The First Violin

Von Francius was a clever man, but he made a grand mistake that night, unless he were desirous of making his protégée as uncomfortable as possible. How could those ladies feel otherwise than insulted at seeing the man of ice so suddenly attentive and bland to a nobody, an upstart, and a beautiful one?

The probe continued, and still she sat alone and unspoken to, her only acquaintance or companion seeming to be Fräulein Sartorius, with whom she had come in. I saw how, when von Francius called upon her to do her part, and the looks which had hitherto been averted from her were now turned pitilessly and unwinkingly upon her, she quailed. She bit her lip; her hand trembled. I turned to Eugen with a look which said volumes. He sat with his arms folded, and his face perfectly devoid of all expression, gazing straight before him.

Miss Wedderburn might have been satisfied to the full with her revenge. That was a voice! such a volume of pure, exquisite melody as I had rarely heard. After hearing that, all doubts were settled. The gift might be a blessing or a curse – let every one decide that for himself, according to his style of thinking – but it was there. She possessed the power which put her out of the category of commonplace, and had the most melodious “Open, Sesame!” with which to besiege the doors of the courts in which dwell artists – creative and interpretative.

The performance finished the gap between her and her companions. Their looks said, “You are not one of us.” My angry spirit said, “No; you can never be like her.”

She seemed half afraid of what she had done when it was over, and shrunk into herself with downcast eyes and nervous quivering of the lips at the subdued applause of the men. I wanted to applaud too, but I looked at Eugen. I had instinctively given him some share in the affairs of this lovely creature – a share, which he always strenuously repudiated, both tacitly and openly.

Nevertheless, when I saw him I abstained from applauding, knowing, by a lightning-quick intuition, that it would be highly irritating to him. He showed no emotion; if he had done, I should not have thought the occasion was anything special to him. It was his absurd gravity, stony inexpressiveness, which impressed me with the fact that he was moved – moved against his will and his judgment. He could no more help approving both of her and her voice than he could help admiring a perfect, half-opened rose.

It was over, and we went out of the saal, across the road, and home.

Sigmund, who had not been very well that day, was awake, and restless. Eugen took him up, wrapped him in a little bed-gown, carried him into the other room, and sat down with him. The child rested his head on the loved breast, and was soothed.

She had gone; the door had closed after her. Eugen turned to me, and took Sigmund into his arms again.

“Mein Vater, who is the beautiful lady, and why did you speak so harshly to her? Why did you make her cry?”

The answer, though ostensibly spoken to Sigmund, was a revelation to me.

“That I may not have to cry myself,” said Eugen, kissing him.

“Could the lady make thee cry?” demanded Sigmund, sitting up, much excited at the idea.

Another kiss and a half laugh was the answer. Then he bade him go to sleep, as he did not understand what he was talking about.

By and by Sigmund did drop to sleep. Eugen carried him to his bed, tucked him up, and returned. We sat in silence – such an uncomfortable constrained silence, as had never before been between us. I had a book before me. I saw no word of it. I could not drive the vision away – the lovely, pleading face, the penitence. Good heavens! How could he repulse her as he had done? Her repeated request that he would take that money – what did it all mean? And, moreover, my heart was sore that he had concealed it all from me. About the past I felt no resentment; there was a secret there which I respected; but I was cut up at this. The more I thought of it, the keener was the pain I felt.

“Friedel!”

I looked up. Eugen was leaning across the table and his hand was stretched toward me; his eyes looked full into mine. I answered his look, but I was not clear yet.

“Forgive me!”

“Forgive thee what?”

“This playing with thy confidence.”

“Don’t mention it,” I forced myself to say, but the sore feeling still remained. “You have surely a right to keep your affairs to yourself if you choose.”

“You will not shake hands? Well, perhaps I have no right to ask it; but I should like to tell you all about it.”

I put my hand into his.

“I was wounded,” said I, “it is true. But it is over.”

“Then listen, Friedel.”

