Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self Part 53

Beethoven! ... Musical fullness of divine light! how the glorious nightingale notes of his unworded poesy came dropping through the air like pearls, rolling off the magic wand of the Violin Wizard, whose delicate dark face, now slightly flushed with the glow of inspiration, seemed to reflect by its very expression the various phases of the mighty composer's thought! Alwyn half closed his eyes and listened entranced, allowing his soul to drift like an oarless boat on the sweeping waves of the music's will. He was under the supreme sway of two Emperors of Art,--Beethoven and Sarasate,--and he was content to follow such leaders through whatever sweet tangles and tall growths of melody they might devise for his wandering. At one mad pa.s.sage of dancing semitones he started,--it was as though a sudden wind, dreaming an enraged dream, had leaped up to shake tall trees to and fro,--and the Pa.s.s of Dariel, with its frozen mountain-peaks, its tottering pines, and howling hurricanes, loomed back upon his imagination as he had seen it first on the night he had arrived at the Monastery--but soon these wild notes sank and slept again in the dulcet harmony of an Adagio softer than a lover's song at midnight. Many strange suggestions began to glimmer ghost-like through this same Adagio,--the fair, dead face of Niphrata flitted past him, as a wandering moonbeam flits athwart a cloud,--then came flashing reflections of light and color,--the bewildering dazzlement of Lysia's beauty shone before the eyes of his memory with a blinding l.u.s.tre as of flame, . . the phantasmagoria of the city of Al-Kyris seemed to float in the air like a faintly discovered mirage ascending from the sea,--again he saw its picturesque streets, its domes and bell-towers, its courts and gardens.. again he heard the dreamy melody of the dance that had followed the death of Nir-jalis, and saw the cruel Lysia's wondrous garden lying white in the radiance of the moon; anon he beheld the great Square, with its fallen Obelisk and the prostrate, lifeless form of the Prophet Khosrul.. and... Oh, most sad and dear remembrance of all! ... the cherished Shadow of Himself, the brilliant, the joyous Sah-luma appeared to beckon him from the other side of some vast gulf of mist and darkness, with a smile that was sorrowful, yet persuasive; a smile that seemed to say--"O friend, why hast thou left me as though I were a dead thing and unworthy of regard?--Lo, I have never died, --_I am_ here, an abandoned part of THEE, ready to become thine inseparable comrade once more if thou make but the slightest sign!"--Then it seemed as though voices whispered in his ear--"Sah-luma! beloved Sah-luma!"--and "Theos! Theos, my beloved!"--till, moved by a vague tremor of anxiety, he lifted his drooping eyelids and gazed full in a sort of half-incredulous, half-reproachful amaze at the musical necromancer who had conjured up all these apparitions,--what did this wonderful Sarasate know of his Past?

Nothing, indeed,--he had ceased, and was gravely bowing to the audience in response to the thunder of applause, that, like a sudden whirlwind, seemed to shake the building. But he had not quite finished his incantations,--the last part of the Concerto was yet to come,--and as soon as the hubbub of excitement had calmed down, he dashed into it with the delicious speed and joy of a lark soaring into the springtide air. And now on all sides what clear showers and sparkling coruscations of melody!--what a broad, blue sky above!--what a fair, green earth below!--how warm and odorous this radiating s.p.a.ce, made resonant with the ring of sweet bird-harmonies!--wild thrills of ecstasy and lover-like tenderness--s.n.a.t.c.hes of song caught up from the flower-filled meadows and set to float in echoing liberty through the azure dome of heaven!--and in all and above all, the light and heat and l.u.s.tre of the unclouded sun!--Here there was no dreaming possible, . .

nothing but glad life, glad youth, glad love! With an ambrosial rush of tune, like the lark descending, the dancing bow cast forth the final chord from the violin as though it were a diamond flung from the hand of a king, a flawless jewel of pure sound,--and the Minstrel monarch of Andalusia, serenely saluting the now wildly enthusiastic audience, left the platform. But he was not allowed to escape so soon,--again and again, and yet again, the enormous crowd summoned him before them, for the mere satisfaction of looking at his slight figure, his dark, poetic face, and soft, half-pa.s.sionate, half-melancholy eyes, as though anxious to convince themselves that he was indeed human, and not a supernatural being, as his marvellous genius seemed to indicate. When at last he had retired for a breathing-while, Heliobas turned to Alwyn with the question:

"What do you think of him?"

