When I went to the class next time I was very eager to catch Mr. Davy,
that I might explain to him where I had been, for I did not like
acting without his cognizance. However, he was already down below when
I arrived. My fair companions were both in their places, but, to my
astonishment, Miss Benette took no notice of me. Her sweet face was as
grave as it was before I caught from under those long lashes the azure
light upon my own for the first time. Certain that she did not mean to
offend me, I got on very well though, and Davy was very much pleased
with our success.
Little Laura looked very pale; her hair was out of its curl, and
altogether she had an appearance as if she had been dragged through a
river, lost and forlorn, and scarcely sensible. She sang languidly,
but Miss Benette's clinging tones would not suffer me to be aware of
any except hers and my own.
Davy taught us something about Gregorian chants, and gave us a few to
practise, besides a new but extremely simple service of his own. "He
wrote that for us, I suppose," I ventured; and Clara nodded seriously,
but made no assent in words. Afterwards she seemed to remember me
again as her ally; for as Davy wished us his adieu in his wonted free
"Good-night!" she spoke to me of her own accord.
"I think it was all the better that we practised."
"Oh, was it not? Suppose we practise again."
"I should like it, if you will come at the same time, and not stay
longer; and Laura can come too, can she not?"
I did not exactly like this idea, but I could not contradict the calm,
mellow voice.
"Oh, if she will practise."
"Of course she will practise if she comes on purpose."
"I don't care about coming!" exclaimed the child, in a low, fretful
voice. "I know I sha'n't get out, either."
"Yes, you shall; I will coax your papa. Look, Laura! there he is,
waiting for you."
The child ran off instantly, with an air of fear over all her fatigue,
and I felt sure she was not treated like a child; but I said nothing
about it then.
"Sir," said I to Mr. Davy, "pray walk a little way, for I want to tell
you something. My mother particularly requests that you will go to our
house to sup with us this evening."
"I will accept her kindness with the greatest pleasure, as I happen to
be less engaged than usual."
Davy never bent his duty to his pleasure,--rather the reverse.
"I went to practise with Miss Benette the day before yesterday."
"So she told me."
"She told you herself?"
"Yes, when she came to my house for her lesson last afternoon. I was
very glad to hear it, because such singing as hers will improve yours.
But I should like to tell your mother how she is connected with me."
"How was it, sir?"
"Oh! I shall make a long story for her; but enough for you that her
father was very good to me when I was an orphan boy and begged my way
through Germany. He taught me all that I now teach you; and when he
died, he asked me to take care of his baby and his lessons. She was
only born that he might see her, and die."
"Oh, sir, how strange! Poor man! he must have been very sorry."
"He was not sorry to go, for he loved his wife, and she went first."
"Oh, that was Miss Benette's mamma?"
"Yes, her lovely mamma."
"Of course she was lovely. If you please, sir, tell me about her too."
But Davy reserved his tale until we were at home.
My mother fully expected him, it was evident; for upon the table,
besides the plain but perfectly ordered meal we always enjoyed at
about nine o'clock, stood the supernumerary illustrations--in honor of
a guest--of boiled custards, puff pastry, and our choicest preserves.
My mother, too, was sitting by the fire in a species of state, having
her hands void of occupation and her pocket-handkerchief outspread.
Millicent and Lydia wore their dahlia-colored poplin frocks,--quite a
Sunday costume,--and Clo revealed herself in purple silk, singularly
adapted for evening wear, as it looked black by candle-light!
I never sat up to supper except on very select occasions. I knew this
would be one, without being told so, and secured the next chair to my
darling friend's.
I would that I could recall, in his own expressive language, his exact
relation of his own history as told to us that night. It struck us
that he should so earnestly acquaint us with every incident,--at
least, it surprised us then, but his after connection with ourselves
explained it in that future.
No fiction could be more fraught with fascinating personality than his
actual life. I pass over his birth in England (and in London), in a
dark room over a dull book-shop, in his father's house. That father,
from pure breeding and constitutional exclusiveness, had avoided all
intercourse with his class, and conserved his social caste by his
marriage only. I linger not upon his remembrance of his mother,
Sybilla Lenhart,--herself a Jewess, with the most exquisite musical
ability,--nor upon her death in her only son's tenth year.
His father's pining melancholy meantime deepened into an abstraction
of misery on her loss. The world and its claims lost their hold, and
he died insolvent when Lenhart was scarcely twelve.
Then came his relation of romantic wanderings in Southern France and
Germany, like a troubadour, or minnesinger, with guitar and song; of
his accidental friendships and fancy fraternities, till he became
choir-alto at a Lutheran church in the heart of the Eichen-Land. Then
came the story of his attachment to the young, sage organist of that
very church, who, in a fairy-like adventure, had married a count's
youngest daughter, and never dared to disclose his alliance; of her
secret existence with him in the topmost room of an old house, where
she never dared to look out of the window to the street for fear she
should be discovered and carried back,--the etiquette requisite to
cover such an abduction being quite alien from my comprehension, by
the way, but so Davy assured us she found it necessary to abide; of
their one beautiful infant born in the old house, and the curious
saintly carving about its wooden cradle; of the young mother, too
hastily weaned from luxurious calm to the struggling dream of poverty,
or at least uncertain thrift; of her fading, falling into a stealthy
sickness, and of the night she lay (a Sunday night) and heard the
organ strains swell up and melt into the moonlight from her husband's
hand; of Lenhart Davy's presence with her alone that night, unknowing,
until the music-peal was over, that her soul had passed to heaven, as
it were, in that cloud of music.
But I must just observe that Davy made as light as possible of his own
pure and characteristic decision, developed even in boyhood. He passed
over, almost without comment, the more than elder brotherly care he
must have bestowed on the beautiful infant, and dwelt, as if to divert
us from that point, upon the woful cares that had pressed upon his
poor friend,--upon his own trouble when the young organist himself,
displaced by weakness from his position, made his own end, even as
Lenhart's father, an end of sorrow and of love.
Davy, indeed, merely mentioned that he had brought little Clara to
England himself, and left her in London with his own mother's sister,
whose house he always reckoned his asylum, if not his home. And then
he told us of his promise to Clara's father that she should be brought
up musically, and that no one should educate her until she should be
capacitated to choose her own masters, except Davy, to whom her father
had imparted a favorite system of his own.
I remember his saying, in conclusion, to my mother: "You must think it
strange, dear madam, that I brought Miss Benette away from London, and
alone. I could not remain in London myself, and I have known for years
that her voice, in itself, would become to her more than the expected
heritage. My aunt taught her only to work. This was my stipulation;
and she now not only supports herself by working,--for she is very
independent,--but is in possession of a separate fund besides, which
is to carry her through a course of complete instruction
elsewhere,--perhaps in Italy or Germany."
I saw how much my mother felt impressed by the dignity and
self-reliance that so characterized him, but I scarcely expected she
would take so warm an interest in his _protegee_. She said she should
like to see some of Miss Benette's work; and again I descanted on its
beauties and varieties, supported by my hero, who seemed to admire it
almost as much as I did.
"Then I may go and practise with Miss Benette?" I said, in conclusion.
"Oh, certainly; and you must ask her to come and see you some evening
when Mr. Davy is kind enough to drink tea with us."
"That curious little Laura too," thought I; "they would not like _her_
so well, I fancy. But though I do dislike her myself, I wish I could
find out what they do with her."
I was going to practise the day after the next, and methought I will
then discover.