I had two letters from
Pair, written within a month of their hegira--gossipy, light-hearted
letters, describing the people they were meeting, reporting
Godelinette's quaint observations upon England and English things,
explaining his hopes, his intentions, all very 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 waterside 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.
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