The First Violin

“Harry, will you go in and leave my sister and me here, that’s a good boy? You can call for us when the play is over.”

“All right, my lady,” assented he, amiably, and left us.

Presently Adelaide and I moved to another seat, near to a small table under a thick shade of trees. The pleasant, cool evening air fanned our faces; all was still and peaceful. Not a soul but ourselves had remained out-of-doors. The still drama of the marching stars was less attractive than the amateur murdering of “Die Piccolomin” within. The tree-tops rustled softly over our heads. The lighted pond gleamed through the low-hanging boughs at the other end of the garden. A peal of laughter and a round of applause came wafted now and then from within. Ere long Adelaide’s hand stole into mine, which closed over it, and we sat silent.

Then there came a voice. Some one – a complaisant dilettantin– was singing Thekla’s song. We heard the refrain – distance lent enchantment; it sounded what it really was, deep as eternity:

“Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.”

Adelaide moved uneasily; her hand started nervously, and a sigh broke from her lips.

“Schiller wrote from his heart,” said she, in a low voice.

“Indeed, yes, Adelaide.”

“Did you say good-bye to von Francius, May, yesterday?”

“Yes – at least, we said au revoir. He wants me to sing for him next winter.”

“Was he very down?”

“Yes – very. He – ”

A footstep close at hand. A figure passed in the uncertain light, dimly discerned us, paused, and glanced at us.

“Max!” exclaimed Adelaide, in a low voice, full of surprise and emotion, and she half started up.

“It is you! That is too wonderful!” said he, pausing.

“You are not yet gone?”

“I have been detained to-day. I leave early to-morrow. I thought I would take at least one turn in the Malkasten garden, which I may perhaps never see or enter again. I did not know you were here.”

“We – May and I – thought it so pleasant that we would not go in again to listen to the play.”

Von Francius had come under the trees and was now leaning against a massive trunk; his slight, tall figure almost lost against it; his arms folded, and an imposing calm upon his pale face, which was just caught by the gleam of a lamp outside the trees.

“Since this accidental meeting has taken place, I may have the privilege of saying adieu to your ladyship.”

“Yes – ” said Adelaide, in a strange, low, much-moved tone.

I felt uneasy, I was sorry this meeting had taken place. The shock and revulsion of feeling for Adelaide, after she had been securely calculating that von Francius was a hundred miles on his way to – , was too severe. I could tell from the very timbre of her voice and its faint vibration how agitated she was, and as she seated herself again beside me, I felt that she trembled like a reed.

“It is more happiness than I expected,” went on von Francius, and his voice too was agitated. Oh, if he would only say “Farewell,” and go!

“Happiness!” echoed Adelaide, in a tone whose wretchedness was too deep for tears.

“Ah! You correct me. Still it is a happiness; there are some kinds of joy which one can not distinguish from griefs, my lady, until one comes to think that one might have been without them, and then one knows their real nature.”

She clasped her hands. I saw her bosom rise and fall with long, stormy breaths.

I trembled for both; for Adelaide, whose emotion and anguish were, I saw, mastering her; for von Francius, because if Adelaide failed he must find it almost impossible to repulse her.

“Herr von Francius,” said I, in a quick, low voice, making one step toward him, and laying my hand upon his arm, “leave us! If you do love us,” I added, in a whisper, “leave us! Adelaide, say good-bye to him – let him go!”

“You are right,” said von Francius to me, before Adelaide had time to speak; “you are quite right.”

A pause. He stepped up to Adelaide. I dared not interfere. Their eyes met, and his will not to yield produced the same in her, in the shape of a passive, voiceless acquiescence in his proceedings. He took her hands, saying:

“My lady, adieu! Heaven send you peace, or death, which brings it, or – whatever is best.”

Loosing her hands he turned to me, saying distinctly:

“As you are a woman, and her sister, do not forsake her now.”

Then he was gone. She raised her arms and half fell against the trunk of the giant acacia beneath which we had been sitting, face forward, as if drunk with misery.

Von Francius, strong and generous, whose very submission seemed to brace one to meet trouble with a calmer, firmer front, was gone. I raised my eyes, and did not even feel startled, only darkly certain that Adelaide’s evil star was high in the heaven of her fate, when I saw, calmly regarding us, Sir Peter Le Marchant.

