The First Violin

This levée lasted till the bell rang for lunch, when we went into the dining-room, and found Sir Peter and his secretary, young Arkwright, already seated. He – Arkwright – was a good-natured, tender-hearted lad, devoted to Adelaide. I do not think he was very happy or very well satisfied with his place, but from his salary he half supported a mother and sister, and so was fain to “grin and bear it.”

Sir Peter was always exceedingly affectionate to me. I hated to be in the same room with him, and while I detested him, was also conscious of an unheroic fear of him. For Adelaide’s sake I was as attentive to him as I could make myself, in order to free her a little from his surveillance, for poor Adelaide Wedderburn, with her few pounds of annual pocket-money, and her proud, restless, ambitious spirit, had been a free, contented woman in comparison with Lady Le Marchant.

On the day in question he was particularly amiable, called me “my dear” every time he spoke to me, and complimented me upon my good looks, telling me I was growing monstrous handsome – ay, devilish handsome, by Gad! far outstripping my lady, who had gone off dreadfully in her good looks, hadn’t she, Arkwright?

Poor Arkwright, tingling with a scorching blush, and ready to sink through the floor with confusion, stammered out that he had never thought of venturing to remark upon my Lady Le Marchant’s looks.

“What a lie, Arkwright! You know you watch her as if she was the apple of your eye,” chuckled Sir Peter, smiling round upon the company with his cold, glittering eyes. “What are you blushing so for, my pretty May? Isn’t there a song something about my pretty May, my dearest May, eh?”

“My pretty Jane, I suppose you mean,” said I, nobly taking his attention upon myself, while Adelaide sat motionless and white as marble, and Arkwright cooled down somewhat from his state of shame and anguish at being called upon to decide which of us eclipsed the other in good looks.

“Pretty Jane! Whoever heard of a pretty Jane?” said Sir Peter. “If it isn’t May, it ought to be. At any rate, there was a Charming May.”

“The month – not a person.”

“Pretty Jane, indeed! You must sing me that after lunch, and then we can see whether the song was pretty or not, my dear, eh?”

“Certainly, Sir Peter, if you like.”

“Yes, I do like. My lady here seems to have lost her voice lately. I can’t imagine the reason. I am sure she has everything to make her sing for joy; have you not, my dear?”

“Everything, and more than everything,” replies my lady, laconically.

“And she has a strong sense of duty, too; loves those whom she ought to love, and despises those whom she ought to despise. She always has done, from her infancy up to the time when she loved me and despised public opinion for my sake.”

The last remark was uttered in tones of deeper malignity, while the eyes began to glare, and the under lip to droop, and the sharp eye-teeth, which lent such a very emphatic point to all Sir Peter’s smiles, sneers, and facial movements in general, gleamed.

Adelaide’s lip quivered for a second; her color momentarily faded.

In this kind of light and agreeable badinage the meal passed over, and we were followed into the drawing-room by Sir Peter, loudly demanding “‘My Pretty Jane’ – or May, or whatever it was.”

“We are going out,” said my lady. “You can have it another time. May can not sing the moment she has finished lunch.”

“Hold your tongue, my dear,” said Sir Peter; and inspired by an agreeable and playful humor, he patted his wife’s shoulder and pinched her ear.

The color fled from her very lips and she stood pale and rigid with a look in her eyes which I interpreted to mean a shuddering recoil, stopped by sheer force of will.

Sir Peter turned with an engaging laugh to me:

“Miss May – bonny May – made me a promise, and she must keep it; or if she doesn’t I shall take the usual forfeit. We know what that is. Upon my word, I almost wish she would break her promise.”

“I have no wish to break my promise,” said I, hastening to the piano, and then and there singing “My Pretty Jane,” and one or two others, after which he released us, chuckling at having contrived to keep my lady so long waiting for her drive.

The afternoon’s programme was, I confess, not without attraction to me; for I knew that I was pretty, and I had not one of the strong and powerful minds which remained unelated by admiration and undepressed by the absence of it.

We drove to the picture exhibitions, and at both of them had a little crowd attending us. That crowd consisted chiefly of admirers, or professed admirers, of my sister, with von Francius in addition, who dropped in at the first exhibition.

