Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  But he had sung his sweet song too well. They did not let him go out and two days later the barber came up the hill from Naples.

  IX. JULIAN’S CHOICE

  “SO! WHAT IS your name?”

  Julian was sitting in his old place with his back against the hovel wall in the rough dress he had been given to wear. It was on an afternoon when the sun was hot and the grass brown and only the temperate air of these uplands mitigated the oppression of that cup of metal which was the sky. For eight weeks had passed since the barber had come up the hill from Naples. Julian was white and frail now, with that unmistakable strain and fatigue in his eyes which is left over from long-borne pain. But there was defiance in them too, as he sat up facing his enemies. They were there, squatting on the grass in front of him, like people at a show waiting for the entertainment to begin.

  “So! What is your name, boy?” Traetta the father asked.

  “Julian, John, Philip, Challoner, Carolus, Scoble, Earl of Linchcombe, Viscount Terceira and Baron Hardley,” answered Julian and his audience received the answer with a great gust of laughter which an expected jest arouses. The old woman cackled, shaking her head, Tonio rocked from side to side, crying “Viva, il Maestro, il Conte,” and beating the ground with his stick, Costanza clapped her hands, “Bravo quaglio! Bravo il guapo!” but she was watching the boy shrewdly. As for the father Traetta, he laughed too, but not with any heartiness. He was a thickset fellow with a curiously sharp face and a pair of small eyes hard as buttons. He had slung a coat over his shoulders; otherwise he was naked to the waist with a fell of black hair upon his chest on which drops of sweat shone and ran.

  “Come!” he said. “A joke is a joke. Let us be serious, Giovanni! Tell your good friends your name.”

  His voice was wheedling, yet as hard as his eyes; but Julian answered:

  “Julian John Philip Challoner—” but that was as far as he got in the list, for old Traetta with a sudden brutal sweep of his hands cried:

  “Stop!”

  He felt in the pocket of his coat and pulled out a news-sheet creased and grimy.

  “You can read?”

  “Yes.”

  It was more than Traetta could do, but in one corner was printed the image of a coffin, with a paragraph in a black rim beneath it.

  “Read, then!” he said, and tossed the sheet on to the boy’s lap. Julian closed his fingers on the paper, but he did not lift it to his eyes, he did not even glance down at it.

  “Read!” Traetta repeated violently.

  “When I am alone,” Julian answered.

  Traetta raised his hands in imprecation. He was holding out against them — this wisp of flesh and bone! Costanza got up from the ground.

  “Let us leave him to read it,” she said, aware that the boy was at the end of his strength.

  Grumbling they obeyed her and disappeared through the doorway of the hut. Costanza went last and stood watching the boy secretly from the threshold. But even when he was alone Julian did not read the news-sheet. His eyelids closed over his eyes, but from want of strength to continue in this abominable world rather than any desire of sleep.

  Costanza turned back into the hut.

  “That boy will die on our hands,” she said quietly. “He has no heart to live.”

  “The man wished him to die,” said Traetta sullenly.

  “But the woman did not. It was the woman who paid. She wanted him to live very miserably quite a long time, begging for a bowl of soup at the convents and then to die at last under a barrow. O Dio! but that woman can hate! Brrrh!”

  “But she has paid and gone,” said the older woman shrilly. “She’ll not come back.”

  Costanza stamped her foot in the most unfilial scorn.

  “But are you all little children? Did you not hear him sing? That good woman was deaf through her hatred. A few years at the Conservatory and he will have a name like Senesino and money like Senesino and, if he likes it, a Dukedom like Caffarelli. And wouldn’t there be some of it for us? Die under a barrow! Bah, he will die in a Palace, and” — she laughed brutally—” since there will be no wife to drive us off or children to inherit — eh, it is worth while to look beyond the nose.”

  Of the four brutes, she was the only one with intelligence. The others had only cunning for the day.

  “You go,” she ordered the two men, “and you, mother, sit here very quietly. I will talk in my own way to the boy.”

