Vashti Part 13

"Quite ready, miss. Commence."

For three-quarters of an hour he listened to her exercises, which he accompanied with his violin, and afterwards directed her to sing an air from a collection of songs on the table. As her deep, rich contralto notes swelled round and full, he shut his eyes and nodded his head as if in an ecstacy; and, when she concluded, he rapped his violin heavily with the bow, and exclaimed,--

"Some day when you sing that at _Della Scala_, remember the poor devil who taught it to you in a hovel. Soaked as those old walls are with music from the most famous lips the world ever applauded, they hold no echoes sweeter than that last trill. After all, there is no pa.s.sion--no pathos--comparable to a perfect contralto crescendo. It is wonderful how you Americans squander voices that would rouse all Europe into a _furore_."

"I am afraid your eager desire for pupils biases your judgment, and invests my voice with fict.i.tious worth," answered Salome, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Ha! you mean that I flatter, in order to keep you. Not so, miss. If St. Cecilia herself asked tuition without good pay, I should shut the door in her face; but, much as I need money, I would not risk my reputation by praising what was poor. If one of my children--that miserable little Beatrice, yonder--only had your voice, do you think I would copy music, or teach beginners, or live in this cursed hole?

You have a fortune shut up in your throat, and some day, when you are celebrated, at least do me the justice to tell the world who first found the treasure; and, out of your wealth, spare me a decent tombstone in the Campo Santo of--of--"

He laughed bitterly, and, seizing his violin, filled the room with mournful _miserere_ strains.

"How long a course of training do you think will be necessary before the inequalities in my voice can be corrected and my vocalization perfected?"

"You are very young, miss, and it would not do to strain your voice, which is well-nigh perfect in itself; but, of course, your execution is defective,--just as a young nightingale cannot warble all its strains before it is full-feathered. If you study faithfully, in one year, or certainly one and a half, you will be ready for your engagement at Della Scala. Hist! see if you can follow me?"

He played a subtle, chromatic pa.s.sage, ending in a trill, and the orphan echoed it with such accuracy and sweetness that the teacher threw down his bow, and, while tears stood in his glittering eyes, he put his brown hand on the girl's head, and said, earnestly,--

"There ought to be feathers here instead of hair, for no nightingale, nestled in the olive groves of Italy, ever warbled more easily and naturally. Don't go out to the world as Miss Owen,--make it call you _Rosignuolo_. Take the next page in the instruction-book for a new lesson, and practise the old scales over before you touch the new,--they are like steps in a ladder, and save jumps and jars. G.o.d made your voice wonderful, and, if you are only careful not to undo his work, it will develop itself every year in fresh power and depth.

Ha! if my poor squeaking Beatrice only had it! But there is no more music stored in her throat and chest than in a regiment of rats. Good day, miss. Your lesson is ended, and I go to buy some wood for my miserable s.h.i.+verers."

He seized his hat and walking-stick and quitted the house, leaving his pupil to gather up her music and conjecture, meanwhile, whether the wood-yard or a neighboring bar-room was his real destination.

His dissipated habits had greatly impaired her faith in the accuracy of his critical ac.u.men touching professional matters, and, as she rolled up the sheet of paper in her hands, Salome approached the feeble occupant of the rocking-chair, and said, rather abruptly,--

"Madam Barilli, you ought to know when your husband speaks earnestly and when he is merely indulging in idle flattery, and I wish to learn his real opinion of my voice. Will you tell me the truth?"

"Yes, miss, I will. I am no musician, and never was in Europe, where he studied; but he talks constantly of your voice, and tells me there is a fortune in it. Only last night he swore that if he could control it, he would not take a hundred thousand dollars for the right; and then, poor fellow, he fell into one of his fierce ways and boxed my little Beatrice's ears, because, he said, all the teachers in the _Conservatoire_ could not put into her throat the trill that you were born with. Ah, no, he flatters no one now! He has forgotten how, since the day that I was coaxed to run away from my father's elegant home and marry the tenor singer of an opera troupe and the professor who taught me the gamut at boarding-school. Miss, you may believe him, for Sebastian Barilli means what he says."

