CHAPTER XIV.
When I went to the class next time I was very eager to catch Mr. Davy, that I might explain to him where I had been, for I did not like acting without his cognizance. However, he was already down below when I arrived. My fair companions were both in their places, but, to my astonishment, Miss Benette took no notice of me. Her sweet face was as grave as it was before I caught from under those long lashes the azure light upon my own for the first time. Certain that she did not mean to offend me, I got on very well though, and Davy was very much pleased with our success.
Little Laura looked very pale; her hair was out of its curl, and altogether she had an appearance as if she had been dragged through a river, lost and forlorn, and scarcely sensible. She sang languidly, but Miss Benette's clinging tones would not suffer me to be aware of any except hers and my own.
Davy taught us something about Gregorian chants, and gave us a few to practise, besides a new but extremely simple service of his own. "He wrote that for us, I suppose," I ventured; and Clara nodded seriously, but made no assent in words. Afterwards she seemed to remember me again as her ally; for as Davy wished us his adieu in his wonted free "Good-night!" she spoke to me of her own accord.
"I think it was all the better that we practised."
"Oh, was it not? Suppose we practise again."
"I should like it, if you will come at the same time, and not stay longer; and Laura can come too, can she not?"
I did not exactly like this idea, but I could not contradict the calm, mellow voice.
"Oh, if she will practise."
"Of course she will practise if she comes on purpose."
"I don't care about coming!" exclaimed the child, in a low, fretful voice. "I know I sha'n't get out, either."
"Yes, you shall; I will coax your papa. Look, Laura! there he is, waiting for you."
The child ran off instantly, with an air of fear over all her fatigue, and I felt sure she was not treated like a child; but I said nothing about it then.
"Sir," said I to Mr. Davy, "pray walk a little way, for I want to tell you something. My mother particularly requests that you will go to our house to sup with us this evening."
"I will accept her kindness with the greatest pleasure, as I happen to be less engaged than usual."
Davy never bent his duty to his pleasure,—rather the reverse.
"I went to practise with Miss Benette the day before yesterday."
"So she told me."
"She told you herself?"
"Yes, when she came to my house for her lesson last afternoon. I was very glad to hear it, because such singing as hers will improve yours. But I should like to tell your mother how she is connected with me."
"How was it, sir?"
"Oh! I shall make a long story for her; but enough for you that her father was very good to me when I was an orphan boy and begged my way through Germany. He taught me all that I now teach you; and when he died, he asked me to take care of his baby and his lessons. She was only born that he might see her, and die."
"Oh, sir, how strange! Poor man! he must have been very sorry."
"He was not sorry to go, for he loved his wife, and she went first."
"Oh, that was Miss Benette's mamma?"
"Yes, her lovely mamma."
"Of course she was lovely. If you please, sir, tell me about her too." But Davy reserved his tale until we were at home.
My mother fully expected him, it was evident; for upon the table, besides the plain but perfectly ordered meal we always enjoyed at about nine o'clock, stood the supernumerary illustrations—in honor of a guest—of boiled custards, puff pastry, and our choicest preserves. My mother, too, was sitting by the fire in a species of state, having her hands void of occupation and her pocket-handkerchief outspread. Millicent and Lydia wore their dahlia-colored poplin frocks,—quite a Sunday costume,—and Clo revealed herself in purple silk, singularly adapted for evening wear, as it looked black by candle-light!
I never sat up to supper except on very select occasions. I knew this would be one, without being told so, and secured the next chair to my darling friend's.
I would that I could recall, in his own expressive language, his exact relation of his own history as told to us that night. It struck us that he should so earnestly acquaint us with every incident,—at least, it surprised us then, but his after connection with ourselves explained it in that future.
No fiction could be more fraught with fascinating personality than his actual life. I pass over his birth in England (and in London), in a dark room over a dull book-shop, in his father's house. That father, from pure breeding and constitutional exclusiveness, had avoided all intercourse with his class, and conserved his social caste by his marriage only. I linger not upon his remembrance of his mother, Sybilla Lenhart,—herself a Jewess, with the most exquisite musical ability,—nor upon her death in her only son's tenth year.
His father's pining melancholy meantime deepened into an abstraction of misery on her loss. The world and its claims lost their hold, and he died insolvent when Lenhart was scarcely twelve.
Then came his relation of romantic wanderings in Southern France and Germany, like a troubadour, or minnesinger, with guitar and song; of his accidental friendships and fancy fraternities, till he became choir-alto at a Lutheran church in the heart of the Eichen-Land. Then came the story of his attachment to the young, sage organist of that very church, who, in a fairy-like adventure, had married a count's youngest daughter, and never dared to disclose his alliance; of her secret existence with him in the topmost room of an old house, where she never dared to look out of the window to the street for fear she should be discovered and carried back,—the etiquette requisite to cover such an abduction being quite alien from my comprehension, by the way, but so Davy assured us she found it necessary to abide; of their one beautiful infant born in the old house, and the curious saintly carving about its wooden cradle; of the young mother, too hastily weaned from luxurious calm to the struggling dream of poverty, or at least uncertain thrift; of her fading, falling into a stealthy sickness, and of the night she lay (a Sunday night) and heard the organ strains swell up and melt into the moonlight from her husband's hand; of Lenhart Davy's presence with her alone that night, unknowing, until the music-peal was over, that her soul had passed to heaven, as it were, in that cloud of music.
But I must just observe that Davy made as light as possible of his own pure and characteristic decision, developed even in boyhood. He passed over, almost without comment, the more than elder brotherly care he must have bestowed on the beautiful infant, and dwelt, as if to divert us from that point, upon the woful cares that had pressed upon his poor friend,—upon his own trouble when the young organist himself, displaced by weakness from his position, made his own end, even as Lenhart's father, an end of sorrow and of love.
Davy, indeed, merely mentioned that he had brought little Clara to England himself, and left her in London with his own mother's sister, whose house he always reckoned his asylum, if not his home. And then he told us of his promise to Clara's father that she should be brought up musically, and that no one should educate her until she should be capacitated to choose her own masters, except Davy, to whom her father had imparted a favorite system of his own.
I remember his saying, in conclusion, to my mother: "You must think it strange, dear madam, that I brought Miss Benette away from London, and alone. I could not remain in London myself, and I have known for years that her voice, in itself, would become to her more than the expected heritage. My aunt taught her only to work. This was my stipulation; and she now not only supports herself by working,—for she is very independent,—but is in possession of a separate fund besides, which is to carry her through a course of complete instruction elsewhere,—perhaps in Italy or Germany."
I saw how much my mother felt impressed by the dignity and self-reliance that so characterized him, but I scarcely expected she would take so warm an interest in his protégée. She said she should like to see some of Miss Benette's work; and again I descanted on its beauties and varieties, supported by my hero, who seemed to admire it almost as much as I did.
"Then I may go and practise with Miss Benette?" I said, in conclusion.
"Oh, certainly; and you must ask her to come and see you some evening when Mr. Davy is kind enough to drink tea with us."
"That curious little Laura too," thought I; "they would not like her so well, I fancy. But though I do dislike her myself, I wish I could find out what they do with her."
I was going to practise the day after the next, and methought I will then discover.