Charles Auchester Volume II Part 12

The day had come, the evening,--an early evening; for entertainments are early in Germany, or were so in my German days. The band had preceded us, and we four drove alone,--Maria, shrouded in her mantilla, which she had never abandoned, little Josephine, Anastase, and myself. Lumberingly enough under any other circ.u.mstances; on this occasion as if in an aerial car. Dark glitter fell from pine-groves, the sun called out the green fields, the wild flowers looked enchanted; but for quite two hours we met no one, and saw nothing that reminded us of our destination. At length, issuing from a valley haunted by the oldest trees, and opening upon the freest upland, we beheld an ancient house all gabled, pine-darkened also from behind, but with torrents of flowers in front sweeping its windows and trailing heavily upon the stone of the ill.u.s.trated gateway. A new-made lawn, itself more moss than gra.s.s, was also islanded with flowers in a thick mosaic: almost English in taste and keeping was this garden-land. I had expected something of the kind from the allusion of the Chevalier; but it was evident much had been done,--more than any could have done but himself to mask in such loveliness that gray seclusion. The gateway was already studded with bright-hued lamps unlighted, hung among the swinging garlands; and as we entered we were smitten through and through with the festal fragrance. In the entrance-hall I grew bewildered, and only desired to keep as near to Anastase and Maria as possible. Here we were left a few minutes, as it were, alone; and while I was expecting a special retainer to lead us again thence, as in England, the curtain of a somewhat obscure gateway, at the end of the s.p.a.ce, was thrust aside, and a little hand beckoned us instantaneously forward. Forward we all flew, and I was the first to sunder the folded damask and stand clear of the mystery.

As I pa.s.sed beneath it, and felt who stood so near me, I was subdued, and not the less when I discovered where I stood. It was in a little theatre, real and sound, but of design rare as if raised within an Oriental dream. We entered at the side of the stage; before us, tier above tier, stretched tiny boxes with a single chair in each, and over each, festooned, a curtain of softest rose-color met another of softest blue. The central chandelier, as yet unlighted, hung like a gigantic dewdrop from a grove of oak-branches, and the workmen were yet nailing long green wreaths from front to front of the nest-like boxes. Seraphael had been directing, and he led us onward to the centre of the house.

"How exquisite!"--"How dream-like!"--"How fairy!" broke from one and another; but I was quite in a maze at present, and in mortal fear of forgetting my part. The Chevalier, in complete undress, was pale and restless; still to us all he seemed to cling, pa.s.sing amidst us confidingly, as a fearful and shy-smitten child. I thought I understood this mood, but was not prepared for its sudden alteration; for he called to some one behind the curtain, and the curtain rose,--rose upon the empty theatre, with the scenery complete for the first act. And then the soul of all that scenery, the light of the fairy life, flashed back into his eyes; elfin-like in his jubilance, he clapped those little hands. Our satisfaction charmed him. But I must not antic.i.p.ate. Letting the curtain again fall, he preceded us to the back of the scenery; and I will not, because I cannot in conscience, reveal what took place in that seclusion for artists great and small,--sacred itself to art, and upon which no one dwells who is pressing onward to the demonstration, ever so reduced and concentrated, of art in its highest form.

At seven o'clock the curtain finally rose. It rose upon that tiny theatre crowded now with cl.u.s.tering faces, upon the chandelier, all glittering, like a sphere of water with a soul of fire, the lingering day-beams shut out and shaded by a leaf-like screen. Out of all precedent the curtain rose, not even on the overture; for as yet not a note had sounded, since the orchestra was tuned, before the theatre filled. It rose upon a hedge of mingled green and silver, densely tangled leaf.a.ge, and a burst of moon-colorless flowers, veiling every player from view, and hiding every instrument of the silent throng, who, with arm and bow uplifted, awaited the magic summons. But by all the names of magic, how arose that flower-tower in the midst? For raised above the screen of sylvan symbol was a turret of roots, entwisted as one sees in old oaks that interlace their gnarled arms, facing the audience, and also in sight of the orchestra; and this wild nest was clad with silver lilies twice the size of life, whose drooping buds made a coronal of the margin where the turret edged into the air. And in the turret, azure-robed, glitter-winged,--those wings sweeping the folded lilies as with the l.u.s.trous shadow of their light,--stood our Ariel, the Ariel of our imaginations, the Ariel of that haunted music, yet unspelled from the silent strings and pipes!

