| | 45

CHAPTER IV.

MERRILY the fête went on, and the young English girl gazed with wonder and delight at the unusual scene.

The arena was thronged with picturesque dresses and bright colours. Overhead the sky was blue and cloudless; the sunshine glittered on white walls and gay banners and flying flags, and everywhere were wreaths of flowers and leaves. When the games were over, there was a momentary hush. Armand de Valtour turned to his wife.

"Now you will hear something you have never heard before, chérie," he said, smiling.

"What is it?" she asked curiously, as a young man separated himself from the crowd, and advanced to the middle of the vast circle.

"It is the performance of a tambourinier," said her husband. "There goes the young man. Is it not a curious instrument? One hardly sees them anywhere now, except in Provence. You see it is a small drum; well, that hangs in front of the player, and he beats time on it with one hand, while with the other he plays a pipe called the galoubet, Sometimes in old prints of the Middle Ages one sees such an instru- | | 46 ment depicted. At one time it was the only music procurable in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The old name galoubet is not often used now. They call it a flutet, or flute traversée."

"Can they bring music out of that?" asked Adrienne, a little contemptuously.

"Wait till you hear," said her husband good-humouredly. "It is surprising what a good player will do with that little flute and its three holes. It requires an immense amount of practice to acquire any execution, and, simple as it looks, I know its difficulty well, for when I was a boy I used to play it."

"But that young man is not going to play alone. Look! there are a number of others!"

"So there are--twenty at least. Well, that will be very pretty. I wonder who that young fellow is. How wonderfully handsome!"

"Yes, is he not?" said Adrienne. "I think I never saw a more perfect face. And the dress is so picturesque, too. Who is he?"

"I don't know. I must ask Céline. Perhaps he is from one of the neighbouring towns. I don't remember him at all. But then it is so long since I have been here."

"And it is so beautiful, and they all love you so," said Adrienne reproachfully. "And it is your real home after all."

"It will be now," he said, looking with a tender smile into the beautiful upraised eyes.

| | 47

She blushed and looked away.

"How pretty!" she cried suddenly.

The music had commenced--odd, wild, barbarous to cultivated ears, but yet with a strange sweetness and power in its fantastic strains that suited well the scene and place. When the first ring of players had ceased, the young man whom the countess and her husband had remarked stepped forward by himself.

There was a general hush. It was evident the young musician was known and famous in his way. Armand de Valtour turned to his sister.

"Who is he, Céline?" he asked.

"That is André Brizeaux," said Mdlle. de Valtour. "He is quite a genius in his way. He is the son of old Brizeaux, who has the farm of Tour des Champs. You remember him, do you not, Armand?"

"Oh, yes. But he was only a little lad when I last saw him. I should not have recognised him again."

"He is really quite a genius," continued Mdlle. de Valtour. "And he has a lovely voice, too. Music is a perfect passion with him. His father is in despair about him, though. He says he will do no work; his whole time is spent with his instrument. He is the best tambourinier in Provence. You hear how the people applaud him!"

"It is beautiful," said Adrienne breathlessly. "To think such music could come out of that!"

"It is the old fable of the god and the reed, is it not?" said Armand de Valtour. "The gift of the | | 48 one making perfect the imperfections of the other. That is a Noël--is it not fine?"

Adrienne was listening attentively to the young player. To her his music had all the charm of novelty--all the fire of genius. From the Noël he passed on to a triumphal hymn; its grand rhythmic measure rolled over the silent crowd like the sweep of the mistral; faces flushed, eyes glistened, a strong excitement thrilled the audience. Armand de Valtour looked at Adrienne. She was very pale, and her great dark eyes never left the face of the young musician. A feeling, half of anger, half of envy, swept over her husband's heart. He did not like to think that any other man had power to move and stir that usually calm and undemonstrative nature. She was an instrument whose varied tones he alone liked to produce, and he was jealous of the power that brought tears to the soft grave eyes and stirred her soul with this subtle indefinable sensation.

When the music ceased, a torrent of applause greeted the young player. Again and again was he recalled, and Armand de Valtour himself beckoned him over to his seat, and complimented him on his performance.

The young man only bowed gracefully in answer to those gracious speeches. He had seen the tears still glistening on the long lashes of the young countess; in his heart he thought he had never received tribute so sweet before.

"Will you not sing, too?" asked Céline de Valtour, | | 49 bending forward to her young protégé. "I should like Madame la Comtesse to hear you. See--they are not satisfied; they are still applauding."

The young man looked doubtfully from the shouting crowd to the aristocratic group on the stand.

"If madame desires?" he said hesitatingly. He looked only at Adrienne. In his heart he was thinking how beautiful she was--more like an angel than a woman--and before her he felt timid of his own powers, and reluctant for once to use them.

The young Countess turned to him with a sweet winning grace. "Pray, sing," she said. "I should so like to hear you."

He bowed low.

"Madame's wishes are commands," he said gracefully, and turned away to resume his place on the platform.

"He has put away his tambourin," said Armand de Valtour, looking at his sister.

"Yes. When he sings he uses the guitar. I gave him one," she said.

