The First Violin
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I bowed. There was a slight smile upon his lips, but I would rather have heard a broken voice and seen a mien less serene.
The second, and only time, up to now, and the events I am coming to, was once when he had been giving Sigmund a music lesson, as we called it – that is to say, Eugen took his violin and played a melody, but incorrectly, and Sigmund told him every time a wrong note was played, or false time kept. Eugen sat, giving a look now and then at the boy, whose small, delicate face was bright with intelligence, whose dark eyes blazed with life and fire, and whose every gesture betrayed spirit, grace, and quick understanding. A child for a father to be proud of. No meanness there; no littleness in the fine, high-bred features; everything that the father’s heart could wish, except perhaps some little want of robustness; one might have desired that the limbs were less exquisitely graceful and delicate – more stout and robust.
As Eugen laid aside his violin, he drew the child toward him, and asked (what I had never heard him ask before):
“What wilt thou be, Sigmund, when thou art a man?”
“Ja, lieber Vater, I will be just like thee.”
“How just like me?”
“I will do what thou dost.”
“So! Thou wilt be a musiker like me and Friedel?”
“Ja wohl!” said Sigmund, but something else seemed to weigh upon his small mind. He eyed his father with a reflective look, then looked down at his own small hands and slender limbs (his legs were cased in the new stockings).
“How?” inquired his father.
“I should like to be a musician,” said Sigmund, who had a fine confidence in his sire, and confided his every thought to him.
“I don’t know how to say it,” he went on, resting his elbows upon Eugen’s knee, and propping his chin upon his two small fists, he looked up into his father’s face.
“Friedhelm is a musician, but he is not like thee,” he pursued. Eugen reddened; I laughed.
“True as can be, Sigmund,” I said.
“‘I would I were as honest a man,’” said Eugen, slightly altering “Hamlet;” but as he spoke English I contented myself with shaking my head at him.
“I like Friedel,” went on Sigmund. “I love him; he is good. But thou, mein Vater– ”
“Well?” asked Eugen again.
“I will be like thee,” said the boy, vehemently, his eyes filling with tears. “I will. Thou saidst that men who try can do all they will – and I will, I will.”
“Why, my child?”
It was a long earnest look that the child gave the man. Eugen had said to me some few days before, and I had fully agreed with him:
“That child’s life is one strife after the beautiful in art, and nature, and life – how will he succeed in the search?”
I thought of this – it flashed subtly through my mind as Sigmund gazed at his father with a childish adoration – then, suddenly springing round his neck, said, passionately:
“Thou art so beautiful – so beautiful! I must be like thee.”
Eugen bit his lip momentarily, saying to me in English:
“I am his God, you see, Friedel. What will he do when he finds out what a common clay figure it was he worshiped?”
But he had not the heart to banter the child; only held the little clinging figure to his breast; the breast which Sigmund recognized as his heaven.
It was after this that Eugen said to me when we were alone:
“It must come before he thinks less of me than he does now, Friedel.”
To these speeches I could never make any answer, and he always had the same singular smile – the same paleness about the lips and unnatural light in the eyes when he spoke so.
He had accomplished one great feat in those three years – he had won over to himself his comrades, and that without, so to speak, actively laying himself out to do so. He had struck us all as something so very different from the rest of us, that, on his arrival and for some time afterward, there lingered some idea that he must be opposed to us. But I very soon, and the rest by gradual degrees, got to recognize that though in, not of us, yet he was no natural enemy of ours; if he made no advances, he never avoided or repulsed any, but on the very contrary, seemed surprised and pleased that any one should take an interest in him. We soon found that he was extremely modest as to his own merits and eager to acknowledge those of other people.
“And,” said Karl Linders once, twirling his mustache, and smiling in the consciousness that his own outward presentment was not to be called repulsive, “he can’t help his looks; no fellow can.”
At the time of which I speak, his popularity was much greater than he knew, or would have believed if he had been told of it.
Only between him and von Francius there remained a constant gulf and a continual coldness. Von Francius never stepped aside to make friends; Eugen most certainly never went out of his way to ingratiate himself with von Francius. Courvoisier had been appointed contrary to the wish of von Francius, which perhaps caused the latter to regard him a little coldly – even more coldly than was usual with him, and he was never enthusiastic about any one or anything, while to Eugen there was absolutely nothing in von Francius which attracted him, save the magnificent power of his musical talent – a power which was as calm and cold as himself.
