Charles Auchester Volume II Part 14

"I mean not until next year. He is going to travel."

"To travel--going away--where--who with?" I was stupid.

"He told us all so the other day,--just before you returned, Carl. He went through all the cla.s.s-rooms to bid farewell. I was in the second singing-room with Spoda and two or three others. He spoke to Spoda, 'Have you any commands for Italy,--any part of Italy? I am going unexpectedly, or we would have had a concert first; but now we must wait until May for our concert.' Spoda behaved very well and exhibited no surprise, only showered forth his _confetti_ speeches about parting. Then the Chevalier bowed to us who were there and said, 'My heart will be half here, and I shall hope to find Cecilia upon the self-same hill,--not a stone wanting.' And then he sighed; but otherwise he looked exceedingly happy. And who, do you think, is going with him?"

"His father, I should imagine."

"No; old Aronach, and your little friend,--who, Carl, I suspect, makes a sort of chevalier of you, from what I hear."

"Yes; he is very fond of me. But, Maria, what is he going away for? Is he going to be married?"

She smiled with her own peculiar expression,--wayward, yet warm.

"Oh, dear, no! nothing of the kind, I am sure. I cannot fancy the Chevalier in love even. It seems most absurd."

"I do not think that; he is too lovable not to be loved."

"And that is just why he never will love--to marry, I mean--until he has tried everything else and pleased himself in every manner."

"Maria, how do you know? And do you think he will marry one day?"

"Carl, I believe there is not anything he will not do; and yet he will be happy, very happy,--only not as he expects. I am certain the Chevalier thinks he should find as much in love as in music,--for himself, I mean. Now, I believe it would be nothing to him in comparison."

I could scarcely contain myself, I so sincerely felt that she was mistaken. But I seriously resolved to humor her, lest I should say too much, or she should say too little.

"Oh, of course! But I don't think he would _expect_ to find more in love, because he knows how he is loved."

"Not _how_, Carl, only how much."

"But, Maria, I fancy he wants as much love as music; and that is plenty."

"But, Carl, he makes the music, and we love him in it, just as we love G.o.d in His works; and I cannot conceive of any love being acceptable to him when it infringed his right as supreme."

"You mean that he is proud."

"So proud that if love came to him without music, I don't think he would take any notice of it."

I felt as surely as she did, sure of that singular pride, but also that it was not a fallen pride, and that she could read it not.

"You mean, Maria, that if you and I were not musical,--supposing such a thing to be possible,--he would not like us nor treat us as he does now?"

"I know he would not."

"But then it would be impossible for us to be as we are if we were changed as to music, and we could not love as we do."

"I don't think that has anything to do with it, and indeed I am sure not. You see, Carl, you make me speak to you openly. I have never done so before, and I should not, but that you force me to it,--not that I dislike to speak of it, for I think of nothing else,--but that it might be troublesome."

Could it be that she was about, in any sense, to open her heart? Mine felt as if it had collapsed, and would never expand again; but I was very rejoiced, for many reasons.

"Oh, Maria! if I could hear you talk all day about your own feelings, I should know really that you cared to be my friend; but I could not ask you to do so, nor wish, unless you did."

"Carl, if you were not younger than I am I should hesitate, and still more if, where I came from, we did not become grown up so fast that our lives seem too quick, too bright! Oh! I have often thought so, and shall think so again; but I will not now, because I intend to be very happy. You know, Carl, you cannot understand, though you may _feel_, what I feel when I think of Florimond. And it is possible you think him higher than I do, for you do him justice now."

"I suppose I do,--I am very certain that I adore his playing."

"I do not care for his playing, or scarcely. And yet I am aware that it is the playing of a master, of a musician, and I am proud to say so. Still, I would rather be that violin than hear it, and endure the sweet anguish he pours into it than be as I am, so far more divided from him than it is."

"Maria!"

"But Florimond does not mind my feeling this, or I should not say it,--on the contrary, he feels the same; and when first Heaven made him love me, he felt it even then."

"Was that long ago, Maria?"

"It is beginning to be a long time, for it was in the summer that I was twelve, before my father died. I was in France that summer, and very miserable, working hard and seeming to do nothing, for my father, rest his soul! was very severe with me, and petted Josephine,--for which I thank and praise him, and love her all the better. We were twenty miles from Paris, and lodged in a cottage whose roof was all ruins; but it was a dry year, and no harm came,--besides, we had been brought up like gypsies, and were sometimes taken for them. In the day I practised my voice and studied Italian or German; then prepared our dinner, which we ate under a tree in the garden, Josephine and I, though she was almost a baby then, and slept half her time. One noon she was asleep upon the gra.s.s, and I was playing with the flowers she had plucked, with no sabots on, for I was very warm, when I heard a step and peeped behind that tree. I saw a boy, or, as I thought him, a very wonderful man, putting aside the boughs to look upon me. You have told me, Carl, how you felt when you first saw the Chevalier; well, it was a little as I felt when I saw that face, only instead of looking on, as you did, I was obliged to look away and hide my eyes with my hand. He was, to my sight, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen or dreamed about; and therefore I could not look upon him, for I know I was not thinking about myself. Still, I felt sure he was coming to speak to me, and so he did; but not for a long time, for he stepped round the tree and sat down upon the turf just near me, and played with the sabots and the wild thyme I had played with, and presently put out his hand to stroke Josephine's hair as it lay in my lap. I never thought of being angry, or of wondering at him even, for the longer I had him near me, the better, though I was rather frightened lest my father should return; but at last he did speak, and when once he began, there was not soon an end. We talked of all things. I can remember nothing, but I do know this,--that we never spoke of music, except that I told how I pa.s.sed my time, and how my father taught me.

