Charles Auchester Volume I Part 24

Davy came up to us and smiled: "I really think he is safe. You will let him come to me one evening, dear madam?"

"Perhaps you can come to us. I really do not think we can spare him; we have so much to do in the way of preparation."

It was an admirable providence that my whole time was, from morning to night, taken up with my family. My sisters, a.s.sisted by Margareth, made me a dozen s.h.i.+rts, and hemmed for me three dozen handkerchiefs. I was being measured or fitted all day, and all the evening was running up and down stairs with the completed items. Oh! if you had seen my boxes you would have said that I ought to be very good to be so cared for, and very beautiful besides; yet I was neither, and was sorely longing to be away,--such kindness pained me more than it pleased. I had a little jointed bed, which you would not have believed _was_ a bed until it was set up. My mother admonished me if I found my bed comfortable to keep that in my box; but she had some experience of German beds, and English ones too, under certain circ.u.mstances. I had a gridiron, and a coffee-pot, a spirit-lamp, and a case containing one knife and fork, one plate, one spoon. I had everything I could possibly want, and felt dreadfully bewildered. Clo was marking my stockings one morning when Davy came in; he gave me one of his little brown boxes, and in the box was a single cup and saucer of that glowing, delicate china. When he pulled it out of his pocket I little knew what it was, and when I found out, how I cried!

"I have, indeed, brought you a small remembrance, Charles; but I am a small man, and you are a small boy, and I understand you are to have a very small establishment."

He said this cheerily, but I could not laugh; he put his kind arm round me, and I only wept the more. Clo was all the time quite seriously, as I have said, tracing ineffaceably my initials in German text, with crimson cotton,--none of your delible inks,--and Davy pretended to be very much interested in them.

"What! all those stockings, Charles?"

"Yes, sir: you see we have provided for summer and winter," responded Clo, as seriously as I have mentioned. "He will not want any till we see him again, for he is to pay us a visit, if G.o.d spares him, next Christmas."

Davy sighed, and kissed my forehead; I clung to him. "Shall I see you again, Mr. Davy?"

"I have come to ask your mother whether I may take you to London; it is precisely what I came for, and I have a little plan."

Davy had actually an engagement in London, or feigned to have one,--I have never been able to discover whether it was a fact or a fiction; and he proposed to my mother that I should sleep with him at his aunt's house one night before I was deposited at the hotel where Santonio rested, and to which he had advised I should be brought.

I was in fits of delight at the idea of Davy's company; yet, after all, I did not have much of that, for he travelled to London on the top of the coach, and I was an inside pa.s.senger at my mother's request.

Then comes a sleep of memory, not unaccompanied by dreams,--a dream of being hurled into a corner by a lady, and of jamming myself so that I could not stir hand or foot between her and the window; a dream of desperate efforts to extricate myself; a dream of sudden respite, cold air, and high stars beyond and above the houses, a cracked horn, a flas.h.i.+ng lantern; a dream of dark in a hackney-coach, and of stopping in a stilly street before a many-windowed mansion, as it seemed to me.

Then I am aware to this hour of a dense headache, and bones almost knotted together, till there arrives the worst nightmare reality can breed,--the smell of toast, m.u.f.fins, and tea; the feeling of a knife and fork you cannot manage for sleepfulness; and the utter depression of your quicksilver.

I could not even look at Miss Lenhart; but I heard that her voice was going on all the time, and felt that she looked at me now and then. I was conveyed into bed by Davy without any exercise on my own part, and I slumbered in that sleep which absorbs all time, till very bright day. Then I awoke and found myself alone, though Davy had left a neat impression in the great soft bed. Presently I heard his steps, and his fingers on the lock. He brought my breakfast in his own hand, and while I forced myself to partake of it, he told me he should carry me to Santonio at two o'clock, the steamboat leaving London Bridge at six the same evening. And at two o'clock we arrived at the hotel. In a lofty apartment sat Santonio near a table laid for dinner.

