The Anthem of Judea

At the foot of the hill stood a low, old-fashioned frame house with a picket fence around the yard, which ran down to a small stream that sometimes flowed slowly, sometimes rushed swiftly, and sometimes slept quietly beneath a sheet of ice. Nearly a mile away, smooth and level, with pleasant streets and a church whose spire shone in the sunlight long after evening shadows had crept over the ground, lay the village of Pickaway, the gem of Paint Valley.

From there, two days a week, children made their way to the quaint house at the foot of the hill, carrying music folios. In summer they loitered along the narrow footpath by the creek where wild columbine grew, but in winter they hurried over the frozen turnpike, swinging their arms, blowing on their fingers, and sometimes bravely battling the snow.

Here Franz Erckman lived in the plainest manner, with only his piano and cottage organ for companions. He had no wife, children, relatives, or pets—no dog, cat, or even a chicken about the premises. He kept one servant, a cross old woman who rarely spoke more than a dozen times a year, and then only upon provocation, such as when scholars broke a pitcher or muddied her floor, causing her to utter incoherent but disagreeable exclamations.

Franz had lived this way for nearly twenty years, as bluff and reserved as when he first arrived, an unknown young foreigner without friends or money, who had modestly begun giving music lessons to a few pupils at first, and to many after a time.

When the new church was built, with a grand organ featuring great gilded pipes, his services were engaged, and rightly so, for no one else in the village could make anything of all those stops, pedals, and keys.

As Pickaway grew into a town with a respectable hotel, many tourists came down from the city in summer to rusticate, and they always heard the organist with astonishment. These cultivated strangers repeated their inquiries so often that Pickaway grew proud of its musician, and it became as natural to show off Franz Erckman as it was to call attention to the beautiful scenery. Indeed, a more picturesque landscape could rarely be found.

However, all this praise seemingly had little effect on the village music master, who was repeatedly invited by friendly tourists to spend a season in the city. They tempted him with orchestras and operas, told wonderful tales of the superb voices of great prima donnas, but all in vain. He always thanked them for their hospitality but never accepted, living along seemingly content to teach village children and play the church organ. Only his one servant knew how at night, sometimes all night, he tried ineffectually to satisfy his craving for music, and how, not until pale light streaked the east, would he shut his cottage organ, always turning away with a strange expression of despair upon his features.

The townspeople said he was penurious, for he invariably demanded tuition in advance, and if payment was not forthcoming at the appointed time, he quietly dismissed the pupil without a word, with no more lessons until the quarter was paid. Yet they grew to know him so well that everyone became punctual, at least in his case.

Working steadily year after year with almost no living expenses, Pickaway thought he must have saved quite a fortune.

When the Widow Massey, poverty-stricken as she was, made up her mind to send her little daughter—her only child—the poor, weak, crippled little Alice, who went every Sunday to the church and listened with deep delight to the strains of the great organ—when she decided to give her daughter this one pleasure, hoping to brighten a life so early blighted, all the people thought he would surely take the child for nothing. But he did not. He took the money, the full amount. And if people made sarcastic remarks about his penuriousness, they never offered to pay for the little girl herself. The mother never thought of asking a favor from anyone, though she earned barely enough by hard labor to keep them. For the past year she had cherished this plan, quietly saving a little at a time until the longed-for sum was in her hands.

Gladly she went and gave it to the music master, who put it in his vest pocket and told her to send the little girl twice a week. And twice a week the little girl went.

That was in summer. She was pale, thin, and delicate, and the scholars all wondered how she would manage through the snow in winter. But before the bleak winds had blown one rude blast, little Alice had a worse trouble. The Widow Massey suddenly fell ill and died, commending her beloved child to the care of the great Guardian above.

It was a terrible stroke, and everyone wondered what would become of the helpless daughter, too feeble to work for her sustenance, and each thought it strange that someone else did not come to her relief.

