It was certainly during this summer that another idol came to fill that shrine of worship in my heart once occupied by the chorister, and once again music was the hot coal that fired my incense, and the music in question was the mellow thunder of the organ in Kenwyn Church. I still believe that it was very skilfully and sympathetically played by the unconscious object of my adoration. I must have fallen in love not really with what she was, but with what she did, for my passion was all ablaze before ever I had seen her face, or had the slightest idea
ELIZABETH COOPER; “BETH.” ÆT. 78 [[Page 69]
what she was like. All I knew of her was that she produced these enchanting noises, since from our pew I could see nothing of her except her back, and a hand which reached out to shut a stop or open another bleating fount of melody. She played the pedals, those great wooden keys, and swayed slightly from side to side as her feet reached out for them. Once or twice, entering or leaving the church I had a glimpse of her in less than profile, and that served my adoration well enough. Her name was Mrs. Carter, and I daresay she was thirty years old or thereabouts, for she had a son of about my own age who used sometimes to turn over leaves for her, sitting by her on the organ bench, and though I don’t think I would quite have exchanged mothers with him, I would have given most other things to take his place there.
This seemed likely to be a barren affair, for Sunday after Sunday passed and I never saw more than the swaying back of Mrs. Carter. But by way of killing one bird and possibly two with one stone, I got leave somehow (with the gardener’s boy to blow the bellows for an occasional quarter of an hour) to find my way about the organ. That exploration was a good bird in itself, but a better lurked in my mind, for I thought that Mrs. Carter might so easily come up to Kenwyn Church during the week to arrange her music or what not, and she would find Me sitting in her place and making tentative experiments with the stops, and straining after the nearer pedals with my short legs. Surely some day I should look up and see her standing by, and she would say, “Who taught you to play so nicely?” (I perceive that vanity was mingled with passion) and I, in a happy tumult of emotion, would reply, “Oh, Mrs. Carter!”
But this trap for Mrs. Carter never brought the hunter his quarry, and quite independent circumstances led me closer. It was decreed that my sisters should have music lessons and who but Mrs. Carter was engaged to be the teacher? Twice a week she would come to the house, so now no human agency, it would appear, could prevent us from meeting. But for some time a human agency did do so, that human agency being myself, for on observing Mrs. Carter’s approach up the drive, an agony of shyness seized me, and I sat distracted in the day nursery until she had gone upstairs, and the noise of the piano from the schoolroom showed that she was engaged. Once, summoning up all my courage, I went in while the lesson was in progress, but she did not take her eyes off the copy of Schubert’s Impromptu in A flat, which Maggie was fumbling at, and I went out and listened in the garden for the cessation of the piano, on which, I determined, I would walk quite calmly towards the front door and thus meet Mrs. Carter there or thereabouts. But, alas for this faint-hearted lover, as soon as the piano ceased I walked in precisely the other direction, and it was not likely that Mrs. Carter instead of going down the drive would force her way through the laurel shrubbery in order to find me.
I blush to record the next step of my wooing. An invincible shyness (though I was not otherwise shy) forbade my walking down the drive as Mrs. Carter was coming up, or taking any direct initiative, so I laid a lure for her. Observing her approach to the house, I regret to say that it was my custom to lean out of the schoolroom window, singing loudly. This would certainly attract her attention (indeed I think that once it did, and I rushed, panic-stricken, away) and she would say to one of my sisters, “Was that your brother who was singing? What a charming voice!” And one of my sisters would say, “Oh yes, he is very fond of music.” Then surely, surely Mrs. Carter would say, “I don’t think we have met,” or perhaps even, “I should like to see him,” and then my sister would come and find me (for after these bursts of melody out of the window I always fled like a frightened dove to the nursery) and say that Mrs. Carter would like to see me. I had looked on her face by now, and I pictured to myself how her kind mouth would smile as she shook hands, and she would say, “We must be friends, mustn’t we, for we are both so fond of music.”