Adrian settled down at Charminster much more easily than he had expected. The prospect, the arrival, and the first few days there had been rather dreadful. During his four years at Waldo there had never been more than twenty boys there, and for some time only twelve. It had not been much of a preparation for this seething ocean of noisy and often hostile youth into which he had been so suddenly plunged.
Waldo had come to be a sort of home to him, but there was nothing of home about Charminster. It was more like a jungle in which there was a ceaseless struggle for existence and only the fit—the self-assertive and physically strong—survived to enjoy any but the most meagre and harassed existence.
Though Adrian had not at the time much minded bidding farewell to Waldo, the uprooting had in the end upset him a good deal, and still more he had been upset by the meeting with his mother and the disillusionment it had brought. It was as if his life had lost its centre. He felt lonely and unsettled, and it was in this defenceless state that he had had to face Charminster.
In these forlorn circumstances the sudden entry into his life of Ronny Dakyn had been his salvation. It was inevitable, in the lonely state in which he was, that he should set his forlorn heart and unused affections on someone, and it was fortunate that he should chance to set them, attracted perhaps by nothing more than his outward charm, on the pleasant, kind-hearted Dakyn, who, by a casual word, had urged him to turn his energies to the things in which he was most deficient. It was doubtless nothing more than chance that Dakyn should have remarked that he must try to improve his football-playing. He had said it lightly, without any insistence or earnestness; but Adrian had accepted it as a sacred duty imposed upon him by one who had suddenly become the most important being in his life. Games at Charminster were regarded by the boys as the only things of importance. A boy was judged and approved or not by whether he was good or bad at games. Work and the things of the mind did not count. Urged by that casual remark of Ronny Dakyn, Adrian saved himself from contempt and nonentity at Charminster and, in a single hour, in that first game of football, freed himself from a tangle of inhibitions also. For his sudden discovery of the rapture of the game turned out to be permanent. He had set himself to obey Dakyn, but it had not occurred to him to speculate on whether Dakyn would ever know that he had done so. He had obeyed without thought of reward: his own consciousness that he had fulfilled what Dakyn had commanded was its own reward. He was astonished when, as he entered the study with a note one evening, Dakyn, having read the note and thrown it aside, said to him:
“You play a nice game of footer, young man. I saw you on Ground 5 this afternoon.”
Adrian flushed with embarrassment and gratitude. At first he could say nothing. Then, blushing still redder, he replied: “You said I had to improve.”
“I said so?” Dakyn looked puzzled.
“Yes. You asked me if I was any good, and I said No, and you said it was a pity and I must improve.”
Dakyn saw in the little boy’s eyes that look which he was accustomed to see in so many others that he had come to regard it as his rightful tribute. He was flattered, amused, and a little touched.
“So you improved?” he said, smiling. “Good for you, little man.”
If Ronny Dakyn was an unconscious saviour of Adrian at Charminster, Mr. Heller was soon, in a very different direction, to become no less. Mr. Heller and Dr. Edward Yardley-Tritton, who was also the school organist, taught the piano at Charminster. It was open to boys who wished, or whose parents wished them to learn the piano to choose either master. Almost all of them chose Dr. Yardley-Tritton, not because he was popular and respected, but because he demanded little and was easy to please. He was also easy to disregard. He was universally looked upon as a fool, and not unjustly. His appearance distressingly bespoke the conventional artist. He wore a double-breasted black coat and a starched turndown collar. His tie had a greater licence than anyone but an artist such as Dr. Yardley-Tritton would permit to his tie. His face was fleshy; he had full, weak, indulgent lips crowned by a greying brown moustache, and from the base of his sagging cheeks flowed an absurd pair of dundreary whiskers, an anachronism which appeared to have been caused by a subsidence of the hair of the head which left his crown almost bare. He wore horn-rimmed pince-nez which were slung round his neck by a black ribbon. His usual expression was that of a fastidious eclectic, but this he was very far from being, for his taste in music was so catholic as to be quite tasteless. His favourite musical adjectives were “charming,” “graceful,” “tasteful,” “melodious.” By the boys he was known, not in affection, but in contempt, as Teddy.
