by Forrest Reid
The wine merchant looked at him. “D’you think so?” he murmured. “Hardly in his line, I should say. Not the sort of thing he approves of—though he holds his tongue about it because he and his aunt are as thick as thieves. . . . Clement—you know—that was her idea. He was Edward at the font—called after me—only better not mention that I told you. The old lady when she began to take an interest in him wanted him to be called after her. Difficult, naturally, but luckily she had a second name, Clementina, for if she hadn’t she’d have done her best with Rhoda. She’s an old lady of character, you see, and what she wants she usually gets.”
“Well,” Tom exclaimed, “I don’t think she’d any right to make a change like that. He’s your son, not hers, and I expect you’d have liked him to be Edward.”
“Ssh!” the wine merchant cautioned, for there were sounds outside the door, and next moment it opened to admit Miss Pascoe herself, followed by her grand-nephew in the unaccustomed elegance of an Eton suit. The Yorkshires rushed tumultuously to greet their mistress, and, more or less entangled in the group, Tom was introduced.
Aunt Rhoda was a slight, small, and wiry-looking old woman, visibly of extreme energy both of mind and body. Tom had hitherto seen her only from a distance and through bushes, digging in her garden; on which occasions she had been wearing a kind of purple tam-o’-shanter, top-boots, and a very short skirt. She was now wearing a wig, though not with any attempt at deception, since obviously it had been chosen as a compromise between the age she felt and the age she actually was. The wig was piebald, and the small wizened mobile face beneath it reminded Tom irresistibly of a monkey’s. The dark, observant eyes, younger than the wig and ever so much younger than the wrinkles, increased this resemblance. And perhaps the strangest thing about it all was that Tom did not think Miss Pascoe ugly. The standard might be simian, but the effect was sympathetic and attractive. She was dressed in black, with a lot of soft black lace at her throat. Her hands, yellow and dry as parchment, were even more wrinkled than her face, but they flashed with emeralds and diamonds, for she wore at least half a dozen rings. She welcomed Tom in the most gracious manner—not without a hint of ceremony—and they went in to dinner, one of Miss Pascoe’s jewelled claws resting lightly on the wine merchant’s sleeve.
Tom got a nudge in the ribs from his own partner. “What did you want dressing yourself up like that for?” Pascoe whispered. “Now we’ll have to sit in the drawing-room all evening, I suppose—looking at picture-books.”
“I didn’t dress myself up,” Tom whispered back.
“You did; you’ve got on your Sunday things, and that’s why I was made to put on mine.”
“They look very nice,” Tom told him, but Pascoe answered with disgust: “Oh, for goodness’ sake! . . . I’d all the stuff ready for a bonfire, too. All the garden rubbish for months and months, and a lot of stuff that’s been there for years! I got Kerrigan to dump it all over the wall this afternoon, and it’s there waiting, about as high as a haystack. You told me you liked bonfires.”
“So I do; I love them,” Tom replied.
But this muttered conversation was interrupted by the wine merchant’s voice, raised from the dining-room: “Come on—come on—you two. What’s keeping you out there?”
So they entered, and took their seats, as if no dispute had arisen, both looking very proper and well behaved.
All through dinner Tom received constant attentions from the Yorkshire terriers, who gradually converged in an ever closer circle about his legs. Every time he put his hand down it was met at once by a tongue or a cold damp nose. But nobody minded his feeding them: Miss Pascoe indeed was clearly pleased, and passed him tit-bits from her own plate. In fact it was the nicest dinner-party Tom had ever been at. Both Miss Pascoe and the wine merchant seemed to like him, and were interested in all he said. Not politely interested, but really interested, so that he couldn’t help feeling he was a success. In this congenial atmosphere he expanded happily, for it was never difficult to make him talk, though it might be easy enough to shut him up. He talked now—talked quite a lot.
