"Then he never found out who you were?" the Boy exclaimed.
"No, never."
"And why did you leave him?"
The Tenor shipped his oars. "He had a place in Scotland to which we went every autumn for shooting," he began to answer indirectly, and then stopped.
The Boy was leaning forward, with his eyes riveted on the Tenor"s face; his delicate features were pale and drawn with excitement and interest; his lips were parted; he scarcely seemed to breathe. There was a long pause. The moonlight still streamed down upon them. The water lapped against the sides of the boat, and sparkled and rippled all around them, its murmurs mingling with the rustle of leaves, the sighing of sleeping cattle, the manifold "inarticulate voices of the night," above which a nightingale in a copse hard by sang out at intervals divinely.
"My friend was not conventional in anything," the Tenor began again at last. "When he went out shooting, for instance, he liked to find his own game as he would have had to do in the wilds. All the sport of the thing lay in that, he said; it was just the difference between nature and artifice. We were therefore in the habit of going out alone--that is to say, with a keeper or two and the dogs, but never with a party." Here again the Tenor paused, and all the minor murmurs of the water and from the land sounded aggressively, with that sort of sound which fills the ears but seems nevertheless to emphasize the silence and solitude at night.
The Boy moved restlessly once or twice, making the little boat rock, and the Tenor, yielding to the eager expectancy he saw in his eyes, resumed his story.
"Toward the end of the season of which I have been speaking," he said, "we had arranged an expedition for one particular morning; but just as we were about to start my friend got a telegram from a man he knew, begging him as a favour to be at home that day to receive a yachting party who were anxious to come up and see the place, and had only a few hours to do it in. I wanted to stay and help him to entertain them, but he would not hear of it. My day"s shooting was of more consequence to him than the entertainment of many guests, and he made me go alone. But I went reluctantly. I had been out alone often enough before, and had enjoyed it thoroughly, but that day, somehow, I hated to leave him, and only went to please him, he made such a point of it. Once fairly started, however, I began, as was natural, to enjoy the tramp over the moors. We intended to send back for any game we might shoot, so only one old gillie accompanied me. I carried out the plans we had made the night before, going the way we had intended to go. It was deer I was after, and as luck would have it I had some splendid sport, and had begun to enter into it thoroughly before we halted to refresh ourselves at noon. After a long rest we set off again up a wooded glen. The keeper had noticed a herd of deer only the day before feeding at the other side, and it seemed more than probable that we should get a shot when we reached the brow of the hill, or we might perhaps meet some of them coming down the glen to drink. The afternoon was waning then, and we had turned our faces homeward. When we got to the head of the glen the luck seemed still to be favouring us, for there, on our right, was a splendid fellow lording it alone on the very crest of the hill within range. I did not stop to consider, but raised my gun to my shoulder and fired instantly. But just as I pulled the trigger, someone sprang up from the heather between me and the stag--sprang up, uttered a cry, and reeled and fell"--the last words were spoken with a gasp, and the Tenor stopped for an instant, and then continued in a hoa.r.s.e broken whisper to which his companion had to listen intently, leaning forward to do so, with his great eyes dilated, and his pale lips quivering. ""Lord, sir," the gillie exclaimed, "you"ve shot the master!""
"And you had?"
"I had. Yes, I had shot him," the Tenor repeated.
"O Israfil!" cried the Boy, flinging himself down impetuously before him, and grasping his hands.
"When his guests had gone," the latter continued in a broken voice, "he strolled out to meet me. He had not said anything about coming, but he knew I meant to return by that glen. He did not, however, know on which side I should be, and he had therefore taken up his position on the brow of the hill from whence he could see every point at which I was likely to appear. Probably he never saw the stag--it was behind him; and we--the gillie and I--neither of us saw anything else. And, indeed, had there been no game, we could hardly have distinguished him at that time of the day from the hillside till he moved, for the suit he wore was just the colour of the rocks and heather. We carried him home--but he was dead--dead--quite dead," and the Tenor moaned, covering his face with his hands.
"I remember now," the Boy said softly. "I heard all about it at the time, and read the case in the papers, but I never thought of a.s.sociating it with you. Yet--how could I have been so dull? There was an inquest, and they tried--" he hesitated.
"They tried to make out that I had some motive--something to gain by his death," the Tenor went on; "but everyone, and most of all his nearest of kin, his heir, came forward to exonerate me. He had provided for me in his will by settling the allowance he always made me on me and my heirs forever. But he always said that my voice was my fortune, and he had no need to make enemies for me by giving me that which belonged by right to others. He was a just man, singularly open in all his dealings, and it was not hard to clear me, but still--oh!"--he broke off--"it was awful!
awful!"
"And afterward?" the Boy ventured to ask.
