The Tenor was vexed sometimes, and obliged to find fault, but the Boy could always soothe him. "I am sure you love me," he would say. "Your life was not worth living until I came, and you could not live without me now.
I am a horrid little brute I know, but I have my finer feelings too, my capacity for loving, and that raises me.
"All love is sweet Given or returned."
When the Boy quoted or recited anything he really felt, he had a way of lingering over the words as if each syllable were a pleasure to him. The deep contralto of his voice was at its sweetest then, and he seldom failed to make his own mood felt as he intended.
The Tenor, justly incensed by some wicked piece of mischief, was often obliged to turn away that he might maintain his authority and not be seen to soften. But he never deceived the Boy, who could gauge the effect of his persuasion to a nicety, and would grin like a fiend behind the Tenor"s back at the success of his own eloquence. No matter what he had done, by hook or by crook he always managed to bring about a reconciliation before they parted. He knew the Tenor"s weak point--Angelica--and when everything else failed he would play upon that unmercifully. But he had a way of speaking of his sister which often made the Tenor seriously angry. He did not believe the Boy meant half the disrespect with which he mentioned her, but it galled him, nevertheless; and, on one occasion, when the Boy had repeated some scandalous gossip to which the Tenor objected, and afterward excused himself by saying that it was not his but his sister"s story, the Tenor"s indignation overflowed, and he lectured him severely.
"You should never forget that your sister is an innocent girl," he said, "and it is degrading to her even to have her name a.s.sociated with such ideas."
But the Boy only grinned. "Bless you," he retorted, "don"t make so much ado about nothing. She"s quite as wise as we are."
The Tenor"s eyes flashed. "I call that disloyal," he said. "Even if it were true--and it is not true--it would be disloyal; and I am ashamed of you. If you ever dare to speak of your sister in that light way to me again, I"ll thrash you."
For a moment the Boy was astonished by the threat. His jaw dropped, and he stared at the Tenor; but, quickly recovering himself, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "Oh, my!" he exclaimed. "What a brother-in-law you would be! How do you know she is such a saint?"
"You are a little brute," was all the answer the Tenor vouchsafed. But the question made him think. He could picture her to himself at any time as he saw her in the canon"s pew, and the pale proud purity of her face, with the unvarying calm of her demeanour, were a.s.surances enough for him. His dear lady. His delicate-minded girl. He would stop it. He would make this scapegrace brother of hers respect her, even as he had threatened, if necessary.
"Do you know what she calls you?" that youth asked presently, breaking in upon the Tenor"s meditation in a confident way, as if he could not be mistaken about the subject of it.
But the Tenor was not to be beguiled all at once. "I have already requested you not to mention your sister to me," he said.
"I know," was the cool rejoinder. "But I promised on my word of honour to tell you what she calls you. She calls you Israfil--Is-ra-fil," he repeated, "the angel of song, you know."
But the Tenor made no sign. The Boy watched him a moment, and then continued unabashed, "I shall call you Israfil myself, I think, for the future. But I like your own name too!" he added. "I have only just found it out. Everybody here calls you the Tenor, you know."
"And how did you find it out, pray, if I may ask?"
"I looked everywhere," said the Boy, glancing round him comprehensively; "and at last I found it on the back of an old envelope that was in that Bible you keep in your bedroom. Here it is," and he took it out of his pocket-book. "David Julian Vanetemple, Esq., Haysthorpe Castle, Hays, N.B."
A painful spasm contracted the Tenor"s face, "Oh, Boy," he said, in a deep stern voice that made the latter quail for once; "have you no sense of honour at all? You must give that back to me immediately."
The Boy returned it without a word, and the Tenor went upstairs. His step was listless, and when he came back he looked pale and disheartened. He sat down in his accustomed seat beside the fireplace farthest from the window that looked out upon the cathedral, but facing it himself, and rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and his head on his hand, taking no notice of the Boy, however, who waited a while, casting anxious glances at him, and then rose softly and stole away.
