BOOK VI THE ORGANIST (continued 2)

The long naked wrist shot out in front of him and turned a knob. A door opened. A voice said, “Go on with you.” A hand pushed him peremptorily from behind, and next moment he stood, deserted and unannounced, the prey of his own emotions within the sanctum sanctorum, or music-room.

9

His entrance coincided exactly with a chord played very unevenly upon the pianoforte, which had been preceded by two other chords widely spaced from each other by intervals of stagnation as Oswald and his cicerone had mounted the stairs. All these chords, and some others unheard, had been produced by a young lady in a black frock who sat upon a music-stool before an upright piano, with her legs dangling above the pedals, and several inches short of them; her eyes and nose tilted up to the extreme summit of what appeared to be a terrible, steep and precipitous page crowded with black and busy notes which she gazed at with great fixity of attention. Judging by the number of notes and the time required to play them, the composition on which she was at present engaged would last about eighteen months, allowing a six weeks’ holiday at midsummer. Oswald’s abrupt entrance seemed no less of a surprise to her than her presence was to him, for she dropped both wrists (still clutching, however, with all her out-stretched fingers to the chord last played, as though to pin it to the keyboard) and turned a startled face in the direction of the door where Oswald stood, holding his cap in one hand and his polished music case in the other, speechless and perturbed.

For the executant, he realized, was the daughter of Mrs. Bankett whom everybody knew, and granddaughter of the defunct Alderman for whom a gigantic urn and kerb were now in active preparation at the monumental mason’s. And though Oswald still exchanged occasional shy glances with this young lady across the perspective of her parent’s hall, albeit it was only on the night of the Mayor’s party that stress of vanity had broken through the reserve between them and caused her to address the Sausage Boy, the precise degree of their acquaintanceship constituted a perpetual puzzle to them both. For Oswald, this granddaughter of the august Alderman assumed an almost symbolic significance in the wide realm of his aspirations. Ever since the night of the Mayor’s party, in fact, when she did his pride the honour of speaking to it, she had come to occupy a sentimental place in his inner and most cherished life. When it is recorded that in his sacred moments of imagination he had even led her to the altar, and that she had wept tumultuous widow’s tears over her deceased husband’s grave in the cemetery, it may be conceived with what embarrassment Oswald now found himself face to face with this object of his dreams, conscience-troubled lest any part of these guilty imaginings might by some mental alchemy escape control and become visible. Besides, seen out of her customary environment, Miss Bankett seemed curiously changed, and her eye was certainly more alert and penetrative than Oswald cared to encounter single handed. But, as though she found nothing in the new arrival’s appearance to repay further notice, Miss Bankett transferred her gaze to the crowded summit of the sheer and almost toppling page. By the convulsive movement of her lips, wrists and shoulders, Oswald believed another chord was imminent, and regaining some of his self-confidence now that the young lady’s back was turned to him, awaited its execution with interest. At the crucial moment she dropped her wrists again and flashed her face round at Oswald, who blushed at being discovered with so flagrant a look of expectation and interest in his eyes.

“Can you play?” the granddaughter of Alderman Bankett asked him with a pert enquiring mouth.

Fearful lest any reply short of negation might plunge him into a command to prove ability, Oswald answered: “Not yet.”

“Have you learned three flats?”

Oswald tendered the same answer.

“This piece is in three flats. Common Time. Counting four crotchets in a bar. It is my new piece. It is by Mr. Rencil. I wish he would come. What time is it?”

All the while she imparted information or sought it, her eyes—hard, grey-green Bankettian eyes—put Oswald through a searching examination from his boots to his cap, and his cap to the music case, and the music case to his clean white collar, chin, mouth, eyes, and forehead, and without waiting for any answer to her last question, addressed herself once more to the topmost stave of the page, and went through all the elaborate and conclusive processes as before. This time, however, with a tremendous hardening of her mouth and contracting of her brows and stiffening of her forearms and hunching of her shoulders, the chord was struck.

It was wrong. Palpably, inextricably wrong.

