The First Violin

CHAPTER XXVI

Resignation! Welch’ elendes Hulfsmittel! und doch bleibt es mir das einzig Uebrige —

Several small events which took place at this time had all their indirect but strong bearing on the histories of the characters in this veracious narrative. The great concert of the “Passions-musik” of Bach came off on the very evening of Sigmund’s departure. It was, I confess, with some fear and trembling that I went to call Eugen to his duties, for he had not emerged from his own room since he had gone into it to send Sigmund away.

He raised his face as I came in; he was sitting looking out of the window, and told me afterward that he had sat there, he believed, ever since he had been unable to catch another glimpse of the carriage which bore his darling away from him.

“What is it, Friedel?” he asked, when I came in.

I suggested in a subdued tone that the concert began in half an hour.

“Ah, true!” said he, rising; “I must get ready. Let me see, what is it?”

“The ‘Passions-musik.’”

“To be sure! Most appropriate music! I feel as if I could write a Passion Music myself just now.”

We had but to cross the road from our dwelling to the concert-room. As we entered the corridor two ladies also stepped into it from a very grand carriage. They were accompanied by a young man, who stood a little to one side to let them pass; and as they came up and we came up, von Francius came up too.

One of the ladies was May Wedderburn, who was dressed in black, and looked exquisitely lovely to my eyes, and, I felt, to some others, with her warm auburn hair in shining coils upon her head. The other was a woman in whose pale, magnificent face I traced some likeness to our fair singer, but she was different; colder, grander, more severe. It so happened that the ladies barred the way as we arrived, and we had to stand by for a few moments as von Francius shook hands with Miss Wedderburn, and asked her smilingly if she were in good voice.

She answered in the prettiest broken German I ever heard, and then turned to the lady, saying:

“Adelaide, may I introduce Herr von Francius – Lady Le Marchant.”

A stately bow from the lady – a deep reverence, with a momentary glance of an admiration warmer than I had ever seen in his eyes, on the part of von Francius – a glance which was instantly suppressed to one of conventional inexpressiveness. I was pleased and interested with this little peep at a rank which I had never seen, and could have stood watching them for a long time; the splendid beauty and the great pride of bearing of the English lady were a revelation to me, and opened quite a large, unknown world before my mental eyes. Romances and poems, and men dying of love, or killing each other for it, no longer seemed ridiculous; for a smile or a warmer glance from that icily beautiful face must be something not to forget.

It was Eugen who pushed forward, with a frown on his brow, and less than his usual courtesy. I saw his eyes and Miss Wedderburn’s meet; I saw the sudden flush that ran over her fair face; the stern composure of his. He would own nothing; but I was strangely mistaken if he could say that it was merely because he had nothing to own.

The concert was a success, so far as Miss Wedderburn went. If von Francius had allowed repetitions, one song at least would have been encored. As it was, she was a success. And von Francius spent his time in the pauses with her and her sister; in a grave, sedate way he and the English lady seemed to “get on.”

The concert was over. The next thing that was of any importance to us occurred shortly afterward. Von Francius had long been somewhat unpopular with his men, and at silent enmity with Eugen, who was, on the contrary, a universal favorite. There came a crisis, and the men sent a deputation to Eugen to say that if he would accept the post of leader they would strike, and refuse to accept any other than he.

This was an opportunity for distinguishing himself. He declined the honor; his words were few; he said something about how kind we had all been to him, “from the time when I arrived; when Friedhelm Helfen, here, took me in, gave me every help and assistance in his power, and showed how appropriate his name was;3 and so began a friendship which, please Heaven, shall last till death divides us, and perhaps go on afterward.” He ended by saying some words which made a deep impression upon me. After saying that he might possibly leave Elberthal, he added: “Lastly, I can not be your leader because I never intend to be any one’s leader – more than I am now,” he added, with a faint smile. “A kind of deputy, you know. I am not fit to be a leader. I have no gift in that line – ”

“Doch!” from half a dozen around.

“None whatever. I intend to remain in my present condition – no lower if I can help it, but certainly no higher. I have good reasons for knowing it to be my duty to do so.”

And then he urged them so strongly to stand by Herr von Francius that we were quite astonished. He told them that von Francius would some time rank with Schumann, Raff, or Rubinstein, and that the men who rejected him now would then be pointed out as ignorant and prejudiced.

And amid the silence that ensued, he began to direct us – we had a probe to Liszt’s “Prometheus,” I remember.

He had won the day for von Francius, and von Francius, getting to hear of it, came one day to see him and frankly apologized for his prejudice in the past, and asked Eugen for his friendship in the future. Eugen’s answer puzzled me.

