The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863

"You would like some dance-music now," said Arnold to the beautiful Caroline, who stood by his side. "Shall I play some music that will make everybody dance?"

"Like the music in the fairy-tale," said Caroline; "oh, I should like that! I often hear such dance-music, that sets me stirring; it seems as if it ought to move old and young."

"There are no old people here," said Arnold. "I have not seen any."

"It seems to me there are no young," answered Caroline.

"There are neither young nor old," said Arnold; "that is the trouble."

But he began to play a soft, dreamy waltz. It was full of bewitching invitation. No one could resist it. It passed into a wild, stirring polka, into a maddening galop, back again to a dreamy waltz. Now it was dizzying, whirling; now it was languishing, full of repose. Now it was the burst and clangor of a full orchestra; now it was the bewitching appeal of a single voice that invited to dance. Up and down the long room, across the broad room, the dancers moved. The room, that had been so full of quiet, was swaying with motion.

Caroline seized hold of the back of a chair to stay herself.

"It whirls me on; how dizzying it is! And you, would you not like to join in the dance? I would be your partner."

"The piano is my partner," answered Arnold. "Do you not see how it whirls with me?"

"Yes, everything moves," said Caroline. "Are Cupid and Psyche coming to join us? Will my great-grand-aunt come down to the waltz in her brocade? My sober cousin, and Marie, who gave up dancing long ago,—they are all carried away. It seems to me like the strange dance of a Walpurgis night,—as though I saw ghosts, and demons too, whirling over the Brocken, across wild forests. It is no longer our gilded drawing-room, with its tapestries, its bijouterie, its sound and light both muffled: we are out in the wild tempest; there are sighing pines, dashing waterfalls. Do you know that is where your music carries me always? Whether it is grave or gay, it takes me out into whirling winds, and tosses me in tempests. They call society gay here, and dizzying,—dance and music, show, excess, following each other; but it is all sleep, Lethe, in comparison with the mad world into which your music whirls me. Oh, stop a moment, Arnold! will you not stop? It is too wild and maddening!"

The strains crashed into discord, crashed into harmony, and then there was a wonderful silence. The dancers were suddenly stilled,—looked at each other with flushed cheek,—would have greeted each other, as if they had just met in a foreign land; but they recovered themselves in time. Nothing unconventional was said or done.

"Did I dance?" Marie asked herself,—"or was I only looking on?"

One of the dancers scarcely dared to look round, lest it should prove to be the great-grand-aunt's brocade that she heard rustle behind her; while another thanked her partner for a chair, with eyes cast down, lest it might be Cupid that offered it. But the room was the same; there was an elegant calm over everything. Tea-poys, light chairs, fragile vases have been undisturbed by crinoline even.

"Are you quite sure this Chinese joss was on this table, when the music began?" asked Marie's companion of her, whisperingly.

"Oh, hush, you don't think that danced, do you?" said Marie, with a shudder.

"I hardly know. I think the musician was on this side of the room a little while ago, piano and all."

"Don't talk so," replied Marie. "They are all going now. I am glad of it. You will be at the opera to-night? I must say I like opera-music better than this wild German stuff that sets one's brain whirling!"

"Heels, too, I should say," said her companion; and they took their leave with the rest.

The next afternoon Arnold was sitting in his room with the windows open. It was an early spring day, when the outer air was breathing of summer. He was thinking of how the beautiful, cold Caroline had spoken to him the day before,—of that wild, appealing tone with which she had called him Arnold. Before, always, she had given him no more than the greeting of an acquaintance. Now, the tone in which she had spoken took a significance. As he was questioning it, recalling it, he suddenly heard his own name called most earnestly and appealingly. There was a softness, and an agony too, in its piercing tone, as if it came straight from the heart. "Arnold! come, come back!" He hurried to the window, wondering if he were under the influence of some dream. He looked down, and found himself a witness to a scene that he could not interrupt, because he could not help, and a sudden word might create danger. It passed very quickly, though it would take many words to describe it. A piazza led across the windows of the story below, to a projecting part of the building, the sloping roof of which it touched. At the other end of the sloping roof, where it met an alley-way that opened upon a street beyond, there was a little child leaning over to look at some soldiers that were passing through the street across the alley. He was supporting himself, by an iron wire that served as a lightning-rod. Already it was bending beneath his weight; and in his eagerness he was forgetting his slippery footing, and the dizzy height of thirty feet, over which he was hanging. He was a little three year-old fellow, too, and probably never knew anything about danger. His mother had always screamed as loudly when he fell from a footstool as when she had seen him leaning from a three-story window.

