Читать книгу In a Yün-nan Courtyard - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 12

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If he had inherited it, the seeding of it must have been a long time ago; its record lost in the thick mists of time. But the heritage was his whether heaven-sent to him in his cradle, or bequeathed him by some far-off ancestor of whom he never had heard. It was his; he was its.

That it was just heaven-sent, his very own, inherited from no one, seems the more probable. Talent usually has a more or less clear-cut ancestry; genius oftener is individual, a personal possession, not a link in a chain.

It was impossible to say when it began in him. Its first indications, given before he was short-coated, passed unnoticed; and so did the many indications of the first few following years.

The first time he opened his eyes wide with intelligence, pleasure, and consideration the canary in its cage in the next room was singing vigorously. Brent was three months old, young to have that thoughtful look in his eyes. But most babies are attracted by noise—musical or raucous. The first time he smiled happily, then gurgled delightedly, a hand-organ down in the street was pounding out “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms” for all it and the Italian were worth. But what of that? Neither nurse thought anything at all. No doubt the smile proclaimed a stomach-ache and the even cheerfuller gurgle its departure. Every nurse knows that.

Brent liked noise. All boys did. And no one—until it was too late, and a family’s tragedy full on them—was clever or observant enough to notice or realise that Brent Gayford, babe and boy, liked only sweet noises.

He gave them hints and to spare, but no one appreciated them.

The day he screamed for the toy violin conspicuous in a shop’s window chanced to be his birthday, but perhaps not less because a “scene,” even an infant one, on Kensington High Street appalled Nelson’s large sense of personal dignity, the head nurse whipped him out of his pram and carried him into the shop, he all wreathed in smiles now and murmuring, “Good Nannie, mine nice Nannie,” ingratiatingly. He was highly pleased with Nelson now.

Nelson, a convinced and on the whole consistent disciplinarian, was less pleased with herself. Master Brent already had had great largess that morning. Gifts had rained upon him in profusion. She herself had paid him tin-soldier tribute when he woke, and so had Jennie the under-nurse.

However, she was not going to walk into Kensington Gardens beside a pramful of screaming, kicking rage. The demanded toy, complete bow and all, was purchased, and the baby trotted back on his sturdy little legs to the waiting pram and its attendant under-nurse.

Brent never had heard or seen a violin. Perhaps its arresting shape had caught his infant fancy. Perhaps——

He “played” it all the way to the Round Pond. That he did disturbed no one. Either it was a mute violin, or else the tot did not get the hang of it. But he scraped its strings softly with the toy bow, and was entirely happy.

That violin had pride of place and of love in the little boy’s nurseries long after all his many other costlier birthday toys had palled and were neglected. He called it his “Noo-noo,” and more than once he fell asleep with his fat little face pillowed on it.

When Brent was nearing five his cousin Lady Cynthia Grey (his elder by a twelvemonth) came on a visit to their grandfather’s house on Sloane Street. With her she brought many dolls, three Teddy bears, and one piano. Brent swooped upon the toy piano. It was derelict. Two of its few keys were silent, another was loose. But presently he picked out of it a tiny tune.

And so it went on—and no one noticed. He found his way to the drawing-room piano one day when it was open. Standing at it, his head not much taller than the keyboard, after a vain attempt to perch himself on the stool he hit a note with eager, loving fingers, and presently he found a chord.

General Gayford gave his orphan grandson a drum—all boys like drums, and it was a suitable and soldierly toy for a future soldier. Brent was dedicated to the Army from birth, as all the male Gayfords were, and had been almost since Agincourt. That the youngster soon beat the little drum in time and tune the old General never suspected. Raymond Gayford had been a notable soldier, but he had been the despair of several regimental band-masters. From First Lieutenant to General he never had known his own regimental march from any other. He always recognised the Anthem, perhaps by some atavistic method of his own, and was ready to knock the hat off of any lout who failed to uncover at its first note; would have rejoiced to knock the head off as well; but that was the all of the old soldier’s musical attainment. Literally he did not know “Rule Britannia” from “Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag.”

Brent—named so for his mother’s family—was the old General’s only grandson, the child of Sir Raymond’s youngest son who had died in battle, as had his two elder brothers. If the General had suffered when all his sons had been killed at the Front, all in a three months, he gave no sign. The youngest had been his favourite, openly and always. Nor had the two older brothers resented it. Harry had been the pick of the Gayford bunch in every way—true, sunny-natured, full of laughter, incorruptible. To know him was to love him. And his friends were legion. He had married his first love, a girl as lovable and charming as he. General Gayford had liked her cordially—all the more cordially perhaps because he had frankly detested his other daughters-in-law. She had died when Brent was two, and the General had grieved fiercely, unashamed to show for her the sorrow he shamed to show for his three soldier sons who had given King and Country the service of death.

