And still Henry talked. The pair of them were near now to the harpsichord and the candles on the top of its frame.
“After I have sung...?”
Was Henry blind, she wondered? Couldn’t he recognize in Julian’s face the family, if not the boy? The same thought was for a second or so stirring in Elliot’s mind, but only for a second. The pattern was already drawn. The copy was already a-weaving. In its due time it should be woven.
“After you have sung, Signor, we must talk.”
Frances Scoble saw the youth’s eyes turn and rest on her husband’s face. An inscrutable smile hovered about his lips, but like a good actor, who had so conned his part that he was always its master, he set his lips straight.
“As you say, we will talk after I have sung,” he said quietly, his eyes still upon the eyes of Scoble.
And now Henry did wake to some disquiet. Was it Julian’s face, the colour of his eyes, his bearing? Was it that he used no title when he addressed his host, yet was so tutored in his conduct that he had left his sword behind him in the Library? These Italian singers were famous for rustling about with their rapiers at their hips, even though from time to time they took a public caning in spite of them. But this lad — Marelli — knew that you left them outside the drawing-room of a country house. As Julian turned towards the harpsichord, his music in his hand, Henry Scoble’s brow was furrowed, his eyes troubled. He shot a glance towards his wife, as if he had a sudden fear that she could answer him. Then he flung his head back and with a touch of impatience in his voice, which he tried in vain to hide:
“I take it, Sir, that you have another name than Marelli?”
Julian turned with a polite bow.
“But Marelli is the name under which I sing.”
He waited, but Henry Scoble could not press his question.
“We shall be beholden to you,” said Henry, and he took his seat.
Under the instructions of one of the ladies, Gurton arranged the chairs in a semicircle a little way from the harpsichord with their backs to the high-curtained windows. And whilst the house-party spread itself upon them like an opened fan, Julian spoke to Sir James at the harpsichord.
“You will be kind enough to accompany these two songs for me, Sir James?” he said.
“Let me see them!”
“You will know them both.”
At the corner of the mantelpiece Frances Scoble drew a chair towards her.
“This is a short song,” said Marelli, standing behind the harpsichord between the lighted candles. “The words are by the Italian poet Metastasio, the music by the great master, Hasse. It is a song of spring.” Below him Sir James ran his fingers over the keys. Frances Scoble slipped silently into her chair. He sang with the Italian accent which he generally used, modifying his voice to the size and structure of the room; and in the clear sweet music his small audience heard the joy of the budding earth, the lilt and whirr of the lark into the pale blue, the bursting into leaf of the black, gaunt trees, and with it all a hint of tears nearby, because so much loveliness must waste so soon. When he had finished, the young ladies were drying their eyes and sniffing into their handkerchiefs, and the young gentlemen were damnably uncomfortable and hoping that the boy from the sea would sing them next a rousing sea-chanty with a recurrent line on which they could all let their tongues loose. But he followed it with the song of “Verdi Prati,” from Handel’s opera of Alcina, which Carestini had first refused to sing.
Julian told the story of this refusal and Handel’s bullying him into consent and of the triumph which the singer secured, as though music were the only passion in his thoughts, so that even Frances lost the sharp edge of her terror and Henry Scoble was lulled quite out of his suspicions. Elliot, for his part, no longer reasoned. He was the looker-on, believing that each interruption, each effort to break the spell and avert the “doom to more than Troy,” impending over this house, was a mere part of the ordained plan. But he observed with eyes less occupied than anyone elses in that great room. He saw the return of ease to Henry, the lessening fear of Frances Scoble and amongst a few unimportant trifles, a relaxation of the household’s discipline. For within the room at the far end by the Library door, Gurton and two or three of the footmen had gathered, and behind their shoulders could be seen the mob-caps of a few of the upper women.
When the applause had died away, Julian laid his music sheets aside and said — it seemed to Elliot that his Italian accent had never given so harsh a rasp to the English tongue:
“I will end, with your permission, my last concert in England,” — with one protest the voices of the ladies threatened him with all the blame for their premature deaths if he adhered to so cruel a resolve.
“I shall positively go into a decline,” cried one.
“It will be murder. I can smell the lilies about my bed,” said another.
And in his gentlest voice, the singer answered:
“Nay, madam, by your leave, for murder there is but one perfume — the musk and amber of revenge.”
He turned to Sir James.
“I have not the music to my hand, but, as Mr. Bellingham says, I can, if you’ll allow me, do the notes myself.”
He bowed to Bellingham as Sir James rose. Bellingham returned the bow with a great grin,” half friendliness, half pleasure that two-thirds of this odd caterwauling was over. But as Julian slipped into Elliot’s seat at the harpsichord, the grin froze upon Bellingham’s face. He half rose from his chair, but a chorus of indignation assailed him.
“The poor man must play at billiards at this hour.”
“And he’s not so clever with his cue neither, for all his practice.”
Brute Bellingham flung up his hands.
“On your own heads be it, young ladies!” he cried, and he resumed his seat.
Julian ran his fingers lightly over the keys.
“I call the song Musk and Amber he said. “The title is not perhaps very appropriate to the theme, but it may be thought to suit the hour and the place.”
