Charles Auchester Volume II Part 33

Miss Lawrence shook her head, a lull came over the animation of her manner; she hastened to arrange her scenery, now unique. She had placed before the picture a velvet screen, deep emerald and gra.s.s-like in its shade; this veil stood out alone, for she had cleared away all signs of picture, sketch, or other frame besides. Nothing was in the room but the picture on its lofty easel, and the loftier velvet shade.

I appreciated to the full the artist tact of the veil itself, and said so.

"I think," was her reply, "it will be more likely to please him if I keep him waiting a little bit, and his curiosity is touched a moment."

And then we went downstairs. Davy, who always had occupation on hand, and would not have been dest.i.tute of duty on the sh.o.r.e of a desert island, was absent in the city; Millicent, who had taken her work to a window, was st.i.tching the most delicate wristband in Europe, inside the heavy satin curtain, as comfortably as in her tiny home. Miss Lawrence went and stood by her, entertained her enchantingly, eternally reminding her of her bliss by Mrs. Davying till I could but laugh; but still my honored hostess was very impetuously excited, for her eyes sparkled as most eyes only light by candle-s.h.i.+ne or the setting sun. She twisted the ta.s.sel of the blind, too, till I thought the silk cord would have snapped; but Millicent only looked up gratefully at her, without the slightest sign of astonishment or mystification.

"Charles!" exclaimed my sister at length, when Miss Lawrence, fairly exhausted with talking, was gathering up her gown into folds and extempore plaits plaits--"Charles! you will be ready at two o'clock, and we shall get home to tea."

I could not be angry with her for thinking of her baby, her little house, her heaven of home; but there was a going back to winter for me in the idea of going away. The music seemed dead, not slumbering, that I had heard the day before. But is this strange? For there is a slumber we call death. About half-past ten a footman fetched Miss Lawrence. She touched my arm, apologizing to Millicent, though not explaining, and we left the room together. She sent me onwards to the studio, and went downstairs alone. I soon heard them coming up,--indeed, I expected them directly; for Seraphael never waited for anything, and never lost a moment. They were talking, and when he entered he did not at first perceive me. His face was exquisite. A charm softened the Hebrew keenness, that was not awful, like the pa.s.sion music stirring the hectic, or spreading its white light. He was flushed, but more as a child that has been playing until it is weary; his eyes, dilated, were of softer kindness than the brain gives birth to,--his happy yet wayward smile, as if he rejoiced because self-willing to rejoice. His clear gaze, his eager footstep, reminded me of other days when he trembled on the verge of manhood; it was, indeed, as a man that he shone before me that morning, and had never shone before. They stood now before the screen, and I was astonished at the utter self-possession of the paintress; she only watched his face, and seemed to await his wishes.

"That screen is very beautiful velvet, and very beautifully made. Am I never to look at anything else? Is nothing hidden behind it? I have been very good, Miss Lawrence, and I waited very patiently; I do not think I can wait any longer. May I pull it away?"

"Sir, most certainly. It is for you to do so at your pleasure. I am not afraid either, though you will think me not over-modest."

Seraphael touched the screen,--it was ma.s.sive, and resisted his little hand; he became impatient. Miss Lawrence only laughed, but I rushed out of my corner to help him. Before he looked at the picture he gave me that little hand and a smile of his very own.

"Look, dearest sir!" I cried, "pray look now!"

And indeed he looked; and indeed, I shall not forget it. It was so strange to turn from the living lineaments--the eye of the sun and starlight, the brilliant paleness, the changeful glow, the look of intense and concentrated vitality upon temple and lip and skin--to the still, immortal visage, the aspect of glory beyond the grave, the l.u.s.tre unearthly, but not of death, that struck from those breathless lips, those snow-sealed eyes; and, above all, to see that the light seemed not to descend from the crown upon the forehead, but to aspire from the forehead to the crown,--so the rays were mixed and fused into the idea of that eternity in which there shall be a new earth besides another heaven! That transcending picture, how would it affect him? I little knew; for as he stood and gazed, he grew more like it.

The smile faded, the deep melancholy I had seldom seen, and never without a shudder, swept back; as the sun goes into a cloud his face a.s.sumed a darklier paleness, he appeared to suffer, but did not speak.

In some minutes still, he started, turned to Miss Lawrence, and sighing gently, as gently said,--

"I wish I were more like it! I wish I were as that is! But we may not dream dreams, though we may paint pictures. I should like to deserve your idea, but I do not at present. Happy for us all who build upon the future as you have done in that painting,--I mean entirely as to the perfection of the work."

"Have I your permission to keep it, sir?"

"What else, madam, would you do with it?"