It was very sad. The poor little creature seemed racked with grief, sitting by her dead mother day and night. On the afternoon of the funeral, they tried in vain to take her away, until Franz Erckman came.

The people saw him lift her up in his arms without a struggle and quietly carry her out of the house. They saw him, with her arms clasped tight about his neck, crossing the green pastures, striking the narrow footpath by the creek, and disappearing as the path turned behind the heavy foliage brilliant in the scarlet dyes of October.

It was not one of his lesson days. Only the ripple of water over stones and the rustle of occasional leaves broke the profound quiet as he passed through his gate. Not a word was spoken, and in perfect silence he carried the frail little being, trembling from head to foot, across the broad veranda and into the pleasant parlor—not the room used for lessons, but where his cottage organ stood. He drew the sofa beside the instrument and laid her down.

Her fingers unclasped with a convulsive movement, and Franz turned his face away, for the child had not uttered a sound. Her eyes, dry and unnaturally bright, wore a startled look, a mute, beseeching expression, like the eyes of a wounded animal, and the pallor of her face, branded with wild grief, was almost as ghastly as death. It was suffering terrible to behold, and the strong man’s hands trembled as he opened the mahogany case of his organ.

There was a moment’s silence; then music, soft and sorrowful, floated out on the air gently, almost timidly; so mournful that the strain, beautiful though it was, seemed to contain a human cry of pain. It was a language that could appeal to the heart when words or lips failed.

The child’s whole frame shook beneath the heavy sobs swelling in her throat, and the great grief opened its floodgates. Hour after hour he played untiringly while the storm spent itself. The music, at first sorrowful and hurt, cried out in pain; then it grew into a measure so yearning it seemed the very genius of sympathy. Making an intense appeal, it swelled into a great passion, which gradually exhausted itself, until about the going down of the sun it died. And the child slept.

The wild storm of anguish was over. Upon the thin, pale face of the little girl in her slumber shone an expression of absolute rest that Franz, with a sudden movement, bent down and listened. Had she passed with the music to the land where strains swell into a gloria never ending? He held his breath. Was this the reflection of that peace eternal, that rest which endureth forever? A sob quivered for a moment on her features and escaped from the lips of the sleeper. No, no, for sorrow showed its painful presence. She was not dead, and at the sigh, sad though it was, the man arose with a smothered exclamation of relief.

The quiet day drew to its close. Within the room shadows were thickening; without, long lines of mist festooned the hills in plumes of royal purple, and the red haze of Indian summer gathered into broad streamers, unfurling their splendor across the tranquil sky. The floating twilight hung over the wide, level pastures. Down by the creek the scarlet sage still showed its coral fringe, and sometimes the woodbine by the house waved its painted leaves. Far off in the filmy vale, the group of maples that had stood crowned with golden glory now shrouded themselves in black; and beyond, like a long stretch of desolate shore, the great gloom lifted its chilly banks.

Many times from his parlor window Franz Erckman had watched the divine pageant of night ascend the valley in all its pomp and grandeur, in all the solemn majesty of its silence, in all the ineffable depths of its sadness. Many times in his loneliness he had seen it pass, when a vision of the fair Rhineland would come back to his heart. Many times through its profound solitude he had looked out with yearning eyes and listening ears, striving to comprehend its sublime mystery. Many times he had turned to it with a soul oppressed by despair reaching toward the Infinite. For, though the people did not know it, beneath the rough exterior of this reserved German dwelt a love of the beautiful—a love so passionate sometimes that it seemed to crush his spirit because he could not give it utterance in his music.

Then he would rise from his organ in bitter disappointment and go out with his trouble to seek consolation from the night—the night forever wan with her own unspoken sorrow.

But now he stood watching the face of the sleeper, paying no heed to the gathering shade. He stooped and arranged the cushions about the fragile form with the gentle touch of a woman, while upon his features rested an expression more beautiful than any the softened evening light could lend.

“She would have died,” he said to himself. “But for the music, I believe she would have died! The chords of the organ spoke to her when all earthly words failed. She, at least, can understand the language I have been striving to learn.”

