CHAPTER VIII.
The second night I had not slept so well as the first, but on the third morning I was, nathless, extraordinarily fresh. I seemed to have lived ages, but yet all struck me in perfect unison as new. I was only too intensely happy as I left our house with Davy, he having breakfasted with us.
He was very much pleased with my achievements. I was very much pleased with everything; I was saturated with pleasure. That day has lasted me—a light—to this. Had I been stricken blind and deaf afterwards, I ought not to have complained,—so far would my happiness, in degree and nature, have outweighed any other I can imagine to have fallen to any other lot. Let those who endure, who rejoice, alike pure in passion, bless God for the power they possess—innate, unalienable, intransferable—of suffering all they feel.
I shall never forget that scene. The hall was already crowded when we pressed into our places half an hour before the appointed commencement. Every central speck was a head; the walls were pillared with human beings; the swarm increased, floating into the reserved places, and a stream still poured on beneath the gallery.
As if to fling glory on music not of its own, it was a most splendid day,—the finest, warmest, and serenest we had had for weeks. Through the multitudinous panes the sky was a positive blaze of blue; the sunshine fell upon the orchestra from the great arched window at the end of the vaulted building, and through that window's purple and orange border radiated gold and amethyst upon the countenances of the entering crowd. The hands of the clock were at the quarter now; we in the chorus wondered that St. Michel had not come. Again they moved, those noiseless hands, and the "tongue" of iron told eleven. We all grew anxious. Still, as all the clocks in the town were not alike, we might be the mistaken ones by ours. It now struck eleven, though, from the last church within our hearing, and there was not yet St. Michel. We were all in the chorus fitted in so nicely that it would have been difficult for some to get out, or if out, impossible to get in. They were all in the orchestra placed as closely as possible, amidst a perfect grove of music-stands. The reserved seats were full, the organist was seated, the score lay wide open upon the lofty desk; but St. Michel did not come!
I shall never forget how we wearied and wondered, and how I, at least, racked myself, writhed, and agonized. The door beneath the orchestra was shut, but every instant or two a hand turned the lock outside; one agitated face peeped in, then another, but were immediately withdrawn. I scarcely suppose the perfect silence lasted three minutes; it was like an electrical suspension, and as quickly snapped. The surcharging spleen of the audience began to break in a murmuring, humming, and buzzing, from centre to gallery. The confusion of forms and faces became a perfect dream, it dazzled me dizzy, and I felt quite sick. A hundred fans began to ply in the reserved seats, the gentlemen bent over the ladies; the sound gathered strength and portentous significance from the non-explanatory calm of the orchestra force; but all eyes were turned, all chins lengthened, towards the orchestra door. At precisely a quarter past eleven the door opened wide, and up came a gentleman in a white waistcoat. He stood somewhere in front, but he could not get his voice out at first. Oh, the hisses then! the shouts! the execrations! But it was a musical assembly, and a few cries of "Shame!" hushed the storm sufficiently to give our curiosity vent.
The speaker was a member of the committee, and very woebegone he looked. He had to say (and it was of course his painful duty) that the unprecedented delay in the commencement of the performance was occasioned by an inevitable and most unexpected accident. Mr. St. Michel, in riding from his house a few miles out, had been thrown from his horse at the corner of the market-place, and falling on his right arm, had broken it below the elbow.
The suddenness of the event would account for the delay sufficiently; all means at present were being employed to secure the services of an efficient resident professor, and it was trusted he would arrive shortly. Otherwise, should there among the enlightened audience be present any professor able and willing to undertake the responsible office of conductor pro tempore, the committee would feel—A hurricane of noes tore up the rest of the sentence in contempt, and flung it in the face of the gentleman in the white waistcoat. He still stood. It was well known that not a hand could be spared from the orchestra; but of course a fancy instantly struck me of Lenhart Davy. I looked up wistfully at him, among the basses, and endeavored to persuade him with my eyes to come down. He smiled upon me, and his eye was kindled; otherwise he seemed determined to remain as he was. Davy was very proud, though one of the most modest men I ever knew.
