University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.
“THE MAIDEN TO THE HARPER'S KNEE.”

The sun of a summer's day had just sunk beneath the horizon, leaving the
western sky a-flood with a golden glow unflecked by clouds, while sea
and earth lay hushed beneath the grand calm that ever falls with such a sunset.
Clouds, gorgeous though they may be, cannot but detract from this calm—cannot
but disturb the unity, the conviction of eternity, that fills the heaven and crowns
the earth in its presence. The cloudy sunset is a grand spectacle of nature—
the golden glow that seems to draw us into itself and on to Eternity, is Space
illumined by Divinity. Against this sunset the trees crowning the summits of
the western hills lined themselves almost leaf by leaf, while Mount Lion, standing
sharply out in the foreground, loomed black and forbidding as the impious
height reared by Titans who would fain clamber to that glory's source. Higher,
the gold melted through a belt of tender green into the clear blue of the zenith,
while all the East was veiled in an amethystine mist, as rare as it was lovely in
its tint.

Out of the slumberous sea rose a moon rounded to its perfect circle, and
with her splendor fell upon earth and sea a benediction:

The tide was out, and upon the grey-ribbed sands lay many a wonder of the
deep. Shells, pebbles, mosses, of every delicate dye and graceful form, quivering
jelly fish and awkward insects, lobsters, crabs, horse-shoes, and one malevolent
squid or cuttle fish, who seized upon everything within his grasp, tearing
and crushing it to atoms.

Among these marine curiosities strolled a party of four young people, three
of them girls varying in age from twelve to seventeen, the fourth a lad of sixteen,
who divided his attention pretty equally between his companions and a
fine spaniel answering to the name of Otter, who seemed to ask no better amusement
than to obey his master's many and somewhat imperious mandates, frisking
now into the water, now up the rocky shingle at the head of the beach, now
forward and now backward, as he was ordered.

“Hark! There is music, an organ, I should think; where can it be?”
asked Claudia, a glowing brunette beauty, and the eldest of the three girls.

“Why, it is Cragness! Who would suppose we had come so far?” said
Francia, looking about her. “Just round that rock you will see the library window,
Claudia, built out over the water. That is all you can see of the house
from the beach.”

“Let us go on, then, and listen to the music. Does that old scarecrow of a
Gillies play like that?” asked her cousin, in contemptuous surprise, as she led
the way onward and paused at last directly beneath the deep bay window of the
library of Cragness.

The others followed, Francia skipping along beside Claudia, narrating in a
tone of lively gossip such particulars as were current in regard to Mr. Gillies's
mode of life, and adding comment and suggestion from her own merry wit.

Behind them walked Neria, a tall, slight girl, of a face and figure promising,
through the immaturity of their thirteen years, a development of rare loveliness.
With bent head, and eyes fixed upon the ocean and the rising moon, she seemed
to care as little for the lively chat of the girls in front as the rude play of the
boy and dog behind her.

Claudia, who had the sensuous love of music befitting her temperament,
paused beneath the window, and, imposing silence upon her companion, seated
herself upon the rocks to listen. Francia wandered down upon the sands, collecting
brilliant pebbles, in the next moment to be thrown away, and about midway
between them stood Neria, her hands locked together, her head drooping,
her dreamy eyes fixed upon the water, and a faint smile stirring her sensitive
mouth.

Beneath the hands of its master, the great organ poured out its soul in music,
exalting like the archangel who soars undazzled to the foot of the throne,
piling chord upon chord in massive harmony until great billows of sound swept
out upon the breathless air and surged up to the open gates of heaven. The
solemn ecstasy reached its height, and fell, through fine gradations, to a single
silvery melody, pure and sweet as the song the shepherds sung upon the heights
of Bethlehem; then wandered on through dreamy variations until of a sudden,
perhaps because the level rays of the rising moon now shot into the great bay
window, the wandering notes changed to a well-known strain, and a fine tenor
voice rolled out the notes of “Casta Diva;” while, combining with the severe
purity of the melody, the managed instrument rendered such complicated orchestral
effects that one could hardly believe one pair of human hands the only
media between human ears and the world of harmonious melody suddenly
opened to them.

The aria ended, the organist fell again into his dreamy fantasia, and now the
great organ wailed and sobbed as if the banished peri breathed forth her longing
and her sorrow through it; and tears, not to be withheld or explained, sprang
to the eyes of the listener. A quick transition, a handful of minor chords, deep
discords resolving into strong, hard tones, and a storm of passion, an infernal
rebellion, a contest of demons, was hurled out to the summer night, and swelled
wilder and louder, faster and fiercer, until Claudia rose to her feet, her cheeks
flushed, her eyes wide and bright with emotion, her lips arched and quivering.

Neria had sunk upon her knees, her face buried in her hands, and her slender
form shaken with irrepressible sobs.

“I must see this man—now, at once,” said Claudia, imperiously. “Neria,
come with me.”

But Neria did not move or speak, and Claudia, the impetuous, hastily climbed
the tortuous path leading to the brow of the cliff, and a moment after knocked
at the same door that, twelve years before, had been opened by Lazarus Graves
to admit the new master of Cragness to his lonely home. It was now opened
by a gaunt, middle-aged woman, who eyed the visitor with surprise and distrust.

“I wish to speak to Mr. Gillies,” said the young lady, briefly.

“Do? Well, I'll tell him, but I don't know as he ll come,” replied Nancy
Brume, curtly.