Max von Francius was a man about whom there were various opinions, expressed and unexpressed; he was a person who never spoke of himself, and who contrived to live a life more isolated and apart than any one I have ever known, considering that he went much into society, and mixed a good deal with the world. In every circle in Elberthal which could by any means be called select, his society was eagerly sought, nor did he refuse it. His days were full of engagements; he was consulted, and his opinion deferred to in a singular manner – singular, because he was no sayer of smooth things, but the very contrary; because he hung upon no patron, submitted to no dictation, was in his way an autocrat. This state of things he had brought about entirely by force of his own will and in utter opposition to precedent, for the former directors had been notoriously under the thumb of certain influential outsiders, who were in reality the directors of the director. It was the universal feeling that though the Herr Direktor was the busiest man, and had the largest circle of acquaintance of any one in Elberthal, yet that he was less really known than many another man of half his importance. His business as musik-direktor took up much of his time; the rest might have been filled to overflowing with private lessons, but von Francius was not a man to make himself cheap; it was a distinction to be taught by him, the more so as the position or circumstances of a would-be pupil appeared to make not the very smallest impression upon him. Distinguished for hard, practical common sense, a ready sneer at anything high-flown or romantic, discouraging not so much enthusiasm as the outward manifestation of it, which he called melodrama, Max von Francius was the cynosure of all eyes in Elberthal, and bore the scrutiny with glacial indifference.
CHAPTER XVIII
FRIEDHELM’S STORYJoachim, Raff. Op. 177.
“Make yourself quite easy, Herr Concertmeister. No child that was left to my charge was ever known to come to harm.”
Thus Frau Schmidt to Eugen, as she stood with dubious smile and folded arms in our parlor, and harangued him, while he and I stood, violin-cases in our hands, in a great hurry, and anxious to be off.
“You are very kind, Frau Schmidt, I hope he will not trouble you.”
“He is a well-behaved child, and not nearly so disagreeable and bad to do with as most. And at what time will you be back?”
“That is uncertain. It just depends upon the length of the probe.”
“Ha! It is all the same. I am going out for a little excursion this afternoon, to the Grafenberg, and I shall take the boy with me.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Eugen; “that will be very kind. He wants some fresh air, and I’ve had no time to take him out. You are very kind.”
“Trust to me, Herr Concertmeister – trust to me,” said she, with the usual imperial wave of her hand, as she at last moved aside from the door-way which she had blocked up and allowed us to pass out. A last wave of the hand from Eugen to Sigmund, and then we hurried away to the station. We were bound for Cologne, where that year the Lower Rhine Musikfest was to be held. It was then somewhat past the middle of April, and the fest came off at Whitsuntide, in the middle of May. We, among others, were engaged to strengthen the Cologne orchestra for the occasion, and we were bidden this morning to the first probe.
We just caught our train, seeing one or two faces of comrades we knew, and in an hour were in Köln.
“The Tower of Babel,” and Raff’s Fifth Symphonie, that called “Lenore,” were the subjects we had been summoned to practice. They, together with Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasia” and some solos were to come off on the third evening of the fest.
The probe lasted a long time; it was three o’clock when we left the concert-hall, after five hours’ hard work.
“Come along, Eugen,” cried I, “we have just time to catch the three-ten, but only just.”
“Don’t wait for me,” he answered, with an absent look. “I don’t think I shall come by it. Look after yourself, Friedel, and auf wiedersehen!”
I was scarcely surprised, for I had seen that the music had deeply moved him, and I can understand the wish of any man to be alone with the remembrance or continuance of such emotions. Accordingly I took my way to the station, and there met one or two of my Elberthal comrades, who had been on the same errand as myself, and, like me, were returning home.
Lively remarks upon the probable features of the coming fest, and the circulation of any amount of loose and hazy gossip respecting composers and soloists followed, and we all went to our usual restauration and dined together. There was an opera that night to which we had probe that afternoon, and I scarcely had time to rush home and give a look at Sigmund before it was time to go again to the theater.
