Books: Ardath

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Nothing, indeed,--he had ceased, and was gravely bowing to the
audience in response to the thunder of applause, that, like a
sudden whirlwind, seemed to shake the building. But he had not
quite finished his incantations,--the last part of the Concerto
was yet to come,--and as soon as the hubbub of excitement had
calmed down, he dashed into it with the delicious speed and joy of
a lark soaring into the springtide air. And now on all sides what
clear showers and sparkling coruscations of melody!--what a broad,
blue sky above!--what a fair, green earth below!--how warm and
odorous this radiating space, made resonant with the ring of sweet
bird-harmonies!--wild thrills of ecstasy and lover-like
tenderness--snatches of song caught up from the flower-filled
meadows and set to float in echoing liberty through the azure dome
of heaven!--and in all and above all, the light and heat and
lustre of the unclouded sun!--Here there was no dreaming
possible, . . nothing but glad life, glad youth, glad love! With an
ambrosial rush of tune, like the lark descending, the dancing bow
cast forth the final chord from the violin as though it were a
diamond flung from the hand of a king, a flawless jewel of pure
sound,--and the Minstrel monarch of Andalusia, serenely saluting
the now wildly enthusiastic audience, left the platform. But he
was not allowed to escape so soon,--again and again, and yet
again, the enormous crowd summoned him before them, for the mere
satisfaction of looking at his slight figure, his dark, poetic
face, and soft, half-passionate, half-melancholy eyes, as though
anxious to convince themselves that he was indeed human, and not a
supernatural being, as his marvellous genius seemed to indicate.
When at last he had retired for a breathing-while, Heliobas turned
to Alwyn with the question:

"What do you think of him?"

"Think of him!" echoed Alwyn--"Why, what CAN one think,--what CAN
one say of such an artist!--He is like a grand sunrise,--baffling
all description and all criticism!"

Heliobas smiled,--there was a little touch of satire in his smile.

"Do you see that gentleman?" he said, in a low tone, pointing out
by a gesture a pale, flabby-looking young man who was lounging
languidly in a stall not very far from where they themselves sat,
--"He is the musical critic for one of the leading London daily
papers. He has not stirred an inch, or moved an eyelash, during
Sarasate's performance,--and the violent applause of the audience
was manifestly distasteful to him! He has merely written one line
down in his note-book,--it is most probably to the effect that the
'Spanish fiddler met with his usual success at the hands of the
undiscriminating public!'"

Alwyn laughed. "Not possible!"--and he eyed the impassive
individual in question with a certain compassionate amusement,--
"Why, if he cannot admire such a magnificent artist as Sarasate,
what is there in the world that WILL rouse his admiration!"

"Nothing!" rejoined Heliobas, his eyes twinkling humorously as he
spoke--"Nothing,--unless it is his own perspicuity! Nil admirari
is the critic's motto. The modern 'Zabastes' must always be
careful to impress his readers in the first place with his
personal superiority to all men and all things,--and the musical
Oracle yonder will no doubt be clever enough to make his report of
Sarasate in such a manner as to suggest the idea that he could
play the violin much better himself, if he only cared to try!"

"Ass!" said Alwyn under his breath--"One would like to shake him
out of his absurd self-complacency!"

Heliobas shrugged his shoulders expressively:

