The First Violin

“Ah, there is Friedhelm,” said he, “now he will take seconds.”

“Then I will not disturb you any longer.”

“On the contrary,” said he, laying his hand upon my wrist. (My dream of the morning flashed into my mind.) “It would be better if you remained, then we could have a trio. Friedel, come here! You are just in time. Fräulein Wedderburn will be good enough to accompany us, and we can try the Fourth Symphony.”

“What you call ‘Spring’?” inquired Helfen, coming up smilingly. “With all my heart. Where is the score?”

“What you call Spring?” Was it possible that in winter – on a cold and unfriendly day – we were going to have spring, leafy bloom, the desert filled with leaping springs, and blossoming like a rose? Full of wonder, surprise, and a certain excitement at the idea, I sat still and thought of my dream, and the rain beat against the windows, and a draughty wind fluttered the tinselly decorations of last night. The floor was strewed with fragments of garments torn in the crush – paper and silken flowers, here a rosette, there a buckle, a satin bow, a tinsel spangle. Benches and tables were piled about the room, which was half dark; only to westward, through one window, was visible a paler gleam, which might by comparison be called light.

The two young men turned over the music, laughing at something, and chaffing each other. I never in my life saw two such entire friends as these; they seemed to harmonize most perfectly in the midst of their unlikeness to each other.

“Excuse that we kept you waiting, mein Fräulein,” said Courvoisier, placing some music before me. “This fellow is so slow, and will put everything into order as he uses it.”

“Well for you that I am, mein lieber,” said Helfen, composedly. “If any one had the enterprise to offer a prize to the most extravagant, untidy fellow in Europe, the palm would be yours – by a long way too.”

“Friedel binds his music and numbers it,” observed Courvoisier. “It is one of the most beautiful and affecting of sights to behold him with scissors, paste-pot, brush and binding. It occurs periodically about four times a year, I think, and moves me almost to tears when I see it.”

“Der edle Ritter leaves his music unbound, and borrows mine on every possible occasion when his own property is scattered to the four winds of heaven.”

“Aber! aber!” cried Eugen. “That is too much! I call Frau Schmidt to witness that all my music is put in one place.”

“I never said it wasn’t. But you never can find it when you want it, and the confusion is delightfully increased by your constantly rushing off to buy a new partitur when you can’t find the old one; so you have three or four of each.”

“This is all to show off what he considers his own good qualities; a certain slow, methodical plodding and a good memory, which are natural gifts, but which he boasts of as if they were acquired virtues. He binds his music because he is a pedant and a prig, and can’t help it; a bad fellow to get on with. Now, mein bester, for the ‘Fruhling.’”

“But the Fräulein ought to have it explained,” expostulated Helfen, laughing. “Every one has not the misfortune to be so well acquainted with you as I am. He has rather insane fancies sometimes,” he added, turning to me, “without rhyme or reason that I am aware, and he chooses to assert that Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, or the chief motive of it, occurred to him on a spring day, when the master was, for a time, quite charmed from his bitter humor, and had, perhaps, some one by his side who put his heart in tune with the spring songs of the birds, the green of the grass, the scent of the flowers. So he calls it the ‘Fruhling Symphonie,’ and will persist in playing it as such. I call the idea rather far-fetched, but then that is nothing unusual with him.”

“Having said your remarkably stupid say, which Miss Wedderburn has far too much sense to heed in the least, suppose you allow us to begin,” said Courvoisier, giving the other a push toward his violin.

But we were destined to have yet another coadjutor in the shape of Karl Linders, who at that moment strolled in, and was hailed by his friends with jubilation.

“Come and help! Your ’cello will give just the mellowness that is wanted,” said Eugen.

“I must go and get it then,” said Karl, looking at me.

Eugen, with an indescribable expression as he intercepted the glance, introduced us to one another. Karl and Friedhelm Helfen went off to another part of the Tonhalle to fetch Karl’s violoncello, and we were left alone again.

“Perhaps I ought not to have introduced him. I forgot ‘Lohengrin,’” said Eugen.

“You know that you did not,” said I, in a low voice.

“No,” he answered, almost in the same tone. “It was thinking of that which led me to introduce poor old Karl to you. I thought, perhaps, that you would accept it as a sign – will you?”

