THE IMPROVISATORE.
The character of Beatrice unfolded more and more every day, and every
new development excited the wonder of Brandon.
She said once that music was to her like the breath of life, and indeed
it seemed to be; for now, since Brandon had witnessed her powers,
he noticed how all her thoughts took a coloring from this. What most
surprised him was her profound acquirements in the more difficult
branches of the art. It was not merely the case of a great natural gift
of voice. Her whole soul seemed imbued with those subtle influences
which music can most of all bestow. Her whole life seemed to have been
passed in one long intercourse with the greatest works of the greatest
masters. All their works were perfectly well known to her. A marvelous
memory enabled her to have their choicest productions at command;
and Brandon, who in the early part of his life had received a careful
musical education, knew enough about it to estimate rightly the full
extent of the genius of his companion, and to be astonished thereat.
Her mind was also full of stories about the lives, acts, and words of
the great masters. For her they formed the only world with which she
cared to be acquainted, and the only heroes whom she had power to
admire. All this flowed from one profound central feeling--namely, a
deep and all-absorbing love of this most divine art. To her it was
more than art. It was a new faculty to him who possessed it. It was the
highest power of utterance--such utterance as belongs to the angels;
such utterance as, when possessed by man, raises him almost to an
equality with them.
Brandon found out every day some new power in her genius. Now her voice
was unloosed from the bonds which she had placed upon it. She sang, she
said, because it was better than talking. Words were weak--song was
all expression. Nor was it enough for her to take the compositions of
others. Those were infinitely better, she said, than any thing which
she could produce; but each one must have his own native expression;
and there were times when she had to sing from herself. To Brandon
this seemed the most amazing of her powers. In Italy the power of
improvisation is not uncommon, and Englishmen generally imagine that
this is on account of some peculiar quality of the Italian language.
This is not the case. One can improvise in any language; and Brandon
found that Beatrice could do this with the English.
“It is not wonderful,” said she, in answer to his expression of
astonishment, “it is not even difficult. There is an art in doing this,
but, when you once know it, you find no trouble. It is rhythmic prose in
a series of lines. Each line must contain a thought. Langhetti found no
difficulty in making rhyming lines, but rhymes are not necessary. This
rhythmic prose is as poetic as any thing can be. All the hymns of the
Greek Church are written on this principle. So are the Te Deum and the
Gloria. So were all the ancient Jewish psalms. The Jews improvised. I
suppose Deborah’s song, and perhaps Miriam’s, are of this order.”
“And you think the art can be learned by every one?”
“No, not by every one. One must have a quick and vivid imagination,
and natural fluency--but these are all. Genius makes all the difference
between what is good and what is bad. Sometimes you have a song of
Miriam that lives while the world lasts, sometimes a poor little song
like one of mine.”
“Sing to me about music,” said Brandon, suddenly.
Beatrice immediately began an improvisation. But the music to which she
sang was lofty and impressive, and the marvelous sweetness of her voice
produced an indescribable effect. And again, as always when she sang,
the fashion of her face was changed, and she became transfigured before
his eyes. It was the same rhythmic prose of which she had been speaking,
sung according to the mode in which the Gloria is chanted, and divided
into bars of equal time.
Brandon, as always, yielded to the spell of her song. To him it was an
incantation. Her own strains varied to express the changing sentiment,
and at last, as the song ended, it seemed to die away in melodious
melancholy, like the dying strain of the fabled swan.
“Sing on!” he exclaimed, fervently; “I would wish to stand and hear your
voice forever.”
A smile of ineffable sweetness came over her face. She looked at him,
and said nothing. Brandon bowed his head, and stood in silence.
Thus ended many of their interviews. Slowly and steadily this young girl
gained over him an ascendency which he felt hourly, and which was so
strong that he did not even struggle against it. Her marvelous genius,
so subtle, so delicate, yet so inventive and quick, amazed him. If he
spoke of this, she attributed every thing to Langhetti. “Could you but
see him,” she would say, “I should seem like nothing!”
“Has he such a voice?”
“Oh! he has no voice at all. It is his soul,” she would reply. “He
speaks through the violin. But he taught me all that I know. He said
my voice was God’s gift. He had a strange theory that the language of
heaven and of the angels was music, and that he who loved it best on
earth made his life and his thoughts most heavenly.”
“You must have been fond of such a man.”
