The First Violin

Silence!

I looked at Eugen. We were all looking at him. Three things I looked for as equally likely for him to do; but he did none. He did not start up in an indignant denial; he did not utter icily an icy word of contempt; he did not smile and ask Karl if he were out of his senses. He dropped his eyes, and maintained a deadly silence.

Karl was looking at him, and his candid face changed. Doubt, fear, dismay succeeded one another upon it. Then, in a lower and changed voice, as if first admitting the idea that caution might be necessary:

“Um Gotteswillen, Eugen! Speak!”

He looked up – so may look a dog that is being tortured – and my very heart sickened; but he did not speak.

A few moments – not half a minute – did we remain thus. It seemed a hundred years of slow agony. But during that time I tried to comprehend that my friend of the bright, clear eyes, and open, fearless glance; the very soul and flower of honor; my ideal of almost Quixotic chivalrousness, stood with eyes that could not meet ours that hung upon him; face white, expression downcast, accused of a crime which came, if ever crime did, under the category “dirty,” and not denying it!

Karl, the wretched beginner of the wretched scene, came nearer, took the other’s hand, and, in a hoarse whisper, said:

“For God’s sake, Eugen, speak! Deny it! You can deny it – you must deny it!”

He looked up at last, with a tortured gaze; looked at Karl, at me, at the faces around. His lips quivered faintly. Silence yet. And yet it seemed to me that it was loathing that was most strongly depicted upon his face; the loathing of a man who is obliged to intimately examine some unclean thing; the loathing of one who has to drag a corpse about with him.

“Say it is a lie, Eugen!” Karl conjured him.

At last came speech; at last an answer; slow, low, tremulous, impossible to mistake or explain away.

“No; I can not say so.”

His head – that proud, high head – dropped again, as if he would fain avoid our eyes.

Karl raised himself. His face too was white. As if stricken with some mortal blow, he walked away. Some people who had surrounded us turned aside and began to whisper to each other behind their music. Von Francius looked impenetrable; May Wedderburn white. The noise and bustle was still going on all around, louder than before. The drama had not taken three minutes to play out.

Eugen rested his brow for a moment on his hand, and his face was hidden. He looked up, rising as he did so, and his eyes met those of Miss Wedderburn. So sad, so deep a gaze I never saw. It was a sign to me, a significant one, that he could meet her eyes.

Then he turned to von Francius.

“Herr Direktor, Helfen will take my place, nicht wahr?”

Von Francius bowed. Eugen left his seat, made his way, without a word, from the orchestra, and von Francius rapped sharply, the preliminary tumult subsided; the concert began.

I glanced once or twice toward Karl; I received no answering look. I could not even see his face; he had made himself as small as possible behind his music.

The concert over – it seemed to me interminable – I was hastening away, anxious only to find Eugen, when Karl Linders stopped me in a retired corner, and holding me fast, said:

“Friedel, I am a damned fool.”

“I am sorry not to be able to contradict you.”

“Listen,” said he. “You must listen, or I shall follow you and make you. I made up my mind not to hear another word against him, but when I went to die Clara after the solo, I found her and that confounded girl whispering together. She – Anna Sartorius – said it was very fine for such scamps to cover their sins with music. I asked her pretty stiffly what she meant, for she is always slanging Eugen, and I thought she might have let him alone for once. She said she meant that he was a blackguard – that’s the word she used —ein lauter Spitzbube– a forger, and worse. I told her I believed it was a lie. I did not believe it.

“‘Ask him,’ said she. I said I would be – something – first. But Clara would have nothing to say to me, and they both badgered me until for mere quietness I agreed to do as they wished.”

He went on in distress for some time.

“Oh, drop it!” said I, impatiently. “You have done the mischief. I don’t want to listen to your whining over it. Go to the Fräulein Steinmann and Sartorius. They will confer the reward of merit upon you.”

“Gott behüte!”

I shook myself loose from him and took my way home. It was with a feeling not far removed from tremulousness that I entered the room. That poor room formed a temple which I had no intention of desecrating.

