Charles Auchester Volume I Part 30

"Understand me, then, that what I say I say to satisfy you: you are better as you are, better than you could be with me. I am a wanderer, and it is not my right to teach; I am bound to another craft, and the only one for the perfecting of which it is not my right to call myself poor. Do you understand, Charles?"

"I think, sir, that you mean you make music, and that therefore you have no time for the dirty work."

He broke into a burst of laughter, like joy-bells. "There is as much dirty work, however, in what you call _making_ music. But what I meant for you to understand was this, that I do not take money for instructing; because that would be to take the bread from the mouths of hundreds I love and honor. I have money enough; and you know how sweet it is even to give money,--how much sweeter to give what cannot be bought by money! I shall take this little friend of mine to my own home, if he will go and I am permitted to do so; and I shall treat him as my son, because he will, indeed, be my music-child, and no more indebted to me than I am to music, or than we all are to Jehovah."

"Sir, you are certainly a Jew if you say 'Jehovah;' I was quite sure of it before, and I am so pleased."

"I cannot contradict thee, but I am almost sorry thou knowest there are even such people as Jews."

"Why so, sir? Pray tell me. I should have thought that _you_, before all other persons, would have rejoiced over them."

"Why so, indeed! but because the mystery of their very name is enough to break the head, and perhaps the heart. But now of this little one: he must, indeed, be covered as a bird in the nest, and shall be. And if I turn him not forth a strong-winged wonder, thou wilt stand up and have to answer for him,--is it not so?"

"Sir, I am certain he will play wonderfully upon what he calls those 'beautiful cold keys.'"

"Ah!" he answered dreamily, "and so, indeed, they are, whose very tones are but as different shadows of the same one-colored light, the ice-blue darkness, and the snowy azure blaze. He has right, if he thinks them cold, to find them _alone_ beautiful." He spoke as if in sleep.

"Sir, I do not know what you mean, for I never heard even Milans-Andre."

"You are to hear him, then; it is positively needful."

Again the raillery pointed every word, as if arrows "dipped in balm."

"I mean that I scarcely know what those keys are like, for I never heard them really played, except by one young lady. I did not find the 'Tone-Wreath' cold, but I thought, when she played with Santonio, that her playing was cold,--cold compared with his; for he was playing, as you know, sir, the violin."

"You are right; yes. The violin is the violet!"

These words, vividly p.r.o.nounced, and so mystical to the uninitiated, were as burning wisdom to my soul. I could have claimed them as my own, so exactly did they respond to my own unexpressed necessities.

But indeed, and in truth, the most singular trait of the presence beside me was that nothing falling from his lips surprised me. I was prepared for all, though everything was new. He did not talk incessantly,--on the contrary, his remarks seemed sudden, as a breeze up-borne and dying into the noonday. There was that in them which cannot be conveyed, although conserved,--the tones, the manner, so changeful, yet all cast in grace unutterable; pa.s.sing from vagrant, never wanton mirth, into pungent, but never supercilious gravity. Such recollection only proves that the beautiful essence flows not well into the form of words,--for I remember every word he spoke,--but rather dies in being uttered forth, itself as music.

It was dusty in the highway, and we met no one for at least a mile except the peasants, who pa.s.sed into the landscape as part of its picture. The intense green of May, and its quickening blossoms, strewed every nook and plantation; but the sweetness of the country, so exuberant just there, only seemed to frame, with fitting ornament, the one idea I contemplated,--that he was close at hand. There had been much sun, and one was naturally inclined to shade in the thrilling May heats, which permeate the veins almost like love's fever, and are as exciting to the pulses.

At last we came to a brook, a lovely freshet, broadening into a mill-stream; for we could see far off in the clear air the flash of that wheel, and hear its last murmuring fall. But here at hand it was all lonely, unspanned by any bridge, and having its feathery banks unspoiled by any clearing hand. A knot of beautiful beech-trees threw dark kisses on the trembling water; there were wildest rushes here, and the thick spring leaves of the yet unbloomed forget-me-not on either hand. The blue hill of Cecilia lay yet before us, but something in my companion's face made me conjecture that here he wished to rest. Before he even suggested it I pulled out my cambric handkerchief, and running on before him, laid it beneath the drooping beech-boughs on the swelling gra.s.s. I came back to him again, and entreated him to repose. He even flushed with satisfaction at my request, which I made, as I ever do, rather impertinently. He ran, too, with me, and taking out his own handkerchief, which was a royal-purple silk, he spread it beside mine, and drew me to that throne with his transparent fingers upon my hand. I say "transparent,"

for they were as though the roseate blood shone through, and the wandering violet veins showed the clearness of the unfretted palm. But it was a hand too refined for model beauty, too thin and rare for the youth, the almost boyhood, that shone on his forehead and in his unwearied eye. The brightness of heaven seemed to pour itself upon my soul as I sat beside him and felt that no one in the whole world was at that moment so near him as I. He pulled a few rushes from the margin, and began to weave a sort of basket. So fleetly his fingers twisted and untwisted themselves that it was as if he were accustomed to do nothing but sit and weave green rushes the livelong day.

