At The Relton Arms Part 1

At The Relton Arms.

by Evelyn Sharp.

CHAPTER I.

It was towards the end of a crowded reception in the musician's studio.

Most of the people who had come from a sense of social obligation, and they were chiefly the mothers of his fashionable pupils, had left when the musician began to play his own compositions; and those who remained behind, and occupied the position of the Greek chorus with regard to his remarks, were his own chosen disciples, who were of course privileged to stay much longer than ordinary acquaintances. The musician, perhaps, had no effectual means of suggesting their departure; but neither was their homage, being very womanly and obvious, unpleasing to him; and when the well-dressed Philistines had driven away in their carriages, he abandoned the att.i.tude of the debonair host and took up that of the prophet instead, which at once gave a serious turn to the conversation.

He then propounded his own theories, or somebody else's, at great length, and the chorus a.s.sented with a gentle murmur of approbation whenever there was a pause. Occasionally one of the elect would ask for some music, and the musician would single out a pupil whom he considered qualified to interpret what he had composed; and in the applause which invariably followed, the performer would be entirely eclipsed by the greater importance of what she had performed.

"Isn't it a beautiful thing? Such depth," said Mrs. Reginald Routh, moving away from the piano where she had just been singing the musician's last song. It was an uncomfortable habit she had of always antic.i.p.ating what the other people would have said if she had only given them time to speak; and she had acquired it from living many years with an unmusical though wealthy husband, who only acknowledged his wife's musical talents by sending large checks annually to the musician. On this occasion she caught the eye of some one who had just arrived, and repeated her remark emphatically; for the new-comer was a stranger who had unscrupulously interrupted the last verse of her song, and was now absorbed in prolonging the existence of a modic.u.m of bitter tea, one sugar-plum, and a preserved cherry.

"Is it?" she answered hastily, seeing she was expected to say something.

"I suppose it is quite good, of course. Who is it by? I suppose you can't say, though, without looking; and I haven't really the least desire to know. Talking of music," she continued blandly, chasing the sugar-plum round the saucer, "I have really had a treat this afternoon at St. James's Hall. Of course you have often heard Sapolienski? Don't ask me how to p.r.o.nounce him; I think another of the horrors added to modern composers is the length of their names. But I'm ashamed to say I have never heard him before; I have been abroad, you see, and I am not a bit musical either. I enjoyed it much more than I expected though, and you should have seen the ovation he received at the end, ladies crowding on to the platform and throwing their rings at him! Oh, no, I am clearly not musical. But still, as he is the greatest musician of the day...."

Here Mrs. Reginald Routh found her opportunity, and used it.

"Oh, indeed? I have never heard of a player of that name, but really there are so many third-rate 'eskis' now that we cannot be expected to know them all. I dislike all kinds of sentimental effusion, and society lions, especially when they are musical ones, are singularly unpleasing to me. There can be no flattery where true genius exists, and if we were to reserve our praise for real hidden talent," she paused as the musician came within hearing and repeated her last words in a louder tone, "_real hidden_ talent, music would at last find her rightful place of honor among us. Do you not think so, Mr. Digby?"

Mrs. Reginald maintained a superb air of possession over music by making it always of the feminine gender, just as she did over the musician by calling him by his first name.

Mr. Digby Raleigh, thus intercepted in his pa.s.sage across the room, turned on his heel and ran his fingers through his hair as he launched out on his favorite theme with enthusiasm. For besides being an interesting musician with a studio in the West End, he had views on metaphysics and Socialism as well, and although his warm discussions of these and other modern subjects conveyed little but confused notions to the minds of his feminine hearers, yet his enthusiasm only lent him a more potent charm in their eyes.

"Not yet, Mrs. Routh, no, no, not yet," he exclaimed earnestly, "we are not ready, not fit for it yet. Socialism has to come first; the people must be taught the meaning of life and humanity before they can be made ready for music. Music is the end and aim of every intelligent Socialist. The people must suffer first, as _we_ have all had to suffer, we who do understand and are waiting for the light which cannot shine because of the materialists who do not even feel the need of it. Life is a problem, but we at least are happiest who see that it is so, and seek for the solution with our--with our heart's blood."

The end was not quite so eloquent as the beginning of his speech, but the musician had also caught the eye of the latest comer as she stirred the grounds of her tea mechanically and looked across the room at him, and he became suddenly conscious that there was somebody in the room who was actually inclined to laugh at him. So he stumbled slightly over his last words, and blushed a little at his own emotion; but the other ladies were glancing at one another with much sympathy as if to show that they thoroughly understood all he meant and felt, and they evidently expected some more to follow. So he ran his fingers through his hair again, and looked at Mrs. Reginald Routh, and tried to forget the gray-eyed girl in the warmth of his cause.