After dinner they returned to the drawing-room, leaving Pascoe’s father over his port. But almost immediately he joined them, coffee was brought in, and the wine merchant lit a cigar. Tom, anxious to hear the next performance of the dogs, had looked at the clock the moment he had entered the room. But they had sat so long over dinner—which had been late to begin with—that the hour was past, and he saw he would have to wait until nine. The dogs, indeed, were perfectly aware of this themselves, and seeking the more comfortable chairs, they scattered themselves about the room in attitudes of repose. After one wavering glance at the hearthrug, Tom sat down on a straight, tall, very high-backed chair, probably valuable, and certainly uncomfortable. The Yorkshires had been wiser or more experienced, for Tom’s was a chair in which you could only sit bolt upright and look and feel like a graven image. But having once made his choice, he didn’t like to change it.
“I hear from Clement that you’re a very good singer,” Miss Pascoe said to him; “much better than any of the other boys.”
“What about going out?” Pascoe immediately called from the window, but was as quickly squashed by the wine merchant.
Tom, himself, thought the interruption rude: Miss Pascoe took no notice of it whatever.
“I should very much like to hear you sing,” she went on. “Don’t fidget,” she suddenly told her nephew, turning round so sharply that Tom was reminded of the albatross. “Clement, I’m sorry to say, takes no interest in music, and has no ear. He must get that from his mother’s side, for all our family were musical.”
“Mother does like music,” Pascoe contradicted. “She likes military bands.”
Miss Pascoe ignored this reply. “We were a large family,” she continued, lapsing into reminiscence, “and my father had us all taught either to sing or to play some instrument. What he liked best himself was chamber music—trios and quartettes for strings and piano. I used to play the piano parts, and I sang a little too. But my youngest sister sang really well. Her voice wasn’t big enough, or perhaps she might have become a professional. But she was sent to London, to have lessons from Tosti.” Tom was at once interested. “I learn from Mr. Holbrook,” he said, “but I know one of Tosti’s songs—‘Serenata’.”
Miss Pascoe had risen from her chair. “The great drawback to living in a place like this is that one has no opportunity to hear music.”
“Couldn’t you get a gramophone?” Tom suggested, watching her as she went to the piano.
“I don’t care for gramophones,” Miss Pascoe answered. Tom was surprised, and wondered how long it was since she had heard one. “Mr. Holbrook says the recording is ever so much better now than it used to be,” he ventured, “and it goes on getting better and better.”
“I dare say it does,” Miss Pascoe agreed, “but even if the records were perfect they could still only repeat themselves, and that’s what I don’t like. Every shade of expression coming always in exactly the same place. . . . I wonder now if there’s anything here that you know.” She opened a box of music and began to rummage amongst it. “My fingers are rather stiff, I expect, but I ought to be able to manage an accompaniment if it’s not too difficult. Unfortunately the only songs I have are those my sister used to sing when she was a girl. If I’d thought of it sooner I’d have got you to bring your music with you.”
“I couldn’t have,” said Tom. “We didn’t know there’d be a piano in the hotel and didn’t bring any music.”
“Well,” said Miss Pascoe, “just have a look through this, though it’s hardly likely that you’ll find anything.” She brought him a volume bound in limp dark-blue morocco, with the initials “A.F.P.” stamped in gilt letters on the front cover.
Tom took it on his knee and turned over the pages, glancing at the words more than at the notes.
“List, pilgrim, list! ’tis the harp in the air.”
“The green trees whispered low a
nd mild.”
“Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest.”
All were unknown to him, forgotten drawing-room ballads, much more old-fashioned even than Mother’s songs, and the paper was quite yellow. Yet, as he turned the leaves, a faint music seemed to float out into the air, thin and ghostly, like the tinkling notes of a musical-box.
“Say, must ye fade, beautiful flowers. . . . Stars of the earth, why must ye away? Stars of the earth, why must ye away? Absent-mindedly he glanced over it, till something familiar in the rhythm arrested his attention. He looked then at the notes, and, though his ability to read music was rudimentary, he knew these notes, and turned back to the title and the composer’s name on the front page. The title was strange to him, but the composer was Donizetti, and, in small letters underneath, the title Tom knew was given, with the name of the opera, La Favorita.
“I know this,” he cried, strangely pleased by his discovery, which was like the finding of an old friend. “Only I don’t know these words. But the music’s the same.”
“Let me see,” said Miss Pascoe curiously, as she stooped over his shoulder.
