CHAPTER VIII.
“Salome, where did you learn to sing? I was astonished this morning when I heard you.”
“I have not yet learned,—I have only begun to practise.”
“But, my child, I had no idea you owned such a voice. Where have you kept it concealed so long?”
“I was not aware that I had it until a month ago, when it accidentally discovered itself.”
“It is very powerful.”
“Yes, and very rough; but care and study will smooth and polish it. Miss Jane, please keep your eye on Stanley until I come home; for, although I left him with his slate and arithmetic, it is by no means certain that they will not part company the moment I am out of sight.”
“Where are you going?”
“To carry back some work which would have been returned yesterday had not the weather been so inclement.”
In addition to the package of embroidered handkerchiefs, Salome carried under her arm a roll of music and an instruction-book; and, when she reached the outskirts of the town, turned away from the main street and stopped at the door of a small comfortless-looking house that stood without enclosure on the common.
Two swart, black-eyed children were playing mumble-peg with a broken knife, in one corner of the room; a third, with tears still on its lashes, had just sobbed itself to sleep on a strip of faded carpet stretched before the smouldering embers on the hearth; while the fourth, a feeble infant only six months old, was wailing in the arms of its mother,—a thin, sickly woman, with consumption’s red autograph written on her hollow cheeks, where the skin clung to the bones as if resisting the chill grasp of death. As she slowly rocked herself, striving to hush the cry of the child, her dry, husky cough formed a melancholy chorus, which seemed to annoy a man who sat before the small table covered with materials for copying music. His cadaverous, sallow complexion, and keen, restless eyes, bespoke Italian origin; and, although engaged in filling some blank sheets with musical notes, he occasionally took up a violin that lay across his knees, and, after playing a few bars, laid aside the bow and resumed the pen. Now and then he glanced at his wife and child with a scowling brow; but, as his eyes fell on their emaciated faces, something like a sigh seemed to heave his chest.
When Salome’s knock arrested his attention he rose and advanced to the half-open door, saying, impatiently,—
“Well, miss, have you brought me any money?”
“Good morning, Mr. Barilli. Here are the ten dollars that 99 I promised, but I wish you to understand that in future I shall not advance one cent of my tuition-money. When the month ends you will receive your wages, but not one day earlier.”
“I beg pardon, miss; but, indeed, you see—”
He did not conclude the sentence, but waved his hand towards the two in the rocking-chair and proceeded to count the money placed in his palm.
“Yes, I see that you are very destitute, but charity begins at home, and I have to work hard for the wages that you have demanded before they are due. Good morning, madam; I hope you feel better to-day. Come, Mr. Barilli, I have no time to waste in loitering. Are you ready for my lesson?”
“Quite ready, miss. Commence.”
For three-quarters of an hour he listened to her exercises, which he accompanied with his violin, and afterwards directed her to sing an air from a collection of songs on the table. As her deep, rich contralto notes swelled round and full, he shut his eyes and nodded his head as if in an ecstacy; and, when she concluded, he rapped his violin heavily with the bow, and exclaimed,—
“Some day when you sing that at Della Scala, remember the poor devil who taught it to you in a hovel. Soaked as those old walls are with music from the most famous lips the world ever applauded, they hold no echoes sweeter than that last trill. After all, there is no passion—no pathos—comparable to a perfect contralto crescendo. It is wonderful how you Americans squander voices that would rouse all Europe into a furore.”
“I am afraid your eager desire for pupils biases your judgment, and invests my voice with fictitious worth,” answered Salome, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Ha! you mean that I flatter, in order to keep you. Not so, miss. If St. Cecilia herself asked tuition without good pay, I should shut the door in her face; but, much as I need money, I would not risk my reputation by praising what was poor. If one of my children—that miserable little Beatrice, yonder—only had your voice, do you think I would copy music, or teach beginners, or live in this cursed hole? You 100 have a fortune shut up in your throat, and some day, when you are celebrated, at least do me the justice to tell the world who first found the treasure; and, out of your wealth, spare me a decent tombstone in the Campo Santo of—of—”
He laughed bitterly, and, seizing his violin, filled the room with mournful miserere strains.
