Charles Auchester Volume I Part 17

As for me, I knew directly who it was, for the gentleman entering at the door so carelessly, at the same time appearing to take in the whole room with his glance, had a violin-case in his hand. I shall not forget his manner of being immediately at home, nodding to one and another amiably, but with a slight sneer upon his lip, which he probably could not help, as his mouth was very finely cut. I felt certain it was Santonio; and while the gentleman upon the rug addressed him very excitedly, and received a cool reply, though I could not hear what it was, for all the men were talking, Davy came up to us and confirmed my presentiment.

"What a handsome gentleman he is, but how he stares!" said Clara, in a serious manner that set me laughing; and then Davy whispered "Hus.h.!.+"

But it was of little use, for Santonio came up now to our corner, and deposited his case on the next chair to Miss Benette, looking at her all the while and at me, so that we could well see his face. It was certainly very handsome,--a trifle too handsome, perhaps, yet full of harmonious lines, and the features were very pure. His complexion was glowing, yet fair, and pa.s.sed well by contrast into the hue of his eyes, which were of that musical gray more blue than slate-colored.

Had he been less handsome, the Hebrew contour might have been more easily detected; as it was, it was clear to me, but might not have occurred to others who did not look for it. A brilliant person, such as I have seldom seen, he yet interested more by his gestures, his way of scanning, and smiling to himself, his defiant self-composure, something discomposing to those about him, than by his positive personal attractions. Having examined us, he examined also Davy, and said specially, "How are you?"

"Quite well, thank you," replied our master; "I had no right to expect you would remember me, Mr. Santonio."

"Oh! I never forget anybody," was the reply; "I often wish I did, for I have seen everybody now, and there is no one else to see."

"Oh!" thought I to myself, but I said nothing, "you have not seen _one_." For I felt sure, I knew not why, that he had not.

"Is this your son, Davy?" questioned he, once more speaking, and looking down upon me for an instant.

"Certainly not; my pupil and favorite alto."

"Is he for the profession, then?"

"What do you say, Charles?"

"Yes, Mr. Davy, certainly."

"If I don't mistake, it will not be alto long, though," said Santonio, with lightness; "his arm and hand are ready made for me."

I was so transported that I believe I should have knelt before Santonio but that, as lightly as he had spoken, he had turned again away. It was as if he had not said those words, so unaltered was his face, with those curved eyebrows; and I wished he had left me alone altogether, I felt so insignificant. It was a good thing for me that now there entered footmen very stately, with silver trays, upon which they carried coffee, very strong and cold, and chilly green tea. We helped ourselves, every one, and then it was I really began to enjoy the exclusion with which we had been visited; for we all seemed shut in and belonging to each other. The pianist primo joked with Santonio, and Mr. Westley attacked Davy, while Newton and the man in the blue coat with bright b.u.t.tons wore the subject of the festival to a thread; for the former had been away, and the latter had been there, and the latter enlightened the former, and more than enlightened him, and where his memory failed, invented, never knowing that I, who had been present, was listening and judging,--as Clara said, "he was making up stories;" and indeed it was a surprise for me to discover such an imagination dwelling in a frame so adipose.

Santonio at last attracted our whole attention by pouring his coffee into the fire, and asking a footman, who had re-entered with wafers and tea-cakes, for some more coffee that was hot; and while we were all laughing very loud, another footman, a shade more pompous than this, threw back the folding-doors that divided us from the impenetrable saloon. As those doors stood open we peeped in.

"How many people there are!" said I.

"Yes," said Clara, "but they are not very wise."

"Why do you suppose not?"

"First, because they have set the piano close up against the wall. Mr.

Davy will have it out, I know."

"I see a great many young ladies in pink frocks,--I suppose the Miss Redferns."

"See that man, Master Auchester, who is looking down at the legs of the piano, to find out how they are put on."

And thus we talked and laughed until Santonio had finished his coffee, quite as if no one was either in that room or in the next.