“Mr. Holbrook made me sing it in Italian,” Tom continued; “but I don’t think this is a translation. In fact it can’t be; it doesn’t mean the same thing at all.”
“Dear me,” murmured Miss Pascoe, “what an accomplished little boy you are!”
Tom blushed. “It’s not that,” he protested hurriedly. “It’s just that Mr. Holbrook likes the sound of the Italian words, and so I learn them off by heart.”
Miss Pascoe had taken the book from him. “Of course!” she exclaimed abruptly. “It’s from an opera. . . . The tune was a favourite with my father, and he used to play it on the fiddle. . . . Do you think you can remember your words?”
“Oh, yes,” said Tom. “It’s the last song I learned.” The wine merchant was puffing at his cigar in friendly silence; Pascoe was silent too; and Miss Pascoe smiled at Tom. “Shall we try it?” she asked, returning to the piano. “But I’d better just run over the accompaniment first to see how it goes.”
Tom complied at once, and leaving his chair, crossed the room to stand beside her.
Aunt Rhoda’s beringed hands looked strangely ancient and withered on the ivory keys, he thought, but she needed no glasses to read the music, and she played quite well. Not with the careless assurance of Mr. Holbrook, naturally, who could improvise an accompaniment if he didn’t know the right one, but certainly better than Mother.
Pascoe came over from the window to get a closer view of the performance, and Tom frowned at him to go away. He wished Pascoe wasn’t in the room at all, because, though he didn’t mind in the least singing to Aunt Rhoda and the wine merchant, Pascoe made him nervous. Especially when he came so near and stared solemnly like an owl. Tom frowned again, but it had no effect.
Meanwhile Aunt Rhoda played the four introductory bars. “Now,” she murmured—just like Mr. Holbrook.
Tom moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue, opened his mouth, and then suddenly spluttered: “I can’t if you keep on staring at me.”
These words were not addressed to Miss Pascoe; nevertheless the accompaniment stopped as abruptly as if they had been. “Come away, Clement,” called the wine merchant from the other side of the room, and Pascoe obeyed. The accompaniment began again.
Tom tried to think he was singing to Mr. Holbrook. He shut out the others from his mind; shut out the room; shut out everything but the sound of the piano—plaintive, soft, and clear. There was just the slightest pause, and then:
He loved the sound of it—caressing and sad—the floating, liquid curves of sound, lingering like a pattern drawn on the air; then melting away. . . .
* * *
“You sing beautifully, dear, and perfectly in tune,” said Miss Pascoe when he had finished, her hands still resting on the keyboard. “Doesn’t he, Edward?”
“Like a lark,” the wine merchant agreed, relighting his cigar, which had gone out during the performance.
Tom felt flattered and pleased. He thought he had sung well, and he would have liked to go on and sing better still, with such an appreciative audience, but Pascoe approached and drew him firmly by the sleeve towards the door. Tom had to go; anyway it was most unlikely that he knew another of Miss Pascoe’s songs; he was very lucky to have found even one.
Pascoe led him into the hall and closed the door behind them. “Come on up,” he said. “I’m going to change, and then we’ll light the bonfire.”
They went up to his room, where Tom sat on the bed, while Pascoe hastily removed the Etons and got into his everyday clothes. He had two boxes of matches, one of which he presented to Tom; and as they ran downstairs Tom could hear Miss Pascoe still playing over softly the air he had sung.
The moment they opened the hall-door the sound of the waves reached them, but the evening had clouded over, and a gusty breeze was blowing from the sea.
“There’s the stuff,” said Pascoe, pointing to two heaps of garden refuse—one of them much larger than the other. “We’ll light the small one; it’s as dry as tinder; and pile on the other by degrees. You light this end and I’ll light that.”
