Peter Ibbetson | Page 8

where they teach one how to invent.
So that, as he waited "for his ship to come home," he sang only to amuse his wife, as they say the nightingale does; and to ease himself of superfluous energy, and to charm the servants, and le P��re et la M��re Fran?ois, and the five followers of Napoleon, and all and everybody who cared to listen, and last and least (and most!), myself.
For this great neglected gift of his, on which he set so little store, was already to me the most beautiful and mysterious thing in the world; and next to this, my mother's sweet playing on the harp and piano, for she was an admirable musician.
It was her custom to play at night, leaving the door of my bedroom ajar, and also the drawing-room door, so that I could hear her till I fell asleep.
Sometimes, when my father was at home, the spirit would move him to hum or sing the airs she played, as he paced up and down the room on the track of a new invention.
And though he sang and hummed "pian-piano," the sweet, searching, manly tones seemed to fill all space.
The hushed house became a sounding-board, the harp a mere subservient tinkle, and my small, excitable frame would thrill and vibrate under the waves of my unconscious father's voice; and oh, the charming airs he sang!
His stock was inexhaustible, and so was hers; and thus an endless succession of lovely melodies went ringing through that happy period.
And just as when a man is drowning, or falling from a height, his whole past life is said to be mapped out before his mental vision as in a single flash, so seven years of sweet, priceless home love--seven times four changing seasons of simple, genial, prae-imperial Frenchness; an ideal house, with all its pretty furniture, and shape, and color; a garden full of trees and flowers; a large park, and all the wild live things therein; a town and its inhabitants; a mile or two of historic river; a wood big enough to reach from the Arc de Triomphe to St. Cloud (and in it the pond of ponds); and every wind and weather that the changing seasons can bring--all lie embedded and embalmed for me in every single bar of at least a hundred different tunes, to be evoked at will for the small trouble and cost of just whistling or humming the same, or even playing it with one finger on the piano--when I had a piano within reach.
Enough to last me for a lifetime--with proper economy, of course--it will not do to exhaust, by too frequent experiment, the strange capacity of a melodic bar for preserving the essence of by-gone things, and days that are no more.
Oh, Nightingale! whether thou singest thyself or, better still, if thy voice by not in thy throat, but in thy fiery heart and subtle brain, and thou makest songs for the singing of many others, blessed be thy name! The very sound of it is sweet in every clime and tongue: Nightingale, Rossignol, Usignuolo, Bulbul! Even Nachtigall does not sound amiss in the mouth of a fair English girl who has had a Hanoverian for a governess! and, indeed, it is in the Nachtigall's country that the best music is made!
[Illustration: "OH, NIGHTINGALE!"]
And oh, Nightingale! never, never grudge thy song to those who love it--nor waste it upon those who do not....
Thus serenaded, I would close my eyes, and lapped in darkness and warmth and heavenly sound, be lulled asleep--perchance to dream!
For my early childhood was often haunted by a dream, which at first I took for a reality--a transcendant dream of some interest and importance to mankind, as the patient reader will admit in time. But many years of my life passed away before I was able to explain and account for it.
I had but to turn my face to the wall, and soon I found myself in company with a lady who had white hair and a young face--a very beautiful young face.
Sometimes I walked with her, hand in hand--I being quite a small child--and together we fed innumerable pigeons who lived in a tower by a winding stream that ended in a water-mill. It was too lovely, and I would wake.
Sometimes we went into a dark place, where there was a fiery furnace with many holes, and many people working and moving about--among them a man with white hair and a young face, like the lady, and beautiful red heels to his shoes. And under his guidance I would contrive to make in the furnace a charming little cocked hat of colored glass--a treasure! And the sheer joy thereof would wake me.
Sometimes the white-haired lady and I would sit together at a square box from which she