GEORGE'S TUNES.
... Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase
The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray
For alms of memory with the after time.
—O. W. H.
There is George sitting at the old piano in the drawing-room. The window is wide open. The Venetian glass is dazzling over his head, of which the cauliflower shadow is thrown upon the wall. By daylight, the old damask paper looks all stained and discoloured, and the draperies hang fainting and turning grey and brown and to all sorts of strange autumnal hues in this bright spring sunshine.
The keys answer to George's vigorous fingers, while the shadow bobs in time from side to side. A pretty little pair of slim gloves and a prayer-book are lying on a chair by the piano; they are certainly not George's, nor Eliza Twells', who is ostensibly dusting the room, but who has stopped short to listen to the music. It has wandered from the Freischütz overture to Kennst Du das Land? which, for the moment, George imagines to be his own composition. How easily the chords fall into their places! how the melody flows loud and clear from his fingers! (It's not only on the piano that people play tunes which they imagine to be their own.) As for Eliza, she had never heard anything so beautiful in all her life.
'Can it play hymn toones, sir?' says she, in a hoarse voice.
Hymn tunes! George goes off into the Hundredth Psalm. The old piano shakes its cranky sides, the pedals groan and creak, the music echoes all round; then another shadow comes floating along the faded wall, two fair arms are round his neck, the music stops for an instant, and Eliza begins to rub up the leg of a table.
'How glad I am you have come; but why have you come, George—oughtn't you to be reading?'
'Oh,' says George, airily, 'I have only come for the day. Look here: have you ever heard this Russian tune? I've been playing it to Miss Parnell; I met her coming from church.'
'Miss Parnell? Do you mean Rhoda?' said Dolly, as she sits down in the big chair and takes up the gloves and the prayer-book, which opens wide, and a little bit of fresh-gathered ivy falls out. It is Rhoda's prayer-book, as Dolly knows. She puts back the ivy, while George goes on playing.
'How pretty!' says she, looking at him with her two admiring eyes, and raising her thick brows.
George, much pleased with the compliment, goes on strumming louder than ever.
'Robert is here,' says Dolly, still listening. 'He is in the garden with Rhoda.'
'Oh, is he?' says George, not over-pleased.
It was at this moment that Lady Sarah came to the garden-window, still in her district equipments. Eliza Twells, much confused by her mistress's appearance, begins to dust wildly.
'How d'ye do, George?' said his aunt, coming up to him. 'We didn't expect you so soon again.'
George offered his cheek to be kissed, and played a few chords with his left hand.
'I hadn't meant to come,' he said; 'but I was up at the station this morning, seeing a friend off, and as the train was starting I got in. I've got a return-ticket.'
'Of course you have,' said Lady Sarah, 'but where will you get a return-ticket for the time you are wasting? It is no use attempting to speak to you. Some day you will be sorry;' and then she turned away, and walked off in her gleaming goloshes, and went out at the window again. She did not join Robert and Rhoda, who were pacing round and round the garden walk, but wandered off her own way alone.
'There!' says George, looking up at Dolly for sympathy.
Dolly doesn't answer, but turns very pale, and her heart begins to beat.
'It is one persecution,' cries George, speaking for himself, since Dolly won't speak for him. 'She seems to think she has a right to insult me—that she has bought it with her hateful money.'
He began to crash out some defiant chords upon the piano.
'Don't, dear,' said Dolly, putting her hand on his. 'You don't know,' she said, hesitating, 'how bitterly disappointed Aunt Sarah has been when—when you have not passed. She is so clever herself. She is so proud of you. She hopes so much.'
'Nonsense,' said George, hunching up sulkily. 'Dolly, you are for ever humbugging. You love me, and perhaps others appreciate me a little; but not Aunt Sarah. She don't care that' (a crash) 'for me. She thinks that I can bear insult like Robert, or all the rest of them who are after her money-bags.'
He was working himself up more and more, as people do who are not sure they are right. He spoke so angrily that Dolly was frightened.
