The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 24 April 1919, Page 3

The Storyteller

THE WILD BIRDS OF KILLEEVY Rosa Mulholeand. (By arrangement with Messrs. Burns and Oates, London.) (Continued.) CHAPTER XVIII THE POEM IN THE CUERE?* T CENTURY Continued Established in his new way of life, he felt no ungrateful contempt for what he had left behind. He thoroughly valued the advantages furnished by his sojourn in the old bookshop, and yet no words could, express his intense appreciation of the change with which fate had surprised him. Instead of the dusty, dingy den where he had “pored," with all London surging and roaring around him, he lived in Mr. Honeywood s elegant apartments, where everything suggested repose, and delicate objects of beauty soothed and satisfied the eye. The green park lay beyond the window at which he worked; the odor 'of books, so sweet to bookish people, was crossed by the scent of flowers; the only noise was a hum of life, sufficiently remote to be pleasant and stimulating, without jar to an excitable brain. Then, in exchange for the kindly but vulgar Mr, Must, he had the companionship of a refined and educated man, who spared no pains to turn everything to account for his pleasure, education and improvement. Together they went to concerts, to picture-galleries, to the opera, and after some little time Kevin found himself introduced to assemblies of intellectual and interesting people, where a whisper from Mr. Honeywood had the effect of winning him smiles and encouraging speeches. And the strangest Part of all to him was this, that though he found himself thus drawn further and further away from the sphere in which he had lived with Fanchea, yet in all his approaches to what is most refined and most cultured in life, he seemed only awing nearer to her, instead of widening the distance between them; for the centre of all ideal refinement lay, to him, within the clear eyes, and was expressed by the pure voice of the little peasant-maid who was still the chosen idol of his imagination. Mr. Honeywood mused a good deal over Kevin’s story and the touching purpose of his life. “Poets must always have an ideal mistress,” he said and this charming idyll of his boyhood will keep him safe 1 hope, for many years to come. The worst is, that the end may disappoint him. Either this child may never be heard of again, or, when later in life she is, perhaps, discovered, he will find her but a coarse and unfaithful likeness of the creature he imagines to exist. What can be expected from the training of such- experiences as she will meet with, the association of such companions as those with whom she will live? Heighho !» What a harvest of disappointments life is ! But all the sweeter is it to light on anything so ingenuous as the heart of my friend Kevin. If years spoil it—well, I must let it go with the rest; but in the meantime I will indulge myself by placing him where he deserves to be in this world where things are generally upside down. ■ , J You must give me a complete description of your little girl," he said to Kevin. “Our best plan will be to put an advertisement in the Times, offering a reward. Yes, I know ; that you can repay me afterwards ; out l'-will advance it now.’’ Kevin’s description of Fanchea was, it must be said, more suited for a poem than a newspaper paragraph, but Mr. Honeywood picked from it a few common facts which he put together in the most matter-of-iact way. . A. " ‘ E y es , f s . blue as -violets, but look black,V so thickly shaded with curled dark lashes.’ That must

go into about three words. ‘ Something wonderfully expressive and sensitive ; about the mouth.’ Ah, well, I fear her captors, or even ordinary lookers-on will not be so observant of that characteristic. The voice will be a good mark, if it be really so remarkable as you think', and not an ordinary child’s pipe. Don’t start. Love is apt to exaggerate. “ ‘Stolen by gipsies. Known to have been going about with them, singing and dancing at their entertainments. Last seen at R , and believed to have escaped and come to London ’

“Stay,” said Mr. Honeywood, breaking off abruptly “I have got the clue to what puzzled me before in this affair. Was it not last year? Yes I was at L , with some friends, and we saw gipsies one morning during our ride. And a little girl danced with a tambourine, and sang with a guitar. She was a picture to look on, poor little soul ! and her voice was wonderful, and she sang in a strange language. She interested me strangely, and I went back the next morning to try and learn something about her; but when I arrived I found the gipsies had moved on in the night. They were gone, tents, and baggage, and all. I was disappointed at the moment, but afterwards it all passed away from my mind.” As Mr. Honeywood proceeded with this speech he became more and more in earnest, and throwing down his pen, looked steadily at Kevin, who had risen and come towards him as if expecting that he was going to tell him where the child was to be found, but at the last words fell back with a look of bitter disappointment.