When the War had orphaned him his mother’s mother had pleaded to have little Brent. Raymond Gayford would not even discuss it, let alone consider it. Sir William and Lady Brent might visit him as often as they would, the General would be delighted—or so he said—but his grandson stayed with him, not to leave him until the necessity of a good preparatory school preceded Eton and Sandhurst.

That his Eton days might be a little longer (boys that are going into the Army cannot stay long at public school) Brent went to his preparatory school younger than most boys do.

The General chose that boarding-school carefully, and almost broke down the day he left the boy there. It was their first separation. And Topham, the servant who had been with him longest, knew that General Sir Raymond Gayford was counting the hours until his grandson’s first holidays came.

Having entrusted his boy to a headmaster in whom he had entire confidence, the General bothered himself not at all about what Brent was taught or how. He had told the Head to get the lad ready for Eton. He expected them to do it. How they did was their job, no concern of his. Civilian curricula did not interest him. He saw that Brent’s reports, on the whole, were uniformly good as to both lessons and conduct. If the boy was not often “top,” he never was bottom or near it. He had told Brent to be good but not too good; evidently Brent was obeying him. The occasional misdemeanours reported were boy-like and harmless enough. Sir Raymond did not regret them.

He did just notice once that there was mention of “Music progress.” That was waste of time, but, if it was a school rule, let it go. The old military martinet was the last of all men to demand or wish “rules” to be relaxed—not even fool ones. Singing hymns in chorus wouldn’t hurt Brent. No doubt it didn’t amount to five minutes a day; just an excuse to put down another “extra” on an already swelling bill. They wouldn’t rope his grandson into a singing or any other sort of musical fraternity; Brent was a Gayford—born a soldier. The whizzing of the bullets was the only music that Brent would ever care for—Brent or any other Gayford ever born. “Halt” and “Right about turn” were the only tunes he’d ever sing. It was hard luck on the boy that he had been born too late to fight in the Great War, damned hard luck. But England’s wars were not done, not by a jugful, let the water-blooded old women of pacifists and such say what they liked, confer and scheme how they choose. Brent would get his soldier’s chance. God grant that he—the General—should live to see that day!

Brent was not counting his days; he was enjoying them too absorbedly. School-life was unbroken, tingling joy. He liked all of it. It was a good school and a sane one, carefully ruled and watched over by a manly gentleman who had vision and common sense; an exceptionally “right” place for growing, plastic boys. Brent Gayford had work he liked and found little difficulty in doing moderately well. He had glorious sport and wholesome exercise, and loved them. Best of all he had comradeship, which until now he always had lacked and longed for without knowing that he did. And he had a music master who almost at once discovered what was the very core of the boy’s being, held his peace about it while he fostered it, and both fathered and mothered the boy; did it so unobstrusively that Brent, and what was even better, Brent’s schoolfellows, never suspected it.

Young Gayford thought that “old von Schultz” was jolly decent to him, and liked the quiet, often lonely, Austrian more than either of them realised, but it was Dick Wentworth whom Brent loved. For the time Dick almost superseded music itself in the younger boy’s glowing heart. And Dick returned Brent’s affection fully. They did everything together, work and play. On one historic occasion they beat gloriously their opponents at squash-rackets, and won identical medals—very small ones, shaped a little like the Maltese Cross—duly inscribed. No big silver cup of their after-years’ ‘Varsity prowess ever gave either of them half the joy or a quarter the pride that those first tiny trophies did. They wrung each other’s hands and danced in triumph (when no one could see them) and exchanged a vow always to wear and to treasure this first dear sports spoil of theirs that they had won together.

Emphatically Brent did not count the days until the coming of his first long holiday. When June came so near that the soon approach of “the hols” no longer could be forgotten or ignored Brent fidgeted at thought of them, regretted that they were so near and could not be escaped. Then Dick announced that his mater had written that he might bring his chum home with him for the summer vac. Paradise opened.

Then the cross of life thudded down on Brent Gayford—his first real trouble. It scarified him. He never quite forgot it; he never will. General Sir Raymond Gayford put his foot down. His grandson was spending the holiday with him, at home in the Priory. Brent did not take it well. He raged, more than once he swore—oaths more vivid than so young a lad so well-born and so carefully brought up should have heard, let alone known. And, strictly in private, he wept. But he spent his holiday in Kent, at the ancestral Priory, had a middling good time part of the time; and it did not occur to either boy to write to the other.

The boy was stoical, notwithstanding the tears he had shed in the privacy of his school bed. He gave no sign that he was enraged, none that he was bored. And his sore disappointment had to recede a little before the grandparent’s undisguised delight at having him and pride in him. The old soldier unbent as he had not since his youthful wooing of Brent’s grandmother. He saw that the boy had grown and how straight. He caught a deeper note in the lad’s clear voice.

Brent Gayford had had a pony almost as soon as he could walk. An officer in the regiment must ride well; the sooner the better. But now his grandfather gave him a larger, more mettled mount—almost a horse. Brent was delighted and grateful. But he was not sorry to go back to school when the day came.