Frail little creature! She appeared, indeed, like a spirit from another world. Her every nerve had vibrated in sympathy, and Franz could hardly help thinking that, soundless to human ears, ceaseless strains of melody played about her. Music seemed to be the vitality that gave her life, the only nourishment that fed her soul.

When she first came to him for instruction, he quickly discovered that she possessed not the least power of execution and had taken no special notice of her further. Wrapped up in his art, teaching children had never been a pleasure. He compelled himself to endure it as a means of subsistence.

The great object for which he worked was once to secure enough to keep penury always from his door and then give himself up unreservedly to his art, which he loved better than his life. So he took no particular interest in any of his scholars, and it was only when he saw how eagerly little Alice drank in every sound that he gradually began to observe the child more narrowly. As he had first seen, she possessed no power of execution. She could not even learn to read the notes, and she would probably never play a single bar correctly. But he had noticed how keenly alive she was to harmony, how peculiarly sensitive to discord. Her lessons seemed a constant pain, yet she came eagerly and often lingered when they were finished.

He had found her once, late in the day, when he had been playing dreamily, sitting on the veranda near the window of his parlor, listening with rapt attention, wholly unconscious of anything but his music.

Since then, when she came for her lesson, he had always played for her—carelessly at first, but after a time with greater interest, until gradually he gave up all effort to instruct her and each day played for her the oratorios and symphonies of the great composers. Then he changed from the piano to his organ, and he grew to wait nearly as anxiously for the hour as the little girl herself.

By degrees, the child’s visits became almost indispensable to him. He seemed always to feel a strange inspiration in her presence. Why, he did not know, but it was then that sometimes the wild tumult and infinite longings of his soul struggled into expression. But when the child went, he would find himself dejected and wholly unable even to recall the strains that seemed to have died at the very moment of their birth.

Franz stood, still watching her motionless form. The sobs trembling through her sleep had one by one exhausted themselves, leaving her face strangely peaceful.

“She is mine,” he muttered. “I will never part with her. She is my spirit of sound!”

Suddenly he heard the grating noise of footsteps on the graveled walk. Turning quickly, he drew the curtain over the window to shield the sleeper from the damp night air. Then he went softly out and closed the door, wrapping himself once more in severe reserve with the old stern expression. His brows knit into a frown, and his lips curled for a moment with a smile of contempt when he recognized the figure entering the hall.

“Ha! Erckman, good-evening,” said the man in a loud, boisterous tone that seemed to dissipate all the serenity of the night.

“Good-evening.”

If it had been their first meeting, Franz could not have spoken with colder formality as he showed his guest into the piano room.

Mr. Cory claimed to be the richest man in Pickaway, and likely it was true. He owned hundreds of green, fertile acres with sleek, fat cattle. He was ruling elder in the church, and his wife bought all her bonnets and flounces in the city. They had built the finest house in all of Paint Valley. Indeed, nothing was done without his presence, and everyone, from minister to sexton, received his advice, distributed far more liberally than his money. So Franz had mentally guessed the object of his visit the instant he saw him in the hall.

“Fine weather, this.”

The organist made no more audible reply than a half-uttered grunt, as he struck a match on the corner of the mantel and lit the lamp. Mr. Cory sat uneasily on the hard, haircloth chair, dimly conscious of some obstruction in the usually smooth channel of his discourse.

“Sad affair of the Widow Massey.”

“Yes.”

He looked about the room for a moment, as though expecting to discover some third person, then repeated, “Sad affair! sad affair! We are all liable to sudden death, and she ought to have been saving up for such an event. She left nothing for the child at all. Nothing at all. The furniture will barely bring enough to pay for her funeral expenses.”

