For like the star-sprays her notes were as clear; and through them ran a sadness as of a mist of moonlight. And just as moonbeams, when they mingle with the mist, make the melancholy of night, so the memory of a dead love ran through everything Alice Westmore sang.
And this made her singing divine.
Why should it be told? What right has a blacksmith to pry into a grand piano to find out wherein the exquisite harmony of the instrument lies? Who has the right to ask the artist how he blended the colors that crowned his picture with immortality, or the poet to explain his pain in the birth of a mood which moved the world?
Born in the mountains of North Alabama, she grew up there and developed this rare voice; and when her father sent her to Italy to complete her musical education, the depth and clearness of it captured even that song nation of the world.
The great of all countries were her friends and princes sought her favors. She sang at courts and in great cathedrals, and her genius and beauty were toasts with society.
“Still, Mademoiselle will never be a great singer, perfect as her voice is,”—said her singing master to her one day—a famous Italian teacher, “until Mademoiselle has suffered. She is now rich and beautiful and happy. Go home and suffer if you would be a great singer,” he said, “for great songs come only with great suffering.”
If this were true, Alice Westmore was now, indeed, a great singer; for now had she suffered. And it was the death of a life with her when love died. For there be some with whom love is a separate life, and when love dies all that is worth living dies with it.
From childhood she and Cousin Tom—Captain Thomas Travis he lived to be—had been sweethearts. He was the grandson of Colonel Jeremiah Travis of “The Gaffs,” and Tom and Alice had grown up together. Their love was one of those earthly loves which comes now and then that we may not altogether lose our faith in heaven.
Both were of a romantic temperament with high ideals, and with keen and sensitive natures.
Their love was the poem of their lives.