Charles Auchester, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Elizabeth Sara Sheppard

CHAPTER XXVII.

It cannot be supposed that I forgot my home, or that I failed to institute an immediate correspondence, which was thus checked in the bud. Aronach, finding me one night, after we had all retired, with my little ink-bottle on the floor and myself outsprawled writing upon my knees close into my lamp, very coolly carried my sheet, pen, and ink away, and informed me that he never permitted his pupils to write home at all, or to write anything except what he set them to do.

I should have revolted outright against this restriction but for a saving discovery I made on the morrow,—that our master himself dismissed from his own hand a bulletin of our health and record of our progress once a month. Precious specimens, no doubt, they were, these, of hard-hearted fact! Neither were we allowed to receive letters ourselves from home. Only simple communications were permitted to himself; and the effect of this rule, so autocratic, was desperately painful upon me at first. I hungered for some sweet morsel of English, served up in English character; I wanted to hear more than that all were well; and as for Lenhart Davy, had not my love informed my memory, I should have forgotten him altogether. But it was very soon I began to realize that this judicious interdiction lent a tonic bitterness to my life. I was completely abstracted, and upon that passage of my inwardly eventful history I can never glance back without a quiet tear or two; it was heavenly in its unabsolved and absolute serenity. It was the one mood that befitted a growing heart too apt to burn,—a busy brain too apt to vision,—if that head and heart were ever to be raised from the valley of material life into the mountain heights of art.

I fear my remembrances are dull just here, for the glory that touched them was of the moment, and too subtle to be retrieved; but it is impossible not just to remind myself of them before returning to my adventure-maze.

For six months, that passed as swiftly as six weeks of a certain existence, we went on together—I should have said—hand-in-hand, but that my Starwood's diffident melancholy and Iskar's travestied hauteur would have held me back, and I was ardent to impel myself forward. So, though at first I had to work almost to desperation in order to join the evening contrapuntal class, I soon left the other two behind, and Aronach taught me alone,—which was an advantage it would be impossible to overrate. Not that he ever commended,—it was not in him; he was too exigent, too stern; his powers never condescended; he was never known to qualify; he was never personally made acquaintance with. Something of the hermit blended mystically with his acumen, so that the primary advantage of our position was his supreme standard, insensibly our own also,—the secondary, our undisturbed seclusion.

As I said, we walked the same distance day by day. Nothing is uniform to a soul really set on the idealities of art. Everything, though it changes not, suggests to the mind of the musician. Though not a full-grown mind, I had all joy in that unchanging route; for as the year grew and rounded, all, as it were, aspired without changing. Meditation mellowed every circumstance till it ripened to an unalterable charm. I always walked with Starwood, who still made me very anxious; suddenly and increasingly so pale and frail he became that I fully expected him to die that spring. Indeed, he hardly cleared it; and I should have mentioned my fears to Aronach but that he seemed fully aware of all I feared. But instead of getting rid of the weakling, as I dreaded he might choose to do, he physicked him and kept him in his bed-box twice or thrice a week, and taciturnly indulged him; giving him hot possets at night, and cooling drinks by day. The poor little fellow was very grateful, but still sad; and I was astonished that Aronach still expected him to practise, unless he was in bed, and to write, except his head ached. The indefinite disorder very seldom reached that climax though, and chiefly asserted itself in baby-yawns and occasional whimpers, constant weariness, and entire loss of appetite. I at length discovered his age, and Iskar's also. The latter had passed eleven, but was not so nearly twelve as I; the first was scarcely nine, and so small he might have been only six. It struck me he would not be much older, and I had learned to love him too well in his infantine and affecting weakness. I ventured, one day, to ask Aronach whether his father knew he was ill. I was answered,—

"He is not ill."

"But, sir, he is low and weak!"

"He will always be weak while thou art petting him. Who can take more care of him than I? His father?"

"Oh, master! I know you are good; but what if he dies?"

"His work will not have killed him, nor his weakness. If people are to die, they die; if they are to live, they live."

I was silenced, not convinced; but from that hour I did not think he would die; nor did he.

