CHAPTER IX.
The chorus, I learned afterwards, was never recalled, so proudly true, so perfect, so flexible; but it was not only not difficult to keep in, it was impossible to get out. So every one said among my choral contemporaries afterwards.
I might recall how the arias told, invested with that same charm of subdued and softened fulness; I might name each chorus, bent to such strength by a might scarcely mortal: but I dare not anticipate my after acquaintance with a musician who, himself supreme, has alone known how to interpret the works of others. I will merely advert to the extraordinary calm that pervaded the audience during the first part.
Tremendous in revenge, perfectly tremendous, was the uproar between the parts, for there was a pause and clearance for a quarter of an hour. I could not have moved for some moments if I had wished it; as it was, I was nearly pressed to death. Everybody was talking; a clamor filled the air. I saw Lenhart Davy afar off, but he could not get to me. He looked quite white, and his eyes sparkled. As for me, I could not help thinking the world was coming to an end, so thirsty I felt, so dry, so shaken from head to foot. I could scarcely feel the ground, and I could not lift my knees, they were so stiff.
But still with infatuation I watched the conductor, though I suffered not my eyes to wander to his face; I dared not look at him, I felt too awful. He was suddenly surrounded by gentlemen, the members of the committee. I knew they were there, bustling, skurrying, and I listened to their intrusive tones. As the chorus pressed by me I was obliged to advance a little, and I heard, in a quiet foreign accent, delicate as clear, these words: "Nothing, thank you, but a glass of pure water."
Trembling, hot, and dizzy, almost mad with impatience, I pushed through the crowd; it was rather thinner now, but I had to drive my head against many a knot, and when I could not divide the groups I dived underneath their arms. I cannot tell how I got out, but I literally leaped the stairs; in two or three steps I cleared the gallery. Once in the refreshment room, I snatched a glass jug that stood in a pail filled with lumps of ice, and a tumbler, and made away with them before the lady who was superintending that table had turned her head. I had never a stumbling footstep, and though I sprang back again, I did not spill a drop. I knew the hall was half empty, so taking a short way that led me into it, I came to the bottom of the orchestra. I stood the tumbler upon a form, and filling it to the brim, left the beaker behind me and rushed up the orchestra stairs.
He was still there, leaning upon the score, with his hands upon his face, and his eyes hidden. I advanced very quietly, but he heard me, and without raising himself from the desk, let his hands fall, elevated his countenance, and watched me as I approached him.
I trembled so violently then, taken with a fresh shudder of excitement, that I could not lift the tumbler to present it. I saw a person from the other side advancing with a tray, and dreading to be supplanted, I looked up with desperate entreaty. The unknown stretched his arm and raised the glass, taking it from me, to his lips. Around those lips a shadowy half-smile was playing, but they were white with fatigue or excitement, and he drank the water instantly, as if athirst.
Then he returned to me the glass, empty, with a gentle but absent air, paused one moment, and now, as if restored to himself, fully regarded me, and fully smiled.
Down-gazing, those deep-colored eyes upon me seemed distant as the stars of heaven; but there was an almost pitying sweetness in his tone as he addressed me. I shall never forget that tone, nor how my eyelids quivered with the longing want to weep.
"It was very refreshing," he said. "How much more strengthening is water than wine! Thank you for the trouble you took to fetch it. And you, you sang also in the chorus. It was beautifully done."
"May I tell them so, sir?" I asked him, eagerly, without being able to help speaking in some reply.
"Yes, every one; but above all, the little ones;" and again he faintly smiled.
Then he turned to the score, and drooping over the desk, seemed to pass back into himself, alone, by himself companioned. And in an agony of fear lest I should intrude for a moment even, I sped as fast as I had entered from his mysterious presence.
To this hour I cannot find in my memory the tone in which he spoke that day. Though I have heard that voice so often since, have listened to it in a trance of life, I can never realize it,—it was too unearthly, and became part of what I shall be, having distilled from the essence of my being, as I am.
Well, I came upon Lenhart Davy in one of the passages as I was running back. I fell, in fact, against him, and he caught me in his arms.
"Charles Auchester, where have you been? You have frightened me sorely. I thought I had lost you, I did indeed, and have been looking for you ever since we came out of the hall."
As soon as I could collect enough of myself to put into words, I exclaimed ecstatically, "Oh, Mr. Davy! I have been talking to the man in the orchestra!"
"You have, indeed, you presumptuous atomy!" and he laughed in his own way, adding, "I did not expect you would blow into an hero quite so soon. And is our hero up there still? My dear Charles, you must have been mistaken, he must be in the committee-room."
"No, I was not. The idea of my mistaking! as if anybody else could be like him! He is up there now, and he would not come down, though they asked him; and he said he would only drink a glass of water, and I heard him, for I waited to see, and I fetched it, and he drank it—there!" and I flung myself round Davy again, almost exhausted with joy.
"And he spoke to you, did he, Charles? My own little boy, be still, or I shall have to fetch you a glass of water. I am really afraid of all this excitement, for which you seem to come in naturally."
"So I do, Mr. Davy; but do tell me who is that man?"
"I cannot tell," said Davy, himself so flushed now that I could hardly think him the same person, "unless, by some extraordinary chance, it may be Milans-André."