I beheld my boxes in one corner, and my violin-case strapped to the largest; but all Santonio's luggage consisted of that case of his which had been wrapped up warm in baize, and one portmanteau. He arose and welcomed us with a smile most amiable; and having shaken hands with Davy, took hold of both mine and held them, while still rallying in a few words about our punctuality. Then he rang for dinner, and I made stupendous efforts not to be a baby, which I should not have been sorry to find myself at that instant. The two masters talked together without noticing me, and presently I recovered; but only to be put upon the sofa, which was soft as a powder-puff, and told to go to sleep. I made magnificent determinations to keep awake, but in vain; and it was just as well I could not, though I did not think so when I awoke. For just then starting and sitting up, I beheld a lamp upon the table, and heard Santonio's voice in the entry, haranguing a waiter about a coach. But looking round and round into every corner I saw no Davy, and I cannot describe how I felt when I found he had kissed me asleep, and gone away altogether. As Santonio re-entered, the sweet cordiality with which he tempered his address to me was more painful than the roughest demeanor would have been just then, thrilling as I was with the sympathy I had never drawn except from Davy's heart, and which I had never lost since I had known him. It was as if my soul were suddenly unclad, and left to writhe naked in a sunless atmosphere; still I am glad to say I was grateful to Santonio. It was about five o'clock when we entered a hackney-coach, and were conveyed to the city from the wide West End. The great river lay as a leaden dream while we ran across the bridge; but how dreamily, drowsily, I can never describe, was conveyed to me that arched darkness spanning the lesser gloom as we turned down dank sweeping steps, and alighted amidst the heavy splash of that rolling tide. There was a confusion and hurry here that mazed my faculties; and most dreadfully alarmed I became at the thought of pa.s.sing into that vessel set so deep into the water, and looking so large and helpless. I was on board, however, before I could calculate the possibilities of running away, and so getting home again. Santonio put his arm around me as I crossed to the deck, and I could not but feel how careful the great violin was of the little human instrument committed to his care. Fairly on deck, the whirling and booming, the crowd not too great, but so busy and anxious, the head-hung lamp, and the cheery peeps into cabins lighter still through glittering wires, all gave motion to my spirit. I was soon more excited than ever, and glorified myself so much that I very nearly fell over the side of the vessel into the Thames, while I was watching the wheel that every now and then gave a sleepy start from the oily, dark water. Santonio was looking after our effects for a while, but it was he who rescued me in this instance, by pulling my great-coat (exactly like Fred's) that had been made expressly, for me in the festival-town, and which, feeling very new, made me think about it a great deal more than it was worth. Then laughing heartily, but still not speaking, he led me downstairs. How magnificent I found all there! I was quite overpowered, never having been in any kind of vessel; but what most charmed me was a glimpse of a second wonderful region within the long dining-room,--the feminine retreat, whose door was a little bit ajar.

The smothered noise of gathering steam came from above, and most strange was it to hear the many footed tramp overhead, as we sat upon the sofa, and spread beneath the oval windows all around. And presently I realized the long tables, and all that there was upon them, and was especially delighted to perceive some flowers mounted upon the epergnes.

I was cravingly hungry by this time, for the first time since I had left my home, and everything here reminded me of eating. Santonio, I suppose, antic.i.p.ated this fact, for he asked me immediately what I should like. I said I should like some tea and a slice of cold meat.

He seemed amused at my choice, and while he drank a gla.s.s of some wine or other and ate a crust, I had all to myself a little round tray, with a short, stout tea-pot and enormous breakfast cup set before me; with b.u.t.ter as white as milk, and cream as thick as b.u.t.ter, the b.u.t.ter being developed in a tiny pat, with the semblance of the steams.h.i.+p we were then in stamped upon the top; also a plate covered with meat all over, upon beginning to clear which, I discovered another cartoon in blue of the same subject. After getting to the bottom of the cup, and a quarter uncovering the plate, I could do no more in that line, and Santonio asked me what I should like to do about sleeping. I was startled, for I had not thought about the coming night at all. He led me on the instant to a certain other door, and bade me peep in; I could only think of a picture I had seen of some catacombs,--in fact, I think a catacomb preferable in every respect to a sleeping cabin.