The voice came from a girl, who, at the moment Arnold came to the window, was crossing the iron palisade of the piazza. She was on the slippery, sloping leads as she repeated the cry, in a tone earnest and thrilling,—"Dear Arnold, come in, only come, and George shall take you to the soldiers."

The boy only gave another start of pleasure, that seemed to loosen still more his support, crying out, "The drummer! Cousin Laura, come, see the drummer!"

But Laura kept her way along the edge of the roof, reached the child, seized him, and walked back across the perilous slope with the struggling boy in her arms. Arnold the musician had noticed, even in her hurrying, dangerous passage towards the child, the rich sunny folds of her hair, golden like a German girl's. Now, as she returned, he saw the soft lines of her terror-moved face, and the deep blue of her wide-opened eyes. Her voice changed as she reached the piazza, and set the child down in safety.

"Oh, Arnold, darling, how could you, how could you frighten me so?"

The child began to cry, because it was reproved, because its pleasure was stopped, and because Cousin Laura, pale and white, held to the railing of the piazza for support. But the mamma came out, Laura was lifted in, the boy was scolded, the windows were shut, and there was the end.

Arnold sat by the window, thinking. The thrilling tones of the voice still rang in his ear, as though they were calling upon him, "Arnold, come, come back!"

"If any voice would speak to me in that tone!" he thought; "if such a voice would call upon my name with all that heart in its depths!"

And he compared it with the tone in which Caroline had appealed to him the day before. Sometimes her voice assumed the same earnestness, and he felt as if she were showing him in the words all her own heart, betraying love, warmth, ardor. Sometimes, in comparison with that cry, her tones seemed cold and metallic, a selfish appeal of danger, not a cry of love. He found himself examining her more nearly than he had ever done before.

"Was she more than outwardly beautiful? Was there any warmth beneath that cold manner? Could she warm as well as shine?"

He remembered that she had often complained to him of her longing for sympathy; she had spoken to him of the coldness of the world, of the heartlessness of society. She had envied him his genius,—the musical talent that made him independent of the world, of the love of men and women. He could never appreciate what it was to be alone in the world, to find one's higher feelings misunderstood, to be obliged to pass from one gayety to another, to be dissatisfied with the superficiality of life, and yet to find no relief;—all this she had said to him.

But why was it so with her? She had a very substantial father and mother, who seemed to devote themselves to her wishes,—some younger brothers,—he had seen them pushed from the drawing-room the day of the matinée,—a sister near her age, not yet out. Caroline had apologized for her sister's crying while listening to his music. "She was unsophisticated still, and had not forgotten her boarding-school nonsense." Then, if Caroline did not enjoy city-life, there was a house in the country to which she might have gone early in the spring. She had, too, her friend Marie. She imparted to him some of Marie's confidences, her sad history; Marie must be enough of a friend to be trusted in return. In short, Caroline's manner had always been so conventional and unimpulsive, that these complaints of life had seemed to him a part of her society-tone, aa easily taken on and off as her bonnet or her paletot. They suited the enthusiasm that was necessary with music, and would be forgotten in her talk with Mr. Gresham the banker.

But she had called him by his own name: that had moved him. And now that another voice had given the words a tone he had not before detected in them, he began to question their meaning. Could Caroline put as much heart into her voice as this golden-haired Laura had shown? Could Caroline have exposed herself to danger as that girl had done? Perhaps any woman would have done it. Perhaps the princess would have ventured so, to save a child's life. Would he have ventured to do it himself? It could not have been a pleasant thing to walk on a pointed roof, with some half-broken spikes to catch one, in case of missing one's footing, or escaping the fall of thirty feet below. And that little frightened-looking, timid Laura, if he could only see her again!