“I am glad, you know, that I honor your genius, and wish you well,” said he, “and your offer of friendship honors me. Suppose I say I accept it – until you see cause to withdraw it.”

“You are putting rather a remote contingency to the front,” said von Francius.

“Perhaps – perhaps not,” said Eugen, with a singular smile. “At least I am glad to have had this token of your sense of generosity. We are on different paths, and my friends are not on the same level as yours – ”

“Excuse me; every true artist must be a friend of every other true artist. We recognize no division of rank or possession.”

Eugen bowed, still smiling ambiguously, nor could von Francius prevail upon him to say anything nearer or more certain. They parted, and long afterward I learned the truth, and knew the bitterness which must have been in Eugen’s heart; the shame, the gloom; the downcast sorrow, as he refused indirectly but decidedly the thing he would have liked so well – to shake the hand of a man high in position and honorable in name – look him in the face and say, “I accept your friendship – nor need you be ashamed of wearing mine openly.”

He refused the advance; he refused that and every other opening for advancement. The man seemed to have a horror of advancement, or of coming in any way forward. He rejected even certain offers which were made that he should perform some solos at different concerts in Elberthal and the neighborhood. I once urged him to become rich and have Sigmund back again. He said: “If I had all the wealth in Germany, it would divide us further still.”

I have said nothing about the blank which Sigmund’s absence made in our lives, simply because it was too great a blank to describe. Day after day we felt it, and it grew keener, and the wound smarted more sharply. One can not work all day long, and in our leisure hours we learned to know only too well that he was gone – and gone indeed. That which remained to us was the “Resignation,” the “miserable assistant” which poor Beethoven indicated with such a bitter smile. We took it to us as inmate and Hausfreund, and made what we could of it.

CHAPTER XXVII

“So runs the world away.”

Königsallée, No. 3, could scarcely be called a happy establishment. I saw much of its inner life, and what I saw made me feel mortally sad – envy, hatred, and malice; no hour of satisfaction; my sister’s bitter laughs and sneers and jibes at men and things; Sir Peter’s calm consciousness of his power, and his no less calm, crushing, unvarying manner of wielding it – of silently and horribly making it felt. Adelaide’s very nature appeared to have changed. From a lofty indifference to most things, to sorrow and joy, to the hopes, fears, and feelings of others, she had become eager, earnest, passionate, resenting ill-usage, strenuously desiring her own way, deeply angry when she could not get it. To say that Sir Peter’s influence upon her was merely productive of a negative dislike would be ridiculous. It was productive of an intense, active hatred, a hatred which would gladly, if it could, have vented itself in deeds. That being impossible, it showed itself in a haughty, unbroken indifference of demeanor which it seemed to be Sir Peter’s present aim in some way to break down, for not only did she hate him – he hated her.

She used to the utmost what liberty she had. She was not a woman to talk of regret for what she had done, or to own that she had miscalculated her game. Her life was a great failure, and that failure had been brought home to her mind in a mercilessly short space of time; but of what use to bewail it? She was not yet conquered. The bitterness of spirit which she carried about with her took the form of a scoffing pessimism. A hard laugh at the things which made other people shake their heads and uplift their hands; a ready scoff at all tenderness; a sneer at anything which could by any stretch of imagination be called good; a determined running up of what was hard, sordid, and worldly, and a persistent and utter skepticism as to the existence of the reverse of those things; such was now the yea, yea, and nay, nay, of her communication.

To a certain extent she had what she had sold herself for; outside pomp and show in plenty – carriages, horses, servants, jewels, and clothes. Sir Peter liked, to use his own expression, “to see my lady blaze away” – only she must blaze away in his fashion, not hers. He declared he did not know how long he might remain in Elberthal; spoke vaguely of “business at home,” about which he was waiting to hear, and said that until he heard the news he wanted, he could not move from the place he was in. He was in excellent spirits at seeing his wife chafing under the confinement to a place she detested, and appeared to find life sweet.

Meanwhile she, using her liberty, as I said, to the utmost extent, had soon plunged into the midst of the fastest set in Elberthal.

There was a fast set there as there was a musical set, an artistic set, a religious set, a free-thinking set; for though it was not so large or so rich as many dull, wealthy towns in England, it presented from its mixed inhabitants various phases of society.

This set into which Adelaide had thrown herself was the fast one; a coterie of officers, artists, the richer merchants and bankers, medical men, literati, and the young (and sometimes old) wives, sisters and daughters of the same; many of them priding themselves upon not being natives of Elberthal, but coming from larger and gayer towns – Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and others.

