Florence McLandburgh

“ Her eyes, dry and unnaturally bright, wore a startled look, a mute, beseeching expression, like the eyes of a wounded animal, and the pallor of her countenance, that had a wild grief branded upon it, was almost as ghastly in hue as death. It was suffering terrible to behold, and the hands of the strong man trembled as he opened the mahogany case of his organ.
There was a moment’s silence; then music, soft and sorrowful, floated out on the air gently, almost timidly; so very mournful, that the strain, beautiful though it was, seemed to have in it a human cry of pain. ”

“ But Franz played on mechanically, with the pang of despair at his heart. Suddenly, half-way in a bar, in the very midst of a single note almost, a sensation of fear came upon him—an overwhelming awe that seemed to lock his muscles and turn his hands into stone. The organ ceased abruptly; he sat motionless as a 279statue; and a death-like silence reigned throughout the church. Had the same unaccountable awe fallen upon the congregation, too? The whole universe waited.
Out of the profound silence a sound was born, a sound more beautiful than the music of a dream. ”

“ Then he would be awakened by the dog rubbing his nose against his face, and knew he had groaned aloud in his troubled slumber, and Caspar had crawled closer, as if to comfort his unhappy master. Sometimes the tempter whispered escape—escape from this Crib, which had been so correctly named, for it had, indeed, become a dismal cage. He felt himself strong to combat the waves in flying from the horrible solitude; he could swim twice the distance in his eagerness to be once again among his fellow beings; but his high principles shrank in horror from the thought of violating a promise. ”

“ My brain reeled, and all the forces of my nature gathered up their increased strength for one fierce and final conflict. I felt the blood rage through my veins with the headlong fury of cataracts. The very spring of life within me was stirred and troubled, when, with one mighty strain, I drew myself up and fell backward on the grass.
The whole world went out in utter darkness. Before my eyes stretched a vast, illimitable gloom, when suddenly out of its impenetrable depths above my head there grew and glimmered faintly a thin and wavering mist. ”

“ Had the soul of the deaf-mute come in retribution to haunt me and cry eternally in my instrument? Perhaps on the morrow it would not disturb me, but there was no difference. I could hear only it, though I drew out the trumpet for vibrations hundreds of years old. I had rid myself of the withered hag who would have stolen my treasure, but now I could not rid myself of her invisible ghost. She had conquered, even through death, and come from the spirit world to gain possession of the prize for which she had given up her life. ”

“ As I have said, the instrument possessed a singular fascination over me. I had grown to love it, not alone as a piece of mechanism for the transmission of sound, but like a living 40thing, and I replaced it in the tower with the same pleasure one feels who has rescued a friend from death. My listening ear never grew weary, but now I drew quickly away. It was not music I heard, or the ripple of water, or the prattle of merry tongues, but the harsh grating cries that had echoed in the church, that had rattled and died out in the forest—that voice which was not a voice. ”

“ Many times he had turned to it with a soul oppressed by despair reaching toward the Infinite. For, though the people did not know it, beneath the rough exterior of this reserved German dwelt a love of the beautiful—a love so passionate sometimes, it seemed crushing his very spirit that he could not give it utterance in his music. Then it was that often he would rise from his organ in bitter disappointment, and go out with his trouble to seek consolation from the night—the night forever wan with her own unspoken sorrow. ”

“ O, Germany! like this fair day you lured a bird high up into your sunshine, a bird with brilliant plumes in its wings; then, before it had sung one song from the pinnacle where it rested, blackening suddenly into a storm, you killed it. Reinhart, poor Reinhart! you lured high up into the fantastic light of psychology; then before he had reared one minaret upon the temple where he climbed, you darkened suddenly into a gigantic gloom that, rising up like a storm, overwhelmed him.
Yes, better had it been for Reinhart were the Suabians still dancing their dryad dances. ”

“ Those were pleasant days to Hannah. Then the sea, clear and calm, rounded out, a great circle of splendor, to the horizon; or on its surface the giant mists reared themselves, triumphant, in towering arches. Perhaps her thoughts went out beyond these mighty phantom aisles, seeking always the two loved ones across their portals, over the vast and solemn ocean. Sometimes when the sky was warm and the wind blew shoreward it seemed to bring faintly the scent of foreign flowers; for nearer now to her were those mystical lands where Summer, almighty Summer, sat upon an everlasting throne. ”

