It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is
the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of
man. All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you
are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--
of course, not so as to disturb the others--or like Helen, who
can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like
Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is
profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open
on his knee; or like their cousin, Fraulein Mosebach, who
remembers all the time that Beethoven is echt Deutsch; or like
Fraulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but
Fraulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes
more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap
at two shillings. It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen's
Hall, dreariest music-room in London, though not as dreary as the
Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit on the extreme
left of that hall, so that the brass bumps at you before the
rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.
"Whom is Margaret talking to?" said Mrs. Munt, at the conclusion
of the first movement. She was again in London on a visit to
Wickham Place.
Helen looked down the long line of their party, and said that she
did not know.
"Would it be some young man or other whom she takes an interest
in?"
"I expect so," Helen replied. Music enwrapped her, and she could
not enter into the distinction that divides young men whom one
takes an interest in from young men whom one knows.
"You girls are so wonderful in always having--Oh dear! one
mustn't talk."
For the Andante had begun--very beautiful, but bearing a family
likeness to all the other beautiful Andantes that Beethoven had
written, and, to Helen's mind, rather disconnecting the heroes
and shipwrecks of the first movement from the heroes and goblins
of the third. She heard the tune through once, and then her
attention wandered, and she gazed at the audience, or the organ,
or the architecture. Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids
who encircle the ceiling of the Queen's Hall, inclining each to
each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on which
the October sunlight struck. "How awful to marry a man like those
Cupids!" thought Helen. Here Beethoven started decorating his
tune, so she heard him through once more, and then she smiled at
her Cousin Frieda. But Frieda, listening to Classical Music,
could not respond. Herr Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses
could not make him inattentive; there were lines across his
forehead, his lips were parted, his pince-nez at right angles to
his nose, and he had laid a thick, white hand on either knee. And
next to her was Aunt Juley, so British, and wanting to tap. How
interesting that row of people was! What diverse influences had
gone to the making! Here Beethoven, after humming and hawing with
great sweetness, said "Heigho," and the Andante came to an end.
Applause, and a round of "wunderschoning" and pracht volleying
from the German contingent. Margaret started talking to her new
young man; Helen said to her aunt: "Now comes the wonderful
movement: first of all the goblins, and then a trio of elephants
dancing"; and Tibby implored the company generally to look out
for the transitional passage on the drum.
"On the what, dear?"
"On the drum, Aunt Juley."
"No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the
goblins and they come back," breathed Helen, as the music started
with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end.
Others followed him. They were not aggressive creatures; it was
that that made them so terrible to Helen. They merely observed in
passing that there was no such thing as splendour or heroism in
the world. After the interlude of elephants dancing, they
returned and made the observation for the second time. Helen
could not contradict them, for, once at all events, she had felt
the same, and had seen the reliable walls of youth collapse.
Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! The goblins were right.
Her brother raised his finger; it was the transitional passage on
the drum.
For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the
goblins and made them do what he wanted. He appeared in person.
He gave them a little push, and they began to walk in a major key
instead of in a minor, and then--he blew with his mouth and they
were scattered! Gusts of splendour, gods and demigods contending
with vast swords, colour and fragrance broadcast on the field of
battle, magnificent victory, magnificent death! Oh, it all burst
before the girl, and she even stretched out her gloved hands as
if it was tangible. Any fate was titanic; any contest desirable;
conqueror and conquered would alike be applauded by the angels of
the utmost stars.
And the goblins--they had not really been there at all? They were
only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief? One healthy human
impulse would dispel them? Men like the Wilcoxes, or ex-President
Roosevelt, would say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins
really had been there. They might return--and they did. It was as
if the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and
froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note,
and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the
universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and
emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall.
Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the
ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and
again the goblins were scattered. He brought back the gusts of
splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and
of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his
Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But the goblins were there.
They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one
can trust Beethoven when he says other things.
Helen pushed her way out during the applause. She desired to be
alone. The music had summed up to her all that had happened or
could happen in her career.
She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be
superseded. The notes meant this and that to her, and they could
have no other meaning, and life could have no other meaning. She
pushed right out of the building and walked slowly down the
outside staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she
strolled home.
"Margaret," called Mrs. Munt, "is Helen all right?"
"Oh yes."
"She is always going away in the middle of a programme," said
Tibby.
"The music has evidently moved her deeply," said Fraulein
Mosebach.