"Oh! if you had not approved, I should have slashed it into pieces with a carving-knife or my father's razor. I shall keep it, with your permission; it will be very valuable and precious, and I have to thank you for the inestimable privilege of possessing it."

This cool treatment of Miss Lawrence's delighted me,--it was the only one to restore our Chevalier. He, indeed, returned unto his rest, for he left the house that moment. Nor could I have desired him to remain,--there was only one presence in which I cared to imagine him....

CHAPTER XVII

The day had come and gone when Clara, for the first time, dressed in white. The sun-grain of August had kissed the corn, the golden-drooping sheaves waved through the land fresh cut, and the latest roses mixed pale amidst the lilies beneath the bounteous harvest-moon when she left us,--but not alone. It was like dying twice over to part with them that once, and therefore it will not be believed how soon I could recover the farewell and feed upon Clara's letters, which never failed me once a month. For a year they more sustained me than anything else could have done; for they told of a life secluded as any who loved _him_ could desire for him, and not more free from pain than care. Of herself she never spoke, except to breathe sweet wishes for her friends; but her whole soul seemed bent upon his existence, and her descriptions were almost a diary. I could not be astonished at her influence, for it had governed my best days; but that she should be able to secure such a boon to us as a year of unmitigated repose for him, was precisely what I had not antic.i.p.ated, nor dared to expect. Meanwhile, and during that year, our work was harder than ever. Davy and I were quite unconscious of progressing, yet were perfectly happy, and as ever determined,--indeed, nothing like a slight contumacy on the part of the pupils kept Davy up to the mark. From Starwood, who had returned to Germany, I also received accounts; but he was no letter-writer, except when there was anything very particular to say. He was still a student, and still under Seraphael's roof. Strange and Arabian dreams were those I had of that house in the heart of a country so far away, for the Chevalier had moved nearer the Rhine, and nothing in his idiosyncrasy so betokened the Oriental tincture of his blood as his restless fondness for making many homes while he was actually at home in none.

We lived very happily, as I said. It was, perhaps, not extraordinary that to my violin I grew more infinitely attached, was one with it, and could scarcely divide myself from it. I lived at home still,--that is, I slept at home, and usually ate there; but Davy's house was also home,--it had grown dearer to me than ever, and was now fairer. The summer after our friends had left us was brilliant as the last, and now the sh.e.l.l was almost hidden by the clinging of the loveliest creepers; the dahlias in the garden had given place to standard rose-trees, and though Carlotta could not reach them, she had learned to say, "Rose!" and to put up her pretty hand for me to pluck her one.

With a flower she would sit and play an entire morning, and we never had any trouble with her. Millicent worked and studied as conveniently as though she had never been born; for it was Davy's supreme wish to educate his daughter at home, and her mamma had very elaborate ideas of self-culture in antic.i.p.ation. During that autumn we found ourselves making some slight way. Davy took it into his head to give utterance, for the first time, to a public concert; and I will not say I was myself averse. We had a great deal of conversation and a great many sessions on the subject, not exactly able to settle whether we would undertake a selection or some entire work. Our people were rather revived out of utter darkness concerning music; but its light was little diffused, and seemed condensed in our cla.s.s-room as a focus.

The band and chorus, of course, made great demonstrations in favor of the "Messiah;" and my mother, who had taken an extraordinary interest in the affair, said, innocently enough,--

"Then why, my dears, not represent the 'Messiah'? It will be at Christmas time, and very suitable."

This was not the point, for Davy had reminded me of the fact that the festival for the approaching year at the centre of the town would open with that work,--unless, indeed, the committee departed from their precedent on all former occasions. My idea would have been a performance all Bach, Beethoven, and Seraphael, with Handel's Ode for a commencement, on the 22d of November; but Davy shook his head at me,--"That would be for Germany, not for England;" and I obliged myself to believe him. At length we accepted the "Messiah,"--to the great delight of the chorus and band.

It was a pressing time all through that autumn. I do not suppose I ever thought of anything but fiddles, fiddles, fiddles, from morning till night. They edged my dreams with music, and sometimes with that which was very much the reverse of music; for we had our difficulties.

Prejudice is best destroyed by pa.s.sion, which as yet we had not kindled. Davy met with little support, and no sympathy, except from his own,--this mattered little either, so long as his own were concerned; but now, in prospect of our ill.u.s.tration, it was necessary to secure certain instrumental a.s.sistance.

I undertook to do this. Besides my own strings, we had bra.s.s and wind, but not sufficient. I shall not forget the difficulty of thawing the players I visited--I will not call them artists--into anything like genial partic.i.p.ation. Their engagement was not sufficiently formal, nor did they like me,--I suppose they owed a grudge against my youth; for youth is unpardonable and inadmissible, except in the case of genius. Neither did they thaw, any more than the weather, on Christmas Eve,--it was on Christmas Eve we were to perform. It was an eve of ice, not snow,--the blue sky silvery, the earth bound fast in sleep.