In another moment he stood beside his wife, smiling, and touched her shoulder; with a low cry she raised her face, shrinking away from him. She did not seem surprised either, and I do not think people often are surprised at the presence, however sudden and unexpected, of their evil genius. It is good luck which surprises the average human being.

“You give me a cold welcome, my lady,” he remarked. “You are so overjoyed to see me, I suppose. Your carriage is waiting outside. I came in it, and Arkwright told me I should find you here. Suppose you come home. We shall be less disturbed there than in these public gardens.”

Tone and words all convinced me that he had heard most of what had passed, and would oppress her with it hereafter.

The late scene had apparently stunned her. After the first recoil she said, scarcely audibly, “I am ready,” and moved. He offered her his arm; she took it, turning to me and saying, “Come, May!”

“Excuse me,” observed Sir Peter, “you are better alone. I am sorry I can not second your invitation to my charming sister-in-law. I do not think you fit for any society – even hers.”

“I can not leave my sister, Sir Peter; she is not fit to be left,” I found voice to say.

“She is not ‘left,’ as you say, my dear. She has her husband. She has me,” said he.

Some few further words passed. I do not chronicle them. Sir Peter was as firm as a rock – that I was helpless before him is a matter of course. I saw my sister handed into her carriage; I saw Sir Peter follow her – the carriage drive away. I was left alone, half mad with terror at the idea of her state, to go home to my lodgings.

Sir Peter had heard the words of von Francius to me; “do not forsake her now,” and had given himself the satisfaction of setting them aside as if they had been so much waste paper. Von Francius was, as I well knew, trying to derive comfort in this very moment from the fact that I at least was with her; I who loved them both, and would have laid down my life for them. Well, let him have the comfort! In the midst of my sorrow I rejoiced that he did not know the worst, and would not be likely to imagine for himself a terror grimmer than any feeling I had yet known.

CHAPTER XXXIV

“Some say, ‘A queen discrowned,’ and some call it ‘Woman’s shame.’ Others name it ‘A false step,’ or ‘Social suicide,’ just as it happens to strike their minds, or such understanding as they may be blessed with. In these days one rarely hears seriously mentioned such unruly words as ‘Love,’ or ‘Wretchedness,’ or ‘Despair,’ which may nevertheless be important factors in bringing about that result which stands out to the light of day for public inspection.”

The three days which I passed alone and in suspense were very terrible ones to me. I felt myself physically as well as mentally ill, and it was in vain that I tried to learn anything of or from Adelaide, and I waited in a kind of breathless eagerness for the end of it all, for I knew as well as if some one had shouted it aloud from the house-tops that that farewell in the Malkasten garden was not the end.

Early one morning, when the birds were singing and the sunshine streaming into the room, Frau Lutzler came into the room and put a letter into my hand, which she said a messenger had left. I took it, and paused a moment before I opened it. I was unwilling to face what I knew was coming – and yet, how otherwise could the whole story have ended?

“Dear May, – You, like me, have been suffering during these three days. I have been trying – yes, I have tried to believe I could bear this life, but it is too horrible. Isn’t it possible that sometimes it may be right to do wrong? It is of no use telling you what has passed, but it is enough. I believe I am only putting the crowning point to my husband’s revenge when I leave him. He will be glad – he does not mind the disgrace for himself; and he can get another wife, as good as I, when he wants one. When you read this, or not long afterward, I shall be with Max von Francius. I wrote to him – I asked him to save me, and he said, ‘Come!’ It is not because I want to go, but I must go somewhere. I have made a great mess of my life. I believe everybody does make a mess of it who tries to arrange things for himself. Remember that, May.

“I wonder if we shall ever meet again. Not likely, when you are married to some respectable, conventional man, who will shield you from contamination with such as I. I must not write more or I shall write nonsense. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye! What will be the end of me? Think of me sometimes, and try not to think too hardly. Listen to your heart – not to what people say. Good-bye again!

“Adelaide.”

