The First Violin

At last the answer came. On the part of Adelaide it was short:

“Dear May, – I have had no time till now to answer your letter. I can not reply to all your questions. You ask whether I repent what I have done. I repent my whole life. If I am happy – how can I be happy? I am busy now, and have many calls upon my time. My husband is very good: he never interposes between me and my work. Shall I ever come to England again? – never.”

“Yours,“A. von F.”

No request to write again! No inquiry after friends or relations! This letter showed me that whatever I might feel to her – however my heart might beat and long, how warm soever the love I bore her, yet that Adelaide was now apart from me – divided in every thought. It was a cruel letter, but in my pain I could not see that it had not been cruelly intended. Her nature had changed. But behind this pain lay comfort. On the back of the same sheet as that on which Adelaide’s curt epistle was written, were some lines in the hand I knew well.

“Liebe Mai” – they said – “Forgive your master, who can never forget you, nor ever cease to love you. You suffer. I know it; I read it in those short, constrained lines, so unlike your spontaneous words and frank smile. My dear child, remember the storms that are beating on every side – over our country, in on our hearts. Once I asked you to sing for me some time: you promised. When the war is over I shall remind you of your promise. At present, believe me, silence is best.

“Your old music-master,“M. v. F.”

Gall and honey, roses and thistles, a dagger at the heart and a caress upon the lips; such seemed to me the characters of the two letters on the same sheet which I held in my hand. Adelaide made my heart ache; von Francius made tears stream from my eyes. I reproached myself for having doubted him, but oh, I treasured the proof that he was true! It was the one tangible link between me, reality, and hard facts, and the misty yet beloved life I had quitted. My heart was full to overflowing; I must tell some one – I must speak to some one.

Once again I tried to talk to Stella about Adelaide, but she gazed at me in that straight, strange way, and said coldly that she preferred not to speak of “that.” I could not speak to Miss Hallam about it. Alone in the broad meadows, beside the noiseless river, I sometimes whispered to myself that I was not forgotten, and tried to console myself with the feeling that what von Francius promised he did – I should touch his hand, hear his voice again – and Adelaide’s. For the rest, I had to lock the whole affair – my grief and my love, my longing and my anxiety, fast within my own breast, and did so.

It was a long lesson – a hard one; it was conned with bitter tears, wept long and alone in the darkness; it was a sorrow which lay down and rose up with me. It taught (or rather practiced me until I became expert in them) certain things in which I had been deficient; reticence, self-reliance, a quicker ability to decide in emergencies. It certainly made me feel old and sad, and Miss Hallam often said that Stella and I were “as quiet as nuns.”

Stella had the power which I so ardently coveted: she was a first-rate instrumentalist. The only topic she and I had in common was the music I had heard and taken part in. To anything concerning that she would listen for hours.

Meanwhile the war rolled on, and Paris capitulated, and peace was declared. The spring passed and Germany laughed in glee, and bleeding France roused herself to look with a haggard eye around her; what she saw, we all know – desolation, and mourning, and woe. And summer glided by, and autumn came, and I did not write either to Adelaide or von Francius. I had a firm faith in him – and absolute trust. I felt I was not forgotten.

In less than a year after my return to England, Miss Hallam died. The day before her death she called me to her, and said words which moved me very much.

“May, I am an eccentric old woman, and lest you should be in any doubt upon the subject of my feelings toward you, I wish to tell you that my life has been more satisfactory to me ever since I knew you.”

“That is much more praise than I deserve, Miss Hallam.”

“No, it isn’t. I like both you and Stella. Three months ago I made a codicil to my will by which I endeavored to express that liking. It is nothing very brilliant, but I fancy it will suit the views of both of you.”

Utterly astounded, I stammered out some incoherent words.

“There, don’t thank me,” said she. “If I were not sure that I shall die to-morrow – or thereabouts, I should put my plan into execution at once, but I shall not be alive at the end of the week.”

Her words proved true. Grim, sardonic, and cynical to the last, she died quietly, gladly closing her eyes which had so long been sightless. She was sixty-five years old, and had lived alone since she was five-and-twenty.