We had hired a ball-room at the chief hotel,--an elegant and rather rare room; it was warmed by three wide fire-places; and the crimson curtains closed, with the chairs instead of benches, gave a social and unusual charm to the whole proceeding.

If our audience entered aghast, looked frozen, rolled in furs and contempts, they could not help smiling upon the fires, the roseate glow; though they also could not help being disconcerted to find themselves treated all alike, for Davy would have no roseate seats, nor any exclusiveness on this occasion. As he intended, besides, to restore the work exactly as it was first written, we expected a little cold and a few black looks. No modern listeners can receive an oratorio as orthodox without an organ of t.i.tan-build in the very middle that takes care to sound.

The overture, beautifully played, was taken down with chill politeness; but my own party were so pleased with themselves, and made such ecstatic motions with their features that it was quite enough for me. The first chorus was lightly, delicately shown up, not extinguished by the orchestra--and, indeed, chorus after chorus found no more favor; still, no one could help feeling the perfect training here. I knew as well as Davy envy or pride alone kept back the free confession. The exquisite shading in the chorus, the public's darling, "Unto us a child is born," and the grandeur of the final effect, subdued them a little. They cheered, and Davy gave me a glance over his shoulder which I understood to say, "One must come in for certain disadvantages if one is well received;" for Davy abhorred a noise as much as I did. When we waited between the parts, some one fetched Davy away in an immense hurry; he did not return immediately, and I grew alarmed. I peeped into the concert-room: there sat Millicent most composedly, and Lydia with her lord, and Clo in her dove-colored silk and spectacles, and my mother in her black satin and white-kid gloves, looking crowned with happiness; it was evident that nothing was the matter at home. But having a few minutes, I went to speak to them; and then my mother, in her surmises about Davy, whom she loved as her own son--and Clo, whose principles were flattered, not shocked, in her approval--took up so much time that I was at last obliged to fly to my little band, who were a.s.sembled again, and tuning by fits. Still, Davy was not there. But presently, and just at the moment when it was necessary to begin, he appeared, so looking that I was sure either something very dread or very joyous had befallen him.

His eye gazed brightly out to the whole room as he faced instead of turning from it. He could not help smiling, and his voice quivered as he spoke. He said in those fond accents,--

"I have the pleasure to announce that the Chevalier Seraphael, having just arrived from Germany on a visit to myself, has consented to conduct the second part himself."

I had been sure the Chevalier was in him before he spoke, but I little thought how it would come about. Immediately he finished speaking, the curtain above us divided, and that heavenly inspired one stood before us.

There was that in his apparition which stirred the slowest and burned upon the coldest pulses. All rose and shouted with an enthusiasm, when elicited from English hearts perhaps more real and touching than any other; a quickening change, like sudden summer, swept the room; the music became infinitely at home there; we all felt as if, watching over the dead, we had seen the dead alive again; the "old familiar strains" untired us, and none either wearied among the listeners. I could not, in the trances of my own playing, forbear to wors.h.i.+p the gentle knowledge that had led the hierarch to that humble shrine, to consecrate and enn.o.ble it forever. But the event told even sooner than I expected; for lo! at the end, when the Chevalier turned his kingly head and bowed to the reiterated applaudings, and had pa.s.sed out, those plaudits continued, and would not cease till Davy was recalled himself; the pent-up reverence, restored to its proper channel, eddied in streams around him.

What an evening we spent, or rather what a night we made that night!--in that little parlor of Davy's the little green-house thrown open, and lighted by Millicent with Carlotta's Christmas-candles; the supper, where there was hardly room for us all at the table, and hardly room upon the table for all the good things my mother sent for from her pantry and larder and store-closet; the decoration of the house with green wreaths and holly-bunches, the swept and garnished air of the entire tiny premises standing us in such good stead to welcome the Christmas visitant with Christmas festivity; the punch Davy mixed in Carlotta's christening-bowl, my mother's present, she perfectly radiant, and staring with satisfaction in the arm-chair, where Seraphael himself had placed her as we closed around the fire; the Christmas music never wanting, for in the midst of our joyous talk a sudden celestial serenade, a deep-voiced carol, burst from beyond the garden, and looking out there, we beheld, through rimed and frost-glazed windows, a cl.u.s.tered throng, whose voices were not uncultured,--the warmest-hearted members of Davy's own. They were still singing when Carlotta awoke and cried, had to be brought down stairs, and was hushed, listening, in Seraphael's arms.

