Charles Auchester Volume II Part 35

I waited until the bier, bare of its gentle burden, stood lonely by the grave. I waited until the wreaths, flung in, covered the treasure with their kisses that was a jewel for earth to hide. I saw the torches thrown into the abyss, quenched by the kisses of the flowers, even as the earthly joy, the beauty, had been quenched in that abyss of light which to us is only darkness. I watched the black shadows draw closer round the grave; one suffocating cry arose, as if all hearts were broken in that spasm, or as if Music herself had given up the ghost. _But Music never dies._ In reply to that sickening shout, as if, indeed, a heaven opened to receive me, a burst, a peal, a shock of transcendent music fell from some distant height. I saw no sign the while I heard, nor was it a mourning strain. Triumphant, jubilant, sublime in seraph sweetness, joy immortal, it mingled into the arms of Night. While yet its echoes rang, another strain made way, came forth to meet it, and melted into its embrace, as jubilant as blissful, but farther, fainter, more ineffable. Again it yielded to the echoes; but above those echoes swelled another, a softer, and yet another and a softer voice, that was but the mingling of many voices, now far and far away. Distantly, dyingly, till death drank distance up, the music wandered. And at length, when the mystic spell was broken, and I could hear no more, I could only believe it still went on and on, sounding through all the earth, beyond my ear, and rising up to heaven from sh.o.r.es of lands untraversed as that country beyond the grave! All peace came there upon me; as a waveless deep it welled up and upwards from my spirit, till I dared no longer sorrow: my love was dispossessed of fear, and the demon Despair, exorcised, fled as one who wept and fain would hide his weeping. And yet that hope, if hope it could be, that cooled my heart and cheered my spirit, was not a hope of earth. My faith had fleeted as an angel into the light, and that hope alone stayed by me.

It was not until the next morning, and then not early, that I visited that house and the spirit now within it whose living voice had called me thither. No longer timidly, if most tenderly, I advanced along the valley, past the church which guarded now the spot on all this earth the most like heaven, and found the mansion, now untenanted, that Heaven itself had robbed. Quiet stillness--not as of death, but most like new-born wonder--possessed that house. The overhanging balconies, the sunburst on the garden, the fresh carnations, the carved gateway, the shaded window, and over all the cloudless sky, and around, all that breathed and lived,--it was a lay beyond all poetry, and such a melancholy may never music utter. Thone took me in, and I believe she had waited for me at the door. She spoke not, and I spoke not; she led me only forwards with the air of one who feels all words are lost between those who understand but cannot benefit each other. She led me to a room in which she left me; but I was not to be alone. I saw Clara instantly,--she came to meet me from the window, unchanged as the summer-land without by the tension or the touch of trouble. I could not possibly believe, as I saw her, and seeing her felt my courage flow back, my life resume its current, that she had ever really suffered. Her face so calm was not pale; her eye so clear was tearless. Nor was there that writhing smile about her lovely lips that is more agonizing than any tears. It was entirely in vain I tried to speak,--had she required comfort, my words would have thronged at my will; but if any there required comfort, it could not be herself.

Seeing my fearful agitation, which would work through all my silence, her sweet voice startled me; I listened as to an angel, or as to an angel I should never have listened.

"If I had known how it would be, I would never have been so rash as to send for you. But he was so strange--for he did not suffer--that I could not think he was going to die. I do not call it dying, nor would you if you had seen it. I wish I could make that darling feel such death was better than to live."

I put a constraint upon myself which no other presence could have brought me to exhibit.

"What darling, then?" said I; for I could only think of one who was darling as well as king.

"Poor Starwood! But you will be able to comfort him,--you are the only person who could."

"Perhaps it would not be kind to comfort him; perhaps he would rather suffer. But I will do my best to please you. Where is he now?"

"I will bring him;" and she left the room.

In another moment, all through the sunny light that despite the shaded windows streamed through the very shade, she entered again with Starwood. He flew at me and sank upon the ground. I have seen women--many--weep, and some few men; but I have never seen, and may I never see! such weeping as he wept. Tears--as if tropic rains should drench our Northern gardens--seemed dissolving with his very life his gentle temperament. I could not rouse nor raise him. His sodden hair, his hands as damp as death, his dreadful sobs, his moans of misery, his very crushed and helpless att.i.tude, appealed to me not in vain; for I felt at once it was the only thing to do for him that he should be suffered to weep till he was satisfied, or till he could weep no more. And yet his tears provoked not mine, but rather drove them inwards and froze them to my heart. Nor did Clara weep; but I could not absolutely say whether she had already wept or not,--for where other eyes grow dim, hers grew only brighter; and weeping--had she wept--had only cleared her heaven. We sat for hours in that room together,--that fair but dreadful room, its brilliant furniture unworn, its frescos delicate as any dream, its busts, its pictures, crowding calm lights and glorious colors, all fresh as the face of Nature, with home upon its every look; save only where the organ towered, and m.u.f.fling in dark velvet its keys and pipes, reminded us that music had left home for heaven, and we might no more find it there!

