A Christmas Posy

"Basil, Basil, how impatient you are! I never said anything about a children's party. Mrs. Marchcote told me something quite different from that. Listen, Basil. A young German – Herr Wildermann is his name – has come to Tarnworth in hopes of making his living by teaching the violin. He can give pianoforte lessons also, but he plays the violin better. He plays it, she says, very beautifully. He has got no pupils yet, Basil. But – who do you think is going to be his first one?"

Basil gazed at his mother. For a moment he felt a little puzzled.

"Mother," he said at last, "do you mean – oh, mother, are you going to let me have lessons? Shall I have a dear little violin of my own? Oh, mother, mother!"

And he jumped up from the rug where he had been lying at his mother's feet, and looked as if he were ready to turn head over heels for joy!

"Yes, my boy," said his mother; "you are going to have your first lesson the day after to-morrow, and Herr Wildermann is to choose you a violin. But listen, Basil, and think well of what I say. It is not easy to learn to play the violin. Even if a child has a great deal of taste – talent even – for music, it requires great patience and perseverance to learn to play the violin at all well. No instrument requires more patience before you can arrive at anything really good. I would not say all this to another child – I would let Blanche, for instance, find out the difficulties for herself, and meet them as they come, cheerfully and brightly as she always does. But you are so exaggerated about difficulties, Basil, that I want to save yourself and me vexation and trouble before you begin the violin. You are too confident at first, and you cannot believe that there will be difficulties, and then you go to the other extreme and lose heart. Now, I warn you that the violin is very difficult. And it is not a thing you must learn – not like your lessons at school. It will be a great, an immense pleasure to you once you master it, but unless you resolve to be patient and persevering and hopeful in learning it, you had better not begin it."

Lady Iltyd spoke very earnestly. She was anxious to make an impression on Basil, for she saw more clearly than any one the faults of his character, and longed to help him to overcome them. For a moment or two Basil remained silent, for he was, as she had hoped he would be, struck by what she had said, and was thinking over it. Then he jumped up, and throwing his arms round his mother's neck, kissed her very lovingly.

"Mother dear," he said, "I do want to learn it, and I will try. Even if it is very difficult, I'll try. You'll see if I won't, for I do love music, and I love you, mother. And I would like to please you."

Lady Iltyd kissed him in return.

"My own dear boy," she said, "you will please me very much if you overcome that bad habit of losing heart over difficulties."

"He may learn more things than music in learning the violin," she thought to herself.

But as Basil went upstairs to bed, fiddling at his invisible violin all the way, and whistling the tune he liked to fancy he was playing, he said to himself: "I do mean to try, but I can't believe it is so difficult as mother says."

Part II

That same afternoon an elderly woman was sitting alone by the window of a shabby little parlour over a grocer's shop in the High Street of Tarnworth. She had a gentle, careworn face – a face that looked as if its owner had known much sorrow, but had not lost heart and patience. She was knitting – knitting a stocking, but so deftly and swiftly that it was evident she did not need to pay any attention to what her fingers were doing. Her eyes, – soft, old, blue eyes, with the rather sad look those clear blue eyes often get in old age, – gazed now and then out of the window – for from where she sat a corner of the ivy-covered church tower was to be seen making a pleasant object against the sky – and now and then turned anxiously towards the door.

"He is late, my poor Ulric," she said to herself. "And yet I almost dread to see him come in, with the same look on his face – always the same sad disappointment! Ah, what a mistake it has been, I fear, this coming to England – but yet we did it for the best, and it seemed so likely to succeed here where there are two or three such good schools and no music teacher. We did it for the best, however, and there is no use regretting it. The good God sees fit to try us – but still we must trust Him. Ah, if it were only I, but my poor boy!"

And the old eyes filled with slow-coming tears.

They were hastily brushed away, however, for at that moment the door opened and a young man, breathless with excitement, hurried into the room.

"Mother!" he exclaimed, but before he could say more she interrupted him.

"What is it, my boy? What is it, Ulric?" she exclaimed. "No bad news, surely?"

"Bad news, mother dear? I scarcely see what more bad news could come to us. As long as we have each other, what is there for us to lose? But I did not mean to speak gloomily this morning, for I have brought you good news. Fancy, mother, only fancy – I have got a pupil at last."

"My Ulric – that is good news!" said poor Frau Wildermann.

"And who knows what it may lead to," said the young man. "I have always heard that the first pupil is the difficulty – once started, one gets on rapidly. Especially if the pupil is one likely to do one credit, and I fancy this will be the case with this boy. Mrs. Marchcote – it is through her kindness I have been recommended – says he has unusual taste for music. He has been longing to learn the violin."

"Who is he?" asked the mother.

"The son of Sir John Iltyd – one of the principal families here. I could not have a better introduction. I am to go the day after to-morrow – three lessons a week, and well paid."

He went on to explain all about the terms to his mother, who listened with a thankful heart, as she saw Ulric's bright eyes and eager, hopeful expression.

"He has not looked like that for many a long day," she thought to herself, "and the help has not come too soon. Ulric would have been even more unhappy had he known how very little we have left."

