‘Ah, you know my music, then, Miss Oswald?’
‘Oh yes, Harry always brings me home all your pieces whenever he comes back at the end of term. I can play every one of them without the notes. But the Penseroso is my special favourite.’
‘It’s mine, too. I’m so glad you like it. But I’m working away at a little thing now which you shall hear as soon as I’ve finished it; something lighter and daintier than anything else I’ve ever attempted. I shall call it the Butterfly Canzonet.’
‘Why don’t you publish your music under your own name, Mr. Berkeley?’
‘Oh, because it would never do. I’m a parson now, and I must keep up the dignity of the cloth by fighting shy of any aesthetic heterodoxies. It would be professional suicide for me to be suspected of artistic leanings. All very well in an archdeacon, you know, to cultivate his tastes for chants and anthems, but for a simple curate!—and secular songs too!—why, it would be sheer contumacy. His chances of a living would shrink at once to what your brother would call a vanishing quantity.’
‘Well, you can’t imagine how much I admire your songs and airs, Mr. Berkeley. I was so pleased when you invited us, to think I was going to lunch with a real composer. There’s no music I love so much as yours.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it, Miss Oswald, I assure you. But I’m only a beginner and a trifler yet. Some day I mean to produce something that will be worth listening to. Only, do you remember what some French novelist once said?—“A poet’s sweetest poem is always the one he has never been able to compose.” I often think that’s true of music, too. Away up in the higher stories of one’s brain somewhere, there’s a tune floating about, or rather a whole oratorio full of them, that one can never catch and fix upon ruled paper. The idea’s there, such a beautiful and vague idea, so familiar to one, but so utterly unrealisable on any known instrument—a sort of musical Ariel, flitting before one and tantalising one for ever, but never allowing one to come up with it and see its real features. I’m always dissatisfied with what I’ve actually written, and longing to crystallise into a score the imaginary airs I can never catch. Except in this last piece of mine; that’s the only thing I’ve ever done that thoroughly and completely pleases me. Come and see me next week, and I’ll play it over to you.’
They walked all round the meadows, and back again beside the arches of the beautiful bridge, and then returned to Berkeley’s rooms once more for a cup of afternoon tea, and an air or two of Berkeley’s own composing. Edie enjoyed the walk and the talk immensely; she enjoyed the music even more. In a way, it was all so new to her. For though she had always seen much of Harry, and though Harry, who was the kindest and proudest of brothers, had always instinctively kept her up to his own level of thought and conversation, still, she wasn’t used to seeing so many intelligent and educated young men together, and the novelty of their society was delightfully exhilarating to her eager little mind. To a bright girl of nineteen, wherever she may come from, the atmosphere of Oxford has a wonderfully cheering and stimulating effect; to a country tradesman’s daughter from a tiny west-country village it is like a little paradise on earth with a ceaseless round of intensely enjoyable breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, and water-parties.
Ernest, for his part, was not so well pleased. He wanted to have a little conversation with Oswald’s sister; and he was compelled by politeness to give her up in favour of Arthur Berkeley. However, he made up for it when he returned, and monopolised the pretty little visitor himself for almost the entire tea-hour.
As soon as they had gone, Arthur Berkeley sported his oak, and sat down by himself in his comfortable crimson-covered basket chair. ‘I won’t let anybody come and disturb me this evening,’ he said to himself moodily. ‘I won’t let any of these noisy Magdalen men come with their racket and riot to cut off the memory of that bright little dream. No desecration after she has gone. Little Miss Butterfly! What a pretty, airy, dainty, delicate little morsel it is! How she flits, and sips, and natters about every possible subject, just touching the tip of it so gracefully with her tiny white fingers, and blushing so unfeignedly when she thinks she’s paid you a compliment, or you’ve paid her one. How she blushed when she said she liked my music! How she blushed when I said she had a splendid ear for minute discrimination! Somehow, if I were a falling-in-love sort of fellow, I half fancy I could manage to fall in love with her on the spot. Or rather, if I were a good analytical psychologist, perhaps I ought more correctly to say I AM in love with her already.’