I.

"SWEET music has been heard

In many places; some has been upstirred

From out its crystal dwelling in a lake,

By a swan's ebon bill; from a thick brake,

Nested and quiet in a valley mild,

Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild

About the earth."

IN an old sea-board town, once famous from its commerce and

fisheries, lived a boy, who, as his mother told her gossip, had a

good talent for music. Over his adopted place the salt winds blew;

beside it, a river rolled its murmurous, mountain-born waters;

behind it, green woods forever rustled. A poet still blows his

bugle-notes across the three streams that braid its garment in

silver; a painter has left there the shadow of cherubs cleaving the

clouds; but till Fauntleroy Verrian came, music had owned there no

apostle.

The name that he wore had been his father's, and seemed sufficient,

in itself, to prove him of gentle blood--the father, of whom no

one knew much, who had married his mother against the wish of her

friends, and who one day went out, having kissed his young wife, and

never returned. She hoped, at last, that he was dead; but something

in her heart assured her that he would one day meet the son whom

he had never seen. And later, as that son matured, she remembered

strange stories once read by her, where demon or Afrite, in the

guise and mask of most dark and fascinating manhood, has espoused

such lady as he chose; and she trembled with half a fear lest the

father of Fauntleroy might be such an one, and traced with terror

the growing likeness there, remembering her brief period of passion

and delight. But name and face were not the only gifts that the

child inherited from his father.

For a time the mother remained in the town where her husband had

left her, lest some day he might come to find her, and fail; but the

impression of the past, instead of wearing off, daily cut deeper

into her soul, and at length the perpetual remembrance grew too

painful. Thus, although in this place she procured sufficiently

genial occupation in teaching, exertion being necessary, since part

of her little store had been deposited in some unknown quarter, she

nevertheless chose to remove to another spot; and now all alone in

the world, but for her child, she labored fitfully at her needle. So

she lived in the small house by the water-side, owning it herself,

and renting the larger half.

All things were auspicious to the youth of this boy, though nothing

seemed so. His mother was, it appeared, a widow, and therefore he

encountered few but the gentle influences of feminine culture. She

was poor, and poverty is a discipline. She had received, of course,

an education beyond her present station, and poured it lavishly

into his thirsty mind. When he numbered fourteen years, she died,

and a loneliness befell him which is the crown of genius, and out

of which marvellous jewels may be plucked.--Very early in his life,

he had manifested an ardent love of the art to which subsequently

he devoted himself. Before he spoke, he sang his own lullabies;

when he first went alone, his mother lost him all one summer's day,

and he was found only at moon-rise, fast asleep beside a fence,

whither, bare-footed, bare-headed, and all day without food, he

had followed the band of a street company, still repeating in his

pretty sleep parts of the tunes they had lent him. He was scarcely

older, when two tickets for a rare concert (in a day when concerts

were like rain in the desert) were given to his mother, and the

poor seamstress, who could neither leave her child nor resign the

pleasure, took him with her as a protector. The gay lights, the

brilliant toilettes and bouquets, the chandelier swinging all its

waxen flames in the glitter of ormulu and prismatic pendents, the

laughing and commotion previous to the opening, these filled the

child with strange exhilaration, so that he danced upon the seat,

repeatedly embraced his mother, and sung to her once or twice, in

a low caressing voice, a few notes of his choicest remembrance.

But when the musicians had spread their magical pages before them,

and, out of a wilderness of sweet sounds, his childish ear drew

the measure and melody of one air, his transport knew no bounds.

The music was not of a difficult order, nor did it require a great

effort of comprehension; yet, while one child, who had been taken

that the effect upon him might be observed, whispered dismally,

'What a yacket!' Fauntleroy stood with his clasped hands hanging

before him, his head bent forward, and his little face bathed in

tears. The last piece was a fantasia upon several of the exquisite

waltzes of Beethoven: during the performance one of the sheets

fluttered from the stage to the floor, and lay there unnoticed;

at the conclusion, as they stepped into the aisle, it caught the

child's eye, and, springing forward, he seized it. The strange

characters enchanted him, he followed them along with his finger;

of their meaning he was, of course, ignorant; but they had some

connection with the passing splendor, they were akin to the music

that had brimmed his childish soul, they were precious to those

gods upon the stage, and so he made a theft of them; or rather,

one should say, bore them off calmly, as if by his own right and

possession.

His letters he found it difficult to conquer, but day after day he

sat in the sun, poring over the stolen sheet, singing the air as he

recalled it, dividing it first into parts, and then into distinct

sounds, until, if he had been conscious of the fact, he had almost

literally deciphered the meaning of those quaint emblems. Hornbook

and catechism retired before them, for to those worthies he had

given but an inconsiderable portion of his acquaintance.

