Chapter VI: The Guitar

THERE was a window on the landing, commanding a fine view of roofs and chimney-pots, and I stood watching little white clouds sailing swiftly across the blue April sky. I could hear the doctor's deep voice in the sick room, and then a faint tone in reply. At length the door opened, and I was bidden to enter.

The room was large, and looked lighter and more airy than London rooms generally do. There was a light paper on the walls, and some kind hand had pinned up several coloured engravings, which made the sick chamber look something like a nursery. The invalid was sitting in an easy chair stuffed with pillows, and placed near a bright fire. Resting against the arm of the chair, just within reach of the sick man's hand, was the guitar.

The doctor quietly introduced us to each other; and Monsieur Léon's eyes, looking strangely brilliant in his worn face, seemed to flash me a glance of welcome. He was very ill; the pinched features and hollow cheeks told a pathetic tale of long suffering; but the smile, that came readily and brightly, was full of courage and sweetness. Evidently Monsieur Léon was not to be daunted by the approach of death.

"It is very good of you to come and see me, madame," he said, with easy courtesy. "Will you be seated, and talk a little while? As for that dear doctor, his minutes are worth guineas. Ah, I wish sometimes that he could waste an hour, as idle people can! Now, I see that he is going to scold me!"

"Not to scold you, only to warn you, Léon," put in Dr. Warstone, kindly. "Don't let your spirit run away with your strength. Remember that you must not say many words without resting. You have a great deal to tell Mrs. Hepburne;—well, you will be wise to make your story as short as possible. She has an invalid at home who will watch the clock till she comes back."

"Ah, your husband, is it not?" said Monsieur Léon, turning eagerly to me. "It is he to whom I am to give my guitar?"

The doctor gave us a parting smile and went his way.

"Yes," I answered, as the door closed. "It will be a great kindness, gratefully accepted. But can you spare it, Monsieur Léon?"

"Spare it!" he repeated. "Ah, madame, do you suppose I would leave my guitar to the mercy of ignorant strangers? It is you who are doing the kindness. You are willing to shelter this beloved friend of mine, and give it a home when I am gone. More! You will let it speak to you in the sweet language which has so often soothed and comforted me. You will not condemn it to dust and silence and decay!"

"Oh, no," I said, earnestly, struck with the poor Frenchman's grace of manner and expression. "To my husband, the guitar will be as dear as it has been to you. It will always be within his reach—always taken up in his spare moments. As for me, I love to hear it played, although I am no player myself."

Monsieur Léon had remembered the doctor's injunction, and was silent for a moment. His voice sounded a little weaker when he spoke again.

"It was in India," he went on, "that I first became possessed of my guitar. When I was young I had friends, and they sent me to Bombay to be clerk in a mercantile house. But ah, madame, it was my misfortune to love music better than figures, and so I did not make the best of clerks. I saw the guitar in a bazaar one day, and bought it for a mere trifle. It is old, as you see, and of Spanish make. Look at this beautiful mosaic work of mother-o'-pearl and silver! You do not find anything like it now-a-days."

He drew the instrument towards him, and pointed out its beauties with evident pride. It was of dark wood, delicately inlaid with a quaint and fanciful pattern. But the tone? I wished he would touch the strings.

"I will not weary you with a history of myself and my doings," he continued. "It is enough to say that the guitar has been with me through many years of sorrow and misfortune. When it has spoken to me, I have forgotten my troubles. Often I have sat alone in a dreary London room, and listened to the tinkle of mule-bells on the passes. Or I have seen the southern moon rise over the walls of the Alhambra, and heard the dark-eyed gipsies sing the songs of Spain. But sometimes my guitar has said things that I cannot understand.

"Sometimes there are melodies of which I fail to find the meaning. It is strange."

Was his mind wandering? There was a dreamy look in his face as he sank back on the pillows, and his thin fingers began to stray over the strings. I waited in silence.

Mechanically he tuned the guitar, and played a few chords. Then came a strange, sweet tune that reminded me of fairy music floating down from distant hills.

"The horns of Elfland faintly blowing—"

Might have sounded just as soft and gay. There was nothing sad in the melody, but it left its hearer unsatisfied. What did it mean? What words were set to this enchanting air? One wanted to hear it again and yet again.