And she felt glad that she had struggled on without telling her son quite the worst of things. What would she not have borne for him – how had she not struggled for him all these years? He was the only one left her, the youngest and last of her children, for the other three had died while still almost infants, and Ulric had come to them when she and her husband were no longer young, and had lost hopes of ever having a child to cheer their old age. So never was a son more cherished. And he deserved it. He had been the best of sons, and had tried in his boyish way to replace his father, though he was only twelve years old when that father died. Since then life had been hard on them both, doubly hard, for each suffered for the other even more than personally, and yet in another sense not so hard as if either had been alone. They had had misfortune after misfortune – the little patrimony which had enabled Frau Wildermann to yield to Ulric's darling wish of being a musician by profession, had been lost by a bad investment just as his musical education was completed, and it seemed too late in the day for him to try anything else. And so for a year or two they had struggled on, faring not so badly in the summer when living is cheaper, and Ulric often got engagements for the season in the band at some watering-place, but suffering sadly in the long, cold German winters – suffering as those do who will not complain, who keep up a respectable appearance to the last. And then came the idea of emigrating to England, suggested to them by a friend who had happened to hear of what seemed like an opening at Tarnworth, where they had now been for nearly two months without finding any pupils for Ulric, or employment of any kind in his profession for the young musician.

So it is easy to understand the delight with which he accepted Lady Iltyd's proposal, made to him by Mrs. Marchcote.

It would be difficult to say which of the two, master or pupil, looked forward the more eagerly to the first music-lesson. Basil dreamed of it night and day. Herr Wildermann on his side built castles in the air about the number of pupils he was to have, and the fame he was to gain through his success with Lady Iltyd's boy. Poor fellow, it was not from vanity that his mind dwelt on and so little doubted this same wonderful success!

And in due course came the day after to-morrow, neither hastened nor retarded by the eagerness with which it was looked forward to.

"What a beautiful home! The child cannot but be refined and tender in nature who has been brought up in such a home," thought Herr Wildermann, ready at all times to think the best, and more than usually inclined to-day to see things through rose-coloured spectacles.

He was walking up the long avenue of elms, leading to the Hall. The weather was lovely, already hot, however, and he would have liked to take off his hat and let the breeze – what there was of it, that is to say – play on his forehead. But he had not a free hand, for he was loaded with no less than three violins, his own and two others, what are called half and three-quarters sized, as, till he saw his little pupil, he could not tell which would suit him. He did look rather a comical object, I daresay, to the tall footman at the door, but not so to the eager child who had spent the last hour at least in peeping out to see if his master was not yet coming.

"Mother," he exclaimed, rushing back into the room, "he's come. And he's brought loads of violins."

"Loads," repeated Lady Iltyd, smiling down at her boy, whose rosy cheeks and bright eyes were still rosier and brighter than usual; "well, among them it is to be hoped there will be one to suit you."

Then she turned to Ulric, who was standing in the doorway, half dazzled by the brightness of the pretty room into which he was ushered after the darker hall, and still more confused by his intense anxiety to please the graceful lady who was greeting him so kindly, and to win the liking of the child he was to teach. But Basil's mother's pleasant manner soon set him at his ease, and in a minute or two he was opening the violin cases and discussing which would be the right size for the boy. Basil gazed and listened in silence. At the first glance Herr Wildermann had felt a little disappointed. His new pupil was not certainly a poetical looking child! His short sturdy figure and round rosy face spoke of the perfection of hearty boyish life, but nothing more. But his breathless eagerness, the intense interest in his eyes – most of all the look in his face as he listened to a little caprice which Ulric played on his own violin as a sort of introduction to the lesson, soon made the musician change his opinion.

"He has it – he has the musician's soul. One can see it!" he half said, half whispered to Lady Iltyd, though he had the good sense to understand what might have seemed a little cold in her answer.

"I think Basil truly loves music," she said, "but you will join with me, I am sure, Herr Wildermann, in telling him that to be a musician at all, to play well above all, takes much patience and perseverance. Nothing in this world can be done without trouble, can it?"

"Ah no," said Herr Wildermann, "that is true."

But Basil, whose fingers were fidgeting to touch at last the violin and dainty bow, said nothing.

"I will leave you," said his mother. "I think you will find it better to be alone with Basil, Herr Wildermann."

And she left the room.

She listened with some anxiety to the sounds which now and then made their way to the room where she sat writing. Sweet clear sounds occasionally from the master's violin, but mingled, it must be confessed, with others the reverse of musical. Squeakings and gruntings, and a dreadful sort of scraping whine, not to be described in words.

"My poor Basil," thought his mother, though it was a little difficult not to smile at a most unearthly shriek that just then reached her ears. "I hope he is not losing his temper already."

But she waited quietly till the sounds ceased. Then came the soft sweet notes of a melody which she knew well, played by Herr Wildermann alone; and a few minutes after she saw among the trees the tall thin figure of the young German, laden with but two violins this time as he made his way down the avenue.

She waited a minute or two to see if Basil would come to her. Then, as he did not, she returned to the morning room where he had had his lesson. He was still there, standing by the window, but she was pleased to hear as she went in that he was humming to himself the air that Ulric had played last.

"Well, Basil?" she said, "and how did you get on?"

The boy turned round – there was a mixture of expressions on his face. A rather dewy look about his eyes made his mother wonder for a moment if he had been crying. But when he spoke it was so cheerfully that she thought she must have been mistaken.

"He plays so beautifully, mother," he said.

"Yes," she replied. "I knew he did. I heard him one day at Mrs. Marchcote's, and I listened this morning."

"You listened, mother?" he said. "Did you hear how awfully it squeaked with me?"

"Of course," said Lady Iltyd, in a matter-of-fact way; "it is always so at first."