CHAPTER X.
It was very strange, or rather it was just natural, that I should feel so singularly low next day. I was not exactly tired, and I was not exactly miserable. I was perfectly blank, like a sunless autumn day, with no wind about. I lay very late in bed, and as I lay there I no more believed the events of yesterday than if they had been a dream. I was literally obliged to touch myself, my hair, my face, and the bed-clothes before I could persuade myself that I was not myself a dream. The cold bath restored me, into which I daily sprang, summer and winter alike; but I grew worse again after breakfast.
Yearning to re-excite myself in some fashion, I marched into the parlor and requested Clo to teach me as usual. There she was, in her gray-silk gown, peering (with her short-sightedness) into Herodotus; but though all my books were placed upon the table by her, I could tell very easily that she had not expected me, and was very much pleased I should come. Her approbation overcame me, and instead of blotting my copy with ink, I used my tears. They were tears I could no more have helped shedding than I could have helped breathing. Clo was very kind, she looked at me solemnly, not severely, and solemnly administered the consolation that they were the effect of excitement. I did not think so; I thought they were the effect of a want of excitement, but I said nothing to her.
I overcame them, and was quiet for the rest of the day, and for several days; but imagine what I suffered when I saw no more of Lenhart Davy. As the world in our house went on just the same as before the festival, and as I had no hand in keeping the house so charmingly, nor any part in committees for dinner, nor in pickling speculations, I was fairly left to myself with my new discovery about myself; namely, that I must be a musician, or I should perish.
Had I only seen Lenhart Davy, I could have told him all. I believe my attraction towards him was irresistible, or I should never have thought of him while he stayed away, it would have hurt me too much; for I was painfully, may be vainly, sensitive. I was not able to appreciate his delicacy of judgment, as well as feeling, in abstaining from any further communication with us until we ourselves reminded him of us. I had no hope; and the four or five days I have mentioned as passing without his apparition seemed to annihilate my future. I quite drooped, I could not help it; and my mother was evidently anxious. She made me bring out my tongue a dozen times a day, and she continually sighed, as if reproaching herself with something. How long it seemed! quite four months, as I used to reckon. I never once alluded to Lenhart Davy, but others did,—at least not Millicent, but Lydia and my eldest sister. Lydia made the observation that perhaps he was too modest to come without a special invitation; but Clo hurt me far more by saying that he had no doubt better engagements elsewhere. On the evening of the fifth day I was sitting upon the stool in the parlor by the window, after tea, endeavoring to gather my wandering fancies to "Simple Susan," her simple woes, pleasures, and loves (for Clo was there, and I did not wish to be noticed), when Millicent came into the room and said my mother wished to speak to me upstairs. I went out with Millicent. "What does she want—I mean mother?" I inquired, no doubt rather peevishly.
"She wants to ask you a question you will like to answer, Charles."
"Shall I?—what is it? I don't think I shall like to answer any question. Oh, Millicent!" and I hid my small face in the folds of her dark-blue frock.
"Come, Charles! you know I would not deceive you. Darling, you must not feel so much."
And she stooped to kiss me, smiling, though the tears were in her eyes. I still persisted in hiding my head, and when we reached the door of the dressing-room, I went in crying. My mother sat in a great white chair beside the fire; next her stood a small table covered with hose,—the hose of the whole household.
"How, Charles! how now! Be a man, or at least a boy, or I am sure I had better not ask you what I sent for you to answer. Come, say, would you like to sing in Mr. Davy's class? You must not give up your old lessons, nor must you forget to take great pains to write, to cipher, and to read as well; but I think you are very fond of singing since you found your voice, and Mr. Davy, to whom I wrote, says you can be of use to him, and that he will be so very good as to teach you what he teaches the others,—to understand what you sing."
Dear Millicent! I knew I owed it all to her, for there had been that in her face, her manner, and her kind eyes that told me she had felt for me in my desolation; and now as she stood apart from my mother and me, I ran to her and told her so—that I knew it all. I will not dwell upon the solicitude of Clo, lest I should become unmanageable in the midst of my satisfaction, nor upon Lydia's amazement at my mother's allowing me to join the class; but I well recollect how Millicent kept fast by me, her will, as it were, upon mine, and her reminding calmness ever possessing me, lest I should by my ecstatic behavior forfeit my right to my new privileges. I was quite good enough, though, in the general opinion, to be permitted to go, as arranged, on the following Tuesday evening.
Lenhart Davy dined with us on Sunday, by special invitation, written by my mother, conveyed by my Margareth. He told me that I must not mistake his silence if he spoke not to me nor noticed me when he was amidst his pupils. I perfectly understood even then how much depended upon his sagacious self-dependence.
The class assembled from six till eight in the evening, twice a week; the room Davy convoked it in was one he hired expressly. My mother sent me with Margareth, who was to fetch me again at the expiration of two hours,—at least during the winter, which was fast approaching.
And thus, had it not been for the festival, I should have been at once initiated into "choral life."
Though, indeed, but for that glorious time, and my own fantastic courage, first-fruit of a musical temperament, I had perhaps never been taught to give that name where I can now bestow none other, so completely has choral worship passed into my life.
When Margareth left me at the door of a house I had never entered,—though I knew it well, for it was let out in auction-rooms, for committees and the like,—I felt far more wild and lost than when I attended the grand rehearsal hand in hand with Lenhart Davy. He was my master, though,—I remembered this, and also that he expected a great deal of me, for he had told me so, and that he had appointed me a high place among the altos. I had my numbered ticket in my hand, and upon it my name, and I showed it to a man who was standing above at the top of the steep staircase. He looked at it, nodded, and pushed me in.
The room was tolerably large and high, and lighted by gas-burners, which fully illustrated the bareness of wall and floor and ceiling. Accustomed to carpets in every chamber, nay, in every passage, I was horrified to hear my own footfall upon the boards as I traversed the backs of those raised forms, one above the other, full of people. Boys and men, and women and girls, seemed all mixed up together, and all watching me; for I was late, and quite dreamy with walking through the twilight town. Several beckoning hands were raised as I inquired for the place of the altos, and I took my seat just where a number, nailed to the form, answered to the number on my ticket.