A fresh volley of hisses broke from the very heart of the hall. Still, it did not circulate, though the confusion seemed increasing in the centre; and it was at that very instant—before poor Merlington had left his apologetic stand—that a form, gliding light, as if of air, appeared hovering on the steps at the side of the orchestra.
It was a man at least, if not a spirit; but I had not seen where that gliding form came from, with its light and stealthy speed.
Swift as a beam of morning he sprang up the steps, and with one hand upon the balustrade bowed to the audience. In a moment silence seemed to mantle upon the hall.
He stood before the score, and as he closed upon the time-stick those pointed fingers, he raised his eyes to the chorus, and then let them fall upon the band. Those piercing eyes recalled us. Every hand was on the bow, every mouthpiece lifted. There was still silence, but we "heard" no "voice." He raised his thin arm: the overture began. The curiosity of the audience had dilated with such intensity that all who had been standing, still stood, and not a creature stirred. The calm was perfect upon which the "Grave" broke. It was not interpretation alone, it was inspiration. All knew that "Grave," but few had heard it as it had been spoken that day. It was then a heard voice,—"a voice from heaven." There seemed not a string that was not touched by fire.
The tranquil echo of the repeat enabled me to bear it sufficiently to look up and form some notion of him on whom so much depended. He was slight, so slight that he seemed to have grown out of the air. He was young, so young that he could not have numbered twenty summers; but the heights of eternity were far-shadowed in the forehead's marble dream.
A strange transparency took the place of bloom upon that face of youth, as if from temperament too tender, or blood too rarefied; but the hair betrayed a wondrous strength, clustering in dark curls of excessive richness. The pointed fingers were pale, but they grasped the time-stick with an energy like naked nerve.
But not until the violins woke up, announcing the subject of the allegro, did I feel fully conscious of that countenance absolved from its repose of perfection by an excitement itself divine.
It would exhaust thought no less than words to describe the aspect of music, thus revealed, thus presented. I was a little child then, my brain was unused to strong sensation, and I can only say I remembered not how he looked after all was over. The intense impression annihilated itself, as a white, dazzling fire struck from a smith's anvil dies without ashy sign. I have since learned to discover, to adore, every express lineament of that matchless face; but then I was lost in gazing, in a spiritual, ebbless excitement,—then I was conscious of the composition that he had made one with himself, that became one with him.
The fire with which he led, the energy, the speed, could only have been communicated to an English orchestra by such accurate force. The perfection with which the conductor was endued must surely have passed electrically into every player,—there fell not a note to the ground. Such precision was wellnigh oppressive; one felt some hand must drop.
From beginning to end of the allegro not a disturbing sound arose throughout the hall; but on the closing chord of the overture there burst one deep toll of wonderful applause. I can only call it a "toll;" it was simultaneous. The conductor looked over his shoulder, and slightly shook his head. It was enough, and silence reigned as the heavenly sympathy of the recitative trembled from the strings surcharged with fire. Here it was as if he whispered "Hush!" for the sobbing staccato of the accompaniment I never heard so low,—it was silvery, almost awful. The bâton stirred languidly, as the stem of a wind-swept lily, in those pointed fingers.
Nor would he suffer any violence to be done to the solemn brightness of the aria. It was not until we all arose that he raised his arm, and impetuously, almost imperiously, fixed upon us his eyes. He glanced not a moment at the score, he never turned a leaf, but he urged the time majestically, and his rapturous beauty brightened as the voices firmly, safely, swelled over the sustaining chords, launched in glory upon those waves of sound.
I almost forgot the festival. I am not certain that I remember who I was, or where I was, but I seemed to be singing at every pore. I seemed pouring out my life instead of my voice; but the feeling I had of being irresistibly borne along was so transporting that I can conceive of nothing else like it, until after death.