And again it was longed-for evening,--the twilight tarried not. It crept, it came, it fell upon the death-struck, woful valley. O blessed hour,--the repose alike of pa.s.sion and of grief! O blessed heaven! to have softened the mystic change from day to darkness so that we can bear them both,--never so blessed as when the broken-hearted seek thy twilights and find refreshment in thy shades! At that hour we two alone stood together by the glorious grave. For the first time, as the sun descended, Starwood had left off weeping. I had myself put him in his bed, and rested beside him till he was asleep; then I had returned to Clara. She was wrapped in black, waiting for me. We went together without speaking, without signifying our intentions to each other; but we both took the same way, and stood, where I have said, together; and when we had kissed the ground she spoke. She had not spoken all the day,--most grave and serious had been her air; she yet looked more as a child that had lost its father than a widowed wife,--as if she had never been married, she struck me: an almost virgin air possessed her, an unserene reserve, for now her accents faltered.

"I could not say to you till we were alone," she said,--"and we could not be alone to-day,--how much I thank you for coming; so many persons are to be here in a day or two, and I wish to consult with you."

"I will see them all for you, I will arrange everything; but you are not going away?"

"Going away? And you to say so, too! I will never leave this place until I die!"

"You love him, then, thank G.o.d!"

"Love him! Shall I tell you how? You know best what it was to love him, for you loved him best,--better than I did; and yet I loved him with all love. Do I look older, and more like this world, or less?"

She smiled a sweet significance,--a smile she had learned from him.

"I have been thinking how young you look,--too young, almost. You are so fresh, so child-like, and--may I say it?--so fair."

"You may say anything. I think I have grown fairer myself. Very strange to confess, is it? But you are my friend,--to you I should confess anything. I have been with a spirit-angel,--no wonder I am fresh. I have been in heaven,--no wonder I am fair. I felt myself grow better hour by hour. After I left you with him, when his arms were round me, when he kissed me, when his tenderness oppressed me,--I felt raised to G.o.d. No heart ever was so pure, so overflowing with the light of heaven. I can only believe I have been in heaven, and have fallen here,--not that he has left me, and I must follow him to find him. I will not follow yet, my friend! I have much to do that he has left me."

"Thank G.o.d, you will not leave us,--but more, because you love him, and made him happy!"

"You do not, perhaps, know that he was never anything but happy. When I think of discontent and envy and hatred and anger and care, and see them painted upon other faces, I feel that he must have tasted heaven to have made himself so happy here. I can fancy a single taste of heaven, sir, lasting a whole life long."

She was his taste of heaven, as a foretaste even to me! But had she, indeed, never learned the secret of his memory, or had she turned, indeed, its darkness into light?

"I wish to hear about the last."

"You know nearly as much as I do, or as I can tell you. You remember the music you heard last night? It was the last he wrote, and I found it and saved it, and had done with it what you heard."

But I cannot descant on death-beds; it is the only theme which I dare believe, if I were to touch, would scare me at my dying hour. I will not tamper with those scenes, but console myself by reminding that if the time had been, and that, too, lately, when upon that brain fell the light in fever and the sun in fire, the time was over; and sightless, painless, deaf to the farewells of dying music, he, indeed, could not be said to _suffer_ death.

Nor did he _know_ to suffer it, as he had said. The crown that, piercing with its _fiery thorns_ unfelt, had pressed into his brow the death-sting, should also crown with its _star-flowers_ the waking unto life.

"You remember what you said, Mr. Auchester, that he needed a 'companion for his earthly hours:' I tried to be his companion,--he allowed me to be so; and one of the last times he spoke he said: 'Thank Carl for giving you to me.'"

That echo reaches me from the summer-night of sadness and still communion, of _pa.s.sion's slumber by the dead_. It is now some years ago; but never was any love so fresh to the spirit it enchanted, as is the enchantment of this sorrow, still mine own. So be it ever mine, till all shall be forever!

I am in England, and again at home. Great changes have swept the earth; I know of none within myself. Through all convulsions the music whispers to me _that music is_. I ought to believe in its existence, for it is my own life and the life of the living round me. Davy is still at work, but not alone in hope,--sometimes in the midst of triumph. They tell me I shall never grow rich, but with my violin I shall never be poor. I have more than enough for everything, as far as I myself am concerned; and as for those I love, there is not one who prospers not, even by means of music.

Starwood has been three years in London. His name, enfolded in another name, brought the whole force of music to his feet. It is not easy to procure lessons of the young professor, who can only afford twenty minutes to the most exacting pupil. It is still less easy to hear him play in public, for he has a will of his own, and will only play what he likes, and only what he likes to the people he likes; for he is a bit of a cynic, and does not believe, half so much as I do, that music is making way. He married his first feminine pupil,--a girl of almost fabulous beauty. I believe he gave her half-a-dozen lessons before the crisis,--not any afterwards; and I know that he was seventeen and she fifteen years of age at the time they married.[10] His whole nature is spent upon her; but she is kind enough to like me, and thus I sometimes receive an invitation, which I should accept did they reside in the moon.

