Volume 16 / Part 4 — A Pearl Ashore.

By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”

If one should wish to enjoy perfectly a fugue of Bach's, this is perhaps as good a way as any: listen to it on a warm afternoon, in a Gothic Protestant church, in a quiet city street, with no one present but the organist and one's self. If any other enter, let him be velvet-footed, incurious, and sympathetic. It would be better if each listener could suppose himself to be the only listener there.

The wood-work of the church is dark, glossy, and richly carved. Rose, purple, and gold-colored panes strain the light that enters, full and glowing up in the roof, but dim below. On the walls, tinted with such colors as come to us from Eastern looms, and on the canvas of the old painters, are texts in letters of dull gold—those beautiful letters that break into bud and blossom at every turn, as though alive and rejoicing over the divine thought they bear. A sunbeam here and there, too slender to illumine widely, points its finger at a word, touches a dark cushion and brings out its shadowed crimson, or glimmers across the organ pipes, binding their silver with gold, as though Light would say to Song, “With this ring I thee wed!”

Those clustered, silvery pipes are surrounded by a border of dark, lace-like carving, and a screen of the same hides the keyboards. Through this screen shines the lamp on the music-desk. Some one is stirring there. You lean back on the cushions, so that the body can take care of itself. Mentally, you are quiescent with a delightful sense of anticipation. If the situation should represent itself to you fancifully, you might say that your soul is somewhat dusty and weary, and has come down to this beach of silence for a refreshing bath. Knowing what you are to hear, watery images suggest themselves; for in the world of music it is the ocean that Bach gives us, as Beethoven gives us the winds, and Handel the stately-flowing streams.

We have made a Protestant church our music-hall, because, though not the dwelling-place of God on earth, it is often the temple of religious art, and, having nothing within it to which we can prostrate ourselves in [pg 789] adoration, it can yet, by signs and images, excite noble and religious feeling. Indeed, we would gladly banish to such concert-rooms all that music, however beautiful in itself, which intrudes on the exclusive recollection proper to the house of God.

This, we repeat, is as good a way as any to hear a fugue of John Sebastian Bach's. So also thought Miss Rothsay; and she was one who ought to know, for she was a professional singer, and as sensitive musically as well could be.

It was an afternoon in early September, and she had only the day before reached her native city, after a prolonged residence abroad. Hers had been that happy lot which seems to be the privilege of the artist: her work, her duty, and her delight were the same. That which she must and ought to do she would have chosen above all things as her recreation. Now, with a perfected voice, and a will to use truly and nobly that gracious power, she had returned to her native land.

Her first contact with the New World had given her a slight jar. Utility seemed to mean here something rough and harsh, and the utility of beauty to be almost unrecognized. She had as yet met with only two kinds of people: those who regarded her talent as beautiful indeed and useful, in so far as it brought her money, but otherwise superfluous; and that yet more depressing class who were enthusiastic in hailing a new amusement, a new sensation, and who valued the singer as a necessity to elegant dissipation. As yet, she had met with no serious disciple of music.

Yet, when she stepped from her door to walk about, to renew her knowledge of familiar scenes, and make acquaintance with changed ones, she was pleased to perceive some of that tranquillity which, in her foreign life, had been so conducive to a steady growth in art. The fine streets she traversed were quiet, distant from the business world, and out of its track. The September air was golden, and the sun so warm as to make the shade welcome. Here and there, through openings between the houses, or at the ends of long avenues, were to be seen glimpses of country; and a thin haze, so exquisite that it might be the cast-off mantle of Beauty herself, half veiled, while it embellished, the landscape. It was quite in keeping to see an open church door. One who loitered on the steps explained that there was to be an organ recital, but could not say who the organist was to be.

Miss Rothsay entered, scarcely seeing her way at first, seated herself, and looked about. The atmosphere of the place suited her taste. None but noble and sacred images presented themselves. Art was there in its sublimity, and in its naïve simplicity. Here was a form full of austere beauty, there one whose grace verged on playfulness. The scene had the effect of a sacred picture, in the corner of which one can see children playing or birds on the wing.

Miss Rothsay, without knowing it, made, herself, a lovely picture in the place. Her oval, pale face was lighted by liquid gray eyes, now lifted, and drinking in the upper light. On her fair hair was set a foreign-looking black hat, turned up over the left temple with an aigrette and feather. A slight and elegant figure could be perceived beneath the dark-blue mantle.

Wondering a little, while she waited, who the organist might be, she ran over in her mind those she had known before going abroad. From [pg 790] that, dismissing the present, her thoughts glanced over those she had known abroad, and at last rested on one she had not seen nor heard of for eight years. Eight years before, Laurie had gone to Germany to study, and he was probably there yet. She recollected his face, more youthful than his years, and full of a dreamy beauty; the figure, tall and graceful, yet wanting somewhat in manly firmness. She heard again, in fancy, that changeful voice, so low, eager, and rich-toned when he was in earnest; she met again the glance of his sparkling blue eyes, full of frankness and enthusiasm. Where was he now?