“My poor boy,” said Mr. Honeywood, “I think I have seen your Fanchea : but unhappily my news is only another flash of the Will-o’-the-wisp in the swamp. I know no more of her than you do. I can only say that I am now more fully able to realise your feelings with regard to the child. A more interesting creature I never beheld.”

It was some time before Mr. Honeywood could satisfy Kevin’s eagerness to know every detail of that morning’s experiences, could answer all his questions as to how Fanchea looked, what she- did and said, and how the people she was among appeared to treat her it was long before Kevin could think calmly of the incident and make it the subject of sober conversation. “How strange,” he said at last, “that I should twice have met with people who had seen her, twice have come so near that I seem to touch her, and yet lose her again each time, unable to find any further trace of her!”

“The turns and twists of fate are, indeed, •wonderful ; but they have sometimes curious meanings when looked back upon. Let us try to console ourselves with this, and hope for the best.” “It is hard, when one thinks of a child—a girl—alone in the world of London.”

“We do not know that she is in London. Do not look so unhappy ; she may be better placed than you fear. At all events, I am going to help you to find her; I have considerable faith in this advertisement.” Kevin was cheered, and returned with new hope to his work. The advertisement appeared every day in the Times, and in the meantime Mr. Honeywood took care that all their hours should be fully occupied. Literary work in the mornings, study of the arts in the afternoons, and in the evenings seeing the world in the social sense; thus was their time filled during the later weeks of the London season. Every day the Times was feverishly scanned by Kevin, and at last one morning a cry broke from him as he opened the paper. An answering advertisement had appeared : “Fanchea is well and happy, with those who will continue to care for her. Ilex friends may hear of her later in life, but at present she is not to be found.” After this blow had fallen, Kevin felt all the reaction from hope to despair, and became restless, and agitated, and afterwards dejected in the extreme.

“It is a blind. It comes from cruel people who desire to satisfy our fears and only want to induce us to leave off searching for her,” he said gloomily.

“It may not be so,” said Mr. Honeywood. “Try and hop© the reverse.” But he felt very doubtful . himself, and began to think of taking Kevin abroad, so that in the novelties and delights of foreign travel he might regain the natural hopefulness of his mind, and escape from painful thoughts through the pleasures and excitements of the imagination. CHAPTER XIX.—THE OLD LORD WILL HAVE HIS WAY. Lord Wilderspin’s letter caused great. commotion behind the little bric-a-brac shop. Mrs .Wynch was lost in wonder at the idea of her little maid having been turned into the protege of a lord. “I shall never contradict you again, Mamzelle,” she said ; “not that I am going to have much chance in future, but I wouldn’t do it now, not if I could. There must be some kind of a blindness about me that I couldn’t see something about the child that other people see.. But you’ll have it all your own way after this.” The signora herself was thrown into a state of agitation that was not all happiness. She was one of those persons who cannot feel unmixed joy at anything that happens in life. Change always brought her pain, and in spite of her delight at Fan’s success, and at the nice discernment shown by Fate in making a favorite of the child, she felt at first as much dismay as pleasure in preparing to leave her own toilsome and precarious life in London for ease, security, and the conditions of peace. Things that had long been a trouble to her, such as the noise in the streets, and the dinginess of her apartment, which she could not afford to improve upon, grew dear to her all at once, and became invested with poetry, directly they were about to become part of the past. Like all who are of the same backwardlooking nature, she needed a shake to make her know her own mind and realise the advantage of a fortunate change. Matter-of-fact Mrs. Wynch, taking her little mournful plaints literally, administered the slight shock which in this instance set her right. “I’m sure I never knew you were so fond of the place, Mamzelle,” she said, quite flattered, “and if you are sorry to go, why I am sorry to lose a good lodger. That old lord is so accustomed to have his own way that he never thinks of what it is to other people to have their lives routed about and everything changed. But I think if you wrote and put it to him, he would easily find somebody else to take care of our little maid; and you could run down in the train sometimes to see how she gets on, you know.” The signora opened her eyes wide and stared at her landlady, and instantly knew that she was longing to get under Lord Wilderspin’s roof. And though she continued to sigh a good deal as she packed up her things, she made no more articulate complaints. Nothing of her possessions could she bring herself to part with; and in the end she set out encumbered with large packing-cases, the contents of which were, for the most part, destined to form contributions to the collection in the lumber-rooms of the Hall.

