The Lost Stradivarius | Page 5

J. Meade Falkner
do not put away your violin yet. It is near twelve o'clock and
I shall get shut out, but I cannot stop to-night without playing the
Gagliarda. Suppose that all our theories of vibration and affinity are
wrong, suppose that there really comes here night by night some
strange visitant to hear us, some poor creature whose heart is bound up
in that tune; would it not be unkind to send him away without the
hearing of that piece which he seems most to relish? Let us not be
ill-mannered, but humour his whim; let us play the Gagliarda."
They played it with more vigour and precision than usual, and the now
customary sound of one taking his seat at once ensued. It was that night
that my brother, looking steadfastly at the chair, saw, or thought he saw,
there some slight obscuration, some penumbra, mist, or subtle vapour
which, as he gazed, seemed to struggle to take human form. He ceased
playing for a moment and rubbed his eyes, but as he did so all dimness
vanished and he saw the chair perfectly empty. The pianist stopped also

at the cessation of the violin, and asked what ailed him.
"It is only that my eyes were dim," he answered.
"We have had enough for to-night," said Mr. Gaskell; "let us stop. I
shall be locked out." He shut the piano, and as he did so the clock in
New College tower struck twelve. He left the room running, but was
late enough at his college door to be reported, admonished with a fine
against such late hours, and confined for a week to college; for being
out after midnight was considered, at that time at least, a somewhat
serious offence.
Thus for some days the musical practice was compulsorily intermitted,
but resumed on the first evening after Mr. Gaskell's term of
confinement was expired. After they had performed several suites of
Graziani, and finished as usual with the "Areopagita," Mr. Gaskell sat
for a time silent at the instrument, as though thinking with himself, and
then said--
"I cannot say how deeply this old-fashioned music affects me. Some
would try to persuade us that these suites, of which the airs bear the
names of different dances, were always written rather as a musical
essay and for purposes of performance than for persons to dance to, as
their names would more naturally imply. But I think these critics are
wrong at least in some instances. It is to me impossible to believe that
such a melody, for instance, as the Giga of Corelli which we have
played, was not written for actual purposes of dancing. One can almost
hear the beat of feet upon the floor, and I imagine that in the time of
Corelli the practice of dancing, while not a whit inferior in grace, had
more of the tripudistic or beating character than is now esteemed
consistent with a correct ball-room performance. The Gagliarda too,
which we play now so constantly, possesses a singular power of
assisting the imagination to picture or reproduce such scenes as those
which it no doubt formerly enlivened. I know not why, but it is
constantly identified in my mind with some revel which I have perhaps
seen in a picture, where several couples are dancing a licentious
measure in a long room lit by a number of silver sconces of the debased
model common at the end of the seventeenth century. It is probably a

reminiscence of my late excursion that gives to these dancers in my
fancy the olive skin, dark hair, and bright eyes of the Italian type; and
they wear dresses of exceedingly rich fabric and elaborate design.
Imagination is whimsical enough to paint for me the character of the
room itself, as having an arcade of arches running down one side alone,
of the fantastic and paganised Gothic of the Renaissance. At the end is
a gallery or balcony for the musicians, which on its coved front has a
florid coat of arms of foreign heraldry. The shield bears, on a field or, a
cherub's head blowing on three lilies--a blazon I have no doubt seen
somewhere in my travels, though I cannot recollect where. This scene, I
say, is so nearly connected in my brain with the Gagliarda, that
scarcely are its first notes sounded ere it presents itself to my eyes with
a vividness which increases every day. The couples advance, set, and
recede, using free and licentious gestures which my imagination should
be ashamed to recall. Amongst so many foreigners, fancy pictures, I
know not in the least why, the presence of a young man of an English
type of face, whose features, however, always elude my mind's attempt
to fix them. I think that the opening
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