He was sitting at the table when I entered, and looked at me absently. Then, with a smile in which sweetness and bitterness were strangely mingled, said:

“So! you have returned? I will not trouble you much longer. Give me house-room for to-night. In the morning I shall be gone.”

I went up to him, pushed the writing materials which lay before him away, and took his hands, but could not speak for ever so long.

“Well, Friedhelm,” he asked, after a pause, during which the drawn and tense look upon his face relaxed somewhat, “what have you to say to the man who has let you think him honest for three years?”

“Whom I know, and ever have known, to be an honest man.”

He laughed.

“There are degrees and grades even in honesty. One kind of honesty is lower than others. I am honest now because my sin has found me out, I can’t keep up appearances any longer.”

“Pooh! do you suppose that deceives me?” said I, contemptuously. “Me, who have known you for three years. That would be a joke, but one that no one will enjoy at my expense.”

A momentary expression of pleasure unutterable flashed across his face and into his eyes; then was repressed, as he said:

“You must listen to reason. Have I not told you all along that my life had been spoiled by my own fault? – that I had disqualified myself to take any leading part among men? – that others might advance, but I should remain where I was? And have you not the answer to all here? You are a generous soul, I know, like few others. My keenest regret now is that I did not tell you long ago how things stood, but it would have cost me your friendship, and I have not too many things to make life sweet to me.”

“Eugen, why did you not tell me before? I know the reason; for the very same reason which prevents you from looking me in the eyes now, and saying, ‘I am guilty. I did that of which I am accused,’ because it is not true. I challenge you; meet my eyes, and say, ‘I am guilty!’”

He looked at me; his eyes were dim with anguish. He said:

“Friedel, I – can not tell you that I am innocent.”

“I did not ask you to do so. I asked you to say you were guilty, and on your soul be it if you lie to me. That I could never forgive.”

Again he looked at me, strove to speak, but no word came. I never removed my eyes from his; the pause grew long, till I dropped his hands and turned away with a smile.

“Let a hundred busybodies raise their clamoring tongues, they can never divide you and me. If it were not insulting I should ask you to believe that every feeling of mine for you is unchanged, and will remain so as long as I live.”

“It is incredible. Such loyalty, such – Friedel, you are a fool!”

His voice broke.

“I wish you could have heard Miss Wedderburn sing her English song after you were gone. It was called, ‘What would You do, Love?’ and she made us all cry.”

“Ah, Miss Wedderburn! How delightful she is.”

“If it is any comfort to you to know, I can assure you that she thinks as I do. I am certain of it.”

“Comfort – not much. It is only that if I ever allowed myself to fall in love again, which I shall not do, it would be with Miss Wedderburn.”

The tone sufficiently told me that he was much in love with her already.

“She is bewitching,” he added.

“If you do not mean to allow yourself to fall in love with her,” I remarked, sententiously, “because it seems that ‘allowing’ is a matter for her to decide, not the men who happen to know her.”

“I shall not see much more of her. I shall not remain here.”

As this was what I had fully expected to hear, I said nothing, but I thought of Miss Wedderburn, and grieved for her.

“Yes, I must go forth from hence,” he pursued. “I suppose I ought to be satisfied that I have had three years here. I wonder if there is any way in which a man could kill all trace of his old self; a man who has every desire to lead henceforth a new life, and be at peace and charity with all men. I suppose not – no. I suppose the brand has to be carried about till the last; and how long it may be before that ‘last’ comes!”

I was silent. I had put a good face upon the matter and spoken bravely about it. I had told him that I did not believe him guilty – that my regard and respect were as high as ever, and I spoke the truth. Both before and since then he had told me that I had a bump of veneration and one of belief ludicrously out of proportion to the exigencies of the age in which I lived.

Be it so. Despite my cheerful words, and despite the belief I did feel in him, I could not help seeing that he carried himself now as a marked man. The free, open look was gone; a blight had fallen upon him, and he withered under it. There was what the English call a “down” look upon his face, which had not been there formerly, even in those worst days when the parting from Sigmund was immediately before and behind us.