No one could have been less like Teddy than Mr. Heller, whose name had long since been altered into Old Hell. In appearance he was like an old vulture. His figure was long, thin, and drooping. The thin, bony head and skinny neck were sunk forward between hunched shoulders. His long, blob-ended nose and weedy moustache overhung a mouth, with teeth discoloured by pipe-smoking, which was set, when he was serious, in a permanent death’s-head grin, but curled, when occasionally he smiled, into an expression of great gentleness. He had a pronounced, bony, aristocratic chin and blue, myopic eyes that blinked behind gold-rimmed spectacles. His clothes were unostentatiously good, the clothes of a gentleman; and, despite his half comical, half pitiable appearance, there was about him a distinction which was enhanced by a kindly, old-fashioned courtesy of manner. But the distinction and the courtesy were evident only to those who penetrated his external comicality and became acquainted with him. Few boys did so. He was regarded as a freak, and his reputation as an irritable and exacting purist frightened pupils away to the facile Teddy.
Adrian did not at once arrange for piano lessons. In the first place he had been too timid to find out how to do so and had decided to wait until he had settled down. But, besides this, he had heard Teddy play the piano at a Sunday concert soon after his arrival, and had been repelled by his fluent and shallow tinkling of Beethoven’s C Sharp Minor Sonata and by the fact that he had followed it up with a piece by Moskowski. Teddy, in all seriousness, played in the manner adopted by entertainers who try hard to be frivolous—that manner which recalls the self-satisfied rider of a short-trotting cob. Adrian decided at once that he would rather not have lessons at all than take them from Teddy.
These Sunday concerts were occasional events and were never largely attended. There were only a dozen boys and a few masters and their wives at the one at which Old Hell played a Bach Prelude and Fugue and two of Beethoven’s Sonatas, one of them the Appassionata. Adrian was one of the twelve boys. He went alone, and all the time he sat enthralled. He had never before heard such playing.
When the concert ended with the ending of the Appassionata he returned to himself from a state of rapture in which he had been unconscious of his surroundings, of old Mr. Heller himself, of everything but that revelation of a new world. He immediately resolved that he would brave the legendary terrors of Old Hell, and, made suddenly bold by his enthusiasm, he stayed behind when the rest went out of the Hall, and waited for him at the bottom of the steps that mounted to the platform. The old man was still at the piano, a vulture groping vaguely for scraps on the floor of its cage. He had closed the piano and was slowly gathering his music together, and soon he crossed the platform and came down the steps. He did not notice Adrian till he was right up against him. Then he stopped and made a series of inarticulate noises, as though he were breathing aloud. Adrian for the first time noticed the fixed grin and believed, with embarrassment, that the old man was laughing at him. But when he spoke it was evident that he was not laughing, for his voice was polite and kindly.
“Did you … er … did you … er …” He gently moved a large, bony hand in the air as if he were conducting what he was trying to say.
“Yes please, sir,” said Adrian. “I wanted to ask you if I could have music lessons.”
Mr. Heller breathed aloud again. “The … er … the piano?” he asked. He pronounced it piahno.
“Yes, sir.”
“You do … er … you do … er … play?”
“No, not really, sir. Just a little.”
“But you … er … you like music?”
“Yes, sir, very much.”
“Were you … er … here,” he vaguely indicated the air about them, “just now, when … er … when I was … er … playing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And … er … which of the pieces did you … er … like the … er … the best?”
“That last one, sir—the Appassionata,” said Adrian. Mr. Heller nodded his head slowly several times, as though devoutly agreeing. “You … er … know it, perhaps?”
“Yes, sir, but I’ve never heard it played like that before. Our head-master’s wife at Waldo played it to us sometimes.”
“And she … er … she made rather a … hm! … rather a poor job of it?”
“No, not bad, sir; but nothing like yours.”