Aronach was strict, he never departed from a rule; it was his chief and salient characteristic. He never held what one may call conversation with us on any subject except our studies, and then it was in exemplification, not suggestively. It was a beneficial reserve, perhaps, but I could not have endured it forever, and might have become impatient but for the auspices of the season; it was the very beginning of May. Though shut up to a great extent, as we were, the weather made itself an entrance, blue sky swelled, and the glow of morning woke me before dawn. The lindens near the fountain began to blossom, and in the garden of the church the oak-leaves clustered. I saw nothing of the country yet, and could only dream of unknown beauty in untraversed paths. The Cecilia examinations approached. Aronach attended almost every day at the school. I knew just so much and no more, and as much expected to assist thereat as I should have hoped to come of age on my twelfth birthday. My birthday was in that month of May, in the third week; and though I was innocent of the fact, it was a fact that it was one of Cecilia's feast-days as well as my own. It was, however, such a delicious morning that it nearly sent me mad up in my little room to be mewed there, when such thousands upon thousands roamed wheresoever they would; for I never took it into account how many of those wanderers would rejoice to be so shut up as I was, could they only rest. And it struck me that at least one day in the year one ought to be permitted to do exactly as one desired, even were the desire to drown one's self the prevalent aspiration. There are times when it is not only natural, but necessary, to rebel against authority; so that had I not been locked in, I would have certainly escaped and made a ramble on my own responsibility; for I should have acted upon as pure impulse as when—usually industrious enough as I was—I laid down my fiddle and wasted my time.

As I gazed upon the window and smelt the utter sweetness of the atmosphere, hardly so much air as flower spirit, the voice of perfume, I was wishful of the wings of all the flies, and envious of the butterflies that blundered in and floated out. I am sure I had been idle at least an hour, and had no prospect of taking heed to my ways, so long as the sky was blue as that sky, and the breeze blew in, when I felt, rather than heard, a soft little knock at the door. I fancied it was the servant dashing her broomstick upon the landing; but in a moment it was repeated, and I was very shy to take any notice, feeling that a goblin could let itself in, and had better do so than be admitted. Then I was roused indeed, and my own inaction scared me, for I recognized Starwood's voice.

"Charles, I want to come in,—mayn't I a minute, please?"

"Really, Star, it is too bad of you to give me such a turn! How can I open the door? Pray come in directly, and tell me what is the matter."

He boggled at the lock for a minute or two, but at last admitted himself.

"Why, Star, how frightened you look! Have you been flogged at last? and is the master home already?"

"No, no, Charles! Something most extraordinary."

I really could but laugh, the child repeated the words with such an awe.

"A gentleman, Charles, has come. He opened my door while I was practising. I should have been dreadfully frightened, but he was so kind, and came in so gently. He thought you were here, Charles, and asked for you; he says he does not know your name, but that he could tell me whether you were here if I would describe you. I said how pale you were, with such dark eyes, and about your playing, and he said,—

"'All right, go and fetch him, or send him to me: will you be so kind?'"

"How could you be quite sure? It may be some one for Iskar, who is pale, and has dark eyes."

"He said it was the violin that came at Christmas, I was to send; and you came at Christmas. Besides, he looks very like a friend you would have; he is not like anybody else."

"What is he like, Star?"

"His face is so very bright and clever that I could not look at it; but I saw his beautiful curling hair. I never saw such curling hair."

"Come in with me, then, Star."

"No, he said I was not to come too, that I might go on with my music. He calls it 'music,' but I don't think it is much like it."

Now, I knew who was there as well as if an angel had spoken to me and said, "It is he for whom you waited." Had I not known in very assurance, I should have forced my little friend to go back with me, that I might not meet alone a stranger; as it was, I only longed to fly, and to fly alone into that presence, for which I then felt I had been waiting, though I had known it not.

I rushed from my little prison enfranchised, ecstatic; but I misapprehended my own sensations. The magnetic power was so appalling that as I reached the threshold of that other room a dark shock came over my eyes, and partly from my haste, in part from that dazzling blindness, I staggered and fell across the doorway, and could not try to rise.

