We went, and really I found it not so dreadful; and so was I drawn to
listen for her voice so dear to me even then, that I forgot all other
circumstances except that she was standing by me there, singing. I
sang very well,--to my shame if it be spoken, I always know when I do;
and the light color so seldom seen on Davy's cheek attested his
satisfaction. Davy himself sang alone next, and we were cleared off
every one, while he sang so beautiful a bass solo, in its delicacy and
simplicity, as I had ever heard. Clara and I mutually agreed to be
very nervous for our master. I am sure he was so, but nobody could
have told it of him who did not know him inside and out,--not even
Santonio, who, standing on the rug again, and turning down his
wristbands, which had disappeared altogether while he played, said to
Mirandos, "He seems very comfortable," meaning Davy. Then came a
quartet, and we figured again.
I was not glad to feel the intermitting tenor supplant that soprano.
Truly, it seemed that the higher Clara sang, the nearer she got to
heaven. The company applauded this quartet, mere thready tissue of
sweet sounds as it was--Rossini's--more than even Santonio's violin;
but twenty years ago there had been no universal deluge of education,
as I have lived to see since, and, at least in England in the midland
counties, people were few who could make out the signs of musical
genius so as to read them as they ran. Perhaps it was better that the
musician then only sought for sympathy among his own kind.
I knew Mirandos, and his fantasia came next, and hastily retreated,
pulling Miss Benette by her dress to bring her away too; for I had a
horror of his spreading hands. Santonio, impelled I daresay by the
small curiosity which characterizes great minds in the majority of
instances, came on the contrary forwards, and stood in the doorway to
watch Mirandos take his seat. I could see the sneer settle upon his
lips, subtle as that was; and I should have liked to stand and watch
him, for I am fond of watching the countenances of artists in their
medium moments, when I saw that Miss Benette had stolen to the fire,
and was leaning against the mantelshelf her infantine forehead. Her
attraction was strongest; I joined her.
"Now," said I, "if it were not for Santonio, would you not find this
evening very dull?"
"It is not an evening at all, Master Auchester, it is a candle-light
day; and so far from finding it dull, I find it a great deal too
bright. I could listen forever to Mr. Davy's voice."
"What can it be that makes his voice so sweet, when it is such a deep
voice?"
"I know it is because he has never sung in theatres. It does make a
deep voice rough to sing in theatres, unless a man does not begin to
sing so for a long, very long time."
"Miss Benette, is that the reason you do not mean to sing in
theatres?"
"No; but it is the reason I sing so much in my little room."
"Mr. Davy says you don't mean to act."
"No more I do mean, but perhaps it will come upon me, and Thone says,
'Child, you must.'"
"She thinks you have a special gift, then?"
"Who said to you about the special gift, Master Auchester? Do you ever
forget anything you hear?"
"Never! I am like Mr. Santonio. But Mr. Davy told me the night I asked
him your name."
"Oh, yes, I told him I had not a special gift. I thought the words so
put together would please him, and I like to please him, he is good. I
do not think it is a special gift, you know, Master Auchester, to
act."
"What is it then, Miss Benette?"
"An inspiration."
"Mr. Davy called the conducting at the festival inspiration."
"Oh, yes; but all great composers are inspired."
"Do you consider our conductor was a great composer?"
"I daresay; but you must not ask me, I am not wise. Thone is very
wise, and she said to me the other day, after you were gone, 'He is
one of us.'"
"But, Miss Benette, she is a gypsy, and I am not."
"We are not all alike because we are one. Can there be music without
many combinations, and they each of many single sounds?"
Mirandos was putting on the pedal, and we paused at this moment, as he
paused before the _attacca_. Santonio still remained in the doorway,
and Davy was standing in the window against the crimson curtain,
listening, and quite white with distress at the performance; for the
keys every now and then jangled furiously, and a storm of _arpeggi_
seemed to endanger the very existence of the fragile wires.
Suddenly a young lady swept past Santonio, and glanced at Davy in
passing into our retreat. Santonio, of course, did not move an inch;
certainly there was just room enough to clear him! But Davy fell back
into the folds of the curtain, frowning, not at the young lady, but at
the fantasia.
It was Miss Lawrence; and lo! before I could well recognize her, she
stepped up to me and said, without a bow or any introductory flourish,
"Are you Mr. Davy's pupil?"
"We are both, ma'am," I answered foolishly, half indicating Miss
Benette, who was bending her lashes into the firelight. Miss Lawrence
replied lightly, yet seriously,--
"Oh, I know _she_ is, but you first, because I knew you again."
I gazed upon her at this crisis. She had a peculiar face, dark yet
soft; and her eye was very fine, large, and half closed, but not at
all languid. Her forehead spread wide beneath jetty hair as smooth as
glass, and her mouth was very satirical,--capable of sweetness, as
such mouths alone are, though the case is often reversed. How
satirical are some expressions that slumber in sweetness too exquisite
to gaze on! And as for this young lady's manner, very easy was she,
yet so high as to be unapproachable, unless she first approached you.
Her accent was polished, or her address would have been somewhat
brusque; as it was, it only required, not requested, a reply. She went
on all this time, though,--
"I saw you in the chorus at the festival, and I watched you well; and
I saw you run out and return with that water-glass I envied you in
bearing. I hope you thought yourself enviable?"