We behind, among the rocks,--those gently painted rocks that faded into a heavenly distance,--could only glimpse that delicate form, hovering amidst up-climbing lilies, those silver-shadowy plumes; that glorious face was s.h.i.+ning into the light of the theatre itself, and we waited for his voice to rea.s.sure us. We need not have feared, even Maria and I. I was quivering and shuddering; but yet she did not sigh, her confidence was too unshaken, albeit in such a trying position, so minutely critical to maintain, did author perhaps never appear. In an instant, as the first soft blaze had broken on the world in front, did our Ariel raise his wand, no longer _like_ the stem of a lily, but a lily-stem itself, all set with silver leaves, and whose crowning blossom sparkled with silver frostwork. He raised it, but not yet again let it sweep,--descending downwards, on the contrary, he clasped it in his roseate lilied fingers; and all amidst the great white buds, that made him shrink to elfin clearness, he began, in a voice that might have been the soul of that charmed orchestra, to recite the little prologue, which may thus be rendered into English:

"A while ago, a long bright while, I dwelt In that old Island with my Prospero.

He gave, not lent, me Freedom, which I fed Sometimes on spicy airs that heavenward roll From flowers that wing their spirits to the stars, And scented shade that droppeth fruit or balm.

But soon a change smote through me, and I fell Weary of stillness in the wide blue day, Weary of breathless beauty, where the rose Of sunset flushes with no fragrant sigh, For that my soul was native with the spheres Where music makes an everlasting morn.

All music in that ancient isle was mine That pulsed the air or floated on the calm,-- Old music veiled in the bemoaning breeze, Or whispering kisses to the yearning sea, Where foam upblown sprayed with its liquid stars My plumes for all their dim cerulean grain.

From age to age the lonely tones I stored In crystal deeps of unheard memory; Froze them with virgin cold fast to the cups Of wavering lilies; bade the roses bind The orbed harmonies in burning rest; Thrilled with that dread elixir, dreaming song, The veins of violets; made the green gloom Of myrtle-leaves hush the sounds intricate; Charged the deep cedars with all mourning chords.

And having wide and far diffused my wealth,-- Safe garnered, spelled, unknown of reasoning men,-- I long to summon it, to disenchant My most melodious treasure breathless hid In bell and blade, in blossom-blush and buds And mystic verdure, the soft shade of rest.

Methinks in this wild wood, this home of flowers, My harmonies are cl.u.s.tered; yea, I feel The voiceless silence stir with voiceful awe; I feel the fanning of a thousand airs That will not be repressed, that crave to wake In resurrection of tone infinite From the tranced beauty, her divinest death.

Arise, my spirits! wake, my slumbering spells!

Dawn on the dreamland of these alien dells!"

As the last words died away, p.r.o.nounced alike with the rest in accents so peculiar, yet so pure, so soft, yet so unshaken,--he swept the stem of lilies around his brow. The frosted flower flashed shudderingly against the lamplight, and with its motion without a pause opened the overture, as by those words themselves invoked and magically won from the abyss of sylvan silence. Three long, longing sighs from the unseen wind instruments, in withering notes, prepared the brain for the rush of fairy melody that was as the subtlest essences of thought and fragrance enfranchised. The elfin progression, _prestissimo_, of the subject, was scarcely realized as the full suggestion dawned of the leafy s.h.i.+vering it portrayed. The violins, their splendors concentrated like the rainbows of the dewdrops, seemed but the veiling voices for that ideal strain to filter through; and yet, when the horns spoke out, a blaze of golden notes, one felt the deeper glory of the strings to be more than ever quenchless as they returned to that ever-pulsing flow. Acc.u.mulating in orchestral richness, as if flower after flower of music were unsheathing to the sun, no words, no expression self-agonized to caricature, can describe that fairy overture. I am only reverting to the feeling, the pa.s.sion it suggested; not to its existent art and actual interpretation.

Its dissolution not immediate, but at its fullest stream subsiding, ebbing, seemed, instead of breaking up and scattering the ideal impression received, to retain it and expand it in itself through another transition of ecstasy into a musical state beyond. During the ethereal modulations, by a sudden illumination of the stage, the scenery behind uncurtained all along, started into light. Still beneath the leafy cloud, by mystic management, the hidden band reposed; but before the audience a sylvan dream had spread. The time was sunset, and upon those hills I spoke of it seemed to blush and burn, still leaving the foreground distinct in a sort of pearly shadow. That foreground was masked in verdure, itself precipitous with descending sides clothed thick with shrubs that lifted their red bells clear to the crimson beams behind, and shelving into a bed of enormous leaves of black-green growth such as one sometimes comes upon in the very core of the forest. Beneath those leaves we nestled, Maria and I.

I can only speak of what I felt and others saw; not of that which any of us heard. For simultaneously with the blissful modulation into the keynote of the primeval strain, we began our part side by side unseen.