But his arm was round me,—before I fell, I felt it; and as I lay I was crushed, abandoned in very worship. None worship as the child-enthusiast save the enthusiast who worshipped even as a child. I scarcely tried to rise; but he lifted me with that strong and slender arm, and set me upon my feet. Before he spoke I spoke, but I gasped so wildly that my words are not in my power to recall. I only remember that I named him "our Conductor—the Conductor!" and that still, with his light touch on my shoulder, he turned his head aside. I looked up freely then; and the glance I then caught of that brow, those eyes half averted, half bent upon me with the old pitying sweetness, partly shaded by earthly sympathy, but for the most part lifted into light beyond my knowledge,—the one glimpse forewarned me not to yield to the emotions he raised within me, lest I should trouble him more than needed. It was not a minute, I am sure, before I mastered myself and stood before him firmly.

"Sir, the Herr Aronach is at the Cecilia School to-day; it is the first day of the grand examination,—at least I believe so; I know they are all very busy there, and have been so for some time. I don't think the master will be home until quite the evening, for he told us to dine alone; but if you will allow me, I will run and bring you a coach from the Kell Platz, which will take you to Cecilia in an hour,—I have heard the master say so."

He was looking towards the window; and while I spoke, his face, so exquisitely pale, grew gradually warm and bright, his cheek mantled, his eyes laughed within the lashes.

"All very good and wise and amiable, most amiable!" said he; "and such pretty German too! But I came to see you, and not your master, here! I have been a long time coming, but I could not get here before, because I had not done my lessons. I have finished them now, and want a game of play. Will you have a game with me?"

Before I could answer, he resumed, in tones of the most ravishing gayety,—

"And you are all so pale,—so pale that I am ashamed of you! What have you been all doing?"

"Practising, sir,—at least not I, for I have been idle all the morning, for the very first time since I came here, I assure you. I kept thinking and thinking, and expecting and expecting, though I could not tell what, and now I know."

"But I am still very much ashamed of Aronach. Does he lock you up?" with a star of mischief shining from the very middle of each eye.

"Yes, sir, always, as well as the others, of course. I like it very much too; it is so safe."

"Not always, it seems. Well, now let us have a race to the river; and then if you are pale still, I shall take you to Cecilia, and show somebody that it is a question whether he can keep you at home, for all he bolts you in. The day is so fine, so beautiful, that I think the music itself may have a holiday."

"Sir, do you really mean it? Oh, if you do, pray let us go to Cecilia now; for perhaps there is music to hear, and oh! it is so very, very long since I heard any."

"Is it so dear to you that you would rather seek it than all the sunshine and all the heart of spring? Ah! too young to find that anything is better than music, and more to be desired."

"Yes, sir, yes! please to take me. I won't be in the way, it will be enough to walk by you; I don't want you to talk."

"But I do want to talk; I cannot keep quiet. I have a lady's tongue, and yours, I fancy, is not much shorter. We will therefore go now."

"This moment, sir? Oh! I would rather go than have the festival over again."

"The festival! the festival! It is the festival! Is it not to-day a festival, and every day in May?"

He looked as he spoke so divinely happy that it is so the angels must appear in their everlasting spring. I rushed into my room and rummaged for my cap, also for a pair of new gloves; but I was not very long, though I shook so violently that it was a task to pull on those skins. Returning, I found him still at the window; he was leaning upon the bureau, not near the harpsichord, not before the organ, but gazing, child-like, into the bright blue morning. He was dressed in a summer coat, short and very loose, that hung almost in folds upon his delicate figure. The collar, falling low, revealed the throat, so white, so regal; and through the button-hole fluttered the ribbon of the Chevalier. He carried also a robe-like cloak upon his arm, lined with silk and amply tasselled. I ventured to take it from him, but he gently, and yet forcibly, drew it again to himself, saying, "It is too heavy for thee. May I not already say 'thou'?"

"Oh, sir, if you will, but let me go first; it is so dark always upon the stairs."

"One does not love darkness, truly; we will escape together."

He took my hand, and I tried to lead him; but after all, it was he who led me step by step. I did not know the road to Cecilia, and I said so.

"Oh, I suppose not; sly Aronach! But I do, and that is sufficient, is it not? Why, the color is coming back already. And I see your eyes begin to know me. I am so glad. Ah! they tell more now than they will tell some day."