When, however, she found herself in his lordship’s carriage, rolling through his blooming park, and when she saw Fanchea, in a pretty brown linen dress with crimson ribbons, flying to meet her, then she realised that the times were good and that the lines were falling to her in pleasant places. All her x-egrets vanished like ghosts at cock-crow when she felt Fanchea’s warm arms clasped round her neck. She allowed herself to be whirled from one beautiful room to another between gusts of joyous information which the child let loose upon her respecting the delights of the place. Various huggings took place at the beginnings and ends of the corridors, and Lord Wiiderspin, coming suddenly round a corner, was witness to one of these. “It will work, I see,” he said to himself. “The child will have mothering as well.” Then aloud: “Aha, madam, I have caught you already spoiling my property ! My nightingale is not here in a gilded cage that she may sing to me and you alone, remember. This lively bit of human intelligence,” putting his

broad hand on Fan’s cool, rounded brow, “is not here to play but to work.” «The signora was a little startled by his fierce manner, but when she saw the arch smile with which Fanchea met his glaring eyes, she caught the cue to his character at once.

"My lord,” she said, in her earnest, emotional way, "this dream of yours was mine first. I had only the will; you have the power.”

“Thank heaven, then, madam, that we have come together,” said his lordship. “Between will and power, we shall, to use a vulgar proverb, either ‘make a spoon, or spoil a horn.’ But mind, I warn you ; the making will be mine, the spoiling yours. I never do anything wrong; so don’t imagine it.” And with a scowl and a low bow be left them.

This first greeting of the old lord’s to the signora was a fit introduction to the intercourse that was to exist between them. His quizzical temper and her intensity clashed together strangely sometimes, but did not exactly jar, for he had feeling enough to appreciate a nature which he nevertheless delighted to startle, and she had sufficient humor to relish the roughness and unconventionality which covered a generous heart. The old lord recognised daily the delicacy and refinement of her nature, something of which he had discerned at the first moment under The shabby cloak of the little grey woman just arrived at the end of her journey. And there never was any oppressive formality between them. Mamzslle was too much the child of genius not to fee! that in her own personality she carried the key of entrance into any circle above or below her : and though said key might be rather rusty for want of use, still the possession of it enabled her to feel at home in the atmosphere of Lord Wilderspin’s drawing-room.

When she had time to look around, she discovered that nothing could suit her better than this place. The beauty of the old house, the storied furniture and adornments, the choice contents of the picture-gallery, the musical atmosphere which she was to breathe, the visits of Herr Harfenspieler, whom she was to assist in the tuition of the child ; all these conditions of her existence were so perfect that, true to her faculty of suffering, she began to feel oppressed by their charm. “My dear,” she said to Fan, "I shall die of all this delightfulness if I do not escape from it.” This AAas said with so agonised a look that Fanchea was alarmed.

"Oh, you are not going to leave me?” she cried. “No, my love, never. But I have got leave from his lordship to fit up one of the empty rooms in my own way. There are the things I brought with me, you know ; and 1 will live in my own nest, and only come out into the splendor when I feel myself able to bear it.”