Eugen’s place remained empty. For the first time since he had come into the orchestra he was absent from his post, and I wondered what could have kept him.
Taking my way home, very tired, with fragments of airs from “Czar und Zimmermann,” in which I had just been playing, the “March” from “Lenore,” and scraps of choruses and airs from the “Thurm zu Babel,” all ringing in my head in a confused jumble, I sprung up the stairs (up which I used to plod so wearily and so spiritlessly), and went into the sitting-room. Darkness! After I had stood still and gazed about for a time, my eyes grew accustomed to the obscurity. I perceived that a dim gray light still stole in at the open window, and that some one reposing in an easy-chair was faintly shadowed out against it.
“Is that you, Friedhelm?” asked Eugen’s voice.
“Lieber Himmel! Are you there? What are you doing in the dark?”
“Light the lamp, my Friedel! Dreams belong to darkness, and facts to light. Sometimes I wish light and facts had never been invented.”
I found the lamp and lighted it, carried it up to him, and stood before him, contemplating him curiously. He lay back in our one easy-chair, his hands clasped behind his head, his legs outstretched. He had been idle for the first time, I think, since I had known him. He had been sitting in the dark, not even pretending to do anything.
“There are things new under the sun,” said I, in mingled amusement and amaze. “Absent from your post, to the alarm and surprise of all who know you, here I find you mooning in the darkness, and when I illuminate you, you smile up at me in a somewhat imbecile manner, and say nothing. What may it portend?”
He roused himself, sat up, and looked at me with an ambiguous half smile.
“Most punctual of men! most worthy, honest, fidgety old friend,” said he, with still the same suppressed smile, “how I honor you! How I wish I could emulate you! How I wish I were like you! and yet, Friedel, old boy, you have missed something this afternoon.”
“So! I should like to know what you have been doing. Give an account of yourself.”
“I have erred and gone astray, and have found it pleasant. I have done that which I ought not to have done, and am sorry, for the sake of morality and propriety, to have to say that it was delightful; far more delightful than to go on doing just what one ought to do. Say, good Mentor, does it matter? For this occasion only. Never again, as I am a living man.”
“I wish you would speak plainly,” said I, first putting the lamp and then myself upon the table. I swung my legs about and looked at him.
“And not go on telling you stories like that of Munchausen, in Arabesks, eh? I will be explicit; I will use the indicative mood, present tense. Now then. I like Cologne; I like the cathedral of that town; I like the Hotel du Nord; and, above all, I love the railway station.”
“Are you raving?”
“Did you ever examine the Cologne railway station?” he went on, lighting a cigar. “There is a great big waiting-room, which they lock up; there is a delightful place in which you may get lost, and find yourself suddenly alone in a deserted wing of the building, with an impertinent porter, who doesn’t understand one word of Eng – of your native tongue – ”
“Are you mad?” was my varied comment.
“And while you are in the greatest distress, separated from your friends, who have gone on to Elberthal (like mine), and struggling to make this porter understand you, you may be encountered by a mooning individual – a native of the land – and you may address him. He drives the fumes of music from his brain, and looks at you, and finds you charming – more than charming. My dear Friedhelm, the look in your eyes is quite painful to see. By the exercise of a little diplomacy, which, as you are charmingly naïve, you do not see through, he manages to seal an alliance by which you and he agree to pass three or four hours in each other’s society, for mutual instruction and entertainment. The entertainment consists of cutlets, potatoes – the kind called kartoffeln frittes, which they give you very good at the Nord – and the wine known to us as Doctorberger. The instruction is varied, and is carried on chiefly in the aisle of the Kölner Dom, to the sound of music. And when he is quite spell-bound, in a magic circle, a kind of golden net or cloud, he pulls out an earthly watch, made of dust and dross (‘More fool he,’ your eye says, and you are quite right), and sees that time is advancing. A whole army of horned things with stings, called feelings of propriety, honor, correctness, the right thing, etc., come in thick battalions in sturmschritt upon him, and with a hasty word he hurries her – he gets off to the station. There is still an hour, for both are coming to Elberthal – an hour of unalloyed delight; then” – he snapped his fingers – “a drosky, an address, a crack of the whip, and ade!”
