"I am entirely at your service."
"Come, then."
She beckoned with her hand. It was all so sudden that I could only determine the color of her hair, black; and of her brocaded dress, a dark blue. Her voice was in tone satirical, and she spoke like one accustomed to be obeyed. When Santonio entered, there began a buzzing, and various worthies in white kid gloves clustered round the piano. He drew the desk this side of the instrument, so that not only his back was turned to us, but he screened Miss Lawrence also; and I was provoked that I could see nothing but the pearls that were twisted with her braided hair. It was one of Beethoven's complete works to be interpreted, a divine duo for violin and piano, that had then never been heard in England, except at the Philharmonic concerts; and I did not know the name even then of the Philharmonic. And when it began, an indescribable sensation of awe, of bliss, of almost anguish, pervaded me,—it was the very bitter of enjoyment; but I could not realize it for a long time.
The perfection of Santonio's bowing never tempted him to eccentricity, and no one could have dreamed of comparing him with Paganini, so his fame was safe. But I knew nothing of Paganini, and merely felt from head to foot as if I were the violin and he was playing upon me, so completely was I drawn into the performance, body and soul,—not the performance merely, let me say; as a violinist now, my conviction is that the influence is as much physical as supernatural of my adopted instrument. That time my nerves were so much affected that I trembled in every part of me. Internally I was weeping, but my tears overflowed not my eyes.
Santonio's cantabile, whatever they say of Ernst or of Sivori, is superior to either. There is a manly passion in his playing that never condescends to coquette with the submissive strings; it wailed enough that night for anything, and yet never degenerated into imitation. I knew directly I heard him draw the first quickening, shivering chord—shivering to my heart—I knew that the violin must become my master, or I its own.
Davy, still pale, but radiant with sympathetic pleasure, continued to glance down upon me, and Clara's eyes were lost in drooping to the ground. I scarcely know how it was, but I was very inadvertent of the pianoforte part, magnificently sustained as it was and inseparable from the other, until Clara whispered to Davy, "Does she not play remarkably well, sir?"
"Yes," he returned; "I am surprised. She surely must be professional." But none of us liked to inquire, at least then.
I noticed afterwards, from time to time, how well the piano met the violin in divided passages, and how exactly they went together; but still those strings, that bow, were all in all for me, and Santonio was the scarcely perceptible presence of an intimate sympathy, veiled from me as it were by a hovering mist of sound. So it was especially in the slow movement, with its long sighs, like the voice of silence, and its short, broken sobs of joy. The thrill of my brain, the deep tumult of my bosom, alone prevented me from tears, just as the rain falls not when the wind is swelling highest, but waits for the subsiding hush. The analogy will not serve me out, nevertheless, for at the close of the last movement, so breathless and so impetuous as it was, there was no hush, only a great din, in the midst of which I wept not; it was neither time nor place. Miss Benette, too, whispered just at the conclusion, when Santonio was haughtily, and Miss Lawrence carelessly, retiring, "Now we shall go; but please do not make me laugh, Master Auchester."
"How can you say so, when it was your fault that we laughed the other night?"
And truly it did seem impossible to unsettle that sweet gravity of hers, though it often unsettled mine.