The Glass Harmonica, page 32
36
London, June 1764
ON a bright morning, Marianne’s carriage delivered her to Craven Street. Bessie ushered her into Mrs. Stevenson’s parlor, where Polly and Margaret Stevenson were having coffee. Eilish, called up from the kitchen, found all three seated around the table. Marianne was beaming, and leaped up the moment she saw Eilish to draw her to a chair.
“Eilish, dear, I am so full of news I fear I must burst!”
Eilish sank gratefully into the chair, and leaned on the arm of it. Mrs. Stevenson offered her coffee, but she said, “Ta, Mrs. Stevenson. I do not think I will, just yet.”
Marianne took her own chair, sitting on the edge of it as if she might jump up again at any moment. “First! Eilish, Miss Stevenson—have you heard about the little Mozarts and their concert on the fifth of June? It was the most miraculous thing—that little girl, only eleven, and her brother only eight! What magic they make with a harpsichord! Had I not been there, I should never credit it!”
“Lovely,” Eilish breathed.
“Yes,” said Polly crisply. “I have heard all about this, even in Essex. They are calling this little boy a genius, this Mozart. But they do that so often, do they not?”
Marianne smiled at Polly, too buoyant in her mood to be affected by her skepticism. “Of course, Miss Stevenson, they do. But this I heard with my own ears—’twas a wonder indeed! He plays as if he were already an adult, with years of training behind him. He plays, I swear, better than I do, for all my years of practice!”
“Oh, Marianne, that cannot be true,” Eilish said. She laid her head against the back of the chair and smiled at her friend. “You are the greatest musician in England.”
“Oh, well, I cannot accept that,” Marianne laughed. “And I certainly cannot improvise in the way this little boy does. But wait till you hear the rest of my news!” She put out her tiny hand and covered Eilish’s. “Eilish, sweetheart, we were such a great success in Bath that now we have been invited back!”
Eilish’s smile faltered, but she squeezed Marianne’s delicate fingers in hers. “Lovely,” she said again.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Marianne beamed at them all. “I think we shall have to expand our repertoire! And Cecilia would like to sing with the armonica, one of the transcriptions! Now, will that not be a triumph?”
“I would love to be present,” Polly said stiffly.
Marianne said with delicate tact, “I am certain the invitation will include you, Miss Stevenson. As you are Dr. Franklin’s protégée.”
Polly flushed with pleasure, touching her hair, smoothing her dress. Mrs. Stevenson murmured, “How kind, Miss Davies.”
“Not at all,” Marianne said. She smiled at Eilish. “Now, dear, tell me what you think!”
Eilish sat up a little straighter. She looked into Marianne’s gentle face, her dark eyes so full of joy on this lovely spring day. She wanted to make her happy, wished she could say the words to please her. But she could no longer dissemble. It was time.
“Marianne,” she said, a little hoarsely. “My dear friend. You must play this concert alone, I fear. You will be wonderful, and it will mean so much to Dr. Franklin that you do it. But I cannot. I think, in all truth, I will play no more concerts.”
Marianne immediately left her chair to kneel beside Eilish, gripping her hands. “What do you mean, dear? What can you mean by that?”
Eilish saw, above her friend’s dark head, that Mrs. Stevenson was watching with a grave air of understanding. Polly sniffed and wriggled impatiently. Pity for Marianne made Eilish’s voice soft.
“I am so sorry, Marianne,” she said. “I know you will be unhappy. But my health is so poor—I am so weak—it has been days since I had the strength to sit at the armonica, to work the treadle. There is nothing to be done for it.”
“Oh, no!” Marianne cried, the quick tears rushing to her eyes. “Oh, no, Eilish, it cannot be true! We shall call a physician, you must come to my own home, you shall rest . . .”
“No, dear,” Eilish breathed. “ ’Tisn’t possible. I am so sorry.”
“But, dearest Eilish, you can’t mean—” Marianne’s eyes searched Eilish’s face, and saw the terrible truth there. She burst into heartbroken sobs and buried her head in Eilish’s lap.
Polly’s eyes had gone wide. “Eilish—are you so very ill? Did no one know?”
