All Jackson's Children By DANIEL F. GALOUYE - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51185/pg51185-images.html

 

“Yes, I am a student,” said the Chinaman, “And I came here to study the English manners and customs.” We were seated on the top of the electric tram which goes to Hampton Court. It was a bitterly cold spring day. The suburbs of London were not looking their best. “I spent three days at Oxford last week,” he said. “It’s a beautiful place, is it not?” I remarked. The Chinaman smiled. “The country which you see from the windows of the railway carriages,” he said, “on the way from Oxford to London strikes me as being beautiful. It reminded me of the Chinese Plain, only it is prettier. But the houses at Oxford are hideous: there is no symmetry about them. The houses in this country are like blots on the landscape. In China the houses are made to harmonise with the landscape just as trees do.” “What did you see at Oxford?” I asked. “I saw boat races,” he said, “and a great many ignorant old men.” “What did you think of that?” “I think,” he said, “the young people seemed to enjoy it, and if they enjoy it they are quite right to do it. But the way the older men talk about these things struck me as being foolish. They talk as if these games and these sports were a solemn affair, a moral or religious question; they said the virtues and the prowess of the English race were founded on these things. They said that competition was the mainspring of life; they seemed to think exercise was the goal of existence. A man whom I saw there and who, I learnt, had been chosen to teach the young on account of his wisdom, told me that competition trained the man to sharpen his faculties; and that the tension which it provoked is in itself a useful training. I do not believe this. A cat or a boa constrictor will lie absolutely idle until it perceives an object worthy of its appetite; it will then catch it and swallow it, and once more relapse into repose without thinking of keeping itself ‘in training.’ But it will lie dormant and rise to the occasion when it occurs. These people who talked of games seem to me to undervalue repose. They forget that repose is the mother of action, and exercise only a frittering away of the same.” “What did you think,” I asked, “of the education that the students at Oxford receive?” “I think,” said the Chinaman, “that inasmuch as the young men waste their time in idleness they do well; for the wise men who are chosen to instruct the young at your places of learning, are not always wise. I visited a professor of Oriental languages. His servant asked me to wait, and after I had waited three quarters of an hour, he sent word to say that he had tried everywhere to find the professor in the University who spoke French, but that he had not been able to find him. And so he asked me to call another day. I had dinner in a college hall. I found that the professors talked of many things in such a way as would be impossible to children of five and six in our country. They are quite ignorant of the manners and customs of the people of other European countries. They pronounce Greek and Latin and even French in the same way as English. I mentioned to one of them that I had been employed for some time in the Chinese Legation; he asked me if I had had much work to do. I said yes, the work had been heavy. ‘But,’ he observed, ‘I suppose a great deal of the work is carried on directly between the Governments and not through the Ambassadors.’ I cannot conceive what he meant or how such a thing could be possible, or what he considered the use and function of Embassies and Legations to be. They most of them seemed to take for granted that I could not speak English: some of them addressed me in a kind of baby language; one of them spoke French. The professor who spoke to me in this language told me that the French possessed no poetical literature, and he said the reason of this was that the French language was a bastard language; that it was, in fact, a kind of pidgin Latin. He said when a Frenchman says a girl is ‘beaucoup belle,’ he is using pidgin Latin. The courtesy due to a host prevented me from suggesting that if a Frenchman said ‘beaucoup belle’ he would be talking pidgin French. “Another professor said to me that China would soon develop if she adopted a large Imperial ideal, and that in time the Chinese might attain to a great position in the world, such as the English now held. He said the best means of bringing this about would be to introduce cricket and football into China. I told him that I thought this was improbable, because if the Chinese play games, they do not care who is the winner; the fun of the game is to us the improvisation of it as opposed to the organisation which appeals to the people here. Upon which he said that cricket was like a symphony of music. In a symphony every instrument plays its part in obedience to one central will, not for its individual advantage, but in order to make a beautiful whole. ‘So it is with our games,’ he said, ‘every man plays his part not for the sake of personal advantage, but so that his side may win; and thus the citizen is taught to sink his own interests in those of the community.’ I told him the Chinese did not like symphonies, and Western music was intolerable to them for this very reason. Western musicians seem to us to take a musical idea which is only worthy of a penny whistle (and would be very good indeed if played on a penny whistle!); and they sit down and make a score of it twenty yards broad, and set a hundred highly-trained and highly-paid musicians to play it. It is the contrast between the tremendous apparatus and waste of energy on one side, and the light and playful character of the business itself on the other which makes me, a Chinaman, as incapable of appreciating your complicated games as I am of appreciating the complicated symphonies of the Germans or the elaborate rules which their students make with regard to the drinking of beer. We like a man for taking his fun and not missing a joke when he finds it by chance on his way, but we cannot understand his going out of his way to prepare a joke and to make arrangements for having some fun at a certain fixed date. This is why we consider a wayside song, a tune that is heard wandering in the summer darkness, to be better than twenty concerts.” “What did that professor say?” I asked. “He said that if I were to stay long enough in England and go to a course of concerts at the Chelsea Town Hall, I would soon learn to think differently. And that if cricket and football were introduced into China, the Chinese would soon emerge out of their backwardness and barbarism and take a high place among the enlightened nations of the world. I thought to myself as he said this that your games are no doubt an excellent substitute for drill, but if we were to submit to so complicated an organisation it would be with a purpose: in