Читать книгу Vashti; Or, Until Death Us Do Part - Augusta J. Evans - Страница 15

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“Salome, where did you learn to sing? I was astonished this morning when I heard you.”

“I have not yet learned,—I have only begun to practise.”

“But, my child, I had no idea you owned such a voice. Where have you kept it concealed so long?”

“I was not aware that I had it until a month ago, when it accidentally discovered itself.”

“It is very powerful.”

98

“Yes, and very rough; but care and study will smooth and polish it. Miss Jane, please keep your eye on Stanley until I come home; for, although I left him with his slate and arithmetic, it is by no means certain that they will not part company the moment I am out of sight.”

“Where are you going?”

“To carry back some work which would have been returned yesterday had not the weather been so inclement.”

In addition to the package of embroidered handkerchiefs, Salome carried under her arm a roll of music and an instruction-book; and, when she reached the outskirts of the town, turned away from the main street and stopped at the door of a small comfortless-looking house that stood without enclosure on the common.

Two swart, black-eyed children were playing mumble-peg with a broken knife, in one corner of the room; a third, with tears still on its lashes, had just sobbed itself to sleep on a strip of faded carpet stretched before the smouldering embers on the hearth; while the fourth, a feeble infant only six months old, was wailing in the arms of its mother,—a thin, sickly woman, with consumption’s red autograph written on her hollow cheeks, where the skin clung to the bones as if resisting the chill grasp of death. As she slowly rocked herself, striving to hush the cry of the child, her dry, husky cough formed a melancholy chorus, which seemed to annoy a man who sat before the small table covered with materials for copying music. His cadaverous, sallow complexion, and keen, restless eyes, bespoke Italian origin; and, although engaged in filling some blank sheets with musical notes, he occasionally took up a violin that lay across his knees, and, after playing a few bars, laid aside the bow and resumed the pen. Now and then he glanced at his wife and child with a scowling brow; but, as his eyes fell on their emaciated faces, something like a sigh seemed to heave his chest.

When Salome’s knock arrested his attention he rose and advanced to the half-open door, saying, impatiently,—

“Well, miss, have you brought me any money?”

“Good morning, Mr. Barilli. Here are the ten dollars that 99 I promised, but I wish you to understand that in future I shall not advance one cent of my tuition-money. When the month ends you will receive your wages, but not one day earlier.”

“I beg pardon, miss; but, indeed, you see—”

He did not conclude the sentence, but waved his hand towards the two in the rocking-chair and proceeded to count the money placed in his palm.

“Yes, I see that you are very destitute, but charity begins at home, and I have to work hard for the wages that you have demanded before they are due. Good morning, madam; I hope you feel better to-day. Come, Mr. Barilli, I have no time to waste in loitering. Are you ready for my lesson?”

“Quite ready, miss. Commence.”

For three-quarters of an hour he listened to her exercises, which he accompanied with his violin, and afterwards directed her to sing an air from a collection of songs on the table. As her deep, rich contralto notes swelled round and full, he shut his eyes and nodded his head as if in an ecstacy; and, when she concluded, he rapped his violin heavily with the bow, and exclaimed,—

“Some day when you sing that at Della Scala, remember the poor devil who taught it to you in a hovel. Soaked as those old walls are with music from the most famous lips the world ever applauded, they hold no echoes sweeter than that last trill. After all, there is no passion—no pathos—comparable to a perfect contralto crescendo. It is wonderful how you Americans squander voices that would rouse all Europe into a furore.”

“I am afraid your eager desire for pupils biases your judgment, and invests my voice with fictitious worth,” answered Salome, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Ha! you mean that I flatter, in order to keep you. Not so, miss. If St. Cecilia herself asked tuition without good pay, I should shut the door in her face; but, much as I need money, I would not risk my reputation by praising what was poor. If one of my children—that miserable little Beatrice, yonder—only had your voice, do you think I would copy music, or teach beginners, or live in this cursed hole? You 100 have a fortune shut up in your throat, and some day, when you are celebrated, at least do me the justice to tell the world who first found the treasure; and, out of your wealth, spare me a decent tombstone in the Campo Santo of—of—”

He laughed bitterly, and, seizing his violin, filled the room with mournful miserere strains.

“How long a course of training do you think will be necessary before the inequalities in my voice can be corrected and my vocalization perfected?”

“You are very young, miss, and it would not do to strain your voice, which is well-nigh perfect in itself; but, of course, your execution is defective,—just as a young nightingale cannot warble all its strains before it is full-feathered. If you study faithfully, in one year, or certainly one and a half, you will be ready for your engagement at Della Scala. Hist! see if you can follow me?”