Franz had sat down mechanically on the music stool and rested one hand on the keyboard. At that point in the conversation, he suddenly took his hand away with a nervous movement that sounded three or four discordant bass notes of the instrument. Mr. Cory, for the second time, found himself laboring under an ill-defined discomfort, something wholly unusual. But seeing his host showed no signs of breaking the silence, after a slight cough he went on:

“We have been talking this afternoon as to what is to be done with the child. You’ve got her here, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, one can’t do a great deal in this way, but you know it’s such a sad case, and the child can’t do any work about a house. My wife is so interested in her she thinks she’ll take the little girl—What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“I beg your pardon, I thought you spoke. My wife thinks she’ll take the little girl and send her for a year to the industrial school in the city, where she can learn fine sewing and embroidery. That will give her a chance to earn her living, and we can take up a collection in church to defray the expense.”

“‘Fine sewing and embroidery’—fine suffering and death!” said Franz, suddenly letting loose his pent-up wrath. “Mr. Cory, would you kill the child? She is frailer than a flower, a sickly little thing, and crippled. One month’s stooping over a needle would put her in the grave. I thought only an hour ago that she was dead.” As he spoke, he rose, took up the lamp, and said, “Come with me, and step lightly.”

Utterly taken aback, Mr. Cory followed him across the hall, saw him open the door of the opposite room and motion him to enter. Then Franz said in a quiet voice, shading the lamp carefully so its rays did not fall directly upon the child’s face, “Look at her.”

The man stepped forward, but almost immediately drew back with a shiver from the sleeper, whose repose strangely resembled death. She lay upon the sofa, hands folded across her breast, as when she had first fallen asleep.

Franz stood intently regarding her, when suddenly his guest, coming close, said in a frightened whisper, his eyes glancing quickly about the room, “Where does it come from?”

“What?” asked Franz, startled by his manner.

“Do you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The music.”

“Music!” exclaimed Franz, also dropping to a whisper and involuntarily holding his breath. “No, I hear no music.”

“It did not seem like the piano or organ. It must have been the wind in the trees outside, but it sounded just like a strain of music. We had better go, or we may waken her,” said Mr. Cory, turning to the door and drawing a hand across his forehead, where perspiration had collected in drops, although the evening was cold.

Franz followed him out, gently latching the door, and both returned to the piano room. Here Mr. Cory seemed to recover some composure.

“Well, Erckman, she does look thin and delicate-like, but sewing won’t hurt her, not a bit. She’ll be better when she’s got something to do. She can’t exist on air, and she can’t live in idleness. She has nothing, and it’s the only way I know she can make her living.”

Before Franz’s eyes floated visions of broad, fertile acres, fine cattle, fine clothes, fine houses, but “she must do work of some kind for support,” so he said nothing while the elder continued: “There is James Maxwell going to the city tomorrow, and my wife said we had better send her to the school by him.”

“Send her—, Mr. Cory,” said the organist with suppressed fierceness. “You saw how frail she is, how she looks as if the shadow of death might be upon her even now. You know how she has been crippled from birth. I tell you, one month in that school among strangers would kill her. Are there not strong arms enough in the world, is there not wealth enough already, that this unfortunate one, this perpetually enfeebled child, must wear out her brief span of life in a painful struggle to gain a little food?”

“We are not, sir, expected to keep the ‘unfortunate one,’ as you call her,” blustered Mr. Cory, purple with indignant astonishment. “What do you mean, sir? We are under no obligation to do anything for the girl. She should be thankful we interested ourselves in her behalf,” he said, choking with rage. “We will do this for her, but that is all. She is nothing to us.”

“I had no intention of dictating,” said the organist politely, having calmed down as quickly as he had roused. “You are right, sir; she is nothing to you, and you need not trouble yourself further. I will see that the child is provided for.”

Then Mr. Cory looked at Franz as if he thought he had not heard aright, or that the music master had taken leave of his senses.

“I repeat, I will see that the child is provided for, and you need not trouble yourself in regard to her further.”

“Very well, sir, very well!” exclaimed the elder, rising, almost speechless with surprise. But when he reached the piazza he said, “Then it is understood that I am not responsible in the case?”

