Charles Auchester Volume II Part 4

"I belong to him, or shall."

"Do you mean that you are married to Anastase?"

"Not yet, or I should not be here."

"But you will be?"

"Yes,--that is, if nothing should happen to prevent our being married."

"You like to be so, I suppose?"

She gazed up and smiled. Her eyes grew liquid as standing dew. "I will not say you are again audacious, because you are so very innocent. I do wish it."

"I said _like_, Fraulein Cerinthia."

"You can make a distinction too. Suppose I said, No."

"I should not believe you while you look so."

"And if I said, Yes, I daresay you would not believe me either. Dear little Carl,--for I must call you little, you are so much less than I,--do you really think I would marry, loving music as I do, unless I really loved that which I was to marry more than music?"

So thrilling were her tones in these simple words, of such intensity her deep glance, with its fringe all quivering now, that I was alienated at once from her,--the child from the woman; yet could like a child have wept too, when she bent her head and sobbed. "Could anything be more beautiful?" I thought; and now, in pausing, my very memory sobs, heavy laden with pathetic pa.s.sion. For it was not exactly sorrow, albeit a very woful bliss. She covered her eyes and gave way a moment; then sweeping off the tears with one hand, she broke into a smile. The shower ceased amidst the sunlight, but still the sunlight served to fling a more peculiar meaning upon the rain-drops,--an iris l.u.s.tre beamed around her eyes. I can but recall that ineffable expression, the April playing over the oriental mould.

"I might have known you would have spoken so, Fraulein Cerinthia," I responded, at last roused to preternatural comprehension by her words; "but so few people think in that way about those things."

"You are right, and agree with me, or at least you will one day. But for that, all would be music here; we should have it all _our own way_."

"You and the Chevalier. Do you know I had forgotten all about your music till this very minute?"

"I am very happy to hear that, because it shows we are to be friends."

"We have the best authority to be so," I replied; "and it only seems too good to be true. I am really, though, mad to hear you sing.

Delemann says there never was in Europe a voice like yours, and that its only fault is it is so heavenly that it makes one discontented."

"That is one of the divinest mistakes ever made, Carlino."

"The Chevalier calls me Carlomein. I like you to say 'Carlino,' it is so coaxing."

"You have served me with another of your high authorities, Maestrino.

The Chevalier says I have scarcely a voice at all; it is the way I sing he likes."

"I did not think it possible. And yet, now I come to consider, I don't think you look so much like a singer as another sort of musician."

She smiled a little, and looked into her lap, but did not reply. It struck me that she was too intuitively modest to talk about herself.

But I could not help endeavoring to extort some comment, and I went on.

"I think you look too much like a composer to be a singer also."

"Perhaps," she whispered.

I took courage. "Don't you mean to be a composer, Fraulein Cerinthia?"

"Carlino, yes. The Chevalier says that to act well is to compose."

"But then," I proceeded hastily, "my sister--at least Mr. Davy--at least--you don't know who I mean, but it does not matter,--a gentleman who is very musical told me and my sister that the original purpose of the drama is defeated in England, and that instead of bringing the good out of the beautiful, it produces the artificial out of the false,--those were his very words; he was speaking of the _music_ of operas, though, I do remember, and perhaps I made some mistake."

"I should think not."

"In England it is very strange, is it not, that good people, really good people, think the opera a dreadful place to be seen in, and the theatres worse? My sister used to say it was so very unnatural, and it seems so."

"I have heard it is so in England,--and really, after all, I don't so much wonder; and perhaps it is better for those good people you spoke of to keep away. It is not so necessary for them to go as for us. And this is it, as I have heard, and you will know how, when I have said it to you. Music is the soul of the drama, for the highest drama is the opera,--the highest possible is the soul, of course; and so the music should be above the other forms, and they the ministers. But most people put the music at the bottom, and think of it last in this drama. If the music be high, all rise to it; and the higher it is, the higher will all rise. So, the dramatic personification pa.s.ses naturally into that spiritual height, as the forms of those we love, and their fleeting actions fraught with grace, dissolve into our strong perception of the soul we in them love and long for. The lights and shades of scenery cease to have any meaning in themselves, but again are drawn upwards into the concentrated performing souls, and so again pa.s.s upwards into the compa.s.s of that tonal paradise. But let the music be degraded or weak, and down it will pull performers, performance, and intention, crush the ideal, as persons without music crush _our_ ideal,--have you not felt? All dramatic music is not thus weak and bad, but much that they use most is vague as well as void. I am repeating to you, Carlino, the very words of the Chevalier: do not think they were my own."

"I did, then, think them very like his words, but I see your thoughts too, for you would say the same. Is there no music to which you would act, then?"

"Oh, yes! I would act to any music, not because I am vain, but because I think I could help it upwards a little. Then there is a great deal for us: we cannot quarrel over Mozart and Cimarosa, neither Gluck nor Spohr; and there is one, but I need hardly name him, who wrote 'Fidelio.' And the Chevalier says if there needed a proof that the highest acting is worthy of the highest music, the highest music of the highest form or outward guise of love in its utmost loveliness, that opera stands as such. And, further, that all the worst operas, and ill-repute of them in the world, will not weigh against the majesty and purity of Beethoven's own character in the opposing scale."

"Oh! thank you for having such a memory."

"I have a memory in my memory for those things."

"Yes, I know. Does the Chevalier know you are to marry Anastase?"

"No."

I was surprised at this, though she said it so very simply; she looked serene as that noonday sky, and very soon she went on to say: "Florimond, my friend, is very young, though I look up to him as no one else could believe. I am but fifteen, you know, and have yet been nearly three years betrothed."

"Gracious! you were only a little girl."

"Not much less than now. I don't think you would ever have called me a little girl, and Florimond says I shall never be a woman. I wished to tell the Chevalier, thinking he would be so good as to congratulate me, and hoping for such a blessing; but I have never found myself able to bring it out of my lips. I always felt it withdraw, as if I had no reason, and certainly I had no right, to confide my personal affairs to him. Our intercourse is so different."

"Yes, I should think so. I wonder what you generally talk about."

"Never yet of anything but music."

"That is strange, because the Chevalier does not usually talk so,--but of little things, common things he makes so bright; and Franz tells me, and so did another of our boys, that he only talks of such small affairs generally, and avoids music."

"So I hear from my brother. He talks to Josephine about her doll. He did tell me once that with me alone he 'communed music.'"

"Again his words!"

She a.s.sented by her flying smile.

"He never plays to you, then?"

"Never to myself; but then, you see, I should never ask him."

"And he would not do it unless he were asked. I understand that. You feel as I should about asking _you_."