"Sir, you are too good, but I thank you. I like to feel well, and I feel more than well to-day; I am too glad, I think."

"Never too well or glad, it is not possible. Never too bright and hopeful. Never too blissfully rejoicing. Tell me your name, if you please."

"Sir, my name is nothing."

"That is better than Norval." He laughed, as at himself.

"Sir, however did you get to hear that? O!"—I quite screamed as the reminiscence shook me,—"oh, sir, did you write the 'Tone-Wreath'?"

He gave me a look which seemed to drink up my soul. "I plucked a garland, but it was beyond the Grampian Hills."

"You did write it! I knew it when I heard it, sir. I am so delighted! I knew the instant she played it, and she thought so too; but of course we could not be quite sure."

He made the very slightest gesture of impatience. "Never mind the 'Tone-Wreath'! There are May-bells enough on the hills that we are to go to."

I was insensibly reminded of his race; but its bitterness was all sheathed in beauty when I looked again. So beautiful was he that I could not help looking at his face. So we are drawn to the evening star, so to the morning roses; but with how different a spell! For just where theirs is closed, did his begin its secret, still attraction; the loveliness, the symmetry were lost as the majestic spirit seized upon the soul through the sight, and conquered.

"You have not told me your name. Is it so difficult for me to pronounce? I will try very hard to say it, and I wish to know it."

No "I will" was ever so irresistible.—"Charles Auchester."

"That is a tell-tale name. But I can never forget what was written for me on your forehead the day you were so kind to me in a foreign country. Do you like me, Charles,—well enough to wish to know me?"

I can never describe the innocent regality of his manner here,—it was something never to be imagined, that voice in that peculiar key.

"Sir, I know how many friends you must have, and how they must admire you. I don't think any of them love you as I do, and always did ever since that day. I wish I could tell you, but it's of no use. I can't, though I quite burn to tell you, and to make you know. I do love you better than I love my life, and you are the only person I love better than music. I would go to the other end of the world, and never see you any more, rather than I would be in your way or tire you. Will you believe me?"

"Come!" he answered brightly, delicately, "I know all you wish to say, because I can feel myself; but I could not bear you at the other end of the world just now, because I like you near me; and were you and I to go away from each other, as we must, I should still feel you near me, for whatever is, or has been, is forever to me."

"Sir, I can only thank you, and that means more than I can say; but I cannot think why you like me. It is most exquisite, but I do not understand it."

He smiled, and his eye kindled. "I shall not tell you, I see you do not know; I do not wish for you to know. But tell me now, will you not, do you enter the school this semester?"

"Yes, sir, I believe so,—at least, I came here on purpose; but Aronach does not tell us much, you know, sir."

"Is that tall young gentleman to enter?"

"Yes, sir,—Marc Iskar."

"And the least,—how do you name him?"

Like a flash of lightning a conception struck me through and through.

"Sir, he is called Starwood Burney, from England. How I do wish I might tell you something!"

"You can tell me anything; there is plenty of time and room, and no one to hear, if it be a pretty little secret."

"It is a secret, but not a little one, nor pretty either. It is about Starwood. I don't think I ought to trouble you about it, and yet I must tell you, because I think you can do anything you please."

"Like a prince in the Arabian tales," he answered brightly; "I fear I am poor in comparison with such, for I can only help in one way."

"And that one way is the very way I want, sir. Starwood loves the pianoforte. I have seen him change all over when he talked of it, as if it were his real life. It is not a real life he lives with that violin."

"I wish it had been thyself, whose real life it is, my child," he replied, with a tenderness I could ill brook, could less account for; "but still thy wish shall be mine. Would the little one go with me? He seems terrified to be spoken to, and it would make my heart beat to flutter him."

"Sir, that is just like you to say so; but I am very certain he would soon love you,—not as I do, that would be impossible, but so much that you would not be sorry you had taken him away. But oh! if I had known that you would take and teach, I would never have taken up the violin, but have come and thrown myself at your feet, sir, and have held upon you till you promised to take me. I thought, sir, somehow that you did not teach."

