An Earl’s Broken Heart by Ella Edon
Chapter Twenty-Two
Isabel sat at the pianoforte with her mind full of thoughts that kept her in a sour mood. Playing was her one escape, a place where she would never be rejected. No matter how many times she missed a note or played at the wrong key, music would always welcome her back.
Every pianoforte had its own subtle character and the one at Carter Manor was much the same. An old instrument of uncommon use that soured somewhat when you touched the keys at the very end of the board. Even still it produced the most glorious sound after you had been playing a while. Her father had never been fond of music, it was her mother who had passed down the love of it to her. She wondered if things would have been different had her mother not died so young. Perhaps she could have avoided half the misery that had followed her for most of her life. Perhaps her mother could have told her more about the mysteries of men. Her father had been a different man in those days. Kinder and always of good countenance. In a way, the phantom of her parent’s love still haunted her. Haunted her father most of all. When her mother had died, a part of her father had gone with her, never to return. Even still, there was something instructive about her father’s grief. It was the last remnant of their love. An homage to the joyous truth that she did not die unmissed.
That was what Isabel wanted in her own life. Not just to love, but to be loved. Truly and completely. She had once believed that she could find that in Alexander. She had once looked into his eyes and known it for sure. Now she knew it was pure fantasy. The way things were going with Alexander, it seemed she was set to live the rest of her life without the pleasure of being loved or cherished and it saddened her to no end.
Thoughts of her mother drew her to her earliest memories when her mother had set to teaching her and Elizabeth how to play the pianoforte. Isabel had learnt everything she knew about music from her mother. The woman was always kind and warm-hearted with them but when it came to the instruction of music, she was indubitably strict. Never lenient nor indulgent with her and Elizabeth. At the time, Isabel had initially taken it for some semblance of cruelty but as their lessons progressed, she learnt that it was rather a consequence of the esteem that their mother had for music. To her it was not merely a pastime but a noble art. An activity that brought out the best in player and listener alike when done with earnest humility and deep-rooted passion. Her mother was the first person Isabel had known to compose original pieces on the pianoforte and perform them after only a single recital. She would have lived to be quite the musician had she been blessed with the benefit of long life.
Isabel could recall with shocking clarity how those pianoforte lessons with Elizabeth and her mother had been. The music room was always quiet before the instruments were touched. To her mother, it was as sacred a place as the Chapel and she seldom spoke in there when it was time for a lesson.
“What are you doing here?” her mother had said, the first time Elizabeth and Isabel thought to join her in there.
“We want to learn to play the pianoforte,” Elizabeth had confessed.
Isabel had raised a fist in agreement. “Yes, we do, Mother!”
Her mother had smiled and offered them both space on either side of her on the bench beside the instrument.
And so it had begun. Whenever they were in the music room, her mother walked around like veteran ship captain on the deck. She stalked about giving instructions when absolutely necessary and correcting them with expressionless candor. She was a different person when it came to music.
Their father, it seemed, respected the music room as their mother’s domain and seldom disturbed them whenever they were learning to play.
The day came when Elizabeth and Isabel had learnt to play a melody of their own with Isabel taking the right-hand side of the pianoforte and Elizabeth obliging herself to the left. The look of pride on their mother’s face had been unforgettable.
“I should have to take your lessons more seriously. It seems you are both blessed with no small talent.”
Elizabeth had blushed and swooned, but Isabel had stared wide-eyed. She had always believed her mother was taking their lessons seriously. The fact that she intended to make the lessons ‘more’ seriously seemed to her almost unfathomable.
It was after that their mother began to teach them to read music and to play without ever glancing at the keyboard. On account of their limited reach, they often were restricted in the pieces they could play but with time a subtle lean of the hips allowed them to use the full spectrum of the pianofortes sound.
One day, Isabel had listened to her mother play a solemnly beautiful piece and had taken it to heart. The next day she reproduced the melody in an effort to show her mother she understood.
Her mother had smiled, her eyes gleaming with tears. “You’re both going to be far better women than I could have ever been.”
Even as she remembered, it struck Isabel that her mother’s emphasis was on the sort of women they would become and not on the sort of musicians. It meant that for her playing music and being a good person were somehow linked. That in reproducing her mother’s composition, Isabel had demonstrated some subtle understanding of the human condition that her mother believed would stand her in good stead in her journey through life.