"No, no!" exclaimed one of our contemporaries, who, in returning to the orchestra, overheard the remark. "No, no! it is not Milans-André. Mr. Hermann, the leader, has seen Milans-André in Paris. No, it is some nobleman, they say,—a German prince. They all know Handel in Germany."
"Nonsense!" replied Davy, "they don't know Handel better in Germany than we do in England;" but he spoke as if to me, having turned from the person who addressed him.
"Don't they, Mr. Davy? But he does look like a prince."
"Not a German prince, my Charles. He is more like one of your favorite Jews,—and that is where it is, no doubt."
"Davy, Davy!" exclaimed again another, one of the professors in the town, "can it be Milans-André?"
"They say not, Mr. Westley. I do not know myself, but I should have thought Monsieur André must be older than this gentleman, who does not look twenty."
"Oh! he is more than twenty."
"As you please," muttered Davy, merrily, as he turned again to me. "My boy, we must not stand here; we shall lose our old places. Do not forget to remain in yours, when it is over, till I come to fetch you."
When it is over! Oh, cruel Lenhart Davy! to remind me that it would ever end. I felt it cruel then, but perhaps I felt too much,—I always do, and I hope I always shall.
Again marshalled in our places (I having crept to mine), and again fitted in very tightly, we all arose. I suppose it was the oppression of so many round me standing, superadded to the strong excitement, but the whole time the chorus lasted, "Behold the Lamb of God!" I could not sing. I stood and sobbed; but even then I had respect to Davy's neatly copied alto sheet, and I only shaded my eyes with that, and wept upon the floor. Nobody near observed me; they were all singing with all their might; I alone dared to look down, ever down, and weep upon the floor.
Such tears I never shed before; they were as necessary as dew after a cloudless day, and, to pursue my figure, I awoke again at the conclusion of the chorus to a deep, rapturous serenity, pure as twilight, and gazed upwards at the stars, whose "smile was Paradise," with my heart again all voice.
I believe the chorus, "Lift up your heads!" will never again be heard in England as it was heard then, and I am quite certain of the "Hallelujah." It was as close, as clear, and the power that bound the band alike constrained the chorus; both seemed freed from all responsibility, and alone to depend upon the will that swayed, that stirred, with a spell real as supernatural, and sweet as strange.
Perhaps the most immediate consequence of such faultless interpretation was the remarkable stillness of the audience. Doubtless a few there were who were calm in critical pique, but I believe the majority dared not applaud, so decided had been the negative of that graceful sign at the commencement of the performance; besides, a breathless curiosity brooded, as distinctly to be traced in the countenance of the crowd as in their thrilling quietude,—for thrilling it was indeed, though not so thrilling as the outbreak, the tempest out-rolling of pent-up satisfaction at the end of the final chorus. That chorus (it was well indeed it was the last) seemed alone to have exhausted the strength of the conductor; his arm suddenly seemed to tire, he entirely relaxed, and the delicate but burning hectic on each cheek alone remained, the seal of his celestial passion.
He turned as soon as the applause, instead of decreasing, persisted; for at first he had remained with his face towards the choir. As the shouts still reached him, and the sea of heads began to fluctuate, he bent a little in acknowledgment, but nevertheless preserved the same air of indifference and abstraction from all about, beneath him. Lingering only until the way was cleared below the orchestra steps, he retreated down them even before the applause had ceased, and before any one could approach him, without addressing any one, he left the hall.
And of him nothing afterwards was heard,—I mean at that time. Not a soul in the whole town had learned his name, and the hotel at which he had slept the night before was in vain attacked by spies on every errand. The landlord could only say what he knew himself,—that he was a stranger who had visited the place for the purpose of attending the festival, and who, having fulfilled that purpose, had left the city unknown, unnamed, as he entered it.
I believe most children of my age would have had a fit of illness after an excitement of brain and of body so peculiar; but perhaps had I been less excited I should have been worse off afterwards. As it was, the storm into which I had been wrought subsided of itself, and I was the better for it,—just as Nature is said to be after her disturbances of a similar description. Davy took me home, and then set off to his own house, where he always seemed to have so much to do; and all my people were very kind to me in listening, while I, more calmly than any one would believe, expatiated upon our grand adventure. I was extremely amused to see how astonished Clo was to find me so reasonable; for her only fear had been, she informed my mother, that Charles would not settle to anything for weeks if he were allowed to go. And Millicent was very much astonished that I spoke so little of the performance itself. I could only defend myself by saying, "If you had seen him you would not wonder."
"Is he handsome, Charles?" said Lydia, innocently, with her brown eyes fixed upon her thimble (which she held upon her finger, and was shocked to perceive a little tarnished). I was so angry that I felt myself turn quite sick; but I was good enough only to answer, "You would not think so;" for so I believe. Millicent softly watched me, and added, "Charlie means, I think, that it was a very beautiful face."
"I do," I said bluntly; "I shall never see a beautiful face again. You will never see one at all, as you have not seen that."
"Pity us then, Charles," replied Millicent, in her gentlest voice.
I climbed upon her lap. "Oh, no, dear! It is you who must pity me, because you do not know what it is, and I do, and I have lost it."
Lydia lifted her eyes and made them very round; but as I was put to bed directly, nobody heard any more of me that night.