"It was not warm, after all," said he to Mirandos; but this was in a lower tone, and he put on an air of hauteur withal that became him wonderfully. Then I found that we had all become very quiet, and there had grown a hush through the next room, so that it looked like a vast picture, of chandeliers all light, tall gla.s.ses, ruddy curtains, and people gayly yet lightly dressed. The men in there spoiled the picture, though,--they none of them looked comfortable: men seldom do in England at an evening party. Our set, indeed, looked comfortable enough, though Davy was a little pale; I very well knew why. At last in came the footman again; he spoke to the gentleman in the blue coat with bright b.u.t.tons. _He_ bowed, looked red, and walked up to Davy.

Miss Benette's song came first, I knew; and I declare the blood quite burned at my heart with feeling for her. How little I knew her really!

Almost before I could look for her, she was gone from my side; I watched her into the next room. She walked across it just as she was used to cross her own little lonely room at home, except that she just touched Davy's arm. As she had predicted, he drew the piano several feet from the wall,--it was a grand piano--and she took her place by him. As serenely, as seriously, with that bright light upon her face which was as the suns.h.i.+ne amidst those lamps, she seemed, and I believe was, as serene, as serious, as when at home over her exquisite broidery. No music was before Davy as he commenced the opening symphony of one of Weber's most delighting airs. The public was just fresh from the pathos of Weber's early death, and everybody rushed to hear his music. She began with an intensity that astonished even me,--an ease that so completely instilled the meaning that I ceased to be alarmed or to tremble for her. Her voice even then held promise of what it has since become, as perfectly as does the rose-bud, half open, contain the rose. I have seen singers smile while they sang; I have watched them sing with the tears upon their cheeks: yet I never saw any one sing so seriously as Miss Benette, calmly, because it is her nature, and above all, with an evident facility so peculiar that I have ceased to reverence conquered difficulties so much as I believe I ought to do for the sake of art. Everybody was very quiet, quieter than at many public concerts; but this audience was half stupefied with curiosity, as well as replete with the novelty of the style itself. Everybody who has enthusiasm knows the effect of candle-light upon the brain during the performance of music anywhere, and just as we were situated there was a strange romance, I thought. Santonio stood upon the rug; a very sweet expression sat upon his lips,--I thought even _he_ was enchanted; and when Clara was silent and had come back again so quietly, without any flush upon her face, I thought he would surely come too and compliment her. But no, he was to play himself, and had taken out his violin.

It was a little violin, and he lifted it as if it had been a flower or an infant, and laid his head lovingly upon it while he touched the strings. They, even those pizzicato hints, seemed to me to be sounds borne out of another sphere, so painfully susceptible I became instantly to the power of the instrument itself.

"It is to be the Grand Sonata, I see."

"No, sir," said Davy, who had come back with Miss Benette.

"Yes, but I shall not play with Mirandos; we settled that, Miss Lawrence and I."

"Who is Miss Lawrence?"

"An ally of mine."

"In the room?"

"Yes, yes. Don't talk, Davy; she is coming after me. Your servant, Miss Lawrence!"

I beheld a young lady in the doorway.

"So, Mr. Santonio, you are not ready? They are all very impatient for a sight of you."

"I am entirely at your service."

"Come, then."

She beckoned with her hand. It was all so sudden that I could only determine the color of her hair, black; and of her brocaded dress, a dark blue. Her voice was in tone satirical, and she spoke like one accustomed to be obeyed. When Santonio entered, there began a buzzing, and various worthies in white kid gloves cl.u.s.tered round the piano. He drew the desk this side of the instrument, so that not only his back was turned to us, but he screened Miss Lawrence also; and I was provoked that I could see nothing but the pearls that were twisted with her braided hair. It was one of Beethoven's complete works to be interpreted, a divine duo for violin and piano, that had then never been heard in England, except at the Philharmonic concerts; and I did not know the name even then of the Philharmonic. And when it began, an indescribable sensation of awe, of bliss, of almost anguish, pervaded me,--it was the very bitter of enjoyment; but I could not realize it for a long time.