The feeble hands soon came to a pause, and I saw that all the fire had died out of Monsieur Léon's eyes. It was time for me to go. I had long outstayed the "half-hour" to which nurse had limited my absence. Ronald would be anxiously looking for my return.

"I am afraid you are exhausted," I said, rising. "Is there nothing I can do before I leave you?"

He thanked me softly and shook his head. Then, with a gesture, he desired me to take up the guitar. But I touched it reluctantly. It must have been so hard for him to part with it. It seemed so cruel to take it away.

"Are you really willing to let it go?" I asked, anxiously.

He roused himself, and looked at me with a sudden smile.

"The time has come," he said. "I cannot take it with me where I am going. Give it to your husband, madame, with the good wishes of a dying man. I send it away with a blessing."

The words were almost solemnly uttered. When he had spoken, he sank back wearily and closed his eyes; and I saw that the short-lived strength, lent him by excitement, had ebbed away. There was nothing more for me to stay for, but my eyes were full of tears when I left the room. That last farewell was echoing in my ears as I carried the guitar carefully downstairs.

In my old country home I had often heard it said that the blessing of the dying is a good gift. I was glad to recall those parting words, although they made me weep. And little did I then know how strangely significant they would seem to me in a time that was yet to come.

Before I had got to the bottom of the stairs, I met a nursing Sister, evidently on her way to the sick room. She stood aside to let me pass, and it comforted me to feel that Monsieur Léon would not long be left alone.

The world scarcely seemed to be like itself when I came out into Soho Square again. There had been something dreamy and romantic in the poor Frenchman's talk, and it was strange to find myself out in the fresh spring air with the guitar in my arms. A small boy called a hansom for me, and I went rattling home through the work-a-day streets, half sad and half glad, holding fast to my new possession. What would Ronald say when he saw me coming into his room? I had been away quite a long while, and he would be tired of lying still and waiting for my return.

The cab set me down in Chapel Place, and I let myself in with a latch-key. In the next minute, I entered the parlour, triumphantly bearing the guitar, and found myself face to face with my husband. He was dressed, and lying on the sofa, looking just a little inclined to find fault with everybody, and with me in particular.

"I didn't think you would have got up," I began in a tone of apology.

"Why not? I felt quite well enough, and nurse helped me. I've had enough of bed, I can assure you. Your shopping seems to have taken a whole morning! What have you there? A guitar?"

"Yes, Ronald. I suppose nurse has told you that yours is broken. This is another that I have got to-day."

"Dear little woman!" cried the poor fellow, brightening. "I was afraid you would say that we could not afford another. Where did you buy it? How much did you give? I wish I had tried it before it was bought."

"Supposing it isn't bought at all?" I said, putting Monsieur Léon's treasure into the eager hands outstretched to receive it.

"Oh, then I suppose you have only borrowed it!"

He swept his fingers across the strings, and a sudden look of pleasure flashed into his face. "It is very good—better than mine, Louie. Do they want much money for it?"

"Who are 'they'?" I demanded, provokingly. "Ah, Ronald, I won't tantalise you any more! The guitar is yours, really yours; and there is nothing to pay for it."

"You are a little witch," said my husband. "Go and take off that shabby old bonnet of yours, and then come here and tell me all about it."

The bonnet was shabby; I knew that well enough; and I knew, too, that it would be a long time before I could get a fresh one. But the "outward adorning" did not occupy my mind just then, nor did I even bestow one regretful thought on the faded face inside the poor bonnet. I was eager to get back to Ronald's side, and see him enjoying his new possession. Moreover, I had a wonderful story to tell, and the telling of it would make the rest of the morning pass pleasantly away.

He was deeply interested in my account of the doctor's poor patient, and asked more questions about Monsieur Léon than I could possibly answer. And then the gift underwent a close examination; in fact, he scarcely cared to part with it even for a moment.

I had gone out of the room to speak to nurse, and when I returned I found my husband standing close to the window. He was looking into the guitar with earnest eyes, and glanced up at me as I came in, saying that he had just made a discovery.

"Do go back to your sofa, dear," I entreated.

"I wanted to get the light," he answered. "This is such a dark room. Louie, here is a curious thing."

"Well, go back to the sofa, and then tell me what it is."

"No, no," he said, petulantly, "come here and see. You know that inside a guitar there is generally a paper pasted, bearing the maker's name. Well, look at this paper, and read what is written upon it."