“How long a course of training do you think will be necessary before the inequalities in my voice can be corrected and my vocalization perfected?”
“You are very young, miss, and it would not do to strain your voice, which is well-nigh perfect in itself; but, of course, your execution is defective,—just as a young nightingale cannot warble all its strains before it is full-feathered. If you study faithfully, in one year, or certainly one and a half, you will be ready for your engagement at Della Scala. Hist! see if you can follow me?”
He played a subtle, chromatic passage, ending in a trill, and the orphan echoed it with such accuracy and sweetness that the teacher threw down his bow, and, while tears stood in his glittering eyes, he put his brown hand on the girl’s head, and said, earnestly,—
“There ought to be feathers here instead of hair, for no nightingale, nestled in the olive groves of Italy, ever warbled more easily and naturally. Don’t go out to the world as Miss Owen,—make it call you Rosignuolo. Take the next page in the instruction-book for a new lesson, and practise the old scales over before you touch the new,—they are like steps in a ladder, and save jumps and jars. God made your voice wonderful, and, if you are only careful not to undo his work, it will develop itself every year in fresh power and depth. Ha! if my poor squeaking Beatrice only had it! But there is no more music stored in her throat and chest than in a regiment of rats. Good day, miss. Your lesson is ended, and I go to buy some wood for my miserable shiverers.”
He seized his hat and walking-stick and quitted the house, leaving his pupil to gather up her music and conjecture, meanwhile, whether the wood-yard or a neighboring bar-room was his real destination.
His dissipated habits had greatly impaired her faith in the accuracy of his critical acumen touching professional matters, and, as she rolled up the sheet of paper in her hands, Salome approached the feeble occupant of the rocking-chair, and said, rather abruptly,—
“Madam Barilli, you ought to know when your husband speaks earnestly and when he is merely indulging in idle flattery, and I wish to learn his real opinion of my voice. Will you tell me the truth?”
“Yes, miss, I will. I am no musician, and never was in Europe, where he studied; but he talks constantly of your voice, and tells me there is a fortune in it. Only last night he swore that if he could control it, he would not take a hundred thousand dollars for the right; and then, poor fellow, he fell into one of his fierce ways and boxed my little Beatrice’s ears, because, he said, all the teachers in the Conservatoire could not put into her throat the trill that you were born with. Ah, no, he flatters no one now! He has forgotten how, since the day that I was coaxed to run away from my father’s elegant home and marry the tenor singer of an opera troupe and the professor who taught me the gamut at boarding-school. Miss, you may believe him, for Sebastian Barilli means what he says.”
“One hundred thousand dollars! I promise him and you that if one-half of that amount can be ‘trilled’ into my pocket you shall both be comfortable during the remainder of your days.”
“Mine are numbered, and will end before your career begins; and, when you sing in Della Scala, I trust I shall be singing up yonder behind the stars, where cold and hunger and heart-ache and cruel words cannot follow me. But, miss, when I am gone, and Sebastian is over at the corner trying to drown his troubles, and my four helpless little ones are left here unprotected, for God’s sake look in upon them now and then, and don’t let them cry for bread. My own family long ago cast me off, and here I am a stranger; but you, who have felt the pangs of orphanage, will not stand by and see 102 my darlings starve! Oh, miss, the poor who cannot pity the poor must be hard-hearted indeed!”
The suffering woman pressed her moaning babe closer to her bosom, and, taking Salome’s hand between her thin, hot fingers, bowed her tear-stained face upon it.
Grim recollections of similar scenes enacted in the old house behind the mill crowded upon the mind of the miller’s daughter, hardening instead of melting her heart; but, withdrawing her fingers, she said in as kind a tone as she could command,—
“The poor are sometimes too poor to aid each other, and pity is most unpalatable fare; but, if your husband has not grossly deceived himself and me with reference to my voice, I will promise that your children shall not suffer while I live. For their sake do not despond, but try to keep up your spirits, else your husband will be utterly ruined. Gloomy hearthstones make club-rooms and bar-rooms populous. Good-by. When I come again, I will bring something to stimulate your appetite, which seems to require coaxing.”
