THE ANTHEM OF JUDEA.
THE ANTHEM OF JUDEA.
At the foot of the hill stood a low, old-fashioned frame house, with a picket-fence round the yard, which ran down to a small stream that sometimes flowed along slowly, and sometimes with a great rush, and sometimes slept tranquilly beneath a sheeting of ice. Nearly a mile off, smooth and level, with pleasant streets, and a church whose spire shone in the sunlight long after the evening shade had crept over the ground, was the village of Pickaway, the gem of Paint Valley.
From there, two days in every week, to the quaint old-fashioned house at the foot of the hill, the children wended their way with music folios, coming loiteringly in Summer over the narrow foot-path where the wild columbinegrew by the creek, but in Winter walking hurriedly over the frozen turnpike, swinging their arms, blowing their fingers, and sometimes doing battle bravely with the snow.
Here Franz Erckman lived in the plainest manner, with only his piano and his cottage-organ for companions. Wife and children he had none, nor any relative, nor any domestic pet. There was never a dog, or cat, or even so much as a chicken, to be seen about the premises. One servant he kept, to be sure, but she, a cross old woman, never opened her mouth for the purpose of speech more than a dozen times in a year, and then it was only upon some unusual provocation, as when the scholars broke a pitcher, or muddied her floor, when she would give utterance to some incoherent but disagreeable ejaculation.
Franz Erckman had lived in this way for nearly twenty years, and was just as bluff in manner, and just as reserved in disposition, as when he had first come there, an unknown young foreigner, without friends, or acquaintances, or money, and commenced in a modest way giving music-lessons to a few pupils at first, to many after a time.
When the new church was built, and a new organ with great gilded pipes put in, his services were engaged, as well they might, for no otherperson in the whole village could have made any thing whatever out of all those stops, and pedals, and keys.
Now that Pickaway had grown to be quite a town, with a very respectable hotel, many tourists came down in the summer season from the city to rusticate for a week or two, and they always heard the organist with astonishment. Inquiries about him were so often repeated by these cultivated strangers, that Pickaway had finally grown to feel proud of its musician, and it became as natural to them to show off Franz Erckman as it did to call attention to the beautiful scenery. It would have been hard to have overlooked either, for a more picturesque landscape could rarely have been found.
However, all this praise and adulation had apparently made little effect upon the village music-master, who had been again and again invited to come up for one season to the city by these friendly tourists. They held out to him the allurements of the orchestras and operas, and told wonderful tales of the superb voices of the greatprime donne. It was all in vain. He always thanked them for their proffered hospitality, but never accepted it, and lived along, seemingly content enough to teach the village children, and play the church-organ. Only his one servant knew how at night, and sometimesall night through, he tried ineffectually to satisfy his great craving for music, and how, not until the pale light of morning was visible in the east, would he shut his cottage-organ. And when he turned from it there was always a strange expression of despair upon his features.
The people of the town said he was penurious, for he invariably exacted the tuition of each scholar in advance, and if at the appointed time it was not forthcoming, he quietly dismissed the pupil without a word, and there were no more lessons given until the quarter had been paid. However, they grew to know him so well that every body fell into the habit, in his case at least, of being punctual.
So, working steadily year after year, as he had done, with almost no expenses of living, Pickaway thought he must have laid by quite a fortune, and when the Widow Massey, poverty-stricken though she was, made up her mind to send her little daughter—her only child—the poor, weak, crippled little Alice, who went every Sunday to the church, and listened with such deep delight to the strains of the great organ—when the Widow Massey made up her mind to send her daughter to the music-master, and give her this one pleasure, that it might brighten somewhat the life so early blighted, all the people thought he would surely take thechild for nothing. But he did not—he took the money, the full amount; and, if the people made sarcastic remarks about his penuriousness,theynever offered to pay for the little girl. And the mother never thought of asking a favor from any one. Though she earned by hard labor scarcely enough to keep them, still for the last year she had had this thought at heart, and quietly saved a little at a time, until finally the long-coveted sum was in her possession; and gladly she went and gave it to the music-master, who put it down at the bottom of his vest-pocket, and told her to send the little girl twice a week. And twice a week the little girl went.
That was in the Summer. She was pale, and thin, and delicate, and the scholars all wondered how she would get there through the snow in the Winter. But before the bleak winds had blown one rude blast, the little Alice had a worse trouble. The Widow Massey suddenly fell ill and died, commending her beloved child to the care only of the great Guardian above.
It was a terrible stroke, and the people all wondered what would become of the helpless daughter, who was too feeble to do any kind of work for a means of subsistence, and every person thought it strange that somebody else did not come to her relief.