He struck the few chords which prepared the song and Elliot’s body stiffened from his head to his feet. He had never guessed how the reckoning, eight years old now, was to be presented. He knew now. He looked across the room at Henry Scoble and Frances in the shadows by the mantelpiece. Surely they knew as certainly as he did himself. But Henry lolled, a trifle bored, and hiding his boredom behind a smile. And Frances? Well, Frances had proved — nay, had admitted — that her ear was not to be trusted. She had not stirred. And then, without a trace of any accent, an English voice rang true across the room, singing English words on the clear note of a flute.
“Boy Cupid with the bandaged eyes
Draws tight his bow of pearl and jade.
Swift from the string the arrow flies
To wound the heart of youth and maid.”
And the melody took a lilt:
“But in this odd world of sevens and sixes
Nothing is quite as it ought to be.
It is only my heart that the arrow transfixes
And never the maid’s that was made for me.”
The voice ceased but the fingers filled in the break between the verses, improvising with runs and shakes and chords, as though they were just garnishing the dish, and the voice rose again:
“I have her picture cut upon crystal,
Painted in exquisite colours and rare.
A pledge? If a pledge, it’s a pledge that the tryst’ll
Only be kept by one of the pair.
There was no change in the smiling face behind the harpsichord. The song was sung with a humorous sort of melancholy, as though the singer laughed at his solitary plight.
“She has eyes that are deeper and kinder than sapphires,
Her lips’ dark velvet defies the rose.
Oh, I can’t believe that other lads have fires
Fierce as the fire which destroys my repose.”
Again the voice ceased, the fingers strayed carelessly over the ke
ys. But at the door where the footmen and the maids were gathered there was a stir. Henry was leaning forward in his chair, bewildered, angry, afraid. Of the young people, some had heard that very song sung by the boy Julian when they themselves were children. All in that room were openly troubled except two. Trouble passed from one to the other like a contagion. But two remained apparently untouched by it, the youth smiling at the harpsichord and the silent woman in the corner by the fire. The voice rose for the third time, but now with a sigh of utter loneliness which certainly the boy had never known, and could never, if he had known, have conveyed into his song:
“And so I wander by forest and boulder
Hoping that one day in spite of my fears
I shall wake with a golden head at my shoulder
Instead of a pillow wet with my tears.”
Julian’s voice died away on a poignant fall which brought to the eyes of the young audience, with the tears, the picture of a wounded bird swerving in an arc to the ground. To most of them the air was still vibrating with the pain of the appeal, when the most unlooked for interruption swept like a tropic wave over a calm sea. Brute Bellingham crashed across the room and bending over the lid of the harpsichord cried:
“Who in God’s name are you?”
The boy’s fingers ran lightly up the notes and executed a little ridiculous shake on a couple of treble notes. He looked up at Brute Bellingham, his eyes smiling, his voice very quiet and clear.
“I am Julian John Philip Challoner Carolus Scoble, Earl of Linchcombe, Viscount Terceira and Baron Hardley.”
“What!”
Henry Scoble was now on his feet with a bellow of rage. But Brute Bellingham paid no heed to him. He was staring at Julian.
“By God you are, boy!” He swept round to Elliot who was standing at a little distance from the harpsichord. “You called him Julian in the inn at Winchester.”
“I did?” exclaimed Elliot.
“You knew then,” Bellingham continued. “I know now.”
He struck a straight arm with a pointed finger over Julian’s head.
“Look, all of you!”
And not a soul but looked, except the woman in the shadow who hadno need to look. Even Henry Scoble must follow with his eyes that pointing finger.
By chance, perhaps, though Sir James Elliot would never admit that chance had anything to do with so much as a gesture in all this affair, the harpsichord had been set under a portrait of Julian’s father in his youth, painted by Sir James Thornhill. It was a vivid picture of a stripling in a pale blue satin coat and wearing a powdered wig. Whilst Julian had sung, with Elliot as his accompanist at the keys, he had stood between the picture and his audience, masking it from their eyes. Only when he took Elliot’s place had the picture been revealed, and so familiar a decoration it was upon those walls that only Brute Bellingham’s sharp eyes had seen and read its message. There it hung on the drawing-room wall in colours as fresh as though they had been painted the day before, and there beneath him at the harpsichord, sat his living replica, the same blue eyes, the same curve of jaw, the same delicate, straight nose, with this difference only noticeable now. Sorrow had given to the living face a droop to the corners of the lips and a shadow about the eyes.
“It’s an imposture,” shouted Henry Scoble, breathing hard. “An accidental likeness. There are always such for scoundrels to make their profit of.
But Giovanni Ferrer, the Marelli” in his rage and fear Henry Scoble was his own traitor, “will find no victims here....”
“Giovanni Ferrer lies at Naples in the high corner of the Campo Santo. You were present when he was buried, Henry Scoble, and you set my tombstone at his head,” said Julian as he stood up at the side of the instrument.
“A cane!” Henry Scoble roared. “Who was it caned Senesino in the streets of London? Marelli shall find the same treatment here. You there, Grainger, Miles, Coates,” and he swung round to the huddle of frightened servants by the Library door. “Get canes and whip this pretty rogue out of Grest. See to it Gurton!”