She stooped and looked for a minute at the gaunt, white face of the half-famished infant pressed against the mother’s feverish breast, and an irresistible impulse impelled her to stroke back the rings of black hair that clustered on its sunken temples; then, snatching her music and bundle, she hurried out of the close, untidy room, and, once more upon the grassy common, drew a long, deep breath of pure fresh air.
Autumn, with orange dawns, and mellow, misty moons, when
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“Sweet, calm days, in golden haze Melt down the amber sky,” |
had died on bare brown stubble-fields and vine-veined hill-sides, purple with clustering grapes on leafless branches; and wintry days had come, with sleety morns and chill, crisp noons, and scarlet sunset banners flouting the silver stars in western skies, where the shivering, gasping old year had woven,—
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“One strait gown of red Against the cold.” |
None of the earlier years of Salome’s life seemed to her half so drearily long as the four monotonous months that followed Dr. Grey’s departure; and, during the intervals between his brief letters to his sister, the orphan learned a deceptive quietude of manner, at variance with the tumultuous feelings that agitated her heart; for painful suspense which is borne with clenched hands and firmly-set teeth is not the more patient because sternly mute.
Which suffered least, Philoctetes howling on the shores of Lemnos, or the silent Trojan priest, writhing in a death-struggle with the serpent folds that crushed him before the altar of Neptune?
If any messages intended for Salome found their way across the ocean, they finally missed their destination, and reached the dead-letter office of Miss Jane’s vast and inviolate pocket; and, while this apparent neglect piqued the girl’s vanity, the blessed assurance that the absent master was alive and well proved a sovereign balm for all the bleeding wounds of amour propre.
In order to defray the expense of her musical tuition, which was carried on in profound secrecy, it was necessary to redouble her exertions; and all the latent energy of her character developed itself in unflagging work, which she persistently prosecuted early and late, and in quiet defiance of Miss Jane’s expostulations and predictions that she would permanently impair her sight.
Paramount to the desire of amassing wealth that would enable her to provide for Jessie and Stanley rose the hope that the cultivation of her voice would invest her with talismanic influence over the man who was singularly susceptible of the magic of music; and, jealously guarding the new-found gift, she spared no toil to render it perfect.
Fearful that her suddenly acquired fondness for singing might arouse suspicion and inquiry, she rarely practised at home unless Miss Jane were absent; and, having procured a tuning-fork, she retreated to the most secluded portion of the adjoining forest and rehearsed her lessons to a mute audience of grazing cattle, sombre pines, nodding plumes of golden-rod, 104 and shivering white asters, belated and overtaken by wintry blasts. Alone with nature, she warbled as unrestrainedly as the birds who listened to her quavering crescendos; and more than once she had become so absorbed in this forest practising, that twinkling stars peeped down at her through the fringy canopy of murmuring firs.
In fulfilment of a promise given to Stanley, with the hope of stimulating him to more earnest study, Salome one day took a piece of sewing and her music-book, and set off with her brother for the sea-shore, where he was sometimes allowed to amuse himself by catching crabs and shrimps. The route they were compelled to take was very circuitous, since strangers were now forbidden to stroll through the grounds attached to “Solitude,” which was the nearest point where land and ocean met. Following a cattle-path that threaded the bare brown hills and wound through low marsh meadows, Salome at length climbed a cliff that overhung the narrow strip of beach running along the base of the promontory, and, while Stanley prepared his net, she applied herself vigorously to the completion of a cluster of lilies of the valley which she had begun to embroider the preceding night.
It was a mild, sunny afternoon, late in December, with only a few flakes of white curd-like cirri drifting slowly before the stiffening south wind that came singing a song of the tropics over the gently heaving waste of waters—
| “Where the green buds of waves burst into white froth flowers.” |
Two glimmering sails stood like phantoms on the horizon; and a silent colony of snowy gulls, perched in conclave on a bit of weed-wreathed drift floating landward, were the only living things in sight, save the childish figure on the yellow beach under the bleaching rocks, and the girlish one seated on the tallest cliff, where a storm-scarred juniper, bending inland, waved its scanty fringe in the fresh salt breeze.
No note of human strife entered here, nor hum of noisy business marts; and the solemn silence, so profound and holy, was broken only by the soft, mysterious murmur of the immemorial 105 ocean, as its crystal fingers smote the harp of rosy shells and golden sands.