"Pull me some more!" he said at length imploringly; and I, who had been absorbed in those clear fingers playing, looked up at him as I stretched my arm. His eyes shone with the starlight of pure abstraction, and I answered not except by gathering the rushes, breaking them off, and laying them one by one across his knees. The pretty work was nearly finished; it was the loveliest green casket I could have fancied, with a plaited handle. It looked like a fairy field-flung treasure. I wished it were for me. When it was quite ready, and as complete and perfect as Nature's own work, he rose, and seizing the lowest branch of the swaying beech grove, hung the plaything upon it and said, "I wish it were filled with ripe red strawberries."

"Why so, sir?" I ventured.

"Because one would like to imagine a little child finding a green basket by the dusty way, filled with strawberries."

We arose, and again walked on.

"Sir, I would rather have the basket than the strawberries."

"I wish a little child may be of your mind. Were you happy, Charles, when you were a little child?"

"Sir, I was always longing to be a man. I never considered what it was to be a little child."

"Thou art a boy, and that is to be a man-child,--the beautiful fate!

But it is thy beautiful fate to teach others also, as only children teach."

"I, sir,--how?"

"Charles, a man may be always longing to be an angel, and never consider what it is to be a man."

His voice was as a sudden wind springing up amidst solitary leaves, it was so fitful, so vaguely sweet. I looked upon him indeed for the first time with trembling, since I had been with him that day. He had fallen into a stiller step, for we had reached the foot of the ascent.

It never occurred to me that I was not expected at Cecilia. I thought of nothing but that I should accompany him. He suddenly again addressed me in English.

"Did St. Michel ever recover the use of his arm?"

I was quite embarra.s.sed. "I never asked about him, sir; but I daresay he did."

"I thought you would have known. You _should_ have asked, I think.

Was he a rich man or a poor man?"

"How do you mean, sir? He was well off, I should suppose, for he used to dress a great deal, and had a horse, and taught all over the town.

Mr. Davy said he was as popular as Giardini."

"Mr. Davy was who,--your G.o.dfather?"

"My musical G.o.dfather I should say, sir. He took me to the festival, and had I not accidentally met him I should never have gone there, have never seen you. Oh, sir!--"

"Nothing is accidental that happens to you, to such as you. But I should have been very sorry not to have seen you. I thought you were a little messenger from the other world."

"It does seem very strange, sir,--at least two things especially."

"What is the first, then?"

"First, that I should serve you; and the second, that you should like me."

"No, believe me, it is not strange,"--he still spoke in that beautiful pure English, swift and keen, as his German was mild and slow,--"not strange that you should serve me, because there was a secret agreement between us that we should either serve the other. Had you been in my place, I should have run to fetch you water; but I fear I should have spilled a drop or two. And how could I but like you when you came before me like something of my own in that crowd, that mult.i.tude in nothing of me?"

"Sir," I answered, to save myself from saying what I really felt, "how beautifully you speak Englis.h.!.+"

He resumed in German: "That is nothing, because we can have no real language. I make myself think in all. I dream first in this, and then in that; so that, amidst the floating fragments, as in the strange mixture we call an _orchestra_, some accent may be expressed from the many voices of the language of our unknown home."

As he said these words, his tones, so clear and reverent, became mystical and inward. I was absolved from communion with that soul. His eye, travelling onwards, was already with the lime-trees at the summit of the hill we had nearly reached, and he appeared to have forgotten me. I felt how frail, how dissoluble, were the fiery links that bound my feeble spirit to that strong immortal. But how little I knew it yet!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

The school of Cecilia was not only at the summit of the hill, it was the only building on the summit; it was isolated, and in its isolation grand. There were cottages in orchards, vine-gardens, fertile lands, an ancient church, sprinkled upon the sides, or nestling in the slopes; but itself looked lonely and consecrated, as in verity it might be named. A belt of glorious trees, dark and dense as a Druid grove, surrounded with an older growth the modern superstructure; but its basis had been a feudal ruin, whose entrance still remained; a hall, a wide waste of room, of rugged symmetry and almost twilight atmosphere. A court-yard in front was paved with stone, and here were carriages and unharnessed horses feeding happily. The doorway of the hall was free; we entered together, and my companion left me one moment while he made some arrangements with the porter, who was quite alone in his corner. Otherwise silence reigned, and also it seemed with solitude; for no one peered among the strong square pillars that upheld as rude a gallery,--the approach to which was by a sweeping staircase of the brightest oak with n.o.ble bal.u.s.trades. Two figures in bronze looked down from the landing-place on either hand, and as we pa.s.sed between them I felt their size, if not their beauty, overawe me as the shadow of the entrance. They were, strange to say, not counterparts, though companion forms of the same head, the same face, the same dun laurel crown; but the one gathered its drapery to its breast, and stretched its hand beckoningly towards the portal,--the other with outstretched arm pointed with an expression almost amounting to menace down the gallery. In niched archways there, one door after another met the eye, ma.s.sive and polished, but all closed.

I implicitly trusted in my companion. I felt sure he possessed a charm to open all those doors, and I followed him as he still lightly, as if upon gra.s.s, stepped from entrance to entrance, not pausing until he reached the bend of the gallery. Here was a door unlike the others,--wider, slighter, of cloth and gla.s.s; and stealing from within those media, with a murmur soft as incense, came a mist of choral sounds, confusing me and captivating me at once, so that I did not care to stir until the mist dissolved and ceased, and I was yet by my companion's side without the door.