He put on his spectacles and looked closely at his own scrawl. “I declare to you,” he said in a little, laughingly, “I declare to you I cannot read a word of her myself. But no matter, John, we’ll just let her go as she stands; they’re better scholars in London than what we are.”
The letter went, but I never heard that the British Admiralty availed itself of an offer so unusual and kind.
I thought of these things yesterday as I passed the ruins of Copenhagen’s school. How far, since then, have travelled the feet that trod there; how far, how weary, how humbled, how elate, how prosperous, how shamefully down at heel? Dear lads, dear girls, wherever you be, my old companions, were we not here in this poor place, among the hazel and the fern, most fortunate and happy? Has the wide world we travel through for fame or fortune—or, better still, content—added aught to us of joy we did not have (at least in memory) in those irrecoverable, enduring, summer days? Now it is mist for ever on the hill, and the rain-rot in the wood, and clouds and cares chasing each other across our heavens, and flowers that flame from bud to blossom and smoulder into dust almost before we have caught their perfume; then, old friends, we pricked our days out leisurely upon a golden calendar: the scent of the morning hay-fields seemed eternal.
THE SILVER DRUM.
Fifty yards to the rear of the dwelling-house the studio half hid itself amongst young elms and laurel bushes, at its outside rather like a granary, internally like a chapel, the timbers of the roof exposed and umber-stained, with a sort of clerestory for the top light, a few casts of life-size statues in the corners, and two or three large bas-reliefs of Madonnas and the like by Donatello helping out the ecclesiastical illusion. It was the last place to associate with the sound of drums, and yet I sat for twenty minutes sometimes stunned, sometimes fascinated, by the uproar of asses’ skin. The sculptor who played might, by one less unconventional, be looked upon as seriously sacrificing his dignity in a performance so incongruous with his age and situation. But I have always loved the whimsical; I am myself considered somewhat eccentric, and there is a rapport between artistic souls that permits—indeed, induces—some display of fantasy or folly when they get into each other’s society apart from the intolerant folks who would think it lunacy for a man of over middle age to indulge in the contre-dance of “Petronella” at a harvest-home, or display any accomplishment with the jew’s-harp.
Urquhart, at the time when I sat to him, was a man of sixty years or thereabout; yet he marched up and down the floor of his workshop with the step of a hill-bred lad, his whole body sharing the rhythm of his beating, his clean-shaven face with the flush of a winter apple, the more noticeable in contrast with the linen smock he used as an overall while at work among his clay. The deep old-fashioned side-drum swinging at his groin seemed to have none of a drum’s monotony. It expressed (at all events to me that have some fancy) innumerable ecstasies and emotions—alarms, entreaties, defiances, gaieties, and regrets, the dreadful sentiment of forlorn hopes, the murmur of dubious battalions in countries of ambush. The sound of the drum is, unhappily, beyond typographical expression, though long custom makes us complacently accept “rat-a-tat-tat” or “rub-a-dub-dub” as quite explanatory of its every phrase and accent; but I declare the sculptor brought from it the very pang of love. Alternated with the martial uproar of rouses, retreats, chamades, and marches that made the studio shake, it rose into the clerestory and lingered in the shades of the umber roof, this gentle combination of taps and roulades, like the appeal of one melodiously seeking admission at his mistress’s door.
“You had no idea that I handled sticks so terrifically?” said he, relinquishing the instrument at last, and returning to his proper task of recording my lineaments in the preparatory clay.
“You play marvellously, Mr Urquhart,” I said, astonished. “I had no idea you added the drum to your—to your accomplishments.”
“Well, there you have me revealed—something of a compliment to you, I assure you, for I do not beat my drum for everybody. If I play well it is, after all, no wonder, for with a side-drum and a pair of sticks I earned a living for seven years and travelled among the most notable scenes of Europe.”
“So?” I said, and waited. He pinched the clay carefully to make the presentment of the lobe of my ear, and stood back from his work a moment to study the effect.