“Very,” said Beatrice, with the utmost simplicity. “Oh, I loved him so
dearly!”
But in this confession, so artlessly made, Brandon saw only a love that
was filial or sisterly. “He was the first one,” said Beatrice, “who
showed me the true meaning of life. He exalted his art above all other
arts, and always maintained that it was the purest and best thing which
the world possessed. This consoled him for exile, poverty, and sorrow of
many kinds.”
“Was he married?”
Beatrice looked at Brandon with a singular smile. “Married! Langhetti
married! Pardon me; but the idea of Langhetti in domestic life is so
ridiculous.”
“Why? The greatest musicians have married.”
Beatrice looked up to the sky with a strange, serene smile. “Langhetti
has no passion out of art,” she said. “As an artist he is all fire, and
vehemence, and enthusiasm. He is aware of all human passions, but only
as an artist. He has only one love, and that is music. This is his idol.
He seems to me himself like a song. But all the raptures which poets and
novelists apply to lovers are felt by him in his music. He wants nothing
while he has this. He thinks the musician’s life the highest life. He
says those to whom the revelations of God were committed were musicians.
As David and Isaiah received inspiration to the strains of the harp,
so, he says, have Bach and Mozart, Handel and Haydn, Beethoven and
Mendelssohn. And where, indeed,” she continued, in a musing tone, half
soliloquizing, “where, indeed, can man rise so near heaven as when he
listens to the inspired strains of these lofty souls?”
“Langhetti,” said Brandon, in a low voice, “does not understand love, or
he would not put music in its place.”
“Yes,” said Beatrice. “We spoke once about that. He has his own ideas,
which he expressed to me.”
“What were they?”
“I will have to say them as he said them,” said she. “For on this theme
he had to express himself in music.”
Brandon waited in rapt expectation. Beatrice began to sing:
“Fairest of all most fair,
Young Love, how comest thou
Unto the soul?
Still as the evening breeze
Over the starry wave--
The moonlit wave--
“The heart lies motionless;
So still, so sensitive;
Love fans the breeze.
Lo! at his lightest touch,
The myriad ripples rise,
And murmur on.
“And ripples rise to waves,
And waves to rolling seas,
Till, far and wide,
The endless billows roll,
In undulations long,
For evermore!”
Her voice died away into a scarce audible tone, which sank into
Brandon’s heart, lingering and dying about the last word, with touching
and unutterable melancholy. It was like the lament of one who loved. It
was like the cry of some yearning heart.
In a moment Beatrice looked at Brandon with a swift, bright smile. She
had sung these words as an artist. For a moment Brandon had thought that
she was expressing her own feelings. But the bright smile on her face
contrasted so strongly with the melancholy of her voice that he saw this
was not so.
“Thus,” she said, “Langhetti sang about it: and I have never forgotten
his words.”
The thought came to Brandon, is it not truer than she thinks, that “she
loves him very dearly?” as she said.
“You were born to be an artist,” he said, at last.
Beatrice sighed lightly. “That’s what I never can be, I am afraid,”
said she. “Yet I hope I may be able to gratify my love for it. Art,”
she continued, musingly, “is open to women as well as to men; and of all
arts none are so much so as music. The interpretation of great masters
is a blessing to the world. Langhetti used to say that these are the
only ones of modern times that have received heavenly inspiration.
They correspond to the Jewish prophets. He used to declare that the
interpretation of each was of equal importance. To man is given the
interpretation of the one, but to woman is given the interpretation of
much of the other. Why is not my voice, if it is such as he said, and
especially the feeling within me, a Divine call to go forth upon this
mission of interpreting the inspired utterances of the great masters of
modern days?
“You,” she continued, “are a man, and you have a purpose.” Brandon
started, but she did not notice it. “You have a purpose in life,” she
repeated. “Your intercourse with me will hereafter be but an episode in
the life that is before you. I am a girl, but I too may wish to have
a purpose in life--suited to my powers; and if I am not able to work
toward it I shall not be satisfied.”
“How do you know that I have a purpose, as you call it?” asked Brandon,
after a pause.
“By the expression of your face, and your whole manner when you are
alone and subside into yourself,” she replied, simply.
“And of what kind?” he continued.
“That I do not seek to know,” she replied; “but I know that it must be
deep and all-absorbing. It seems to me to be too stern for Love; you are
not the man to devote yourself to Avarice: possibly it may be Ambition,
yet somehow I do not think so.”