order to turn the Europeans out of China, for instance; but that organisation without a purpose would always seem to us to be stupid, and we should no more dream of organising our play than of organising a stroll in the twilight to see the Evening Star, or the chase of a butterfly in the spring. If we were to decide on drill it would be drill with a vengeance and with a definite aim; but we should not therefore and thereby destroy our play. Play cannot exist for us without fun, and for us the open air, the fields, and the meadows are like wine: if we feel inclined, we roam and jump about in them, but we should never submit to standing to attention for hours lest a ball should escape us. Besides which, we invented the foundations of all our games many thousand of years ago. We invented and played at ‘Diabolo’ when the Britons were painted blue and lived in the woods. The English knew how to play once, in the days of Queen Elizabeth; then they had masques and madrigals and Morris dances and music. A gentleman was ashamed if he did not speak six or seven languages, handle the sword with a deadly dexterity, play chess, and write good sonnets. Men were broken on the wheel for an idea: they were brave, cultivated, and gay; they fought, they played, and they wrote excellent verse. Now they organise games and lay claim to a special morality and to a special mission; they send out missionaries to civilise us savages; and if our people resent having an alien creed stuffed down their throats, they take our hand and burn our homes in the name of Charity, Progress, and Civilisation. They seek for one thing—gold; they preach competition, but competition for what? For this: who shall possess the most, who shall most successfully ‘do’ his neighbour. These ideals and aims do not tempt us. The quality of the life is to us more important than the quantity of what is done and achieved. We live, as we play, for the sake of living. I did not say this to the professors because we have a proverb that when you are in a man’s country you should not speak ill of it. I say it to you because I see you have an inquiring mind, and you will feel it more insulting to be served with meaningless phrases and empty civilities than with the truth, however bitter. For those who have once looked the truth in the face cannot afterwards be put off with false semblances.” “You speak true words,” I said, “but what do you like best in England?” “The gardens,” he answered, “and the little yellow flowers that are sprinkled like stars on your green grass.” “And what do you like least in England?” “The horrible smells,” he said. “Have you no smells in China?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied, “we have natural smells, but not the smell of gas and smoke and coal which sickens me here. It is strange to me that people can find the smell of human beings disgusting and be able to stand the foul stenches of a London street. This very road along which we are now travelling (we were passing through one of the less beautiful portions of the tramway line) makes me homesick for my country. I long to see a Chinese village once more built of mud and fenced with mud, muddy-roaded and muddy-baked, with a muddy little stream to be waded across or passed by stepping on stones; with a delicate one-storeyed temple on the water-eaten bank, and green poppy fields round it; and the women in dark blue standing at the doorways, smoking their pipes; and the children, with three small budding pigtails on the head of each, clinging to them; and the river fringed with a thousand masts: the boats, the houseboats, the barges and the ships in the calm, wide estuaries, each with a pair of huge eyes painted on the front bow. And the people: the men working at their looms and whistling a happy tune out of the gladness of their hearts. And everywhere the sense of leisure, the absence of hurry and bustle and confusion; the dignity of manners and the grace of expression and of address. And, above all, the smell of life everywhere.” “I admit,” I said, “that our streets smell horribly of smoke and coal, but surely our people are clean?” “Yes,” he said, “no doubt; but you forget that to us there is nothing so intolerably nasty as the smell of a clean white man!”

This Star Shall be Free By Murray Leinster - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/76849/pg76849-images.html

 

There is a village in the South of England not far from the sea, which possesses a curious inn called “The Green Tower.” Why it is called thus, nobody knows. This inn must in days gone by have been the dwelling of some well-to-do squire, but nothing now remains of its former prosperity, except the square grey tower, partially covered with ivy, from which it takes its name. The inn stands on the roadside, on the brow of a hill, and at the top of the tower there is a room with four large windows, whence you can see all over the wooded country. The ex-Prime Minister of a foreign state, who had been driven from office and home by a revolution, happening to pass the night in the inn and being of an eccentric disposition, was so much struck with this room that he secured it, together with two bedrooms, permanently for himself. He determined to spend the rest of his life here, and as he was within certain limits not unsociable, he invited his friends to come and stay with him on any Saturday they pleased, without giving him notice. Thus it happened that of a Saturday and Sunday there was nearly always a mixed gathering of men at “The Green Tower”, and after they had dined they would sit in the tower room and drink old Southern wines from the ex-Prime Minister’s country, and talk, or tell each other stories. But the ex-Prime Minister made it a stringent rule that at least one guest should tell one story during his stay, for while he had been Prime Minister a Court official had been in his service whose only duty it was to tell him a story every evening, and this was the only thing he regretted of all his former privileges. On this particular Sunday, besides myself, the clerk, the flute-player, the wine merchant (the friends of the ex-Prime Minister were exceedingly various), and the scholar were present. They were smoking in the tower room. It was summer, and the windows were wide open. Every inch of wall which was not occupied by the windows was crowded with books. The clerk was turning over the leaves of the ex-Prime Minister’s stamp collection (which was magnificent), the flute-player was reading the score of Handel’s flute sonatas (which was rare), the scholar was reading a translation in Latin hexameters of the “Ring and the Book” (which the ex-Prime Minister has written in his spare moments), and the wine merchant was drinking generously of a curious red wine, which was very old. “I think,” said the ex-Prime Minister, “that the flute-player has never yet told us a story.” The guests knew that this hint was imperative, and so putting away