At the completion of his sixth year, there came a memorable day

to Fauntleroy Verrian. He was no longer to remain with the other

lodger during Sabbath mornings of perfect calm, that breathed of

woods and brooks and dewy winds, and brought to him vague sensations

of distant and unknown delights; but jacket and trowsers lay, one

sunrise, by his bedside, and he was promoted, not only to the

dignity of breeches, but to that other goal of his desires, to see

clouds of music, laden with all gorgeous imaginings, blown from

the great golden organ-pipes; to go, morning and afternoon, to

church. Through the quiet prime, he discoursed of this anticipation

to his mother, and she, with maternal wont, did her best to check

it, telling him, not the choir, but the preacher, and the sweet

voice of the prayers, should draw him there, where she took him not

to delight his ear but to save his soul. Fauntleroy had thought

his soul safe enough, if he took it round with him, and did not

understand his mother's dogmas. 'I know,' he answered, when she

tried to elicit his ideas of immortal things, 'that GOD holds me in

my sleep, and makes the ocean cry so in the night, and all the winds

whistle and clap their wings when the dark comes, because you told

me, and I always thank HIM in my prayers, mother. I wish, sometimes,

HE had made a field for me, with flowers in it; but I suppose there

is one growing against I am a man.'

'But, in all this,' said his mother, 'you think too much of

yourself, and very little of GOD.'

'Mother, I love GOD with all my heart,' he replied; 'but when I say

it, somehow I feel like a bird, and sing it.'

His mother's seat at church commanded a view of the choir, and

here, regardless of every thing else, Fauntleroy remained, his eyes

fixed on the loft, and his ears expectant of the moment when the

great crypt of silent sound should open its gates, and send forth

its winged worshipping ghosts. At last, through the vestry-door,

stole the white-robed priest, and a hush reigned in the assembled

congregation. As the first hum stole over their heads, like the

breath of a wandering wind, slowly flanking itself with allies

of massive chords, and winding into vast volumes of involved

harmonies, the boy sat rapt in a seraphic trance. No motion marred

the marble-like repose, his shadow never quivered, and, but for the

blood that bounded up and down the cheek, one could have dreamed

him transmuted into some delicate sculpture. At length, the little

statue gave a sigh, the lashes fell and hid the starry eyes, and

he covered his face with his hands. In the confession, a slight

motion did not disturb his mother, but when, on rising, he was not

to be seen in the pew, she knew he had gone to seek an ascent to the

idol, where she soon caught sight of the dark little head, as its

owner sat perched on a stool beside the organist. The service over,

the mother remains in the pew, with a mouthful of reproofs for the

truant; but he still lingers in the loft.

'Well, what is it?' asks the organist, amused at the unceremonious

freedom of the visitor.

'Would you be so kind,' asks the latter, with much sweetness, but no

fear, 'as to let me put my fingers on the music?'

'On the keys? With pleasure.'

The child extends his hands, and lays them on the polished ice,

although extracting no murmur.

'Well, what do they say to you, the sirens? What do they tell you?'

'O Sir! all sweet things!'

'Do they, little enthusiast? And, if they say so much without sound,

what do they say when their lips move?'

The child lifts his hands from the keys, crosses them behind him,

and says imperiously: 'Play!'

The man obeys, and evolves a slow movement from Cherubini. If the

composer's soul never mirrored the extremest depths of Nature, or

if the present performer has in his own soul no complete expression

for the strain, there is yet enough. The child's eyes sparkle over

cheeks whiter than snow, his quivering lips part, he shivers at

each roll of harmony, he stands with self-forgetful, outstretched

hands, and, as it closes, every pulse thrills beneath the surge

of the silver thunders. He had found that day a new revelation,

and unconsciously to himself had learned that in the organ--'great

omnipotence of sound'--was slumbering all the delight and purpose of

his life.

His mother had often taken him with her, when calling on an elderly

lady who lived a few streets higher than herself, the town sloping

up from the river; and during these visits he had amused himself

with an old English piano that stood, neglected and forlorn, on very

slender legs, in a corner of the room. Round the edges, ivory had

once been damaskeened in the notes of an air in vogue at the time of

its construction; but they, together with the harp of St. Cecilia,

elaborately let into the centre of the lid, had long been yellow as

gold. Opened, it displayed the delightful mysteries of the black and

white key-board. But alas! what different sounds issued thence; what

tormented sprites shrieked in short pain from the shrunken wires,

and how many others refused to answer his summons at all. Just over

it was a small window, which Fauntleroy incidentally noticed to be

destitute of fastening. A few weeks after his first attendance at

church, he learned from his mother that this neighbor was dead, and

that the house would be closed until her heirs, who were foreign,

should send an agent from Europe, preparatory to the settlement of

her affairs, and the sale of household stuff. During these weeks,

his mother had been greatly harassed by her son's evident propensity

to music, for though he now learned and digested whatever was set

before him, all his avidity was manifested in the former direction.