When the Tenor roused himself he found a slip of paper on the table beside him, on which was written, "Dear Israfil, I beg your pardon. I did it without thinking. I will never hurt you like that again, only forgive me."
And the Tenor forgave him.
On another occasion, when there was peace between them, and they were both in a merry mood, the Boy said he had a grievance, and when the Tenor asked what it was, he complained that the Tenor had never taken interest enough in him to ask him his name.
"No, now you mention it," the Tenor answered. "I never thought of your having a name."
"Do you mean to say you think me such a nonent.i.ty?"
"Just the opposite. Your individuality is so strongly marked that you don"t seem to require to be labelled like other people, By-the-bye, what is your name?"
"Claude."
The Tenor laughed ironically. "Oh, no," he said, "it is Maude you mean; delicate, dainty, white-fingered Maude."
But the Boy only roared. This kind of insinuation never roused his resentment; on the contrary, it delighted him. "Imagine the feelings of the flowers," he said, with a burst of laughter that convulsed him, "if my remarkable head, sunning over with curls, were to shine out on them suddenly, and want to be their sun!"
"I am afraid you are incorrigible," the Tenor answered. "You seem to glory in being effeminate. If wholesome ridicule has no effect, you"ll die an old woman in the opprobrious sense of the word."
"I"ll make you respect these delicate fingers of mine, though," the Boy irritably interposed, and then he took up his violin. "I"ll make you quiver."
He drew a long melodious wail from the instrument, then lightly ran up the chromatic scale and paused on an upper note for an instant before he began, with perfect certainty of idea and marvellous modulations and transitions in the expression of it, to make music that steeped the Tenor"s whole being in bliss.
The latter had noticed before that it was to his senses absolutely, not at all to his intellect, that the Boy"s playing always appealed; but he did not quarrel with it on that account, for music was the only form of sensuous indulgence he ever rioted in, and besides, once under the spell of the Boy"s playing, he could not have resisted it even if he would, so completely was he carried away. The Boy"s white fingers were certainly not out of place at such work. "Do I play like an old woman in the opprobrious sense of the word?" he demanded, mimicking the Tenor.
"Oh, Boy!" the latter exclaimed, with a deep drawn sigh of satisfaction.
"Yon have genius. When you play you are like that creature in the "Witch of Atlas":
A s.e.xless thing it was, and in its growth It seemed to have developed no defect Of either s.e.x, yet all the grace of both."
But the Boy frowned for a moment at the definition, and then he said: "Is that what you call genius? Now I make it something like that, only different. I believe it is the attributes of both minds, masculine and feminine, perfectly united in one person of either s.e.x."
The Tenor, lolling in his easy-chair, smiled at him lazily. There was no end to his indulgence of the Boy; but still he led him, by example princ.i.p.ally, but also by suggestion, as on one occasion when the Boy had been sketching out a scheme of life in which self was all predominant, and the Tenor asked: "Do you never feel any impulse to do something for your suffering fellow-creatures?"
To which the Boy at first rejoined derisively: "Am I not one of the best of their benefactors? Would you say that a fellow who plays as I can does nothing for his fellow-creatures? To make music is my vocation, and I follow it like a man."
But after a moment"s thought he confessed; "Once indeed I did try to do some good in the world, but I failed disastrously,"
"What did you try?"
"I took a cla.s.s in a Sunday school." He waited to enjoy the effect of this announcement on the Tenor. "I did, indeed," he protested; "but--eh--I cannot say that success attended the effort. In fact, both I and my cla.s.s were forcibly ejected from the building before the school closed. You see, I had no vocation, and it was foolish to experiment."
The Tenor said no more on the subject and did not mean to, but the Boy returned to it himself eventually, and it was evident that the wish to do something for somebody was taking possession of him seriously. This was the Tenor"s tactful way with him; and from such slight indications of awakening thought he continued to augur well for the Boy.
CHAPTER IX.