Von Francius did not attend my sister; it was by my side that he remained and it was to me that he talked. He looked on at the men who were around her, but scarcely addressed her himself.

There was a clique of young artists who chose to consider the wealth of Sir Peter Le Marchant as fabulous, and who paid court to his wife from mixed motives; the prevailing one being a hope that she would be smitten by some picture of theirs at a fancy price, and order it to be sent home – as if she ever saw with anything beyond the most superficial outward eye those pictures, and as if it lay in her power to order any one, even the smallest and meanest of them. These ingenuous artists had yet to learn that Sir Peter’s picture purchases were formed from his own judgment, through the medium of himself or his secretary, armed with strict injunctions as to price, and upon the most purely practical and business-like principles – not in the least at the caprice of his wife.

We went to the larger gallery last. As we entered it I turned aside with von Francius to look at a picture in a small back room, and when we turned to follow the others, they had all gone forward into the large room; but standing at the door by which we had entered, and looking calmly after us, was Courvoisier.

A shock thrilled me. It was some time since I had seen him; for I had scarcely been at my lodgings for a fortnight, and we had had no haupt-proben lately. I had heard some rumor that important things – or, as Frau Lutzler gracefully expressed it, was wichtiges– had taken place between von Francius and the kapelle, and that Courvoisier had taken a leading part in the affair. To-day the greeting between the two men was a cordial if a brief one.

Eugen’s eyes scarcely fell upon me; he included me in his bow – that was all. All my little day-dream of growing self-complacency was shattered, scattered; the old feeling of soreness, smallness, wounded pride, and bruised self-esteem came back again. I felt a wild, angry desire to compel some other glance from those eyes than that exasperating one of quiet indifference. I felt it like a lash every time I encountered it. Its very coolness and absence of emotion stung me and made me quiver.

We and Courvoisier entered the large room at the same time. While Adelaide was languidly making its circuit, von Francius and I sat upon the ottoman in the middle of the room. I watched Eugen, even if he took no notice of me – watched him till every feeling of rest, every hard-won conviction of indifference to him and feeling of regard conquered came tumbling down in ignominious ruins. I knew he had had a fiery trial. His child, for whom I used to watch his adoration with a dull kind of envy, had left him. There was some mystery about it, and much pain. Frau Lutzler had begun to tell me a long story culled from one told her by Frau Schmidt, and I had stopped her, but knew that “Herr Courvoisier was not like the same man any more.”

That trouble was visible in firmly marked lines, even now; he looked subdued, older, and his face was thin and worn. Yet never had I noticed so plainly before the bright light of intellect in his eye; the noble stamp of mind upon his brow. There was more than the grace of a kindly nature in the pleasant curve of the lips – there was thought, power, intellectual strength. I compared him with the young men who were at this moment dangling round my sister. Not one among them could approach him – not merely in stature and breadth and the natural grace and dignity of carriage, but in far better things – in the mind that dominates sense; the will that holds back passion with a hand as strong and firm as that of a master over the dog whom he chooses to obey him. This man – I write from knowledge – had the capacity to appreciate and enjoy life – to taste its pleasures – never to excess, but with no ascetic’s lips. But the natural prompting – the moral “eat, drink, and be merry,” was held back with a ruthless hand, with chain of iron, and biting thong to chastise pitilessly each restive movement. He dreed out his weird most thoroughly, and drank the cup presented to him to the last dregs.

When the weird is very long and hard – when the flavor of the cup is exceeding bitter, this process leaves its effects in the form of sobered mien, gathering wrinkles, and a permanent shadow on the brow, and in the eyes. So it was with him.

He went round the room, looking at a picture here and there with the eye of a connoisseur – then pausing before the one which von Francius had brought me to look at on Christmas-day, Courvoisier, folding his arms, stood before it and surveyed it, straightly, and without moving a muscle; coolly, criticisingly and very fastidiously. The blasé-looking individual in the foreground received, I saw, a share of his attention – the artist, too, in the background; the model, with the white dress, oriental fan, bare arms, and half-bored, half-cynic look. He looked at them all long – attentively – then turned away; the only token of approval or disapproval which he vouchsafed being a slight smile and a slight shrug, both so very slight as to be almost imperceptible. Then he passed on – glanced at some other pictures – at my sister, on whom his eyes dwelt for a moment as if he thought that she at least made a very beautiful picture; then out of the room.

“Do you know him?” said von Francius, quite softly, to me.

I started violently. I had utterly forgotten that he was at my side, and I know not what tales my face had been telling. I turned to find the dark and impenetrable eyes of von Francius fixed on me.

“A little,” I said.

“Then you know a generous, high-minded man – a man who has made me feel ashamed of myself – and a man to whom I made an apology the other day with pleasure.”

My heart warmed. This praise of Eugen by a man whom I admired so devotedly as I did Max von Francius seemed to put me right with myself and the world.

Soon afterward we left the exhibition, and while the others went away it appeared somehow by the merest casualty that von Francius was asked to drive back with us and have afternoon tea, englischerweise– which he did, after a moment’s hesitation.

After tea he left for an orchestra probe to the next Saturday’s concert; but with an auf wiedersehen, for the probe will not last long, and we shall meet again at the opera and later at the Malkasten Ball.

I enjoyed going to the theater. I knew my dress was pretty. I knew that I looked nice, and that people would look at me, and that I, too, should have my share of admiration and compliments as a schöne Engländerin.

We were twenty minutes late – naturally. All the people in the place stare at us and whisper about us, partly because we have a conspicuous place – the proscenium loge to the right of the stage, partly because we are in full toilet – an almost unprecedented circumstance in that homely theater – partly, I suppose, because Adelaide is supremely beautiful.

Mr. Arkwright was already with us. Von Francius joined us after the first act, and remained until the end. Almost the only words he exchanged with Adelaide were:

“Have you seen this opera before, Lady Le Marchant?”

“No; never.”

It was Auber’s merry little opera, “Des Teufels Antheil.” The play was played. Von Francius was beside me. Whenever I looked down I saw Eugen, with the same calm, placid indifference upon his face; and again I felt the old sensation of soreness, shame, and humiliation. I feel wrought up to a great pitch of nervous excitement when we leave the theater and drive to the Malkasten, where there is more music – dance music, and where the ball is at its height. And in a few moments I find myself whirling down the room in the arms of von Francius, to the music of “Mein schönster Tag in Baden,” and wishing very earnestly that the heart-sickness I feel would make me ill or faint, or anything that would send me home to quietness and – him. But it does not have the desired effect. I am in a fever; I am all too vividly conscious, and people tell me how well I am looking, and that rosy cheeks become me better than pale ones.

They are merry parties, these dances at the Malkasten, in the quaintly decorated saal of the artists’ club-house. There is a certain license in the dress. Velvet coats, and coats, too, in many colors, green and prune and claret, vying with black, are not tabooed. There are various uniforms of hussars, infantry, and uhlans, and some of the women, too, are dressed in a certain fantastically picturesque style to please their artist brothers or fiancés.

The dancing gets faster, and the festivities are kept up late. Songs are sung which perhaps would not be heard in a quiet drawing-room; a little acting is done with them. Music is played, and von Francius, in a vagrant mood, sits down and improvises a fitful, stormy kind of fantasia, which in itself and in his playing puts me much in mind of the weird performances of the Abbate Liszt.

I at least hear another note than of yore, another touch. The soul that it wanted seems gradually creeping into it. He tells a strange story upon the quivering keys – it is becoming tragic, sad, pathetic. He says hastily to me and in an under-tone: “Fräulein May, this is a thought of one of your own poets:

“‘How sad, and mad, and bad it was,And yet how it was sweet.’”

I am almost in tears, and every face is affording illustrations for “The Expressions of the Emotions in Men and Women,” when it suddenly breaks off with a loud, Ha! ha! ha! which sounds as if it came from a human voice, and jars upon me, and then he breaks into a waltz, pushing the astonished musicians aside, and telling the company to dance while he pipes.

A mad dance to a mad tune. He plays and plays on, ever faster, and ever a wilder measure, with strange eerie clanging chords in it which are not like dance notes, until Adelaide prepares to go, and then he suddenly ceases, springs up, and comes with us to our carriage. Adelaide looks white and worn.

Again at the carriage door, “a pair of words” passes between them.

“Milady is tired?” from him, in a courteous tone, as his dark eyes dwell upon her face.

“Thanks, Herr Direktor, I am generally tired,” from her, with a slight smile, as she folds her shawl across her breast with one hand, and extends the other to him.

“Milady, adieu.”

“Adieu, Herr von Francius.”

The ball is over, and I think we have all had enough of it.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CARNIVAL BALL

“Aren’t you coming to the ball, Eugen?”

“I? No.”

“I would if I were you.”

“But you are yourself, you see, and I am I. What was it that Heinrich Mohr in ‘The Children of the World’ was always saying? Ich bin ich, und setze mich selbst. Ditto me, that’s all.”

“It is no end of a lark,” I pursued.

“My larking days are over.”

“And you can talk to any one you like.”

“I am going to talk to myself, thanks. I have long wanted a little conversation with that interesting individual, and while you are masquerading, I will be doing the reverse. By the time you come home I shall be so thoroughly self-investigated and set to rights that a mere look at me will shake all the frivolity out of you.”

“Miss Wedderburn will be there.”

“I hope she may enjoy it.”

“At least she will look so lovely that she will make others enjoy it.”

He made no answer.

“You won’t go – quite certain?”

“Quite certain, mein lieber. Go yourself, and may you have much pleasure.”

Finding that he was in earnest, I went out to hire one domino and purchase one mask, instead of furnishing myself, as I had hoped, with two of each of those requisites.

It was Sunday, the first day of the carnival, and that devoted to the ball of the season. There were others given, but this was the Malerball, or artists’ ball. It was considered rather select, and had I not been lucky enough to have one or two pupils, members of the club, who had come forward with offerings of tickets, I might have tried in vain to gain admittance.

Everybody in Elherthal who was anybody would be at this ball. I had already been at one like it, as well as at several of the less select and rougher entertainments, and I found a pleasure which was somewhat strange even to myself in standing to one side and watching the motley throng and the formal procession which was every year organized by the artists who had the management of the proceedings.

The ball began at the timely hour of seven; about nine I enveloped myself in my domino, and took my way across the road to the scene of the festivities, which took up the whole three saals of the Tonhalle.

The night was bitter cold, but cold with that rawness which speaks of a coming thaw. The lamps were lighted, and despite the cold there was a dense crowd of watchers round the front of the building and in the gardens, with cold, inquisitive noses flattened against the long glass doors through which I have seen the people stream in the pleasant May evenings after the concert or musikfest into the illuminated gardens.

The last time I had been in the big saal had been to attend a dry probe to a dry concert – the “Erste Walpurgisnacht” of Mendelssohn. The scene was changed now; the whole room was a mob – “motley the only wear.” It was full to excess, so that there was scarcely room to move about, much less for dancing. For that purpose the middle saal of the three had been set aside, or rather a part of it railed off.

I felt a pleasant sense of ease and well-being – a security that I should not be recognized, as I had drawn the pointed hood of my domino over my head, and enveloped myself closely in its ample folds, and thus I could survey the brilliant Maskenball as I surveyed life from a quiet, unnoticed obscurity, and without taking part in its active affairs.

There was music going on as I entered. It could scarcely be heard above the Babel of tongues which was sounding. People were moving as well as they could. I made my way slowly and unobtrusively toward the upper end of the saal, intending to secure a place on the great orchestra, and thence survey the procession.

I recognized dozens of people whom I knew personally, or by sight, or name, transformed from sober Rhenish burger, or youths of the period, into persons and creatures whose appropriateness or inappropriateness to their every-day character it gave me much joy to witness. The most foolish young man I knew was attired as Cardinal Richelieu; the wisest, in certain respects, had a buffoon’s costume, and plagued the statesman and churchman grievously.

By degrees I made my way through the mocking, taunting, flouting, many-colored crowd, to the orchestra, and gradually up its steps until I stood upon a fine vantage-ground. Near me were others; I looked round. One party seemed to keep very much together – a party which for richness and correctness of costume outshone all others in the room. Two ladies, one dark and one fair, were dressed as Elsa and Ortrud. A man, whose slight, tall, commanding figure I soon recognized, was attired in the blue mantle, silver helm and harness of Lohengrin the son of Percivale; and a second man, too boyish-looking for the character, was masked as Frederic of Telramund. Henry the Fowler was wanting, but the group was easily to be recognized as personating the four principal characters from Wagner’s great opera.

They had apparently not been there long, for they had not yet unmasked. I had, however, no difficulty in recognizing any of them. The tall, fair girl in the dress of Elsa was Miss Wedderburn; the Ortrud was Lady Le Marchant, and right well she looked the character. Lohengrin was von Francius, and Friedrich von Telramund was Mr. Arkwright, Sir Peter’s secretary. Here was a party in whom I could take some interest, and I immediately and in the most unprincipled manner devoted myself to watching them – myself unnoticed.

“Who in all that motley crowd would I wish to be?” I thought, as my eyes wandered over them.

The procession was just forming; the voluptuous music of “Die Tausend und eine Nacht” waltzes was floating from the gallery and through the room. They went sweeping past – or running, or jumping; a ballet-girl whose mustache had been too precious to be parted with and a lady of the vielle cour beside her, nuns and corpses; Christy Minstrels (English, these last, whose motives were constantly misunderstood), fools and astrologers, Gretchens, Clärchens, devils, Egmonts, Joans of Arc enough to have rescued France a dozen times, and peasants of every race: Turks and Finns; American Indians and Alfred the Great – it was tedious and dazzling.

Then the procession was got into order; a long string of German legends, all the misty chronicle of Gudrun, the “Nibelungenlied” and the Rheingold – Siegfried and Kriemhild – those two everlasting figures of beauty and heroism, love and tragedy, which stand forth in hues of pure brightness that no time can dim; Brunhild and von Tronje-Hagen – this was before the days of Bayreuth and the Tetralogy – Tannhauser and Lohengrin, the Loreley, Walther von der Vogelweide, the two Elizabeths of the Wartburg, dozens of obscure legends and figures from “Volkslieder” and Folklore which I did not recognize; “Dornroschen,” Rubezahl; and the music to which they marched, was the melancholy yet noble measure, “The Last Ten of the Fourth Regiment.”

I surveyed the masks and masquerading for some time, keeping my eye all the while upon the party near me. They presently separated. Lady Le Marchant took the arm which von Francius offered her, and they went down the steps. Miss Wedderburn and the young secretary were left alone. I was standing near them, and two other masks, both in domino, hovered about. One wore a white domino with a scarlet rosette on the breast. The other was a black domino, closely disguised, who looked long after von Francius and Lady Le Marchant, and presently descended the orchestra steps and followed in their wake.

“Do not remain with me, Mr. Arkwright,” I heard Miss Wedderburn say. “You want to dance. Go and enjoy yourself.”

“I could not think of leaving you alone, Miss Wedderburn.”

“Oh, yes, you could, and can. I am not going to move from here. I want to look on – not to dance. You will find me here when you return.”

Again she urged him not to remain with her, and finally he departed in search of amusement among the crowd below.

Miss Wedderburn was now alone. She turned; her eyes, through her mask, met mine through my mask, and a certain thrill shot through me. This was such an opportunity as I had never hoped for, and I told myself that I should be a great fool if I let it slip. But how to begin? I looked at her. She was very beautiful, this young English girl, with the wonderful blending of fire and softness which had made me from the first think her one of the most attractive women I had ever seen.

As I stood, awkward and undecided, she beckoned me to her. In an instant I was at her side, bowing but maintaining silence.

“You are Herr Helfen, nicht wahr?” said she, inquiringly.

“Yes,” said I, and removed my mask. “How did you know it?”

“Something in your figure and attitude. Are you not dancing?”

“I – oh, no!”

“Nor I – I am not in the humor for it. I never felt less like dancing, nor less like a masquerade.” Then – hesitatingly – “Are you alone to-night?”

“Yes. Eugen would not come.”

“He will not be here at all?”

“Not at all?”

“I am surprised.”

“I tried to persuade him to come,” said I, apologetically. “But he would not. He said he was going to have a little conversation at home with himself.”

“So!” She turned to me with a mounting color, which I saw flush to her brow above her mask, and with parted lips.