It was very sad. The poor little creature seemed fairly racked with grief, and had sat by the side of her dead mother day and night. On the afternoon of the funeral they tried in vain to take her away, until Franz Erckman came, and the people in surprise saw him lift her up in his arms without a struggle, and quietly carry her out of the house. They saw him, still with her arms clasped tight about his neck, crossing the green pastures, strike the narrow foot-path by the creek, and disappear as the path turned behind the heavy foliage that was brilliant in the scarlet dyes of October.
It was not one of the days upon which he gave lessons. There was only the ripple of water over the stones and the rustle of leaves that occasionally blew down from the trees, to break the profound quiet of the place as he passed through his gate. Not one word had been spoken, and still in perfect silence he carried the frail little being, that he could feel trembling from head to foot—he carried her across the broad veranda and into the pleasant parlor—not the room that the scholars used, but where his cottage-organ stood. Then he drew the sofa up beside the instrument and laid her down upon it.
Her fingers unclasped with a convulsive movement, and Franz turned his face away, forthe child had not uttered a sound. Her eyes, dry and unnaturally bright, wore a startled look, a mute, beseeching expression, like the eyes of a wounded animal, and the pallor of her countenance, that had a wild grief branded upon it, was almost as ghastly in hue as death. It was suffering terrible to behold, and the hands of the strong man trembled as he opened the mahogany case of his organ.
There was a moment’s silence; then music, soft and sorrowful, floated out on the air gently, almost timidly; so very mournful, that the strain, beautiful though it was, seemed to have in it a human cry of pain. It was a language that could appeal to the heart when word or lip failed.
The child’s whole frame shook beneath the heavy sobs that swelled up in her throat, and the great grief had opened its flood-gates. Hour after hour he played untiringly, while the violence of the storm spent itself. The music, at first sorrowful, hurt, had cried out in its pain; then it grew into a measure so yearning, it seemed the very genius of sympathy. Making an intense appeal, it swelled into a great passion, which gradually became exhausted by its own intense vehemence, until about the going down of the sun it died. And the child slept.
The wild storm of anguish was over. Upon the face, the thin, pale face of the little girl in her slumber, there shone an expression of such absolute rest that Franz, with a sudden movement, bent down his head and listened. Had she passed with the music to the land where there are strains that swell into aglorianever ending? He held his breath. Was this the reflection of that peace eternal, that rest which endureth forever? A sob quivered for a moment on her features, and escaped from the lips of the sleeper. No, no, for sorrow showed its painful presence. She was not dead, and, at the sigh, sad though it was to see, the man arose with a smothered exclamation of relief.
The quiet day was drawing to its close. Within the room the shadows were already thickening; without, long lines of mist festooned the hills in plumes of royal purple, and the red haze of Indian-summer had gathered into broad streamers that unfurled their splendor across the tranquil sky. The floating twilight hung over the wide and level pastures. Down by the creek the scarlet sage still showed its coral fringe, and sometimes the woodbine, close by the house, waved its painted leaves. Far off in the filmy vale the group of maples that had stood crowned with a golden glory now shrouded themselves in black; and beyond, like a longstretch of desolate shore, the great gloom lifted up its chilly banks.
Many times from the window in his parlor Franz Erckman had watched the divine pageant of night ascend the valley in all the pomp and grandeur of its magnificence, in all the solemn majesty of its silence, in all the ineffable depths of its sadness. Many times in his loneliness he had seen it pass, when a vision of the fair Rhineland would come back to his heart. Many times through its profound solitude he had looked out with yearning eyes, with listening ears, striving to comprehend its sublime mystery. Many times he had turned to it with a soul oppressed by despair reaching toward the Infinite. For, though the people did not know it, beneath the rough exterior of this reserved German dwelt a love of the beautiful—a love so passionate sometimes, it seemed crushing his very spirit that he could not give it utterance in his music. Then it was that often he would rise from his organ in bitter disappointment, and go out with his trouble to seek consolation from the night—the night forever wan with her own unspoken sorrow.
But he stood watching the face of the sleeper, paying no heed to the gathering shade. He stooped and arranged the cushions about the fragile form with the gentle touch of a woman,while upon his features there rested an expression more beautiful than they could ever borrow from the softened light of the evening.
“She would have died,” he said to himself. “But for the music, I believe she would have died! The chords of the organ spoke to her when all earthly words failed. She, at least, can understand the language I have been striving to learn.”
Frail little creature! She appeared, indeed, like a spirit of some other world. Her every nerve had vibrated in sympathy, and Franz could hardly help thinking, as he looked at her, that, soundless to human ears, there played about her ceaseless strains of melody. Music seemed to be the vitality that gave her life, the only nourishment that fed her soul.
When she first came to him for instruction, he quickly discovered that she possessed not the least power of execution, and then had taken no special notice of her further. Wrapped up in his art, teaching the children had never been a pleasure to him. He compelled himself to endure it as a means of subsistence.
The great object for which he worked was once to secure means enough to keep penury always from his door, and then give himself up unreservedly to this art which he loved better than his life. So he took no particular interestin any of his scholars, and it was only when he saw how eagerly the little Alice drank in every sound, that gradually he began to observe the child more narrowly. As he had at first seen, she possessed no power of execution whatever. She could not even learn to read the notes, and she would probably never be able to play a single bar correctly. But he had noticed how keenly alive she was to harmony, how peculiarly sensitive to discord. It seemed as though her lessons were a constant pain. Yet she came eagerly, and often lingered when they were finished.
He had found her once, late in the day, when he had been playing dreamily to himself, sitting on the veranda near the window of his parlor, listening with a rapt attention, wholly unconscious of any thing but his music. Since that, when she came to take her lesson, he had always played for her, carelessly at first, but after a time with greater interest, until gradually he had given up altogether any effort to instruct her, and in its place each day played for her the oratorios and symphonies of the great composers. Then he had changed from the piano to his organ, and he had grown to wait nearly as anxiously for the hour to come round as the little girl herself.
By degrees the visits of the child became tohim almost indispensable. He seemed to feel always a strange inspiration come upon him in her presence. Why, he did not know; but it was then that sometimes the wild tumult, the infinite longings of his soul struggled into expression. But, when the child went, he would find himself again dejected, and wholly unable even to recall the strains which seemed to have died at the very moment of their birth.
Franz stood, still watching her motionless form. The sobs, quivering through her sleep, had one by one exhausted themselves, and left her face strangely peaceful to look upon.
“She is mine,” he muttered. “I will never part with her. She is my spirit of sound!”
Suddenly he heard the grating noise of footsteps on the graveled walk. Turning quickly, he drew the curtain over the window to shield the sleeper from the damp night-air. Then he went softly out and closed the door after him, wrapped once more in his severe reserve, and with the old stern expression upon his features. His brows knit themselves into a frown, and his lips curled for a moment with a smile of contempt when he recognized the figure coming into the hall.
“Ha! Erckman, good-evening,” said the man, in a loud and boisterous tone, which seemed to dissipate all the serenity of the night in its pompous swell.
“Good-evening.”
If it had been the first time they had ever met, Franz could not have spoken with colder formality as he showed his guest into the piano-room.
Mr. Cory claimed to be the richest man in Pickaway, and very likely it was true. He owned hundreds of green and fertile acres, with cattle sleek and fat. He was ruling elder in the church, and his wife bought all her bonnets and flounces in the city, and they had built the finest house in the whole of Paint Valley. Indeed, nothing was done without his presence, and every one, from the minister to the sexton, received his advice, which he distributed far more liberally than he did his money. So it was that Franz had mentally guessed the object of his visit the instant he recognized him in the hall.
“Fine weather, this.”
The organist made no more audible reply to the remark than a half-uttered grunt, as he struck a match down the corner of the mantelpiece, and lighted the lamp. Mr. Cory sat uneasily on the hard, hair-cloth chair, dimly conscious of some obstruction in the usually smooth channel of his discourse.
“Sad affair of the Widow Massey.”
“Yes.”
He looked about the room for a moment, asthough expecting to discover the presence of some third person, then repeated,—
“Sad affair! sad affair! We are all liable to sudden death, and she ought to have been saving up, in case of such an event. She left nothing to provide for the child at all. Nothing at all. The furniture will barely bring enough to pay for her funeral expenses.”
Franz had sat down mechanically on the music-stool, and rested one hand on the keyboard of the piano. Just as the conversation had reached this point, he suddenly took his hand away, with a nervous movement that sounded three or four discordant bass-notes of the instrument as he did so, and Mr. Cory for the second time found himself laboring under an ill-defined sense of discomfort, something wholly unusual. But, seeing his host showed no symptoms of breaking the silence, after a slight cough, he went on,—
“We have been talking this afternoon as to what is going to be done with the child. You’ve got her here, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, one can’t do a great deal in this way, but you know it is such a sad case, and the child can’t do any work about a house, and my wife is so interested in her she thinks she’ll take the little girl—What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“I beg your pardon, I thought you spoke. My wife is so interested in her she thinks she’ll take the little girl and send her for a year to the industrial school in the city, where she can learn to do fine sewing and embroidery. That will give her a chance to earn her living, and we can take up a collection in church to defray the expense.”
“‘Fine sewing and embroidery’—fine suffering and death!” said Franz, suddenly letting loose his pent-up wrath. “Mr. Cory, would you kill the child? She is frailer than a flower, a sickly little thing, and crippled. One month’s stooping over a needle would put her in the grave. I thought for a moment, but an hour ago, that she was dead.” As he spoke the last word he left his seat, and, taking up the lamp, said,—“Come with me, and step lightly.”