I sat and stared at him while he wound up this rhodomontade by singing:
“Ade, ade, ade!Ja, Scheiden und Meiden thut Weh!”“You are too young and fair,” he presently resumed, “too slight and sober for apoplexy; but a painful fear seizes me that your mental faculties are under some slight cloud. There is a vacant look in your usually radiant eyes; a want of intelligence in the curve of your rosy lips – ”
“Eugen! Stop that string of fantastic rubbish! Where have you been, and what have you been doing?”
“I have not deserved that from you. Haven’t I been telling you all this time where I have been and what I have been doing? There is a brutality in your behavior which is to a refined mind most lamentable.”
“But where have you been, and what have you done?”
“Another time, mein lieber– another time!”
With this misty promise I had to content myself. I speculated upon the subject for that evening, and came to the conclusion that he had invented the whole story, to see whether I would believe it (for we had all a reprehensible habit of that kind), and very soon the whole circumstance dropped from my memory.
On the following morning I had occasion to go to the public eye hospital. Eugen and I had interested ourselves to procure a ticket for free, or almost free, treatment as an out-patient for a youth whom we knew – one of the second violins – whose sight was threatened, and who, poor boy, could not afford to pay for proper treatment. Eugen being busy, I went to receive the ticket.
It was the first time I had been in the place. I was shown into a room with the light somewhat obscured, and there had to wait some few minutes. Every one had something the matter with his or her eyes – at least so I thought, until my own fell upon a girl who leaned, looking a little tired and a little disappointed, against a tall desk at one side of the room.
She struck me on the instant as no feminine appearance had ever struck me before. She, like myself, seemed to be waiting for some one or something. She was tall and supple in figure, and her face was girlish and very innocent-looking; and yet, both in her attitude and countenance there was a little pride, some hauteur. It was evidently natural to her, and sat well upon her. A slight but exquisitely molded figure, different from those of our stalwart Elberthaler Mädchen– finer, more refined and distinguished, and a face to dream of. I thought it then, and I say it now. Masses, almost too thick and heavy, of dark auburn hair, with here and there a glint of warmer hue, framed that beautiful face – half woman’s, half child’s. Dark-gray eyes, with long dark lashes and brows; cheeks naturally very pale, but sensitive, like some delicate alabaster, showing the red at every wave of emotion; something racy, piquant, unique, enveloped the whole appearance of this young girl. I had never seen anything at all like her before.
She looked wearily round the room, and sighed a little. Then her eyes met mine; and seeing the earnestness with which I looked at her, she turned away, and a slight, very slight, flush appeared in her cheek.
I had time to notice (for everything about her interested me) that her dress was of the very plainest and simplest kind, so plain as to be almost poor, and in its fashion not of the newest, even in Elberthal.
Then my name was called out. I received my ticket, and went to the probe at the theater.
CHAPTER XIX
“Wishes are pilgrims to the vale of tears.”
A week – ten days passed. I did not see the beautiful girl again – nor did I forget her. One night at the opera I found her. It was “Lohengrin” – but she has told all that story herself – how Eugen came in late (he had a trick of never coming in till the last minute, and I used to think he had some reason for it) – and the recognition and the cut direct, first on her side, then on his.
Eugen and I walked home together, arm in arm, and I felt provoked with him.
“I say, Eugen, did you see the young lady with Vincent and the others in the first row of the parquet?”
“I saw some six or eight ladies of various ages in the first row of the parquet. Some were old and some were young. One had a knitted shawl over her head, which she kept on during the whole of the performance.”
“Don’t be so maddening. I said the young lady with Vincent and Fräulein Sartorius. By the bye, Eugen, do you know, or have you ever known her?”
“Who?”
“Fräulein Sartorius.”
“Who is she?”
“Oh, bother! The young lady I mean sat exactly opposite to you and me – a beautiful young girl; an Engländerin– fair, with that hair that we never see here, and – ”
“In a brown hat – sitting next to Vincent. I saw her – yes.”
“She saw you too.”
“She must have been blind if she hadn’t.”
“Have you seen her before?”
“I have seen her before – yes.”
“And spoken to her?”
“Even spoken to her.”
“Do tell me what it all means.”
“Nothing.”
“But, Eugen – ”
“Are you so struck with her, Friedel? Don’t lose your heart to her, I warn you.”