“No; I will go to him; he is playing on the organ, and I wish to hear him.”

“Hear him! You don't expect he's going to play with you a setting by, do
ye? Why, if he could help it, he wouldn't let the rats and mice in the old walls
hear him. I dursn't do it,” said Nancy, with a tone of awe in her voice, engrafted
there by her twelve years' residence under Mr. Gillies's roof.

“Nonsense; show me the way directly,” retorted Claudia, imperiously. “I
will explain everything myself.”

Without further remonstrance, Nancy turned and led the way up the long
passage, muttering.

“Have your own way and live the longer; but 'tain't the way gals acted when
I was young.”

Arrived at the door of the gallery dividing the library from the house, she
paused and, with the curt direction, “Straight ahead,” waited until Claudia had
entered, and then, closing the door upon her, went back to her own domain.

The young girl hesitated a moment, and then, with heightened color, passed
on, and, softly turning the latch of the library door, entered and stood within
the gloomy chamber.

The musician turned at the sound of the opening door and sat looking in
mute wonder at the brilliant apparition so suddenly vouchsafed him. And indeed
Claudia had never looked so beautiful as now, when a touch of maiden
shame softened the lustre of her eyes, trembled on her proud lips, and bowed
her regal head. So, as she stood, her white draperies and glowing beauty
thrown forward from the dusky shadows crowding up behind her, a tremulous
half-motion vibrating through her slender figure, her whole presence instinct
with youth's beautiful enthusiasm, she might have been the spirit of music
evoked and embodied by the artist's longing soul and magic touch.

John Gillies gazed speechless, and his very consternation restored to his
guest the advantage she had for a moment lost. She laughed a little rippling
laugh, and advanced to the centre of the room.

“Indeed, I could not help it, Mr. Gillies,” began she; “and if you often
make such music here by the sea as has drawn me hither, you must be too well
accustomed to visits from mermaids and nixies, or whatever spirits haunt these
old grey rocks, to wonder that a mere mortal was unable to resist the spell. My
name is Claudia Murray, and I am niece to Mr. Vaughn, of Bonniemeer. I love
music better than I do life, and I never heard such music as has floated from
this window in the last half hour. Now please sit down again and play to me.”

She threw herself as she spoke into a great arm chair beside the fire-place,
and

on the musician.

In silent obedience, he seated himself before the organ; but now the tones
were feeble and confused, expressing as faithfully as before the emotions of the
musician's soul, and therefore painful and unsatisfying. He ceased suddenly,
and, rising, closed and locked the doors of the instrument.

“I cannot play to listeners,” said he, half in humility, half in anger, as he
came and stood before his guest.

Claudia looked up and smiled.

“But you must learn,” said she, “for I am always coming to listen to you.

If I may not come here, I will sit outside upon the cold rocks beside the sea;
but listen I must.”

Gillies stood and looked at her with the same terrible wistfulness that we
have all seen in the eyes of some dumb creature struggling for the utterance
which nature has denied him. To borrow the distinction of a subtle psychologist,
the John Gillies as his Maker knew him experienced emotions which John
Gillies as men knew him could not express, and which John Gillies as he knew
himself could only half define. So he looked at Claudia and opened his lips,
but no words came.

Again the woman drew assurance from his discomfiture.

“You won't forbid my coming to hear you sometimes?” asked she, with a
bewildering smile.

“If I know you are here, I can never play,” said Gillies, hesitatingly.

“But you might—O, Mr. Gillies, if only you would!” and the listless figure
sprang upright and stood, with clasped hands, looking up into his face.

“If I would—” repeated he, perplexed.

“If only you would try to teach me a little.”

“I teach you!” and John Gillies turned pale and trembled visibly.

“Yes. I can play on the piano pretty well, I believe, and I know about music—the
mechanism, you know—but O, I never dreamed it had a soul till I heard
you just now.”

The shadows lifted from the musician's face, as his mind reverted to his own
most usual subject of thought. He forgot the strange and beautiful vision before
him, in contemplation of a beauty fairer, higher, sweeter than anything of
earth. The passion of his life swept away the admiration of a moment.

“It is only when we learn that music has a soul that we can interpret it to
the soul of another,” said he, serenely.

“But how learn it?” asked Claudia, passionately. “I have all my life studied
music, but never felt it until to-night.”

“Probably you have all your life studied an instrument and the technicalities
of science. If you had studied music as an art, you would have found her
soul long ago,” said the musician.

“Yes, that is it. I have studied the piano, I have never studied music; I
have never found anyone to teach me this art. O, sir, will you?”

Dark eyes swimming in tears, curved lips tremulous with feeling, clasped
hands, and a face pale with genuine emotion. Powerful agents, these, to work
upon the will of a man; but the eyes of the artist fell upon them now as calmly
as upon his own reflection in the mirror.

“I will try,” said he, briefly “But if I find that you are incapable of receiving
the ideas I shall try to communicate, I shall stop. No man can do more
for another than to show him the path. Each must tread it for himself.”

“I understand,” said Claudia, humbly; “and, though I may be stupid and
unappreciative, at least you shall not find me ungrateful.”

If she hoped to extort words of flattery from those dry lips, the wily coquette
was disappointed; for Mr. Gillies did not even glance at her as he said,

“I will try. Your may come here to-morrow at four o'clock. But do not
expect too much.”

“I will come, and I do expect a great deal,” said Claudia, joyfully, and, with
a graceful gesture of farewell, took her leave.