He questioned whether this were not a possible thing. He had formed a slight acquaintance with Mrs. Ashton, who was occupying the rooms below; he had met her on the stairs, had exchanged some words with her. It struck him it would be a proper thing to offer her some tickets to his next concert. At this moment he was interrupted, was summoned away, and he deferred his intention until the next day.

The next day he presented himself at the door of Mrs. Ashton's parlor. She invited him to come in, cordially, and he was presented to her niece, who sat in the window with her work. Laura scarcely looked up as he entered, and went on with her crochet.

Presently Arnold opened his business.

"Would Mrs. Ashton accept some tickets for his concert that evening?"

Mrs. Ashton looked pleased, thought him very kind.

Arnold took out the tickets for herself, for Mr. Ashton. He offered another.

"Would her niece be pleased to go? would Miss"—

Laura looked up from her work and hesitated.

"She was much obliged, she didn't know, but she had promised her cousin to go to the theatre with him."

Mrs. Ashton, thinking the musician looked displeased, attempted to explain.

"Laura was not very fond of music. She did not like concerts very well. She seldom came to New York, and the theatre was a new thing to her."

"I do not wonder," said Arnold, withdrawing his ticket. "I sympathize with Mademoiselle in her love for the theatre; and concert-music is but poor stuff. If one finds a glimpse there of a higher style, a higher art, it is driven away directly by the recurrence of something trifling and frivolous."

Mrs. Ashton did not agree with the musician. She could not understand why Laura did not like concerts. For herself, she liked the variety: the singing relieved the piano, and one thing helped another.

Arnold looked towards Laura for a contradiction; he wanted to hear her defence of her philosophy, for he was convinced she had some in not liking music. To him every one had expressed a fondness for music; and it was a rarity, an originality, to find some one who confessed she did not like it.

But Laura did not seem inclined to reply; she was counting the stitches in her crochet. In the silence, Arnold took his leave.

He had no sooner reached his own room than he reproached himself for his sudden retreat. Why had he not stayed, and tried to persuade the young lady to change her mind? An engagement for the theatre with a cousin might have been easily postponed. And he would like to have made her listen to some of his music. He would have compelled her to listen. He would have played something that would have stirred all the audience; but for her, it would have been like taking her back to her peril of the day before,—she should have lived over again all its self-exaltation, all its triumph.

Laura meanwhile had laid down her work.

"I was stupid," she said, "not to take that ticket."

"I think you were," said her aunt, "when we know so many people who would give their skins for a ticket."

"It is not that," said Laura; "but I didn't want to go, till I saw the ticket going out of my grasp. I have always had such dreary associations with concerts, since those I went to with Janet, last spring,—long, dreary pieces that I couldn't understand, interrupted by Italian songs that had more scream in them than music, and Janet flirting with her friends all the time."

"I knew you didn't like music," said her aunt; "that was the only way I could get you out of the scrape, for it did seem impolite to refuse the ticket. Of course an engagement to the theatre appeared a mere excuse, as long as Laura Keene plays every night now."

"It was not a mere excuse with me," said Laura; "I did not fancy the exchange. But now I think I should like to know what his music is. I wonder if it is at all like mine."

"The music you make on the little old piano at home?" asked Mrs. Ashton; "that is sweet enough in that room, but I fancy it is different from his music."

"Oh, I don't mean that," said Laura; "it is because the piano seems to say so little that I care so little for it. The music I mean is what I hear, when, in a summer's afternoon, I carry my book out into the barn to read as I lie on a bed of hay. I don't read, but I listen. The cooing of the doves, the clatter even of the fowls in the barn-yard, the quiet noises, with the whisperings of the great elm, and the rustling of the brook in the field beyond,—all this is the music I like to hear. It puts me into delicious dreams, and stirs me, too, into strange longing."

"Well, I doubt if our great musician can do all that. Anyhow, he wouldn't bring in the hens and chickens," laughed Mrs. Ashton.

"But I should like to hear him, if he could show me what real music is," said Laura, dreamily, as her hands fell on her work.

