The day was far advanced, when the chief censor, in behalf of the children, expressed their gratitude to the members of the corps for their deliverance from the inveteracy of savage hatred. Then as a closing memento, Correliana read the nuptial record of the few that were about to graduate, that the members of the corps might hold the traits in memory for personal comparison and selection of candidates in their next day’s visit to the female school. At our departure, after evening song, in which it was the children’s special delight to join with their parents, we were made sensible of a grateful share in their affectionate memories; but the padre’s kindlier, yet vagrant disposition, had been discovered beneath its artificial mask of entailed habit, so at parting he attracted the warmer flow of their sympathies which suffused his eyes with kindly moisture. When he was finally permitted to overstep the foræ threshold of the temple portals, he exclaimed with glistening eyes, “My conscience sake alive, I feel as if every soul of those boys had passed through me with gladness; and I can truly and thankfully say, that I feel in the purity of their loving goodness as if they had offered me the only object worth living for. What joy there would be, if our Sundays could be spent in communion with parents and children free from the alloy of selfishness?” The earnestness of the padre’s implied petition met with a hearty response from all.
CHAPTER XXV.
On their way from the temple school, Correliana invited the padre and members of the corps to pay a twilight visit to her garden. Passing through her father’s into her own garden, while yet the upward slant of the sun’s rays reached above the Andean peaks, the party were surprised and startled by the winged hoverings of a cloud of birds of every feather, accompanied with the vocal salutation,—“Well, my goodness gracious, if here ain’t the padre! well, I declare, aha, aha!”—pronounced in variations of tone peculiar to the raven, starling, and parrot. With a confused fluttering, twittering, and tonguester terms of speech, they with encouraged familiarity, alighted wherever a perch was offered. Correliana tried to still their clamors by calling upon the leaders, but only effected a change, all uniting in the word “Musick!” To stay their noisy importunities she beckoned her visitors to be seated, and then under the escort of her feathered choristers she brought forth an instrument of music which Captain Greenwood had presented to her as a parting gift. On opening the case she presented the instrument to the curators of sound, who were known to be excellent pianists. From its resemblance to an accordion they started back with horror, without touching it, which caused the beaming face of Correliana to become overshadowed with disappointment. But the humorous smiles of the others relieved her from sudden apprehension, by suggesting, as the cause of their dismay, some foregone amusing event. In explanation, M. Hollydorf described the mechanical affinity of the accordion with the primitive bagpipes, which to the modern musician were a nightmare revelation of the past ages of discord. “Except in its improved capacity of breathing sweet harmony in the hands of an experienced musician, the accordion has the same monotonous drone of its ancestral relative. The source of Signor Pettynose and Herr Lindenhoff’s chagrin had its origin on our voyage hitherward from the annoyance caused by one in the hands of the Tortuga’s cook, which they purchased and threw overboard, and its ghostly resuscitation in your hands has given rise to their expressions of horror. I perceive that the instrument in your hands only bears an outward resemblance to the accordion, and the moment its tones are revealed, I am sure my impressions will be sustained, and the artists will be more enthusiastically retentive in its praise, than they have been in pantomimic rejection.”
While M. Hollydorf was soothing the wounded enthusiasm of Correliana’s affection, the instinctively sensitive curators passed the case, with its instrument, from one to the other, with an expression, kindred in acting translation, to the effect likely to be produced upon two civilized or savage bachelors in the armed disposal of an infant which had been subjected to their inspection, for commendation, by a fond mother. Finding that their former criticisms of Heraclean music had placed them in a dilemma that required vindication, they questioned each other’s ability for extrication. Pettynose having used an accordion in boyhood as a dernier Alma Mater for the nursing of his musical faculties, offered in acknowledgment of his debt of gratitude, with manifest reluctance, the tribute of his experience in expiation of his long neglect and indifference to the rudimentary ties of affection. With the first out-breathings of the foundling, as his fingers deftly caressed with familiar touch the well known features, he became conscious that the ties of relationship had been rendered harmonious by a foreign marriage. Reassured by this discovery the petulant asperities of his face vanished; then after a short wandering prelude for thoughtful familiarization, he lapsed into a musical reverie of the past, that gradually caused his disembodiment from the petty assumptions of instinct, leaving his natural spirit of goodness to soar in flight upon the wings of sympathy. In a few moments he became lost to material impressions, other than from the imposed invocation of his fingers, causing the colonnades and courts to become tremulous with the lulling concord of sweet sounds. Correliana with hands reverentially folded over her breast leaned against a vine-wreathed pillar, regarding his face and fingers with her large luminous eyes overshadowed with a misty veil of thoughtful inspiration, as if in search for the mazy source of the mysterious influence that held her entranced within the spell of inwrought concord. But the motor spirit of memory in reviving vision bore upon its talismanic wings the artist far away from self to roam among scenes bright with the revels of childhood in the land of his birth, on the banks of the swift flowing Amaril, whose cascades embowered by the tropical hill groves of Brazil had inspired with the rippling flow of their echoes his love for music. The reveried air of “Home, sweet home” surprised his listeners with a responsive echo, that held them immovable in hushed silence, with a controlling power that banished self. Even the harsh discordant screams of the parrots, calling for the vesper notice of their mistress, were hushed, as if suddenly made aware of their voiced defects; while birds with voices attuned to song in cadenced time swayed silently listening upon their sprayed perches, eying askance as if in search of the new songster from whom the sweet notes came. As minutes unheeded winged their way into the current of the past, and the night shades of twilight deepened, stronger grew the charmed bondage that held Correliana and her mother dumb and motionless, bound by the sweet chords of melodious inspiration. But alas, as if to typify the ephemeral pleasures of sense, the spell was rudely broken by the grosser instinctive impressions of the unfortunate padre, who recalled the wandering spirit of Pettynose, by asking, “Can’t you play Yankee Doodle, Jim Crow, God Save the Queen, or something we know?”
