IITHE HARP AND THE VIOLIN
Besides those that I have mentioned, there were two especially of that ancient race whose fortunes were bound in with my early memories.
It was upon a day when I was a little more than fourteen that I came to know them. I was alone at home, save for the maids in the house, and was reading at my ease, as I loved to do, in that old verandah that fronted the south. I remember well that the book I read was "Rasselas, or The Happy Valley."
The verandah was deep and long. Beside it ran a brick pavement, delightful in color and texture. Over this, joining the verandah, there curved a latticed grape-arbor of most gracious lines, on which grew, in lovely profusion, a wistaria, a catawba grape-vine, moonflower, and traveler's-joy. When the wistaria, like a spendthrift, had lavished all its purple blossoms, and there were left but green leaves in its treasury, then the grape bloom lifted its fragrance; and when this was spent, the traveler's-joy, as though it had foreseen and savedfor the event, flung forth its abundance; and when at last its every petal had fallen and nothing more remained,—for the moonflower had its own prejudice, persistently refused the demands of the sun, and would open its riches only to the moon and the night moths,—then the early autumn sun, feeling through the thinning leaves, hardly expectant, would come upon that best treasure of all, stored long, against this time, in the reddening clusters of the grapes.
All these things lent I cannot say what charm inexhaustible to that old verandah, and made it a place of abiding romance and delight. The pattern of the sunshine and of the moonlight on the floor of it, as they fell through the lattice and the leaves, are things that still haunt my memory with the sense of a lovely security, of a generous abundance, and, as it were, of the lavish inexhaustible liberality of life itself.
There, secure against interruption, I read and pondered, with the imaginative ponderings of fourteen, the strange longings of that Prince who should have been so content in the Happy Valley.
As I read, I was aware of a strange intrusion:a bent form in baggy trousers and rusty coat stooped under the weight of an old and worn harp; behind him, bent also, but by no visible burden, an old man with a violin entered the gateway of the arbor. They came very slowly and deliberately, yet without pause or uncertainty. They did not introduce themselves, being, I knew instantly, quite above such plebeian need. They asked no permission, nor solicited any tolerance. They spoke not a word. It was as if they had long outgrown the need of such earthly trivialities.
He of the rusty coat and baggy trousers, having taken a slow look at the place around,—as though to establish in his mind some mysterious identity,—let the harp slip from his shoulders to the brick pavement, adjusted it there very deliberately, and proceeded to pluck one or two of its strings with testing fingers, still looking around carefully all the while; then he adjusted his camp-stool, seated himself, pulled the worn, yet delicate and feminine instrument toward him, so that her body lay against his shoulder, and put his hands in position to play.
The old violin, more lordly, made no concessionwhatever to harmony; he tuned or touched not a string, but with a really kingly gesture put his instrument in the worn hollow of his shoulder, laid his head and cheek over against it, as though lending his whole soul to listen, raised the bow, held it for an immortal instant over the strings, and then drew out a long preliminary note—on, on, on, to the very quivering tip of the bow.
My education had not been neglected as to music. There had always been much of it in my home, where flute and voice and harp and violin and piano spoke often, and my home town was near a great musical centre, where, young as I was, I had heard the best that was to be heard. Had I been in a critical mood, I should have noted how badly the long-drawn note was drawn; I can hear still how excruciating it was, how horribly it squawked; but rendered solemn, as I was, by the strangeness of their appearance and their presence, and dimly, dimly aware of their immortal powers, it thrilled me more than I remember those of Sarasate or Ysaye to have done.
The long note at an end, without so much as a consultation of the eyes, they then began.With never a word, only with thrilling tones horribly off the key, the violin spoke, say rather wrung its hands and wailed,—"Oh, don't you remember"—("Oh, yes; I remember!" throbbed and sobbed the harp)—"Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?"
They played it all through, even to what must have been the "slab of granite so gray," varying all the while from one half to one tone off the key, the old violin lending his ear as attentively all the while to the voice of his instrument as if she spoke with the tongues of angels; his dim veiled eyes fixed on incalculable distances, like those of an eagle in captivity.
The old harp, on the contrary, kept his eyes lowered stubbornly on the vibrating strings; and the harp, as he smote, quivered like some human thing struck upon its remembering heart. From the painfully reminiscent song they leaped without pause into that second most wailful melody in the world,—
Ah, I have sighed to rest me,Deep in the quiet grave,—
and played that on to the end also.
But though to the outward eye these visitorsplayed upon the harp and violin, how much more indeed did they play upon me! Young, and sensitive, and as yet unsounded, how, with dim compelling fingers they searched and found and struck and drew from me emotions I had never known! Old and worn and bowed with life, and weather-beaten of the world, they played there in the mottled sunlight of that romantic arbor, as might Ulysses have stood mistaken and unhonored by those who had but heard of Troy. There was to me something suddenly overwhelming in the situation. Oh, who was I, to enjoy so much, in such security; to feast upon plenty, and to know the generous liberality of life, while these, doomed to the duress of the gods, went through the world, day after day, half-starved, playing miserable memorable music fearfully off the key!
Perhaps I was intense; certainly I was young; and as certainly I had all the eager vivid imagination of youth. Moreover, this was, it should not be overlooked, my very first adventure, all my own, with the poor; my first piece of entirely independent service to those mysterious powers. Meanwhile, the divinitiesin disguise played on—a wild, boisterous tune it was now, set to a rollicking measure and infinitely more sad for that than the sighs of "Trovatore," or than sweet Alice under the stone. Bent they seemed on sounding every stop. You may think they were but a grimy pair, dull and squalid; probably embittered. I can only tell you that they invoked for me that day, as with the mournful powers of the Sibyl of Cumæ, love and life and death, and joy irrevocable, and memory—these they called up to pass before me, and bade them as they went, for one summoning moment, to reveal their faces to me.