So time pa.s.sed on, changing all things greatly, or with infinitesimal changes, according to their nature. The colours worn in crowded thoroughfares varied with the varying fashions; the tint of the summer foliage with sun and rain and dust. Doors, closed the whole long winter, were opened now and left so, and the young people pa.s.sed to and fro, thronging to river banks, but lately deserted; to the cricket fields, garden, or wood, or lawn. The very faces of the streets were changing, enlivened by plaster and paint and polish: the face of the land with the certain advance of the season; the faces of friends with something not to be named, but visible, strange, and, for the most part, disheartening. It was the old story for ever and ever; all things changed always; but the chime was immutable.
As the days grew gradually to weeks, his one connecting link with the outer world became dearer and dearer to the lonely Tenor. The nights that brought the Boy were happy nights, looked forward to with eagerness, and prepared for with difficulty. For at this time the Tenor denied himself some of the bare necessaries of life, that he might buy him the Burgundy he loved to sip: he did no more than sip, and, therefore, the Tenor indulged him; drink was not to be one of his vices, evidently.
The Tenor, although he would not have acknowledged it, held that the Boy was a creature apart, and one, therefore, whom it was not fair to measure by the common standard. Doubtless the manner of their meeting had something to do with this idea. The Boy was a.s.sociated in the Tenor"s mind with many sweet a.s.sociations; with the beautiful still night; with the Tenor"s far off ideal of all that is gracious and womanly; with the music that was in him; and, further, with a sympathetic comprehension of those moments when gray glimpses of the old cathedral, or a warm breath of perfumed air from the garden, or some slight sound, such as the note of a night bird breaking the silence, fired a train of deep emotion, and set his whole poetic nature quivering, to the unspeakable joy of it; joy sanctified by reverence, and enlarged beyond comparison by love.
With such moods as these the Boy"s own mood was always in harmony; so much so indeed that the Tenor thought it was then that he was himself, and that those wild ebullitions of spirits were only affected to disguise some deeper feeling of which, boy-like, he was ashamed. As their intimacy ripened there were times when, not only his whole demeanour, but his very nature seemed to change; when he craved for dimness and quiet; and when he would work upon the Tenor with little caressing ways that won his heart and drew from him, although he was habitually undemonstrative, expressions of tenderness which were almost paternal.
In his quieter moods the Boy would sit in the dim lamplight on a footstool beside the Tenor"s chair, leaning his head against the arm of it, while the latter smoked, and the tap, tap, tap, of the clematis and honeysuckle on the window pane kept time to the thoughts of each. Long intervals of silence were natural to the Tenor, and it was generally the Boy who broke the charm. He would talk seriously then, and often about his sister, and was not to be silenced until he had had his say. He conquered the Tenor as usual by his persistence, but the latter was not much influenced by what he said at first. Gradually, however, and by dint of constant iteration, some of the Boy"s a.s.sertions became impressed upon his mind. He began to believe that Angelica did wish to make his acquaintance, and to admit to himself that there might be a possibility of winning her regard eventually; but his high mindedness shrank from approaching a girl whose social position was so far above his own--in the matter of money that is. For of course the Tenor had a proper respect for art. He knew that to be a great artist, with the will and power to make his art elevating, is to be great in the greatest way; and he also knew that his own gift was second to none. But would she link her lot with his? He yearned for some a.s.surance.
He had no ambition whatever for himself, but he would have toiled to succeed for her. It was his weakness to require someone to work for as he was working for the Boy; a purely personal ambition seemed to him a vexing, vain, and insufficient motive for action. All selfless people suffer from indolence when only their own interests are in question; they require a strong incentive from without to arouse them. Such incentive as the Tenor had was in itself a pleasure to him, a refinement of pleasure which might be coa.r.s.ened, which certainly would be impaired by any change.
He had, however, begun to make plans. He was determined to go and take his place amongst the singers of the world; but when, exactly, he had not decided. As the Boy declared, when it came to the point he found it difficult to tear himself away from Morningquest. Of course he would go, in fact he felt he must go, soon--say, when these drawings for his good friend the dean were finished.
"By the way, Boy," he asked one night, "what is your family name? and who are your people?"