In the days which immediately followed the scene at the concert I noticed how he would set about things with a kind of hurried zeal, then suddenly stop and throw them aside, as if sick of them, and fall to brooding with head sunk upon his breast, and lowering brow; a state and a spectacle which caused me pain and misery not to be described. He would begin sudden conversations with me, starting with some question, as:

“Friedel, do you believe in a future state?”

“I do, and I don’t. I mean to say that I don’t know anything about it.”

“Do you know what my idea of heaven would be?”

“Indeed, I don’t,” said I, feebly endeavoring a feeble joke. “A place where all the fiddles are by Stradivarius and Guanarius, and all the music comes up to Beethoven.”

“No; but a place where there are no mistakes.”

“No mistakes?”

“Ja wohl! Where it would not be possible for a man with fair chances to spoil his whole career by a single mistake. Or, if there were mistakes, I would arrange that the punishment should be in some proportion to them – not a large punishment for a little sin, and vice versâ.”

“Well, I should think that if there is any heaven there would be some arrangement of that kind.”

“As for hell,” he went on, in a low, calm tone which I had learned to understand meant with him intense earnestness, “there are people who wonder that any one could invent a hell. My only wonder is why they should have resorted to fire and brimstone to enhance its terrors when they had the earth full of misery to choose from.”

“You think this world a hell, Eugen?”

“Sometimes I think it the very nethermost hell of hells, and I think if you had my feelings you would think so too. A poet, an English poet (you do not know the English poets as you ought, Friedhelm), has said that the fiercest of all hells is the failure in a great purpose. I used to think that a fine sentiment; now I sometimes wonder whether to a man who was once inclined to think well of himself it may not be a much fiercer trial to look back and find that he has failed to be commonly honest and upright. It is a nice little distinction – a moral wire-drawing which I would recommend to the romancers if I knew any.”

Once and only once was Sigmund mentioned between us, and Eugen said:

“Nine years, were you speaking of? No – not in nineteen, nor in ninety-nine shall I ever see him again.”

“Why?”

“The other night, and what occurred then, decided me. Till then I had some consolation in thinking that the blot might perhaps be wiped out – the shame lived down. Now I see that that is a fallacy. With God’s help I will never see him nor speak to him again. It is better that he should forget me.”

His voice did not tremble as he said this, though I knew that the idea of being forgotten by Sigmund must be to him anguish of a refinement not to be measured by me.

I bided my time, saying nothing. I at least was too much engrossed with my own affairs to foresee the cloud then first dawning on the horizon, which they who looked toward France and Spain might perhaps perceive.

It had not come yet – the first crack of that thunder which rattled so long over our land, and when we saw the dingy old Jäger Hof at one end of the Hofgarten, and heard by chance the words of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, no premonition touched us. My mind was made up, that let Eugen go when and where he would, I would go with him.

I had no ties of duty, none of love or of ambition to separate me from him; his God should be my God, and his people my people; if the God were a jealous God, dealing out wrath and terror, and the people should dwindle to outcasts and pariahs, it mattered not to me. I loved him.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Nein, länger kann ich diesen Kampf nicht kämpfen,Den Riesenkampf der Pflicht.Kannst du des Herzens Flammentrieb nicht dämpfen,So fordre, Tugend, dieses Opfer nicht.Geschworen hab’ ich ’s, ja, ich hab’s geschworen,Mich selbst zu bändigen.Hier ist dein Kranz, er sei auf ewig mir verloren;Nimm ihn zurück und lass mich sündigen.Schiller.

If I had never had a trouble before I had one now – large, stalwart, robust. For what seemed to me a long time there was present to my mind’s eye little but the vision of a large, lighted room – a great undefined crowd surging around and below, a small knot of persons and faces in sharp distinctness immediately around me; low-spoken words with a question; no answer – vehement imploring for an answer – still no reply; yet another sentence conjuring denial, and then the answer itself – the silence that succeeded it; the face which had become part of my thoughts all changed and downcast – the man whom I had looked up to, feared, honored, as chivalrous far beyond his station and circumstances slowly walking away from the company of his fellows, disgraced, fallen, having himself owned to the disgrace being merited, pointed at as a cheat – bowing to the accusation.