"It is not Parliamentary reform, it is not any revolution, or series of revolutions, that will bring Socialism. It is we ourselves who must give it birth after much pain and sorrow, even as a mother--" here the exclusive nature of the audience struck him, and he paused abruptly, until he remembered that he was a prophet, and might use any questionable metaphor he pleased without impropriety--"even as a mother brings forth the child who is to become her joy and her comfort. It is the spirit of altruism that has to be diffused among us, and when we have once realized that the 'will to live' as Schopenhauer puts it, is the one to be controlled, and that the finest of all things is to die,--that is, of course, to live,--to live for the good of the Commonwealth, then shall we be prepared for the enjoyment of perfect art, and then shall the musician,--that is, of course, the _art_ of the musician,--be allowed to exist without such sordid considerations as bread and b.u.t.ter and a roof. I use art in its highest, its only real sense, as meaning music only; such imitative branches as literature and painting will not then be practised. I--I beg your pardon?"

"Please don't stop," urged the gray-eyed girl, who had painted certain hot sunsets and purple mists during her travels on the Continent, and had shown in her face what she thought of the musician's last words, "I would not interrupt for the world. I don't know anything about Socialism, or any of the other things you mention except painting, which is evidently doomed. So pray go on, I find it most entertaining."

And a laugh, in which derision was plainly discernible, rang out to bear testimony to her words. She evidently did not realize the serious nature of the a.s.semblage in which she found herself, and Mrs. Reginald acquired a distinct antipathy for her when she leaned back in her chair carelessly, and proceeded to argue with Digby as though he were any ordinary young man, with no ideas, and no studio, and no deep and hidden tragedy in his life which could be alluded to darkly whenever the topic of conversation required it. And no one in the room could forgive her when the musician threw himself on the chair at her side, and condescended to parry her objections as though he thoroughly enjoyed the attack she was daring to make upon his favorite principles.

"Do you not see that the language of painting is limited?" he cried. "It has told us all it had to tell; it is not adapted to modern needs and modern craving, though the impressionists have made a fine attempt, a n.o.ble attempt, to make it express more than it can. Do you not see that while music is purely spiritual, purely intellectual, painting is a mere imitation of the common objects of nature?"

"Man and woman being among the common objects?" murmured the girl. But he did not heed her tiresomely obvious remark, and plunged onwards.

"Is not art finer, ten times finer than nature? You cannot see below the surface, you painters who copy nature, poor ignorant nature, who is only on the threshold of knowledge herself. You say you can paint a tree; but when it is done, what is it? A tree!"

"No, it is not only the tree," objected the other, "it is the picture in the artist's mind that the tree makes. When you and I look at a tree we see two different things,--apparently; and as I live in the country most of the year, I am thankful I am not a musician. Voila tout!"

"But even then? You can put into your picture none of the workings of the human mind, none of the aspirations of the human soul. When you have a great happiness or a great sorrow, does it help you to paint your pictures? No, no, your painting is apart from your existence, your mind has no place there. In the future we shall have but one art, and that art will be music!"

"Oh, Mr. Raleigh!" laughed the girl, "you are making a world for one kind of people. What will happen to the poor luckless ones like myself who are not musical? I suppose there will have to be some in your world?"

"Je n'en vois pas la necessite," said the musician, relaxing into a laugh too; but Mrs. Routh, who had never read Voltaire, thought it was quite time to interfere when she could not even understand what they were saying, and she dropped her parasol. Digby stooped to pick it up, and she asked him promptly to play something.

The spell was broken, and the chorus round the room echoed the request.

The musician smiled in a forced manner, and said he would play the thirty-seven variations of Beethoven.

"Oh, no, something of your own," begged the chorus.

"Yes, please, Mr. Raleigh, something full of the workings of the human mind and the aspirations of the human soul," said the girl, merrily; and as the musician sat down and began to play, she again shocked everybody by walking round the room and examining the photographs.

"How exquisite, how emotional!" cried the easily moved Mrs. Reginald when he had finished.

"Is he not bound to get on?" said the other upholders of altruism. But the musician did not seem to hear them, for he crossed over to the girl by the bookshelves.

"Now tell me," she said, hardly lowering her voice, "is it possible to compose anything that would express the aspirations of Mrs. Reginald Routh's soul? That is she, is it not, the one in the black silk who glares at me and is so maternal to you? Oh, I shall never understand the language of music; I wonder if you find the language of painting as difficult, and if that is why you have acquired such an unflattering opinion of it?"

"May it not be because I have as yet seen none of your sketches?" he said gallantly; but she shrugged her shoulders and turned away.

"What stacks of photographs you have. Cleverly arranged too, I see: pupils in evening dress from twenty to twenty-five on the piano; pupils with long hair and pinafores on the mantelshelf with the pipe-racks; mammas in velvet and fur behind the fern-pots. Ah, the workings of the musical mind are most subtle. Good-bye; I suppose I shall see you down at the Manor on Sat.u.r.day?"

"I hope to run down for the week end; I have not seen my people for months. And perhaps I may have an opportunity of converting you yet! Is your carriage here?"

"Who is she?" asked some one, when the musician had followed her into the hall.

"Don't ask me, dear," said Mrs. Reginald, with her habitual smile, "I am quite unacquainted with the person."

"Poor Mr. Raleigh, I quite felt for him," said another; "but how chivalrous he is! No one would have suspected how much her impertinence was torturing his sensitive nature."