"I certainly did not, because I could not think of myself at all."
"That is best! Now will you--that is, can you--tell me who the
conductor was?"
I forgot who she was, and imploringly my whole heart said, "Oh, do
pray tell us! We have tried and tried to find out, and no one knows."
"No one knows, but I _will_ know!" and she shook impatiently the rich
coral _negligee_ that hung about her throat. Again, with much
bitterness in her tones, she resumed, "I think it was cruel and unjust
besides not to tell us, that we at least might have thanked him. Even
poor St. Michel was groaning over his ignorance of such a
personage,--if indeed he be a wight, and not a sprite. I shall find a
witch next."
"Thone!" I whispered to Clara, and her lips parted to smile, but she
looked not up.
And now a young man came in, out of the company, to look for Miss
Lawrence.
"Oh, is Miss Lawrence here?" said Santonio, carelessly turning and
looking over his shoulder to find her, though I daresay he knew she
was there well enough. However, he came up now and took his stand by
her side, and they soon began to talk. Rather relieved that the
responsibility was taken off myself, I listened eagerly.
It was fascinating in the extreme to me to see how Miss Lawrence
spurned the arm of the gentleman who had come to look for her and to
conduct her back; he was obliged to retire discomfited, and Santonio
took no heed of him at all. I could not help thinking then that Miss
Lawrence must have been everywhere and have seen everything, to be so
self-possessed, for I could quite distinguish between her
self-possession and Clara's,--the latter natural, the former acquired,
however naturally worn.
It was not long, nevertheless, before I received a shock. It was
something in this way. Miss Lawrence had reverted to the festival, and
she said to Santonio, "I had hopes of this young gentleman, because I
thought he belonged to the conductor, who spoke to him between the
parts; but he is as wise as the rest of us, and I can only say my
conviction bids fair to become my faith."
"Your conviction that you related to me in such a romantic narrative?"
asked Santonio, without appearing much interested. But he warmed as he
proceeded. "The wind was very poor at the festival, I heard."
"They always say so in London about country performances, you know,
either at least about the wind or the strings, or else one luckless
oboe is held up to ridicule, or a solitary flute, or a desolate
double-bass."
"But if the solitary flute or bass render themselves absurd, they
should be ridiculed far more in a general orchestra than in a
particular quartet or so, for the effect of the master-players thus
goes for nothing. I never yet heard a stringed force go through an
oratorio, and its violent exercises for the _tutti_, without falling
at least a tone."
"Oh, the _primi_ were very well! and in fact, had all been flat
together, it would have been unnoticeable; while the _tempi_ were
marked so clearly, no one had time to criticise and analyze. But the
organ had better have been quiet altogether; it would have looked very
well, and nobody would have known it was not sounding."
"I beg your pardon, every one would then have called out for more
noise."
"Not so, Mr. Santonio; there was quite body enough. But there sat
Erfurt, groping, as he always does, for the pedals, and punching the
keys, while the stops, all out, could very often not be got in in
time, and we had _fortissimo_ against the fiddles."
"I wonder your conductor did not give one little tap upon Erfurt's
skull. So much for his own judgment, Miss Lawrence."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Santonio; the grand point was making all go
together, such as it was, so that no one realized a discrepancy
anywhere. Interruptions would not only have been useless, they would
have been ignorant; but in this person's strange intimacy with the
exigencies of a somewhat unsteady orchestra, his consummate triumph
was achieved."
"Well, I believe he will be found some time hence, in some
out-of-the-way hole, that shall deprive you all of enchantment."
"I do believe he is my wizard of Rothseneld."
"You are very credulous if you can so believe."
And they said much more. But what shocked me, had been the denuding
treatment of my all-glorious festival,--my romance of perfectibility,
my ideal world. How they talked--for I cannot remember the phrases
they strung into cold chains, at much greater length than I record--of
what had been for me as heaven outspread above in mystery and beauty,
and as a heaven-imaging deep beneath, beyond my fathom, yet whereon I
had exulted as on the infinite unknown! they making it instead a
reality not itself all lovely,--a revelation not itself complete. I
had not been mixed in the musical world; for there is such a world as
is not heaven, but earth, in the realm of tone, and tone-artists must
pass, as it were, through it. How few receive not from it some touch,
some taint of its clinging presence! How few, indeed, infuse into
it--while in it they are necessitated to linger--the spirit of their
heavenly home! Dimly, of a truth, had the life of music been then
opened to my ken; but it seemed at that moment again enclosed, and I
fell back into the first darkness. It was so sad to me to feel thus,
that I could not for an instant recover my faith in myself. I fancied
myself too insignificantly affected, and would, if I could, have
joined in the anti-spiritual prate of Miss Lawrence and Santonio. Let
me do them no injustice; they were both musicians, but I was not old
enough to appreciate their actual enthusiasm, as it were by mutual
consent a sealed subject between them.
I am almost tempted, after all, to say that it is best not to tamper
with our finest feelings,--best to keep silence; but let me
beware,--it is while we muse, the fire kindles, and we are then to
speak with our tongues. Let _them_ be touched too, though, with the
inward fire, or we have no right to speak.