The boy was delighted. His face glowed. His heart burned.
“Dear madam,” he cried, “do not depreciate your calling. Why, I have heard even great musicians say that the most one could do in a lifetime was to add a single note to the great symphony which Nature sings in adoration of the Creator.”
“Then I was unduly ambitious when I talked of a shrine,” said she. “And I am, I repeat, only an actress. Such as I can only utter a feeble pipe—the trill of a robin. ’Tis you musicians whose works sound in the ears of all ages. Time calls aloud to time through you, until the world is girt about with a circle of glorious melody, and men live rejoicing within its clasp. Ah, sir, what am I, to talk of shrine-building? What am I in the presence of a great musician? Shrines? Oh, I can only think of Handel as a builder of cathedrals. Every oratorio that he composed seems to me comparable only to a great cathedral—glorious within and without, massive in its structure, and here and there a spire tapering up to the heaven itself, and yet with countless columns made beautiful with the finest carving. Ah, Mr. Linley, if the music of Messiah were to be frozen before our eyes, would it not stand before us in the form of St. Paul’s?”
“I am overwhelmed by the grandeur of the thought,” said he; and indeed he spoke the truth. His eyes had grown larger and more lustrous than ever while she had been speaking, and he could scarcely articulate for emotion. So highly strung was his temperament that the force of a striking poetic image affected him as it did few men. He had, as it were, reduced all the possibilities of life to a musical scale, and his thoughts swept over him as a bow sweeps over the strings of an instrument until all are set quivering.
“A cathedral!” he murmured—“a cathedral!”
She could see that those eyes of his were looking at such a fabric as she had suggested. He was gazing in admiration from pillar to dome, and from the dome to the blue heaven above all. She had never before come in contact with so emotional a nature—with so sensitive a soul. She knew that what Dick Sheridan said was true: Tom Linley had hidden his heart in his violin, and every breeze that touched the strings caused his heart to vibrate in unison with the music they made. She had only spoken to him on the subject of music, and already his face was glowing—his heart was quivering.
Some minutes had gone by before he was able to ask her:
“When did you conceive that wonderful thought—the oratorio—the cathedral? Ah, Handel spent his life building cathedrals!”
“It was when I had heard your sister sing in the greatest of all the master’s works,” she replied. “Could any one hear Miss Linley sing ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ and remain unmoved? Ah, what a gift is hers! I am certain that she is as sensible as you are of the precious heritage that is hers.”
“Alas!” he cried, “she has flung it away from her. She has no thought of her responsibility. Nay, she is ready to sacrifice herself so that she may never be asked to sing again.”