In despair of his ever becoming a useful member of society, she took

from him the precious sheet of Beethoven, forbade him to speak on

the subject of his predilection, broke in pieces and consumed the

violin left behind by his father, and, above all, commanded him

never to approach the piano at the old lady's house, and, finally,

since she saw the restless longings of the little face at every

visit, ceased to go there at all herself. At last, when Fauntleroy

heard the announcement, he resolved to attain the mastery of that

valueless old piano, and revolved a thousand schemes by which his

object could be effected. Music drew him as a magnet draws a needle;

resistance never occurred to him, but concealment was absolutely

necessary. The more his mother opposed, the more she pushed him

forward: with a pertinacity equal to her own, Fauntleroy followed

his bent. On his way home from school, he passed the deserted house,

even opened the little gate, and took a quick but satisfactory

survey of the premises, and as hasty a resolution.

That night at tea-time, his share was taken away untouched, he went

early to bed, but not to sleep, frequently calling on his mother

to put by her work. It seemed as if the evening would never end,

while he tossed impatiently about, yet entertaining myriad fantastic

presences, and marshaling an ever-shifting procession of varied

song. At length his mother lay down by his side, and the candle was

extinguished. Soon the regular breathing of the tired needle-woman

announced her sleep, and her treacherous little boy slipped down

the other side, silently donned his clothes, and stole from the

house into the mid-night street, leaving the door and his mother

at the mercy of the open bolt. Up the long street he ran till out

of hearing distance, past the churchyard like a spirit, and over

the garden-wall. He stopped at last on the moss-grown flags of the

garden-walk to look about him. The softest brilliancy of a June

moon, but two hours high, flooded all the nodding boughs with a

silver frosting; the althea and flox and narcissi dropped their

heads, heavy with dew, and spread their untrained fragrance on the

sweet, cool wind--the wind that wandered in and out the darker green

glooms of the aromatic alleys, and was the only stirring thing

beside himself. How free he was, and how glorious such liberty!

He hardly believed that another soul in the world was up and in a

garden at this hour. The garden, which had been his admiration all

his summers, with its beds of pansies and violets, and its great

swinging boughs of juiciest fruit, down whose walks he had timidly

stepped with dainty delight, this garden was now his own dominion,

as much his as ever it had been any bee's; the people who owned it

slept and forgot it, and cancelled their right in oblivion; any one

of the flowers he could pluck if he chose. The universal hush and

peace waited upon him. Truly he was Lord of the Night. At least,

without having been stated in words to himself, this was the sum

and meaning of his sensations. But when the first bloom of his

midnight experience wore away, he remembered the piano, and sought

the window that opened behind it. It was almost higher than he could

reach, but by dint of an arbor-seat, which, inch by inch, the little

burglar dragged along, he raised himself to a sufficient height.

A sweet-brier climbed round this window, and, in feeling for the

sash, the thorns tore and scratched his hands. When found, all his

strength could not raise it. He hesitated a little while, and then

took a big stone, deliberately broke through the space of two panes,

inserted his head and arm, and drew himself through. In a moment,

the mystic instrument was open and tinkling outrageously beneath

his empiric hands. To his horror, this was not the music he wanted,

and the connection between each separate key and the characters

on his excommunicated sheet suddenly flashed upon him. Solving

the riddle with a patience most wonderful, he sat working in the

slowly-wheeling moonlight until the clock of the opposite church

struck three: still delaying, minute after minute, till the last

quarter warned him how near the day might be, he hastily closed the

lid, and retreated as he had entered. Passing the graves, this time

he was hardly so fearless, but scampered down the gray street at

full speed. Nevertheless an unutterable satisfaction filled him, and

noiselessly securing the door, he crept up the stair, tore off his

clothes, and slipped into bed again, silently giving a little prayer

of thanks that he had succeeded in his naughtiness. Having the first

time accomplished so much, he on the next night lost no sleep, but

woke when his mother retired, and again, when she slept, escaped.

A half-dozen nights, while the moon lasted, the child continued

his excursions, but at length was obliged to cease for want of the

friendly light.