“It is understood.”

Franz had never intended to part with the child. He would not have given her up had Mr. Cory offered all his grassy meadows. He watched him walk down the graveled path and disappear into the darkness. “Charity!” he muttered. “Shut him out, O Night—hide him from view! Wrap your impenetrable mantle about him, that it may shield him from the eye of God and man!”

The German stood a moment looking into the limitless gloom, which screened alike the evil and the good, then turned back into the house.

He went through the dining room, where supper lay untouched, to the kitchen, where Margery sat warming herself by the dying embers in the stove. The old servant was used to his irregular ways, often seeing meals go untasted without a remark. But it was rare that the master intruded upon her premises, and she rose with surprise as he entered.

“Margery,” he said, “fix up the bedroom next to yours, then come down to me in the parlor.”

She heard him without a question, though never before could she remember the guest chamber being used or a visitor staying overnight.

When she had obeyed, she presented herself at the parlor door. No lamp burned in the room; only a narrow strip of light fell across the hall, but it did not penetrate the heavy shadow, and Margery, with a half-uttered apology, drew back. At the sound of her steps, Franz came out of the gloom.

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“What is the matter?”

“I did not know you was playin’, or I would have waited,” said the servant respectfully, having long since learned never to interrupt her master at his practice.

“I was not playing.”

“Warn’t it you, sir? It was so dark I could not see.”

“Me? No, nor anybody else. No one was playing.”

“Why, I thought I heard—but it must have been the wind,” said Margery, glancing over her shoulder to the vacant piano stool. “I thought I heard music just as I opened the door. The room is ready, sir.”

Franz bent over the sofa and lifted the sleeping form in his arms. Turning to Margery, he said, “She is light. Here, carry her up and put her to bed. Don’t waken her if you can help it, and go to her once or twice in the night to see that she sleeps, for she is not well.” Then he added as an abrupt explanation, “She will occupy that room always. This is to be her home, and I want you to see that she has everything necessary.”

“Yes, sir.”

If the old servant was surprised, she made no remark. She took the child, arranged everything for the night, and the little girl never awakened.

A pleasant expression spread over the woman’s face as she bent over the bed, carefully arranging every fold about the sleeper. With noiseless footsteps she returned again and again to look at the unconscious form that seemed to possess a singular attraction for her. Taking up the lamp to go into her own adjoining room, she stopped suddenly, held the light suspended, and stood with every muscle arrested, as if some unexpected sound had fallen on her ears. Then she bent her head over the sleeper, glanced quickly about the room, and hurriedly crossed to the hall.

She ran down the stairs, looked first into the piano room, then into the parlor opposite. Both were deserted, the instruments closed. The front door was bolted, and the master had evidently retired. She returned to the guest chamber. The child still slept, and Margery held her breath, but there was not the slightest sound. She stepped to the window, raised the sash, leaned out, and listened. The night was perfectly calm; even the gentle breeze from two hours before had died away, leaving profound silence, unbroken by the chirp of an insect. She closed the window, went back to the bedside for an instant, and then, saying quietly to herself, “It must have been mere fancy,” passed to her own room, leaving the door partially open between the two.

II

So little Alice had found a home. All of Pickaway expressed utter surprise at the unexpected generosity of the penurious music master. He was certainly the last person from whom such an act might have been expected; indeed, it was little short of an enigma. But their astonishment knew no bounds when, within days of taking her in, he quietly dismissed all his pupils and steadily refused to give further lessons. Nothing could prevail upon him; no entreaties could persuade him; he never offered an explanation.

Some of the wealthier ones, unwilling to give him up, voluntarily proposed doubling the price, but even money—which the village had thought the god of his life—failed to move him. He was inexorable. Everyone wondered why he had given up teaching. They asked about his health; it was good, he said. Did he plan to leave? No. Would he continue playing the church organ? Yes, oh yes; he had no intention of stopping. So they conjectured until tired of the task, while Franz paid no attention.

