A Christmas Posy

Part I

"Thank you so much for telling me about it. I am pleased, for it is just what I wanted to hear of."

"And I am so glad for Herr Wildermann's sake. It rarely happens in this world that one hears of a want and a supply at the same time;" and the speaker, laughing as she said the last words, shook hands once again with her hostess and left her.

Lady Iltyd went to the window, – a low one, leading on to the garden, and looked out. Then she opened it and called out clearly, though not very loudly —

"Basil, Basi – i – il, are you there, my boy?"

"Yes, mother; I'm coming." And from among the bushes, at a very short distance, there emerged a rather comical little figure. A boy of eight or nine, with a bright rosy face and short dark hair. Over his sailor suit he had a brown holland blouse, which once, doubtless, had been clean, but was certainly so no longer. It stuck out rather bunchily behind, owing to the large collar and handkerchief worn beneath, and as the child was of a sturdy make to begin with, and was extra flushed with his exertions, it was no wonder that his mother stopped in what she was going to say to laugh heartily at her little boy.

"You look like a gnome, Basil," she said. "What have you been doing to make yourself so hot and dirty?"

"Transplanting, mother. It's nearly done. I've taken a lot of the little wood plants that I have in my garden and put them down here among the big shrubs, where it's cool and damp. It was too dry and sunny for them in my garden, Andrew says. They're used to the nice, shady, damp sort of places in the wood, you see, mother."

"But it isn't the time for transplanting, Basil. It is too late."

"It won't matter, Andrew says, mother. I've put them in such a beautiful wet corner. But I'm awfully hot, and I'm rather dirty."

"Rather," said his mother. "And, Basil, your lessons for to-morrow? It's four o'clock, and you know what your father said about having them done before you come down to dessert."

Basil shook himself impatiently.

"Oh bother!" he said; "whenever I'm a little happy somebody begins about something horrid. I've such a lot of lessons to-day. And it's a half-holiday. I think it is the greatest shame to call it a half-holiday, and then give more lessons to do than any other day."

At the bottom of her heart Lady Iltyd was a little of Basil's opinion; but she felt it would do no good, and might do a great deal of harm to say so. Basil went as a day-scholar to a very good private school at Tarnworth, the little country town two miles off. He rode there on his pony in the morning, and rode home again at four o'clock. He liked his schoolfellows, and did not dislike his teachers, but he could not bear lessons! There was this much excuse for him, that he was not a clever boy in the sense of learning quickly. On the contrary, he learned slowly, and had to read a thing over several times before he understood it. Sometimes he would do so patiently enough; but sometimes – and these "times," I fear, came more frequently than the good ones – he was so impatient, so easily discouraged, that it was not a pleasant task to superintend his lessons' learning. Yet he was not without a queer kind of perseverance of his own – he could not bear to go to bed leaving any of his lessons unfinished, and he would go on working at them with a sort of dull, hopeless resolution that was rather piteous, till one reflected that, after all, he might just as well look cheerful about it. But to look cheerful in the face of difficulties was not Basil's "way." With the first difficulty vanished all his brightness and good temper, and all he could do was to work on like a poor little over-driven slave, with no pleasure or satisfaction in his task. And many an evening bedtime was long past before his lessons were ready, for though Basil well knew how long he took to learn them, and how the later he put them off the harder they grew, there was no getting him to set to work at once on coming home. He would make one excuse after another – "it was not worth while beginning till after tea," or his little sister Blanche had begged him to play with her just for five minutes, and they "hadn't noticed how late it was," or – or – it would be impossible to tell all the reasons why Basil never could manage to begin his lessons so as to get them done at a reasonable hour. So that at last his father had made the rule of which his mother reminded him – that he was not to come down to dessert unless his lessons were done.

Now, not coming down to dessert meant more to Basil than it sounds, and nothing was a greater punishment to him. It was not that he was too fond of nice things, for he was not at all a greedy boy, though he liked an orange, or a juicy pear, or a macaroon biscuit as much as anybody, and he liked, too, to be neatly dressed, and sit beside his father in the pretty dining-room, by the nicely arranged table with the flowers and the fruit and the sparkling wine and shining glass. For though Basil was not in some ways a clever child, he had great taste for pretty and beautiful things. But it was none of the things I have mentioned that made him so very fond of "coming down to dessert." It was another thing. It was his mother's playing on the piano.

Every evening when Lady Iltyd left the dining-room, followed by Basil and Blanche, she used to go straight to the grand piano which stood in one corner of the library, where they generally sat, and there she would play to the children for a quarter of an hour or so, just whatever they asked for. She needed no "music paper," as Blanche called it; the music seemed to come out of her fingers of itself. And this was Basil's happiest moment of the day. Blanche liked it too, but not as much as Basil. She would sometimes get tired of sitting still, and begin to fidget about, so that now and then her mother would tell her to run off to bed without waiting for nurse to come for her. But not so Basil. There he would sit, – or lie perhaps, generally on the white fluffy rug before the fire, – with the soft dim light stealing in through the coloured glass of the high windows, or in winter evenings with no light but that of the fire fitfully dancing on the rows and rows and rows of books that lined the walls from floor to ceiling, only varied here and there by the portrait of some powdered-haired great-grandfather or grandmother smiling, or sometimes, perhaps, frowning down on their funny little descendant in his sailor-suit, with his short-cropped, dark head. A quaint little figure against the gleaming white fur, dreaming – what? – he could not have told you, for he had not much cleverness in telling what he thought. But his music-dreams were very charming nevertheless, and in after life, whenever anything beautiful or exquisite came in his way, Basil's thoughts always flew back to the old library and his mother's playing.

he had imagined that nothing of music kind could be more delightful. But a short time before this little story begins a new knowledge had come to him. At a concert at Tarnworth – for once or twice a year there were good concerts at the little town – he had heard a celebrated violinist play, and it seemed to Basil as if a new world had opened to him.