He held the instrument up to catch the light. And then, indeed, I did see the paper, and some words inscribed upon it in a woman's hand. These words were written in Spanish, and I did not know their meaning till he translated them.

"Hope guards the jewels," he read, thoughtfully. "Now, what does that mean, I wonder?"

"How can we ever tell?" I cried. "What do we know of those who once owned this guitar? But you are looking fagged and pale, Ronald; and if you are going to lose your afternoon nap, I shall wish that I had never brought that thing into the house."

He consented at last to lie down on the couch and shut his eyes. Soon I had the satisfaction of seeing that he was fast asleep, with the guitar lying by his side.

Later on, when the soft dusk of the spring evening was creeping over Chapel Place, my husband's fingers began to wander lovingly across the strings; and I sat and listened to him in the twilight, just as I had done a hundred times before. It was the resting time of the day; my hands lay idly folded in my lap, and I was leaning back in a low chair with a sense of quietness and peace. He was not strong enough yet to sing the songs that I had written in our happy courting-days. He could only strike the chords, and bring out of them that fairy-like music which is always sweetest when it is heard in the gloaming.

Presently there came again that soft, gay melody that Monsieur Léon had played, and again it stirred me with a strange surprise. Surely it was unlike anything I had ever heard before. How and where did Ronald learn it? He repeated the air, and I listened, entranced and wondering. It seemed to me that the chords were giving out a fuller sound than I had ever heard yet.

"Ronald, what is that? Where did you first hear it?" I asked, raising myself, and bending eagerly towards him.

He did not immediately reply. A flame shot up suddenly from the low fire, and showed me the thoughtful, dreamy look upon his face. At length he spoke.

"I was just wondering," he answered, "where I had first heard it. It seems to be an echo of something that I knew years and years ago. And yet, I could fancy that it came out of my own brain, just as your verses come out of yours."

"But I heard it from Monsieur Léon this morning," I said, "and it had a strange effect upon me."

"Did the Frenchman play it? Then, depend upon it, I have got it from some old music book that I have not seen for ages. Only I can't remember playing it on my old guitar."

"You never did," I replied. "I know all that you play. Poor Monsieur Léon has laid his spell upon those strings!"

"You are getting fanciful, Louie," he said, looking wonderingly at me through the mist of twilight.

"Perhaps I am. Monsieur Léon's talk to-day was fanciful; it might have been that his mind was wandering. He said that the guitar sometimes spoke to him of things that he could not understand, and then he played that very air. It is an air that needs a poem to interpret its meaning."

"Well, why don't you write one?" Ronald asked. "I will try to play it again."

He did play it again. And once more I felt the influence of the soft gladness—the faint, sweet triumph that was expressed in the melody. But when he paused, I shook my head.

"It goes beyond me," I confessed. "I can find no words that will harmonise with that air. It leaves me with an inexplicable longing to find out its true meaning; but I think I shall never know it."

"I have had that feeling once or twice in my life," said Ronald, musingly. "I remember a winter afternoon when I was waiting for a train in a strange town, and strolled into an old church to pass away the time. Some one was playing on the organ—a voluntary, perhaps—and the music came drifting along the empty aisles. I stood just inside the west door, and listened, trying to find out what it meant. But I could not tell."

"Let us put the guitar away now," I entreated, catching the tone of weariness in his voice. "You have been sitting up quite long enough, dear, and there is a bright fire in the next room. What a chilly spring it is! This evening is as cold as winter."

For a wonder he complied meekly with my request, and walked from the parlour into the bed-chamber with his arm round my shoulders. In a little while he was in a sound sleep, his head resting quietly on the pillow, while I moved gently about the room and put things in order for the night.

I was too tired to sit long over my needlework, although a piled up work-basket reminded me that there was plenty of mending to be done. But, sleepy as I really was, that mysterious melody was still haunting my brain, and I found myself trying to set words to it unawares. Only fragments of rhyme came to me; bits of verses never to be finished; and at last I endeavoured to forget the air altogether. Yet even in slumber it came back, and again I saw Monsieur Léon's thin face and brilliant eyes, and heard his parting blessing.

When the morning came, and I went into the parlour to get my husband's breakfast, there lay the guitar upon the sofa. And I almost started at the sight of it, for I had half persuaded myself that it was merely a thing of my dreams.