"Think of him!" echoed Alwyn--"Why, what CAN one think,--what CAN one say of such an artist!--He is like a grand sunrise,--baffling all description and all criticism!"

Heliobas smiled,--there was a little touch of satire in his smile.

"Do you see that gentleman?" he said, in a low tone, pointing out by a gesture a pale, flabby-looking young man who was lounging languidly in a stall not very far from where they themselves sat,--"He is the musical critic for one of the leading London daily papers. He has not stirred an inch, or moved an eyelash, during Sarasate's performance,--and the violent applause of the audience was manifestly distasteful to him! He has merely written one line down in his note-book,--it is most probably to the effect that the 'Spanish fiddler met with his usual success at the hands of the undiscriminating public!'"

Alwyn laughed. "Not possible!"--and he eyed the impa.s.sive individual in question with a certain compa.s.sionate amus.e.m.e.nt,--"Why, if he cannot admire such a magnificent artist as Sarasate, what is there in the world that WILL rouse his admiration!"

"Nothing!" rejoined Heliobas, his eyes twinkling humorously as he spoke--"Nothing,--unless it is his own perspicuity! Nil admirari is the critic's motto. The modern 'Zabastes' must always be careful to impress his readers in the first place with his personal superiority to all men and all things,--and the musical Oracle yonder will no doubt be clever enough to make his report of Sarasate in such a manner as to suggest the idea that he could play the violin much better himself, if he only cared to try!"

"a.s.s!" said Alwyn under his breath--"One would like to shake him out of his absurd self-complacency!"

Heliobas shrugged his shoulders expressively:

"My dear fellow, he would only bray!--and the braying of an a.s.s is not euphonious! No!--you might as well shake a dry clothes-prop and expect it to blossom into fruit and flower, as argue with a musical critic, and expect him to be enthusiastic! The worst of it is, these men are not REALLY musical,--they perhaps know a little of the grammar and technique of the thing, but they cannot understand its full eloquence.

In the presence of a genius like Pablo de Sarasate they are more or less perplexed,--it is as though you ask them to describe in set, cold terms the counterpoint and thoroughba.s.s of the wind's symphony to the trees,--the great ocean's sonata to the sh.o.r.e, or the delicate madrigals sung almost inaudibly by little bell-blossoms to the tinkling fall of April rain. The man is too great for them--he is a blazing star that dazzles and confounds their sight--and, after the manner of their craft, they abuse what they can't understand. Music is distinctly the language of the emotions,--and they have no emotion. They therefore generally prefer Joachim,--the good, stolid Joachim, who so delights all the dreary old spinsters and dowagers who nod over their knitting-needles at the 'Monday Popular' concerts, and fancy themselves lovers of the 'cla.s.sical' in music. Sarasate appeals to those who have loved, and thought, and suffered--those who have climbed the heights of pa.s.sion and wrung out the depths of pain,--and therefore the PEOPLE, taken en ma.s.se, as, for instance, in this crowded hall, instinctively respond to his magic touch. And why?--Because the greater majority of human beings are full of the deepest and most pa.s.sionate feelings, not as yet having been 'educated' OUT of them!"

Here the orchestra commenced Liszt's "Preludes"--and all conversation ceased. Afterwards Sarasate came again to bestow upon his eager admirers another saving grace of sound, in the shape of the famous Mendelssohn Concerto, which he performed with such fiery ardor, tenderness, purity of tone, and marvellous execution that many listeners held their breath for sheer amazement and delighted awe.