Mrs. Stevenson rose and put out her hand to her daughter. “Polly, dear,” she said. “I believe we shall leave Miss Davies and Eilish alone for the moment. Come with me down to the kitchen. We will talk to Cook about the supper.”
For once Polly did not argue. She stood, murmuring, “Eilish—I’m very sorry, Eilish. I—truly, I had no idea.” Eilish nodded to her as she left, and sat stroking Marianne’s hair, patting her hand. After a time, Marianne lifted her tear-swollen face.
“If you cannot play—at least you can be there, can you not, dear? Be there to advise me, to listen, to tell me what needs work, what is all right—”
Eilish tried to smile, but her lips trembled. “If I can, Marianne, I will. ’Tis not that I do not wish it. But I cannot help it, dear. ’Tis not my own will. It has been decided for me.”
Marianne, comprehending the enormity of what Eilish was trying to tell her, was shocked beyond tears. She stared, her face white, her eyes stark. “Oh, God,” she said. “ ’Tis too cruel, that you should fly from me so soon.”
“Oh, but Marianne,” Eilish said, “I do not mind, after all. I long to see Mackie, and my father. If I cannot have my music, and they are gone . . . what is left for me?”
“Eilish!” Marianne moaned. “I am left for you, sweetheart! I, who love you more than anyone in the world!”
“My sweet friend. If I could stay for you, I would.”
“Then I shall not go on without you! I shall never touch the instrument again!”
“Oh, no, you must not say that,” Eilish protested. She felt as if she could sustain the conversation no longer. Weakness, fatigue, illness dragged at every limb, and her aching head felt too heavy to lift. Sometimes, at night, she felt that death would be welcome if only to relieve the pain of her head. “Marianne, your sister needs you . . . and your public cries out for you . . . and, only think, there is only you now to give life to the armonica.”
“Oh, my dear,” Marianne whispered. “I shall pray this is not true, any of it. I shall pray to God to give you back to me.”
Eilish closed her eyes. “Ta, Marianne. Or to make it easy for me.”
Marianne gave a little cry of grief, and caught Eilish into her arms.
LATE that night, when the household was asleep, Eilish woke with a start to find her bedgown wet with perspiration, her heart thudding in her ears. She lay looking out into the brilliant stars of summer. ’Twould be fair, she thought, that I should die alone, right now. Alone, as Mackie died. She even waited, listening to her heartbeat, feeling her breathing, wondering if this could be the moment. But her heart continued to beat, and her breath, though it was shallow and quick, did not stop.
She threw back the covers and got slowly to her feet, steadying herself on the bedpost. She pulled a dressing gown over her bedgown and moved carefully to the door to listen for any sounds of people about. There were none. The household slumbered peacefully beneath her. Cautious of making noise, of stumbling, Eilish crept down the stairs to the laboratory.
She did not trouble with lighting the oil lamps. She dared not play the armonica for fear of waking anyone, and in any case, she had told Marianne the truth. Her feet were too weak and unsteady to work the treadle. She only wanted to look at it, to touch it one more time. She pulled off the silk cover, and put out her hand to the crystal cups.
They were cool to the touch, shining softly in the starlight, the painted diamonds glowing white. She sat on the stool and dipped one shaky finger into the bowl of water beneath the spindle. Slowly, gently, she rubbed the finger across one small cup. A thin, clear sound, hardly more than a breath, rang out in the empty laboratory. Eilish sighed. So lovely, it was. So enchanting. She had given all of her being, all of her short life, to be able to play it. And now, so soon, too soon, it was to be over.
She would not weep for herself. She deserved no tears. She was being punished for her selfishness, her abandonment of Mackie, her failure to save him. And if she could not save Mackie, what point was there in saving herself?
She dipped the finger again, and poised it over the glasses. But before she could bring it down, she became aware of that other presence at her shoulder. It was rather like peering at her own reflection in the dim and shadowed glass over her bureau. She smiled at it.
“Aye,” she whispered. “ ’Tis you, is it not? And what do you think of my farewell performance?”