During the intervening space, he employed himself in running errands

and gathering sixpences, till he had amassed a sum sufficient for

the purchase of strings, which, in his search through the mechanism

of the instrument, he had found requisite. One sunset he returned

with them in his pocket, carefully secreted among peg-top, white

ally, whittlings and ginger-bread, and great was his joy when the

thin crescent of the new moon lay above a long orange cloud, but

equally great his sorrow to see the slender boat float down the

lucid currents of the west, and leave no sign. A few nights more,

however, and she was again his leaguer, fortified and reïnforced

by certain candles pillaged from his mother's scanty store.

Meanwhile he had lost no time for ingratiating himself with the

church organist, had not suffered a day to pass without seeing him,

had beset him with flocks of questions, had received hints and

instructions that seemed to him as comprehensive as a library, and

had, as he soon found, acquired, in this interval of rest, real

knowledge and satisfactory progress.

The June passed into the harvest moon, October began to array

herself in all the beautiful decadence of the year, and still his

new pleasure had not palled upon Fauntleroy. He had repaired to the

best of his ability the injuries time had wrought on this mine of

enjoyment, had tuned it according to his inventive skill, and, when

in the latter business strength failed, had resorted to a thousand

expedients, had contrived infantile levers and screws, and, at one

time, had even secured the refractory subject by a cord to the jambs

across the room, thinking that being thoroughly wetted it would

contract, as he had seen his mother's clothes-line do, and draw the

tone to the required pitch. And although I doubt if by these methods

he effected much, still he met with a certain success that sufficed,

and they were excellent schemes of instruction. Remembering as he

did, every line and mark of his one-paged volume of Beethoven, he

had compared with it what every hour over the instrument taught

him, and having obtained a book of tunes from the organ-desk at

church, together with much more assistance from the friend there,

had found his knowledge to be perfectly accurate if small, and that

from these notes he could produce, though in how much less degree!

the same melodies that enraptured him on Sabbaths. Moreover, so

much attained, he now by practice became to a great extent master

of difficulties to which most pupils yield, and of a convenient if

not always elegant style, in which his little fingers would twinkle

over the keys at some prestissimo, or slowly oar along through what

seemed to him a sea of solemn harmony.

Such frequent loss of sleep, as might be expected, soon showed its

results in the boy. Languid and pale during day-light, with large

purple shadows beneath his eyes, thin and without appetite, yet

animated by a constant liveliness of mind, joyous and over-flowing

with inner happiness, he grew the subject of his mother's tenderest

anxieties, and often in her sleep she turned to take the truant

into her bosom. Once or twice not touching him in her drowsiness,

his absence did not occur to her, but another time she started up

filled with keen alarm, as he closed the street-door. Her quick call

was smothered in affright. It was the work of an instant to gather

a few garments and follow him just as he turned the corner of the

street. Never dreaming of looking behind him, Fauntleroy hurried

on, scaled the wall, and for the last time entered his sanctuary.

His mother, less nimble, toiled up the hill, and, despairing at

the wall, ran round to the gate. In the tremor that ruled her, she

found it locked, and succeeded only, after several minutes, in

remembering a broken part of the inclosure. Here she effected an

entrance, but Fauntleroy was no where to be seen. Down one aisle

and up another, across grassy plots and weed-choked flower-beds she

ran breathlessly, and perhaps had not found him to this day, if a

thought of the old piano had not struck her simultaneously with its

sound. With suddenly-illumined thoughts she turned to the window

whither the thread of music led her, and bending from one side,

looked in. There was the dark, old-fashioned book-case, filling

one side of the room from floor to ceiling, with a white bust of

some irate Apollo in a niche of the arched carving, like a crown;

the curtains swept apart for all the light the night could give;

the buffet yielding a sidelong gleam, half drowned in shade, of

silver and glass and gorgeously-flowered china; the chancel-chairs

and velvet-covered table; and the mysterious portrait above the

chimney-piece, that gathered all the spare light into itself and

leaned from the dingy frame a pale, witch-like face, in a net of

golden hair. All this his mother received at a glance, although

that glance lighted instantly on her child, where he sat rapt in a

softly-improvised welcome to his Egeria. So motionless was he, with

uplifted eyes in the clear moon-light that streamed upon and over

him into the room, that she half-feared him to be in a somnambulic

state. Yet those violet eyes, so dark, so lustrous, wore no fixed

stare, nor any trace of sleep; they were rather filled with spirit,

brimmed with the wakefulness of life, and the heavenly dream of

music alone overshadowed the transfigured face. The mother felt this

as she gazed, and hung on the sweetness that his fingers drew into

the air. Did ever any one do so beautifully, she thought; and, as

if to mock her, a golden robin stirred in his nest and trilled his

mid-night song, as full of joy as the whippowil's of sorrow.

