Paul the minstrel, and other stories, reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset

Front matter

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Preface

These stories were all written at a very happy time of my life, and they were first published when I was a master at Eton with a boarding-house. A house-master is not always a happy man. It is an anxious business at best. Boys are very unaccountable creatures, and the years between boyhood and adolescence are apt to represent an irresponsible mood. From the quiet childhood at home the boys have passed to what is now, most happily, in the majority of cases, a carefully guarded and sheltered atmosphere — the private school. My own private school was of the old-fashioned type, with a very independent tone of tradition ; but nowadays private schools are smaller and much more domesticated. The boys live hke little brothers in the company of active and kindly young masters ; and then the}^ are plunged into the rougher currents of public schools, with their strange and in miany w^ays barbarous code of ethics, their strong and penetrating traditions. Here the boys, who have hitherto had little temptation to be anything but obedient, have to learn to govern themselves, and to do so among conventions which hardly represent the conventions of the world, and where the public opinion is curiously unaffected either by viii PREFACE

parental desires, or by the wishes, expressed or unexpressed, of the masters. A house-master is often in the position of seeing a new set of boys come into power in his house whom he may distrust ; but the sense of honour among the boys is so strong that he is often the last person to hear of practices and principles prevailing in liis house of which he may wholly disapprove. He may even find that many of the individual boys in his house disapprove of them too, and yet be unable to alter a tone impressed on the place by a few boys of forcible, if even sometimes unsatisfactory, character. But at the time at which these stories were written the tone of my own house was sound, sensible, and friendly ; and I had the happiness of living in an atmosphere which I knew to be wholesome, manly, and pure. I used to tell or read stories on Sunday evenings to any boys who cared to come to listen ; and I remember with delight those hours when perhaps twenty boys would come and sit all about mj/ study, filling every chair and sofa and overflowing on to the floor, to listen to long, vague stories of adventure, with at all events an appearance of interest and excitement.

One wanted to do the best for the boys, to put fine ideas, if one could, into their heads and hearts. But direct moral exhortation to growing boys, feeling the life of the world quickening in their veins, and with vague old instincts of love and war rising uninterpreted in their thoughts, is apt to be a fruitless thing enough. It is not that they do not Hsten ; but they simply do not understand the need of caution and control, nor do they see the unguarded

PREFACE ix

posterns by which evil things sHp smiHng into the fortress of the soul.

Every now and then I used to try to shape a tale which in a figure might leave an arresting or a restraining thought in their minds ; or even touch with a light of romance some of the knightly virtues which are apt to be dulled into the aspect of commonplace and uninteresting duties.

It is very hard to make the simple choices of life assume a noble or an inspiring form. One sees long afterwards in later life how fine the right choice, the vigorous resistance, the honest perseverance might have been ; but the worst faults of boyhood have something exciting and even romantic about them — they would not be so alluring if they had not — while the homely virtues of honesty, frankness, modesty, and self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were alwa3^s ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world that is wrought by sin and indolence.

I chose, not deliberately but instinctively, the old romantic form for the setting of these tales, a semi-mediaeval atmosphere such as belongs to the literary epic ; some of the stories are pure fantasy; but they aU aim more or less directly at illustrating the stern necessity of moral choice ; the difficulty is to get children to believe, at the brilliant outset of life, that it will not do to follow the delights of impulse. And one of the most pathetic parts of a schoolmaster's life is that he cannot,

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however earnestly and sincerel}^ he may wish to do so, transfer his o\^^Q experience to the boys, or persuade them that, in the simple words of Browning, " It's wiser being good than bad." It may be wiser but it is certainly duller ! and the schoolmaster has the horror, which ought never to be a faithless despair, of seeing bo\'S drift into habits of non-resistance, and sow with eager hand the seed which must almost inevitably grow up into the thorns and weeds of life. If the child could but grasp the bare truth, if one could but pull away the veil of the years and show him the careless natural joy ending in the dingy, broken slovenliness of failure ! But one cannot ; and perhaps life would lose all its virtue if one could.