the score, the flute-player said: “My story is called, ‘The Fiddler.’” And he began:— “This happened a long time ago in one of the German-speaking countries of the Holy Roman Empire. There was a Count who lived in a large castle. He was rich, powerful, and the owner of large lands. He had a wife, and one daughter, who was dazzlingly beautiful, and she was betrothed to the eldest son of a neighbouring lord. When I say betrothed, I mean that her parents had arranged the marriage. She herself—her name was Elisinde—had had no voice in the matter, and she disliked, or rather loathed, her future husband, who was boorish, sullen, and ill-tempered; he cared for nothing except hunting and deep drinking, and had nothing to recommend him but his ducats and his land. But it was quite useless for Elisinde to cry or protest. Her parents had settled the marriage and it was to be. She understood this herself very well. “All the necessary preparations for the wedding, which was to be held on a splendid scale, were made. There was to be a whole week of feasting; and tumblers and musicians came from distant parts of the country to take part in the festivities and merry-making. In the village, which was close to the castle, a fair was held, and the musicians, tumblers, and mountebanks, who had thronged to it, performed in front of the castle walls for the amusement of the Count’s guests. “Among these strolling vagabonds was a fiddler who far excelled all the others in skill. He drew the most ravishing tones from his instrument, which seemed to speak in trills as liquid as those of the nightingale, and in accents as plaintive as those of a human voice. And one of the inmates of the castle was so much struck by the performance of this fiddler that he told the Count of it, and the fiddler was commanded to come and play at the Castle, after the banquet which was to be held on the eve of the wedding. The banquet took place in great pomp and solemnity, and lasted for many hours. When it was over the fiddler was summoned to the large hall and bidden to play before the Lords and Ladies. “The fiddler was a strange looking, tall fellow with unkempt fair hair, and eyes that glittered like gold; but as he was dressed in tattered uncouth rags (and they were his best too) he cut an extraordinary and almost ridiculous figure amongst that splendid jewelled gathering. The guests tittered when they saw him. But as soon as he began to play, their tittering ceased, for never had they heard such music. “He played—in view of the festive occasion—a joyous melody. And, as he played, the air seemed full of sunlight, and the smell of wine vats and the hum of bees round ripe fruit. The guests could not keep still in their places, and at last the Count gave orders for a general dance. The hall was cleared, and soon all the guests were breathlessly dancing to the divine lilt of the fiddler’s melody. All except Elisinde who, when her betrothed came forward to lead her to the dance, pleaded fatigue, and remained seated in her chair, pale and distraught, and staring at the fiddler. This did not, to tell the truth, displease her betrothed, who was a clumsy dancer and had no ear for music. Breathless at last with exhaustion the guests begged the untiring fiddler to pause while they rested for a moment to get their breath. “And while they were resting the fiddler played another tune. This time it was a sad tune: a low, soft tune, liquid and lovely as a human voice. A great hush came on the company. It seemed as if after the heat and splendour of a summer’s day the calm of evening had fallen; the quiet of the dusk, when the moon rises in the sky, still faintly yellow in the west with the ebb of sunset, and pours on the stiff cornfields its cool, silvery frost; and the trees quiver, as though they felt the freshness and were relieved, and a breeze comes, almost imperceptible and not strong enough to shake the boughs, from the sea; and a bird, hidden somewhere in the leaves, sings a throbbing song. “Everyone was spellbound, but none so much as Elisinde. The music seemed to be speaking straight to her, to pierce the very core of her heart. It was an inarticulate language which she understood better than any words. She heard a lonely spirit crying out to her, that it understood her sorrow and shared her pain. And large tears poured down her cheeks. “The fiddler stopped playing, and for a moment or two no one spoke. At last Elisinde’s betrothed gave a great yawn, and the spell was broken. “‘You play very well—very well, indeed,’ said the Count. “‘But that sad music is, I think, rather out of place to-day,’ said the Countess. “‘Yes, let us have another cheerful tune,’ said the Count. “The fiddler struck up once more and played another dance. This time there was an almost elfish magic in his melody. It took you captive; it was irresistible; it called and commanded and compelled; you longed to follow, follow, anywhere, over the hills, over the sea, to the end of the world. “Elisinde rose from her chair as though the spirit of the music beckoned her, but looking round she saw no partner to her taste. She sat down again and stared at the fiddler. His eyes were fixed on her, and as she looked at him his squalor and rags seemed to fade away and his blue eyes that glittered like gold seemed to grow larger, and his hair to grow brighter till it shone like fire. And he seemed to be caught in a rosy cloud of light: tall, splendid, young, and glowing like a god. “After this dance was over the Count rose, and he and his guests retired to rest. The fiddler was given a purse full of money, and the Count gave orders that he should be served refreshment in the kitchen. “Elisinde went up to her bedroom, which overlooked the garden. She threw the window wide open and looked out into the starry darkness. It was a breathless summer night. The air was full of warm scents. Lights still twinkled in the village; now and again a dog barked, otherwise everything was still. She leant out of the window, and cried bitterly because her lot was loathsome to her, and she had not a friend in the world to whom she could confide her sorrow. “While she was thus sobbing she heard a rustling in the bushes beneath; she looked down and she saw a face looking up towards her, a beautiful face, glistening in the moonlight. It was the fiddler. “‘Elisinde,’ he called to her in a low voice, ‘if you want to escape I have the means. Come with me; I love you, and I will save you from your doom.’ “‘I would come with you to the end of the world,’ she said, ‘but how can I get away from this castle?’ “He threw a rope ladder up to her. ‘Make it fast to the bar,’ he said, ‘and let yourself down.’ “She let herself down into the garden. ‘We can easily climb the wall with this,’ he said; ‘but before you come I must tell you that if you will be my bride your life will be hard and full of misery. Think before you come.’ “‘Rather all the misery in the world,’ she said, ‘than the awful doom that awaits me here. Besides which I love you, and we shall be very happy.’ “They scaled the wall, and on the other side of it the fiddler had two horses, waiting tied to the gate. They galloped through many villages, and by the dawn they had reached a village far beyond the Count’s lands. Here they stopped at an inn, and they were married by the priest that day. But they did not stop in this village; they sought a further country, beyond reach of all pursuit. They settled in a village, and the fiddler earned his bread by his fiddling, and Elisinde kept their cottage neat and clean. For awhile they were as happy as the day was long; the fiddler found favour everywhere by his fiddling, and Elisinde ingratiated herself by her gentle ways. But one day when Elisinde was lying in bed and the fiddler had lulled her to sleep with his music, some neighbours, attracted by the sound, passed the cottage and looked in at the window. And to their astonishment they saw the fiddler sitting by a bed on which lay what seemed to them to be a sleeping princess; and the whole cottage was full of dazzling light, and the fiddler’s face shone, and his hair and his eyes glittered like gold. They went away much frightened, and told the whole village the news. “Now there were already not a few of the villagers who looked askance on the fiddler; and this incident set all the evil and envious tongues wagging. When the fiddler went to play the next day at the inn men turned away from him, and a child in the street threw a stone at him. Presently he was warned that he had better swiftly fly or else he would be drowned as a sorcerer. “So he and Elisinde fled in the night to a neighbouring village. But soon the dark rumours followed them, and they were forced to flee once more. This happened again and again, till at last in the whole country there was not a village which would receive them, and one night they were obliged to take refuge in a barn, for Elisinde was expecting the birth of her child. That night their child was born, a beautiful little boy, and an hour afterwards Elisinde smiled and died. “All that night the villagers heard from afar a piteous wailing music, infinitely sad and beautiful, and those that heard it shuddered and crossed themselves. “The next day the villagers sought the barn, for they had resolved to drown the sorcerer; but he was not there. All they found was the dead body of Elisinde, and a little baby lying on some straw. The body of Elisinde was covered with roses. And this was strange, for it was midwinter. The fiddler had disappeared and was never heard of again, and an old wood-cutter, who was too old to know any better, took charge of the baby. “I will tell you what happened to it another day.” “We wish to hear the end of your story,” said the ex-Prime Minister to the flute-player. “Yes,” said the scholar, “and I want to know who the fiddler was.” This conversation took place at the Green Tower two weeks after the gathering I have already described. The same people were present; but there was another guest, namely, the musician, who, unlike the flute-player, was not an amateur. “The child of Elisinde and the fiddler,” began the flute-player, “was, as I have already told you, a boy. The woodcutter who took pity on him was old and childless. He brought the baby to his hut, and gave it over to the care of his wife. At first she pretended to be angry, and said that nothing would persuade her to have anything to do with the child, and that it was all they could do to feed themselves without picking up waifs in the gutter; but she ended by looking after the baby with the utmost tenderness and care, and by loving it as much as if it had been her own child. The baby was christened Franz. As soon as he was able to walk and talk there were two things about him which were remarkable. The first was his hair, which glittered like sunlight; the second was his fondness for all musical sounds. When he was four years old he had made himself a flute out of a reed, and on this he played all day, imitating the song of the birds. He was in his sixth year when an event happened which changed his life. He was sitting in front of the woodcutter’s cottage one day, when a bright cavalcade passed him. It was a nobleman from a neighbouring castle, who was travelling to the city with his retainers. Among these was a Kapellmeister, who organised the music of this nobleman’s household. The moment he caught sight of Franz and heard his piping, he stopped, and asked who he was. “The woodcutter’s wife told him the story of the finding of the waif, to which both the nobleman and himself listened with great interest. The Kapellmeister said that they should take the child with them; that he should be attached to the nobleman’s house and trained as a member of his choir or his string band, according to his capacities. The nobleman, who was passionately fond of music, and extremely particular with regard to the manner of its performance, was delighted with the idea. The offer was made to the woodcutter and his wife, and although she cried a good deal they were both forced to recognise that they had no right to interfere with the child’s good fortune. Moreover, the gift of a purse full of gold (which the nobleman gave them) did not make the matter more distasteful. “Finally it was settled that the child should go with the nobleman then and there; and Franz took leave of his adopted parents, not without many and bitter tears being shed on both sides. “Franz travelled with the nobleman to a large city, and he became a member—the youngest—of the nobleman’s household. He was taught his letters, which he learnt with ease, and the rudiments of music, which he absorbed with such astounding rapidity, that the Kapellmeister said that it seemed as if he already knew everything that was taught him. When he was seven years old, he could not only play several instruments, but he composed fugues and sonatas. When the nobleman invited the magnates of the place to listen to his musicians, Franz, the prodigy, was the centre of interest, and very soon he became the talk of the town. At the age of ten he was an accomplished organ player, and he played with skill on the flute and the clavichord. “He grew up a tall and handsome lad, with clear, dreamy eyes, and hair that continued to glitter like sunlight. He was happy in the nobleman’s household, for the nobleman and his wife were kind people; like the woodcutter they were childless and came to look upon him as their own child. He was a quiet youth, and so deeply engrossed in his music and his studies that he seemed to be quite unaware of the outside world and its inhabitants and its doings. But although he led a retired, studious life, his fame had got abroad and had even reached the Emperor’s ears. “When Franz was seventeen years old it happened that the Court was in need of an organist. The Emperor’s curiosity had been aroused by what