29361	----	[Illustration] [Illustration: _Painting by N. M. Price._ FIRST WALPURGIS NIGHT. "Through the night-gloom lead and follow In and out each rocky hollow."] A DAY WITH FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY BY GEORGE SAMPSON HODDER & STOUGHTON _In the same Series._ _Beethoven._ _Schubert._ A DAY WITH MENDELSSOHN. During the year 1840 I visited Leipzig with letters of introduction from Herr Klingemann of the Hanoverian Legation in London. I was a singer, young, enthusiastic, and eager--as some singers unfortunately are not--to be a musician as well. Klingemann had many friends among the famous German composers, because of his personal charm, and because his simple verses had provided them with excellent material for the sweet little songs the Germans love so well. I need scarcely say that the man I most desired to meet in Leipzig was Mendelssohn; and so, armed with Klingemann's letter, I eagerly went to his residence--a quiet, well-appointed house near the Promenade. I was admitted without delay, and shown into the composer's room. It was plainly a musician's work-room, yet it had a note of elegance that surprised me. Musicians are not a tidy race; but here there was none of the admired disorder that one instinctively associates with an artist's sanctum. There was no litter. The well-used pianoforte could be approached without circuitous negotiation of a rampart of books and papers, and the chairs were free from encumbrances. On a table stood some large sketch-books, one open at a page containing an excellent landscape drawing; and other spirited sketches hung framed upon the walls. The abundant music paper was perhaps the most strangely tidy feature of the room, for the exquisitely neat notation that covered it suggested the work of a careful copyist rather than the original hand of a composer. I could not refrain from looking at one piece. It was a very short and very simple Adagio cantabile in the Key of F for a solo pianoforte. It appealed at once to me as a singer, for its quiet, unaffected melody seemed made to be sung rather than to be played. The "cantabile" of its heading was superfluous--it was a Song without Words, evidently one of a new set, for I knew it was none of the old. But the sound of a footstep startled me and I guiltily replaced the sheet. The door opened, and I was warmly greeted in excellent English by the man who entered. I had no need to be told that it was Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy himself. Nature is strangely freakish in her choice of instruments for noble purposes. Sometimes the delicate spirit of creative genius is housed in a veritable tenement of clay, so that what is within seems ever at war with what is without. At times the antagonism is more dreadful still, and the artist-soul is sent to dwell in the body of a beast, coarse in speech and habit, ignorant and dull in mind, vile and unclean in thought. But sometimes Nature is generous, and makes the body itself an expression of the informing spirit. Mendelssohn was one of these almost rare instances. In him, artist and man were like a beautiful picture appropriately framed. He was then thirty-one. In figure he was slim and rather below the middle height, and he moved with the easy grace of an accomplished dancer. Masses of long dark hair crowned his finely chiselled face; but what I noticed first and last was the pair of lustrous, dark brown eyes that glowed and dilated with every deep emotion. He had the quiet, assured manner of a master; yet I was not so instantly conscious of that, as of an air of reverence and benignity, which, combined with the somewhat Oriental tendency of feature and colour, made his whole personality suggest that of a young poet-prophet of Israel. "So," he said, his English gaining piquancy from his slight lisp, "you come from England--from dear England. I love your country greatly. It has fog, and it is dark, too, for the sun forgets to shine at times; but it is beautiful--like a picture, and when it smiles, what land is sweeter?" "You have many admirers in England, sir," I replied; "perhaps I may rather say you have many friends there." "Yes," he said, with a bright smile, "call them friends, for I am a friend to all England. Even in the glowing sun of Italy I have thought with pleasure of your dear, smoky London, which seems to wrap itself round one like a friendly cloak. It was England that gave me my first recognition as a serious musician, when Berlin was merely inclined to think that I was an interesting young prodigy with musical gifts that were very amusing in a young person of means." "You have seen much of England, have you not, sir?" I asked. "A great deal," he replied, "and of Scotland and Wales, too. I have heard the Highland pipers in Edinburgh, and I have stood in Queen Mary's tragic palace of Holyrood. Yes, and I have been among the beautiful hills that the great Sir Walter has described so wonderfully." "And," I added, "music-lovers do not need to be told that you have also penetrated 'The silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.'" "Ah!" he said, smiling, "you like my Overture, then?" I hastened to assure him that I admired it greatly; and he continued, with glowing eyes: "What a wonder is the Fingal's Cave--that vast cathedral of the seas, with its dark, lapping waters within, and the brightness of the gleaming waves outside!" Almost instinctively he sat down at the piano, and began to play, as if his feelings must express themselves in tones rather than words. His playing was most remarkable for its orchestral quality. Unsuspected power lay in those delicate hands, for at will they seemed able to draw from the piano a full orchestral volume, and to suggest, if desired, the peculiar tones of solo instruments. This Overture of his is made of the sounds of the sea. There is first a theme that suggests the monotonous wash of the waters and the crying of sea-birds within the vast spaces of the cavern. Then follows a noble rising passage, as if the spirit of the place were ascending from the depths of the sea and pervading with his presence the immensity of his ocean fane. This, in its turn, is succeeded by a movement that seems to carry us into the brightness outside, though still the plaint of crying birds pursues us in haunting monotony. It is a wonderful piece, this Hebrides Overture, with all the magic and the mystery of the Islands about it. "That is but one of my Scottish impressions," said Mendelssohn; "I have many more, and I am trying to weave them into a Scottish Symphony to match the Italian." "You believe in a programme then?" I asked. [Illustration: _Painting by N. M. Price._ SPRING SONG (Lied Ohne Worte) "To think of it is to be happy with the innocence of pure joy."] "Oh, yes!" he answered; "moreover I believe that most composers have a programme implicit in their minds, even though they may not recognise it. But always one must keep within the limits of the principle inscribed by Beethoven at the head of his Pastoral Symphony, 'More an expression of the feelings than a painting.' Music cannot paint. It is on a different plane of time. A painting must leap to the eye, but a musical piece unfolds itself slowly. If music tries to paint it loses its greatest glory--the power of infinite, immeasurable suggestion. Beethoven, quite allowably, and in a purely humorous fashion, used a few touches of realism; but his Pastoral Symphony is not a painting, it is not even descriptive; it is a musical outpouring of emotion, and enshrines within its notes all the sweet peaceful brightness of an early summer day. To think of it," he added, rising in his enthusiasm, "is to be happy with the innocence of pure joy." I was relieved of the necessity of replying by a diversion without the door. Two male voices were heard declaiming in a sort of mock-melodramatic duet, "Are you at home, are you at home? May we enter, may we enter?" "Come in, you noisy fellows," exclaimed Mendelssohn gaily; and two men entered. The elder, who was of Mendelssohn's age, carried a violin case, and saluted the composer with a flourish of the music held in his other hand. "Hail you second Beethoven!" he exclaimed. Suddenly he observed my presence and hushed his demonstrations, giving me a courteous, and humorously penitent salutation. Mendelssohn introduced us. "This," he said to me "is Mr. Ferdinand David, the great violinist and leader of our orchestra; and this," indicating the younger visitor, "is a countryman of yours, Mr. Sterndale Bennett. We think a great deal of Mr. Bennett in Leipzig." "Ah, ha!" said David to me; "you've come to the right house in Leipzig if you're an Englishman. Mendelssohn dotes on you all, doesn't he, Bennett?" "Yes," said Bennett, "and we dote on him. I left all the young ladies in England singing 'Ist es wahr.'" "Ist es wahr? ist es wahr?" carolled David, in lady-like falsetto, with comic exaggeration of anguish sentiment. Bennett put his hands to his ears with an expression of anguish, saying, "Spare us, David; you play like an angel, but you sing like--well, I leave it to you?" "And I forgot to mention," said Mendelssohn with a gay laugh, "that our young English visitor is a singer bringing ecstatic recommendations from Klingemann." "Ah! a rival!" said David, with a dramatic gesture; "but since we're all of a trade, perhaps our friend will show he doesn't mind my nonsense by singing this song to us." "Yes," said Mendelssohn, with a graceful gesture, "I shall be greatly pleased if you will." I could not refuse. Mendelssohn sat down at the piano and I began the simple song that has helped so many English people to appreciate the beauties of the German _lied_. "Can it be? Can it be? Dost thou wander through the bower, Wishing I was there with thee? Lonely, midst the moonlight's splendour, Dost thou seek for me? Can it be? Say! But the secret rapturous feeling Ne'er in words must be betrayed; True eyes will tell what love conceals!" "Thank you very much," said Mendelssohn with a smile. "Bravo!" exclaimed David; "but our Mendelssohn can do more than make pretty songs. This," he continued, indicating the music he had brought, "is going to be something great!" "Do you think so?" asked Mendelssohn quietly, yet with eyes that gleamed intensely. "I'm sure of it," said David emphatically. "There is plenty of music for violin and orchestra--oceans of it; but there has been hitherto only one real great big Concerto,"--he spread his arms wide as he spoke. "Now there will be two." "No, no!" exclaimed Mendelssohn quickly; "if I finish this Concerto it will be with no impious intention of competing with Beethoven. You see, for one thing, I have begun it quite differently." "Yes," nodded David, and he began to drum on the table in the rhythm of Beethoven's fateful knocking at the door; "yes, Beethoven was before all a symphonist--his Concerto is a Symphony in D major with violin obbligato." "Observe," murmured Bennett, "the blessing of a musical temperament. A drunken man thumps monotonously at his door in the depths of night. To an Englishman it suggests calling the police; to Beethoven it suggests a symphony." "Well, David," said Mendelssohn, "it's to be your Concerto, so I want you to discuss it with me in all details. I am the most devoted admirer of your playing, but I have, as well, the sincerest respect for your musicianship." "Thank you," said David with a smile of deep pleasure; and turning to me he added, "I really called to play this over with the master. Shall you mind if I scratch it through?" I tried to assure him of the abiding pleasure that I, a young stranger, would receive from being honoured by permission to remain. "Oh, that's all right," he said unaffectedly; "we are all in the trade, you know; you sing, I play." Mendelssohn sat at the piano and David tuned his instrument. Mendelssohn used no copy. His memory was prodigious. The violin gave out a beautiful melody that soared passionately, yet gracefully, above an accompaniment, simple at first, but growing gradually more intense and insistent till a great climax was reached, after which the solo voice sank slowly to a low, whispering murmur, while the piano played above it a succession of sweetly delicate and graceful phrases. The movement was worked out with the utmost complexity and brilliance, but came suddenly to an end. The playing of the two masters was beyond description. "The cadenza is subject to infinite alteration," remarked Mendelssohn; and turning to me, he continued, "the movement is unfinished, you see; and even what is written may be greatly changed. I fear I am a fastidious corrector. I am rarely satisfied with my first thoughts." "Well, I don't think much change is wanted here," said David. "I'm longing to have the rest of it. When will it be ready?" Mendelssohn shook his head with a smile. "Ask me for it in five years, David." "What do you think of it, Bennett?" asked the violinist. "I was thinking that we are in the garden of Eden," said Bennett, oracularly. "What do you mean?" asked Mendelssohn. "This," explained Bennett: "there seems to me something essentially and exquisitely feminine about this movement, just as in Beethoven's Concerto there is something essentially and heroically masculine. In other words, he has made the Adam of Concertos, and you have mated it with the Eve. Henceforth," he continued, waving his hands in benediction, "the tribe of Violin Concertos shall increase and multiply and become as the stars of heaven in multitude." "The more the merrier," cried David, "at least for fiddlers--I don't know what the audiences will think." "Audiences don't think--at least, not in England," said Bennett. "Come, come!" interposed Mendelssohn; and turning to me with a smile he said, "Will you allow Mr. Bennett to slander your countrymen like this?" "But Mr. Bennett doesn't mean it," I replied; "he knows that English audiences love, and are always faithful to, what stirs them deeply." "Yes; but what does stir them deeply?" he asked; "look at the enormous popularity of senseless sentimental songs." "On the other hand," I retorted, "look at our old affection for Handel and our new affection for Mr. Mendelssohn himself." "Thank you," said Mendelssohn, with a smile; "Handel is certainly yours by adoption. You English love the Bible, and Handel knew well how to wed its beautiful words to noble music. He was happy in having at his command the magnificent prose of the Bible and the magnificent verses of Milton. I, too, am fascinated by the noble language of the Scriptures, and I have used it both in the vernacular and in the sounding Latin of the Vulgate. And I am haunted even now by the words of one of the Psalms which seem to call for an appropriate setting. You recall the verses? "Hear my prayer; O God; and hide not thyself from my petition. Take heed unto me, and hear me, how I mourn in my prayer and am vexed. The enemy crieth so, and the ungodly cometh on so fast; for they are minded to do me some mischief, so maliciously are they set against me. My heart is disquieted within me; and the fear of death is fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me; and a horrible dread hath overwhelmed me. And I said, O that I had wings like a dove; for then would I flee away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I get me away far off; and remain in the wilderness. I would make haste to escape; because of the stormy wind and tempest." "Yes," said David, nodding emphatically; "they are wonderful words; you must certainly set them." "The Bible is an inexhaustible mine of song and story for musical setting," continued Mendelssohn; "I have one of its stories in my mind now; but only one man, a greater even than Handel, was worthy to touch the supreme tragedy of all." The last words were murmured as if to himself rather than to us, and he accompanied them abstractedly with tentative, prelusive chords, which gradually grew into the most strangely moving music I have ever heard. Its complex, swelling phrases presently drew together and rose up in one great major chord. No one spoke. I felt as if some mighty spirit had been evoked and that its unseen presence overshadowed us. "What was it?" I presently whispered to Bennett; but he shook his head and said, "Wait; he will tell you." At length I turned to Mendelssohn and said, "Is that part of the new work of yours you mentioned just now?" "Of mine!" he exclaimed; "of mine! I could never write such music. No, no! That was Bach, John Sebastian Bach--part of his St. Matthew Passion. I was playing not so much the actual notes of any chorus, but rather the effect of certain passages as I could feel them in my mind." "So that was by Bach!" I said in wonder. "Yes," said Mendelssohn; "and people know so little of him. They either think of him as the composer of mathematical exercises in music, or else they confuse him with others of his family. He was Cantor of the St. Thomas School here in Leipzig, the perfect type of a true servant of our glorious art. He wrote incessantly, but the greatest of his works lay forgotten after his death; and it was I, I, who disinterred this marvellous music-drama of the Passion, and gave it in Berlin ten years ago--its first performance since Bach's death almost a century before. But there," he added, with an apologetic smile, "I talk too much! Let us speak of something else." "Yes," said David, "you will talk of Bach for ever if no one stops you. Not that I mind. I am a disciple, too." "And I, too," added Bennett. "I mean to emulate Mendelssohn. He was the first to give the 'Passion' in Germany, I will be the first to give it in England." "Then I'll be recording angel," said David, "and register your vow. You'll show him up, if he breaks his word, won't you?" he added, turning to me. "Now this will really change the subject," said Mendelssohn, producing a sheet of manuscript. "Here is a little song I wrote last year to some old verses. Perhaps our new friend will let us hear it." In great trepidation I took the sheet. It was headed simply "Volkslied." I saw at once that there would be no difficulty in reading it, for the music was both graceful and simple. "Shall we try?" asked Mendelssohn, with his quiet, reassuring smile. "If you are willing to let me," I answered. _Parting._ "It is decreed by heaven's behest That man from all he loves the best Must sever. That soon or late with breaking heart With all his dear ones he must part For ever. How oft we cull a budding flower, To see it bloom a transient hour; 'Tis gathered. The bud becomes a lovely rose, Its morning blush at evening goes; 'Tis withered. And has it pleased our God to lend His cheering smile in child or friend? To-morrow-- To-morrow if reclaimed again The parting hour will prove how vain Is sorrow. Oft hope beguiles the friends who part; With happy smiles, and heart to heart, 'To meet,' they cry, 'we sever.' It proves good-bye for ever. For ever!" [Illustration: _Painting by N. M. Price._ PARTING. "It is decreed by heaven's behest That man from all he loves the best Must sever."] "Bravo!" cried Bennett. "Say rather, 'Bravi,'" said David, "for the song was as sweet as the singer." "Yes," said Bennett; "the simple repetition of the closing words of each verse is like a sigh of regret." "And the whole thing," added David, "has the genuine simplicity of the true folk-melody." Further discussion was prevented by a characteristic knock at the door. The visitor who entered in response to Mendelssohn's call was a sturdily built man of thirty, or thereabouts, with an air of mingled courage, resolution, and good humour. His long straight hair was brushed back from a broad, intellectual brow, and his thoughtful, far-looking eyes intensified the impression he gave of force and original power. He smiled humorously. "All the youth, beauty and intellect of Leipzig in one room. I leave you to apportion the qualities. Making much noise, too! And did I hear the strains of a vocal recital?" "You did," replied Bennett; "that was my young countryman here, who has just been singing a new song of Mendelssohn's." "Pardon me," said the new-comer to me; "you see Mendelssohn so fills the stage everywhere, that even David gets overlooked sometimes, don't you, my inspired fiddler?" he added, slapping the violinist on the back. "Yes I do," said David, "and so do the manners of all of you, for no one introduces our singer;" and turning to me he added, "this is Mr. Robert Schumann who divides the musical firmament of Leipzig with Mendelssohn." "You forget to add," said Mendelssohn, "that Schumann conquers in literature as well as in music. No one has written better musical critiques." "Yes, yes," grumbled David; "I wish he wouldn't do so much of it. If he scribbled less he'd compose more. The cobbler should stick to his last, and the musician shouldn't relinquish the music-pen for the goose quill." "But what of Mendelssohn himself," urged Schumann; "he, in a special sense, is a man of letters; for if there's one thing as good as being with him, it is being away from him, and receiving his delightful epistles." "Not the same thing," said David, shaking his head. "And then," said Schumann, waving his hand comprehensively around the room, "observe his works of art." I was about to express my astonishment at finding that Mendelssohn himself had produced these admirable pictures; but David suddenly addressed me: "By the way, don't let Mendelssohn decoy you into playing billiards with him; or if you do weakly yield, insist on fifty in the hundred--unless, of course, you have misspent your time, too, in gaining disreputable proficiency;" and he shook his head at the thought of many defeats. "Certainly," exclaimed Schumann, "Mendelssohn does all things well." "That's a handsome admission from a rival," said David. "A rival!" answered Schumann with spirit. "There can be no talk of rivalry between us. I know my place. Mendelssohn and I differ about things, sometimes; but who could quarrel with him?" "I could!" exclaimed David, jumping up, and striking an heroic attitude. "You!" laughed Schumann; "You quarrel, you dear old scraper of unmentionable strings!" "Ah, ha! my boy," chuckled David, "you can't write for them." "You mean I don't write for them," said Schumann; "I admit that I don't provide much for you to do. I leave that to my betters." "Never mind," said David, giving his shoulder a friendly pat; "at least you can write for the piano. I believe in you, and your queer music." "That's nice of you, David," replied Schumann, "but as to Mendelssohn and me, who shall decide which of us is right? He believes in making music as pellucid to the hearers as clear water. Now I like to baffle them--to leave them something to struggle with. Music is never the worse for being obscure at first." Mendelssohn shook his head and smiled. "You state your case eloquently, Schumann," he said, "but my feelings revolt against darkness and indefiniteness." "Yes, yes," assented Schumann; "you are the Fairies' Laureate." "Hear, hear!" cried David. "Now could anything be finer in its way than the Midsummer Night's Dream music? And the wondrous brat wrote it at seventeen!" Mendelssohn laughingly acknowledged the compliments. "That is a beautiful fairy song of yours," I said, "the one to Heine's verses about the fairies riding their tiny steeds through the wood." "Oh, yes," said Schumann; "will you sing it to us?" "I am afraid it requires much lighter singing than I can give it," I replied; "but I will try, if you wish." "We shall all be glad if you will," said Mendelssohn, as he turned once more to the key-board. The bright staccato rhythm flashed out from his fingers so gaily that I was swept into the song without time for hesitation: _The Fairy Love._ "Through the woods the moon was glancing; There I saw the Fays advancing; On they bounded, gaily singing, Horns resounded, bells were ringing. Tiny steeds with antlers growing On their foreheads brightly glowing, Bore them swift as falcons speeding Fly to strike the game receding. Passing, Queen Titania sweetly Deigned with nods and smiles to greet me. Means this, love will be requited? Or, will hope by death be blighted?" "You have greatly obliged us," said Schumann courteously. "It reminds me, though I don't know why," said David, "of that fairy-like duet about Jack Frost and the dancing flowers." "Come along and play it with me," said Mendelssohn to Bennett; "you've been hiding your talents all day." Bennett joined him at the piano, and the two began to romp like schoolboys. The simple duet was woven into a brilliant fantasia, but always in the gay spring-like spirit of the poem. [Illustration: _Painting by N. M. Price._ THE FAIRY LOVE. "Through the woods the moon was glancing There I saw the fays advancing. * * * * * Tiny steeds with antlers growing on their foreheads brightly glowing."] _The Maybells and the Flowers._ "Young Maybells ring throughout the vale And sound so sweet and clear, The dance begins, ye flowers all, Come with a merry cheer! The flowers red and white and blue, Merrily flock around, Forget-me-nots of heavenly hue, And violets, too, abound. Young Maybells play a sprightly tune, And all begin to dance, While o'er them smiles the gentle moon, With her soft silvery glance. This Master Frost offended sore; He in the vale appeared: Young Maybells ring the dance no more-- Gone are the flowers seared! But Frost has scarcely taken flight, When well-known sounds we hear: The Maybells with renewed delight, Are ringing doubly clear! Now I no more can stay at home, The Maybells call me so: The flowers to the dance all roam, Then why should I not go?" "Really," said David; "it's quite infectious"; and jumping up he began to pirouette, exclaiming, "Then why should I not go!" "David, this is unseemly," exclaimed Schumann, with mock severity. "There's another pretty fairy-like piece of yours, Mendelssohn, the Capriccio in E minor." "Yes," said Bennett, beginning to touch its opening fanfare of tiny trumpet-notes; "someone told me a pretty story of this piece, to the effect that a young lady gave you some flowers, and you undertook, gallantly, to write the music the Fairies played on the little trumpet-like blooms." "Yes," said Mendelssohn, with a smile, "it was in Wales, and I wrote the piece for Miss Taylor." "By-the-by," said Schumann, "David's antics remind me that Mendelssohn can make Witches and other queer creatures, dance, as well as Fairies." "Villain," exclaimed David, and he began to recite dramatically the invocation from the "First Walpurgis Night," while Mendelssohn played the flashing accompaniment. "Come with flappers, Fire and clappers; Hop with hopsticks, Brooms and mopsticks; Through the night-gloom lead and follow In and out each rocky hollow. Owls and ravens Howl with us and scare the cravens." "Ah," said Mendelssohn, "I don't think the old poet would really have cared for my setting, though he admired my playing, and was always most friendly to me." "Yes," said Schumann, warmly; "Goethe liked you because you were successful, and prosperous. Now Beethoven was poor: therefore Beethoven must first be loftily patronised and then contemptuously snubbed. I can never forgive Goethe for that. And as for poor Schubert, well, Goethe ignored him, and actually thought he had misinterpreted the Erl-king! It would be comic if it were not painful." "Poor Schubert!" said Mendelssohn with a sigh; "he met always Fortune's frown, never her smile." "Don't you think," said Bennett, "that his genius was the better for his poverty--that he learned in suffering what he taught in song?" "No, I do not!" replied Mendelssohn warmly. "That is a vile doctrine invented by a callous world to excuse its cruelty." "I believe there's something in it, though," said Bennett. "There is some truth in it, but not much," answered Mendelssohn, his eyes flashing as he spoke. "It is true that the artist learns by suffering, because the artist is more sensitive and feels more deeply than others. But enough of suffering comes to all of us, even the most fortunate, without the sordid, gratuitous misery engendered by poverty." "I agree with Mendelssohn," said Schumann. "To say that poverty is the proper stimulus of genius is to talk pernicious nonsense. Poverty slays, it does not nourish; poverty narrows the vision, it does not ennoble; poverty lowers the moral standard and makes a man sordid. You can't get good art out of that." [Illustration: _Painting by N. M. Price._ THE MAYBELLS AND THE FLOWERS. "Now I no more can stay at home. The Maybells call me so. The flowers to the dance all roam, Then, why should I not go?"] "Perhaps I have been more fortunate than most artists," said Mendelssohn softly. "When I think of all that my dear father and mother did for us, I can scarcely restrain tears of gratitude. Almost more valuable than their careful encouragement was their noble, serious common-sense. My mother, whom Heaven long preserve to me, was not the woman to let me, or any of us, live in a fool's paradise, and my dear dead father was too good a man of business to set me walking in a blind alley. Ah!" he continued, with glistening eyes, "the great musical times we had in the dear old Berlin house!" "Yes," said David; "Your house was on the Leipzig Road. You see, even then, the finger of fate pointed the way to this place." "Indeed," said Schumann, with a sigh, "You certainly had extraordinary opportunities. Not that I've been badly used, though." "Your father was genuinely proud of you," said David. "I remember his epigram: 'Once I was the son of my father; now I am the father of my son.'" Mendelssohn nodded with a smile, and, turning to me, said in explanation, "You must know that my father's father was a famous philosopher." "Well!" said Schumann, rising, "I must be going." Bennett and David also prepared to leave, and I rose with them. "Wait a moment," said Mendelssohn; and going to the door he called softly, "Cecile, are you there?" He went out for a moment, and returned with a beautiful and charming girl, who greeted the three visitors warmly. Mendelssohn then presented me, saying, gently and almost proudly, "This is my wife." I bowed deeply. "You are from England?" said the lady, with the sweetest of smiles; "I declare I am quite jealous of your country, my husband loves it so much." "We are very proud of his affection," I replied. She turned to Schumann and said softly, "And how is Clara?" "Oh, she is well;" he replied with a glad smile. "And the father?" she added. "We have been much worried," he said gravely; "but we shall marry this year in spite of all he may do." "She is worth all your struggles," said Mendelssohn warmly; "she is a charming lady, and an excellent musician. You will be very happy." "Thanks, thanks," replied Schumann, with evident pleasure. Mendelssohn turned to me and shook my hand warmly. "I have been glad to meet you, and to hear you; for you sing like a musician. I shall not say good-bye. You will call again, I hope, before you leave Leipzig. Perhaps we may meet, too, in England. I am now writing something that I hope my English friends will like." "What is it, sir?" I asked. "It is an oratorio on the subject of Elijah," he replied. "It is bound to be good," said Schumann enthusiastically. "Posterity will call you the man who never failed." "Ah!" said Mendelssohn almost sadly, "you are all good and kind, but you praise me too much. Perhaps posterity will remember me for my little pieces rather than for my greater efforts. Perhaps it will remember me best, not as the master, but as the servant; for in my way I have tried very hard to glorify the great men who went before me--Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert--Bach most of all. Even if every note of my writing should perish, perhaps future generations will think kindly of me, remembering that it was I, the Jew by birth, who gave back to Christianity that imperishable setting of its tragedy and glory." With these words in my ears I passed out into the pleasant streets of Mendelssohn's chosen city. _Printed by The Bushey Colour Press (André & Sleigh, Ltd.)._ _Bushey, Herts._ TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE Contemporary spellings have been retained even when inconsistent. In a small number of cases, missing punctuation has been silently added. The following additional changes have been made: Lied ohne Wörte Lied ohne _Worte_ grateful and simple _graceful_ and simple 
14107	----	THE LOST STRADIVARIUS by J. MEADE FALKNER 1895 Penguin Books Harmondsworth Middlesex, England 245 Fifth Avenue, New York, U.S.A. THE AUTHOR John Meade Falkner was a remarkable character, as he was not only a scholar and a writer, but a captain of industry as well. Born in 1858, the son of a clergyman in Wiltshire, he was educated at Marlborough and Hertford College, Oxford. On leaving the university, he became tutor to the sons of Sir Andrew Noble, then vice-chairman of the Armstrong-Whitworth Company; and his ability so much impressed his employer that in 1885 he was offered a post in the firm. Without connections or influence in industrial circles, and solely by his intellect, he rose to be a director in 1901, and finally, in 1915, chairman of this enormous business. He was actually chairman during the important years 1915-1920, and remained a director until 1926. His intellectual energy was so great that throughout his life he found time for scholarship as well as business. He travelled for his firm in Europe and South America; and in the intervals of negotiating with foreign governments studied manuscripts wherever he found a library. His researches in the Vatican Library were of special importance, and in connection with them he received a gold medal from the Pope; he was also decorated by the Italian, Turkish and Japanese governments. His scholastic interests included archæology, folklore, palæography, mediæval history, architecture and church music; and he was a collector of missals. Towards the end of his life he was made an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, Honorary Reader in Palæography to Durham University, and Honorary Librarian to the Chapter Library of Durham Cathedral, which he left one of the best cathedral libraries in Europe. He died at Durham in 1932. Apart from _The Lost Stradivarius_, Falkner was the author of two other novels, _The Nebuly Coat_ (1903--also published in Penguin Books) and _Moonfleet_ (1898). He also wrote a History of Oxfordshire, handbooks to that county and to Berkshire, historical short stories, and some mediævalist verse. THE LOST STRADIVARIUS Letter from MISS SOPHIA MALTRAVERS to her Nephew, SIR EDWARD MALTRAVERS, then a Student at Christ Church, Oxford. 13 Pauncefort Buildings, Bath, Oct. 21, 1867. MY DEAR EDWARD, It was your late father's dying request that certain events which occurred in his last years should be communicated to you on your coming of age. I have reduced them to writing, partly from my own recollection, which is, alas! still too vivid, and partly with the aid of notes taken at the time of my brother's death. As you are now of full age, I submit the narrative to you. Much of it has necessarily been exceedingly painful to me to write, but at the same time I feel it is better that you should hear the truth from me than garbled stories from others who did not love your father as I did. Your loving Aunt, SOPHIA MALTRAVERS To Sir Edward Maltravers, Bart. "A tale out of season is as music in mourning." --ECCLESIASTICUS xxii. 6. MISS SOPHIA MALTRAVERS' STORY CHAPTER I Your father, John Maltravers, was born in 1820 at Worth, and succeeded his father and mine, who died when we were still young children. John was sent to Eton in due course, and in 1839, when he was nineteen years of age, it was determined that he should go to Oxford. It was intended at first to enter him at Christ Church; but Dr. Sarsdell, who visited us at Worth in the summer of 1839, persuaded Mr. Thoresby, our guardian, to send him instead to Magdalen Hall. Dr. Sarsdell was himself Principal of that institution, and represented that John, who then exhibited some symptoms of delicacy, would meet with more personal attention under his care than he could hope to do in so large a college as Christ Church. Mr. Thoresby, ever solicitous for his ward's welfare, readily waived other considerations in favour of an arrangement which he considered conducive to John's health, and he was accordingly matriculated at Magdalen Hall in the autumn of 1839. Dr. Sarsdell had not been unmindful of his promise to look after my brother, and had secured him an excellent first-floor sitting-room, with a bedroom adjoining, having an aspect towards New College Lane. I shall pass over the first two years of my brother's residence at Oxford, because they have nothing to do with the present story. They were spent, no doubt, in the ordinary routine of work and recreation common in Oxford at that period. From his earliest boyhood he had been passionately devoted to music, and had attained a considerable proficiency on the violin. In the autumn term of 1841 he made the acquaintance of Mr. William Gaskell, a very talented student at New College, and also a more than tolerable musician. The practice of music was then very much less common at Oxford than it has since become, and there were none of those societies existing which now do so much to promote its study among undergraduates. It was therefore a cause of much gratification to the two young men, and it afterwards became a strong bond of friendship, to discover that one was as devoted to the pianoforte as was the other to the violin. Mr. Gaskell, though in easy circumstances, had not a pianoforte in his rooms, and was pleased to use a fine instrument by D'Almaine that John had that term received as a birthday present from his guardian. From that time the two students were thrown much together, and in the autumn term of 1841 and Easter term of 1842 practised a variety of music in John's rooms, he taking the violin part and Mr. Gaskell that for the pianoforte. It was, I think, in March 1842 that John purchased for his rooms a piece of furniture which was destined afterwards to play no unimportant part in the story I am narrating. This was a very large and low wicker chair of a form then coming into fashion in Oxford, and since, I am told, become a familiar object of most college rooms. It was cushioned with a gaudy pattern of chintz, and bought for new of an upholsterer at the bottom of the High Street. Mr. Gaskell was taken by his uncle to spend Easter in Rome, and obtaining special leave from his college to prolong his travels; did not return to Oxford till three weeks of the summer term were passed and May was well advanced. So impatient was he to see his friend that he would not let even the first evening of his return pass without coming round to John's rooms. The two young men sat without lights until the night was late; and Mr. Gaskell had much to narrate of his travels, and spoke specially of the beautiful music which he had heard at Easter in the Roman churches. He had also had lessons on the piano from a celebrated professor of the Italian style, but seemed to have been particularly delighted with the music of the seventeenth-century composers, of whose works he had brought back some specimens set for piano and violin. It was past eleven o'clock when Mr. Gaskell left to return to New College; but the night was unusually warm, with a moon near the full, and John sat for some time in a cushioned window-seat before the open sash thinking over what he had heard about the music of Italy. Feeling still disinclined for sleep, he lit a single candle and began to turn over some of the musical works which Mr. Gaskell had left on the table. His attention was especially attracted to an oblong book, bound in soiled vellum, with a coat of arms stamped in gilt upon the side. It was a manuscript copy of some early suites by Graziani for violin and harpsichord, and was apparently written at Naples in the year 1744, many years after the death of that composer. Though the ink was yellow and faded, the transcript had been accurately made, and could be read with tolerable comfort by an advanced musician in spite of the antiquated notation. Perhaps by accident, or perhaps by some mysterious direction which our minds are incapable of appreciating, his eye was arrested by a suite of four movements with a _basso continuo_, or figured bass, for the harpsichord. The other suites in the book were only distinguished by numbers, but this one the composer had dignified with the name of "l'Areopagita." Almost mechanically John put the book on his music-stand, took his violin from its case, and after a moment's tuning stood up and played the first movement, a lively _Coranto_. The light of the single candle burning on the table was scarcely sufficient to illumine the page; the shadows hung in the creases of the leaves, which had grown into those wavy folds sometimes observable in books made of thick paper and remaining long shut; and it was with difficulty that he could read what he was playing. But he felt the strange impulse of the old-world music urging him forward, and did not even pause to light the candles which stood ready in their sconces on either side of the desk. The _Coranto_ was followed by a _Sarabanda_, and the _Sarabanda_ by a _Gagliarda_. My brother stood playing, with his face turned to the window, with the room and the large wicker chair of which I have spoken behind him. The _Gagliarda_ began with a bold and lively air, and as he played the opening bars, he heard behind him a creaking of the wicker chair. The sound was a perfectly familiar one--as of some person placing a hand on either arm of the chair preparatory to lowering himself into it, followed by another as of the same person being leisurely seated. But for the tones of the violin, all was silent, and the creaking of the chair was strangely distinct. The illusion was so complete that my brother stopped playing suddenly, and turned round expecting that some late friend of his had slipped in unawares, being attracted by the sound of the violin, or that Mr. Gaskell himself had returned. With the cessation of the music an absolute stillness fell upon all; the light of the single candle scarcely reached the darker corners of the room, but fell directly on the wicker chair and showed it to be perfectly empty. Half amused, half vexed with himself at having without reason interrupted his music, my brother returned to the _Gagliarda_; but some impulse induced him to light the candles in the sconces, which gave an illumination more adequate to the occasion. The _Gagliarda_ and the last movement, a _Minuetto_, were finished, and John closed the book, intending, as it was now late, to seek his bed. As he shut the pages a creaking of the wicker chair again attracted his attention, and he heard distinctly sounds such as would be made by a person raising himself from a sitting posture. This time, being less surprised, he could more aptly consider the probable causes of such a circumstance, and easily arrived at the conclusion that there must be in the wicker chair osiers responsive to certain notes of the violin, as panes of glass in church windows are observed to vibrate in sympathy with certain tones of the organ. But while this argument approved itself to his reason, his imagination was but half convinced; and he could not but be impressed with the fact that the second creaking of the chair had been coincident with his shutting the music-book; and, unconsciously, pictured to himself some strange visitor waiting until the termination of the music, and then taking his departure. His conjectures did not, however, either rob him of sleep or even disturb it with dreams, and he woke the next morning with a cooler mind and one less inclined to fantastic imagination. If the strange episode of the previous evening had not entirely vanished from his mind, it seemed at least fully accounted for by the acoustic explanation to which I have alluded above. Although he saw Mr. Gaskell in the course of the morning, he did not think it necessary to mention to him so trivial a circumstance, but made with him an appointment to sup together in his own rooms that evening, and to amuse themselves afterwards by essaying some of the Italian music. It was shortly after nine that night when, supper being finished, Mr. Gaskell seated himself at the piano and John tuned his violin. The evening was closing in; there had been heavy thunder-rain in the afternoon, and the moist air hung now heavy and steaming, while across it there throbbed the distant vibrations of the tenor bell at Christ Church. It was tolling the customary 101 strokes, which are rung every night in term-time as a signal for closing the college gates. The two young men enjoyed themselves for some while, playing first a suite by Cesti, and then two early sonatas by Buononcini. Both of them were sufficiently expert musicians to make reading at sight a pleasure rather than an effort; and Mr. Gaskell especially was well versed in the theory of music, and in the correct rendering of the _basso continuo_. After the Buononcini Mr. Gaskell took up the oblong copy of Graziani, and turning over its leaves, proposed that they should play the same suite which John had performed by himself the previous evening. His selection was apparently perfectly fortuitous, as my brother had purposely refrained from directing his attention in any way to that piece of music. They played the _Coranto_ and the _Sarabanda_, and in the singular fascination of the music John had entirely forgotten the episode of the previous evening, when, as the bold air of the _Gagliarda_ commenced, he suddenly became aware of the same strange creaking of the wicker chair that he had noticed on the first occasion. The sound was identical, and so exact was its resemblance to that of a person sitting down that he stared at the chair, almost wondering that it still appeared empty. Beyond turning his head sharply for a moment to look round, Mr. Gaskell took no notice of the sound; and my brother, ashamed to betray any foolish interest or excitement, continued the _Gagliarda_, with its repeat. At its conclusion Mr. Gaskell stopped before proceeding to the minuet, and turning the stool on which he was sitting round towards the room, observed, "How very strange, Johnnie,"--for these young men were on terms of sufficient intimacy to address each other in a familiar style,--"How very strange! I thought I heard some one sit down in that chair when we began the _Gagliarda_. I looked round quite expecting to see some one had come in. Did you hear nothing?" "It was only the chair creaking," my brother answered, feigning an indifference which he scarcely felt. "Certain parts of the wicker-work seem to be in accord with musical notes and respond to them; let us continue with the _Minuetto_." Thus they finished the suite, Mr. Gaskell demanding a repetition of the _Gagliarda_, with the air of which he was much pleased. As the clocks had already struck eleven, they determined not to play more that night; and Mr. Gaskell rose, blew out the sconces, shut the piano, and put the music aside. My brother has often assured me that he was quite prepared for what followed, and had been almost expecting it; for as the books were put away, a creaking of the wicker chair was audible, exactly similar to that which he had heard when he stopped playing on the previous night. There was a moment's silence; the young men looked involuntarily at one another, and then Mr. Gaskell said, "I cannot understand the creaking of that chair; it has never done so before, with all the music we have played. I am perhaps imaginative and excited with the fine airs we have heard to-night, but I have an impression that I cannot dispel that something has been sitting listening to us all this time, and that now when the concert is ended it has got up and gone." There was a spirit of raillery in his words, but his tone was not so light as it would ordinarily have been, and he was evidently ill at ease. "Let us try the _Gagliarda_ again," said my brother; "it is the vibration of the opening notes which affects the wicker-work, and we shall see if the noise is repeated." But Mr. Gaskell excused himself from trying the experiment, and after some desultory conversation, to which it was evident that neither was giving any serious attention, he took his leave and returned to New College. CHAPTER II I shall not weary you, my dear Edward, by recounting similar experiences which occurred on nearly every occasion that the young men met in the evenings for music. The repetition of the phenomenon had accustomed them to expect it. Both professed to be quite satisfied that it was to be attributed to acoustical affinities of vibration between the wicker-work and certain of the piano wires, and indeed this seemed the only explanation possible. But, at the same time, the resemblance of the noises to those caused by a person sitting down in or rising from a chair was so marked, that even their frequent recurrence never failed to make a strange impression on them. They felt a reluctance to mention the matter to their friends, partly from a fear of being themselves laughed at, and partly to spare from ridicule a circumstance to which each perhaps, in spite of himself, attached some degree of importance. Experience soon convinced them that the first noise as of one sitting down never occurred unless the _Gagliarda_ of the "Areopagita" was played, and that this noise being once heard, the second only followed it when they ceased playing for the evening. They met every night, sitting later with the lengthening summer evenings, and every night, as by some tacit understanding, played the "Areopagita" suite before parting. At the opening bars of the _Gagliarda_ the creaking of the chair occurred spontaneously with the utmost regularity. They seldom spoke even to one another of the subject; but one night, when John was putting away his violin after a long evening's music without having played the "Areopagita," Mr. Gaskell, who had risen from the pianoforte, sat down again as by a sudden impulse and said-- "Johnnie, do not put away your violin yet. It is near twelve o'clock and I shall get shut out, but I cannot stop to-night without playing the _Gagliarda_. Suppose that all our theories of vibration and affinity are wrong, suppose that there really comes here night by night some strange visitant to hear us, some poor creature whose heart is bound up in that tune; would it not be unkind to send him away without the hearing of that piece which he seems most to relish? Let us not be ill-mannered, but humour his whim; let us play the _Gagliarda_." They played it with more vigour and precision than usual, and the now customary sound of one taking his seat at once ensued. It was that night that my brother, looking steadfastly at the chair, saw, or thought he saw, there some slight obscuration, some penumbra, mist, or subtle vapour which, as he gazed, seemed to struggle to take human form. He ceased playing for a moment and rubbed his eyes, but as he did so all dimness vanished and he saw the chair perfectly empty. The pianist stopped also at the cessation of the violin, and asked what ailed him. "It is only that my eyes were dim," he answered. "We have had enough for to-night," said Mr. Gaskell; "let us stop. I shall be locked out." He shut the piano, and as he did so the clock in New College tower struck twelve. He left the room running, but was late enough at his college door to be reported, admonished with a fine against such late hours, and confined for a week to college; for being out after midnight was considered, at that time at least, a somewhat serious offence. Thus for some days the musical practice was compulsorily intermitted, but resumed on the first evening after Mr. Gaskell's term of confinement was expired. After they had performed several suites of Graziani, and finished as usual with the "Areopagita," Mr. Gaskell sat for a time silent at the instrument, as though thinking with himself, and then said-- "I cannot say how deeply this old-fashioned music affects me. Some would try to persuade us that these suites, of which the airs bear the names of different dances, were always written rather as a musical essay and for purposes of performance than for persons to dance to, as their names would more naturally imply. But I think these critics are wrong at least in some instances. It is to me impossible to believe that such a melody, for instance, as the _Giga_ of Corelli which we have played, was not written for actual purposes of dancing. One can almost hear the beat of feet upon the floor, and I imagine that in the time of Corelli the practice of dancing, while not a whit inferior in grace, had more of the tripudistic or beating character than is now esteemed consistent with a correct ball-room performance. The _Gagliarda_ too, which we play now so constantly, possesses a singular power of assisting the imagination to picture or reproduce such scenes as those which it no doubt formerly enlivened. I know not why, but it is constantly identified in my mind with some revel which I have perhaps seen in a picture, where several couples are dancing a licentious measure in a long room lit by a number of silver sconces of the debased model common at the end of the seventeenth century. It is probably a reminiscence of my late excursion that gives to these dancers in my fancy the olive skin, dark hair, and bright eyes of the Italian type; and they wear dresses of exceedingly rich fabric and elaborate design. Imagination is whimsical enough to paint for me the character of the room itself, as having an arcade of arches running down one side alone, of the fantastic and paganised Gothic of the Renaissance. At the end is a gallery or balcony for the musicians, which on its coved front has a florid coat of arms of foreign heraldry. The shield bears, on a field _or_, a cherub's head blowing on three lilies--a blazon I have no doubt seen somewhere in my travels, though I cannot recollect where. This scene, I say, is so nearly connected in my brain with the _Gagliarda_, that scarcely are its first notes sounded ere it presents itself to my eyes with a vividness which increases every day. The couples advance, set, and recede, using free and licentious gestures which my imagination should be ashamed to recall. Amongst so many foreigners, fancy pictures, I know not in the least why, the presence of a young man of an English type of face, whose features, however, always elude my mind's attempt to fix them. I think that the opening subject of this _Gagliarda_ is a superior composition to the rest of it, for it is only during the first sixteen bars that the vision of bygone revelry presents itself to me. With the last note of the sixteenth bar a veil is drawn suddenly across the scene, and with a sense almost of some catastrophe it vanishes. This I attribute to the fact that the second subject must be inferior in conception to the first, and by some sense of incongruity destroys the fabric which the fascination of the preceding one built up." My brother, though he had listened with interest to what Mr. Gaskell had said, did not reply, and the subject was allowed to drop. CHAPTER III It was in the same summer of 1842, and near the middle of June, that my brother John wrote inviting me to come to Oxford for the Commemoration festivities. I had been spending some weeks with Mrs. Temple, a distant cousin of ours, at their house of Royston in Derbyshire, and John was desirous that Mrs. Temple should come up to Oxford and chaperone her daughter Constance and myself at the balls and various other entertainments which take place at the close of the summer term. Owing to Royston being some two hundred miles from Worth Maltravers, our families had hitherto seen little of one another, but during my present visit I had learned to love Mrs. Temple, a lady of singular sweetness of disposition, and had contracted a devoted attachment to her daughter Constance. Constance Temple was then eighteen years of age, and to great beauty united such mental graces and excellent traits of character as must ever appear to reasoning persons more enduringly valuable than even the highest personal attractions. She was well read and witty, and had been trained in those principles of true religion which she afterwards followed with devoted consistency in the self-sacrifice and resigned piety of her too short life. In person, I may remind you, my dear Edward, since death removed her ere you were of years to appreciate either her appearance or her qualities, she was tall, with a somewhat long and oval face, with brown hair and eyes. Mrs. Temple readily accepted Sir John Maltravers' invitation. She had never seen Oxford herself, and was pleased to afford us the pleasure of so delightful an excursion. John had secured convenient rooms for us above the shop of a well-known printseller in High Street, and we arrived in Oxford on Friday evening, June 18, 1842. I shall not dilate to you on the various Commemoration festivities, which have probably altered little since those days, and with which you are familiar. Suffice it to say that my brother had secured us admission to every entertainment, and that we enjoyed our visit as only youth with its keen sensibilities and uncloyed pleasures can. I could not help observing that John was very much struck by the attractions of Miss Constance Temple, and that she for her part, while exhibiting no unbecoming forwardness, certainly betrayed no aversion to him. I was greatly pleased both with my own powers of observation which had enabled me to discover so important a fact, and also with the circumstance itself. To a romantic girl of nineteen it appeared high time that a brother of twenty-two should be at least preparing some matrimonial project; and my friend was so good and beautiful that it seemed impossible that I should ever obtain a more lovable sister or my brother a better wife. Mrs. Temple could not refuse her sanction to such a scheme; for while their mental qualities seemed eminently compatible, John was in his own right master of Worth Maltravers, and her daughter sole heiress of the Royston estates. The Commemoration festivities terminated on Wednesday night with a grand ball at the Music-Room in Holywell Street. This was given by a Lodge of University Freemasons, and John was there with Mr. Gaskell--whose acquaintance we had made with much gratification--both wearing blue silk scarves and small white aprons. They introduced us to many other of their friends similarly adorned, and these important and mysterious insignia sat not amiss with their youthful figures and boyish faces. After a long and pleasurable programme, it was decided that we should prolong our visit till the next evening, leaving Oxford at half-past ten o'clock at night and driving to Didcot, there to join the mail for the west. We rose late the next morning and spent the day rambling among the old colleges and gardens of the most beautiful of English cities. At seven o'clock we dined together for the last time at our lodgings in High Street, and my brother proposed that before parting we should enjoy the fine evening in the gardens of St. John's College. This was at once agreed to, and we proceeded thither, John walking on in front with Constance and Mrs. Temple, and I following with Mr. Gaskell. My companion explained that these gardens were esteemed the most beautiful in the University, but that under ordinary circumstances it was not permitted to strangers to walk there of an evening. Here he quoted some Latin about "aurum per medios ire satellites," which I smilingly made as if I understood, and did indeed gather from it that John had bribed the porter to admit us. It was a warm and very still night, without a moon, but with enough of fading light to show the outlines of the garden front. This long low line of buildings built in Charles I's reign looked so exquisitely beautiful that I shall never forget it, though I have not since seen its oriel windows and creeper-covered walls. There was a very heavy dew on the broad lawn, and we walked at first only on the paths. No one spoke, for we were oppressed by the very beauty of the scene, and by the sadness which an imminent parting from friends and from so sweet a place combined to cause. John had been silent and depressed the whole day, nor did Mr. Gaskell himself seem inclined to conversation. Constance and my brother fell a little way behind, and Mr. Gaskell asked me to cross the lawn if I was not afraid of the dew, that I might see the garden front to better advantage from the corner. Mrs. Temple waited for us on the path, not wishing to wet her feet. Mr. Gaskell pointed out the beauties of the perspective as seen from his vantage-point, and we were fortunate in hearing the sweet descant of nightingales for which this garden has ever been famous. As we stood silent and listening, a candle was lit in a small oriel at the end, and the light showing the tracery of the window added to the picturesqueness of the scene. Within an hour we were in a landau driving through the still warm lanes to Didcot. I had seen that Constance's parting with my brother had been tender, and I am not sure that she was not in tears during some part at least of our drive; but I did not observe her closely, having my thoughts elsewhere. Though we were thus being carried every moment further from the sleeping city, where I believe that both our hearts were busy, I feel as if I had been a personal witness of the incidents I am about to narrate, so often have I heard them from my brother's lips. The two young men, after parting with us in the High Street, returned to their respective colleges. John reached his rooms shortly before eleven o'clock. He was at once sad and happy--sad at our departure, but happy in a new-found world of delight which his admiration for Constance Temple opened to him. He was, in fact, deeply in love with her, and the full flood of a hitherto unknown passion filled him with an emotion so overwhelming that his ordinary life seemed transfigured. He moved, as it were, in an ether superior to our mortal atmosphere, and a new region of high resolves and noble possibilities spread itself before his eyes. He slammed his heavy outside door (called an "oak") to prevent anyone entering and flung himself into the window-seat. Here he sat for a long time, the sash thrown up and his head outside, for he was excited and feverish. His mental exaltation was so great and his thoughts of so absorbing an interest that he took no notice of time, and only remembered afterwards that the scent of a syringa-bush was borne up to him from a little garden-patch opposite, and that a bat had circled slowly up and down the lane, until he heard the clocks striking three. At the same time the faint light of dawn made itself felt almost imperceptibly; the classic statues on the roof of the schools began to stand out against the white sky, and a faint glimmer to penetrate the darkened room. It glistened on the varnished top of his violin-case lying on the table, and on a jug of toast-and-water placed there by his college servant or scout every night before he left. He drank a glass of this mixture, and was moving towards his bedroom door when a sudden thought struck him. He turned back, took the violin from its case, tuned it, and began to play the "Areopagita" suite. He was conscious of that mental clearness and vigour which not unfrequently comes with the dawn to those who have sat watching or reading through the night: and his thoughts were exalted by the effect which the first consciousness of a deep passion causes in imaginative minds. He had never played the suite with more power; and the airs, even without the piano part, seemed fraught with a meaning hitherto unrealised. As he began the _Gagliarda_ he heard the wicker chair creak; but he had his back towards it, and the sound was now too familiar to him to cause him even to look round. It was not till he was playing the repeat that he became aware of a new and overpowering sensation. At first it was a vague feeling, so often experienced by us all, of not being alone. He did not stop playing, and in a few seconds the impression of a presence in the room other than his own became so strong that he was actually afraid to look round. But in another moment he felt that at all hazards he must see what or who this presence was. Without stopping he partly turned and partly looked over his shoulder. The silver light of early morning was filling the room, making the various objects appear of less bright colour than usual, and giving to everything a pearl-grey neutral tint. In this cold but clear light he saw seated in the wicker chair the figure of a man. In the first violent shock of so terrifying a discovery, he could not appreciate such details as those of features, dress, or appearance. He was merely conscious that with him, in a locked room of which he knew himself to be the only human inmate, there sat something which bore a human form. He looked at it for a moment with a hope, which he felt to be vain, that it might vanish and prove a phantom of his excited imagination, but still it sat there. Then my brother put down his violin, and he used to assure me that a horror overwhelmed him of an intensity which he had previously believed impossible. Whether the image which he saw was subjective or objective, I cannot pretend to say: you will be in a position to judge for yourself when you have finished this narrative. Our limited experience would lead us to believe that it was a phantom conjured up by some unusual condition of his own brain; but we are fain to confess that there certainly do exist in nature phenomena such as baffle human reason; and it is possible that, for some hidden purposes of Providence, permission may occasionally be granted to those who have passed from this life to assume again for a time the form of their earthly tabernacle. We must, I say, be content to suspend our judgment on such matters; but in this instance the subsequent course of events is very difficult to explain, except on the supposition that there was then presented to my brother's view the actual bodily form of one long deceased. The dread which took possession of him was due, he has more than once told me when analysing his feelings long afterwards, to two predominant causes. Firstly, he felt that mental dislocation which accompanies the sudden subversion of preconceived theories, the sudden alteration of long habit, or even the occurrence of any circumstance beyond the walk of our daily experience. This I have observed myself in the perturbing effect which a sudden death, a grievous accident, or in recent years the declaration of war, has exercised upon all except the most lethargic or the most determined minds. Secondly, he experienced the profound self-abasement or mental annihilation caused by the near conception of a being of a superior order. In the presence of an existence wearing, indeed, the human form, but of attributes widely different from and superior to his own, he felt the combined reverence and revulsion which even the noblest wild animals exhibit when brought for the first time face to face with man. The shock was so great that I feel persuaded it exerted an effect on him from which he never wholly recovered. After an interval which seemed to him interminable, though it was only of a second's duration, he turned his eyes again to the occupant of the wicker chair. His faculties had so far recovered from the first shock as to enable him to see that the figure was that of a man perhaps thirty-five years of age and still youthful in appearance. The