The codicil to her will, which she had spoken of with so much composure, left three hundred pounds to Stella and me. She wished a portion of it to be devoted to our instruction in music, vocal and instrumental, at any German conservatorium we might select. She preferred that of L – . Until we were of age, our parents or guardians saw to the dispensing of the money, after that it was our own – half belonging to each of us; we might either unite our funds or use them separately as we choose.

It need scarcely be said that we both chose that course which she indicated. Stella’s joy was deep and intense – mine had an unavoidable sorrow mingled with it. At the end of September, 18 – , we departed for Germany, and before going to L – it was agreed that we should pay a visit at Elberthal, to my friend Dr. Mittendorf.

It was a gusty September night, with wind dashing angrily about and showers of rain flying before the gale, on which I once again set foot in Elberthal – the place I had thought never more to see.

CHAPTER XXXVI

“Freude trinken alle WesenAn den Brüsten der Natur;Alle Guten, alle BösenFolgen ihrer Rosenspur.”

I felt a deep rapture in being once more in that land where my love, if he did not live, slept. But I forbear to dwell on that rapture, much as it influenced me. It waxes tedious when put into words – loses color and flavor, like a pressed flower.

I was at first bitterly disappointed to find that Stella and I were only to have a few days at Elberthal. Dr. Mittendorf no longer lived there; but only had his official residence in the town, going every week-end to his country house, or “Schloss,” as he ambitiously called it, at Lahnburg, a four-hours’ railway journey from Elberthal.

Frau Mittendorf, who had been at Elberthal on a visit, was to take Stella and me with her to Lahnburg on the Tuesday morning after our arrival, which was on Friday evening.

The good doctor’s schloss, an erection built like the contrivances of the White Knight in “Through the Looking-glass,” on “a plan of his own invention,” had been his pet hobby for years, and now that it was finished, he invited every invitable person to come and stay at it.

It was not likely that he would excuse a person for whom he had so much regard as he professed for me from the honor, and I was fain to conceal the fact that I would much rather have remained in Elberthal, and make up my mind to endure as well as I could the prospect of being buried in the country with Frau Mittendorf and her children.

It was Sunday afternoon. An equinoctial gale was raging, or rather had been raging all day. It had rained incessantly, and the wind had howled. The skies were cloud-laden, the wind was furious. The Rhine was so swollen that the streets in the lower part of the town sloping to the river were under water, and the people going about in boats.

But I was tired of the house; the heated rooms stifled me. I was weary of Frau Mittendorf’s society, and thoroughly dissatisfied with my own.

About five in the afternoon I went to the window and looked out. I perceived a strip of pale, watery blue through a rift in the storm-laden clouds, and I chose to see that, and that only, ignoring the wind-lashed trees of the allee; the leaves, wet, and sodden and sere, hurrying panic-stricken before the gale, ignoring, too, the low wail promising a coming hurricane, which sighed and soughed beneath the wind’s shrill scream.

There was a temporary calm, and I bethought myself that I would go to church – not to the Protestant church attended by the English clique – heaven forbid! but to my favorite haunt, the Jesuiten Kirche.

It was just the hour at which the service would be going on. I asked Stella in a low voice if she would not like to come; she declined with a look of pity at me, so, notifying my intention to Frau Mittendorf, and mildly but firmly leaving the room before she could utter any remonstrance, I rushed upstairs, clothed myself in my winter mantle, threw a shawl over my arm, and set out.

The air was raw, but fresh, life-giving and invigorating. The smell of the stove, which clung to me still, was quickly dissipated by it. I wrapped my shawl around me, turned down a side street, and was soon in the heart of the old part of the town, where all Roman Catholic churches were, the quarter lying near the river and wharves and bridge of boats.

I liked to go to the Jesuiten Kirche, and placing myself in the background, kneel as others knelt, and, without taking part in the service, think my own thoughts and pray my own prayers.

Here none of the sheep looked wolfish at you unless you kept to a particular pen, for the privilege of sitting in which you paid so many marks per quartal to a respectable functionary who came to collect them. Here the men came and knelt down, cap in hand, and the women seemed really to be praying, and aware of what they were praying for, not looking over their prayer-books at each other’s clothes.