Tier new life was inaugurated on the first evening when Herr Harfenspieler came, and all the actors in the little drama that was beginning met at dinner. The thought of meeting the great musician agitated her much more than the prospect of encountering his lordship had done. She prepared for the occasion with some solemnity, and appeared attired in a very antique brocade which had belonged to her mother, a much larger woman, and trailed behind her, and in her dear old black lace mantilla, worn long ago in the Italian city of her youth and dreams. Under this her loose gold and silver hair shimmered strangely, and made one at a distance ask if she were child, angel, or witch. Her worn face, with its deep lines of pain and passion, its frequent wistful, almost infantile expressions, and its wandering lights of genius, was very striking to Herr Harfenspieler, who at once recognised a good ally and a kindred spirit. As they clasped hands they seemed to know that they were brothel* and sister in what the world would call misfortune, each having found life a loneliness, and given up all that is comfortable and pleasant for a solitary and never-fading dream

The man who had found happiness in varieties of dreams which always faded, or dissolved dug, into

another, stood over them and glowered at theta in satisfaction from under his shaggy brows. He* had brought them here together that out of their ruins he might build a fair temple for his own contentment and the delight of the world. As they stood talking, each Avith a hand on Fanchea’s shoulder, the old lord strode about, laughing grimly to himself. "With this trio,” he said; "on this triangle, I will make such music as all Europe shall run to hear !” And as these eager guardians hovered about the slender slip of humanity, with her black head and crimson ribbons, her deep-shaded eyes and pomegranate cheeks, casting their spells, of woven paces and of waving hands, around her, Kevin, himself, had he been able to see, might have surely been content with her state. She herself felt a deep wonder at finding that she was the object of so much attention from such learned and travelled people, and listened with interest to their conversation.

Madam,” said Herr Harfenspieler, “allow me as a musician to pay a tribute in the name of my country to the musical genius of your beautiful land.” "Ah, sir,” said the signora, “we may well feel a mutual sympathy. Your country contains the intellect of music, and mine, perhaps, the soul.” "And mine deserves some praise for producing that noble strain, ‘The roast beef of old England,V” broke in Lord Wilderspin. “Let me remind you that dinner has been announced.” After dinner the old lord had a smoke and forty winks in his smoking-room, while the musician, Avho could not bear tobacco, drank coffee and tuned his violin, and talked with the signora in the music-room.

"T was born in Verona,” said the signora, in answer to a question.

"And I in Nuremberg,” said Herr Harfenspieler, touching his most delicate string with a loving finger. "I know your Verona. What a dream! That is why your face reminds me of the angels in Fra Angelico’s pictures,” he added, bluntly. "I am no flatterer, and you may not be heavenly for aught I know; but I have seen you blowing a trumpet in one of the Paradisaical visions of the angelic master.” Twang went a deep chord across the violin; and a silent sob echoed it in the signora’s heart. “That was said long ago,” she said; "but it is like a sorry old jest to hear it now.” "Why? Angels may get worn faces for a time, perhaps through wearying after the good in some human soul. When that soul is won their wrinkles probably disappear. Whatever is intrinsically good and beautiful remains a perpetual fact, and never can be destroyed ; it is only what is ugly, wrong, discordant, that is failure and negation. What is time? Ach—! Music will never cease.”

Hereupon a burst of delicious melody swept through the quiet and darkening room; and noiselessly the signora wept. "Juliet was born in your Verona,” continued the old professor, laying down his bow; "and Juliet is a fact, though she never was clothed in flesh and blood. The deep red rose that comes every June is a fact, though each time it sheds its leaves wo can scarcely believe it ever was, or ever av i 11 return. Beethoven’s “Dead March” is a reality that still beguiles us lovingly to the grave, while the sad, solemn, mysterious eyes that look down on us yonder from the wall are closed for ever. So, why should not the face of an angel with a lute remain *au angel’s face, even though Time has written a score across it. Let me talk my own way. I do not often get a listener like you.” "It is pleasant to me to listen,” said the signora. “Life does not seem so wasted when one gets rid of the idea of success and failure.”