"Afterward," the Tenor repeated slowly. "Afterward--for some months--I wandered about. They were all very kind. They wanted me to stay with them --they wanted to take me abroad--they would have done anything to help and comfort me. But all I cared for was to be alone. At first there was a blank--the faces about me had no meaning for me--the people when they spoke could scarcely make me understand. I was mad in a way, but not mad enough to be insensible to sorrow. I felt the fearful calamity that had fallen upon me, but nothing else. I told myself every hour of the day that he was dead--dead; cruelly cut off in the midst of his happy life by me whom he loved--I could not have suffered more had I been guilty," the Tenor broke off. "This lasted--I hardly know how long; but eventually I began to fancy that he saw my agony of grief, and that it was a torment to him not to be able to come and comfort me. Then one day--I was in Cornwall at the time--sitting on the sea sh.o.r.e--and all at once--it was the strangest thing in life--I heard the chime! I had not been thinking of it.
I doubt if I had thought of it a dozen times since I heard it first. But it sounded for me then:
[Ill.u.s.tration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el, slumbers not, nor sleeps.]
I heard it quite distinctly, and I got up and looked about me. It was the first thing outside myself that had arrested my attention since I had seen him drop on the moor. I went back to the inn I was staying at, and asked about it: but I could scarcely make them understand what I meant, and there was certainly no such chime in that neighbourhood. Then I felt it was a message sent specially to me, and I made my man pack up my things, and then I dismissed him, and started at once for Morningquest alone. It was a long journey, and although I travelled with all possible speed, I did not arrive until nearly forty-eight hours later. It was close on midnight then, and the first thing I heard, when I found myself alone in my room at the hotel, was the chime itself. Have you ever noticed--or is it only my fancy?--that it seems to strike louder at midnight, and with greater intensity of expression, as we ourselves strike final chords? It sounded so to me then, and suggested something--I can"t tell what, I can"t define it; but something that changed the current of my thoughts, and made me feel I had done right to come. And from that moment my grief was less self-centred, and the blessed power to feel for others began to return to me. Almost immediately after my arrival, I heard of the tragedy in the cathedral, the suicide of the tenor, and the trouble the dean and chapter were having to find a subst.i.tute; and when I had seen the quiet shady Close, and the beautiful old cathedral, and my little house with its high-walled garden at the back, standing, as it were, on holy ground, I longed to take up my abode there, where no one would know my story but those to whom the secret would be sacred, and no one would intrude upon my grief. So I applied for the tenor"s place, and I knew as soon as I had taken the step that it was a wise one. I thought, if any thing could restore the balance of my mind, it would be the regular employment, the quiet monotony, the something to do that I must do, the duty and obligation, which were just sufficient without being any tax on my powers to take me out of myself. And the being able to shut myself up from the world in the Close, as I said before, was another inducement, though by far the greatest were the daily services in the cathedral; while taking part in them I always feel that I am nearer him. When I applied for the place, and the dean heard who I was--of course, he knew the story; the whole world knew it at that time--and heard how I yearned for a life of devotion, he sympathized with me entirely, gladly acceded to my request, and agreed to keep my secret. He has told me since that he always hoped and believed the quiet regular life would restore me, and when it had he intended to urge me to go away, and make the most of my powers. Dear, kind old man! he has indeed been a good friend to me, and he is a good man himself, if ever there were one. But I seem to have known none but good men," the Tenor concluded thoughtfully.
"But your money, Israfil," the Boy said impatiently; "what did you do with that?"
The question provoked the ghost of a smile. "Oh, Boy! that is so like you!" the Tenor answered. "But since you wish to know I will tell you. My income has all been disposed of for some years to come. It was a great deal more than I should have required in any case, and a lay clerk with such means would have been an anomaly not to be tolerated. But he meant that I should enjoy it, and so I have. I have held it as a sacred trust left to me for the benefit of those who are worse off than myself. I keep the princ.i.p.al in my own hands, but I dispose of the interest. It does not go very far, alas! in my profession, where want is the rule, but it enables me to do something, and that, till I knew you. Boy, was my greatest pleasure in life. I have earned my own living almost ever since I came to Morningquest, and being obliged to do so has been a very good thing for me."
"And all these pensioners--or whatever you like to call them--of yours, do they know?"
"As a rule my lawyers manage the business delicately," the Tenor answered, smiling. He dipped his oars as he spoke, and began to row back with a will.
The Boy, shivering as if with cold, gathered up the tiller lines and steered mechanically. They were both subdued, and scarcely spoke till the boat touched the landing place at the water-gate, and then the Boy begged the Tenor to get out, saying that he must row himself home.
The Tenor jumped ash.o.r.e, and then, with a long grip of each other"s hands, and a long look into each other"s eyes, they parted in silence.
The moon had set by this time, and the summer dawn was near.
CHAPTER XIV.
The next night the Boy appeared again in his white boating suit, with his sandy hair tumbled more than usual His restless eyes sparkled and glanced, and there was a glow beneath his clear skin which answered in his to a heightened colour in other complexions. He was evidently excited about something, and the Tenor thought he had never seen him look so well. What his mood was did not become immediately apparent. The Tenor had learnt that the sparkle in his eyes either meant some mischievous design, or a strong desire to "make music." But this evening he was long in coming to the point. He began by pelting the Tenor with roses through the window, and then he entered and danced an impromptu breakdown in the middle of the room; but these preliminaries might have been an introduction to anything, and it seemed as if his programme were not complete, for he next subsided into his accustomed seat on the sofa up against the wall opposite the fireplace, and remained there, with his hands in his pockets, looking at the Tenor thoughtfully for at least ten minutes.