Anything approaching the beauty of his rendering of the final "Allegro"

Alwyn had never heard,--and indeed it is probable none WILL ever hear a more poetical, more exquisite SINGING OF THOUGHT than this matchless example of Sarasate's genius and power. Who would not warm to the brightness and delicacy of those delicious rippling tones, that seemed to leap from the strings alive like sparks of fire--the dainty, tripping ease of the arpeggi, that float from the bow with the grace of rainbow bubbles blown forth upon the air,--the brilliant runs, that glide and glitter up and down like chattering brooks sparkling among violets and meadow-sweet,--the lovely softer notes, that here and there sigh between the varied harmonies with the dreamy pa.s.sion of lovers who part, only to meet again in a rush of eager joy!--Alwyn sat absorbed and spellbound; he forgot the pa.s.sing of time,--he forgot even the presence of Heliobas,--he could only listen, and gratefully drink in every drop of sweetness that was so lavishly poured upon him from such a glorious sky of sunlit sound.

Presently, toward the end of the performance, a curious thing happened.

Sarasate had appeared to play the last piece set down for him,--a composition of his own, ent.i.tled "Zigeunerweisen." A gypsy song, or medley of gypsy songs, it would be, thought Alwyn, glancing at his programme,--then, looking towards the artist, who stood with lifted bow like another Prospero, prepared to summon forth the Ariel of music at a touch, he saw that the dark Spanish eyes of the maestro were fixed full upon him, with, as he then fancied, a strange, penetrating smile in their fiery depths. One instant.. and a weird lament came sobbing from the smitten violin,--a wildly beautiful despair was wordlessly proclaimed, . . a melody that went straight to the heart and made it ache, and burn, and throb with a rising tumult of unlanguaged pa.s.sion and desire! The solemn, yet unfettered, grace of its rhythmic respiration suggested to Alwyn, first darkness,--then twilight--then the gradual far-glimmering of a silvery dawn,--till out of the shuddering notes there seemed to grow up a vague, vast, and cool whiteness, splendid and mystical,--a whiteness that from shapeless, fleecy mist took gradual form and substance, ... the great concert-hall, with its closely packed throng of people, appeared to fade away like vanishing smoke,--and lo!--before the poet's entranced gaze there rose up a wondrous vision of stately architectural grandeur,--a vision of snowy columns and lofty arches, upon which fell a shimmering play of radiant color flung by the beams of the sun through stained gla.s.s windows glistening jewel-wise,--a tremulous sound of voices floated aloft, singing, "Kyrie Eleison!--Kyrie Eleison!"--and the murmuring undertone of the organ shook the still air with deep vibrations of holy tune. Everywhere peace,--everywhere purity!

everywhere that s.p.a.cious whiteness, flecked with side-gleams of royal purple, gold, and ardent crimson,--and in the midst of all,--O dearest tenderness!--O fairest glory!--a face, shining forth like a star in a cloud!--a face dazzlingly beautiful and sweet,--a golden head, above which the pale halo of a light ethereal hovered lovingly in a radiant ring!

"EDRIS!"--The chaste name breathed itself silently in Alwyn's thoughts,--silently and yet with all the pa.s.sion of a lover's prayer!

How was it, he wondered dimly, that he saw her thus distinctly NOW,--now, when the violin-music wept its wildest tears--now when love, love, love, seemed to clamor in a tempestuous agony of appeal from the low, pulsating melody of the marvellous "Zigeunerweisen," a melody which, despite its name, had revealed to one listener, at any rate, nothing concerning the wanderings of gypsies over forest and moorland,--but on the contrary had built up all these sublime cathedral arches, this l.u.s.trous light, this exquisite face, whose loveliness was his life! How had he found his way into such a dream sanctuary of frozen snow?--what was his mission there?--and why, when the picture slowly faded, did it still haunt his memory invitingly,--persuasively,--nay, almost commandingly?

He could not tell,--but his mind was entirely ravished and possessed by an absorbing impression of white, sculptured calm,--and he was as startled as though he had been brusquely awakened from a deep sleep, when the loud plaudits of the people made him aware that Sarasate had finished his programme, and was departing from the scene of his triumphs. The frenzied shouts and encores, however brought him once more before the excited public, to play a set of Spanish dances, fanciful and delicate as the gamboling of a light breeze over rose-gardens and dashing fountains,--and when this wonder-music ceased, Alwyn woke from tranced rapture into enthusiasm, and joined in the thunders of applause with fervent warmth and zeal. Eight several times did the wearied, but ever affable, maestro ascend the platform to bow and smile his graceful acknowledgments, till the audience, satisfied with having thoroughly emphasized their hearty appreciation of his genius, permitted him to finally retire. Then the people flocked out of the hall in crowds, talking, laughing, and delightedly commenting upon the afternoon's enjoyment, the brief remarks exchanged by two Americans who were sauntering on immediately in front of Heliobas and Alwyn being perhaps the very pith and essence of the universal opinion concerning the great artist they had just heard.