It was a duet for t.i.tania and Oberon, the alto being mine, the mezzo-soprano hers; and it was to be treated with the most distant softness. The excitement had overpa.s.sed its crisis with me, and no calm could have been more trance-like than that of both our voices, so far fulfilling his aspiration, which conceived for that effect all the pa.s.sionless serenity of a nature devoid of pain,--the prerogative of a fairy life alone.

"Ariel, we hear thee!

Slumbering, dreaming, near thee, Bursting from control As from death the soul, From the bud the flower, From the will the power; Risen, by the spell Thou alone canst quell, Hear we, Ariel, Ariel, we feel thee!

Music, to reveal thee, Drowns, as dawn the night, Us in thy delight.

We, immortal, own Thee supreme alone.

Strongest, in the spell Thou canst raise or quell, Feel we, Ariel!"

And Maria shook the leaves above her spreading, and waving aside the broad-green fans, stood out to the audience as a freshly blossomed idea from the shadows of a poet's dream. For here had music and poetry met together, here even as righteousness and peace had embraced, heaven-sent and spiritual; nor was there aught of earth in that fancy hour. I was nearest her, and supported her with my arm; her floating scarf, transparent, spangled, fell upon my own rose-hued mantle, which blushed through its lucid mist. Her hair, trembling with water-like gems, clothed her to the very knees; her cheek was white as her streaming robe, but her eye was as a midnight moon, bright yet lambent; and while she sang she looked at Anastase, as he stood a little above the others in the band, and appeared to have eyes for his violin alone. The next movement was a fairy march _pianissimo_,--a rustling, gathering accompaniment that m.u.f.fled a measure delicate as precise: it was as for the marshalling of troops of fairies, who by the s.h.i.+fting of the scenery appeared cl.u.s.tering to the stems of the red foxgloves that bent not beneath that fragile weight. And as the march waned ravis.h.i.+ngly, another verse arose for the duet we sang,--

"Ariel, behold us!

In thy strains enfold us, Minding but that we Ministrant may be.

On thy freak or sport Waits our fairy court: Mortals cannot tell How to cross thy spell, Nor we, Ariel!"

And Ariel lifted the lily wand, and silence awaited his reply. Still, while he spoke in that recitative so singularly contrasting with the voice of any song, might be heard weird s.n.a.t.c.hes from the veiled orchestra, as if music fainted from delight of him,--strange sounds, indeed, now sigh, now sob, that broke against his unfaltering accents, yet disturbed them not.

"Friends, royal darlings of mine ancient age, Welcome, right welcome, in the realm of sound To majesty and honor! Sooth to say Long time I languished for your presences That nothing save our Music seeks and finds; Though Poesy seeks to find and has not met, As we, through might of Music, face to face.

Your potence is my boon; I bid it work With mine own spells, in soul-like, eager flame To flash about my spirit and make day, Till, as in times of old, we s.h.i.+ne as one.

Far in those undulating vales apart A castle lifts its glittering ghostly hue, In whose calm walls, that years spare tenderly, Dwelleth the rival soul of Faerie And Music,--one whose very name is spell Immutable,--for that fixed name is Love.

And Love holds yonder his best festal rite This evening, when the moontime draweth nigh.

Twain souls love there, and meet; but not as cleft By late long parting--they have met and loved Years upon years, since youth; none ever loved So long as they unparted, unappalled, Save my t.i.tania and her Oberon!

For twenty-five their one-like summers count Since the dim rapture of the bridal dream.

Such among mortals jubilant they call The Silver Wedding,--rare and purer crown Than the wreathed myrtle of the marriage morn.

All that is rare and pure is of our own; Our elements mix gladly into joy: But chiefly Love is our own atmosphere, And chiefly those who love our pensioners Remain,--for where unsullied Love remains, Doth Faerie consecrate its festal strains."

