To-day Castellani was in high spirits, proud of to-morrow’s anticipated success, in which his own exertions would count for much. He sat at the piano in a leisure hour after tea. All the performers had gone, after the final adjustment of every detail. Mildred sat idle with her head resting against the cushion of a high-backed armchair, exhausted by the afternoon’s labours. Pamela stood by the piano watching and listening delightedly as Castellani improvised.
“I will give you my musical transcript of St. Partridge Day,” he said, smiling down at the notes as he played a lively melody with little rippling runs in the treble and crisp staccato chords in the bass. “This is morning, and all the shooters are on tip-toe with delight—a misty morning,” gliding into a dreamy legato movement as he spoke. “You can scarcely see the hills yonder, and the sun is not yet up. See there he leaps above that bank of purple cloud, and all is brightness,” changing to crashing chords in the bass and brilliant arpeggios in the treble. “Hark! there is chanticleer. How shrill he peals in the morning air! The dogs are leaving the kennel—and now the gates are open, dogs and men are in the road. You can hear the steady tramp of the clumsy shooting-boots—your dreadful English boots—and the merry music of the dogs. Pointers, setters, spaniels, smooth beasts and curly beasts, shaking the dew from the hedgerows as they scramble along the banks, flying over the ditches—creatures of lightning swiftness; yes, even those fat heavy spaniels which seem made to sprawl and snap at flies in the sunshine or snore beside the fire.”
He talked in brief snatches, playing all the time—playing with the easy brilliancy, the unerring grace of one to whom music is a native tongue—as natural a mode of thought-expression as speech itself. His father had trained him to improvise, weaving reminiscences of all his favourite composers into those dreamy reveries. They had sat side by side, father and son, each following the bent of his own fancy, yet quick to adapt it to the other, now leading, now following. They had played together as Moscheles and Mendelssohn used to play, delighting in each other’s caprices.
“I hope I don’t bore you very much,” said Castellani, looking up at Mildred as she sat silent, the fair face and pale gold hair defined against the olive brocade of the chair cushion.
He looked up at her in wondering admiration, as at a beautiful picture. How lovely she was, with a loveliness that grew upon him, and took possession of his fancy and his senses with a strengthening hold day by day. It was a melancholy loveliness, the beauty of a woman whose life had come to a dead stop, in whose breast hope and love were dead—or dormant.
“Not dead,” he told himself, “only sleeping. Whose shall be the spell to awaken the sleepers. Who shall be the Orpheus to bring this sweet Eurydice from the realms of Death?”
Such thoughts were in his mind as he sat looking at her, waiting for her answer, playing all the while, telling her how fair she was in the tenderest variations of an old German air whose every note breathed passionate love.
“How sweet!” murmured Pamela; “what an exquisite melody!” taking some of the sweetness to herself. “How could such sweetness weary any one with the ghost of an ear? You are not bored by it, are you, aunt?”
“Bored? no, it is delightful,” answered Mildred, rousing herself from a reverie. “My thoughts went back to my childhood while you were playing. I never knew but one other person who had that gift of improvisation, and she used to play to me when I was a child. She was almost a child herself, and of course she was very inferior to you as a pianist; but she would sit and play to me for an hour in the twilight, inventing new melodies, or playing recollections of old melodies, describing in music. The old fairy tales are for ever associated with music in my mind, because of those memories. I believe she was highly gifted in music.”
“Music of a high order is not an uncommon gift among women of sensitive temperament,” said Castellani musingly. “I take it to be only another name for sympathy. Want of musical feeling is want of sympathy. Shakespeare knew that when he declared the non-musical man to be by nature a villain. I could no more imagine you without the gift of music than I could imagine the stars without the quality of light. Mr. Greswold’s first wife was a good musician, as no doubt you know.”