“A sign of what?”

“That I feel myself to have been in the wrong throughout – and forgive.”

As I sat, amazed and a little awed at this almost literal fulfillment of my dream, the others returned.

Karl contributed the tones of his mellowest of instruments, which he played with a certain pleasant breadth and brightness of coloring, and my dream came ever truer and truer. The symphony was as spring-like as possible. We tried it nearly all through; the hymn-like and yet fairy-like first movement; the second, that song of universal love, joy, and thanksgiving, with Beethoven’s masculine hand evident throughout. To the notes there seemed to fall a sunshine into the room, and we could see the fields casting their covering of snow, and withered trees bursting into bloom; brooks swollen with warm rain, birds busy at nest-making; clumps of primroses on velvet leaves, and the subtle scent of violets; youths and maidens with love in their eyes; and even a hint of later warmth, when hedges should be white with hawthorn, and the woodland slopes look, with their sheets of hyacinths, as if some of heaven’s blue had been spilled upon earth’s grass.

As the last strong, melodious modulations ceased, Courvoisier pointed to one of the windows.

“Friedhelm, you wretched unbeliever, behold the refutation of your theories. The symphony has brought the sun out.”

“For the first time,” said Friedhelm, as he turned his earnest young face with its fringe of loose brown hair toward the sneaking sun-ray, which was certainly looking shyly in. “As a rule the very heavens weep at the performance. Don’t you remember the last time we tried it, it began to rain instantly?”

“Miss Wedderburn’s co-operation must have secured its success then on this occasion,” said Eugen, gravely, glancing at me for a moment.

“Hear! hear!” murmured Karl, screwing up his violoncello and smiling furtively.

“Oh, I am afraid I hindered rather than helped,” said I, “but it is very beautiful.”

“But not like spring, is it?” asked Friedhelm.

“Well, I think it is.”

“There! I knew she would declare for me,” said Courvoisier, calmly, at which Karl Linders looked up in some astonishment.

“Shall we try this ‘Traumerei,’ Miss Wedderburn, if you are not too tired?”

I turned willingly to the piano, and we played Schumann’s little “Dreams.”

“Ah,” said Eugen, with a deep sigh (and his face had grown sad), “isn’t that the essence of sweetness and poetry? Here’s another which is lovely. ‘Noch ein Paar,’ nicht wahr?”

“And it will be ‘noch ein Paar’ until our fingers drop off,” scolded Friedhelm, who seemed, however, very willing to await that consummation. We went through many of the Kinderscenen and some of the Kreissleriana, and just as we finished a sweet little “Bittendes Kind,” the twilight grew almost into darkness, and Courvoisier laid his violin down.

“Miss Wedderburn, thank you a thousand times!”

“Oh, bitte sehr!” was all I could say. I wanted to say so much more; to say that I had been made happy; my sadness dispelled, a dream half fulfilled, but the words stuck, and had they come ever so flowingly I could not have uttered them with Friedhelm Helfen, who knew so much, looking at us, and Karl Linders on his best behavior in what he considered superior company.

I do not know how it was that Karl and Friedhelm, as we all came from the Tonhalle, walked off to the house, and Eugen and I were left to walk alone through the soaking streets, emptied of all their revelers, and along the dripping Königsallée, with its leafless chestnuts, to Sir Peter’s house. It was cold, it was wet – cheerless, dark, and dismal, and I was very happy – very insanely so. I gave a glance once or twice at my companion. The brightness had left his face; it was stern and worn again, and his lips set as if with the repression of some pain.

“Herr Courvoisier, have you heard from your little boy?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I do not expect to hear from him, mein Fräulein. When he left me we parted altogether.”

“Oh, how dreadful!”

No answer. And we spoke no more until he said “Good-evening” to me at the door of No. 3. As I went in I reflected that I might never meet him thus face to face again. Was it an opportunity missed, or was it a brief glimpse of unexpected joy?

CHAPTER XXX

THE TRUTH

As days went on and grew into weeks, and weeks paired off until a month passed, and I still saw the same stricken look upon my sister’s face, my heart grew full of foreboding.

One morning the astonishing news came that Sir Peter had gone to America.