He went away before Josephine awoke, and n.o.body knew he had come; but I returned the next day to the place where I had seen him, and again I found him there. In that country one could do such things, and it was the hour my father was absent,--for he had other pupils at the houses of the inhabitants several miles about, and we lived frugally, in order that he might give us all advantages when we should be old enough. I saw Florimond every day for a week, and then for a week he never came. That week I was taken ill,--I could not help it; I was too young to hide it. And when he came again, I told him I should have died if he had stayed away. And then he said that he loved me, but that he was going a journey, and should not for a long time see me again, but that I was never, never to forget him; and he gave me a bit of his hair softer than any curl. I gave him, too, my mother's ring, that I had always kept warm in my bosom; and I never even lamented that he was departed, because I knew I should be his forever. We had a long, long talk,--of feelings and fears and mysteries, of the flowers of heaven and earth, of glory and bliss, of hope and ecstasy. We poured out our hearts together, and did not even trouble ourselves to say we loved. I think he was there three hours; but I sent him away myself, just in time to be quite ready, and not at all in a tremble, for my father's supper. Papa came home by sunset, much later than usual, and I tried hard to wake up, but was as a wanderer in sleep, until he took from his pocket a parcel and gave it me to open. He was in great good humor to-night, for he had heard of my brother's success at the Academie; but it was not my brother who sent the parcel, which contained two tickets for a grand concert in Paris the next morning, and a little anonymous billet to beg that we would go, I and my father.

"My father was much flattered, and still more because there was a handful of gold to pay the expenses of our journey. This settled the matter; we did go in the diligence that night. I took my best frock and gloves, and we slept at a grand hotel for once in our lives, and supped there, and breakfasted the next morning before setting out for the concert. When I walked into the streets with my father I envied the ladies their bonnets,--for I had not even my mantilla, it was too shabby; and I wore alone a wreath of ivy that I had gathered from under that very tree at home, and I was thinking too seriously of one only person to wish to see or to be seen. We went into the very best places, but I thought as I sat down how I must have changed in a short time; for a little while before I would have almost sold myself to go to this same concert, and now I did not care. There was a grand vocal trio first, and then a fantasia for the harp, and then a tenor solo.

But next in the programme came one of Fesca's solos for the violin; and when I saw the violinist come up into the front, I fell backwards, and should have swooned had he not begun to play. His tones sustained me, drew me upwards; it was Florimond,--my Florimond; mine then as now."

"I thought it would turn out so," I exclaimed, rudely enough. "But, Maria, when you said music had nothing to do with love, I think you were mistaken, or that you misunderstood yourself; for though I can't express it, I am sure that our being musical makes a great difference in the way we feel, and that though we don't allude to it, it will go through everything, and make us what we are."

"Perhaps you are right, and, Carl, I should not like to contradict you; but I know I should have loved Florimond if he had not been a musician,--if he had been a shoemaker, for instance."

"Yes, because he still might have been musical; and if the music had remained within him, it might have influenced his feelings even more than it does now."

"Carl, but I don't love in that way all those who are musical, therefore why must it be the music that makes me love _him_? What will you say to me, now, when I tell you I cannot imagine wishing to marry the Chevalier?"

"Maria!"

"Carl, I could not; it would abase the power of worship in my soul, it would cloud my idea of heaven, it would crush all my life within me. I should be transported into a place where the water was all light and I could not drink, the air was all fire to wither me. I should flee from myself in him, and in fleeing, die."

Her strange words, so unlike her youth, consumed my doubts as she p.r.o.nounced them. I shuddered inwardly, but strove to keep serene.

"Maria, that may be because you had loved when you saw him, and it would have been impossible for you to be inconstant."

"Carlino, no. You and I are talking of droll things for a girl and a boy; but I would rather you knew me well, because, perhaps, it will help you when you grow up to understand some lady better than you would if I did not speak so openly. Under no circ.u.mstances could I have loved him so as to wish to belong to him in that sense. For, Carl, though it might have been inconstant, it would not have been unfaithful to myself if I had seen and loved him better than Florimond; it might have been that I had not before found out what I ought to submit my soul to, nor could I have helped it; such things have happened to many, I daresay,--to many natures, but not to mine; if I feel once, it is entirely and for always, and I cannot think how it is that so few women, even of my own race, are so unfixed about their feelings and have so many fancies. I sometimes believe there is a reason for my being different, which, if it is true, will make him sadder than the saddest,--you can guess what I mean?"

"Yes, Maria, but I know there is nothing in it; it is what my mother would call a morbid presentiment, and I wish she could talk to you about it. I should think there might be truth in it, but that it always proves false. My sister had it once, so had my dear brother, Mr. Davy. I don't believe people have it when they are really going to die."

"It is not a morbid presentiment, for 'morbid' means 'diseased,' and I am sure I am not diseased; but my idea is that people who form so fast cannot live long. I am only fifteen, and I feel as if I had lived longer than anybody I know."

"Then," said I, laughing, for I felt it was wrong to permit her much range here, "I shall die soon, Maria."

"No, Carl. You are not formed; you are like an infant,--your heart tells itself out, one may count its beats and sing songs to them, as Florimond says; but your brain keeps you back, though it is itself so forward."

I was utterly puzzled. "I don't understand, Maria."

"But you will, some time. Your brain is burning, busy, always dreaming and working. The dreams of the brain are often those which play through the slumbers of the heart. If your heart even awoke, your brain would still have the upper hand, and would keep down, keep back your heart. There is no fear for you, Carl, pa.s.sionate as you are."

"Well, Maria, I must confess it frightens me a little when you talk so,--first, because you are so young yourself; and secondly, because if it is all true, how much you must know,--you must know almost more than you feel; it is too much for a girl to know, or a boy either, and I would rather know nothing than so very much."