On this particular evening, when young Purcell went to call for lights, the Signor was seated out on his little terrace enjoying the twilight and a cigarette together. There were two chairs on the scrap of grass, and a little table with an inkstand upon it, and the cup in which the Signor had taken his black coffee after dinner. He was leaning back in his chair puffing out the fragrant smoke from his cigarette, lazily watching it as it floated upwards, and now and then noting down a bar or two of music upon a piece of paper in his hand. Sometimes he took the cigarette from his mouth and hummed a scrap of an air, keeping time with his head and hand. There was no one who was more popular in the country as a composer of graceful drawing-room songs than Signor Rossinetti. It was something refined, something elegant that was expected from him, delicate soprano melodies, fine combinations for tenors and altos. It was very seldom that he took any trouble about the bass, but his tenor songs were justly considered exquisite. He liked to have a pretty set of verses on hand, and “set” them in the intervals of more serious business. The summer evening, when he sat out after dinner upon his scrap of terrace, was the time when he had most inspiration. His pupil and protégé, young Purcell, thought there was no intellectual pleasure higher and more elevating, than to sit out here in the shadow of the great grey buttresses, with the cheerful distant noises of the High Street floating upward from the foot of the wall, and to watch the Signor composing his song. The young fellow would run in to the piano and “try over” every line of the symphony as it came welling out from that fount of music. He said often that, except one thing, there was no such delight in the world. To see genius working under his very eyes, what a privilege it was! To Purcell it seemed that his master read his heart, and uttered his deepest sentiments for him in those compositions. To-night his mind had been lulled out of great commotion and disturbance by the rosy vision of love and happiness that had breathed through the notes. It was glad, it was sad, it was full of suggestion, it wrung the very heart of Purcell—“’Twas in the time of roses, they plucked them as they passed.” Would that time ever come for him? He thought the Signor had read the depths of his heart, the wistful longing which was sometimes hope and sometimes despair, the pictures he made to himself of one day wandering by her side, one day gathering roses for her. He murmured over and over the tune of the refrain in a kind of ecstasy as he went to his mother’s room, his fancy excited, his head all on fire, half with the delicious sense of being friend to such a genius, and sharing, as it were, the very inspiration that produced such beautiful things—and half with the pride and delight of being so deeply in love and hanging on so exquisite an edge of anguish. The Signor himself did not know how much those pretty compositions of his went to his pupil’s heart; but he was flattered—as who would not be?—by this never-failing appreciation of his work, and youthful enthusiasm. It pleased him vaguely, just as the floating sounds from below, the voices and noises, all softened by the warm air of the summer evening, and even by the dimness of the twilight, pleased him. How harmonious they became as they soared upwards, all that was harsh taken out of them, filling the solitude with a genial sense of human fellowship! Perhaps the Signor was, like many others, not too fond of his fellow-creatures close at hand; but as they went and came, far down at his feet, talking, calling to each other, shouting their wares, singing now and then, making a sound of their steps upon the pavement, and a movement of their breathing in the air, he was transported with the hum, and felt that he loved them. This always gave him inspiration, this and the glimmer of the river and of the distant villages scattered over the plain, throwing up here and there a dim point of a spire among the trees. When Purcell left him, he put aside the bit of music-paper on which he had been jotting down his chords. He raised his eyes to the profound unfathomable blue above, and swung back upon his chair. He was half giddy with the sense of circling depths of infinity above him, though himself raised so high. The Signor was not without a feeling that he was raised very high, not only in locality, but in soul; yet there was a heaven above which made his head giddy when he looked up—a heaven full of stars, from Palestrina to Mendelssohn, all shining over him, serene, unapproachable, not even holding out any encouragement to him, passive and splendid as the other stars which hid themselves in that still-luminous blue. Would any one ever look up at that sky and recall his name as also among the ranks of the unapproachable? The Signor turned his eyes from it with a sigh as he heard some one enter the room, and came down to earth, letting his chair drop upon its four legs, and his mind return to the present. He watched through the open window the advent of old Pickering carrying the lamp. The old man put it down on the table, and lighted some candles on the mantelpiece in front of the dim mirror, which gave them back with a blurred, enlarged reflection. His master sat outside and watched him pottering about the room, setting the chairs against the wall, and vainly attempting to make everything “straight.” It was a standing grievance to old Pick that he was not allowed to close the window and draw the curtains as it was right to do. The Signor outside sat and watched him with a gentle amusement. He liked to feel the oddness and superiority of his own tastes, thrown into evidence by the mighty anxiety of old Pick to shut the window. A smile came over his face. To ordinary mortals, in ordinary houses, it was not necessary to seek inspiration from the skies and the wide world of evening air. As Pick approached the window, with his usual look of wistful anxiety to be allowed to do what was right, and tacit disapproval of lawless habits, the Signor stepped through, smiling. “I think you will shut me out some night, Pick,” he said, “and then you will have my blood on your soul—for what could I do upon the terrace? I should fall asleep and tumble over, and be picked up in little pieces at the foot of the hill.”