"Understand me, then, that what I say I say to satisfy you: you are better as you are, better than you could be with me. I am a wanderer, and it is not my right to teach; I am bound to another craft, and the only one for the perfecting of which it is not my right to call myself poor. Do you understand, Charles?"

"I think, sir, that you mean you make music, and that therefore you have no time for the dirty work."

He broke into a burst of laughter, like joy-bells. "There is as much dirty work, however, in what you call making music. But what I meant for you to understand was this, that I do not take money for instructing; because that would be to take the bread from the mouths of hundreds I love and honor. I have money enough; and you know how sweet it is even to give money,—how much sweeter to give what cannot be bought by money! I shall take this little friend of mine to my own home, if he will go and I am permitted to do so; and I shall treat him as my son, because he will, indeed, be my music-child, and no more indebted to me than I am to music, or than we all are to Jehovah."

"Sir, you are certainly a Jew if you say 'Jehovah;' I was quite sure of it before, and I am so pleased."

"I cannot contradict thee, but I am almost sorry thou knowest there are even such people as Jews."

"Why so, sir? Pray tell me. I should have thought that you, before all other persons, would have rejoiced over them."

"Why so, indeed! but because the mystery of their very name is enough to break the head, and perhaps the heart. But now of this little one: he must, indeed, be covered as a bird in the nest, and shall be. And if I turn him not forth a strong-winged wonder, thou wilt stand up and have to answer for him,—is it not so?"

"Sir, I am certain he will play wonderfully upon what he calls those 'beautiful cold keys.'"

"Ah!" he answered dreamily, "and so, indeed, they are, whose very tones are but as different shadows of the same one-colored light, the ice-blue darkness, and the snowy azure blaze. He has right, if he thinks them cold, to find them alone beautiful." He spoke as if in sleep.

"Sir, I do not know what you mean, for I never heard even Milans-André."

"You are to hear him, then; it is positively needful."

Again the raillery pointed every word, as if arrows "dipped in balm."

"I mean that I scarcely know what those keys are like, for I never heard them really played, except by one young lady. I did not find the 'Tone-Wreath' cold, but I thought, when she played with Santonio, that her playing was cold,—cold compared with his; for he was playing, as you know, sir, the violin."

"You are right; yes. The violin is the violet!"

These words, vividly pronounced, and so mystical to the uninitiated, were as burning wisdom to my soul. I could have claimed them as my own, so exactly did they respond to my own unexpressed necessities. But indeed, and in truth, the most singular trait of the presence beside me was that nothing falling from his lips surprised me. I was prepared for all, though everything was new. He did not talk incessantly,—on the contrary, his remarks seemed sudden, as a breeze up-borne and dying into the noonday. There was that in them which cannot be conveyed, although conserved,—the tones, the manner, so changeful, yet all cast in grace unutterable; passing from vagrant, never wanton mirth, into pungent, but never supercilious gravity. Such recollection only proves that the beautiful essence flows not well into the form of words,—for I remember every word he spoke,—but rather dies in being uttered forth, itself as music.

It was dusty in the highway, and we met no one for at least a mile except the peasants, who passed into the landscape as part of its picture. The intense green of May, and its quickening blossoms, strewed every nook and plantation; but the sweetness of the country, so exuberant just there, only seemed to frame, with fitting ornament, the one idea I contemplated,—that he was close at hand. There had been much sun, and one was naturally inclined to shade in the thrilling May heats, which permeate the veins almost like love's fever, and are as exciting to the pulses.

At last we came to a brook, a lovely freshet, broadening into a mill-stream; for we could see far off in the clear air the flash of that wheel, and hear its last murmuring fall. But here at hand it was all lonely, unspanned by any bridge, and having its feathery banks unspoiled by any clearing hand. A knot of beautiful beech-trees threw dark kisses on the trembling water; there were wildest rushes here, and the thick spring leaves of the yet unbloomed forget-me-not on either hand. The blue hill of Cecilia lay yet before us, but something in my companion's face made me conjecture that here he wished to rest. Before he even suggested it I pulled out my cambric handkerchief, and running on before him, laid it beneath the drooping beech-boughs on the swelling grass. I came back to him again, and entreated him to repose. He even flushed with satisfaction at my request, which I made, as I ever do, rather impertinently. He ran, too, with me, and taking out his own handkerchief, which was a royal-purple silk, he spread it beside mine, and drew me to that throne with his transparent fingers upon my hand. I say "transparent," for they were as though the roseate blood shone through, and the wandering violet veins showed the clearness of the unfretted palm. But it was a hand too refined for model beauty, too thin and rare for the youth, the almost boyhood, that shone on his forehead and in his unwearied eye. The brightness of heaven seemed to pour itself upon my soul as I sat beside him and felt that no one in the whole world was at that moment so near him as I. He pulled a few rushes from the margin, and began to weave a sort of basket. So fleetly his fingers twisted and untwisted themselves that it was as if he were accustomed to do nothing but sit and weave green rushes the livelong day.