One does not know, one cannot dimty guess, why all these attractive opportunities of evil are so thickly strewn about the path of the young in a world which we believe to be ultimately ruled by Justice and Love. Much of it comes from our own blindness and hardness of heart. Either we do not care enough ourselves, or we cannot risk the unpopularity of interfering with bad traditions, or we are lacking in imaginative sympathy, or we sophistically persuade ourselves into the belief that the character is strengthened by exposure to premature evil. The atmosphere of the boarding-school is a very artificial one ; its successes are patent, its debris we sweep away into a corner ; but whatever view we take of it all, it is a life which, if one cares for virtue at all, however half-heartedly, tries the mental and emotional faculties of the schoolmaster to the uttermost, and everj^ now and then shakes one's

PREFACE xi

heart to the depths with a terrible wonder as to how one can ever answer to the account which will be demanded.

I do not claim to have realised my responsibilities fully, or to have done all I could to lead my flock along the right path. But I did desire to minimise temptations and to try to get the better side of the boys' hearts and minds to emphasise itself. One saw masters who seemed to meddle too much — ^that sometimes produced an atmosphere of guarded hostility — and one saw masters who seemed to be foolishly optimistic about it all ; but as a rule one found in one's colleagues a deep and serious preoccupation with manly ideals of boy-life ; and in these stories I tried my best to touch into life the poetical and beautiful side of virtue, to show life as a pilgrimage to a far-off but glorious goal, with seductive bypaths turning off the narrow way, and evil shapes, both terrifying and alluring, which loitered in shady corners, or even sometimes straddled horribly across the very road.

The romance, then, of these stories is coloured by what may be thought to be a conventional and commonplace morality enough ; but it is real for all that ; and life as it proceeds has a blessed way of revealing the urgency and the unseen features of the combat. It is just because virtue seems dry and humdrum that the struggle is so difficult. It is so hard to turn aside from what seems so dangerously beautiful, to what seems so plain and homely. But it is what we mostly have to do.

I saw many years ago a strange parable of what I mean. I was walking through a quiet countryside xii PREFACE

with a curious, fanciful, interesting boy, and we came to a little church off the track in a tiny churchyard full of high-seeded grasses. On the wall of the chancel hung an old trophy of armour, a helmet and a cuirass, black with age. The boy climbed quickly up upon the choir-stalls, took the helmet down, enclosed his own curly head in it, and then knelt down suddenly on the altar-step ; after which he replaced the helmet again on its nail. *' What put it into your head to do that ? " I said. " Oh," he said lightly, " I thought of the old man who wore it ; and they used to kneel before the altar in their armour when they were made knights, didn't they ? I wanted just to feel what it was like ! "

Life was too strong for that boy, and he was worsted ! He won little credit in the fight. But it had been a pretty fancy of his, and perhaps something more than a fancy. I have often thought of the little slender figure, so strangely helmeted, kneeling in the summer sunlight, with Heaven knows what thoughts of what life was to be ; it seems to me a sorrowful enough symbol of bo^^hood — so eager to share in the fraj , so unfit to bear the dinted helm.

And yet I do not wish to be sorrowful, and it would be untrue to life to yield oneself to foolish pity. M}^ own little company is broken up long ago ; I wonder if they remember the old days and the old stories. They are good citizens m^ost of them, standing firmly and sturdily, finding out the meaning of life in their own way and contributing their part to the business of the world. But some of them have fallen by the way, and those

PREFACE xiii

not the faultiest or coarsest, but some of fine instinct and graceful charm, who evoked one's best hopes and most affectionate concern.

If one believed that life were all, that there was no experience beyond the dark grave and the mouldering clay, it would be a miserable task enough to creep cautiously through life, just holding on to its tangible advantages and cautiously enjoying its delights. But I do most utterly believe that there is a truth beyond that satisfies our sharpest cravings and our wildest dreams, and that if we have loved what is high and good, even for a halting minute, it will come to bless us consciously and abundantly before we have done with experience. Many of our dreams are heavy-hearted enough ; we are hampered by the old faults, and by the body that not only cannot answer the demands of the spirit, but bars the way with its own urgent claims and desires. But whatever hope we can frame or conceive of peace and truth and nobleness and light shall be wholly and purely fulfilled ; and even if we are separated by a season, as we must be separated, from those whom we love and journey with, there is a union ahead of us when we shall remember gratefully the old dim days, and the path which we trod in hope and fear together ; when all the trouble we have wrought to ourselves and others will vanish into the shadow of a faded dream, in the sweetness and glory of some great city of God, full of fire and music and all the radiant visions of uplifted hearts, which visited us so faintly and yet so beckoningly in the old frail days.

Contents

PAUL THE MINSTREL ....

I

THE ISLES OF SUNSET ....