he had heard of Franz, and one fine day the youth was summoned to Court to play before his Majesty. This he did with such success that he was appointed organist of the Court on the spot. “He was sad at leaving the nobleman, but there was nothing to be done. The Emperor’s wish was law. He became Court organist and he played the organ in the Imperial chapel during Mass on Sundays. As before, he spent all his leisure time in composing music. “Now the Emperor had a daughter called Kunigmunde, who was beautiful and wildly romantic. She was immediately spellbound by Franz’s music, and he became the lodestar of her dreams. Often in the afternoon she would steal up to the organ loft, where he was playing alone, and sit for hours listening to his improvisations. They did not speak to each other much, but ever since Franz had set eyes on her something new had entered into his soul and spoke in his music, something tremulous and strange and wonderful. “For a year Franz’s life ran placidly and smoothly. He was made much of, praised and petted; but now, as before, he seemed quite unaware of the outside world and its doings, and he moved in a world of his own, only he was no longer alone in his secret habitation, it was inhabited by another shape, the beautiful dark-haired Princess Kunigmunde, and in her honour he composed songs, minuets, sonatas, hymns, and triumphal marches. As was only natural, there were not wanting at Court persons who were envious of Franz, his talent, and his good fortune. And among them there was a musician, a tenor in the Imperial choir, called Albrecht, who hated Franz with his whole heart. He was a dark-eyed, dark-haired creature, slightly deformed; he limped, and he had a sinister look as though of a satyr. Nevertheless he was highly gifted and composed music of his own which, although it was not radiant like that of Franz, was full of brilliance and not without a certain compelling power. Albrecht revolved in his mind how he might ruin Franz. He tried to excite the envy of the courtiers against him, but Franz was such a modest fellow, so kindly and good-natured, that it was not easy to make people dislike him. Nevertheless there were many who were tired of hearing him praised, and many who were secretly tired of the perpetual beauty and radiance of Franz’s music, and wished for something new even though it should be ugly. “An opportunity soon presented itself for Albrecht to carry out his evil and envious designs. The Court Kapellmeister died, and not long after this event a great feast was to be held at Court to celebrate Princess Kunigmunde’s birthday. The Emperor had offered a prize, a wreath of gilt laurels, as well as the post of Court Kapellmeister to him who should compose the most beautiful piece of music in his daughter’s honour. Franz seemed so certain of success that nobody even dared to compete with him except Albrecht. “When the hour of the contest came—it took place in the great throne-room before the Emperor, the Empress, their sons, their daughters, and the whole court after the banquet—Franz was the first to display his work. He sat down at the clavichord and sang what he had composed in honour of the Princess. He had made three little songs for her. Franz had not much voice, but it had a peculiar wail in it, and he sang, like the born and trained musician that he was, with that absolute mastery over his means, that certain perfection of utterance, that power of conveying, to the shade of a shade, the inmost spirit and meaning of the music which only belong to those great and rare artists whose perfect art is alive with the inspiration that cannot be learnt. “The first song he sang was the call of a home-going shepherd to his flock on the hills at sunset, and when he sang it he brought the largeness of the dying evening and the solemn hills into the elegant throne-room. The second song was the cry of a lonely fisherman on the river at midnight, and as he sang it he brought the mystery of broad starlit waters into the taper-lit, gilded hall. The third song was the song of the happy lover in the orchard at dawn. And when he sang it he brought the smell of dewy leaves and grass, the soaring radiance of spring and early morning, to that powdered and silken assembly. The Court applauded him, but they were astonished and slightly disappointed, for they had expected something grand and complicated, and not three simple tunes. But the nobleman who had educated Franz, and his Kapellmeister, who were among the guests, wept tears in silence. “Albrecht followed him. The swarthy singer sat down to the instrument and struck a ringing chord. He had a pure and infinitely powerful tenor voice, clear as crystal, loud as a clarion, strong, rich, and rippling. He sang a love-song he had composed himself. He called it ‘The Homage of King Pan to the Princess.’ It was voluptuous and vehement and sweet as honey, full of bold conceits and audacious turns and trills, which startled the audience and took their breath away. He sang his song with almost devilish skill and power; and his warm, captivating voice rang through the room and shook the tall window-panes, and finally died away like the vibrations of a great bell. The whole Court shouted, delirious with applause, and unanimously declared him to be the victor. A witty courtier said that Marsyas had avenged himself on Apollo; but the nobleman and his Kapellmeister snorted and sniffed and said nothing. Albrecht was given the prize and appointed Kapellmeister to the Court without further discussion. “When the ceremony was over, Franz, who was indifferent to his defeat, went to the chapel of the palace, and lighting a candle, walked up into the organ loft. There he played to himself another song, a hymn he had composed in honour of Princess Kunigmunde. It was filled with rapture and a breathless wonder, and in it his inmost soul spoke its unuttered love. He had not sung this song in public, it was too sacred. As he played and sang to himself in a low voice he was aware of a soft footstep. He started and looked round, and there was the Princess, bright in silk and jewels, with a pink rose in her powdered hair. She took this rose and laid it lightly on the black keys. “‘That is the prize,’ she said. ‘You won it, and I want to thank you. I never knew music could be so beautiful.’ “Franz looked at her, and said ‘Thank you.’ He had risen from his seat and was about to go, but the light of his candle caught Princess Kunigmunde’s brown eyes (which were wet with tears), and something rose like fire in his breast and made him forget his bashfulness, his respect, and his sense of decorum. “‘Come with me,’ he said, in a broken voice. ‘Let us fly from this Court to the hills and be happy.’ “But the Princess shook her head sadly, and said: ‘Alas! It is impossible. I am betrothed to the King of the Two Sicilies.’ “Then Franz mastered himself once more, and said: ‘Of course, it is impossible. I was mad.’ “The Princess kissed her hand to him and fled. “At that moment Franz heard a noise in the nave of the chapel; he looked over the gallery of the organ loft, and saw sidling away in the darkness the dim figure of a deformed man. “That night Princess Kunigmunde had a strange dream. She thought she was transported into a beautiful southern country where the azure sky seemed to scintillate with the dust of myriads and myriads of diamonds, and to sparkle with sunlight like dancing wine. The low blue hills were bare and sparsely clothed with delicate trees, and the fields, sprinkled with innumerable red, yellow, white and purple flowers, were bright as fabulous Persian carpets. On a grassy knoll before her the rosy columns of a temple shone in the gleaming dust of the atmosphere. Beside her there was a running stream, on the bank of which grew a bay-tree. There was a chirping of grasshoppers in the air, a noise of bees, and a delicious warm smell of burnt grass and thyme and mint. “Near the stream a man was standing; he was an ordinary man, and yet he seemed to tower above the landscape without being unusually tall; his hair was bright as gold, and his eyes, more lustrous still, reflected the silvery blue sky and shone like opals. In his hands he held a golden lyre, and around him a warm golden cloud seemed to rise, on a transparent aura of light, like the glow of the sunset. In front of him there stood a creature of the woods, a satyr, with pointed ears, cloven hoofs, and human eyes, in his hairy hands holding a flute made out of a reed. “Presently the satyr breathed on his flute and a wonderful note trembled in the air, soft, low, and liquid. The note was followed by others, and a stillness fell upon Nature; the birds ceased to sing, the grasshoppers were still, the bees paused. All Nature was listening and the Princess was conscious in her dream that there were others besides herself listening, unseen shapes and sightless phantoms; a crowd, a multitude of attentive ghosts, that were hidden from her sight. The melody rose and swelled in stillness; it was melting and ravishing and bold with a human audacity. As she listened it reminded her of something; she felt she had heard such sounds before, though she could not remember where and when. But suddenly it flashed across her that the music resembled Albrecht’s song; it was Albrecht’s song, only transfigured as it were, and a thousand times more beautiful in her dream than in reality. More beautiful, and at the same time as though it belonged to the days of youth and spring which Albrecht had never known. The satyr ceased playing and the pleasant noises of the world began once more. The shining figure who stood before him looked on the satyr with divine scorn and smiled a radiant, merciless smile. Then he struck his lyre and Nature once more was dumb. “But this time the magic was of another kind and a thousand times more mighty; a song rose into the air which leapt and soared like a flame, imperious as the flashing of a sword, triumphant as the waving of a banner, wonderful as the dawn and fresh as the laughing sea. And once more Princess Kunigmunde was aware that the music was familiar to her. She had heard something like it in the chapel that evening, when in the darkness Franz had played and sung the hymn that he had composed in her honour. Only now it was more than human, unearthly and divine. As soon as he ceased an eclipse seemed to darken the world, a thick cloud of rolling darkness; there was a crash of thunder, a flash of lightning, and out of the blackness came a piteous, human cry, the cry of a creature in anguish, and then a faint moaning. “Presently all was still, but the dark cloud remained, and she heard a mocking laugh and the accents of a clear, scornful voice (she recognised the voice, it was the voice of Albrecht), and the voice said: ‘Thou hast conquered, Apollo, and cruelly hast thou used thy victory; and cruelly has thou punished me for daring to challenge thy divine skill. It was mad indeed to compete with a god; and yet shall I avenge my wrong and thy harshness shall recoil on thee. For not even gods can be unjust with impunity, and the Fates are above us all. And I shall be avenged; for all thy sons shall suffer what I have suffered; and there is not one of them that shall escape the doom and not share the fate of Marsyas the Satyr, whom thou didst cruelly slay. The music and the skill which shall be their inheritance shall be the cause to them of sorrow and grief unending and pitiless pain and misery. Their life shall be as bitter to them as my death has been to me. Their music shall fill the world with sweetness and ravish the ears of listening nations, but to them it shall bring no joy; for life like a cruel blade shall flay and lay bare their hearts, and sorrow like a searching wind shall play upon their souls and make them tremble, even as the scabbard of my body trembled in the breeze; and just as from that trembling husk of what was once myself there came forth sweet sounds, so shall it be with their souls, shivering and trembling in the cold wind of life. Music shall come from them, but this music shall be born of agony; nor shall they utter a single note that is not begotten of sorrow or pain. And so shall the children of Apollo suffer and share the pain of Marsyas. “The voice died away, and a pitiful wail was heard as of a wind blowing through the reeds of a river. And the Princess awoke, trembling with fear of some unknown and impending disaster. “The next morning Franz, as he walked into the chapel to practice on the organ, was met by two soldiers, who bade him follow them, and he was shut up in the prison of the palace. No word of explanation was given him; nor had he any idea what the crime might be of which he was accused, or of his ultimate fate. But in the evening, when the gaoler’s daughter brought him his food, she made him a sign, and he found in his loaf of bread a rose, a file, and a tiny scroll, on which the following words were written; ‘Albrecht denounced you. Fly for your life. K.’ Later, when the gaolers had gone to sleep, the gaoler’s daughter stole to his cell. She brought him a rope, and a purse full of silver. He filed the bars and let himself down into a narrow street of the city. “By the time the sun rose he had left the city far behind him. He journeyed on and on till he passed the frontier of the Emperor’s dominions and reached a neighbouring State. By the time he came to a city he had spent his money, and he was in rags and tatters; nevertheless, he managed to earn his bread by making music in the streets, and after a time a well-to-do citizen who noticed him took him into his house and entrusted him with the task of teaching music to his sons and of playing him to sleep in the evening. Franz spent his leisure hours in composing an opera called ‘The Death of Adonis,’ into which he poured all the music of his soul, all his love, his sorrow, and his infinite desire. He lived for this only, and during all the hours he spent when he was not working at his opera he was like a man in a dream, unconscious of the realities around him. In a year his opera was finished. He took it to the Intendant of the Ducal Theatre in the city and played it to him, and the Intendant, greatly pleased, determined to have it performed without delay. The best singers were allotted parts in it, and it was performed before the Arch-Duke and his Court, and a multitude of people. “The music told the story of Franz’s love; it was bright with all his dreams, and sorrowful with his great despair. Never had such music been heard; so sweet, so sunlit in its joys, so radiant in its sadness. But the Arch-Duke and his Court, startled by the new accent of this music, and influenced by the local and established musicians, who were envious of this newcomer, listened in frigid silence, so that the common people in the gallery dared not show signs of their delight. In fact, the opera was a complete failure. Public opinion followed the Court, and found no words, bad or strong enough to condemn what they called the new-fangled rubbish. Among those who blamed the new work there was none so bitter as the citizen whose children Franz had been teaching. For this man considered himself to be a genius, and was inordinately vain, and his ignorance was equal to his conceit. He dismissed Franz from his service. All doors were now closed to him, and being on the verge of starvation he was reduced to earning his bread in the streets by playing his pipe. This also proved unsuccessful, and it was with difficulty that he earned a few pence every day. “At last he burnt all his manuscripts, and went into the hills; the hill people welcomed him, but their kindness came too late; his heart was broken, and when sickness came to him with the winter snow, he had no longer any strength to resist it. The peasants found him one day lying cold and stiff in his hut. They buried him on the hill-side. The night of his funeral a strange fiddler with a shining face was seen standing beside his grave and playing the most lovely tunes on a violin. “The name of Franz was soon forgotten, but although he died obscure and penniless he left a rich legacy. For he taught the hill-people three songs, the songs he had sung at Court in honour of Princess Kunigmunde, and they never died. They spread from the hills to the plains, from the plains to the river, from the river to the woods, and indeed you can still hear them on the hills of the north, on the great broad rivers of the east, and in the orchards of the south.”

SURVIVORS By Arthur Dekker Savage - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65812/pg65812-images.html

 When man embarks upon the final atomic war his
civilization may be destroyed; yet, there will
be survivors. Would you want to be one of them?...

 

The Doctor got up at dawn, as was his wont, and as soon as he was dressed he sat down at his desk in his library overlooking the sea, and immersed himself in the studies which were the lodestar of his existence. His hours were mapped out with rigid regularity like those of a school-boy, and his methodical life worked as though by clockwork. He rose at dawn and read without interruption until eight o’clock. He then partook of some light food (he was a strict vegetarian), after which he walked in the garden of his house, overlooking the Bay of Naples, until ten. From ten to twelve he received sick people, peasants from the village, or any visitors that needed his advice or his company. At twelve he ate a frugal meal. From one o’clock until three he enjoyed a siesta. At three he resumed his studies, which continued without interruption until six when he partook of a second meal. At seven he took another stroll in the village or by the seashore and remained out of doors until nine. He then withdrew into his study, and at midnight went to bed. It was, perhaps, the extreme regularity of his life, combined with the strict diet which he observed, that accounted for his good health. This day was his seventieth birthday, and his body was as vigorous and his mind as alert as they had been in his fortieth year. His thick hair and beard were scarcely grey, and the wrinkles on his white, thoughtful face were rare. Yet the Doctor, when questioned as to the secret of his youthfulness, being like many learned men fond of a paradox, used to reply that diet and regularity had nothing to do with it, and that the Southern sun and the climate of the Neapolitan coast, which he had chosen among all places to be the abode of his old age, were in reality responsible for his excellent health. “I lead a regular life,” he used to say, “not in order to keep well, but in order to get through my work. Unless my hours were mapped out regularly I should be the prey of every idler in the place and I should never get any work done at all.” On this day, as it was his seventieth birthday, the Doctor had asked a few friends to share his mid-day meal, and when he returned from his morning stroll he sent for his housekeeper to give her a few final instructions. The housekeeper, who was a voluble Italian peasant-woman, after receiving his orders, handed him a piece of paper on which a few words were scrawled in reddish-brown ink, saying it had been left by a Signore. “What Signore?” asked the Doctor, as he perused the document, which consisted of words in the German tongue to the effect that the writer regretted his absence from the Doctor’s feast, but would call at midnight. It was not signed. “He was a Signore, like all Signores,” said the housekeeper; “he just left the letter and went away.” The Doctor was puzzled, and in spite of much cross-examination he was unable to extract anything more beyond the fact that he was a “Signore.” “Shall I lay one place less?” asked the housekeeper. “Certainly not,” said the Doctor. “All my guests will be present.” And he threw the piece of paper on the table. The housekeeper left the room, but she had not been gone many minutes before she returned and said that Maria, the wife of the late Giovanni, the baker, wished to speak to him. The Doctor nodded, and Maria burst into the room, sobbing. When her tears had somewhat subsided she told her story in broken sentences. Her daughter, Margherita, who was seventeen years old, had been allowed to spend the summer at Sorrento with her late father’s sister. There, it appeared, she had met a “Signore,” who had given her jewels, made love to her, promised her marriage, and held clandestine meetings with her. Her aunt professed now to have been unaware of this; but Maria assured the Doctor that her sister-in-law, who had the evil eye and had more than once trafficked with Satan, must have had knowledge of the business, even if she were not directly responsible, which was highly probable. In the meantime Margherita’s brother Anselmo had returned from the wars in the North, and, discovering