"I should not call her impertinent myself," said Mrs. Reginald, charitably, "I think it is merely want of breeding. Provincial, I should say. Some friend of the family perhaps; I have heard--that is to say, Mr. Digby has often talked to me of his home in the country. Strange that so many of our greatest men should have come up from the provinces.

Take--take Handel, for instance, or even Charlotte Bronte."

"What a pretty girl, Mr. Raleigh; who is she?" asked the first speaker, when the musician returned, with rather a conscious look on his face.

"Ah, yes, charming, isn't she? She is Lady Joan Relton, the Relton Court family, you know; came into the t.i.tle unexpectedly through the death of a great-uncle. Not much wealth, I believe; no doubt, all the money has been squandered by her worthless and immoral ancestors," he added, remembering his prophet's mantle in time to justify his momentary interest in the aristocracy. "Will you give us another song, Mrs.

Routh?"

And, the room having been cleared, as it were, of the heretical element, the atmosphere of music once more settled down solidly on that studio in the West End.

CHAPTER II.

Squire Raleigh was a philanthropist. But philanthropy in town is a costly amus.e.m.e.nt, and Squire Raleigh had a large family, whose claims could not comfortably be ignored in favor of charitable inst.i.tutions, although a philanthropist with a love for mankind cannot be expected to do as much for his own children as an ordinary domesticated egoist.

Nevertheless, after the endowment of an orphan asylum, and the failure of a Liberal newspaper speculation, and the gift of a public park to the people had been followed by the reduction of his income to one-third of its original value, the vigorous reformer yielded to the persuasions of his sons and his lawyers and retired to his country estate, with a knighthood, a troublesome liver, and a firm resolve to get to the bottom of the land question.

At Murville Manor, an old Georgian house standing near a quaint little village in one of the home counties, Sir Marcus Raleigh once more tried to forget the disagreeable facts of an income with decreasing resources and a family of increasing claims, and plunged into fresh philanthropic schemes, this time relating to small holdings, and the growth of potatoes for the million, and the advancement in general of the agricultural laborer. Such energy naturally brought the enthusiast into collision with his own farming tenants, who liked to preserve the monopoly of grumbling to themselves, and although not hesitating to complain of the difficulties of making their land pay, yet objected strongly to having small portions of it wrested from them and given to their own laborers instead, who throve upon them straightway. It likewise bred strained relations between the Squire and the old rector, who in his own way of Sunday-schools, and coal clubs, and relief funds, was a philanthropist of an old world form, and could not understand why the traditional supporter of church charities should prefer to invent charities of his own and allow the church to fall into debt meanwhile.

His family also, who had not inherited philanthropic tendencies, failed to appreciate the unselfishness of their father in this direction, and complained with the grossest individualism of the want of pocket money.

They complained, too, of being forced to exchange a town life, where they could at least sink their father's personality in the oblivion of society, for a country one, where it was impossible to remain unknown for miles round, where philanthropy was cheap and therefore more rife than before, and where a large staff of men-servants was replaced by a so-called handy man. The handy man, by the way, in spite of advertising himself in the county paper as competent to look after "pony, cart, garden, boots, knives, fifteen shillings a week, Sundays, and beer,"

had as yet shown no decided talent in any of these particulars, except in the last-mentioned one.

Among a ma.s.s of other inconsistencies, which almost likened him to a schoolboy who is having a romp through life instead of playing the game seriously, the Squire, while considering his children in the light of impedimenta, yet cherished a pa.s.sionate affection for the least worthy of them all, for the one to whom nature had decreed that he should bequeath, with a liberality he had shown his children in no other respect, the largest share of his own failings. Jack Raleigh was handsome, fascinating, improvident to a degree, with no fixed code of morality and no definite powers of reasoning, ruling himself and his actions entirely by a kind of blind instinct such as we find in healthy animals or in children. His love, like his antipathy, was of an elementary character; if he found himself in a complicated situation, which was not rare, he would merely choose the most pleasant course open to him, without giving it a moment's consideration, and would follow it gayly until another obstacle arose which would have to be treated in a similar manner. Whether he was the happier for feeling nothing deeply, belongs to those questions which are argued by thousands of lives every day without a conclusive answer being found to them. That his temperament was the sunnier for it and that his misdeeds were less harmful, is most certain; and since the G.o.d whom he believed in, if he believed in one at all, was a kind of inexhaustible Being who could offer him as many fresh opportunities as he had squandered already, and seemed to be the cause, in some indirect way that Jack never attempted to fathom, of occasional magnificent music in churches and cathedrals, his religion as well as his excellent digestion saved him from the fits of depression that usually accompany the sanguine disposition. He had discovered before he was out of his teens that England was not the place for one so restless as he, and he had been sent out to more than one colony "to try his luck," as the Squire said, in a vague hope of shifting his uneasy responsibility for his son's actions on to fortune.

But fortune, although not philanthropic in her tendencies, and having no n.o.bler vocation to distract her from her plain duty of looking after her prodigal sons, refused to help him, and he inevitably returned home with more debts, more friends, more anecdotes, but no more stability than before.