As days grew into weeks, and weeks into months, the village saw a change in the organist. He was less communicative and more severely reserved.

The scarlet flowers by the creek vanished, the myriad leaves lost their rainbow glory and dropped in russet tatters, and the woodbine, having shed its vermilion, stretched up naked, snake-like arms. The maples laid down their golden crown, and the hills cast aside their emerald tiara. Summer and fall in their splendor passed, and autumn’s gorgeous livery faded to winter’s grizzled hues.

A bleak December wind swept up the tawny valley, rattling among the naked trees, and the creek slumbered beneath ice. But no children came over the frozen turnpike. The house seemed more secluded than ever. In the pleasant November days, before the bitter winds, Franz often rambled through the woods, carrying little Alice when she tired. But as the air grew chill, they stayed almost wholly indoors. Franz rarely left except for his church duties, and he always took the child, wrapped carefully in a heavy cloak.

People noticed he was never seen without her. On bad Sabbaths or weekdays when he played, he still carried her, adding a fur mantle for protection. She had not grown stronger, but since that first night when the organist broke down the barrier of grief that had closed like a wall around her heart, they were seldom separated during her waking hours.

During this time Franz changed so strangely that gossips said one would hardly know him. Always silent and reserved, he now became absolutely inapproachable. His manner, naturally abrupt, grew wild and feverish. His face thinned, cheeks hollowed, his whole figure gaunt. His eyes, brilliant but sunken, took on a singular unrest, a perpetually searching look, as if trying to see the invisible. Whispers began that the church organist was not quite right in his head. He would never allow the child out of his sight. Ladies tried to pet her, but she shrank from everyone except Franz, clinging to him as her one prop.

So time wore on at the musician’s home. Margery, respectful as ever, assiduously attended the little girl, who received all attentions gratefully and never made demands. But a change came over the old servant too. Her usual quiet ways became restless, as if something weighed on her mind, making her uneasy. She was sour, as scholars said, but never to the orphan. She watched the child with strange devotion, following her about at a distance, sitting on the veranda with her sewing while the girl played, or trimming the woodbine near her. Once or twice she even found excuses to enter the parlor.

Every evening when she put the child to bed, Margery, with a strange, expectant look, lingered long after the little girl slept. Often in the middle of the night she would start awake, spring from bed, and find herself beside the child, head bent as if listening, every nerve strained to catch the slightest sound. Immediately she would run downstairs to the music rooms, only to find both deserted and instruments closed. With a white face, she would return, pause in the child’s room, then lie down again, saying to herself for the hundredth time, “It must be mere fancy. I have been dreaming.”

There was no superstition in Margery, but this incident recurred night after night until she began to wonder if she were losing her mind. She dreamed the same thing so often, and each time so vividly, hearing a strain of music as distinctly as any sound in her life, though not like piano, organ, or any instrument. It was vivid yet evanescent, making her doubt her senses. It never came from downstairs or outside, but always from the child’s bedside, though as soon as she stooped to listen it was gone, silence reigning supreme. Once or twice during the day, standing by little Alice, she heard, or thought she heard, a waft of soft melody, but so fleeting she could not be sure it wasn’t imagination.

So Margery grew restless, continually watching the child. She was not unaware of the great change wrought in her master since the child’s arrival. She noticed that he would never allow the child out of his sight, and he never played alone at night as he once had.

After the child went to bed, the instruments were always closed, for he never touched the keyboard unless she was present, and even with her beside him, he did not seem happy.

The church people said that as he changed, his music changed too; as he grew wilder and feverish, his music became softer and more beautiful. Once, after playing a dreamy harmony that held all entranced, he came down from the organ gallery with a fierce fire in his eyes and trembling hands clasped tightly over the little girl. When complimented, he looked bewildered, speaking confusedly, as if he couldn’t remember what he had played. More convinced than ever that something was wrong, many shook their heads and whispered that poor Erckman was going crazy.