“America!” I ejaculated (it was always I who acted the part of chorus and did the exclamations and questioning), and I looked at Harry Arkwright, who had communicated the news, and who held an open letter in his hand.

“Yes, to America, to see about a railway which looks very bad. He has no end of their bonds,” said Harry, folding up the letter.

“When will he return?”

“He doesn’t know. Meanwhile we are to stay where we are.”

Adelaide, when we spoke of this circumstance, said, bitterly:

“Everything is against me!”

“Against you, Adelaide?” said I, looking apprehensively at her.

“Yes, everything!” she repeated.

She had never been effusive in her behavior to others; she was now, if possible, still less so, but the uniform quietness and gentleness with which she now treated all who came in contact with her, puzzled and troubled me. What was it that preyed upon her mind? In looking round for a cause my thoughts lighted first on one person, then on another; I dismissed the idea of all, except von Francius, with a smile. Shortly I abandoned that idea too. True, he was a man of very different caliber from the others; a man, too, for whom Adelaide had conceived a decided friendship, though in these latter days even that seemed to be dying out. He did not come so often; when he did come they had little to say to each other. Perhaps, after all, the cause of her sadness lay no deeper than her every-day life, which must necessarily grow more mournful day by day. She could feel intensely, as I had lately become aware, and had, too, a warm, quick imagination. It might be that a simple weariness of life and the anticipation of long years to come of such a life lay so heavily upon her soul as to have wrought that gradual change.

Sometimes I was satisfied with this theory; at others it dwindled into a miserably inadequate measure. When Adelaide once or twice kissed me, smiled at me, and called me “dear,” it was on my lips to ask the meaning of the whole thing, but it never passed them. I dared not speak when it came to the point.

One day, about this time, I met Anna Sartorius in one of the picture exhibitions. I would have bowed and passed her, but she stopped and spoke to me.

“I have not seen you often lately,” said she; “but I assure you, you will hear more of me some time – and before long.”

Without replying, I passed on. Anna had ceased even to pretend to look friendly upon me, and I did not feel much alarm as to her power for or against my happiness or peace of mind.

Regularly, once a month, I wrote to Miss Hallam and occasionally had a few lines from Stella, who had become a protégée of Miss Hallam’s too. They appeared to get on very well together, at which I did not wonder; for Stella, with all her youthfulness, was of a cynical turn of mind, which must suit Miss Hallam well.

My greatest friend in Elberthal was good little Dr. Mittendorf, who had brought his wife to call upon me, and to whose house I had been invited several times since Miss Hallam’s departure.

During this time I worked more steadily than ever, and with a deeper love of my art for itself. Von Francius was still my master and my friend. I used to look back upon the days, now nearly a year ago, when I first saw him, and seeing him, distrusted and only half liked him, and wondered at myself; for I had now as entire a confidence in him as can by any means be placed in a man. He had thoroughly won my esteem, respect, admiration – in a measure, too, my affection. I liked the power of him; the strong hand with which he carried things in his own way; the idiomatic language, and quick, curt sentences in which he enunciated his opinions. I felt him like a strong, kind, and thoughtful elder brother, and have had abundant evidence in his deeds and in some brief unemotional words of his that he felt a great regard of the fraternal kind for me. It has often comforted me, that friendship – pure, disinterested and manly on his side, grateful and unwavering on mine.

I still retained my old lodgings in the Wehrhahn, and was determined to do so. I would not be tied to remain in Sir Peter Le Marchant’s house unless I choose. Adelaide wished me to come and remain with her altogether. She said Sir Peter wished it too; he had written and said she might ask me. I asked what was Sir Peter’s motive in wishing it? Was it not a desire to humiliate both of us, and to show us that we – the girl who had scorned him, and the woman who had sold herself to him – were in the end dependent upon him, and must follow his will and submit to his pleasure?

She reddened, sighed, and owned that it was true; nor did she press me any further.

A month, then, elapsed between the carnival in February and the next great concert in the latter end of March. It was rather a special concert, for von Francius had succeeded, in spite of many obstacles, in bringing out the Choral Symphony.

He conducted well that night; and he, Courvoisier, Friedhelm Helfen, Karl Linders, and one or two others, formed in their white heat of enthusiasm a leaven which leavened the whole lump. Orchestra and chorus alike did a little more than their possible, without which no great enthusiasm can be carried out. As I watched von Francius, it seemed to me that a new soul had entered into the man. I did not believe that a year ago he could have conducted the Choral Symphony as he did that night. Can any one enter into the broad, eternal clang of the great “world-story” unless he has a private story of his own which may serve him in some measure as a key to its mystery? I think not. It was a night of triumph for Max von Francius. Not only was the glorious music cheered and applauded, he was called to receive a meed of thanks for having once more given to the world a never-dying joy and beauty.

I was in the chorus. Down below I saw Adelaide and her devoted attendant, Harry Arkwright. She looked whiter and more subdued than ever. All the splendor of the praise of “joy” could not bring joy to her heart —

“Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt”

brought no warmth to her cheek, nor lessened the load on her breast.

The concert over, we returned home. Adelaide and I retired to her dressing-room, and her maid brought us tea. She seated herself in silence. For my part, I was excited and hot, and felt my cheeks glowing. I was so stirred that I could not sit still, but moved to and fro, wishing that all the world could hear that music, and repeating lines from the “Ode to Joy,” the grand march-like measure, feeling my heart uplifted with the exaltation of its opening strain:

“Freude, schöner Gotterfunken!Tochter aus Elysium!”

As I paced about thus excitedly, Adelaide’s maid came in with a note. Mr. Arkwright had received it from Herr von Francius, who had desired him to give it to Lady Le Marchant.

Adelaide opened it and I went on with my chant. I know now how dreadful it must have sounded to her.

“Freude trinken alle WesenAn den Brüsten der Natur – ”

“May!” said Adelaide, faintly.

I turned in my walk and looked at her. White as death, she held the paper toward me with a steady hand, and I, the song of joy slain upon my lips, took it. It was a brief note from von Francius.

“I let you know, my lady, first of all that I have accepted the post of Musik-Direktor in – . It will be made known to-morrow.”

I held the paper and looked at her. Now I knew the reason of her pallid looks. I had indeed been blind. I might have guessed better.

“Have you read it?” she asked, and she stretched her arms above her head, as if panting for breath.

“Adelaide!” I whispered, going up to her; “Adelaide – oh!”

She fell upon my neck. She did not speak, and I, speechless, held her to my breast.

“You love him, Adelaide?” I said, at last.

“With my whole soul!” she answered, in a low, very low, but vehement voice. “With my whole soul.”

“And you have owned it to him?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me,” said I, “how it was.”

“I think I have loved him since almost the first time I saw him – he made quite a different impression upon me than other men do – quite. I hardly knew myself. He mastered me. No other man ever did – except – ” she shuddered a little, “and that only because I tied myself hand and foot. But I liked the mastery. It was delicious; it was rest and peace. It went on for long. We knew – each knew quite well that we loved, but he never spoke of it. He saw how it was with me and he helped me – oh, why is he so good? He never tried to trap me into any acknowledgment. He never made any use of the power he knew he had except to keep me right. But at the Maskenball – I do not know how it was – we were alone in all the crowd – there was something said – a look. It was all over. But he was true to the last. He did not say, ‘Throw everything up and come to me.’ He said, ‘Give me the only joy that we may have. Tell me you love me.’ And I told him. I said, ‘I love you with my life and my soul, and everything I have, for ever and ever.’ And that is true. He said, ‘Thank you, milady. I accept the condition of my knighthood,’ and kissed my hand. There was some-one following us. It was Sir Peter. He heard all, and he has punished me for it since. He will punish me again.”

A pause.

“That is all that has been said. He does not know that Sir Peter knows, for he has never alluded to it since. He has spared me. I say he is a noble man.”

She raised herself, and looked at me.

Dear sister! With your love and your pride, your sins and your folly, inexpressibly dear to me! I pressed a kiss upon her lips.

“Von Francius is good, Adelaide; he is good.”

“Von Francius would have told me this himself, but he has been afraid for me; some time ago he said to me that he had the offer of a post at a distance. That was asking my advice. I found out what it was, and said, ‘Take it.’ He has done so.”

“Then you have decided?” I stammered.