I entered the church. Within the building it was already almost dark. A reddish light burned in a great glittering censer, which swung gently to and fro in the chancel.

There were many people in the church, kneeling in groups and rows, and all occupied with their prayers. I, too, knelt down, and presently as the rest sat up I sat up too. A sad-looking monk had ascended the pulpit, and was beginning to preach. His face was thin, hollow, and ascetic-looking; his eyes blazed bright from deep, sunken sockets. His cowl came almost up to his ears. I could dimly see the white cord round his waist as he began to preach, at first in a low and feeble voice, which gradually waxed into power.

He was in earnest – whether right or wrong, he was in earnest. I listened with the others to what he said. He preached the beauties of renunciation, and during his discourse quoted the very words which had so often haunted me —Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren!

His earnestness moved me deeply. His voice was musical, sweet. His accent made the German burr soft; he was half Italian. I had been at the instrumental concert the previous night, for old association’s sake, and they had played the two movements of Schubert’s unfinished symphony – the B minor. The refrain in the last movement haunted me – a refrain of seven cadences, which rises softly and falls, dies away, is carried softly from one instrument to another, wanders afar, returns again, sinks lower and lower, deeper and deeper, till at last the ’celli (if I mistake not) takes it up for the last time, and the melody dies a beautiful death, leaving you undecided whether to weep or smile, but penetrated through and through with its dreamy loveliness.

This exquisite refrain lingered in my memory and echoed in my mind, like a voice from some heavenly height, telling me to rest and be at peace, in time to the swinging of the censer, in harmony with the musical southern voice of that unknown Brother Somebody.

By degrees I began to think that the censer did not sway so regularly, so like a measured pendulum as it had done, but was moving somewhat erratically, and borne upon the gale came a low, ominous murmur, which first mingled itself with the voice of the preacher, and then threatened to dominate it. Still the refrain of the symphony rang in my ears, and I was soothed to rest by the inimitable nepenthe of music.

But the murmur of which I had so long been, as it were, half-conscious, swelled and drove other sounds and the thoughts of them from my mind. It grew to a deep, hollow roar – a very hurricane of a roar. The preacher’s voice ceased, drowned.

I think none of us were at first certain about what was happening; we only felt that something tremendous was going on. Then, with one mighty bang and blow of the tempest, the door by which I had entered the church was blown bodily in, and fell crashing upon the floor; and after the hurricane came rushing through the church with the howl of a triumphant demon, and hurried round the building, extinguishing every light, and turning a temple of God into Hades.

Sounds there were as of things flapping from the walls, as of wood falling; but all was in the pitchiest darkness – a very “darkness which might be felt.” Amid the roar of the wind came disjointed, broken exclamations of terrified women and angry, impatient men. “Ach Gott!” “Du meine Zeit!” “Herr du meine Güte!” “Oh je!” etc., rang all round, and hurrying people rushed past me, making confusion worse confounded as they scrambled past to try to get out.

I stood still, not from any bravery or presence of mind, but from utter annihilation of both qualities in the shock and surprise of it all. At last I began trying to grope my way toward the door. I found it. Some people – I heard and felt rather than saw – were standing about the battered-in door, and there was the sound of water hurrying past the door-way. The Rhine was rushing down the street.

“We must go to the other door – the west door,” said some one among the people; and as the group moved I moved too, beginning to wish myself well out of it.

We reached the west door; it led into a small lane or gasse, regarding the geography of which I was quite at sea, for I had only been in it once before. I stepped from the street into the lane, which was in the very blackness of darkness, and seemed to be filled with wind and a hurricane which one could almost distinguish and grasp.

The roar of the wind and the surging of water were all around, and were deafening. I followed, as I thought, some voices which I heard, but scarcely knew where I was going, as the wind seemed to be blowing all ways at once, and there came to me an echo here and an echo there, misleading rather than guiding. In a few moments I felt my foot upon wood, and there was a loud creaking and rattling, as of chains, a groaning, splitting, and great uproar going on, as well as a motion as if I were on board a ship.

After making a few steps I paused. It was utterly impossible that I could have got upon a boat – wildly impossible. I stood still, then went on a few steps. Still the same extraordinary sounds – still such a creaking and groaning – still the rush, rush, and swish, swish of water; but not a human voice any more, not a light to be seen, not a sign!