“Most of the boys go … er … to Dr. Yardley-Tritton,” said Mr. Heller, as if gently rebuking Adrian for not doing the same. “Why did you … er …?” He indicated in the air the approach of an invisible Adrian to an invisible Mr. Heller.
“I heard Dr. Yardley-Tritton play two Sundays ago, sir,” said Adrian without intended cynicism.
“And that … er … was enough to make you … er … apply … er …?” Mr. Heller was really smiling this time, and Adrian smiled too.
“Yes, sir; to you.”
“Of course, you’ll have to … er … speak to your … er … house-master. But meanwhile, perhaps you’d … er … care … to … er …?”
Adrian gathered that they were to leave the Hall together for some airy destination. “I could give you … er … some … er … some tea.”
Adrian accepted the invitation, and followed Mr. Heller out through the porch. Outside he looked anxiously about him, for he was ashamed of being seen walking with Old Hell, knowing well that the result would be ridicule and scornful curiosity. But at that hour on a Sunday afternoon there were few boys about the school buildings, and they turned out of the cloisters unobserved, followed the edge of one of the football fields, and, to Adrian’s relief, dived down a hidden path through a close hazel-copse. At the end of it they descended rustic steps into a lane, and half-way down the lane Mr. Heller opened a gate in a close oak fence and let Adrian into a small garden. A cinder path ran straight to the porch.
They entered the house, and Mr. Heller, putting a hand on Adrian’s shoulder, propelled him gently out of the narrow hall into a small, dim room. It seemed to Adrian, as he entered, to contain little else than a black grand piano and a table with a white cloth on it. The chief thing he noticed about it was its smell, a close, spicy smell which seemed to be made up of the smell of the inside of a piano and of old books, and the rich aroma of loose tobacco in ajar. It reminded him of the smell of the old ebony snuff-box which his grandfather had said was supposed to have belonged to the poet Pope.
Mr. Heller went to put down the music he was carrying on a chair near the piano. His thin body and hunched shoulders stooped stiffly over the chair, an ancient bird of prey cowering under a cold wind. He fumbled with the music, then, still stooping, spoke to Adrian, his comic, tragic mask peering at him round his bent body; and Adrian suddenly thought of that grim little picture of John Donne in his shroud which hung over the old piano in his grandfather’s study in a black and silver frame. The picture had always horrified and fascinated him, and he had often stared at it as he sat playing to himself.
“You haven’t yet told me your … er … your name,” Mr. Heller was saying.
“Glynde, sir.”
“And your … er … your …?”
“Taylor’s, sir.”
The old man straightened himself and turned to Adrian. “Let me … let me … er … see … er … your hand.”
Adrian, wondering what he meant, shyly held out his small, delicate-fingered hand. Mr. Heller took it in his own long, bony talon, kneeded it, peered at it, turned it over, and peered at it again.
“Hm, yes!” he said, releasing it. “A good … er “—he worked his own marvellously flexible, independent fingers over an immaterial piano—” a good … er … musicianly hand. A good hand for … er … for Bach.”
When Mr. Heller completed a sentence, when he actually uttered a word that gave the sentence meaning, he spoke that word, however commonplace it might be, with a quiet, confidential emphasis and a little jerk of the head, as if he were imparting a happy discovery. More often his sentences never achieved completion; yet in spite of this, Adrian found that it was nearly always easy to read him. Perhaps that gently, rhythmically moving hand of his really conveyed in some mysterious way a definite meaning. But it was a slower method than speech, it demanded more anxious attention in the listener, and it made Adrian even more nervous than he usually was. He was relieved when the door opened and a middle-aged woman came in carrying a tea-tray. Mr. Heller blinked at her through his spectacles.
“Mrs.… er … Mrs.…” he said, making a rhythmical picture of her name in the air; “we shall want … er … an … er … an extra … er …” He indicated Adrian, the tea-table, the invisible kitchen.
“I’ve brought them, sir,” said the woman. “I saw the young gentleman with you as you passed the kitchen window.”