Utterly taken aback at the sudden outburst of the music-master, Mr. Cory followed him across the hall, saw him open the door of the opposite room, and motion him to enter. Then he said, in a quiet voice, while he shaded the lamp carefully with his hand, so that its rays did not fall directly upon the face of the child,—
“Look at her.”
The man stepped forward, but almost immediatelydrew back, with a shiver, from the sleeper, whose repose so strangely resembled death. She lay upon the sofa, with her hands folded across her breast, as when she had at first fallen into slumber.
Franz stood intently regarding her, when suddenly his guest, coming up close to him, said, with his rough voice dropped into a frightened whisper, and his eyes looking quickly about the room,—
“Where does it come from?”
“What?” asked Franz, startled by his singular manner.
“Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The music.”
“Music!” exclaimed Franz, dropping his voice also to a whisper, and involuntarily suspending his breath for a moment—“no, I hear no music.”
“It did not seem like the piano or organ. It must have been the wind in the trees outside, but it sounded just like a strain of music. We had better go, or we may waken her,” said Mr. Cory, as he turned to the door, and drew one hand across his forehead, where the perspiration had collected in drops, although the evening was cold and the air chilly.
Franz followed him out, springing the latchgently with his hand as it caught, and they both went back to the piano-room. Here Mr. Cory seemed to recover somewhat of his usual composure.
“Well, Erckman, she does look thin and delicate-like, but sewing won’t hurt her, not a bit. She’ll be better when she’s got something to do. She can’t exist on air, and she can’t live in idleness. She has got nothing, and it’s the only way I know of she can make her living. She must do work of some kind for support.”
Before Franz’s eyes there floated visions of broad and fertile acres, of fine cattle, of fine clothes, of fine houses, but “she must do work of some kind for support,” so he said nothing, while the church-elder continued,—
“There is James Maxwell going to the city to-morrow, and my wife said we had better send her to the school by him.”
“Send her—, Mr. Cory,” said the organist, with a suppressed fierceness in his voice, “You saw how frail she is, how she looks as if, even now, the shadow of death might be upon her. You know how, from her birth, she has been crippled. I tell you one month in that school among strangers would kill her. Are there not strong arms enough in the world, is there not wealth enough already, that this unfortunate one, this perpetually enfeebled child, must wearout her brief span of life in a painful struggle to gain a little food?”
“We are not, sir, expected to keep the ‘unfortunate one,’ as you call her,” blustered Mr. Cory, fairly purple with indignant astonishment. “What do you mean, sir? We are not under obligations to do any thing whatever for the girl. She should be thankful we interested ourselves in her behalf,” he said, partially choking with rage. “We will do this for her, but that is all. She is nothing to us.”
“I had no intention of dictating,” said the organist, politely, who had quieted down as quickly as he had roused up. “You are right, sir, she is nothing to you, and you need not trouble yourself about the matter further. I will see that the child is provided for.”
Then Mr. Cory looked at Franz as if he thought he had not heard aright, or that the music-master might be departing from his senses.
“I repeat, I will see that the child is provided for, and you need not trouble yourself in regard to her further.”
“Very well, sir, very well!” exclaimed the elder, rising, almost speechless with surprise. But when he reached the piazza he said,—“Then it is understood that I am not responsible in the case?”
“It is understood.”
Franz had had no intention of parting with the child. He would not have given her up had Mr. Cory offered all his grassy meadows. He watched him as he walked down the graveled path and disappeared in the darkness. “Charity!” he muttered. “Shut him out, O Night—hide him from view! Wrap your impenetrable mantle about him, that it may shield him from the eye of God and man!”
The German stood for a moment looking out into the limitless gloom, which screened alike the evil and the good, then he turned again into the house.
He went back, through the dining-room where his supper was spread untouched upon the table, to the kitchen, where Margery sat warming herself by the dying embers in the stove. The old servant was used to his irregular ways, and often saw his meals go untasted without a remark. But it was rarely the master ever intruded upon her premises, and she rose up as he came in, with an expression of surprise upon her quiet face.
“Margery,” he said, “fix up the bedroom next to yours, then come down to me in the parlor.”
The old woman heard him without a question, though never before could she remember whenthe guest-chamber had been used, or a visitor staid overnight at the house.
When she had obeyed his instructions she presented herself at the parlor-door. There was no lamp in the room, only a narrow strip of light fell upon the floor from across the hall, but it did not penetrate the heavy shadow, and Margery, with a half-uttered apology upon her lips, drew back. At the sound of the woman’s steps, Franz came out of the gloom.
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
“What is the matter?”
“I did not know you was playin’, or I would have waited,” said the servant, respectfully, who had learned long ago never under any circumstances to interrupt her master at his practice.
“I was not playing.”
“Warn’t it you, sir? It was so dark I could not see.”
“Me? no; nor any body else. No one was playing.”