Presently, I do not know with what dark thoughts, these two would have departed, but I remembered and begged them to stay. I flew upstairs and found my purse, and emptied it, and gave them what it held. They took it without thanks, merely as lawful tribute exacted. Again they would have departed, but I begged them still to remain. Should this ancient Zeus and Hermes be allowed to depart without bread? I disappeared into the house with a beating heart. I found bread and milk and meat. I brought these and set them outfor them, and drew chairs for them. All this, too, they took for granted, with some shrewd glances at me; they shuffled their feet about under the table, bent low to their plates like hungry men, and shoveled their food into their mouths dexterously with their knives, the better, no doubt, to disguise their divinity.
While they ate, I went, with a heart troubled yet high, and gathered for them grapes that hung immortally lovely in the sun. These too they ate, with a more manifest pleasure, cleaning the bunches down to the stems; and when they had made away with all they could, slipped the remaining clusters in their pockets against a less hospitable occasion.
I remember that then they went and left me standing there in a world of dreams and speculation and adventure. They had gone as they had come but me they left forever changed. As they departed, certain doors in my young days swung and closed mysteriously. For me the channels of life were permanently deepened. With them had departed my complacent, inexperienced attitude of mind; with them had fared forth the care-free child that I had been. This adventure all my own, conductedin my own manner, had initiated me into vast possibilities, the more impressive because but dimly seen. On me had depended for a little while these two of God knows what ancient descent. I too had begun to know and taste life. I too would begin to count my memories. Oh, strange new world! And with strange people in it!
On this world, enter, upper left stage, Leila the maid.
"Oh, Miss Laura, honey, what you bin' doin'? Dey ain't nothin' but no-'count beggars, chile. Don't you know dey mought 'a' come indo's and carried off all de silver? Dat's just de kind would steal fum you when you warn't lookin'. I ain't right sho' now dey ain't got some o' de silver in dey pockets!" And she took savage stock of what lay on the table.
O Leila, ingenuous mind! Dearly as I loved her, how little she knew! How far she was from understanding the habits and predilections of the gods! Would they trouble, do you think, to take a silver knife or fork, who can take away the priceless riches of childhood with them? Would they pause to purloin a mere petty silver spoon, who can carry off an entiregolden period of your existence, and leave you with the leaden questions and dull philosophy and heavy responsibility of older years?
I should have asked their names, that I might set these in my prayers, but I had not had presence of mind enough to do that; so, that night, while I knelt by my bed, alone in the moonlight, a very devout little girl, there stood there, shadowy in the shadows, and among my nearest and dearest, on whom I asked the Lord's blessing, the old harp and violin; while, with my head buried passionately in my hands, I begged Providence to have an especial care of these new friends of my heart, to bless them, to let its face shine upon them, and to give them peace.
Musical beggars! I have seen them often since, in one guise or another. Sometimes they trumpet on the trombone or cornet, or blow fearful blasts upon the French horn; I have known them to finesse upon the flute or flageolet. These differences are but inconsiderable. Always I find them equally mighty. I have thought sometimes to get past them with giving them only a great deal more than I could afford. Useless frugality! futile economy!For still they will be laying ghostly hands upon you; still will they be exacting a heavier tribute and demanding that gold and silver of the soul which, as Plato is so well aware, is how infinitely more precious.
Though to outward appearance they are busy with their instruments, how they lay ghostly hands upon your imagination. How they conjure up before the inward eye themselves as they might have been, to levy a new tax upon you. The man with the horn, he who plays always off the key, and always a little ahead of the others, he, it is now mysteriously revealed to you, had meant perhaps, at the very least, to play in an orchestra. And the baggy battered old violin was to have wiped his heated brow with a grand gesture, and bowed condescendingly over his collar to metropolitan audiences, had not his dreams so unaccountably miscarried. And the old thread-bare harp-player, his shabbiness and his bitter face to the contrary notwithstanding, had meant, had really meant, to pluck some sweetness out of life. And the harp itself (yes, even so extensive is the occult power they wield) makes its own special appeal to you,and with its taste for delicacy seems suddenly like a dull tormented thing, swaying and trembling under the stiff sullen fingers of its master, there on the garish pavement—an instrument which, but for the uncertainty of life (ah, the uncertainty of life!), might have responded how devotedly, in the tempered light of a curtained alcove, to the touch of delicate fingers.
All this they conjure up before the mind's eye, ere they stop their excruciating playing. Then the violin, at the very moment that should have been his gracious one, counts the miserably few pennies. The sullen horn, his instrument tucked under his arm, goes on, still a stave ahead of the rest, a sodden expression in his eyes. The old harpist swings the harp rudely over his shoulder, and gives the strap an extra twitch to ease the dull weight, and they are off to fresh pavements and districts new. I have seen great tragedians. I have sat through the sleep-walking scene in "Macbeth." I have heard Banquo knock. I have seen Juliet waken too late in the Capulet tomb and call for Romeo: "O comfortable friar! Where is my lord?" In my schoolgirldays I saw Booth in his great parts; but none of these master-scenes and fine harmonies have stirred in me so intolerable an emotion of pity or sense of fatality as an old horn, or harp and violin, grouped on a garish pavement, their lives dedicated to cheap music fearfully off the key.
These are people of power, let appearances be what they may. You may patronize them if you like, and look upon them as the downtrodden and the dregs of existence. I am, indeed, not so hardy. I have read a different fate in their groups and constellations.