Mr. Heller poured out tea and lifted the cover from the buttered toast, handed Adrian his cup, the sugarbasin, the toast, and then helped himself, all with a slow, courteous formality and an accompaniment of audible breathings, gaspings, and polite, inarticulate noises. It was evident that he enjoyed tea and buttered toast, for he raised a triangle of toast to his mouth and bit it into a mere crescent, chewed it till his whole face seemed to crumple up, and then took long gulps from his cup with the slow gusto of a drinking horse. Yet there was nothing boorish in the effect of this behaviour; rather a formal and leisurely dignity. Suddenly he realised the presence of a new cake, drew it towards him, and, seizing a knife, attacked it blindly but vigorously until he had reduced it to a wreckage of odd fragments.
Adrian, small, shy, and demure, sat eating and drinking, occasionally giving the old man a timid smile or replying, “Yes, please, sir “and “No, thank you, sir “to his vague hospitable noises.
When they had finished, Mr. Heller pushed his chair back and stood up.
“Well!” he said with a long breath, as if suddenly conscious that they had delayed too long and must get to business. He turned to the piano. “I’ll just … er …” He slowly and rhythmically fingered a contrapuntal passage for two hands on the air of the sitting-room and Adrian gathered with a thrill of excitement that Mr. Heller was going to play to him.
The old man sat down at the piano, fumbled among the music on an adjacent chair, emerged from the struggle with a battered volume, and beckoned Adrian to bring up another chair and sit beside him. He set the volume on the music-stand, slowly and patiently found his place, then turned Donne’s death mask on Adrian, blinked, and asked him: “You know the … the Waldstein Sonata?”
“No, sir.”
“Ah!” The ah implied that Adrian had a treat in store. The old man was now turning down the lower corners of the pages he was going to play.
“You will … er …?” He was politely requesting Adrian to turn over for him.
“I’m afraid I shan’t be able to follow, sir.”
“I’ll … er … I’ll …” Mr. Heller indicated that he would nod his head at the critical moments. “Now!”
He faced the music, foresquare to the piano, his hands held over the keyboard with the fists clenched. He appeared to be collecting himself, gathering himself into the mood that the music demanded. Then with his right fist he slowly beat time, looking at Adrian. “You see?” he said, and then beat time again. His intention seemed to be to convey the mood of the music to Adrian. Then again he squared himself, paused, opened his hands, dropped them quietly to the keys, and began.
There was in Mr. Heller’s playing everything that he lacked in manner and conversation. There was strength, precision, delicacy, a clear, rhythmical articulateness, and above all the presence of a powerful control. The piece he had just begun opened with a soft drumming, and Adrian, recalling the playing of Dr. Yardley-Tritton, was astonished at the strength and precision which Mr. Heller conveyed in that soft shimmer of sound. Teddy, he thought, would have made it sound trivial at once, the puffing of a toy steam-engine. But there was no triviality about Mr. Heller. Piano-playing for him was not an amiable adornment but a religious act. He could be rich, mysterious, melancholy, threatening, explosive, triumphant, gay, even rollicking, but of triviality he was incapable. Adrian was carried away, thrilled to the marrow by the soft, mysterious pulsings, the terrifying crescendos, the sudden plunges into abysmal silences in that first movement. He was so enthralled that, after a few pages, he forgot to watch for Mr. Heller’s nod, and was brought to himself by frantic, inarticulate noises that rose above the hurrying noise of the music and culminated in an infuriated: “B-b-b-boy!”
Adrian sprang to his feet, fumbled helplessly at the turned-up ear of the page in an agony of terror, and flapped it over at last, feeling that he had only just averted an appalling, a world-wrecking disaster. He sank back on his chair, palpitating, exhausted by the shock; but Mr. Heller was already far ahead down the next page, carried onwards, despite the unturned leaf, by the sheer momentum of the music, and in a minute he had nodded again and again Adrian had missed the nod.