December wore into Christmas. Every house prepared for the holiday. The church was undergoing mysterious changes at the hands of young people who entered at all hours by the back way, refusing admittance to anyone. They closed even the organist out one morning, but he was easily persuaded to withdraw, caring more for solitude than society.

Franz sat moodily by the fire in his parlor, the little girl on a cushion at his feet. They were both naturally silent, often sitting quietly together for hours. But now, though the musician gazed absently into the grate, she looked up once or twice into his face, then said timidly, “Father, tomorrow is Christmas.”

Franz had long ago taught her to call him father, and he answered mechanically, without taking his eyes from the coals, “Yes.”

“How dark the night is out, and how shrill and bleak the wind blows!” She had risen and gone to the window. “But tomorrow is Christmas-day, and I know it will be bright then; oh, I am sure it will be bright!”

She stood a moment longer, then came back and sat down, looking ethereal, like some spirit that might vanish into the red firelight.

“You will play something very beautiful tomorrow, won’t you, father? You will make the voluntary better than all the service besides? Oh, for such a celebration, it ought to be the most magnificent music in the world, for, think, father, it will be Christmas, the grandest day in all the year! It seems I can hardly wait to hear you. But, father, you have not practiced for it, have you?” she said, looking up suddenly with quick dismay.

Franz, still not glancing at her, said, “No,” but clasped his hands nervously together.

“Oh, father, you did not forget about it, did you?” she asked eagerly. “I have thought of it so often, but it is strange I never thought about practicing. Oh, you could not have forgotten it, father?”

She was so intensely earnest it seemed her whole soul trembled awaiting his reply.

“No, I have not forgotten it,” said Franz. “It has hardly been out of my mind for weeks; but I have nothing to play.”

At first her face was radiant; but at the last clause she rose, put her arms about his neck, and said with terror in her voice, “Oh, no, no! You will play, father—tell me you will play!”

Franz moved uneasily.

“And it will be something grand, father. You will please everybody—I am not afraid of that. Quick, tell me you will play. Father, if you did not—I cannot bear to think of it—oh, you will—say you will!”

Her entreaty grew into wild desperation. Every fiber of her frame quivered as she clung to him. Alarmed, he took her on his knee and said hurriedly, “Yes, yes; I will play. Do not be troubled; I will play.”

“Oh, I am so glad! I knew you would, and it will be grand, I am sure, for tomorrow is Christmas!”

Her face was radiant, but so extreme was her excitement that nearly an hour later, when Margery came to take her upstairs, she still trembled.

Franz, left alone, paced his room, sometimes stopping to look moodily into the fire. He had had this thing long upon his mind. Feeling the divine power of genius within him, he was unwilling to play again what generations had played a hundred times before. Yet he tried in vain to improvise. Once or twice, when playing with little Alice beside him, he had entranced even himself, but as soon as he tried to reproduce the notes, either on paper or organ, they fled his memory, leaving him powerless. Latterly he had felt hampered, yet he was conscious that his music had simultaneously improved. Struggling against this fault, he had been determined to compose something new for this great occasion; now, on the very verge of Christmas, he found himself without a single idea—wholly unprepared.

In disappointment, he had almost resolved to stay away from church, but the child’s appeal had stopped that cowardly refuge, of which in a better mood he would have been ashamed.

The child had not prophesied incorrectly. Beneath cover of night, clouds marshaled into gray battalions that fled before the lances of morning, which in resplendent array mounted the eastern sky; and Christmas—that day forever sacred in its grand memories—dawned with blazing colors.

Bathed in sunlight, the crystal valley glittered with jewels; sparkling trees held up embossed arches of frosted silver; from the hillsides, cold flakes of fire burned in diamond hues almost blinding. A slight fall of snow had covered the land like a mantle of transfiguration.

The bell in the tower had long been ringing before Franz, carrying little Alice, left the house. A singular eagerness marked the child’s face, her usually pale cheeks flushed crimson. She clung quietly to Franz, sometimes looking at him, then again toward the village.