face was long and oval, the hair brown, and brushed straight off an exceptionally high forehead. His complexion was very pale or bloodless. He was clean shaven, and his finely cut mouth, with compressed lips, wore something of a sneering smile. His general expression was unpleasing, and from the first my brother felt as by intuition that there was present some malign and wicked influence. His eyes were not visible, as he kept them cast down, resting his head on his hand in the attitude of one listening. His face and even his dress were impressed so vividly upon John's mind, that he never had any difficulty in recalling them to his imagination; and he and I had afterwards an opportunity of verifying them in a remarkable manner. He wore a long cut-away coat of green cloth with an edge of gold embroidery, and a white satin waistcoat figured with rose-sprigs, a full cravat of rich lace, knee-breeches of buff silk, and stockings of the same. His shoes were of polished black leather with heavy silver buckles, and his costume in general recalled that worn a century ago. As my brother gazed at him, he got up, putting his hands on the arms of the chair to raise himself, and causing the creaking so often heard before. The hands forced themselves on my brother's notice: they were very white, with the long delicate fingers of a musician. He showed a considerable height; and still keeping his eyes on the floor, walked with an ordinary gait towards the end of the bookcase at the side of the room farthest from the window. He reached the bookcase, and then John suddenly lost sight of him. The figure did not fade gradually, but went out, as it were, like the flame of a suddenly extinguished candle. The room was now filled with the clear light of the summer morning: the whole vision had lasted but a few seconds, but my brother knew that there was no possibility of his having been mistaken, that the mystery of the creaking chair was solved, that he had seen the man who had come evening by evening for a month past to listen to the rhythm of the _Gagliarda_. Terribly disturbed, he sat for some time half dreading and half expecting a return of the figure; but all remained unchanged: he saw nothing, nor did he dare to challenge its reappearance by playing again the _Gagliarda_, which seemed to have so strange an attraction for it. At last, in the full sunlight of a late June morning at Oxford, he heard the steps of early pedestrians on the pavement below his windows, the cry of a milkman, and other sounds which showed the world was awake. It was after six o'clock, and going to his bedroom he flung himself on the outside of the bed for an hour's troubled slumber. CHAPTER IV When his servant called him about eight o'clock my brother sent a note to Mr. Gaskell at New College, begging him to come round to Magdalen Hall as soon as might be in the course of the morning. His summons was at once obeyed, and Mr. Gaskell was with him before he had finished breakfast. My brother was still much agitated, and at once told him what had happened the night before, detailing the various circumstances with minuteness, and not even concealing from him the sentiments which he entertained towards Miss Constance Temple. In narrating the appearance which he had seen in the chair, his agitation was still so excessive that he had difficulty in controlling his voice. Mr. Gaskell heard him with much attention, and did not at once reply when John had finished his narration. At length he said, "I suppose many friends would think it right to affect, even if they did not feel, an incredulity as to what you have just told me. They might consider it more prudent to attempt to allay your distress by persuading you that what you have seen has no objective reality, but is merely the phantasm of an excited imagination; that if you had not been in love, had not sat up all night, and had not thus overtaxed your physical powers, you would have seen no vision. I shall not argue thus, for I am as certainly convinced as of the fact that we sit here, that on all the nights when we have played this suite called the 'Areopagita,' there has been some one listening to us, and that you have at length been fortunate or unfortunate enough to see him." "Do not say fortunate," said my brother; "for I feel as though I shall never recover from last night's shock." "That is likely enough," Mr. Gaskell answered, coolly; "for as in the history of the race or individual, increased culture and a finer mental susceptibility necessarily impair the brute courage and powers of endurance which we note in savages, so any supernatural vision such as you have seen must be purchased at the cost of physical reaction. From the first evening that we played this music, and heard the noises mimicking so closely the sitting down and rising up of some person, I have felt convinced that causes other than those which we usually call natural were at work, and that we were very near the manifestation of some extraordinary phenomenon." "I do not quite apprehend your meaning." "I mean this," he continued, "that this man or spirit of a man has been sitting here night after night, and that we have not been able to see him, because our minds are dull and obtuse. Last night the elevating force of a strong passion, such as that which you have confided to me, combined with the power of fine music, so exalted your mind that you became endowed, as it were, with a sixth sense, and suddenly were enabled to see that which had previously been invisible. To this sixth sense music gives, I believe, the key. We are at present only on the threshold of such a knowledge of that art as will enable us to use it eventually as the greatest of all humanising and educational agents. Music will prove a ladder to the loftier regions of thought; indeed I have long found for myself that I cannot attain to the highest range of my intellectual power except when hearing good music. All poets, and most writers of prose, will say that their thought is never so exalted, their sense of beauty and proportion never so just, as when they are listening either to the artificial music made by man, or to some of the grander tones of nature, such as the roar of a western ocean, or the sighing of wind in a clump of firs. Though I have often felt on such occasions on the very verge of some high mental discovery, and though a hand has been stretched forward as it were to rend the veil, yet it has never been vouchsafed me to see behind it. This you no doubt were allowed in a measure to do last night. You probably played the music with a deeper intuition than usual, and this, combined with the excitement under which you were already labouring, raised you for a moment to the required pitch of mental exaltation." "It is true," John said, "that I never felt the melody so deeply as when I played it last night." "Just so," answered his friend; "and there is probably some link between this air and the history of the man whom you saw last night; some fatal power in it which enables it to exert an attraction on him even after death. For we must remember that the influence of music, though always powerful, is not always for good. We can scarcely doubt that as certain forms of music tend to raise us above the sensuality of the animal, or the more degrading passion of material gain, and to transport us into the ether of higher thought, so other forms are directly calculated to awaken in us luxurious emotions, and to whet those sensual appetites which it is the business of a philosopher not indeed to annihilate or to be ashamed of, but to keep rigidly in check. This possibility of music to effect evil as well as good I have seen recognised, and very aptly expressed in some beautiful verses by Mr. Keble which I have just read:-- "'Cease, stranger, cease those witching notes, The art of syren choirs; Hush the seductive voice that floats Across the trembling wires. "'Music's ethereal power was given Not to dissolve our clay, But draw Promethean beams from heaven To purge the dross away.'" "They are fine lines," said my brother, "but I do not see how you apply your argument to the present instance." "I mean," Mr. Gaskell answered, "that I have little doubt that the melody of this _Gagliarda_ has been connected in some manner with the life of the man you saw last night. It is not unlikely, either, that it was a favourite air of his whilst in the flesh, or even that it was played by himself or others at the moment of some crisis in his history. It is possible that such connection may be due merely to the innocent pleasure the melody gave him in life; but the nature of the music itself, and a peculiar effect it has upon my own thoughts, induce me to believe that it was associated with some occasion when he either fell into great sin or when some evil fate, perhaps even death itself, overtook him. You will remember I have told you that this air calls up to my mind a certain scene of Italian revelry in which an Englishman takes part. It is true that I have never been able to fix his features in my mind, nor even to say exactly how he was dressed. Yet now some instinct tells me that it is this very man whom you saw last night. It is not for us to attempt to pierce the mystery which veils from our eyes the secrets of an after-death existence; but I can scarcely suppose that a spirit entirely at rest would feel so deeply the power of a certain melody as to be called back by it to his old haunts like a dog by his master's whistle. It is more probable that there is some evil history connected with the matter, and this, I think, we ought to consider if it be possible to unravel." My brother assenting, he continued, "When this man left you, Johnnie, did he walk to the door?" "No; he made for the side wall, and when he reached the end of the bookcase I lost sight of him." Mr. Gaskell went to the bookcase and looked for a moment at the titles of the books, as though expecting to see something in them to assist his inquiries; but finding apparently no clue, he said-- "This is the last time we shall meet for three months or more; let us play the _Gagliarda_ and see if there be any response." My brother at first would not hear of this, showing a lively dread of challenging any reappearance of the figure he had seen: indeed he felt that such an event would probably fling him into a state of serious physical disorder. Mr. Gaskell, however, continued to press him, assuring him that the fact of his now being no longer alone should largely allay any fear on his part, and urging that this would be the last opportunity they would have of playing together for some months. At last, being overborne, my brother took his violin, and Mr. Gaskell seated himself at the pianoforte. John was very agitated, and as he commenced the _Gagliarda_ his hands trembled so that he could scarcely play the air. Mr. Gaskell also exhibited some nervousness, not performing with his customary correctness. But for the first time the charm failed: no noise accompanied the music, nor did anything of an unusual character occur. They repeated the whole suite, but with a similar result. Both were surprised, but neither, had any explanation to offer. My brother, who at first dreaded intensely a repetition of the vision, was now almost disappointed that nothing had occurred; so quickly does the mood of man change. After some further conversation the young men parted for the Long Vacation--John returning to Worth Maltravers and Mr. Gaskell going to London, where he was to pass a few days before he proceeded to his home in Westmorland. CHAPTER V John spent nearly the whole of this summer vacation at Worth Maltravers. He had been anxious to pay a visit to Royston; but the continued and serious illness of Mrs. Temple's sister had called her and Constance to Scotland, where they remained until the death of their relative allowed them to return to Derbyshire in the late autumn. John and I had been brought up together from childhood. When he was at Eton we had always spent the holidays at Worth, and after my dear mother's death, when we were left quite alone, the bonds of our love were naturally drawn still closer. Even after my brother went to Oxford, at a time when most young men are anxious to enjoy a new-found liberty, and to travel or to visit friends in their vacation, John's ardent affection for me and for Worth Maltravers kept him at home; and he was pleased on most occasions to make me the partner of his thoughts and of his pleasures. This long vacation of 1842 was, I think, the happiest of our lives. In my case I know it was so, and I think it was happy also for him; for none could guess that the small cloud seen in the distance like a man's hand was afterwards to rise and darken all his later days. It was a summer of brilliant and continued sunshine; many of the old people said that they could never recollect so fine a season, and both fruit and crops were alike abundant. John hired a small cutter-yacht, the _Palestine_, which he kept in our little harbour of Encombe, and in which he and I made many excursions, visiting Weymouth, Lyme Regis, and other places of interest on the south coast. In this summer my brother confided to me two secrets,--his love for Constance Temple, which indeed was after all no secret, and the history of the apparition which he had seen. This last filled me with inexpressible dread and distress. It seemed cruel and unnatural that any influence so dark and mysterious should thus intrude on our bright life, and from the first I had an impression which I could not entirely shake off, that any such appearance or converse of a disembodied spirit must portend misfortune, if not worse, to him who saw or heard it. It never occurred to me to combat or to doubt the reality of the vision; he believed that he had seen it, and his conviction was enough to convince me. He had meant, he said, to tell no one, and had given a promise to Mr. Gaskell to that effect; but I think that he could not bear to keep such a matter in his own breast, and within the first week of his return he made me his confidant. I remember, my dear Edward, the look everything wore on that sad night when he first told me what afterwards proved so terrible a secret. We had dined quite alone, and he had been moody and depressed all the evening. It was a chilly night, with some fret blowing up from the sea. The moon showed that blunted and deformed appearance which she assumes a day or two past the full, and the moisture in the air encircled her with a stormy-looking halo. We had stepped out of the dining-room windows on to the little terrace looking down towards Smedmore and Encombe. The glaucous shrubs that grow in between the balusters were wet and dripping with the salt breath of the sea, and we could hear the waves coming into the cove from the west. After standing a minute I felt chill, and proposed that we should go back to the billiard-room, where a fire was lit on all except the warmest nights. "No," John said, "I want to tell you something, Sophy," and then we walked on to the old boat summer-house. There he told me everything. I cannot describe to you my feelings of anguish and horror when he told me of the appearance of the man. The interest of the tale was so absorbing to me that I took no note of time, nor of the cold night air, and it was only when it was all finished that I felt how deadly chill it had become. "Let us go in, John," I said; "I am cold and feel benumbed." But youth is hopeful and strong, and in another week the impression had faded from our minds, and we were enjoying the full glory of midsummer weather, which I think only those know who have watched the blue sea come rippling in at the foot of the white chalk cliffs of Dorset. I had felt a reluctance even so much as to hear the air of the _Gagliarda_, and though he had spoken to me of the subject on more than one occasion, my brother had never offered to play it to me. I knew that he had the copy of Graziani's suites with him at Worth Maltravers, because he had told me that he had brought it from Oxford; but I had never seen the book, and fancied that he kept it intentionally locked up. He did not, however, neglect the violin, and during the summer mornings, as I sat reading or working on the terrace, I often heard him playing to himself in the library. Though he had never even given me any description of the melody of the _Gagliarda_, yet I felt certain that he not infrequently played it. I cannot say how it was; but from the moment that I heard him one morning in the library performing an air set in a curiously low key, it forced itself upon my attention, and I knew, as it were by instinct, that it must be the _Gagliarda_ of the "Areopagita." He was using a _sordino_ and playing it very softly; but I was not mistaken. One wet afternoon in October, only a week before the time of his leaving us to return to Oxford for the autumn term, he walked into the drawing-room where I was sitting, and proposed that we should play some music together. To this I readily agreed. Though but a mediocre performer, I have always taken much pleasure in the use of the pianoforte, and esteemed it an honour whenever he asked me to play with him, since my powers as a musician were so very much inferior to his. After we had played several pieces, he took up an oblong music-book bound in white vellum, placed it upon the desk of the pianoforte, and proposed that we should play a suite by Graziani. I knew that he meant the "Areopagita," and begged him at once not to ask me to play it. He rallied me lightly on my fears, and said it would much please him to play it, as he had not heard the pianoforte part since he had left Oxford three months ago. I saw that he was eager to perform it, and being loath to disoblige so kind a brother during the last week of his stay at home, I at length overcame my scruples and set out to play it. But I was so alarmed at the possibility of any evil consequences ensuing, that when we commenced the _Gagliarda_ I could scarcely find my notes. Nothing in any way unusual, however, occurred; and being reassured by this, and feeling an irresistible charm in the music, I finished the suite with more appearance of ease. My brother, however, was, I fear, not satisfied with my performance, and compared it, very possibly, with that of Mr. Gaskell, to which it was necessarily much inferior, both through weakness of execution and from my insufficient knowledge of the principles of the _basso continuo_. We stopped playing, and John stood looking out of the window across the sea, where the sky was clearing low down under the clouds. The sun went down behind Portland in a fiery glow which cheered us after a long day's rain. I had taken the copy of Graziani's suites off the desk, and was holding it on my lap turning over the old foxed and yellow pages. As I closed it a streak of evening sunlight fell across the room and lighted up a coat of arms stamped in gilt on the cover. It was much faded and would ordinarily have been hard to make out; but the ray of strong light illumined it, and in an instant I recognised the same shield which Mr. Gaskell had pictured to himself as hanging on the musicians' gallery of his phantasmal dancing-room. My brother had often recounted to me this effort of his friend's imagination, and here I saw before me the same florid foreign blazon, a cherub's head blowing on three lilies on a gold field. This discovery was not only of interest, but afforded me much actual relief; for it accounted rationally for at least one item of the strange story. Mr. Gaskell had no doubt noticed at some time this shield stamped on the outside of the book, and bearing the impression of it unconsciously in his mind, had reproduced it in his imagined revels. I said as much to my brother, and he was greatly interested, and after examining the shield agreed that this was certainly a probable solution of that part of the mystery. On the 12th of October John returned to Oxford. CHAPTER VI My brother told me afterwards that more than once during the summer vacation he had seriously considered with himself the propriety of changing his rooms at Magdalen Hall. He had thought that it might thus be possible for him to get rid at once of the memory of the apparition, and of the fear of any reappearance of it. He could either have moved into another set of rooms in the Hall itself, or else gone into lodgings in the town--a usual proceeding, I am told, for gentlemen near the end of their course at Oxford. Would to God that he had indeed done so! but with the supineness which has, I fear, my dear Edward, been too frequently a characteristic of our family, he shrank from the trouble such a course would involve, and the opening of the autumn term found him still in his old rooms. You will forgive me for entering here on a very brief description of your father's sitting-room. It is, I think, necessary for the proper understanding of the incidents that follow. It was not a large room, though probably the finest in the small buildings of Magdalen Hall, and panelled from floor to ceiling with oak which successive generations had obscured by numerous coats of paint. On one side were two windows having an aspect on to New College Lane, and fitted with deep cushioned seats in the recesses. Outside these windows there were boxes of flowers, the brightness of which formed in the summer term a pretty contrast to the grey and crumbling stone, and afforded pleasure at once to the inmate and to passers-by. Along nearly the whole length of the wall opposite to the windows, some tenant in years long past had had mahogany book-shelves placed, reaching to a height of perhaps five feet from the floor. They were handsomely made in the style of the eighteenth century and pleased my brother's taste. He had always exhibited a partiality for books, and the fine library at Worth Maltravers had no doubt contributed to foster his tastes in that direction. At the time of which I write he had formed a small collection for himself at Oxford, paying particular attention to the bindings, and acquiring many excellent specimens of that art, principally I think, from Messrs. Payne & Foss, the celebrated London booksellers. Towards the end of the autumn term, having occasion one cold day to take down a volume of Plato from its shelf, he found to his surprise that the book was quite warm. A closer examination easily explained to him the reason--namely, that the flue of a chimney, passing behind one end of the bookcase, sensibly heated not only the wall itself, but also the books in the shelves. Although he had been in his rooms now near three years, he had never before observed this fact; partly, no doubt, because the books in these shelves were seldom handled, being more for show as specimens of bindings than for practical use. He was somewhat annoyed at this discovery, fearing lest such a heat, which in moderation is beneficial to books, might through its excess warp the leather or otherwise injure the bindings. Mr. Gaskell was sitting with him at the time of the discovery, and indeed it was for his use that my brother had taken down the volume of Plato. He strongly advised that the bookcase should be moved, and suggested that it would be better to place it across that end of the room where the pianoforte then stood. They examined it and found that it would easily admit of removal, being, in fact, only the frame of a bookcase, and showing at the back the painted panelling of the wall. Mr. Gaskell noted it as curious that all the shelves were fixed and immovable except one at the end, which had been fitted with the ordinary arrangement allowing its position to be altered at will. My brother thought that the change would improve the appearance of his rooms, besides being advantageous for the books, and gave instructions to the college upholsterer to have the necessary work carried out at once. The two young men had resumed their musical studies, and had often played the "Areopagita" and other music of Graziani since their return to Oxford in the Autumn. They remarked, however, that the chair no longer creaked during the _Gagliarda_--and, in fact, that no unusual occurrence whatever attended its performance. At times they were almost tempted to doubt the accuracy of their own remembrances, and to consider as entirely mythical the mystery which had so much disturbed them in the summer term. My brother had also pointed out to Mr. Gaskell my discovery that the coat of arms on the outside of the music-book was identical with that which his fancy portrayed on the musicians' gallery. He readily admitted that he must at some time have noticed and afterwards forgotten the blazon on the book, and that an unconscious reminiscence of it had no doubt inspired his imagination in this instance. He rebuked my brother for having agitated me unnecessarily by telling me at all of so idle a tale; and was pleased to write a few lines to me at Worth Maltravers, felicitating me on my shrewdness of perception, but speaking banteringly of the whole matter. On the evening of the 14th of November my brother and his friend were sitting talking in the former's room. The position of the bookcase had been changed on the morning of that day, and Mr. Gaskell had come round to see how the books looked when placed at the end instead of at the side of the room. He had applauded the new arrangement, and the young men sat long over the fire, with a bottle of college port and a dish of medlars which I had sent my brother from our famous tree in the Upper Croft at Worth Maltravers. Later on they fell to music, and played a variety of pieces, performing also the "Areopagita" suite. Mr. Gaskell before he left complimented John on the improvement which the alteration in the place of the bookcase had made in his room, saying, "Not only do the books in their present place very much enhance the general appearance of the room, but the change seems to me to have affected also a marked acoustical improvement. The oak panelling now exposed on the side of the room has given a resonant property to the wall which is peculiarly responsive to the tones of your violin. While you were playing the _Gagliarda_ to-night, I could almost have imagined that someone in an adjacent room was playing the same air with a _sordino_, so distinct was the echo." Shortly after this he left. My brother partly undressed himself in his bedroom, which adjoined, and then returning to his sitting-room, pulled the large wicker chair in front of the fire, and sat there looking at the glowing coals, and thinking perhaps of Miss Constance Temple. The night promised to be very cold, and the wind whistled down the chimney, increasing the comfortable sensation of the clear fire. He sat watching the ruddy reflection of the firelight dancing on the panelled wall, when he noticed that a picture placed where the end of the bookcase formerly stood was not truly hung, and needed adjustment. A picture hung askew was particularly offensive to his eyes, and he got up at once to alter it. He remembered as he went up to it that at this precise spot four months ago he had lost sight of the man's figure which he saw rise from the wicker chair, and at the memory felt an involuntary shudder. This reminiscence probably influenced his fancy also in another direction; for it seemed to him that very faintly, as though played far off, and with the _sordino_, he could hear the air of the _Gagliarda_. He put one hand behind the picture to steady it, and as he did so his finger struck a very slight projection in the wall. He pulled the picture a little to one side, and saw that what he had touched was the back of a small hinge sunk in the wall, and almost obliterated with many coats of paint. His curiosity was excited, and he took a candle from the table and examined the wall carefully. Inspection soon showed him another hinge a little further up, and by degrees he perceived that one of the panels had been made at some time in the past to open, and serve probably as the door of a cupboard. At this point he assured me that a feverish anxiety to re-open this cupboard door took possession of him, and that the intense excitement filled his mind which we experience on the eve of a discovery which we fancy may produce important results. He loosened the paint in the cracks with a penknife, and attempted to press open the door; but his instrument was not adequate to such a purpose, and all his efforts remained ineffective. His excitement had now reached an overmastering pitch; for he anticipated, though he knew not why, some strange discovery to be made in this sealed cupboard. He looked round the room for some weapon with which to force the door, and at length with his penknife cut away sufficient wood at the joint to enable him to insert the end of the poker in the hole. The clock in the New College Tower struck one at the exact moment when with a sharp effort he thus forced open the door. It appeared never to have had a fastening, but merely to have been stuck fast by the accumulation of paint. As he bent it slowly back upon the rusted hinges his heart beat so fast that he could scarcely catch his breath, though he was conscious all the while of a ludicrous aspect of his position, knowing that it was most probable that the cavity within would be found empty. The cupboard was small but very deep, and in the obscure light seemed at first to contain nothing except a small heap of dust and cobwebs. His sense of disappointment was keen as he thrust his hand into it, but changed again in a moment to breathless interest on feeling something solid in what he had imagined to be only an accumulation of mould and dirt. He snatched up a candle, and holding this in one hand, with the other pulled out an object from the cupboard and put it on the table, covered as it was with the curious drapery of black and clinging cobwebs which I have seen adhering to bottles of old wine. It lay there between the dish of medlars and the decanter, veiled indeed with thick dust as with a mantle, but revealing beneath it the shape and contour of a violin. CHAPTER VII John was excited at his discovery, and felt his thoughts confused in a manner that I have often experienced myself on the unexpected receipt of news interesting me deeply, whether for pleasure or pain. Yet at the same time he was half amused at his own excitement, feeling that it was childish to be moved over an event so simple as the finding of a violin in an old cupboard. He soon collected himself and took up the instrument, using great care, as he feared lest age should have rendered the wood brittle or rotten. With some vigorous puffs of breath and a little dusting with a handkerchief he removed the heavy outer coating of cobwebs, and began to see more clearly the delicate curves of the body and of the scroll. A few minutes' more gentle handling left the instrument sufficiently clean to enable him to appreciate its chief points. Its seclusion from the outer world, which the heavy accumulation of dust proved to have been for many years, did not seem to have damaged it in the least; and the fact of a chimney-flue passing through the wall at no great distance had no doubt conduced to maintain the air in the cupboard at an equable temperature. So far as he was able to judge, the wood was as sound as when it left the maker's hands; but the strings were of course broken, and curled up in little tangled knots. The body was of a light-red colour, with a varnish of peculiar lustre and softness. The neck seemed rather longer than ordinary, and the scroll was remarkably bold and free. The violin which my brother was in the habit of using was a fine _Pressenda_, given to him on his fifteenth birthday by Mr. Thoresby, his guardian. It was of that maker's later and best period, and a copy of the Stradivarius model. John took this from its case and laid it side by side with his new discovery, meaning to compare them for size and form. He perceived at once that while the model of both was identical, the superiority of the older violin in every detail was so marked as to convince him that it was undoubtedly an instrument of exceptional value. The extreme beauty of its varnish impressed him vividly, and though he had never seen a genuine Stradivarius, he felt a conviction gradually gaining on him that he stood in the presence of a masterpiece of that great maker. On looking into the interior he found that surprisingly little dust had penetrated into it, and by blowing through the sound-holes he soon cleared it sufficiently to enable him to discern a label. He put the candle close to him, and held the violin up so that a little patch of light fell through the sound-hole on to the label. His heart leapt with a violent pulsation as he read the characters, "_Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonensis faciebat_, 1704." Under ordinary circumstances it would naturally be concluded that such a label was a forgery, but the conditions were entirely altered in the case of a violin found in a forgotten cupboard, with proof so evident of its having remained there for a very long period. He was not at that time as familiar with the history of the fiddles of the great maker as he, and indeed I also, afterwards became. Thus he was unable to decide how far the exact year of its manufacture would determine its value as compared with other specimens of Stradivarius. But although the Pressenda he had been used to play on was always considered a very fine instrument both in make and varnish, his new discovery so far excelled it in both points as to assure him that it must be one of the Cremonese master's greatest productions. He examined the violin minutely, scrutinising each separate feature, and finding each in turn to be of the utmost perfection, so far as his knowledge of the instrument would enable him to judge. He lit more candles that he might be able better to see it, and holding it on his knees, sat still admiring it until the dying fire and increasing cold warned him that the night was now far advanced. At last, carrying it to his bedroom, he locked it carefully into a drawer and retired for the night. He woke next morning with that pleasurable consciousness of there being some reason for gladness, which we feel on waking in seasons of happiness, even before our reason, locating it, reminds us what the actual source of our joy may be. He was at first afraid lest his excitement, working on the imagination, should have led him on the previous night to overestimate the fineness of the instrument, and he took it from the drawer half expecting to be disappointed with its daylight appearance. But a glance sufficed to convince him of the unfounded nature of his suspicions. The various beauties which he had before observed were enhanced a hundredfold by the light of day, and he realised more fully than ever that the instrument was one of altogether exceptional value. And now, my dear Edward, I shall ask your forgiveness if in the history I have to relate any observation of mine should seem to reflect on the character of your late father, Sir John Maltravers. And I beg you to consider that your father was also my dear and only brother, and that it is inexpressibly painful to me to recount any actions of his which may not seem becoming to a noble gentleman, as he surely was. I only now proceed because, when very near his end, he most strictly enjoined me to narrate these circumstances to you fully when you should come of age. We must humbly remember that to God alone belongs judgment, and that it is not for poor mortals to decide what is right or wrong in certain instances for their fellows, but that each should strive most earnestly to do his own duty. Your father entirely concealed from me the discovery he had made. It was not till long afterwards that I had it narrated to me, and I only obtained a knowledge of this and many other of the facts which I am now telling you at a date much subsequent to their actual occurrence. He explained to his servant that he had discovered and opened an old cupboard in the panelling, without mentioning the fact of his having found anything in it, but merely asking him to give instructions for the paint to be mended and the cupboard put into a usable state. Before he had finished a very late breakfast Mr. Gaskell was with him, and it has been a source of lasting regret to me that my brother concealed also from his most intimate and trusted friend the discovery of the previous night. He did, indeed, tell him that he had found and opened an old cupboard in the panelling, but made no mention of there having been anything within. I cannot say what prompted him to this action; for the two young men had for long been on such intimate terms that the one shared almost as a matter of course with the other any pleasure or pain which might fall to his lot. Mr. Gaskell looked at the cupboard with some interest, saying afterwards, "I know now, Johnnie, why the one shelf of the bookcase which stood there was made movable when all the others were fixed. Some former occupant used the cupboard, no doubt, as a secret receptacle for his treasures, and masked it with the book-shelves in front. Who knows what he kept in here, or who he was! I should not be surprised if he were that very man who used to come here so often to hear us play the 'Areopagita,' and whom you saw that night last June. He had the one shelf made, you see, to move so as to give him access to this cavity on occasion: then when he left Oxford, or perhaps died, the mystery was forgotten, and with a few times of painting the cracks closed up." Mr. Gaskell shortly afterwards took his leave as he had a lecture to attend, and my brother was left alone to the contemplation of his new-found treasure. After some consideration he determined that he would take the instrument to London, and obtain the opinion of an expert as to its authenticity and value. He was well acquainted with the late Mr. George Smart, the celebrated London dealer, from whom his guardian, Mr. Thoresby, had purchased the Pressenda violin which John commonly used. Besides being a dealer in valuable instruments, Mr. Smart was a famous collector of Stradivarius fiddles, esteemed one of the first authorities in Europe in that domain of art, and author of a valuable work of reference in connection with it. It was to him, therefore, that my brother decided to submit the violin, and he wrote a letter to Mr. Smart saying that he should give himself the pleasure of waiting on him the next day on a matter of business. He then called on his tutor, and with some excuse obtained leave to journey to London the next morning. He spent the rest of the day in very carefully cleaning the violin, and noon of the next saw him with it, securely packed, in Mr. Smart's establishment in Bond Street. Mr. Smart received Sir John Maltravers with deference, demanded in what way he could serve him; and on hearing that his opinion was required on the authenticity of a violin, smiled somewhat dubiously and led the way into a back parlour. "My dear Sir John," he said, "I hope you have not been led into buying any instrument by a faith in its antiquity. So many good copies of instruments by famous makers and bearing their labels are now afloat, that the chances of obtaining a genuine fiddle from an unrecognised source are quite remote; of hundreds of violins submitted to me for opinion, I find that scarce one in fifty is actually that which it represents itself to be. In fact the only safe rule," he added as a professional commentary, "is never to buy a violin unless you obtain it from a dealer with a reputation to lose, and are prepared to pay a reasonable price for it." My brother had meanwhile unpacked the violin and laid it on the table. As he took from it the last leaf of silver paper he saw Mr. Smart's smile of condescension fade, and assuming a look of interest and excitement, he stepped forward, took the violin in his hands, and scrutinised it minutely. He turned it over in silence for some moments, looking narrowly at each feature, and even applying the test of a magnifying-glass. At last he said with an altered tone, "Sir John, I have had in my hands nearly all the finest productions of Stradivarius, and thought myself acquainted with every instrument of note that ever left his workshop; but I confess myself mistaken, and apologise to you for the doubt which I expressed as to the instrument you had brought me. This violin is of the great master's golden period, is incontestably genuine, and finer in some respects than any Stradivarius that I have ever seen, not even excepting the famous _Dolphin_ itself. You need be under no apprehension as to its authenticity: no connoisseur could hold it in his hand for a second and entertain a doubt on the point." My brother was greatly pleased at so favourable a verdict, and Mr. Smart continued-- "The varnish is of that rich red which Stradivarius used in his best period after he had abandoned the yellow tint copied by him at first from his master Amati. I have never seen a varnish thicker or more lustrous, and it shows on the back that peculiar shading to imitate wear which we term 'breaking up.' The purfling also is of an unsurpassable excellence. Its execution is so fine that I should recommend you to use a magnifying-glass for its examination." So he ran on, finding from moment to moment some new beauties to admire. My brother was at first anxious lest Mr. Smart should ask him whence so extraordinary an instrument came, but he saw that the expert had already jumped to a conclusion in the matter. He knew that John had recently come of age, and evidently supposed that he had found the violin among the heirlooms of Worth Maltravers. John allowed Mr. Smart to continue in this misconception, merely saying that he had discovered the instrument in an old cupboard, where he had reason to think it had remained hidden for many years. "Are there no records attached to so splendid an instrument?" asked Mr. Smart. "I suppose it has been with your family a number of years. Do you not know how it came into their possession?" I believe this was the first occasion on which it had occurred to John to consider what right he had to the possession of the instrument. He had been so excited by its discovery that the question of ownership had never hitherto crossed his mind. The unwelcome suggestion that it was not his after all, that the College might rightfully prefer a claim to it, presented itself to him for a moment; but he set it instantly aside, quieting his conscience with the reflection that this at least was not the moment to make such a disclosure. He fenced with Mr. Smart's inquiry as best he could, saying that he was ignorant of the history of the instrument, but not contradicting the assumption that it had been a long time in his family's possession. "It is indeed singular," Mr. Smart continued, "that so magnificent an instrument should have lain buried so long; that even those best acquainted with such matters should be in perfect ignorance of its existence. I shall have to revise the list of famous instruments in the next edition of my 'History of the Violin,' and to write," he added smiling, "a special paragraph on the 'Worth Maltravers Stradivarius.'" After much more, which I need not narrate, Mr. Smart suggested that the violin should be left with him that he might examine it more at leisure, and that my brother should return in a week's time, when he would have the instrument opened, an operation which would be in any case advisable. "The interior," he added, "appears to be in a strictly original state, and this I shall be able to ascertain when opened. The label is perfect, but if I am not mistaken I can see something higher up on the back which appears like a second label. This excites my interest, as I know of no instance of an instrument bearing two labels." To this proposal my brother readily assented, being anxious to enjoy alone the pleasure of so gratifying a discovery as that of the undoubted authenticity of the instrument. As he thought over the matter more at leisure, he grew anxious as to what might be the import of the second label in the violin of which Mr. Smart had spoken. I blush to say that he feared lest it might bear some owner's name or other inscription proving that the instrument had not been so long in the Maltravers family as he had allowed Mr. Smart to suppose. So within so short a time it was possible that Sir John Maltravers of Worth should dread being detected, if not in an absolute falsehood, at least in having by his silence assented to one. During the ensuing week John remained in an excited and anxious condition. He did little work, and neglected his friends, having his thoughts continually occupied with the strange discovery he had made. I know also that his sense of honour troubled him, and that he was not satisfied with the course he was pursuing. The evening of his return from London he went to Mr. Gaskell's rooms at New College, and spent an hour conversing with him on indifferent subjects. In the course of their talk he proposed to his friend as a moral problem the question of the course of action to be taken were one to find some article of value concealed in his room. Mr. Gaskell answered unhesitatingly that he should feel bound to disclose it to the authorities. He saw that my brother was ill at ease, and with a clearness of judgment which he always exhibited, guessed that he had actually made some discovery of this sort in the old cupboard in his rooms. He could not divine, of course, the exact nature of the object found, and thought it might probably relate to a hoard of gold; but insisted with much urgency on the obligation to at once disclose anything of this kind. My brother, however, misled, I fear, by that feeling of inalienable right which the treasure-hunter experiences over the treasure, paid no more attention to the advice of his friend than to the promptings of his own conscience, and went his way. From that day, my dear Edward, he began to exhibit a spirit of secretiveness and reserve entirely alien to his own open and honourable disposition, and also saw less of Mr. Gaskell. His friend tried, indeed, to win his confidence and affection in every way in his power; but in spite of this the rift between them widened insensibly, and my brother lost the fellowship and counsel of a true friend at a time when he could ill afford to be without them. He returned to London the ensuing week, and met Mr. George Smart by appointment in Bond Street. If the expert had been enthusiastic on a former occasion, he was ten times more so on this. He spoke in terms almost of rapture about the violin. He had compared it with two magnificent instruments in the collection of the late Mr. James Loding, then the finest in Europe; and it was admittedly superior to either, both in the delicate markings of its wood and singularly fine varnish. "Of its tone," he said, "we cannot, of course, yet pronounce with certainty, but I am very sure that its voice will not belie its splendid exterior. It has been carefully opened, and is in a strangely perfect condition. Several persons eminently qualified to judge unite with me in considering that it has been exceedingly little played upon, and admit that never has so intact an interior been seen. The scroll is exceptionally bold and original. Although undoubtedly from the hand of the great master, this is of a pattern entirely different and distinct from any that have ever come under my observation." He then pointed out to my brother that the side lines of the scroll were unusually deeply cut, and that the front of it projected far more than is common with such instruments. "The most remarkable feature," he concluded, "is that the instrument bears a double label. Besides the label which you have already seen bearing '_Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonensis faciebat_,' with the date of his most splendid period, 1704, so clearly that the ink seems scarcely dry, there is another smaller one higher up on the back which I will show you." He took the violin apart and showed him a small label with characters written in faded ink. "That is the writing of Antonio Stradivarius himself, and is easily recognisable, though it is much firmer than a specimen which I once saw, written in extreme old age, and giving his name and the date 1736. He was then ninety-two, and died in the following year. But this, as you will see, does not give his name, but merely the two words '_Porphyrius philosophus_.' What this may refer to I cannot say: it is beyond my experience. My friend Mr. Calvert has suggested that Stradivarius may have dedicated this violin to the pagan philosopher, or named it after him; but this seems improbable. I have, indeed, heard of two famous violins being called 'Peter' and 'Paul,' but the instances of such naming are very rare; and I believe it to be altogether without precedent to find a name attached thus on a label. "In any case, I must leave this matter to your ingenuity to decipher. Neither the sound-post nor the bass-bar have ever been moved, and you see here a Stradivarius violin wearing exactly the same appearance as it once wore in the great master's workshop, and in exactly the same condition; yet I think the belly is sufficiently strong to stand modern stringing. I should advise you to leave the instrument with me for some little while, that I may give it due care and attention and ensure its being properly strung." My brother thanked him and left the violin with him, saying that he would instruct him later by letter to what address he wished it sent. CHAPTER VIII Within a few days after this the autumn term came to an end, and in the second week of December John returned to Worth Maltravers for the Christmas vacation. His advent was always a very great pleasure to me, and on this occasion I had looked forward to his company with anticipation keener than usual, as I had been disappointed of the visit of a friend and had spent the last month alone. After the joy of our first meeting had somewhat sobered, it was not long before I remarked a change in his manner, which puzzled me. It was not that he was less kind to me, for I think he was even more tenderly forbearing and gentle than I had ever known him, but I had an uneasy feeling that some shadow had crept in between us. It was the small cloud rising in the distance that afterwards darkened his horizon and mine. I missed the old candour and open-hearted frankness that he had always shown; and there seemed to be always something in the background which he was trying to keep from me. It was obvious that his thoughts were constantly elsewhere, so much so that on more than one occasion he returned vague and incoherent answers to my questions. At times I was content to believe that he was in love, and that his thoughts were with Miss Constance Temple; but even so, I could not persuade myself that his altered manner was to be thus entirely accounted for. At other times a dazed air, entirely foreign to his bright disposition, which I observed particularly in the morning, raised in my mind the terrible suspicion that he was in the habit of taking some secret narcotic or other deleterious drug. We had never spent a Christmas away from Worth Maltravers, and it had always been a season of quiet joy for both of us. But under these altered circumstances it was a great relief and cause of thankfulness to me to receive a letter from Mrs. Temple inviting us both to spend Christmas and New Year at Royston. This invitation had upon my brother precisely the effect that I had hoped for. It roused him from his moody condition, and he professed much pleasure in accepting it, especially as he had never hitherto been in Derbyshire. There was a small but very agreeable party at Royston, and we passed a most enjoyable fortnight. My brother seemed thoroughly to have shaken off his indisposition; and I saw my fondest hopes realised in the warm attachment which was evidently springing up between him and Miss Constance Temple. Our visit drew near its close, and it was within a week of John's return to Oxford. Mrs. Temple celebrated the termination of the Christmas festivities by giving a ball on Twelfth-night, at which a large party were present, including most of the county families. Royston was admirably adapted for such entertainments, from the number and great size of its reception-rooms. Though Elizabethan in date and external appearance, succeeding generations had much modified and enlarged the house; and an ancestor in the middle of the last century had built at the back an enormous hall after the classic model, and covered it with a dome or cupola. In this room the dancing went forward. Supper was served in the older hall in the front, and it was while this was in progress that a thunderstorm began. The rarity of such a phenomenon in the depth of winter formed the subject of general remark; but though the lightning was extremely brilliant, being seen distinctly through the curtained windows, the storm appeared to be at some distance, and, except for one peal, the thunder was not loud. After supper dancing was resumed, and I was taking part in a polka (called, I remember, the "_King Pippin_"), when my partner pointed out that one of the footmen wished to speak with me. I begged him to lead me to one side, and the servant then informed me that my brother was ill. Sir John, he said, had been seized with a fainting fit, but had been got to bed, and was being attended by Dr. Empson, a physician who chanced to be present among the visitors. I at once left the hall and hurried to my brother's room. On the way I met Mrs. Temple and Constance, the latter much agitated and in tears. Mrs. Temple assured me that Dr. Empson reported favourably of my brother's condition, attributing his faintness to over-exertion in the dancing-room. The medical man had got him to bed with the assistance of Sir John's valet, had given him a quieting draught, and ordered that he should not be disturbed for the present. It was better that I should not enter the room; she begged that I would kindly comfort and reassure Constance, who was much upset, while she herself returned to her guests. I led Constance to my bedroom, where there was a bright fire burning, and calmed her as best I could. Her interest in my brother was evidently very real and unaffected, and while not admitting her partiality for him in words, she made no effort to conceal her sentiments from me. I kissed her tenderly, and bade her narrate the circumstances of John's attack. It seemed that after supper they had gone upstairs into the music-room, and he had himself proposed that they should walk thence into the picture-gallery, where they would better he able to see the lightning, which was then particularly vivid. The picture-gallery at Royston is a very long, narrow, and rather low room, running the whole length of the south wing, and terminating in a large Tudor oriel or flat bay window looking east. In this oriel they had sat for some time watching the flashes, and the wintry landscape revealed for an instant and then plunged into outer blackness. The gallery itself was not illuminated, and the effect of the lightning was very fine. There had been an unusually bright flash accompanied by that single reverberating peal of thunder which I had previously noticed. Constance had spoken to my brother, but he had not replied, and in a moment she saw that he had swooned. She summoned aid without delay, but it was some short time before consciousness had been restored to him. She had concluded this narrative, and sat holding my hand in hers. We were speculating on the cause of my brother's illness, thinking it might be due to over-exertion, or to sitting in a chilly atmosphere as the picture-gallery was not warmed, when Mrs. Temple knocked at the door and said that John was now more composed and desired earnestly to see me. On entering my brother's bedroom I found him sitting up in bed wearing a dressing-gown. Parnham, his valet, who was arranging the fire, left the room as I came in. A chair stood at the head of the bed and I sat down by him. He took my hand in his and without a word burst into tears. "Sophy," he said, "I am so unhappy, and I have sent for you to tell you of my trouble, because I know you will be forbearing to me. An hour ago all seemed so bright. I was sitting in the picture-gallery with Constance, whom I love dearly. We had been watching the lightning, till the thunder had grown fainter and the storm seemed past. I was just about to ask her to become my wife when a brighter flash than all the rest burst on us, and I saw--I saw, Sophy, standing in the gallery as close to me as you are now--I saw--that man I told you about at Oxford; and then this faintness came on me." "Whom do you mean?" I said, not understanding what he spoke of, and thinking for a moment he referred to someone else. "Did you see Mr. Gaskell?" "No, it was not he; but that dead man whom I saw rising from my wicker chair the night you went away from Oxford." You will perhaps smile at my weakness, my dear Edward, and indeed I had at that time no justification for it; but I assure you that I have not yet forgotten, and never shall forget, the impression of overwhelming horror which his words produced upon me. It seemed as though a fear which had hitherto stood vague and shadowy in the background, began now to advance towards me, gathering more distinctness as it approached. There was to me something morbidly terrible about the apparition of this man at such a momentous crisis in my brother's life, and I at once recognised that unknown form as being the shadow which was gradually stealing between John and myself. Though I feigned incredulity as best I might, and employed those arguments or platitudes which will always be used on such occasions, urging that such a phantom could only exist in a mind disordered by physical weakness, my brother was not deceived by my words, and perceived in a moment that I did not even believe in them myself. "Dearest Sophy," he said, with a much calmer air, "let us put aside all dissimulation. I _know_ that what I have to-night seen, and that what I saw last summer at Oxford, are _not_ phantoms of my brain; and I believe that you too in your inmost soul are convinced of this truth. Do not, therefore, endeavour to persuade me to the contrary. If I am not to believe the evidence of my senses, it were better at once to admit my madness--and I know that I am not mad. Let us rather consider what such an appearance can portend, and who the man is who is thus presented. I cannot explain to you why this appearance inspires me with so great a revulsion. I can only say that in its presence I seem to be brought face to face with some abysmal and repellent wickedness. It is not that the form he wears is hideous. Last night I saw him exactly as I saw him at Oxford--his face waxen pale, with a sneering mouth, the same lofty forehead, and hair brushed straight up so as almost to appear standing on end. He wore the same long coat of green cloth and white waistcoat. He seemed as if he had been standing listening to what we said, though we had not seen him till this bright flash of lightning made him manifest. You will remember that when I saw him at Oxford his eyes were always cast down, so that I never knew their colour. This time they were wide open; indeed he was looking full at us, and they were a light brown and very brilliant." I saw that my brother was exciting himself, and was still weak from his recent swoon. I knew, too, that any ordinary person of strong mind would say at once that his brain wandered, and yet I had a dreadful conviction all the while that what he told me was the truth. All I could do was to beg him to calm himself, and to reflect how vain such fancies must be. "We must trust, dear John," I said, "in God. I am sure that so long as we are not living in conscious sin, we shall never be given over to any evil power; and I know my brother too well to think that he is doing anything he knows to be evil. If there be evil spirits, as we are taught there are, we are taught also that there are good spirits stronger than they, who will protect us." So I spoke with him a little while, until he grew calmer; and then we talked of Constance and of his love for her. He was deeply pleased to hear from me how she had shown such obvious, signs of interest in his illness, and sincere affection for him. In any case, he made me promise that I would never mention to her either what he had seen this night or last summer at Oxford. It had grown late, and the undulating beat of the dances, which had been distinctly sensible in his room--even though we could not hear any definite noise--had now ceased. Mrs. Temple knocked at the door as she went to bed and inquired how he did, giving him at the same time a kind message of sympathy from Constance, which afforded him much gratification. After she had left I prepared also to retire; but before going he begged me to take a prayer-book lying on the table, and to read aloud a collect which he pointed out. It was that for the second Sunday in Lent, and evidently well known to him. As I read it the words seemed to bear a new and deeper significance, and my heart repeated with fervour the petition for protection from those "evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul." I bade him good night and went away very sorrowful. Parnham, at John's request, had arranged to sleep on a sofa in his master's bedroom. I rose betimes the next morning and inquired at my brother's room how he was. Parnham reported that he had passed a restless night, and on entering a little later I found him in a high fever, slightly delirious, and evidently not so well as when I saw him last. Mrs. Temple, with much kindness and forethought, had begged Dr. Empson to remain at Royston for the night, and he was soon in attendance on his patient. His verdict was sufficiently grave: John was suffering from a sharp access of brain-fever; his condition afforded cause for alarm; he could not answer for any turn his sickness might take. You will easily imagine how much this intelligence affected me; and Mrs. Temple and Constance shared my anxiety and solicitude. Constance and I talked much with one another that morning. Unaffected anxiety had largely removed her reserve, and she spoke openly of her feelings towards my brother, not concealing her partiality for him. I on my part let her understand how welcome to me would be any union between her and John, and how sincerely I should value her as a sister. It was a wild winter's morning, with some snow falling and a high wind. The house was in the disordered condition which is generally observable on the day following a ball or other important festivity. I roamed restlessly about, and at last found my way to the picture-gallery, which had formed the scene of John's adventure on the previous night. I had never been in this part of the house before, as it contained no facilities for heating, and so often remained shut in the winter months. I found a listless pleasure in admiring the pictures which lined the walls, most of them being portraits of former members of the family, including the famous picture of Sir Ralph Temple and his family, attributed to Holbein. I had reached the end of the gallery and sat down in the oriel watching the snow-flakes falling sparsely, and the evergreens below me waving wildly in the sudden rushes of the wind. My thoughts were busy with the events of the previous evening,--with John's illness, with the ball,--and I found myself humming the air of a waltz that had caught my fancy. At last I turned away from the garden scene towards the gallery, and as I did so my eyes fell on a remarkable picture just opposite to me. It was a full-length portrait of a young man, life-size, and I had barely time to appreciate even its main features when I knew that I had before me the painted counterfeit of my brother's vision. The discovery caused me a violent shock, and it was with an infinite repulsion that I recognised at once the features and dress of the man whom John had seen rising from the chair at Oxford. So accurately had my brother's imagination described him to me, that it seemed as if I had myself seen him often before. I noted each feature, comparing them with my brother's description, and finding them all familiar and corresponding exactly. He was a man still in the prime of life. His features were regular and beautifully modelled; yet there was something in his face that inspired me with a deep aversion, though his brown eyes were open and brilliant. His mouth was sharply cut, with a slight sneer on the lips, and his complexion of that extreme pallor which had impressed itself deeply on my brother's imagination and my own. After the first intense surprise had somewhat subsided, I experienced a feeling of great relief, for here was an extraordinary explanation of my brother's vision of last night. It was certain that the flash of lightning had lit up this ill-starred picture, and that to his predisposed fancy the painted figure had stood forth as an actual embodiment. That such an incident, however startling, should have been able to fling John into a brain-fever, showed that he must already have been in a very low and reduced state, on which excitement would act much more powerfully than on a more robust condition of health. A similar state of weakness, perturbed by the excitement of his passion for Constance Temple, might surely also have conjured up the vision which he thought he saw the night of our leaving Oxford in the summer. These thoughts, my dear Edward, gave me great relief; for it seemed a comparatively trivial matter that my brother should be ill, even seriously ill, if only his physical indisposition could explain away the supernatural dread which had haunted us for the past six months. The clouds were breaking up. It was evident that John had been seriously unwell for some months; his physical weakness had acted on his brain; and I had lent colour to his wandering fancies by being alarmed by them, instead of rejecting them at once or gently laughing them away as I should have done. But these glad thoughts took me too far, and I was suddenly brought up by a reflection that did not admit of so simple an explanation. If the man's form my brother saw at Oxford were merely an effort of disordered imagination, how was it that he had been able to describe it exactly like that represented in this picture? He had never in his life been to Royston, therefore he could have no image of the picture impressed unconsciously on or hidden away in his mind. Yet his description had never varied. It had been so close as to enable me to produce in my fancy a vivid representation of the man he had seen; and here I had before me the features and dress exactly reproduced. In the presence of a coincidence so extraordinary reason stood confounded, and I knew not what to think. I walked nearer to the picture and scrutinised it closely. The dress corresponded in every detail with that which my brother had described the figure as wearing at Oxford: a long cut-away coat of green cloth with an edge of gold embroidery, a white satin waistcoat with sprigs of embroidered roses, gold-lace at the pocket-holes, buff silk knee-breeches, and low down on the finely modelled neck a full cravat of rich lace. The figure was posed negligently against a fluted stone pedestal or short column on which the left elbow leant, and the right foot was crossed lightly over the left. His shoes were of polished black leather with heavy silver buckles, and the whole costume was very old-fashioned, and such as I had