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.
"Who 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
"prachtvolleying" 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 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 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 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 walkingstick
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
mustn'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 play 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 up-sides 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 around
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
would have 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 to
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 to 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 are 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 anyone, 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 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 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."
"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 of the fantastic skyline 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 latchkey. 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 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 Helen, 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 our 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 I
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 Indian 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 relit 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
football, 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.