"I tell you what he is," said one, "he's a demi-G.o.d!"

"Oh, don't halve it!" rejoined the other wittily, "he's the whole thing anyway!"

Once outside the hall and in the busy street, now rendered doubly brilliant by the deep saffron light of a gloriously setting sun, Heliobas prepared to take leave of his somewhat silent and preoccupied companion.

"I see you are still under the sway of the Ange-Demon," he remarked cheerfully, as he shook hands, "Is he not an amazing fellow? That bow of his is a veritable divining-rod, it finds out the fountain of Elusidis [Footnote: A miraculous fountain spoken of in old chronicles, whose waters rose to the sound of music, and, the music ceasing, sank again.] in each human heart,--it has but to p.r.o.nounce a note, and straightway the hidden waters begin to bubble. But don't forget to read the newspaper accounts of this concert! You will see that the critics will make no allusion whatever to the enthusiasm of the audience, and that the numerous encores will not even be mentioned!"

"That is unfair," said Alwyn quickly. "The expression of the people's appreciation should always be chronicled."

"Of course!--but it never is, unless it suits the immediate taste of the cliques. Clique-Art, clique-Literature, clique-Criticism, keep all three things on a low ground that slopes daily more and more toward decadence. And the pity of it is, that the English get judged abroad chiefly by what their own journalists say of them,--thus, if Sarasate is coldly criticised, foreigners laugh at the 'UNmusical English,'

whereas, the fact is that the nation itself is NOT unmusical, but its musical critics mostly are. They are very often picked out of the rank and file of the dullest Academy students and contrapuntists, who are incapable of understanding anything original, and therefore are the persons most unfitted to form a correct estimate of genius. However, it has always been so, and I suppose it always will be so,--don't you remember that when Beethoven began his grand innovations, a certain critic-a.s.s-ter wrote of him, 'The absurdity of his effort is only equalled by the hideousness of its result'."

He laughed lightly, and once more shook hands, while Alwyn, looking at him wistfully, said:

"I wonder when we shall meet again?"

"Oh, very soon, I dare say," he rejoined. "The world is a wonderfully small place, after all, as men find when they jostle up against each other unexpectedly in the most unlikely corners of far countries. You may, if you choose, correspond with me, and that is a privilege I accord to few, I a.s.sure you!" He smiled, and then went on in a more serious tone, "You are, of course, welcome at our monastery whenever you wish to come, but, take my advice, do not wilfully step out of the sphere in which you are placed. Live IN society, it needs men of your stamp and intellectual calibre; show it a high and consistent example--let no eccentricity mar your daily actions--work at your destiny steadily, cheerfully, serenely, and leave the rest to G.o.d, and--the angels!"

There was a slight, tender inflection in his voice as he spoke the last words,--and Alwyn gave him a quick, searching glance. But his blue, penetrating eyes were calm and steadfast, full of their usual luminous softness and pathos, and there was nothing expressed in them but the gentlest friendliness.

"Well! I'm glad I may write to you, at any rate," said Alwyn at last, reluctantly releasing his hand. "It is possible I may not remain long in London; I want to finish my poem, and it gets on too slowly in the tumult of daily life in town."

"Then will you go abroad again?" inquired Heliobas.

"Perhaps. I may. Bonn, where I was once a student for a time. It is a peaceful, sleepy little place,--I shall probably complete my work easily there. Moreover, it will be like going back to a bit of my youth. I remember I first began to entertain all my dreams of poesy at Bonn."