"Well, I am sorry," said Mrs. Ashton, "and you might take my ticket: you can, if you wish. Only one concert is like another, and I dare say you would be disappointed, after all. I told Mrs. Campbell I should certainly go to one of his concerts, and I suppose Mr. Ashton will hardly care for the expense of tickets, now we have had them presented to us. And as I know that Mrs. Campbell is going to-night, she will see that I am there, so I should much prefer going tonight. But then, Laura, if you do care so much about it"—

Oh, no,—Laura did not care; only she was sorry she had been so stupid.

She was very much surprised, when, in the evening, towards the end of the performance at the theatre, the musician came and joined her party, and talked most agreeably with them. Even her cousin George did not resent his intrusion, and on the way home imparted to Laura that he had no doubt the musician's talk was pleasanter than his music.

Laura did not agree with him. She met with the musician frequently now, and his talk only made her more and more desirous to hear his music. He came frequently to her aunt's room; he joined her and her aunt at the Academy of Fine Arts many times. Here he talked to her most charmingly of pictures, as a musician likes to talk about pictures, and as a painter discusses music,—as though he had the whole art at his fingers' ends. It was the opening of a new life to Laura. If he could tell her so much of painting and sculpture, what would she not learn, if he would only speak of music? But he never did, and he never offered to play to them. She was very glad her aunt never suggested it. The piano in the drawingroom must be quite too poor for him to touch. But he never offered her another concert-ticket. She did not wonder that he never did, she had been so ungracious at first. She was quite ashamed that he detected her once in going to the Horse-Opera, he must think her taste so low. She wanted to tell him it was her cousin George's plan; but then she did enjoy it.

Arnold found himself closely studying both Caroline and Laura now. "Carl would be pleased at my microscopic examinations," he thought.

Frequently as he visited Laura, as frequently he saw Caroline. He was constantly invited to her house,—to meet her at other places. Yet the nearer she came to him, the farther he seemed from her. Can we more easily read a form that flees from us than one that approaches us? He talked with her constantly of music. She asked him his interpretation of this or that sonata. She betrayed to him the impression he had made with this or that fantasie. It was astonishing how closely she appreciated the vague changes of tones and words of music.

But with Laura he never ventured to speak of music. Whenever he played now, he played as if for her; and yet he never ventured to ask her to listen.

"It seems to me sometimes," said Caroline to him once, "as though you were playing to some one person. Your music is growing to have a beseeching tone; there is something personal in it."

"It must always be so," replied Arnold, moodily; "can my music answer its own questions?"

The spring days were opening into summer, the vines were coming into full leaf, the magnolias were in blossom, the windows to the conservatories at the street-corners were thrown open, and let out to sight some of the gorgeous display of bright azaleas and gay geraniums.

Arnold sat with Caroline at an Opera Matinée. A seat had been left for him near her. In an interval, she began to speak to him again of her weariness of life; the next week was going on precisely as the last had gone, in the same round of engagements.

"You will envy me my life," said Arnold. "I am going out West. I am going to build my own house."

"You are joking; you would not think of it seriously," said Caroline.

"I planned it long ago," answered Arnold; "it was to be the next act after New York,—the final act, perhaps. Scene I: The Log Cabin."

"How can you think of it?" exclaimed Caroline. "Give up everything? your reputation, fortune, everything?"

"New York, in short," added Arnold.

"Very well, then,—New York, in short; that is the world," said Caroline. "And your music, who is to listen to it?"

"My music?" asked Arnold; "that is of a subjective quality. A composer, even, need not hear his own music."

"I don't understand you," said Caroline; "and I dare say you are insane."

"You do not understand me?" asked Arnold, "yet you could read to me all that fantasie I played to you last night. It was my own composition, and I had not comprehended it in the least."

"Now you are, satirical," said Caroline.

"Because you are inconsistent," pursued Arnold; "you wonder I do not stay here, because my fortune can buy me a handsome house, horses, style and all its elegancies; yet you yourself have found no happiness in them."

"But I never should find happiness out of them," answered Caroline. "It is a pretty amusement for us who have the gold to buy our pleasures with, to abuse it and speak ill of it. But those who have not it,—you do not hear them depreciate it so. I believe they would sell out their home-evenings, those simple enjoyments books speak of and describe so well,—they would sell them as gladly as the author sells his descriptions of them, for our equipages, our grand houses, our toilet."