I received this stroke without groan or cry, tear or shiver. It struck home to me. The heavens were riven asunder – a flash came from them, descended upon my head, and left me desolate. I stood, I know not how long, stock-still in the place where I had read that letter. In novels I had read of such things; they had had little meaning for me. In real life I had only heard them mentioned dimly and distantly, and here I was face to face with the awful thing, and so far from being able to deal out hearty, untempered condemnation, I found that the words of Adelaide’s letter came to me like throes of a real heart. Bald, dry, disjointed sentences on the outside; without feeling they might seem, but to me they were the breathless exclamations of a soul in supreme torture and peril. My sister! with what a passion of love my heart went out to her. Think of you, Adelaide, and think of you not too hardly? Oh, why did not you trust me more?

I saw her as she wrote these words: “I have made a great mess of it.” To make a mess of one’s life – one mistake after another, till what might have been at least honest, pure, and of good report, becomes a stained, limp, unsightly thing, at which men feel that they may gaze openly, and from which women turn away in scorn unutterable; and that Adelaide, my proudest of proud sisters, had come to this!

I was not thinking of what people would say. I was not wondering how it had come about; I was feeling Adelaide’s words ever more and more acutely, till they seemed to stand out from the paper and turn into cries of anguish in my very ears. I put my hands to my ears; I could not bear those notes of despair.

“What will be the end of me?” she said, and I shook from head to foot as I repeated the question. If her will and that of von Francius ever came in contact. She had put herself at his mercy utterly; her whole future now depended upon the good pleasure of a man – and men were selfish.

With a faint cry of terror and foreboding, I felt everything whirl unsteadily around me; the letter fell from my hand; the icy band that had held me fast gave way. All things faded before me, and I scarcely knew that I was sinking upon the floor. I thought I was dying; then thought faded with the consciousness that brings it.

CHAPTER XXXV

“Allein, allein! und so soll ich genesen?Allein, allein! und das des Schicksals Segen!Allein, allein! O Gott, ein einzig Wesen,Um dieses Haupt an seine Brust zu legen!”

I had a sharp, if not a long attack of illness, which left me weak, shaken, passive, so that I felt neither ability nor wish to resist those who took me into their hands. I remember being surprised at the goodness of every one toward me; astonished at Frau Lutzler’s gentle kindness, amazed at the unfailing goodness of Dr. Mittendorf and his wife, at that of the medical man who attended me in my illness. Yes, the world seemed full of kindness, full of kind people who were anxious to keep me in it, and who managed, in spite of my effort to leave it, to retain me.

Dr. Mittendorf, the oculist, had been my guardian angel. It was he who wrote to my friends and told them of my illness; it was he who went to meet Stella and Miss Hallam’s Merrick, who came over to nurse me – and take me home. The fiat had gone forth. I was to go home. I made no resistance, but my very heart shrunk away in fear and terror from the parting, till one day something happened which reconciled me to going home, or rather made me evenly and equally indifferent whether I went home, or stayed abroad, or lived, or died, or, in short, what became of me.

I sat one afternoon for the first time in an arm-chair opposite the window. It was June, and the sun streamed warmly and richly in. The room was scented with a bunch of wall-flowers and another of mignonette, which Stella had brought in that morning from the market. Stella was very kind to me, but in a superior, patronizing way. I had always felt deferentially backward before the superior abilities of both my sisters, but Stella quite over-awed me by her decided opinions and calm way of setting me right upon all possible matters.

This afternoon she had gone out with Merrick to enjoy a little fresh air. I was left quite alone, with my hands in my lap, feeling very weak, and looking wistfully toward the well-remembered windows on the other side of the street.

They were wide open; I could see inside the room. No one was there – Friedhelm and Eugen had gone out, no doubt.

The door of my room opened, and Frau Lutzler came in. She looked cautiously around, and then, having ascertained that I was not asleep, asked in a nerve-disturbing whisper if I had everything that I wanted.

“Everything, thank you, Frau Lutzler,” said I. “But come in! I want to speak to you. I am afraid I have given you no end of trouble.”

“Ach, ich bitte sie, Fräulein! Don’t mention the trouble. We have managed to keep you alive.”

How they all did rejoice in having won a victory over that gray-winged angel, Death! I thought to myself, with a curious sensation of wonder.

“You are very kind,” I said, “and I want you to tell me something, Frau Lutzler: how long have I been ill?”

“Fourteen days, Fräulein; little as you may think it.”

“Indeed! I have heard nothing about any one in that time. Who has been made musik-direktor in place of Herr von Francius?”

