'True,' said the Abbot: 'Clerk Anvil's case is in that way somewhat exceptional, but then so are his talents. He will be celebrated and rich before very long. That should carry weight with the father. And if not, as a pious man, which I myself know him to be, he'll have in mind his duty to God. Or can easily be put in mind of it.'
'There'll be no difficulty, my lord,' said Dilke, carefully choosing a sweetmeat from the silver bowl before him.
Later the Abbot said privately to Mirabilis, 'If I may ask you, Fritz—do you think we were right?'
'In what respect?'
'The decision about Anvil's future isn't an ordinary one, you see. There can be no going back afterwards.'
'No indeed, my lord, but I still don't quite understand.'
'It's simply that not even the wisest of us is infallible. Suppose that in a few years Anvil's powers decline. There was such a case—at any rate, if it should so turn out, what do we say to ourselves then?'
'What you have just said, that none of us is infallible. Let me put your mind at peace, my lord. There are these, these declines you mention, but they're very rare, too rare to be allowed for, and your duty to music and to God is too great. No, whatever should happen, anybody who knows the full truth must see that you were right in your decision.'
'Thank you, dear Fritz, that's what I wanted to hear.'
Later yet, Lawrence escorted his master's two guests across the quadrangle to the gate and assisted them into the small four-wheeled carriage that was waiting there. Mirabilis gave the man a sixpence-he enjoyed overtipping on his travels-and watched him and his lantern disappear. All St Cecilia's, all that could be seen, was dark. The driver whipped up his horse and they moved off between the tall hedgerows. The going was quiet, quiet enough for Mirabilis to be able to hear without difficulty the little rapid snorts and sniffs coining from his companion. They held a familiar message, and experience suggested that it should be heeded without undue delay.
'A pleasant and distinguished evening,' said Mirabilis with an air of contentment.
Further sniffs and snorts.
'That young priest, Dilke: I must confess I didn't care for him at first, but he has more depth than I suspected.'
'H'm. H'm.'
'Does something trouble you, Wolfgang?' Parts of marriage must be rather like this, thought Mirabilis.
'No. Nothing.'
'Tell old Fritz about it.'
Viaventosa was a fat bewigged shape in the watery moonlight. 'There's a boy asleep somewhere in that place,' he squeaked after a moment. 'An ordinary English boy, with all his boyish dreams. No doubt he pictures himself journeying to Mexico to win the hand of the Emperor's daughter, or rescuing a Christian princess from the Turks...'
'No doubt he does, Wolfgang.'
'And steps are about to be taken which will confound those dreams for ever.'
'Really, very few English boys can hope to win the-'
'Please, Fritz. His youth is to vanish, with his manhood, and his humanity. He'll be what we are, a gelding, an ox, a wether, a capon.'
'And a singer at the summit of his profession, a—'
'Not as great as Velluti. No one could match Velluti.'
'Shame on you, Wolfgang: your grandfather could not have heard Velluti.'
'My great-grandfather did, as a young boy. I told you before.'
'Be done with your great-grandfather, and with Velluti. We talk of Anvil, and I say he'll be admired, deferred to, welcome wherever he wishes to go, above all possessed of something more valuable than any crown: to have as the centre of his life the delight that comes from the exercise of skill.'
'There are other things more valuable than crowns, and other delights.'
'How can you know?'
'I can't know, but I have eyes and ears. And feeling.'
'I share it, my dear: you know that.'
'H'm. H'm.'
Your feeling is too much for yourself at this moment, thought Mirabilis, but what he said, in a gentle tone, was, 'What did you think of the boy's piano-forte studies? Some of those modulations were too violent for me, in spite of what Morley said. Oh, the days are gone when music was supposed to sound pleasant...'
At St Cecilia's, the next day was one of leisure. According to Decuman, this was actually a device for extracting more work from the inmates than usuaclass="underline" morning studies began with a solid two hours of Latin during which (so he said afterwards) the preceptors behaved as if all knowledge of that tongue were about to be removed from their minds the moment the bell sounded, and they must convey everything they could before it struck. Church history was similarly accelerated, with popes, idolaters, martyrs, heretical bishops jostling one another across the scene like characters in an extravaganza. Forenoon choir-schooling sternly eschewed anything that could be called music and set the clerks to struggle with uncouth intervals or eccentric time-signatures. But, with dinner, the march of instruction halted; Hubert, for instance, was to have the afternoon to himself until his private hour with Master Morley at five o'clock.
Activity on the dormitory floor was intense but almost silent: a reckless guffaw or yell was apt to draw the attention of a monitor and lead, perhaps, to a withdrawal of leisure-privilege. So it was in a kind of bursting mutter that Thomas invited Hubert to join him, Decuman and Mark in an expedition to a pool where there were supposed to be trout, and in a similiar mode that Hubert conveyed his thanks and regrets—he had to write letters to his family, he said. But, as the other three did, he changed from chapel dress to the garb permitted for the leisure hours of leisure days: coloured cotton shirt, a furious indulgence for those limited on all occasions to white, and, in theory, to spotless white at that; loose trousers reaching to the ankle, an escape no less precious to habitual wearers of breeches and stockings; and rubber-soled canvas shoes instead of the constant polished leather.
Decuman gave Hubert a perhaps over-cordial buffet on the shoulder and led his fishing-party from the room. All the way down the tiled corridor to the stairhead, the receding swish and squeak of rubber could be heard, diversified by the recurrent bang of a door, smothered giggle and louder shushing. Soon there was silence but for a creak or two of woodwork as the building warmed up in the sun. It was a hot day for the time of year: from the dormitory window, Hubert had a view of grass and treetops, shining almost yellow in the strong light, and caught a stray sparkle from the distant spires of Oxford. For some time he stared without blinking, without looking except vaguely. The waxed windowshelf was warm and moist under his hand. His writing materials were in his desk in the day-room on the ground floor, but when at last he moved it was through the momentary coolness of the tiny stone-paved hall of that part of the building and out into the sunshine.
He crossed the courtyard and went through the arch under the Abbot's lodging. In the farrier's shop, the ring of beaten metal could be heard; otherwise, the various offices seemed asleep or empty. Hubert paused at the carp-pond and peered through the shifting glare at the mud-coloured mass that showeditself only now and then, for a moment, to be a crowd of individual fish. When the time came, each and all of them would vanish down the gullets of hungry folk at dinner or supper in the Chapel refectories. That was not shocking, or rather it ceased to be so on consideration. Human beings had absolute God-given rights over dumb creatures; it was part of the principle on which the world worked. Less extremely but no less strictly, it applied to divisions within mankind: Christians and Mahometans, clergy and laity, gentry and people, men and women, fathers and children.