"One hundred thousand dollars! I promise him and you that if one-half of that amount can be 'trilled' into my pocket you shall both be comfortable during the remainder of your days."

"Mine are numbered, and will end before your career begins; and, when you sing in Della Scala, I trust I shall be singing up yonder behind the stars, where cold and hunger and heart-ache and cruel words cannot follow me. But, miss, when I am gone, and Sebastian is over at the corner trying to drown his troubles, and my four helpless little ones are left here unprotected, for G.o.d's sake look in upon them now and then, and don't let them cry for bread. My own family long ago cast me off, and here I am a stranger; but you, who have felt the pangs of orphanage, will not stand by and see my darlings starve! Oh, miss, the poor who cannot pity the poor must be hard-hearted indeed!"

The suffering woman pressed her moaning babe closer to her bosom, and, taking Salome's hand between her thin, hot fingers, bowed her tear-stained face upon it.

Grim recollections of similar scenes enacted in the old house behind the mill crowded upon the mind of the miller's daughter, hardening instead of melting her heart; but, withdrawing her fingers, she said in as kind a tone as she could command,--

"The poor are sometimes too poor to aid each other, and pity is most unpalatable fare; but, if your husband has not grossly deceived himself and me with reference to my voice, I will promise that your children shall not suffer while I live. For their sake do not despond, but try to keep up your spirits, else your husband will be utterly ruined. Gloomy hearthstones make club-rooms and bar-rooms populous.

Good-by. When I come again, I will bring something to stimulate your appet.i.te, which seems to require coaxing."

She stooped and looked for a minute at the gaunt, white face of the half-famished infant pressed against the mother's feverish breast, and an irresistible impulse impelled her to stroke back the rings of black hair that cl.u.s.tered on its sunken temples; then, s.n.a.t.c.hing her music and bundle, she hurried out of the close, untidy room, and, once more upon the gra.s.sy common, drew a long, deep breath of pure fresh air.

Autumn, with orange dawns, and mellow, misty moons, when

"Sweet, calm days, in golden haze Melt down the amber sky,"

had died on bare brown stubble-fields and vine-veined hill-sides, purple with cl.u.s.tering grapes on leafless branches; and wintry days had come, with sleety morns and chill, crisp noons, and scarlet sunset banners flouting the silver stars in western skies, where the s.h.i.+vering, gasping old year had woven,--

"One strait gown of red Against the cold."

None of the earlier years of Salome's life seemed to her half so drearily long as the four monotonous months that followed Dr. Grey's departure; and, during the intervals between his brief letters to his sister, the orphan learned a deceptive quietude of manner, at variance with the tumultuous feelings that agitated her heart; for painful suspense which is borne with clenched hands and firmly-set teeth is not the more patient because sternly mute.

Which suffered least, Philoctetes howling on the sh.o.r.es of Lemnos, or the silent Trojan priest, writhing in a death-struggle with the serpent folds that crushed him before the altar of Neptune?

If any messages intended for Salome found their way across the ocean, they finally missed their destination, and reached the dead-letter office of Miss Jane's vast and inviolate pocket; and, while this apparent neglect piqued the girl's vanity, the blessed a.s.surance that the absent master was alive and well proved a sovereign balm for all the bleeding wounds of _amour propre_.

In order to defray the expense of her musical tuition, which was carried on in profound secrecy, it was necessary to redouble her exertions; and all the latent energy of her character developed itself in unflagging work, which she persistently prosecuted early and late, and in quiet defiance of Miss Jane's expostulations and predictions that she would permanently impair her sight.