only seen worn at fancy dress balls. On the foot of the pedestal was the painter's name, "BATTONI pinxit, Romæ, 1750." On the top of the pedestal, and under his left elbow, was a long roll apparently of music, of which one end, unfolded, hung over the edge. For some minutes I stood still gazing at this portrait which so much astonished me, but turned on hearing footsteps in the gallery, and saw Constance, who had come to seek for me. "Constance," I said, "whose portrait is this? It is a very striking picture, is it not?" "Yes, it is a splendid painting, though of a very bad man. His name was Adrian Temple, and he once owned Royston. I do not know much about him, but I believe he was very wicked and very clever. My mother would be able to tell you more. It is a picture we none of us like, although so finely painted; and perhaps because he was always pointed out to me from childhood as a bad man, I have myself an aversion to it. It is singular that when the very bright flash of lightning came last night while your brother John and I were sitting here, it lit this picture with a dazzling glare that made the figure stand out so strangely as to seem almost alive. It was just after that I found that John had fainted." The memory was not a pleasant one for either of us and we changed the subject. "Come," I said, "let us leave the gallery, it is very cold here." Though I said nothing more at the time, her words had made a great impression on me. It was so strange that, even with the little she knew of this Adrian Temple, she should speak at once of his notoriously evil life, and of her personal dislike to the picture. Remembering what my brother had said on the previous night, that in the presence of this man he felt himself brought face to face with some indescribable wickedness, I could not but be surprised at the coincidence. The whole story seemed to me now to resemble one of those puzzle pictures or maps which I have played with as a child, where each bit fits into some other until the outline is complete. It was as if I were finding the pieces one by one of a bygone history, and fitting them to one another until some terrible whole should be gradually built up and stand out in its complete deformity. Dr. Empson spoke gravely of John's illness, and entertained without reluctance the proposal of Mrs. Temple, that Dr. Dobie, a celebrated physician in Derby, should be summoned to a consultation. Dr. Dobie came more than once, and was at last able to report an amendment in John's condition, though both the doctors absolutely forbade anyone to visit him, and said that under the most favourable circumstances a period of some weeks must elapse before he could be moved. Mrs. Temple invited me to remain at Royston until my brother should be sufficiently convalescent to be moved; and both she and Constance, while regretting the cause, were good enough to express themselves pleased that accident should detain me so long with them. As the reports of the doctors became gradually more favourable, and our minds were in consequence more free to turn to other subjects, I spoke to Mrs. Temple one day about the picture, saying that it interested me, and asking for some particulars as to the life of Adrian Temple. "My dear child," she said, "I had rather that you should not exhibit any curiosity as to this man, whom I wish that we had not to call an ancestor. I know little of him myself, and indeed his life was of such a nature as no woman, much less a young girl, would desire to be well acquainted with. He was, I believe, a man of remarkable talent, and spent most of his time between Oxford and Italy, though he visited Royston occasionally, and built the large hall here, which we use as a dancing-room. Before he was twenty wild stories were prevalent as to his licentious life, and by thirty his name was a by-word among sober and upright people. He had constantly with him at Oxford and on his travels a boon companion called Jocelyn, who aided him in his wickednesses, until on one of their Italian tours Jocelyn left him suddenly and became a Trappist monk. It was currently reported that some wild deed of Adrian Temple had shocked even him, and so outraged his surviving instincts of common humanity that he was snatched as a brand from the burning and enabled to turn back even in the full tide of his wickedness. However that may be, Adrian went on in his evil course without him, and about four years after disappeared. He was last heard of in Naples, and it is believed that he succumbed during a violent outbreak of the plague which took place in Italy in the autumn of 1752. That is all I shall tell you of him, and indeed I know little more myself. The only good trait that has been handed down concerning him is that he was a masterly musician, performing admirably upon the violin, which he had studied under the illustrious Tartini himself. Yet even his art of music, if tradition speaks the truth, was put by him to the basest of uses." I apologised for my indiscretion in asking her about an unpleasant subject, and at the same time thanked her for what she had seen fit to tell me, professing myself much interested, as indeed I really was. "Was he a handsome man?" "That is a girl's question," she answered, smiling. "He is said to have been very handsome; and indeed his picture, painted after his first youth was past, would still lead one to suppose so. But his complexion was spoiled, it is said, and turned to deadly white by certain experiments, which it is neither possible nor seemly for us to understand. His face is of that long oval shape of which all the Temples are proud, and he had brown eyes: we sometimes tease Constance, saying she is like Adrian." It was indeed true, as I remembered after Mrs. Temple had pointed it out, that Constance had a peculiarly long and oval face. It gave her, I think, an air of staid and placid beauty, which formed in my eyes, and perhaps in John's also, one of her greatest attractions. "I do not like even his picture," Mrs. Temple continued, "and strange tales have been narrated of it by idle servants which are not worth repeating. I have sometimes thought of destroying it; but my late husband, being a Temple, would never hear of this, or even of removing it from its present place in the gallery; and I should be loath to do anything now contrary to his wishes, once so strongly expressed. It is, besides, very perfect from an artistic point of view, being painted by Battoni, and in his happiest manner." I could never glean more from Mrs. Temple; but what she told me interested me deeply. It seemed another link in the chain, though I could scarcely tell why, that Adrian Temple should be so great a musician and violinist. I had, I fancy, a dim idea of that malign and outlawed spirit sitting alone in darkness for a hundred years, until he was called back by the sweet tones of the Italian music, and the lilt of the "Areopagita" that he had loved so long ago. CHAPTER IX John's recovery, though continuous and satisfactory, was but slow; and it was not until Easter, which fell early, that his health was pronounced to be entirely re-established. The last few weeks of his convalescence had proved to all of us a time of thankful and tranquil enjoyment. If I may judge from my own experience, there are few epochs in our life more favourable to the growth of sentiments of affection and piety, or more full of pleasurable content, than is the period of gradual recovery from serious illness. The chastening effect of our recent sickness has not yet passed away, and we are at once grateful to our Creator for preserving us, and to our friends for the countless acts of watchful kindness which it is the peculiar property of illness to evoke. No mother ever nursed a son more tenderly than did Mrs. Temple nurse my brother, and before his restoration to health was complete the attachment between him and Constance had ripened into a formal betrothal. Such an alliance was, as I have before explained, particularly suitable, and its prospect afforded the most lively pleasure to all those concerned. The month of March had been unusually mild, and Royston being situated in a valley, as is the case with most houses of that date, was well sheltered from cold winds. It had, moreover, a south aspect, and as my brother gradually gathered strength, Constance and he and I would often sit out of doors in the soft spring mornings. We put an easy-chair with many cushions for him on the gravel by the front door, where the warmth of the sun was reflected from the red brick walls, and he would at times read aloud to us while we were engaged with our crochet-work. Mr. Tennyson had just published anonymously a first volume of poems, and the sober dignity of his verse well suited our frame of mind at that time. The memory of those pleasant spring mornings, my dear Edward, has not yet passed away, and I can still smell the sweet moist scent of the violets, and see the bright colours of the crocus-flowers in the parterres in front of us. John's mind seemed to be gathering strength with his body. He had apparently flung off the cloud which had overshadowed him before his illness, and avoided entirely any reference to those unpleasant events which had been previously so constantly in his thoughts. I had, indeed, taken an early opportunity of telling him of my discovery of the picture of Adrian Temple, as I thought it would tend to show him that at least the last appearance of this ghostly form admitted of a rational explanation. He seemed glad to hear of this, but did not exhibit the same interest in the matter that I had expected, and allowed it at once to drop. Whether through lack of interest, or from a lingering dislike to revisit the spot where he was seized with illness, he did not, I believe, once enter the picture-gallery before he left Royston. I cannot say as much for myself. The picture of Adrian Temple exerted a curious fascination over me, and I constantly took an opportunity of studying it. It was, indeed, a beautiful work; and perhaps because John's recovery gave a more cheerful tone to my thoughts, or perhaps from the power of custom to dull even the keenest antipathies, I gradually got to lose much of the feeling of aversion which it had at first inspired. In time the unpleasant look grew less unpleasing, and I noticed more the beautiful oval of the face, the brown eyes, and the fine chiselling of the features. Sometimes, too, I felt a deep pity for so clever a gentleman who had died young, and whose life, were it ever so wicked, must often have been also lonely and bitter. More than once I had been discovered by Mrs. Temple or Constance sitting looking at the picture, and they had gently laughed at me, saying that I had fallen in love with Adrian Temple. One morning in early April, when the sun was streaming brightly through the oriel, and the picture received a fuller light than usual, it occurred to me to examine closely the scroll of music painted as hanging over the top of the pedestal on which the figure leant. I had hitherto thought that the signs depicted on it were merely such as painters might conventionally use to represent a piece of musical notation. This has generally been the case, I think, in such pictures as I have ever seen in which a piece of music has been introduced. I mean that while the painting gives a general representation of the musical staves, no attempt is ever made to paint any definite notes such as would enable an actual piece to be identified. Though, as I write this, I do remember that on the monument to Handel in Westminster Abbey there is represented a musical scroll similar to that in Adrian Temple's picture, but actually sculptured with the opening phrase of the majestic melody, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." On this morning, then, at Royston I thought I perceived that there were painted on the scroll actual musical staves, bars, and notes; and my interest being excited, I stood upon a chair so as better to examine them. Though time had somewhat obscured this portion of the picture as with a veil or film, yet I made out that the painter had intended to depict some definite piece of music. In another moment I saw that the air represented consisted of the opening bars of the _Gagliarda_ in the suite by Graziani with which my brother and I were so well acquainted. Though I believe that I had not seen the volume of music in which that piece was contained more than twice, yet the melody was very familiar to me, and I had no difficulty whatever in making myself sure that I had here before me the air of the _Gagliarda_ and none other. It was true that it was only roughly painted, but to one who knew the tune there was no room left for doubt. Here was a new cause, I will not say for surprise, but for reflection. It might, of course, have been merely a coincidence that the artist should have chosen to paint in this picture this particular piece of music; but it seemed more probable that it had actually been a favourite air of Adrian Temple, and that he had chosen deliberately to have it represented with him. This discovery I kept entirely to myself, not thinking it wise to communicate it to my brother, lest by doing so I might reawaken his interest in a subject which I hoped he had finally dismissed from his thoughts. In the second week of April the happy party at Royston was dispersed, John returning to Oxford for the summer term, Mrs. Temple making a short visit to Scotland, and Constance coming to Worth Maltravers to keep me company for a time. It was John's last term at Oxford. He expected to take his degree in June, and his marriage with Constance Temple had been provisionally arranged for the September following. He returned to Magdalen Hall in the best of spirits, and found his rooms looking cheerful with well-filled flower-boxes in the windows. I shall not detain you with any long narration of the events of the term, as they have no relation to the present history. I will only say that I believe my brother applied himself diligently to his studies, and took his amusement mostly on horseback, riding two horses which he had had sent to him from Worth Maltravers. About the second week after his return he received a letter from Mr. George Smart to the effect that the Stradivarius violin was now in complete order. Subsequent examination, Mr. Smart wrote, and the unanimous verdict of connoisseurs whom he had consulted, had merely confirmed the views he had at first expressed--namely, that the violin was of the finest quality, and that my brother had in his possession a unique and intact example of Stradivarius's best period. He had had it properly strung; and as the bass-bar had never been moved, and was of a stronger nature than that usual at the period of its manufacture, he had considered it unnecessary to replace it. If any signs should become visible of its being inadequate to support the tension of modern stringing, another could be easily substituted for it at a later date. He had allowed a young German _virtuoso_ to play on it, and though this gentleman was one of the first living performers, and had had an opportunity of handling many splendid instruments, he assured Mr. Smart that he had never performed on one that could in any way compare with this. My brother wrote in reply thanking him, and begging that the violin might be sent to Magdalen Hall. The pleasant musical evenings, however, which John had formerly been used to spend in the company of Mr. Gaskell were now entirely pretermitted. For though there was no cause for any diminution of friendship between them, and though on Mr. Gaskell's part there was an ardent desire to maintain their former intimacy, yet the two young men saw less and less of one another, until their intercourse was confined to an accidental greeting in the street. I believe that during all this time my brother played very frequently on the Stradivarius violin, but always alone. Its very possession seemed to have engendered from the first in his mind a secretive tendency which, as I have already observed, was entirely alien to his real disposition. As he had concealed its discovery from his sister, so he had also from his friend, and Mr. Gaskell remained in complete ignorance of the existence of such an instrument. On the evening of its arrival from London, John seems to have carefully unpacked the violin and tried it with a new bow of Tourte's make which he had purchased of Mr. Smart. He had shut the heavy outside door of his room before beginning to play, so that no one might enter unawares; and he told me afterwards that though he had naturally expected from the instrument a very fine tone, yet its actual merits so far exceeded his anticipations as entirely to overwhelm him. The sound issued from it in a volume of such depth and purity as to give an impression of the passages being chorded, or even of another violin being played at the same time. He had had, of course, no opportunity of practising during his illness, and so expected to find his skill with the bow somewhat diminished; but he perceived, on the contrary, that his performance was greatly improved, and that he was playing with a mastery and feeling of which he had never before been conscious. While attributing this improvement very largely to the beauty of the instrument on which he was performing, yet he could not but believe that by his illness, or in some other unexplained way, he had actually acquired a greater freedom of wrist and fluency of expression, with which reflection he was not a little elated. He had had a lock fixed on the cupboard in which he had originally found the violin, and here he carefully deposited it on each occasion after playing, before he opened the outer door of his room. So the summer term passed away. The examinations had come in their due time, and were now over. Both the young men had submitted themselves to the ordeal, and while neither would of course have admitted as much to anyone else, both felt secretly that they had no reason to be dissatisfied with their performance. The results would not be published for some weeks to come. The last night of the term had arrived, the last night too of John's Oxford career. It was near nine o'clock, but still quite light, and the rich orange glow of sunset had not yet left the sky. The air was warm and sultry, as on that eventful evening when just a year ago he had for the first time seen the figure or the illusion of the figure of Adrian Temple. Since that time he had played the "Areopagita" many, many times; but there had never been any reappearance of that form, nor even had the once familiar creaking of the wicker chair ever made itself heard. As he sat alone in his room, thinking with a natural melancholy that he had seen the sun set for the last time on his student life, and reflecting on the possibilities of the future and perhaps on opportunities wasted in the past, the memory of that evening last June recurred strongly to his imagination, and he felt an irresistible impulse to play once more the "Areopagita." He unlocked the now familiar cupboard and took out the violin, and never had the exquisite gradations of colour in its varnish appeared to greater advantage than in the soft mellow light of the fading day. As he began the _Gagliarda_ he looked at the wicker chair, half expecting to see a form he well knew seated in it; but nothing of the kind ensued, and he concluded the "Areopagita" without the occurrence of any unusual phenomenon. It was just at its close that he heard some one knocking at the outer door. He hurriedly locked away the violin and opened the "oak." It was Mr. Gaskell. He came in rather awkwardly, as though not sure whether he would be welcomed. "Johnnie," he began, and stopped. The force of ancient habit sometimes, dear nephew, leads us unwittingly to accost those who were once our friends by a familiar or nick-name long after the intimacy that formerly justified it has vanished. But sometimes we intentionally revert to the use of such a name, not wishing to proclaim openly, as it were, by a more formal address that we are no longer the friends we once were. I think this latter was the case with Mr. Gaskell as he repeated the familiar name. "Johnnie, I was passing down New College Lane, and heard the violin from your open windows. You were playing the 'Areopagita,' and it all sounded so familiar to me that I thought I must come up. I am not interrupting you, am I?" "No, not at all," John answered. "It is the last night of our undergraduate life, the last night we shall meet in Oxford as students. To-morrow we make our bow to youth and become men. We have not seen much of each other this term at any rate, and I daresay that is my fault. But at least let us part as friends. Surely our friends are not so many that we can afford to fling them lightly away." He held out his hand frankly, and his voice trembled a little as he spoke--partly perhaps from real emotion, but more probably from the feeling of reluctance which I have noticed men always exhibit to discovering any sentiment deeper than those usually deemed conventional in correct society. My brother was moved by his obvious wish to renew their former friendship, and grasped the proffered hand. There was a minute's pause, and then the conversation was resumed, a little stiffly at first, but more freely afterwards. They spoke on many indifferent subjects, and Mr. Gaskell congratulated John on the prospect of his marriage, of which he had heard. As he at length rose up to take his departure, he said, "You must have practised the violin diligently of late, for I never knew anyone make so rapid progress with it as you have done. As I came along I was spellbound by your music. I never before heard you bring from the instrument so exquisite a tone: the chorded passages were so powerful that I believed there had been another person playing with you. Your Pressenda is certainly a finer instrument than I ever imagined." My brother was pleased with Mr. Gaskell's compliment, and the latter continued, "Let me enjoy the pleasure of playing with you once more in Oxford; let us play the 'Areopagita.'" And so saying he opened the pianoforte and sat down. John was turning to take out the Stradivarius when he remembered that he had never even revealed its existence to Mr. Gaskell, and that if he now produced it an explanation must follow. In a moment his mood changed, and with less geniality he excused himself, somewhat awkwardly, from complying with the request, saying that he was fatigued. Mr. Gaskell was evidently hurt at his friend's altered manner, and without renewing his petition rose at once from the pianoforte, and after a little forced conversation took his departure. On leaving he shook my brother by the hand, wished him all prosperity in his marriage and after-life, and said, "Do not entirely forget your old comrade, and remember that if at any time you should stand in need of a true friend, you know where to find him!" John heard his footsteps echoing down the passage and made a half-involuntary motion towards the door as if to call him back, but did not do so, though he thought over his last words then and on a subsequent occasion. CHAPTER X The summer was spent by us in the company of Mrs. Temple and Constance, partly at Royston and partly at Worth Maltravers. John had again hired the cutter-yacht _Palestine_, and the whole party made several expeditions in her. Constance was entirely devoted to her lover; her life seemed wrapped up in his; she appeared to have no existence except in his presence. I can scarcely enumerate the reasons which prompted such thoughts, but during these months I sometimes found myself wondering if John still returned her affection as ardently as I knew had once been the case. I can certainly call to mind no single circumstance which could justify me in such a suspicion. He performed punctiliously all those thousand little acts of devotion which are expected of an accepted lover; he seemed to take pleasure in perfecting any scheme of enjoyment to amuse her; and yet the impression grew in my mind that he no longer felt the same heart-whole love to her that she bore him, and that he had himself shown six months earlier. I cannot say, my dear Edward, how lively was the grief that even the suspicion of such a fact caused me, and I continually rebuked myself for entertaining for a moment a thought so unworthy, and dismissed it from my mind with reprobation. Alas! ere long it was sure again to make itself felt. We had all seen the Stradivarius violin; indeed it was impossible for my brother longer to conceal it from us, as he now played continually on it. He did not recount to us the story of its discovery, contenting himself with saying that he had become possessed of it at Oxford. We imagined naturally that he had purchased it; and for this I was sorry, as I feared Mr. Thoresby, his guardian, who had given him some years previously an excellent violin by Pressenda, might feel hurt at seeing his present so unceremoniously laid aside. None of us were at all intimately acquainted with the fancies of fiddle-collectors, and were consequently quite ignorant of the enormous value that fashion attached to so splendid an instrument. Even had we known, I do not think that we should have been surprised at John purchasing it; for he had recently come of age, and was in possession of so large a fortune as would amply justify him in such an indulgence had he wished to gratify it. No one, however, could remain unaware of the wonderful musical qualities of the instrument. Its rich and melodious tones would commend themselves even to the most unmusical ear, and formed a subject of constant remark. I noticed also that my brother's knowledge of the violin had improved in a very perceptible manner, for it was impossible to attribute the great beauty and power of his present performance entirely to the excellence of the instrument he was using. He appeared more than ever devoted to the art, and would shut himself up in his room alone for two or more hours together for the purpose of playing the violin--a habit which was a source of sorrow to Constance, for he would never allow her to sit with him on such occasions, as she naturally wished to do. So the summer fled. I should have mentioned that in July, after going up to complete the _viva-voce_ part of their examination, both Mr. Gaskell and John received information that they had obtained "first-classes." The young men had, it appears, done excellently well, and both had secured a place in that envied division of the first-class which was called "above the line." John's success proved a source of much pleasure to us all, and mutual congratulations were freely exchanged. We were pleased also at Mr. Gaskell's high place, remembering the kindness which he had shown us at Oxford in the previous year. I desired to send him my compliments and felicitations when he should next be writing to him. I did not doubt that my brother would return Mr. Gaskell's congratulations, which he had already received: he said, however, that his friend had given no address to which he could write, and so the matter dropped. On the 1st of September John and Constance Temple were married. The wedding took place at Royston, and by John's special desire (with which Constance fully agreed) the ceremony was of a strictly private and unpretentious nature. The newly married pair had determined to spend their honeymoon in Italy, and left for the Continent in the forenoon. Mrs. Temple invited me to remain with her for the present at Royston, which I was very glad to do, feeling deeply the loss of a favourite brother, and looking forward with dismay to six weeks of loneliness which must elapse before I should again see him and my dearest Constance. We received news of our travellers about a fortnight afterwards, and then heard from them at frequent intervals. Constance wrote in the best of spirits, and with the keenest appreciation. She had never travelled in Switzerland or Italy before and all was enchantingly novel to her. They had journeyed through Basle to Lucerne, spending a few days in that delightful spot, and thence proceeding by the Simplon Pass to Lugano and the Italian lakes. Then we heard that they had gone further south than had been at first contemplated; they had reached Rome, and were intending to go on to Naples. After the first few weeks we neither of us received any more letters from John. It was always Constance who wrote, and even her letters grew very much less frequent than had at first been the case. This was perhaps natural, as the business of travel no doubt engrossed their thoughts. But ere long we both perceived that the letters of our dear girl were more constrained and formal than before. It was as if she was writing now rather to comply with a sense of duty than to give vent to the light-hearted gaiety and naïve enjoyment which breathed in every line of her earlier communications. So at least it seemed to us, and again the old suspicion presented itself to my mind, and I feared that all was not as it should be. Naples was to be the turning-point of their travels, and we expected them to return to England by the end of October. November had arrived, however, and we still had no intimation that their return journey had commenced or was even decided on. From John there was no word, and Constance wrote less often than ever. John, she said, was enraptured with Naples and its surroundings; he devoted himself much to the violin, and though she did not say so, this meant, I knew, that she was often left alone. For her own part, she did not think that a continued residence in Italy would suit her health; the sudden changes of temperature tried her, and people said that the airs rising in the evening from the bay were unwholesome. Then we received a letter from her which much alarmed us. It was written from Naples and dated October 25. John, she said, had been ailing of late with nervousness and insomnia. On Wednesday, two days before the date of her letter, he had suffered all day from a strange restlessness, which increased after they had retired for the evening. He could not sleep and had dressed again, telling her he would walk a little in the night air to compose himself. He had not returned till near six in the morning, and then was so deadly pale and seemed so exhausted that she insisted on his keeping to his bed till she could get medical advice. The doctors feared that he had been attacked by some strange form of malarial fever, and said he needed much care. Our anxiety was, however, at least temporarily relieved by the receipt of later tidings which spoke of John's recovery; but November drew to a close without any definite mention of their return having reached us. That month is always, I think, a dreary one in the country. It has neither the brilliant tints of October, nor the cosy jollity of mid-winter with its Christmas joys to alleviate it. This year it was more gloomy than usual. Incessant rain had marked its close, and the Roy, a little brook which skirted the gardens not far from the house, had swollen to unusual proportions. At last one wild night the flood rose so high as to completely cover the garden terraces, working havoc in the parterres, and covering the lawns with a thick coat of mud. Perhaps this gloominess of nature's outer face impressed itself in a sense of apprehension on our spirits, and it was with a feeling of more than ordinary pleasure and relief that early in December we received a letter dated from Laon, saying that our travellers were already well advanced on their return journey, and expected to be in England a week after the receipt by us of this advice. It was, as usual, Constance who wrote. John begged, she said, that Christmas might be spent at Worth Maltravers, and that we would at once proceed thither to see that all was in order against their return. They reached Worth about the middle of the month, and were, I need not say, received with the utmost affection by Mrs. Temple and myself. In reply to our inquiries John professed that his health was completely restored; but though we could indeed discern no other signs of any special weakness, we were much shocked by his changed appearance. He had completely lost his old healthy and sunburnt complexion, and his face, though not thin or sunken, was strangely pale. Constance assured us that though in other respects he had apparently recovered, he had never regained his old colour from the night of his attack of fever at Naples. I soon perceived that her own spirits were not so bright as was ordinarily the case with her; and she exhibited none of the eagerness to narrate to others the incidents of travel which is generally observable in those who have recently returned from a journey. The cause of this depression was, alas! not difficult to discover, for John's former abstraction and moodiness seemed to have returned with an increased force. It was a source of infinite pain to Mrs. Temple, and perhaps even more so to me, to observe this sad state of things. Constance never complained, and her affection towards her husband seemed only to increase in the face of difficulties. Yet the matter was one which could not be hid from the anxious eyes of loving kinswomen, and I believe that it was the consciousness that these altered circumstances could not but force themselves upon our notice that added poignancy to my poor sister's grief. While not markedly neglecting her, my brother had evidently ceased to take that pleasure in her company which might reasonably have been expected in any case under the circumstances of a recent marriage, and a thousand times more so when his wife was so loving and beautiful a creature as Constance Temple. He appeared little except at meals, and not even always at lunch, shutting himself up for the most part in his morning-room or study and playing continually on the violin. It was in vain that we attempted even by means of his music to win him back to a sweeter mood. Again and again I begged him to allow me to accompany him on the pianoforte, but he would never do so, always putting me off with some excuse. Even when he sat with us in the evening, he spoke little, devoting himself for the most part to reading. His books were almost always Greek or Latin, so that I am ignorant of the subjects of his study; but he was content that either Constance or I should play on the pianoforte, saying that the melody, so far from distracting his attention, helped him rather to appreciate what he was reading. Constance always begged me to allow her to take her place at the instrument on these occasions, and would play to him sometimes for hours without receiving a word of thanks, being eager even in this unreciprocated manner to testify her love and devotion to him. Christmas Day, usually so happy a season, brought no alleviation of our gloom. My brother's reserve continually increased, and even his longest-established habits appeared changed. He had been always most observant of his religious duties, attending divine service with the utmost regularity whatever the weather might be, and saying that it was a duty a landed proprietor owed as much to his tenantry as himself to set a good example in such matters. Ever since our earliest years he and I had gone morning and afternoon on Sundays to the little church of Worth, and there sat together in the Maltravers chapel where so many of our name had sat before us. Here their monuments and achievements stood about us on every side, and it had always seemed to me that with their name and property we had inherited also the obligation to continue those acts of piety, in the practice of which so many of them had lived and died. It was, therefore, a source of surprise and great grief to me when on the Sunday after his return my brother omitted all religious observances, and did not once attend the parish church. He was not present with us at breakfast, ordering coffee and a roll to be taken to his private sitting-room. At the hour at which we usually set out for church I went to his room to tell him that we were all dressed and waiting for him. I tapped at the door, but on trying to enter found it locked. In reply to my message he did not open the door, but merely begged us to go on to church, saying he would possibly follow us later. We went alone, and I sat anxiously in our seat with my eyes fixed on the door, hoping against hope that each late comer might be John, but he never came. Perhaps this will appear to you, Edward, a comparatively trivial circumstance (though I hope it may not), but I assure you that it brought tears to my eyes. When I sat in the Maltravers chapel and thought that for the first time my dear brother had preferred in an open way his convenience or his whim to his duty, and had of set purpose neglected to come to the house of God, I felt a bitter grief that seemed to rise up in my throat and choke me. I could not think of the meaning of the prayers nor join in the singing: and all the time that Mr. Butler, our clergyman, was preaching, a verse of a little piece of poetry which I learnt as a girl was running in my head:-- "How easy are the paths of ill; How steep and hard the upward ways; A child can roll the stone down hill That breaks a giant's arm to raise." It seemed to me that our loved one had set his foot upon the downward slope, and that not all the efforts of those who would have given their lives to save him could now hold him back. It was even worse on Christmas Day. Ever since we had been confirmed John and I had always taken the Sacrament on that happy morning, and after service he had distributed the Maltravers dole in our chapel. There are given, as you know, on that day to each of twelve old men £5 and a green coat, and a like sum of money with a blue cloth dress to as many old women. These articles of dress are placed on the altar-tomb of Sir Esmoun de Maltravers, and have been thence distributed from days immemorial by the head of our house. Ever since he was twelve years old it had been my pride to watch my handsome brother doing this deed of noble charity, and to hear the kindly words he added with each gift. Alas! alas! it was all different this Christmas. Even on this holy day my brother did not approach either the altar or the house of God. Till then Christmas had always seemed to me to be a day given us from above, that we might see even while on earth a faint glimpse of that serenity and peaceful love which will hereafter gild all days in heaven. Then covetous men lay aside their greed and enemies their rancour, then warm hearts grow warmer, and Christians feel their common brotherhood. I can scarcely imagine any man so lost or guilty as not to experience on that day some desire to turn back to the good once more, as not to recognise some far-off possibility of better things. It was thoughts free and happy such as these that had previously come into my heart in the service of Christmas Day, and been particularly associated with the familiar words that we all love so much. But that morning the harmonies were all jangled: it seemed as though some evil spirit was pouring wicked thoughts into my ear; and even while children sang "Hark the herald angels," I thought I could hear through it all a melody which I had learnt to loathe, the _Gagliarda_ of the "Areopagita." Poor Constance! Though her veil was down, I could see her tears, and knew her thoughts must be sadder even than mine: I drew her hand towards me, and held it as I would a child's. After the service was over a new trial awaited us. John had made no arrangement for the distribution of the dole. The coats and dresses were all piled ready on Sir Esmoun's tomb, and there lay the little leather pouches of money, but there was no one to give them away. Mr. Butler looked puzzled, and approaching us, said he feared Sir John was ill--had he made no provision for the distribution? Pride kept back the tears which were rising fast, and I said my brother was indeed unwell, that it would be better for Mr. Butler to give away the dole, and that Sir John would himself visit the recipients during the week. Then we hurried away, not daring to watch the distribution of the dole, lest we should no longer be able to master our feelings, and should openly betray our agitation. From one another we no longer attempted to conceal our grief. It seemed as though we had all at once resolved to abandon the farce of pretending not to notice John's estrangement from his wife, or of explaining away his neglectful and unaccountable treatment of her. I do not think that three poor women were ever so sad on Christmas Day before as were we on our return from church that morning. None of us had seen my brother, but about five in the afternoon Constance went to his room, and through the locked door begged piteously to see him. After a few minutes he complied with her request and opened the door. The exact circumstances of that interview she never revealed to me, but I knew from her manner when she returned that something she had seen or heard had both grieved and frightened her. She told me only that she had flung herself in an agony of tears at his feet, and kneeling there, weary and broken-hearted, had begged him to tell her if she had done aught amiss, had prayed him to give her back his love. To all this he answered little, but her entreaties had at least such an effect as to induce him to take his dinner with us that evening. At that meal we tried to put aside our gloom, and with feigned smiles and cheerful voices, from which the tears were hardly banished, sustained a weary show of conversation and tried to wile away his evil mood. But he spoke little; and when Foster, my father's butler, put on the table the three-handled Maltravers' loving-cup that he had brought up Christmas by Christmas for thirty years, my brother merely passed it by without a taste. I saw by Foster's face that the master's malady was no longer a secret even from the servants. I shall not harass my own feelings nor yours, my dear Edward, by entering into further details of your father's illness, for such it was obvious his indisposition had become. It was the only consolation, and that was a sorry one, that we could use with Constance, to persuade her that John's estrangement from her was merely the result or manifestation of some physical infirmity. He obviously grew worse from week to week, and his treatment of his wife became colder and more callous. We had used all efforts to persuade him to take a change of air--to go to Royston for a month, and place himself under the care of Dr. Dobie. Mrs. Temple had even gone so far as to write privately to this physician, telling him as much of the case as was prudent, and asking his advice. Not being aware of the darker sides of my brother's ailment, Dr. Dobie replied in a less serious strain than seemed to us convenient, but recommended in any case a complete change of air and scene. It was, therefore, with no ordinary pleasure and relief that we heard my brother announce quite unexpectedly one morning in March that he had made up his mind to seek change, and was going to leave almost immediately for the Continent. He took his valet Parnham with him, and quitted Worth one morning before lunch, bidding us an unceremonious adieu, though he kissed Constance with some apparent tenderness. It was the first time for three months, she confessed to me afterwards, that he had shown her even so ordinary a mark of affection; and her wounded heart treasured up what she hoped would prove a token of returning love. He had not proposed to take her with him, and even had he done so, we should have been reluctant to assent, as signs were not wanting that it might have been imprudent for her to undertake foreign travel at that period. For nearly a month we had no word of him. Then he wrote a short note to Constance from Naples, giving no news, and indeed, scarce speaking of himself at all, but mentioning as an address to which she might write if she wished, the Villa de Angelis at Posilipo. Though his letter was cold and empty, yet Constance was delighted to get it, and wrote henceforth herself nearly every day, pouring out her heart to him, and retailing such news as she thought would cheer him. CHAPTER XI A month later Mrs. Temple wrote to John warning him of the state in which Constance now found herself, and begging him to return at least for a few weeks in order that he might be present at the time of her confinement. Though it would have been in the last degree unkind, or even inhuman, that a request of this sort should have been refused, yet I will confess to you that my brother's recent strangeness had prepared me for behaviour on his part however wild; and it was with a feeling of extreme relief that I heard from Mrs. Temple a little later that she had received a short note from John to say that he was already on his return journey. I believe Mrs. Temple herself felt as I did in the matter, though she said nothing. When he returned we were all at Royston, whither Mrs. Temple had taken Constance to be under Dr. Dobie's care. We found John's physical appearance changed for the worse. His pallor was as remarkable as before, but he was visibly thinner; and his strange mental abstraction and moodiness seemed little if any abated. At first, indeed, he greeted Constance kindly or even affectionately. She had been in a terrible state of anxiety as to the attitude he would assume towards her, and this mental strain affected prejudicially her very delicate bodily condition. His kindness, of an ordinary enough nature indeed, seemed to her yearning heart a miracle of condescending love, and she was transported with the idea that his affection to her, once so sincere, was indeed returning. But I grieve to say that his manner thawed only for a very short time, and ere long he relapsed into an attitude of complete indifference. It was as if his real, true, honest, and loving character had made one more vigorous effort to assert itself,--as though it had for a moment broken through the hard and selfish crust that was forming around him; but the blighting influence which was at work proved seemingly too strong for him to struggle against, and riveted its chains again upon him with a weight heavier than before. That there was some malefic influence, mental or physical, thus working on him, no one who had known him before could for a moment doubt. But while Mrs. Temple and I readily admitted this much, we were entirely unable even to form a conjecture as to its nature. It is true that Mrs. Temple's fancy suggested that Constance had some rival in his affections; but we rejected such a theory almost before it was proposed, feeling that it was inherently improbable, and that, had it been true, we could not have remained entirely unaware of the circumstances which had conduced to such a state of things. It was this inexplicable nature of my brother's affliction that added immeasurably to our grief. If we could only have ascertained its cause we might have combated it; but as it was, we were fighting in the dark, as against some enemy who was assaulting us from an obscurity so thick that we could not see his form. Of any mental trouble we thus knew nothing, nor could we say that my brother was suffering from any definite physical ailment, except that he was certainly growing thinner. Your birth, my dear Edward, followed very shortly. Your poor mother rallied in an unusually short time, and was filled with rapture at the new treasure which was thus given as a solace to her afflictions. Your father exhibited little interest at the event, though he sat nearly half an hour with her one evening, and allowed her even to stroke his hair and caress him as in time long past. Although it was now the height of summer he seldom left the house, sitting much and sleeping in his own room, where he had a field-bed provided for him, and continually devoting himself to the violin. One evening near the end of July we were sitting after dinner in the drawing-room at Royston, having the French windows looking on to the lawn open, as the air was still oppressively warm. Though things were proceeding as indifferently as before, we were perhaps less cast down than usual, for John had taken his dinner with us that evening. This was a circumstance now, alas! sufficiently uncommon, for he had nearly all his meals served for him in his own rooms. Constance, who was once more downstairs, sat playing at the pianoforte, performing chiefly melodies by Scarlatti or Bach, of which old-fashioned music she knew her husband to be most fond. A later fashion, as you know, has revived the cultivation of these composers, but at the time of which I write their works were much less commonly known. Though she was more than a passable musician, he would not allow her to accompany him; indeed he never now performed at all on the violin before us, reserving his practice entirely for his own chamber. There was a pause in the music while coffee was served. My brother had been sitting in an easy-chair apart reading some classical work during his wife's performance, and taking little notice of us. But after a while he put down his book and said, "Constance, if you will accompany me, I will get my violin and play a little while." I cannot say how much his words astonished us. It was so simple a matter for him to say, and yet it filled us all with an unspeakable joy. We concealed our emotion till he had left the room to get his instrument, then Constance showed how deeply she was gratified by kissing first her mother and then me, squeezing my hand but saying nothing. In a minute he returned, bringing his violin and a music-book. By the soiled vellum cover and the shape I perceived instantly that it was the book containing the "Areopagita." I had not seen it for near two years, and was not even aware that it was in the house, but I knew at once that he intended to play that suite. I entertained an unreasoning but profound aversion to its melodies, but at that moment I would have welcomed warmly that or any other music, so that he would only choose once more to show some thought for his neglected wife. He put the book open at the "Areopagita" on the desk of the pianoforte, and asked her to play it with him. She had never seen the music before, though I believe she was not unacquainted with the melody, as she had heard him playing it by himself, and once heard, it was not easily forgotten. They began the "Areopagita" suite, and at first all went well. The tone of the violin, and also, I may say with no undue partiality, my brother's performance, were so marvellously fine that though our thoughts were elsewhere when, the music commenced, in a few seconds they were wholly engrossed in the melody, and we sat spellbound. It was as if the violin had become suddenly endowed with life, and was singing to us in a mystical language more deep and awful than any human words. Constance was comparatively unused to the figuring of the _basso continuo_, and found some trouble in reading it accurately, especially in manuscript; but she was able to mask any difficulty she may have had until she came to the _Gagliarda_. Here she confessed to me her thoughts seemed against her will to wander, and her attention became too deeply riveted on her husband's performance to allow her to watch her own. She made first one slight fault, and then growing nervous, another, and another. Suddenly John stopped and said brusquely, "Let Sophy play, I cannot keep time with you." Poor Constance! The tears came swiftly to my own eyes when I heard him speak so thoughtlessly to her, and I was almost provoked to rebuke him openly. She was still weak from her recent illness; her nerves were excited by the unusual pleasure she felt in playing once more with her husband, and this sudden shattering of her hopes of a renewed tenderness proved more than she could bear: she put her head between her hands upon the keyboard and broke into a paroxysm of tears. We both ran to her; but while we were attempting to assuage her grief, John shut his violin into its case, took the music-book under his arm, and left the room without saying a word to any of us, not even to the weeping girl, whose sobs seemed as though they would break her heart. We got her put to bed at once, but it was some hours before her convulsive sobbing ceased. Mrs. Temple had administered to her a soothing draught of proved efficacy, and after sitting with her till after one o'clock, I left her at last dozing off to sleep, and myself sought repose. I was quite wearied out with the weight of my anxiety, and with the crushing bitterness of seeing my dearest Constance's feelings so wounded. Yet in spite, or rather perhaps on account of my trouble, my head had scarcely touched my pillow ere I fell into a deep sleep. A room in the south wing had been converted for the nonce into a nursery, and for the convenience of being near her infant Constance now slept in a room adjoining. As this portion of the house was somewhat isolated, Mrs. Temple had suggested that I should keep her daughter company, and occupy a room in the same passage, only removed a few doors, and this I had accordingly done. I was aroused from my sleep that night by some one knocking gently on the door of my bedroom; but it was some seconds before my thoughts became sufficiently awake to allow me to remember where I was. There was some moonlight, but I lighted a candle, and looking at my watch saw that it was two o'clock. I concluded that either Constance or her baby was unwell, and that the nurse needed my assistance. So I left my bed, and moving to the door, asked softly who was there. It was, to my surprise, the voice of Constance that replied, "O Sophy, let me in." In a second I had opened the door, and found my poor sister wearing only her night-dress, and standing in the moonlight before me. She looked frightened and unusually pale in her white dress and with the cold gleam of the moon upon her. At first I thought she was walking in her sleep, and perhaps rehearsing again in her dreams the troubles which dogged her waking footsteps. I took her gently by the arm, saying, "Dearest Constance, come back at once to bed; you will take cold." She was not asleep, however, but made a motion of silence, and said in a terrified whisper, "Hush; do you hear nothing?" There was something so vague and yet so mysterious in the question and in her evident perturbation that I was infected too by her alarm. I felt myself shiver, as I strained my ear to catch if possible the slightest sound. But a complete silence pervaded everything: I could hear nothing. "Can you hear it?" she said again. All sorts of images of ill presented themselves to my imagination: I thought the baby must be ill with croup, and that she was listening for some stertorous breath of anguish; and then the dread came over me that perhaps her sorrows had been too much for her, and that reason had left her seat. At that thought the marrow froze in my bones. "Hush," she said again; and just at that moment, as I strained my ears, I thought I caught upon the sleeping air a distant and very faint murmur. "Oh, what is it, Constance?" I said. "You will drive me mad;" and while I spoke the murmur seemed to resolve itself into the vibration, felt almost rather than heard, of some distant musical instrument. I stepped past her into the passage. All was deadly still, but I could perceive that music was being played somewhere far away; and almost at the same minute my ears recognised faintly but unmistakably the _Gagliarda_ of the "Areopagita." I have already mentioned that for some reason which I can scarcely explain, this melody was very repugnant to me. It seemed associated in some strange and intimate way with my brother's indisposition and moral decline. Almost at the moment that I had heard it first two years ago, peace seemed to have risen up and left our house, gathering her skirts about her, as we read that the angels left the Temple at the siege of Jerusalem. And now it was even more detestable to my ears, recalling as it did too vividly the cruel events of the preceding evening. "John must be sitting up playing," I said. "Yes," she answered; "but why is he in this part of the house, and why does he always play _that_ tune?" It was if some irresistible attraction drew us towards the music. Constance took my hand in hers and we moved together slowly down the passage. The wind had risen, and though there was a bright moon, her beams were constantly eclipsed by driving clouds. Still there was light enough to guide us, and I extinguished the candle. As we reached the end of the passage the air of the _Gagliarda_ grew more and more distinct. Our passage opened on to a broad landing with a balustrade, and from one side of it ran out the picture-gallery which you know. I looked at Constance significantly. It was evident that John was playing in this gallery. We crossed the landing, treading carefully and making no noise with our naked feet, for both of us had been too excited even to think of putting on shoes. We could now see the whole length of the gallery. My poor brother sat in the oriel window of which I have before spoken. He was sitting so as to face the picture of Adrian Temple, and the great windows of the oriel flung a strong light on him. At times a cloud hid the moon, and all was plunged in darkness; but in a moment the cold light fell full on him, and we could trace every feature as in a picture. He had evidently not been to bed, for he was fully dressed, exactly as he had left us in the drawing-room five hours earlier when Constance was weeping over his thoughtless words. He was playing the violin, playing with a passion and reckless energy which I had never seen, and hope never to see again. Perhaps he remembered that this spot was far removed from the rest of the house, or perhaps he was careless whether any were awake and listening to him or not; but it seemed to me that he was playing with a sonorous strength greater than I had thought possible for a single violin. There came from his instrument such a volume and torrent of melody as to fill the gallery so full, as it were, of sound that it throbbed and vibrated again. He kept his eyes fixed on something at the opposite side of the gallery; we could not indeed see on what, but I have no doubt at all that it was the portrait of Adrian Temple. His gaze was eager and expectant, as though he were waiting for something to occur which did not. I knew that he had been growing thin of late, but this was the first time I had realised how sunk were the hollows of his eyes and how haggard his features had become. It may have been some effect of moonlight which I do not well understand, but his fine-cut face, once so handsome, looked on this night worn and thin like that of an old man. He never for a moment ceased playing. It was always one same dreadful melody, the _Gagliarda_ of the "Areopagita," and he repeated it time after time with the perseverance and apparent aimlessness of an automaton. He did not see us, and we made no sign, standing afar off in silent horror at that nocturnal sight. Constance clutched me by the arm: she was so pale that I perceived it even in the moonlight. "Sophy," she said, "he is sitting in the same place as on the first night when he told me how he loved me." I could answer nothing, my voice was frozen in me. I could only stare at my brother's poor withered face, realising then for the first time that he must be mad, and that it was the haunting of the _Gagliarda_ that had made him so. We stood there I believe for half an hour without speech or motion, and all the time that sad figure at the end of the gallery continued its performance. Suddenly he stopped, and an expression of frantic despair came over his face as he laid down the violin and buried his head in his hands. I could bear it no longer. "Constance," I said, "come back to bed. We can do nothing," So we turned and crept away silently as we had come. Only as we crossed the landing Constance stopped, and looked back for a minute with a heart-broken yearning at the man she loved. He had taken his hands from his head, and she saw the profile of his face clear cut and hard in the white moonlight. It was the last time her eyes ever looked upon it. She made for a moment as if she would turn back and go to him, but her courage failed her, and we went on. Before we reached her room we heard in the distance, faintly but distinctly, the burden of the _Gagliarda_. CHAPTER XII The next morning, my maid brought me a hurried note written in pencil by my brother. It contained only a few lines, saying that he found that his continued sojourn at Royston was not beneficial to his health, and had determined to return to Italy. If we wished to write, letters would reach him at the Villa de Angelis: his valet Parnham was to follow him thither with his baggage as soon as it could be got together. This was all; there was no word of adieu even to his wife. We found that he had never gone to bed that night. But in the early morning he had himself saddled his horse _Sentinel_ and ridden in to Derby, taking the early mail thence to London. His resolve to leave Royston had apparently been arrived at very suddenly, for so far as we could discover, he had carried no luggage of any kind. I could not help looking somewhat carefully round his room to see if he had taken the Stradivarius violin. No trace of it or even of its case was to be seen, though it was difficult to imagine how he could have carried it with him on horseback. There was, indeed, a locked travelling-trunk which Parnham was to bring with him later, and the instrument might, of course, have been in that; but I felt convinced that he had actually taken it with him in some way or other, and this proved afterwards to have been the case. I shall draw a veil, my dear Edward, over the events which immediately followed your father's departure. Even at this distance of time the memory is too inexpressibly bitter to allow me to do more than briefly allude to them. A fortnight after John's departure, we left Royston and removed to Worth, wishing to get some sea-air, and to enjoy the late summer of the south coast. Your mother seemed entirely to have recovered from her confinement, and to be enjoying as good health as could be reasonably expected under the circumstances of her husband's indisposition. But suddenly one of those insidious maladies which are incidental to women in her condition seized upon her. We had hoped and believed that all such period of danger was already happily past; but, alas! it was not so, and within a few hours of her first seizure all realised how serious was her case. Everything that human skill can do under such conditions was done, but without avail. Symptoms of blood-poisoning showed themselves, accompanied with high fever, and within a week she was in her coffin. Though her delirium was terrible to watch, yet I thank God to this day, that if she was to die, it pleased Him to take her while in an unconscious condition. For two days before her death she recognised no one, and was thus spared at least the sadness of passing from life without one word of kindness or even of reconciliation from her unhappy husband. The communication with a place so distant as Naples was not then to be made under fifteen or twenty days, and all was over before we could hope that the intelligence even of his wife's illness had reached John. Both Mrs. Temple and I remained at Worth in a state of complete prostration, awaiting his return. When more than a month had passed without his arrival, or even a letter to say that he was on his way, our anxiety took a new turn, as we feared that some accident had befallen him, or that the news of his wife's death, which would then be in his hands, had so seriously affected him as to render him incapable of taking any action. To repeated subsequent communications we received no answer; but at last, to a letter which I wrote to Parnham, the servant replied, stating that his master was still at the Villa de Angelis, and in a condition of health little differing from that in which he left Royston, except that he was now slightly paler if possible and thinner. It was not till the end of November that any word came from him, and then he wrote only one page of a sheet of note-paper to me in pencil, making no reference whatever to his wife's death, but saying that he should not return for Christmas, and instructing me to draw on his bankers for any moneys that I might require for household purposes at Worth. I need not tell you the effect that such conduct produced on Mrs. Temple and myself; you can easily imagine what would have been your own feelings in such a case. Nor will I relate any other circumstances which occurred at this period, as they would have no direct bearing upon my narrative. Though I still wrote to my brother at frequent intervals, as not wishing to neglect a duty, no word from him ever came in reply. About the end of March, indeed, Parnham returned to Worth Maltravers, saying that his master had paid him a half-year's wages in advance, and then dispensed with his services. He had always been an excellent servant, and attached to the family, and I was glad to be able to offer him a suitable position with us at Worth until his master should return. He brought disquieting reports of John's health, saying that he was growing visibly weaker. Though I was sorely tempted to ask him many questions as to his master's habits and way of life, my pride forbade me to do so. But I heard incidentally from my maid that Parnham had told her Sir John was spending money freely in alterations at the Villa de Angelis, and had engaged Italians to attend him, with which his English valet was naturally much dissatisfied. So the spring passed and the summer was well advanced. On the last morning of July I found waiting for me on the breakfast-table an envelope addressed in my brother's hand. I opened it hastily. It only contained a few words, which I have before me as I write now. The ink is a little faded and yellow, but the impression it made is yet vivid as on that summer morning. "MY DEAREST SOPHY," it began,--"Come to me here at once, if possible, or it may be too late. I want to see you. They say that I am ill, and too weak to travel to England. "Your loving brother, "JOHN." There was a great change in the style, from the cold and conventional notes that he had hitherto sent at such long intervals; from the stiff "Dear Sophia" and "Sincerely yours" to which, I grieve to say, I had grown accustomed. Even the writing itself was altered. It was more the bold boyish hand he wrote when first he went to Oxford, than the smaller cramped and classic character of his later years. Though it was a little matter enough, God knows, in comparison with his grievous conduct, yet it touched me much that he should use again the once familiar "Dearest Sophy," and sign himself "my loving brother." I felt my heart go out towards him; and so strong is woman's affection for her own kin, that I had already forgotten any resentment and reprobation in my great pity for the poor wanderer, lying sick perhaps unto death and alone in a foreign land. I took his note at once to Mrs. Temple. She read it twice or thrice, trying to take in the meaning of it. Then she drew me to her and, kissing me, said, "Go to him at once, Sophy. Bring him back to Worth; try to bring him back to the right way." I ordered my things to be packed, determining to drive to Southampton and take train thence to London; and at the same time Mrs. Temple gave instructions that all should be prepared for her own return to Royston