  Tonio went up the hill to his goats. Traetta, the father, walked out of sight to the shade of a rock.

  “Why should I listen to her?” he growled. “Isn’t she my daughter? Why don’t I take a stick to her shoulders?”

  He appealed to the universe and the universe gave him no explanation. So he lay down in the shade and slept, and dreamt no doubt of the pleasant little farm which he would have, where the women did all the work, as soon as this accursed boy with the big, still eyes was dead or in some way off his hands.

  Costanza, meanwhile, returned to Julian and squatted at his side. But there was a change in him. The languor, the indifference had gone from his face. It was quietly alert. His eyes were open, but they kept as ever his secrets.

  “You have read?” she asked, looking about him for the paper.

  “It is in my pocket,” said Julian.

  “But you have read it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You saw then there is another who has all these fine titles?”

  “Yes.”

  Costanza felt uneasy. He was always reticent. He had never burst into torrents of abuse of them for their cruelty. They had done him the irretrievable wrong and hurt him terribly and he had screamed a little, more than a little, but from pain, from humiliation, not from anger; and then when he ought to be well, he went on slowly dying. But he certainly was not as far now on the death-road as he had been an hour ago.

  “Yes,” he repeated the word. “I see that there is another who has my title and Grest too.”

  He lingered gently over the name Grest as he spoke it. He saw something more too which he was going to keep to himself. Had he been kidnapped, the Traettas would have asked a ransom for him. There would not have been a boy’s body retrieved from the Bay and buried. There would have been a payment and he would have been restored. Or there would have been a hue-and-cry. But he was not to be restored. It was never wished that he should be.

  “Who is it that I am?” he asked without the slightest sign of irony.

  “Giovanni Ferrer.”

  He repeated the name to himself, looking down at his body and his limbs. He seemed to be trying it on as if it were a new suit of clothes.

  “Yes. Oh, you are more sensible. That is good,” said Costanza cheerfully. “Now listen to me with both your little ears. You cannot stay here. For you will die if you stay.”

  “Yes, I shall die if I stay.”

  “But you can be a great singer, little boy,” she said shifting herself nearer to him. “A few years at a Conservatorio under a great teacher, and with your beauty and your voice you will have the world at your feet.”

  “The woman’s world,” said the extraordinary boy, and Costanza swung away from him.

  “But that’s all the world there is — for you,” she cried in exasperation. “You’ll find that out in time,” and she caught herself up sharply. Her business at that moment was to persuade, not to jeer. “You will be rich, Giovanni. You will have jewels. You will live in your own world amongst high-born gentlemen and elegant ladies,” and she kissed the palm of her hand towards the high Heavens. “Titles? Pah! You can be a Duke of Naples with a fine, great house on the hill of Capodimonte. It is understood?”

  For a full minute Julian remained silent, staring out in front of him. Then he turned to her and smiled.

  “It is understood. I am Giovanni Ferrer and I shall sing.”

  “Good!” and she sprang to her feet. “You must eat and get strong. And then—” she made a gesture to pile all the riches of the world into his lap.<
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  “Costanza,” he called as she turned towards the door. “Yes,” she answered, stopping. What now had this uncomfortable child to say to her?

  “I suppose that Giovanni Ferrer lies in my grave?”

  “Will you be quiet?” she cried. “You are Giovanni Ferrer.”

  Julian nodded his head solemnly.

  “And I shall sing. And I shall be rich and a Duke of Naples?”

  Was he laughing at her, the incomprehensible one, she wondered? But Julian was not laughing at all. Old Timbertoes would never stump about the Italian garden with his wife on his arm and his children’s cries filling the air with their shrill and lovely cacophonies. Grest had gone, its gracious rooms and long corridors. But something else was replacing in his breast that exquisite vision — something dark and grim and yet engrossing — something which already began to have a pleasant savour in his nostrils — the musk and amber of revenge.

  X. A PRESENT IS GIVEN AND A DEBUT MADE

  THUS IN A month’s time the Conservatorio di St.