“Why?” I inquired, wilily, hoping the answer would give me some clew to his acquaintance with her.
“Because, mein Bester, she is a cut above you and me, in a different sphere, one that we know nothing about. What is more, she knows it, and shows it. Be glad that you can not lay yourself open to the snub that I got to-night.”
There was so much bitterness in his tone that I was surprised. But a sudden remembrance flushed into my mind of his strange remarks after I had left him that day at Cologne, and I laughed to myself, nor, when he asked me, would I tell him why. That evening he had very little to say to Karl Linders and myself.
Eugen never spoke to me of the beautiful girl who had behaved so strangely that evening, though we saw her again and again.
Sometimes I used to meet her in the street, in company with the dark, plain girl, Anna Sartorius, who, I fancied, always surveyed Eugen with a look of recognition. The two young women formed in appearance an almost startling contrast. She came to all the concerts, as if she made music a study – generally she was with a stout, good-natured-looking German Fräulein, and the young Englishman, Vincent. There was always something rather melancholy about her grace and beauty.
Most beautiful she was; with long, slender, artist-like hands, the face a perfect oval, but the features more piquant than regular; sometimes a subdued fire glowed in her eyes and compressed her lips, which removed her altogether from the category of spiritless beauties – a genus for which I never had the least taste.
One morning Courvoisier and I, standing just within the entrance to the theater orchestra, saw two people go by. One, a figure well enough known to every one in Elberthal, and especially to us – that of Max von Francius. Did I ever say that von Francius was an exceedingly handsome fellow, in a certain dark, clean-shaved style? On that occasion he was speaking with more animation than was usual with him, and the person to whom he had unbent so far was the fair English woman – that enigmatical beauty who had cut my friend at the opera. She also was looking animated and very beautiful; her face turned to his with a smile – a glad, gratified smile. He was saying:
“But in the next lesson, you know – ”
They passed on. I turned to ask Eugen if he had seen. I needed not to put the question. He had seen. There was a forced smile upon his lips. Before I could speak he had said:
“It’s time to go in, Friedel; come along!” With which he turned into the theater, and I followed thoughtfully.
Then it was rumored that at the coming concert – the benefit of von Francius – a new soprano was to appear – a young lady of whom report used varied tones; some believable facts at least we learned about her. Her name, they said was Wedderburn; she was an English woman, and had a most wonderful voice. The Herr Direktor took a very deep interest in her; he not only gave her lessons; he had asked to give her lessons, and intended to form of her an artiste who should one day be to the world a kind of Patti, Lucca, or Nilsson.
I had no doubt in my own mind as to who she was, but for all that I felt considerable excitement on the evening of the haupt-probe to the “Verlorenes Paradies.”
Yes, I was right. Miss Wedderburn, the pupil of von Francius, of whom so much was prophesied, was the beautiful, forlorn-looking English girl. The feeling which grew upon me that evening, and which I never found reason afterward to alter, was that she was modest, gentle, yet spirited, very gifted, and an artiste by nature and gift, yet sadly ill at ease and out of place in that world into which von Francius wished to lead her.
She sat quite near to Eugen and me, and I saw how alone she was, and how she seemed to feel her loneliness. I saw how certain young ladies drew themselves together, and looked at her (it was on this occasion that I first began to notice the silent behavior of women toward each other, and the more I have observed, the more has my wonder grown and increased), and whispered behind their music, and shrugged their shoulders when von Francius, seeing how isolated she seemed, bent forward and said a few kind words to her.
I liked him for it. After all, he was a man. But his distinguishing the child did not add to the delights of her position – rather made it worse. I put myself in her place as well as I could, and felt her feelings when von Francius introduced her to one of the young ladies near her, who first stared at him, then at her, then inclined her head a little forward and a little backward, turned her back upon Miss Wedderburn, and appeared lost in conversation of the deepest importance with her neighbor. And I thought of the words which Karl Linders had said to us in haste and anger, and after a disappointment he had lately had, “Das weib ist der teufel.” Yes, woman is the devil sometimes, thought I, and a mean kind of devil too. A female Mephistopheles would not have damned Gretchen’s soul, nor killed her body, she would have left the latter on this earthly sphere, and damned her reputation.