within a few days. I knew she did not dare to see John after her daughter's death. I took my maid with me, and Parnham to act as courier. At London we hired a carriage for the whole journey, and from Calais posted direct to Naples. We took the short route by Marseilles and Genoa, and travelled for seventeen days without intermission, as my brother's note made me desirous of losing no time on the way. I had never been in Italy before; but my anxiety was such that my mind was unable to appreciate either the beauty of the scenery or the incidents of travel. I can, in fact, remember nothing of our journey now, except the wearisome and interminable jolting over bad roads and the insufferable heat. It was the middle of August in an exceptionally warm summer, and after passing Genoa the heat became almost tropical. There was no relief even at night, for the warm air hung stagnant and suffocating, and the inside of my travelling coach was often like a furnace. We were at last approaching the conclusion of our journey, and had left Rome behind us. The day that we set out from Aversa was the hottest that I have ever felt, the sun beating down with an astonishing power even in the early hours, and the road being thick with a white and blinding dust. It was soon after midnight that our carriage began rattling over the great stone blocks with which the streets of Naples are paved. The suburbs that we at first passed through were, I remember, in darkness and perfect quiet; but after traversing the heart of the city and reaching the western side, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of an enormous and very dense crowd. There were lanterns everywhere, and interminable lanes of booths, whose proprietors were praising their wares with loud shouts; and here acrobats, jugglers, minstrels, black-vested priests, and blue-coated soldiers mingled with a vast crowd whose numbers at once arrested the progress of the carriage. Though it was so late of a Sunday night, all seemed here awake and busy as at noonday. Oil-lamps with reeking fumes of black smoke flung a glare over the scene, and the discordant cries and chattering conversation united in so deafening a noise as to make me turn faint and giddy, wearied as I already was with long travelling. Though I felt that intense eagerness and expectation which the approaching termination of a tedious journey inspires, and was desirous of pushing forward with all imaginable despatch, yet here our course was sadly delayed. The horses could only proceed at the slowest of foot-paces, and we were constantly brought to a complete stop for some minutes before the post-boy could force a passage through the unwilling crowd. This produced a feeling of irritation, and despair of ever reaching my destination; and the mirth and careless hilarity of the people round us chafed with bitter contrast on my depressed spirits. I inquired from the post-boy what was the origin of so great a commotion, and understood him to say in reply that it was a religious festival held annually in honour of "Our Lady of the Grotto." I cannot, however, conceive of any truly religious person countenancing such a gathering, which seemed to me rather like the unclean orgies of a heathen deity than an act of faith of Christian people. This disturbance occasioned us so serious a delay, that as we were climbing the steep slope leading up to Posilipo it was already three in the morning and the dawn was at hand. After mounting steadily for a long time we began to rapidly descend, and just as the sun came up over the sea we arrived at the Villa de Angelis. I sprang from the carriage, and passing through a trellis of vines, reached the house. A man-servant was in waiting, and held the door open for me; but he was an Italian, and did not understand me when I asked in English where Sir John Maltravers was. He had evidently, however, received instructions to take me at once to my brother, and led the way to an inner part of the house. As we proceeded I heard the sound of a rich alto voice singing very sweetly to a mandoline some soothing or religious melody. The servant pulled aside a heavy curtain and I found myself in my brother's room. An Italian youth sat on a stool near the door, and it was he who had been singing. At a few words from John, addressed to him in his own language, he set down his mandoline and left the room, pulling to the curtain and shutting a door behind it. The room looked directly on to the sea: the villa was, in fact, built upon rocks at the foot of which the waves lapped. Through two folding windows which opened on to a balcony the early light of the summer morning streamed in with a rosy flush. My brother sat on a low couch or sofa, propped up against a heap of pillows, with a rug of brilliant colours flung across his feet and legs. He held out his arms to me, and I ran to him; but even in so brief an interval I had perceived that he was terribly weak and wasted. All my memories of his past faults had vanished and were dead in that sad aspect of his worn features, and in the conviction which I felt, even from the first moment, that he had but little time longer to remain with us. I knelt by him on the floor, and with my arms round his neck, embraced him tenderly, not finding any place for words, but only sobbing in great anguish. Neither of us spoke, and my weariness from long travel and the strangeness of the situation caused me to feel that paralysing sensation of doubt as to the reality of the scene, and even of my own existence, which all, I believe, have experienced at times of severe mental tension. That I, a plain English girl, should be kneeling here beside my brother in the Italian dawn; that I should read, as I believed, on his young face the unmistakable image and superscription of death; and reflect that within so few months he had married, had wrecked his home, that my poor Constance was no more;--these things seemed so unrealisable that for a minute I felt that it must all be a nightmare, that I should immediately wake with the fresh salt air of the Channel blowing through my bedroom window at Worth, and find I had been dreaming. But it was not so; the light of day grew stronger and brighter, and even in my sorrow the panorama of the most beautiful spot on earth, the Bay of Naples, with Vesuvius lying on the far side, as seen then from these windows, stamped itself for ever on my mind. It was unreal as a scene in some brilliant dramatic spectacle, but, alas! no unreality was here. The flames of the candles in their silver sconces waxed paler and paler, the lines and shadows on my brother's face grew darker, and the pallor of his wasted features showed more striking in the bright rays of the morning sun. CHAPTER XIII I had spent near a week at the Villa de Angelis. John's manner to me was most tender and affectionate; but he showed no wish to refer to the tragedy of his wife's death and the sad events which had preceded it, or to attempt to explain in any way his own conduct in the past. Nor did I ever lead the conversation to these topics; for I felt that even if there were no other reason, his great weakness rendered it inadvisable to introduce such subjects at present, or even to lead him to speak at all more than was actually necessary. I was content to minister to him in quiet, and infinitely happy in his restored affection. He seemed desirous of banishing from his mind all thoughts of the last few months, but spoke much of the years before he had gone to Oxford, and of happy days which we had spent together in our childhood at Worth Maltravers. His weakness was extreme, but he complained of no particular malady except a short cough which troubled him at night. I had spoken to him of his health, for I could see that his state was such as to inspire anxiety, and begged that he would allow me to see if there was an English doctor at Naples who could visit him. This he would not assent to, saying that he was quite content with the care of an Italian doctor who visited him almost daily, and that he hoped to be able, under my escort, to return within a very short time to England. "I shall never be much better, dear Sophy," he said one day. "The doctor tells me that I am suffering from some sort of consumption, and that I must not expect to live long. Yet I yearn to see Worth once more, and to feel again the west winds blowing in the evening across from Portland, and smell the thyme on the Dorset downs. In a few days I hope perhaps to be a little stronger, and I then wish to show you a discovery which I have made in Naples. After that you may order them to harness the horses, and carry me back to Worth Maltravers." I endeavoured to ascertain from Signor Baravelli, the doctor, something as to the actual state of his patient; but my knowledge of Italian was so slight that I could neither make him understand what I would be at, nor comprehend in turn what he replied, so that this attempt was relinquished. From my brother himself I gathered that he had begun to feel his health much impaired as far back as the early spring, but though his strength had since then gradually failed him, he had not been confined to the house until a month past. He spent the day and often the night reclining on his sofa and speaking little. He had apparently lost the taste for the violin which had once absorbed so much of his attention; indeed I think the bodily strength necessary for its performance had probably now failed him. The Stradivarius instrument lay near his couch in its case; but I only saw the latter open on one occasion, I think, and was deeply thankful that John no longer took the same delight as heretofore in the practice of this art,--not only because the mere sound of his violin was now fraught to me with such bitter memories, but also because I felt sure that its performance had in some way which I could not explain a deleterious effect upon himself. He exhibited that absence of vitality which is so often noticeable in those who have not long to live, and on some days lay in a state of semi-lethargy from which it was difficult to rouse him. But at other times he suffered from a distressing restlessness which forbade him to sit still even for a few minutes, and which was more painful to watch than his lethargic stupor. The Italian boy, of whom I have already spoken, exhibited an untiring devotion to his master which won my heart. His name was Raffaelle Carotenuto, and he often sang to us in the evening, accompanying himself on the mandoline. At nights, too, when John could not sleep, Raffaelle would read for hours till at last his master dozed off. He was well educated, and though I could not understand the subject he read, I often sat by and listened, being charmed with his evident attachment to my brother and with the melodious intonation of a sweet voice. My brother was nervous apparently in some respects, and would never be left alone even for a few minutes; but in the intervals while Raffaelle was with him I had ample opportunity to examine and appreciate the beauties of the Villa de Angelis. It was built, as I have said, on some rocks jutting into the sea, just before coming to the Capo di Posilipo as you proceed from Naples. The earlier foundations were, I believe, originally Roman, and upon them a modern villa had been constructed in the eighteenth century, and to this again John had made important additions in the past two years. Looking down upon the sea from the windows of the villa, one could on calm days easily discern the remains of Roman piers and moles lying below the surface of the transparent water; and the tufa-rock on which the house was built was burrowed with those unintelligible excavations of a classic date so common in the neighbourhood. These subterraneous rooms and passages, while they aroused my curiosity, seemed at the same time so gloomy and repellent that I never explored them. But on one sunny morning, as I walked at the foot of the rocks by the sea, I ventured into one of the larger of these chambers, and saw that it had at the far end an opening leading apparently to an inner room. I had walking with me an old Italian female servant who took a motherly interest in my proceedings, and who, relying principally upon a very slight knowledge of English, had constituted herself my body-guard. Encouraged by her presence, I penetrated this inner room and found that it again opened in turn into another, and so on until we had passed through no less than four chambers. They were all lighted after a fashion through vent-holes which somewhere or other reached the outer air, but the fourth room opened into a fifth which was unlighted. My companion, who had been showing signs of alarm and an evident reluctance to proceed further, now stopped abruptly and begged me to return. It may have been that her fear communicated itself to me also, for on attempting to cross the threshold and explore the darkness of the fifth cell, I was seized by an unreasoning panic and by the feeling of undefined horror experienced in a nightmare. I hesitated for an instant, but my fear became suddenly more intense, and springing back, I followed my companion, who had set out to run back to the outer air. We never paused until we stood panting in the full sunlight by the sea. As soon as the maid had found her breath, she begged me never to go there again, explaining in broken English that the caves were known in the neighbourhood as the "Cells of Isis," and were reputed to be haunted by demons. This episode, trifling as it may appear, had so great an effect upon me that I never again ventured on to the lower walk which ran at the foot of the rocks by the sea. In the house above, my brother had built a large hall after the ancient Roman style, and this, with a dining-room and many other chambers, were decorated in the fashion of those discovered at Pompeii. They had been furnished with the utmost luxury, and the beauty of the paintings, furniture, carpets, and hangings was enhanced by statues in bronze and marble. The villa, indeed, and its fittings were of a kind to which I was little used, and at the same time of such beauty that I never ceased to regard all as a creation of an enchanter's wand, or as the drop-scene to some drama which might suddenly be raised and disappear from my sight. The house, in short, together with its furniture, was, I believe, intended to be a reproduction of an ancient Roman villa, and had something about it repellent to my rustic and insular ideas. In the contemplation of its perfection I experienced a curious mental sensation, which I can only compare to the physical oppression produced on some persons by the heavy and cloying perfume of a bouquet of gardenias or other too highly scented exotics. In my brother's room was a medieval reproduction in mellow alabaster of a classic group of a dolphin encircling a Cupid. It was, I think, the fairest work of art I ever saw, but it jarred upon my sense of propriety that close by it should hang an ivory crucifix. I would rather, I think, have seen all things material and pagan entirely, with every view of the future life shut out, than have found a medley of things sacred and profane, where the emblems of our highest hopes and aspirations were placed in insulting indifference side by side with the embodied forms of sensuality. Here, in this scene of magical beauty, it seemed to me for a moment that the years had rolled back, that Christianity had still to fight with a _living_ Paganism, and that the battle was not yet won. It was the same all through the house; and there were many other matters which filled me with regret, mingled with vague and apprehensive surmises which I shall not here repeat. At one end of the house was a small library, but it contained few works except Latin and Greek classics. I had gone thither one day to look for a book that John had asked for, when in turning out some drawers I found a number of letters written from Worth by my lost Constance to her husband. The shock of being brought suddenly face to face with a handwriting that evoked memories at once so dear and sad was in itself a sharp one; but its bitterness was immeasurably increased by the discovery that not one of these envelopes had ever been opened. While that dear heart, now at rest, was pouring forth her love and sorrow to the ears that should have been above all others ready to receive them, her letters, as they arrived, were flung uncared for, unread, even unopened, into any haphazard receptacle. The days passed one by one at the Villa de Angelis with but little incident, nor did my brother's health either visibly improve or decline. Though the weather was still more than usually warm, a grateful breeze came morning and evening from the sea and tempered the heat so much as to render it always supportable. John would sometimes in the evening sit propped up with cushions on the trellised balcony looking towards Baia, and watch the fishermen setting their nets. We could hear the melody of their deep-voiced songs carried up on the night air. "It was here, Sophy," my brother said, as we sat one evening looking on a scene like this,--"It was here that the great epicure Pollio built himself a famous house, and called it by two Greek words meaning a 'truce to care,' from which our name of Posilipo is derived. It was his _sans-souci_, and here he cast aside his vexations; but they were lighter than mine. Posilipo has brought no cessation of care to me. I do not think I shall find any truce this side the grave; and beyond, who knows?" This was the first time John had spoken in this strain, and he seemed stirred to an unusual activity, as though his own words had suddenly reminded him how frail was his state. He called Raffaelle to him and despatched him on an errand to Naples. The next morning he sent for me earlier than usual, and begged that a carriage might be ready by six in the evening, as he desired to drive into the city. I tried at first to dissuade him from his project, urging him to consider his weak state of health. He replied that he felt somewhat stronger, and had something that he particularly wished me to see in Naples. This done, it would be better to return at once to England: he could, he thought, bear the journey if we travelled by very short stages. CHAPTER XIV Shortly after six o'clock in the evening we left the Villa de Angelis. The day had been as usual cloudlessly serene; but a gentle sea-breeze, of which I have spoken, rose in the afternoon and brought with it a refreshing coolness. We had arranged a sort of couch in the landau with many cushions for my brother, and he mounted into the carriage with more ease than I had expected. I sat beside him, with Raffaelle facing me on the opposite seat. We drove down the hill of Posilipo through the ilex-trees and tamarisk-bushes that then skirted the sea, and so into the town. John spoke little except to remark that the carriage was an easy one. As we were passing through one of the principal streets he bent over to me and said, "You must not be alarmed if I show you to-day a strange sight. Some women might perhaps be frightened at what we are going to see; but my poor sister has known already so much of trouble that a light thing like this will not affect her." In spite of his encomiums upon my supposed courage, I felt alarmed and agitated by his words. There was a vagueness in them which frightened me, and bred that indefinite apprehension which is often infinitely more terrifying than the actual object which inspires it. To my inquiries he would give no further response than to say that he had whilst at Posilipo made some investigations in Naples leading to a strange discovery, which he was anxious to communicate to me. After traversing a considerable distance, we had penetrated apparently into the heart of the town. The streets grew narrower and more densely thronged; the houses were more dirty and tumbledown, and the appearance of the people themselves suggested that we had reached some of the lower quarters of the city. Here we passed through a further network of small streets of the name of which I took no note, and found ourselves at last in a very dark and narrow lane called the _Via del Giardino_. Although my brother had, so far as I had observed, given no orders to the coachman, the latter seemed to have no difficulty in finding his way, driving rapidly in the Neapolitan fashion, and proceeding direct as to a place with which he was already familiar. In the Via del Giardino the houses were of great height, and overhung the street so as nearly to touch one another. It seemed that this quarter had been formerly inhabited, if not by the aristocracy, at least by a class very much superior to that which now lived there; and many of the houses were large and dignified, though long since parcelled out into smaller tenements. It was before such a house that we at last brought up. Here must have been at one time a house or palace of some person of distinction, having a long and fine façade adorned with delicate pilasters, and much florid ornamentation of the Renaissance period. The ground-floor was divided into a series of small shops, and its upper storeys were evidently peopled by sordid families of the lowest class. Before one of these little shops, now closed and having its windows carefully blocked with boards, our carriage stopped. Raffaelle alighted, and taking a key from his pocket unlocked the door, and assisted John to leave the carriage. I followed, and directly we had crossed the threshold, the boy locked the door behind us, and I heard the carriage drive away. We found ourselves in a narrow and dark passage, and as soon as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom I perceived there was at the end of it a low staircase leading to some upper room, and on the right a door which opened into the closed shop. My brother moved slowly along the passage, and began to ascend the stairs. He leant with one hand on Raffaelle's arm, taking hold of the balusters with the other. But I could see that to mount the stairs cost him considerable effort, and he paused frequently to cough and get his breath again. So we reached a landing at the top, and found ourselves in a small chamber or magazine directly over the shop. It was quite empty except for a few broken chairs, and appeared to be a small loft formed by dividing what had once been a high room into two storeys, of which the shop formed the lower. A long window, which had no doubt once formed one of several in the walls of this large room, was now divided across its width by the flooring, and with its upper part served to light the loft, while its lower panes opened into the shop. The ceiling was, in consequence of these alterations, comparatively low, but though much mutilated, retained evident traces of having been at one time richly decorated, with the raised mouldings and pendants common in the sixteenth century. At one end of the loft was a species of coved and elaborately carved dado, of which the former use was not obvious; but the large original room had without doubt been divided in length as well as in height, as the lath-and-plaster walls at either end of the loft had evidently been no part of the ancient structure. My brother sat down in one of the old chairs, and seemed to be collecting his strength before speaking. My anxiety was momentarily increasing, and it was a great relief when he began, talking in a low voice as one that had much to say and wished to husband his strength. "I do not know whether you will recollect my having told you of something Mr. Gaskell once said about the music of Graziani's 'Areopagita' suite. It had always, he used to say, a curious effect upon his imagination, and the melody of the _Gagliarda_ especially called up to his thoughts in some strange way a picture of a certain hall where people were dancing. He even went so far as to describe the general appearance of the room itself, and of the persons who were dancing there." "Yes," I answered, "I remember your telling me of this;" and indeed my memory had in times past so often rehearsed Mr. Gaskell's description that, although I had not recently thought of it, its chief features immediately returned to my mind. "He described it," my brother continued, "as a long hall with an arcade of arches running down one side, of the fantastic Gothic of the Renaissance. At the end was a gallery or balcony for the musicians, which on its front carried a coat of arms." I remembered this perfectly and told John so, adding that the shield bore a cherub's head fanning three lilies on a golden field. "It is strange," John went on, "that the description of a scene which our friend thought a mere effort of his own imagination has impressed itself so deeply on both our minds. But the picture which he drew was more than a fancy, for we are at this minute in the very hall of his dream." I could not gather what my brother meant, and thought his reason was failing him; but he continued, "This miserable floor on which we stand has of course been afterwards built in; but you see above you the old ceiling, and here at the end was the musicians' gallery with the shield upon its front." He pointed to the carved and whitewashed dado which had hitherto so puzzled me. I stepped up to it, and although the lath-and-plaster partition wall was now built around it, it was clear that its curved outline might very easily, as John said, have formed part of the front of a coved gallery. I looked closer at the relief-work which had adorned it. Though the edges were all rubbed off, and the mouldings in some cases entirely removed, I could trace without difficulty a shield in the midst; and a more narrow inspection revealed underneath the whitewash, which had partly peeled away, enough remnants of colour to show that it had certainly been once painted gold and borne a cherub's head with three lilies. "That is the shield of the old Neapolitan house of Doma-Cavalli," my brother continued; "they bore a cherub's head fanning three lilies on a shield or. It was in the balcony behind this shield, long since blocked up as you see, that the musicians sat on that ball night of which Gaskell dreamt. From it they looked down on the hall below where dancing was going forward, and I will now take you downstairs that you may see if the description tallies." So saying, he raised himself, and descending the stairs with much less difficulty than he had shown in mounting them, flung open the door which I had seen in the passage and ushered us into the shop on the ground-floor. The evening light had now faded so much that we could scarcely see even in the passage, and the shop having its windows barricaded with shutters, was in complete darkness. Raffaelle, however, struck a match and lit three half-burnt candles in a tarnished sconce upon the wall. The shop had evidently been lately in the occupation of a wine-seller, and there were still several empty wooden wine-butts, and some broken flasks on shelves. In one corner I noticed that the earth which formed the floor had been turned up with spades. There was a small heap of mould, and a large flat stone was thus exposed below the surface. This stone had an iron ring attached to it, and seemed to cover the aperture of a well, or perhaps a vault. At the back of the shop, and furthest from the street, were two lofty arches separated by a column in the middle, from which the outside casing had been stripped. To these arches John pointed and said, "That is a part of the arcade which once ran down the whole length of the hall. Only these two arches are now left, and the fine marbles which doubtless coated the outside of this dividing pillar have been stripped off. On a summer's night about one hundred years ago dancing was going on in this hall. There were a dozen couples dancing a wild step such as is never seen now. The tune that the musicians were playing in the gallery above was taken from the 'Areopagita' suite of Graziani. Gaskell has often told me that when he played it the music brought with it to his mind a sense of some impending catastrophe, which culminated at the end of the first movement of the _Gagliarda_. It was just at that moment, Sophy, that an Englishman who was dancing here was stabbed in the back and foully murdered." I had scarcely heard all that John had said, and had certainly not been able to take in its import; but without waiting to hear if I should say anything, he moved across to the uncovered stone with the ring in it. Exerting a strength which I should have believed entirely impossible in his weak condition, he applied to the stone a lever which lay ready at hand. Raffaelle at the same time seized the ring, and so they were able between them to move the covering to one side sufficiently to allow access to a small staircase which thus appeared to view. The stair was a winding one, and once led no doubt to some vaults below the ground-floor. Raffaelle descended first, taking in his hand the sconce of three candles, which he held above his head so as to fling a light down the steps. John went next, and then I followed, trying to support my brother if possible with my hand. The stairs were very dry, and on the walls there was none of the damp or mould which fancy usually associates with a subterraneous vault. I do not know what it was I expected to see, but I had an uneasy feeling that I was on the brink of some evil and distressing discovery. After we had descended about twenty steps we could see the entry to some vault or underground room, and it was just at the foot of the stairs that I saw something lying, as the light from the candles fell on it from above. At first I thought it was a heap of dust or refuse, but on looking closer it seemed rather a bundle of rags. As my eyes penetrated the gloom, I saw there was about it some tattered cloth of a faded green tint, and almost at the same minute I seemed to trace under the clothes the lines or dimensions of a human figure. For a moment I imagined it was some poor man lying face downwards and bent up against the wall. The idea of a man or of a dead body being there shocked me violently, and I cried to my brother, "Tell me, what is it?" At that instant the light from. Raffaelle's candles fell in a somewhat different direction. It lighted up the white bowl of a human skull, and I saw that what I had taken for a man's form was instead that of a clothed skeleton. I turned faint and sick for an instant, and should have fallen had it not been for John, who put his arm about me and sustained me with an unexpected strength. "God help us!" I exclaimed, "let us go. I cannot bear this; there are foul vapours here; let us get back to the outer air." He took me by the arm, and pointing at the huddled heap, said, "Do you know whose bones those are? That is Adrian Temple. After it was all over, they flung his body down the steps, dressed in the clothes he wore." At that name, uttered in so ill-omened a place, I felt a fresh access of terror. It seemed as though the soul of that wicked man must be still hovering over his unburied remains, and boding evil to us all. A chill crept over me, the light, the walls, my brother, and Raffaelle all swam round, and I sank swooning on the stairs. When I returned fully to my senses we were in the landau again making our way back to the Villa de Angelis. CHAPTER XV The next morning my health and strength were entirely restored to me, but my brother, on the contrary, seemed weak and exhausted from his efforts of the previous night. Our return journey to the Villa de Angelis had passed in complete silence. I had been too much perturbed to question him on the many points relating to the strange events as to which I was still completely in the dark, and he on his side had shown no desire to afford me any further information. When I saw him the next morning he exhibited signs of great weakness, and in response to an effort on my part to obtain some explanation of the discovery of Adrian Temple's body, avoided an immediate reply, promising to tell me all he knew after our return to Worth Maltravers. I pondered over the last terrifying episode very frequently in my own mind, and as I thought more deeply of it all, it seemed to me that the outlines of some evil history were piece by piece developing themselves, that I had almost within my grasp the clue that would make all plain, and that had eluded me so long. In that dim story Adrian Temple, the music of the _Gagliarda_, my brother's fatal passion for the violin, all seemed to have some mysterious connection, and to have conspired in working John's mental and physical ruin. Even the Stradivarius violin bore a part in the tragedy, becoming, as it were, an actively malignant spirit, though I could not explain how, and was yet entirely unaware of the manner in which it had come into my brother's possession. I found that John was still resolved on an immediate return to England. His weakness, it is true, led me to entertain doubts as to how he would support so long a journey; but at the same time I did not feel justified in using any strong efforts to dissuade him from his purpose. I reflected that the more wholesome air and associations of England would certainly re-invigorate both body and mind, and that any extra strain brought about by the journey would soon be repaired by the comforts and watchful care with which we could surround him at Worth Maltravers. So the first week in October saw us once more with our faces set towards England. A very comfortable swinging-bed or hammock had been arranged for John in the travelling carriage, and we determined to avoid fatigue as much as possible by dividing our journey into very short stages. My brother seemed to have no intention of giving up the Villa de Angelis. It was left complete with its luxurious furniture, and with all his servants, under the care of an Italian _maggior-duomo_. I felt that as John's state of health forbade his entertaining any hope of an immediate return thither, it would have been much better to close entirely his Italian house. But his great weakness made it impossible for him to undertake the effort such a course would involve, and even if my own ignorance of the Italian tongue had not stood in the way, I was far too eager to get my invalid back to Worth to feel inclined to import any further delay, while I should myself adjust matters which were after all comparatively trifling. As Parnham was now ready to discharge his usual duties of valet, and as my brother seemed quite content that he should do so, Raffaelle was of course to be left behind. The boy had quite won my heart by his sweet manners, combined with his evident affection to his master, and in making him understand that he was now to leave us, I offered him a present of a few pounds as a token of my esteem. He refused, however, to touch this money, and shed tears when he learnt that he was to be left in Italy, and begged with many protestations of devotion that he might be allowed to accompany us to England. My heart was not proof against his entreaties, supported by so many signs of attachment, and it was agreed, therefore, that he should at least attend us as far as Worth Maltravers. John showed no surprise at the boy being with us; indeed I never thought it necessary to explain that I had originally purposed to leave him behind. Our journey, though necessarily prolonged by the shortness of its stages, was safely accomplished. John bore it as well as I could have hoped, and though his body showed no signs of increased vigour, his mind, I think, improved in tone, at any rate for a time. From the evening on which he had shown me the terrible discovery in the Via del Giardino he seemed to have laid aside something of his care and depression. He now exhibited little trace of the moroseness and selfishness which had of late so marred his character; and though he naturally felt severely at times the fatigue of travel, yet we had no longer to dread any relapse into that state of lethargy or stupor which had so often baffled every effort to counteract it at Posilipo. Some feeling of superstitious aversion had prompted me to give orders that the Stradivarius violin should be left behind at Posilipo. But before parting my brother asked for it, and insisted that it should be brought with him, though I had never heard him play a note on it for many weeks. He took an interest in all the petty episodes of travel, and certainly appeared to derive more entertainment from the journey than was to have been anticipated in his feeble state of health. To the incidents of the evening spent in the Via del Giardino he made no allusion of any kind, nor did I for my part wish to renew memories of so unpleasant a nature. His only reference occurred one Sunday evening as we were passing a small graveyard near Genoa. The scene apparently turned his thoughts to that subject, and he told me that he had taken measures before leaving Naples to ensure that the remains of Adrian Temple should be decently interred in the cemetery of Santa Bibiana. His words set me thinking again, and unsatisfied curiosity prompted me strongly to inquire of him how he had convinced himself that the skeleton at the foot of the stairs was indeed that of Adrian Temple. But I restrained myself, partly from a reliance on his promise that he would one day explain the whole story to me, and partly being very reluctant to mar the enjoyment of the peaceful scenes through which we were passing, by the introduction of any subjects so jarring and painful as those to which I have alluded. We reached London at last, and here we stopped a few days to make some necessary arrangements before going down to Worth Maltravers. I had urged upon John during the journey that immediately on his arrival in London he should obtain the best English medical advice as to his own health. Though he at first demurred, saying that nothing more was to be done, and that he was perfectly satisfied with the medicine given him by Dr. Baravelli, which he continued to take, yet by constant entreaty I prevailed upon him to accede to so reasonable a request. Dr. Frobisher, considered at that time the first living authority on diseases of the brain and nerves, saw him on the morning after our arrival. He was good enough to speak with me at some length after seeing my brother, and to give me many hints and recipes whereby I might be better enabled to nurse the invalid. Sir John's condition, he said, was such as to excite serious anxiety. There was, indeed, no brain mischief of any kind to be discovered, but his lungs were in a state of advanced disease, and there were signs of grave heart affection. Yet he did not bid me to despair, but said that with careful nursing life might certainly be prolonged, and even some measure of health in time restored. He asked me more than once if I knew of any trouble or worry that preyed upon Sir John's mind. Were there financial difficulties; had he been subjected to any mental shock; had he received any severe fright? To all this I could only reply in the negative. At the same time I told Dr. Frobisher as much of John's history as I considered pertinent to the question. He shook his head gravely, and recommended that Sir John should remain for the present in London, under his own constant supervision. To this course my brother would by no means consent. He was eager to proceed at once to his own house, saying that if necessary we could return again to London for Christmas. It was therefore agreed that we should go down to Worth Maltravers at the end of the week. Parnham had already left us for Worth in order that he might have everything ready against his master's return, and when we arrived we found all in perfect order for our reception. A small morning-room next to the library, with a pleasant south aspect and opening on to the terrace, had been prepared for my brother's use, so that he might avoid the fatigue of mounting stairs, which Dr. Frobisher considered very prejudicial in his present condition. We had also purchased in London a chair fitted with wheels, which enabled him to be moved, or, if he were feeling equal to the exertion, to move himself, without difficulty, from room to room. His health, I think, improved; very gradually, it is true, but still sufficiently to inspire me with hope that he might yet be spared to us. Of the state of his mind or thoughts I knew little, but I could see that he was at times a prey to nervous anxiety. This showed itself in the harassed look which his pale face often wore, and in his marked dislike to being left alone. He derived, I think, a certain pleasure from the quietude and monotony of his life at Worth, and perhaps also from the consciousness that he had about him loving and devoted hearts. I say hearts, for every servant at Worth was attached to him, remembering the great consideration and courtesy of his earlier years, and grieving to see his youthful and once vigorous frame reduced to so sad a strait. Books he never read himself, and even the charm of Raffaelle's reading seemed to have lost its power; though he never tired of hearing the boy sing, and liked to have him sit by his chair even when his eyes were shut and he was apparently asleep. His general health seemed to me to change but little either for better or worse. Dr. Frobisher had led me to expect some such a sequel. I had not concealed from him that I had at times entertained suspicions as to my brother's sanity; but he had assured me that they were totally unfounded, that Sir John's brain was as clear as his own. At the same time he confessed that he could not account for the exhausted vitality of his patient,--a condition which he would under ordinary circumstances have attributed to excessive study or severe trouble. He had urged upon me the pressing necessity for complete rest, and for much sleep. My brother never even incidentally referred to his wife, his child, or to Mrs. Temple, who constantly wrote to me from Royston, sending kind messages to John, and asking how he did. These messages I never dared to give him, fearing to agitate him, or retard his recovery by diverting his thoughts into channels which must necessarily be of a painful character. That he should never even mention her name, or that of Lady Maltravers, led me to wonder sometimes if one of those curious freaks of memory which occasionally accompany a severe illness had not entirely blotted out from his mind the recollection of his marriage and of his wife's death. He was unable to consider any affairs of business, and the management of the estate remained as it had done for the last two years in the hands of our excellent agent, Mr. Baker. But one evening in the early part of December he sent Raffaelle about nine o'clock, saying he wished to speak to me. I went to his room, and without any warning he began at once, "You never show me my boy now, Sophy; he must be grown a big child, and I should like to see him." Much startled by so unexpected a remark, I replied that the child was at Royston under the care of Mrs. Temple, but that I knew that if it pleased him to see Edward she would be glad to bring him down to Worth. He seemed gratified with this idea, and begged me to ask her to do so, desiring that his respects should be at the same time conveyed to her. I almost ventured at that moment to recall his lost wife to his thoughts, by saying that his child resembled her strongly; for your likeness at that time, and even now, my dear Edward, to your poor mother was very marked. But my courage failed me, and his talk soon reverted to an earlier period, comparing the mildness of the month to that of the first winter which he spent at Eton. His thoughts, however, must, I fancy, have returned for a moment to the days when he first met your mother, for he suddenly asked, "Where is Gaskell? Why does he never come to see me?" This brought quite a new idea to my mind. I fancied it might do my brother much good to have by him so sensible and true a friend as I knew Mr. Gaskell to be. The latter's address had fortunately not slipped from my memory, and I put all scruples aside and wrote by the next mail to him, setting forth my brother's sad condition, saying that I had heard John mention his name, and begging him on my own account to be so good as to help us if possible and come to us in this hour of trial. Though he was so far off as Westmorland, Mr. Gaskell's generosity brought him at once to our aid, and within a week he was installed at Worth Maltravers, sleeping, in the library, where we had arranged a bed at his own desire, so that he might be near his sick friend. His presence was of the utmost assistance to us all. He treated John at once with the tenderness of a woman and the firmness of a clever and strong man. They sat constantly together in the mornings, and Mr. Gaskell told me John had not shown with him the same reluctance to talk freely of his married life as he had discovered with me. The tenor of his communications I cannot guess, nor did I ever ask; but I knew that Mr. Gaskell was much affected by them. John even amused himself now at times by having Mr. Baker into his rooms of a morning, that the management of the estate might be discussed with his friend; and he also expressed his wish to see the family solicitor, as he desired to draw his will. Thinking that any diversion of this nature could not but be beneficial to him, we sent to Dorchester for our solicitor, Mr. Jeffreys, who together with his clerk spent three nights at Worth, and drew up a testament for my brother. So time went on, and the year was drawing to a close. It was Christmas Eve, and I had gone to bed shortly after twelve o'clock, having an hour earlier bid good night to John and Mr. Gaskell. The long habit of watching with, or being in charge of an invalid at night, had made my ears extraordinarily quick to apprehend even the slightest murmur. It must have been, I think, near three in the morning when I found myself awake and conscious of some unusual sound. It was low and far off, but I knew instantly what it was, and felt a choking sensation of fear and horror, as if an icy hand had gripped my throat, on recognising the air of the _Gagliarda_. It was being played on the violin, and a long way off, but I knew that tune too well to permit of my having any doubt on the subject. Any trouble or fear becomes, as you will some day learn, my dear nephew, immensely intensified and exaggerated at night. It is so, I suppose, because our nerves are in an excited condition, and our brain not sufficiently awake to give a due account of our foolish imaginations. I have myself many times lain awake wrestling in thought with difficulties which in the hours of darkness seemed insurmountable, but with the dawn resolved themselves into merely trivial inconveniences. So on this night, as I sat up in bed looking into the dark, with the sound of that melody in my ears, it seemed as if something too terrible for words had happened; as though the evil spirit, which we had hoped was exorcised, had returned with others sevenfold more wicked than himself, and taken up his abode again with my lost brother. The memory of another night rushed to my mind when Constance had called me from my bed at Royston, and we had stolen together down the moonlit passages with the lilt of that wicked music vibrating on the still summer air. Poor Constance! She was in her grave now; yet _her_ troubles at least were over, but here, as by some bitter irony, instead of carol or sweet symphony, it was the _Gagliarda_ that woke me from my sleep on Christmas morning. I flung my dressing-gown about me, and hurried through the corridor and down the stairs which led to the lower storey and my brother's room. As I opened my bedroom door the violin ceased suddenly in the middle of a bar. Its last sound was not a musical note, but rather a horrible scream, such as I pray I may never hear again. It was a sound such as a wounded beast might utter. There is a picture I have seen of Blake's, showing the soul of a strong wicked man leaving his body at death. The spirit is flying out through the window with awful staring eyes, aghast at the desolation into which it is going. If in the agony of dissolution such a lost soul could utter a cry, it would, I think, sound like the wail which I heard from the violin that night. Instantly all was in absolute stillness. The passages were silent and ghostly in the faint light of my candle; but as I reached the bottom of the stairs I heard the sound of other footsteps, and Mr. Gaskell met me. He was fully dressed, and had evidently not been to bed. He took me kindly by the hand and said, "I feared you might be alarmed by the sound of music. John has been walking in his sleep; he had taken out his violin and was playing on it in a trance. Just as I reached him something in it gave way, and the discord caused by the slackened strings roused him at once. He is awake now and has returned to bed. Control your alarm for his sake and your own. It is better that he should not know you have been awakened." He pressed my hand and spoke a few more reassuring words, and I went back to my room still much agitated, and yet feeling half ashamed for having shown so much anxiety with so little reason. That Christmas morning was one of the most beautiful that I ever remember. It seemed as though summer was so loath to leave our sunny Dorset coast that she came back on this day to bid us adieu before her final departure. I had risen early and had partaken of the Sacrament at our little church. Dr. Butler had recently introduced this early service, and though any alteration of time-honoured customs in such matters might not otherwise have met with my approval, I was glad to avail myself of the privilege on this occasion, as I wished in any case to spend the later morning with my brother. The singular beauty of the early hours, and the tranquillising effect of the solemn service brought back serenity to my mind, and effectually banished from it all memories of the preceding night. Mr. Gaskell met me in the hall on my return, and after greeting me kindly with the established compliments of the day, inquired after my health, and hoped that the disturbance of my slumber on the previous night had not affected me injuriously. He had good news for me: John seemed decidedly better, was already dressed, and desired, as it was Christmas morning, that we would take our breakfast with him in his room. To this, as you may imagine, I readily assented. Our breakfast party passed off with much content, and even with some quiet humour, John sitting in his easy-chair at the head of the table and wishing us the compliments of the season. I found laid in my place a letter from Mrs. Temple greeting us all (for she knew Mr. Gaskell was at Worth), and saying that she hoped to bring little Edward to us at the New Year. My brother seemed much pleased at the prospect of seeing his son, and though perhaps it was only imagination, I fancied he was particularly gratified that Mrs. Temple herself was to pay us a visit. She had not been to Worth since the death of Lady Maltravers. Before we had finished breakfast the sun beat on the panes with an unusual strength and brightness. His rays cheered us all, and it was so warm that John first opened the windows, and then wheeled his chair on to the walk outside. Mr. Gaskell brought him a hat and mufflers, and we sat with him on the terrace basking in the sun. The sea was still and glassy as a mirror, and the Channel lay stretched before us like a floor of moving gold. A rose or two still hung against the house, and the sun's rays reflected from the red sandstone gave us a December morning more mild and genial than many June days that I have known in the north. We sat for some minutes without speaking, immersed in our own reflections and in the exquisite beauty of the scene. The stillness was broken by the bells of the parish church ringing for the morning service. There were two of them, and their sound, familiar to us from childhood, seemed like the voices of old friends. John looked at me and said with a sigh, "I should like to go to church. It is long since I was there. You and I have always been on Christmas mornings, Sophy, and Constance would have wished it had she been with us." His words, so unexpected and tender, filled my eyes with tears; not tears of grief, but of deep thankfulness to see my loved one turning once more to the old ways. It was the first time I had heard him speak of Constance, and that sweet name, with the infinite pathos of her death, and of the spectacle of my brother's weakness, so overcame me that I could not speak. I only pressed his hand and nodded. Mr. Gaskell, who had turned away for a minute, said he thought John would take no harm in attending the morning service provided the church were warm. On this point I could reassure him, having found it properly heated even in the early morning. Mr. Gaskell was to push John's chair, and I ran off to put on my cloak, with my heart full of profound thankfulness for the signs of returning grace so mercifully vouchsafed to our dear sufferer on this happy day. I was ready dressed and had just entered the library when Mr. Gaskell stepped hurriedly through the window from the terrace. "John has fainted!" he said. "Run for some smelling salts and call Parnham!" There was a scene of hurried alarm, giving place ere long to terrified despair. Parnham mounted a horse and set off at a wild gallop to Swanage to fetch Dr. Bruton; but an hour before he returned we knew the worst. My brother was beyond the aid of the physician: his wrecked life had reached a sudden term! * * * * * I have now, dear Edward, completed the brief narrative of some of the facts attending the latter years of your father's life. The motive which has induced me to commit them to writing has been a double one. I am anxious to give effect as far as may be to the desire expressed most strongly to Mr. Gaskell by your father, that you should be put in possession of these facts on your coming of age. And for my own part I think it better that you should thus hear the plain truth from me, lest you should be at the mercy of haphazard reports, which might at any time reach you from ignorant or interested sources. Some of the circumstances were so remarkable that it is scarcely possible to suppose that they were not known, and most probably frequently discussed, in so large an establishment as that of Worth Maltravers. I even have reason to believe that exaggerated and absurd stories were current at the time of Sir John's death, and I should be grieved to think that such foolish tales might by any chance reach your ear without your having any sure means of discovering where the truth lay. God knows how grievous it has been to me to set down on paper some of the facts that I have here narrated. You as a dutiful son will reverence the name even of a father whom you never knew; but you must remember that his sister did more; she loved him with a single-hearted devotion, and it still grieves her to the quick to write anything which may seem to detract from his memory. Only, above all things, let us speak the truth. Much of what I have told you needs, I feel, further explanation, but this I cannot give, for I do not understand the circumstances. Mr. Gaskell, your guardian, will, I believe, add to this account a few notes of his own, which may tend to elucidate some points, as he is in possession of certain facts of which I am still ignorant. MR. GASKELL'S NOTE I have read what Miss Maltravers has written, and have but little to add to it. I can give no explanation that will tally with all the facts or meet all the difficulties involved in her narrative. The most obvious solution of some points would be, of course, to suppose that Sir John Maltravers was insane. But to anyone who knew him as intimately as I did, such an hypothesis is untenable; nor, if admitted, would it explain some of the strangest incidents. Moreover, it was strongly negatived by Dr. Frobisher, from whose verdict in such matters there was at the time no appeal, by Dr. Dobie, and by Dr. Bruton, who had known Sir John from his infancy. It is possible that towards the close of his life he suffered occasionally from hallucination, though I could not positively affirm even so much; but this was only when his health had been completely undermined by causes which are very difficult to analyse. When I first knew him at Oxford he was a strong man physically as well as mentally; open-hearted, and of a merry and genial temperament. At the same time he was, like most cultured persons--and especially musicians,--highly strung and excitable. But at a certain point in his career his very nature seemed to change; he became reserved, secretive, and saturnine. On this moral metamorphosis followed an equally startling physical change. His robust health began to fail him, and although there was no definite malady which doctors could combat, he went gradually from bad to worse until the end came. The commencement of this extraordinary change coincided, I believe, almost exactly with his discovery of the Stradivarius violin; and whether this was, after all, a mere coincidence or something more it is not easy to say. Until a very short time before his death neither Miss Maltravers nor I had any idea how that instrument had come into his possession, or I think something might perhaps have been done to save him. Though towards the end of his life he spoke freely to his sister of the finding of the violin, he only told her half the story, for he concealed from her entirely that there was anything else in the hidden cupboard at Oxford. But as a matter of fact, he had found there also two manuscript books containing an elaborate diary of some years of a man's life. That man was Adrian Temple, and I believe that in the perusal of this diary must be sought the origin of John Maltravers's ruin. The manuscript was beautifully written in a clear but cramped eighteenth century hand, and gave the idea of a man writing with deliberation, and wishing to transcribe his impressions with accuracy for further reference. The style was excellent, and the minute details given were often of high antiquarian interest; but the record throughout was marred by gross licence. Adrian Temple's life had undoubtedly so definite an influence on Sir John's that a brief outline of it, as gathered from his diaries, is necessary for the understanding of what followed. Temple went up to Oxford in 1737. He was seventeen years old, without parents, brothers, or sisters; and he possessed the Royston estates in Derbyshire, which were then, as now, a most valuable property. With the year 1738 his diaries begin, and though then little more than a boy, he had tasted every illicit pleasure that Oxford had to offer. His temptations were no doubt great; for besides being wealthy he was handsome, and had probably never known any proper control, as both his parents had died when he was still very young. But in spite of other failings, he was a brilliant scholar, and on taking his degree, was made at once a fellow of St. John's. He took up his abode in that College in a fine set of rooms looking on to the gardens, and from this period seems to have used Royston but little, living always either at Oxford or on the Continent. He formed at this time the acquaintance of one Jocelyn, whom he engaged as companion and amanuensis. Jocelyn was a man of talent, but of irregular life, and was no doubt an accomplice in many of Temple's excesses. In 1743 they both undertook the so-called "grand tour," and though it was not his first visit, it was then probably that Temple first felt the fascination of pagan Italy,--a fascination which increased with every year of his after-life. On his return from foreign travel he found himself among the stirring events of 1745. He was an ardent supporter of the Pretender, and made no attempt to conceal his views. Jacobite tendencies were indeed generally prevalent in the College at the time, and had this been the sum of his offending, it is probable that little notice would have been taken by the College authorities. But his notoriously wild life told against the young man, and certain dark suspicions were not easily passed over. After the _fiasco_ of the Rebellion Dr. Holmes, then President of the College, seems to have made a scapegoat of Temple. He was deprived of his fellowship, and though not formally expelled, such pressure was put upon him as resulted in his leaving St. John's and removing to Magdalen Hall. There his great wealth evidently secured him consideration, and he was given the best rooms in the Hall, that very set looking on to New College Lane which Sir John Maltravers afterwards occupied. In the first half of the eighteenth century the romance of the middle ages, though dying, was not dead, and the occult sciences still found followers among the Oxford towers. From his early years Temple's mind seems to have been set strongly towards mysticism of all kinds, and he and Jocelyn were versed in the jargon of the alchemist and astrologer, and practised according to the ancient rules. It was his reputation as a necromancer, and the stories current of illicit rites performed in the garden-rooms at St. John's, that contributed largely to his being dismissed from that College. He had also become acquainted with Francis Dashwood, the notorious Lord le Despencer, and many a winter's night saw him riding through the misty Thames meadows to the door of the sham Franciscan abbey. In his diaries were more notices than one of the "Franciscans" and the nameless orgies of Medmenham. He was devoted to music. It was a rare enough accomplishment then, and a rarer thing still to find a wealthy landowner performing on the violin. Yet so he did, though he kept his passion very much to himself, as fiddling was thought lightly of in those days. His musical skill was altogether exceptional, and he was the first possessor of the Stradivarius violin which afterwards fell so unfortunately into Sir John's hands. This violin Temple bought in the autumn of 1738, on the occasion of a first visit to Italy. In that year died the nonagenarian Antonius Stradivarius, the greatest violin-maker the world has ever seen. After Stradivarius's death the stock of fiddles in his shop was sold by auction. Temple happened to be travelling in Cremona at the time with a tutor, and at the auction he bought that very instrument which we afterwards had cause to know so well. A note in his diary gave its cost at four louis, and said that a curious history attached to it. Though it was of his golden period, and probably the finest instrument he ever made, Stradivarius would never sell it, and it had hung for more than thirty years in his shop. It was said that from some whim as he lay dying he had given orders that it should be burnt; but if that were so, the instructions were neglected, and after his death it came under the hammer. Adrian Temple from the first recognised the great value of the instrument. His notes show that he only used it on certain special occasions, and it was no doubt for its better protection that he devised the hidden cupboard where Sir John eventually found it. The later years of Temple's life were spent for the most part in Italy. On the Scoglio di Venere, near Naples, he built the Villa de Angelis, and there henceforth passed all except the hottest months of the year. Shortly after the completion of the villa Jocelyn left him suddenly, and became a Carthusian monk. A caustic note in his diary hinted that even this foul parasite was shocked into the austerest form of religion by something he had seen going forward. At Naples Temple's dark life became still darker. He dallied, it is true, with Neo-Platonism, and boasts that he, like Plotinus, had twice passed the circle of the _nous_ and enjoyed the fruition of the deity; but the ideals of even that easy doctrine grew in his evil life still more miserably debased. More than once in the manuscript he made mention by name of the _Gagliarda_ of Graziani as having been played at pagan mysteries which these enthusiasts revived at Naples, and the air had evidently impressed itself deeply on his memory. The last entry in his diary is made on the 16th of December, 1752. He was then in Oxford for a few days, but shortly afterwards returned to Naples. The accident of his having just completed a second volume, induced him, no doubt, to leave it behind him in the secret cupboard. It is probable that he commenced a third, but if so it was never found. In reading the manuscript I was struck with the author's clear and easy style, and found the interest of the narrative increase rather than diminish. At the same time its study was inexpressibly painful to me. Nothing could have supported me in my determination to thoroughly master it but the conviction that if I was to be of any real assistance to my poor friend Maltravers, I must know as far as possible every circumstance connected with his malady. As it was, I felt myself breathing an atmosphere of moral contagion during the perusal of the manuscript, and certain passages have since returned at times to haunt me in spite of all efforts to dislodge them from my memory. When I came to Worth at Miss Maltravers's urgent invitation, I found my friend Sir John terribly altered. It was not only that he was ill and physically weak, but he had entirely lost the manner of youth, which, though indefinable, is yet so appreciable, and draws so sharp a distinction between the first period of life and middle age. But the most striking feature of his illness was the extraordinary pallor of his complexion, which made his face resemble a subtle counterfeit of white wax rather than that of a living man. He welcomed me undemonstratively, but with evident sincerity; and there was an entire absence of the constraint which often accompanies the meeting again of friends whose cordial relations have suffered interruption. From the time of my arrival at Worth until his death we were constantly together; indeed I was much struck by the almost childish dislike which he showed to be left alone even for a few moments. As night approached this feeling became intensified. Parnham slept always in his master's room; but if anything called the servant away even for a minute, he would send for Carotenuto or myself to be with him until his return. His nerves were weak; he started violently at any unexpected noise, and above all, he dreaded being in the dark. When night fell he had additional lamps brought into his room, and even when he composed himself to sleep, insisted on a strong light being kept by his bedside. I had often read in books of people wearing a "hunted" expression, and had laughed at the phrase as conventional and unmeaning. But when I came to Worth I knew its truth; for if any face ever wore a hunted--I had almost written a haunted--look, it was the white face of Sir John Maltravers. His air seemed that of a man who was constantly expecting the arrival of some evil tidings, and at times reminded me painfully of the guilty expectation of a felon who knows that a warrant is issued for his arrest. During my visit he spoke to me frequently about his past life, and instead of showing any reluctance to discuss the subject, seemed glad of the opportunity of disburdening his mind. I gathered from him that the reading of Adrian Temple's memoirs had made a deep impression on his mind, which was no doubt intensified by the vision which he thought he saw in his rooms at Oxford, and by the discovery of the portrait at Royston. Of those singular phenomena I have no explanation to offer. The romantic element in his disposition rendered him peculiarly susceptible