II

Of the life that Paul lived with Mark I must not here tell ; but before he grew to full manhood he had learned his art well. Mark was a strict m.aster, but not impatient. The only thing that angered him was carelessness or listlessness ; and Paul was an apt and untiring pupil, and learnt so easily and deftly that Mark was often astonished. '* How did you learn that ? " he said one day suddenty to Paul

1 -1 when the boy was practising on the lute, and played a strange soft cadence, of a kind that Mark had never heard. The boy was startled by the question, for he had not thought that Mark was listening to him. He looked up with a blush and turned his eyes on Mark. " Is it not right ? " he said. " I did not learn it ; it comes from somewhere in my mind."

Paul learnt to play several instruments, both wind and string. Sometimes he loved one sort the best, sometimes the other. The wind instruments of wood had to him a kind of soft magic, like the voice of a gentle spirit, a spirit that dwelt in lonely un visited places, and communed more with things of earth than the hearts of men. In the flutes and bassoons seemed to him to dwell the voices of airs that murmured in the thickets, the soft gliding of streams, the crooning of serene birds, the peace of noonday, the welling of clear springs, the beauty of little waves, the bright thoughts of stars. Sometimes in certain modes, they could be sad, but it was the sadness of lonely homeless things, old dreaming spirits of wind and wave, not the sadness of such things as had known love and lost what they had loved, but the melancholy of such forlorn beings as by their nature were shut out from the love that dwells about the firelit hearth and the old roofs of homesteads. It was the sadness of the wind that wails in desolate places, knowing that it is lonely, but not knowing what it desires ; or the soft sighing of trees that murmur all together in a forest, dreaming each its own dream, but with no thought of comradeship or desire.

The metal instruments, out of which the cunning breath could draw bright music, seemed to him soulless too in a sort, but shrill and enlivening. These clarions and trumpets spoke to him of brisk morning winds, or the cold sharp plunge of green waves that leap in triumph upon rocks. To such sounds he fancied warriors marching out at morning, with the joy of fight in their hearts, meaning to deal great blows, to slay and be slain, and hardly thinking of what would come after, so sharp and swift an eagerness of spirit held them ; but these instruments he loved less.

Best of all he loved the resounding strings that could be twanged by the quill, or swept into a heavenly melody by the finger-tips, or throb beneath the strongly drawn bow. In all of these lay the secrets of the heart ; in these Paul heard speak the bright dreams of the child, the vague hopes of growing boy or girl, the passionate desires of love, the silent loyalty of equal friendship, the dreariness of the dejected spirit, whose hopes have set like the sun smouldering to his fall, the rebellious grief of the heart that loses what it loves, the darkening fears that begin to roll about the ageing mind, like clouds that weep on mountain tops, and the despair of sinners, finding the evil too strong.

Best of all it was when all these instruments could conspire together to weave a sudden dream of beauty that seemed to guard a secret. What was the secret ? It seemed so near to Paul sometimes, as if he were like a man very near the edge of some mountain from which he may peep into an unknown valley. Sometimes it was far away.

But it was there, he doubted not, though it hid itself. It was Hke a dance of fairies in a forest glade, which a man could half discern through the screening leaves ; but, when he gains the place, he sees nothing but tall flowers with drooping bells, bushes set with buds, large-leaved herbs, all with a silent, secret, smiling air, as though they said, " We have seen, we could tell."

Paul seemed very near this baffling secret at times ; in the dewy silence of mornings, just before the sun comes up, when familiar woods and trees stand in a sort of musing happiness ; at night when the sky is thickly sown with stars, or when the moon rises in a soft hush and silvers the sleeping pool ; or when the sun goes down in a rich pomp, trailing a great glow of splendour with him among cloudy islands, all flushed with fiery red. When the sun withdrew himself thus, flying and flaring to the west, behind the boughs of leafless trees, what was the hidden secret presence that stood there as it were finger on lip, inviting j^et denying ? Paul knew within himself that if he could but say or sing this, the world would never forget. But he could not yet.

Then, too, Paul learned the magic of words, the melodious accent of letters, sometimes so sweet, sometimes so harsh ; then the growing phrase, the word that beckons as it were other words to join it trippingly ; the thought that draws the blood to the brain, and sets the heart beating swiftly — ^he learned the words that sound like far-off bells, or that wake a gentle echo in the spirit, the words that burn into the heart, and make the hearer ashamed of all that is hard and low. But he learned, too, that the craftsman in words must not build up his song word by word, as a man fetches bricks to make a wall ; but that he must see the whole thought clear first, in a kind of divine flash, so that when he turns for words to write it, he finds them piled to his hand.