"Excuse me," said Margaret's young man, who had for some time
been preparing a sentence, "but that lady has, quite
inadvertently, taken my umbrella."
"Oh, good gracious me!--I am so sorry. Tibby, run after Helen."
"I shall miss the Four Serious Songs if I do."
"Tibby, love, you must go."
"It isn't of any consequence," said the young man, in truth a
little uneasy about his umbrella.
"But of course it is. Tibby! Tibby!"
Tibby rose to his feet, and wilfully caught his person on the
backs of the chairs. By the time he had tipped up the seat and
had found his hat, and had deposited his full score in safety, it
was "too late" to go after Helen. The Four Serious Songs had
begun, and one could not move during their performance.
"My sister is so careless," whispered Margaret.
"Not at all," replied the young man; but his voice was dead and
cold.
"If you would give me your address--"
"Oh, not at all, not at all;" and he wrapped his greatcoat over
his knees.
Then the Four Serious Songs rang shallow in Margaret's ears.
Brahms, for all his grumbling and grizzling, had never guessed
what it felt like to be suspected of stealing an umbrella. For
this fool of a young man thought that she and Helen and Tibby had
been playing the confidence trick on him, and that if he gave his
address they would break into his rooms some midnight or other
and steal his walking-stick too. Most ladies would have laughed,
but Margaret really minded, for it gave her a glimpse into
squalor. To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy
can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. As soon as Brahms had
grunted himself out, she gave him her card and said, "That is
where we live; if you preferred, you could call for the umbrella
after the concert, but I didn't like to trouble you when it has
all been our fault."
His face brightened a little when he saw that Wickham Place was
W. It was sad to see him corroded with suspicion, and yet not
daring to be impolite, in case these well-dressed people were
honest after all. She took it as a good sign that he said to her,
"It's a fine programme this afternoon, is it not?" for this was
the remark with which he had originally opened, before the
umbrella intervened.
"The Beethoven's fine," said Margaret, who was not a female of
the encouraging type. "I don't like the Brahms, though, nor the
Mendelssohn that came first and ugh! I don't like this Elgar
that's coming."
"What, what?" called Herr Liesecke, overhearing. "The 'Pomp and
Circumstance' will not be fine?"
"Oh, Margaret, you tiresome girl!" cried her aunt.
"Here have I been persuading Herr Liesecke to stop for 'Pomp and
Circumstance,' and you are undoing all my work. I am so anxious
for him to hear what WE are doing in music. Oh,--you musn't run
down our English composers, Margaret."
"For my part, I have heard the composition at Stettin," said
Fraulein Mosebach, "on two occasions. It is dramatic, a little."
"Frieda, you despise English music. You know you do. And English
art. And English literature, except Shakespeare, and he's a
German. Very well, Frieda, you may go."
The lovers laughed and glanced at each other. Moved by a common
impulse, they rose to their feet and fled from "Pomp and
Circumstance."
"We have this call to pay in Finsbury Circus, it is true," said
Herr Liesecke, as he edged past her and reached the gangway just
as the music started.
"Margaret--" loudly whispered by Aunt Juley.
"Margaret, Margaret! Fraulein Mosebach has left her beautiful
little bag behind her on the seat."
Sure enough, there was Frieda's reticule, containing her address
book, her pocket dictionary, her map of London, and her money.
"Oh, what a bother--what a family we are! Fr--frieda!"
"Hush!" said all those who thought the music fine.
"But it's the number they want in Finsbury Circus."
"Might I--couldn't I--" said the suspicious young man, and got
very red.
"Oh, I would be so grateful."
He took the bag--money clinking inside it--and slipped up the
gangway with it. He was just in time to catch them at the
swing-door, and he received a pretty smile from the German girl
and a fine bow from her cavalier. He returned to his seat
upsides with the world. The trust that they had reposed in him
was trivial, but he felt that it cancelled his mistrust for them,
and that probably he would not be "had" over his umbrella. This
young man had been "had" in the past badly, perhaps
overwhelmingly--and now most of his energies went in defending
himself against the unknown. But this afternoon--perhaps on
account of music--he perceived that one must slack off
occasionally or what is the good of being alive? Wickham Place,
W., though a risk, was as safe as most things, and he would risk
it.