But whilst they stood muttering and mumbling in a confusion, Julian repeated Gurton’s name.
“Come you here to me!” he added with a quiet authority, and even Henry Scoble’s bluster was stilled.
In a complete silence Gurton walked across the room.
“Do you remember me?”
Gurton stood in front of Julian, looking at him, and without a word. He had no doubts to master, but he had a throat which worked and choked him. At last he began huskily:
“My Lord, to see you again is honey in the mouth,” and suddenly he dropped on his knee and seizing Julian’s right hand pressed it against his forehead.
“We have grieved for you, Admiral—”
Julian caught at the title. For the first time that night his poise and calm went by the board. He threw back his head and showed them all a tortured face.
“Admiral!” he cried aloud in anguish, and then dropping his left hand on Gurton’s shoulder, he added in a voice broken between a laugh and a sob, “Yes, good friend of mine, old Admiral Timbertoes comes back to Grest for a night and a day.”
Elliot was puzzled by that time-limit. It was new to him. It was to be put aside and understood at leisure. Meanwhile it was according to the pattern. Henry Scoble took some comfort from it. He waited. Julian raised Gurton to his feet.
“If any still doubt, I ask them to listen. Mr. Bassett, you travelled with me yesterday in my chaise from Winchester to Mr. Bellingham’s house.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I was seldom out of your sight to-day.”
“That’s true.”
“You drove with me to-night to Grest. We were taken straight from the hall into the Library.” Bassett nodded his head.
“But, by Gad, you knew your way,” he said “Aye and he knew of the big bookcase, too,” added Brute Bellingham.
“Well then, let me tell you of my house and Mr. Henry Scoble will correct me if I am wrong,” continued Julian with a savage note creeping into his voice. “When I was a boy, I slept in the big bedroom fronting the east, on this floor, where my father slept before me, and Gurton in the closet at its side.”
He mounted, as it were, the stairs and described the long corridor and the rooms which opened out of it. Henry Scoble uttered a tittering scornful laugh.
“After all, Grest Park is not unknown,” he interrupted. “And it would not be difficult for a stranger who took the trouble, to make himself acquainted with its arrangements. I am not belittling Signor Marelli’s ingenuity. On the contrary. It is of a very high quality since it can so easily corrupt our good Gurton’s simplicity.”
Henry Scoble had the trick of words. They went to his head like wine. They fed the passions in his mind. One violent phrase devised another still more violent, one bitter epigram sharpened the acrimony of the epigram to follow. That they missed their mark through their excess mattered not at all, so long as there were words and words like flails to beat an enemy down.
“With Gurton I shall deal in my own time. Admiral Timbertoes — yes, we all remember with a kindly smile the fancies of a young boy. But since the boy is dead, the least raw sentiment of decency might have left them in his grave with him. Meanwhile....”
Henry Scoble was snarling when Julian cut across his speech.
“Meanwhile my memory shall serve where no ingenuity could,” he said. “In the long corridor above, by the side of the big staircase a door opens on to the south wing. Into that wing, a few paces from the corridor, a narrow stairway cut in the wall descends. It leads up to a big lumber-room in the roof, where all sorts of pieces of furniture, as they were discarded and replaced, were stored; pictures, mirrors, chairs, old cabinets, tapestries. In that room I used to play truant from my lessons.” He turned to Elliot. “You caught me one morning when I was seeking refuge there with old short-sighted Dr. Lanford at my heels.”
Elliot could see as clearly as if it was all happening to-day, the boy as he stood
on the lowest step in the narrow embrasure of the staircase with an impish grin on his face, a volume of Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations under his arm and an appealing finger to his lips.
“I remember it as if it had happened this morning,” said Elliot. “I was leaving Grest. Dr. Lanford was hurrying up the big stairs, calling ‘Julian! Julian!’ one moment and moaning ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ the next.”
There was a trace of that impish grin on Julian’s face now, making a boy of him again.
“In my thoughts,” said Elliot, “I was a boy again and played truant with you.”
“In that bolt-hole I could never be found,” Julian continued. “For across one corner a big cabinet stood making a small hiding-place behind it, with just room for a stool and a book and me. It was my private study and I decorated it not very politely with charcoal sketches, chiefly of a small boy with his fingers extended at the end of his nose, expressing his derision at an old tutor in horn-rimmed spectacles. I should be obliged if one or two of you gentlemen would look in that lumber-room now and report to us whether or no I am speaking the truth.”
There could not have been a surer test. The cleverest magician of all the magicians since the days of Aladdin could not have found his way up to that lumber-room and scrawled his cartoons upon the walls since Julian had reached Grest. There was a pause, none the less, when he had done, for, in truth, no one now doubted the truth of Julian’s claim, and all feared what the outcome was to be.
At last Brute Bellingham spoke up:
“I’ll go.”
“And I,” Charles Bassett added.
“Thank you!” said Julian. “You’ll need one of the footmen to show you the way. Not you, Gurton. Your loyalty has made you suspect to Mr. Scoble.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 749