He told me the story of his meeting with Miss Wedderburn. All he said of the impression she had made upon him was:

“I thought her very charming, and the loveliest creature I had ever seen. And about the trains. It stands in this way. I thought a few hours of her society would make me very happy, and would be like – oh, well! I knew that in the future, if she ever should see me again, she would either treat me with distant politeness as an inferior, or, supposing she discovered that I had cheated her, would cut me dead. And as it did not matter, as I could not possibly be an acquaintance of hers in the future, I gave myself that pleasure then. It has turned out a mistake on my part, but that is nothing new; my whole existence has been a monstrous mistake. However, now she sees what a churl’s nature was under my fair-seeming exterior, her pride will show her what to do. She will take a wrong view of my character, but what does that signify? She will say that to be deceitful first and uncivil afterward are the main features of the German character, and when she is at Cologne on her honey-moon, she will tell her bride-groom about this adventure, and he will remark that the fellow wanted horsewhipping, and she – ”

“There! You have exercised your imagination quite sufficiently. Then you intend to keep up this farce of not recognizing her. Why?”

He hesitated, looked as nearly awkward as he could, and said, a little constrainedly:

“Because I think it will be for the best.”

“For you or for her?” I inquired, not very fairly, but I could not resist it.

Eugen flushed all over his face.

“What a question!” was all he said.

“I do not think it such a remarkable question. Either you have grown exceedingly nervous as to your own strength of resistance or your fear for hers.”

“Friedhelm,” said he, in a cutting voice, “that is a tone which I should not have believed you capable of taking. It is vulgar, my dear fellow, and uncalled for; and it is so unlike you that I am astonished. If you had been one of the other fellows – ”

I fired up.

“Excuse me, Eugen, it might be vulgar if I were merely chaffing you, but I am not; and I think, after what you have told me, that I have said very little. I am not so sure of her despising you. She looks much more as if she were distressed at your despising her.”

“Pre – pos – ter – ous!”

“If you can mention an instance in her behavior this evening which looked as if she were desirous of snubbing you, I should be obliged by your mentioning it,” I continued:

“Well – well – ”

“Well – well. If she had wished to snub you she would have sent you that money through the post, and made an end of it. She simply desired, as was evident all along, to apologize for having been rude to a person who had been kind to her. I can quite understand it, and I am not sure that your behavior will not have the very opposite effect to that you expect.”

“I think you are mistaken. However, it does not matter; our paths lie quite apart. She will have plenty of other things to take up her time and thoughts. Anyhow I am glad that you and I are quits once more.”

So was I. We said no more upon the subject, but I always felt as if a kind of connecting link existed between my friend and me, and that beautiful, solitary English girl.

The link was destined to become yet closer. The concert was over at which she sung. She had a success. I see she has not mentioned it; a success which isolated her still more from her companions, inasmuch as it made her more distinctly professional and them more severely virtuous.

One afternoon when Eugen and I happened to have nothing to do, we took Sigmund to the Grafenberg. We wandered about in the fir wood, and at last came to a pause and rested. Eugen lay upon his back and gazed up into the thickness of brown-green fir above, and perhaps guessed at the heaven beyond the dark shade. I sat and stared before me through the straight red-brown stems across the ground, to an invisible beyond which had charms for me, and was a kind of symphonic beauty in my mind. Sigmund lay flat upon his stomach, kicked his heels and made intricate patterns with the fir needles, while he hummed a gentle song to himself in a small, sweet voice, true as a lark’s, but sadder. There was utter stillness and utter calm all round.

“With sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged,”

Presently Eugen’s arm stole around Sigmund and drew him closer and closer to him, and they continued to look at each other until a mutual smile broke upon both faces, and the boy said, his whole small frame as well as his voice quivering (the poor little fellow had nerves that vibrated to the slightest emotion): “I love thee.”

A light leaped into the father’s eyes; a look of pain followed it quickly.

“And I shall never leave thee,” said Sigmund.

Eugen parried the necessity of speaking by a kiss.

“I love thee too, Friedel,” continued he, taking my hand. “We are very happy together, aren’t we?” And he laughed placidly to himself.

Eugen, as if stung by some tormenting thought, sprung up and we left the wood.

Oh, far back, by-gone day! There was a soft light over you shed by a kindly sun. That was a time in which joy ran a golden thread through the gray homespun of every-day life.