The odors that rushed out, of brandy and lamp-oil, were but visionary terrors compared with the aspect of those supernaturally constructed enclosed berths, in not a few of which the victims of that entombment had already deposited themselves.

"I can't sleep in there!" I said shudderingly as I withdrew, and withdrawing, was inexpressibly revived by the air blowing down the staircase. "Oh, let us sit up all night! on the sea too!"

Santonio replied, with great cordiality, that he should prefer such an arrangement to any other, and would see what could be contrived for me.

And so he did; and I can never surpa.s.s my own sensations of mere satisfaction as I lay upon a seat on deck by ten o'clock, with a boat-cloak for my pillow and a tarpaulin over my feet, Santonio by my side, with a cloak all over him like a skin, his feet on his fiddle-case, and an exquisitely fragrant regalia in his mouth.

My feelings soon became those of careering ecstasy,--careering among stars all clear in the darkness over us; of pa.s.sionate delight, rocked to a dream by the undulation I began to perceive in our seaward motion. I fell asleep about midnight, and woke again at dawn; but I experienced just enough then of existing circ.u.mstances in our position to retreat again beneath the handkerchief I had spread upon my face, and again I slept and dreamed.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] The Cecilia School at Lorbeerstadt is probably intended to represent the Conservatory at Leipsic, which Mendelssohn founded in 1843.

CHAPTER XXV.

At noon, when at length I roused myself, we were no longer upon the sea. We swept on tranquilly between banks more picturesque, more glorious, more laden with spells for me, than any haven I had fortified with Spanish castles. Castles there were too, or what I took for castles,--silvery gray amidst leafless trees, and sometimes softest pine woods with their clinging mist. Then came s.h.i.+ning country, where the sky met the sun-bright slopes, and then a quiet sail at rest in the tiny harbor. But an hour or two brought me to the idea of cities, though even they were as cities in a dream. And yet this was not the Rhine; but I made sure it was so, having forgotten Clo's geography lessons, and that there could be any other river in Germany,--so that when Santonio told me its real name I was very angry at it. After I had wearied myself with gazing, he drew me back to my seat, and began to speak more consecutively than he had done yet.

"Now, sir," said he, "do you see that castle?" pointing to something in the prospect which may or may not have been a castle, but which I immediately realized as one. "You are to be shut up there. Really and seriously, you have more faith than any one I ever had the honor of introducing yet, under any circ.u.mstances whatever. Pray don't you feel any curiosity about your destination?"

"Yes, sir, plenty; but I forgot what I was going for."

"And where you were going to?"

"Sir, I did not know where. I thought you would tell me when you liked."

"I don't know myself, but I daresay we shall fall in with your favorite 'Chevalier.'"

"My favorite who, sir?"

"The gentleman who enslaved you at the performance of the 'Messiah,'

in your part of the world."

"Oh, sir! what can I ever say to you? I cannot bear it."

"Cannot bear what? Nay, you must not expect too much of him now you know who he is. He is merely a very clever composer."

"Oh, sir! how did you ever find out?"

"By writing to Milans-Andre,--another idol for you, by the way."

"Oh! I know all about Milans-Andre."

"Indeed! and pray what is all about him?"

"I know he plays wonderfully, and fills a large theatre with one pianoforte. Stop! He has a handsome face and long arms,--rather too long for his body. He is very--let me see--something, but not something else; very famous, but not beloved."

"Who told you that? A most coherent description, as it happens."

"Miss Lawrence."

"Miss Lawrence is a blab. So you have no curiosity to learn your fate?"

"I know _that_; but I should like to know where I am going."

"To an old gentleman in a hollow cave."

"I wish I were, and then perhaps he would teach me to make gold."

"That is like a Jew, fie! But the fiddle has made gold."

"Why like a Jew? Because they are rich,--Jews, I mean?"