“Ah! I don’t feel no fear of that, sir,” said Pickering, shaking his head; “you’ve got too good a voice for that, sir. I don’t make no doubt that you could hold an A sharp till you frighted the whole Abbey. And besides I always looks out; I’ve got the habit in this house. Even the girl, she’ll go and stand at the window, as if the view was any matter to her; it’s a thing as carries one away. But I don’t hold with leaving all open when the lights are lighted. Bless you, the top windows in the street with a spyglass, or even with good eyes like what I had when I was young, they could see in.”
“Much good it would do them,” said the Signor, sitting down before his piano. And indeed it is quite true that as he sat close to the window, relieved against the light of the lamp within, there were eyes at the top windows opposite which could catch with difficulty the outline of the Signor’s pale profile and black moustache. Some of the young ladies in the shops would climb up occasionally and show that exciting prospect to a friend. But it was an amusement which palled after the first moment, and certainly did no harm to the Signor.
“Maybe not much good, sir,” said old Pick, who always would have the last word; “but it might do harm. You never can tell what folks will say. The less they know the more they’ll talk; and that’s true all the world over; though I will say for the Abbey as it’s as bad or worse than most other places.”
“Why should it be worse, Pick?”
“I don’t know, sir—unless it’s the clergy and the chevaliers. You see, when gentlemen has little or nothing to do, they’re brought down to the level of the women, so far as that goes—and as gentlemen always does things more thorough than the women when they’re once started, the consequence nat’rally is—Leastways that’s my notion of it,” said Pick;—“the women haven’t the strength to start a real talking as does harm. They tries hard—as hard as they knows how—but bless you, in that as in most things, they wants a man to show ’em the way.”
“That is a new view, Pick. I thought if there was one thing in which the ladies had the advantage of us——”
“There ain’t one thing, sir, not one. For my part, I can tell in a minute a story as will hang together, a real crusher, one as will drive folks distracted and ruin a family. You’ll never get that out of a woman’s tongue. Nay, nay, they hasn’t the force for it; they’re poor creatures at the best; they can make a person uncomfortable, but they can’t do no more. And when I say the Abbey’s as bad or maybe worse, I mean that the gentlemen has little to do, and they has to amuse themselves the same as the women. That’s what I mean to say.”
The Signor gave a half attention to Pick’s long speech while he sat at his piano. All the time he was running over his new composition with one hand, correcting a note here and there, changing a harmony. “’Twas in the time of roses—the time of roses,” he hummed softly under his breath. But the smile on his lip was for Pick, and he gave him a negligent half attention, amused by his chatter, and by the peculiar views he held forth. He looked up at him as Pick stopped, singing with a little flourish in the accompaniment, which meant satisfaction in having at last got the phrase to his mind—“’Twas in the time of roses—the time of roses——” Old Pick was not surprised by the utterance of a sentiment so foreign to his subject. He knew his master’s ways, and he took a certain interest in his master’s productions, such as old servants often benevolently accord to the doings of their “family.” He could not tell what folks saw in them—still, as the Signor’s productions, he looked upon them with kindly toleration all the same.
“You may say, sir,” he cried, “‘the time o’ roses’—that’s just the very thing; for, I daresay, but for that rose in his button-hole, and the jaunty looks of him, a young girl wouldn’t have seen nothing in him. But I don’t know neither—women is the queerest things on the face of this whole earth. Flatter them, or make them think they’re bettering themselves, and there’s nothing they won’t do.”