They led a gay enough life among themselves – a life of theater, concert, and opera-going, of dances, private at home, public at the Malkasten or Artists’ Club, flirtations, marriages, engagements, disappointments, the usual dreary and monotonous round. They considered themselves the only society worthy the name in Elberthal, and whoever was not of their set was niemand.

I was partly dragged, partly I went to a certain extent of my own will, into this vortex. I felt myself to have earned a larger experience now of life and life’s realities. I questioned when I should once have discreetly inclined the head and held my peace. I had a mind to examine this clique and the characters of some of its units, and see in what it was superior to some other acquaintances (in an humbler sphere) with whom my lot had been cast. As time went on I found the points of superiority to decrease – those of inferiority rapidly to increase.

I troubled myself little about them and their opinions. My joys and griefs, hopes and fears, lay so entirely outside their circle that I scarce noticed whether they noticed me or not. I felt and behaved coldly toward them! to the women because their voices never had the ring of genuine liking in speaking to me; to the men because I found them as a rule shallow, ignorant, and pretentious; repellent to me, as I dare say I, with my inability to understand them, was to them. I saw most men and things through a distorting glass; that of contrast, conscious or unconscious, with Courvoisier.

My musician, I reasoned, wrongly or rightly, had three times their wit, three times their good looks, manners and information, and many times three times their common sense, as well as a juster appreciation of his own merits; besides which, my musician was not a person whose acquaintance and esteem were to be had for the asking – or even for a great deal more than the asking, while it seemed that these young gentleman gave their society to any one who could live in a certain style and talk a certain argot, and their esteem to every one who could give them often enough the savory meat that their souls loved, and the wine of a certain quality which made glad their hearts, and rendered them of a cheerful countenance.

But my chief reason for mixing with people who were certainly as a rule utterly distasteful and repugnant to me, was because I could not bear to leave Adelaide alone. I pitied her in her lonely and alienated misery; and I knew that it was some small solace to her to have me with her.

The tale of one day will give an approximate idea of most of the days I spent with her. I was at the time staying with her. Our hours were late. Breakfast was not over till ten, that is by Adelaide and myself. Sir Peter was an exceedingly active person, both in mind and body, who saw after the management of his affairs in England in the minutest manner that absence would allow. Toward half past eleven he strolled into the room in which we were sitting, and asked what we were doing.

“Looking over costumes,” said I, as Adelaide made no answer, and I raised my eyes from some colored illustrations.

“Costumes – what kind of costumes?”

“Costumes for the maskenball,” I answered, taking refuge in brevity of reply.

“Oh!” He paused. Then, turning suddenly to Adelaide:

“And what is this entertainment, my lady?”

“The Carnival Ball,” said she, almost inaudibly, between her closed lips, as she shut the book of illustrations, pushed it away from her, and leaned back in her chair.

“And you think you would like to go to the Carnival Ball, hey?”

“No, I do not,” said she, as she stroked her lap-dog with a long, white hand on which glittered many rings, and steadily avoided looking at him. She did wish to go to the ball, but she knew that it was as likely as not that if she displayed any such desire he would prevent it. Despite her curt reply she foresaw impending the occurrence which she most of anything disliked – a conversation with Sir Peter. He placed himself in our midst, and requested to look at the pictures. In silence I handed him the book. I never could force myself to smile when he was there, nor overcome a certain restraint of demeanor which rather pleased and flattered him than otherwise. He glanced sharply round in the silence which followed his joining our company, and turning over the illustrations, said:

“I thought I heard some noise when I came in. Don’t let me interrupt the conversation.”

But the conversation was more than interrupted; it was dead – the life frozen out of it by his very appearance.

“When is the carnival, and when does this piece of tomfoolery come off?” he inquired, with winning grace of diction.

“The carnival begins this year on the 26th of February. The ball is on the 27th,” said I, confining myself to facts and figures.

“And how do you get there? By paying?”

“Well, you have to pay – yes. But you must get your tickets from some member of the Malkasten Club. It is the artists’ ball, and they arrange it all.”

“H’m! Ha! And as what do you think of going, Adelaide?” he inquired, turning with suddenness toward her.

“I tell you I had not thought of going – nor thought anything about it. Herr von Francius sent us the pictures, and we were looking over them. That is all.”

Sir Peter turned over the pages and looked at the commonplace costumes therein suggested – Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Picardy Peasant, Maria Stuart, a Snow Queen, and all the rest of them.

“Well, I don’t see anything here that I would wear if I were a woman,” he said, as he closed the book. “February, did you say?”

“Yes,” said I, as no one else spoke.

