Charles Auchester Volume I Part 19

I am almost tempted, after all, to say that it is best not to tamper with our finest feelings,--best to keep silence; but let me beware,--it is while we muse, the fire kindles, and we are then to speak with our tongues. Let _them_ be touched too, though, with the inward fire, or we have no right to speak.

CHAPTER XXI.

Oh, shame upon me, thus to ramble, when I should be restoring merely!

After the shock I mentioned, the best thing happened to me possible,--we had to sing again; and Clara's voice arising, like the souls of flowers, to the sun, became actually to me as the sun unto those flowery souls. I revived and recovered my warmth; but now the reaction had come, and I sang through tears. I don't know how my voice sounded, but I felt it return upon me, and Davy grew rather nervous, I knew, from his manner of accompanying. And I did not say that while Miss Lawrence had stood and chatted with Santonio, a noiseless _rentree_ of footmen had taken place,--they bearing salvers loaded with ices and what are called "creams" at evening parties.

A sort of interlude this formed, of which the guests availed themselves to come and stare in upon us; and as they looked in we peeped out, though n.o.body ventured on our side beyond the doorway. So our duet had happened afterwards, and the music was to be resumed until twelve o'clock, the supper-hour. And after our duet there was performed this coda, that Miss Redfern requested Miss Lawrence to play with her, and that Miss Lawrence refused, but consented, at Santonio's suggestion, to play alone. As soon as she was seen past our folding-door, the whole male squadron advanced to escort her to the piano; but as she was removing her gloves leisurely, she waved them off, and they became of no account whatever in an instant. She sat down very still and played a brilliant prelude, a more than brilliant fugue, short and sharp, then a popular air, with variations, few, but finely fingered; and at last, after a few modulations, startling from the hand of a female, something altogether new, something fresh and mystical, that affected me painfully even at its opening notes. It was a movement of such intense meaning that it was but one sigh of unblended and unfaltering melody, isolated as the fragrance of a single flower; and only the perfumes of Nature exhale a bliss as sweet, how far more unexpressed! This short movement, that in its oneness was complete, grew, as it were, by fragmentary harmonies intricate, but most gradual, into another,--a _prestissimo_, so delicately fitted, that it was like moonlight dancing upon crested ripples; or for a better similitude, like quivering sprays in a summer wind. And in less than fifty bars of regularly broken time--how ravis.h.i.+ngly sweet I say not--the first subject in refrain flowed through the second, and they interwoven even as creepers and flowers densely tangled, closed together simultaneously. The perfect command Miss Lawrence possessed over the instrument did not in the least occur to me; I was possessed but by one idea. Yet too nervous to venture into that large room, I eagerly watched her, and endeavored to arrest her eye, that I might beckon her among us again; so resolute was I to ask her the name of the author. Santonio, as if really excited, had made a sort of rush to her, and was now addressing her, but I heard not what they said, though Davy did, for he had followed Santonio. To my surprise, I saw that Miss Benette had taken herself into a corner, and when I gazed upon her she was wiping her eyes. I was reminded then that my own were running over.

Scarcely was I fit to look up again, having retreated to another corner, when I beheld Miss Lawrence, in her blue brocade, come in and look about her. She absolutely advanced to me.

"Did you like that little dream? That is my notion of the gentleman at the festival, do you know."

"Did you compose it?" I asked in a maze.

"No, I believe he did."

"Then you know who he is? Tell me, oh! tell me the name."

She smiled then at me with kindness,--a beneficent sweetness. "Come, sit down, and I will sit by you and tell you the story."

"May not Miss Benette come too?"

"Oh, certainly, if she is not more comfortable out there. I wish you would bring her, though, for I want to see her eyes." I slipped over the carpet. "Come, Miss Benette, and hear what Miss Lawrence is saying." She looked a little more serious with surprise, but followed me across the room and took the next chair beyond mine. Santonio came up too, but Miss Lawrence said, "Go,--you have heard it before;" and he, having to play again next, retired with careful dignity.

