Part 15

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 silence 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 born, 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 higher and higher, it fainted through infinite distance, and was gone as if it had passed beyond 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 questions. 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 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 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 mysterious 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.

THE END.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.