“Ladies unt shentlemens, I have de pleasure to announce dot Miss Lucy
will now favor de company mit a song.” The Herr was seated at the piano,
while Lucy stood by his side.
“What! does she sing, too?” inquired the Don, with interest.
“Oh, yes; Lucy has a very sweet voice.”
The Don sat and listened, with a pleased smile, nodding approvingly from
time to time. “Not very strong,” remarked he, when the song was ended,
“but, as you say, sweet and sympathetic—very.”
A second ballad was called for, which Lucy gave, and then her mother
suggested Schubert’s “Serenade.” She had hardly sung half a dozen notes,
when Mary noticed a peculiar expression on the Don’s face. It was a face
which, when in repose, was always grave, to say the least; and there
were times when it seemed to many stern, even grim. But now as he gazed,
wide-eyed and dreamy, upon the bank of coals before him, the firm lines
of his features melted into an inexpressible softness.
“Oh, that I were a musician, to bring that beautiful look into his face!
Lucy’s fingers have stolen half his heart, her voice the rest.” Thus
sighed Mary in the depths of her troubled spirit.
The Don rose softly from his seat. “Excuse me,” said he; and moving
silently and on tiptoe across the room, took up his violin, placed it
under his chin, and poising the bow over the strings, stood there
waiting for a pause in Lucy’s song. By Lucy alone, of all the company,
had these movements of the Don been unobserved; and when there leaped
forth, just behind her and close to her ear, the vibrating tones of the
Guarnerius, echoing her own, she gave a quick start and a pretty little
“oh!” but turning and seeing the Don behind her, she beamed upon him
with a radiant smile.
“Aha, an obligato! so!” cried the Herr. “Very goot, very goot.” And he
bent him over the piano with renewed zeal.
If I knew what an “obligato” was, I would tell you most cheerfully; but
even Charley could never get it into my head. It was not an
accompaniment, that I know; for the Herr was playing the accompaniment
himself.
“I tell you venn to come in,” said the Herr to Lucy, who was naturally a
little confused at first. “Now—ah—so, very goot.”
This time the Don broke in here and there upon Lucy’s song in a
fragmentary kind of way, as it seemed to me, and just as fancy dictated,
producing a very weird and startling effect; and when the pause came in
her score, he continued the strain in an improvisation full of power and
wild passion. “Wunderschön! Ben trovato!” cried the Herr, lapsing into
and out of his mother-tongue in his enthusiasm.
I gave the reader to understand, when I brought him acquainted with
Waldteufel, that he was a musician of far greater ability than one would
have expected to find teaching in a country neighborhood; regretfully
giving the reason for this anomaly. Aroused now by the Don, he showed
the stuff that was in him; dashing off an improvisation full of feeling
on the theme of the “Serenade.” “Now,” said he, striking the last notes,
“coom again, coom. Vot you got to say now?” he added, in challenge.
The Don gave a slight bow to Lucy.
“Ah, das is so,—I forgot.”
Lucy began anew, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling with excitement,
nodding approval, first to one, then to the other of the rival artists,
as each in turn gave proof of his virtuosity. Schubert’s “Serenade” is
of a divine beauty, and improving upon it is like adding polish to
Gray’s “Elegy.” But such considerations did not disturb our little
audience. Our local pride was up. The stranger had been carrying
everything before him, and when our honest Herr came back at him with a
Roland for his Oliver, as described above, there had been a lively
clapping of hands. And now, first one or two, then the entire company
had risen in a body and clustered around the performers, applauding and
cheering each in turn, but the Herr, as I remember, most warmly; for few
of us had ever heard him improvise before, and, besides, he seemed to
deserve special encouragement for his pluck in contending with this
Orpheus, newly dropped among us from the skies, as it were.
Mary had not at first risen with the rest. An unconquerable reserve was
her most marked trait. But at last even she rose (not being able,
perhaps, to see the Don from where she sat), but did not join the
cluster that surrounded the piano. She stood apart, resting her elbow
upon the mantel-piece, her cheek upon her hand, listening to the
music,—the music half drowned by the fevered tattoo her own heart was
beating. For now Lucy was singing the last stanza of the song, and the
Herr had dropped into something like an accompaniment, while the Don,
seeing that his antagonist had called a truce, had reined his own muse
down into a “second.” Sustained by this and rising with her enthusiasm,
Lucy’s voice came forth with a power and a pathos it had not shown
before; and the mellow Guarnerius, kindling and enkindled in turn, rose
to a passion almost human in its intensity. And before Mary’s eyes there
seemed to float, as voice and violin rose and fell, and fell and rose, a
vision (and it was her nature to dream dreams); there floated a vision
as of two souls locked in eternal embrace and borne aloft on the wings
of divinest music.
She did not close her eyes that night; for, to add to the perturbation
of her spirit, Mrs. Poythress, seeing Charley making ready to cross the
River and spend the night under her roof, as he did every Friday, had so
cordially invited the Don to accompany him that he, when the invitation
was warmly seconded by Mr. Poythress and Lucy, had, after some
hesitation, consented to do so.
He had entered the very grotto of Circe.