If I permit myself to pay any more visits to the nameless cottage, I
shall never take myself to the festival; but I must just say that we
entertained Davy the next Sunday at dinner. I had never seen my mother
enjoy anybody's society so much; but I observed he talked not so much
as he listened to her, and this may have been the secret. He went very
early, but on the Tuesday he fetched me again. It was not in vain that
I sang this time either,--my voice seemed to deliver itself from
something earthly; it was joy and ease to pour it forth.
When we had blended the bass and alto of the "Creation" choruses, with
a long spell at "The heavens are telling," Davy observed, "Now for the
'Messiah,' but you will only be able to look at it with me; to-morrow
night is rehearsal at the hall, and your mother must let you go."
Rehearsal at the hall! What words were those? They rang in my brain
that night, and I began to grow very feverish. Millicent was very kind
to me; but I was quite timid of adverting to my auspices, and I dared
not introduce the subject, as none of them could feel as I did. My
mother watched me somewhat anxiously,--and no wonder; for I was very
much excited. But when the morrow came, my self-importance made a man
of me, and I was calmer than I had been for days.
I remember the knock which came about seven in the evening, just as it
was growing gray. I remember rushing from our parlor to Lenhart Davy
on the doorstep. I remember our walk, when my hands were so cold and
my heart was so hot, so happy. I remember the pale, pearly shade that
was falling on street and factory, the shop-lit glare, the mail-coach
thundering down High Street. I remember how I felt entering, from the
dim evening, the chiaro-oscuro of the corridors, just uncertainly
illustrated by a swinging lamp or two; and I remember passing into the
hall. Standing upon the orchestra, giddy, almost fearful to fall
forwards into the great unlighted chaos, the windows looked like
clouds themselves, and every pillar, tier, and cornice stood dilated
in the unsubstantial space. Lenhart Davy had to drag me forwards to my
nook among the altos, beneath the organ, just against the conductor's
desk. The orchestra was a dream to me, filled with dark shapes,
flitting and hurrying, crossed by wandering sounds, whispers, and
laughter. There must have been four or five hundred of us up there,
but it seems to me like a lampless church, as full as it could be of
people struggling for room.
Davy did not lose his hold upon me, but one and another addressed him,
and flying remarks reached him from every quarter. He answered in his
hilarious voice; but his manner was decidedly more distant than to me
when alone with him. At last some one appeared at the foot of the
orchestra steps with a taper; some one or other snatched it from him,
and in a moment a couple of candles beamed brightly from the
conductor's desk. It was a strange, candle-light effect then. Such
great, awful shadows threw themselves down the hall, and so many faces
seemed darker than they had, clustered in the glooming twilight.
Again some hidden hand had touched the gas, which burst in tongues of
splendor that shook themselves immediately over us; _then_ was the
orchestra a blaze defined as day. But still dark, and darkening, like
a vast abyss, lay the hall before us; and the great chandelier was
itself a blot, like a mystery hung in circumambient nothingness.
I was lost in the light around me, and striving to pierce into that
mystery beyond, when a whisper thrilled me: "Now, Charles, I must
leave you. You are Mr. Auchester at present. Stand firm and sing on.
Look alone at the conductor, and think alone of your part. Courage!"
What did he say "courage" for? As if my heart could fail me then and
there!
I looked steadfastly on. I saw the man of many years' service in the
cause of music looking fresh as any youth in the heyday of his primal
fancy. A white-haired man, with a patriarchal staff besides, which he
struck upon the desk for silence, and then raised, in calm, to dispel
the silence.
I can only say that my head swam for a few minutes, and I was obliged
to shut my eyes before I could tell whether I was singing or not. I
was very thankful when somebody somewhere got out as a fugue came in,
and we were stopped, because it gave me a breathing instant. But then
again, breathless,--nerveless, I might say, for I could not
distinguish my sensations,--we rushed on, or I did, it was all the
same; I was not myself yet. At length, indeed, it came, that restoring
sense of self which is so precious at some times of our life. I
recalled exactly where I was. I heard myself singing, felt myself
standing; I was as if treading upon air, yet fixed as rock. I arose
and fell upon those surges of sustaining sound; but it was as with an
undulating motion itself rest. My spirit straightway soared. I could
imagine my own voice, high above all the others, to ring as a lark's
above a forest, tuneful with a thousand tones more low, more hidden;
the attendant harmonies sank as it were beneath me; I swelled above
them. It was my first idea of paradise.
And it is perhaps my last.
Let me not prose where I should, most of all, be poetical. The
rehearsal was considered very successful. St. Michel praised us. He
was a good old man, and, as Davy had remarked, very steady. There was
a want of unction about his conducting, but I did not know it,
certainly not feel it, that night. The "Messiah" was more hurried
through than it should have been, because of the late hour, and also
because, as we were reminded, "it was the most generally known."
Besides, there was to be a full rehearsal with the band before the
festival, but I was not to be present, Davy considerately deeming the
full effect would be lost for me were it in any sense to be
anticipated.
I feel I should only fail if I should attempt to delineate my
sensations on the first two days of performance, for the single reason
that the third morning of that festival annihilated the others so
effectually as to render me only master at this moment of its
unparalleled incidents. _Those_ I bear on my heart and in my life even
to this very hour, and shall take them with me, yea, as a part of my
essential immortality.