"My dear fellow, he would only bray!--and the braying of an ass is
not euphonious! No!--you might as well shake a dry clothes-prop
and expect it to blossom into fruit and flower, as argue with a
musical critic, and expect him to be enthusiastic! The worst of it
is, these men are not REALLY musical,--they perhaps know a little
of the grammar and technique of the thing, but they cannot
understand its full eloquence. In the presence of a genius like
Pablo de Sarasate they are more or less perplexed,--it is as
though you ask them to describe in set, cold terms the
counterpoint and thoroughbass of the wind's symphony to the
trees,--the great ocean's sonata to the shore, or the delicate
madrigals sung almost inaudibly by little bell-blossoms to the
tinkling fall of April rain. The man is too great for them--he is
a blazing star that dazzles and confounds their sight--and, after
the manner of their craft, they abuse what they can't understand.
Music is distinctly the language of the emotions,--and they have
no emotion. They therefore generally prefer Joachim,--the good,
stolid Joachim, who so delights all the dreary old spinsters and
dowagers who nod over their knitting-needles at the 'Monday
Popular' concerts, and fancy themselves lovers of the 'classical'
in music. Sarasate appeals to those who have loved, and thought,
and suffered--those who have climbed the heights of passion and
wrung out the depths of pain,--and therefore the PEOPLE, taken en
masse, as, for instance, in this crowded hall, instinctively
respond to his magic touch. And why?--Because the greater majority
of human beings are full of the deepest and most passionate
feelings, not as yet having been 'educated' OUT of them!"

Here the orchestra commenced Liszt's "Preludes"--and all
conversation ceased. Afterwards Sarasate came again to bestow upon
his eager admirers another saving grace of sound, in the shape of
the famous Mendelssohn Concerto, which he performed with such
fiery ardor, tenderness, purity of tone, and marvellous execution
that many listeners held their breath for sheer amazement and
delighted awe. Anything approaching the beauty of his rendering of
the final "Allegro" Alwyn had never heard,--and indeed it is
probable none WILL ever hear a more poetical, more exquisite
SINGING OF THOUGHT than this matchless example of Sarasate's
genius and power. Who would not warm to the brightness and
delicacy of those delicious rippling tones, that seemed to leap
from the strings alive like sparks of fire--the dainty, tripping
ease of the arpeggi, that float from the bow with the grace of
rainbow bubbles blown forth upon the air,--the brilliant runs,
that glide and glitter up and down like chattering brooks
sparkling among violets and meadow-sweet,--the lovely softer
notes, that here and there sigh between the varied harmonies with
the dreamy passion of lovers who part, only to meet again in a
rush of eager joy!--Alwyn sat absorbed and spellbound; he forgot
the passing of time,--he forgot even the presence of Heliobas,--he
could only listen, and gratefully drink in every drop of sweetness
that was so lavishly poured upon him from such a glorious sky of
sunlit sound.

Presently, toward the end of the performance, a curious thing
happened. Sarasate had appeared to play the last piece set down
for him,--a composition of his own, entitled "Zigeunerweisen." A
gypsy song, or medley of gypsy songs, it would be, thought Alwyn,
glancing at his programme,--then, looking towards the artist, who
stood with lifted bow like another Prospero, prepared to summon
forth the Ariel of music at a touch, he saw that the dark Spanish
eyes of the maestro were fixed full upon him, with, as he then
fancied, a strange, penetrating smile in their fiery depths. One
instant.. and a weird lament came sobbing from the smitten
violin,--a wildly beautiful despair was wordlessly proclaimed, . . a
melody that went straight to the heart and made it ache, and burn,
and throb with a rising tumult of unlanguaged passion and desire!
The solemn, yet unfettered, grace of its rhythmic respiration
suggested to Alwyn, first darkness,--then twilight--then the
gradual far-glimmering of a silvery dawn,--till out of the
shuddering notes there seemed to grow up a vague, vast, and cool
whiteness, splendid and mystical,--a whiteness that from
shapeless, fleecy mist took gradual form and substance, ... the
great concert-hall, with its closely packed throng of people,
appeared to fade away like vanishing smoke,--and lo!--before the
poet's entranced gaze there rose up a wondrous vision of stately
architectural grandeur,--a vision of snowy columns and lofty
arches, upon which fell a shimmering play of radiant color flung
by the beams of the sun through stained glass windows glistening
jewel-wise,--a tremulous sound of voices floated aloft, singing,
"Kyrie Eleison!--Kyrie Eleison!"--and the murmuring undertone of
the organ shook the still air with deep vibrations of holy tune.
Everywhere peace,--everywhere purity! everywhere that spacious
whiteness, flecked with side-gleams of royal purple, gold, and
ardent crimson,--and in the midst of all,--O dearest tenderness!--
O fairest glory!--a face, shining forth like a star in a cloud!--a
face dazzlingly beautiful and sweet,--a golden head, above which
the pale halo of a light ethereal hovered lovingly in a radiant
ring!