Mr. Heller stopped in mid-course. He stared at Adrian with gaping mouth and poised fists conducting furiously in the air. “B-b-but … but … don’t you … er … er … c-can’t you … er …!” he gasped and spluttered in outraged, helpless expostulation.
Adrian sat there scarlet, terrified, covered with shame. Suddenly Mr. Heller was calm. He turned back two pages, pointed to a particular bar, glanced at Adrian, gasped like a fish in the bottom of a boat, poised himself for another start, and once more the room brimmed with music. Thenceforward Adrian kept a firm hold on himself, taking care not to resign himself again to the rapture of the music. He concentrated his whole attention on Mr. Heller’s head and on the task of turning the pages suddenly and neatly. When the movement ended there was a long pause during which the two sat silent and motionless, not wishing either to stir or speak.
Then the hands were lifted and poised again, slowly lowered, and like the slow, serene dawning of a new world, the next movement began. It was so slow that Adrian was no longer afraid of yielding to the music. He saw too that the movement changed to a rondo before the page had to be turned, and he knew that he would recognise the change when it came. It came—after a slow, secret preparation, richly satisfying in its beauty, yet persistently promising something more—on a single long note in the treble which Mr. Heller held with the pedal, his spread hands lifted above the notes, acting the pause which the pedal sustained. With hands still poised he turned Donne’s death mask on Adrian and said, quietly and articulately: “The opening of the Gates of Heaven!”
Then he turned his face to the music-stand and a golden illumination of sound, soft, level, serene, flowed out into the room. It glowed for days, weeks, months, with a soft, radiant leisure, and then a thrill shook it, it became more brilliant, for a long while it quivered and sparkled, dimmed and brightened again; and then it rushed into a still greater brightness, dazzling, blinding; broke into leaping tongues of flame; grew portentously into a conflagration of sound.
The great blaze died down to a shimmer, soft and luminous. A clanging flame shot upwards and died. Another, still more fierce. And then another, volcanic, appalling, that faded, the moment after, into darkness. Adrian had resigned himself again to the music. He had discovered that by leaning back in his chair and fixing his eyes on the back of Mr. Heller’s head he could both enjoy the music and keep watch for the nod. And now once more in the darkness the Gates of Heaven were opened and, golden and softly luminous, the creation of light began again, slowly evolving through long ages; increasing, increasing to a dazzling brightness; bursting into still fiercer flames, still more thunderous explosions of fire; and so again dying down, crumbling into grey ash, and, bursting out afresh, recreated into a being more ardent, more torrential, till at its final avatar it spread suddenly, like a bursting furnace, into a quivering, softly crackling lake of fire, shaken with hurrying tremors, flinging up sudden, bright showers of sparks, and finally gathering itself up, like a waterspout at sea, into an all-concluding holocaust.
Mr. Heller sat silent, his hands on his knees, still absorbed, it seemed, in that amazing world which he had just called into existence. Then, like one emerging from a trance, he began to move, to come to himself again, and soon he turned his kindly smile, his real smile, upon Adrian. He saw the wonder and delight in the boy’s eyes.
“Well, boy,” he said, “it’s … it’s … er … it’s … ! “His gestures conveyed that the Waldstein Sonata was a sublime mastcrpicce, a miracle. Adrian thought so too. There was reason, this time, he felt that words should fail Mr. Heller. He himself had nothing to say, indeed he felt an irresistible desire to refrain from saying anything, and he was relieved to see that Mr. Heller did not expect him to speak. The old man took the volume from the music-stand, laid it on the pile of music beside him, and began to tell Adrian again that he must see his house-master about coming to him for lessons. Then they arranged between them the day and hour when he would turn up for his first lesson.
It was time for Adrian to go, for in half an hour there would be Sunday evening chapel, and he ran down the lane in a state of glowing spiritual intoxication, feeling no less than that a new realm of life had been opened to him.
He ran on, up the steps, through the copse, and along the edge of the deserted playing-field, impelled by that inner glow to a furious bodily energy.