All these things Paul learnt, and daj^ by day he suffered all the sweet surprises and joys of art. There were days that were not so, when the strings jangled aimlessly, and seemed to have no soul in them ; days when it appeared that the cloud could not lift, as though light and music together were dead in the world — ^but these days were few ; and Paul growing active and strong, caring little what he ate and drank, tasting no wine, because it fevered him at first, and then left him ill at ease, knowing no evil or luxurious thoughts, sleeping hghtly and hardly, found his spirits very pure and plentiful ; or if he was sad, it was a clear sadness that had something beautiful within it, and dwelt not on any past grossness of his own, but upon the thought that all beautiful things can but live for a time, and must then be laid away in the darkness and in the cold.

So Paul grew up knowing neither friendship nor love, only stirred at the sight of a beautiful face, a shapely hand, or a slender form ; by a grateful wonder for what was so fair ; untainted by any desire to master it, or make it his own ; living only for his art, and with a sort of blind devotion to Mark, whom he soon excelled, though he knew it not. Mark once said to him, when Paul had made a song of some old forgotten sorrow, " How do you know all this, boy ? You have not suffered, you have not lived ! " " Oh," said Paul gaily, knowing it to be praise, " my heart tells me it is so."

Paul, too, as he grew to manhood, found himself with a voice that was not loud, but true — a voice that thrilled those who heard it through and through ; but it seemed strange that he felt not what he made other men feel ; rather his music was like a still pool that can reflect all that is above it, the sombre tree, the birds that fly over, the starry silence of the night, the angry redness of the dawn.

It was on one of his journeys with Mark that the news of Mistress Alison's death reached him. Mark told him very carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul — for the end had come very suddenly — ^Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little ; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts ; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it were, day by day, with earnest effort, the steep ladder of song. He thought a little upon Mistress Ah son, and on all her love and goodness : but it was with a tranquil sorrow, and not with the grief and pain of loss. Mark was very gentle with him for awhile ; and this indeed did shame Paul a little, to find himself being used so lovingly for a sorrow which he was hardly feeling. But he said to himself that sorrow must come unbidden, and that it was no sorrow that was made with labour and intention.

He was a little angered with himself for his dullness — but then song was so beautiful, that he could think of nothing else ; he was dazzled.

A little while after, Mark asked him whether, as they were near at hand, he would turn aside to see Mistress Alison's grave. And Paul said, " No ; I would rather feel it were all as it used to be ! " — and then seeing that Mark looked surprised and almost grieved, Paul, with the gentle hypocrisy of childhood, said, " I cannot bear it yet," which made Mark silent, and he said no more, but used Paul more gently than ever.

One day Mark said to him, very gravely, as if he had long been pondering the matter, "It is time for me to take another pupil, Paul. I have taught you all I know ; indeed you have learned far more than I can teach." Then he told him that he had arranged all things meetly. That there was a certain Duke who lacked a minstrel, and that Paul should go and abide with him. That he should have his room at the castle, and should be held in great honour, making music only when he would. And then Mark would have added some words of love, for he loved Paul as a son. But Paul seemed to have no hunger in his heart, no thought of the days they had spent together ; so Mark said them not. But he added very gently, " And one thing, Paul, I must tell you. You will be a great master — ^indeed you are so already — ^and I can tell you nothing about the art that you do not know. But one thing I will tell you — that you have a human heart within you that is not yet awake : and when it awakes, it will be very strong ; so that a great combat, I think, lies before you. See that it overcome you not ! " And Paul said wondering, " Oh, I have a heart, but it is altogether given to song." And so Mark was silent.

Then Paul went to the Duke's Castle of Wresting and abode with him year after year. Here, too, he made no friend ; he was gracious with all, and of a lofty courtesy, so that he was had in reverence ; and he made such music that the tears would come into the eyes of those who heard him, and they would look at each other, and wonder how Paul could thus tell the secret hopes of the heart. There were many women in the castle, great ladies, 3^oung maidens, and those that attended on them. Some of these would have proffered love to Paul, but their glances fell before a certain cold, virginal, almost affronted look, that he turned to meet any smile or gesture that seemed to hold in it any personal claim, or to offer any gift but that of an equal and serene friendship. As a maiden of the castle once said, provoked by his coldness, ** Sir Paul seems to have everything to say to all of us, but nothing to any one of us." He was kind to all with a sort of great and distant courtesy that was too secure even to condescend. And so the years passed away.

Ill

It was nearly noon at the Castle of Wresting, and the whole house was deserted, for the Duke had ridden out at daybreak to the hunt ; and all that could find a horse to ride had gone with him ; and, for it was not far afield, all else that could walk had gone afoot. So bright and cheerful a day was it that the Duchess had sent out her pavilion to be pitched in a lawn in the v/ood, and the Duke with his friends were to dine there ; none were left in the castle save a few of the elder serving-maids, and the old porter, who was lame. About midday, however, it seemed that one had been left ; for Paul, nov/ a tall man, strongty built and comely, yet with a somewhat dreamful air, as though he pondered difficult things within himself, and a troubled brow, under w^hich looked out large and gentle ej^es, came with a quick step down a stairwa^^ He turned neither to right nor left, but passed through the porter's lodge. Here the road from the town camiC up into the castle on the left, cut steeply in the hill, and you could see the red roofs laid out like a map beneath, with the church and the bridge ; to the right ran a little terrace under the wall. Paul came through the lodge, nodding gravely to the porter, who returned his salute with a kind of reverence ; then he walked on to the terrace, and stood for a moment leaning against the low wall that bounded it ; below him lay for miles the great wood of Wresting, now all ablaze with the brave gold of autumn leaves ; here was a great tract of beeches all rusty red ; there was the pale gold of elms. The forest lay in the plain, here and there broken by clearings or open glades ; in one or two places could be seen the roofs of villages, with the tower of a church rising gravely among trees. On the horizon ran a blue line of downs, pure and fine above the fretted gold of the forest. The air was very ^s till, with a fresh sparkle in it, and the sun shone bright in a cloudless heaven ; it was a day when the heaviest heart grows light, and when it seems the bravest thing that can be designed to be alive.

Once or twice, as Paul leaned to look, there came from the wood, very far away, the faint notes of a horn ; he smiled to hear it, and it seemed as though some merry thought came into his head, for he beat cheerfully with his fingers on the parapet. Presently he seemed to bethink himself, and then walked briskly to the end of the terrace, where was a little door in the wall ; he pushed this open, and found himself at the head of a flight of stone steps, with low walls on either hand, that ran turning and twisting according to the slope of the hill, down into the wood.

Paul went lightly down the steps ; once or twice he turned and looked up at the grey walls and towers of the castle, rising from the steep green turf at their foot, above the great leafless trees — for the trees on the slope lost their leaves first in the wind. The sight pleased him, for he smiled again. Then he stood for a moment, lower down, to watch the great limbs and roots of a huge beech that seemed to cling to the slope for fear of slipping downwards. He came presently to a little tower at the bottom that guarded the steps. The door was locked ; he knocked, and there came out an old woman with a merry wrinkled face, who opened it for him with a key, saying, " Do you go to the hunt. Sir Paul ? " " Nay," he said, smiling, " only to walk a little alone in the wood." '* To make music, perhaps ? " said the old woman shyly. " Perhaps," said Paul, smiling, " if the music come — but it will not always come for the wishing."

As Paul walked in the deep places of the wood, little by little his fresh holiday mood died away, and there crept upon him a shadow of thought that had of late been no stranger to him. He asked himself, with some bitterness, what his life was tending to. There was no loss of skill in his art ; indeed it was easier to him than ever ; he had a rich and prodigal store of music in him, music both of word and sound, that came at his call. But the zest was leaving him. He had attained to his utmost desire, and in his art there was nothing more to conquer. But as he looked round about him and saw all the beautiful chains of love multiplying themselves about those among whom he lived, he began to wonder whether he was not after all missing life itself. He saw children born, he saw them growing up ; then they, too, found their own path of love, they married, or were given in marriage ; presently they had children of their own ; and even death itself, that carried well-loved souls into the dark world, seemed to forge new chains of faith and loyalty. All this he could say and did say in his music. He knew it, he divined it by some magical instinct ; he could put into words and sounds the secrets that others could not utter — and there his art stopped. It could not bring him within the charmed circle — nav, it seemed to him that it was even like a fence that kept him outside. He looked forward to a time when his art of itself must fade, when other minstrels should arise with new secrets of power ; and what would become of him then?