The curtain fell on the first act as Ariel finished speaking. Again rising, the scene indeed had changed. The gray castle immediately fronted the audience, its b.u.t.tresses glistening in the perfect moonlight, the full languid orb itself divided by the dark edge of a tower. The many windows shone ruby with the gleam inside that seemed ready to pour through the stonework; and on the ground-floor especially, the radiance was as if sun-lamps blazed within. And midst the blaze, scarcely softened by the outer silver s.h.i.+ne, rose the exciting, exhilarating burden of an exquisite dance-measure, brilliant, almost delirious; albeit distance-clouded, as it issued from another band behind the stage. The long, straight alleys of moon-bathed lindens to which the waltz-whirlwind floated, parted on either hand and left a smooth expanse of lawn, now white, heaving like a moon-kissed sea; and as soon as the measure had pa.s.sed into its glad refrain, two little Loves struck from the lime avenues to the lawn, directly before the ball-room. I call them Loves; but they were anything but Cupids, for they were mystical little creatures enough, and in the prevailing moonlight showed like bright birds of blus.h.i.+ng plumage as they each carried a roseate torch of tinted flame that made their small bodies look much like flame themselves. They were no others than Josephine and my own Starwood; but it would have been impossible to recognize them unprepared. As they stood they paused an instant, and then flung the torches high into the air against the side of the castle; and as the rose-flame kissed the moonbeams upon the walls, it was extinguished, but the whole building burst into an illumination entirely of silver lamps,--calm, not coruscant; translucent, streaming; itself like concentrated moons.h.i.+ne, or the light of the very lilies. And with the light that drank up into itself the rose-radiance, our Ariel with the silvered hedge, the lilies, the s.h.i.+ne, the s.h.i.+mmer, swelled upon the vision in softest swiftness; and Ariel, leaning upon his nest, seemed listening to the dance symphonies afar.

Soon a great shout arose,--no elfin call, but a cry of wonder-stricken earthlings. And then the hall front opened,--a ma.s.sy portal that rolled back; and out of the ball-room, amidst the diminis.h.i.+ng dance-song, poured the dancers upon the lawn in ranks, their fluttering airy dresses pa.s.sing into the silver light like clouds. And as they streamed forth, there broke a delicate peal of laughter in response to the wondering shout, accompanied by the top-notes of the violins, vividly _piano_; then Ariel arose, and himself addressed the mult.i.tude. Sharp, sweet notes in unison, intermitted this time with his words, but ceased when he turned to his fairy troop and incited them to do homage to the name of love. Nor do I even essay to describe our feats subsequently, which might in their relation tend to deteriorate from the conviction that the ill.u.s.trated music was all in all, not their companion, but their element and creator.

Except that in the last scene, after exhibiting every kind of charm that can co-exist with scenic transition, the portraits of the father and mother in whose honor the fairydom had united, appeared framed in an archway of lilies with their leaves of silver, painted with such skill that the imagery almost issued from the canvas; and while t.i.tania and Oberon supported the l.u.s.trous framework on either hand,--themselves all s.h.i.+vering with the silver radiance,--on either hand, to form a vista from which the gazers caught the picture, rose trees of giant harebells, all silver,--white as if veined with moons.h.i.+ne; and the attendant fairies, springing winged from their roots, shook them until the tremulous silver shudder was, as it were, itself a sound,--for as they quivered, or seemed to quiver, did the final chorus in praise of wedded love rise chime upon chime from the fairy voices and the rapt Elysian orchestra.

"All that's bright must fade." This pa.s.sionate proverb is trite and travestied enough, but neither in its interpretation of necessity irrelevant or grotesque. I do not envy those who would strangle melancholy as it is born into the soul; and again to quote, though from a source far higher and less investigated, "There are woes ill bartered for the garishness of joy." Such troubles we may not christen in the name of sorrow, for sorrow concerns our personality; and in these we agonize for others, not a thought of self intrudes,--we only feel and know that we can do nothing, and are silent.

At this distance of time, with the mists of boyish inexperience upon my memory of myself, I can only advert to the issues of that evening as they appeared. As they are, they can only be read where all things tell, where nothing that has happened shall be in vain, where mystery is eternal light. How strangely I recall the smothered sound, the long-repressed shout of rapture, that soared and pierced through the fallen and folded curtain,--the eminent oblivion of everything but him for whom it was uttered, or rather kept back. For the music bewitched them still, and they could no more realize their position in front, even among the garlanded tiers, than we behind, stumbling into regions of lampless chaos.

I felt I must faint if I could not retreat, and as instinctively I had sought for Maria's hand. I found it, and it saved me; for though I could not hear her speak, I knew she was leading me away. I had closed my eyes, and when I opened them we were together again in the little dressing-room that had been devoted to us alone, and in which we had robed and waited.

"Oh, Carlino!" said Maria, "I hope no one is coming, for I feel I must cry."

"Do not, pray!" I cried, for her paleness frightened me; "but let me help you to undress. I can do that, though I could not dress you, as the Chevalier seemed to think."

For the Chevalier had slyly entered beforehand and had himself invested her with the glittering costume. I was still in a dream of those elfin hands as they had sleeked the plumes and soothed the spangled undulations of the scarf, and I could not bear her to be denuded of them, they had become so natural now. I had stripped off my own roseate mantle and all the rest in a moment, and had my own coat on before she had moved from the chair into which she had flung herself, or I had considered what was to be done next. I was running my fingers through my hair, somewhat distraught in fancy, when some one knocked at the door. I went to it, and beheld, as I expected, our Ariel,--_unarielized_ yet, except that he had doffed his wings.

