Читать книгу The Little Schoolmaster Mark - J. H. Shorthouse - Страница 9

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The next morning early Mark was sent for to the Prince. He was shown into the dressing-room, but the Prince was already dressed. He was seated in an easy-chair reading a small closely-printed sheet of paper, upon which the word "Wien" was conspicuous to the boy. The Prince bade the little schoolmaster be seated on a fauteuil near him, and looked so kindly that he felt quite at his ease.

"Well! little one," said the Prince, "how findest thou thyself? Hast thou found any friends yet in this place?"

"The Signorina has been very kind to me, Highness," said the boy.

"Ah!" said the Prince, smiling, "thou hast found that out already. That is not so bad. I thought you two would be friends. What has the Signorina told thee?"

"She has told me of the actors who are so clever and so strange. She says that they are all in love with her."

"That is not unlikely. And what else?"

"She has told me of the Princess and of her servente."

"Indeed!" said the Prince, with the slightest possible appearance of increased interest; "what does she say of the Princess?"

"She says that she is a bad woman, and that she hates her."

"Ah! the Signorina appears to have formed opinions of her own, and to be able to express them. What else?"

"She says that the servente is the devil himself! But she does not mean the real devil. She says that the servente is a much more real devil than he! Is not that horrible, Highness?"

The Prince looked at Mark for two or three moments, with a kindly but strange far-reaching look, which struck the boy, though he did not in the least understand it.

"I did well, little one," he said at last, "when I sent for thee."

There was a pause. The Prince seemed to have forgotten the presence of the boy, who already was sufficiently of a courtier to hold his tongue.

At last the Prince spoke.

"And the children," he said; "thou hast seen them?"

"Yes," said Mark, with a little shy smile, "I did badly there. I insulted the gracious Fräulein by calling her 'Princess,' which she said only the little Princes should do; and I told her I was come to teach her and her little brother, and that I should do it in my own way or not at all."

The Prince looked as though he feared that this unexpected amusement would be almost too delightful.

"Well, little one," he said, "thou hast begun well. Better than this none could have done. Only be careful that thou art not spoilt. Care nothing for what thou hearest here. Continue to hate and fear the devil; for, whether he be thy own devil or the servente, he is more powerful than thou. Say nothing but what He whom thou rightly callest God teaches thee to say. So all will be well. Better teacher than thou my daughter could not have. I would wish her to be pious, within reason; not like her aunt, that would not be well. I should wish her to care for the poor. Nothing is so gracious in noble ladies as to care for the poor. When they cease to do this they lose tone at once. The French noblesse have done so. I should like her to visit the poor herself. It will have the best effect upon her nature; much better," continued the Prince with a half smile, and seemingly speaking to himself, "much better, I should imagine, than on the poor themselves. But what will you have?—some one must suffer, and the final touch cannot be obtained without."

There was another pause. This aspect of the necessary suffering the poor had to undergo was so new to Mark that he required some time to grasp it. The visits of noble ladies to his village had not been so frequent as to cause the malign effects to be deeply felt.

* * * * *

Acting upon this advice so far as he understood it, Mark pursued the same system of education with the little Highnesses as he had followed with the village children; that is, he set them to read such things as he was told they ought to learn, and encouraged them to do so by promising to relate his histories and tales if they were good.

It is surprising how much the same human nature remains after generations of different breeding and culture. It is true that these princely children had heard many tales before, perhaps the very ones the little schoolmaster now related, yet they delighted in nothing so much as hearing them again. Much of this pleasure, no doubt, was due to the intense faith and interest in them shown by Mark himself. He talked to them also much about God and the unseen world of angels, and of the wicked one; and, as they believed firmly that he was an angel, they listened to these things with the more ready belief. Indeed, the affection which the little boy formed for his child-tutor was unusual. He was a silent, solemn child; he said nothing, but he attached himself to Mark with a persistent devotion.

Every one in the palace, indeed, took to the boy: the pages left off teasing him; the Signorina petted him in a manner sufficient to deprive her numerous lovers of their reason; the servants waited on him for love and not for reward; but the strangest thing of all was, that in proportion as he was kindly treated—just as much as every one seemed to love him and delight in him—just so much did the boy become miserable and unhappy. The kinder these people were, the more he felt the abyss which lay between his soul and theirs; earnestness and solemn faith in his—sarcasm and lively farce, and, at the most, kindly toleration of belief, in theirs.

Had they ill-treated or wronged him, he would not have felt it so much; but kindness and security on their part, seemed to intensify the sense of doubt and perplexity on his.

It is difficult to realise the effect which sarcasm and irony have upon such natures as his. They look upon life with such a single eye. It is so beautiful and solemn to them. Truth is so true; they are so much in earnest that they cannot understand the complex feeling that finds relief in sarcasm and allegory, that tolerates the frivolous and the vain, as an ironic reading of the lesson of life.