He struck a few chords, and the great crowd grew silent in an instant. Then, with his eyes on the blue sky and drifting clouds that canopied the vast arena, his fingers striking a plaintive note from time to time, he began to sing.

Slow and soft--a little tremulous at first--the rich clear tones of that beautiful tenor voice rang out on the air. He sang a love song of Provence, such a | | 50 song as a troubadour of old might have sung, while the stars gleamed overhead, and, at the lattice above, the eyes he loved best on earth were watching through the dusk.

"Did I not say truly? Is not his voice perfect?" said Céline de Valtour softly in her brother's ear.

He made a slight movement of impatience. Adrienne was again engrossed, and that ill-pleased him.

"Yes," he answered, with reluctance. "It is too good to be lost here. What a stir he would make in the cities."

"He is better here," said the old French lady. "The cities! What would they give him? Fever, restlessness, discontent; paying for God's gift with gold-robbing his life of purity, freedom, peace. No, he is better here. Do not tempt him away."

"I have no intention of tempting him," said Armand de Valtour, shrugging his shoulders. "The nightingale sings best in its rose-thickets, I know. He may remain here, if he choose, for me."

Adrienne made an impatient movement. The voices spoiled the effect of that wonderful singing, which now rose clarion-like to heaven--now sank soft as a sigh to earth. It ceased at last, and only the tremor of the leaves as the wind stirred them to and fro was audible in the breathless stillness. André Brizeaux had never sung like that in the hearing of anyone present, and for a moment they seemed to | | 51 recognise something in him greater and grander than they had even imagined.

It is a great gift, a beautiful voice. If there is one thing that leads our thoughts to heaven, and stirs within our souls some purer, loftier feeling than the dull cares of earth permit, it is music; and no music is so perfect in its utterance, so enthralling in its power, as the music of a pure and perfect human voice.

It is no wonder we idolise our singers as we do. Well enough we know the rarity and value of the gift they own. It was such a gift as this that André Brizeaux possessed, and as yet was only half conscious that he did so. To sing seemed only a natural impulse, and music was in his soul and in his nature, so that all sights and sounds of earth and heaven seemed but a part of his intense worship of that most perfect art.

He had come of a musical race, but in him the gift seemed loftier and greater than in any of his predecessors. They had all been tambouriniers, and content with holding the championship of that one branch of musical art throughout their own district of Provence. But André was something more. He was a musician heart and soul, and Céline de Valtour had long ago discovered that, and encouraged and taught him herself, until she was fain to acknowledge that he had outstripped her own musical powers, and held within his soul a loftier genius than she had ever possessed. Much of his musical training had been | | 52 that of church singing, the old curé of Valtours being only too thankful for his assistance in the choir, and proud of the perfect voice that pealed forth the solos of some great mass, which would otherwise have been unknown to the peasantry and people. It was good training--none could have been better--and it seemed to foster and increase the young man's passion, until all other duties and employments became worthless and uninteresting, and his father, recognising that his only son was no longer of any use to him in his farm work or market bargainings, almost cursed the gift which others envied.

It is often so. In his own house the poet, like the prophet, is of no account. To be unlike those around us, and superior to them intellectually, is an affront they are sure to resent; and they can best do that by mockery and ridicule and that contemptuous disdain of the gift they envy, which is the most cruel and crushing obstacle its possessor has to contend with.

Something of all this André Brizeaux knew, and it had done him much harm. It would have done him much more but for the sympathy and help of two powerful friends--the curé and the lady of Valtours. They had assisted him in every way, and given him such aid in perfecting his musical knowledge as refined and intelligent minds could give. To-day the genius within him seemed for once to have burst the bonds of timidity and restraint. The beautiful face that had smiled on him, the sweet voice that had bidden him sing, fired his whole soul with a longing | | 53 to be for once great in the eyes of his fellow-men, to lay his homage at the feet of this exquisite creature in such guise as would set him apart from others, and give him a place in her memory.

It was a romantic notion, one more worthy of the troubadours whose lays he sang, than of a peasant youth of these days; but André Brizeaux was in his soul a poet, and that, in most men's minds, means something akin to madness.

The song ceased at last, and in the momentary silence that ensued the young Countess de Valtour leaned forward and threw at the feet of the singer her bouquet of white roses. The act was the signal for a torrent of applause, a thunder of acclamations; and as the beautiful flushed face of the young singer was raised from the flowers over which he stooped, his eyes looked across the sea of excited faces before him with such triumph and delight in their depths as made Adrienne de Valtour wonder and smile.

Her husband's voice sounded low and stern on her ear--

"There was no need to do that," he said; "we are not at the opera. And after all, he is only a pleasant lad!"

Adrienne looked at him in wonder.

"Are you vexed?" she asked. "I did not know it would matter. After all, it was for us he sang, and I have never heard anything more beautiful, even at the opera."

"Do not tell him so, pray," said her husband coldly. | | 54 "I daresay he is conceited enough of his own powers already!"

"In saying that you wrong him," said his sister warmly, overhearing the words, and feeling indignant at the injustice they did to her protégé. "André is of the sweetest and most humble nature possible. He thinks far too little of himself, if anything."