She stroked the glasses one more time, one last sweet, longing note, and then covered the instrument, left the laboratory, and dragged herself up the stairs to her bedroom. She would not see the armonica again.
37
London, September 2018
THE glasses, thicker and duller-looking than the ones on Erin’s own instrument, revolved smoothly on the reproduction spindle as she pumped the treadle. She dipped her fingers into the water and pressed them to the spinning cups. It was a richer tone than she was accustomed to, the timbre slightly muted, less focused. She played a triad, and a scale, and then, working to keep the speed steady, she tried a trill. It was quite different, the spacing between the cups, the balance between the work of her feet and her hands. Her trill was muddy and awkward and she gave it up for the moment.
“Good thing I left time to practice,” she muttered to the empty room.
Franklin House was quiet around her. The security staff were on the ground floor, and the lights, except in the laboratory where she was working, were off. The imitation oil lamp cast only a dim glow over the armonica. Erin felt she had been set apart from the everyday world. It would be easy to believe she had stepped back in time. Perhaps the lady of the house, powdered and wigged, would look in and offer her tea, or the great Benjamin Franklin, bursting with energy and curiosity, would throw open the door and peer through his bifocal glasses to see who it was playing his latest invention. Or perhaps . . .
Erin experimented with the unfamiliar instrument for half an hour, until her ankles grew tired from the unaccustomed movement. She took a break, standing and walking around the laboratory. Like the armonica, the exhibits were convincing reproductions. A thick glass jar, with coppery wires poking out of its lid, rested on a shelf. A bizarre contraption of straps and ominous-looking metal wires hung above a wooden worktable. Erin went to the door and peeked around the corner, into Franklin’s parlor.
The parlor, also, was filled with repro furniture and lamps and paintings, but she thought it must look very like it had in Franklin’s day. A snatch of music and laughter rose from the security office downstairs, a television program, or a netcast. It was comforting to hear, a reminder that the world she knew was still there. She went back to the laboratory and the armonica. The car was returning for her at eight, leaving her about an hour more to work.
This time when she pumped the treadle, the action felt much more natural. It was, in fact, remarkably easy. Only once, that time in Boston, had she touched a manual treadle, but suddenly it seemed as if she had always known how to work it. She had often noticed that when she struggled for a new technique, it came to her after a recess, as if her mind went on working on it while her muscles rested. Smiling down at the little instrument, she began one of the old Scottish tunes Benjamin Franklin had been so fond of. “Bonnie Laddie, Highland Laddie,” a melody so popular in its day that even Beethoven had composed a setting, rollicked from her fingers, flowed as if the crystals had only been awaiting an opportunity to sing it. Deborah Franklin had said once, upon being wakened by the strains of her husband’s armonica, that she thought she had died in her sleep, and was “listening to the musick of the angels.” The sound was pure and sweet, fragile and powerful at the same time.
Erin closed her eyes, feeling the placement of the cups, their thickness, their texture. She dipped her fingers again, and began “Barb’ry Allen.”
She felt the presence as a warmth by her side, as if someone had turned on another lamp. Her right shoulder, her arm, and her cheek vibrated with it, and she knew. She opened her eyes.
The revenant at her side was as clear as her own hands upon the glasses. Erin dared not turn her head, lest the wraith shimmer into nothingness once again. She dared not lift her fingers from the spinning cups, lest that was the magic, or the medium, which made it possible for her to see. Her mind and her body and the music and the revenant were one. For the moment she shared the space of her existence with that other, ghostly, but very real, presence.
The girl sat beside her at the armonica, her hands outstretched, shadowy reflections of Erin’s own. Hers were white, and terribly thin. Her hair, which Erin remembered as a cloud of black curls, now hung in long, straight tresses over her shoulders. Erin carefully slid her eyes to the right, without moving her head.
She was lovely, her eyes a dark blue, black-lashed, under heavy black brows. Her small nose was dusted with gold freckles, and her lips were full and sweet and sad. Her smile was wistful, full of longing. Of farewell.