Without a word, she seemed unable to wait until they reached the church, but Franz walked slowly, unwillingly. Fierce despair consumed him. His disappointment sharpened at the sight of her wild expectation and confident belief that his music would be grander than anything before.

The villagers, in groups, in twos and threes, with happy faces, poured into the church. Franz, ignoring everyone, entered by the side door and went to the organ gallery. Little Alice, with glad eyes, saw the festival decorations: wreaths of cedar coiling around the great pillars, creeping in waving lines over altar, arch, and casement, green flecked with amber or dyed violet as sunlight caught the stained-glass tints. Against the chancel rail rested a magnificent cross of hothouse flowers, loading the air with summer perfumes, an incense more pure than myrrh; and on each side, English ivy in long twining branches displayed its waxy leaves.

The last vibrations of the bell died away. The congregation chanted its anthem; the minister read the Christmas service; then the first strains of the organ voluntary sounded after the litany. Little Alice, with throbbing pulse, crept close to Franz as he played. But it was only familiar music, known by heart, heard a thousand times. Poor Franz, warring against himself, had been driven back to others’ compositions, though he knew he possessed a power that should have created something beyond written measures. Now even his execution was a dead, mechanical labor.

A swift look of keen disappointment fell upon the child’s face. She looked up at him with a slight but strangely appealing gesture, eyes filled with sorrowful reproach—such a look as one might wear if a cherished friend had dealt a death-blow.

Franz played on mechanically, with the pang of despair at his heart. Suddenly, halfway through a bar, in the very midst of a note, a sensation of fear seized him—an overwhelming awe that seemed to lock his muscles and turn his hands to stone. The organ ceased abruptly; he sat motionless as a statue, and a death-like silence reigned throughout the church. Had the same unaccountable awe fallen upon the congregation? The whole universe waited.

Out of the profound silence a sound was born, 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, not loud, as if it reached beyond the church walls and floated through endless space. Was it, then, music from a land where crystal air breathes perpetual melody? By one impulse, the people sprang to their feet, turning awe-stricken faces toward the gallery. Grander, more majestic, it swelled into a glad chorus whose gloria, inspired with praise, rose to heaven. It was an adoration of sublime joy too intense for mortal spirit; the people fell on their knees while listening.

Over plains, over hills, in the sky, it seemed to reverberate and answer back, sweeter than silver, vaster than the ocean’s roll—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 a victorious army’s strains. Then, ascending higher, it fainted through infinite distance and was gone, as if it had passed the very portals of eternity.

The spellbound audience hardly stirred for a moment even after the music died. But when the first movement broke the silence, they crowded about the organist with eager questions. Franz, still sitting at his instrument, never turned. They were ready almost to bow down before him, but had to speak several times before he heeded. Then he looked up abruptly and said with strange impatience, “Did not you see?”

A confused expression filled his eyes, as if blinded by a great light. The people looked at him, then at each other in bewilderment, but as if he suddenly understood, 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 by angels at Christ’s nativity centuries ago beside the village of Bethlehem!”

Then the people, regarding him with doubtful faces, drew back, and he said fiercely, “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 knees by 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 never again could he be prevailed upon to strike a note or listen to music. More rarely than ever did he speak, and then only at Christmastime, to tell again of little Alice, his spirit of sound, to tell of that wonderful gloria of immortal praise sung by the heavenly host, whose splendor, almost blinding to his eyes, had lit up earth and sky over the far-off plains of Palestine where shepherds centuries ago watched 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 the villagers spoke of him with respect, almost awe, and children hushed their mirth as he passed. Margery, with a face quieter than ever, said little but served her master with untiring devotion. After she had closed his eyes in death, when she was a very old woman, sometimes in the evening she would break her long silence to tell a wondering group of Franz and little Alice, and of the mysterious melody that played about the child.

And so the people of Paint Valley still recount the story, and show the graves in the long grass of the village churchyard, 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.