he used to play to me in the magic hour before bedtime, when, in the summer, the red sun threw long shadows across the lawn, and in winter the fire burned brighter and brighter in the hearth. this was the hour when all the interminable squabbles of the schoolroom were forgotten, and even the noisiest of us would hush his voice to listen drowsily to a fairy-tale, or to watch the palaces raise aloft their minarets, and crumble to dull red ash in the heart of the fire. it was then that i would see him sitting astride of the fireguard and puffing out his cheeks over his shining flute. even in the most thrilling moments of fairy stories, when cinderella lost her crystal slipper or sister ann saw the cloud of dust from the summit of bluebeard’s tower, his shrill melodies would ring in my ears and p. 190quicken my sleepy senses with the desire to hear more of this enchanted music. i knew that it was real magic, but i did not find it strange, because as far as i knew i had heard it all my life. perhaps he had played to me when i yet lay in my cradle, and watched the night-light winking on the nursery ceiling; but i did not try to remember whether this was so. i was content to accept my strange musician as a fact of my existence, and to feel a sense of loss on the rare evenings when he failed me. i did not know how to dance, but sometimes i would tap my feet on the floor in time to the music, till some one would tell me not to fidget. for no one else would either see him or hear him, which proved that it was real magic, and flattered my sense of possession. it was evident that he came for me alone.
the years passed, and in due course the imaginative graces of my childhood were destroyed by the boys of my own age at school. they compelled me to exchange a hundred star-roofed palaces, three distinct kingdoms of dreams, and my enchanted p. 191flute-player for a threadbare habit of mimicry that left me cold and unprotected from the winds in the large places of life. there was something at once pathetic and ridiculous in our childish efforts to imitate our elders, but as it seemed that our masters and grown-up relatives were in the conspiracy to make us materialistically wise before our time, a boy would have needed a rare force of character to linger with his childhood and refuse to ape the man. so, for a while, i saw my glad musician no more, though sometimes i thought i heard him playing far away, and the child within me was warmed and encouraged even while my new-found manhood was condemning the weakness. i knew now that no man worthy of the name was escorted through life by a fairy flute-player, and that dreamers and wool-gatherers invariably sank to be poets and musicians, persons who wear bowler-hats with frock-coats, have no crease in their trousers, and come to a bad end. fortunately, all education that is repressive rather than stimulating is only skin-deep, and it was inevitable that sooner or later i should p. 192meet the flute-player again. one saturday afternoon in high summer i avoided cricket and went for a long walk in the woods, moved by a spirit of revolt against all the traditions and conventions of boy-life; and presently, in a mossy clearing, all splashed and wetted by little pools of sunlight, i found him playing to an audience of two squirrels and a redstart. when he saw me he winked the eye that glittered over his parading fingers, as though he had left me only five minutes before, but i had not listened long before i realised that i must pay the price of my infidelity. it was the old music and the old magic, but try as i might i could not hear it so clearly as i had when i was a child. the continuity of my faith had been broken, and though he was willing to forgive, i myself could not forget those dark years of doubt and denial; and while i often met him in the days that followed, i never won back to the old childish intimacy. i sought his company eagerly and listened passionately to his piping, but i was conscious now that this was a strange thing, and sometimes when he p. 193saw by my eyes that i was moved by wonder rather than by the love of beauty, he would put his flute in his pocket and disappear. the world is an enchanted place only to the incurious and tranquil-minded.
nevertheless, though like all boys i had been forced to discard my childish dreams before i had really finished with them, the lovely melodies of the flute-player served to enrich my latter years at school with much of the old enchantment. often enough he would play to me at night during preparation, and i would spend my time in trying to set words to his tunes instead of doing my lessons. it was then that i regretted the lost years that had dulled my ear and prevented me from winning the inmost magic of his song, compared with which my verses seemed but the shadow of a shadow. yet i saw that he was content with my efforts, and gradually made the discovery that while great achievement is granted to the fortunate, it is the fine effort that justifies a man to himself. what did it matter whether my songs were good or bad? they were the highest expression i could find for the p. 194rapture of beauty that had filled my heart as a child when i had been gifted to see life with clean and truthful eyes. for the songs the flute-player played to me were the great dreams of my childhood, the dreams that a wise man prolongs to the day of his death.
i do not hear him often now, for i have learnt my lesson, and though my hands tremble and my ear deceives me, i am by way of being a flute-player myself. this article, it is clear, is a child’s dream, and so have been, and will be, i hope, all the articles i shall ever write. what else should we write about? we have learnt a few long words since we grew up, and a few crimes, but no new virtues. that is why i like to get back to the nursery floor, and play with the old toys and think the old thoughts. we knew intuitively then a number of beautiful truths that circumstance appears to deny now, and we grown men are the poorer in consequence. it is folly to find life ugly when the flute lies within our reach and we can pipe ourselves back to the world of beauty with a song made of an old dream.
p. 195as for the flute-player, if i see him no more with wakeful eyes, i know that he is never very far away. likely enough one of these wintry evenings, in the hour before bedtime, when the fire burns brighter and brighter in the hearth, i shall look up and see him sitting astride of the fireguard and puffing out his cheeks over his shining flute. not many nights ago i heard some one playing the flute out in the street, and i went down and found a poor fellow blowing his heart out for rare sous. there was not much enchantment about him—he had been dismissed from a music-hall orchestra for drinking red wine to excess—but he was a real flute-player, and i could well imagine that such a man might be driven to intemperance by the failure to achieve those “unheard melodies” not to be detected by the sensual ear. to be a bad flute-player must be rather like being a bad poet, a joyous but sadly finite life. he was a sad dog, this earthly musician, and he frankly conceived the ideal state as a kind of communal bodega where thirsty souls could find peace in satiety. i gave him fivepence to p. 196help him on his way, and left him to make doleful music in the night till he had enough money to supply his crimson dreams. but he ought not to have said that my flute-player was only an amateur.