After gazing curiously at her outspread fingers and at the page in turn, whilst the chord still vibrated discordantly in the bowels of the instrument, and as though despairing of a reconciliation between factors so conflictingly at variance, the young lady directed her attention towards Oswald again.

“How long have you been learning music?”

Oswald answered diplomatically, “Not very long.”

“A year?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ve been learning nearly three years. I’ve never played this piece before. It’s a lot more difficult than the last. The last had only one sharp. I don’t think I like this one. Do you? I shall ask Mr. Rencil to play it for me as soon as he comes. It goes faster than this really. A lot faster.” There came a pause and she added: “You won’t be bringing us any more pies or sausages for a long while. I know. I heard mother tell Mary so last night. We’re getting tired of them. Aren’t you?”

All this time the dissonant chord made a protesting clamour in the depths of the pianoforte, as though supplicating to be resolved or otherwise put mercifully out of misery. The subject of sausages proving somewhat delicate for the son of the Manufacturer, Oswald could only respond to it by means of a flush, which Miss Bankett immediately noted and commented on, saying with the utmost self-composure: “You’ve gone all red. Did you know?” Oswald’s reply being unintelligible, the young lady exclaimed: “O, dear! I wish he’d come. Aren’t you tired of waiting? I am,” and displayed half a tendency to tackle the top of the page once more. But the cryptic look of the chord already attempted, and probably the still more forbidding aspect of the chord that was to follow, deterred her. Instead, submitting to an impulse of coquettish vanity, she suddenly asked him: “Do you know this piece?” and rattled audaciously through half a dozen bars of a busy rondeau, these half dozen bars constituting all that she was able to play without the book. Oswald, lacking as yet any intimacy with the works of the Organist of St. Saviour’s, was in no position to answer that this extract just performed for him came from the fourth of the second Series of Twelve Progressive Pieces for Tiny Players, called “In the Swing,” published (with a coloured title page) by Messrs. Ashpot and Claypole. Nor indeed, had he so much as the time to shake his head, for this mournful admission of ignorance was frustrated by no less a personage than the Composer himself, who opened the door at this juncture, and, rolling up his gloves, sportively flung the ball so made at the extended fingers on the keyboard, with the exclamation: “Tig!”

Then, finding the further opening of the door impeded by the person of Oswald, whose diffidence forbade him to seek escape from the handle that impended in the small of his back, he turned the mild surprise of his glasses upon the apologetic presence.

“Oswald, you scamp! What are you doing in my music-room at this time of day? Trying to steal my pupils from me, are you?”

Oswald’s lips emitted a penitential murmur, in which the words “Mother” and “half-past ten” were distinguishable. Miss Bankett, slipping adroitly off the music-stool to pick up the Organist’s gloves, cried:

“Oh! Mr. Rencil, will you play me my new piece?”

“Half-past ten!” said the Organist, drawing out his gold half-hunter and referring to the dial. “But this is not half-past ten. This is much more like a quarter to eleven.”

The humour, kindly though it was, rose somewhat above the level of Oswald’s immediate modesty. He hung his head, deficient of the courage requisite to tell this great musician that he had been on the doorstep when St. Gyles’s church clock chimed the half hour. He wondered, too, if Mr. Rencil were really displeased to find him in the music-room, and whether it was not incumbent on him to beg the Organist’s pardon. But his apprehensions were quickly allayed by the friendly pressure of the hand that fell upon his shoulder.

“One of us is evidently very late this morning,” Mr. Rencil said with an air of great indulgence. “But as I happen to be in a very good temper we won’t ask who it is.”

“It’s you,” said Miss Bankett emphatically. “I’ve been here since a quarter past ten. And the other boy was here too—that funny looking boy with the sore throat. He said it was no use waiting—you’d only tell him to come again. He said you’d told him to come again twice, this week.”

“Twice?” said the Organist of St. Saviour’s. “Are you sure? I’d no idea it was twice. I thought it was three times.” He laid his hat upon the writing table by the window, littered with music paper, part songs and anthems. “Did he take the letter?”

“What letter?”