Clasped in the crescent that curved a mile northward lay the house, and grove, and grounds of “Solitude,” looking sombre in the distance, as the shadow of surrounding hills fell upon the dense foliage that overhung its quiet precincts, and toned down the garish red of the boat-house roof, which lent a brief dash of color to the peaceful picture. Beyond the last guarding promontory that seemed to have plunged through the shelving strand to bathe in blue brine and cut off all passage along its base, a strong well-trained eye might follow the trend of the coast even to the dim outlines and thread-like masts, that told where the distant town hugged its narrow harbor; and, in the opposite direction, low, irregular sand hills and brown marshes crept southward, as if hunting the warmth that alone could mantle them with living verdure.
As the afternoon wore away, the sinking sun dipped suddenly behind a wooded eminence, which, losing the warm purples it had worn since noon, grew chill and blue as his rays departed; and, weary of her work, Salome put it aside and began to practise her music lesson, beating time with her slender fingers on the bare juniper-roots, from which wind and rain had driven the soil. Running her chromatic scales, and pausing at will to trill upon any minor note that wooed her vagrant fancy, she played with her flexible voice as dexterous violinists toy with the obedient strings they hold in harmonious bondage to their bows.
Finally she pushed the exercises away, and began a fantasus from “Traviata,” which she had heard Mr. Barilli play several times; and so absorbed was she in testing her capacity for vocal gymnastics that she failed to observe the moving figure dwarfed by distance and pacing the sands in front of “Solitude.”
The rich, fresh tones which seemed occasionally to tremble with the excess of melody that burdened them played hide-and-seek among the hills, startling whole choruses of deep-throated echoes, and attending and retentive ocean, catching the strains on her beryl strings, bore them whither—and how 106 far? To palm-plumed equatorial isles, where dying auricular nerves mistook them for seraphic utterances? To toiling mariners, tossed helplessly by fierce typhoons, who, pausing in their scramble for spars, listened to the weird melody that presaged woe and wreck? To the broken casements of fishermen’s huts, on distant shores, where anxious wives peered out in the blackening tempest, and shrank back appalled by sounds which sea-tradition averred were born in coral caves, mosaiced with blanching human skulls? What hoary hierophant in the mysteries of cataphonics and diacoustics will undertake to track those trills across the blue bosom of the Atlantic or the purplish billows of the Indian Ocean?
The wind went down with the sun; silver-edged cirri lost their glitter, and swift was
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... “The spread
Of orange lustre through these azure spheres Where little clouds lie still like flocks of sheep, Or vessels sailing in God’s other deep.” |
In that wondrous and magical after-glow which tenderly hovers over the darkening face of the dying day, like the strange, spectral smile that only sheds its cold, supernatural light on lips twelve hours dead, Salome’s fair face and graceful pose was as softly defined against the western sky as some nimbussed saint or madonna on the golden background of old Byzantine pictures. Her small straw hat, wreathed with scarlet poppies, lay at her feet; and around her shoulders she had closely folded a bright plaid flannel cloak, which tinted her complexion with its ruddy hues, as firelight flushes the olive portraits that stare at it from surrounding walls, and the braided black hair and large hazel eyes showed every brown tint and topaz gleam.
Leaning her arms on the top of her music-book, she rested her chin upon them, and sat looking seaward, singing a difficult passage, in the midst of which her nimble voice tripped on an E flat, and, missing the staccato step, rolled helplessly down in a legato flood of melody; whereupon, with an impatient grimace she shut her eyes, weary of watching the wave-shimmer 107 that almost dazzled her. After a few seconds, when she opened them, there stood just on the edge of the cliff, as if poised in air, a woman whose face and form were as sharply cut in profile on the azure sea and sky as white cameo features on black agate grounds.
Around the tall figure shining folds of silver poplin hung heavy and statuesque, and over the shoulders a blue crape shawl was held by a beautiful blue-veined hand, where a sapphire asp kept guard; while a cluster of double violets fastened behind one shell-like ear breathed their perfume among glossy bands of gray hair.
