Читать книгу Time's Door - Esther Meynell - Страница 13

A day or two later in their travels they came to aMOUNTAIN CASTLE mountain Castle where Paganini was expected to play. It was a Castle set by the side of a lake—“eyes of the sea” these uplifted lakes were often called—and behind it climbed rich chestnut forests. A Princess lived there who loved music, and not only the members of her Court, but many others from the cities of the Plain were gathered round her upon this occasion to hear the far-famed Paganini.

It was evening when they arrived, and to Giovanni’s enchanted gaze was presented the scene of the Castle, every window glittering with light, and the whole great circle of the lake surrounded by servants bearing torches, each torch seen double in the reflecting flood, barely moving in its liquid surface, where fire shone in water and wavered faintly in the evening breeze.

Paganini, too, was impressed with the strange still beauty of the scene. “I shall play this,” he said to Giovanni, “My fiddle shall draw this picture.”

When all was ready for the concert, the chamber orchestra disposed, the audience arranged, the candles shining in clusters on the golden walls of the Music Salon, when a silence had fallen on all as Paganini stepped to the edge of the curved platform, bowed deeply, and was about to lift his violin to his chin, suddenly there was heard a curious trampling, a murmuring of subdued voices, a sense of urgency and many people crowding invisibly around. All were startled. The Princess’s cheek grew pale—since the Revolution in France the firm ordained foundations of the world seemed visibly shaken: she herself had lost by the guillotine an aunt, who as a brilliant girl had married a great noble at the Court of Marie Antoinette and perished with the Queen. She beckoned to her Chamberlain and bade him discover what all the trampling and movement without could mean.

In a few moments he returned.

“Madam,” he said, bending before her, “The courtyard is crowded with peasants, they have come from the mountain and from villages many miles away, and crave Your Highness’s permission that the windows may be opened wide so that perchance they may hear some notes of the violin of Maestro Paganini. They say he is Italian and they desire before they die to hear once their countryman.”

The Princess rose, she stepped across the space before the platform to where Paganini still stood as if he were turned to stone.

“Maestro,” she said and told him what had occurred, “Is it your pleasure that these people should hear you?—for if so I will admit them into the ante-chamber, so shall they hear better than through the windows, which are high up, and would in any case give them no sight of you.”

“It would be gracious, Princess,” PaganiniPAGANINI PLAYS answered, “And to me a pleasure to play to them.”

His mind swung back to his own humble origin, the poverty and harshness of his early days, his scorn for the silken people before him stirred within him. He was acquainted with courts, had been attached to that of Napoleon’s sister, the Princess of Lucca.

“I use these great ones, the rich and the powerful of the world,” he thought as he waited upon that platform, “I play to them and play upon them, and for this they pay me good gold. That is the only thing worth having in this existence.”

By this time the peasants were shuffling in, eagerness pushing, shyness holding back. The great carved doors between Music Room and ante-room were folded against the walls, so that the two rooms became one, and once more silence descended upon the strangely increased audience.

Once more Paganini lifted his violin to his shoulder, and when the last note faded into silence under his poised bow, there was a moment’s pause until the Princess raised her white hands and led the applause. For a minute or two it was the enthusiastic but elegant clapping to which polite ears are accustomed—then, their awe overcome by their excitement, horny hands and stamping feet broke in, making a storm of sound which drowned the applause of the Princess’s courtiers. Paganini bowed and bowed again in his gaunt and angular manner, his long arms holding fiddle and bow almost sweeping to the floor as he did so. He smiled at the Princess and said something, but the noise was too great for her to hear. Paganini tucked his violin under his arm, stepped off the platform, and walked down the length of the Music Salon to the thrown-back doors of the room beyond. This ante-chamber was crowded with brown faces and black eyes in which a deep inexhaustible life burned with elemental strength, as marked in the old faces—some of which in their deep wrinkles and leather-like skin seemed to have passed age into timelessness—as in the young ones. All crowded together were the coloured kerchiefs and striped petticoats of the women, the thick buckled shoes and earth-worn hands of the old men, the rich black curls and bold countenances of the young men. Tears stood in the eyes of some of the old women, and smiles were on the lips of all the young ones—but all, old or young, sad or happy, under his spell. “Viva Paganini!” they cried as with one throat.

Paganini stood between the two rooms, as between two worlds. He held up his hand. “Vi ringrazio,” he said, “And because you liked my playing I will now play you something I have myself made for you, something that came into my mind when I arrived here this evening and saw this Castle among the chestnut woods and the lake ringed all round with the fire of torches.”

His improvisation was a picture to them all. The most unlettered old peasant father saw and felt his meaning as well as could the most cultured musician. That was Paganini’s gift, and quite as much as his extraordinary technical fireworks explained his hold upon his hearers.

Giovanni was lifted out of the mortal world altogether. Everything that his wildest dreams had depicted was happening before his eyes.