Paramount to the desire of ama.s.sing wealth that would enable her to provide for Jessie and Stanley rose the hope that the cultivation of her voice would invest her with talismanic influence over the man who was singularly susceptible of the magic of music; and, jealously guarding the new-found gift, she spared no toil to render it perfect.

Fearful that her suddenly acquired fondness for singing might arouse suspicion and inquiry, she rarely practised at home unless Miss Jane were absent; and, having procured a tuning-fork, she retreated to the most secluded portion of the adjoining forest and rehea.r.s.ed her lessons to a mute audience of grazing cattle, sombre pines, nodding plumes of golden-rod, and s.h.i.+vering white asters, belated and overtaken by wintry blasts. Alone with nature, she warbled as unrestrainedly as the birds who listened to her quavering crescendos; and more than once she had become so absorbed in this forest practising, that twinkling stars peeped down at her through the fringy canopy of murmuring firs.

In fulfilment of a promise given to Stanley, with the hope of stimulating him to more earnest study, Salome one day took a piece of sewing and her music-book, and set off with her brother for the sea-sh.o.r.e, where he was sometimes allowed to amuse himself by catching crabs and shrimps. The route they were compelled to take was very circuitous, since strangers were now forbidden to stroll through the grounds attached to "Solitude," which was the nearest point where land and ocean met. Following a cattle-path that threaded the bare brown hills and wound through low marsh meadows, Salome at length climbed a cliff that overhung the narrow strip of beach running along the base of the promontory, and, while Stanley prepared his net, she applied herself vigorously to the completion of a cl.u.s.ter of lilies of the valley which she had begun to embroider the preceding night.

It was a mild, sunny afternoon, late in December, with only a few flakes of white curd-like cirri drifting slowly before the stiffening south wind that came singing a song of the tropics over the gently heaving waste of waters--

"Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers."

Two glimmering sails stood like phantoms on the horizon; and a silent colony of snowy gulls, perched in conclave on a bit of weed-wreathed drift floating landward, were the only living things in sight, save the childish figure on the yellow beach under the bleaching rocks, and the girlish one seated on the tallest cliff, where a storm-scarred juniper, bending inland, waved its scanty fringe in the fresh salt breeze.

No note of human strife entered here, nor hum of noisy business marts; and the solemn silence, so profound and holy, was broken only by the soft, mysterious murmur of the immemorial ocean, as its crystal fingers smote the harp of rosy sh.e.l.ls and golden sands.

Clasped in the crescent that curved a mile northward lay the house, and grove, and grounds of "Solitude," looking sombre in the distance, as the shadow of surrounding hills fell upon the dense foliage that overhung its quiet precincts, and toned down the garish red of the boat-house roof, which lent a brief dash of color to the peaceful picture. Beyond the last guarding promontory that seemed to have plunged through the shelving strand to bathe in blue brine and cut off all pa.s.sage along its base, a strong well-trained eye might follow the trend of the coast even to the dim outlines and thread-like masts, that told where the distant town hugged its narrow harbor; and, in the opposite direction, low, irregular sand hills and brown marshes crept southward, as if hunting the warmth that alone could mantle them with living verdure.

As the afternoon wore away, the sinking sun dipped suddenly behind a wooded eminence, which, losing the warm purples it had worn since noon, grew chill and blue as his rays departed; and, weary of her work, Salome put it aside and began to practise her music lesson, beating time with her slender fingers on the bare juniper-roots, from which wind and rain had driven the soil. Running her chromatic scales, and pausing at will to trill upon any minor note that wooed her vagrant fancy, she played with her flexible voice as dexterous violinists toy with the obedient strings they hold in harmonious bondage to their bows.

Finally she pushed the exercises away, and began a _fantasus_ from "Traviata," which she had heard Mr. Barilli play several times; and so absorbed was she in testing her capacity for vocal gymnastics that she failed to observe the moving figure dwarfed by distance and pacing the sands in front of "Solitude."

