The Little Schoolmaster Mark: A Spiritual Romance

by J. H. Shorthouse

The Chaplain led him up some back stairs, and through corridors and anterooms, all full of wonderful things, which the boy passed bewildered, till they reached a small room where were two boys apparently of his own age. They appeared to have been just engaged in punching each other's heads, for their hair was disordered, their faces red, and one was in tears. They regarded the Chaplain with a sullen suspicion, and the schoolmaster with undisguised contempt. The door at the farther side of the room was partly open, the Chaplain scratched upon it, and, receiving some answer, they went in.

The little schoolmaster dared scarcely breathe when he got into the room, so surprising was all he saw. To the left of the door, as they came in, was placed a harpsichord, before which was standing, with her back towards them, a young girl whose face they could not see; by her side, at the harpsichord, was seated an elderly man upon whom the boy gazed with wonder, so different was he from anything that he had ever seen before; opposite to them, in the window, hung a canary in a cage, and the boy perceived, even in the surprise of the moment, that the bird was agitated and troubled. But the next moment all his attention was absorbed by the figure of the Prince, who was seated on a couch to the right of the room, and almost facing them. To say that this was the most wonderful sight that the little schoolmaster had ever seen would be to speak foolishly, for he had seen no wonderful sights, but it surpassed the wildest imagination of his dreams. The Prince was a very handsome man of about thirty-five, of a slight and delicate figure, and of foreign manners and pose. He was dressed in a suit of what seemed to the boy a wonderful white cloth, of a soft material, embroidered in silk, with flowers of the most lovely tints. The coat was sparingly ornamented in this manner, but the waistcoat, which was only partly seen, was a mass of these exquisite flowers. At his throat and wrists were masses of costly lace, and his hair was frizzled, and slightly powdered, which increased the delicate expression of his features, which were perfectly cut. He lay back on the couch, caressing, with his right hand, a small monkey, also gorgeously dressed, and armed with a toy sword, who sat on the arm of the sofa cracking nuts, and throwing the shells upon the carpet.

The Prince looked up as the two came in, and waved his disengaged hand for them to stand back, and the next moment the strange phantasmagoria, into which the boy's life was turned, took another phase, and he again lost all perception of what he had seen before; for there burst into the little room the most wonderful voice, which not only he and the Chaplain, but even the Maestro and the Prince, had well-nigh ever heard.

The girl, who was taking her music lesson, had been discovered in Italy by the old Maestro, who managed the music of the private theatre which the Prince had formed. He had heard her, a poor untaught girl, in a coffee-house in Venice, and she afterwards became, in the opinion of some, the most pathetic female actress and singer of the century.

The first chord of her voice penetrated into the boy's nature as nothing had ever done before; he had never heard any singing save that of the peasants at church, and of the boys and girls who sang hymns round the cottage hearths in the winter nights.

The solemn tramp of the Lutheran measures, where the deep basses of the men drown the women's soft voices, and the shrill unshaded singing of the children, could hardly belong to this art, which he heard now for the first time. These sudden runs and trills, so fantastic and difficult, these chords and harmonies, so quaint and full of colour, were messages from a world of sound, as yet an unknown country to the boy. He stood gazing upon the singer with open mouth. The Prince moved his jewelled hand slightly in unison with the notes; the monkey, apparently rather scared, left off cracking his nuts, and, creeping close to his master, nestled against his beautiful coat close to the star upon his breast.

Then suddenly, in this world of wonders, a still more wonderful thing occurred. There entered into this bewitching, this entrancing voice, a strange, almost a discordant, note. Through the fantasied gaiety of the theme, to which the sustained whirr of the harpsichord was like the sigh of the wind through the long grass, there was perceptible a strain, a tremor of sadness, almost of sobs. It was as if, in the midst of festival, some hidden grief, known beforetime of all, but forgotten or suppressed, should at once and in a moment well up in the hearts of all, turning the dance-measures into funeral chants, the love-songs into the loveliest of chorales. The Maestro faltered in his accompaniment; the Prince left off marking the time, he swept the monkey from him with a movement of his hand, and leaned forward eagerly in his seat: the discarded favourite slunk into a corner, where it leaned disconsolately against the wall. The pathetic strain went on, growing more tremulous and more intense, when suddenly the singing stopped, the girl buried her face in her hands and sank upon the floor in a passion of tears; the boy sprang forward, he forgot where he was, he forgot the Prince—

"It is the bird," he cried, "the bird!"

The canary, whose dying struggles the singer had been watching through her song, gave a final shudder and fell lifeless from its perch.

The Prince rose: he lifted the singer from her knees, and, taking her hands from the wet face, he turned to the others with a smile.