So, after all, we did not go to bed that night, for it was quite two o'clock when I escorted my mother and sisters home, having left the little room I usually occupied when I slept at my brother's house for Seraphael, whom no one would suffer to sleep at the hotel. I might remind myself of the next day, too, and I surely may,--of our all going to church together after a night of snow, over the sheeted white beneath a cloudless heaven; of our all sitting together in that large pew of ours, and the excitement prevailing among the congregation afterwards as they a.s.sured themselves of our guest; of the chimes swelling high from the tower as we returned, and my walk alone with Seraphael to show him where Clara's house had stood. When we were, indeed, alone together, I asked more especially after her, and listened to his tender voice when it told of her that she was not then strong enough to cross the sea, but that though he could only leave her for a week, it was her latest request that he would come to see us all himself, nor return without having done so. And then he spoke of the affairs that had brought him over,--an entreaty from the committee of our own town festival that he would direct that of the coming year, and compose exclusively for it.

It made me very indignant at first that they should have kept Davy so entirely in the dark as to their intentions, because he had been forewarned on all previous occasions, before his influence was so strong in his own circle. But when I expressed a little my indignation, Seraphael only laughed, and said,--

"It was what every one must expect who was such a purist, unless he would also condescend to amuse the people at times and seasons, or unless he were not _poor_."

My obligation to accede here made me yet more indignant, until I remembered how Seraphael had introduced himself, and so taken Davy by the hand that it would not be likely for him ever again to be thrust back into obscurity afterwards, were it only because Seraphael himself was _rich_.

"And will you come to us, sir?" I asked, scarcely able to frame a wish upon the subject.

"If I live, Carlomein. And I do hope to live--till then, at least. I have also been rather idle lately, and must work. Indeed, I have brought nothing with me, except a psalm or two for your brother. We may write music to psalms, I suppose, Carlomein?"

"You may, sir, and, indeed, anybody may; for whatever is worthless will be forgotten, and whatever is worthy will live forever."

"It is not that anything we offer can be worthy of the feet at which we lay it, it is not that anything is sweet or sufficient for our love's expression, but every little word of love and smile of love is precious to us, and must be so to Love itself, I think. Only in music now does G.o.d reveal himself as in the days of old; and I do believe, Carlomein, that he, dwelling not in temples made with hands, yet dwelleth there. I suppose it may be that as we make the music that issues from the orchestra, or from the organ where all musics mingle, so he makes the love that religion burns to utter, but that music, for the musical, alone makes manifest. All wors.h.i.+p is sacred, but that is unutterably holy. How holy should the heart of the musician be!"

"Dearest sir, forgive me! If you had not spoken so, I could not have presumed to ask you. But do you, therefore, object to write for the stage, in its present promiscuous position among the arts?"

"Carlomein, the drama is my greatest delight. The dramatic genius I would ever accept as a guide and standard; but from youth upwards, I have ever abstained from writing for the stage. It does not suit me; it is in some respects beyond me,--that is, as it ought to exist. But my days are numbered,--I have lately known it; and to give forth opera after opera would reduce my short span to a mere holiday task. I am too happy, Carlomein, and to you I will say it,--too blest in that I feel I can best express what others left to me because expression failed them."

"Oh, dearest sir, it is so, and not alone in music, but in everything you touch or tell us! Yet you are ours for years and years. I feel it,--there is so much to be done, and you only can do it; so much to learn yet of what you only can teach us. You cannot, you will not, and are not going to leave us! I know it; I could not be so if I did not know and feel it. You are looking better than when even first I saw you--all those years ago."

"I am well, Carlomein,--I have never been ill. I do not know sickness, though I have known sorrow,--thank G.o.d for that inexpressible mystery in which his light is hidden! But, Carlomein, you speak as if it were of all things the saddest thing to die! I know not that sensation; I believe it to be mere sensation. Neither is this earth a wilderness,--no weariness! There is not an air of spring that does not make me long for death; the burdening gladness is too much for life, and summer and winter call me. Eternity without years is ever present with me, and the poor music they love so well, they love because it comes to me from beyond the grave."

I could not hear him speak so; it killed me to all but a ravishment of fear. I could not help saying, though I fear it was out of place,--

"There is one you must not leave; she cannot live without you."

"Carlomein, any one can live who is to live, and whoever is decreed must die. There is no death for me,--I do not call it so; nor do I believe that death could touch me. I mean I should not know it, for I could not bear it; and I fear it not, for nothing we cannot bear is given us to endure."

"Sir, if I did not revere too much every word you utter, I should say that a morbid presentiment clouds your enthusiasm, and that you know not what you say."