The demarcation between present and past, reality and dream, blurred and disappeared. Erin felt the vibrations of the glass in her ears and her fingers and her heart, and she saw her wraith as clearly as any hologram of Charlie’s.
’Tis like that, my little instrument.
Erin heard the words in her head as if they had been spoken aloud. Goose bumps rose on her arms and her neck. “What?” she whispered. Her melody slowed, stretching, spinning out into long legato notes that dissolved all rhythm into one continuous thread of sound. Her feet worked automatically, forward, back, pumping, pumping. The girl leaned forward, closer to Erin, and then past. Her gaze shifted, and Erin followed her eyes.
The dimness beyond the circle of the lamp seemed to fill with people. Erin couldn’t make them out really, except for one child who lay in the arms of a tall man, and one other person, male or female she couldn’t tell, lying supine on the worktable under the odd apparatus. The others were truly shades, shifting, drifting with the air. Erin felt absolutely certain that if she turned on the electric light overhead, they would disappear. Only the girl at her side was distinct.
’Tis like that, my little instrument.
Erin became aware that her ankles were cramping, her hands tiring, but she dared not stop playing. She looked at the girl beside her. She whispered, “Like what? What do you mean?”
The great eyes shifted back to her, the lids falling once, twice, as if she were going to sleep. She reached out with one finger and inaudibly stroked one of the spinning glasses.
My little instrument.
In the end, ankles and wrists exhausted, Erin had to cease her music. The revenant beside her appeared to sigh. She stood, turned, and drifted away, leaving Erin alone in an utterly empty room.
ERIN slept badly that night, tossing from side to side, disturbed by dreams in which oddly dressed people did strange and frightening things in the old laboratory. Early in the morning, again with only coffee to sustain her, she took a cab to Thirty-six Craven Street. She was tired, her eyes burning, her ankles aching from the unaccustomed motion of the treadle. She climbed out of the cab and stood outside the iron fence, looking up at the stone faca¸de of Franklin House. Now that she was here, she had to fight a reluctance to go in, to open herself again to these exhausting experiences. But she must. She had to pursue this to the end. For Charlie, and maybe, even, for herself.
The museum was just opening. A bus filled with schoolchildren in green and blue uniforms emptied in front of Franklin House, and a crowd of chattering youngsters trooped in through the iron gate under the supervision of their teachers. A docent met them at the door. Erin stood to one side and listened as the docent gave the children an introduction to Franklin House.
“This used to be Number Seven,” she said in high, cultured accents. “When Mrs. Margaret Stevenson owned it, and Dr. Benjamin Franklin lived here. I know you’ve learned all about Dr. Franklin from your teachers, haven’t you?”
There were murmurs of assent from the children. “Oh, isn’t that lovely,” the docent said automatically. “Well. Dr. Benjamin Franklin stayed with Mrs. Stevenson twice, from 1756 to 1762, and again from 1764 to 1775. We’re going to show you all four floors, but children, please respect the ropes that are strung in some of the doorways. Those are to protect the rooms and some of the old furniture that Dr. Franklin and his friends may actually have used. You may go into some rooms, though, and we’ll show you which ones. Come now, down these stairs, and you’ll discover what an eighteenth-century kitchen looked like!”
Erin followed at a little distance as the children trooped down the stairs and were allowed to wander through the kitchen, to touch the old wooden sideboard, to run their hands over the nocked and worn kitchen table, to exclaim over the ancient stove and the stone sink. She stood in the doorway listening to the docent talk about Margaret Stevenson and her daughter, Polly, and their small staff. She went along as they moved up the stairs to the ground-floor parlor, the Stevensons’ living quarters, then on to the first floor, and Franklin’s laboratory and parlor.
The students were ushered into the laboratory, though the armonica was protected from their curious hands by its little velvet curtain. The docent went to the worktable and the odd apparatus hanging above it. “Now, children, you all know from your studies that Benjamin Franklin was very interested in electricity, don’t you? Yes, of course you do. Well, this odd contraption here was called a Leyden jar, what today we would call a capacitor. It was used to store and pass along static electricity. Benjamin Franklin and Richard Pringle, the royal physician, gave some patients electric shock!”
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