“The letter I meant to give him if he had waited for me as he ought to have done.” He brushed the part-songs and anthems aside and found the envelope still resting where he had laid it. “No! Here it is, the rascal! He shall have some harmonic minor scales for this.—Well? What about this new piece? I will give you sixpence if you can play it from memory.”

The granddaughter of Alderman Bankett declined his challenge, but dismounted from the stool and gave the padded seat a vigorous twist with both hands. “Please, Mr. Rencil!”

Thus supplicated, Mr. Rencil seated himself at the instrument, and after reciting the characteristics of the composition to be performed, in most punctilious fashion: “Home for the Holidays” composed by Arthur Rencil, opus 103, No. 7. In the key of E flat, containing three flats B. E. and A (and occasionally F sharp). Common Time. Counting four crochets in a bar. Allegro ma non troppo—which means play slowly and mind your stops—ran glibly through the music that had cost Miss Bankett so much unprofitable labour. As the composition drew to a close he elaborated it by means of a protracted coda on a sustained pedal, finally modulating into the key of C major for the execution of some miraculous glissandi with both hands, to Miss Bankett’s huge delight, who exclaimed nevertheless: “That isn’t in the piece. I know it isn’t. You’re making it all up. Aren’t you?” Not only so, but warming to his genial task the Organist of St. Saviour’s let his enraptured auditors hear how the composition would sound on a musical box,—the preliminary winding-up of the mechanism being realistically suggested by rubbing the finger-nails lightly over the surface of the keys. That Miss Bankett was not altogether unacquainted with this high form of musical art was evinced by her begging the executant: “Now let it run down, so you have to wind it up again.” At which the placid tinkling of the music-box manifested signs of unsteadiness; the notes dragged, as though the cylinder had insufficient strength to overcome the pressure of the minute metallic tongues resisting it; hiccoughed and came to a standstill. A vigorous re-winding ensued, succeeding which the music leaped into life again, more tinklingly mechanical than before.

Nor did the versatility of the performer stop here, for he interpreted the composition after the virtuosic style of a French piano, and also in the manner of an itinerant German Band of three instruments—saxophone, cornet and clarinet. After awhile the clarinet (as Mr. Rencil explained over his shoulder) took off his cap and went collecting coppers, thus leaving the composition to the mercies of the cornet and saxophone. The cornet, after a further while, also doffed his cap and departed in quest of coppers, abandoning the morceau to the care of the saxophone alone, who held on resolutely with the basses until the clarinet’s return, when he ceased playing on the saxophone in order to blow through it. Mr. Rencil also, at Miss Bankett’s urgent request, played the National Anthem in two simultaneous keys, putting this familiar hymn perplexingly into the minor, at the same time dropping its tonality by semitones until at last, for lack of any further keyboard, it came into collision with the bass truss. During the course of this marvellous recital the delight which Miss Bankett experienced caused her to turn continually towards Oswald, impelled by the instinctive desire to share her own joy and partake of his, and Oswald’s assurance (since no speech was demanded of it) rose to an incredible degree. Stimulated by these wonders of the sublime art—wonders of which he had not even dreamed—his bosom expanded. He visioned himself retailing all these marvels in turn; to his mother; to his sister; to Miss Bankett’s own self; to imaginary legions of Canons, vergers, and admiring pupils. He felt endowed with a courage that would stick at nothing. He could even have answered questions put to him. This was an auspicious beginning, indeed. This was something like learning music. This was, in the highest sense of the word, Sublime.

As the bell of St. Gyles’s boomed the hour of eleven, the music room door opened once again, and the smiling maid insinuated her head to announce that Miss Bankett’s mamma had called for her, and was now seated with Mrs. Rencil in the drawing-room.