The reader has undoubtedly felt the chill of sudden obscurity when the mellow light of a declining summer sun had been intercepted by a thunder gust, and the startling effect produced by the lightning’s dazzling gleam that makes murky darkness palpable after its transient blaze. This gleam the aroused Pettynose darted on the padre, as he thundered with quavering voice: “You soulless son of a paddy! are you so dead to the divine influence of harmony that you could not feel that I was moved by an inspiration beyond the reach of the time-serving twaddle of national humbuggery and the idol worship of sectarian selfishness?”
As the rumbling growl of the enraged musician ceased, the soft expression of Correliana’s face was for a moment lighted with an expression of reproach directed to the reproved and reprover. The padre, whose lack of thoughtful impression had invoked this outburst, turned with flushing winces from face to face, questioning the source of his error, but only met frowns of pitying, or disdainful reproof, which prudently inclined him to silence. Pettynose, restored to his instinctive self, examined the instrument to discover the attachment that had contributed by its aid for the production of sounds of such pure accord, in freedom from the drone of its prototype. Sliding back the key-board his vision was introduced to a novel mechanism, bearing but a slight resemblance to that of the accordion, except in formulistic fabrication. In the place of a reed-board of wood it had one of glass. Covering the openings were reeds of bamboo answering to the stops of the keys. Raising the plate he discovered on its under side longitudinal fossæ corresponding in length and form with the string attachments of the harp, which it represented in miniature; over this the peculiar strings were strung. The wind in passing from the bellow’s font through the open slots caused an æolian vibration, which was increased in volume and sweetness of sound by the vibrating accord of the reeds. The spirits of the two curators of sound were highly elated by the discovery of this rare musical waif; at the same time were surprised to learn that it had been the companion of their river voyage; but readily accounted for its concealment with the supposition that Captain Greenwood withheld it from the idea that it was to them an object of aversion. Pettynose, when leaving, would, in his heedless selfishness, have taken the instrument with him, but M. Hollydorf, anticipating Correliana’s anxiety, bade him recollect that it was a gage of affection.
When the music ceased, a raven and parrot, who had perched upon the padre’s broad-brimmed hat, commenced a gossiping promenade, backwards and forwards upon the diametric extremes of its circumference, alternating the rise and descent of its rim from his nose to the back of his coat-collar, to his great annoyance, which added to the comical effect. But the padre continued silent, notwithstanding the birds’ quotations of his familiar phrases, “Well, I declare! my conscience’ sake!” and the like, which seemed to be prompted by the changes wrought in the position of his hat. At length Correliana became mindful of their annoyance, and despatched them to their roosts; then she apologized to the padre for the liberty she had taken, by saying, that they had imitated her when she was repeating his phrases to familiarize her ear with the intonations of the English language. “But I am not alone accountable,” she said, “for that demure personage,” pointing to the prætor, “has largely contributed by his patience and perseverance to their proficiency. The Doschessa wishes to have me remind you that their imitations are an apt example of ritual observances, classical educations, and fashionable accomplishments, which are styled the progressive features of Giga civilization.”
“It pleases me to hear you try to make the padre understand the difference between a practical education and one of words,” patronizingly added Dr. Baāhar.
This assumption of the doctor’s dispersed the depressing cloud that weighed upon the padre’s spirits, who replied, “Ah doctor, you forget that to-day you were unable to make the material distinction between an ancient goddess of your fathers, and a Heraclean statue crowned with Kyronese mousetraps, even with the advantage of your wordy education?”
Mr. Welson laughingly commended Correliana and the prætor for their successful essay in the professorial art, offering to recommend their talents to the Dominican College of Guatemala, or its Jesuitical propagandic rival institution of Chinandagua of Nicaragua, which were devoted to the education of parrots for the dissemination of their tenets among the people, if disposed to enlarge their sphere of usefulness. Declining, in the same vein, his intercession in their behalf, the members of the corps were invited to join the family of the prætor at the table, where they could have the advantage of seeing and hearing the Manatitlans, as the Dosch was desirous of joining in the conversation. The voice of Correliana aroused chirping murmurs from the leafy coverts of tree and bush, but with such drowsy pipes of recognition it was easy to discover that the notes were muffled in the head’s feathery couch beneath the wings. When seated, the Dosch addressed the padre as follows, “Your race claim that the chief object of their lives is to obtain present and future happiness; now I would like to ask you whether your ‘system of education,’ founded upon the parotic rehearsal of progenitorial self-inflicted woes, has any tendency for the fulfillment of their hopes? Then answer, with thoughtful consideration drawn from your day’s experience, whether you have ever approached so near the shrine of an enjoyment, so pure and unadulterated, in joyful impression, as that of to-day?”