to the fascination of that mysticism which breathed through Temple's narrative. He told me that almost from the first time he read it he was filled with a longing to visit the places and to revive the strange life of which it spoke. This inclination he kept at first in check, but by degrees it gathered strength enough to master him. There is no doubt in my mind that the music of the _Gagliarda_ of Graziani helped materially in this process of mental degradation. It is curious that Michael Prætorius in the "Syntagma musicum" should speak of the Galliard generally as an "invention of the devil, full of shameful and licentious gestures and immodest movements," and the singular melody of the _Gagliarda_ in the "Areopagita" suite certainly exercised from the first a strange influence over me. I shall not do more than touch on the question here, because I see Miss Maltravers has spoken of it at length, and will only say, that though since the day of Sir John's death I have never heard a note of it, the air is still fresh in my mind, and has at times presented itself to me unexpectedly, and always with an unwholesome effect. This I have found happen generally in times of physical depression, and the same air no doubt exerted a similar influence on Sir John, which his impressionable nature rendered from the first more deleterious to him. I say this advisedly, because I am sure that if some music is good for man and elevates him, other melodies are equally bad and enervating. An experience far wider than any we yet possess is necessary to enable us to say how far this influence is capable of extension. How far, that is, the mind may be directed on the one hand to ascetic abnegation by the systematic use of certain music, or on the other to illicit and dangerous pleasures by melodies of an opposite tendency. But this much is, I think, certain, that after a comparatively advanced standard of culture has once been attained, music is the readiest if not the only key which admits to the yet narrower circle of the highest imaginative thought. On the occasion for travel afforded him by his honeymoon, an impulse which he could not at the time explain, but which after-events have convinced me was the haunting suggestion of the _Gagliarda_, drove him to visit the scenes mentioned so often in Temple's diary. He had always been an excellent scholar, and a classic of more than ordinary ability. Rome and Southern Italy filled him with a strange delight. His education enabled him to appreciate to the full what he saw; he peopled the stage with the figures of the original actors, and tried to assimilate his thought to theirs. He began reading classical literature widely, no longer from the scholarly but the literary standpoint. In Rome he spent much time in the librarians' shops, and there met with copies of the numerous authors of the later empire and of those Alexandrine philosophers which are rarely seen in England. In these he found a new delight and fresh food for his mysticism. Such study, if carried to any extent, is probably dangerous to the English character, and certainly was to a man of Maltravers's romantic sympathies. This reading produced in time so real an effect upon his mind that if he did not definitely abandon Christianity, as I fear he did, he at least adulterated it with other doctrines till it became to him Neo-Platonism. That most seductive of philosophies, which has enthralled so many minds from Proclus and Julian to Augustine and the Renaissancists, found an easy convert in John Maltravers. Its passionate longing for the vague and undefined good, its tolerance of æsthetic impressions, the pleasant superstitions of its dynamic pantheism, all touched responsive chords in his nature. His mind, he told me, became filled with a measureless yearning for the old culture of pagan philosophy, and as the past became clearer and more real, so the present grew dimmer, and his thoughts were gradually weaned entirely from all the natural objects of affection and interest which should otherwise have occupied them. To what a terrible extent this process went on, Miss Maltravers's narrative shows. Soon after reaching Naples he visited the Villa de Angelis, which Temple had built on the ruins of a sea-house of Pomponius. The later building had in its turn become dismantled and ruinous, and Sir John found no difficulty in buying the site outright. He afterwards rebuilt it on an elaborate scale, endeavouring to reproduce in its equipment the luxury of the later empire. I had occasion to visit the house more than once in my capacity of executor, and found it full of priceless works of art, which, though neither so difficult to procure at that time nor so costly as they would be now, were yet sufficiently valuable to have necessitated an unjustifiable outlay. The situation of the building fostered his infatuation for the past. It lay between the Bay of Naples and the Bay of Baia, and from its windows commanded the same exquisite view which had charmed Cicero and Lucullus, Severus and the Antonines. Hard by stood Baia, the princely seaside resort of the empire. That most luxurious and wanton of all cities of antiquity survived the cataclysms of ages, and only lost its civic continuity and became the ruined village of to-day in the sack of the fifteenth century. But a continuity of wickedness is not so easily broken, and those who know the spot best say that it is still instinct with memories of a shameful past. For miles along that haunted coast the foot cannot be put down except on the ruins of some splendid villa, and over all there broods a spirit of corruption and debasement actually sensible and oppressive. Of the dawns and sunsets, of the noonday sun tempered by the sea-breeze and the shade of scented groves, those who have been there know the charm, and to those who have not no words can describe it. But there are malefic vapours rising from the corpse of a past not altogether buried, and most cultivated Englishmen who tarry there long feel their influence as did John Maltravers. Like so many _decepti deceptores_ of the Neo-Platonic school, he did not practise the abnegation enjoined by the very cult he professed to follow. Though his nature was far too refined, I believe, ever to sink into the sensualism revealed in Temple's diaries, yet it was through the gratification of corporeal tastes that he endeavoured to achieve the divine _extasis_; and there were constantly lavish and sumptuous entertainments at the villa, at which strange guests were present. In such a nightmare of a life it was not to be expected that any mind would find repose, and Maltravers certainly found none. All those cares which usually occupy men's minds, all thoughts of wife, child, and home were, it is true, abandoned; but a wild unrest had hold of him, and never suffered him to be at ease. Though he never told me as much, yet I believe he was under the impression that the form which he had seen at Oxford and Royston had reappeared to him on more than one subsequent occasion. It must have been, I fancy, with a vague hope of "laying" this spectre that he now set himself with eagerness to discover where or how Temple had died. He remembered that Royston tradition said he had succumbed at Naples in the plague of 1752, but an idea seized him that this was not the case; indeed I half suspect his fancy unconsciously pictured that evil man as still alive. The methods by which he eventually discovered the skeleton, or learnt the episodes which preceded Temple's death, I do not know. He promised to tell me some day at length, but a sudden death prevented his ever doing so. The facts as he narrated them, and as I have little doubt they actually occurred, were these: Adrian Temple, after Jocelyn's departure, had made a confidant of one Palamede Domacavalli, a scion of a splendid Parthenopean family of that name. Palamede had a palace in the heart of Naples, and was Temple's equal in age and also in his great wealth. The two men became boon companions, associated in all kinds of wickedness and excess. At length Palamede married a beautiful girl named Olimpia Aldobrandini, who was also of the noblest lineage; but the intimacy between him and Temple was not interrupted. About a year subsequent to this marriage dancing was going on after a splendid banquet in the great hall of the Palazzo Domacavalli. Adrian, who was a favoured guest, called to the musicians in the gallery to play the "Areopagita" suite, and danced it with Olimpia, the wife of his host. The _Gagliarda_ was reached but never finished, for near the end of the second movement Palamede from behind drove a stiletto into his friend's heart. He had found out that day that Adrian had not spared even Olimpia's honour. I have endeavoured to condense into a connected story the facts learnt piecemeal from Sir John in conversation. To a certain extent they supplied, if not an explanation, at least an account of the change that had come over my friend. But only to a certain extent; there the explanation broke down and I was left baffled. I could imagine that a life of unwholesome surroundings and disordered studies might in time produce such a loss of mental tone as would lead in turn to moral _acolasia_, sensual excess, and physical ruin. But in Sir John's case the cause was not adequate; he had, so far as I know, never wholly given the reins to sensuality, and the change was too abrupt and the breakdown of body and mind too complete to be accounted for by such events as those of which he had spoken. I had, too, an uneasy feeling, which grew upon me the more I saw of him, that while he spoke freely enough on certain topics, and obviously meant to give a complete history of his past life, there was in reality something in the background which he always kept from my view. He was, it seemed, like a young man asked by an indulgent father to disclose his debts in order that they may be discharged, who, although he knows his parent's leniency, and that any debt not now disclosed will be afterwards but a weight upon his own neck, yet hesitates for very shame to tell the full amount, and keeps some items back. So poor Sir John kept something back from me his friend, whose only aim was to afford him consolation and relief, and whose compassion would have made me listen without rebuke to the narration of the blackest crimes. I cannot say how much this conviction grieved me. I would most willingly have given my all, my very life, to save my friend and Miss Maltravers's brother; but my efforts were paralysed by the feeling that I did not know what I had to combat, that some evil influence was at work on him which continually evaded my grasp. Once or twice it seemed as though he were within an ace of telling me all; once or twice, I believe, he had definitely made up his mind to do so; but then the mood changed, or more probably his courage failed him. It was on one of these occasions that he asked me, somewhat suddenly, whether I thought that a man could by any conscious act committed in the flesh take away from himself all possibility of repentance and ultimate salvation. Though, I trust, a sincere Christian, I am nothing of a theologian, and the question touching on a topic which had not occurred to my mind since childhood, and which seemed to savour rather of medieval romance than of practical religion, took me for a moment aback. I hesitated for an instant, and then replied that the means of salvation offered man were undoubtedly so sufficient as to remove from one truly penitent the guilt of any crime however dark. My hesitation had been but momentary; but Sir John seemed to have noticed it, and sealed his lips to any confession, if he had indeed intended to make any, by changing the subject abruptly. This question naturally gave me food for serious reflection and anxiety. It was the first occasion on which he appeared to me to be undoubtedly suffering from definite hallucination, and I was aware that any illusions connected with religion are generally most difficult to remove. At the same time, anything of this sort was the more remarkable in Sir John's case, as he had, so far as I knew, for a considerable time entirely abandoned the Christian belief. Unable to elicit any further information from him, and being thus thrown entirely upon my own resources, I determined that I would read through again the whole of Temple's diaries. The task was a very distasteful one, as I have already explained, but I hoped that a second reading might perhaps throw some light on the dark misgiving that was troubling Sir John. I read the manuscript again with the closest attention. Nothing, however, of any importance seemed to have escaped me on the former occasions, and I had reached nearly the end of the second volume when a comparatively slight matter arrested my attention. I have said that the pages were all carefully numbered, and the events of each day recorded separately; even where Temple had found nothing of moment to notice on a given day, he had still inserted the date with the word _nil_ written against it. But as I sat one evening in the library at Worth after Sir John had gone to bed, and was finally glancing through the days of the months in Temple's diary to make sure that all were complete, I found one day was missing. It was towards the end of the second volume, and the day was the 23d of October in the year 1752. A glance at the numbering of the pages revealed the fact that three leaves had been entirely removed, and that the pages numbered 349 to 354 were not to be found. Again I ran through the diaries to see whether there were any leaves removed in other places, but found no other single page missing. All was complete except at this one place, the manuscript beautifully written, with scarcely an error or erasure throughout. A closer examination showed that these leaves had been cut out close to the back, and the cut edges of the paper appeared too fresh to admit of this being done a century ago. A very short reflection convinced me, in fact, that the excision was not likely to have been Temple's, and that it must have been made by Sir John. My first intention was to ask him at once what the lost pages had contained, and why they had been cut out. The matter might be a mere triviality which he could explain in a moment. But on softly opening his bedroom door I found him sleeping, and Parnham (whom the strong light always burnt in the room rendered more wakeful) informed me that his master had been in a deep sleep for more than an hour. I knew how sorely his wasted energies needed such repose, and stepped back to the library without awaking him. A few minutes before, I had been feeling sleepy at the conclusion of my task, but now all wish for sleep was suddenly banished and a painful wakefulness took its place. I was under a species of mental excitement which reminded me of my feelings some years before at Oxford on the first occasion of our ever playing the _Gagliarda_ together, and an idea struck me with the force of intuition that in these three lost leaves lay the secret of my friend's ruin. I turned to the context to see whether there was anything in the entries preceding or following the lacuna that would afford a clue to the missing passage. The record of the few days immediately preceding the 23d of October was short and contained nothing of any moment whatever. Adrian and Jocelyn were alone together at the Villa de Angelis. The entry on the 22d was very unimportant and apparently quite complete, ending at the bottom of page 348. Of the 23d there was, as I have said, no record at all, and the entry for the 24th began at the top of page 355. This last memorandum was also brief, and written when the author was annoyed by Jocelyn leaving him. The defection of his companion had been apparently entirely unexpected. There was at least no previous hint of any such intention. Temple wrote that Jocelyn had left the Villa de Angelis that day and taken up his abode with the Carthusians of San Martino. No reason for such an extraordinary change was given; but there was a hint that Jocelyn had professed himself shocked at something that had happened. The entry concluded with a few bitter remarks: _"So farewell to my holy anchoret; and if I cannot speed him with a leprosie as one Elisha did his servant, yet at least he went out from my presence with a face as white as snow."_ I had read this sentence more than once before without its attracting other than a passing attention. The curious expression, that Jocelyn had gone out from his presence with a face as white as snow, had hitherto seemed to me to mean nothing more than that the two men had parted in violent anger, and that Temple had abused or bullied his companion. But as I sat alone that night in the library the words seemed to assume an entirely new force, and a strange suspicion began to creep over me. I have said that one of the most remarkable features of Sir John's illness was his deadly pallor. Though I had now spent some time at Worth, and had been daily struck by this lack of colour, I had never before remembered in this connection that a strange paleness had also been an attribute of Adrian Temple, and was indeed very clearly marked in the picture painted of him by Battoni. In Sir John's account, moreover, of the vision which he thought he had seen in his rooms at Oxford, he had always spoken of the white and waxen face of his spectral visitant. The family tradition of Royston said that Temple had lost his colour in some deadly magical experiment, and a conviction now flashed upon me that Jocelyn's face "as white as snow" could refer only to this same unnatural pallor, and that he too had been smitten with it as with the mark of the beast. In a drawer of my despatch-box, I kept by me all the letters which the late Lady Maltravers had written home during her ill-fated honeymoon. Miss Maltravers had placed them in my hands in order that I might be acquainted with every fact that could at all elucidate the progress of Sir John's malady. I remembered that in one of these letters mention was made of a sharp attack of fever in Naples, and of her noticing in him for the first time this singular pallor. I found the letter again without difficulty and read it with a new light. Every line breathed of surprise and alarm. Lady Maltravers feared that her husband was very seriously ill. On the Wednesday, two days before she wrote, he had suffered all day from a strange restlessness, which had increased after they had retired in the evening. He could not sleep and had dressed again, saying he would walk a little in the night air to compose himself. He had not returned till near six in the morning, and then seemed so exhausted that he had since been confined to his bed. He was terribly pale, and the doctors feared he had been attacked by some strange fever. The date of the letter was the 25th of October, fixing the night of the 23d as the time of Sir John's first attack. The coincidence of the date with that of the day missing in Temple's diary was significant, but it was not needed now to convince me that Sir John's ruin was due to something that occurred on that fatal night at Naples. The question that Dr. Frobisher had asked Miss Maltravers when he was first called to see her brother in London returned to my memory with an overwhelming force. "Had Sir John been subjected to any mental shock; had he received any severe fright?" I knew now that the question should have been answered in the affirmative, for I felt as certain as if Sir John had told me himself that he _had_ received a violent shock, probably some terrible fright, on the night of the 23d of October. What the nature of that shock could have been my imagination was powerless to conceive, only I knew that whatever Sir John had done or seen, Adrian Temple and Jocelyn had done or seen also a century before and at the same place. That horror which had blanched the face of all three men for life had fallen perhaps with a less overwhelming force on Temple's seasoned wickedness, but had driven the worthless Jocelyn to the cloister, and was driving Sir John to the grave. These thoughts as they passed through my mind filled me with a vague alarm. The lateness of the hour, the stillness and the subdued light, made the library in which I sat seem so vast and lonely that I began to feel the same dread of being alone that I had observed so often in my friend. Though only a door separated me from his bedroom, and I could hear his deep and regular breathing, I felt as though I must go in and waken him or Parnham to keep me company and save me from my own reflections. By a strong effort I restrained myself, and sat down to think the matter over and endeavour to frame some hypothesis that might explain the mystery. But it was all to no purpose. I merely wearied myself without being able to arrive at even a plausible conjecture, except that it seemed as though the strange coincidence of date might point to some ghastly charm or incantation which could only be carried out on one certain night of the year. It must have been near morning when, quite exhausted, I fell into an uneasy slumber in the arm-chair where I sat. My sleep, however brief, was peopled with a succession of fantastic visions, in which I continually saw Sir John, not ill and wasted as now, but vigorous and handsome as I had known him at Oxford, standing beside a glowing brazier and reciting words I could not understand, while another man with a sneering white face sat in a corner playing the air of the _Gagliarda_ on a violin. Parnham woke me in my chair at seven o'clock; his master, he said, was still sleeping easily. I had made up my mind that as soon as he awoke I would inquire of Sir John as to the pages missing from the diary; but though my expectation and excitement were at a high pitch, I was forced to restrain my curiosity, for Sir John's slumber continued late into the day. Dr. Bruton called in the morning, and said that this sleep was what the patient's condition most required, and was a distinctly favourable symptom; he was on no account to be disturbed. Sir John did not leave his bed, but continued dozing all day till the evening. When at last he shook off his drowsiness, the hour was already so late that, in spite of my anxiety, I hesitated to talk with him about the diaries, lest I should unduly excite him before the night. As the evening advanced he became very uneasy, and rose more than once from his bed. This restlessness, following on the repose of the day, ought perhaps to have made me anxious, for I have since observed that when death is very near an apprehensive unrest often sets in both with men and animals. It seems as if they dreaded to resign themselves to sleep, lest as they slumber the last enemy should seize them unawares. They try to fling off the bedclothes, they sometimes must leave their beds and walk. So it was with poor John Maltravers on his last Christmas Eve. I had sat with him grieving for his disquiet until he seemed to grow more tranquil, and at length fell asleep. I was sleeping that night in his room instead of Parnham, and tired with sitting up through the previous night, I flung myself, dressed as I was, upon the bed. I had scarcely dozed off, I think, before the sound of his violin awoke me. I found he had risen from his bed, had taken his favourite instrument, and was playing in his sleep. The air was the _Gagliarda_ of the "Areopagita" suite, which I had not heard since we had played it last together at Oxford, and it brought back with it a crowd of far-off memories and infinite regrets. I cursed the sleepiness which had overcome me at my watchman's post, and allowed Sir John to play once more that melody which had always been fraught with such evil for him; and I was about to wake him gently when he was startled from sleep by a strange accident. As I walked towards him the violin seemed entirely to collapse in his hands, and, as a matter of fact, the belly then gave way and broke under the strain of the strings. As the strings slackened, the last note became an unearthly discord. If I were superstitious I should say that some evil spirit then went out of the violin, and broke in his parting throes the wooden tabernacle which had so long sheltered him. It was the last time the instrument was ever used, and that hideous chord was the last that Maltravers ever played. I had feared that the shock of waking thus suddenly from sleep would have a very prejudicial effect upon the sleep-walker, but this seemed not to be the case. I persuaded him to go back at once to bed, and in a few minutes he fell asleep again. In the morning he seemed for the first time distinctly better; there was indeed something of his old self in his manner. It seemed as though the breaking of the violin had been an actual relief to him; and I believe that on that Christmas morning his better instincts woke, and that his old religious training and the associations of his boyhood then made their last appeal. I was pleased at such a change, however temporary it might prove. He wished to go to church, and I determined that again I would subdue my curiosity and defer the questions I was burning to put till after our return from the morning service. Miss Maltravers had gone indoors to make some preparation, Sir John was in his wheel-chair on the terrace, and I was sitting by him in the sun. For a few moments he appeared immersed in silent thought, and then bent over towards me till his head was close to mine, and said, "Dear William, there is something I must tell you. I feel I cannot even go to church till I have told you all." His manner shocked me beyond expression. I knew that he was going to tell me the secret of the lost pages, but instead of wishing any longer to have my curiosity satisfied, I felt a horrible dread of what he might say next. He took my hand in his and held it tightly, as a man who was about to undergo severe physical pain and sought the consolation of a friend's support. Then he went on--"You will be shocked at what I am going to tell you; but listen, and do not give me up: You must stand by me and comfort me and help me to turn again." He paused for a moment and continued--"It was one night in October, when Constance and I were at Naples. I took that violin and went by myself to the ruined villa on the Scoglio di Venere." He had been speaking with difficulty. His hand clutched mine convulsively, but still I felt it trembling, and I could see the moisture standing thick on his forehead. At this point the effort seemed too much for him and he broke off. "I cannot go on, I cannot tell you, but you can read it for yourself. In that diary which I gave you there are some pages missing." The suspense was becoming intolerable to me, and I broke in, "Yes, yes, I know; you cut them out. Tell me where they are," He went on--"Yes, I cut them out lest they should possibly fall into anyone's hands unaware. But before you read them you must swear, as you hope for salvation, that you will never try to do what is written in them. Swear this to me now, or I never can let you see them." My eagerness was too great to stop now to discuss trifles, and to humour him I swore as desired. He had been speaking with a continual increasing effort; he cast a hurried and fearful glance round as though he expected to see someone listening, and it was almost in a whisper that he went on, "You will find them in--" His agitation had become most painful to watch, and as he spoke the last words a convulsion passed over his face, and speech failing him, he sank back on his pillow. A strange fear took hold of me. For a moment I thought there were others on the terrace beside myself, and turned round expecting to see Miss Maltravers returned; but we were still alone. I even fancied that just as Sir John spoke his last words I felt something brush swiftly by me. He put up his hands, beating the air with a most painful gesture, as though he were trying to keep off an antagonist who had gripped him by the throat, and made a final struggle to speak. But the spasm was too strong for him; a dreadful stillness followed, and he was gone. There is little more to add; for Sir John's guilty secret, perished with him. Though I was sure from his manner that the missing leaves were concealed somewhere at Worth, and though as executor I caused the most diligent search to be made, no trace of them was afterwards found; nor did any circumstance ever transpire to fling further light upon the matter. I must confess that I should have felt the discovery of these pages as a relief; for though I dreaded what I might have had to read, yet I was more anxious lest, being found at a later period and falling into other hands, they should cause a recrudescence of that plague which had blighted Sir John's life. Of the nature of the events which took place on that night at Naples I can form no conjecture. But as certain physical sights have ere now proved so revolting as to unhinge the intellect, so I can imagine that the mind may in a state of extreme tension conjure up to itself some form of moral evil so hideous as metaphysically to sear it: and this, I believe, happened in the case both of Adrian Temple and of Sir John Maltravers. It is difficult to imagine the accessories used to produce the mental excitation in which alone such a presentment of evil could become imaginable. Fancy and legend, which have combined to represent as possible appearances of the supernatural, agree also in considering them as more likely to occur at certain times and places than at others; and it is possible that the missing pages of the diary contained an account of the time, place, and other conditions chosen by Temple for some deadly experiment. Sir John most probably re-enacted the scene under precisely similar conditions, and the effect on his overwrought imagination was so vivid as to upset the balance of his mind. The time chosen was no doubt the night of the 23d of October, and I cannot help thinking that the place was one of those evil-looking and ruinous sea-rooms which had so terrifying an effect on Miss Maltravers. Temple may have used on that night one of the medieval incantations, or possibly the more ancient invocation of the Isiac rite with which a man of his knowledge and proclivities would certainly be familiar. The accessories of either are sufficiently hideous to weaken the mind by terror, and so prepare it for a belief in some frightful apparition. But whatever was done, I feel sure that the music of the _Gagliarda_ formed part of the ceremonial. Medieval philosophers and theologians held that evil is in its essence so horrible that the human mind, if it could realise it, must perish at its contemplation. Such realisation was by mercy ordinarily withheld, but its possibility was hinted in the legend of the _Visio malefica_. The _Visio Beatifica_ was, as is well known, that vision of the Deity or realisation of the perfect Good which was to form the happiness of heaven, and the reward of the sanctified in the next world. Tradition says that this vision was accorded also to some specially elect spirits even in this life, as to Enoch, Elijah, Stephen, and Jerome. But there was a converse to the Beatific Vision in the _Visio malefica_, or presentation of absolute Evil, which was to be the chief torture of the damned, and which, like the Beatific Vision, had been made visible in life to certain desperate men. It visited Esau, as was said, when he found no place for repentance, and Judas, whom it drove to suicide. Cain saw it when he murdered his brother, and legend relates that in his case, and in that of others, it left a physical brand to be borne by the body to the grave. It was supposed that the Malefic Vision, besides being thus spontaneously presented to typically abandoned men, had actually been purposely called up by some few great adepts, and used by them to blast their enemies. But to do so was considered equivalent to a conscious surrender to the powers of evil, as the vision once seen took away all hope of final salvation. Adrian Temple would undoubtedly be cognisant of this legend, and the lost experiment may have been an attempt to call up the Malefic Vision. It is but a vague conjecture at the best, for the tree of the knowledge of Evil bears many sorts of poisonous fruit, and no one can give full account of the extravagances of a wayward fancy. Conjointly with Miss Sophia, Sir John appointed me his executor and guardian of his only son. Two months later we had lit a great fire in the library at Worth. In it, after the servants were gone to bed, we burnt the book containing the "Areopagita" of Graziani, and the Stradivarius fiddle. The diaries of Temple I had already destroyed, and wish that I could as easily blot out their foul and debasing memories from my mind. I shall probably be blamed by those who would exalt art at the expense of everything else, for burning a unique violin. This reproach I am content to bear. Though I am not unreasonably superstitious, and have no sympathy for that potential pantheism to which Sir John Maltravers surrendered his intellect, yet I felt so great an aversion to this violin that I would neither suffer it to remain at Worth, nor pass into other hands. Miss Sophia was entirely at one with me on this point. It was the same feeling which restrains any except fools or braggarts from wishing to sleep in "haunted" rooms, or to live in houses polluted with the memory of a revolting crime. No sane mind believes in foolish apparitions, but fancy may at times bewitch the best of us. So the Stradivarius was burnt. It was, after all, perhaps not so serious a matter, for, as I have said, the bass-bar had given way. There had always been a question whether it was strong enough to resist the strain of modern stringing. Experience showed at last that it was not. With the failure of the bass-bar the belly collapsed, and the wood broke across the grain in so extraordinary a manner as to put the fiddle beyond repair, except as a curiosity. Its loss, therefore, is not to be so much regretted. Sir Edward has been brought up to think more of a cricket-bat than of a violin-bow; but if he wishes at any time to buy a Stradivarius, the fortunes of Worth and Royston, nursed through two long minorities, will certainly justify his doing so. Miss Sophia and I stood by and watched the holocaust. My heart misgave me for a moment when I saw the mellow red varnish blistering off the back, but I put my regret resolutely aside. As the bright flames jumped up and lapped it round, they flung a red glow on the scroll. It was wonderfully wrought, and differed, as I think Miss Maltravers has already said, from any known example of Stradivarius. As we watched it, the scroll took form, and we saw what we had never seen before, that it was cut so that the deep lines in a certain light showed as the profile of a man. It was a wizened little paganish face, with sharp-cut features and a bald head. As I looked at it I knew at once (and a cameo has since confirmed the fact) that it was a head of Porphyry. Thus the second label found in the violin was explained and Sir John's view confirmed, that Stradivarius had made the instrument for some Neo-Platonist enthusiast who had dedicated it to his master Porphyrius. * * * * * A year after Sir John's death I went with Miss Maltravers to Worth church to see a plain slab of slate which we had placed over her brother's grave. We stood in bright sunlight in the Maltravers chapel, with the monuments of that splendid family about us. Among them were the altar-tomb of Sir Esmoun, and the effigies of more than one Crusader. As I looked on their knightly forms, with their heads resting on their tilting helms, their faces set firm, and their hands joined in prayer, I could not help envying them that full and unwavering faith for which they had fought and died. It seemed to stand out in such sharp contrast with our latter-day sciolism and half-believed creeds, and to be flung into higher relief by the dark shadow of John Maltravers's ruined life. At our feet was the great brass of one Sir Roger de Maltravers. I pointed out the end of the inscription to my companion--"CVIVS ANIMÆ, ATQVE ANIMABVS OMNIVM FIDELIVM DEFVNCTORVM, ATQVE NOSTRIS ANIMABVS QVVM EX HAC LVCE TRANSIVERIMVS, PROPITIETVR DEVS." Though no Catholic, I could not refuse to add a sincere Amen. Miss Sophia, who is not ignorant of Latin, read the inscription after me. "Ex hac luce," she said, as though speaking to herself, "out of this light; alas! alas! for some the light is darkness." 
2662	----	Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk from the 1912 Macmillan and Co. edition. Proofed by Margaret Rose Price, Dagny and David Price. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE or THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE A RURAL PAINTING OF THE DUTCH SCHOOL by Thomas Hardy PREFACE This story of the Mellstock Quire and its old established west-gallery musicians, with some supplementary descriptions of similar officials in Two on a Tower, A Few Crusted Characters, and other places, is intended to be a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages, ways, and customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the villages of fifty or sixty years ago. One is inclined to regret the displacement of these ecclesiastical bandsmen by an isolated organist (often at first a barrel-organist) or harmonium player; and despite certain advantages in point of control and accomplishment which were, no doubt, secured by installing the single artist, the change has tended to stultify the professed aims of the clergy, its direct result being to curtail and extinguish the interest of parishioners in church doings. Under the old plan, from half a dozen to ten full-grown players, in addition to the numerous more or less grown-up singers, were officially occupied with the Sunday routine, and concerned in trying their best to make it an artistic outcome of the combined musical taste of the congregation. With a musical executive limited, as it mostly is limited now, to the parson's wife or daughter and the school- children, or to the school-teacher and the children, an important union of interests has disappeared. The zest of these bygone instrumentalists must have been keen and staying to take them, as it did, on foot every Sunday after a toilsome week, through all weathers, to the church, which often lay at a distance from their homes. They usually received so little in payment for their performances that their efforts were really a labour of love. In the parish I had in my mind when writing the present tale, the gratuities received yearly by the musicians at Christmas were somewhat as follows: From the manor-house ten shillings and a supper; from the vicar ten shillings; from the farmers five shillings each; from each cottage-household one shilling; amounting altogether to not more than ten shillings a head annually--just enough, as an old executant told me, to pay for their fiddle-strings, repairs, rosin, and music-paper (which they mostly ruled themselves). Their music in those days was all in their own manuscript, copied in the evenings after work, and their music-books were home-bound. It was customary to inscribe a few jigs, reels, horn-pipes, and ballads in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the insertions being continued from front and back till sacred and secular met together in the middle, often with bizarre effect, the words of some of the songs exhibiting that ancient and broad humour which our grandfathers, and possibly grandmothers, took delight in, and is in these days unquotable. The aforesaid fiddle-strings, rosin, and music-paper were supplied by a pedlar, who travelled exclusively in such wares from parish to parish, coming to each village about every six months. Tales are told of the consternation once caused among the church fiddlers when, on the occasion of their producing a new Christmas anthem, he did not come to time, owing to being snowed up on the downs, and the straits they were in through having to make shift with whipcord and twine for strings. He was generally a musician himself, and sometimes a composer in a small way, bringing his own new tunes, and tempting each choir to adopt them for a consideration. Some of these compositions which now lie before me, with their repetitions of lines, half-lines, and half-words, their fugues and their intermediate symphonies, are good singing still, though they would hardly be admitted into such hymn-books as are popular in the churches of fashionable society at the present time. August 1896. Under the Greenwood Tree was first brought out in the summer of 1872 in two volumes. The name of the story was originally intended to be, more appropriately, The Mellstock Quire, and this has been appended as a sub- title since the early editions, it having been thought unadvisable to displace for it the title by which the book first became known. In rereading the narrative after a long interval there occurs the inevitable reflection that the realities out of which it was spun were material for another kind of study of this little group of church musicians than is found in the chapters here penned so lightly, even so farcically and flippantly at times. But circumstances would have rendered any aim at a deeper, more essential, more transcendent handling unadvisable at the date of writing; and the exhibition of the Mellstock Quire in the following pages must remain the only extant one, except for the few glimpses of that perished band which I have given in verse elsewhere. T. H. April 1912. PART THE FIRST--WINTER CHAPTER I: MELLSTOCK-LANE To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality. On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence. All the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his footsteps, which succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and by the liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence: "With the rose and the lily And the daffodowndilly, The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go." The lonely lane he was following connected one of the hamlets of Mellstock parish with Upper Mellstock and Lewgate, and to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm, all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. Within the woody pass, at a level anything lower than the horizon, all was dark as the grave. The copse-wood forming the sides of the bower interlaced its branches so densely, even at this season of the year, that the draught from the north-east flew along the channel with scarcely an interruption from lateral breezes. After passing the plantation and reaching Mellstock Cross the white surface of the lane revealed itself between the dark hedgerows like a ribbon jagged at the edges; the irregularity being caused by temporary accumulations of leaves extending from the ditch on either side. The song (many times interrupted by flitting thoughts which took the place of several bars, and resumed at a point it would have reached had its continuity been unbroken) now received a more palpable check, in the shape of "Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" from the crossing lane to Lower Mellstock, on the right of the singer who had just emerged from the trees. "Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" he answered, stopping and looking round, though with no idea of seeing anything more than imagination pictured. "Is that thee, young Dick Dewy?" came from the darkness. "Ay, sure, Michael Mail." "Then why not stop for fellow-craters--going to thy own father's house too, as we be, and knowen us so well?" Dick Dewy faced about and continued his tune in an under-whistle, implying that the business of his mouth could not be checked at a moment's notice by the placid emotion of friendship. Having come more into the open he could now be seen rising against the sky, his profile appearing on the light background like the portrait of a gentleman in black cardboard. It assumed the form of a low-crowned hat, an ordinary-shaped nose, an ordinary chin, an ordinary neck, and ordinary shoulders. What he consisted of further down was invisible from lack of sky low enough to picture him on. Shuffling, halting, irregular footsteps of various kinds were now heard coming up the hill, and presently there emerged from the shade severally five men of different ages and gaits, all of them working villagers of the parish of Mellstock. They, too, had lost their rotundity with the daylight, and advanced against the sky in flat outlines, which suggested some processional design on Greek or Etruscan pottery. They represented the chief portion of Mellstock parish choir. The first was a bowed and bent man, who carried a fiddle under his arm, and walked as if engaged in studying some subject connected with the surface of the road. He was Michael Mail, the man who had hallooed to Dick. The next was Mr. Robert Penny, boot- and shoemaker; a little man, who, though rather round-shouldered, walked as if that fact had not come to his own knowledge, moving on with his back very hollow and his face fixed on the north-east quarter of the heavens before him, so that his lower waist-coat-buttons came first, and then the remainder of his figure. His features were invisible; yet when he occasionally looked round, two faint moons of light gleamed for an instant from the precincts of his eyes, denoting that he wore spectacles of a circular form. The third was Elias Spinks, who walked perpendicularly and dramatically. The fourth outline was Joseph Bowman's, who had now no distinctive appearance beyond that of a human being. Finally came a weak lath-like form, trotting and stumbling along with one shoulder forward and his head inclined to the left, his arms dangling nervelessly in the wind as if they were empty sleeves. This was Thomas Leaf. "Where be the boys?" said Dick to this somewhat indifferently-matched assembly. The eldest of the group, Michael Mail, cleared his throat from a great depth. "We told them to keep back at home for a time, thinken they wouldn't be wanted yet awhile; and we could choose the tuens, and so on." "Father and grandfather William have expected ye a little sooner. I have just been for a run round by Ewelease Stile and Hollow Hill to warm my feet." "To be sure father did! To be sure 'a did expect us--to taste the little barrel beyond compare that he's going to tap." "'Od rabbit it all! Never heard a word of it!" said Mr. Penny, gleams of delight appearing upon his spectacle-glasses, Dick meanwhile singing parenthetically-- "The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go." "Neighbours, there's time enough to drink a sight of drink now afore bedtime?" said Mail. "True, true--time enough to get as drunk as lords!" replied Bowman cheerfully. This opinion being taken as convincing they all advanced between the varying hedges and the trees dotting them here and there, kicking their toes occasionally among the crumpled leaves. Soon appeared glimmering indications of the few cottages forming the small hamlet of Upper Mellstock for which they were bound, whilst the faint sound of church- bells ringing a Christmas peal could be heard floating over upon the breeze from the direction of Longpuddle and Weatherbury parishes on the other side of the hills. A little wicket admitted them to the garden, and they proceeded up the path to Dick's house. CHAPTER II: THE TRANTER'S It was a long low cottage with a hipped roof of thatch, having dormer windows breaking up into the eaves, a chimney standing in the middle of the ridge and another at each end. The window-shutters were not yet closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated forth upon the thick bushes of box and laurestinus growing in clumps outside, and upon the bare boughs of several codlin-trees hanging about in various distorted shapes, the result of early training as espaliers combined with careless climbing into their boughs in later years. The walls of the dwelling were for the most part covered with creepers, though these were rather beaten back from the doorway--a feature which was worn and scratched by much passing in and out, giving it by day the appearance of an old keyhole. Light streamed through the cracks and joints of outbuildings a little way from the cottage, a sight which nourished a fancy that the purpose of the erection must be rather to veil bright attractions than to shelter unsightly necessaries. The noise of a beetle and wedges and the splintering of wood was periodically heard from this direction; and at some little distance further a steady regular munching and the occasional scurr of a rope betokened a stable, and horses feeding within it. The choir stamped severally on the door-stone to shake from their boots any fragment of earth or leaf adhering thereto, then entered the house and looked around to survey the condition of things. Through the open doorway of a small inner room on the right hand, of a character between pantry and cellar, was Dick Dewy's father Reuben, by vocation a "tranter," or irregular carrier. He was a stout florid man about forty years of age, who surveyed people up and down when first making their acquaintance, and generally smiled at the horizon or other distant object during conversations with friends, walking about with a steady sway, and turning out his toes very considerably. Being now occupied in bending over a hogshead, that stood in the pantry ready horsed for the process of broaching, he did not take the trouble to turn or raise his eyes at the entry of his visitors, well knowing by their footsteps that they were the expected old comrades. The main room, on the left, was decked with bunches of holly and other evergreens, and from the middle of the beam bisecting the ceiling hung the mistletoe, of a size out of all proportion to the room, and extending so low that it became necessary for a full-grown person to walk round it in passing, or run the risk of entangling his hair. This apartment contained Mrs. Dewy the tranter's wife, and the four remaining children, Susan, Jim, Bessy, and Charley, graduating uniformly though at wide stages from the age of sixteen to that of four years--the eldest of the series being separated from Dick the firstborn by a nearly equal interval. Some circumstance had apparently caused much grief to Charley just previous to the entry of the choir, and he had absently taken down a small looking-glass, holding it before his face to learn how the human countenance appeared when engaged in crying, which survey led him to pause at the various points in each wail that were more than ordinarily striking, for a thorough appreciation of the general effect. Bessy was leaning against a chair, and glancing under the plaits about the waist of the plaid frock she wore, to notice the original unfaded pattern of the material as there preserved, her face bearing an expression of regret that the brightness had passed away from the visible portions. Mrs. Dewy sat in a brown settle by the side of the glowing wood fire--so glowing that with a heedful compression of the lips she would now and then rise and put her hand upon the hams and flitches of bacon lining the chimney, to reassure herself that they were not being broiled instead of smoked--a misfortune that had been known to happen now and then at Christmas-time. "Hullo, my sonnies, here you be, then!" said Reuben Dewy at length, standing up and blowing forth a vehement gust of breath. "How the blood do puff up in anybody's head, to be sure, a-stooping like that! I was just going out to gate to hark for ye." He then carefully began to wind a strip of brown paper round a brass tap he held in his hand. "This in the cask here is a drop o' the right sort" (tapping the cask); "'tis a real drop o' cordial from the best picked apples--Sansoms, Stubbards, Five-corners, and such-like--you d'mind the sort, Michael?" (Michael nodded.) "And there's a sprinkling of they that grow down by the orchard- rails--streaked ones--rail apples we d'call 'em, as 'tis by the rails they grow, and not knowing the right name. The water-cider from 'em is as good as most people's best cider is." "Ay, and of the same make too," said Bowman. "'It rained when we wrung it out, and the water got into it,' folk will say. But 'tis on'y an excuse. Watered cider is too common among us." "Yes, yes; too common it is!" said Spinks with an inward sigh, whilst his eyes seemed to be looking at the case in an abstract form rather than at the scene before him. "Such poor liquor do make a man's throat feel very melancholy--and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent." "Come in, come in, and draw up to the fire; never mind your shoes," said Mrs. Dewy, seeing that all except Dick had paused to wipe them upon the door-mat. "I am glad that you've stepped up-along at last; and, Susan, you run down to Grammer Kaytes's and see if you can borrow some larger candles than these fourteens. Tommy Leaf, don't ye be afeard! Come and sit here in the settle." This was addressed to the young man before mentioned, consisting chiefly of a human skeleton and a smock-frock, who was very awkward in his movements, apparently on account of having grown so very fast that before he had had time to get used to his height he was higher. "Hee--hee--ay!" replied Leaf, letting his mouth continue to smile for some time after his mind had done smiling, so that his teeth remained in view as the most conspicuous members of his body. "Here, Mr. Penny," resumed Mrs. Dewy, "you sit in this chair. And how's your daughter, Mrs. Brownjohn?" "Well, I suppose I must say pretty fair." He adjusted his spectacles a quarter of an inch to the right. "But she'll be worse before she's better, 'a b'lieve." "Indeed--poor soul! And how many will that make in all, four or five?" "Five; they've buried three. Yes, five; and she not much more than a maid yet. She do know the multiplication table onmistakable well. However, 'twas to be, and none can gainsay it." Mrs. Dewy resigned Mr. Penny. "Wonder where your grandfather James is?" she inquired of one of the children. "He said he'd drop in to-night." "Out in fuel-house with grandfather William," said Jimmy. "Now let's see what we can do," was heard spoken about this time by the tranter in a private voice to the barrel, beside which he had again established himself, and was stooping to cut away the cork. "Reuben, don't make such a mess o' tapping that barrel as is mostly made in this house," Mrs. Dewy cried from the fireplace. "I'd tap a hundred without wasting more than you do in one. Such a squizzling and squirting job as 'tis in your hands! There, he always was such a clumsy man indoors." "Ay, ay; I know you'd tap a hundred beautiful, Ann--I know you would; two hundred, perhaps. But I can't promise. This is a' old cask, and the wood's rotted away about the tap-hole. The husbird of a feller Sam Lawson--that ever I should call'n such, now he's dead and gone, poor heart!--took me in completely upon the feat of buying this cask. 'Reub,' says he--'a always used to call me plain Reub, poor old heart!--'Reub,' he said, says he, 'that there cask, Reub, is as good as new; yes, good as new. 'Tis a wine-hogshead; the best port-wine in the commonwealth have been in that there cask; and you shall have en for ten shillens, Reub,'--'a said, says he--'he's worth twenty, ay, five-and-twenty, if he's worth one; and an iron hoop or two put round en among the wood ones will make en worth thirty shillens of any man's money, if--'" "I think I should have used the eyes that Providence gave me to use afore I paid any ten shillens for a jimcrack wine-barrel; a saint is sinner enough not to be cheated. But 'tis like all your family was, so easy to be deceived." "That's as true as gospel of this member," said Reuben. Mrs. Dewy began a smile at the answer, then altering her lips and refolding them so that it was not a smile, commenced smoothing little Bessy's hair; the tranter having meanwhile suddenly become oblivious to conversation, occupying himself in a deliberate cutting and arrangement of some more brown paper for the broaching operation. "Ah, who can believe sellers!" said old Michael Mail in a carefully-cautious voice, by way of tiding-over this critical point of affairs. "No one at all," said Joseph Bowman, in the tone of a man fully agreeing with everybody. "Ay," said Mail, in the tone of a man who did not agree with everybody as a rule, though he did now; "I knowed a' auctioneering feller once--a very friendly feller 'a was too. And so one hot day as I was walking down the front street o' Casterbridge, jist below the King's Arms, I passed a' open winder and see him inside, stuck upon his perch, a-selling off. I jist nodded to en in a friendly way as I passed, and went my way, and thought no more about it. Well, next day, as I was oilen my boots by fuel-house door, if a letter didn't come wi' a bill charging me with a feather-bed, bolster, and pillers, that I had bid for at Mr. Taylor's sale. The slim-faced martel had knocked 'em down to me because I nodded to en in my friendly way; and I had to pay for 'em too. Now, I hold that that was coming it very close, Reuben?" "'Twas close, there's no denying," said the general voice. "Too close, 'twas," said Reuben, in the rear of the rest. "And as to Sam Lawson--poor heart! now he's dead and gone too!--I'll warrant, that if so be I've spent one hour in making hoops for that barrel, I've spent fifty, first and last. That's one of my hoops"--touching it with his elbow--"that's one of mine, and that, and that, and all these." "Ah, Sam was a man," said Mr. Penny, contemplatively. "Sam was!" said Bowman. "Especially for a drap o' drink," said the tranter. "Good, but not religious-good," suggested Mr. Penny. The tranter nodded. Having at last made the tap and hole quite ready, "Now then, Suze, bring a mug," he said. "Here's luck to us, my sonnies!" The tap went in, and the cider immediately squirted out in a horizontal shower over Reuben's hands, knees, and leggings, and into the eyes and neck of Charley, who, having temporarily put off his grief under pressure of more interesting proceedings, was squatting down and blinking near his father. "There 'tis again!" said Mrs. Dewy. "Devil take the hole, the cask, and Sam Lawson too, that good cider should be wasted like this!" exclaimed the tranter. "Your thumb! Lend me your thumb, Michael! Ram it in here, Michael! I must get a bigger tap, my sonnies." "Idd it cold inthide te hole?" inquired Charley of Michael, as he continued in a stooping posture with his thumb in the cork-hole. "What wonderful odds and ends that chiel has in his head to be sure!" Mrs. Dewy admiringly exclaimed from the distance. "I lay a wager that he thinks more about how 'tis inside that barrel than in all the other parts of the world put together." All persons present put on a speaking countenance of admiration for the cleverness alluded to, in the midst of which Reuben returned. The operation was then satisfactorily performed; when Michael arose and stretched his head to the extremest fraction of height that his body would allow of, to re-straighten his back and shoulders--thrusting out his arms and twisting his features to a mass of wrinkles to emphasize the relief aquired. A quart or two of the beverage was then brought to table, at which all the new arrivals reseated themselves with wide-spread knees, their eyes meditatively seeking out any speck or knot in the board upon which the gaze might precipitate itself. "Whatever is father a-biding out in fuel-house so long for?" said the tranter. "Never such a man as father for two things--cleaving up old dead apple-tree wood and playing the bass-viol. 'A'd pass his life between the two, that 'a would." He stepped to the door and opened it. "Father!" "Ay!" rang thinly from round the corner. "Here's the barrel tapped, and we all a-waiting!" A series of dull thuds, that had been heard without for some time past, now ceased; and after the light of a lantern had passed the window and made wheeling rays upon the ceiling inside the eldest of the Dewy family appeared. CHAPTER III: THE ASSEMBLED QUIRE William Dewy--otherwise grandfather William--was now about seventy; yet an ardent vitality still preserved a warm and roughened bloom upon his face, which reminded gardeners of the sunny side of a ripe ribstone-pippin; though a narrow strip of forehead, that was protected from the weather by lying above the line of his hat-brim, seemed to belong to some town man, so gentlemanly was its whiteness. His was a humorous and kindly nature, not unmixed with a frequent melancholy; and he had a firm religious faith. But to his neighbours he had no character in particular. If they saw him pass by their windows when they had been bottling off old mead, or when they had just been called long-headed men who might do anything in the world if they chose, they thought concerning him, "Ah, there's that good-hearted man--open as a child!" If they saw him just after losing a shilling or half-a-crown, or accidentally letting fall a piece of crockery, they thought, "There's that poor weak-minded man Dewy again! Ah, he's never done much in the world either!" If he passed when fortune neither smiled nor frowned on them, they merely thought him old William Dewy. "Ah, so's--here you be!--Ah, Michael and Joseph and John--and you too, Leaf! a merry Christmas all! We shall have a rare log-wood fire directly, Reub, to reckon by the toughness of the job I had in cleaving 'em." As he spoke he threw down an armful of logs which fell in the chimney-corner with a rumble, and looked at them with something of the admiring enmity he would have bestowed on living people who had been very obstinate in holding their own. "Come in, grandfather James." Old James (grandfather on the maternal side) had simply called as a visitor. He lived in a cottage by himself, and many people considered him a miser; some, rather slovenly in his habits. He now came forward from behind grandfather William, and his stooping figure formed a well- illuminated picture as he passed towards the fire-place. Being by trade a mason, he wore a long linen apron reaching almost to his toes, corduroy breeches and gaiters, which, together with his boots, graduated in tints of whitish-brown by constant friction against lime and stone. He also wore a very stiff fustian coat, having folds at the elbows and shoulders as unvarying in their arrangement as those in a pair of bellows: the ridges and the projecting parts of the coat collectively exhibiting a shade different from that of the hollows, which were lined with small ditch-like accumulations of stone and mortar-dust. The extremely large side-pockets, sheltered beneath wide flaps, bulged out convexly whether empty or full; and as he was often engaged to work at buildings far away--his breakfasts and dinners being eaten in a strange chimney-corner, by a garden wall, on a heap of stones, or walking along the road--he carried in these pockets a small tin canister of butter, a small canister of sugar, a small canister of tea, a paper of salt, and a paper of pepper; the bread, cheese, and meat, forming the substance of his meals, hanging up behind him in his basket among the hammers and chisels. If a passer-by looked hard at him when he was drawing forth any of these, "My buttery," he said, with a pinched smile. "Better try over number seventy-eight before we start, I suppose?" said William, pointing to a heap of old Christmas-carol books on a side table. "Wi' all my heart," said the choir generally. "Number seventy-eight was always a teaser--always. I can mind him ever since I was growing up a hard boy-chap." "But he's a good tune, and worth a mint o' practice," said Michael. "He is; though I've been mad enough wi' that tune at times to seize en and tear en all to linnit. Ay, he's a splendid carrel--there's no denying that." "The first line is well enough," said Mr. Spinks; "but when you come to 'O, thou man,' you make a mess o't." "We'll have another go into en, and see what we can make of the martel. Half-an-hour's hammering at en will conquer the toughness of en; I'll warn it." "'Od rabbit it all!" said Mr. Penny, interrupting with a flash of his spectacles, and at the same time clawing at something in the depths of a large side-pocket. "If so be I hadn't been as scatter-brained and thirtingill as a chiel, I should have called at the schoolhouse wi' a boot as I cam up along. Whatever is coming to me I really can't estimate at all!" "The brain has its weaknesses," murmured Mr. Spinks, waving his head ominously. Mr. Spinks was considered to be a scholar, having once kept a night-school, and always spoke up to that level. "Well, I must call with en the first thing to-morrow. And I'll empt my pocket o' this last too, if you don't mind, Mrs. Dewy." He drew forth a last, and placed it on a table at his elbow. The eyes of three or four followed it. "Well," said the shoemaker, seeming to perceive that the interest the object had excited was greater than he had anticipated, and warranted the last's being taken up again and exhibited; "now, whose foot do ye suppose this last was made for? It was made for Geoffrey Day's father, over at Yalbury Wood. Ah, many's the pair o' boots he've had off the last! Well, when 'a died, I used the last for Geoffrey, and have ever since, though a little doctoring was wanted to make it do. Yes, a very queer natured last it is now, 'a b'lieve," he continued, turning it over caressingly. "Now, you notice that there" (pointing to a lump of leather bradded to the toe), "that's a very bad bunion that he've had ever since 'a was a boy. Now, this remarkable large piece" (pointing to a patch nailed to the side), "shows a' accident he received by the tread of a horse, that squashed his foot a'most to a pomace. The horseshoe cam full-butt on this point, you see. And so I've just been over to Geoffrey's, to know if he wanted his bunion altered or made bigger in the new pair I'm making." During the latter part of this speech, Mr. Penny's left hand wandered towards the cider-cup, as if the hand had no connection with the person speaking; and bringing his sentence to an abrupt close, all but the extreme margin of the bootmaker's face was eclipsed by the circular brim of the vessel. "However, I was going to say," continued Penny, putting down the cup, "I ought to have called at the school"--here he went groping again in the depths of his pocket--"to leave this without fail, though I suppose the first thing to-morrow will do." He now drew forth and placed upon the table a boot--small, light, and prettily shaped--upon the heel of which he had been operating. "The new schoolmistress's!" "Ay, no less, Miss Fancy Day; as neat a little figure of fun as ever I see, and just husband-high." "Never Geoffrey's daughter Fancy?" said Bowman, as all glances present converged like wheel-spokes upon the boot in the centre of them. "Yes, sure," resumed Mr. Penny, regarding the boot as if that alone were his auditor; "'tis she that's come here schoolmistress. You knowed his daughter was in training?" "Strange, isn't it, for her to be here Christmas night, Master Penny?" "Yes; but here she is, 'a b'lieve." "I know how she comes here--so I do!" chirruped one of the children. "Why?" Dick inquired, with subtle interest. "Pa'son Maybold was afraid he couldn't manage us all to-morrow at the dinner, and he talked o' getting her jist to come over and help him hand about the plates, and see we didn't make pigs of ourselves; and that's what she's come for!" "And that's the boot, then," continued its mender imaginatively, "that she'll walk to church in to-morrow morning. I don't care to mend boots I don't make; but there's no knowing what it may lead to, and her father always comes to me." There, between the cider-mug and the candle, stood this interesting receptacle of the little unknown's foot; and a very pretty boot it was. A character, in fact--the flexible bend at the instep, the rounded localities of the small nestling toes, scratches from careless scampers now forgotten--all, as repeated in the tell-tale leather, evidencing a nature and a bias. Dick surveyed it with a delicate feeling that he had no right to do so without having first asked the owner of the foot's permission. "Now, neighbours, though no common eye can see it," the shoemaker went on, "a man in the trade can see the likeness between this boot and that last, although that is so deformed as hardly to recall one of God's creatures, and this is one of as pretty a pair as you'd get for ten-and- sixpence in Casterbridge. To you, nothing; but 'tis father's voot and daughter's voot to me, as plain as houses." "I don't doubt there's a likeness, Master Penny--a mild likeness--a fantastical likeness," said Spinks. "But I han't got imagination enough to see it, perhaps." Mr. Penny adjusted his spectacles. "Now, I'll tell ye what happened to me once on this very point. You used to know Johnson the dairyman, William?" "Ay, sure; I did." "Well, 'twasn't opposite his house, but a little lower down--by his paddock, in front o' Parkmaze Pool. I was a-bearing across towards Bloom's End, and lo and behold, there was a man just brought out o' the Pool, dead; he had un'rayed for a dip, but not being able to pitch it just there had gone in flop over his head. Men looked at en; women looked at en; children looked at en; nobody knowed en. He was covered wi' a sheet; but I catched sight of his voot, just showing out as they carried en along. 