Part 38 (1/2)

”And don't you like Beethoven?”

”No, I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now that I never really liked him.”

”Ah! how can you say so? You cannot understand him, you never could say this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of Beethoven is enough. This is happiness.”

Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father--a likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it were an epitaph:--

”Stay: I may presently take A simple chord of Beethoven, Or a small semiquaver From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words.”

After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was pleased and flattered beyond his wont. He rose and bowed. ”These expressions,” he said, _voce sua_, ”are very valuable to me.” ”They are but a small part, Sir,” rejoined Ernest, ”of what anyone of your old pupils must feel towards you,” and the pair danced as it were a minuet at the end of the dining-room table in front of the old bay window that looked upon the smooth shaven lawn. On this Ernest departed; but a few days afterwards, the Doctor wrote him a letter and told him that his critics were a [Greek text], and at the same time [Greek text]. Ernest remembered [Greek text], and knew that the other words were something of like nature, so it was all right. A month or two afterwards, Dr Skinner was gathered to his fathers.

”He was an old fool, Ernest,” said I, ”and you should not relent towards him.”

”I could not help it,” he replied, ”he was so old that it was almost like playing with a child.”

Sometimes, like all whose minds are active, Ernest overworks himself, and then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful encounters with Dr Skinner or Theobald in his sleep--but beyond this neither of these two worthies can now molest him further.

To myself he has been a son and more than a son; at times I am half afraid--as for example when I talk to him about his books--that I may have been to him more like a father than I ought; if I have, I trust he has forgiven me. His books are the only bone of contention between us. I want him to write like other people, and not to offend so many of his readers; he says he can no more change his manner of writing than the colour of his hair, and that he must write as he does or not at all.

With the public generally he is not a favourite. He is admitted to have talent, but it is considered generally to be of a queer unpractical kind, and no matter how serious he is, he is always accused of being in jest.

His first book was a success for reasons which I have already explained, but none of his others have been more than creditable failures. He is one of those unfortunate men, each one of whose books is sneered at by literary critics as soon as it comes out, but becomes ”excellent reading”

as soon as it has been followed by a later work which may in its turn be condemned.