“Why, I thought I heard—but it must have been the wind,” said Margery, glancing across her shoulder to the vacant piano-stool. “I thought I heard music just as I opened the door.—The room is ready, sir.” Franz bent over the sofa and raised the sleeping form in his arms. Turning to Margery, he said,—
“She is light. Here, carry her up and put her to bed. Don’t waken her if you can help it, and go to her once or twice in the night to see that she sleeps, for she is not well.”
Then he added, as an abrupt explanation,—
“She will occupy that room always. This is to be her home, and I want you to see that she has every thing necessary.”
“Yes, sir.”
If the old servant was surprised at the announcement, she made no remark. She took her up, arranged every thing for the night, and the child never awakened.
It was not an unpleasant expression that spread itself upon the face of the woman as she stooped over the bed, and laid with a careful hand every fold about the sleeper. With noiseless feet she came again and again to look once more at the unconscious form that seemed to possess for her a singular attraction. Taking up the lamp, she turned to go into her own (the adjoining) room, but, with an abrupt start, she checked herself midway in the action, held the light suspended, and stood with every muscle arrested, as if some unexpected sound had fallen suddenly on her ears. Then she bent her head for a moment over the sleeper, glanced quickly about the room, and hurriedly crossed to the hall.
She ran down the flight of stairs, looked first into the piano-room, then into the parlor opposite. Both places were deserted, and the instruments closed. The front door was bolted, and the master had evidently retired. She went back to the guest-chamber. The child still slept, and Margery held every nerve in suspense, but there was not the least sound. She stepped to the window, pushed up the sash, then leaned out and listened. The night was perfectly calm. What gentle breeze there had been two hours before had died away and left a profound silence unbroken even by the chirp of an insect. She closed the shutter, went back to the bedside again for an instant; then, saying quietly to herself, “It must have been mere fancy,” passed out to her own room, and left the door partially open between the two apartments.
II.
So the little Alice had found a home. All the people in Pickaway expressed their utter surprise at this unexpected generosity of the penurious music-master. He certainly was about the last person in the town from whom such an act might have been anticipated. Indeed, it was little short of an enigma to the place. But their astonishment knew no bounds when, within a few days after he had taken the little girl, he quietly dismissed all his pupils, and steadily refused to give any more lessons to a single soul. Nothing could prevail upon him, no entreaties whatever could persuade him, and he could never be induced to offer the least explanation.
Some of the wealthier ones, unwilling to give him up, had voluntarily proposed to pay double the former price, but even money, which all the village had thought the god of his life, failed to move him from his determination. He was inexorable. Every body wondered what might be the reason. No person could discover any apparent cause why he should so suddenly give up teaching. They inquired about his health. It was very good, he said. Did he expect toleave home? No. He would continue to play the church-organ? Yes, oh, yes; he had no intention of stopping that. So they conjectured until tired of the task, while Franz Erckman paid no attention.
However, as the days grew into weeks, and the weeks into months, all the village saw that a change had come over the organist. He was less communicative than formerly, and more severely reserved.
From the borders of the creek the fringe of scarlet flowers had vanished. The myriad leaves had lost their rainbowed glory, and dropped, one after another, in russet tatters to the ground. The woodbine had thrown off its vermilion raiment, and now stretched up unclothed its weird and snake-like arms. The group of maples had laid down its golden crown; the hills, too, had cast aside their tiara of brilliant emerald. The Summer and Fall, in all their emblazoned splendor, had passed by, and the gorgeous livery of Autumn faded to the grizzled hues of Winter.
Up the tawny valley a bleak December wind swept, making a cheerless rattle among the naked trees, and the creek slumbered quietly beneath its covering of ice; but this time no children came over the frozen turnpike to the house at the foot of the hill. More secludedthan ever it seemed. Before the bitter winds had risen, in the pleasant November days, Franz had often rambled through the woods, carrying the little Alice, when she felt tired, in his arms. But, as the air grew chill, they staid almost wholly within the house. After that Franz rarely left it except when his duties as organist called him to the church, and then he invariably took the little girl with him, wrapped carefully in a heavy cloak.
The people noticed that he was never seen any where without the child. If the weather proved bad on the Sabbath, or on the days when he went sometimes during the week to play, he still carried her with him, but an additional fur mantle was thrown around her for protection. She had never grown stronger; but, since that first night, when the organist had broken down the great barrier of grief that was closing up like a strong wall about her heart, they were seldom separated in her waking hours.
During all this time Franz had changed so strangely that the village gossips said one would hardly have known him for the same person. To be sure, he had always been silent and reserved, but now he had become absolutely inapproachable. His manner, which was naturally abrupt, was often now wild and feverish. His face, too, had grown thin, his cheeks hollow,his whole figure gaunt. His eyes, brilliant but sunken, had assumed a singular expression of unrest, a perpetually searching look, as if forever striving to see the invisible, and it began finally to be whispered about among the people that the church-organist was not quite right in his head. They noticed, besides, that he would never allow the child to be enticed out of his sight. The ladies often tried to pet her, but she shrank invariably from every one except Franz, to whom she clung as if he were the one prop that sustained her life.
