Charles Auchester Volume II Part 19

"Ah! your dream, Maria,--I thought of that. But shall _I_ hear it, Maria?"

"You will play for me, Carl,--and Florimond. Oh! I must not remember that. And the Chevalier, Carl,--he even entreated, the proud soul, the divinely missioned, entreated me to perpetuate the work. I can write now without fear; he has made me free. I feared myself before; now I only fear him."

"Maria, what of Anastase? Does he know, and what does he think?"

"Do not ask me, Carl, for I cannot tell you what he did. He was foolish, and so was I; but it was for joy on both our parts."

"You cried then! There is nothing to be ashamed of."

"We ought to have restrained ourselves when the Chevalier was by. He must love Florimond now, for he fetched him himself, and told him what I had done, and was still to do."

It is well for us that time does not stay,--not grievous, but a gladsome thought that all we most dread is carried beyond our reach by its force, and that all we love and long to cherish is but taken that it may remain, beyond us, to ripen in eternity until we too ripen to enjoy it. Still, there is a pain, wholly untinctured with pleasure, in recalling certain of its shocks, re-living them, returning upon them with memory.

The most glorious of our days, however, strike us with as troubled a reminiscence, so that we ought not to complain, nor to desire other than that the past should rest, as it does, and as alone the dead beside repose,--in hope. I have brought myself to the recollection of certain pa.s.sages in my youth's history simply because there is nothing more precious than the sympathy, so rare, of circ.u.mstance with pa.s.sion; nothing so difficult to describe, yet that we so long to win.

It is seldom that what happens as chance we would have left unchanged, could we have pa.s.sed sentence of our will upon it; but still more unwonted is it to feel, after a lapse of eventful times, that what _has_ happened was not only the best, but the only thing to happen, all things considered that have intervened. This I feel now about the saddest lesson I learned in my exuberant boyhood,--a lesson I have never forgotten, and can never desire to discharge from my life's remembrance.

Everything prospered with us after the arrangement our friend and lord had made for Maria. I can only say of my impressions that they were of the utmost perfectibility of human wishes in their accomplishment, for she had indeed nothing left to wish for.

I would fain delineate the singular and touching grat.i.tude she evinced towards Seraphael, but it did not distribute itself in words; I believe she was altogether so much affected by his goodness that she dared not dwell upon it. I saw her constantly between his return and the approaching examinations; but our intercourse was still and silent. I watched her glide from room to room at Cecilia, or found her dark hair sweeping the score at home so calmly--she herself calmer than the calmest,--calm as Anastase himself. Indeed, to him she appeared to have transferred the whole impetuousness of her nature; he was changed also, his kindness to myself warmer than it ever had been; but from his brow oppressed, his air of agitation, I deemed him verily most anxious for the result. Maria had not more than a month to work upon the rest of the symphony and to complete it, as Seraphael had resolutely resolved that it should be rehea.r.s.ed before our summer separation.

Maria I believe would not have listened to such an arrangement from any other lips; and Florimond's dissatisfaction at a premature publicity was such that the Chevalier--autocratic even in granting a favor, which he must ever grant in his own way--had permitted the following order to be observed in antic.i.p.ation.

After our own morning performance by the pupils only and their respective masters, the hall would be cleared, the audience and members should disperse, and only the strictly required players for the orchestra remain; Seraphael himself having chosen these. Maria was herself to conduct the rehearsal, and those alone whose a.s.sistance she would demand had received an intimation of the secret of her authors.h.i.+p. I trembled when the concluding announcement was made to me, for I had a feeling that she could not be kept too quiet; also, Anastase, to my manifest appreciation, shared my fear. But Seraphael was irresistible, especially as Maria had a.s.sented, had absorbed herself in the contemplation of her intentions, even to eagerness, that they should be achieved.

Our orchestra was, though small, brilliant, and in such perfect training as I seldom experienced in England. Our own rehearsals were concluded by the week before our concert, and there remained rather less for me to do. Those few days I was inexpressibly wretched,--a foreboding drowned my ecstatic hopes in dread; they became a constant effort to maintain, though even everything still smiled around us.

The Tuesday was our concert morning, and on the Sunday that week I met Maria as we came from church. She was sitting in the sunlight, upon one of the graves. Josephine was not near her, nor her brother, only Florimond, who was behind me, ran and joined her before I beheld that she beckoned to me. I did hardly like to go forward as they were both together, but he also made me approach by a very gentle smile. The broad lime-trees shadowed the church, and the blossoms, unopened, hung over them in ripest bud; it was one of those oppressively sweet seasons that remind one--at least me--of the resurrection morning.

"Sit down by me, Carl," said Maria, who had taken off her gloves, and was already playing with Florimond's fingers, as if she were quite alone with him, though the churchyard was yet half filled with people.