As Fauntleroy's fancy lightened from the theme he followed, his eye

pursued a cloud across the sky, and falling, lay upon his mother's

face. He ceased a moment in terrible dismay, then starting to his

feet, looked back at the portrait on the wall, lest she had stolen

out of her frame, mastered by all the charm of the old house. But

as quietly as ever, in the Greek cap of vivid scarlet and gold

zequins falling from her hair, she looked through her prison-door.

Again his fascinated eyes sprung back to the white face pressed

against the vacant panes. It was all quicker than thought, and

hardly a minute had elapsed when he comprehended it. If his mother

had been Solomon, he would have expected summary chastisement; as it

was, he resumed his seat and played with his best execution the very

piece upon which she had laid her ban. He fancied himself to have

accomplished a fine revenge, but silly child! his mother no more

understood his meaning than did the portrait, for of the identity

between what he played and what the sheet contained his unskilled

senses were ignorant. Hardly had he struck the closing chord, when

the door behind him opened, and a tall gentleman, in flowing robes

and with long, dark hair, entered, bearing a light, which the

draught at once extinguished.

'What does this mean?' he asked in apparent amazement, first of the

child and then of the white face beyond. The mother pushed up the

sash.

'Sir,' she cried, 'he is my son; and having been forbidden by me,

when Madame Fardeau was living, to touch this piano, has escaped

from me in the night! Send him here to me, I implore you.'

'Is this so?' asked the stranger doubtingly, and with that strange

manner which, however perfectly one speaks the tongue, always

indicates the foreigner.

'Yes, it is so!' answered Fauntleroy stoutly, as his mother's words

were impugned. 'Mother never knew of my coming till to-night; and

where's the harm?'

'You have been here before, then?'

'Oh! yes,' answered Fauntleroy, into whose nature there had not been

instilled sufficient awe of any one to make it seem to him worth

while to tell a lie.

'Several times?'

'Several times.'

'When did you first come?'

'Oh! a great while ago; a great many years, I should think.'

'A great many years, Fauntleroy!' exclaimed his mother, while the

gentleman moved uneasily as she spoke. 'Madame Fardeau has not been

dead a great many years. You are not a great many years old!'

'Why, mother, the little lilies were in bloom, the first time.'

'And that was in June, Sir,' she said, half-laughingly, and

appealing to the stranger.

''Well, well, you make too much noise to be about a bad business. So

you like this tinkling cymbal?'

'Sir--so much!'

'Who taught you to play?'

'I do not yet play; but I shall.'

'That does not answer my question. Have you had a teacher?'

'No.'

The gentleman stooped and examined the piano. 'Who keeps your

instrument in order?' he asked with a comical shrug.

'I do.'

It was all like a dream to Fauntleroy, and which was real, which

false, he could not tell; suddenly two hands seized his waist, swung

him through the casement to his mother. 'See, little monkey,' said

the great black-bearded face close to his own, while the cheery

laugh rung in his terrified ear like a booming bell, 'I shall set a

trap here to-morrow. Good night!' and he abruptly closed the sash.

Fauntleroy felt as if he had just fallen out of bed, and expecting

that the next minute would reveal the falsehood of so long and so

delightful a hallucination, was yet farther surprised when his

mother took his hand and led him home without a word. She was

trembling in every nerve herself, she did not cease throwing a

frightened glance over her shoulder as they walked, and she seemed

unable to recal her thoughts from the region to which they had

strayed.

'Naughty child,' said she at last with tears, as she sat once more

in the little bed-chamber; 'cruel boy, to occasion me such trouble!'

'Mother, didn't you like to hear me play?'

'You played well; but you have stolen it all.'

'No one else has lost it.'

'Fauntleroy, I would rather you had never played a note than to have

deceived me so.'

'Did you hear the piece you took away from me?'

'Are you going to increase your disobedience by dishonesty? Have you

been at my trunk? Have you unlocked that, and got it?'

'Pooh! no. I remembered that.'

'I wish you would learn your multiplication-table as easily.'

'Sixteen times sixteen are two hundred and fifty-six, and that's as

far as the table goes!'

'You are in high glee to-night. Does it make you happy to be wicked?'

'O mother! not to be wicked! but to be up, to have been out, to have

seen my beauty, and oh! I never shall see her any more, I never can

go there again!' and bursting into tears, he went crying to bed and

sobbing to sleep.

The next day, when the mournful Fauntleroy returned at night from

school, there stood in his mother's small sitting-room the beloved

piano, a roll of old and invaluable musical MSS. upon it, and an

envelope containing a sum of money, with directions that it should

be employed in paying a teacher for Master Fauntleroy Verrian.

The mother entering soon from an unusual day's work abroad--for she

was assisting at a trousseau--first looked about her in amaze, and

then hung long above the writing on the envelope, holding it to the

light, and trying it by a thousand whims.