So when the concert was over and Margaret said, "We live quite
near; I am going there now. Could you walk round with me, and
we'll find your umbrella?" he said, "Thank you," peaceably, and
followed her out of the Queen's Hall. She wished that he was not
so anxious to hand a lady downstairs, or to carry a lady's
programme for her--his class was near enough her own for its
manners to vex her. But she found him interesting on the whole--
every one interested the Schlegels on the whole at that time--and
while her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite
him to tea.
"How tired one gets after music!" she began.
"Do you find the atmosphere of Queen's Hall oppressive?"
"Yes, horribly."
"But surely the atmosphere of Covent Garden is even more
oppressive."
"Do you go there much?"
"When my work permits, I attend the gallery for the Royal Opera."
Helen would have exclaimed, "So do I. I love the gallery," and
thus have endeared herself to the young man. Helen could do these
things. But Margaret had an almost morbid horror of "drawing
people out," of "making things go." She had been to the gallery
at Covent Garden, but she did not "attend" it, preferring the
more expensive seats; still less did she love it. So she made no
reply.
"This year I have been three times--to 'Faust,' 'Tosca,' and--"
Was it "Tannhouser" or "Tannhoyser"? Better not risk the word.
Margaret disliked "Tosca" and "Faust." And so, for one reason and
another, they walked on in silence, chaperoned by the voice of
Mrs. Munt, who was getting into difficulties with her nephew.
"I do in a WAY remember the passage, Tibby, but when every
instrument is so beautiful, it is difficult to pick out one thing
rather than another. I am sure that you and Helen take me to the
very nicest concerts. Not a dull note from beginning to end. I
only wish that our German friends had stayed till it finished."
"But surely you haven't forgotten the drum steadily beating on
the low C, Aunt Juley?" came Tibby's voice. "No one could. It's
unmistakable."
"A specially loud part?" hazarded Mrs. Munt. "Of course I do not
go in for being musical," she added, the shot failing. "I only
care for music--a very different thing. But still I will say this
for myself--I do know when I like a thing and when I don't. Some
people are the same about pictures. They can go into a picture
gallery--Miss Conder can--and say straight off what they feel,
all round the wall. I never could do that. But music is so
different from pictures, to my mind. When it comes to music I am
as safe as houses, and I assure you, Tibby, I am by no means
pleased by everything. There was a thing--something about a faun
in French--which Helen went into ecstasies over, but I thought it
most tinkling and superficial, and said so, and I held to my
opinion too."
"Do you agree?" asked Margaret. "Do you think music is so
different from pictures?"
"I--I should have thought so, kind of," he said.
"So should I. Now, my sister declares they're just the same. We
have great arguments over it. She says I'm dense; I say she's
sloppy." Getting under way, she cried: "Now, doesn't it seem
absurd to you? What is the good of the Arts if they 're
interchangeable? What is the good of the ear if it tells you the
same as the eye? Helen's one aim is to translate tunes into the
language of painting, and pictures into the language of music.
It's very ingenious, and she says several pretty things in the
process, but what's gained, I'd like to know? Oh, it's all
rubbish, radically false. If Monet's really Debussy, and
Debussy's really Monet, neither gentleman is worth his salt--
that's my opinion."
Evidently these sisters quarrelled.
"Now, this very symphony that we've just been having--she won't
let it alone. She labels it with meanings from start to finish;
turns it into literature. I wonder if the day will ever return
when music will be treated as music. Yet I don't know. There's my
brother--behind us. He treats music as music, and oh, my
goodness!
He makes me angrier than any one, simply furious. With him I
daren't even argue."
An unhappy family, if talented.
"But, of course, the real villain is Wagner. He has done more
than any man in the nineteenth century towards the muddling of
the arts. I do feel that music is in a very serious state just
now, though extraordinarily interesting. Every now and then in
history there do come these terrible geniuses, like Wagner, who
stir up all the wells of thought at once. For a moment it's
splendid. Such a splash as never was. But afterwards--such a lot
of mud; and the wells--as it were, they communicate with each
other too easily now, and not one of them will run quite clear.
That's what Wagner's done."