They wasted a few matches in their hurry, but soon a thin blue smoke, accompanied by a light crepitating noise, rose waveringly into the air. The foundation, however, was so dry and inflammable that almost at once it burst into a blaze. The danger was that it might burn itself out too rapidly, but there was a pile of fir-cuttings, and these caught too. Using the pitch-forks which Kerrigan had left for them, Tom and Pascoe built up their pyre, working as hard as they could, while the flames rushed up, licking the air and dropping round them in scarlet flakes. Then, before they knew what was happening, a gust of wind swept the flames backwards, and with a rushing, roaring sound, their whole store ignited. A clear blinding sheet of golden flame leapt at them, and so quickly that they had barely time to jump back. There was no more stoking to be done, everything was burning at once, and for a minute or two, even to Tom, it was rather terrifying.
Pascoe was in an agony. “I hope the old wall doesn’t go!” he cried, beating with his fork at descending showers of sparks, while Tom stood rooted to the spot in a kind of trance. The whole house was lit up—and the shore, and the rocks, and the edge of the sea.
“You’re doing nothing!” screamed Pascoe, who was still making desperate and futile efforts to keep the surrounding bushes from catching, though the heat was too intense for him to get near the actual fire. Tom beat out a few sparks, but it was useless, they could do nothing, and he dropped his fork. He retreated a few paces, and then stood still, lost in a rapture that was dreamy yet exultant. Through it, after a while, he became dimly aware of other figures, other voices, than Pascoe’s—the wine merchant’s. Aunt Rhoda’s—and all the voices sounded excited, and the wine merchant’s angry. But Tom was only half conscious of them, like far-off sounds heard in a dream. The growing brambles and furze-bushes had caught now: it looked as if the whole shore would soon be ablaze. And the shifting uncertain wind swayed the fire sometimes towards him, and sometimes away. Through the smooth, rushing sound there came numerous explosions; blazing fragments fell; and showers of sparks floated far and wide like burning rain. . . .
The fire seemed to have divided Tom from the Pascoe family. It had thrust them back to an immense distance; they were no more than gesticulating marionettes. They were outside his world, but the fire was in his world. He heard the seagulls crying, and a startled rabbit ran almost over his feet. The whole world was burning, with bright wings of flame that rushed up the sky, while far above Tom’s head, pale and remote and spectral, a white moon hovered like a gigantic moth, appearing and disappearing as the clouds drifted across it.
The red flare reached no further than the foam at the edge of the sea, but it was still increasing, and the flames were still mounting higher. Kerrigan and another man had now appeared, and they and the two Pascoes were exerting every effort to keep the fire from spread
ing through the garden inside. But Tom did not notice this till a dense cloud of white steam suddenly hissed up. Then he saw what was happening; they had turned on a hose; and in a minute or two the enchantment was ended. To Tom it was like the slaying of a beautiful great beast. The beast—a dragon—still heaved its rosy coils here and there, but they were dying rapidly, and as they died they sank back in an ashen grey. Soon only smoke and cinders and steam were left—charred black branches and sodden ashes—while the vanished colour-notes of dim green and bronze crept back into the evening landscape.
Then, and not till then, did Tom really awaken to the disaster. At the same time he felt his arm grasped and shaken; and an angry voice almost sobbed into his ear: “Why didn’t you help? There’s going to be the most frightful row about this. All Aunt Rhoda’s ramblers are burnt, and the trellises with them.”
“Are they?” said Tom, beginning to feel a little scared. “I don’t think they can all be burnt.”
“All that were on this side of the garden,” Pascoe wailed. “She’s pretty mad about it, I can tell you, and Daddy’s worse. You’d better go home. There’s no use you saying good-night to them; they saw that you didn’t do a thing.”
Tom shook off Pascoe’s hand. He hadn’t done much, he knew; but what could he have done? He made a detour, with Pascoe gloomily following him, and then scrambled over the low wall into the garden. The remains of the fire had been beaten down, but the flattened mass of embers still glowed dangerously. Kerrigan was still plying the hose. Tom walked straight up to Miss Pascoe and the wine merchant, who watched his approach in silence. He didn’t know what to say, and, since nobody else spoke, in the end he held out his hand to Miss Pascoe, murmuring involuntarily, “Thank you very much for a pleasant evening.”
The wine merchant coughed, and Miss Pascoe replied rather grimly: “I’m glad you enjoyed it, though I suppose we ought to thank you and Clement for the chief entertainment.”