“What do you think it is, then?” asked Brandon, in a voice which had
died away, almost to a whisper.
She looked at him earnestly; she looked at him pityingly. She looked
at him also with that sympathy which might be evinced by one’s Guardian
Angel, if that Being might by any chance become visible. She leaned
toward him, and spoke low in a voice only audible to him:
“Something stronger than Love, and Avarice, and Ambition,” said she.
“There can be only one thing.”
“What?”
“Vengeance!” she said, in a voice of inexpressible mournfulness.
Brandon looked at her wonderingly, not knowing how this young girl could
have divined his thoughts. He long remained silent.
Beatrice folded her hands together, and looked pensively at the sea.
“You are a marvelous being,” said Brandon, at length. “Can you tell me
any more?”
“I might,” said she, hesitatingly; “but I am afraid you will think me
impertinent.”
“No,” said Brandon. “Tell me, for perhaps you are mistaken.”
“You will not think me impertinent, then? You will only think that I
said so because you asked me?”
“I entreat you to believe that it is impossible for me to think
otherwise of you than you yourself would wish.”
“Shall I say it, then?”
“Yes.”
Her voice again sank to a whisper. “Your name is not Wheeler.”
Brandon looked at her earnestly. “How did you learn that?”
“By nothing more than observation.”
“What is my name?”
“Ah, that is beyond my power to know,” said she with a smile. “I have
only discovered what you are not. Now you will not think me a spy, will
you?” she continued, in a pleading voice.
Brandon smiled on her mournfully as she stood looking at him with her
dark eyes upraised.
“A spy!” he repeated. “To me it is the sweetest thought conceivable
that you could take the trouble to notice me sufficiently.” He checked
himself suddenly, for Beatrice looked away, and her hands which had been
folded together clutched each other nervously. “It is always flattering
for a gentleman to be the object of a lady’s notice,” he concluded, in a
light tone.
Beatrice smiled. “But where,” he continued, “could you have gained
that power of divination which you possess; you who have always lived a
secluded life in so remote a place?”
“You did not think that one like me could come out of Hong-Kong, did
you?” said she, laughingly.
“Well, I have seen much of the world; but I have not so much of this
power as you have.”
“You might have more if--if--” she hesitated. “Well,” she continued,
“they say, you know, that men act by reason, women by intuition.”
“Have you any more intuitions?” asked Brandon, earnestly.
“Yes,” said she, mournfully.
“Tell me some.”
“They will not do to tell,” said Beatrice, in the same mournful tone.
“Why not?”
“They are painful.”
“Tell them at any rate.”
“No.”
“Hint at them.”
Beatrice looked at him earnestly. Their eyes met. In hers there was
a glance of anxious inquiry, as though her soul were putting forth a
question by that look which was stronger than words. In his there was
a glance of anxious expectancy, as though his soul were speaking unto
hers, saying: “Tell all; let me know if you suspect that of which I am
afraid to think.”
“We have met with ships at sea,” she resumed, in low, deliberate tones.
“Yes.”
“Sometimes we have caught up with them, we have exchanged signals,
we have sailed in sight of one another for hours or for days, holding
intercourse all the while. At last a new morning has come, and we looked
out over the sea, and the other ship has gone from sight. We have left
it forever. Perhaps we have drifted away, perhaps a storm has parted us,
the end is the same--separation for evermore.”
She spoke mournfully, looking away, her voice insensibly took up a
cadence, and the words seemed to fall of themselves into rhythmic pause.
“I understand you,” said Brandon, with a more profound mournfulness in
his voice. “You speak like a Sibyl. I pray Heaven that your words may
not be a prophecy.”
Beatrice still looked at him, and in her eyes he read pity beyond words;
and sorrow also as deep as that pity.
“Do you read my thoughts as I read yours?” asked Brandon, abruptly.
“Yes,” she answered, mournfully.
He turned his face away.
“Did Langhetti teach you this also?” he asked, at last.
“He taught me many things,” was the answer.
Day succeeded to day, and week to week. Still the ship went on holding
steadily to her course northward, and every day drawing nearer and
nearer her goal. Storms came--some moderate, some severe; but the ship
escaped them all with no casualties, and with but little delay.
At last they passed the equator, and seemed to have entered the last
stage of their journey.