Arnold looked at his neighbor. Her hands, in their exquisitely fitting lilac gloves, lay carelessly across each other above the folds of the dress with which they harmonized perfectly. A little sweetbrier rose fell out from the white lace about her face, against the soft brown of her hair. Arnold pictured Laura gathering just such a rose from the porch she had described by the door of her country-home.

"Would you not have enjoyed gathering yourself that delicate rose that looks coquettish out of its simplicity?" he asked.

"Thank you, no," Caroline interrupted. "I selected it from Madame's Paris bonnets, because it suited my complexion. If I had picked the rose in the sun, don't you see my complexion would no longer have suited it?"

"I see you would enjoy life merely as a looker-on," said Arnold. "I would prefer to be an actor in it. When I have built my own house, and have digged my own potatoes, I shall know the meaning of house and potatoes. My wife, meanwhile, will be picking the roses for her hair."

"She will be learning the meaning of potatoes in cooking them," replied Caroline. "I would, indeed, rather be above life than in it. I have just enjoyed hearing Lucia sing her last song, and seeing Edgardo kill himself. I should not care to commit either folly myself. I pity people that have no money; I think they would as gladly hurry out of their restraints as Brignoli hurries into his everyday suit, after killing himself nightly as love-sick tenor."

"I would rather kill myself than think so," said Arnold.

This talk, which had been interrupted by the course of the opera, was finished as they left their seats. At the door, Mr. Gresham offered to help Caroline to her carriage. Arnold walked away.

"I would kill myself, if I could fancy that Laura thought so," he said, as he hurried home.

There was a cart at the door of the house, men carrying furniture on the stairs. The doors of Mrs. Ashton's rooms were wide-open; packing-paper and straw were scattered about.

"What is the matter?" he asked of his landlady.

"A gentleman has taken Mrs. Ashton's rooms. This is his grand piano."

"Mrs. Ashton! where is she?" asked Arnold.

"She left this morning. I should have been glad of further notice, but fortunately"—

"Where have they gone?" interrupted Arnold.

"Home. I don't know where. I can't keep the run."

"It is in New England. Is there a directory of New England?"

"A directory of New England! The names of its towns would make a large book!"

Arnold went to his room. If he could only recall the name of the town near which Laura lived! But American names had no significance. In Germany each town had a history. The small places were famous because they were near larger ones. And even in the smallest some drop of blood had been shed that had given it a name, or had made its name noted.

She had gone; and why had she gone without telling him?

If he could only have heard Mrs. Ashton's talk the evening before with her husband, he need not have asked the question.

"Do you know, dear, I think we had better leave New York directly,—tomorrow?"

Mr. Ashton looked inquiries.

"I don't like this intimacy with a foreigner. He really has been very devoted to Laura."

"And, pray, what is the harm?" asked Mr. Ashton.

"How can you ask? A foreigner, and we know nothing about him," answered Mrs. Ashton.

"But that he is the richest man in New York, quiet, inexpensive in his ways."

"If we were sure of all that! But I don't think her father would like it. I had a dream last night of Red Riding-Hood and the Wolf, and I haven't thought all day of anybody but Laura. We can get off early to-morrow. I have sent Laura to pack her things now."

"I'm afraid it is too late for her, poor girl!" said Mr. Ashton.

"She would be miserable, and her father would blame me, and I don't like it," said Mrs. Ashton. "And I am tired of New York."

"There's your dentist," suggested Mr. Ashton.

"I can come again," answered his wife.

Arnold's determination was made. He would visit every town in New England; he would cross every square mile of her territory. Of course he would find Laura. Since he should not stop till he found her, of course he would find her before he stopped.

He began his quest. He gave concerts in all the larger places; he looked anxiously through the large audiences that attended them,—hopelessly,—for how could he expect to find Laura among them? Often he left the railroads, to walk through the villages. It was the summer time, and he enjoyed the zest of climbing hills and wandering through quiet valleys.