“ I bent my ear eagerly to the instrument again and heard—the soft rustle, the breathing as of a sleeping forest. A plaintive note stole gently out, more solemn and quiet than the chant of the leaves. The mournful lay, forlorn, frightened, trembled on the air like the piteous wail of some wounded creature. Then it grew stronger. Clear, brilliant, it burst in a shower of silver sounds like a whole choir of birds in the glitter of the tropical sunlight. But the mournful wail crept back, and the lonely heartbroken strain was lost, while the leaves still whispered to one another in the midnight. ”

“ The congregation chanted its anthem; the minister read the Christmas service; and the first strains of the organ-voluntary, after the close of the litany, sounded through the church. The little Alice, with a throbbing pulse, crept close to Franz as he played; but it was only the familiar music, that the world already knew by heart, and had heard a thousand times before. Poor Franz, warring against himself, had been driven back to the composition of others, though he knew he possessed within him a power that should have created, that should have raised him above all written measure. ”

“ The heavy perfume of the honeysuckle suddenly make her sick and faint. The tall and prickly cedar stood up straight 64and still, covered on one side with a fret-work of silver, on the other clothed with the very gloom of darkness, and somewhere from among its shadowy branches a dove, as if half wakened out of a dream, stirred, uttered its brooding note, then sank again to silence. Hannah had heard the same dove a hundred times before, she even knew that there were purple ripples on its neck, but this time she started violently and shivered. ”

“ Then the widow stayed her trembling hands for a moment in their flurried effort to tie her bonnet, and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, as she had done before, with the same strange gaze in her eyes. It always seemed as if she was dimly conscious, for the instant, that something was wrong, but even as the shadow flitted over her face, it was gone.
“Come,” she said, her countenance all brilliant with eager excitement, “hurry, we must not be late. I feel young and strong, and it will be such a glad surprise for him!” ”

“ On the river flowing past the lances of the sun broke into a thousand flakes of fire that followed each other over its surface in myriad ranks; and on either 229side, where the twisted birch reached out its branches, the waves with a grateful murmur turned up their cool white crests.
There was no loud hum of grasshoppers. Hardly a leaf stirred upon the trees, hardly a bird fluttered its wings. Even the far-off mists had disappeared, and a hush was on the hills—a hush as of awe before the splendor of the sky. ”

“ In the utter misery of his solitude, in his strange grief for the loss of the drowned corpse, and his terror from the hallucinations of a disordered intellect, he had neglected to feed his faithful dog, and had starved to death the only living creature that existed for him in the world. Caspar was dead.
Stahlmann in his agony seemed to hear once more the piteous cry which the dog had uttered with its expiring breath, and to him the wail sounded in its pathetic mournfulness like the mysterious herald of another death. ”

“ Occasionally a wild bird rose up and darted with swift wings, seeking a resting place, for already the September moon waited the coming night. Nearer, the tall weeds raised themselves from the great, soundless ocean of grass, like the masts of receding vessels. A single wagon, the only object on all the void prairie, stood out bold and sharp against the bright line of the horizon, and clearly defined above the driver, high up on top of the hay, the figure of a man cut the sky. Even at that distance I knew it was Boydell. ”

“ Then, ascending higher and higher, it fainted through infinite distance, and was gone as if it had passed beyond the very portals of eternity.
The spellbound audience hardly moved for a moment, even after the music had died; but when the first stir broke the silence they collected about the organist with eager questions. Franz, still sitting at his instrument, had never turned. Anxious to testify their wild admiration, they were ready almost to bow down before him; but they were obliged to speak several times before he gave the slightest heed. ”

“ The villagers, by groups, in twos, in threes, with happy faces, coming from far and near, poured into the church. Paying no heed to any one as he passed, Franz entered by the side door, and went immediately up into the organ-gallery. With glad eyes, the little Alice saw the church in its festival decorations. Beautiful wreaths of cedar coiled themselves around the great pillars, and crept in waving lines over altar, arch, and casement, their unfading green sometimes flecked with amber, sometimes dyed in violet light, as the rays of the sun caught the tints from the windows of stained glass. ”

