We now return to our friends assembled in the Hall.
Especially among the ladies who had not heard the Don’s first
performance, expectation was on tiptoe. The excellent Herr is bustling
about, rubbing his hands, and smiling through his spectacles the vast
Teutonic smile. Charley places the case containing the Guarnerius upon
the table. The Don opens it with an almost nervous eagerness. _She_ is
to hear him, and he will outdo himself.
But where is she? Presently he espies her partly concealed behind the
stalwart form of Jones. She is gazing at the western sky,—she alone of
all the company unconscious that he is about to play.
The thought is a sudden shock. And then he remembers that she alone of
the ladies had made no allusion, during the day, to the performance of
the evening before,—had expressed no regret at not having been present.
The artist nature is caprice itself,—changeful as an April sky; and the
Don with sudden impulse released the neck of the violin, which sank back
upon its luxurious cushion of blue satin. He would excuse himself,—he
_could_ not play. But the strings, vibrating beneath an accidental
touch, gave forth a chord, and instantly reversed the current of his
feelings. Yes, he would play; and taking up the instrument, he sauntered
over, with as careless an air as he could command, to the window by
which Mary stood, touching the strings lightly as he went, as though to
see whether they were in tune. Mary felt his approach; and partly
turning her face and raising her eyes to his, as he reached her side,
she said, with what was meant for a smile, “Now we shall have some merry
music.” And she dropped her eyes.
“Why merry?”
Mary, startled as well by the abruptness of the question as by a certain
hardness in his voice, gave a quick glance at his face.
“Why, is not the violin—” began she, but could get no farther,—held,
as was the Wedding Guest by the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner.
“Is this, then, a merry world?”
The smile faded from Mary’s face. These words had thrilled her; for it
was not by nature a blithesome heart that beat in that young bosom, and
its strings gave forth readiest response to minor chords. A slight
tremor ran through her frame as she met the gaze of his darkly gleaming
eyes, and a vague sense of having in some way wounded his feelings
oppressed her mind.
Perhaps he read her thoughts; for in an instant a reassuring smile—sad,
almost pathetic—came into his eyes, followed by a look,—one momentary,
indescribable glance; and her untutored heart began to throb so that she
thought he must hear it.
“I, at least,” he added, slowly, “have not found it such, so far; and
see,” said he, pointing with his bow to the faint streaks of red that
tinged the western horizon,—“still another Christmas Day—and the only
happy one that I have known since I was a child—one more Christmas
Day—is dying!” And his voice trembled as he averted his face.
Mary felt a choking sensation in her throat; for a kindred thought had
been weighing upon her naturally melancholy spirit, as she stood there
gazing upon the western sky; and the Don, in giving voice to her inmost
thoughts, had touched a chord that thrilled with overmastering power. As
he moved away to take his place by the piano, she sank into a chair
trembling from head to foot. They had stood together by the window
hardly one minute, and had not exchanged above a dozen words; yet as she
followed his retiring form with her eyes, he was no longer the same
person to her that he had been a moment before. She was stricken to the
heart, and she knew it.
The Don spoke to Charley in a low voice. “Yes,” replied he, “we have
it;” and hurrying into the adjoining room he soon returned, bearing in
his hand some sheet music. “Thanks,” said the Don, placing the
piano-part before the Herr, and laying the violin score upon the piano.
“Never mind about the stand; I know it by heart. Can you read yours,
Mein Herr, by the light of the fire?”
“Oh, I tink so.” And adjusting his spectacles, he looked at the title of
the piece. “De Elegie von Ernst! Ah, das ist vat you call very sat, very
vat you call melancholish,”—and he struck a chord. “So!”—and poising
his hands, he glanced upwards to signify his readiness to begin.
A sudden stillness came over us at the sight of the sombre face of the
Don. Obviously, we all felt there was to be a change of programme. There
were to be no musical fireworks on this occasion.
Had the Don been a consummate actor, posing for effect, he could not
have brought his audience into more instant, more complete harmony with
the spirit of the piece he was about to render. Tall, broad-shouldered,
gaunt, he seemed in the ruddy glare of the great bank of coals to tower
above us, while his eyes, fixed for a moment with a far-away look upon
the fire, seemed doubly dark in contrast with the red light upon his
brow.
He placed the violin beneath his dark, flowing beard, and poised the bow
above the strings.
I fear that but few of my readers will follow me in this scene. To have
heard pathetic music only in theatres and concert-halls, amid a sea of
careless faces distracted by bright toilets, and under the glare of
gaslight, is to have heard it, indeed, but not to have felt it. The
“Miserere” chanted in the dim religious light of St. Peter’s rends the
heart of the listener. It has been found to be meaningless elsewhere.
For the power of music, as of eloquence, lies in the heart of the
hearer,—a heart prepared beforehand by the surroundings.
On the present occasion everything was in the artist’s favor,—the dying
day, the spectral glare and shadow wrought by the glowing coals, the
reaction after a week of frolic gladness.
The bow descended upon the G string, softly as a snow-flake, but
clinging as a mother’s arm.
Ernst has obeyed Horace’s maxim, and plunged at once into the middle of
his story. With the very first tone of the violin there seems to break
from the overwrought heart a low moan, which, rising and swelling,
leaps, in the second note, into a cry of rebellious anguish,—anguish
too bitter to be borne; despair were more endurable; and in the fourth
bar the voice of the crushed spirit sinks into a weird, muttered whisper
of resignation unresigned. The whole story is there,—there in those
four bars, but the poet begins anew and sings his sorrow in detail;
pouring forth a lament so passionate in its frenzy that it almost
passes, at times, the bounds of true music (for can you not hear the
sobs, see the wringing of the hands?), and rising, at last, to a climax
that is almost insupportable, the voice of wailing then sinks—for all
is over—into a low plaint, and dies into silence.
The _Marcia Funebre_ of the Eroica symphony is the lament of a nation of
Titans; in Ernst’s Elegie one poor human heart is breaking—breaking all
alone. I have heard the piece since in crowded halls and beneath the
blaze of chandeliers, and performed by artists more finished, no doubt,
than was the Don; but the effect he wrought I have never seen
approached. All eyes were riveted upon him while he played, and when he
ceased—when the last despairing sigh died upon the air—no one moved,
not a note of applause was given, and the only sound heard was that of
long-drawn breaths of relief.
It was an intense moment. My grandfather was the first to break the
spell. Approaching the Don with a tender look in his eyes, he tried, I
think, to speak a few words, but could only press his hand. Then there
arose a subdued murmur of whispered enthusiasm, each one to his
neighbor. At last—
“Billy,” said the middle-aged-fat-gentleman, “I give it up,—he can beat
you.” And a ripple of laughter relieved the tension.
And Mary?
She and the Don happened to be among the last to leave the hall, and he
offered her his arm. Neither spoke for a few moments.
“How silly you must have thought me!”
“I assure you—”
“Oh, but you must. But I had never heard anything but fiddling before.
Do you know,” she added gravely, “I doubt if any of the company
understood all that you meant, save myself?”
“And are you quite sure that _you_ understood all that I felt?”
Mary looked up and their eyes met. Releasing his arm as she passed into
the house, she colored deeply.