With my hat long since stripped from my head and launched into darkness and space, my hair lashed about me in all directions, my petticoats twisted round me like ropes, I was utterly and completely bewildered by the thunder and roar of all around. I no longer knew which way I had come nor where to turn. I could not imagine where I was, and my only chance seemed to be to hold fast and firm to the railing against which the wind had unceremoniously banged me.

The creaking grew louder – grew into a crash; there was a splitting of wood, a snapping of chains, a kind of whirl, and then I felt the wind blow upon me, first upon this side, then from that, and became conscious that the structure upon which I stood was moving – floating smoothly and rapidly upon water. In an instant (when it was too late) it all flashed upon my mind. I had wandered upon the Schiffbrucke, or bridge of boats which crossed the Rhine from the foot of the market-place, and this same bridge had been broken by the strength of the water and wind, and upon a portion of it I was now floating down the river.

With my usual wisdom, and “the shrewd application of a wide experience so peculiar to yourself,” as some one has since insulted me by saying, I instantly gave myself up as lost. The bridge would run into some other bridge, or dash into a steamer, or do something horrible, and I should be killed, and none would know of my fate; or it would all break into little pieces, and I should have to cling to one of them, and should inevitably be drowned.

In any case, my destruction was only a matter of time. How I loved my life then! How sweet, and warm, and full, and fresh it seemed! How cold the river, and how undesirable a speedy release from the pomps and vanities of this wicked world!

The wind was still howling horribly – chanting my funeral dirge. Like grim death, I held on to my railing, and longed, with a desperate longing, for one glimpse of light.

I had believed myself alone upon my impromptu raft – or rather, it had not occurred to me that there might be another than myself upon it; but at this instant, in a momentary lull of the wind, almost by my side I heard a sound that I knew well, and had cause to remember – the tune of the wild march from “Lenore,” set to the same words, sung by the same voice as of yore.

My heart stood still for a moment, then leaped on again. Then a faint, sickly kind of dread overcame me. I thought I was going out of my mind – was wandering in some delusion, which took the form of the dearest voice, and sounded with its sound in my ears.

But no. The melody did not cease. As the beating of my heart settled somewhat down, I still heard it – not loud, but distinct. Then the tune ceased. The voice – ah! there was no mistaking that, and I trembled with the joy that thrilled me as I heard it – conned over the words as if struck with their weird appropriateness to the scene, which was certainly marked:

“Und das Gesindel, husch, husch, huschKam hinten nachgeprasselt —Wie Wirbelwind am HaselbuschDurch dürre Blatter rasselt.”

And wirbelwind– the whirlwind – played a wild accompaniment to the words.

It seemed to me that a long time passed, during which I could not speak, but could only stand with my hands clasped over my heart, trying to steady its tumultuous beating. I had not been wrong, thank the good God above! I had not been wrong when my heart sung for joy at being once more in this land. He was here – he was living – he was safe!

Here were all my worst fears soothed – my intensest longings answered without my having spoken. It was now first that I really knew how much I loved him – so much that I felt almost afraid of the strength of the passion. I knew not till now how it had grown – how fast and all-denominating it had become.

A sob broke from my lips, and his voice was silenced.

“Herr Courvoisier!” I stammered.

“Who spoke?” he asked in a clear voice.

“It is you!” I murmured.

“May!” he uttered, and paused abruptly.

A hand touched mine – warm, firm, strong – his very hand. In its lightest touch there seemed safety, shelter, comfort.

“Oh, how glad I am! how glad I am!” I sobbed.

He murmured “Sonderbar!” as if arguing with himself, and I held his hand fast.

“Don’t leave me! Stay here!” I implored.

“I suppose there is not much choice about that for either of us,” said he, and he laughed.

I did not remember to wonder how he came there; I only knew that he was there. That tempest, which will not soon be forgotten in Elberthal, subsided almost as rapidly as it had arisen. The winds lulled as if a wizard had bidden them be still. The gale hurried on to devastate fresh fields and pastures new. There was a sudden reaction of stillness, and I began to see in the darkness the outlines of a figure beside me. I looked up. There was no longer that hideous, driving black mist, like chaos embodied, between me and heaven. The sky, though dark, was clear; some stars were gleaming coldly down upon the havoc which had taken place since they last viewed the scene.