The perfection of Santonio's bowing never tempted him to eccentricity, and no one could have dreamed of comparing him with Paganini, so his fame was safe. But I knew nothing of Paganini, and merely felt from head to foot as if I were the violin and he was playing upon me, so completely was I drawn into the performance, body and soul,--not the performance merely, let me say; as a violinist now, my conviction is that the influence is as much physical as supernatural of my adopted instrument. That time my nerves were so much affected that I trembled in every part of me. Internally I was weeping, but my tears overflowed not my eyes.

Santonio's _cantabile_, whatever they say of Ernst or of Sivori, is superior to either. There is a manly pa.s.sion in his playing that never condescends to coquette with the submissive strings; it wailed enough that night for anything, and yet never degenerated into imitation. I knew directly I heard him draw the first quickening, s.h.i.+vering chord--s.h.i.+vering to my heart--I knew that the violin must become my master, or I its own.

Davy, still pale, but radiant with sympathetic pleasure, continued to glance down upon me, and Clara's eyes were lost in drooping to the ground. I scarcely know how it was, but I was very inadvertent of the pianoforte part, magnificently sustained as it was and inseparable from the other, until Clara whispered to Davy, "Does she not play remarkably well, sir?"

"Yes," he returned; "I am surprised. She surely must be professional."

But none of us liked to inquire, at least then.

I noticed afterwards, from time to time, how well the piano met the violin in divided pa.s.sages, and how exactly they went together; but still those strings, that bow, were all in all for me, and Santonio was the scarcely perceptible presence of an intimate sympathy, veiled from me as it were by a hovering mist of sound. So it was especially in the slow movement, with its long sighs, like the voice of silence, and its short, broken sobs of joy. The thrill of my brain, the deep tumult of my bosom, alone prevented me from tears, just as the rain falls not when the wind is swelling highest, but waits for the subsiding hush. The a.n.a.logy will not serve me out, nevertheless, for at the close of the last movement, so breathless and so impetuous as it was, there was no hush, only a great din, in the midst of which I wept not; it was neither time nor place. Miss Benette, too, whispered just at the conclusion, when Santonio was haughtily, and Miss Lawrence carelessly, retiring, "Now we shall go; but please do not make me laugh, Master Auchester."

"How can you say so, when it was your fault that we laughed the other night?"

And truly it did seem impossible to unsettle that sweet gravity of hers, though it often unsettled mine.

CHAPTER XX.

We went, and really I found it not so dreadful; and so was I drawn to listen for her voice so dear to me even then, that I forgot all other circ.u.mstances except that she was standing by me there, singing. I sang very well,--to my shame if it be spoken, I always know when I do; and the light color so seldom seen on Davy's cheek attested his satisfaction. Davy himself sang alone next, and we were cleared off every one, while he sang so beautiful a ba.s.s solo, in its delicacy and simplicity, as I had ever heard. Clara and I mutually agreed to be very nervous for our master. I am sure he was so, but n.o.body could have told it of him who did not know him inside and out,--not even Santonio, who, standing on the rug again, and turning down his wristbands, which had disappeared altogether while he played, said to Mirandos, "He seems very comfortable," meaning Davy. Then came a quartet, and we figured again.

I was not glad to feel the intermitting tenor supplant that soprano.

Truly, it seemed that the higher Clara sang, the nearer she got to heaven. The company applauded this quartet, mere thready tissue of sweet sounds as it was--Rossini's--more than even Santonio's violin; but twenty years ago there had been no universal deluge of education, as I have lived to see since, and, at least in England in the midland counties, people were few who could make out the signs of musical genius so as to read them as they ran. Perhaps it was better that the musician then only sought for sympathy among his own kind.