So the time had worn away at the musician’s home. Margery, respectful as ever in her manner, assiduously waited upon the little girl, who received all her attentions gratefully, and never voluntarily made a single demand. But there had passed a change over the old servant also. From her usually quiet ways she had become restless, as if there might be something upon her mind that rendered her constantly uneasy, or from which she was ineffectually trying to free herself. If she were sour or cross in disposition, as all the scholars used to tell, she had never shown it to the little orphan. She watched the child with a strange devotion. She would follow her about the house at a distance, and, if the little girl for a time sat down upon the veranda, Margery, too, farther off, would sit there withher sewing, or embrace that opportunity to trim the woodbine, and once or twice she had even found an excuse to intrude herself for a moment in the parlor.
Every evening, when she put the little girl to bed, Margery, with a strange, expectant look upon her face, would linger about the room long after her charge had fallen into a peaceful sleep. Then, when she had retired, often in the very middle of the night, she would suddenly waken from a sound slumber, spring out of bed, and, before she was thoroughly conscious, discover herself standing beside the child, with her head bent down in a listening position, and every nerve strained to catch the slightest sound. Immediately she would rundown stairs into the music-rooms, only to find them both deserted and the instruments closed. With a white countenance she would return, pause once more in the child’s room, and then lie down again, saying to herself, for the hundredth time,—
“It must be mere fancy. I have been dreaming.”
There was no element of superstition in Margery, but this incident would recur over and over, night after night, until she began to ask herself if, before she had reached sixty years, she was already losing her mind, and this the first fancy of a disordered imagination. It wasstrange, she told herself, that she should dream the same thing so often, and every time it should be so vivid, for she heard a strain of music as distinctly as she ever heard a sound in her life, though it was not like the piano, organ, or, indeed, any instrument. And, though vivid, it was so evanescent it made her doubt the veracity of her senses. Then, too, it never came from down stairs, or out-of-doors, but always seemed apparently to emanate from the bedside of the little child, though, as soon as she had stooped to listen, it was gone, and the reign of silence again left supreme. Once or twice, even during the day, when standing beside the little Alice, Margery had heard, or thought she heard, a sudden waft of this soft melody sweep by her, but so fleeting that it was gone before she could catch her breath to listen, or be sure it was not simply all her own imagination.
So, with this constantly upon her mind, Margery had grown restless, and found herself continually watching the little girl. She was not insensible either of the great change that had, by some means or other, been wrought in her master since the child had come into the house. She, as well as the people, had noticed that he would never, if possible, allow her out of his sight. He never played a night now by himself as he had been used to doing for years.After the child went to bed the instruments were always closed, for he never put his hand upon the keyboard unless she were present. And, even when he had her beside him, he did not seem happy.
The people at church said, as he had changed, his music, too, had changed; but, as he had grown more wild and feverish in manner, his music had grown more softened and beautiful in style. And once, after he had played a dreamy harmony that held them all entranced, he had come down from the organ-gallery with a fierce fire burning in his eyes, and hands that trembled violently, though they were clasped tight over the little girl in his arms. When they had complimented him he looked bewildered, and spoke in a confused way, as though he could not remember what he had been playing. Now, more convinced than ever were the people that something was evidently wrong with the music-master, and, notwithstanding he had lost nothing in his art, many shook their heads, and whispered that poor Erckman was, beyond a doubt, going crazy.
December had worn almost into Christmas. In every house of the village there were preparations for the approaching holiday. The church, too, was undergoing some mysterious process at the hands of the young people, who went inand out at all hours by the back way, and steadily refused admittance to any one. They had even closed the doors against the organist when he went there one morning to play, but he was easily persuaded to withdraw, as he cared far more for solitude than society.
Franz sat moodily by the fire in his parlor, with the little girl upon a cushion at his feet. They were both naturally silent, and would often sit quietly together for hours. But now, though the musician gazed absently into the grate, and seemed to take no heed of the child, she looked up once or twice into his face, then said, in a timid voice,—
“Father, to-morrow is Christmas.”
Franz had long ago taught her to call him father, and he merely answered mechanically, without taking his eyes from the illuminated coals,—
“Yes.”
“How dark the night is out, and how shrill and bleak the wind blows!” She had risen from her seat and gone to the window. “But to-morrow is Christmas-day, and I know it will be bright then; oh, I am sure it will be bright!”
She stood a moment longer by the casement without speaking, then came back and sat down again, looking almost as ethereal as some spirit,that might vanish any moment forever into the glow of the red firelight.
“You will play something very beautiful to-morrow, will you not, father? You will make the voluntary better than all the service besides? Oh, for such a celebration, it ought to be the most magnificent music in the world, for, think, father, it will be Christmas, the grandest day in all the year! It seems to me I can hardly wait to hear you, I have been looking forward to it so long. But, father, you have not practised any for it, have you?” said the child, looking up suddenly with quick dismay upon her features.
Franz, still without glancing at the little girl, or taking his eyes from the fire, said,—
“No,” but he clasped his hands nervously together.
“Oh, father, you did not forget about it, did you?” she asked eagerly. “I have so often and often thought of it, though I did not say any thing, but it is strange I never once thought about the practising. Oh, you could not have forgotten it, father?”
She was so intensely earnest, it seemed as if her whole soul was in the question, trembling while it awaited the reply.
“No, I have not forgotten it,” said Franz, “It has hardly been out of my mind one momentfor many weeks; but I have nothing to play.”
At first, her face had been perfectly radiant; but, when he added the last clause, she got up, put her arms about his neck, and said, with a kind of terror in her voice,—
“Oh, no, no! You will play, father—tell me you will play!”
Franz moved uneasily in his seat.
“And it will be something grand, father. Oh, you will please everybody—I am not afraid of that. Quick, tell me you will play. Father, if you did not—I can not bear to think of it—oh, you will—say you will!”
Her entreaty had fairly grown into wild desperation. Every fiber of her frame quivered as she clung to him. Alarmed at her singular agitation, he took her up on his knee, and said, hurriedly,—
“Yes, yes; I will play. Do not be troubled about it; I will play.”
“Oh, I am so glad! I knew you would, and it will be grand, I am sure, for to-morrow is Christmas!”
Her face was radiant with pleasure; but so extreme had been her excitement that nearly an hour later, when Margery came to take her upstairs, she still trembled.
Franz, left alone, paced the floor of his roomup and down, sometimes stopping to look moodily into the fire. He had had this thing long upon his mind. Feeling the divine power of genius within him, he was not willing to play over again what generations had played over a hundred times before him. Yet he tried unavailingly to improvise. Once or twice, when playing, with the little Alice beside him, he had suddenly entranced even himself; but as soon as he undertook to reproduce the notes, either upon paper or upon the organ, he discovered them gone from his memory, and himself utterly powerless. It had only been latterly that he felt hampered in this way; yet he was conscious, notwithstanding, that his music at the same time had undergone a vast improvement. But he struggled against this one fault vainly. He had been determined to work out a new composition for this great occasion; and now, upon the very verge of Christmas-day, after all his unceasing anxiety, he found himself without a single idea—wholly unprepared. In his disappointment, he had almost been ready to absent himself altogether from the church; but the sudden appeal of the little girl had compelled him to give up this cowardly refuge, of which in a better mood he would have been ashamed.
The child had not prophesied incorrectly.Under cover of night, the clouds marshaled themselves into gray battalions, which fled precipitately before the lances of the morning, that in resplendent array, column upon column, mounted the eastern sky; and Christmas—this day forever sacred to the world in its grand memories—dawned with the blaze of victorious colors.
Bathed in sunlight, the crystal valley wreathed itself with brilliant jewels; the sparkling trees held up their embossed arches of frosted silver; and from the glittering hill-sides cold flakes of fire burned in diamond hues almost blinding to the eye—for a slight fall of snow during the night had spread itself over the land, and covered it as with a mantle of transfiguration.
The bell in the tower had long been ringing out its invitation to worship, before Franz, carrying the little Alice on his arm, left the house. A singular eagerness rested on the face of the child, whose usually pale cheeks were now colored with a crimson flush that deepened almost to scarlet in the center. She held quietly to Franz, sometimes looking at him for a moment, then turning her eyes again toward the village.
Though she said no word, it seemed as if she could hardly wait until they reached the church,but that her impatient spirit would break its bounds and fly. But Franz walked with a slow, unwilling step. A fierce despair appeared to be consuming him. His disappointment was made keener when he saw the wild expectation with which the little Alice looked forward to his music, and her confident belief that it would be far grander than any thing he had ever done before.
The villagers, by groups, in twos, in threes, with happy faces, coming from far and near, poured into the church. Paying no heed to any one as he passed, Franz entered by the side door, and went immediately up into the organ-gallery. With glad eyes, the little Alice saw the church in its festival decorations. Beautiful wreaths of cedar coiled themselves around the great pillars, and crept in waving lines over altar, arch, and casement, their unfading green sometimes flecked with amber, sometimes dyed in violet light, as the rays of the sun caught the tints from the windows of stained glass. Resting against the center of the chancel rail, a magnificent cross of hot house flowers loaded the air with the perfumes of summer—an incense more pure and holy than the incense of myrrh; and on either side sprays of English ivy, in long and twining branches, displayed their wax-like leaves.