This interruption, closely followed by the appearance of a gaunt gentleman with high cheek bones and a moustache like a respirator (though shaggier at the edges) whose roll of music wrapped in brown paper and tied with string proclaimed him a student of the divine art—probably a bass vocalist, to judge by the protuberance of his Adam’s apple—put an effectual stop to further contrapuntal exercises. Miss Bankett, suddenly infected with market fever and the excitement to go a shopping, picked up her hat and mantle and ran to rejoin her waiting parent, sped by genial words of recommendation from the Organist, and the promise of a longer lesson next week. The gaunt gentleman was taken cordially by the hand and welcomed—although, as Mr. Rencil warned him, they would have to make the most of the least available time this morning, inasmuch as he had shortly to give an organ lesson at the church. Oswald, indulgently patted on the back, was commended for the lustre of his music case, which (said Mr. Rencil) showed how hard he meant to work. In addition, the Organist told him to practice his scales and to come back on Monday morning at the same time, which Oswald undertook to do, saying to himself all the while: “But I shall be at school on Monday. I can’t come then. Tell him!” Had it not been for the presence of the gaunt gentleman with the natural respirator, who, having unrolled his music and straightened it upon his knee, was now beginning to cough in a summary and professional manner and to work his Adam’s apple up and down in preparation for vocal exercises, and whose eye seemed to rest on Oswald in a somewhat menacing and unfriendly fashion as though resentful of his presence—Oswald felt sure he could have found sufficient courage to explain his inability to come at the time appointed. But the eye of the vocalist sealed his lips with the weight of a leaden “Begone!”

As he closed the door, still deeply pondering, he heard his name called after him in Mr. Rencil’s voice. “Perhaps,” thought Oswald, “he has remembered that I shall be at school on Monday morning.” But the Organist had remembered no such thing. He had found on his writing table the note, addressed to one of his pupils, that the red-throated boy should have waited for this morning. The duty of delivering it was now delegated to Oswald, who accepted the charge with pride. Oswald knew Mr. Finchley; Oswald was to take the note to him at Messrs. Garrod and Wheelright’s Office in Monastery Street. He would find Mr. Finchley in the public office on the left-hand side of the door, with an office coat on and a pen over his ear. If it wasn’t over his ear it would be stuck through his mouth. On no account must Oswald turn by mistake into the private office on the right-hand side, for if he so much as put his head in there would be six and eightpence to pay. That Oswald should keep out of the clutches of the law was Mr. Rencil’s earnest hope. The gentleman with the respirator laughed at this. That is to say, the respirator arched its back under his nose and became crescent shaped, but instantly the valves of his Adam’s apple began to work again, and he tried his voice subterraneously on a “Ha!” as though actuated by the sudden fear that, in laughing, he had lost it.

“And don’t forget Monday morning,” Mr. Rencil reminded Oswald as he took his leave once more. Oswald, still telling himself: “But I shall be at school on Monday morning. Doesn’t he know?” acquiesced again. Pondering this matter deeply, he walked with exemplary politeness down the padded stairs, keeping his eyes from wandering and praying that the doors he passed might not open to involve him in any further complications before he reached the street. A brilliant prelude on the pianoforte rang out from the music room and arrested his attention. He opened the front door with exceeding delicacy and care, to prolong the rapture of these glorious sounds that emanated from the Organist’s hallowed fingers, wondering too, whether he might not be rewarded with a taste of the quality of the gaunt-faced gentleman’s voice. But that hope bore no fruit, for the moment of the singing lesson was not yet. These far more glorious strains originated from the Organist alone, who played to his flattered and enraptured pupil the latest song whose proofs sheets had reached him from the London publishers that morning. Perhaps, thought Oswald, his mother might be willing to release him from the school on Monday for such an important matter as a music lesson. His conscience troubled him the less because his vanities were so vigorous. It is true he had had no opportunity to display his clean fingers, or to show Mr. Rencil how politely he could sit at the piano. But he had been played to by the Organist’s great and very self; he had been spoken to by Miss Bankett; Mr. Rencil had patted his shoulder. And lo! now he was engaged to undertake a most important mission on the Organist’s behalf.

Devotion grows with service. They love best who serve the most. Oswald’s loyalty towards the Organist was greater because something had been asked of it. He went on his errand irradiated with gratitude and aspirations.

O! after all this—what a musician he should some day be.