  Onofrio opened its doors to a new soprano. The Maestro di Capella, Signor Durante, successor to the famous Porpora, passed the boy in upon one audition. He was bound for a term of six to eight years, variable for any special reason by either side. The lower floor of the school was occupied by the instrumentalists who practised their different instruments at the same time and filled the air with the ear-splitting roar of their discords. Julian, however, was taken to the upper storeys, which were kept warm and quiet and consonant with these hothouse flowers. He was dressed in the uniform of Saint Onofrio’s Conservatory, a jacket and breeches of white cloth, white stockings, with a black sash about the waist. There, under a strict regime, with every now and then a procession to a church upon a Saint’s day, when the pupils were allowed to try their voices in a great choral celebration, he remained until the day he was eighteen.

  On that morning the Maestro Durante made him repeat over and over again one series of notes. It seemed that Durante would never be content and the harassed student began to wonder whether his five years of intense application were to end with the Maestro’s disapproval and his own dismissal from the Conservatorio. His heart sank when Durante leaned back in his chair and cried:

  “So, my boy! I have nothing more to teach you.”

  He did indeed begin to think that he was the world’s worst football, when Durante sprang up and clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Nay, never look so miserable! I shall take you after dinner to the house of Sir Edward Place. You jump a little? Yes, it is to be understood. Sir Edward is the kindest and most generous patron of the art of music and my very good friend. It is not every pupil of St. Onofrio’s whom I ask him to help. Please him, Giovanni, this afternoon and your fortune is in your own hands. Meanwhile I shall give you a little book,” and the Maestro took a small, slim volume from a drawer in his bureau.

  He opened the pages at one place and another and chuckled over the passages which met his eyes.

  “It is by Benedetto Marcello, a great musician and a great patrician of Venice. I wrap it up, for you will not read it yet,” and whilst he talked, Durante folded a paper about the book and tied it with tape. He lit a taper upon his table and sealed the book with his seal and wrote on the envelope in his minute hand, “From Durante to his pupil, Giovanni Ferrer.”

  “There! On the night when you have made your début and the candles of the Opera House are all extinguished and you are back in your lodging, with the ‘Vivas’ still ringing in your ears, you will light a candle and sit down to read Marcello’s book. You will laugh, as you heard me laugh, but since you are intelligent, you will also learn a great lesson.” He handed the book to Julian. “So! Tie back your hair with a ribbon, polish your shoes, and sing your best this afternoon.”

  Julian, when he had left the room, leaned against the wall of the corridor and his face went white. He had travelled the first stage of his journey and now that he had come to the successful end of it, he was suddenly surprised by an overwhelming fatigue. All the anxiety and labour of the last five years swept over his head like a tidal wave and left him as weak and unsteady as an invalid. He went on slowly, clutching in his hand Durante’s gift, to the dormitory which he shared with seven others of his kind and lay for a little while upon his bed, reflecting bitterly:

  “Yes, it is so. Where anyone else would be throwing his cap in the air, I am swooning like a girl at the sign of a mouse.”

  But there was no sign of that discouragement when he followed Durante that afternoon into Sir Edward Place’s music-room and was greeted for the second time in his life by the English Minister.

  “You will sing to us, Signor Ferrer?” the Minister said courteously. “There are but the five of us here, my wife, the Princess Iacci, Lord Fortrose, a compatriot of mine and Signor Durante, five of us who are very fond of music, and sympathetic with young people starting out upon their careers. You will feel yourself at home with us.”

  It was a speech to set a novice at his ease and Julian was grateful for it. There had not been a spark of recognition or surprise in Sir Edward’s eyes. And indeed there could hardly have been. He had seen a boy once for a few seconds in a motley of guests. He saw now a youth, fairly tall, slender, gracious in his bearing and of a beauty which seemed to have as its particular quality a modesty and diffidence in its appeal — a broad rather than high forehead, a nose which a Greek sculptor might have chiselled, an honest mouth, teeth white and even, a chin rounded and firm, a clean curve of jaw and a pair of big long-lashed violet eyes for which women would have pledged their souls.