Back to the restauration at the foot of the berg, where Sigmund was supplied with milk and Eugen and I with beer, where we sat at a little wooden table in a garden and the pleasant clack of friendly conversation sounded around; where the women tried to make friends with Sigmund, and the girls whispered behind their coffee-cups or (pace, elegant fiction!) their beer-glasses, and always happened to be looking up if our eyes roved that way. Two poor musiker and a little boy; persons of no importance whatever, who could scrape their part in the symphony with some intelligence and feel they had done their duty. Well, well! it is not all of us who can do even so much. I know some instruments that are always out of tune. Let us be complacent where we justly can. The opportunities are few.

We took our way home. The days were long, and it was yet light when we returned and found the reproachful face of Frau Schmidt looking for us, and her arms open to receive the weary little lad who had fallen asleep on his father’s shoulder.

I went upstairs, and, by a natural instinct, to the window. Those facing it were open; some one moved in the room. Two chords of a piano were struck. Some one came and stood by the window, shielded her eyes from the rays of the setting sun which streamed down the street and looked westward. Eugen was passing behind me. I pulled him to the window, and we both looked – silently, gravely.

The girl dropped her hand; her eyes fell upon us. The color mounted to her cheek; she turned away and went to the interior of the room. It was May Wedderburn.

“Also!” said Eugen, after a pause. “A new neighbor; it reminds me of one of Andersen’s ‘Märchen,’ but I don’t know which.”

CHAPTER XX

“For though he lived aloof from ken,The world’s unwitnessed denizen,The love within him stirsAbroad, and with the hearts of menHis own confers.”

The story of my life from day to day was dull enough, same enough for some time after I went to live at the Wehrhahn. I was studying hard, and my only variety was the letters I had from home; not very cheering, these. One, which I received from Adelaide, puzzled me somewhat. After speaking of her coming marriage in a way which made me sad and uncomfortable, she condescended to express her approval of what I was doing, and went on:

“I am catholic in my tastes. I suppose all our friends would faint at the idea of there being a ‘singer’ in the family. Now, I should rather like you to be a singer – only be a great one – not a little twopenny-halfpenny person who has to advertise for engagements.

“Now I am going to give you some advice. This Herr von Francius – your teacher or whatever he is. Be cautious what you are about with him. I don’t say more, but I say that again. Be cautious! Don’t burn your fingers. Now, I have not much time, and I hate writing letters, as you know. In a week I am to be married, and then —nous verrons. We go to Paris first, and then on to Rome, where we shall winter – to gratify my taste, I wonder, or Sir Peter’s for moldering ruins, ancient pictures, and the Coliseum by moonlight? I have no doubt that we shall do our duty by the respectable old structures. Remember what I said, and write to me now and then.

“A.”

I frowned and puzzled a little over this letter. Be cautious? In what possible way could I be cautious? What need could there be for it when all that passed between me and von Francius was the daily singing lesson at which he was so strict and severe, sometimes so sharp and cutting with me. I saw him then; I saw him also at the constant proben to concerts whose season had already begun; proben to the “Passions-musik,” the “Messiah,” etc. At one or two of these concerts I was to sing. I did not like the idea, but I could not make von Francius see it as I did. He said I must sing – it was part of my studies, and I was fain to bend to his will.

Von Francius – I looked at Adelaide’s letter, and smiled again. Von Francius had kept his word; he had behaved to me as a kind elder brother. He seemed instinctively to understand the wish, which was very strong on my part, not to live entirely at Miss Hallam’s expense – to provide, partially at any rate, for myself, if possible. He helped me to do this. Now he brought me some music to be copied; now he told me of a young lady who wanted lessons in English – now of one little thing – now of another, which kept me, to my pride and joy, in such slender pocket-money as I needed. Truly, I used to think in those days, it does not need much money nor much room for a person like me to keep her place in the world. I wished to trouble no one – only to work as hard as I could, and do the work that was set for me as well as I knew how. I had my wish and so far was not unhappy.