'Yes,' she murmured at length, 'with all the false color of hair

and beard, with all the disguised tones and hidden pen-strokes, he

is unchanged. This is he, and strange it is that my heart does not

break. Of what, of what can I be made? How hard that heart must be;

for my love is as utterly extinct as his.'

Nevertheless, she hurried on shawl and hood again, and returned to

the house from which she had lately issued. She never had occasion

to seek it again, for the trousseau upon which she had worked, was

from that evening abandoned.

For two or three days the money lay untouched, the music unrolled,

the piano unopened. At their close his mother extracted the

confession, that if he had been dishonest he was 'making up for it,'

and that he would show her how well he could deny himself.

At the end of another week, during which the donor had settled his

affairs and departed, as she heard, she engaged a music-teacher,

herself displayed the crabbed manuscript, opened the piano, and

placed him before it.

'You have my leave, dear,' she said, and with a sigh perhaps,

resigned the laudable intention which all American mothers are

supposed to entertain, of making him on one day President of the

Republic; for the fine arts, as we all know, are not the road to

that distinction.

'Mother,' said Fauntleroy, a few days afterward, 'I never shall

enjoy my music the way I did when it was, as you say, stolen.'

There was little for his teacher to correct in what he had

previously gained, and at every lesson he astonished and outstripped

her. Finally she buried him in the intricacies of the science till

it became clear and glorious as the firmament, and reflected back to

him the features of his own mind like the brazen sea of the Temple

crowned at the brim with flowers of lilies. The gradual opening of

the child's genius gave his mother a great awe; with that she dared

no longer interfere, but in the moral part of his character he was,

she saw, fearfully deficient. He met all her arguments with an

unconscious sophistry, and was almost incapable of distinguishing

right from wrong. The creature of impulse, she declared it

providential that all his impulses were good.

As time passed, Fauntleroy's supple fingers gathered strength, and

he was pronounced equal to the anticipation of his life. To be a

great performer on any instrument, or to create fresh forms for any

or all instruments to unfold, did not at that time belong to his

visions; he only desired to live for and in music, however humbly,

and to serve it entirely. It was not, meantime, so easy a task to

obtain an opportunity for this exercise. Wealthy committees of

wealthy churches declined affording his genius the assistance; had

they willed it, they might have ministered to the heavenly visitant,

but unwilling, he was nevertheless not to lose his service. At last

the organ of a poorer church, fine and powerful for its size, was

placed at his disposal, and he entered with the years of childhood

upon the career of a man. Frequently, after becoming accustomed,

he played for the usual organist of his place: his performances

being so excellent that ungodly crowds flocked to hear them; and on

the departure of his first friend from the church which his mother

attended, he was invited to fill his place, at a salary which, far

too small as it was, was a fabulous amount to the boy and his mother.

Thus he grew. His teacher had no more to impart; if it were

possible, he had exhausted the MSS. with which he had been so

unexpectedly enriched: he had finished fourteen years, and his

mother died. Slowly and imperceptibly, yet with the sureness of

fate, she had drooped and wearied from the day, eight years since,

in which she had abandoned her son to his determination; and without

ever knowing that it was so, Fauntleroy watched his mother fade away

before his eyes. Had he been an ordinary person, the reäction would

now inevitably have come. But the grief that so suddenly overwhelmed

him only goaded to farther effort, and in almost unbroken seclusion

he turned himself partially to a more general study, pursued with no

less ardor or success. Nothing that he attempted seemed to require

an effort, or rather the effort he saw fit to put forth always

covered the attempt, and thus in time his learning became more than

liberal. Again then he returned to his chosen pursuit, and day after

day he sat in the old church alone, except for his single attendant,

pouring forth melodies, and teaching the echoes of the place such

resonances as they had never breathed before.

* * * * *

There was at no great distance from the church a school, the tumult

of whose greetings and recesses reached the young organist in a

murmur, as he sat studying black tomes in the sheltered choir.

Often through the blush of sunrise he passed its neat grounds, and

its bells broke in upon his sweetest reveries. The boy grows as

he dreams, and Fauntleroy was already gathering a look into his

face that did not belong to the child. Up the gallery-stairs now,

unperceived by him, stole every day a little girl--pale, though not

from lack of health, and elegantly clad--who sat upon the upper

step and listened to his music. When the bell struck she would

hasten down, as frequently taking the balustrade for her method of

conveyance as any other. Time increasing, she became more daring,

and stole on tip-toe round the organ, though never obtaining a view

of the performer's face, and never caring to do so. Sometimes now

the stroke of the bell was disregarded by her, and until some motion

of the organist surprised her, she sat listening through the warm

noons to his necromancy; the long roll of the sound made her tremble

with a delicious pain, and her face grew paler as the childish soul

fed upon such ecstatic sweetness. Pinafore and pantalette vanished

by degrees, while a maturer maidenly attire assumed predominance;

and the flying hair, swept away in a long satin gloss, was secured

in twisted coils. Once she had brought a cluster of the school-girls

to partake her feast, but each borrowing courage from the other,

their congregated boldness frightened her, and she did not repeat

the experiment.