He played a subtle, chromatic passage, ending in a trill, and the orphan echoed it with such accuracy and sweetness that the teacher threw down his bow, and, while tears stood in his glittering eyes, he put his brown hand on the girl’s head, and said, earnestly,—

“There ought to be feathers here instead of hair, for no nightingale, nestled in the olive groves of Italy, ever warbled more easily and naturally. Don’t go out to the world as Miss Owen,—make it call you Rosignuolo. Take the next page in the instruction-book for a new lesson, and practise the old scales over before you touch the new,—they are like steps in a ladder, and save jumps and jars. God made your voice wonderful, and, if you are only careful not to undo his work, it will develop itself every year in fresh power and depth. Ha! if my poor squeaking Beatrice only had it! But there is no more music stored in her throat and chest than in a regiment of rats. Good day, miss. Your lesson is ended, and I go to buy some wood for my miserable shiverers.”

He seized his hat and walking-stick and quitted the house, leaving his pupil to gather up her music and conjecture, meanwhile, whether the wood-yard or a neighboring bar-room was his real destination.

101

His dissipated habits had greatly impaired her faith in the accuracy of his critical acumen touching professional matters, and, as she rolled up the sheet of paper in her hands, Salome approached the feeble occupant of the rocking-chair, and said, rather abruptly,—

“Madam Barilli, you ought to know when your husband speaks earnestly and when he is merely indulging in idle flattery, and I wish to learn his real opinion of my voice. Will you tell me the truth?”

“Yes, miss, I will. I am no musician, and never was in Europe, where he studied; but he talks constantly of your voice, and tells me there is a fortune in it. Only last night he swore that if he could control it, he would not take a hundred thousand dollars for the right; and then, poor fellow, he fell into one of his fierce ways and boxed my little Beatrice’s ears, because, he said, all the teachers in the Conservatoire could not put into her throat the trill that you were born with. Ah, no, he flatters no one now! He has forgotten how, since the day that I was coaxed to run away from my father’s elegant home and marry the tenor singer of an opera troupe and the professor who taught me the gamut at boarding-school. Miss, you may believe him, for Sebastian Barilli means what he says.”

“One hundred thousand dollars! I promise him and you that if one-half of that amount can be ‘trilled’ into my pocket you shall both be comfortable during the remainder of your days.”

“Mine are numbered, and will end before your career begins; and, when you sing in Della Scala, I trust I shall be singing up yonder behind the stars, where cold and hunger and heart-ache and cruel words cannot follow me. But, miss, when I am gone, and Sebastian is over at the corner trying to drown his troubles, and my four helpless little ones are left here unprotected, for God’s sake look in upon them now and then, and don’t let them cry for bread. My own family long ago cast me off, and here I am a stranger; but you, who have felt the pangs of orphanage, will not stand by and see 102 my darlings starve! Oh, miss, the poor who cannot pity the poor must be hard-hearted indeed!”

The suffering woman pressed her moaning babe closer to her bosom, and, taking Salome’s hand between her thin, hot fingers, bowed her tear-stained face upon it.

Grim recollections of similar scenes enacted in the old house behind the mill crowded upon the mind of the miller’s daughter, hardening instead of melting her heart; but, withdrawing her fingers, she said in as kind a tone as she could command,—

“The poor are sometimes too poor to aid each other, and pity is most unpalatable fare; but, if your husband has not grossly deceived himself and me with reference to my voice, I will promise that your children shall not suffer while I live. For their sake do not despond, but try to keep up your spirits, else your husband will be utterly ruined. Gloomy hearthstones make club-rooms and bar-rooms populous. Good-by. When I come again, I will bring something to stimulate your appetite, which seems to require coaxing.”

She stooped and looked for a minute at the gaunt, white face of the half-famished infant pressed against the mother’s feverish breast, and an irresistible impulse impelled her to stroke back the rings of black hair that clustered on its sunken temples; then, snatching her music and bundle, she hurried out of the close, untidy room, and, once more upon the grassy common, drew a long, deep breath of pure fresh air.

Autumn, with orange dawns, and mellow, misty moons, when

“Sweet, calm days, in golden haze Melt down the amber sky,”

had died on bare brown stubble-fields and vine-veined hill-sides, purple with clustering grapes on leafless branches; and wintry days had come, with sleety morns and chill, crisp noons, and scarlet sunset banners flouting the silver stars in western skies, where the shivering, gasping old year had woven,—

“One strait gown of red Against the cold.”