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“There was no color in the quiet mouth, Nor fulness; yet it had a ghostly grace, Pathetically pale,” |
and wan, and woful—the still face turned seaward, fronting a round white moon that was lifting its full disk out of the line where air and water met—she stood motionless.
Lifting her head, Salome shivered involuntarily, and grew a shade paler as she breathlessly watched the apparition, expecting that it would fade into blue air or float down and mingle with the waters that gave it birth. But there was no wavering mistiness about the shining drapery; and, presently, when she turned and came forward, the orphan, despite her sneers at superstition, felt the hair creep and rise on her temples, and, springing to her feet, they faced each other. As the stranger advanced, Salome unconsciously retreated a few steps, and exclaimed,—
“Gray-eyed, gray-haired, gray-clad, gray-faced, and rising out of that gray sea, I suppose I have at last met the gray ghost that people tell me haunts old ‘Solitude.’ But how came such a young face under that drift of white hair? If all ghosts have such finely carved, delicate noses and chins, such oval cheeks and pretty brows, most of us here in the flesh might thank fortune for a chance to ‘shuffle off this mortal coil.’ Say, are you the troubled evil spirit that haunts ‘Solitude’?”
“I am.”
The voice was so mournfully sweet that it thrilled every nerve in Salome’s quivering frame.
“Phantom or flesh—which are you?”
“Mrs. Gerome, the owner of ‘Solitude.’”
“Oh, indeed! I beg your pardon, madam, but I took you for a wraith! You know the place has always been considered unlucky—haunted—and you are such an extraordinary-looking person I was inclined to think I had stumbled on the traditional ghost. I am neither ignorant nor stupidly superstitious; but, madam, you must admit you have an unearthly appearance; and, moreover, I should be glad to know how you rose from the beach below to the top of this cliff? I see no feathers on your shoulders—no balloon under your feet!”
“I was walking on the sands in front of my door, and, hearing some very sweet strains that came floating down from this direction, I followed the sound, and climbed by means of steps cut in the side of this cliff. Since you regarded me as a spectre, I may as well tell you that I was beginning to fancy I was listening to one of the old sea-sirens, until I saw your rosy face and red lips, far too human for a dripping mermaid or a murderous, mocking Aglaiopheme.”
“No more a siren, madam, than you are a ghost! I am only Salome Owen, the miller’s child, waiting for that boy yonder, whose sublimest idea of heaven consists in the hope that its blessed sea of glass is brimming with golden shrimp. Stanley, run around the cliff, and meet me. It is too late for us to be here. We should have started home an hour ago.”
“Who taught you ‘Traviata’?”
“I am teaching myself, with what small help I can obtain from a vagabond musician, who calls himself Signor Barilli, and claims to have been a tenor singer in an opera troupe at Milan.”
“You ought to cultivate your voice as thoroughly as possible.”
“Why? Is it really good? Tell me, is it worth anything? No one has heard it except that Italian violinist; and, if he praises it, I sometimes fear it is because he is so horribly dissipated 109 that he confounds my bravura runs with the clicking of his wine-glasses and the gurgling of his flask. Do you know much about music?”
“I have heard the best living performers, vocal and instrumental, and to a finer voice than yours I never listened; but you need study and practice, for your execution is faulty. You have a splendid instrument; but you do not yet understand its management. Where do you live?”
“At ‘Grassmere,’ a farm two miles behind those hills, and in a house hidden under elm and apple trees. Madam, it is very late, and I must bid you good-evening. Before I go, I should like to know, if you will not deem me unwarrantably impertinent, whether you are a very young person with white hair, or whether you are a very old woman with a wonderfully young face?”
For a moment there was no answer; and, supposing that she had offended her, the orphan bowed and was turning away, when Mrs. Gerome’s calm, mournful tones arrested her:
“I am only twenty-three years old.”
She walked away, turning her countenance towards the water, where moonlight was burnishing the waves; and, when Salome and Stanley had reached the bend in their path that would shut out the view of the beach, the former looked back and saw the silver-gray figure standing alone on the silent shore, communing with the silver sea, as desolate and as hopeless as Buchanan’s “Penelope,”—
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“An alabaster woman, whose fixed eyes Stare seaward, whether it be storm or calm.” |