Her speeches fluttered away from the young man like birds. If
only he could talk like this, he would have caught the world. Oh,
to acquire culture! Oh, to pronounce foreign names correctly! Oh,
to be well informed, discoursing at ease on every subject that a
lady started! But it would take one years. With an hour at lunch
and a few shattered hours in the evening, how was it possible to
catch up with leisured women, who had been reading steadily from
childhood? His brain might be full of names, he might have even
heard of Monet and Debussy; the trouble was that he could not
string them together into a sentence, he could not make them
"tell," he could not quite forget about his stolen umbrella. Yes,
the umbrella was the real trouble. Behind Monet and Debussy the
umbrella persisted, with the steady beat of a drum. "I suppose my
umbrella will be all right," he was thinking. "I don't really
mind about it. I will think about music instead. I suppose my
umbrella will be all right." Earlier in the afternoon he had
worried about seats. Ought he to have paid as much as two
shillings? Earlier still he had wondered, "Shall I try to do
without a programme?" There had always been something to worry
him ever since he could remember, always something that
distracted him in the pursuit of beauty. For he did pursue
beauty, and, therefore, Margaret's speeches did flutter away from
him like birds.
Margaret talked ahead, occasionally saying, "Don't you think so?
don't you feel the same?" And once she stopped, and said, "Oh, do
interrupt me!" which terrified him. She did not attract him,
though she filled him with awe. Her figure was meagre, her face
seemed all teeth and eyes, her references to her sister and her
brother were uncharitable. For all her cleverness and culture,
she was probably one of those soulless, atheistical women who
have been so shown up by Miss Corelli. It was surprising (and
alarming) that she should suddenly say, "I do hope that you'll
come in and have some tea. We should be so glad. I have dragged
you so far out of your way."
They had arrived at Wickham Place. The sun had set, and the
backwater, in deep shadow, was filling with a gentle haze. To the
right the fantastic sky-line of the flats towered black against
the hues of evening; to the left the older houses raised a
square-cut, irregular parapet against the grey. Margaret fumbled
for her latch-key. Of course she had forgotten it. So, grasping
her umbrella by its ferrule, she leant over the area and tapped
at the dining-room window.
"Helen! Let us in!"
"All right," said a voice.
"You've been taking this gentleman's umbrella."
"Taken a what?" said Helen, opening the door. "Oh, what's that?
Do come in! How do you do?"
"Helen, you must not be so ramshackly. You took this gentleman's
umbrella away from Queen's Hall, and he has had the trouble of
coming round for it."
"Oh, I am so sorry!" cried Helen, all her hair flying. She had
pulled off her hat as soon as she returned, and had flung herself
into the big dining-room chair. "I do nothing but steal
umbrellas. I am so very sorry! Do come in and choose one. Is yours
a hooky or a nobbly? Mine's a nobbly--at least, I THINK it is."
The light was turned on, and they began to search the hall,
Helen, who had abruptly parted with the Fifth Symphony,
commenting with shrill little cries.
"Don't you talk, Meg,! You stole an old gentleman's silk top-hat.
Yes, she did, Aunt Juley. It is a positive fact. She thought it
was a muff. Oh, heavens! I've knocked the In-and-Out card down.
Where's Frieda? Tibby, why don't you ever-- No, I can't remember
what I was going to say. That wasn't it, but do tell the maids to
hurry tea up. What about this umbrella? " She opened it. "No,
it's all gone along the seams. It's an appalling umbrella. It
must be mine."
But it was not.
He took it from her, murmured a few words of thanks, and then
fled, with the lilting step of the clerk.
"But if you will stop--" cried Margaret. "Now, Helen, how stupid
you've been!"
"Whatever have I done?"
"Don't you see that you've frightened him away? I meant him to
stop to tea. You oughtn't to talk about stealing or holes in an
umbrella. I saw his nice eyes getting so miserable. No, it's not
a bit of good now." For Helen had darted out into the street,
shouting, "Oh, do stop!"
"I dare say it is all for the best," opined Mrs. Munt. "We know
nothing about the young man, Margaret, and your drawing-room is
full of very tempting little things."
But Helen cried: "Aunt Juley, how can you! You make me more and
more ashamed. I'd rather he had been a thief and taken all the
apostle spoons than that I-- Well, I must shut the front-door, I
suppose. One more failure for Helen."
"Yes, I think the apostle spoons could have gone as rent," said
Margaret. Seeing that her aunt did not understand, she added:
"You remember 'rent'? It was one of father's words-- Rent to the
ideal, to his own faith in human nature. You remember how he
would trust strangers, and if they fooled him he would say,
'It's better to be fooled than to be suspicious'--that the
confidence trick is the work of man, but the want-of-confidence
trick is the work of the devil."
"I remember something of the sort now," said Mrs. Munt, rather
tartly, for she longed to add, "It was lucky that your father
married a wife with money." But this was unkind, and she
contented herself with, "Why, he might have stolen the little
Ricketts picture as well."
