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

"That is because you have never loved," said Carl.

"That may be," said Arnold,—"because I have never loved anything but music. Still that does not satisfy me,—it scarcely gives me joy; it gives me only longing, and oftener despair. I listen to it alone, in secret, until I am driven by a strange desire to express it to a great world. Then, for a few moments, the praise and flattery of crowds delight and exalt me,—but only to let me fall back into greater despair, into remorse that I have allowed the glorious art of music to serve me as a cup of self-exaltation."

"You, Arnold, so unmoved by applause?" said Carl.

"It is only an outside coldness," answered Arnold; "the applause heats me, excites me, till a moment when I grow to hate it. The flatteries of a princess and her imitating train turn my head, till an old choral strain, or a clutch that my good angel gives me, a welling-up of my own genius in my heart, comes to draw me back, to cool me, to taunt me as traitor, to rend me with the thought that in self I have utterly forgotten myself, my highest self."

"These are the frenzies with which one has to pay for the gift of genius," said Carl. "A cool temperament balances all that. If one enjoys coolly, one suffers as coolly. Take these fits of despair as the reverse side of your fate. She offers you by way of balance cups of joy and pleasure and success, of which we commonplace mortals scarcely taste a drop. When my peasant-maiden Rosa gives me a smile, I am at the summit of bliss; but my bliss-mountain is not so high that I fear a fall from it. If it were the princess that gladdened me so, I should expect a tumble into the ravine now and then, and would not mind the hard scramble up again, to reach the reward at the top."

"It would not be worth the pains," said Arnold; "a princess's smiles are not worth more than a peasant-girl's. I am tired of it all. I am going to find another world. I am going to England."

"You are foolish," answered Carl. "The world is no different there; there is as little heart in England as in Germany,—no more or less. You are just touching success here; do give it a good grasp."

"I am cloyed with it already," said Arnold.

"It is not that," said Carl. "You are a child crying for the moon. You would have your cake and eat it too. You want some one who shall love you, you alone,—who shall have no other thought but yours, no other dream than of you. Yet you are jealous for your music. If that is not loved as warmly, you begin to suspect your lover. It is the old proverb, 'Love me, love my dog.' But if your dog is petted too much, if we dream in last night's strains of music, forget you a moment in the world you have lifted us into,—why, then your back is turned directly; you upbraid us with following you for the sake of the music,—we have no personal love of you,—you are the violin or the fiddlestick!"

"You are right, old Carl," said Arnold. "I am all out of tune myself. I have not set my inward life into harmony with the world outside. It is true, at times I impress a great audience, make its feelings sway with mine; but, alas! it does not impress me in return. There is a little foolish joy at what you call success; but it lasts such a few minutes! I want to have the world move me; I do not care to move the world!"

"And will England move you more than Germany?" asked Carl; "will the hearts of a new place touch you more than those of home? The closer you draw to a man, the better you can read his heart, and learn that he has a heart. It is not the number of friends that gives us pleasure, but the warmth of the few."

"In music I find my real life," Arnold went on, "because in music I forget myself. Is music, then, an unreal life? In real life must self always be uppermost? It is so with me. In the world, with people, I am self-conscious. It is only in music that I am lifted above myself. When I am not living in that, I need activity, restlessness, change. This is why I must go away. Here I can easily be persuaded to become a conceited fool, a flattered hanger-on of a court."

We need scarcely tell of the musician's career in England. We are already familiar with London fashionable life. We have had life-histories, three volumes at a time, that have taken us into the very houses, told us of all the domestic quarrels, some already healed, some still pending. It is easy to imagine of whom the world was composed that crowded the concerts of the celebrated musician. The Pendennises were there, and the Newcomes, Jane Rochester with her blind husband, a young Lord St. Orville with one of the Great-Grand-Children of the Abbey, Mr. Thornton and Margaret Thornton, a number of semi-attached couples, Lady Lufton and her son, the De Joinvilles visiting the Osbornes, from France, Miss Dudleigh and Sarona, Alton Locke, on a visit home, Signor and Signora Mancini, sad-eyed Rachel Leslie with her young brother, a stately descendant of Sir Charles Grandison, the Royal Family, and all the nobility. When everybody went,—every one fortunate enough to get a ticket and a seat in the crowded hall,—it would be invidious to mention names. It was the fashion to go; and so everybody went who was in the fashion. Then of course the unfashionables went, that it might not be supposed they were of that class; and with these, all those who truly loved music were obliged to contend for a place. Fashion was on the side of music, till it got the audience fairly into the hall and in their seats; and then music had to struggle with fashion. It had to fix and melt the wandering eyes, to tug at the worldly and the stony heart. And here it was that Arnold's music won the victory. The ravishing bonnet of Madam This or That no longer distracted the attention of its envying admirers, or of its owner; the numerous flirtations that had been thought quite worth the price of the ticket, and of the crushed flounces, died away for a few moments; the dissatisfaction of the many who discovered themselves too late in inconspicuous seats was drowned in the deeper and sadder unrest that the music awakened. For the music spoke separately to each heart, roused up the secrets hidden there, fanned dying hopes or silent longings. It made the light-hearted lighter in heart, the light-minded heavy in soul. Where there was a glimpse of heaven, it opened the heavens wider; where there was already hell, it made the abysses gape deeper. For those few moments each soul communed with itself, and met with a shuddering there, or an exaltation, as the case might be.

After those few moments, outside life resumed its sway. Buzzing talk swept out the memory of the music. One song from an opera brought thought back to its usual level. Men and women looked at each other through their opera-glasses, and, bringing distant outside life close to them, fancied themselves in near communion with it. The intimacy of the opera-glass was warm enough to suit them,—so very near at one moment, comfortably distant at the next. It was an intimacy that could have no return, nor demanded it. One could study the smile on the lip of one of these neighbors, even the tear in her eye, with one's own face unmoved, an answer of sympathy impossible, not required. Nevertheless, the music had stirred, had excited; and the warmth it had awakened was often transferred to the man who had kindled it. The true lovers of music could not express their joy and were silent, while these others surrounded Arnold with their flatteries and adoration.

He was soon wearied of this.

"I am going to America, to a new world," he said to his friend; "there must be some variety there."

"Perhaps so," said Carl,—"something new, something that is neither man nor woman, since they cannot satisfy you. Still I fancy you will find nothing higher than men and women."

"A new land must develop men and women in a new way," answered Arnold.

"If you would only look at things in my microscopic way," said Carl, "and examine into one man or one woman, you would not need all this travelling. But I will go as far as New York with you."

At New York the name of the musician had already awakened the same excitement as in other places; the concert-room was crowded; there was the same rush for places; the prices paid for the tickets seemed here even more fabulous. Arnold was more of a lion than ever. His life was filled with receptions, dinners, and evening parties, or with parlor and evening concerts. His dreamy, poetic face, his distant, abstracted manner, proved as fascinating as his music.

Carl tired of the whirl, and the adoration, of which he had his share.

"I shall go back to Germany," he said. "I shall go to my Rosa, and leave you your world."

"I am tired of my world. I shall go to the Far West," said Arnold, when Carl left him.

One day he went to a matinée at one of the finest and most fashionable houses in the place. There were beautiful women elegantly dressed, very exquisite men walking up and down the magnificently furnished drawing-rooms. The air was subdued, the voices were low, the wit was quiet, the motion was full of repose, the repose breathed grace. Arnold seated himself at the Steinway, at the half-expressed request of the hostess, and partly from the suggestions of his own mood. He began with dreamy music; it was heavy with odors, at first, drugged with sense, then spiritualizing into strange, delicate fancies. Then came strength with a sonata of Beethoven's; then the strains died back again into a song singing without words.

"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"—