Seeing the heavens so calm and serene, a sudden feeling of shyness and terror overtook me. I tried to withdraw my hand from that of my companion, and to remove myself a little from him. He held my hand fast.

“You are exhausted with standing?” said he. “Sit down upon this ledge.”

“If you will too.”

“Oh, of course. I think our voyage will be a long one, and – ”

“Speak German,” said I. “Let me hear you speaking it again.”

“And I have no mind to stand all the time,” he concluded in his own tongue.

“Is there no one else here but ourselves?”

“No one.”

I had seated myself and he placed himself beside me. I was in no laughing mood or I might have found something ludicrous in our situation.

“I wonder where we are now,” I half whispered, as the bridge was still hurried ceaselessly down the dark and rushing river. I dared not allude to anything else. I felt my heart was too full – I felt too, too utterly uncertain of him. There was sadness in his voice. I, who knew its every cadence, could hear that.

“I think we are about passing Kaiserswerth,” said he. “I wonder where we shall land at last.”

“Do you think we shall go very far?”

“Perhaps we may. It is on record that the Elberthal boat bridge – part of it, I mean – once turned up at Rotterdam. It may happen again, warum nicht?”

“How long does that take?”

“Twelve or fourteen hours, I dare say.”

I was silent.

“I am sorry for you,” he said in the gentlest of voices, as he happed my shawl more closely around me. “And you are cold too – shivering. My coat must do duty again.”

“No, no!” cried I. “Keep it! I won’t have it.”

“Yes you will, because you can’t help it if I make you,” he answered as he wrapped it round me.

“Well, please take part of it. At least wrap half of it round you,” I implored, “or I shall be miserable.”

“Pray don’t. No, keep it! It is not like charity – it has not room for many sins at once.”

“Do you mean you or me?” I could not help asking.

“Are we not all sinners?”

I knew it would be futile to resist, but I was not happy in the new arrangement, and I touched his coat-sleeve timidly.

“You have quite a thin coat,” I remonstrated, “and I have a winter dress, a thick jacket, and a shawl.”

“And my coat, und doch bist du– oh, pardon! and you are shivering in spite of it,” said he, conclusively.

“It is an awful storm, is it not?” I suggested next.

“Was an awful storm, nicht wahr? Yes. And how very strange that you and I, of all people, should have met here, of all places. How did you get here?”

“I had been to church.”

“So! I had not.”

“How did you come here?” I ventured to ask.

“Yes – you may well ask; but first – you have been in England, have you not?”

“Yes, and am going back again.”

“Well – I came here yesterday from Berlin. When the war was over – ”

“Ah, you were in the war?” I gasped.

“Natürlich, mein Fräulein. Where else should I have been?”

“And you fought?”

“Also natürlich.”

“Where did you fight? At Sedan?”

“At Sedan – yes.”

“Oh, my God!” I whispered to myself. “And were you wounded?” I added aloud.

“A mere trifle. Friedhelm and I had luck to march side by side. I learned to know in spirit and in letter the meaning of Ich hatt’ einen guten Cameraden.”

“You were wounded!” I repeated, unheeding all that discursiveness. “Where? How? Were you in the hospital?”

“Yes. Oh, it is nothing. Since then I have been learning my true place in the world, for you see, unluckily, I was not killed.”

“Thank God! Thank God! How I have wondered! How I have thought – well, how did you come here?”

“I coveted a place in one of those graves, and couldn’t have it,” he said, bitterly. “It was a little thing to be denied, but fallen men must do without much. I saw boys falling around me, whose mothers and sisters are mourning for them yet.”

“Oh, don’t.”

“Well – Friedel and I are working in Berlin. We shall not stay there long; we are wanderers now! There is no room for us. I have a short holiday, and I came to spend it at Elberthal. This evening I set out, intending to hear the opera – ‘Der Fliegende Holländer’ – very appropriate, wasn’t it?”