"Better that he had," said Helen stoutly.
"No, I agree with Aunt Juley," said Margaret. "I'd rather
mistrust people than lose my little Ricketts. There are limits."
Their brother, finding the incident commonplace, had stolen
upstairs to see whether there were scones for tea. He warmed the
teapot--almost too deftly--rejected the orange pekoe that the
parlour-maid had provided, poured in five spoonfuls of a superior
blend, filled up with really boiling water, and now called to the
ladies to be quick or they would lose the aroma.
"All right, Auntie Tibby," called Heien, while Margaret,
thoughtful again, said: "In a way, I wish we had a real boy in
the house--the kind of boy who cares for men. It would make
entertaining so much easier."
"So do I," said her sister. "Tibby only cares for cultured
females singing Brahms." And when they joined him she said rather
sharply: "Why didn't you make that young man welcome, Tibby? You
must do the host a little, you know. You ought to have taken his
hat and coaxed him into stopping, instead of letting him be
swamped by screaming women."
Tibby sighed, and drew a long strand of hair over his forehead.
"Oh, it's no good looking superior. I mean what I say."
"Leave Tibby alone!" said Margaret, who could not bear her
brother to be scolded.
"Here's the house a regular hen-coop!" grumbled Helen.
"Oh, my dear!" protested Mrs. Munt. "How can you say such
dreadful things! The number of men you get here has always
astonished me. If there is any danger it's the other way round."
"Yes, but it's the wrong sort of men, Helen means."
"No, I don't," corrected Helen. "We get the right sort of man,
but the wrong side of him, and I say that's Tibby's fault. There
ought to be a something about the house--an--I don't know what."
"A touch of the W's, perhaps?"
Helen put out her tongue.
"Who are the W's?" asked Tibby.
"The W's are things I and Meg and Aunt Juley know about and you
don't, so there!"
"I suppose that ours is a female house," said Margaret, "and one
must just accept it. No, Aunt Juley, I don't mean that this house
is full of women. I am trying to say something much more clever.
I mean that it was irrevocably feminine, even in father's time.
Now I'm sure you understand! Well, I'll give you another example.
It'll shock you, but I don't care. Suppose Queen Victoria gave a
dinner-party, and that the guests had been Leighton, Millais,
Swinburne, Rossetti, Meredith, Fitzgerald, etc. Do you suppose
that the atmosphere of that dinner would have been artistic?
Heavens, no! The very chairs on which they sat would have seen to
that. So with out house--it must be feminine, and all we can do
is to see that it isn't effeminate. Just as another house that I
can mention, but won't, sounded irrevocably masculine, and all
its inmates can do is to see that it isn't brutal."
"That house being the W's house, I presume," said Tibby.
"You're not going to be told about the W's, my child," Helen
cried, "so don't you think it. And on the other hand, I don't the
least mind if you find out, so don't you think you've done
anything clever, in either case. Give me a cigarette."
"You do what you can for the house," said Margaret. "The
drawing-room reeks of smoke."
"If you smoked too, the house might suddenly turn masculine.
Atmosphere is probably a question of touch and go. Even at Queen
Victoria's dinner-party--if something had been just a little
Different--perhaps if she'd worn a clinging Liberty tea-gown
instead of a magenta satin."
"With an India shawl over her shoulders--"
"Fastened at the bosom with a Cairngorm-pin."
Bursts of disloyal laughter--you must remember that they are half
German--greeted these suggestions, and Margaret said pensively,
"How inconceivable it would be if the Royal Family cared about
Art." And the conversation drifted away and away, and Helen's
cigarette turned to a spot in the darkness, and the great flats
opposite were sown with lighted windows which vanished and were
refit again, and vanished incessantly. Beyond them the
thoroughfare roared gently--a tide that could never be quiet,
while in the east, invisible behind the smokes of Wapping, the
moon was rising.
"That reminds me, Margaret. We might have taken that young man
into the dining-room, at all events. Only the majolica plate--and
that is so firmly set in the wall. I am really distressed that he
had no tea."
For that little incident had impressed the three women more than
might be supposed. It remained as a goblin footfall, as a hint
that all is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds,
and that beneath these superstructures of wealth and art there
wanders an ill-fed boy, who has recovered his umbrella indeed,
but who has left no address behind him, and no name.
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