The Blue Rose Fairy Book. Baring Maurice

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СКАЧАТЬ as he did with his hands. Doctor Sebastian had a pupil called Frantz, a lad with curly brown hair and large brown eyes. Frantz used to practise on the organ every day; but Doctor Sebastian was severe with him, and Frantz was not allowed to play the organ at High Mass on Sundays. One day Johan asked Doctor Sebastian whether this was because Frantz played badly, and Doctor Sebastian said:

      "Frantz has much to learn and he must be trained, but one day, when he has learnt all that I can teach him, he will be able to teach me what I shall not be able to learn."

      Johan did not understand what this meant, but he guessed that Doctor Sebastian thought well of Frantz, in spite of his being so severe with him. Johan thought that Frantz was the most wonderful player in the world, and whereas Doctor Sebastian only made the organ speak in deep single tones, and only used the open stops and the booming pedal bass-notes, Frantz – when Doctor Sebastian was not there to listen – used to make the organ sigh and speak like a castle full of spirits, and Johan thought this was wonderful.

      One day, it was in winter just before Christmas, and Johan was eight years old, Doctor Sebastian was laid up in bed with a bad cold, and he sent for Frantz and said to him:

      "I shall never rise from my bed again. I am going thither where I shall hear the music which we only guess at here on earth. You must play the organ on Christmas Day. I have taught you all I know. I have been severe and gruff with you; but being a musician, you know that if I had not thought you worthy of it, I should not have taken any trouble with you at all. I have been spared until you were ready to take my place, and now I can go in peace, for I know that I leave behind me a worthy successor. I have scolded you and pulled your ears, rapped your fingers and blamed your playing, but you have got that which I should never learn if I lived for two hundred years. You have the divine gift, and as a musician I am not worthy to unlatch the shoes of what you will be; for you will play on earth the music that I am now going to hear in Heaven!"

      After that Doctor Sebastian squeezed Frantz's hand and said no more. The next day he died.

      Frantz was very sad, and he spent the whole day that the Doctor died in the cathedral composing a requiem in memory of his dead master. Little Johan, in a corner of the aisle, listened to the music: he had never heard anything so beautiful; some new power seemed to have come to Frantz, and when he touched the keys the pipes spoke in a way they had never spoken before.

      Frantz went on playing until late into the night, and Johan had been carried so far away into dreamland by the music that he did not notice when Frantz stopped, but all at once he became aware that he was alone in the cathedral and that the organ-loft was dark and no sound came from it.

      Johan ran up the winding stair into the organ-loft, but Frantz had gone, and Johan knew that he was locked in the cathedral for the night. He made up his mind to sleep there where he was, and he was just taking one of Frantz's missals to use as a pillow when he became aware that he was no longer alone. Sitting on the bench in front of the keys was a strange figure. It was an old man with a grey beard, twinkling eyes, and a deep voice like the buzzing of a hornet. He wore a brown coat and grey stockings, and a black three-cornered hat.

      "Who are you?" asked Johan.

      "My name is Quint," said the little old man, "and I live in one of the big wooden pipes of the organ."

      "Do you always live there?" asked Johan.

      "No, not always," said Quint. "We don't live here as a rule, but some of them oblige us to come here and sing – "

      "I don't understand," said Johan.

      "Well, I will explain it to you," answered Quint. "It's like this: Every one of the stops of the organ has some one who belongs to it and to whom it belongs – but these people do not live in the stops; they live in their own country, which is called Musicland, and they only come to the organs when they are obliged to."

      "But who obliges them?" asked Johan.

      Quint thought for a moment, and then he said: "Those who have the gift."

      "But what is the gift?" asked Johan.

      "That I can't tell you," said Quint. "All I know is that some have it and others haven't."

      "Did Doctor Sebastian have the gift?" asked Johan.

      "No," said Quint, "he was a learned man and a very good man; but he hadn't got the gift. But young Frantz: he's got it. That's why I am here to-day."

      "Are the people of the other stops here too?" asked Johan, who was deeply interested in what Quint told him.

      "They've all gone home," said Quint. "You see, as long as the player plays, we can stay here and not come out except just when we're wanted; but if we don't get back into the pipes before the player has finished, we can't go home. Now just before Frantz finished I crept out of my pipe because I wasn't wanted, and I wished to look at the cathedral, and then suddenly he stopped playing, before I could get back into my pipe again, and if we are not in our pipes when the organist stops playing we can't get home."

      "What will you do then?" asked Johan.

      "I shall have to wait till he plays again to-morrow. I can get into a pipe of course, but I can't go home."

      "To Musicland?" asked Johan.

      "Yes," said Quint, "and it's annoying, because I shall miss the end of the wedding festivities."

      "Whose wedding?" asked Johan.

      "Vox Angelica's, of course," said Quint. "She was married yesterday."

      "Vox Angelica is that lovely soft stop in the swell," said Johan. "I suppose she's going to marry 'Lieblich Gedacht'?"

      "Of course she is," said Quint, "but it's a long business. If you like I will tell you all about it."

      "Oh, please do!" said Johan.

      "Well," began Quint, "Vox Angelica is the most beautiful person you have ever seen. Her eyes are just like blue waters, grave and still, and her hair is long and as bright as the gold on a harp. And as for her voice, well, you can hear that whenever Frantz plays the organ. She is as kind and gentle as she is beautiful, and everybody in our country loves her. She lives in that part of Musicland where the hills and white mountains are. In the winter it is covered with snow which gleams in the sunshine, whiter and brighter than any snow you have ever seen, but when the spring comes the snow disappears and the slopes of the mountains are covered with millions and millions of flowers which are soft and white and glisten like stars.

      "Lieblich Gedacht was the son of a forester, and he lives in the Woods of Melody, right in the heart of our country where the old oak forests grow, which are carpeted with bluebells in the spring so that the enormous stems look as if they rose out of a blue sea, and in the spring and in the summer the woods are full of birds; but no bird there has so sweet a note as Lieblich Gedacht when he sings in the wood. The birds stop singing to listen to him. He sings all the year round: when the woods are green, and in the autumn too, when they are gold and crimson like the tattered banners of our King, and in the winter, when the oak trees spread their bare arms across the clear cold sky.

      "One day Lieblich Gedacht put on a green jerkin, a green cap, and taking with him a sword and a pipe he set out on his travels. He wandered through Musicland until he came to a castle which was on the top of a mountain. This castle had a tower with one window in it, and from the window came the sound of a whisper which sounded so soft and wonderful that Lieblich Gedacht thought it must be the voice of a flower speaking to itself: the jessamine perhaps, or the briar rose. Then he looked up and he saw leaning out of the window a maid with gold hair which СКАЧАТЬ