But what did Adelaide mean? True, I had once described von Francius to her as young, that is youngish, clever and handsome. Did she, remembering my well-known susceptibility, fear that I might fall in love with him and compromise myself by some silly Schwärmerei? I laughed about all by myself at the very idea of such a thing. Fall in love with von Francius, and – my eyes fell upon the two windows over the way. No; my heart was pure of the faintest feeling for him, save that of respect, gratitude, and liking founded at that time more on esteem than spontaneous growth. And he – I smiled at that idea, too.

In all my long interviews with von Francius throughout our intercourse he maintained one unvaried tone, that of a kind, frank, protecting interest, with something of the patron on his part. He would converse with me about Schiller and Goethe, true; he would also caution me against such and such shop-keepers as extortioners, and tell me the place where they gave the largest discount on music paid for on the spot; would discuss the “Waldstein” or “Appassionata” with me, or the beauties of Rubinstein or the deep meanings of Schumann, also the relative cost of living en pension or providing for one’s self.

No. Adelaide was mistaken. I wished, parenthetically, that she could make the acquaintance of von Francius, and learn how mistaken – and again my eyes fell upon the opposite windows. Friedhelm Helfen leaned from one, holding fast Courvoisier’s boy. The rich Italian coloring of the lovely young face; the dusky hair; the glow upon the cheeks, the deep blue of his serge dress, made the effect of a warmly tinted southern flower; it was a flower-face too; delicate and rich at once.

Adelaide’s letter dropped unheeded to the floor. Those two could not see me, and I had a joy in watching them.

To say, however, that I actually watched my opposite neighbors would not be true. I studiously avoided watching them; never sat in the window; seldom showed myself at it, though in passing I sometimes allowed myself to linger, and so had glimpses of those within. They were three and I was one. They were the happier by two. Or if I knew that they were out, that a probe was going on, or an opera or concert, there was nothing I liked better than to sit for a time and look to the opposite windows. They were nearly always open, as were also mine, for the heat of the stove was oppressive to me, and I preferred to temper it with a little of the raw outside air. I used sometimes to hear from those opposite rooms the practicing or playing of passages on the violin and violoncello – scales, shakes, long complicated flourishes and phrases. Sometimes I heard the very strains that I had to sing to: airs, scraps of airs, snatches from operas, concerts and symphonies. They were always humming and singing things. They came home haunted with “The Last Rose,” from “Marta” – now some air from “Faust,” “Der Freischütz,” or “Tannhauser.”

But one air was particular to Eugen, who seemed to be perfectly possessed by it – that which I had heard him humming when I first met him – the March from “Lenore.” He whistled it and sung it; played it on violin, ’cello and piano; hummed it first thing in the morning and last thing at night; harped upon it until in despair his companion threw books and music at him, and he, dodging them, laughed, begged pardon, was silent for five minutes, and then the March da Capo set in a halting kind of measure to the ballad.

By way of a slight and wholesome variety there was the whole repertory of “Volkslieder,” from

“Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen;Du, du, liegst mir im Sinn,”

up to

“Mädele, ruck, ruck, ruckAn meine gürne Seite.”

Sometimes they – one or both of them with the boy – might be seen at the window leaning out, whistling or talking. When doors banged and quick steps rushed up or down the stairs two steps at a time I knew it was Courvoisier. Friedhelm Helfen’s movements were slower and more sedate. I grew to know his face as well as Eugen’s, and to like it better the more I saw of it. A quite young, almost boyish face, with an inexpressibly pure, true, and good expression upon the mouth and in the dark-brown eyes. Reticent, as most good faces are, but a face which made you desire to know the owner of it, made you feel that you could trust him in any trial. His face reminded me in a distant manner of two others, also faces of musicians, but greater in their craft than he, they being creators and pioneers, while he was only a disciple, of Beethoven and of the living master, Rubinstein. A gentle, though far from weak face, and such a contrast in expression and everything else to that of my musician, as to make me wonder sometimes whether they had been drawn to each other from very oppositeness of disposition and character. That they were very great friends I could not doubt; that the leadership was on Courvoisier’s side was no less evident. Eugen’s affection for Helfen seemed to have something fatherly in it, while I could see that both joined in an absorbing worship of the boy, who was a very Crœsus in love if in nothing else. Sigmund had, too, an adorer in a third musician, a violoncellist, one of their comrades, who apparently spent much of his spare substance in purchasing presents of toys and books and other offerings, which he laid at the shrine of St. Sigmund, with what success I could not tell. Beyond this young fellow, Karl Linders, they had not many visitors. Young men used occasionally to appear with violin-cases in their hands, coming for lessons, probably.