But I have other London friends. After two seasons, more satisfactory than brilliant, Laura retired from the stage. During the time she danced, her name was scarcely whispered,--I believe she was even feared in her spiritual exaltation of her art; but no sooner had she left the lights than all critics and contemporaries discovered her excellences. She was wooed with the white-flower garlands of the purest honor, with the gold so few despised, to return and resume her career, now certain fame; but she was never won, and I have since made clear to myself that she only danced in public until she had raised a certain capital, for you will only find her now in her graceful drawing-room where London is most secluded, surrounded by the most graceful and loveliest of the children of the peerage. No one but Mademoiselle Lauretta--her stage and professional name--prepares the little rarities for transplantation into the court-garden, or rehea.r.s.es the quadrille for the Prince of Wales's birthnight-ball. I believe Miss Lemark, as she is known still to me, or even Laura, might have had many homes if she had chosen,--homes where she could not but have felt at home. Clara was even importunate that she should live with her in Germany; Miss Lawrence was excessively indignant at being refused herself; and there have been worthy gentlemen, shades not to be invoked or recognized, who would have been very thankful to be allowed to dream of that pale brow veiled, those clear eyes downcast, those tapering fingers twined in theirs. But Laura, like myself, will _never_ marry.

For Miss Lawrence, too, that glorious friend of mine, I must have a little corner. It was Miss Lawrence who carried to Laura the news of Seraphael's death,--herself heart-broken, who bound up that bleeding heart. It is Miss Lawrence whose secretive and peculiar generosity so permeates the heart of music in London that no true musician is actually ever poor. It is Miss Lawrence who, disdaining subscription-lists, steps unseen through every embarra.s.sment where those languish who are too proud or too humble to complain, and leaves that behind her which re-a.s.sures and re-establishes by the magic of charity strewn from her artist-hand. It is Miss Lawrence who discerns the temporality of art to be that which is as inevitable as its spiritual necessity; who yet ministers to its uttermost spiritual appreciation by her patronage of the highest only. It is Miss Lawrence you see wherever music is to be heard, with her n.o.ble brow and sublimely beneficent eyes, her careless costume, and music-beaming lips; but you cannot know, as I do, what it is to have her for a friend.

Miss Lawrence certainly lost caste by receiving and entertaining, as she did, Mademoiselle Lauretta; for both when Laura was dancing before the public and had done with so dancing, Miss Lawrence would insist upon her appearing at every party or a.s.sembly she gave,--whether with her father's sanction or without, n.o.body knew. To be introduced to a ballet-girl, or even a dancing-lady, at the same table or upon the same carpet with barristers and baronets, with golden-hearted bankers and "earnest" men of letters!--she certainly lost caste by her resolute unconventionalism, did my friend Miss Lawrence. But then, as she said to me, "What in life does it matter about losing caste with people who have no caste to lose?" She writes to me continually, and her house is my home in London. I have never been able to make her confess that she sent me my violin; but I know she did, for her interest in me can only be explained on that ground, and there is that look upon her face, whenever I play, which a.s.sures me of something a.s.sociated in her mind and memory with my playing that is not itself music.

Miss Lawrence also corresponds with Clara, and Clara sees us too; but no one, seeing her, would believe her to be childless and alone. She is more beautiful than ever, and not less calm,--more loving and more beloved.

We had Florimond Anastase a concert-player at our very last festival.

He was exactly like the young Anastase who taught me, and I should not have been able to believe him older but for his companion, a young lady, who sat below him in the audience, and at whom I could only gaze. It was Josephine Cerinthia, no longer a child, but still a prodigy, for she has the finest voice, it is said, in Europe. No one will hear it, however, for Anastase, who adopted her eight years ago, makes her life the life of a princess, or as very few princesses' can be; he works for her, he saves for her, and has already made her rich.

They say he will marry her by and by; it may be so, but I do not myself believe it.

Near the house in which Seraphael died, and rising as from the ashes of his tomb, is another house which holds his name, and will ever hold it to be immortal. Sons and daughters of his own are there,--of his land, his race, his genius,--those whom music has "called" and "chosen" from the children of humanity. The grandeur of the inst.i.tution, its stupendous scale, its intention, its consummation, afford, to the imagination that enshrines him, the only monument that would not insult his name. Nor is that temple without its priestess, that altar without its angel. She who devoted the wealth of his wisdom to that work gave up the treasure of her life besides, and has consecrated herself to its superintendence. At the monumental school she would be adored, but that she is too much loved as children love,--too much at home there to be feared. I hold her as my pa.s.sion forever; she makes my old years young in memory, and to every new morning of my life her name is Music. With another name--not dearer, but as dear--she is indissolubly connected; and if I preserve my heart's first purity, it is to them I owe it.

I write no more. Had I desired to treat of music specifically, I should not have written at all; for that theme demands a tongue beyond the tongues of men and angels,--a voice that is no more heard. But if one faithful spirit find an echo in my expression, to his beating heart for music, his inward song of praise, it is not in vain that I write, that what I have written is written.

CHARLES AUCHESTER.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] Sterndale Bennett married Mary Anne, daughter of Captain James Wood, R. N.

THE END.