One noon she had stood sheltered by the wing of the organ; so

entranced through the music, and so lost in the mazes whither it had

led her, that when its last throb died away she was first startled

from her abstraction by the clang of the church-door. She ran down,

but the organist and his attendant had gone, and she was locked

in. Knowing he would return, she entered the body of the church,

and, having wandered at her pleasure over the forbidden precincts,

ensconced herself finally among the piled hassocks of a square

pew, and opened the school-book which to save her conscience she

had brought in her hand. Never a very courageous student, the book

ere long wearied her, letter chased letter over the page, and the

head sinking among the crimson cushions, she was soon fast asleep.

In a short time the young organist returned, quietly ascended,

and busied himself in fresh problems, combinations and intervals,

over the old cabalistic volumes. Rising at length, he leaned over

the rail of the gallery, and looked down into the church: his mind

full of pleasant dreaming. Thus the girl slumbering in the warm

coloring of the old pew below, with a broad pencil of light guarding

her presence as it slanted through the chancel window and swum in

gorgeous motes, seemed to him like a fay curled in the cups of

ruby cacti, or the visible spirit and creation of his music, and

so passed along his dream without exciting other emotions than its

thousand fantasies and gay processions were wont to do. Turning

again to the keys, he was soon lost in the more beautiful ideas of

men older and greater than he. Soon there stole through the girl's

half-waking mind a gentle murmuring, swelling till all the air

about her pulsed with long waves of melody, and she awoke to hear

the golden pipes pealing as she had never dreamed they could, while

every atom throbbed with conscious sound.

So the music stole along the aisles, shaking from its flowing folds

fragments of delicious airs, dim remembrances of meadow-greens,

wreaths of palest wood-flowers. Now the quiet ripple of a

forest-brook crept down; and now the summer wind, taking the

pine-tree tops, shook them in a hurried storm of notes till the

wild crescendo broke into a myriad murmurs, each rocking in the

breeze. Slowly through this, out of untrodden depths, a grander

and more solemn movement rose, and all the mysterious beauty of a

fugue of Bach bathed the place in a fairer sanctity. Filled with

indescribable awe, she glided from the church at its close, and

returned to her vacant seat at school, regardless of reprimand and

trifles, and only repeating in her mind the sublime strains she had

heard.

For some time Fauntleroy Verrian had been quietly growing in the

public favor. Indeed it would have been singular if the chord

so powerfully touched by him had never drawn any response; and

thus when a musical impulse, apparently unaccountable, seized the

town, all his quiet became disturbed, and he was compelled to

direct it. Yet so sincerely did he love his art, that he deemed no

self-sacrifice too great, and his genial advice and enthusiastic

sympathy were never sought in vain. A class of eager students came

into his own hands, and soon with their help he had reörganized the

ancient order of singing-schools into institutions replete with

zeal and science. While the fever, as it was called, was at its

height, it was determined to introduce the pursuit of music into

the schools, and certain of his class undertaking younger pupils,

he reserved to himself the older, and therefore more stupid and

refractory. Among these, it chanced, was his unrecognized disciple.

It was a warm afternoon when he first mounted that seminary

staircase, in company with the Principal. A class in history sat

in the recitation-desks, and the girl who, unknown to him, had so

haunted the organ-loft, was standing in the act of answering a

question. She was rather taller than the usual height, and wore a

dress of some thin purple tissue, out of whose dark shades rose

her snowy shoulders like a Naiad from a flag-flower, and short

sleeves with little puffs of cloudy lace displayed the round fair

arms. The hair, naturally of a soft brown, was transmuted into

sunshine by the beams that showering through the dome, illumined

the beautiful forehead, and was fastened by a narrow silver comb.

