DOI Artikel:
Harland, Henry: When I am king
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27812#0076
72 When I am King
couples, clumsily toeing it; and on a platform, at the far end, a
man pounded a piano. All this in an atmosphere hot as a furnace-
blast, and poisonous with the fumes of gas, the smells of bad
tobacco, of musk, alcohol, and humanity.
The musician faced away from the company, so that only his
shoulders and the back of his grey head were visible, bent over his
keyboard. It was sad to see a grey head in that situation ; and
one wondered what had brought it there, what story of vice or
weakness or evil fortune. Though his instrument was harsh, and
he had to bang it violently to be heard above the roar of conversa-
tion, the man played with a kind of cleverness, and with certain
fugitive suggestions of good style. He had once studied an art,
and had hopes and aspirations, who now, in his age, was come to
serve the revels of a set of drunken sailors, in a disreputable tavern,
where they danced with prostitutes. I don't know why, but from
the first he drew my attention ; and I left my handmaid to count
her charms neglected, while I sat and watched him, speculating
about him in a melancholy way, with a sort of vicarious shame.
But presently something happened to make me forget him—-
something of his own doing. A dance had ended, and after a
breathing spell he began to play an interlude. It was an instance
of how tunes, like perfumes, have the power to wake sleeping
memories. The tune he was playing now, simple and dreamy
like a lullaby, and strangely at variance with the surroundings,
whisked me off in a twinkling, far from the actual—ten, fifteen
years backwards—to my student life in Paris, and set me to
thinking, as I had not thought for many a long day, of my hero,
friend, and comrade, Edmund Pair ; for it was a tune of Pair's
composition, a melody he had written to a nursery rhyme, and
used to sing a good deal, half in fun, half in earnest, to his lady-
love, Godelinette :
" Lavender's
couples, clumsily toeing it; and on a platform, at the far end, a
man pounded a piano. All this in an atmosphere hot as a furnace-
blast, and poisonous with the fumes of gas, the smells of bad
tobacco, of musk, alcohol, and humanity.
The musician faced away from the company, so that only his
shoulders and the back of his grey head were visible, bent over his
keyboard. It was sad to see a grey head in that situation ; and
one wondered what had brought it there, what story of vice or
weakness or evil fortune. Though his instrument was harsh, and
he had to bang it violently to be heard above the roar of conversa-
tion, the man played with a kind of cleverness, and with certain
fugitive suggestions of good style. He had once studied an art,
and had hopes and aspirations, who now, in his age, was come to
serve the revels of a set of drunken sailors, in a disreputable tavern,
where they danced with prostitutes. I don't know why, but from
the first he drew my attention ; and I left my handmaid to count
her charms neglected, while I sat and watched him, speculating
about him in a melancholy way, with a sort of vicarious shame.
But presently something happened to make me forget him—-
something of his own doing. A dance had ended, and after a
breathing spell he began to play an interlude. It was an instance
of how tunes, like perfumes, have the power to wake sleeping
memories. The tune he was playing now, simple and dreamy
like a lullaby, and strangely at variance with the surroundings,
whisked me off in a twinkling, far from the actual—ten, fifteen
years backwards—to my student life in Paris, and set me to
thinking, as I had not thought for many a long day, of my hero,
friend, and comrade, Edmund Pair ; for it was a tune of Pair's
composition, a melody he had written to a nursery rhyme, and
used to sing a good deal, half in fun, half in earnest, to his lady-
love, Godelinette :
" Lavender's