Tre Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 8 May 1919, Page 3

Tre Storyteller

THE WILD BIRDS OF KILLEEVY Rosa Mulholland. (By arrangement with Messrs. Burns and Oates, London.) (Continued.) CHAPTER XXI.— SUMMER MORNING. Lord Wilderspin was making one of his erratic tours abroad, and was expected to return to the Park in a fortnight ; and Captain Rupert decided on remaining at the Hall to await his return, rather than pass the intervening time in London. Already the fresh breezes of the country were telling upon his health and spirits. The days passed pleasantly; a long ride through the sheltering woods, and over the sunny clowns; a lounge in the library, dipping into old favorite books; and occasional conversations with the signora and Fan, furnished him with sufficient amusement and occupation. Surprise at the simplicity of his own tastes enhanced his enjoyment of the novelty of this unwonted way of life, and he was happier than he had been for many years. Aware that he was looked on by the signora as a dangerous person, likely to undo some of the difficult work done in Fan by increasing her dislike, to public exhibition, and encouraging her to lower her aspirations to the level of those of ordinary commonplace mortals, he was careful to choose wisely his subjects of conversation, and to propitiate the enthusiastic little Italian. But Fanchea's music was her least attractive charm in his eyes; neither was it altogether her beauty that fascinated him, though that was pleasant to look upon as a rose in June. Never had any girl so near womanhood treated him with so much of the cordjal simplicity of a child. It was the joyous transparency of her character that delighted him. Not a great lover of books, it yet pleased him to read to the ladies under the shelter of the trees, of a morning, while Fan performed the tasks of needlework which the signora considered a necessary part of the education of a gentlewoman. The signora's embroideries were works of art, such as hang on walls in dusky corners of old Italian palaces and Captain Rupert professed an interest in their daily growth. But Fan's fresh comments on the tale or poem he recited to her were more to his taste than the most wonderful tapestries in the world. Finding that he did not return to unpleasant subjects of conversation; that he invariably spoke with respect of Lord Wilderspin, and that he was careful never to intrude upon their society beyond the most reasonable limits, the signora forgot the pang of distrust and displeasure she had felt at the close of their first interview, and made Captain Rupert welcome to share their walks and their hours of outdoor recreation. Herr Harfenspieler came and went without even seeing the gentleman, and Fan's industry at her studies was no way decreased. Fan felt kindly to their new companion from the first, because he had sympathised with her dislike of the career to which she was destined; but she wondered why he held opinions so different "form those of her other friends. Her own dread of public exhibition was instinctive; but she could see no reason why a stranger should object to see her fulfilling her vocation in life. One morning the signora, more easily tired than younger people, had sat down to rest, and Fanchea and Captain Wilderspin had wandered a little further into the wood. ~ r • .)" "May I ask you about something," said Fan, "something that has" been in my mind? Why were you displeased at the idea of my going on the stage?'.' Captain- Rupert;? was startled at the directness, of the question, and paused a moment before answering,'