All these things I saw without absolutely watching for them; they made that impression upon me which the most trifling facts connected with a person around whom cling all one’s deepest pleasures and deepest pains ever do and must make. I was glad to know them, but at the same time they impressed the loneliness and aloofness of my own life more decidedly upon me.

I remember one small incident which at the time it happened struck home to me. My windows were open; it was an October afternoon, mild and sunny. The yellow light shone with a peaceful warmth upon the afternoon quietness of the street. Suddenly that quietness was broken. The sound of music, the peculiar blatant noise of trumpets smote the air. It came nearer, and with it the measured tramp of feet. I rose and went to look out. A Hussar regiment was passing; before them was borne a soldier’s coffin; they carried a comrade to his grave. The music they played was the “Funeral March for the Death of a Hero,” from the “Sinfonia Eroica.” Muffled, slow, grand and mournful, it went wailing and throbbing by. The procession passed slowly on in the October sunshine, along the Schadowstrasse, turning off by the Hofgarten, and so on to the cemetery. I leaned out of the window and looked after it – forgetting all outside, till just as the last of the procession passed by my eyes fell upon Courvoisier going into his house, and who presently entered the room. He was unperceived by Friedhelm and Sigmund, who were looking after the procession. The child’s face was earnest, almost solemn – he had not seen his father come up. I saw Helfen’s lip caress Sigmund’s loose black hair that waved just beneath them.

Then I saw a figure – only a black shadow to my eyes which were dazzled by the sun – come behind them. One hand was laid upon Helfen’s shoulder, another turned the child’s chin. What a change! Friedhelm’s grave face smiled: Sigmund sprung aside, made a leap to his father, who stooped to him, and clasping his arms tight round his neck was raised up in his arms.

They were all satisfied – all smiling – all happy. I turned away. That was a home – that was a meeting of three affections. What more could they want? I shut the window – shut it all out, and myself with it into the cold, feeling my lips quiver. It was very fine, this life of independence and self-support, but it was dreadfully lonely.

The days went on. Adelaide was now Lady Le Marchant. She had written to me again, and warned me once more to be careful what I was about. She had said that she liked her life – at least she said so in her first two or three letters, and then there fell a sudden utter silence about herself, which seemed to me ominous.

Adelaide had always acted upon the assumption that Sir Peter was a far from strong-minded individual, with a certain hardness and cunning perhaps in relation to money matters, but nothing that a clever wife with a strong enough sense of her own privileges could not overcome.

She said nothing to me about herself. She told me about Rome; who was there; what they did and looked like; what she wore; what compliments were paid to her – that was all.

Stella told me my letters were dull – and I dare say they were – and that there was no use in her writing, because nothing ever happened in Skernford, which was also true. And for Eugen, we were on exactly the same terms – or rather no terms – as before. Opposite neighbors, and as far removed as if we had lived at the antipodes.

My life, as time went on, grew into a kind of fossilized dream, in which I rose up and lay down, practiced so many hours a day, ate and drank and took my lesson, and it seemed as if I had been living so for years, and should continue to live on so to the end of my days – until one morning my eyes would not open again, and for me the world would have come to an end.

CHAPTER XXI

“And nearer still shall further be,And words shall plague and vex and buffet thee.”

It was December, close upon Christmas. Winter at last in real earnest. A black frost. The earth bound in fetters of iron. The land gray; the sky steel; the wind a dagger. The trees, leafless and stark, rattled their shriveled boughs together in that wind.

It met you at corners and froze the words out of your mouth; it whistled a low, fiendish, malignant whistle round the houses; as vicious and little louder than the buzz of a mosquito. It swept, thin, keen and cutting, down the Königsallée, and blew fine black dust into one’s face.