"Inspired by the Seven Mountains and the Drachenfels!" laughed Heliobas. "No wonder you recalled the lost 'Sah-luma' period in the sight of the entrancing Rhine! Ah, Sir Poet, you have had your fill of fame! and I fear the plaudits of London will never be like those of Al-Kyris! No monarchs will honor you now, but rather despise! for the kings and queens of this age prefer financiers to Laureates! Now, wherever you wander, let me hear of your well-being and progress in contentment; when you write, address to our Dariel retreat, for though on my return from Mexico I shall probably visit Lemnos, my letters will always be forwarded. Adieu!"

"Adieu!" and their eyes met. A grave sweet smile brightened the Chaldean's handsome features.

"G.o.d remain with you, my friend!" he said, in a low, thrillingly earnest tone. "Believe me, you are elected to a strangely happy fate!--far happier than you at present know!"

With these words he turned and was gone,--lost to sight in the surging throng of pa.s.sers-by. Alwyn looked eagerly after him, but saw him no more. His tall figure had vanished as utterly as any of the phantom shapes in Al-Kyris, only that, far from being spectre-like, he had seemed more actually a living personality than any of the people in the streets who were hurrying to and fro on their various errands of business or pleasure.

That same night when Alwyn related his day's adventure to Villiers, who heard it with the most absorbed interest, he was describing the effect of Sarasate's violin-playing, when all at once he was seized by the same curious, overpowering impression of white, lofty arches, stained windows, and jewel-like glimmerings of color, and he suddenly stopped short in the midst of his narrative.

"What's the matter?" asked Villiers, astonished. "Go on!--you were saying,--"

"That Sarasate is one of the divinest of G.o.d's wandering melodies,"

went on Alwyn, slowly and with a faint smile. "And that though, as a rule, musicians are forgotten when their music ceases, this Andalusian Orpheus in Thrace will be remembered long after his violin is laid aside, and he himself has journeyed to a sunnier land than Spain! But I am not master of my thoughts to-night, Villiers; my Chaldean friend has perhaps mesmerized me--who knows! and I have an odd fancy upon me. I should like to spend an hour in some great and beautiful cathedral, and see the light of the rising sun flashing through the stained windows across the altar!"

"Poet and dreamer!" laughed Villiers. "You can't gratify that whim in London; there's no 'great and beautiful' edifice of the kind here,--only the unfinished Oratory, Westminster Abbey, broken up into ugly pews and vile monuments, and the repellently grimy St. Paul's--so go to bed, old boy, and indulge yourself in some more 'visions,' for I a.s.sure you you'll never find any reality come up to your ideal of things in general."

"No?" and Alwyn smiled. "Strange that I see it in quite the reverse way! It seems to me, no ideal will ever come up to the splendor of reality!"

"But remember," said Villiers quickly, "YOUR reality is heaven,--a 'reality' that is every one else's myth!"

"True! terribly true!".. and Alwyn's eyes darkened sorrowfully. "Yet the world's myth is the only Eternal Real, and for the shadows of this present Seeming we barter our immortal Substance!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

BY THE RHINE.

In the two or three weeks that followed his meeting with Heliobas, Alwyn made up his mind to leave London for a while. He was tired and restless,--tired of the routine society more or less imposed upon him,--restless because he had come to a standstill in his work--an invisible barrier, over which his creative fancy was unable to take its usual sweeping flight. He had an idea of seeking some quiet spot among mountains, as far remote as possible from the travelling world of men,--a peaceful place, where, with the majestic silence of Nature all about him, he might plead in lover-like retirement with his refractory Muse, and strive to coax her into a sweeter and more indulgent humor.

It was not that thoughts were lacking to him,--what he complained of was the monotony of language and the difficulty of finding new, true, and choice forms of expression. A great thought leaps into the brain like a lightning flash; there it is, an indescribable mystery, warming the soul and pervading the intellect, but the proper expression of that thought is a matter of the deepest anxiety to the true poet, who, if he be worthy of his vocation, is bound not only to proclaim it to the world CLEARLY, but also clad in such a perfection of wording that it shall chime on men's ears with a musical sound as of purest golden bells. There are very few faultless examples of this felicitous utterance in English or in any literature, so few, indeed, that they could almost all be included in one newspaper column of ordinary print.

Keats's exquisite line: