‘I’m hesitating, Daddy, between “Evolution” and “The Primate of Fiji.” Which do you recommend—tell me?’
‘The Primate, by all means,’ said the old man gaily. ‘And you still mean to open with the debate in the Fijian Parliament on the Deceased Grandmother’s Second Cousin Bill?’
‘No, I don’t, Daddy. I’ve written a new first scene this week, in which the President of the Board of Trade remonstrates with the mermaids on their remissness in sending their little ones to the Fijian Board Schools, in order to receive primary instruction in the art of swimming. I’ve got a capital chorus of mermaids to balance the other chorus of Biological Professors on the Challenger Expedition. I consider it’s a happy cross between Ariosto and Aristophanes. If you like, I’ll give you the score, and read over the words to you.’ ‘Do,’ said the old man, settling himself down in comfort in his son’s easy-chair, and assuming the sternest air of an impartial critic. Arthur Berkeley read on dramatically, in his own clever airy fashion, suiting accent and gesture to the subject matter through the whole first three acts of that exquisitely humorous opera, the Primate of Fiji. Sometimes he hummed the tune over to himself as he went; sometimes he played a few notes upon his flute by way of striking the key-note; sometimes he rose from his seat in his animation, and half acted the part he was reading with almost unconscious and spontaneous mimicry. He read through the famous song of the President of the Local Government Board, that everybody has since heard played by every German band at the street corners; through the marvellously catching chorus of the superannuated tide-waiters; through the culminating dialogue between the London Missionary Society’s Agent and the Hereditary Grand Sacrificer to the King of Fiji. Of course the recital lacked everything of the scenery and dresses that give it so much vogue upon the stage; but it had at least the charmingly suggestive music, the wonderful linking of sound to sense, the droll and inimitable intermixture of the plausible and the impossible which everybody has admired and laughed at in the acted piece.
The old shoemaker listened in breathless silence, keeping his eye fixed steadily all the time upon the clean copy of the score. Only once he made a wry face to himself, and that was in the chorus to the debate in the Fijian Parliament on the proposal to leave off the practice of obligatory cannibalism. The conservative party were of opinion that if you began by burying instead of eating your deceased wife, you might end by the atrocious practice of marrying your deceased wife’s sister; and they opposed the revolutionary measure in that well known refrain:—
Of change like this we’re naturally chary,
Nolumus leges Fijiae mutari.
That passage evidently gave the Progenitor deep pain.
‘Stick to your own language, my boy,’ he murmured; ‘stick to your own language. The Latin may be very fine, but the gallery wil never understand it.’ However, when Arthur finished at last, he drew a long breath, and laid down the roll of manuscript with an involuntary little cry of half-stifled applause.
‘Artie,’ he said rising from the chair slowly, ‘Artie, that’s not so bad for a parson, I can tell you. I hope the Archbishop won’t be tempted to cite you for displaying an amount of originality unworthy of your cloth.’
‘Father,’ said Arthur, suddenly, after a short pause, with a tinge of pensiveness in his tone that was not usual with him, in speaking at least; ‘Father, I often think I ought never to have become a parson at all.’
‘Well, my boy,’ said the old man, looking up at him sharply with his keen eyes, ‘I knew that long ago. You’ve never really believed in the thing, and you oughtn’t to have gone in for it from the very beginning. It was the music, and the dresses, and the decorations that enticed you, Artie, and not the doctrine.’