He met with pleasant greetings in farm-houses, so far from the world that a stranger was greeted as a friend, where hospitality had not been so long worn upon but that it could offer a fresh cordiality to an unknown face. He wished he were a painter, that he might paint the pretty domestic scenes he saw: the cattle coming home at evening,—the children crowding round the school-mistress, as they walked away with her from the school-door,—the groups of girls sitting at sunset on the door-steps under the elms,—the broad meadows,—the rushing mountain-streams. But again, after the fresh delight of one of these country-walks, he would reproach himself that he had left the more beaten ways and the crowded cars, where he might have met Laura.

In passing in one of these from one of the larger towns to another, he met Caroline, on her bridal tour as Mrs. Gresham.

"You are not gone to Kansas yet?" she asked. "Then you will be able to come and visit us in Newport this summer. I assure you, you will find cottage-life there far more romantic than log-cabin life."

Of course he found success at last. It was just as summer was beginning to wane, but when in September she was putting on some of her last glories and her most fervid heats. He had reached the summit of a hill, then slowly walked down its slope, as he admired the landscape that revealed itself to him. He saw, far away among the hills in the horizon, the town towards which he was bound. The sunset was gathering brilliant colors over the sky; hills and meadows were bathed in a soft light. He stopped in front of a house that was separated from the road by a soft green of clover. By the gate there was a seat, on which he sat down to rest. It was all that was left of a great elm that some Vandal of the last generation had cut away. Nature had meanwhile been doing her best to make amends for the great damage. Soft mosses nestled over the broad, mutilated stump, the rains of years had washed out the freshness of its scar, vines wound themselves around, dandelions stretched their broad yellow shields above, and falling leaves rested there to form a carpet over it.

As Arnold, tired with his day's walk, was resting himself in the repose of the hour, the old master of the house came to talk with him. They spoke of the distance to the town, of the hilly road that led to it, of the meadows in the valley, and their rich crops. At last the old man asked Arnold into his house, and offered him the old-fashioned hospitality of a mug of cider, apologizing as he did so, telling how the times had changed, and what had become of all the cider-mills in the neighborhood. He showed the large stem of the sweetbrier under which they passed as they went into the house, such as Arnold had seen hanging over many a New-England porch, large enough for many initials to be carved upon it. They sat down in the little front-room, and talked on as the mother brought the promised mug of eider.

"Are you fond of music here?" asked Arnold, as he pointed to the old many-legged piano that stood at one side of the room.

"My girls play a little," answered the old man; "they have gone up to town this afternoon to get some tickets to that famous man's concert. They play a little, but they complain that the old piano is out of tune."

"That I could help," said Arnold, as he took his tuning-key out of his pocket.

"Oh, you are one of those tuners," said the old man, relieved; "my girls have been looking out for one."

Arnold seated himself at the piano. The old people went in and out of the room, but presently came back when he began to play. They sat in silent listening. "When Arnold came to a pause, the old man said,—

"That takes me back to the old meeting-house. Do you remember, wife, when I led in Dedham?"

"I," said the mother, "was thinking of that Ordination-ball, and of 'Money Musk' and 'Hull's Victory.'"

"That is strange enough," said the old man, "that it should sound like psalm-tunes and country-dances."

"It takes us back to our youth; that is it," she answered.

And Arnold went on. Soft home-strains came from the piano, and the two old people sank into their chairs in happy musing. The twilight was growing dimmer, the strains grew more soft and subdued, dying through gentle shades into silence. There had been a little rustling sound in the doorway. Arnold turned, when he had done, and saw a white figure standing there, in listening attitude, the head half bent, the hands clasped over a straw hat whose ribbons touched the ground. Behind her was the trellis of the porch, with its sweet-brier hanging over it. It was Laura, in the very frame in which his imagination had pictured her.

"Have the girls got home?" asked the old man, rousing himself, and going towards the door.—"Come in, girls. I half think we have got your great musician here. At any rate, he can work some magic, and has pulled out of the old piano all the music ever your mother and I have listened to all our life long.—My girls could not have hired me," he continued to Arnold, "to go to one of your new-fangled concerts; but whether it is because the little piano is so old, or because you know all that old music, you have brought it all back as though the world were beginning again.—We must not let him go from here to-night," he said to his wife and children. And when he found that Laura had met the musician in New York, his urgencies upon Arnold to stay were peremptory and unanswerable.