the truth, had sworn to kill the Signore unless he married Margherita. “And what do you wish me to do?” asked the Doctor, after he had listened to the story. “Anything, anything,” she answered, “only calm my son Anselmo or else there will be a disaster.” “Who is the Signore?” asked the Doctor. “The Conte Guido da Siena,” she answered. The Doctor reflected a moment, and then said: “I will see what can be done. The matter can be arranged. Send your son to me later.” And then, after scolding Maria for not having taken proper care of her daughter, he sent her away. As he did so he caught sight of the dirty piece of paper on his table. For one second he had the impression that the letters on it were written in blood, and he shivered, but the momentary hallucination and sense of discomfort passed immediately. At mid-day the guests arrived. They consisted of Dr. Cornelius, Vienna’s most learned scholar; Taddeo Mainardi, the painter; a Danish student from the University of Wittenberg; a young English nobleman, who was travelling in Italy; and Guido da Siena, philosopher and poet, who was said to be the handsomest man in Italy. The Doctor set before his guests a precious wine from Cyprus, in which he toasted them, although as a rule he drank only water. The meal was served in the cool loggia overlooking the bay, and the talk, which was of the men and books of many climes, flowed like a rippling stream on which the sunshine of laughter lightly played. The student asked the Doctor whether in Italy men of taste took any interest in the recent experiments of a French Huguenot, who professed to be able to send people into a trance. Moreover, the patient when in the trance, so it was alleged, was able to act as a bridge between the material and the spiritual worlds, and the dead could be summoned and made to speak through the unconscious patient. “We take no thought of such things here,” said the Doctor. “In my youth, when I studied in the North, experiments of that nature exercised a powerful sway over my mind. I dabbled in alchemy; I tried and indeed considered that I succeeded in raising spirits and visions; but two things are necessary for such a study: youth, and the mists of the Northern country. Here the generous sun kills such phantasies. There are no phantoms here. Moreover, I am convinced that in all such experiments success depends on the state of mind of the inquirer, which not only persuades, but indeed compels itself by a strange magnetic quality to see the vision it desires. In my youth I considered that I had evoked visions of Satan and Helen of Troy, and what not—such things are fit for the young. We greybeards have more serious things to occupy us, and when a man has one foot in the grave, he has no time to waste.” “To my mind,” said the painter, “this world has sufficient beauty and mystery to satisfy the most ardent inquirer.” “But,” said the Englishman, “is not this world a phantom and a dream as insubstantial as the visions of the ardent mind?” “Men and women are the only study fit for a man,” interrupted Guido, “and as for the philosopher’s stone I have found it. I found it some months ago in a garden at Sorrento. It is a pearl radiant with all the hues of the rainbow.” “With regard to that matter,” said the Doctor, “we will have some talk later. The wench’s brother has returned from the war. We must find her a husband.” “You misunderstand me,” said Guido. “You do not think I am going to throw my precious pearl to the swine? I have sworn to wed Margherita, and wed her I shall, and that swiftly.” “Such an act of folly would only lead,” said the Doctor, “to your unhappiness and to hers. It is the selfish act of a fool. You must not think of it.” “Ah!” said Guido, “you are young at seventy, Doctor, but you were old at twenty-five, and you cannot know what these things mean.” “I was young in my day,” said the Doctor, “and I found many such pearls; believe me, they are all very well in their native shell. To move them is to destroy their beauty.” “You do not understand,” said Guido. “I have loved countless times; but she is different. You never felt the revelation of the real, true thing that is different from all the rest and transforms a man’s life.” “No,” said the Doctor, “I confess that to me it was always the same thing.” And for the second time that day the Doctor shivered, he knew not why. Soon after the meal was over the guests departed, and although the Doctor detained Guido and endeavoured to persuade him to listen to the voice of reason and commonsense, his efforts were in vain. Guido had determined to wed Margherita. “Besides which, if I left her now, I should bring shame and ruin on her,” he said. The Doctor started—a familiar voice seemed to whisper in his ear: “She is not the first one.” A strange shudder passed through him, and he distinctly heard a mocking voice laughing. “Go your way,” he said, “but do not come and complain to me if you bring unhappiness on yourself and her.” Guido departed and the Doctor retired to enjoy his siesta. For the first time during all the years he had lived at Naples the Doctor was not able to sleep. “This and the hallucinations I have suffered from to-day come from drinking that Cyprus wine,” he said to himself. He lay in the darkened room tossing uneasily on his bed and sleep would not come to him. Stranger still, before his eyes fiery letters seemed to dance before him in the air. At seven o’clock he went out into the garden. Never had he beheld a more glorious evening. He strolled down towards the seashore and watched the sunset. Mount Vesuvius seemed to have dissolved into a rosy haze; the waves of the sea were phosphorescent. A fisherman was singing in his boat. The sky was an apocalypse of glory and peace. The Doctor sighed and watched the pageant of light until it faded and the stars lit up the magical blue darkness. Then out of the night came another song—a song which seemed familiar to the Doctor, although for the moment he could not place it, about a King in the Northern Country who was faithful to the grave and to whom his dying mistress a golden beaker gave. “Strange,” thought the Doctor, “it must come from some Northern fishing smack,” and he went home. He sat reading in his study until midnight, and for the first time in thirty years he could not fix his mind on his book. For the vision of the sunset and the song of the Northern fisherman, which in some unaccountable way brought back to him the days of his youth, kept on surging up in his mind. Twelve o’clock struck. He rose to go to bed, and as he did so he heard a loud knock at the door. “Come in,” said the Doctor, but his voice faltered (“the Cyprus wine again!” he thought), and his heart beat loudly. The door opened and an icy draught blew into the room. The visitor beckoned, but spoke no word, and Doctor Faust rose and followed him into the outer darkness.

TRUMP AND THE NOBEL PRIZE - WHO WILL WIN? END OF THE WAR IN GAZA?