"Pull me some more!" he said at length imploringly; and I, who had been absorbed in those clear fingers playing, looked up at him as I stretched my arm. His eyes shone with the starlight of pure abstraction, and I answered not except by gathering the rushes, breaking them off, and laying them one by one across his knees. The pretty work was nearly finished; it was the loveliest green casket I could have fancied, with a plaited handle. It looked like a fairy field-flung treasure. I wished it were for me. When it was quite ready, and as complete and perfect as Nature's own work, he rose, and seizing the lowest branch of the swaying beech grove, hung the plaything upon it and said, "I wish it were filled with ripe red strawberries."

"Why so, sir?" I ventured.

"Because one would like to imagine a little child finding a green basket by the dusty way, filled with strawberries."

We arose, and again walked on.

"Sir, I would rather have the basket than the strawberries."

"I wish a little child may be of your mind. Were you happy, Charles, when you were a little child?"

"Sir, I was always longing to be a man. I never considered what it was to be a little child."

"Thou art a boy, and that is to be a man-child,—the beautiful fate! But it is thy beautiful fate to teach others also, as only children teach."

"I, sir,—how?"

"Charles, a man may be always longing to be an angel, and never consider what it is to be a man."

His voice was as a sudden wind springing up amidst solitary leaves, it was so fitful, so vaguely sweet. I looked upon him indeed for the first time with trembling, since I had been with him that day. He had fallen into a stiller step, for we had reached the foot of the ascent. It never occurred to me that I was not expected at Cecilia. I thought of nothing but that I should accompany him. He suddenly again addressed me in English.

"Did St. Michel ever recover the use of his arm?"

I was quite embarrassed. "I never asked about him, sir; but I daresay he did."

"I thought you would have known. You should have asked, I think. Was he a rich man or a poor man?"

"How do you mean, sir? He was well off, I should suppose, for he used to dress a great deal, and had a horse, and taught all over the town. Mr. Davy said he was as popular as Giardini."

"Mr. Davy was who,—your godfather?"

"My musical godfather I should say, sir. He took me to the festival, and had I not accidentally met him I should never have gone there, have never seen you. Oh, sir!—"

"Nothing is accidental that happens to you, to such as you. But I should have been very sorry not to have seen you. I thought you were a little messenger from the other world."

"It does seem very strange, sir,—at least two things especially."

"What is the first, then?"

"First, that I should serve you; and the second, that you should like me."

"No, believe me, it is not strange,"—he still spoke in that beautiful pure English, swift and keen, as his German was mild and slow,—"not strange that you should serve me, because there was a secret agreement between us that we should either serve the other. Had you been in my place, I should have run to fetch you water; but I fear I should have spilled a drop or two. And how could I but like you when you came before me like something of my own in that crowd, that multitude in nothing of me?"

"Sir," I answered, to save myself from saying what I really felt, "how beautifully you speak English!"

He resumed in German: "That is nothing, because we can have no real language. I make myself think in all. I dream first in this, and then in that; so that, amidst the floating fragments, as in the strange mixture we call an orchestra, some accent may be expressed from the many voices of the language of our unknown home."

As he said these words, his tones, so clear and reverent, became mystical and inward. I was absolved from communion with that soul. His eye, travelling onwards, was already with the lime-trees at the summit of the hill we had nearly reached, and he appeared to have forgotten me. I felt how frail, how dissoluble, were the fiery links that bound my feeble spirit to that strong immortal. But how little I knew it yet!