Frau Lutzler folded her arms and composed herself to tell me a history.

“Ja, Fräulein, the post would have been offered to Herr Courvoisier, only, you see, he has turned out a good-for-nothing. But perhaps you heard about that?”

“Oh, yes! I know all about it,” said I, hastily, as I passed my handkerchief over my mouth to hide the spasm of pain which contracted it.

“Of course, considering all that, the Direktion could not offer it to him, so they proposed it to Herr Helfen – you know Herr Helfen, Fräulein, nicht?”

I nodded.

“A good young man! a worthy young man, and so popular with his companions! Aber denken sie nur! The authorities might have been offering him an insult instead of a good post. He refused it then and there; would not stop to consider about it – in fact, he was quite angry about it. The gentleman who was chosen at last was a stranger, from Hanover.”

“Herr Helfen refused it – why, do you know?”

“They say, because he was so fond of Herr Courvoisier, and would not be set above him. It may be so. I know for a certainty that, so far from taking part against Herr Courvoisier, he would not even believe the story against him, though he could not deny it, and did not try to deny it. Aber, Fräulein – what hearts men must have! To have lived three years, and let the world think him an honest man, when all the time he had that on his conscience! Schrecklich!”

Adelaide and Courvoisier, it seemed, might almost be pelted with the same stones.

“His wife, they say, died of grief at the disgrace – ”

“Yes,” said I, wincing. I could not bear this any longer, nor to discuss Courvoisier with Frau Lutzler, and the words “his wife,” uttered in that speculatively gossiping tone, repelled me. She turned the subject to Helfen again.

“Herr Helfen must indeed have loved his friend, for when Herr Courvoisier went away he went with him.”

“Herr Courvoisier is gone?” I inquired, in a voice so like my usual one that I was surprised.

“Yes, certainly he is gone. I don’t know where, I am sure.”

“Perhaps they will return?”

Frau Lutzler shook her head, and smiled slightly.

“Nee, Fräulein! Their places were filled immediately. They are gone —ganz und gar.”

I tried to listen to her, tried to answer her as she went on giving her opinions upon men and things, but the effort collapsed suddenly. I had at last to turn my head away and close my eyes, and in that weary, weary moment I prayed to God that He would let me die, and wondered again, and was almost angry with those who had nursed me, for having done their work so well. “We have managed to save you,” Frau Lutzler had said. Save me from what, and for what?

I knew the truth, as I sat there; it was quite too strong and too clear to be laid aside, or looked upon with doubtful eyes. I was fronted by a fact, humiliating or not – a fact which I could not deny.

It was bad enough to have fallen in love with a man who had never showed me by word or sign that he cared for me, but exactly and pointedly the reverse; but now it seemed the man himself was bad too. Surely a well-regulated mind would have turned away from him – uninfluenced.

If so, then mine was an ill-regulated mind. I had loved him from the bottom of my heart; the world without him felt cold, empty and bare – desolate to live in, and shorn of its sweetest pleasures. He had influenced me, he influenced me yet – I still felt the words true:

“The greater soul that draweth theeHath left his shadow plain to seeOn thy fair face, Persephone!”

He had bewitched me; I did feel capable of “making a fool of myself” for his sake. I did feel that life by the side of any other man would be miserable, though never so richly set; and that life by his side would be full and complete though never so poor and sparing in its circumstances. I make no excuses, no apologies for this state of things. It simply was so.

Gone! And Friedhelm with him! I should probably never see either of them again. “I have made a mess of my life,” Adelaide had said, and I felt that I might chant the same dirge. A fine ending to my boasted artistic career! I thought of how I had sat and chattered so aimlessly to Courvoisier in the cathedral at Köln, and had little known how large and how deep a shadow his influence was to cast over my life.

I still retained a habit of occasionally kneeling by my bedside and saying my prayers, and this night I felt the impulse to do so. I tried to thank God for my recovery. I said the Lord’s Prayer; it is a universal petition and thanksgiving; it did not too nearly touch my woes; it allowed itself to be said, but when I came to something nearer, tried to say a thanksgiving for blessings and friends who yet remained, my heart refused, my tongue cleaved to my mouth. Alas! I was not regenerate. I could not thank God for what had happened. I found myself thinking of “the pity on’t,” and crying most bitterly till tears streamed through my folded fingers, and whispering, “Oh, if I could only have died while I was so ill! no one would have missed me, and it would have been so much better for me!”