“Well, it is the middle of January now. You had better be looking out for something; but don’t let it be anything in those books. Let the beggarly daubers see how English women do these things.”

“Do you intend me to understand that you wish us to go to the ball?” inquired Adelaide, in an icy kind of voice.

“Yes, I do,” almost shouted Sir Peter. Adelaide could, despite the whip and rein with which he held her, exasperate and irritate him – by no means more thoroughly than by pretending that she did not understand his grandiloquent allusions, and the vague grandness of the commands which he sometimes gave. “I mean you to go, and your little sister here, and Arkwright too. I don’t know about myself. Now, I am going to ride. Good-morning.”

As Sir Peter went out, von Francius came in. Sir Peter greeted him with a grin and exaggerated expressions of affability at which von Francius looked silently scornful. Sir Peter added:

“Those two ladies are puzzled to know what they shall wear at the Carnival Ball. Perhaps you can give them your assistance.”

Then he went away. It was as if a half-muzzled wolf had left the room.

Von Francius had come to give me my lesson, which was now generally taken at my sister’s house and in her presence, and after which von Francius usually remained some half hour or so in conversation with one or both of us. He had become an intime of the house. I was glad of this, and that without him nothing seemed complete, no party rounded, scarcely an evening finished.

When he was not with us in the evening, we were somewhere where he was; either at a concert or a probe, or at the theater or opera, or one of the fashionable lectures which were then in season.

It could hardly be said that von Francius was a more frequent visitor than some other men at the house, but from the first his attitude with regard to Adelaide had been different. Some of those other men were, or professed to be, desperately in love with the beautiful English woman; there was always a half gallantry in their behavior, a homage which might not be very earnest, but which was homage all the same, to a beautiful woman. With von Francius it had never been thus, but there had been a gravity and depth about their intercourse which pleased me. I had never had the least apprehension with regard to those other people; she might amuse herself with them; it would only be amusement, and some contempt.

But von Francius was a man of another mettle. It had struck me almost from the first that there might be some danger, and I was unfeignedly thankful to see that as time went on and his visits grew more and more frequent and the intimacy deeper, not a look, not a sign occurred to hint that it ever was or would be more than acquaintance, liking, appreciation, friendship, in successive stages. Von Francius had never from the first treated her as an ordinary person, but with a kind of tacit understanding that something not to be spoken of lay behind all she did and said, with the consciousness that the skeleton in Adelaide’s cupboard was more ghastly to look upon than most people’s secret specters, and that it persisted, with an intrusiveness and want of breeding peculiar to guests of that caliber, in thrusting its society upon her at all kinds of inconvenient times.

I enjoyed these music lessons, I must confess. Von Francius had begun to teach me music now, as well as singing. By this time I had resigned myself to the conviction that such talent as I might have lay in my voice, not my fingers, and accepted it as part of the conditions which ordain that in every human life shall be something manqué, something incomplete.

The most memorable moments with me have been those in which pain and pleasure, yearning and satisfaction, knowledge and seeking, have been so exquisitely and so intangibly blended, in listening to some deep sonata, some stately and pathetic old ciacconna or gavotte, some concerto or symphony; the thing nearest heaven is to sit apart with closed eyes while the orchestra or the individual performer interprets for one the mystic poetry, or the dramatic fire, or the subtle cobweb refinements of some instrumental poem.

I would rather have composed a certain little “Traumerei” of Schumann’s or a “Barcarole” of Rubinstein’s, or a sonata of Schubert’s than have won all the laurels of Grisi, all the glory of Malibran and Jenny Lind.

But it was not to be. I told myself so, and yet I tried so hard in my halting, bungling way to worship the goddess of my idolatry, that my master had to restrain me.

“Stop!” said he this morning, when I had been weakly endeavoring to render a ciacconna from a suite of Lachner’s, which had moved me to thoughts too deep for tears at the last symphonie concert. “Stop, Fräulein May! Duty first; your voice before your fingers.”

“Let me try once again!” I implored.

He shut up the music and took it from the desk.

“Entbehren sollst du; sollst entbehren!” said he, dryly.

I took my lesson and then practiced shakes for an hour, while he talked to Adelaide; and then, she being summoned to visitors, he went away.

Later I found Adelaide in the midst of a lot of visitors – Herr Hauptmann This, Herr Lieutenant That, Herr Maler The Other, Herr Concertmeister So-and-So – for von Francius was not the only musician who followed in her train. But there I am wrong. He did not follow in her train; he might stand aside and watch the others who did; but following was not in his line.

There were ladies there too – gay young women, who rallied round Lady Le Marchant as around a master spirit in the art of Zeitvertreib.