"Well, well, let us go home now," said the Count impatiently. "It is insufferably hot here, and I am sure Adrienne must be fatigued."

The young wife rose at once. She wondered at the vexation and impatience evinced for so slight a cause; but she took her husband's arm, and, bowing to the people near, left the arena with him and his sister.

To André Brizeaux the place seemed suddenly to grow dark and chill. He put the roses in his breast and took his instruments and left also, and when his friends surrounded him and uttered compliments and congratulations, he shook them off impatiently.

He wanted to be alone--alone with his own thoughts, that were like the scent of the roses, perfumed with the memory of the giver.

A little way out, on the white shaded road that led to his own home, a girl overtook him. She was very pretty. She wore the customary peasant's dress, and her shy, soft eyes lit up with sudden rapture as she came up to his side. He smiled on her; the smile was grave and a little absent.

"Ah, Maï, is it you? Are you all alone?"

| | 55

"Gran'mère stopped to see the end of the fête; she comes home with old Michael in the cart," answered the girl. "And you, André, why have you left so soon?"

"I was tired," he said abruptly. "They grow stupid, these games--one knows them all so well and who will win. Ah! how wearisome life is here."

"André!" cried the girl, in surprise. "What has come to you to say that?"

It sounded like rank heresy in her ears. Like all children of the soil, her own immediate dwelling-place and its surroundings seemed to her the fairest spot in the world. For generations past her people had lived here, and married, and borne children, and died, and their graves were in the little country churchyard, where trees waved softly overhead, and birds sang in the boughs. To leave the place, or even wish to leave it, seemed almost a sin, and that André should say such a thing struck her with absolute horror. They had grown up from childhood--they were affianced lovers these two, and yet she understood but little of the nature of the man she loved; and with each year the difference between them increased, though she herself was unconscious of it.

"Yes; why not?" he said impatiently. "It is all very well for you, Maï, to go on as you do from day to day, one just like another; but I am different. To me it grows hateful--this endless sowing, and reaping, and marketing, and harvesting. I should | | 56 like to see the great cities of the world--to be famous. Music has made many men that before to-day. It might do the same for me."

Maï was silent. Her heart grew heavy as she heard the words; but she was as utterly incapable of comprehending their full meaning as of understanding those wild strange airs which her lover played, or the chants of the masses that he sang. She was perplexed and sorrowful. No discontent of her own homely, healthy life had ever entered into her honest little soul, and it was a simple life enough. Why was André not the same? She could not argue--peasants never can. They either laugh, or abuse, or are silent. Maï was the latter.

"Of course, you do not understand," continued André impatiently. "No one here does. You are all like a flock of sheep--one follows another. What one does all must do. I have learned to think for myself."

"And it makes you discontented?" asked Maï. In her own mind she thought it would be best never to think at all if the result was to upset the peaceful tenor of one's life in that way.

The sun had grown low and red. The dusk was falling. She walked on by his side, keeping pace with his swift steps, and troubled at heart (being a sympathetic, tender little soul) because he was troubled.

"And after to-day, and all the people applauding, and the Comtesse giving you her own flowers!" she | | 57 murmured. "Is it not better to be loved like that here among your own people than struggle among the many who are great, or who want to be great, out there in the cold hard world?"

André frowned impatiently.

"You think so, doubtless," he muttered. "But then you do not understand." And he touched the white roses in his breast, and sighed.

"It is always so," he murmured restlessly. " Five hundred think all alike until one among them throws off the yoke of subjection, and then the other four hundred and ninety-nine cry out at him in wonder. Can I help it if I see things and hear things that no one else does? That I long for another sort of life--fair, poetic, beautiful--with sweet gifts and high ambitions, and a fame that lives far longer than our own poor lives. I suppose I am one of those to whom dreams are more than bread--my father always tells me so."

"I think you are," said little Maï gently. "But, then, someone must think of the bread, or we should all starve. Is it not so?"

"Yes, of course," he answered, in the same restless, impatient tone, that to-night held no lover's tenderness for her. "But that does not make it any better--one cannot help one's feelings."

The girl wondered if he was right.

She was too accustomed to look up to him as something greater, wiser, cleverer, than anyone else she knew, to dispute anything he said. In her own inno- | | 58 cence and simplicity, he had always seemed to her as a king among other men; but, then, she loved him, and loved him, too, with an exceeding pure and tender love, and bent humbly to his wisdom, knowing its superiority to her own instincts, and never daring to dispute its decrees.

She was only a little peasant, brought up among peasants, accustomed to hard work and endless labour--often hungry and tired, and full of troubles homely enough, perhaps, in their way, but great and important to her. It was all her life, and all she had to look forward to; but she had never murmured at its hardships, never grown discontented at the burden of endurance it demanded, never forgotten to thank God for its safety, peace, and shelter every night and morning that she sought rest or awoke from it.

Perhaps in her own way she was happier than André Brizeaux. Perhaps? But, then, she had no genius in her little innocent humble soul. She was only patient and content.