'I don't care what name that man went by,' I said, in my way, 'but he's John Woodward's brother; I can swear to the family voot.' At that very moment up comes John Woodward, weeping and teaving, 'I've lost my brother! I've lost my brother!'" "Only to think of that!" said Mrs. Dewy. "'Tis well enough to know this foot and that foot," said Mr. Spinks. "'Tis long-headed, in fact, as far as feet do go. I know little, 'tis true--I say no more; but show me a man's foot, and I'll tell you that man's heart." "You must be a cleverer feller, then, than mankind in jineral," said the tranter. "Well, that's nothing for me to speak of," returned Mr. Spinks. "A man lives and learns. Maybe I've read a leaf or two in my time. I don't wish to say anything large, mind you; but nevertheless, maybe I have." "Yes, I know," said Michael soothingly, "and all the parish knows, that ye've read sommat of everything a'most, and have been a great filler of young folks' brains. Learning's a worthy thing, and ye've got it, Master Spinks." "I make no boast, though I may have read and thought a little; and I know--it may be from much perusing, but I make no boast--that by the time a man's head is finished, 'tis almost time for him to creep underground. I am over forty-five." Mr. Spinks emitted a look to signify that if his head was not finished, nobody's head ever could be. "Talk of knowing people by their feet!" said Reuben. "Rot me, my sonnies, then, if I can tell what a man is from all his members put together, oftentimes." "But still, look is a good deal," observed grandfather William absently, moving and balancing his head till the tip of grandfather James's nose was exactly in a right line with William's eye and the mouth of a miniature cavern he was discerning in the fire. "By the way," he continued in a fresher voice, and looking up, "that young crater, the schoolmis'ess, must be sung to to-night wi' the rest? If her ear is as fine as her face, we shall have enough to do to be up-sides with her." "What about her face?" said young Dewy. "Well, as to that," Mr. Spinks replied, "'tis a face you can hardly gainsay. A very good pink face, as far as that do go. Still, only a face, when all is said and done." "Come, come, Elias Spinks, say she's a pretty maid, and have done wi' her," said the tranter, again preparing to visit the cider-barrel. CHAPTER IV: GOING THE ROUNDS Shortly after ten o'clock the singing-boys arrived at the tranter's house, which was invariably the place of meeting, and preparations were made for the start. The older men and musicians wore thick coats, with stiff perpendicular collars, and coloured handkerchiefs wound round and round the neck till the end came to hand, over all which they just showed their ears and noses, like people looking over a wall. The remainder, stalwart ruddy men and boys, were dressed mainly in snow-white smock-frocks, embroidered upon the shoulders and breasts, in ornamental forms of hearts, diamonds, and zigzags. The cider-mug was emptied for the ninth time, the music-books were arranged, and the pieces finally decided upon. The boys in the meantime put the old horn-lanterns in order, cut candles into short lengths to fit the lanterns; and, a thin fleece of snow having fallen since the early part of the evening, those who had no leggings went to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their ankles to keep the insidious flakes from the interior of their boots. Mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets composing it lying at a much greater distance from each other than is ordinarily the case. Hence several hours were consumed in playing and singing within hearing of every family, even if but a single air were bestowed on each. There was Lower Mellstock, the main village; half a mile from this were the church and vicarage, and a few other houses, the spot being rather lonely now, though in past centuries it had been the most thickly-populated quarter of the parish. A mile north-east lay the hamlet of Upper Mellstock, where the tranter lived; and at other points knots of cottages, besides solitary farmsteads and dairies. Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his grandson Dick the treble violin; and Reuben and Michael Mail the tenor and second violins respectively. The singers consisted of four men and seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of carrying and attending to the lanterns, and holding the books open for the players. Directly music was the theme, old William ever and instinctively came to the front. "Now mind, neighbours," he said, as they all went out one by one at the door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them with a critical face as they passed, like a shepherd counting out his sheep. "You two counter- boys, keep your ears open to Michael's fingering, and don't ye go straying into the treble part along o' Dick and his set, as ye did last year; and mind this especially when we be in 'Arise, and hail.' Billy Chimlen, don't you sing quite so raving mad as you fain would; and, all o' ye, whatever ye do, keep from making a great scuffle on the ground when we go in at people's gates; but go quietly, so as to strike up all of a sudden, like spirits." "Farmer Ledlow's first?" "Farmer Ledlow's first; the rest as usual." "And, Voss," said the tranter terminatively, "you keep house here till about half-past two; then heat the metheglin and cider in the warmer you'll find turned up upon the copper; and bring it wi' the victuals to church-hatch, as th'st know." * * * * * Just before the clock struck twelve they lighted the lanterns and started. The moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the snowstorm; but the dense accumulation of snow-cloud weakened her power to a faint twilight, which was rather pervasive of the landscape than traceable to the sky. The breeze had gone down, and the rustle of their feet and tones of their speech echoed with an alert rebound from every post, boundary-stone, and ancient wall they passed, even where the distance of the echo's origin was less than a few yards. Beyond their own slight noises nothing was to be heard, save the occasional bark of foxes in the direction of Yalbury Wood, or the brush of a rabbit among the grass now and then, as it scampered out of their way. Most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited by about two o'clock; they then passed across the outskirts of a wooded park toward the main village, nobody being at home at the Manor. Pursuing no recognized track, great care was necessary in walking lest their faces should come in contact with the low-hanging boughs of the old lime-trees, which in many spots formed dense over-growths of interlaced branches. "Times have changed from the times they used to be," said Mail, regarding nobody can tell what interesting old panoramas with an inward eye, and letting his outward glance rest on the ground, because it was as convenient a position as any. "People don't care much about us now! I've been thinking we must be almost the last left in the county of the old string players? Barrel-organs, and the things next door to 'em that you blow wi' your foot, have come in terribly of late years." "Ay!" said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on seeing him, did the same thing. "More's the pity," replied another. "Time was--long and merry ago now!--when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served some of the quires right. They should have stuck to strings as we did, and kept out clarinets, and done away with serpents. If you'd thrive in musical religion, stick to strings, says I." "Strings be safe soul-lifters, as far as that do go," said Mr. Spinks. "Yet there's worse things than serpents," said Mr. Penny. "Old things pass away, 'tis true; but a serpent was a good old note: a deep rich note was the serpent." "Clar'nets, however, be bad at all times," said Michael Mail. "One Christmas--years agone now, years--I went the rounds wi' the Weatherbury quire. 'Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys of all the clar'nets froze--ah, they did freeze!--so that 'twas like drawing a cork every time a key was opened; and the players o' 'em had to go into a hedger-and-ditcher's chimley-corner, and thaw their clar'nets every now and then. An icicle o' spet hung down from the end of every man's clar'net a span long; and as to fingers--well, there, if ye'll believe me, we had no fingers at all, to our knowing." "I can well bring back to my mind," said Mr. Penny, "what I said to poor Joseph Ryme (who took the treble part in Chalk-Newton Church for two-and- forty year) when they thought of having clar'nets there. 'Joseph,' I said, says I, 'depend upon't, if so be you have them tooting clar'nets you'll spoil the whole set-out. Clar'nets were not made for the service of the Lard; you can see it by looking at 'em,' I said. And what came o't? Why, souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ on his own account within two years o' the time I spoke, and the old quire went to nothing." "As far as look is concerned," said the tranter, "I don't for my part see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar'net. 'Tis further off. There's always a rakish, scampish twist about a fiddle's looks that seems to say the Wicked One had a hand in making o'en; while angels be supposed to play clar'nets in heaven, or som'at like 'em, if ye may believe picters." "Robert Penny, you was in the right," broke in the eldest Dewy. "They should ha' stuck to strings. Your brass-man is a rafting dog--well and good; your reed-man is a dab at stirring ye--well and good; your drum-man is a rare bowel-shaker--good again. But I don't care who hears me say it, nothing will spak to your heart wi' the sweetness o' the man of strings!" "Strings for ever!" said little Jimmy. "Strings alone would have held their ground against all the new comers in creation." ("True, true!" said Bowman.) "But clarinets was death." ("Death they was!" said Mr. Penny.) "And harmonions," William continued in a louder voice, and getting excited by these signs of approval, "harmonions and barrel-organs" ("Ah!" and groans from Spinks) "be miserable--what shall I call 'em?--miserable--" "Sinners," suggested Jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and did not lag behind like the other little boys. "Miserable dumbledores!" "Right, William, and so they be--miserable dumbledores!" said the choir with unanimity. By this time they were crossing to a gate in the direction of the school, which, standing on a slight eminence at the junction of three ways, now rose in unvarying and dark flatness against the sky. The instruments were retuned, and all the band entered the school enclosure, enjoined by old William to keep upon the grass. "Number seventy-eight," he softly gave out as they formed round in a semicircle, the boys opening the lanterns to get a clearer light, and directing their rays on the books. Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time-worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly: "Remember Adam's fall, O thou Man: Remember Adam's fall From Heaven to Hell. Remember Adam's fall; How he hath condemn'd all In Hell perpetual There for to dwell. Remember God's goodnesse, O thou Man: Remember God's goodnesse, His promise made. Remember God's goodnesse; He sent His Son sinlesse Our ails for to redress; Be not afraid! In Bethlehem He was born, O thou Man: In Bethlehem He was born, For mankind's sake. In Bethlehem He was born, Christmas-day i' the morn: Our Saviour thought no scorn Our faults to take. Give thanks to God alway, O thou Man: Give thanks to God alway With heart-most joy. Give thanks to God alway On this our joyful day: Let all men sing and say, Holy, Holy!" Having concluded the last note, they listened for a minute or two, but found that no sound issued from the schoolhouse. "Four breaths, and then, 'O, what unbounded goodness!' number fifty-nine," said William. This was duly gone through, and no notice whatever seemed to be taken of the performance. "Good guide us, surely 'tisn't a' empty house, as befell us in the year thirty-nine and forty-three!" said old Dewy. "Perhaps she's jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our doings?" the tranter whispered. "'Od rabbit her!" said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner of the school chimney, "I don't quite stomach her, if this is it. Your plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a' b'lieve, souls; so say I." "Four breaths, and then the last," said the leader authoritatively. "'Rejoice, ye Tenants of the Earth,' number sixty-four." At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud voice, as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the previous forty years--"A merry Christmas to ye!" CHAPTER V: THE LISTENERS When the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had nearly died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible in one of the windows of the upper floor. It came so close to the blind that the exact position of the flame could be perceived from the outside. Remaining steady for an instant, the blind went upward from before it, revealing to thirty concentrated eyes a young girl, framed as a picture by the window architrave, and unconsciously illuminating her countenance to a vivid brightness by a candle she held in her left hand, close to her face, her right hand being extended to the side of the window. She was wrapped in a white robe of some kind, whilst down her shoulders fell a twining profusion of marvellously rich hair, in a wild disorder which proclaimed it to be only during the invisible hours of the night that such a condition was discoverable. Her bright eyes were looking into the grey world outside with an uncertain expression, oscillating between courage and shyness, which, as she recognized the semicircular group of dark forms gathered before her, transformed itself into pleasant resolution. Opening the window, she said lightly and warmly--"Thank you, singers, thank you!" Together went the window quickly and quietly, and the blind started downward on its return to its place. Her fair forehead and eyes vanished; her little mouth; her neck and shoulders; all of her. Then the spot of candlelight shone nebulously as before; then it moved away. "How pretty!" exclaimed Dick Dewy. "If she'd been rale wexwork she couldn't ha' been comelier," said Michael Mail. "As near a thing to a spiritual vision as ever I wish to see!" said tranter Dewy. "O, sich I never, never see!" said Leaf fervently. All the rest, after clearing their throats and adjusting their hats, agreed that such a sight was worth singing for. "Now to Farmer Shiner's, and then replenish our insides, father?" said the tranter. "Wi' all my heart," said old William, shouldering his bass-viol. Farmer Shiner's was a queer lump of a house, standing at the corner of a lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare. The upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof upon the sky. The front of this building was reached, and the preliminaries arranged as usual. "Four breaths, and number thirty-two, 'Behold the Morning Star,'" said old William. They had reached the end of the second verse, and the fiddlers were doing the up bow-stroke previously to pouring forth the opening chord of the third verse, when, without a light appearing or any signal being given, a roaring voice exclaimed-- "Shut up, woll 'ee! Don't make your blaring row here! A feller wi' a headache enough to split his skull likes a quiet night!" Slam went the window. "Hullo, that's a' ugly blow for we!" said the tranter, in a keenly appreciative voice, and turning to his companions. "Finish the carrel, all who be friends of harmony!" commanded old William; and they continued to the end. "Four breaths, and number nineteen!" said William firmly. "Give it him well; the quire can't be insulted in this manner!" A light now flashed into existence, the window opened, and the farmer stood revealed as one in a terrific passion. "Drown en!--drown en!" the tranter cried, fiddling frantically. "Play fortissimy, and drown his spaking!" "Fortissimy!" said Michael Mail, and the music and singing waxed so loud that it was impossible to know what Mr. Shiner had said, was saying, or was about to say; but wildly flinging his arms and body about in the forms of capital Xs and Ys, he appeared to utter enough invectives to consign the whole parish to perdition. "Very onseemly--very!" said old William, as they retired. "Never such a dreadful scene in the whole round o' my carrel practice--never! And he a churchwarden!" "Only a drap o' drink got into his head," said the tranter. "Man's well enough when he's in his religious frame. He's in his worldly frame now. Must ask en to our bit of a party to-morrow night, I suppose, and so put en in humour again. We bear no mortal man ill-will." They now crossed Mellstock Bridge, and went along an embowered path beside the Froom towards the church and vicarage, meeting Voss with the hot mead and bread-and-cheese as they were approaching the churchyard. This determined them to eat and drink before proceeding further, and they entered the church and ascended to the gallery. The lanterns were opened, and the whole body sat round against the walls on benches and whatever else was available, and made a hearty meal. In the pauses of conversation there could be heard through the floor overhead a little world of undertones and creaks from the halting clockwork, which never spread further than the tower they were born in, and raised in the more meditative minds a fancy that here lay the direct pathway of Time. Having done eating and drinking, they again tuned the instruments, and once more the party emerged into the night air. "Where's Dick?" said old Dewy. Every man looked round upon every other man, as if Dick might have been transmuted into one or the other; and then they said they didn't know. "Well now, that's what I call very nasty of Master Dicky, that I do," said Michael Mail. "He've clinked off home-along, depend upon't," another suggested, though not quite believing that he had. "Dick!" exclaimed the tranter, and his voice rolled sonorously forth among the yews. He suspended his muscles rigid as stone whilst listening for an answer, and finding he listened in vain, turned to the assemblage. "The treble man too! Now if he'd been a tenor or counter chap, we might ha' contrived the rest o't without en, you see. But for a quire to lose the treble, why, my sonnies, you may so well lose your . . . " The tranter paused, unable to mention an image vast enough for the occasion. "Your head at once," suggested Mr. Penny. The tranter moved a pace, as if it were puerile of people to complete sentences when there were more pressing things to be done. "Was ever heard such a thing as a young man leaving his work half done and turning tail like this!" "Never," replied Bowman, in a tone signifying that he was the last man in the world to wish to withhold the formal finish required of him. "I hope no fatal tragedy has overtook the lad!" said his grandfather. "O no," replied tranter Dewy placidly. "Wonder where he's put that there fiddle of his. Why that fiddle cost thirty shillings, and good words besides. Somewhere in the damp, without doubt; that instrument will be unglued and spoilt in ten minutes--ten! ay, two." "What in the name o' righteousness can have happened?" said old William, more uneasily. "Perhaps he's drownded!" Leaving their lanterns and instruments in the belfry they retraced their steps along the waterside track. "A strapping lad like Dick d'know better than let anything happen onawares," Reuben remarked. "There's sure to be some poor little scram reason for't staring us in the face all the while." He lowered his voice to a mysterious tone: "Neighbours, have ye noticed any sign of a scornful woman in his head, or suchlike?" "Not a glimmer of such a body. He's as clear as water yet." "And Dicky said he should never marry," cried Jimmy, "but live at home always along wi' mother and we!" "Ay, ay, my sonny; every lad has said that in his time." They had now again reached the precincts of Mr. Shiner's, but hearing nobody in that direction, one or two went across to the schoolhouse. A light was still burning in the bedroom, and though the blind was down, the window had been slightly opened, as if to admit the distant notes of the carollers to the ears of the occupant of the room. Opposite the window, leaning motionless against a beech tree, was the lost man, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed upon the illuminated lattice. "Why, Dick, is that thee? What b'st doing here?" Dick's body instantly flew into a more rational attitude, and his head was seen to turn east and west in the gloom, as if endeavouring to discern some proper answer to that question; and at last he said in rather feeble accents--"Nothing, father." "Th'st take long enough time about it then, upon my body," said the tranter, as they all turned anew towards the vicarage. "I thought you hadn't done having snap in the gallery," said Dick. "Why, we've been traypsing and rambling about, looking everywhere, and thinking you'd done fifty deathly things, and here have you been at nothing at all!" "The stupidness lies in that point of it being nothing at all," murmured Mr. Spinks. The vicarage front was their next field of operation, and Mr. Maybold, the lately-arrived incumbent, duly received his share of the night's harmonies. It was hoped that by reason of his profession he would have been led to open the window, and an extra carol in quick time was added to draw him forth. But Mr. Maybold made no stir. "A bad sign!" said old William, shaking his head. However, at that same instant a musical voice was heard exclaiming from inner depths of bedclothes--"Thanks, villagers!" "What did he say?" asked Bowman, who was rather dull of hearing. Bowman's voice, being therefore loud, had been heard by the vicar within. "I said, 'Thanks, villagers!'" cried the vicar again. "Oh, we didn't hear 'ee the first time!" cried Bowman. "Now don't for heaven's sake spoil the young man's temper by answering like that!" said the tranter. "You won't do that, my friends!" the vicar shouted. "Well to be sure, what ears!" said Mr. Penny in a whisper. "Beats any horse or dog in the parish, and depend upon't, that's a sign he's a proper clever chap." "We shall see that in time," said the tranter. Old William, in his gratitude for such thanks from a comparatively new inhabitant, was anxious to play all the tunes over again; but renounced his desire on being reminded by Reuben that it would be best to leave well alone. "Now putting two and two together," the tranter continued, as they went their way over the hill, and across to the last remaining houses; "that is, in the form of that young female vision we zeed just now, and this young tenor-voiced parson, my belief is she'll wind en round her finger, and twist the pore young feller about like the figure of 8--that she will so, my sonnies." CHAPTER VI: CHRISTMAS MORNING The choir at last reached their beds, and slept like the rest of the parish. Dick's slumbers, through the three or four hours remaining for rest, were disturbed and slight; an exhaustive variation upon the incidents that had passed that night in connection with the school-window going on in his brain every moment of the time. In the morning, do what he would--go upstairs, downstairs, out of doors, speak of the wind and weather, or what not--he could not refrain from an unceasing renewal, in imagination, of that interesting enactment. Tilted on the edge of one foot he stood beside the fireplace, watching his mother grilling rashers; but there was nothing in grilling, he thought, unless the Vision grilled. The limp rasher hung down between the bars of the gridiron like a cat in a child's arms; but there was nothing in similes, unless She uttered them. He looked at the daylight shadows of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows. "Perhaps the new young wom--sch--Miss Fancy Day will sing in church with us this morning," he said. The tranter looked a long time before he replied, "I fancy she will; and yet I fancy she won't." Dick implied that such a remark was rather to be tolerated than admired; though deliberateness in speech was known to have, as a rule, more to do with the machinery of the tranter's throat than with the matter enunciated. They made preparations for going to church as usual; Dick with extreme alacrity, though he would not definitely consider why he was so religious. His wonderful nicety in brushing and cleaning his best light boots had features which elevated it to the rank of an art. Every particle and speck of last week's mud was scraped and brushed from toe and heel; new blacking from the packet was carefully mixed and made use of, regardless of expense. A coat was laid on and polished; then another coat for increased blackness; and lastly a third, to give the perfect and mirror-like jet which the hoped-for rencounter demanded. It being Christmas-day, the tranter prepared himself with Sunday particularity. Loud sousing and snorting noises were heard to proceed from a tub in the back quarters of the dwelling, proclaiming that he was there performing his great Sunday wash, lasting half-an-hour, to which his washings on working-day mornings were mere flashes in the pan. Vanishing into the outhouse with a large brown towel, and the above-named bubblings and snortings being carried on for about twenty minutes, the tranter would appear round the edge of the door, smelling like a summer fog, and looking as if he had just narrowly escaped a watery grave with the loss of much of his clothes, having since been weeping bitterly till his eyes were red; a crystal drop of water hanging ornamentally at the bottom of each ear, one at the tip of his nose, and others in the form of spangles about his hair. After a great deal of crunching upon the sanded stone floor by the feet of father, son, and grandson as they moved to and fro in these preparations, the bass-viol and fiddles were taken from their nook, and the strings examined and screwed a little above concert-pitch, that they might keep their tone when the service began, to obviate the awkward contingency of having to retune them at the back of the gallery during a cough, sneeze, or amen--an inconvenience which had been known to arise in damp wintry weather. The three left the door and paced down Mellstock-lane and across the ewe- lease, bearing under their arms the instruments in faded green-baize bags, and old brown music-books in their hands; Dick continually finding himself in advance of the other two, and the tranter moving on with toes turned outwards to an enormous angle. At the foot of an incline the church became visible through the north gate, or 'church hatch,' as it was called here. Seven agile figures in a clump were observable beyond, which proved to be the choristers waiting; sitting on an altar-tomb to pass the time, and letting their heels dangle against it. The musicians being now in sight, the youthful party scampered off and rattled up the old wooden stairs of the gallery like a regiment of cavalry; the other boys of the parish waiting outside and observing birds, cats, and other creatures till the vicar entered, when they suddenly subsided into sober church-goers, and passed down the aisle with echoing heels. The gallery of Mellstock Church had a status and sentiment of its own. A stranger there was regarded with a feeling altogether differing from that of the congregation below towards him. Banished from the nave as an intruder whom no originality could make interesting, he was received above as a curiosity that no unfitness could render dull. The gallery, too, looked down upon and knew the habits of the nave to its remotest peculiarity, and had an extensive stock of exclusive information about it; whilst the nave knew nothing of the gallery folk, as gallery folk, beyond their loud-sounding minims and chest notes. Such topics as that the clerk was always chewing tobacco except at the moment of crying amen; that he had a dust-hole in his pew; that during the sermon certain young daughters of the village had left off caring to read anything so mild as the marriage service for some years, and now regularly studied the one which chronologically follows it; that a pair of lovers touched fingers through a knot-hole between their pews in the manner ordained by their great exemplars, Pyramus and Thisbe; that Mrs. Ledlow, the farmer's wife, counted her money and reckoned her week's marketing expenses during the first lesson--all news to those below--were stale subjects here. Old William sat in the centre of the front row, his violoncello between his knees and two singers on each hand. Behind him, on the left, came the treble singers and Dick; and on the right the tranter and the tenors. Farther back was old Mail with the altos and supernumeraries. But before they had taken their places, and whilst they were standing in a circle at the back of the gallery practising a psalm or two, Dick cast his eyes over his grandfather's shoulder, and saw the vision of the past night enter the porch-door as methodically as if she had never been a vision at all. A new atmosphere seemed suddenly to be puffed into the ancient edifice by her movement, which made Dick's body and soul tingle with novel sensations. Directed by Shiner, the churchwarden, she proceeded to the small aisle on the north side of the chancel, a spot now allotted to a throng of Sunday-school girls, and distinctly visible from the gallery-front by looking under the curve of the furthermost arch on that side. Before this moment the church had seemed comparatively empty--now it was thronged; and as Miss Fancy rose from her knees and looked around her for a permanent place in which to deposit herself--finally choosing the remotest corner--Dick began to breathe more freely the warm new air she had brought with her; to feel rushings of blood, and to have impressions that there was a tie between her and himself visible to all the congregation. Ever afterwards the young man could recollect individually each part of the service of that bright Christmas morning, and the trifling occurrences which took place as its minutes slowly drew along; the duties of that day dividing themselves by a complete line from the services of other times. The tunes they that morning essayed remained with him for years, apart from all others; also the text; also the appearance of the layer of dust upon the capitals of the piers; that the holly-bough in the chancel archway was hung a little out of the centre--all the ideas, in short, that creep into the mind when reason is only exercising its lowest activity through the eye. By chance or by fate, another young man who attended Mellstock Church on that Christmas morning had towards the end of the service the same instinctive perception of an interesting presence, in the shape of the same bright maiden, though his emotion reached a far less developed stage. And there was this difference, too, that the person in question was surprised at his condition, and sedulously endeavoured to reduce himself to his normal state of mind. He was the young vicar, Mr. Maybold. The music on Christmas mornings was frequently below the standard of church-performances at other times. The boys were sleepy from the heavy exertions of the night; the men were slightly wearied; and now, in addition to these constant reasons, there was a dampness in the atmosphere that still further aggravated the evil. Their strings, from the recent long exposure to the night air, rose whole semitones, and snapped with a loud twang at the most silent moment; which necessitated more retiring than ever to the back of the gallery, and made the gallery throats quite husky with the quantity of coughing and hemming required for tuning in. The vicar looked cross. When the singing was in progress there was suddenly discovered to be a strong and shrill reinforcement from some point, ultimately found to be the school-girls' aisle. At every attempt it grew bolder and more distinct. At the third time of singing, these intrusive feminine voices were as mighty as those of the regular singers; in fact, the flood of sound from this quarter assumed such an individuality, that it had a time, a key, almost a tune of its own, surging upwards when the gallery plunged downwards, and the reverse. Now this had never happened before within the memory of man. The girls, like the rest of the congregation, had always been humble and respectful followers of the gallery; singing at sixes and sevens if without gallery leaders; never interfering with the ordinances of these practised artists--having no will, union, power, or proclivity except it was given them from the established choir enthroned above them. A good deal of desperation became noticeable in the gallery throats and strings, which continued throughout the musical portion of the service. Directly the fiddles were laid down, Mr. Penny's spectacles put in their sheath, and the text had been given out, an indignant whispering began. "Did ye hear that, souls?" Mr. Penny said, in a groaning breath. "Brazen-faced hussies!" said Bowman. "True; why, they were every note as loud as we, fiddles and all, if not louder!" "Fiddles and all!" echoed Bowman bitterly. "Shall anything saucier be found than united 'ooman?" Mr. Spinks murmured. "What I want to know is," said the tranter (as if he knew already, but that civilization required the form of words), "what business people have to tell maidens to sing like that when they don't sit in a gallery, and never have entered one in their lives? That's the question, my sonnies." "'Tis the gallery have got to sing, all the world knows," said Mr. Penny. "Why, souls, what's the use o' the ancients spending scores of pounds to build galleries if people down in the lowest depths of the church sing like that at a moment's notice?" "Really, I think we useless ones had better march out of church, fiddles and all!" said Mr. Spinks, with a laugh which, to a stranger, would have sounded mild and real. Only the initiated body of men he addressed could understand the horrible bitterness of irony that lurked under the quiet words 'useless ones,' and the ghastliness of the laughter apparently so natural. "Never mind! Let 'em sing too--'twill make it all the louder--hee, hee!" said Leaf. "Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf! Where have you lived all your life?" said grandfather William sternly. The quailing Leaf tried to look as if he had lived nowhere at all. "When all's said and done, my sonnies," Reuben said, "there'd have been no real harm in their singing if they had let nobody hear 'em, and only jined in now and then." "None at all," said Mr. Penny. "But though I don't wish to accuse people wrongfully, I'd say before my lord judge that I could hear every note o' that last psalm come from 'em as much as from us--every note as if 'twas their own." "Know it! ah, I should think I did know it!" Mr. Spinks was heard to observe at this moment, without reference to his fellow players--shaking his head at some idea he seemed to see floating before him, and smiling as if he were attending a funeral at the time. "Ah, do I or don't I know it!" No one said "Know what?" because all were aware from experience that what he knew would declare itself in process of time. "I could fancy last night that we should have some trouble wi' that young man," said the tranter, pending the continuance of Spinks's speech, and looking towards the unconscious Mr. Maybold in the pulpit. "I fancy," said old William, rather severely, "I fancy there's too much whispering going on to be of any spiritual use to gentle or simple." Then folding his lips and concentrating his glance on the vicar, he implied that none but the ignorant would speak again; and accordingly there was silence in the gallery, Mr. Spinks's telling speech remaining for ever unspoken. Dick had said nothing, and the tranter little, on this episode of the morning; for Mrs. Dewy at breakfast expressed it as her intention to invite the youthful leader of the culprits to the small party it was customary with them to have on Christmas night--a piece of knowledge which had given a particular brightness to Dick's reflections since he had received it. And in the tranter's slightly-cynical nature, party feeling was weaker than in the other members of the choir, though friendliness and faithful partnership still sustained in him a hearty earnestness on their account. CHAPTER VII: THE TRANTER'S PARTY During the afternoon unusual activity was seen to prevail about the precincts of tranter Dewy's house. The flagstone floor was swept of dust, and a sprinkling of the finest yellow sand from the innermost stratum of the adjoining sand-pit lightly scattered thereupon. Then were produced large knives and forks, which had been shrouded in darkness and grease since the last occasion of the kind, and bearing upon their sides, "Shear-steel, warranted," in such emphatic letters of assurance, that the warranter's name was not required as further proof, and not given. The key was left in the tap of the cider-barrel, instead of being carried in a pocket. And finally the tranter had to stand up in the room and let his wife wheel him round like a turnstile, to see if anything discreditable was visible in his appearance. "Stand still till I've been for the scissors," said Mrs. Dewy. The tranter stood as still as a sentinel at the challenge. The only repairs necessary were a trimming of one or two whiskers that had extended beyond the general contour of the mass; a like trimming of a slightly-frayed edge visible on his shirt-collar; and a final tug at a grey hair--to all of which operations he submitted in resigned silence, except the last, which produced a mild "Come, come, Ann," by way of expostulation. "Really, Reuben, 'tis quite a disgrace to see such a man," said Mrs. Dewy, with the severity justifiable in a long-tried companion, giving him another turn round, and picking several of Smiler's hairs from the shoulder of his coat. Reuben's thoughts seemed engaged elsewhere, and he yawned. "And the collar of your coat is a shame to behold--so plastered with dirt, or dust, or grease, or something. Why, wherever could you have got it?" "'Tis my warm nater in summer-time, I suppose. I always did get in such a heat when I bustle about." "Ay, the Dewys always were such a coarse-skinned family. There's your brother Bob just as bad--as fat as a porpoise--wi' his low, mean, 'How'st do, Ann?' whenever he meets me. I'd 'How'st do' him indeed! If the sun only shines out a minute, there be you all streaming in the face--I never see!" "If I be hot week-days, I must be hot Sundays." "If any of the girls should turn after their father 'twill be a bad look- out for 'em, poor things! None of my family were sich vulgar sweaters, not one of 'em. But, Lord-a-mercy, the Dewys! I don't know how ever I cam' into such a family!" "Your woman's weakness when I asked ye to jine us. That's how it was I suppose." But the tranter appeared to have heard some such words from his wife before, and hence his answer had not the energy it might have shown if the inquiry had possessed the charm of novelty. "You never did look so well in a pair o' trousers as in them," she continued in the same unimpassioned voice, so that the unfriendly criticism of the Dewy family seemed to have been more normal than spontaneous. "Such a cheap pair as 'twas too. As big as any man could wish to have, and lined inside, and double-lined in the lower parts, and an extra piece of stiffening at the bottom. And 'tis a nice high cut that comes up right under your armpits, and there's enough turned down inside the seams to make half a pair more, besides a piece of cloth left that will make an honest waistcoat--all by my contriving in buying the stuff at a bargain, and having it made up under my eye. It only shows what may be done by taking a little trouble, and not going straight to the rascally tailors." The discourse was cut short by the sudden appearance of Charley on the scene, with a face and hands of hideous blackness, and a nose like a guttering candle. Why, on that particularly cleanly afternoon, he should have discovered that the chimney-crook and chain from which the hams were suspended should have possessed more merits and general interest as playthings than any other articles in the house, is a question for nursing mothers to decide. However, the humour seemed to lie in the result being, as has been seen, that any given player with these articles was in the long-run daubed with soot. The last that was seen of Charley by daylight after this piece of ingenuity was when in the act of vanishing from his father's presence round the corner of the house--looking back over his shoulder with an expression of great sin on his face, like Cain as the Outcast in Bible pictures. * * * * * The guests had all assembled, and the tranter's party had reached that degree of development which accords with ten o'clock P.M. in rural assemblies. At that hour the sound of a fiddle in process of tuning was heard from the inner pantry. "That's Dick," said the tranter. "That lad's crazy for a jig." "Dick! Now I cannot--really, I cannot have any dancing at all till Christmas-day is out," said old William emphatically. "When the clock ha' done striking twelve, dance as much as ye like." "Well, I must say there's reason in that, William," said Mrs. Penny. "If you do have a party on Christmas-night, 'tis only fair and honourable to the sky-folk to have it a sit-still party. Jigging parties be all very well on the Devil's holidays; but a jigging party looks suspicious now. O yes; stop till the clock strikes, young folk--so say I." It happened that some warm mead accidentally got into Mr. Spinks's head about this time. "Dancing," he said, "is a most strengthening, livening, and courting movement, 'specially with a little beverage added! And dancing is good. But why disturb what is ordained, Richard and Reuben, and the company zhinerally? Why, I ask, as far as that do go?" "Then nothing till after twelve," said William. Though Reuben and his wife ruled on social points, religious questions were mostly disposed of by the old man, whose firmness on this head quite counterbalanced a certain weakness in his handling of domestic matters. The hopes of the younger members of the household were therefore relegated to a distance of one hour and three-quarters--a result that took visible shape in them by a remote and listless look about the eyes--the singing of songs being permitted in the interim. At five minutes to twelve the soft tuning was again heard in the back quarters; and when at length the clock had whizzed forth the last stroke, Dick appeared ready primed, and the instruments were boldly handled; old William very readily taking the bass-viol from its accustomed nail, and touching the strings as irreligiously as could be desired. The country-dance called the 'Triumph, or Follow my Lover,' was the figure with which they opened. The tranter took for his partner Mrs. Penny, and Mrs. Dewy was chosen by Mr. Penny, who made so much of his limited height by a judicious carriage of the head, straightening of the back, and important flashes of his spectacle-glasses, that he seemed almost as tall as the tranter. Mr. Shiner, age about thirty-five, farmer and church-warden, a character principally composed of a crimson stare, vigorous breath, and a watch-chain, with a mouth hanging on a dark smile but never smiling, had come quite willingly to the party, and showed a wondrous obliviousness of all his antics on the previous night. But the comely, slender, prettily-dressed prize Fancy Day fell to Dick's lot, in spite of some private machinations of the farmer, for the reason that Mr. Shiner, as a richer man, had shown too much assurance in asking the favour, whilst Dick had been duly courteous. We gain a good view of our heroine as she advances to her place in the ladies' line. She belonged to the taller division of middle height. Flexibility was her first characteristic, by which she appeared to enjoy the most easeful rest when she was in gliding motion. Her dark eyes--arched by brows of so keen, slender, and soft a curve, that they resembled nothing so much as two slurs in music--showed primarily a bright sparkle each. This was softened by a frequent thoughtfulness, yet not so frequent as to do away, for more than a few minutes at a time, with a certain coquettishness; which in its turn was never so decided as to banish honesty. Her lips imitated her brows in their clearly-cut outline and softness of bend; and her nose was well shaped--which is saying a great deal, when it is remembered that there are a hundred pretty mouths and eyes for one pretty nose. Add to this, plentiful knots of dark-brown hair, a gauzy dress of white, with blue facings; and the slightest idea may be gained of the young maiden who showed, amidst the rest of the dancing-ladies, like a flower among vegetables. And so the dance proceeded. Mr. Shiner, according to the interesting rule laid down, deserted his own partner, and made off down the middle with this fair one of Dick's--the pair appearing from the top of the room like two persons tripping down a lane to be married. Dick trotted behind with what was intended to be a look of composure, but which was, in fact, a rather silly expression of feature--implying, with too much earnestness, that such an elopement could not be tolerated. Then they turned and came back, when Dick grew more rigid around his mouth, and blushed with ingenuous ardour as he joined hands with the rival and formed the arch over his lady's head; which presumably gave the figure its name; relinquishing her again at setting to partners, when Mr. Shiner's new chain quivered in every link, and all the loose flesh upon the tranter--who here came into action again--shook like jelly. Mrs. Penny, being always rather concerned for her personal safety when she danced with the tranter, fixed her face to a chronic smile of timidity the whole time it lasted--a peculiarity which filled her features with wrinkles, and reduced her eyes to little straight lines like hyphens, as she jigged up and down opposite him; repeating in her own person not only his proper movements, but also the minor flourishes which the richness of the tranter's imagination led him to introduce from time to time--an imitation which had about it something of slavish obedience, not unmixed with fear. The ear-rings of the ladies now flung themselves wildly about, turning violent summersaults, banging this way and that, and then swinging quietly against the ears sustaining them. Mrs. Crumpler--a heavy woman, who, for some reason which nobody ever thought worth inquiry, danced in a clean apron--moved so smoothly through the figure that her feet were never seen; conveying to imaginative minds the idea that she rolled on castors. Minute after minute glided by, and the party reached the period when ladies' back-hair begins to look forgotten and dissipated; when a perceptible dampness makes itself apparent upon the faces even of delicate girls--a ghastly dew having for some time rained from the features of their masculine partners; when skirts begin to be torn out of their gathers; when elderly people, who have stood up to please their juniors, begin to feel sundry small tremblings in the region of the knees, and to wish the interminable dance was at Jericho; when (at country parties of the thorough sort) waistcoats begin to be unbuttoned, and when the fiddlers' chairs have been wriggled, by the frantic bowing of their occupiers, to a distance of about two feet from where they originally stood. Fancy was dancing with Mr. Shiner. Dick knew that Fancy, by the law of good manners, was bound to dance as pleasantly with one partner as with another; yet he could not help suggesting to himself that she need not have put quite so much spirit into her steps, nor smiled quite so frequently whilst in the farmer's hands. "I'm afraid you didn't cast off," said Dick mildly to Mr. Shiner, before the latter man's watch-chain had done vibrating from a recent whirl. Fancy made a motion of accepting the correction; but her partner took no notice, and proceeded with the next movement, with an affectionate bend towards her. "That Shiner's too fond of her," the young man said to himself as he watched them. They came to the top again, Fancy smiling warmly towards her partner, and went to their places. "Mr. Shiner, you didn't cast off," said Dick, for want of something else to demolish him with; casting off himself, and being put out at the farmer's irregularity. "Perhaps I sha'n't cast off for any man," said Mr. Shiner. "I think you ought to, sir." Dick's partner, a young lady of the name of Lizzy--called Lizz for short--tried to mollify. "I can't say that I myself have much feeling for casting off," she said. "Nor I," said Mrs. Penny, following up the argument, "especially if a friend and neighbour is set against it. Not but that 'tis a terrible tasty thing in good hands and well done; yes, indeed, so say I." "All I meant was," said Dick, rather sorry that he had spoken correctingly to a guest, "that 'tis in the dance; and a man has hardly any right to hack and mangle what was ordained by the regular dance-maker, who, I daresay, got his living by making 'em, and thought of nothing else all his life." "I don't like casting off: then very well; I cast off for no dance-maker that ever lived." Dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being really an effort to present to himself, in an abstract form, how far an argument with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that rival was his mother's guest. The dead-lock was put an end to by the stamping arrival up the middle of the tranter, who, despising minutiae on principle, started a theme of his own. "I assure you, neighbours," he said, "the heat of my frame no tongue can tell!" He looked around and endeavoured to give, by a forcible gaze of self-sympathy, some faint idea of the truth. Mrs. Dewy formed one of the next couple. "Yes," she said, in an auxiliary tone, "Reuben always was such a hot man." Mrs. Penny implied the species of sympathy that such a class of affliction required, by trying to smile and to look grieved at the same time. "If he only walk round the garden of a Sunday morning, his shirt-collar is as limp as no starch at all," continued Mrs. Dewy, her countenance lapsing parenthetically into a housewifely expression of concern at the reminiscence. "Come, come, you women-folk; 'tis hands across--come, come!" said the tranter; and the conversation ceased for the present. CHAPTER VIII: THEY DANCE MORE WILDLY Dick had at length secured Fancy for that most delightful of country-dances, opening with six-hands-round. "Before we begin," said the tranter, "my proposal is, that 'twould be a right and proper plan for every mortal man in the dance to pull off his jacket, considering the heat." "Such low notions as you have, Reuben! Nothing but strip will go down with you when you are a-dancing. Such a hot man as he is!" "Well, now, look here, my sonnies," he argued to his wife, whom he often addressed in the plural masculine for economy of epithet merely; "I don't see that. You dance and get hot as fire; therefore you lighten your clothes. Isn't that nature and reason for gentle and simple? If I strip by myself and not necessary, 'tis rather pot-housey I own; but if we stout chaps strip one and all, why, 'tis the native manners of the country, which no man can gainsay? Hey--what did you say, my sonnies?" "Strip we will!" said the three other heavy men who were in the dance; and their coats were accordingly taken off and hung in the passage, whence the four sufferers from heat soon reappeared, marching in close column, with flapping shirt-sleeves, and having, as common to them all, a general glance of being now a match for any man or dancer in England or Ireland. Dick, fearing to lose ground in Fancy's good opinion, retained his coat like the rest of the thinner men; and Mr. Shiner did the same from superior knowledge. And now a further phase of revelry had disclosed itself. It was the time of night when a guest may write his name in the dust upon the tables and chairs, and a bluish mist pervades the atmosphere, becoming a distinct halo round the candles; when people's nostrils, wrinkles, and crevices in general, seem to be getting gradually plastered up; when the very fiddlers as well as the dancers get red in the face, the dancers having advanced further still towards incandescence, and entered the cadaverous phase; the fiddlers no longer sit down, but kick back their chairs and saw madly at the strings, with legs firmly spread and eyes closed, regardless of the visible world. Again and again did Dick share his Love's hand with another man, and wheel round; then, more delightfully, promenade in a circle with her all to himself, his arm holding her waist more firmly each time, and his elbow getting further and further behind her back, till the distance reached was rather noticeable; and, most blissful, swinging to places shoulder to shoulder, her breath curling round his neck like a summer zephyr that had strayed from its proper date. Threading the couples one by one they reached the bottom, when there arose in Dick's mind a minor misery lest the tune should end before they could work their way to the top again, and have anew the same exciting run down through. Dick's feelings on actually reaching the top in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a mortal fear that the fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment; which prompted him to convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone musicians, to the effect that they were not to leave off till he and his partner had reached the bottom of the dance once more, which remark was replied to by the nearest of those convulsed and quivering men by a private nod to the anxious young man between two semiquavers of the tune, and a simultaneous "All right, ay, ay," without opening the eyes. Fancy was now held so closely that Dick and she were practically one person. The room became to Dick like a picture in a dream; all that he could remember of it afterwards being the look of the fiddlers going to sleep, as humming-tops sleep, by increasing their motion and hum, together with the figures of grandfather James and old Simon Crumpler sitting by the chimney-corner, talking and nodding in dumb-show, and beating the air to their emphatic sentences like people near a threshing machine. The dance ended. "Piph-h-h-h!" said tranter Dewy, blowing out his breath in the very finest stream of vapour that a man's lips could form. "A regular tightener, that one, sonnies!" He wiped his forehead, and went to the cider and ale mugs on the table. "Well!" said Mrs. Penny, flopping into a chair, "my heart haven't been in such a thumping state of uproar since I used to sit up on old Midsummer- eves to see who my husband was going to be." "And that's getting on for a good few years ago now, from what I've heard you tell," said the tranter, without lifting his eyes from the cup he was filling. Being now engaged in the business of handing round refreshments, he was warranted in keeping his coat off still, though the other heavy men had resumed theirs. "And a thing I never expected would come to pass, if you'll believe me, came to pass then," continued Mrs. Penny. "Ah, the first spirit ever I see on a Midsummer-eve was a puzzle to me when he appeared, a hard puzzle, so say I!" "So I should have fancied," said Elias Spinks. "Yes," said Mrs. Penny, throwing her glance into past times, and talking on in a running tone of complacent abstraction, as if a listener were not a necessity. "Yes; never was I in such a taking as on that Midsummer- eve! I sat up, quite determined to see if John Wildway was going to marry me or no. I put the bread-and-cheese and beer quite ready, as the witch's book ordered, and I opened the door, and I waited till the clock struck twelve, my nerves all alive and so strained that I could feel every one of 'em twitching like bell-wires. Yes, sure! and when the clock had struck, lo and behold, I could see through the door a little small man in the lane wi' a shoemaker's apron on." Here Mr. Penny stealthily enlarged himself half an inch. "Now, John Wildway," Mrs. Penny continued, "who courted me at that time, was a shoemaker, you see, but he was a very fair-sized man, and I couldn't believe that any such a little small man had anything to do wi' me, as anybody might. But on he came, and crossed the threshold--not John, but actually the same little small man in the shoemaker's apron--" "You needn't be so mighty particular about little and small!" said her husband. "In he walks, and down he sits, and O my goodness me, didn't I flee upstairs, body and soul hardly hanging together! Well, to cut a long story short, by-long and by-late, John Wildway and I had a miff and parted; and lo and behold, the coming man came! Penny asked me if I'd go snacks with him, and afore I knew what I was about a'most, the thing was done." "I've fancied you never knew better in your life; but I mid be mistaken," said Mr. Penny in a murmur. After Mrs. Penny had spoken, there being no new occupation for her eyes, she still let them stay idling on the past scenes just related, which were apparently visible to her in the centre of the room. Mr. Penny's remark received no reply. During this discourse the tranter and his wife might have been observed standing in an unobtrusive corner, in mysterious closeness to each other, a just perceptible current of intelligence passing from each to each, which had apparently no relation whatever to the conversation of their guests, but much to their sustenance. A conclusion of some kind having at length been drawn, the palpable confederacy of man and wife was once more obliterated, the tranter marching off into the pantry, humming a tune that he couldn't quite recollect, and then breaking into the words of a song of which he could remember about one line and a quarter. Mrs. Dewy spoke a few words about preparations for a bit of supper. That elder portion of the company which loved eating and drinking put on a look to signify that till this moment they had quite forgotten that it was customary to expect suppers on these occasions; going even further than this politeness of feature, and starting irrelevant subjects, the exceeding flatness and forced tone of which rather betrayed their object. The younger members said they were quite hungry, and that supper would be delightful though it was so late. Good luck attended Dick's love-passes during the meal. He sat next Fancy, and had the thrilling pleasure of using permanently a glass which had been taken by Fancy in mistake; of letting the outer edge of the sole of his boot touch the lower verge of her skirt; and to add to these delights the cat, which had lain unobserved in her lap for several minutes, crept across into his own, touching him with fur that had touched her hand a moment before. There were, besides, some little pleasures in the shape of helping her to vegetable she didn't want, and when it had nearly alighted on her plate taking it across for his own use, on the plea of waste not, want not. He also, from time to time, sipped sweet sly glances at her profile; noticing the set of her head, the curve of her throat, and other artistic properties of the lively goddess, who the while kept up a rather free, not to say too free, conversation with Mr. Shiner sitting opposite; which, after some uneasy criticism, and much shifting of argument backwards and forwards in Dick's mind, he decided not to consider of alarming significance. "A new music greets our ears now," said Miss Fancy, alluding, with the sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of the fiddlers. "Ay; and I don't know but what 'tis sweeter in tone when you get above forty," said the tranter; "except, in faith, as regards father there. Never such a mortal man as he for tunes. They do move his soul; don't 'em, father?" The eldest Dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to Reuben's remark. "Spaking of being moved in soul," said Mr. Penny, "I shall never forget the first time I heard the 'Dead March.' 