“That for failure!” said the Harfenspieler, snapping his wiry fingers. "Give me the beautiful, the true, and pain with its reverse. When the height is missed, the depth is found ; true, but when the abyss is touched, there is the rebound which sends us higher thap Ave otherwise could have reached. Hist! I will tell you, a, secret, I have made no name like him,”

pointing to the portrait of Beethoven. “My efforts have passed into the works of others; my soul has been only uttered by others' lips. I shall die unknown, and be buried obscurely ; but I would rather wield this in a garret”—touching his bow—“than have it changed into the sceptre of a prince. ' Yet I am not mad.” “1 have shared your feeling too much to doubt you,” said the signora. “My youth was one long passion of longing to create the beautiful. Life broke my tools and laughed at my folly; and yet there is something dwelling with me for all that which binds up the sorest* wounds of a broken spirit. Art has allowed me to live in her house, though her dearest tasks have been given elsewhere. I have tried to remember that 'they also serve who only stand and wait.’ The long patience, the readiness to do if called, the meekness forced upon one at being always passed overthese must shelter one from the charge of waste. The joy at seeing others do, takes the place of feverish- desires for self. One grows content to glean where others bear the sheaves; if only the harvest be somehow gathered in.”

“My own thought,” said Herr Harfenspielcr, “expressed in womanly words. Let us put it into music!” Again he touched the violin, and wonderful strains poured from it: feverish, hurried, impassioned, then yearning and wistful, and at last dying away in notes whispering of peace. “Now,” he said, when he had finished, “we are going to do something, you and I, something that shall be proved worth the doing. This girl who stands between us is rich material to work upon. There is a quality in the voice which I have never known equalled. In it is contained something that once heard never can be forgotten. She will give expression and form to the noblest conceptions of the great masters. Not only are her notes ravishing, but she has a broad intelligence, a rich imagination, and fortunately also the pure, vigorous physique which will make her perfect mistress of her artistic powers.” “You sum up her qualities exactly as I have done myself,” said the signora. “I know. To you be the honor of the first discovery. More yet can you do, more than educating and cherishing her, and helping to make her the queen of song who is one day to conquer the world. I would beg you to keep her noble and simple as she is. Let no petty conceit creep into her feminine brain ; amuse her with no trashy novels and romances ; let her know nothing but of the higher, purer literature : cultivate her heart to thrill only to the real, the most genuine, and unaffected sorrows of life, to the purest and holiest affections. People call me an enthusiast, but I know to whom I am talking at this moment.” At this point Fan came in, fresh and glowing, out of the evening dews of the garden, bringing a nosegay for her master’s button-hole, and a rose for the signora’s bosom.

“This is the prelude to our song,” said the Harfenspieler with one of his rarified smiles, as the little fingers fixed the bit of bloom close to his shirt-frills ; and, with a glow still in his dark, deep-set eyes, he touched the first note of “With Verdure Clad.”

Later, when the signora and her charge had retired for the night, Lord Wilderspin, with a peculiar look, half comic and half dismayed, and with several glances all round from under his white brows, as if ho feared eyes in the curtains, or ears in the pictures on the Avails, drew a folded newspaper from his pocket and tapped it with his finger. “I have something to show you here,” he said. “Read this advertisement. Well, is that intended for us?”

It was Kevin’s advertisement, which had been so carefully worded by Mr. Honey Herr Harfeuspieler read it, and a flame shot out of his eyes. “Mein Gott!” he murmured. “Shall we be forced to give up this fair enterprise?”