"EDRIS!"--The chaste name breathed itself silently in Alwyn's
thoughts,--silently and yet with all the passion of a lover's
prayer! How was it, he wondered dimly, that he saw her thus
distinctly NOW,--now, when the violin-music wept its wildest
tears--now when love, love, love, seemed to clamor in a
tempestuous agony of appeal from the low, pulsating melody of the
marvellous "Zigeunerweisen," a melody which, despite its name, had
revealed to one listener, at any rate, nothing concerning the
wanderings of gypsies over forest and moorland,--but on the
contrary had built up all these sublime cathedral arches, this
lustrous light, this exquisite face, whose loveliness was his
life! How had he found his way into such a dream sanctuary of
frozen snow?--what was his mission there?--and why, when the
picture slowly faded, did it still haunt his memory invitingly,--
persuasively,--nay, almost commandingly?

He could not tell,--but his mind was entirely ravished and
possessed by an absorbing impression of white, sculptured calm,--
and he was as startled as though he had been brusquely awakened
from a deep sleep, when the loud plaudits of the people made him
aware that Sarasate had finished his programme, and was departing
from the scene of his triumphs. The frenzied shouts and encores,
however brought him once more before the excited public, to play a
set of Spanish dances, fanciful and delicate as the gamboling of a
light breeze over rose-gardens and dashing fountains,--and when
this wonder-music ceased, Alwyn woke from tranced rapture into
enthusiasm, and joined in the thunders of applause with fervent
warmth and zeal. Eight several times did the wearied, but ever
affable, maestro ascend the platform to bow and smile his graceful
acknowledgments, till the audience, satisfied with having
thoroughly emphasized their hearty appreciation of his genius,
permitted him to finally retire. Then the people flocked out of
the hall in crowds, talking, laughing, and delightedly commenting
upon the afternoon's enjoyment, the brief remarks exchanged by two
Americans who were sauntering on immediately in front of Heliobas
and Alwyn being perhaps the very pith and essence of the universal
opinion concerning the great artist they had just heard.

"I tell you what he is," said one, "he's a demi-god!"

"Oh, don't halve it!" rejoined the other wittily, "he's the whole
thing anyway!"

Once outside the hall and in the busy street, now rendered doubly
brilliant by the deep saffron light of a gloriously setting sun,
Heliobas prepared to take leave of his somewhat silent and
preoccupied companion.

"I see you are still under the sway of the Ange-Demon," he
remarked cheerfully, as he shook hands, "Is he not an amazing
fellow? That bow of his is a veritable divining-rod, it finds out
the fountain of Elusidis [Footnote: A miraculous fountain spoken
of in old chronicles, whose waters rose to the sound of music,
and, the music ceasing, sank again.] in each human heart,--it has
but to pronounce a note, and straightway the hidden waters begin
to bubble. But don't forget to read the newspaper accounts of this
concert! You will see that the critics will make no allusion
whatever to the enthusiasm of the audience, and that the numerous
encores will not even be mentioned!"

"That is unfair," said Alwyn quickly. "The expression of the
people's appreciation should always be chronicled."

"Of course!--but it never is, unless it suits the immediate taste
of the cliques. Clique-Art, clique-Literature, clique-Criticism,
keep all three things on a low ground that slopes daily more and
more toward decadence. And the pity of it is, that the English get
judged abroad chiefly by what their own journalists say of them,--
thus, if Sarasate is coldly criticised, foreigners laugh at the
'UNmusical English,' whereas, the fact is that the nation itself
is NOT unmusical, but its musical critics mostly are. They are
very often picked out of the rank and file of the dullest Academy
students and contrapuntists, who are incapable of understanding
anything original, and therefore are the persons most unfitted to
form a correct estimate of genius. However, it has always been so,
and I suppose it always will be so,--don't you remember that when
Beethoven began his grand innovations, a certain critic-ass-ter
wrote of him, 'The absurdity of his effort is only equalled by the
hideousness of its result'."

He laughed lightly, and once more shook hands, while Alwyn,
looking at him wistfully, said:

"I wonder when we shall meet again?"

"Oh, very soon, I dare say," he rejoined. "The world is a
wonderfully small place, after all, as men find when they jostle
up against each other unexpectedly in the most unlikely corners of
far countries. You may, if you choose, correspond with me, and
that is a privilege I accord to few, I assure you!" He smiled, and
then went on in a more serious tone, "You are, of course, welcome
at our monastery whenever you wish to come, but, take my advice,
do not wilfully step out of the sphere in which you are placed.
Live IN society, it needs men of your stamp and intellectual
calibre; show it a high and consistent example--let no
eccentricity mar your daily actions--work at your destiny
steadily, cheerfully, serenely, and leave the rest to God, and--
the angels!"

There was a slight, tender inflection in his voice as he spoke the
last words,--and Alwyn gave him a quick, searching glance. But his
blue, penetrating eyes were calm and steadfast, full of their
usual luminous softness and pathos, and there was nothing
expressed in them but the gentlest friendliness.

"Well! I'm glad I may write to you, at any rate," said Alwyn at
last, reluctantly releasing his hand. "It is possible I may not
remain long in London; I want to finish my poem, and it gets on
too slowly in the tumult of daily life in town."

"Then will you go abroad again?" inquired Heliobas.

"Perhaps. I may. Bonn, where I was once a student for a time. It
is a peaceful, sleepy little place,--I shall probably complete my
work easily there. Moreover, it will be like going back to a bit
of my youth. I remember I first began to entertain all my dreams
of poesy at Bonn."

"Inspired by the Seven Mountains and the Drachenfels!" laughed
Heliobas. "No wonder you recalled the lost 'Sah-luma' period in
the sight of the entrancing Rhine! Ah, Sir Poet, you have had your
fill of fame! and I fear the plaudits of London will never be like
those of Al-Kyris! No monarchs will honor you now, but rather
despise! for the kings and queens of this age prefer financiers to
Laureates! Now, wherever you wander, let me hear of your well-
being and progress in contentment; when you write, address to our
Dariel retreat, for though on my return from Mexico I shall
probably visit Lemnos, my letters will always be forwarded.
Adieu!"

"Adieu!" and their eyes met. A grave sweet smile brightened the
Chaldean's handsome features.

"God remain with you, my friend!" he said, in a low, thrillingly
earnest tone. "Believe me, you are elected to a strangely happy
fate!--far happier than you at present know!"

With these words he turned and was gone,--lost to sight in the
surging throng of passers-by. Alwyn looked eagerly after him, but
saw him no more. His tall figure had vanished as utterly as any of
the phantom shapes in Al-Kyris, only that, far from being spectre-
like, he had seemed more actually a living personality than any of
the people in the streets who were hurrying to and fro on their
various errands of business or pleasure.

That same night when Alwyn related his day's adventure to
Villiers, who heard it with the most absorbed interest, he was
describing the effect of Sarasate's violin-playing, when all at
once he was seized by the same curious, overpowering impression of
white, lofty arches, stained windows, and jewel-like glimmerings
of color, and he suddenly stopped short in the midst of his
narrative.

"What's the matter?" asked Villiers, astonished. "Go on!--you were
saying,--"

"That Sarasate is one of the divinest of God's wandering
melodies," went on Alwyn, slowly and with a faint smile. "And that
though, as a rule, musicians are forgotten when their music
ceases, this Andalusian Orpheus in Thrace will be remembered long
after his violin is laid aside, and he himself has journeyed to a
sunnier land than Spain! But I am not master of my thoughts to-
night, Villiers; my Chaldean friend has perhaps mesmerized me--who
knows! and I have an odd fancy upon me. I should like to spend an
hour in some great and beautiful cathedral, and see the light of
the rising sun flashing through the stained windows across the
altar!"

"Poet and dreamer!" laughed Villiers. "You can't gratify that whim
in London; there's no 'great and beautiful' edifice of the kind
here,--only the unfinished Oratory, Westminster Abbey, broken up
into ugly pews and vile monuments, and the repellently grimy St.
Paul's--so go to bed, old boy, and indulge yourself in some more
'visions,' for I assure you you'll never find any reality come up
to your ideal of things in general."

"No?" and Alwyn smiled. "Strange that I see it in quite the
reverse way! It seems to me, no ideal will ever come up to the
splendor of reality!"

"But remember," said Villiers quickly, "YOUR reality is heaven,--
a, 'reality' that is every one else's myth!"

"True! terribly true!".. and Alwyn's eyes darkened sorrowfully.
"Yet the world's myth is the only Eternal Real, and for the
shadows of this present Seeming we barter our immortal Substance!"

CHAPTER XXXIX.

BY THE RHINE.

In the two or three weeks that followed his meeting with Heliobas,
Alwyn made up his mind to leave London for a while. He was tired
and restless,--tired of the routine society more or less imposed
upon him,--restless because he had come to a standstill in his
work--an invisible barrier, over which his creative fancy was
unable to take its usual sweeping flight. He had an idea of
seeking some quiet spot among mountains, as far remote as possible
from the travelling world of men,--a peaceful place, where, with
the majestic silence of Nature all about him, he might plead in
lover-like retirement with his refractory Muse, and strive to coax
her into a sweeter and more indulgent humor. It was not that
thoughts were lacking to him,--what he complained of was the
monotony of language and the difficulty of finding new, true, and
choice forms of expression. A great thought leaps into the brain
like a lightning flash; there it is, an indescribable mystery,
warming the soul and pervading the intellect, but the proper
expression of that thought is a matter of the deepest anxiety to
the true poet, who, if he be worthy of his vocation, is bound not
only to proclaim it to the world CLEARLY, but also clad in such a
perfection of wording that it shall chime on men's ears with a
musical sound as of purest golden bells. There are very few
faultless examples of this felicitous utterance in English or in
any literature, so few, indeed, that they could almost all be
included in one newspaper column of ordinary print. Keats's
exquisite line:

"AEea's Isle was wondering at the moon"..

in which the word "wondering" paints a whole landscape of dreamy
enchantment, and the couplet in the "Ode to a Nightingale," that
speaks with a delicious vagueness of

"Magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,"--

are absolutely unique and unrivalled, as is the exquisite
alliteration taken from a poet of our own day:

"The holy lark,
With fire from heaven and sunlight on his wing,
Who wakes the world with witcheries of the dark,
Renewed in rapture in the reddening air!"

Again from the same:

"The chords of the lute are entranced
With the weight of the wonder of things";

and

"his skyward notes
Have drenched the summer with the dews of song! ..."

this last line being certainly one of the most suggestive and
beautiful in all poetical literature. Such expressions have the
intrinsic quality of COMPLETENESS,--once said, we feel that they
can never be said again;--they belong to the centuries, rather
than the seasons, and any imitation of them we immediately and
instinctively resent as an outrage.

And Theos Alwyn was essentially, and above all things, faithful to
the lofty purpose of his calling,--he dealt with his art
reverently, and not in rough haste and scrambling carelessness,--
if he worked out any idea in rhyme, the idea was distinct and the
rhyme was perfect,--he was not content, like Browning, to jumble
together such hideous and ludicrous combinations as "high;--
Humph!" and "triumph,"--moreover, he knew that what he had to tell
his public must be told comprehensively, yet grandly, with all the
authority and persuasiveness of incisive rhetoric, yet also with
all the sweetness and fascination of a passioned love-song.
Occupied with such work as this, London, with its myriad mad
noises and vulgar distractions, became impossible to him,--and
Villiers, his fidus Achates, who had read portions of his great
poem and was impatient to see it finished, knowing, as he did,
what an enormous sensation it would create when published, warmly
seconded his own desire to gain a couple of months complete
seclusion and tranquillity.

He left town, therefore, about the middle of May and started
across the Channel, resolving to make for Switzerland by the
leisurely and delightful way of the Rhine, in order to visit Bonn,
the scene of his old student days. What days they had been!--days
of dreaming, more than action, for he had always regarded learning
as a pastime rather than a drudgery, and so had easily distanced
his comrades in the race for knowledge. While they were flirting
with the Lischen or Gretchen of the hour, he had willingly
absorbed himself in study--thus he had attained the head of his
classes with scarce an effort, and, in fact, had often found time
hanging heavily on his hands for want of something more to do. He
had astonished the university professors--but he had not
astonished himself, inasmuch as no special branch of learning
presented any difficulties to him, and the more he mastered the
more dissatisfied he became. It had seemed such a little thing to
win the honors of scholarship! for at that time his ambition was
always climbing up the apparently inaccessible heights of fame,--
fame, that he then imagined was the greatest glory any human being
could aspire to. He smiled as he recollected this, and thought how
changed he was since then! What a difference between the former
discontented mutability of his nature, and the deep, unswerving
calm of patience that characterized it now! Learning and
scholarship? these were the mere child's alphabet of things,--and
fame was a passing breath that ruffled for one brief moment the
on-rushing flood of time--a bubble blown in the air to break into
nothingness. Thus much wisdom he had acquired,--and what more? A
great deal more! he had won the difficult comprehension of
HIMSELF; he had grasped the priceless knowledge that man has no
enemy save THAT WHICH IS WITHIN HIM, and that the pride of a
rebellious Will is the parent Sin from which all others are
generated. The old Scriptural saying is true for all time, that
through pride the angels fell; and it is only through humility
that they will ever rise again. Pride! the proud Will that is left
FREE by Divine Law, to work for itself and answer for itself, and
wreak upon its own head the punishment of its own errors,--the
Will that once voluntarily crushed down, in the dust at the Cross
of Christ, with these words truly drawn from the depths of
penitence, "Lord, not as I will, but as Thou wilt!" is
straightway lifted up from its humiliation, a supreme, stately
Force, resistless, miraculous, world-commanding;--smoothing the
way for all greatness and all goodness, and guiding the happy Soul
from joy to joy, from glory to glory, till Heaven itself is
reached and the perfection of all love and life begins. For true
humility is not slavish, as some people imagine, but rather royal,
since, while acknowledging the supremacy of God, it claims close
kindred with Him, and is at once invested with all the diviner
virtues. Fame and wealth, the two perishable prizes for which men
struggle with one another in ceaseless and cruel combat, bring no
absolute satisfaction in the end--they are toys that please for a
time and then grow wearisome. But the conquering of Self is a
battle in which each fresh victory bestows a deeper content, a
larger happiness, a more perfect peace,--and neither poverty,
sickness, nor misfortune can quench the courage, or abate the
ardor, of the warrior who is absorbed in a crusade against his own
worser passions. Egotism is the vice of this age,--the maxim of
modern society is "each man for himself, and no one for his
neighbor"--and in such a state of things, when personal interest
or advantage is the chief boon desired, we cannot look for honesty
in either religion, politics, or commerce. Nor can we expect any
grand work to be done in art or literature. When pictures are
painted and books are written for money only,--when laborers take
no pleasure in labor save for the wage it brings,--when no real
enthusiasm is shown in anything except the accumulation of
wealth,--and when all the finer sentiments and nobler instincts of
men are made subject to Mammon worship, is any one so mad and
blind as to think that good can come of it? Nothing but evil upon
evil can accrue from such a system,--and those who have prophetic
eyes to see through the veil of events can perceive, even now, the
not far distant end--namely, the ruin of the country that has
permitted itself to degenerate into a mere nation of shopkeepers,
--and something worse than ruin,--degradation!