It drove me almost mad to think of it. I suffered the more keenly because I could speak to no one of what had happened. What sympathy should I get from any living soul by explaining my sick looks and absent demeanor with the words, “I love that man who is disgraced?” I smiled dryly in the midst of my anguish, and locked it the deeper in my own breast.

I had believed in him so devotedly, so intensely, had loved him so entirely, and with such a humility, such a consciousness of my own shortcomings and of his superiority. The recoil at first was such as one might experience who embraces a veiled figure, presses his lips to where its lips should be, and finds that he kisses a corpse.

Such, I say, was the recoil at first. But a recoil, from its very nature, is short and vehement. There are some natures, I believe, which after a shock turn and flee from the shocking agent. Not so I. After figuratively springing back and pressing my hands over my eyes, I removed them again, and still saw his face – and it tortured me to have to own it, but I had to do so – still loved that face beyond all earthly things.

It grew by degrees familiar to me again. I caught myself thinking of the past and smiling at the remembrance of the jokes between Eugen and Helfen on Carnival Monday, then pulled myself up with a feeling of horror, and the conviction that I had no business to be thinking of him at all. But I did think of him day by day and hour by hour, and tortured myself with thinking of him, and wished, yet dreaded, to see him, and wondered how I possibly could see him, and could only live on in a hope which was not fulfilled. For I had no right to seek him out. His condition might be much – very much to me. My sympathy or pity or thought – as I felt all too keenly – could be nothing to him.

Meanwhile, as is usual in such cases, circumstance composedly took my affairs into her hands and settled them for me without my being able to move a finger in the matter.

The time was approaching for the departure of von Francius. Adelaide and I did not exchange a syllable upon the subject. Of what use? I knew to a certain extent what was passing within her. I knew that this child of the world – were we not all children of the world, and not of light? – had braced her moral forces to meet the worst, and was awaiting it calmly.

Adelaide, like me, based her actions not upon religion. Religion was for both of us an utter abstraction; it touched us not. That which gave Adelaide force to withstand temptation, and to remain stoically in the drear sphere in which she already found herself, was not religion; it was pride on the one hand, and on the other love for Max von Francius.

Pride forbade her to forfeit her reputation, which was dear to her, though her position had lost the charms with which distance had once gilded it for her. Love for von Francius made her struggle with all the force of her nature to remain where she was, renounce him blamelessly rather than yield at the price which women must pay who do such things as leave their husbands.

It was wonderful to me to see how love had developed in her every higher emotion. I remembered how cynical she had always been as to the merits of her own sex. Women, according to her, were an inferior race, who gained their poor ends by poor means. She had never been hard upon female trickery and subterfuge. Bah! she said, how else are they to get what they want? But now with the exalted opinion of a man, had come exalted ideas as to the woman fit for his wife.

Since to go to him she must be stained and marked forever, she would remain away from him. Never should any circumstance connected with him be made small or contemptible by any act of hers. I read the motive, and, reading it, read her.

Von Francius was, equally with herself, distinctly and emphatically a child of the world – as she honored him he honored her. He proved his strength and the innate nobility of his nature by his stoic abstinence from evasion of or rebellion against the decree which had gone out against their love. He was a better man, a greater artist, a more sympathetic nature now than before. His passage through the furnace had cleansed him. He was a standing example to me that despite what our preachers and our poets, our philosophers and our novelists are incessantly dinning into our ears, there are yet men who can renounce – men to whom honor and purity are still the highest goddesses.

I saw him, naturally, and often during these days – so dark for all of us. He spoke to me of his prospects in his new post. He asked me if I would write to him occasionally, even if it should be only three or four times in the year.

“Indeed I will, if you care to hear from me,” said I, much moved.

This was at our last music lesson, in my dark little room at the Wehrhahn. Von Francius had made it indeed a lesson, more than a lesson, a remembrance to carry with me forever, for he had been playing Beethoven and Schubert to me.