Had he been a common acquaintance, she would have inquired concerning him freely; but he was a rejected lover, and she would not, by mentioning his name, remind people of that fact. Why had she rejected him? Simply because he had seemed to her not to reach her ideal. It had occurred to her since that time that possibly his manner and not his character had been at fault. At twenty years of age, she had been more mature than he at twenty-five. She liked an appearance of dignity and firmness, and had made the mistake often made by those older and wiser than herself, of thinking that dignity of soul must always be accompanied by a grave manner, and that an air occasionally or habitually demonstrative and variable, which is merely temperament, indicates a fickle or superficial mind. Sometimes, indeed, the strongest and most profound feelings, in reserved and sensitive persons, seek to veil themselves under an affectation of lightness or caprice, and the soul looks forth with a sad scorn through that flimsy mask on the hasty and egotistical judge who pronounces sentence against it.

“And you must love him, ere to you

He will seem worthy of your love,”

is true of some of the finest natures.

Miss Rothsay, during these eight years of her separation from Laurie, had more than once felt a misgiving on his account, lest she had done him injustice. Observing and studying the manners of those she met, she saw that what passed for dignity was sometimes only the distrustfulness of the suspicious, the caution of the worldly-wise, the unsympathizing coldness of the selfish, or the vanity of the conceited. She had lost not only her admiration, but her respect for that unchangeable loftiness which chills and awes the demonstrative into silence; and she had remembered, with a growing regret, Laurie's cordial ways, that seemed to expect friendliness and sympathy from all, and to appreciate the purity of his soul, that never looked for evil, and turned away from it when it intruded itself, and thus seemed scarcely aware that evil existed. Still she had been too deeply engrossed in her studies to give him much thought, and it was only now that she became conscious of regret.

Meantime, the organist had taken his place, and was arranging his music. The light of the lamp shone on a face wherein were exquisitely blended strength and refinement. One could see there passion purified by prayer, and enthusiasm too deep for trivial excitement. The face showed, too, when studied, that tranquil reserve, not without sadness, which is learned by those who have too often cast their pearls before swine, yet who do not despair of finding sympathy.

He placed the music, sat an instant in fixed recollection, as though he prayed, then lifted his tapering hands, so nervous, light, and powerful, and let them fall on the keys. [pg 791] To the listener beyond the screen, it was as though her reverie had been broken by a burst of thunder. Then the sea rolled in its waves of sound, strong, steady, a long, overlapping rhythm. What did it mean, that fugue? Did it symbolize the swift-coming assaults of evil that seek to drag the race of man downward, as the persistent sea eats away, grain by grain, the continents? Was it, perhaps, the ceaseless endeavor of the faithful will that, baffled once, returns ever to the charge, and dies triumphantly struggling? Did it indicate the generations of men flowing on in waves for ever, to break at the feet of God; or the hurrying centuries, cut short, at last, by eternity? However it might be interpreted, the music lifted and bore the listener on, and the silence that followed found her otherwhere than the last silence had left her. She was the same in nature, but her mood was higher; for music does not change the listener, it merely intensifies what is positive in his nature, whether it be good or bad, to its superlative degree.

Vibrating and breathless still with the emotion caused by that grand composition so grandly rendered, Miss Rothsay perceived a slip of paper on the cushion, and reached her hand for it. It proved to be a programme of the Recital. She glanced along the list, and read the name of the organist at the end—it was Duncan Laurie!

She heard, as in a dream, the soft-toned Vorspiele that followed, and only came back to music when the third number, a toccata, began. But the music had now to her a new meaning. It seemed to triumph over and scorn her. She heard through that melodious thunder the voice of Nemesis.

But when the closing piece, a noble concerto by Handel, sang out, it reproved that fancy of hers. There was no spirit of revenge nor mean triumph in Laurie's nature.

The audience, small and select, went out quietly. The organist closed the instrument, and prepared to follow, yet waited a moment to recover full consciousness of the everyday world he was going to meet. The air seemed to pulse about him still, and wings of flying melodies to brush his face. Never had he felt less inclined to meet idle compliment or talk commonplace. “I hope no one will wait for me,” he muttered, going out into the vestibule.

But some one was waiting, a pale-faced, lovely woman, who looked at him, but spoke not a word. The look, too, was short; for when he exclaimed and reddened up to the eyes, and held out a trembling hand, her eyes dropped.

There is a commonplace which is but the veil to glory or delight, like Minerva in her russet gown. The conventional questions that Laurie properly asked of the lady, as they walked on together, were of this sort. When did she come home? was as one should say, When did Joy arrive? When do the stars come? And the steamer that brought her could be as worthy of poetical contemplation as the cloud that wrapped a descending Juno, or the eagle that bore away a Ganymede.

Not long after, when some one asked them who was their favorite composer, each answered “Bach!” and, when alone together, each asked the other the reason for that answer.

“Because,” said the lady, blushing, “it was on the waves of one of Bach's fugues that I reached the Happy Islands.”

“And because,” returned the lover, “when some of Bach's music had rolled back into the ocean, it left a pearl ashore for me.”

[pg 792]