The rich, fresh tones which seemed occasionally to tremble with the excess of melody that burdened them played hide-and-seek among the hills, startling whole choruses of deep-throated echoes, and attending and retentive ocean, catching the strains on her beryl strings, bore them whither--and how far? To palm-plumed equatorial isles, where dying auricular nerves mistook them for seraphic utterances? To toiling mariners, tossed helplessly by fierce typhoons, who, pausing in their scramble for spars, listened to the weird melody that presaged woe and wreck? To the broken cas.e.m.e.nts of fishermen's huts, on distant sh.o.r.es, where anxious wives peered out in the blackening tempest, and shrank back appalled by sounds which sea-tradition averred were born in coral caves, mosaiced with blanching human skulls? What h.o.a.ry hierophant in the mysteries of cataphonics and diacoustics will undertake to track those trills across the blue bosom of the Atlantic or the purplish billows of the Indian Ocean?

The wind went down with the sun; silver-edged cirri lost their glitter, and swift was

... "The spread Of orange l.u.s.tre through these azure spheres Where little clouds lie still like flocks of sheep, Or vessels sailing in G.o.d's other deep."

In that wondrous and magical after-glow which tenderly hovers over the darkening face of the dying day, like the strange, spectral smile that only sheds its cold, supernatural light on lips twelve hours dead, Salome's fair face and graceful _pose_ was as softly defined against the western sky as some nimbussed saint or madonna on the golden background of old Byzantine pictures. Her small straw hat, wreathed with scarlet poppies, lay at her feet; and around her shoulders she had closely folded a bright plaid flannel cloak, which tinted her complexion with its ruddy hues, as firelight flushes the olive portraits that stare at it from surrounding walls, and the braided black hair and large hazel eyes showed every brown tint and topaz gleam.

Leaning her arms on the top of her music-book, she rested her chin upon them, and sat looking seaward, singing a difficult pa.s.sage, in the midst of which her nimble voice tripped on an E flat, and, missing the staccato step, rolled helplessly down in a legato flood of melody; whereupon, with an impatient grimace she shut her eyes, weary of watching the wave-s.h.i.+mmer that almost dazzled her. After a few seconds, when she opened them, there stood just on the edge of the cliff, as if poised in air, a woman whose face and form were as sharply cut in profile on the azure sea and sky as white cameo features on black agate grounds.

Around the tall figure s.h.i.+ning folds of silver poplin hung heavy and statuesque, and over the shoulders a blue c.r.a.pe shawl was held by a beautiful blue-veined hand, where a sapphire asp kept guard; while a cl.u.s.ter of double violets fastened behind one sh.e.l.l-like ear breathed their perfume among glossy bands of gray hair.

"There was no color in the quiet mouth, Nor fulness; yet it had a ghostly grace, Pathetically pale,"

and wan, and woful--the still face turned seaward, fronting a round white moon that was lifting its full disk out of the line where air and water met--she stood motionless.

Lifting her head, Salome s.h.i.+vered involuntarily, and grew a shade paler as she breathlessly watched the apparition, expecting that it would fade into blue air or float down and mingle with the waters that gave it birth. But there was no wavering mistiness about the s.h.i.+ning drapery; and, presently, when she turned and came forward, the orphan, despite her sneers at superst.i.tion, felt the hair creep and rise on her temples, and, springing to her feet, they faced each other. As the stranger advanced, Salome unconsciously retreated a few steps, and exclaimed,--

"Gray-eyed, gray-haired, gray-clad, gray-faced, and rising out of that gray sea, I suppose I have at last met the gray ghost that people tell me haunts old 'Solitude.' But how came such a young face under that drift of white hair? If all ghosts have such finely carved, delicate noses and chins, such oval cheeks and pretty brows, most of us here in the flesh might thank fortune for a chance to 'shuffle off this mortal coil.' Say, are you the troubled evil spirit that haunts 'Solitude'?"

"I am."