A Story of Aggravation [pp. 811-813]

self over the land, and covered it as with a
mantle of transfiguration.
The bell in the tower had long been ring ing out its invitation to worship before Franz,
carrying the little Alice on his arm, left the
house. A singular eagerness rested on the
face of the child, whose usually pale cheeks
were now colored with a crimson flush that
deepened almost to scarlet in the centre. She
held quietly to Franz, sometimes looking at
him for a moment, then turning her eyes
again toward the village. Though she said
no word, it seemed as if she could hardly
wait until they reached the church, but that
her impatient spirit would break its bounds
and fly. But Franz walked with a slow, un willing step. A fierce despair appeared to
be consuming him. His disappointment was
made keener when he saw the wild expecta tion with which the little A".ce looked for ward to his music, and her confident belief
that it would be far grander than any thing
he had ever done before.
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 decora tions. 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. Resting against
the centre of the chahcel-rail, a magnificent
cross of hot-house flowers loaded the air with
the perfumes of summer-an incense more
pure and holy than the incense of myrrh;
and on either side sprays of English ivy, in
long and twining branches, displayed their
wax-like leaves.
The last vibrations of the bell died away.
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 ought to
have created, that ought to have raised him
above all written measure. But now even
his execution was a dead, mechanical labor.
A swift expression of keen disappointment
fell upon the child's face. She looked up at
him, with a gesture, slight but strangely appealing, and with eyes filled by a sorrowful reproach-such a look as one might wear in the
last moment, whose most cherished friend had
suddenly turned and dealt him a death-blow.
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 statue; and a death-like si lence 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
borne, a sound more beautiful than the music
of a dream. 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. It was an adoration of sublime joy
that seemed too intense to be ascribed to
mortal spirit; and the people fell upon their
knees while they listened. Over plains, over
hills, in the sky, it seemed to reverberate
and answer back, Sweeter than the sound of
silver, vaster than the roll of ocean-the
hallelujah of myriad voices, the song as of
an innumerable multitude-" Glory be to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will
toward men."
Again and again the refrain gathered into
a measure more triumphant than the strains
of a victorious army. Then, ascending high er and higher, it fainted through infinite dis tance, and was gone as if it had passed be yond 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 ques tions. 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. Then he looked up abruptly
and said with a strange impatience:
"Did not you see?"
There was a confused expression in his
eyes, as if they might have been blinded by
a great light, and their vision not yet wholly
recovered. The people looked at him, then
at each other in bewilderment, but, as if he
had suddenly comprehended their meaning,
he went on quickly:
" It was not I. I did not play a note. It
was the music of another world, the music
of the first Christmas. Did not you see the
host of angels in the sky, and the shepherds
that watched their flocks by night upon the
plains of Judea? It was the gloria sung at
the nativity of Christ by the angels centuries
ago, beside the village of Bethlehem!"
Then the people, regarding him with
doubtful faces, drew back, and he said, with
fierce excitement:
"If you do not believe, ask the little Alice
there. She will tell you."
The little girl sat close to his bench, but
when they turned to her she made no reply.
They raised her up. Their question never
received an answer, and Franz with a wild
cry fell upon his knee at her side. The child
was dead.
! For many years afterward the musician
lived on in the old place at the foot of the
hill, but he never again could be prevailed
upon to strike a note of any instrument or
listen to a strain of any music. 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. Strangers heard his tale with a scarcely concealed smile, and shook their heads sorrowfully as the old man, feeble and palsied,
with a singular brilliance in his sunken eyes,
turned away. But all the villagers spoke of
him with respect, almost with awe, and the
children learned to hush their mirth in reverence as he passed by. Margery, with a face
quieter than ever, said little, but served her
master with an untiring devotion, and after
she had closed his eyes in death, when she
was an old, old woman, sometimes in the
evening she would suddenly break her long
silence to tell a wondering group, of Franz
and the little Alice, and of the mnysteriolus
melody that played about the child.
And so the people of Paint Valley relate
the story yet, and show the graves in the
long grass of the village church-yard, where,
side by side, they wait to join at the last day
the throng whose immortal gloria shall surpass even that grand Christmas anthem -
the song of the angels heard by the shepherds
upon the plains of Judea.
FLORENCE McLANDBURGH.
A STORY OF AGGRAVATION.
IN MULTITUDINOUS CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I.
THE AMERICAN VELVET-PLANT.
v MTqY dear," said Mrs. Scroggs, "you
V must get me at once an'American
velvet-plant.' I have been reading its de scription. It is charming."
"My dear," said Mr. Scroggs, "there are
several growing out there on the bill. Which
shall I transplant for you?"
"What do you mean?" said Mrs. Scroggs.
"The'American velvet-plant' is the mullein," said Mr. Scroggs.
"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Scroggs.
CHAPTER II.
MULLEINS AND ROSES.
WHAT has this conversation (which actually occurred) to do with the story? Wait
a little.
This is a story of aggravation, and not a
Christmas - story, for, in fact, they had no
Christmas at all, and it was impossible that
they should have had, and they ought to have
known better. It is written to be read after
Christmas, when the bills come in, and the
indigestions, and the doctors, and you and
your wife have come to an understanding