Hughes goes to the piano, for a piano always draws him as a magnet draws steel, and sometimes, half-consciously, he feels the pull of one before he has seen it. He goes to the piano and, perking his nose at an angle of about forty degrees with the horizontal, plays French songs very quietly, whilst we sit gazing into the heart of the fire, each with his own thoughts, and probably each with the same thoughts—thoughts of Harry Lowe in Greece, of Gordon Warlow in Mesopotamia, of those who lie dead, though but two years before they were more alive than we ourselves, of those who have gone to France and never returned....

And Madame, moving with our thoughts, gently rises and joins Hughes and begins, her hands clasped on her breast, to sing with most alluring grace things by Hahn, Debussy and Duparc. The music lulls us into a very luxury of sadness, into a mood in which grief loses its edge [245] ]and sorrow its poignancy. To me, who have heard no music for two years, her singing is mercilessly beautiful, so beautiful, indeed, that my breathing becomes uneven and my eyes wet. And once again I feel that spinal shiver which, as a little boy, I used to experience when I heard an anthem by Gounod or just caught the sound of a military band as it marched down another road.... I never used to run from the house to see the band, for even in those early days I had an intuitive knowledge that beauty is mystery, and that to probe mysteries is to mar, if not altogether to kill, beauty.... And to-night, when Madame comes to the end of each song, I do not speak, I scarcely breathe, so fearful am I that the spell may be broken. But something of the spell lasts even when she ceases singing altogether and, looking at my wife, I know that she feels it too—that, indeed, all in our little company are more quietly happy, more reconciled to all the brutality and ugliness over the sea, than we have been for a long age.

We talk in quiet tones about the past, the present and the future, each contributing something to the common stock of conversation. Madame brings us tea and cakes, and we listen to the dim rumour of traffic in King’s Road. And then, not very late, moved by a common impulse, we rise to leave, and talking softly as we go, make our way outside where, as we did in that spot three years ago, we say farewell, wondering as we do so what Fate has in store for each of us and whether for one or more of us this is the end of our life in Chelsea—a life in which we have worked hard and played hard, enjoying both work and play, and in which we have been carelessly unmindful of the danger lying in wait for our country.

[246]
]CHAPTER XXI
SOME MORE MUSICIANS

Professor Granville Bantock—Frederick Delius—Joseph Holbrooke—Dr Walford Davies—Dr Vaughan Williams—Dr W. G. M‘Naught—Julius Harrison—Rutland Boughton—John Coates—Cyril Scott

At the present moment there are only two names that are of vital importance in British creative music—Sir Edward Elgar and Granville Bantock. No two men could be in more violent contrast: Elgar, conservative, soured with the aristocratic point of view, super-refined, deeply religious; Bantock, democratic, Rabelaisian, free-thinking, gorgeously human.

Of the two, Bantock is the more original, the deeper thinker, the more broadly sympathetic.

It must be about ten years ago that, staying a week-end with Ernest Newman, I was taken by my host one evening to Bantock’s house in Moseley. I remember Bantock’s bulky form rising from the table at which he was scoring the first part of his setting of Omar Khayyám, and I recollect that, as soon as we had shaken hands, he took from his pocket an enormous cigar-case of many compartments that shut in upon themselves concertina-fashion. From another pocket he produced a huge match-box containing matches almost as large as the chips of wood commonly used for lighting fires. Having carefully selected a cigar for me, he struck a match that, spluttering like a firework, calmed down into a huge blaze. He gazed upon me very solemnly and rather critically all the time I was lighting up, but his face relaxed into a [247] ]smile when, having plunged my cigar into the middle of the flame, I left it there for many seconds and did not withdraw it until the cigar itself had momentarily flamed and until it glowed like a miniature furnace.

I was destined to smoke very many of Bantock’s cigars, and I hope that when the war is over I shall smoke many more; but I never lit a cigar he handed me without noticing that he invariably observed me very closely and a trifle anxiously, as though afraid I should fail in some detail of the holy rite. I do not think I ever did fail, for he never met me without offering me a cheroot, which he certainly would never have done if I had omitted any necessary observance of the lighting ceremonial.

That first evening we talked a good deal—at least, Newman and a few other friends did; but Bantock, never a very loquacious man, committed himself to nothing save a few generalities. By no means a cautious man in his mode of life, he is nevertheless cautious in his choice of friends, and no man can freeze more quickly than he when uncongenial company is thrust upon him. There were several strangers in our little circle, and Bantock was content for the most part to sit back in his easy-chair and listen.