CHAPTER XXXVII.
We now return to our friends assembled in the Hall.
Especially among the ladies who had not heard the Don’s first performance, expectation was on tiptoe. The excellent Herr is bustling about, rubbing his hands, and smiling through his spectacles the vast Teutonic smile. Charley places the case containing the Guarnerius upon the table. The Don opens it with an almost nervous eagerness. She is to hear him, and he will outdo himself.
But where is she? Presently he espies her partly concealed behind the stalwart form of Jones. She is gazing at the western sky,—she alone of all the company unconscious that he is about to play.
The thought is a sudden shock. And then he remembers that she alone of the ladies had made no allusion, during the day, to the performance of the evening before,—had expressed no regret at not having been present.
The artist nature is caprice itself,—changeful as an April sky; and the Don with sudden impulse released the neck of the violin, which sank back upon its luxurious cushion of blue satin. He would excuse himself,—he could not play. But the strings, vibrating beneath an accidental touch, gave forth a chord, and instantly reversed the current of his feelings. Yes, he would play; and taking up the instrument, he sauntered over, with as careless an air as he could command, to the window by which Mary stood, touching the strings lightly as he went, as though to see whether they were in tune. Mary felt his approach; and partly turning her face and raising her eyes to his, as he reached her side, she said, with what was meant for a smile, “Now we shall have some merry music.” And she dropped her eyes.
“Why merry?”
Mary, startled as well by the abruptness of the question as by a certain hardness in his voice, gave a quick glance at his face.
“Why, is not the violin—” began she, but could get no farther,—held, as was the Wedding Guest by the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner.
“Is this, then, a merry world?”
The smile faded from Mary’s face. These words had thrilled her; for it was not by nature a blithesome heart that beat in that young bosom, and its strings gave forth readiest response to minor chords. A slight tremor ran through her frame as she met the gaze of his darkly gleaming eyes, and a vague sense of having in some way wounded his feelings oppressed her mind.
Perhaps he read her thoughts; for in an instant a reassuring smile—sad, almost pathetic—came into his eyes, followed by a look,—one momentary, indescribable glance; and her untutored heart began to throb so that she thought he must hear it.
“I, at least,” he added, slowly, “have not found it such, so far; and see,” said he, pointing with his bow to the faint streaks of red that tinged the western horizon,—“still another Christmas Day—and the only happy one that I have known since I was a child—one more Christmas Day—is dying!” And his voice trembled as he averted his face.
Mary felt a choking sensation in her throat; for a kindred thought had been weighing upon her naturally melancholy spirit, as she stood there gazing upon the western sky; and the Don, in giving voice to her inmost thoughts, had touched a chord that thrilled with overmastering power. As he moved away to take his place by the piano, she sank into a chair trembling from head to foot. They had stood together by the window hardly one minute, and had not exchanged above a dozen words; yet as she followed his retiring form with her eyes, he was no longer the same person to her that he had been a moment before. She was stricken to the heart, and she knew it.
The Don spoke to Charley in a low voice. “Yes,” replied he, “we have it;” and hurrying into the adjoining room he soon returned, bearing in his hand some sheet music. “Thanks,” said the Don, placing the piano-part before the Herr, and laying the violin score upon the piano. “Never mind about the stand; I know it by heart. Can you read yours, Mein Herr, by the light of the fire?”
“Oh, I tink so.” And adjusting his spectacles, he looked at the title of the piece. “De Elegie von Ernst! Ah, das ist vat you call very sat, very vat you call melancholish,”—and he struck a chord. “So!”—and poising his hands, he glanced upwards to signify his readiness to begin.
A sudden stillness came over us at the sight of the sombre face of the Don. Obviously, we all felt there was to be a change of programme. There were to be no musical fireworks on this occasion.
Had the Don been a consummate actor, posing for effect, he could not have brought his audience into more instant, more complete harmony with the spirit of the piece he was about to render. Tall, broad-shouldered, gaunt, he seemed in the ruddy glare of the great bank of coals to tower above us, while his eyes, fixed for a moment with a far-away look upon the fire, seemed doubly dark in contrast with the red light upon his brow.
He placed the violin beneath his dark, flowing beard, and poised the bow above the strings.
I fear that but few of my readers will follow me in this scene. To have heard pathetic music only in theatres and concert-halls, amid a sea of careless faces distracted by bright toilets, and under the glare of gaslight, is to have heard it, indeed, but not to have felt it. The “Miserere” chanted in the dim religious light of St. Peter’s rends the heart of the listener. It has been found to be meaningless elsewhere. For the power of music, as of eloquence, lies in the heart of the hearer,—a heart prepared beforehand by the surroundings.
On the present occasion everything was in the artist’s favor,—the dying day, the spectral glare and shadow wrought by the glowing coals, the reaction after a week of frolic gladness.
The bow descended upon the G string, softly as a snow-flake, but clinging as a mother’s arm.
Ernst has obeyed Horace’s maxim, and plunged at once into the middle of his story. With the very first tone of the violin there seems to break from the overwrought heart a low moan, which, rising and swelling, leaps, in the second note, into a cry of rebellious anguish,—anguish too bitter to be borne; despair were more endurable; and in the fourth bar the voice of the crushed spirit sinks into a weird, muttered whisper of resignation unresigned. The whole story is there,—there in those four bars, but the poet begins anew and sings his sorrow in detail; pouring forth a lament so passionate in its frenzy that it almost passes, at times, the bounds of true music (for can you not hear the sobs, see the wringing of the hands?), and rising, at last, to a climax that is almost insupportable, the voice of wailing then sinks—for all is over—into a low plaint, and dies into silence.
The Marcia Funebre of the Eroica symphony is the lament of a nation of Titans; in Ernst’s Elegie one poor human heart is breaking—breaking all alone. I have heard the piece since in crowded halls and beneath the blaze of chandeliers, and performed by artists more finished, no doubt, than was the Don; but the effect he wrought I have never seen approached. All eyes were riveted upon him while he played, and when he ceased—when the last despairing sigh died upon the air—no one moved, not a note of applause was given, and the only sound heard was that of long-drawn breaths of relief.
It was an intense moment. My grandfather was the first to break the spell. Approaching the Don with a tender look in his eyes, he tried, I think, to speak a few words, but could only press his hand. Then there arose a subdued murmur of whispered enthusiasm, each one to his neighbor. At last—
“Billy,” said the middle-aged-fat-gentleman, “I give it up,—he can beat you.” And a ripple of laughter relieved the tension.
And Mary?
She and the Don happened to be among the last to leave the hall, and he offered her his arm. Neither spoke for a few moments.
“How silly you must have thought me!”
“I assure you—”
“Oh, but you must. But I had never heard anything but fiddling before. Do you know,” she added gravely, “I doubt if any of the company understood all that you meant, save myself?”
“And are you quite sure that you understood all that I felt?”
Mary looked up and their eyes met. Releasing his arm as she passed into the house, she colored deeply.