DOI article:
Harland, Henry: When I am king
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27812#0082
78 When I am King
confidently—and then I had no more. I wrote again, and still
again, till, getting no answer, of course I ceased to write. I
was hurt and puzzled ; but in the spring we should meet in
London, and could have it out. When the spring came, however,
my plans were altered : I had to go to America. I went by way
of Havre, expecting to stay six weeks, and was gone six years.
On my return to England I said to people, "You have a
brilliant young composer named Pair. Can you put me in the
way of procuring his address ? " The fortune he had come to
seek he would surely have found ; he would be a known man.
But people looked blank, and declared they had never heard of him.
I applied to music-publishers—with the same result. I wrote to
his uncle in Hampshire; the squire did not reply. When I
reached Paris I inquired of our friends there ; they were as
ignorant as I. " He must be dead," I concluded. "If he had
lived, it is impossible we should not have heard of him." And I
wondered what had become of Godelinette.
Then another eight or ten years passed, and now, in a water-
side public at Bordeaux, an obscure old pianist was playing Pair's
setting of " Lavender's blue," and stirring a hundred bitter-sweet
far-away memories of my friend. It was as if fifteen years were
erased from my life. The face of Godelinette was palpable before
me—pale, with its sad little smile, its bright appealing eyes.
Edmund might have been smoking across the table—I could hear
his voice, I could have put out my hand and touched him. And
all round me were the streets, the lights, the smells, the busy
youthful of the Latin Quarter ; and in my heart the
yearning, half joy and all despair and anguish, with which we
think of the old days when we were young, of how real and dear
they were, of how irrecoverable they are.
And then the music stopped, the Brasserie des Quatre Vents
became
confidently—and then I had no more. I wrote again, and still
again, till, getting no answer, of course I ceased to write. I
was hurt and puzzled ; but in the spring we should meet in
London, and could have it out. When the spring came, however,
my plans were altered : I had to go to America. I went by way
of Havre, expecting to stay six weeks, and was gone six years.
On my return to England I said to people, "You have a
brilliant young composer named Pair. Can you put me in the
way of procuring his address ? " The fortune he had come to
seek he would surely have found ; he would be a known man.
But people looked blank, and declared they had never heard of him.
I applied to music-publishers—with the same result. I wrote to
his uncle in Hampshire; the squire did not reply. When I
reached Paris I inquired of our friends there ; they were as
ignorant as I. " He must be dead," I concluded. "If he had
lived, it is impossible we should not have heard of him." And I
wondered what had become of Godelinette.
Then another eight or ten years passed, and now, in a water-
side public at Bordeaux, an obscure old pianist was playing Pair's
setting of " Lavender's blue," and stirring a hundred bitter-sweet
far-away memories of my friend. It was as if fifteen years were
erased from my life. The face of Godelinette was palpable before
me—pale, with its sad little smile, its bright appealing eyes.
Edmund might have been smoking across the table—I could hear
his voice, I could have put out my hand and touched him. And
all round me were the streets, the lights, the smells, the busy
youthful of the Latin Quarter ; and in my heart the
yearning, half joy and all despair and anguish, with which we
think of the old days when we were young, of how real and dear
they were, of how irrecoverable they are.
And then the music stopped, the Brasserie des Quatre Vents
became