The actors were particularly kind to him, though their grotesque attempts to amuse him mostly added to his misery. They were extremely anxious that he should appear upon the stage, and indeed the boy's beauty and simplicity would have made an excellent foil.

"Herr Tutor," said old Carricchio the arlecchino to him one day, with mock gravity, "we are about to perform a comedy—what is called a masqued comedy, not because we wear masques, for we don't, but because of our dresses. It consists of music, dancing, love-making, joking, and buffoonery; you will see what a trifle it is all about. The scene is in the garden of a country-house—during what in Italy we call the Villeggiatura, that is the month we spend in the country during the vintage. A lady's fan is found by an ill-natured person in a curious place; all the rest agree not to see the fan, not to acknowledge that it is a fan. It is all left to us at the moment, all except the songs and the music, and you know how delightful those are. If you would take a part, and keep your own character throughout, it would be magnificent; but we will wait, if you once see it you will wish to act."

No one, indeed, was kinder to Mark, or seemed more to delight in his society than the old arlecchino, and the two made a most curious sight, seated together on one of the terraces on a sunny afternoon. Nothing could be more diverse in appearance than this strangely assorted pair. Carricchio was tall, with long limbs, and large aquiline features. He wore a set smile upon his large expressive mouth, which seemed born of no sense of enjoyment, but of an infinite insight, and of a mocking friendliness. He seldom wore anything but the dress of his part; but he wrapped himself mostly in a long cloak, lined with fur, for even the northern sunshine seemed chilly to the old clown. Wrapped in this ancient garment, he would sit beside Mark, listening to the boy's stories with his deep unfathomed smile; and as he went on with his histories, the boy used to look into his companion's face, wondering at the slow smile, and at the deep wrinkles of the worn visage, till at length, fascinated at the sight, he forgot his stories, and looking into the old man's face appeared to Mark, though the comparison seems preposterous, like gazing at the fated story of the mystic tracings of the star-lit skies.

Why the old man listened so patiently to these childish stories no one could tell; perhaps he did not hear them. He himself said that the presence of Mark had the effect of music upon his jaded and worn sense. But, indeed, there was beneath Carricchio's mechanical buffoonery and farce a sober and pathetic humour, which was almost unconscious, and which was now, probably owing to advancing years, first becoming known either to himself or others.

"The Maestro has been talking to me this morning," he said one day. "He says that life is a wretched masque, a miserable apology for existence by the side of art; what do you say to that?"

"I do not know what it means," said Mark; "I neither know life nor art, how can I tell?"

"That is true, but you know more than you think. The Maestro means that life is imperfect, struggling, a failure, ugly most often; art is perfect, complete, beautiful, and full of force and power. But I tell him that some failure is better than success; sometimes ugliness is a finer thing than beauty; and that the best art is that which only reproduces life. If life were fashioned after the most perfect art you would never be able to cry, nor to make me cry, as you do over your beautiful tales."

Mark tried to understand this, but failed, and was therefore silent. Indeed it is not certain whether Carricchio himself understood what he was saying.

He seemed to have some suspicion of this, for he did not go on talking, but was silent for some time. These silences were common between the two.

At last he said:

"I think where the Maestro is wrong is in making the two quarrel. They cannot quarrel. There is no art without life, and no life without art. Look at a puppet-play—the fantoccini—it means life and it means art."

"I never saw a puppet-play," said Mark.

"Well, you have seen us," said Carricchio; "we are much the same. We move ourselves—they are moved by wires; but we do just the same things—we are life and we are art, in the burletta we are both. I often think which is which—which is the imposture and which is the masque. Then I think that somewhere there must be a higher art that surpasses the realism of life—a divine art which is not life but fashions life.

"When I look at you, little one," Carricchio went on, "I feel almost as I do when the violins break in upon the jar and fret of the wittiest dialogue. Jest and lively fancy—these are the sweets of life, no doubt—and humorous thought and speech and gesture—but they are not this divine art, they are not rest. They shrivel and wither the brain. The whole being is parched, the heart is dry in this sultry, piercing light. But when the stringed melodies steal in, and when the rippling, surging arpeggios and crescendos sweep in upon the sense, and the stilled cadences that lull and soothe—then, indeed, it is like moisture and the gracious dew. It is like sleep; the strained nerves relax; the overwrought frame, which is like dry garden mould, is softened, and the flowers spring up again."

Carricchio paused; but as Mark said nothing, he went on again.

"The other life is gay, lively, bright, full of excitement and interest, of tender pity even, and of love—but this is rest and peace. The other is human life, but what is this? Art? Ah! but a divine art. Here is no struggle, no selfish desire, no striving, no conflict of love or of hate. It is like silence, the most unselfish thing there is. I have, indeed, sometimes thought that music must be the silence of heaven."

"The silence of heaven!" said Mark, with open eyes. "The silence of heaven! What, then, are its words?"

"Ah! that," said the old clown, smiling, but with a sad slowness in his speech, "is beyond me to tell. I can hear its silence, but not its voice."