“ The chords of the organ spoke to her when all earthly words failed. She, at least, can understand the language I have been striving to learn.”
Frail little creature! She appeared, indeed, like a spirit of some other world. Her every nerve had vibrated in sympathy, and Franz could hardly help thinking, as he looked at her, that, soundless to human ears, there played about her ceaseless strains of melody. Music seemed to be the vitality that gave her life, the only nourishment that fed her soul. ”

“ The spires of the town and the college campus glittered white, the fields of barley and oats were fields of snow, the forest leaves had withered and fallen, and the river slumbered, wrapped in a sheeting of ice. Still I brooded over my failure, and when again the wild grass turned green I no longer cared. I was not the same man that had looked out at the waving grain and the blue haze only a year before. A gloomy despondency had settled upon me, and I grew to hate the students, to hate the college, to hate society. ”

“ I placed the trumpet on the window-ledge, and, carrying the grim burden in my arms, plunged into the damp tangle of weeds and grass.
In a lonesome corner far back from the church, in the dense shade of thorn-trees, among the wild brambles where poisonous vines grew, slippery with the mould of forgotten years, unsought, uncared for by any human hand, was a tomb. Its sides were half buried in the tall underbrush, and the long slab had been broken once, for a black fissure ran zigzag across the middle. In my muscles that night there was the strength of two men. ”

“ Hannah had grown up the very picture of her mother when in her early girlhood, but young Tom was like his father. He was like his father in more respects than one, and while still a boy the people said he too will prove a sailor. They were right; though Miriam had struggled against it and watched over him with an absorbing care. She saw again developed in him the same wild fascination for the sea. She knew its strength and that it must prevail, and when he came and begged so hard, with the well remembered far-off look in his eyes, she felt all opposition would be vain. ”

“ A few vessels that had grown mysteriously upon the empty horizon, and come in over the vast waste of waters, were idly lying at anchor, each one biding her time to spread her sails in the breeze and recede upon her lonely course, going, as she had come, like some spirit of solitude, dropping down silently beyond the remote sea-reaches. There the Nereid swung herself gently over the long ground-swell, patiently awaiting the coming night when again to take up her watery track that would carry her over the great Atlantic to other lands and far-off harbors. ”

“ Soft as a whisper, clear and distinct, it grew, wave upon wave, into a grand volume of harmony, that was not loud, though it seemed as if it reached beyond the church-walls and floated on through endless space. Was it, then, music from that land where the crystal air breathes a perpetual melody? The people by one impulse sprang to their feet, and turned with awe-stricken faces toward the gallery. Grander, more majestic, it swelled into a glad chorus, whose gloria, inspired with praise, rose up into heaven. ”

“ More rarely than ever did he speak to a soul, and then it was only at the Christmas time, to tell again of the little Alice, his spirit of sound, to tell of that wonderful gloria of immortal praise sung by a multitude of the heavenly hosts, whose splendor, almost blinding to his eyes, had lighted up earth and sky over the far-off plains of Palestine, where the shepherds, centuries ago, were watching their flocks by night. ”

“ Only in the most beautiful weather did this fog lift from about them its clinging skirts, and slowly the damp mists trailed themselves off in long white plumes of down. At such times, floating idly in my skiff, I felt oppressed by the vast burden of their dreadful silence. I believe there is no greater solitude than that which sometimes at noon, when sea and sky are unwrinkled by wave or cloud, sits upon this mighty shore of desolate, desert rock. ”

“ A savage fierceness roused within me when I found she would not give up the instrument, and I rushed at her with hands ready to snatch back the prize I valued more than my life—or hers; but, quicker than a hunted animal, she turned and fled with it down the stairs, making the tower ring with the hideous cries of her wordless voice. Swiftly—it seemed as if the danger of losing the trumpet gave me wings to fly in pursuit—I crossed the vestibule. ”

“ Stahlmann found himself utterly alone on the wide lake, and the fierce blasts howled around his frame house, covering it with spray from the lashing billows that seemed ready to engulf it. Crusts of ice formed and snapped, rattling down to the waves. Heavy snow fell, but did not whiten the unchanging scenery, for it was drowned in the waste of waters. Night after night he lit the beacon and looked yearningly westward to the starred city. Then the solitude grew intolerable. ”