"Is she tired?" he whispered softly; "is she very tired?" And without even looking at me, he pa.s.sed in and stood before her.

"Thank you for all your goodness!" said he, in the tenderest of all his voices, no longer cold, but as if fanned by the same fire that had scorched his delicate cheek to a hectic like the rose fresh open to the sun.

"And you, sir, oh you!" Maria exclaimed with enthusiasm, lifting her eyes from all that cloud of hair, as twin sunbeams from the dark of night. "Oh, your music! your music! it is of all that is the most divine, and nothing ever has been or shall be to excel it. It breaks the heart with beauty; it is for the soul that seeks and comprehends it, all in all. And will you not, as you even promised, reform the drama?"

"If it yet remains to me, after all is known; that I cannot yet discern. Infant germ of all my art's dread children, inspiration demands thee only!" He checked himself; but as naturally as if no deep, insufferable sentiment had imbued his words, his caressing calm returned. "I did not come for a compliment, I came to help you; also to bring you some pretty ice, made in a mould like a little bird in a little nest. But I will not give it you now, because you are too warm." He was smiling now, as he glanced downwards at the crystal plate he held.

"I am not warm," she answered, very indifferently, still with grateful intention, "and I should like some ice better than anything, if you are so kind as to give it me."

"Let me feed you, then," was his sweet reply; and she made no resistance. And he fed her, spoonful by spoonful, presenting her with morsels so fairy that I felt he prolonged the opportunity vaguely, and almost wondered why. Before it was over, another knock came,--very impatient for so cool a hand, as it was that of Anastase himself.

However, there was no exhilaration of manner on his part; one would not have thought he had just been playing the violin.

"They are all inquiring for you, sir," he said, very respectfully, to Seraphael; "your name is calling through and through the theatre."

"I daresay," replied the Chevalier lightly, daringly; but he made no show of moving, though Maria had finished the ice-bird and last straw of the nest. Then Anastase approached. "That weight of hair will tire you; let me fasten it up for you, Maria, and then we need detain no one, for Carl, I see, is ready." A change came upon the Chevalier; as if ice had pa.s.sed upon his cheek, he paled, he turned proud to the very topmost steep of his shadeless brow, he laughed coldly but airily. "Oh, if that is it, and you want to get rid of us, Carl and I will go. Come, Carlomein, for we are both of us in the way; but I will say it is the first time any one ever dared to interfere between the queen and her chosen consort."

"It would be impossible," said Anastase, with still politeness, "that you should be in the way,--that is our case, indeed; but Maria, as _Maria_, would certainly not detain you."

"Maria, as Maria, would have said you are too good, sir, to notice the least of your servants,--too good to have come and stayed; but,"

she added, looking at Anastase with her most enchanting sweetness, a smile like love itself, "_he_ will always have it that I am content he should do everything for me." I was astonished, for nothing, except the seasonable excitement, could have drawn forth such demonstration from her before the Chevalier. He was not looking at her, he looked at me vividly; I could not bear his eyes simultaneously with Maria's words, he had so allured my own, though I longed to gaze away.

"Come!" he continued, holding his hand to me, "come, Carlomein." I took his hand. He grasped me as if those elfin fingers were charged with lightning. I shook and trembled, even outwardly, but he drew me on with that convulsive pressure never heeding, and holding his head so high that the curls fell backwards from the forehead. We pa.s.sed to the stage. He led me behind the stage--deserted, dim--to another door behind that, opened by waving drapery, to the garden-land. He led me in the air, round the outside of the temporary theatre, to the main front of the house, to the entrance through the hall, swiftly, silently, up the stairs into the corridor, and so to a chamber I had never known nor entered. I saw nothing that was in the room, and generally I see everything. I believe there were books; I felt there was an organ, and I heard it a long time afterwards. But I was only conscious this night that then I was with him,--shut up and closed together with his awful presence, in the travail of presentiment.

He had placed me on a seat, and he sat by me, still holding my hand; but his own was now relaxed and soft, the fingers cold, as if benumbed.

"Carlomein," he said, "I have always loved you, as you know; but I little thought it would be for this."

"How, sir? Why? I am frightened; for you look so strange and speak so strangely, and I feel as if I were going to die."

"I wish we both were! But do not be frightened. Ah! that is only excitement, my darling. You will let me call you so to-night?"

"Let you, dear, dearest sir! You have always been my darling. But I am too weak and young to be of any use to you; and that is why I wish to die."