"Mother," he said, when the concert was over, looking up at his mother with red cheeks and sparkling eyes, "it's better than the piano – that little fiddle, I mean. It's like – like – "

"Like what, my boy?"

"I can't say it," said Basil, "but it's like as if the music didn't belong to here at all. Like as if it came out of the air someway, without notes or anything. I think if I was an awfully clever man I could say things out of a fiddle, far better than write them in books."

His mother smiled at him.

"But you mustn't call it a fiddle, Basil. A violin is the right name."

"Violin," repeated Basil thoughtfully. And a few minutes later, when they were in the carriage on their way home, "Mother," he said, "do you think I might learn to play the violin?"

"I should like it very much," said his mother. "But I fear there is no teacher at Tarnworth. I will inquire, however. Only, Basil, there is one thing. The violin is difficult, and you don't like difficulties."

Basil opened his eyes.

"Difficult," he said, and as he spoke he put up his left arm as he had seen the violinist do, sawing the air backwards and forwards with an imaginary bow in his right – "difficult! I can't fancy it would be difficult. But any way, I'd awfully like to learn it."

This had been two or three months ago. Lady Iltyd had not forgotten Basil's wish; and, indeed, if she had been inclined to do so, I don't think Basil would have let her. For at least two or three times a week he asked her if she had found a violin teacher yet, and whether it wouldn't be a good plan to write to London for a violin. For, at the bottom of his heart, Basil had an idea which he did not quite like to express, in the face of what his mother had said as to the difficulty of violin playing, namely, that teaching at all would be unnecessary!

"If I only had a violin in my arms," he used to say to himself as he fiddled away with his invisible bow, "I am sure I could make it sing out whatever I wanted."

And I am afraid that this idea of violin playing which had taken such a hold of him, did not help him to do his lessons any the quicker. He would fall into a brown study in the middle of them, imagining himself with the longed-for treasure in his possession, and almost hearing the lovely sounds, to wake up with a start to a half-finished Latin exercise or French verb on the open copy-book before him, so that it was really no wonder that the complaint, evening after evening repeated, "Basil hasn't finished his lessons," at last wore out his father's patience.

We have been a long time of returning to the garden and listening to the conversation between Basil and his mother.

"Yes, I think it's a shame," repeated Basil, àpropos of Wednesday afternoon lessons.

"But it can't be altered," said his mother, "and instead of wasting time in grumbling, I think it would be much better to set to work. And Basil, listen. If you really exert yourself to the utmost, you may still get your lessons done in time this evening. And if they are done in time, and you can come down to dessert, I shall have something to tell you in the library after dinner."

"Something to tell me," repeated Basil, looking rather puzzled. "How do you mean, mother? Something nice, do you mean?"

He did not take up ideas very quickly, and now and then looked puzzled about things that would have been easily understood by most children.

"Nice, of course it is nice, you stupid old fellow," said his mother, laughing. "Are you in a brown study, Basil? That bodes ill for your lessons. Come, rouse yourself and give all your attention to them, and let me see a bright face at dessert. Of course it is something 'nice' I have to tell you, or I wouldn't make a bribe of it, would I? It's very wrong to bribe you, isn't it?"

"I don't know," said Basil. "I don't think it can be if you do it. Kiss me, mother. I'll try to do my lessons quickly," and lifting up his rosy face for his mother's kiss, he ran off. "But oh, how I do hate them!" he said to himself as he ran.

After all, "they" were not so very difficult to-day, or perhaps Basil really did try hard for once. However that may have been, the result was a happy one. At dessert two bright little people made their appearance in the dining-room, and before his father had time to ask him the question he had hitherto so dreaded, the boy burst out with the good news —

"All done, father, every one, more than half an hour ago."

"Yes," said Blanche complacently, "he's been werry good. He's put his fingers in his ears, and kept bumming to himself such a lot, and he hasn't played the vi'lin one time."

"Played the violin!" repeated her father. "What does she mean? You didn't tell me Basil had already be – " he went on, turning to the children's mother; but she hastily interrupted him.

"Blanche means playing an imaginary violin," she said, smiling. "Ever since Basil heard Signor L – at Tarnworth, his head has been running on violins so, that he stops in the middle of his lessons to refresh himself with a little inaudible music."

As she spoke she got up and moved towards the door.

"Bring your biscuits and fruit into the library, children," she said. "You can eat them there. I'm not going to play to you this evening. We're going to talk instead."

Up jumped Basil.

"I don't want any fruit," he said, "I really don't. Blanche, you stay with father and eat all you want. I want to be a little while alone with mother in the library. Mayn't I, mother?" he added coaxingly. "Blanche doesn't mind."

"You are really very complimentary to me," said his father, laughing. "Why should Blanche mind?"

"I doesn't," said Blanche, very contentedly watching her father peeling a pear for her. So Basil and his mother went off together for their talk.

"About the 'something nice,' mother?" began Basil.

"Well, my boy, I'm quite ready to tell you. Mrs. Marchcote was here to-day. You know who I mean – the lady who lives in that pretty house at the end of Tarnworth High Street. You pass it every morning going to school."

"I know," said Basil, nodding his head. "But I don't care about Mrs. Marchcote, mother. Is she going to have a children's party – is that it? I don't think I care about parties, mother." And his face looked rather disappointed.