asking himself whether he had any right to interfere with the future of this young creature; but, looking at her eager face, he felt that the' question in her eyes must be met with the' truth. "Because I do hot-think a public life is a desirable one for a lady." " ':/ t % | . ■ i sMl&But I," said Fan, "am v I a lady?" 'f : H : \ He glanced at her in surprise. - :'■, Had '"' she : been other than she was, he would have thought. the question sounded like asking for a compliment; -.-but ne knew that Fan meant what she ; said. Was she a lady cr not? In her spotless white gown, with delicate blooming face and spiritual eyes, had she really: any doubts about her own ladyhood? He had learned to expect nothing but what was unconventional from her, and waited, as he often did, till she would give him the i clue to her.thought. •;; Fan's was a long thought, as she stood, fingering with one raised hand the leaves of "the sheltering tree above them, and looking with absent eyes away into the depths of the wood. There was no self-conscio.T3-ness in her face; she was not thinking of her own breeding, appearance, education, when she asked her question ; her mind had gone back to one point that seemed unmeasurably far away in time and space, when her feet were upon a sea-washed mountain side, and she was carried up'and down rugged braes, and in and out of a fishing boat by Kevin. She was well aware that this elegant person beside her would not call Kevin a gentleman, and therefore, did she want to be a lady ? She knew the advantage of all that had befallen her, and yet the fidelity within her looked back, and claimed a right to be of the rank of her early friend. So long was her thought, that Captain Rupert at last believed she must be waiting for his answer, and said: "I think you can hardly be in earnest; you must know that you are a lady." "My father and mother were peasant people." "Indeed! I did not know it." '-Mamzelle does not talk about it: she hopes I will forget. And I do not speak for fear of vexing her. But I never forget." "What is it that you never forget?" said Captain Wilderspin, seeing a whole history in her upturned eyes. --/>:;■ ■ ■_,..: -. ... "The sea, and the mountains, and someone who is always looking for me." "You are half Italian, are you not?" "Oh, no Irish." "You surprise me. I thought you belonged to the signora. I fancied you the child of some brother or sister of hers who had married in England." "I belong to her only through her kindness. I am lost, strayed, and stolen from an Irish mountain." "I might have known by your eyes that you were a daughter of the emerald isle." "Why, are my eyes emerald?" said Fan, with a flash of merriment. "No; blue, like the sea." "The English sea is blue; I see it out yonder always, a bluish line. But our sea was green - like your emerald; green, with clouds of foam." .....'- "Who is it that is always looking for you?" "Kevin." _ j: She pronounced the name as if the utterance was some part of the weaving of a; spell, and: looked out to the horizon with/lifted face,; as if she half expected the sound might be carried afar, -and overheard from the deserts, or other distant regions of the earth. Then catching at an overhanging branch, she stood on tiptoe and peered forward into the purple dimness of a f hollow opening in the wood. But no figure started up on the narrow brown path; no wanderer appeared with staff and bundle, descending the mossy bank."fj Captain Rupert observed her with = a curious'thrill of interest. ■ _ 'ii "I half think you are a changeling," he said. "Is that what you mean to convey? Are you looking to see your fairy kinsmen ' coming riding on the wind V

"No," said. Fan, sadly; "the fairies have nothing to do with m;e, ; or they might have put v everything right." / ;. "The postman is the fairy' who generally puts everything right in such a case. Have you never written to your home?" "I have written, but my letters were not answered and so I know . that Kevin is not there. I knew he could not be there. He went out over the world to look for me." '; ' f - '' "Is he your brother?" ~, kW [ grv : i>" - r "Oh, no; but he has the care of me." u; ■•';-v "A care which ; appears" to sit lightly c upon him. The signora is performing his duties by proxy, I suppose," said Captain Rupert, with a slight accent of contempt; adding mentally, "The old rascal, dozing tipsily in his shanty, while he allows the child to slip through his fingers." fjzr.'-'i .■■'* Fan looked at him questioningly, with a dangerous light in her eyes. . "■>■'> % : "I mean," said Captain Rupert, • "that the old man ought not to have allowed you to get lost." What old man?" said Fanchea. "Kevin." . Fan broke into a peal of delicious laughter. Her laugh was almost as musical as her song, and the birds hearing it, began to sing. : ."' "Why do you laugh?" asked Captain Rupert, finding all this gaiety contagious, and contributing a smile to it. "He is but twelve years older than me."., . ~ "Then he was young enough to be more wide awake." "He was away about some business of his father's, and it was all my fault, for I went where I ought not to have gone. The gipsies are cunning, and they wanted me." "Then you have been roving with gipsies." ■ "Oh, yes," "I should not wonder. That is why you are so unlike tame people." "I am tame now," said Fan, folding her hands, with a little sigh. "Then I should like to have seen you when you were wild. How long have you been caged in this Park?" "Nearly seven years." "And you suppose that Kevin has been searching for you all this time?" r "Yes." "Wonderful faith of a child. Happy belief' in the fidelity of human nature. And your only proof of this is the fact that he has not written?" r . "Don't?" said Fan, as the accent of sarcasm again touched her quick ear. "I will talk to you no more." "You look on me as a wicked unbeliever?" "It is a matter not of believing but of knowing. And you do not know. I am not angry, but I have said enough." "But I would like both to believe and to know. I promise you to do both ; if you will tell me some more." - *-■ - '■'.;/_ ■'; : v:'" : : '" "' /':/';;/h "~' ; tC/^ V ' ''' ■--■■-* "The signora is coming," said Fan. ■"■ "Perhaps I may tell you more another time. The signora would not listen to me if I were to talk as I want to talk now." -.,.- . ■-,, • '■*&■**, '"% ;..^:,. "I-have forgotten myself," said the signora, coming towards them with the look of a person who has waked from a long-sleep. .- •->-_. f v ' .*• "What have you found in Tasso 1 to make you forget the world asked Captain Rupert, glancing at the book .in, her hand. ; "Much, I much that has spoken to my soul," said the signora, with her silver ringlets trembling. "The poet has stirred me on a subject that is next my heart. I am anxious to take Fan into Italy, Captain Wilderspin." . ■'*•-*' *** : W; •-'•. , ,<-. , | "Would she like to go?" '=' " ' . ■;' : '.■ hi- - "Yes," said Fan, radiantly; and Captain Rupert knew she was thinking of the likelihood of meeting with the imaginary wanderer, her friend. : tts 'J -