The Tenor was also in his accustomed seat beside the hearth--or rather beside the stand of growing flowers and ferns that hid the hearth, with a book on his knee. He was sitting there when the first rose whizzed in out of the silence and solitude of night without warning upon him, announcing the arrival of the Boy. It startled him somewhat, but he did not wince from the shower that followed, nor did he move when the Boy chose to show himself, but merely smiled and closed his book and then sat watching the next part of the proceedings with the gravity of an eastern potentate. He sat so now, looking up at the great cathedral, seen dimly through the open window, towering above them, his profile turned to the Boy, and the roses all about him--on the floor, on the back of his chair, one on his shoulder, another on his book, and one he held in his hand. There were dozens of them of every hue, from that deep crimson damask which is almost black, to the purest white, fresh gathered from the trees apparently, with the dew still glistening on their perfumed petals and on the polished surface of the leaves. The Tenor, becoming conscious of the _Gloire de Dijon_ he held in his hand, looked into its creamy depth with quiet eyes. The beauty of the flower was a pleasure to him--though, for the matter of that, everything was a pleasure to him now, He had no words to tell it, but his face was irradiated by the gladness of the hope which he cherished, from morning till night.
The Boy had been watching him admiringly. "You will be one of the beauties when you come out, dear Israfil," he said. "They will photograph you and put you into the shop windows, cabinet size two-and-sixpence. Sounds rather vulgar, though, doesn"t it? Savours of desecration, to my mind.
But, Israfil, you will certainly be the rage. One so seldom sees a good-looking man! Good-looking women are common enough and they make themselves still commoner nowadays," which remark coming from such a quarter amused the Tenor, whereupon the Boy became irate. "Oh, jeer away!"
he exclaimed; "but when you know Angelica as well as I do you will respect my knowledge of the subject."
But here the Tenor threw back his head, and groaned aloud.
"Boy, I protest!" he exclaimed. "I can endure your garrulousness, but I do bar your cynicism. If you can"t be agreeable, be still. You"re in a horrid bad temper"--and so saying the Tenor rose in his languid way, got a little table which he placed beside his chair, spread out his pipes upon it, and began to clean them with crows" quills, the Boy watching the operation the while with cheerful intentness.
"Pipes and tobacco and roses!" he said at last. "What a mixture it sounds!
But it doesn"t look bad, dear Israfil," he added encouragingly.
The Tenor made no remark; his pipes seemed to be all engrossing. He had just filled the bowl of one with a number of fuseeheads, cut off short, and now he popped in a light and corked them up. There was a tiny explosion on the instant, followed by a rush of smoke through the shank of the pipe, which swept it clean, and added musk and gunpowder to the already heavy odour of roses that filled the room.
The Boy, still lolling on the sofa observing the Tenor"s proceedings with interest, drew up one leg, clasping his hands round it below the knee, and began to sing to himself in a monotonous undertone as was his wont.
"By-the-bye," the Tenor said, like one who suddenly remembers, "I found some verses after you were here the other night"--and he straightened himself to feel in his pockets--"I suppose you dropped them. Here they are." And then he leant back in his chair again and read aloud;
"When the winter storms were howling o"er the ocean, Leafless trees and sombre landscape cold and drear, Bitter winds, and driving rains, or white commotion Of the whirling snow that drifted far and near; Then my heart, which had been strong, was bowed and broken, I was crushed with sudden sense of loss and fear, Dull as silence pa.s.sed the days and brought no token Of a light to make the darkness disappear.
Would the grief that wrecked my life forever hold me?
Soon or later winter storms their ravage cease-- With the coming of the green leaves, something told me, With the coming of the green leaves there is peace.
When the bursting buds proclaim"d the spring time nearing.
Song of birds and scent of flowers everywhere, Drowsy drone of distant workers, and the cheering Hum of honey-seeking bees in all the air; Then my sorrow took swift wings and rose and left me; And I knew no more the aching of despair; Came again to me the joy that seemed bereft me, And for hope I changed the dreary weight of care.
With the winter tempests pa.s.s"d the storms of feeling, Soon and surely did their power to pain me cease, And the sunshine-lighted summer rose revealing With the coming of the green leaves there is peace."
The Tenor looked at the Boy when he had finished, shook his head mournfully, struck a match, set fire to the paper upon which the verses were written, and watched it burn with the air of a disappointed man.
"Don"t make any more rhymes, Boy," he said; "don"t write any more, at least, until you get out of the sickly sentimental stage. I thought I was prepared for the worst, but I really never imagined anything quite so bad as that."
The Boy, although he had listened to the lines with a fine affectation of enjoyment, was in no way discomposed by the Tenor"s adverse criticism; he seemed, on the contrary, to enjoy that too, for he chuckled and hugged himself ecstatically before he replied.
"I should like to know," he said, with his uncanny grin, "how you found out those lines were mine, for I certainly never told you that I wrote them."
The Tenor"s mind misgave him.
"Didn"t you?" he said, looking at the ashes.