“Hush!” said his lordship, with a grimace. “Don’t let us talk about it here* or the words will float up through all the ceilings to that pair of little

hare’s ears, and we shall have her performing La Son-n'amhul-a- before her time.- She would be down upon us in her bare feet in a trice, imploring to be packed up in this newspaper' on the spot, and sent off by post to advertiser. The night is fine; let us take a turn outside.” “We are like a pair of wicked old conspirators plotting away somebody’s life,” said Lord Wilderspin, striding along between the high hedges, and pulling his hat over his eyes. “Seriously,” said Herr Harfenspieler, “do you mean to give up the child or not?” “I do not,” said his lordship, stopping short. “There, the sky has not fallen upon me!” “And yetit seems cruel to take no notice of such an advertisement.” “Now listen to me, mein Herr. You are a musician, and all you musicians, poets, artists, and your kin, are bound to be sentimentalists according to both Nature and Art: but I am none of your race. 1 may be a gentleman, and therein lies the bond between us, but I am by nature a marauder, a revolutionist, a turner-upside-down of things in general, a whim-indulger, a fancy-monger: and as arbitrary as a three-tailed bashaw. All this you know as well as I. Now 1 am not doing a bad act in bringing up this little peasant-born genius to her true vocation, but hang mo if I am going to have a troop of Irish bog-trotters running after us all the time the thing is going on. If these low connections of hers were blood relations—were her own family—l don’t know how I should get out of the matter. If this Kevin were her brother, or father, or if she were old enough to have a lover and he were that worthy, I suppose I should feel bound to ‘interview’ the fellow; but as she is nothing to him or his I shall beg leave to remain in my modest obscurity. Let him dig his potatoes, and cut his turf, and leave the child to the good fortune that has dropped upon her.” “You do nob mean to ignore this altogether?” persisted Herr Harfenspieler. “Confound it, no ; I suppose I must do something.” “Write, and tell them as much as you please; and make terras for keeping her unmolested.” “My friend, you do not know these Irish! They have hearts as big as copper kettles, and value money no more than sand where their affections are concerned. You know the creature that sang for us. an hour ago and is now curled up in her pillows with her blue eyes, shut as fast as yonder convolvoli. Could you have looked in Fan’s eyes before she went to bed and offered her a bright sovereign to forget her nightprayer for Kevin? You could not do it. And they are all ‘tarred with the same stick,’ to use a vulgar proverb which your musical ears have probably never heard before. Children every one of them in faith and love—all honor to them for it”—and the lord lifted his hat from his bald head—“but still I am not going to have them spoiling my plans with their cushla machreas and their nlnliis!”

Herr Harfenspieler had nothing more to say. He felt it best to let the whimsical nobleman work out his own idea, and put it into words without help from him. •

“You do not ask me what I am going to do?” “I am Availing to hear.” “I think of answering the advertisement with another in which I shall give enough information to allay : anxiety on the girl’s account. I shall also hold out a hope of future meeting, but give the people to understand that there is to be no communication with her at present. That is the beat plan I can hit upon.” “And how will you satisfy the child herself as time goes on?” “By impressing upon her that in following my plans obediently she will benefit her friends in the end. She is fully convinced that lam constantly making inquiries about them, and she will go on expecting every day to see them walking in, till gradually tin* vivid desire for them fades away. I have no doubt

that as soon as she is in any degree independent and begins to make money (as on© day she must) she will actively seek them herself and want to pour everything into their laps. However, when that day comes, we must see about protecting her.” : Herr Harfenspieler was silent. His mind was not quite at ease as to this parting of the child from her friends; and yet, enthusiast as he was, his desire to hold her fast and continue his work in her made him rejoice at the decision of his friend.

After everyone was asleep in the Hall that night, the Harfenspieler sat at his open window fingering his violin tenderly and fitfully. The jasmine from without scented the air, and the old musician was living in other scenes where even such white jasmine wreaths had perfumed other chambers.

“Is it right, after all,” he thought, “to play such tricks upon human hearts ? Has not humble and holy love too often to pay the penalty for fame and the triumphs of art ? Can we who rob this lowly nest say that the bird would not be happier singing in her native woods?”

But this mood of the old professor passed away with a few hours of moonlight dreams, and a restless night. The impulse of his genius was too strong for the more subtle tenderness of his heart. He was glad when he saw his young pupil running to meet him in the morning sun, and reflected that Lord Wilderspin’s mysterious advertisement was on its way to the post.

(To be continued.)