r ---Her r musical education is to be completed there," said the signora. Herr Harfenspeiler has done good work in her; but the sun of Italy will be s needed jtb; ripen her genius*"' *'* '" ""' *" i ,'j. ,„,,"In,this'; there will be a pleasure for you, signora. Is it long since you have seen your native land?';' "Many long years, Captain Wilderspin. >ij These elf locks, of mine were pure gold in the Italian sunshine. They have grown grey in your chiller atmosphere, Alas! no glow on earth will ever transmute them into sold again." " As she spoke, the little woman's wistful eyes, gazing from under her deep brows encircled by their silvery aureole, saw, not the grey, gleaming shafts and bowery undulations of the Sussex greenwood, but azure mountains surrounding narrow, deep-colored streets full of heavy shadows and yellow sunshine, in which her own soul had walked, as a girl glorified within and without by illusive dreams. While they talked, Fan moved on a little apart; her hands, were linked behind her back, her feet had fallen into a dancing measure, keeping time to a wild, quaint gipsy song which she was singing low to herself. They were treading that mossy, flower-spangled opening in the wood where she remembered having been found by Lord Wildersphr, and where she had sung for him the gipsies' tarantula. To her, who forgot nothing, all this magic space was haunted by the faces of gipsies, and echoing with their peculiar music which the birds had learned to mock. Her late conversation, having made a slight vent for habitually silent thoughts, had given a more than ordinary vividness to her memories, and therefore she broke out into the gipsy song as she walked, till her walk became a dance, like a ghost of the dance she had first learned delightedly on Ivilleevy, and afterwards danced many times in gaiety, fear, sorrow, and expectation, while scanning the crowd for a face that never appeared, amidst the hurry and excitement of the gipsies' tent. Captain Rupert watched her while he talked, noticed her singing and dancing like a person doing the same in a dream, where the voice is kept from soaring and the limbs from moving by an unaccountable something that is struggling against the will. Her feet beat the time, though with a fettered movement her hand was sometimes raised to shake the tambourine, or she snapped her fingers softly, with a whisper of the rattle of castanets. After some time she danced herself gradually, away out of sight- of her companions, and they heard her fantastic song break out gleefully in the distance,: as if in the solitude of Nature the spell had been broken and the • wild music set free' from, her heart. ' - ; The signora and Captain Rupert stood still, and looked at one another while their conversation flagged and died on their lips. 'V: "It is piercing sweet," said the signora, "but I do not like it. That song always seems to me the expression of something wild in her nature that is warring against our efforts to train her for her fitting career. Whether it is the wild Irish strain that is in her blood,-or whether it is that she is inoculated with gipsy's magic, I do not know." "There is certainly more of the bird in that soul than of the cant at vice," was the answer. "I cannot bear it," said the signora, with a look of passionate pain' on her worn face, -and putting her fingers impatiently in her ears. Her anguish sprang from a variety of causes, all converging curiously like little knife-points towards her heart. The notes of the gipsy song always, beat upon certain old, unused, and rusty strings . within her, like "sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh," making a claim for some truths which she was unwilling' to grant. Its round, rolling sweetness, its wayward whims and changes, its purring contentment, and utter freedom from all rules and constraints;^seemed s to her always to ; sing of the genius that is rather suggestive than creative or interpretative, and will rather work through love and gladness in dewy byways than come forth with any message of its own to the listening world 4 c That Fan