"You must know that once on a time,--which means about three months ago,"--began Miss Lawrence, as if she were reading the introductory chapter of a new novel, "I wanted some country air and some hard practice. I cannot get either in London, where I live, and I determined to combine the two. So I took a cottage in a lone part of Scotland,--mountainous Scotland; but no one went with me except my maid, and we took care together of a grand pianoforte which I hired in Edinburgh, and carried on with me, van and all.

"It was glorious weather just then, and when I arrived at my cottage I found it very difficult to practise, though very charming to play; and I played a great deal,--often all the day until the evening, when I invariably ascended my nearest hill, and inhaled the purest air in the whole world. My maid went always with me; and at such seasons I left my pianoforte sometimes shut, and sometimes open, as it happened, in my parlor, which had a splendid prospect, and very wide windows opening to the garden in front. I allowed these windows to remain open always when I went out, and I have often found Beethoven's sonatas strewed over the lawn when the wind blew freshly, as very frequently it did. You may believe I often prolonged my strolls until the sun had set and the moon arisen. So one time it happened, I had been at work the whole day upon a crabbed copy of studies by Bach and Handel that my music-seller had smuggled for me from an old bureau in a Parisian warehouse,--for you must know such studies are rarely to be found."

"Why not?" asked I, rather abruptly, just as if it had been Millicent who was speaking.

"Oh! just because they are rare practice, I suppose. But listen, or our tale will be cut off short, as I see Santonio is about to play."

"Oh, make haste then, pray!"

And she resumed in a vein more lively.

"The whole day I had worked, and at evening I went out. The suns.h.i.+ne had broken from dark, moist clouds all over those hills. The first steep I climbed was profusely covered with honeysuckle, and the rosy gold of the cl.u.s.ters, intermixed with the heather, just there a perfect surface, pleased me so much that I gathered more than I could well hold in both my arms. Victorine was just coming out,--that is, my handmaid,--and I returned past her to leave my flowers at home. It struck me first to throw them over the palings upon the little lawn, but second thoughts determined me to carry them in-doors for a sketch, or something. I got into my parlor by the gla.s.s door, and flung them all, fresh as they were, and glimmering with rain-drops, upon the music-stand of the pianoforte. I cannot tell you why I did it, but so it was; and I had a fancy that they would be choice companions for those quaint studies which yet lay open upon the desk.

"In that lone place, such was its beauty and its virtue, we never feared to leave the windows open or the doors all night unlocked; and I think it very possible I may have left the little gate of the front garden swinging after me, for Victorine always latched it, as she came last.

"At all events, I found her on the top of the honeysuckle height, carrying a camp-stool and looking very tired. The camp-stool was for her, as I always reposed on the gra.s.s, wrapped in a veritable tartan.

And this night I reposed a good deal to make a flying sunset sketch.

Then I stayed to find fault with my dry earth and wooden sky, and the heather with neither gold nor bloom upon it; then to watch the shadows creep up the hill, and then the moon, and then the lights in the valley, till it was just nine o'clock. Slowly strolling home, I met n.o.body except a shadow,--that is to say, as I was moving no faster myself than a snail, I suddenly saw a long figure upon the ground flit by me in the broad moonlight.

"'It was a gentleman in a cloak,' said Victorine. But I had seen no person, only, as I have said, a shadow, and took no note.

"'He had a sketching-book like Mademoiselle's, and was pale,' added Victorine. But I bade her be silent, as she was too fond of talking; still, I replied, 'Everybody looks pale by moonlight,'--a fact to be ascertained, if anywhere, on a moonlit moor.

"So I came home across the lawn, and got in at my window. I rang for candles; it was not dark, certainly, but I wanted to play. I stood at the window till the goodwife of the house, from her little kitchen, brought them up. She placed them upon the piano, as I had always ordered her to do, and left the room. After I had watched the moonlight out of doors for some time, being lazy with that wild air, I walked absently up to the instrument. What had taken place there?