It was all the encouragement Isabel could have hoped for and that was the true beginning of her learning. It was three months later when their mother died. It had come suddenly and without any particular warning. She had died from some violent affliction of the heart which had caused her to faint after a bout of convulsion. All attempts to revive her had proved abortive.
The pain of her death had proved unimaginable but when playing the pianoforte, Isabel imagined that by some supernatural providence her mother could still hear the music, still enjoy the ingenuity and hope in her playing.
Whenever she found herself again in that place of pain and hopelessness, she found refuge in the sanctuary of music. With all the hurt and sting from Alexander’s rejection of her, Isabel found she could run to the music to hold her steady.
She played the same song over and over again. Her mother’s song. She didn’t care if she was causing a nuisance or if the whole manor could hear. She played until her fingers were blistered. When the playing was done, and her fingers were too sore to go on. She hummed that same melody until her throat was raw and dry. When she had regained some aspect of her peace of mind, she leaned back satisfied that she had shared her pain with her mother’s spirit and by some divine help her situation might be improved.
Isabel dried her tears and closed the pianoforte as she let the memories of her mother fade. She had learnt from the very best how to mend your mood with music and the playing had gone some way to helping the hurt.
* * *
Alexander stood by the music room door, utterly beguiled by Isabel’s playing. She had always been a fabulous player, but her talents had greatly improved since they were youths in love. There was always a note of sadness in her playing and now the sadness rang clear and sharp in the melody. He could hear all her devastation, all her disappointment and pain in every note. This was not a normal music routine but an act of survival. A hope to find solace in making something of the pain within.
Alexander understood the emotion well. It was something he himself had done at many times in his life. When his parents died, he, too, had searched for something to confide in. A place to hide the pain. His search led him to the local boxing academy where he met a man by the name of Daniel Heston. After a few sparring sessions, Daniel Heston had remarked that Alexander had the talent to become the next John ‘the Gentleman’ Jackson, the Worcestershire Man who had become the bare-knuckle boxing champion of England. His early days under the tutelage of Daniel Heston and the so-called emperors of pugilism likened him even more to John Jackson on account of the fact that he spoke well and dressed well despite his humble birth. It was John Jackson’s air and manner that had made him the darling of the Ton and though Alexander’s cousin Emily had discouraged it, Alexander had taken every opportunity to visit the local boxing academy and do his part to expunge his own pains with violence.
Early on, Daniel Heston knew that Alexander had some darkness in him. He had remarked upon it after his first week hitting the hanging bags. Alexander was going through a lot of pain at that time and so he fought with accumulated rage. Before long he was feared and respected about the boxing academy for his fast hands and suddenness. With time his footwork grew nimble and his arms which had once been skinny, thickened with lean muscle. His Great Uncle, upon noting the transformation of his body, enquired about it and Alexander had declined to give a clear answer. He suspected his Great Uncle always knew of his secret but made no further enquiry of it.
Sometimes, when Daniel was in good spirits, he would take Alex to watch the older fighters and he learnt that Daniel himself was a fighter of some repute, but Daniel never allowed Alex to watch him fight. It wasn’t until Alexander himself sought to make a real effort as a boxer that Daniel told him that it was not going to resolve the pain within. He brought Alexander to watch him fight. Alexander watched with open-mouthed awe. Daniel had brutish strength and fearsome power, but his real strength was his deceptive quickness, his suddenness. He moved around the ring like a big, beautiful dancer. But there was a concentrated pain in his fighting, an exultation of malice.
After the fight Daniel had pulled him aside and said, “You could be the best at this, but this wouldn’t be the best for you. If you ask me, boxing should only be a place of release and not be the place you make your name.”
Alexander had understood precisely what the man meant and had reserved his boxing at the academy for only those darkest days when he needed to purge his emotions.
The energy of those dark days was the same thing he heard in Isabel’s music. He knew it well because he understood it intimately. His heart hurt for her. He wanted her to understand that he didn’t mean to put her through this. To understand that it was only for the best that they did not threaten old wounds. How could he make her see that letting their love flow could be dangerous for him?
She shut the pianoforte and he came to sudden attention. He had to go. Perhaps one day he would find the words to explain to her.