“Fräulein May, everything concerning you and yours will ever be of the very deepest interest to me,” he said, looking earnestly at me. “Take a few words of advice and information from one who has never felt anything for you since he first met you but the truest friendship. You have in you the materials of a great artist; whether you have the Spartan courage and perseverance requisite to attain the position, I can hardly tell. If you choose to become an artist, eine vollkommene Künstlerin, you must give everything else up – love and marriage and all that interferes with your art, for, liebes Fräulein, you can not pursue two things at once.”

“Then I have every chance of becoming as great an artist as possible,” said I; “for none of those things will ever interfere with my pursuit of art.”

“Wait till the time of probation comes; you are but eighteen yet,” said he, kindly, but skeptically.

“Herr von Francius” – the words started to my lips as the truth into my mind, and fell from them in the strong desire to speak to some one of the matter that then filled my whole soul – “I can tell you the truth – you will understand – the time of probation has been – it is over – past. I am free for the future.”

“So!” said he, in a very low voice, and his eyes were filled, less with pity than with a fellow-feeling which made them “wondrous kind.” “You too have suffered, and given up. There are then four people – you and I, and one whose name I will not speak, and – may I guess once, Fräulein May?”

I bowed.

“My first violinist, nicht wahr?”

Again I assented silently. He went on:

“Fate is perverse about these things. And now, my fair pupil, you understand somewhat more that no true artist is possible without sorrow and suffering and renunciation. And you will think sometimes of your old, fault-finding, grumbling master —ja?”

“Oh, Herr von Francius!” cried I, laying my hand upon the key-board of the piano, and sobbing aloud. “The kindest, best, most patient, gentle – ”

I could say no more.

“That is mere nonsense, my dear May,” he said, passing his hand over my prostrate head; and I felt that it – the strong hand – trembled. “I want a promise from you. Will you sing for me next season?”

“If I am alive, and you send for me, I will.”

“Thanks. And – one other word. Some one very dear to us both is very sad; she will become sadder. You, my child, have the power of allaying sadness, and soothing grief and bitterness in a remarkable degree. Will you expend some of that power upon her when her burden grows very hard, and think that with each word of kindness to her you bind my heart more fast to yourself?”

“I will – indeed I will!”

“We will not say good-bye, but only auf wiedersehen!” said he. “You and I shall meet again. I am sure of that. Meine liebe, gute Schülerin, adieu!”

Choked with tears, I passively let him raise my hand to his lips. I hid my face in my handkerchief to repress my fast-flowing tears. I would not, because I dared not, look at him. The sight of his kind and trusted face would give me too much pain.

He loosed my hand. I heard steps; a door opened and closed. He was gone! My last lesson was over. My trusty friend had departed. He was to leave Elberthal on the following day.

The next night there was an entertainment – half concert, half theatricals, wholly dilettante– at the Malkasten, the Artists’ Club. We, as is the duty of a decorous English family, buried all our private griefs, and appeared at the entertainment, to which, indeed, Adelaide had received a special invitation. I was going to remain with Adelaide until Sir Peter’s return, which, we understood, was to be in the course of a few weeks, and then I was going to – , by the advice of von Francius, there to finish my studies.

Dearly though I loved music, divine as she ever has been, and will be, to me, yet the idea of leaving von Francius for other masters had at first almost shaken my resolution to persevere. But, as I said, all this was taken out of my hands by an irresistible concourse of circumstances, over which I had simply no control whatever.

Adelaide, Harry, and I went to the Malkasten. The gardens were gayly illuminated; there was a torch-light procession round the little artificial lake, and chorus singing – merry choruses, such as “Wenn Zwei sich gut sind, sie finden den Weg” – which were cheered and laughed at. The fantastically dressed artists and their friends were flitting, torch in hand, about the dark alleys under the twisted acacias and elms, the former of which made the air voluptuous with their scent. Then we adjourned to the saal for the concert, and heard on all sides regrets about the absence of von Francius.

We sat out the first part of the festivities, which were to conclude with theatricals. During the pause we went into the garden. The May evening was balmy and beautiful; no moonlight, but many stars and the twinkling lights in the garden.

Adelaide and I had seated ourselves on a circular bench surrounding a big tree, which had the mighty word Goethe cut deeply into its rugged bark. When the others began to return to the Malkasten, Adelaide, turning to Arkwright, said: