For the Blood Is the Life. Francis Marion Crawford

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      CHAPTER V.

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      The moon rose higher and higher in the cloudless sky, bathing the terrace in silver and lending in her turn to men the light she borrowed from heaven. For some minutes no one spoke, and it was as though all nature lay in a trance while the visions of heaven passed by. It was the hour when in eastern lands the lotus unfolds its heavy leaves, to take up the wondrous dream broken by the scorching day; it was the hour when in the laurel groves of Italy the nightingale raises her voice in long-drawn weeping for her sister's murdered son, in passionate sorrow for the blood she has shed and can never more wash away; the hour when the mighty dead come forth from their tombs beneath the dark cathedral aisles and kneel before the high altar where the transepts meet the nave, and where the moonbeams from the stained windows of the lofty dome make pools of blood-red light upon the marble floor.

      All the party were silent, realising perhaps in that moment the whole beauty of the scene. Heine leaned back in his chair and looked steadily at the moon, resting his elbows on the carved arms of the seat and clasping his delicate white fingers before him.

      Suddenly and without the least warning a wonderful strain of music broke the silence. Some one was playing on the piano in the great hall, and through the open windows the sounds floated out to the terrace. No one dared to speak, though all started in surprise. It was a wild Polish mazoure, fitful, passionate and sad, woven in strange movement, now sweeping forward in a burst of fervid hope, full of the rush of the dance, the ring of spurs, the timely measured tread of women's feet, the indescribable grace of slender figures in refined yet rapid motion — the whole breathing a reckless delight in the pleasure of the moment, a defiant power to be glad in the very jaws of death. Then with the contrast of true passion the pace slackens, the melody sways fitfully in the uncertain measure and sadness, waking in the harmony, trembles despairing for one moment in the muffled chords, while even love hardly dares to breathe sweet words in the ear of tired beauty. But again the dance awakes, the stronger rhythm breaks out again and dashing through the veil of melancholy, seizes on body and soul and whirls them down the storm of wild, luxurious, and wellnigh unbearable delight.

      "That must be by Chopin!" exclaimed Diana. "But I never heard Gwendoline play it — "

      She stopped short in surprise. She had imagined that Gwendoline had slipped away to the piano during the silence, but as she looked she saw her in her place.

      "It is by Chopin," answered Heine with a smile. "It is Chopin himself."

      All rose to their feet and hastened to the drawing-room ; Gwendoline reached the door first.

      At the piano sat a man with a fair and beautiful face, dressed much as Heine himself but with far greater elegance. There was about him a wonderful air of distinction, an unspeakable atmosphere of refinement and superiority over ordinary men. He had the look which tradition ascribes to kings, but which nature, in royal irony, more often bestows upon penniless persons of genius. His fair hair was fine and silky as spun gold; his skin transparent as a woman's; his features delicately aquiline and noble, and in his soft eyes there shone a clear and artistic intelligence, a spirit both gentle and quiet, yet neither weak nor effeminate, but capable rather of boundless courage and of heroic devotion when roused by the touch of sympathy.

      He rose as the party approached him, and they saw that he was short and very slender. He smiled, half apologetically, and made a courteous inclination.

      "Perhaps the introduction of a dead man is hardly an introduction at all," he said in a muffled voice, which, however, was not unpleasant to the ear. "I will save my friend Heine the trouble — I am Frederic Chopin."

      Gwendoline, in her delight at meeting her favourite composer, would gladly have pressed him to remain at the piano, but hospitality forbade her.

      She sat down and the others followed her example. The two dead men glanced at each other in friendly recognition and took their places in the circle. They looked so thoroughly alive that it was impossible to feel any uneasiness in their society, and perhaps none but Augustus and Lady Brenda, who had touched Heine's icy hand, realised fully the strangeness of the situation. But Chopin was perfectly at his ease. He did not seem to admit that his presence could possibly cause surprise. He sat quietly in his chair and looked from one to the other of his hosts, as though silently making their acquaintance.

      "What an ideal life! " he exclaimed. "If I could live again I would live as you do — in a beautiful place over the sea, far from noise, dust and all that is detestable."

      "It is a part of fairyland," answered Heine. "Do you remember ? It was only last year that we came here together and sat on the rocks and tried to think what the people were like who once lived here, and whether any one would ever live here again. And you wished there were a piano in the old place — you have your wish now."

      "It is not often that such wishes are realised," said Chopin. "It is rarely indeed that I can touch a piano now, though I hear much music. It interests me immensely to watch the progress of what Mozart began."

      "It sickens me to see what has grown in literature from the ruins of what I helped to demolish," answered Heine.

      "Believe me, my dear friend," returned the musician, "without romance there is neither music nor literature."

      "What do you mean by romance, exactly? " asked Gwendoline, anxious to stimulate the conversation which had been begun by the two friends.

      "Heine will give you one definition — I will give you another," answered Chopin.

      "I never really differed from you," said his friend. " But give your definition of romance. I would like to hear it."

      "It is the hardest thing in the world to define, and yet it is something which we all feel. I think it is based upon an association of ideas. When we say that a place is romantic we unconsciously admit that its beauty suggests some kind of story to our minds, most generally a love-story. Such scenery is not necessarily grand, but it is necessarily beautiful. I do not think that a man standing on the summit of Mont Blanc would say that it was a romantic spot. It is splendid indeed, but it is uninhabited and uninhabitable. It suggests no love-story. It is hugely grand and vast like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or like the great pyramid. But it is not romantic. There is more romance in a Polish landscape — with a little white village in the foreground surrounded by flat green fields and green woods, cut symmetrically in all directions by straight, white roads, and innocent of hills — one may at least fancy a fair-haired boy making love to a still fairer girl, just where the brook runs between the wood and the meadow. No — Mont Blanc is not romantic. Come down from the snow-peaks — here for instance, where the wild rocks hang and curl in crests like a petrified whirlpool, but where the walls of this' old castle suggest lives and deeds long forgotten. You have romance at once. From the grey battlements some Moorish maiden may have once looked her last upon the white sails of her corsair lover's long black ship. The fair young Conradin may have lain hidden here before Frangipani betrayed him to his death in Naples. Here Bayard came, perhaps, after the tournament of Barletta. Here Giovanna may have rested — she may even have plotted here the murder of her husband—"

      "I did not know you were such an historian," interrupted Heine with a smile.

      "I have learned much since I died," answered Chopin, quietly. " But I am encroaching on your ground. I only want to prove that it is easy to see the СКАЧАТЬ