The last vibrations of the bell died away. The congregation chanted its anthem; the minister read the Christmas service; and the first strains of the organ-voluntary, after the close of the litany, sounded through the church. The little Alice, with a throbbing pulse, crept close to Franz as he played; but it was only the familiar music, that the world already knew by heart, and had heard a thousand times before. Poor Franz, warring against himself, had been driven back to the composition of others, though he knew he possessed within him a power that should have created, that should have raised him above all written measure. But now even his execution was a dead, mechanical labor.
A swift expression of keen disappointment fell upon the child’s face. She looked up at him, with a gesture, slight but strangely appealing, and with eyes filled by a sorrowful reproach—such a look as one might wear in the last moment, whose most cherished friend had suddenly turned and dealt him a death-blow.
But Franz played on mechanically, with the pang of despair at his heart. Suddenly, half-way in a bar, in the very midst of a single note almost, a sensation of fear came upon him—an overwhelming awe that seemed to lock his muscles and turn his hands into stone. The organ ceased abruptly; he sat motionless as astatue; and a death-like silence reigned throughout the church. Had the same unaccountable awe fallen upon the congregation, too? The whole universe waited.
Out of the profound silence a sound was born, a sound more beautiful than the music of a dream. Soft as a whisper, clear and distinct, it grew, wave upon wave, into a grand volume of harmony, that was not loud, though it seemed as if it reached beyond the church-walls and floated on through endless space. Was it, then, music from that land where the crystal air breathes a perpetual melody? The people by one impulse sprang to their feet, and turned with awe-stricken faces toward the gallery. Grander, more majestic, it swelled into a glad chorus, whosegloria, inspired with praise, rose up into heaven. It was an adoration of sublime joy that seemed too intense to be ascribed to mortal spirit; and the people fell upon their knees while they listened. Over plains, over hills, in the sky, it seemed to reverberate and answer back, sweeter than the sound of silver, vaster than the roll of ocean—the hallelujah of myriad voices, the song as of an innumerable multitude,—
“Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men—”
Again and again the refrain gathered into ameasure more triumphant than the strains of a victorious army. Then, ascending higher and higher, it fainted through infinite distance, and was gone as if it had passed beyond the very portals of eternity.
The spellbound audience hardly moved for a moment, even after the music had died; but when the first stir broke the silence they collected about the organist with eager questions. Franz, still sitting at his instrument, had never turned. Anxious to testify their wild admiration, they were ready almost to bow down before him; but they were obliged to speak several times before he gave the slightest heed. Then he looked up abruptly and said with a strange impatience,—
“Did not you see?”
There was a confused expression in his eyes, as if they might have been blinded by a great light, and their vision not yet wholly recovered. The people looked at him, then at each other in bewilderment, but, as if he had suddenly comprehended their meaning, he went on quickly,—
“It was not I. I did not play a note. It was the music of another world, the music of the first Christmas. Did not you see the host of angels in the sky, and the shepherds that watched their flocks by night upon the plains of Judea? It was thegloriasung at thenativity of Christ by the angels centuries ago, beside the village of Bethlehem!”
Then the people, regarding him with doubtful faces, drew back, and he said, with fierce excitement,—
“If you do not believe, ask the little Alice there. She will tell you.”
The little girl sat close to his bench, but when they turned to her she made no reply. They raised her up. Their question never received an answer, and Franz with a wild cry fell upon his knees by her side. The child was dead.
For many years afterward the musician lived on in the old place at the foot of the hill, but he never again could be prevailed upon to strike a note of any instrument or listen to a strain of any music. More rarely than ever did he speak to a soul, and then it was only at the Christmas time, to tell again of the little Alice, his spirit of sound, to tell of that wonderfulgloriaof immortal praise sung by a multitude of the heavenly hosts, whose splendor, almost blinding to his eyes, had lighted up earth and sky over the far-off plains of Palestine, where the shepherds, centuries ago, were watching their flocks by night.
Strangers heard his tale with a scarcely concealed smile, and shook their heads sorrowfully as the old man, feeble and palsied, with asingular brilliance in his sunken eyes, turned away. But all the villagers spoke of him with respect, almost with awe, and the children learned to hush their mirth in reverence as he passed by. Margery, with a face quieter than ever, said little, but served her master with an untiring devotion, and after she had closed his eyes in death, when she was an old, old woman, sometimes in the evening she would suddenly break her long silence to tell a wondering group of Franz and the little Alice, and of the mysterious melody that played about the child.
And so the people of Paint Valley relate the story yet, and show the graves in the long grass of the village church-yard, where, side by side, they wait to join at the last day the throng whose immortalgloriashall surpass even that grand Christmas anthem—the song of the angels heard by the shepherds upon the plains of Judea.