'Oh, George,' she said, 'how can you say such things; you mustn't, do you hear? not to me—not to yourself. Of course Robert scorns anything mean, as much as you do. Her savings! they all went in that horrid bank. She does not know where to go for money sometimes, and we ought to spare her, and never to forget what we do owe her. She denies herself every day for us. She will scarcely see a doctor when she is ill, or take a carriage when she is tired.'
Dolly's heart was beating very quick; she was determined that, come what might, George should hear the truth from her.
'If you are going to lecture me, too, I shall go,' said George; and he got up and walked away to the open window, and stood grimly looking out. He did not believe Dolly; he could not afford to believe her. He was in trouble; he wanted money himself. He had meant to confide in Dolly that was one of the reasons why he had come up to town. He should say nothing to her now. She did not deserve his confidence; she did not understand him, and always sided with her aunt. 'Look here, I had better give the whole thing up at once,' he said, sulkily; 'I don't care to be the object of so many sacrifices.' As he stood there glowering, he was unconsciously watching the two figures crossing the garden and going towards the pond; one of them, the lady, turned, and seeing him at the window, waved a distant hand in greeting. George's face cleared. He would join Rhoda; it was no use staying here.
As he was leaving the room poor Dolly looked up from the arm-chair in which she had been sitting despondently: she had tears in her heart though her eyes were dry: she wanted to make friends. 'You know, George,' she said, 'I must say what I think true to you. Aunt Sarah grudges nothing——'
'She makes the very most,' says George, stopping short, of what she does, and so do you;' and he looked away from Dolly's entreating face.
Again poor Dolly's indignation masters her prudence. 'How can you be so mean and ungrateful?' she says.
'Ungrateful!' cries George, in a passion; 'you get all you like out of Aunt Sarah; to me she doles out hard words and a miserable pittance, and you expect me to be grateful. I can see what Robert and Frank Raban think as well as if they said it.'
Dolly sprang past him and rushed out of the room in tears.
'Dolly! Dolly! forgive me, do forgive me! I'm a brute,' says George, running after her,—he had really talked on without knowing what he said—'please stop!'
'Dolly!' cries Lady Sarah from the breakfast-room.
Dolly went flying along the oak hall and up the old staircase and across the ivy window. She could not speak. She ran up to her room, and slammed the door, and burst out sobbing. She did not heed the voices calling then, but in after days, long, long after, she used to hear them at times, and how plainly they sounded, when all was silent—'Dolly, Dolly!' they called. People say that voices travel on through space,—they travel on through life, and across time,—is it not so? Years have passed since they may have been uttered, but do we not hear them again and again, and answer back longing into the past?
Meanwhile poor Dolly banged the door in indignation She was glad George was sorry, but how dared he suspect her? How dared Mr. Raban—Mr. Raban, who did not pay his debts—What did she care?—What did they know? They did not understand how she loved her brother in her own way, her very own; loving him and taking care for him and fighting his battles....
'Oh, George, how cruel you are,' sobbed poor Dolly, sitting on her window-sill. The warm sun was pouring through the open casement, spreading the shadow of the panes and the framework upon the carpetless floor; in a corner of the window a little pot of mignonette stood ready to start to life; a bird came with the shadow of its little breast upon the bars, and chirruped a cheerful chirp. Dolly looked up, breathed in the sun and the bird-chirp, how could she help it? Then her wooden clock struck, it distracted her somehow, and her indignation abated; the girl got up, bathed her red eyes, and went to the glass to straighten her crisp locks and limp tucker. 'Who is knocking?—come in,' said Dolly. She did not look round, she was too busy struggling with her laces: presently she saw a face reflected in the glass beside her own, a pale brown face with black hair and slow, dark eyes, and close little red lips.
'Why, Rhoda, have you come for me?' said Dolly, looking round, sighing and soothed.
At the same time a voice from the garden below cried out, 'Dolly, come down! Have you forgiven me?'
'Yes, George,' said Dolly, looking out from her window.
'Here, let me help you,' cried Rhoda. 'Dolly, Mr. Robert and your brother sent me to find you.'