  Durante, with a superb confidence in his pupil, had chosen for his very first display that song by Hasse with which the famous Farinelli had for twenty years conjured the melancholy of Philip the Fifth at Aranjuez. Julian stood up before his tiny audience and sang. The years of training had given a great volume to his voice, a power of swelling out and holding and slowly diminishing the note without a breath, which was of the rarest. They had increased its compass so that he could reach F in altissimo without effort, and that moving sweetness which it had always possessed was clearer than it had ever been. He sang with feeling and a throb of passion, forgetting himself as it seemed, but controlling his voice with the reticence and taste which were a part of his nature. His audience which had expected much from the pains the Maestro had taken to bring him to their notice was startled. Little exclamations of delight escaped from them as song followed song, and the two women were in tears. He avoided the gross sort of ornamentation with which so many singers were accustomed to overgild their performances. There was a delicacy even in the strongest passages; and the effect was indescribably helped by the beauty of his appearance and a certain loneliness which hung about him like a charm. Sir Edward Place was not content until he had taken Durante’s seat at the harpsichord and had made Julian sing an aria of his own composition. Then he presented the lad with a silver snuff-box in which there were twenty guineas, thanked him for the great enjoyment he had received and promised him all the help he could give in launching him on his career.

  “We make our séjour for the summer at the Villa Angelica by Vesuvius,” he continued, “and there, once a week, we have an accademia.”

  The musical evenings of Sir Edward Place gathered together not only the devotees but the potentates, the men who held the keys of the outer doors. Durante came near to a frank gasp of relief. A début for his favourite pupil at the Villa Angelica was the hope which he had been cherishing.

  “Shall we say then next Thursday?” said Sir Edward with a smile. He was all that was gracious and condescending and kind.

  “Thursday,” Durante agreed warmly. “Giovanni will be grateful to you all his life.”

  But the ladies would have none of so early a date. They had dried their tears. They uttered little screams of horror.

  “Thursday?”

  “Impossible!”

  “Ridiculous, my dear!”

  “The boy wa
nts clothes.”

  “Well,” said Edward, “he has three days to get them in.”

  But again the screams cluttered the air. Sir Edward was a monster.

  “A barbarian, Etta,” cried Lady Place to her friend.

  “Giovanni must cut a figure to match his voice.”

  “A voice in slops! Not a soul will listen to it.”

  “Besides he’s too pretty a boy to be negligently presented.”

  “It would be to set a fine play in a miserable décor.”

  The men meekly bowed before the storm. The début was postponed to the second accademia and the ladies went into committee upon this important matter of his dress. Giovanni stood apart whilst their eyes measured him and coloured him and beruffled him, as if he were a girl to be decked out for a Court Ball. Once a wisp of a smile curved his lips when Lady Place suggested that black would suit him, and the Princess, rather shocked, replied that black was the patrician colour and not for Giovanni Ferrer. In the end agreement was reached. Giovanni was to wear a velvet coat of a deep rose colour, a white satin waistcoat and breeches and white silk stockings. He was to go to Sir Edward’s tailor to be fitted. The Princess was to provide the lace ruffles for his wrists, Lady Place had a set of paste buckles for his knees and his insteps. Red heels he must have to his shoes, but there was a great debate whether he should have a wig with a bag, or his own hair powdered. Giovanni had a mass of brown hair shot with gold curling about his face, and it was decided that it would give him a more fresh and aetherial look, if he wore his own hair powdered rather than a modish peruke. Lady Place would send her hairdresser on the morning of the performance to dress it for him. Thus it was arranged. Julian had not a word to say. He stood apart, — it would have been against all etiquette to invite him to sit and not even Sir Edward thought of doing so — quite silent and indeed grateful, and keeping his secrets as always to himself. Like any other novice to whom a great opportunity was granted, he dutifully thanked his patrons.