Behold, the Bach and Handel, discarded, lay behind the desk, having been removed by some careful hand, and on the desk itself, still overhung with the honeysuckle and heather I had hastily tossed about it, I found a sheet of music-paper. I could not believe my eyes for a long time. It was covered with close, delicate composition, so small as to fill a double page, and distinct as any printing. It had this inscription, but no name, no notice else: 'Heather and Honeysuckle; a Tone-wreath from the Northern Hills."'

"And that is what you played; oh, Miss Lawrence!" I cried, less in ecstasy at the sum of the story than at my own consciousness of having antic.i.p.ated its conclusion.

"Yes, that is what I played, and what I very seldom do play; but I thought you should hear it!"

"I!" I cried, much too loud under the circ.u.mstances; but I could not have helped it. "It was very kind of you, but I don't know why you should. But it is by _him_ then?"

"You have said!" answered Miss Lawrence, laughing,--"at least I think so. And if you and I agree, no doubt we are right."

"No, I don't see that at all," I replied; for it was a thing I could not allow. "I am only a little boy, and you are a great player, and grown up. Besides, you saw his shadow."

"Do you think so? Well, I thought so myself, though it may possibly have been the shadow of somebody else."

Miss Lawrence here stopped, that she might laugh; and as she laughed, her deep eyes woke up and shone like fire-flies glancing, to and fro.

Very Spanish she seemed then, and very Jewish withal. I had never seen a Spaniard I suppose then, but I conceive I had met with prints of Murillo's "Flower-girl;" for her eyes were the only things I could think of while Miss Lawrence laughed.

"At all events," she at last continued, "the 'Tone-wreath' is no shadow." I was astonished here to perceive that Clara had raised her eyes,--indeed, they looked fully into those of the speaker.

"He came from Germany, you can be sure at least."

"Why so, Miss Benette?" replied Miss Lawrence, graciously, but with a slight deference very touching from one so self-sustained.

"Because it is only in that land they call music 'Tone.'"

"But still he may have visited Germany and listened to the Tongedicht[11] of Beethoven; for _he_ is not so long dead." And she sighed so deeply that I felt a deep pa.s.sion indeed must have exhaled that sigh. I got out of my chair and ran to Lenhart Davy, for I saw him yet in the curtain. He detained me, saying, "My dear little boy, do stay by me and sit a while, that you may grow calm; for verily, Charles, your eyes are dancing almost out of your head. Besides, I should like you to _see_ Mr. Santonio while he plays."

"Will he turn his face this way though, Mr. Davy? For he did not before."

"I particularly requested him to do so, and he agreed, on purpose that you might look at him." In fact, Santonio had taken up the gilt music-stand, and very coolly turned it towards us, in the very centre of the company, who shrank with awe from his immediate presence, and left a circle round him. Then, as Mirandos, who had to play a trifling negative accompaniment to the stringed solo, advanced to the piano, the lord of the violin turned round and nodded at me as he himself took his seat.

FOOTNOTE:

[11] Tone poem.

CHAPTER XXII.

We--that is, Miss Benette and Davy and I--came away from the Redferns all in a hurry, just before supper, Santonio having informed us that he intended to stay. He indeed, if I recollect right, took Miss Lawrence down, and I have a dim remembrance of Mirandos poking haughtily in the background. Also I remember our conversation on returning home, and that Davy informed us Miss Lawrence was immensely rich. She had lost her mother when a baby, he said; but I thought her very far from pitiable,--she seemed to do so exactly as she pleased. I had no idea of her age, and I did not think about it at all; but Miss Benette said, "She is as independent as she is gifted, sir; and she spoke to me like one who is very generous."

"Yes, I should think so," said Davy, cheerfully; "Santonio tells me she is a pupil of Milans-Andre."