Volume I Part 24 (1/2)
Davy came up to us and smiled: ”I really think he is safe You will let hi, dear madam?”
”Perhaps you can come to us I really do not think we can spare him; we have so much to do in the way of preparation”
It was an adht, taken up with areth, made me a dozen shi+rts, and heup and down stairs with the completed items Oh! if you had seen ood to be so cared for, and very beautiful besides; yet I was neither, and was sorely longing to be away,--such kindness pained me more than it pleased I had a little jointed bed, which you would not have believed _was_ a bed until it was set up My mother admonished me if I found my bed comfortable to keep that in lish ones too, under certain circuridiron, and a coffee-pot, a spirit-la one knife and fork, one plate, one spoon I had everything I could possibly want, and felt dreadfully bewildered Clo was ave le cup and saucer of that glowing, delicate china When he pulled it out of his pocket I little knehat it was, and when I found out, how I cried!
”I have, indeed, brought you a small remembrance, Charles; but I am a small man, and you are a small boy, and I understand you are to have a very small establishh; he put his kind arm round me, and I only wept the more Clo was all the ti ineffaceably my initials in German text, with crimson cotton,--none of your delible inks,--and Davy pretended to be very s, Charles?”
”Yes, sir: you see we have provided for summer and winter,” responded Clo, as seriously as I have ain, for he is to pay us a visit, if God spares hihed, and kissed ain, Mr Davy?”
”I have come to ask your mother whether I may take you to London; it is precisely what I came for, and I have a little plan”
Davy had actually an engagened to have one,--I have never been able to discover whether it was a fact or a fiction; and he proposed to my mother that I should sleep with hiht before I was deposited at the hotel where Santonio rested, and to which he had advised I should be brought
I was in fits of delight at the idea of Davy's company; yet, after all, I did not have much of that, for he travelled to London on the top of the coach, and I was an inside passenger at my mother's request
Then comes a sleep ofhurled into a corner by a lady, and of ja myself so that I could not stir hand or foot between her and the ; a dream of desperate efforts to extricate h stars beyond and above the houses, a cracked horn, a flashi+ng lantern; a drea in a stilly street before a many-ed mansion, as it seemed to me
Then I am aware to this hour of a dense headache, and bones alhtmare reality can breed,--the s of a knife and fork you cannot e for sleepfulness; and the utter depression of your quicksilver
I could not even look at Miss Lenhart; but I heard that her voice was going on all the time, and felt that she looked at me now and then I was conveyed into bed by Davy without any exercise on my own part, and I sluht day Then I awoke and found reat soft bed Presently I heard his steps, and his fingers on the lock He brought my breakfast in his own hand, and while I forced myself to partake of it, he told me he should carryLondon Bridge at six the sa And at two o'clock we arrived at the hotel In a lofty apartment sat Santonio near a table laid for dinner
I beheld my boxes in one corner, and gage consisted of that case of his which had been wrapped up warm in baize, and one portmanteau He arose and welco shaken hands with Davy, took hold of bothin a feords about our punctuality Then he rang for dinner, and I made stupendous efforts not to be a baby, which I should not have been sorry to find ether without noticing me, and presently I recovered; but only to be put upon the sofa, which was soft as a powder-puff, and told to go to sleep I nificent determinations to keep awake, but in vain; and it was just as well I could not, though I did not think so when I awoke For just then starting and sitting up, I beheld a lamp upon the table, and heard Santonio's voice in the entry, haranguing a waiter about a coach But looking round and round into every corner I saw no Davy, and I cannot describe how I felt when I found he had kissed ether As Santonio re-entered, the sweet cordiality hich he tehest de as I ith the sympathy I had never drawn except from Davy's heart, and which I had never lost since I had known him It was as if my soul were suddenly unclad, and left to writhe naked in a sunless atrateful to Santonio It was about five o'clock e entered a hackney-coach, and were conveyed to the city froreat river lay as a leaden dreae; but how dreamily, drowsily, I can never describe, was conveyed to loohted a tide There was a confusion and hurry here that mazed my faculties; andinto that vessel set so deep into the water, and looking so large and helpless I was on board, however, before I could calculate the possibilities of running away, and so getting hoain Santonio put his arm around me as I crossed to the deck, and I could not but feel how careful the great violin was of the little human instru and booreat, but so busy and anxious, the head-hung lalittering wires, all gave lorified myself so much that I very nearly fell over the side of the vessel into the Thaave a sleepy start fro after our effects for a while, but it was he who rescued reat-coat (exactly like Fred's) that had been made expressly, forvery new, reat dealheartily, but still not speaking, he led nificent I found all there! I was quite overpowered, never having been in any kind of vessel; but what ion within the long dining-room,--the feminine retreat, whose door was a little bit ajar
The s steae was it to hear the many footed tramp overhead, as we sat upon the sofa, and spread beneath the oval s all around And presently I realized the long tables, and all that there was upon thehted to perceive soly hungry by this time, for the first ti here re Santonio, I suppose, anticipated this fact, for he asked me immediately what I should like I said I should like some tea and a slice of cold meat
He seelass of some wine or other and ate a crust, I had all to myself a little round tray, with a short, stout tea-pot and enormous breakfast cup set before me; with butter as white asdeveloped in a tiny pat, with the semblance of the steamshi+p ere then in stamped upon the top; also a plate covered withto clear which, I discovered another cartoon in blue of the sa to the botto the plate, I could do no more in that line, and Santonio askedI was startled, for I had not thought about the coht at all He led me on the instant to a certain other door, and bade me peep in; I could only think of a picture I had seen of some catacombs,--in fact, I think a cataco cabin
The odors that rushed out, of brandy and lamp-oil, were but visionary terrors compared with the aspect of those supernaturally constructed enclosed berths, in not a fehich the victims of that entombment had already deposited thely as I withdrew, and withdrawing, was inexpressibly revived by the air blowing down the staircase ”Oh, let us sit up all night! on the sea too!”
Santonio replied, with great cordiality, that he should prefer such an arrangement to any other, and would see what could be contrived for me
And so he did; and I can never surpass my own sensations of mere satisfaction as I lay upon a seat on deck by ten o'clock, with a boat-cloak for my pillow and a tarpaulin over my feet, Santonio by my side, with a cloak all over him like a skin, his feet on his fiddle-case, and an exquisitely fragrant regalia in hisecstasy,--careering a stars all clear in the darkness over us; of passionate delight, rocked to a dreaan to perceive in our seaward ain at dawn; but I experienced just enough then of existing circuain beneath the handkerchief I had spread upon ain I slept and dreamed
FOOTNOTE:
[12] The Cecilia School at Lorbeerstadt is probably intended to represent the Conservatory at Leipsic, which Mendelssohn founded in 1843
CHAPTER XXV
At noon, when at length I roused er upon the sea We swept on tranquilly between banks lorious, more laden with spells for me, than any haven I had fortified with Spanish castles Castles there were too, or what I took for castles,--silvery gray amidst leafless trees, and socountry, where the sky ht slopes, and then a quiet sail at rest in the tiny harbor But an hour or two brought h even they were as cities in a dream And yet this was not the Rhine; but I raphy lessons, and that there could be any other river in Germany,--so that when Santonio told ry at it After I had wearied an to speak more consecutively than he had done yet