should live""to be '&' mere cricket chirping' on any mortal's hearthstone y-was an .idea/r that the signora could not tolerate. There was mo i creature in : th.e universe noble enough to absorb, music into his life. That' such • a state of things even ought tot-he she was unwilling to admit. And yet she knew too well that the rusty chord within her which would vibrate so agoniz|' edly to Fan's bird-like, love-laden minstrelsy, was the mainspring of almost every woman's heart; arid that in Fan's it ""was strung with gold;'and throbbing mellowly in tune. '' ■ ' ''-' , "'■ -' y •' .• ; - ; " v Captain Rupert looked on her emotion with surprise. "Strange," he said, 1 "that music so enchanting should give you nothing but pain. ' And you who are a musician, signora." ''■'' : ' : ; : ' ..:.:■;.■•;;;:-■ "I have told you the reason partly," replied she. "This wild-wood singing makes me tremble for her perseverance in the utterance and interpretation of more noble strains. My own life, sir, has been given to art, offered as a handful of roses that shrivelled into dust in the giver's hand; and now my failure has been made a pedestal for her success. She shall not turn into a mere thrush in the hedgerows; she who was born for, and has been trained to give expression to, the soul of multitudes!"' ' Captain Wilderspin listened to her . impassioned words disapprovingly. "There,"'.; he said to ..himself, "is the kind of person who would steal the posies, from a woman's life in order that the dried leaves, of fame may rustle on her brow !" But he did not'quite understand the signora. Art was the god of her enthusiasm, and not fame. The .latter she looked on as but the accidental accompaniment of. the success that is witness to the truth. In the pause that followed the signora's speech which Captain Wilderspin found so unlovely, Fan's song wound, curled, and dived through the upper air with a wilfulness that seemed resolved to escape out of reach of the thought of both listeners. ' 5 " "Another reason why I do not like it," said the signora, "is that it is the twin-song of another which is a link between the child and the home which, I trust, she may never see again. A return to that lowly and uncivilised home could only result in the loss of her peace of mind." "I agree with you there," said Captain Wilderspin. "What is that other song you speak of?" "A hymn, which is in itself very beautiful, forming a contrast the most complete to the gipsy song. She sings it in her native Irish, and I own that listening to it my heart has been softened towards, a people whose peasantry could treasure and enjoy such a gem of religious melody and thought. But:, when I hear Fan sing the ' Hymn of the Virgin Triumphant,' I feel as if she were stealing away out of my restraining arms into a region where the world can never follow her." " ;] ' "Have I heard her sing it?" '"'■'■ "No; of - late she has given it up, having seen that it gives me pain; and only sings it in a crooning way to herself, generally, when she thinks she is alone. I believe she sings it as a sort of incantation to. bring the spirits of her people around her, to call up the scenes of her childhood and the voices of those she has lost. When I; hear her crooning so,-it makes me weep. So strange a thing is the human heart, Captain Wilderspin ; so sad a thing is life." ... i Captain Rupert reflected that the worn-faced little lady was rather flighty and inconsistent; and he felt angry with her. She' would ; place this v ' creature]|so cherished oh a public s&'ge, under the gaze of all -the eyes of a vulgar world. "And she is fit for something higher," he insisted with himself. "Is she fit to be a princess ?"-thought Captain Rupert. - '-• l ' T || At . this moment ' Fan, whose song had ceased, appeared at some distance, in a hollow among the trees, flitting across U the opening, with a bright look over her shoulder in the direction of her friends. The brilliant face shone, the white dress glimmered, , and she was gone again, hidden behind the greenery. . || H'iK'Jls-. she fit: to-be a peeress f thought Captain

WilderspirT, and then made a movement as if shaking himself awake, shocked at coming . suddenly upon so strange a thought. fff gj ;,;:•''"- >"••'-; "There is a bewitchment over this place," he said to himself, "which is beginning to tell upon me also. It is time Lord Wilderspin should "come home: What? this girl out of a cabin, with her pagan gipsy song, and the Christian superstition of her ' Virgin's Hymn' ? What a likely bride for the heir of all the Wilderspins !" • ■■-'■■■--■ - ■ • '. • Again Fan was seen still farther away, wandering on the upland, in the blue ether of what seemed another, and more delicately, and deeply-colored world. "Fool thought Captain Rupert, watching her, "to be so jealous of a dignity which could add nothing to her grace. My coronet would, perhaps, be of as little value to her as was the jewel to the bird in the fable." ' . ' £& (To be continued.)