In the beginning of July, Stella, Merrick, and I returned to England, to Skernford, home. I parted in silent tears from my trusted friends, the Mittendorfs, who begged me to come and stay with them at some future day. The anguish of leaving Elberthal did not make itself fully felt at first – that remained to torment me at a future day. And soon after our return came printed in large type in all the newspapers, “Declaration of War between France and Germany.” Mine was among the hearts which panted and beat with sickening terror in England while the dogs of war were fastened in deadly grip abroad.

My time at home was spent more with Miss Hallam than in my own home. I found her looking much older, much feebler, and much more subdued than when she had been in Germany. She seemed to find some comfort from my society, and I was glad to devote myself to her. But for her I should never have known all those pains and pleasures which, bitter though their remembrance might be, were, and ever would be to me, the dearest thing of my life.

Miss Hallam seemed to know this; she once asked me: “Would I return to Germany if I could?”

“Yes,” said I, “I would.”

To say that I found life dull, even in Skernford, at that time would be untrue. Miss Hallam was a furious partisan of the French, and I dared not mention the war to her, but I took in the “Daily News” from my private funds, and read it in my bedroom every night with dimmed eyes, fast-coming breath, and beating heart. I knew – knew well, that Eugen must be fighting – unless he were dead. And I knew, too, by some intuition founded, I suppose, on many small negative evidences unheeded at the time, that he would fight, not like the other men who were battling for the sake of hearth and home, and sheer love and pride for the Fatherland, but as one who has no home and no Fatherland, as one who seeks a grave, not as one who combats a wrong.

Stella saw the pile of newspapers in my room, and asked me how I could read those dreary accounts of battles and bombardments. Beyond these poor newspapers I had, during the sixteen months that I was at home, but scant tidings from without. I had implored Clara Steinmann to write me now and then, and tell me the news of Elberthal, but her penmanship was of the most modest and retiring description, and she was, too, so desperately excited about Karl as to be able to think scarce of anything else. Karl belonged to a Landwehr regiment which had not yet been called out, but to which that frightful contingency might happen any day; and what should she, Clara, do in that case? She told me no news; she lamented over the possibility of Karl’s being summoned upon active service. It was, she said, grausam, schrecklich! It made her almost faint to write about it, and yet she did compose four whole pages in that condition. The barrack, she informed me, was turned into a hospital, and she and “Tante” both worked hard. There was much work – dreadful work to do – such poor groaning fellows to nurse! “Herrgott!” cried poor little Clara, “I did not know that the world was such a dreadful place!” Everything was so dear, so frightfully dear, and Karl – that was the burden of her song – might have to go into battle any day.

Also through the public papers I learned that Adelaide and Sir Peter Le Marchant were divided forever. As to what happened afterward I was for some time in uncertainty, longing most intensely to know, not daring to speak of it. Adelaide’s name was the signal for a cold stare from Stella, and angry, indignant expostulation from Miss Hallam. To me it was a sorrowful spell which I carried in my heart of hearts.

One day I saw in a German musical periodical which I took in, this announcement: “Herr Musik-direktor Max von Francius in – has lately published a new symphony in B minor. The productions of this gifted composer are slowly but most surely making the mark which they deserve to leave in the musical history of our nation; he has, we believe, left – for – for a few weeks to join his lady (seine Gemahlin), who is one of the most active and valuable hospitable nurses of that town, now, alas! little else than a hospital.”

This paragraph set my heart beating wildly. Adelaide was then the wife of von Francius. My heart yearned from my solitude toward them both. Why did not they write? They knew how I loved them. Adelaide could not suppose that I looked upon her deed with the eyes of the world at large – with the eyes of Stella or Miss Hallam. Had I not grieved with her? Had I not seen the dreadful struggle? Had I not proved the nobility of von Francius? On an impulse I seized pen and paper, and wrote to Adelaide, addressing my letter under cover to her husband at the town in which he was musik-direktor; to him I also wrote – only a few words – “Is your pupil forgotten by her master? he has never been forgotten by her.”