"Maria," I said, sitting down at the foot of a cross that was hung with faded garlands, "why don't you sit in the shade? It is a very warm day."

"So it is very warm, and that is what I like; I am never warm enough here, and Florimond, too, loves the sun. I could not sit under a tree this day, everything is so bright; but nothing can be as bright as I wish it. Carl, I was going to tell Florimond, and I will tell you, that I feel as if I were too glad to bear what is before me. I did not think so until it came so very near. I am afraid when I stand up my heart will fail."

"Are you frightened, Maria?" I asked in my simplicity.

"That is not it, though I am also frightened. But I feel as if it were scarcely the thing for me to do, to stand up and control those of whom I am not master. Is it not so, Florimond?"

"Maria, the Chevalier is the only judge; and I am certain you will not, as a woman, allow your feelings to get the better of you. I have a great deal more to suffer on your account than you can possibly feel."

"I do not see that."

"It is so, and should be seen by you. If your work should in any respect fail, imagine what that failure would cost me."

I looked up in utter indignation, but was disarmed by the expression of his countenance; a vague sadness possessed it, a certain air of tender resignation; his hauteur had melted, though his manner retained its distance.

"As if it could be a failure!" I exclaimed; "why, we already know how much it is!"

"I do not, Auchester, and I am not unwilling to confess my ignorance.

If our symphony even prove worthy of our Cecilia, I shall still be anxious."

"Why, Florimond?" she demanded, wistfully.

"On account of your health. You know what you promised me."

"Not to write for a year. That is easy to say."

"But not so easy to do. You make every point an extreme, Maria."

"I cannot think what you mean about my health."

"You cannot?"

She blushed lightly and frowned a shade. "I have told you, Florimond, how often I have had that pain before."

"And you told me also what they said."

His tones were now so grave that I could not bear to conjecture their significance. He went on.

"I do not consider, Maria, that for a person of genius it is any hards.h.i.+p to be discouraged from too much effort, especially when the effect will become enhanced by a matured experience."

"You are very unkind, Florimond."

Indeed, I thought so, too.

"I only care to please you."

"No, Maria, you had not a thought of me in writing."

"And yet you yourself gave me the first idea. But you are right; I wrote without reference to any one, and because I burned to do so."

"And you burn less now for it? Tell me that."

"I do not burn any longer, I weary for it to be over; I desire to hear it once, and then you may take it away, and I will never see it any more."

"That is quite as unnatural as the excessive desire,--to have fatigued of what you loved. But, Maria, I trust this weariness of yours will not appear before the Chevalier, after all his pains and interest."

"I hope so too, Florimond; but I do not know."

It did not. The next day the Chevalier came over to Cecilia, and slept that night in the village. The tremendous consequence of the next twenty-four hours might almost have erased, as a rolling sea, all identical remembrance; and, indeed, it has sufficed to leave behind it what is as but a picture once discerned, and then forever darkened,--the cool, early romance of the wreaths and garlands (for we all rose at dawn to decorate the entrance, the corridors, the hall, the reception-room), the ma.s.ses of May-bloom and lilies that arrived with the sun; the wild beauty overhanging everything; the mysterious freshness I have mentioned, or some effects just so conceived, before.

I myself adorned with laurels and lilies the conductor's desk, and the whole time as much in a dream as ever when asleep,--at all events I could even realize less. Maria was not at hand, nor could I see her, she breakfasted alone with Anastase; and although I shall never know what happened between them that morning, I have ever rejoiced that she did so.

When our floral arrangements were perfected I could not even criticise them. I flew to my bed and sat down upon it, holding my violin, my dearest, in my arms; there I rested, perhaps slept. Strange thoughts were mine in that short time, which seemed immeasurably lengthening,--most like dreams, too, those very thoughts, for they were all rus.h.i.+ng to a crisis. I recalled my cue, however, and what that alarming peal of a drum meant, sounding through the avenues of Cecilia.

As we ever cast off things behind, my pa.s.sion could only hold upon the future. I was but, with all my speed, just in time to fall into procession with the rest. The chorus first singing, the band in the midst, behind, our professors in order, and on either side our own dark lines the female pupils,--a double streak of white. I have not alluded to our examinations, with which, however, I had had little enough to do. But we all pressed forward in contemporaneous state, and so entered the antechamber of the hall. It was the most purely brilliant scene I ever saw, prepared under the eye of the masters in our universal absence; I could recognize but one taste, but one eye, one hand, in that blending of all deep with all most dazzling flower-tints.

One double garland, a harp in a circle,--the symbol of immortal harmony,--wrought out of snowy roses and azure ribbons, hung exactly above the table; but the table was itself covered with snowy damask, fold upon fluted fold, so that nothing, whatever lay beneath it, could be given to the gaze.