The long-cut hazel eyes with darker brows distinctly pencilled;

the finely-moulded features and self-repressed lips; and the white

colorless skin, all made a piece of rare beauty. The contrast of

her complexion and dress first caught the eye of Fauntleroy as the

principal would have conducted him to a seat. His glance lingered

unconsciously, and he scanned her keenly to discover the soul that

animated such loveliness. An ordinary observer might have passed

heedlessly, but he read in her the tone that answered to his dimmest

dearest thought. Perhaps she had spent more serious study on the

present lesson than ever on any before, yet now the answer, ready

not a moment since, hung trembling on her lips and slipped away

from her treacherous memory, while as earnestly and forgetfully she

returned his gaze. Yet in an instant, as I said, Fauntleroy had seen

something in her face, neither of feature nor of color; something

that comprised a beautiful ideal, that sprung forward and met his

own soul. He had felt her presence before he fairly saw her, and

now while she stood with those little white hands calmly crossed on

the cherry-wood desk beside her, and her eyes fearlessly meeting

his own; the gusty maps that swayed upon the wall; the shadow of

the maples through the open windows; the form of the teacher and

the hum of the scholars all disappeared, and he felt only this girl

and himself alone in the world. In a moment more the class was

dismissed. Suddenly awakened, the girl fled to her seat, which was

at the opposite extremity of the room.

The teacher now briefly explained the affair on hand, assured the

scholars that all diffidence should be laid aside, and that each one

must sing such a verse as she could remember; that their separate

capabilities might be ascertained. A few, the first summoned,

declared themselves totally without ear and voice; for the nonce

they were left undisturbed, and perhaps the whole number would have

confessed to a similar inability had not one whispering little thing

struck up an impudent air, and sung it through with spirit. After

this, sentimental songs found favor, a faded opera-tune tawdrily

rendered, and some drawled out long-metred hymns, or raced through

the best of the negro-melodies extant, which at that time numbered

but few. Mechanically the young organist noted these, while a new

and strange impatience fired him to hear that other voice. As for

her, she had never, as you know, seen his face before, yet was

sure of his identity as much as he was amazed at finding here the

creature of his reverie. At last her turn came.

'Miss Sara,' said the teacher.

She rose calmly, as if thinking what to sing, while he waited

longingly; then ran lightly up and down the scale, with liquid,

airy, ringing notes as ever sung by any spray-swung bird.

'A tune, Miss Sara,' said the preceptress, according to the letter

of her instructions; 'is it not, Mr. Verrian?'

The scales answered far better, but impossible as it was to speak,

and in his quick desire to hear more, he bowed. Again the lips

parted, and the mournful words of the old Scotch chorus flowed on

the bosom of its wild sweet tune in a luxury of pathos and melody:

'LOCHABER na mair

May be to return to Lochaber na mair.'

Tears filled his eyes while she sung, and her competitors exhibited

their skill to inattentive ears. When all were through, he walked

directly to her desk. She rose to meet him.

'Will you come to my house after school?' he asked in his sweetest

tones. 'Will you come and sing with me?'

The frank glad consent of her eyes was answer enough; he named his

place of residence, and without another word left the school, nor

did he ever return.

There was a beautiful calmness about this girl, a natural freedom

from anticipation and tumult; impatience never interrupted her

quiet, surprises were impossible with her; all things came to her as

if by an appointed sequence of events. Thus this new friend did not

startle her, and in all the tedious employments of the school that

day she was not for an instant restless.

As soon as the recitations closed, Sara obeyed his request, reached

the small house by the water-side, and entered the low room.

Fauntleroy was standing by the window, looking out upon the river;

as she lingered at the handle of the door, he turned, instantly

advanced and led her in with the happiest of smiles, but with no

words. He seated himself at the piano, and placed certain vocal

exercises before her. Not to his astonishment, since he could have

believed her capable of all things, she sang them with entire

ease, as her music-teacher, who once had been also his, could

have prophesied to him. His fingers lingered on the accompaniment

when she had finished, as if loth to conclude. She trembled a

minute, half in doubt, and then, her lithe figure swaying to the

song, warbled an air more familiar to him than day, because it

was his own. The expression with which she rendered his song, the

interpretation of all its indefinite grace, could not have been more

exquisitely given by the most finished cantatrice alive. He turned

in a rapture of admiration.

'It is yours, Sir,' she said. He had not presumed that another soul

had knowledge of it.

'And yours! You have made it so!' he replied, seeing her as no

pupil, but rather on an equality with himself. 'And you--surely you

have melodies where your delights are written down.'

'The clouds, Sir, have neither color nor shape till the sun shines

on them; and such as I sing only what is made for us.'

The clock tolled nine before he allowed her to rest, and then

conducting her to her home, he returned. A new light had been given

to his eye that day; a new fire kindled at his hearth. His heart had

been like a flower waiting for the dawn, and that now expanded in

all the warmth and beauty of its rich growth. There were but three

Fates: the first he had met on the Sunday, now so long ago, when he

threw himself upon the organ's universe of sound; his second he knew

well he had found to-day, and were she hostile or propitious, still

how fair and calm and beautiful! When should he find his third Fate?

(END OF PART FIRST.)