“To part. He has strength. So have I. It was my own fault. May – I could bear it if it were for myself alone. I have had my eyes opened now. I see that when people do wrong they drag others into it – they punish those they love – it is part of their own punishment.”

A pause. Facts, I felt, were pitiless; but the glow of friendship for von Francius was like a strong fire. In the midst of the keenest pain one finds a true man, and the discovery is like a sudden soothing of sharp anguish, or like the finding a strong comrade in a battle.

Adelaide had been very self-restrained and quiet all this time, but now suddenly broke out into low, quick, half sobbed-out words:

“Oh, I love him, I love him! It is dreadful! How shall I go through with it?”

Ay, there was the rub! Not one short, sharp pang, and over – all fire quenched in cool mists of death and unconsciousness, but long years to come of daily, hourly, paying the price; incessant compunction, active punishment. A prospect for a martyr to shirk from, and for a woman who has made a mistake to – live through.

We needed not further words. The secret was told, and the worst known. We parted. Von Francius was from this moment a sacred being to me.

But from this time he scarcely came near the house – not even to give me my lessons. I went to my lodging and had them there. Adelaide said nothing, asked not a question concerning him, nor mentioned his name, and the silence on his side was almost as profound as that on hers. It seemed as if they feared that should they meet, speak, look each other in the eyes, all resolution would be swept away, and the end hurry resistless on.

CHAPTER XXXI

“And behold, though the way was light and the sun did shine, yet my heart was ill at ease, for a sinister blot did now and again fleck the sun, and a muttered sound perturbed the air. And he repeated oft ‘One hath told me – thus – or thus.’”

Karl Linders, our old acquaintance, was now our fast friend. Many changes had taken place in the personnel of our fellow-workmen in the kapelle, but Eugen, Karl, and I remained stationary in the same places and holding the same rank as on the day we had first met. He, Karl, had been from the first more congenial to me than any other of my fellows (Eugen excepted, of course). Why, I could never exactly tell. There was about him a contagious cheerfulness, good-humor, and honesty. He was a sinner, but no rascal; a wild fellow —Taugenichts—wilder Gesell, as our phraseology had it, but the furthest thing possible from a knave.

Since his visits to us and his earnest efforts to curry favor with Sigmund by means of nondescript wool beasts, domestic or of prey, he had grown much nearer to us. He was the only intimate we had – the only person who came in and out of our quarters at any time; the only man who sat and smoked with us in an evening. At the time when Karl put in his first appearance in these pages he was a young man not only not particular, but utterly reckless as to the society he frequented. Any one, he was wont to say, was good enough to talk with, or to listen while talked to. Karl’s conversation could not be called either affected or pedantic; his taste was catholic, and comprised within wide bounds; he considered all subjects that were amusing appropriate matter of discussion, and to him most subjects were – or were susceptible of being made – amusing.

Latterly, however, it would seem that a process of growth had been going on in him. Three years had worked a difference. In some respects he was, thank Heaven! still the old Karl – the old careless, reckless, aimless fellow; but in others he was metamorphosed.

Karl Linders, a handsome fellow himself and a slave to beauty, as he was careful to inform us – susceptible in the highest degree to real loveliness – so he often told us – and in love on an average, desperately and forever, once a week, had at last fallen really and actually in love.

For a long time we did not guess it – or rather, accepting his being in love as a chronic state of his being – one of the “inseparable accidents,” which may almost be called qualities, we wondered what lay at the bottom of his sudden intense sobriety of demeanor and propriety of conduct, and looked for some cause deeper than love, which did not usually have that effect upon him; we thought it might be debt. We studied the behavior itself; we remarked that for upward of ten days he had never lauded the charms of any young woman connected with the choral or terpsichorean staff of the opera, and wondered.

We saw that he had had his hair very much cut, and we told him frankly that we did not think it improved him. To our great surprise he told us that we knew nothing about it, and requested us to mind our own business, adding testily, after a pause, that he did not see why on earth a set of men like us should make ourselves conspicuous by the fashion of our hair, as if we were Absaloms or Samsons.

“Samson had a Delilah, mein lieber,” said I, eying him. “She shore his locks for him. Tell us frankly who has acted the part by you.”