'Twas at poor Corp'l Nineman's funeral at Casterbridge. It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about like a vlock of sheep--ah, it did, souls! And when they had done, and the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero's grave, a' icy-cold drop o' moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another upon my jawbone. Ah, 'tis a very solemn thing!" "Well, as to father in the corner there," the tranter said, pointing to old William, who was in the act of filling his mouth; "he'd starve to death for music's sake now, as much as when he was a boy-chap of fifteen." "Truly, now," said Michael Mail, clearing the corner of his throat in the manner of a man who meant to be convincing; "there's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating." He lifted the cup to his mouth, and drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to a slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from the wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead. Then clearing the other corner of his throat: "Once I was a-setting in the little kitchen of the Dree Mariners at Casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass band struck up in the street. Such a beautiful band as that were! I was setting eating fried liver and lights, I well can mind--ah, I was! and to save my life, I couldn't help chawing to the tune. Band played six-eight time; six-eight chaws I, willynilly. Band plays common; common time went my teeth among the liver and lights as true as a hair. Beautiful 'twere! Ah, I shall never forget that there band!" "That's as tuneful a thing as ever I heard of," said grandfather James, with the absent gaze which accompanies profound criticism. "I don't like Michael's tuneful stories then," said Mrs. Dewy. "They are quite coarse to a person o' decent taste." Old Michael's mouth twitched here and there, as if he wanted to smile but didn't know where to begin, which gradually settled to an expression that it was not displeasing for a nice woman like the tranter's wife to correct him. "Well, now," said Reuben, with decisive earnestness, "that sort o' coarse touch that's so upsetting to Ann's feelings is to my mind a recommendation; for it do always prove a story to be true. And for the same reason, I like a story with a bad moral. My sonnies, all true stories have a coarse touch or a bad moral, depend upon't. If the story- tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd ha' troubled to invent parables?" Saying this the tranter arose to fetch a new stock of cider, ale, mead, and home-made wines. Mrs. Dewy sighed, and appended a remark (ostensibly behind her husband's back, though that the words should reach his ears distinctly was understood by both): "Such a man as Dewy is! Nobody do know the trouble I have to keep that man barely respectable. And did you ever hear too--just now at supper-time--talking about 'taties' with Michael in such a work-folk way. Well, 'tis what I was never brought up to! With our family 'twas never less than 'taters,' and very often 'pertatoes' outright; mother was so particular and nice with us girls there was no family in the parish that kept them selves up more than we." The hour of parting came. Fancy could not remain for the night, because she had engaged a woman to wait up for her. She disappeared temporarily from the flagging party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up and looking altogether a different person from whom she had been hitherto, in fact (to Dick's sadness and disappointment), a woman somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament--nothing left in her of the romping girl that she had seemed but a short quarter-hour before, who had not minded the weight of Dick's hand upon her waist, nor shirked the purlieus of the mistletoe. "What a difference!" thought the young man--hoary cynic pro tem. "What a miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid's life at dancing times and at others! Look at this lovely Fancy! Through the whole past evening touchable, squeezeable--even kissable! For whole half- hours I held her so chose to me that not a sheet of paper could have been shipped between us; and I could feel her heart only just outside my own, her life beating on so close to mine, that I was aware of every breath in it. A flit is made upstairs--a hat and a cloak put on--and I no more dare to touch her than--" Thought failed him, and he returned to realities. But this was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed. Mr. Shiner and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive advantage that ardent bachelors who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty young woman always do take of that circumstance, came forward to assure Fancy--with a total disregard of Dick's emotions, and in tones which were certainly not frigid--that he (Shiner) was not the man to go to bed before seeing his Lady Fair safe within her own door--not he, nobody should say he was that;--and that he would not leave her side an inch till the thing was done--drown him if he would. The proposal was assented to by Miss Day, in Dick's foreboding judgment, with one degree--or at any rate, an appreciable fraction of a degree--of warmth beyond that required by a disinterested desire for protection from the dangers of the night. All was over; and Dick surveyed the chair she had last occupied, looking now like a setting from which the gem has been torn. There stood her glass, and the romantic teaspoonful of elder wine at the bottom that she couldn't drink by trying ever so hard, in obedience to the mighty arguments of the tranter (his hand coming down upon her shoulder the while, like a Nasmyth hammer); but the drinker was there no longer. There were the nine or ten pretty little crumbs she had left on her plate; but the eater was no more seen. There seemed a disagreeable closeness of relationship between himself and the members of his family, now that they were left alone again face to face. His father seemed quite offensive for appearing to be in just as high spirits as when the guests were there; and as for grandfather James (who had not yet left), he was quite fiendish in being rather glad they were gone. "Really," said the tranter, in a tone of placid satisfaction, "I've had so little time to attend to myself all the evenen, that I mean to enjoy a quiet meal now! A slice of this here ham--neither too fat nor too lean--so; and then a drop of this vinegar and pickles--there, that's it--and I shall be as fresh as a lark again! And to tell the truth, my sonny, my inside has been as dry as a lime-basket all night." "I like a party very well once in a while," said Mrs. Dewy, leaving off the adorned tones she had been bound to use throughout the evening, and returning to the natural marriage voice; "but, Lord, 'tis such a sight of heavy work next day! What with the dirty plates, and knives and forks, and dust and smother, and bits kicked off your furniture, and I don't know what all, why a body could a'most wish there were no such things as Christmases . . . Ah-h dear!" she yawned, till the clock in the corner had ticked several beats. She cast her eyes round upon the displaced, dust-laden furniture, and sank down overpowered at the sight. "Well, I be getting all right by degrees, thank the Lord for't!" said the tranter cheerfully through a mangled mass of ham and bread, without lifting his eyes from his plate, and chopping away with his knife and fork as if he were felling trees. "Ann, you may as well go on to bed at once, and not bide there making such sleepy faces; you look as long-favoured as a fiddle, upon my life, Ann. There, you must be wearied out, 'tis true. I'll do the doors and draw up the clock; and you go on, or you'll be as white as a sheet to-morrow." "Ay; I don't know whether I shan't or no." The matron passed her hand across her eyes to brush away the film of sleep till she got upstairs. Dick wondered how it was that when people were married they could be so blind to romance; and was quite certain that if he ever took to wife that dear impossible Fancy, he and she would never be so dreadfully practical and undemonstrative of the Passion as his father and mother were. The most extraordinary thing was, that all the fathers and mothers he knew were just as undemonstrative as his own. CHAPTER IX: DICK CALLS AT THE SCHOOL The early days of the year drew on, and Fancy, having spent the holiday weeks at home, returned again to Mellstock. Every spare minute of the week following her return was used by Dick in accidentally passing the schoolhouse in his journeys about the neighbourhood; but not once did she make herself visible. A handkerchief belonging to her had been providentially found by his mother in clearing the rooms the day after that of the dance; and by much contrivance Dick got it handed over to him, to leave with her at any time he should be near the school after her return. But he delayed taking the extreme measure of calling with it lest, had she really no sentiment of interest in him, it might be regarded as a slightly absurd errand, the reason guessed; and the sense of the ludicrous, which was rather keen in her, do his dignity considerable injury in her eyes; and what she thought of him, even apart from the question of her loving, was all the world to him now. But the hour came when the patience of love at twenty-one could endure no longer. One Saturday he approached the school with a mild air of indifference, and had the satisfaction of seeing the object of his quest at the further end of her garden, trying, by the aid of a spade and gloves, to root a bramble that had intruded itself there. He disguised his feelings from some suspicious-looking cottage-windows opposite by endeavouring to appear like a man in a great hurry of business, who wished to leave the handkerchief and have done with such trifling errands. This endeavour signally failed; for on approaching the gate he found it locked to keep the children, who were playing 'cross-dadder' in the front, from running into her private grounds. She did not see him; and he could only think of one thing to be done, which was to shout her name. "Miss Day!" The words were uttered with a jerk and a look meant to imply to the cottages opposite that he was now simply one who liked shouting as a pleasant way of passing his time, without any reference to persons in gardens. The name died away, and the unconscious Miss Day continued digging and pulling as before. He screwed himself up to enduring the cottage-windows yet more stoically, and shouted again. Fancy took no notice whatever. He shouted the third time, with desperate vehemence, turning suddenly about and retiring a little distance, as if it were by no means for his own pleasure that he had come. This time she heard him, came down the garden, and entered the school at the back. Footsteps echoed across the interior, the door opened, and three-quarters of the blooming young schoolmistress's face and figure stood revealed before him; a slice on her left-hand side being cut off by the edge of the door. Having surveyed and recognized him, she came to the gate. At sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did it continue to cover its normal area of ground? It was a question meditated several hundreds of times by her visitor in after-hours--the meditation, after wearying involutions, always ending in one way, that it was impossible to say. "Your handkerchief: Miss Day: I called with." He held it out spasmodically and awkwardly. "Mother found it: under a chair." "O, thank you very much for bringing it, Mr. Dewy. I couldn't think where I had dropped it." Now Dick, not being an experienced lover--indeed, never before having been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small schoolboy way--could not take advantage of the situation; and out came the blunder, which afterwards cost him so many bitter moments and a sleepless night:- "Good morning, Miss Day." "Good morning, Mr. Dewy." The gate was closed; she was gone; and Dick was standing outside, unchanged in his condition from what he had been before he called. Of course the Angel was not to blame--a young woman living alone in a house could not ask him indoors unless she had known him better--he should have kept her outside before floundering into that fatal farewell. He wished that before he called he had realized more fully than he did the pleasure of being about to call; and turned away. PART THE SECOND--SPRING CHAPTER I: PASSING BY THE SCHOOL It followed that, as the spring advanced, Dick walked abroad much more frequently than had hitherto been usual with him, and was continually finding that his nearest way to or from home lay by the road which skirted the garden of the school. The first-fruits of his perseverance were that, on turning the angle on the nineteenth journey by that track, he saw Miss Fancy's figure, clothed in a dark-gray dress, looking from a high open window upon the crown of his hat. The friendly greeting resulting from this rencounter was considered so valuable an elixir that Dick passed still oftener; and by the time he had almost trodden a little path under the fence where never a path was before, he was rewarded with an actual meeting face to face on the open road before her gate. This brought another meeting, and another, Fancy faintly showing by her bearing that it was a pleasure to her of some kind to see him there; but the sort of pleasure she derived, whether exultation at the hope her exceeding fairness inspired, or the true feeling which was alone Dick's concern, he could not anyhow decide, although he meditated on her every little movement for hours after it was made. CHAPTER II: A MEETING OF THE QUIRE It was the evening of a fine spring day. The descending sun appeared as a nebulous blaze of amber light, its outline being lost in cloudy masses hanging round it, like wild locks of hair. The chief members of Mellstock parish choir were standing in a group in front of Mr. Penny's workshop in the lower village. They were all brightly illuminated, and each was backed up by a shadow as long as a steeple; the lowness of the source of light rendering the brims of their hats of no use at all as a protection to the eyes. Mr. Penny's was the last house in that part of the parish, and stood in a hollow by the roadside so that cart-wheels and horses' legs were about level with the sill of his shop-window. This was low and wide, and was open from morning till evening, Mr. Penny himself being invariably seen working inside, like a framed portrait of a shoemaker by some modern Moroni. He sat facing the road, with a boot on his knees and the awl in his hand, only looking up for a moment as he stretched out his arms and bent forward at the pull, when his spectacles flashed in the passer's face with a shine of flat whiteness, and then returned again to the boot as usual. Rows of lasts, small and large, stout and slender, covered the wall which formed the background, in the extreme shadow of which a kind of dummy was seen sitting, in the shape of an apprentice with a string tied round his hair (probably to keep it out of his eyes). He smiled at remarks that floated in from without, but was never known to answer them in Mr. Penny's presence. Outside the window the upper-leather of a Wellington-boot was usually hung, pegged to a board as if to dry. No sign was over his door; in fact--as with old banks and mercantile houses--advertising in any shape was scorned, and it would have been felt as beneath his dignity to paint up, for the benefit of strangers, the name of an establishment whose trade came solely by connection based on personal respect. His visitors now came and stood on the outside of his window, sometimes leaning against the sill, sometimes moving a pace or two backwards and forwards in front of it. They talked with deliberate gesticulations to Mr. Penny, enthroned in the shadow of the interior. "I do like a man to stick to men who be in the same line o' life--o' Sundays, anyway--that I do so." "'Tis like all the doings of folk who don't know what a day's work is, that's what I say." "My belief is the man's not to blame; 'tis she--she's the bitter weed!" "No, not altogether. He's a poor gawk-hammer. Look at his sermon yesterday." "His sermon was well enough, a very good guessable sermon, only he couldn't put it into words and speak it. That's all was the matter wi' the sermon. He hadn't been able to get it past his pen." "Well--ay, the sermon might have been good; for, 'tis true, the sermon of Old Eccl'iastes himself lay in Eccl'iastes's ink-bottle afore he got it out." Mr. Penny, being in the act of drawing the last stitch tight, could afford time to look up and throw in a word at this point. "He's no spouter--that must be said, 'a b'lieve." "'Tis a terrible muddle sometimes with the man, as far as spout do go," said Spinks. "Well, we'll say nothing about that," the tranter answered; "for I don't believe 'twill make a penneth o' difference to we poor martels here or hereafter whether his sermons be good or bad, my sonnies." Mr. Penny made another hole with his awl, pushed in the thread, and looked up and spoke again at the extension of arms. "'Tis his goings-on, souls, that's what it is." He clenched his features for an Herculean addition to the ordinary pull, and continued, "The first thing he done when he came here was to be hot and strong about church business." "True," said Spinks; "that was the very first thing he done." Mr. Penny, having now been offered the ear of the assembly, accepted it, ceased stitching, swallowed an unimportant quantity of air as if it were a pill, and continued: "The next thing he do do is to think about altering the church, until he found 'twould be a matter o' cost and what not, and then not to think no more about it." "True: that was the next thing he done." "And the next thing was to tell the young chaps that they were not on no account to put their hats in the christening font during service." "True." "And then 'twas this, and then 'twas that, and now 'tis--" Words were not forcible enough to conclude the sentence, and Mr. Penny gave a huge pull to signify the concluding word. "Now 'tis to turn us out of the quire neck and crop," said the tranter after an interval of half a minute, not by way of explaining the pause and pull, which had been quite understood, but as a means of keeping the subject well before the meeting. Mrs. Penny came to the door at this point in the discussion. Like all good wives, however much she was inclined to play the Tory to her husband's Whiggism, and vice versa, in times of peace, she coalesced with him heartily enough in time of war. "It must be owned he's not all there," she replied in a general way to the fragments of talk she had heard from indoors. "Far below poor Mr. Grinham" (the late vicar). "Ay, there was this to be said for he, that you were quite sure he'd never come mumbudgeting to see ye, just as you were in the middle of your work, and put you out with his fuss and trouble about ye." "Never. But as for this new Mr. Maybold, though he mid be a very well- intending party in that respect, he's unbearable; for as to sifting your cinders, scrubbing your floors, or emptying your slops, why, you can't do it. I assure you I've not been able to empt them for several days, unless I throw 'em up the chimley or out of winder; for as sure as the sun you meet him at the door, coming to ask how you are, and 'tis such a confusing thing to meet a gentleman at the door when ye are in the mess o' washing." "'Tis only for want of knowing better, poor gentleman," said the tranter. "His meaning's good enough. Ay, your pa'son comes by fate: 'tis heads or tails, like pitch-halfpenny, and no choosing; so we must take en as he is, my sonnies, and thank God he's no worse, I suppose." "I fancy I've seen him look across at Miss Day in a warmer way than Christianity asked for," said Mrs. Penny musingly; "but I don't quite like to say it." "O no; there's nothing in that," said grandfather William. "If there's nothing, we shall see nothing," Mrs. Penny replied, in the tone of a woman who might possibly have private opinions still. "Ah, Mr. Grinham was the man!" said Bowman. "Why, he never troubled us wi' a visit from year's end to year's end. You might go anywhere, do anything: you'd be sure never to see him." "Yes, he was a right sensible pa'son," said Michael. "He never entered our door but once in his life, and that was to tell my poor wife--ay, poor soul, dead and gone now, as we all shall!--that as she was such a' old aged person, and lived so far from the church, he didn't at all expect her to come any more to the service." "And 'a was a very jinerous gentleman about choosing the psalms and hymns o' Sundays. 'Confound ye,' says he, 'blare and scrape what ye will, but don't bother me!'" "And he was a very honourable man in not wanting any of us to come and hear him if we were all on-end for a jaunt or spree, or to bring the babies to be christened if they were inclined to squalling. There's good in a man's not putting a parish to unnecessary trouble." "And there's this here man never letting us have a bit o' peace; but keeping on about being good and upright till 'tis carried to such a pitch as I never see the like afore nor since!" "No sooner had he got here than he found the font wouldn't hold water, as it hadn't for years off and on; and when I told him that Mr. Grinham never minded it, but used to spet upon his vinger and christen 'em just as well, 'a said, 'Good Heavens! Send for a workman immediate. What place have I come to!' Which was no compliment to us, come to that." "Still, for my part," said old William, "though he's arrayed against us, I like the hearty borussnorus ways of the new pa'son." "You, ready to die for the quire," said Bowman reproachfully, "to stick up for the quire's enemy, William!" "Nobody will feel the loss of our church-work so much as I," said the old man firmly; "that you d'all know. I've a-been in the quire man and boy ever since I was a chiel of eleven. But for all that 'tisn't in me to call the man a bad man, because I truly and sincerely believe en to be a good young feller." Some of the youthful sparkle that used to reside there animated William's eye as he uttered the words, and a certain nobility of aspect was also imparted to him by the setting sun, which gave him a Titanic shadow at least thirty feet in length, stretching away to the east in outlines of imposing magnitude, his head finally terminating upon the trunk of a grand old oak-tree. "Mayble's a hearty feller enough," the tranter replied, "and will spak to you be you dirty or be you clane. The first time I met en was in a drong, and though 'a didn't know me no more than the dead, 'a passed the time of day. 'D'ye do?' he said, says he, nodding his head. 'A fine day.' Then the second time I met en was full-buff in town street, when my breeches were tore into a long strent by getting through a copse of thorns and brimbles for a short cut home-along; and not wanting to disgrace the man by spaking in that state, I fixed my eye on the weathercock to let en pass me as a stranger. But no: 'How d'ye do, Reuben?' says he, right hearty, and shook my hand. If I'd been dressed in silver spangles from top to toe, the man couldn't have been civiller." At this moment Dick was seen coming up the village-street, and they turned and watched him. CHAPTER III: A TURN IN THE DISCUSSION "I'm afraid Dick's a lost man," said the tranter. "What?--no!" said Mail, implying by his manner that it was a far commoner thing for his ears to report what was not said than that his judgment should be at fault. "Ay," said the tranter, still gazing at Dick's unconscious advance. "I don't at all like what I see! There's too many o' them looks out of the winder without noticing anything; too much shining of boots; too much peeping round corners; too much looking at the clock; telling about clever things she did till you be sick of it; and then upon a hint to that effect a horrible silence about her. I've walked the path once in my life and know the country, neighbours; and Dick's a lost man!" The tranter turned a quarter round and smiled a smile of miserable satire at the setting new moon, which happened to catch his eye. The others became far too serious at this announcement to allow them to speak; and they still regarded Dick in the distance. "'Twas his mother's fault," the tranter continued, "in asking the young woman to our party last Christmas. When I eyed the blue frock and light heels o' the maid, I had my thoughts directly. 'God bless thee, Dicky my sonny,' I said to myself; 'there's a delusion for thee!'" "They seemed to be rather distant in manner last Sunday, I thought?" Mail tentatively observed, as became one who was not a member of the family. "Ay, that's a part of the zickness. Distance belongs to it, slyness belongs to it, queerest things on earth belongs to it! There, 'tmay as well come early as late s'far as I know. The sooner begun, the sooner over; for come it will." "The question I ask is," said Mr. Spinks, connecting into one thread the two subjects of discourse, as became a man learned in rhetoric, and beating with his hand in a way which signified that the manner rather than the matter of his speech was to be observed, "how did Mr. Maybold know she could play the organ? You know we had it from her own lips, as far as lips go, that she has never, first or last, breathed such a thing to him; much less that she ever would play." In the midst of this puzzle Dick joined the party, and the news which had caused such a convulsion among the ancient musicians was unfolded to him. "Well," he said, blushing at the allusion to Miss Day, "I know by some words of hers that she has a particular wish not to play, because she is a friend of ours; and how the alteration comes, I don't know." "Now, this is my plan," said the tranter, reviving the spirit of the discussion by the infusion of new ideas, as was his custom--"this is my plan; if you don't like it, no harm's done. We all know one another very well, don't we, neighbours?" That they knew one another very well was received as a statement which, though familiar, should not be omitted in introductory speeches. "Then I say this"--and the tranter in his emphasis slapped down his hand on Mr. Spinks's shoulder with a momentum of several pounds, upon which Mr. Spinks tried to look not in the least startled--"I say that we all move down-along straight as a line to Pa'son Mayble's when the clock has gone six to-morrow night. There we one and all stand in the passage, then one or two of us go in and spak to en, man and man; and say, 'Pa'son Mayble, every tradesman d'like to have his own way in his workshop, and Mellstock Church is yours. Instead of turning us out neck and crop, let us stay on till Christmas, and we'll gie way to the young woman, Mr. Mayble, and make no more ado about it. And we shall always be quite willing to touch our hats when we meet ye, Mr. Mayble, just as before.' That sounds very well? Hey?" "Proper well, in faith, Reuben Dewy." "And we won't sit down in his house; 'twould be looking too familiar when only just reconciled?" "No need at all to sit down. Just do our duty man and man, turn round, and march out--he'll think all the more of us for it." "I hardly think Leaf had better go wi' us?" said Michael, turning to Leaf and taking his measure from top to bottom by the eye. "He's so terrible silly that he might ruin the concern." "He don't want to go much; do ye, Thomas Leaf?" said William. "Hee-hee! no; I don't want to. Only a teeny bit!" "I be mortal afeard, Leaf, that you'll never be able to tell how many cuts d'take to sharpen a spar," said Mail. "I never had no head, never! that's how it happened to happen, hee-hee!" They all assented to this, not with any sense of humiliating Leaf by disparaging him after an open confession, but because it was an accepted thing that Leaf didn't in the least mind having no head, that deficiency of his being an unimpassioned matter of parish history. "But I can sing my treble!" continued Thomas Leaf, quite delighted at being called a fool in such a friendly way; "I can sing my treble as well as any maid, or married woman either, and better! And if Jim had lived, I should have had a clever brother! To-morrow is poor Jim's birthday. He'd ha' been twenty-six if he'd lived till to-morrow." "You always seem very sorry for Jim," said old William musingly. "Ah! I do. Such a stay to mother as he'd always ha' been! She'd never have had to work in her old age if he had continued strong, poor Jim!" "What was his age when 'a died?" "Four hours and twenty minutes, poor Jim. 'A was born as might be at night; and 'a didn't last as might be till the morning. No, 'a didn't last. Mother called en Jim on the day that would ha' been his christening day if he had lived; and she's always thinking about en. You see he died so very young." "Well, 'twas rather youthful," said Michael. "Now to my mind that woman is very romantical on the matter o' children?" said the tranter, his eye sweeping his audience. "Ah, well she mid be," said Leaf. "She had twelve regular one after another, and they all, except myself, died very young; either before they was born or just afterwards." "Pore feller, too. I suppose th'st want to come wi' us?" the tranter murmured. "Well, Leaf, you shall come wi' us as yours is such a melancholy family," said old William rather sadly. "I never see such a melancholy family as that afore in my life," said Reuben. "There's Leaf's mother, poor woman! Every morning I see her eyes mooning out through the panes of glass like a pot-sick winder-flower; and as Leaf sings a very high treble, and we don't know what we should do without en for upper G, we'll let en come as a trate, poor feller." "Ay, we'll let en come, 'a b'lieve," said Mr. Penny, looking up, as the pull happened to be at that moment. "Now," continued the tranter, dispersing by a new tone of voice these digressions about Leaf; "as to going to see the pa'son, one of us might call and ask en his meaning, and 'twould be just as well done; but it will add a bit of flourish to the cause if the quire waits on him as a body. Then the great thing to mind is, not for any of our fellers to be nervous; so before starting we'll one and all come to my house and have a rasher of bacon; then every man-jack het a pint of cider into his inside; then we'll warm up an extra drop wi' some mead and a bit of ginger; every one take a thimbleful--just a glimmer of a drop, mind ye, no more, to finish off his inner man--and march off to Pa'son Mayble. Why, sonnies, a man's not himself till he is fortified wi' a bit and a drop? We shall be able to look any gentleman in the face then without shrink or shame." Mail recovered from a deep meditation and downward glance into the earth in time to give a cordial approval to this line of action, and the meeting adjourned. CHAPTER IV: THE INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR At six o'clock the next day, the whole body of men in the choir emerged from the tranter's door, and advanced with a firm step down the lane. This dignity of march gradually became obliterated as they went on, and by the time they reached the hill behind the vicarage a faint resemblance to a flock of sheep might have been discerned in the venerable party. A word from the tranter, however, set them right again; and as they descended the hill, the regular tramp, tramp, tramp of the united feet was clearly audible from the vicarage garden. At the opening of the gate there was another short interval of irregular shuffling, caused by a rather peculiar habit the gate had, when swung open quickly, of striking against the bank and slamming back into the opener's face. "Now keep step again, will ye?" said the tranter. "It looks better, and more becomes the high class of arrant which has brought us here." Thus they advanced to the door. At Reuben's ring the more modest of the group turned aside, adjusted their hats, and looked critically at any shrub that happened to lie in the line of vision; endeavouring thus to give a person who chanced to look out of the windows the impression that their request, whatever it was going to be, was rather a casual thought occurring whilst they were inspecting the vicar's shrubbery and grass-plot than a predetermined thing. The tranter, who, coming frequently to the vicarage with luggage, coals, firewood, etc., had none of the awe for its precincts that filled the breasts of most of the others, fixed his eyes firmly on the knocker during this interval of waiting. The knocker having no characteristic worthy of notice, he relinquished it for a knot in one of the door-panels, and studied the winding lines of the grain. "O, sir, please, here's Tranter Dewy, and old William Dewy, and young Richard Dewy, O, and all the quire too, sir, except the boys, a-come to see you!" said Mr. Maybold's maid-servant to Mr. Maybold, the pupils of her eyes dilating like circles in a pond. "All the choir?" said the astonished vicar (who may be shortly described as a good-looking young man with courageous eyes, timid mouth, and neutral nose), abandoning his writing and looking at his parlour-maid after speaking, like a man who fancied he had seen her face before but couldn't recollect where. "And they looks very firm, and Tranter Dewy do turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, but stares quite straight and solemn with his mind made up!" "O, all the choir," repeated the vicar to himself, trying by that simple device to trot out his thoughts on what the choir could come for. "Yes; every man-jack of 'em, as I be alive!" (The parlour-maid was rather local in manner, having in fact been raised in the same village.) "Really, sir, 'tis thoughted by many in town and country that--" "Town and country!--Heavens, I had no idea that I was public property in this way!" said the vicar, his face acquiring a hue somewhere between that of the rose and the peony. "Well, 'It is thought in town and country that--'" "It is thought that you be going to get it hot and strong!--excusen my incivility, sir." The vicar suddenly recalled to his recollection that he had long ago settled it to be decidedly a mistake to encourage his servant Jane in giving personal opinions. The servant Jane saw by the vicar's face that he recalled this fact to his mind; and removing her forehead from the edge of the door, and rubbing away the indent that edge had made, vanished into the passage as Mr. Maybold remarked, "Show them in, Jane." A few minutes later a shuffling and jostling (reduced to as refined a form as was compatible with the nature of shuffles and jostles) was heard in the passage; then an earnest and prolonged wiping of shoes, conveying the notion that volumes of mud had to be removed; but the roads being so clean that not a particle of dirt appeared on the choir's boots (those of all the elder members being newly oiled, and Dick's brightly polished), this wiping might have been set down simply as a desire to show that respectable men had no wish to take a mean advantage of clean roads for curtailing proper ceremonies. Next there came a powerful whisper from the same quarter:- "Now stand stock-still there, my sonnies, one and all! And don't make no noise; and keep your backs close to the wall, that company may pass in and out easy if they want to without squeezing through ye: and we two are enough to go in." . . . The voice was the tranter's. "I wish I could go in too and see the sight!" said a reedy voice--that of Leaf. "'Tis a pity Leaf is so terrible silly, or else he might," said another. "I never in my life seed a quire go into a study to have it out about the playing and singing," pleaded Leaf; "and I should like to see it just once!" "Very well; we'll let en come in," said the tranter. "You'll be like chips in porridge, {1} Leaf--neither good nor hurt. All right, my sonny, come along;" and immediately himself, old William, and Leaf appeared in the room. "We took the liberty to come and see 'ee, sir," said Reuben, letting his hat hang in his left hand, and touching with his right the brim of an imaginary one on his head. "We've come to see 'ee, sir, man and man, and no offence, I hope?" "None at all," said Mr. Maybold. "This old aged man standing by my side is father; William Dewy by name, sir." "Yes; I see it is," said the vicar, nodding aside to old William, who smiled. "I thought you mightn't know en without his bass-viol," the tranter apologized. "You see, he always wears his best clothes and his bass-viol a-Sundays, and it do make such a difference in a' old man's look." "And who's that young man?" the vicar said. "Tell the pa'son yer name," said the tranter, turning to Leaf, who stood with his elbows nailed back to a bookcase. "Please, Thomas Leaf, your holiness!" said Leaf, trembling. "I hope you'll excuse his looks being so very thin," continued the tranter deprecatingly, turning to the vicar again. "But 'tisn't his fault, poor feller. He's rather silly by nature, and could never get fat; though he's a' excellent treble, and so we keep him on." "I never had no head, sir," said Leaf, eagerly grasping at this opportunity for being forgiven his existence. "Ah, poor young man!" said Mr. Maybold. "Bless you, he don't mind it a bit, if you don't, sir," said the tranter assuringly. "Do ye, Leaf?" "Not I--not a morsel--hee, hee! I was afeard it mightn't please your holiness, sir, that's all." The tranter, finding Leaf get on so very well through his negative qualities, was tempted in a fit of generosity to advance him still higher, by giving him credit for positive ones. "He's very clever for a silly chap, good-now, sir. You never knowed a young feller keep his smock-frocks so clane; very honest too. His ghastly looks is all there is against en, poor feller; but we can't help our looks, you know, sir." "True: we cannot. You live with your mother, I think, Leaf?" The tranter looked at Leaf to express that the most friendly assistant to his tongue could do no more for him now, and that he must be left to his own resources. "Yes, sir: a widder, sir. Ah, if brother Jim had lived she'd have had a clever son to keep her without work!" "Indeed! poor woman. Give her this half-crown. I'll call and see your mother." "Say, 'Thank you, sir,'" the tranter whispered imperatively towards Leaf. "Thank you, sir!" said Leaf. "That's it, then; sit down, Leaf," said Mr. Maybold. "Y-yes, sir!" The tranter cleared his throat after this accidental parenthesis about Leaf, rectified his bodily position, and began his speech. "Mr. Mayble," he said, "I hope you'll excuse my common way, but I always like to look things in the face." Reuben made a point of fixing this sentence in the vicar's mind by gazing hard at him at the conclusion of it, and then out of the window. Mr. Maybold and old William looked in the same direction, apparently under the impression that the things' faces alluded to were there visible. "What I have been thinking"--the tranter implied by this use of the past tense that he was hardly so discourteous as to be positively thinking it then--"is that the quire ought to be gie'd a little time, and not done away wi' till Christmas, as a fair thing between man and man. And, Mr. Mayble, I hope you'll excuse my common way?" "I will, I will. Till Christmas," the vicar murmured, stretching the two words to a great length, as if the distance to Christmas might be measured in that way. "Well, I want you all to understand that I have no personal fault to find, and that I don't wish to change the church music by forcible means, or in a way which should hurt the feelings of any parishioners. Why I have at last spoken definitely on the subject is that a player has been brought under--I may say pressed upon--my notice several times by one of the churchwardens. And as the organ I brought with me is here waiting" (pointing to a cabinet-organ standing in the study), "there is no reason for longer delay." "We made a mistake I suppose then, sir? But we understood the young woman didn't want to play particularly?" The tranter arranged his countenance to signify that he did not want to be inquisitive in the least. "No, nor did she. Nor did I definitely wish her to just yet; for your playing is very good. But, as I said, one of the churchwardens has been so anxious for a change, that, as matters stand, I couldn't consistently refuse my consent." Now for some reason or other, the vicar at this point seemed to have an idea that he had prevaricated; and as an honest vicar, it was a thing he determined not to do. He corrected himself, blushing as he did so, though why he should blush was not known to Reuben. "Understand me rightly," he said: "the church-warden proposed it to me, but I had thought myself of getting--Miss Day to play." "Which churchwarden might that be who proposed her, sir?--excusing my common way." The tranter intimated by his tone that, so far from being inquisitive, he did not even wish to ask a single question. "Mr. Shiner, I believe." "Clk, my sonny!--beg your pardon, sir, that's only a form of words of mine, and slipped out accidental--he nourishes enmity against us for some reason or another; perhaps because we played rather hard upon en Christmas night. Anyhow 'tis certain sure that Mr. Shiner's real love for music of a particular kind isn't his reason. He've no more ear than that chair. But let that be." "I don't think you should conclude that, because Mr. Shiner wants a different music, he has any ill-feeling for you. I myself, I must own, prefer organ-music to any other. I consider it most proper, and feel justified in endeavouring to introduce it; but then, although other music is better, I don't say yours is not good." "Well then, Mr. Mayble, since death's to be, we'll die like men any day you name (excusing my common way)." Mr. Maybold bowed his head. "All we thought was, that for us old ancient singers to be choked off quiet at no time in particular, as now, in the Sundays after Easter, would seem rather mean in the eyes of other parishes, sir. But if we fell glorious with a bit of a flourish at Christmas, we should have a respectable end, and not dwindle away at some nameless paltry second-Sunday-after or Sunday-next-before something, that's got no name of his own." "Yes, yes, that's reasonable; I own it's reasonable." "You see, Mr. Mayble, we've got--do I keep you inconvenient long, sir?" "No, no." "We've got our feelings--father there especially." The tranter, in his earnestness, had advanced his person to within six inches of the vicar's. "Certainly, certainly!" said Mr. Maybold, retreating a little for convenience of seeing. "You are all enthusiastic on the subject, and I am all the more gratified to find you so. A Laodicean lukewarmness is worse than wrongheadedness itself." "Exactly, sir. In fact now, Mr. Mayble," Reuben continued, more impressively, and advancing a little closer still to the vicar, "father there is a perfect figure o' wonder, in the way of being fond of music!" The vicar drew back a little further, the tranter suddenly also standing back a foot or two, to throw open the view of his father, and pointing to him at the same time. Old William moved uneasily in the large chair, and with a minute smile on the mere edge of his lips, for good-manners, said he was indeed very fond of tunes. "Now, you see exactly how it is," Reuben continued, appealing to Mr. Maybold's sense of justice by looking sideways into his eyes. The vicar seemed to see how it was so well that the gratified tranter walked up to him again with even vehement eagerness, so that his waistcoat-buttons almost rubbed against the vicar's as he continued: "As to father, if you or I, or any man or woman of the present generation, at the time music is a-playing, was to shake your fist in father's face, as may be this way, and say, 'Don't you be delighted with that music!'"--the tranter went back to where Leaf was sitting, and held his fist so close to Leaf's face that the latter pressed his head back against the wall: "All right, Leaf, my sonny, I won't hurt you; 'tis just to show my meaning to Mr. Mayble.--As I was saying, if you or I, or any man, was to shake your fist in father's face this way, and say, 'William, your life or your music!' he'd say, 'My life!' Now that's father's nature all over; and you see, sir, it must hurt the feelings of a man of that kind for him and his bass- viol to be done away wi' neck and crop." The tranter went back to the vicar's front and again looked earnestly at his face. "True, true, Dewy," Mr. Maybold answered, trying to withdraw his head and shoulders without moving his feet; but finding this impracticable, edging back another inch. These frequent retreats had at last jammed Mr. Maybold between his easy-chair and the edge of the table. And at the moment of the announcement of the choir, Mr. Maybold had just re-dipped the pen he was using; at their entry, instead of wiping it, he had laid it on the table with the nib overhanging. At the last retreat his coat-tails came in contact with the pen, and down it rolled, first against the back of the chair, thence turning a summersault into the seat, thence falling to the floor with a rattle. The vicar stooped for his pen, and the tranter, wishing to show that, however great their ecclesiastical differences, his mind was not so small as to let this affect his social feelings, stooped also. "And have you anything else you want to explain to me, Dewy?" said Mr. Maybold from under the table. "Nothing, sir. And, Mr. Mayble, you be not offended? I hope you see our desire is reason?" said the tranter from under the chair. "Quite, quite; and I shouldn't think of refusing to listen to such a reasonable request," the vicar replied. Seeing that Reuben had secured the pen, he resumed his vertical position, and added, "You know, Dewy, it is often said how difficult a matter it is to act up to our convictions and please all parties. It may be said with equal truth, that it is difficult for a man of any appreciativeness to have convictions at all. Now in my case, I see right in you, and right in Shiner. I see that violins are good, and that an organ is good; and when we introduce the organ, it will not be that fiddles were bad, but that an organ was better. That you'll clearly understand, Dewy?" "I will; and thank you very much for such feelings, sir. Piph-h-h-h! How the blood do get into my head, to be sure, whenever I quat down like that!" said Reuben, who having also risen to his feet stuck the pen vertically in the inkstand and almost through the bottom, that it might not roll down again under any circumstances whatever. Now the ancient body of minstrels in the passage felt their curiosity surging higher and higher as the minutes passed. Dick, not having much affection for this errand, soon grew tired, and went away in the direction of the school. Yet their sense of propriety would probably have restrained them from any attempt to discover what was going on in the study had not the vicar's pen fallen to the floor. The conviction that the movement of chairs, etc., necessitated by the search, could only have been caused by the catastrophe of a bloody fight beginning, overpowered all other considerations; and they advanced to the door, which had only just fallen to. Thus, when Mr. Maybold raised his eyes after the stooping he beheld glaring through the door Mr. Penny in full- length portraiture, Mail's face and shoulders above Mr. Penny's head, Spinks's forehead and eyes over Mail's crown, and a fractional part of Bowman's countenance under Spinks's arm--crescent-shaped portions of other heads and faces being visible behind these--the whole dozen and odd eyes bristling with eager inquiry. Mr. Penny, as is the case with excitable boot-makers and men, seeing the vicar look at him and hearing no word spoken, thought it incumbent upon himself to say something of any kind. Nothing suggested itself till he had looked for about half a minute at the vicar. "You'll excuse my naming of it, sir," he said, regarding with much commiseration the mere surface of the vicar's face; "but perhaps you don't know that your chin have bust out a-bleeding where you cut yourself a-shaving this morning, sir." "Now, that was the stooping, depend upon't," the tranter suggested, also looking with much interest at the vicar's chin. "Blood always will bust out again if you hang down the member that's been bleeding." Old William raised his eyes and watched the vicar's bleeding chin likewise; and Leaf advanced two or three paces from the bookcase, absorbed in the contemplation of the same phenomenon, with parted lips and delighted eyes. "Dear me, dear me!" said Mr. Maybold hastily, looking very red, and brushing his chin with his hand, then taking out his handkerchief and wiping the place. "That's it, sir; all right again now, 'a b'lieve--a mere nothing," said Mr. Penny. "A little bit of fur off your hat will stop it in a minute if it should bust out again." "I'll let 'ee have a bit off mine," said Reuben, to show his good feeling; "my hat isn't so new as yours, sir, and 'twon't hurt mine a bit." "No, no; thank you, thank you," Mr. Maybold again nervously replied. "'Twas rather a deep cut seemingly?" said Reuben, feeling these to be the kindest and best remarks he could make. "O, no; not particularly." "Well, sir, your hand will shake sometimes a-shaving, and just when it comes into your head that you may cut yourself, there's the blood." "I have been revolving in my mind that question of the time at which we make the change," said Mr. Maybold, "and I know you'll meet me half-way. I think Christmas-day as much too late for me as the present time is too early for you. I suggest Michaelmas or thereabout as a convenient time for both parties; for I think your objection to a Sunday which has no name is not one of any real weight." "Very good, sir. I suppose mortal men mustn't expect their own way entirely; and I express in all our names that we'll make shift and be satisfied with what you say." The tranter touched the brim of his imaginary hat again, and all the choir did the same. "About Michaelmas, then, as far as you are concerned, sir, and then we make room for the next generation." "About Michaelmas," said the vicar. CHAPTER V: RETURNING HOME WARD "'A took it very well, then?" said Mail, as they all walked up the hill. "He behaved like a man, 'a did so," said the tranter. "And I'm glad we've let en know our minds. And though, beyond that, we ha'n't got much by going, 'twas worth while. He won't forget it. Yes, he took it very well. Supposing this tree here was Pa'son Mayble, and I standing here, and thik gr't stone is father sitting in the easy-chair. 'Dewy,' says he, 'I don't wish to change the church music in a forcible way.'" "That was very nice o' the man, even though words be wind." "Proper nice--out and out nice. The fact is," said Reuben confidentially, "'tis how you take a man. Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed: kings must be managed; for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal." "'Tis truly!" murmured the husbands. "Pa'son Mayble and I were as good friends all through it as if we'd been sworn brothers. Ay, the man's well enough; 'tis what's put in his head that spoils him, and that's why we've got to go." "There's really no believing half you hear about people nowadays." "Bless ye, my sonnies! 'tisn't the pa'son's move at all. That gentleman over there" (the tranter nodded in the direction of Shiner's farm) "is at the root of the mischty." "What! Shiner?" "Ay; and I see what the pa'son don't see. Why, Shiner is for putting forward that young woman that only last night I was saying was our Dick's sweet-heart, but I suppose can't be, and making much of her in the sight of the congregation, and thinking he'll win her by showing her off. Well, perhaps 'a woll." "Then the music is second to the woman, the other churchwarden is second to Shiner, the pa'son is second to the churchwardens, and God A'mighty is nowhere at all." "That's true; and you see," continued Reuben, "at the very beginning it put me in a stud as to how to quarrel wi' en. In short, to save my soul, I couldn't quarrel wi' such a civil man without belying my conscience. Says he to father there, in a voice as quiet as a lamb's, 'William, you are a' old aged man, as all shall be, so sit down in my easy-chair, and rest yourself.' And down father zot. I could fain ha' laughed at thee, father; for thou'st take it so unconcerned at first, and then looked so frightened when the chair-bottom sunk in." "You see," said old William, hastening to explain, "I was scared to find the bottom gie way--what should I know o' spring bottoms?--and thought I had broke it down: and of course as to breaking down a man's chair, I didn't wish any such thing." "And, neighbours, when a feller, ever so much up for a miff, d'see his own father sitting in his enemy's easy-chair, and a poor chap like Leaf made the best of, as if he almost had brains--why, it knocks all the wind out of his sail at once: it did out of mine." "If that young figure of fun--Fance Day, I mean," said Bowman, "hadn't been so mighty forward wi' showing herself off to Shiner and Dick and the rest, 'tis my belief we should never ha' left the gallery." "'Tis my belief that though Shiner fired the bullets, the parson made 'em," said Mr. Penny. "My wife sticks to it that he's in love wi' her." "That's a thing we shall never know. I can't onriddle her, nohow." "Thou'st ought to be able to onriddle such a little chiel as she," the tranter observed. "The littler the maid, the bigger the riddle, to my mind. And coming of such a stock, too, she may well be a twister." "Yes; Geoffrey Day is a clever man if ever there was one. Never says anything: not he." "Never." "You might live wi' that man, my sonnies, a hundred years, and never know there was anything in him." "Ay; one o' these up-country London ink-bottle chaps would call Geoffrey a fool." "Ye never find out what's in that man: never," said Spinks. "Close? ah, he is close! He can hold his tongue well. That man's dumbness is wonderful to listen to." "There's so much sense in it. Every moment of it is brimmen over wi' sound understanding." "'A can hold his tongue very clever--very clever truly," echoed Leaf. "'A do look at me as if 'a could see my thoughts running round like the works of a clock." "Well, all will agree that the man can halt well in his talk, be it a long time or be it a short time. And though we can't expect his daughter to inherit his closeness, she may have a few dribblets from his sense." "And his pocket, perhaps." "Yes; the nine hundred pound that everybody says he's worth; but I call it four hundred and fifty; for I never believe more than half I hear." "Well, he've made a pound or two, and I suppose the maid will have it, since there's nobody else. But 'tis rather sharp upon her, if she's been born to fortune, to bring her up as if not born for it, and letting her work so hard." "'Tis all upon his principle. A long-headed feller!" "Ah," murmured Spinks, "'twould be sharper upon her if she were born for fortune, and not to it! I suffer from that affliction." CHAPTER VI: YALBURY WOOD AND THE KEEPER'S HOUSE A mood of blitheness rarely experienced even by young men was Dick's on the following Monday morning. It was the week after the Easter holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they streamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor. His errand was to fetch Fancy, and some additional household goods, from her father's house in the neighbouring parish to her dwelling at Mellstock. The distant view was darkly shaded with clouds; but the nearer parts of the landscape were whitely illumined by the visible rays of the sun streaming down across the heavy gray shade behind. The tranter had not yet told his son of the state of Shiner's heart that had been suggested to him by Shiner's movements. He preferred to let such delicate affairs right themselves; experience having taught him that the uncertain phenomenon of love, as it existed in other people, was not a groundwork upon which a single action of his own life could be founded. Geoffrey Day lived in the depths of Yalbury Wood, which formed portion of one of the outlying estates of the Earl of Wessex, to whom Day was head game-keeper, timber-steward, and general overlooker for this district. The wood was intersected by the highway from Casterbridge to London at a place not far from the house, and some trees had of late years been felled between its windows and the ascent of Yalbury Hill, to give the solitary cottager a glimpse of the passers-by. It was a satisfaction to walk into the keeper's house, even as a stranger, on a fine spring morning like the present. A curl of wood-smoke came from the chimney, and drooped over the roof like a blue feather in a lady's hat; and the sun shone obliquely upon the patch of grass in front, which reflected its brightness through the open doorway and up the staircase opposite, lighting up each riser with a shiny green radiance, and leaving the top of each step in shade. The window-sill of the front room was between four and five feet from the floor, dropping inwardly to a broad low bench, over which, as well as over the whole surface of the wall beneath, there always hung a deep shade, which was considered objectionable on every ground save one, namely, that the perpetual sprinkling of seeds and water by the caged canary above was not noticed as an eyesore by visitors. The window was set with thickly-leaded diamond glazing, formed, especially in the lower panes, of knotty glass of various shades of green. Nothing was better known to Fancy than the extravagant manner in which these circular knots or eyes distorted everything seen through them from the outside--lifting hats from heads, shoulders from bodies; scattering the spokes of cart- wheels, and bending the straight fir-trunks into semicircles. The ceiling was carried by a beam traversing its midst, from the side of which projected a large nail, used solely and constantly as a peg for Geoffrey's hat; the nail was arched by a rainbow-shaped stain, imprinted by the brim of the said hat when it was hung there dripping wet. The most striking point about the room was the furniture. This was a repetition upon inanimate objects of the old principle introduced by Noah, consisting for the most part of two articles of every sort. The duplicate system of furnishing owed its existence to the forethought of Fancy's mother, exercised from the date of Fancy's birthday onwards. The arrangement spoke for itself: nobody who knew the tone of the household could look at the goods without being aware that the second set was a provision for Fancy, when she should marry and have a house of her own. The most noticeable instance was a pair of green-faced eight-day clocks, ticking alternately, which were severally two and half minutes and three minutes striking the hour of twelve, one proclaiming, in Italian flourishes, Thomas Wood as the name of its maker, and the other--arched at the top, and altogether of more cynical appearance--that of Ezekiel Saunders. They were two departed clockmakers of Casterbridge, whose desperate rivalry throughout their lives was nowhere more emphatically perpetuated than here at Geoffrey's. These chief specimens of the marriage provision were supported on the right by a couple of kitchen dressers, each fitted complete with their cups, dishes, and plates, in their turn followed by two dumb-waiters, two family Bibles, two warming- pans, and two intermixed sets of chairs. But the position last reached--the chimney-corner--was, after all, the most attractive side of the parallelogram. It was large enough to admit, in addition to Geoffrey himself, Geoffrey's wife, her chair, and her work- table, entirely within the line of the mantel, without danger or even inconvenience from the heat of the fire; and was spacious enough overhead to allow of the insertion of wood poles for the hanging of bacon, which were cloaked with long shreds of soot, floating on the draught like the tattered banners on the walls of ancient aisles. These points were common to most chimney corners of the neighbourhood; but one feature there was which made Geoffrey's fireside not only an object of interest to casual aristocratic visitors--to whom every cottage fireside was more or less a curiosity--but the admiration of friends who were accustomed to fireplaces of the ordinary hamlet model. This peculiarity was a little window in the chimney-back, almost over the fire, around which the smoke crept caressingly when it left the perpendicular course. The window-board was curiously stamped with black circles, burnt thereon by the heated bottoms of drinking-cups, which had rested there after previously standing on the hot ashes of the hearth for the purpose of warming their contents, the result giving to the ledge the look of an envelope which has passed through innumerable post-offices. Fancy was gliding about the room preparing dinner, her head inclining now to the right, now to the left, and singing the tips and ends of tunes that sprang up in her mind like mushrooms. The footsteps of Mrs. Day could be heard in the room overhead. Fancy went finally to the door. "Father! Dinner." A tall spare figure was seen advancing by the window with periodical steps, and the keeper entered from the garden. He appeared to be a man who was always looking down, as if trying to recollect something he said yesterday. The surface of his face was fissured rather than wrinkled, and over and under his eyes were folds which seemed as a kind of exterior eyelids. His nose had been thrown backwards by a blow in a poaching fray, so that when the sun was low and shining in his face, people could see far into his head. There was in him a quiet grimness, which would in his moments of displeasure have become surliness, had it not been tempered by honesty of soul, and which was often wrongheadedness because not allied with subtlety. Although not an extraordinarily taciturn man among friends slightly richer than himself, he never wasted words upon outsiders, and to his trapper Enoch his ideas were seldom conveyed by any other means than nods and shakes of the head. Their long acquaintance with each other's ways, and the nature of their labours, rendered words between them almost superfluous as vehicles of thought, whilst the coincidence of their horizons, and the astonishing equality of their social views, by startling the keeper from time to time as very damaging to the theory of master and man, strictly forbade any indulgence in words as courtesies. Behind the keeper came Enoch (who had been assisting in the garden) at the well-considered chronological distance of three minutes--an interval of non-appearance on the trapper's part not arrived at without some reflection. Four minutes had been found to express indifference to indoor arrangements, and simultaneousness had implied too great an anxiety about meals. "A little earlier than usual, Fancy," the keeper said, as he sat down and looked at the clocks. "That Ezekiel Saunders o' thine is tearing on afore Thomas Wood again." "I kept in the middle between them," said Fancy, also looking at the two clocks. "Better stick to Thomas," said her father. "There's a healthy beat in Thomas that would lead a man to swear by en offhand. He is as true as the town time. How is it your stap-mother isn't here?" As Fancy was about to reply, the rattle of wheels was heard, and "Weh- hey, Smart!" in Mr. Richard Dewy's voice rolled into the cottage from round the corner of the house. "Hullo! there's Dewy's cart come for thee, Fancy--Dick driving--afore time, too. Well, ask the lad to have pot-luck with us." Dick on entering made a point of implying by his general bearing that he took an interest in Fancy simply as in one of the same race and country as himself; and they all sat down. Dick could have wished her manner had not been so entirely free from all apparent consciousness of those accidental meetings of theirs: but he let the thought pass. Enoch sat diagonally at a table afar off, under the corner cupboard, and drank his cider from a long perpendicular pint cup, having tall fir-trees done in brown on its sides. He threw occasional remarks into the general tide of conversation, and with this advantage to himself, that he participated in the pleasures of a talk (slight as it was) at meal-times, without saddling himself with the responsibility of sustaining it. "Why don't your stap-mother come down, Fancy?" said Geoffrey. "You'll excuse her, Mister Dick, she's a little queer sometimes." "O yes,--quite," said Richard, as if he were in the habit of excusing people every day. "She d'belong to that class of womankind that become second wives: a rum class rather." "Indeed," said Dick, with sympathy for an indefinite something. "Yes; and 'tis trying to a female, especially if you've been a first wife, as she hev." "Very trying it must be." "Yes: you see her first husband was a young man, who let her go too far; in fact, she used to kick up Bob's-a-dying at the least thing in the world. And when I'd married her and found it out, I thought, thinks I, ''Tis too late now to begin to cure 'e;' and so I let her bide. But she's queer,--very queer, at times!" "I'm sorry to hear that." "Yes: there; wives be such a provoking class o' society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong." Fancy seemed uneasy under the infliction of this household moralizing, which might tend to damage the airy-fairy nature that Dick, as maiden shrewdness told her, had accredited her with. Her dead silence impressed Geoffrey with the notion that something in his words did not agree with her educated ideas, and he changed the conversation. "Did Fred Shiner send the cask o' drink, Fancy?" "I think he did: O yes, he did." "Nice solid feller, Fred Shiner!" said Geoffrey to Dick as he helped himself to gravy, bringing the spoon round to his plate by way of the potato-dish, to obviate a stain on the cloth in the event of a spill. Now Geoffrey's eyes had been fixed upon his plate for the previous four or five minutes, and in removing them he had only carried them to the spoon, which, from its fulness and the distance of its transit, necessitated a steady watching through the whole of the route. Just as intently as the keeper's eyes had been fixed on the spoon, Fancy's had been fixed on her father's, without premeditation or the slightest phase of furtiveness; but there they were fastened. This was the reason why: Dick was sitting next to her on the right side, and on the side of the table opposite to her father. Fancy had laid her right hand lightly down upon the table-cloth for an instant, and to her alarm Dick, after dropping his fork and brushing his forehead as a reason, flung down his own left hand, overlapping a third of Fancy's with it, and keeping it there. So the innocent Fancy, instead of pulling her hand from the trap, settled her eyes on her father's, to guard against his discovery of this perilous game of Dick's. Dick finished his mouthful; Fancy finished her crumb, and nothing was done beyond watching Geoffrey's eyes. Then the hands slid apart; Fancy's going over six inches of cloth, Dick's over one. Geoffrey's eye had risen. "I said Fred Shiner is a nice solid feller," he repeated, more emphatically. "He is; yes, he is," stammered Dick; "but to me he is little more than a stranger." "O, sure. Now I know en as well as any man can be known. And you know en very well too, don't ye, Fancy?" Geoffrey put on a tone expressing that these words signified at present about one hundred times the amount of meaning they conveyed literally. Dick looked anxious. "Will you pass me some bread?" said Fancy in a flurry, the red of her face becoming slightly disordered, and looking as solicitous as a human being could look about a piece of bread. "Ay, that I will," replied the unconscious Geoffrey. "Ay," he continued, returning to the displaced idea, "we are likely to remain friendly wi' Mr. Shiner if the wheels d'run smooth." "An excellent thing--a very capital thing, as I should say," the youth answered with exceeding relevance, considering that his thoughts, instead of following Geoffrey's remark, were nestling at a distance of about two feet on his left the whole time. "A young woman's face will turn the north wind, Master Richard: my heart if 'twon't." Dick looked more anxious and was attentive in earnest at these words. "Yes; turn the north wind," added Geoffrey after an impressive pause. "And though she's one of my own flesh and blood . . . " "Will you fetch down a bit of raw-mil' cheese from pantry-shelf?" Fancy interrupted, as if she were famishing. "Ay, that I will, chiel; chiel, says I, and Mr. Shiner only asking last Saturday night . . . cheese you said, Fancy?" Dick controlled his emotion at these mysterious allusions to Mr. Shiner,--the better enabled to do so by perceiving that Fancy's heart went not with her father's--and spoke like a stranger to the affairs of the neighbourhood. "Yes, there's a great deal to be said upon the power of maiden faces in settling your courses," he ventured, as the keeper retreated for the cheese. "The conversation is taking a very strange turn: nothing that I have ever done warrants such things being said!" murmured Fancy with emphasis, just loud enough to reach Dick's ears. "You think to yourself, 'twas to be," cried Enoch from his distant corner, by way of filling up the vacancy caused by Geoffrey's momentary absence. "And so you marry her, Master Dewy, and there's an end o't." "Pray don't say such things, Enoch," came from Fancy severely, upon which Enoch relapsed into servitude. "If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single, we do," replied Dick. Geoffrey had by this time sat down again, and he now made his lips thin by severely straining them across his gums, and looked out of the window along the vista to the distant highway up Yalbury Hill. "That's not the case with some folk," he said at length, as if he read the words on a board at the further end of the vista. Fancy looked interested, and Dick said, "No?" "There's that wife o' mine. It was her doom to be nobody's wife at all in the wide universe. But she made up her mind that she would, and did it twice over. Doom? Doom is nothing beside a elderly woman--quite a chiel in her hands!" A movement was now heard along the upstairs passage, and footsteps descending. The door at the foot of the stairs opened, and the second Mrs. Day appeared in view, looking fixedly at the table as she advanced towards it, with apparent obliviousness of the presence of any other human being than herself. In short, if the table had been the personages, and the persons the table, her glance would have been the most natural imaginable. She showed herself to possess an ordinary woman's face, iron-grey hair, hardly any hips, and a great deal of cleanliness in a broad white apron- string, as it appeared upon the waist of her dark stuff dress. "People will run away with a story now, I suppose," she began saying, "that Jane Day's tablecloths are as poor and ragged as any union beggar's!" Dick now perceived that the tablecloth was a little the worse for wear, and reflecting for a moment, concluded that 'people' in step-mother language probably meant himself. On lifting his eyes he found that Mrs. Day had vanished again upstairs, and presently returned with an armful of new damask-linen tablecloths, folded square and hard as boards by long compression. These she flounced down into a chair; then took one, shook it out from its folds, and spread it on the table by instalments, transferring the plates and dishes one by one from the old to the new cloth. "And I suppose they'll say, too, that she ha'n't a decent knife and fork in her house!" "I shouldn't say any such ill-natured thing, I am sure--" began Dick. But Mrs. Day had vanished into the next room. Fancy appeared distressed. "Very strange woman, isn't she?" said Geoffrey, quietly going on with his dinner. "But 'tis too late to attempt curing. My heart! 'tis so growed into her that 'twould kill her to take it out. Ay, she's very queer: you'd be amazed to see what valuable goods we've got stowed away upstairs." Back again came Mrs. Day with a box of bright steel horn-handled knives, silver-plated forks, carver, and all complete. These were wiped of the preservative oil which coated them, and then a knife and fork were laid down to each individual with a bang, the carving knife and fork thrust into the meat dish, and the old ones they had hitherto used tossed away. Geoffrey placidly cut a slice with the new knife and fork, and asked Dick if he wanted any more. The table had been spread for the mixed midday meal of dinner and tea, which was common among frugal countryfolk. "The parishioners about here," continued Mrs. Day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, "are the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of any ever I came among. And they'll talk about my teapot and tea-things next, I suppose!" She vanished with the teapot, cups, and saucers, and reappeared with a tea-service in white china, and a packet wrapped in brown paper. This was removed, together with folds of tissue- paper underneath; and a brilliant silver teapot appeared. "I'll help to put the things right," said Fancy soothingly, and rising from her seat. "I ought to have laid out better things, I suppose. But" (here she enlarged her looks so as to include Dick) "I have been away from home a good deal, and I make shocking blunders in my housekeeping." Smiles and suavity were then dispensed all around by this bright little bird. After a little more preparation and modification, Mrs. Day took her seat at the head of the table, and during the latter or tea division of the meal, presided with much composure. It may cause some surprise to learn that, now her vagary was over, she showed herself to be an excellent person with much common sense, and even a religious seriousness of tone on matters pertaining to her afflictions. CHAPTER VII: DICK MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL The effect of Geoffrey's incidental allusions to Mr. Shiner was to restrain a considerable flow of spontaneous chat that would otherwise have burst from young Dewy along the drive homeward. And a certain remark he had hazarded to her, in rather too blunt and eager a manner, kept the young lady herself even more silent than Dick. On both sides there was an unwillingness to talk on any but the most trivial subjects, and their sentences rarely took a larger form than could be expressed in two or three words. Owing to Fancy being later in the day than she had promised, the charwoman had given up expecting her; whereupon Dick could do no less than stay and see her comfortably tided over the disagreeable time of entering and establishing herself in an empty house after an absence of a week. The additional furniture and utensils that had been brought (a canary and cage among the rest) were taken out of the vehicle, and the horse was unharnessed and put in the plot opposite, where there was some tender grass. Dick lighted the fire already laid; and activity began to loosen their tongues a little. "There!" said Fancy, "we forgot to bring the fire-irons!" She had originally found in her sitting-room, to bear out the expression 'nearly furnished' which the school-manager had used in his letter to her, a table, three chairs, a fender, and a piece of carpet. This 'nearly' had been supplemented hitherto by a kind friend, who had lent her fire-irons and crockery until she should fetch some from home. Dick attended to the young lady's fire, using his whip-handle for a poker till it was spoilt, and then flourishing a hurdle stick for the remainder of the time. "The kettle boils; now you shall have a cup of tea," said Fancy, diving into the hamper she had brought. "Thank you," said Dick, whose drive had made him ready for some, especially in her company. "Well, here's only one cup-and-saucer, as I breathe! Whatever could mother be thinking about? Do you mind making shift, Mr. Dewy?" "Not at all, Miss Day," said that civil person. "--And only having a cup by itself? or a saucer by itself?" "Don't mind in the least." "Which do you mean by that?" "I mean the cup, if you like the saucer." "And the saucer, if I like the cup?" "Exactly, Miss Day." "Thank you, Mr. Dewy, for I like the cup decidedly. Stop a minute; there are no spoons now!" She dived into the hamper again, and at the end of two or three minutes looked up and said, "I suppose you don't mind if I can't find a spoon?" "Not at all," said the agreeable Richard. "The fact is, the spoons have slipped down somewhere; right under the other things. O yes, here's one, and only one. You would rather have one than not, I suppose, Mr. Dewy?" "Rather not. I never did care much about spoons." "Then I'll have it. I do care about them. You must stir up your tea with a knife. Would you mind lifting the kettle off, that it may not boil dry?" Dick leapt to the fireplace, and earnestly removed the kettle. "There! you did it so wildly that you have made your hand black. We always use kettle-holders; didn't you learn housewifery as far as that, Mr. Dewy? Well, never mind the soot on your hand. Come here. I am going to rinse mine, too." They went to a basin she had placed in the back room. "This is the only basin I have," she said. "Turn up your sleeves, and by that time my hands will be washed, and you can come." Her hands were in the water now. "O, how vexing!" she exclaimed. "There's not a drop of water left for you, unless you draw it, and the well is I don't know how many furlongs deep; all that was in the pitcher I used for the kettle and this basin. Do you mind dipping the tips of your fingers in the same?" "Not at all. And to save time I won't wait till you have done, if you have no objection?" Thereupon he plunged in his hands, and they paddled together. It being the first time in his life that he had touched female fingers under water, Dick duly registered the sensation as rather a nice one. "Really, I hardly know which are my own hands and which are yours, they have got so mixed up together," she said, withdrawing her own very suddenly. "It doesn't matter at all," said Dick, "at least as far as I am concerned." "There! no towel! Whoever thinks of a towel till the hands are wet?" "Nobody." "'Nobody.' How very dull it is when people are so friendly! Come here, Mr. Dewy. Now do you think you could lift the lid of that box with your elbow, and then, with something or other, take out a towel you will find under the clean clothes? Be sure don't touch any of them with your wet hands, for the things at the top are all Starched and Ironed." Dick managed, by the aid of a knife and fork, to extract a towel from under a muslin dress without wetting the latter; and for a moment he ventured to assume a tone of criticism. "I fear for that dress," he said, as they wiped their hands together. "What?" said Miss Day, looking into the box at the dress alluded to. "O, I know what you mean--that the vicar will never let me wear muslin?" "Yes." "Well, I know it is condemned by all orders in the church as flaunting, and unfit for common wear for girls who've their living to get; but we'll see." "In the interest of the church, I hope you don't speak seriously." "Yes, I do; but we'll see." There was a comely determination on her lip, very pleasant to a beholder who was neither bishop, priest, nor deacon. "I think I can manage any vicar's views about me if he's under forty." Dick rather wished she had never thought of managing vicars. "I certainly shall be glad to get some of your delicious tea," he said in rather a free way, yet modestly, as became one in a position between that of visitor and inmate, and looking wistfully at his lonely saucer. "So shall I. Now is there anything else we want, Mr Dewy?" "I really think there's nothing else, Miss Day." She prepared to sit down, looking musingly out of the window at Smart's enjoyment of the rich grass. "Nobody seems to care about me," she murmured, with large lost eyes fixed upon the sky beyond Smart. "Perhaps Mr. Shiner does," said Dick, in the tone of a slightly injured man. "Yes, I forgot--he does, I know." Dick precipitately regretted that he had suggested Shiner, since it had produced such a miserable result as this. "I'll warrant you'll care for somebody very much indeed another day, won't you, Mr. Dewy?" she continued, looking very feelingly into the mathematical centre of his eyes. "Ah, I'll warrant I shall," said Dick, feelingly too, and looking back into her dark pupils, whereupon they were turned aside. "I meant," she went on, preventing him from speaking just as he was going to narrate a forcible story about his feelings; "I meant that nobody comes to see if I have returned--not even the vicar." "If you want to see him, I'll call at the vicarage directly we have had some tea." "No, no! Don't let him come down here, whatever you do, whilst I am in such a state of disarrangement. Parsons look so miserable and awkward when one's house is in a muddle; walking about, and making impossible suggestions in quaint academic phrases till your flesh creeps and you wish them dead. Do you take sugar?" Mr. Maybold was at this instant seen coming up the path. "There! That's he coming! How I wish you were not here!--that is, how awkward--dear, dear!" she exclaimed, with a quick ascent of blood to her face, and irritated with Dick rather than the vicar, as it seemed. "Pray don't be alarmed on my account, Miss Day--good-afternoon!" said Dick in a huff, putting on his hat, and leaving the room hastily by the back-door. The horse was caught and put in, and on mounting the shafts to start he saw through the window the vicar, standing upon some books piled in a chair, and driving a nail into the wall; Fancy, with a demure glance, holding the canary-cage up to him, as if she had never in her life thought of anything but vicars and canaries. CHAPTER VIII: DICK MEETS HIS FATHER For several minutes Dick drove along homeward, with the inner eye of reflection so anxiously set on his passages at arms with Fancy, that the road and scenery were as a thin mist over the real pictures of his mind. Was she a coquette? The balance between the evidence that she did love him and that she did not was so nicely struck, that his opinion had no stability. She had let him put his hand upon hers; she had allowed her gaze to drop plumb into the depths of his--his into hers--three or four times; her manner had been very free with regard to the basin and towel; she had appeared vexed at the mention of Shiner. On the other hand, she had driven him about the house like a quiet dog or cat, said Shiner cared for her, and seemed anxious that Mr. Maybold should do the same. Thinking thus as he neared the handpost at Mellstock Cross, sitting on the front board of the spring cart--his legs on the outside, and his whole frame jigging up and down like a candle-flame to the time of Smart's trotting--who should he see coming down the hill but his father in the light wagon, quivering up and down on a smaller scale of shakes, those merely caused by the stones in the road. They were soon crossing each other's front. "Weh-hey!" said the tranter to Smiler. "Weh-hey!" said Dick to Smart, in an echo of the same voice. "Th'st hauled her back, I suppose?" Reuben inquired peaceably. "Yes," said Dick, with such a clinching period at the end that it seemed he was never going to add another word. Smiler, thinking this the close of the conversation, prepared to move on. "Weh-hey!" said the tranter. "I tell thee what it is, Dick. That there maid is taking up thy thoughts more than's good for thee, my sonny. Thou'rt never happy now unless th'rt making thyself miserable about her in one way or another." "I don't know about that, father," said Dick rather stupidly. "But I do--Wey, Smiler!--'Od rot the women, 'tis nothing else wi' 'em nowadays but getting young men and leading 'em astray." "Pooh, father! you just repeat what all the common world says; that's all you do." "The world's a very sensible feller on things in jineral, Dick; very sensible indeed." Dick looked into the distance at a vast expanse of mortgaged estate. "I wish I was as rich as a squire when he's as poor as a crow," he murmured; "I'd soon ask Fancy something." "I wish so too, wi' all my heart, sonny; that I do. Well, mind what beest about, that's all." Smart moved on a step or two. "Supposing now, father,--We-hey, Smart!--I did think a little about her, and I had a chance, which I ha'n't; don't you think she's a very good sort of--of--one?" "Ay, good; she's good enough. When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand--she's as good as any other; they be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference. She's good enough; but I can't see what the nation a young feller like you--wi' a comfortable house and home, and father and mother to take care o' thee, and who sent 'ee to a school so good that 'twas hardly fair to the other children--should want to go hollering after a young woman for, when she's quietly making a husband in her pocket, and not troubled by chick nor chiel, to make a poverty-stric' wife and family of her, and neither hat, cap, wig, nor waistcoat to set 'em up with: be drowned if I can see it, and that's the long and the short o't, my sonny." Dick looked at Smart's ears, then up the hill; but no reason was suggested by any object that met his gaze. "For about the same reason that you did, father, I suppose." "Dang it, my sonny, thou'st got me there!" And the tranter gave vent to a grim admiration, with the mien of a man who was too magnanimous not to appreciate artistically a slight rap on the knuckles, even if they were his own. "Whether or no," said Dick, "I asked her a thing going along the road." "Come to that, is it? Turk! won't thy mother be in a taking! Well, she's ready, I don't doubt?" "I didn't ask her anything about having me; and if you'll let me speak, I'll tell 'ee what I want to know. I just said, Did she care about me?" "Piph-ph-ph!" "And then she said nothing for a quarter of a mile, and then she said she didn't know. Now, what I want to know is, what was the meaning of that speech?" The latter words were spoken resolutely, as if he didn't care for the ridicule of all the fathers in creation. "The meaning of that speech is," the tranter replied deliberately, "that the meaning is meant to be rather hid at present. Well, Dick, as an honest father to thee, I don't pretend to deny what you d'know well enough; that is, that her father being rather better in the pocket than we, I should welcome her ready enough if it must be somebody." "But what d'ye think she really did mean?" said the unsatisfied Dick. "I'm afeard I am not o' much account in guessing, especially as I was not there when she said it, and seeing that your mother was the only 'ooman I ever cam' into such close quarters as that with." "And what did mother say to you when you asked her?" said Dick musingly. "I don't see that that will help 'ee." "The principle is the same." "Well--ay: what did she say? Let's see. I was oiling my working-day boots without taking 'em off, and wi' my head hanging down, when she just brushed on by the garden hatch like a flittering leaf. 'Ann,' I said, says I, and then,--but, Dick I'm afeard 'twill be no help to thee; for we were such a rum couple, your mother and I, leastways one half was, that is myself--and your mother's charms was more in the manner than the material." "Never mind! 'Ann,' said you." "'Ann,' said I, as I was saying . . . 'Ann,' I said to her when I was oiling my working-day boots wi' my head hanging down, 'Woot hae me?' . . . What came next I can't quite call up at this distance o' time. Perhaps your mother would know,--she's got a better memory for her little triumphs than I. However, the long and the short o' the story is that we were married somehow, as I found afterwards. 'Twas on White Tuesday,--Mellstock Club walked the same day, every man two and two, and a fine day 'twas,--hot as fire,--how the sun did strike down upon my back going to church! I well can mind what a bath o' sweating I was in, body and soul! But Fance will ha' thee, Dick--she won't walk with another chap--no such good luck." "I don't know about that," said Dick, whipping at Smart's flank in a fanciful way, which, as Smart knew, meant nothing in connection with going on. "There's Pa'son Maybold, too--that's all against me." "What about he? She's never been stuffing into thy innocent heart that he's in hove with her? Lord, the vanity o' maidens!" "No, no. But he called, and she looked at him in such a way, and at me in such a way--quite different the ways were,--and as I was coming off, there was he hanging up her birdcage." "Well, why shouldn't the man hang up her bird-cage? Turk seize it all, what's that got to do wi' it? Dick, that thou beest a white-lyvered chap I don't say, but if thou beestn't as mad as a cappel-faced bull, let me smile no more." "O, ay." "And what's think now, Dick?" "I don't know." "Here's another pretty kettle o' fish for thee. Who d'ye think's the bitter weed in our being turned out? Did our party tell 'ee?" "No. Why, Pa'son Maybold, I suppose." "Shiner,--because he's in love with thy young woman, and d'want to see her young figure sitting up at that queer instrument, and her young fingers rum-strumming upon the keys." A sharp ado of sweet and bitter was going on in Dick during this communication from his father. "Shiner's a fool!--no, that's not it; I don't believe any such thing, father. Why, Shiner would never take a bold step like that, unless she'd been a little made up to, and had taken it kindly. Pooh!" "Who's to say she didn't?" "I do." "The more fool you." "Why, father of me?" "Has she ever done more to thee?" "No." "Then she has done as much to he--rot 'em! Now, Dick, this is how a maid is. She'll swear she's dying for thee, and she is dying for thee, and she will die for thee; but she'll fling a look over t'other shoulder at another young feller, though never leaving off dying for thee just the same." "She's not dying for me, and so she didn't fling a look at him." "But she may be dying for him, for she looked at thee." "I don't know what to make of it at all," said Dick gloomily. "All I can make of it is," the tranter said, raising his whip, arranging his different joints and muscles, and motioning to the horse to move on, "that if you can't read a maid's mind by her motions, nature d'seem to say thou'st ought to be a bachelor. Clk, clk! Smiler!" And the tranter moved on. Dick held Smart's rein firmly, and the whole concern of horse, cart, and man remained rooted in the lane. How long this condition would have lasted is unknown, had not Dick's thoughts, after adding up numerous items of misery, gradually wandered round to the fact that as something must be done, it could not be done by staying there all night. Reaching home he went up to his bedroom, shut the door as if he were going to be seen no more in this life, and taking a sheet of paper and uncorking the ink-bottle, he began a letter. The dignity of the writer's mind was so powerfully apparent in every line of this effusion that it obscured the logical sequence of facts and intentions to an appreciable degree; and it was not at all clear to a reader whether he there and then left off loving Miss Fancy Day; whether he had never loved her seriously, and never meant to; whether he had been dying up to the present moment, and now intended to get well again; or whether he had hitherto been in good health, and intended to die for her forthwith. He put this letter in an envelope, sealed it up, directed it in a stern handwriting of straight dashes--easy flourishes being rigorously excluded. He walked with it in his pocket down the lane in strides not an inch less than three feet long. Reaching her gate he put on a resolute expression--then put it off again, turned back homeward, tore up his letter, and sat down. That letter was altogether in a wrong tone--that he must own. A heartless man-of-the-world tone was what the juncture required. That he rather wanted her, and rather did not want her--the latter for choice; but that as a member of society he didn't mind making a query in jaunty terms, which could only be answered in the same way: did she mean anything by her bearing towards him, or did she not? This letter was considered so satisfactory in every way that, being put into the hands of a little boy, and the order given that he was to run with it to the school, he was told in addition not to look behind him if Dick called after him to bring it back, but to run along with it just the same. Having taken this precaution against vacillation, Dick watched his messenger down the road, and turned into the house whistling an air in such ghastly jerks and starts, that whistling seemed to be the act the very furthest removed from that which was instinctive in such a youth. The letter was left as ordered: the next morning came and passed--and no answer. The next. The next. Friday night came. Dick resolved that if no answer or sign were given by her the next day, on Sunday he would meet her face to face, and have it all out by word of mouth. "Dick," said his father, coming in from the garden at that moment--in each hand a hive of bees tied in a cloth to prevent their egress--"I think you'd better take these two swarms of bees to Mrs. Maybold's to- morrow, instead o' me, and I'll go wi' Smiler and the wagon." It was a relief; for Mrs. Maybold, the vicar's mother, who had just taken into her head a fancy for keeping bees (pleasantly disguised under the pretence of its being an economical wish to produce her own honey), lived near the watering-place of Budmouth-Regis, ten miles off, and the business of transporting the hives thither would occupy the whole day, and to some extent annihilate the vacant time between this evening and the coming Sunday. The best spring-cart was washed throughout, the axles oiled, and the bees placed therein for the journey. PART THE THIRD--SUMMER CHAPTER I: DRIVING OUT OF BUDMOUTH An easy bend of neck and graceful set of head; full and wavy bundles of dark-brown hair; light fall of little feet; pretty devices on the skirt of the dress; clear deep eyes; in short, a bunch of sweets: it was Fancy! Dick's heart went round to her with a rush. The scene was the corner of Mary Street in Budmouth-Regis, near the King's statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in the row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse of salt water projected from the outer ocean--to-day lit in bright tones of green and opal. Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and there on the right, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour, stood Fancy Day; and she turned and recognized him. Dick suspended his thoughts of the letter and wonder at how she came there by driving close to the chains of the Esplanade--incontinently displacing two chairmen, who had just come to life for the summer in new clean shirts and revivified clothes, and being almost displaced in turn by a rigid boy rattling along with a baker's cart, and looking neither to the right nor the left. He asked if she were going to Mellstock that night. "Yes, I'm waiting for the carrier," she replied, seeming, too, to suspend thoughts of the letter. "Now I can drive you home nicely, and you save half an hour. Will ye come with me?" As Fancy's power to will anything seemed to have departed in some mysterious manner at that moment, Dick settled the matter by getting out and assisting her into the vehicle without another word. The temporary flush upon her cheek changed to a lesser hue, which was permanent, and at length their eyes met; there was present between them a certain feeling of embarrassment, which arises at such moments when all the instinctive acts dictated by the position have been performed. Dick, being engaged with the reins, thought less of this awkwardness than did Fancy, who had nothing to do but to feel his presence, and to be more and more conscious of the fact, that by accepting a seat beside him in this way she succumbed to the tone of his note. Smart jogged along, and Dick jogged, and the helpless Fancy necessarily jogged, too; and she felt that she was in a measure captured and made a prisoner. "I am so much obliged to you for your company, Miss Day," he observed, as they drove past the two semicircular bays of the Old Royal Hotel, where His Majesty King George the Third had many a time attended the balls of the burgesses. To Miss Day, crediting him with the same consciousness of mastery--a consciousness of which he was perfectly innocent--this remark sounded like a magnanimous intention to soothe her, the captive. "I didn't come for the pleasure of obliging you with my company," she said. The answer had an unexpected manner of incivility in it that must have been rather surprising to young Dewy. At the same time it may be observed, that when a young woman returns a rude answer to a young man's civil remark, her heart is in a state which argues rather hopefully for his case than otherwise. There was silence between them till they had left the sea-front and passed about twenty of the trees that ornamented the road leading up out of the town towards Casterbridge and Mellstock. "Though I didn't come for that purpose either, I would have done it," said Dick at the twenty-first tree. "Now, Mr. Dewy, no flirtation, because it's wrong, and I don't wish it." Dick seated himself afresh just as he had been sitting before, arranged his looks very emphatically, and cleared his throat. "Really, anybody would think you had met me on business and were just going to commence," said the lady intractably. "Yes, they would." "Why, you never have, to be sure!" This was a shaky beginning. He chopped round, and said cheerily, as a man who had resolved never to spoil his jollity by loving one of womankind-- "Well, how are you getting on, Miss Day, at the present time? Gaily, I don't doubt for a moment." "I am not gay, Dick; you know that." "Gaily doesn't mean decked in gay dresses." "I didn't suppose gaily was gaily dressed. Mighty me, what a scholar you've grown!" "Lots of things have happened to you this spring, I see." "What have you seen?" "O, nothing; I've heard, I mean!" "What have you heard?" "The name of a pretty man, with brass studs and a copper ring and a tin watch-chain, a little mixed up with your own. That's all." "That's a very unkind picture of Mr. Shiner, for that's who you mean! The studs are gold, as you know, and it's a real silver chain; the ring I can't conscientiously defend, and he only wore it once." "He might have worn it a hundred times without showing it half so much." "Well, he's nothing to me," she serenely observed. "Not any more than I am?" "Now, Mr. Dewy," said Fancy severely, "certainly he isn't any more to me than you are!" "Not so much?" She looked aside to consider the precise compass of that question. "That I can't exactly answer," she replied with soft archness. As they were going rather slowly, another spring-cart, containing a farmer, farmer's wife, and farmer's man, jogged past them; and the farmer's wife and farmer's man eyed the couple very curiously. The farmer never looked up from the horse's tail. "Why can't you exactly answer?" said Dick, quickening Smart a little, and jogging on just behind the farmer and farmer's wife and man. As no answer came, and as their eyes had nothing else to do, they both contemplated the picture presented in front, and noticed how the farmer's wife sat flattened between the two men, who bulged over each end of the seat to give her room, till they almost sat upon their respective wheels; and they looked too at the farmer's wife's silk mantle, inflating itself between her shoulders like a balloon and sinking flat again, at each jog of the horse. The farmer's wife, feeling their eyes sticking into her back, looked over her shoulder. Dick dropped ten yards further behind. "Fancy, why can't you answer?" he repeated. "Because how much you are to me depends upon how much I am to you," said she in low tones. "Everything," said Dick, putting his hand towards hers, and casting emphatic eyes upon the upper curve of her cheek. "Now, Richard Dewy, no touching me! I didn't say in what way your thinking of me affected the question--perhaps inversely, don't you see? No touching, sir! Look; goodness me, don't, Dick!" The cause of her sudden start was the unpleasant appearance over Dick's right shoulder of an empty timber-wagon and four journeymen-carpenters reclining in lazy postures inside it, their eyes directed upwards at various oblique angles into the surrounding world, the chief object of their existence being apparently to criticize to the very backbone and marrow every animate object that came within the compass of their vision. This difficulty of Dick's was overcome by trotting on till the wagon and carpenters were beginning to look rather misty by reason of a film of dust that accompanied their wagon-wheels, and rose around their heads like a fog. "Say you love me, Fancy." "No, Dick, certainly not; 'tisn't time to do that yet." "Why, Fancy?" "'Miss Day' is better at present--don't mind my saying so; and I ought not to have called you Dick." "Nonsense! when you know that I would do anything on earth for your love. Why, you make any one think that loving is a thing that can be done and undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim." "No, no, I don't," she said gently; "but there are things which tell me I ought not to give way to much thinking about you, even if--" "But you want to, don't you? Yes, say you do; it is best to be truthful. Whatever they may say about a woman's right to conceal where her love lies, and pretend it doesn't exist, and things like that, it is not best; I do know it, Fancy. And an honest woman in that, as well as in all her daily concerns, shines most brightly, and is thought most of in the long- run." "Well then, perhaps, Dick, I do love you a little," she whispered tenderly; "but I wish you wouldn't say any more now." "I won't say any more now, then, if you don't like it, dear. But you do love me a little, don't you?" "Now you ought not to want me to keep saying things twice; I can't say any more now, and you must be content with what you have." "I may at any rate call you Fancy? There's no harm in that." "Yes, you may." "And you'll not call me Mr. Dewy any more?" "Very well." CHAPTER II: FURTHER ALONG THE ROAD Dick's spirits having risen in the course of these admissions of his sweetheart, he now touched Smart with the whip; and on Smart's neck, not far behind his ears. Smart, who had been lost in thought for some time, never dreaming that Dick could reach so far with a whip which, on this particular journey, had never been extended further than his flank, tossed his head, and scampered along with exceeding briskness, which was very pleasant to the young couple behind him till, turning a bend in the road, they came instantly upon the farmer, farmer's man, and farmer's wife with the flapping mantle, all jogging on just the same as ever. "Bother those people! Here we are upon them again." "Well, of course. They have as much right to the road as we." "Yes, but it is provoking to be overlooked so. I like a road all to myself. Look what a lumbering affair theirs is!" The wheels of the farmer's cart, just at that moment, jogged into a depression running across the road, giving the cart a twist, whereupon all three nodded to the left, and on coming out of it all three nodded to the right, and went on jerking their backs in and out as usual. "We'll pass them when the road gets wider." When an opportunity seemed to offer itself for carrying this intention into effect, they heard light flying wheels behind, and on their quartering there whizzed along past them a brand-new gig, so brightly polished that the spokes of the wheels sent forth a continual quivering light at one point in their circle, and all the panels glared like mirrors in Dick and Fancy's eyes. The driver, and owner as it appeared, was really a handsome man; his companion was Shiner. Both turned round as they passed Dick and Fancy, and stared with bold admiration in her face till they were obliged to attend to the operation of passing the farmer. Dick glanced for an instant at Fancy while she was undergoing their scrutiny; then returned to his driving with rather a sad countenance. "Why are you so silent?" she said, after a while, with real concern. "Nothing." "Yes, it is, Dick. I couldn't help those people passing." "I know that." "You look offended with me. What have I done?" "I can't tell without offending you." "Better out." "Well," said Dick, who seemed longing to tell, even at the risk of offending her, "I was thinking how different you in love are from me in love. Whilst those men were staring, you dismissed me from your thoughts altogether, and--" "You can't offend me further now; tell all!" "And showed upon your face a pleased sense of being attractive to 'em." "Don't be silly, Dick! You know very well I didn't." Dick shook his head sceptically, and smiled. "Dick, I always believe flattery if possible--and it was possible then. Now there's an open confession of weakness. But I showed no consciousness of it." Dick, perceiving by her look that she would adhere to her statement, charitably forbore saying anything that could make her prevaricate. The sight of Shiner, too, had recalled another branch of the subject to his mind; that which had been his greatest trouble till her company and words had obscured its probability. "By the way, Fancy, do you know why our quire is to be dismissed?" "No: except that it is Mr. Maybold's wish for me to play the organ." "Do you know how it came to be his wish?" "That I don't." "Mr. Shiner, being churchwarden, has persuaded the vicar; who, however, was willing enough before. Shiner, I know, is crazy to see you playing every Sunday; I suppose he'll turn over your music, for the organ will be close to his pew. But--I know you have never encouraged him?" "Never once!" said Fancy emphatically, and with eyes full of earnest truth. "I don't like him indeed, and I never heard of his doing this before! I have always felt that I should like to play in a church, but I never wished to turn you and your choir out; and I never even said that I could play till I was asked. You don't think for a moment that I did, surely, do you?" "I know you didn't, dear." "Or that I care the least morsel of a bit for him?" "I know you don't." The distance between Budmouth and Mellstock was ten or eleven miles, and there being a good inn, 'The Ship,' four miles out of Budmouth, with a mast and cross-trees in front, Dick's custom in driving thither was to divide the journey into three stages by resting at this inn going and coming, and not troubling the Budmouth stables at all, whenever his visit to the town was a mere call and deposit, as to-day. Fancy was ushered into a little tea-room, and Dick went to the stables to see to the feeding of Smart. In face of the significant twitches of feature that were visible in the ostler and labouring men idling around, Dick endeavoured to look unconscious of the fact that there was any sentiment between him and Fancy beyond a tranter's desire to carry a passenger home. He presently entered the inn and opened the door of Fancy's room. "Dick, do you know, it has struck me that it is rather awkward, my being here alone with you like this. I don't think you had better come in with me." "That's rather unpleasant, dear." "Yes, it is, and I wanted you to have some tea as well as myself too, because you must be tired." "Well, let me have some with you, then. I was denied once before, if you recollect, Fancy." "Yes, yes, never mind! And it seems unfriendly of me now, but I don't know what to do." "It shall be as you say, then." Dick began to retreat with a dissatisfied wrinkling of face, and a farewell glance at the cosy tea- tray. "But you don't see how it is, Dick, when you speak like that," she said, with more earnestness than she had ever shown before. "You do know, that even if I care very much for you, I must remember that I have a difficult position to maintain. The vicar would not like me, as his schoolmistress, to indulge in a tete-a-tete anywhere with anybody." "But I am not any body!" exclaimed Dick. "No, no, I mean with a young man;" and she added softly, "unless I were really engaged to be married to him." "Is that all? Then, dearest, dearest, why we'll be engaged at once, to be sure we will, and down I sit! There it is, as easy as a glove!" "Ah! but suppose I won't! And, goodness me, what have I done!" she faltered, getting very red. "Positively, it seems as if I meant you to say that!" "Let's do it! I mean get engaged," said Dick. "Now, Fancy, will you be my wife?" "Do you know, Dick, it was rather unkind of you to say what you did coming along the road," she remarked, as if she had not heard the latter part of his speech; though an acute observer might have noticed about her breast, as the word 'wife' fell from Dick's lips, a soft silent escape of breaths, with very short rests between each. "What did I say?" "About my trying to look attractive to those men in the gig." "You couldn't help looking so, whether you tried or no. And, Fancy, you do care for me?" "Yes." "Very much?" "Yes." "And you'll be my own wife?" Her heart quickened, adding to and withdrawing from her cheek varying tones of red to match each varying thought. Dick looked expectantly at the ripe tint of her delicate mouth, waiting for what was coming forth. "Yes--if father will let me." Dick drew himself close to her, compressing his lips and pouting them out, as if he were about to whistle the softest melody known. "O no!" said Fancy solemnly. The modest Dick drew back a little. "Dick, Dick, kiss me and let me go instantly!--here's somebody coming!" she whisperingly exclaimed. * * * Half an hour afterwards Dick emerged from the inn, and if Fancy's lips had been real cherries probably Dick's would have appeared deeply stained. The landlord was standing in the yard. "Heu-heu! hay-hay, Master Dewy! Ho-ho!" he laughed, letting the laugh slip out gently and by degrees that it might make little noise in its exit, and smiting Dick under the fifth rib at the same time. "This will never do, upon my life, Master Dewy! calling for tay for a feymel passenger, and then going in and sitting down and having some too, and biding such a fine long time!" "But surely you know?" said Dick, with great apparent surprise. "Yes, yes! Ha-ha!" smiting the landlord under the ribs in return. "Why, what? Yes, yes; ha-ha!" "You know, of course!" "Yes, of course! But--that is--I don't." "Why about--between that young lady and me?" nodding to the window of the room that Fancy occupied. "No; not I!" said the innkeeper, bringing his eyes into circles. "And you don't!" "Not a word, I'll take my oath!" "But you laughed when I laughed." "Ay, that was me sympathy; so did you when I laughed!" "Really, you don't know? Goodness--not knowing that!" "I'll take my oath I don't!" "O yes," said Dick, with frigid rhetoric of pitying astonishment, "we're engaged to be married, you see, and I naturally look after her." "Of course, of course! I didn't know that, and I hope ye'll excuse any little freedom of mine, Mr. Dewy. But it is a very odd thing; I was talking to your father very intimate about family matters only last Friday in the world, and who should come in but Keeper Day, and we all then fell a-talking o' family matters; but neither one o' them said a mortal word about it; knowen me too so many years, and I at your father's own wedding. 'Tisn't what I should have expected from an old neighbour!" "Well, to say the truth, we hadn't told father of the engagement at that time; in fact, 'twasn't settled." "Ah! the business was done Sunday. Yes, yes, Sunday's the courting day. Heu-heu!" "No, 'twasn't done Sunday in particular." "After school-hours this week? Well, a very good time, a very proper good time." "O no, 'twasn't done then." "Coming along the road to-day then, I suppose?" "Not at all; I wouldn't think of getting engaged in a dog-cart." "Dammy--might as well have said at once, the when be blowed! Anyhow, 'tis a fine day, and I hope next time you'll come as one." Fancy was duly brought out and assisted into the vehicle, and the newly affianced youth and maiden passed up the steep hill to the Ridgeway, and vanished in the direction of Mellstock. CHAPTER III: A CONFESSION It was a morning of the latter summer-time; a morning of lingering dews, when the grass is never dry in the shade. Fuchsias and dahlias were laden till eleven o'clock with small drops and dashes of water, changing the colour of their sparkle at every movement of the air; and elsewhere hanging on twigs like small silver fruit. The threads of garden spiders appeared thick and polished. In the dry and sunny places, dozens of long- legged crane-flies whizzed off the grass at every step the passer took. Fancy Day and her friend Susan Dewy the tranter's daughter, were in such a spot as this, pulling down a bough laden with early apples. Three months had elapsed since Dick and Fancy had journeyed together from Budmouth, and the course of their love had run on vigorously during the whole time. There had been just enough difficulty attending its development, and just enough finesse required in keeping it private, to lend the passion an ever-increasing freshness on Fancy's part, whilst, whether from these accessories or not, Dick's heart had been at all times as fond as could be desired. But there was a cloud on Fancy's horizon now. "She is so well off--better than any of us," Susan Dewy was saying. "Her father farms five hundred acres, and she might marry a doctor or curate or anything of that kind if she contrived a little." "I don't think Dick ought to have gone to that gipsy-party at all when he knew I couldn't go," replied Fancy uneasily. "He didn't know that you would not be there till it was too late to refuse the invitation," said Susan. "And what was she like? Tell me." "Well, she was rather pretty, I must own." "Tell straight on about her, can't you! Come, do, Susan. How many times did you say he danced with her?" "Once." "Twice, I think you said?" "Indeed I'm sure I didn't." "Well, and he wanted to again, I expect." "No; I don't think he did. She wanted to dance with him again bad enough, I know. Everybody does with Dick, because he's so handsome and such a clever courter." "O, I wish!--How did you say she wore her hair?" "In long curls,--and her hair is light, and it curls without being put in paper: that's how it is she's so attractive." "She's trying to get him away! yes, yes, she is! And through keeping this miserable school I mustn't wear my hair in curls! But I will; I don't care if I leave the school and go home, I will wear my curls! Look, Susan, do! is her hair as soft and long as this?" Fancy pulled from its coil under her hat a twine of her own hair, and stretched it down her shoulder to show its length, looking at Susan to catch her opinion from her eyes. "It is about the same length as that, I think," said Miss Dewy. Fancy paused hopelessly. "I wish mine was lighter, like hers!" she continued mournfully. "But hers isn't so soft, is it? Tell me, now." "I don't know." Fancy abstractedly extended her vision to survey a yellow butterfly and a red-and-black butterfly that were flitting along in company, and then became aware that Dick was advancing up the garden. "Susan, here's Dick coming; I suppose that's because we've been talking about him." "Well, then, I shall go indoors now--you won't want me;" and Susan turned practically and walked off. Enter the single-minded Dick, whose only fault at the gipsying, or picnic, had been that of loving Fancy too exclusively, and depriving himself of the innocent pleasure the gathering might have afforded him, by sighing regretfully at her absence,--who had danced with the rival in sheer despair of ever being able to get through that stale, flat, and unprofitable afternoon in any other way; but this she would not believe. Fancy had settled her plan of emotion. To reproach Dick? O no, no. "I am in great trouble," said she, taking what was intended to be a hopelessly melancholy survey of a few small apples lying under the tree; yet a critical ear might have noticed in her voice a tentative tone as to the effect of the words upon Dick when she uttered them. "What are you in trouble about? Tell me of it," said Dick earnestly. "Darling, I will share it with 'ee and help 'ee." "No, no: you can't! Nobody can!" "Why not? You don't deserve it, whatever it is. Tell me, dear." "O, it isn't what you think! It is dreadful: my own sin!" "Sin, Fancy! as if you could sin! I know it can't be." "'Tis, 'tis!" said the young lady, in a pretty little frenzy of sorrow. "I have done wrong, and I don't like to tell it! Nobody will forgive me, nobody! and you above all will not! . . . I have allowed myself to--to--fl--" "What,--not flirt!" he said, controlling his emotion as it were by a sudden pressure inward from his surface. "And you said only the day before yesterday that you hadn't flirted in your life!" "Yes, I did; and that was a wicked story! I have let another love me, and--" "Good G--! Well, I'll forgive you,--yes, if you couldn't help it,--yes, I will!" said the now dismal Dick. "Did you encourage him?" "O,--I don't know,--yes--no. O, I think so!" "Who was it?" A pause. "Tell me!" "Mr. Shiner." After a silence that was only disturbed by the fall of an apple, a long- checked sigh from Dick, and a sob from Fancy, he said with real austerity-- "Tell it all;--every word!" "He looked at me, and I looked at him, and he said, 'Will you let me show you how to catch bullfinches down here by the stream?' And I--wanted to know very much--I did so long to have a bullfinch! I couldn't help that and I said, 'Yes!' and then he said, 'Come here.' And I went with him down to the lovely river, and then he said to me, 'Look and see how I do it, and then you'll know: I put this birdlime round this twig, and then I go here,' he said, 'and hide away under a bush; and presently clever Mister Bird comes and perches upon the twig, and flaps his wings, and you've got him before you can say Jack'--something; O, O, O, I forget what!" "Jack Sprat," mournfully suggested Dick through the cloud of his misery. "No, not Jack Sprat," she sobbed. "Then 'twas Jack Robinson!" he said, with the emphasis of a man who had resolved to discover every iota of the truth, or die. "Yes, that was it! And then I put my hand upon the rail of the bridge to get across, and--That's all." "Well, that isn't much, either," said Dick critically, and more cheerfully. "Not that I see what business Shiner has to take upon himself to teach you anything. But it seems--it do seem there must have been more than that to set you up in such a dreadful taking?" He looked into Fancy's eyes. Misery of miseries!--guilt was written there still. "Now, Fancy, you've not told me all!" said Dick, rather sternly for a quiet young man. "O, don't speak so cruelly! I am afraid to tell now! If you hadn't been harsh, I was going on to tell all; now I can't!" "Come, dear Fancy, tell: come. I'll forgive; I must,--by heaven and earth, I must, whether I will or no; I love you so!" "Well, when I put my hand on the bridge, he touched it--" "A scamp!" said Dick, grinding an imaginary human frame to powder. "And then he looked at me, and at last he said, 'Are you in love with Dick Dewy?' And I said, 'Perhaps I am!' and then he said, 'I wish you weren't then, for I want to marry you, with all my soul.'" "There's a villain now! Want to marry you!" And Dick quivered with the bitterness of satirical laughter. Then suddenly remembering that he might be reckoning without his host: "Unless, to be sure, you are willing to have him,--perhaps you are," he said, with the wretched indifference of a castaway. "No, indeed I am not!" she said, her sobs just beginning to take a favourable turn towards cure. "Well, then," said Dick, coming a little to his senses, "you've been stretching it very much in giving such a dreadful beginning to such a mere nothing. And I know what you've done it for,--just because of that gipsy-party!" He turned away from her and took five paces decisively, as if he were tired of an ungrateful country, including herself. "You did it to make me jealous, and I won't stand it!" He flung the words to her over his shoulder and then stalked on, apparently very anxious to walk to the remotest of the Colonies that very minute. "O, O, O, Dick--Dick!" she cried, trotting after him like a pet lamb, and really seriously alarmed at last, "you'll kill me! My impulses are bad--miserably wicked,--and I can't help it; forgive me, Dick! And I love you always; and those times when you look silly and don't seem quite good enough for me,--just the same, I do, Dick! And there is something more serious, though not concerning that walk with him." "Well, what is it?" said Dick, altering his mind about walking to the Colonies; in fact, passing to the other extreme, and standing so rooted to the road that he was apparently not even going home. "Why this," she said, drying the beginning of a new flood of tears she had been going to shed, "this is the serious part. Father has told Mr. Shiner that he would like him for a son-in-law, if he could get me;--that he has his right hearty consent to come courting me!" CHAPTER IV: AN ARRANGEMENT "That is serious," said Dick, more intellectually than he had spoken for a long time. The truth was that Geoffrey knew nothing about his daughter's continued walks and meetings with Dick. When a hint that there were symptoms of an attachment between them had first reached Geoffrey's ears, he stated so emphatically that he must think the matter over before any such thing could be allowed that, rather unwisely on Dick's part, whatever it might have been on the lady's, the lovers were careful to be seen together no more in public; and Geoffrey, forgetting the report, did not think over the matter at all. So Mr. Shiner resumed his old position in Geoffrey's brain by mere flux of time. Even Shiner began to believe that Dick existed for Fancy no more,--though that remarkably easy-going man had taken no active steps on his own account as yet. "And father has not only told Mr. Shiner that," continued Fancy, "but he has written me a letter, to say he should wish me to encourage Mr. Shiner, if 'twas convenient!" "I must start off and see your father at once!" said Dick, taking two or three vehement steps to the south, recollecting that Mr. Day lived to the north, and coming back again. "I think we had better see him together. Not tell him what you come for, or anything of the kind, until he likes you, and so win his brain through his heart, which is always the way to manage people. I mean in this way: I am going home on Saturday week to help them in the honey-taking. You might come there to me, have something to eat and drink, and let him guess what your coming signifies, without saying it in so many words." "We'll do it, dearest. But I shall ask him for you, flat and plain; not wait for his guessing." And the lover then stepped close to her, and attempted to give her one little kiss on the cheek, his lips alighting, however, on an outlying tract of her back hair by reason of an impulse that had caused her to turn her head with a jerk. "Yes, and I'll put on my second-best suit and a clean shirt and collar, and black my boots as if 'twas a Sunday. 'Twill have a good appearance, you see, and that's a great deal to start with." "You won't wear that old waistcoat, will you, Dick?" "Bless you, no! Why I--" "I didn't mean to be personal, dear Dick," she said, fearing she had hurt his feelings. "'Tis a very nice waistcoat, but what I meant was, that though it is an excellent waistcoat for a settled-down man, it is not quite one for" (she waited, and a blush expanded over her face, and then she went on again)--"for going courting in." "No, I'll wear my best winter one, with the leather lining, that mother made. It is a beautiful, handsome waistcoat inside, yes, as ever anybody saw. In fact, only the other day, I unbuttoned it to show a chap that very lining, and he said it was the strongest, handsomest lining you could wish to see on the king's waistcoat himself." "I don't quite know what to wear," she said, as if her habitual indifference alone to dress had kept back so important a subject till now. "Why, that blue frock you wore last week." "Doesn't set well round the neck. I couldn't wear that." "But I shan't care." "No, you won't mind." "Well, then it's all right. Because you only care how you look to me, do you, dear? I only dress for you, that's certain." "Yes, but you see I couldn't appear in it again very well." "Any strange gentleman you mid meet in your journey might notice the set of it, I suppose. Fancy, men in love don't think so much about how they look to other women." It is difficult to say whether a tone of playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed in the speech. "Well then, Dick," she said, with good-humoured frankness, "I'll own it. I shouldn't like a stranger to see me dressed badly, even though I am in love. 'Tis our nature, I suppose." "You perfect woman!" "Yes; if you lay the stress on 'woman,'" she murmured, looking at a group of hollyhocks in flower, round which a crowd of butterflies had gathered like female idlers round a bonnet-shop. "But about the dress. Why not wear the one you wore at our party?" "That sets well, but a girl of the name of Bet Tallor, who lives near our house, has had one made almost like it (only in pattern, though of miserably cheap stuff), and I couldn't wear it on that account. Dear me, I am afraid I can't go now." "O yes, you must; I know you will!" said Dick, with dismay. "Why not wear what you've got on?" "What! this old one! After all, I think that by wearing my gray one Saturday, I can make the blue one do for Sunday. Yes, I will. A hat or a bonnet, which shall it be? Which do I look best in?" "Well, I think the bonnet is nicest, more quiet and matronly." "What's the objection to the hat? Does it make me look old?" "O no; the hat is well enough; but it makes you look rather too--you won't mind me saying it, dear?" "Not at all, for I shall wear the bonnet." "--Rather too coquettish and flirty for an engaged young woman." She reflected a minute. "Yes; yes. Still, after all, the hat would do best; hats are best, you see. Yes, I must wear the hat, dear Dicky, because I ought to wear a hat, you know." PART THE FOURTH--AUTUMN CHAPTER I: GOING NUTTING Dick, dressed in his 'second-best' suit, burst into Fancy's sitting-room with a glow of pleasure on his face. It was two o'clock on Friday, the day before her contemplated visit to her father, and for some reason connected with cleaning the school the children had been given this Friday afternoon for pastime, in addition to the usual Saturday. "Fancy! it happens just right that it is a leisure half day with you. Smart is lame in his near-foot-afore, and so, as I can't do anything, I've made a holiday afternoon of it, and am come for you to go nutting with me!" She was sitting by the parlour window, with a blue frock lying across her lap and scissors in her hand. "Go nutting! Yes. But I'm afraid I can't go for an hour or so." "Why not? 'Tis the only spare afternoon we may both have together for weeks." "This dress of mine, that I am going to wear on Sunday at Yalbury;--I find it fits so badly that I must alter it a little, after all. I told the dressmaker to make it by a pattern I gave her at the time; instead of that, she did it her own way, and made me look a perfect fright." "How long will you be?" he inquired, looking rather disappointed. "Not long. Do wait and talk to me; come, do, dear." Dick sat down. The talking progressed very favourably, amid the snipping and sewing, till about half-past two, at which time his conversation began to be varied by a slight tapping upon his toe with a walking-stick he had cut from the hedge as he came along. Fancy talked and answered him, but sometimes the answers were so negligently given, that it was evident her thoughts lay for the greater part in her lap with the blue dress. The clock struck three. Dick arose from his seat, walked round the room with his hands behind him, examined all the furniture, then sounded a few notes on the harmonium, then looked inside all the books he could find, then smoothed Fancy's head with his hand. Still the snipping and sewing went on. The clock struck four. Dick fidgeted about, yawned privately; counted the knots in the table, yawned publicly; counted the flies on the ceiling, yawned horribly; went into the kitchen and scullery, and so thoroughly studied the principle upon which the pump was constructed that he could have delivered a lecture on the subject. Stepping back to Fancy, and finding still that she had not done, he went into her garden and looked at her cabbages and potatoes, and reminded himself that they seemed to him to wear a decidedly feminine aspect; then pulled up several weeds, and came in again. The clock struck five, and still the snipping and sewing went on. Dick attempted to kill a fly, peeled all the rind off his walking-stick, then threw the stick into the scullery because it was spoilt, produced hideous discords from the harmonium, and accidentally overturned a vase of flowers, the water from which ran in a rill across the table and dribbled to the floor, where it formed a lake, the shape of which, after the lapse of a few minutes, he began to modify considerably with his foot, till it was like a map of England and Wales. "Well, Dick, you needn't have made quite such a mess." "Well, I needn't, I suppose." He walked up to the blue dress, and looked at it with a rigid gaze. Then an idea seemed to cross his brain. "Fancy." "Yes." "I thought you said you were going to wear your gray gown all day to-morrow on your trip to Yalbury, and in the evening too, when I shall be with you, and ask your father for you?" "So I am." "And the blue one only on Sunday?" "And the blue one Sunday." "Well, dear, I sha'n't be at Yalbury Sunday to see it." "No, but I shall walk to Longpuddle church in the afternoon with father, and such lots of people will be looking at me there, you know; and it did set so badly round the neck." "I never noticed it, and 'tis like nobody else would." "They might." "Then why not wear the gray one on Sunday as well? 'Tis as pretty as the blue one." "I might make the gray one do, certainly. But it isn't so good; it didn't cost half so much as this one, and besides, it would be the same I wore Saturday." "Then wear the striped one, dear." "I might." "Or the dark one." "Yes, I might; but I want to wear a fresh one they haven't seen." "I see, I see," said Dick, in a voice in which the tones of love were decidedly inconvenienced by a considerable emphasis, his thoughts meanwhile running as follows: "I, the man she loves best in the world, as she says, am to understand that my poor half-holiday is to be lost, because she wants to wear on Sunday a gown there is not the slightest necessity for wearing, simply, in fact, to appear more striking than usual in the eyes of Longpuddle young men; and I not there, either." "Then there are three dresses good enough for my eyes, but neither is good enough for the youths of Longpuddle," he said. "No, not that exactly, Dick. Still, you see, I do want--to look pretty to them--there, that's honest! But I sha'n't be much longer." "How much?" "A quarter of an hour." "Very well; I'll come in in a quarter of an hour." "Why go away?" "I mid as well." He went out, walked down the road, and sat upon a gate. Here he meditated and meditated, and the more he meditated the more decidedly did he begin to fume, and the more positive was he that his time had been scandalously trifled with by Miss Fancy Day--that, so far from being the simple girl who had never had a sweetheart before, as she had solemnly assured him time after time, she was, if not a flirt, a woman who had had no end of admirers; a girl most certainly too anxious about her frocks; a girl, whose feelings, though warm, were not deep; a girl who cared a great deal too much how she appeared in the eyes of other men. "What she loves best in the world," he thought, with an incipient spice of his father's grimness, "is her hair and complexion. What she loves next best, her gowns and hats; what she loves next best, myself, perhaps!" Suffering great anguish at this disloyalty in himself and harshness to his darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel thought crossed his mind. He would not call for her, as he had promised, at the end of a quarter of an hour! Yes, it would be a punishment she well deserved. Although the best part of the afternoon had been wasted he would go nutting as he had intended, and go by himself. He leaped over the gate, and pushed up the lane for nearly two miles, till a winding path called Snail-Creep sloped up a hill and entered a hazel copse by a hole like a rabbit's burrow. In he plunged, vanished among the bushes, and in a short time there was no sign of his existence upon earth, save an occasional rustling of boughs and snapping of twigs in divers points of Grey's Wood. Never man nutted as Dick nutted that afternoon. He worked like a galley slave. Half-hour after half-hour passed away, and still he gathered without ceasing. At last, when the sun had set, and bunches of nuts could not be distinguished from the leaves which nourished them, he shouldered his bag, containing quite two pecks of the finest produce of the wood, about as much use to him as two pecks of stones from the road, strolled down the woodland track, crossed the highway and entered the homeward lane, whistling as he went. Probably, Miss Fancy Day never before or after stood so low in Mr. Dewy's opinion as on that afternoon. In fact, it is just possible that a few more blue dresses on the Longpuddle young men's account would have clarified Dick's brain entirely, and made him once more a free man. But Venus had planned other developments, at any rate for the present. Cuckoo-Lane, the way he pursued, passed over a ridge which rose keenly against the sky about fifty yards in his van. Here, upon the bright after-glow about the horizon, was now visible an irregular shape, which at first he conceived to be a bough standing a little beyond the line of its neighbours. Then it seemed to move, and, as he advanced still further, there was no doubt that it was a living being sitting in the bank, head bowed on hand. The grassy margin entirely prevented his footsteps from being heard, and it was not till he was close that the figure recognized him. Up it sprang, and he was face to face with Fancy. "Dick, Dick! O, is it you, Dick!" "Yes, Fancy," said Dick, in a rather repentant tone, and lowering his nuts. She ran up to him, flung her parasol on the grass, put her little head against his breast, and then there began a narrative, disjointed by such a hysterical weeping as was never surpassed for intensity in the whole history of love. "O Dick," she sobbed out, "where have you been away from me? O, I have suffered agony, and thought you would never come any more! 'Tis cruel, Dick; no 'tisn't, it is justice! I've been walking miles and miles up and down Grey's Wood, trying to find you, till I was wearied and worn out, and I could walk no further, and had come back this far! O Dick, directly you were gone, I thought I had offended you and I put down the dress; 'tisn't finished now, and I never will finish, it, and I'll wear an old one Sunday! Yes, Dick, I will, because I don't care what I wear when you are not by my side--ha, you think I do, but I don't!--and I ran after you, and I saw you go up Snail-Creep and not look back once, and then you plunged in, and I after you; but I was too far behind. O, I did wish the horrid bushes had been cut down, so that I could see your dear shape again! And then I called out to you, and nobody answered, and I was afraid to call very loud, lest anybody else should hear me. Then I kept wandering and wandering about, and it was dreadful misery, Dick. And then I shut my eyes and fell to picturing you looking at some other woman, very pretty and nice, but with no affection or truth in her at all, and then imagined you saying to yourself, 'Ah, she's as good as Fancy, for Fancy told me a story, and was a flirt, and cared for herself more than me, so now I'll have this one for my sweetheart.' O, you won't, will you, Dick, for I do love you so!" It is scarcely necessary to add that Dick renounced his freedom there and then, and kissed her ten times over, and promised that no pretty woman of the kind alluded to should ever engross his thoughts; in short, that though he had been vexed with her, all such vexation was past, and that henceforth and for ever it was simply Fancy or death for him. And then they set about proceeding homewards, very slowly on account of Fancy's weariness, she leaning upon his shoulder, and in addition receiving support from his arm round her waist; though she had sufficiently recovered from her desperate condition to sing to him, 'Why are you wandering here, I pray?' during the latter part of their walk. Nor is it necessary to describe in detail how the bag of nuts was quite forgotten until three days later, when it was found among the brambles and restored empty to Mrs. Dewy, her initials being marked thereon in red cotton; and how she puzzled herself till her head ached upon the question of how on earth her meal-bag could have got into Cuckoo-Lane. CHAPTER II: HONEY-TAKING, AND AFTERWARDS Saturday evening saw Dick Dewy journeying on foot to Yalbury Wood, according to the arrangement with Fancy. The landscape being concave, at the going down of the sun everything suddenly assumed a uniform robe of shade. The evening advanced from sunset to dusk long before Dick's arrival, and his progress during the latter portion of his walk through the trees was indicated by the flutter of terrified birds that had been roosting over the path. And in crossing the glades, masses of hot dry air, that had been formed on the hills during the day, greeted his cheeks alternately with clouds of damp night air from the valleys. He reached the keeper-steward's house, where the grass-plot and the garden in front appeared light and pale against the unbroken darkness of the grove from which he had emerged, and paused at the garden gate. He had scarcely been there a minute when he beheld a sort of procession advancing from the door in his front. It consisted first of Enoch the trapper, carrying a spade on his shoulder and a lantern dangling in his hand; then came Mrs. Day, the light of the lantern revealing that she bore in her arms curious objects about a foot long, in the form of Latin crosses (made of lath and brown paper dipped in brimstone--called matches by bee-masters); next came Miss Day, with a shawl thrown over her head; and behind all, in the gloom, Mr. Frederic Shiner. Dick, in his consternation at finding Shiner present, was at a loss how to proceed, and retired under a tree to collect his thoughts. "Here I be, Enoch," said a voice; and the procession advancing farther, the lantern's rays illuminated the figure of Geoffrey, awaiting their arrival beside a row of bee-hives, in front of the path. Taking the spade from Enoch, he proceeded to dig two holes in the earth beside the hives, the others standing round in a circle, except Mrs. Day, who deposited her matches in the fork of an apple-tree and returned to the house. The party remaining were now lit up in front by the lantern in their midst, their shadows radiating each way upon the garden-plot like the spokes of a wheel. An apparent embarrassment of Fancy at the presence of Shiner caused a silence in the assembly, during which the preliminaries of execution were arranged, the matches fixed, the stake kindled, the two hives placed over the two holes, and the earth stopped round the edges. Geoffrey then stood erect, and rather more, to straighten his backbone after the digging. "They were a peculiar family," said Mr. Shiner, regarding the hives reflectively. Geoffrey nodded. "Those holes will be the grave of thousands!" said Fancy. "I think 'tis rather a cruel thing to do." Her father shook his head. "No," he said, tapping the hives to shake the dead bees from their cells, "if you suffocate 'em this way, they only die once: if you fumigate 'em in the new way, they come to life again, and die o' starvation; so the pangs o' death be twice upon 'em." "I incline to Fancy's notion," said Mr. Shiner, laughing lightly. "The proper way to take honey, so that the bees be neither starved nor murdered, is a puzzling matter," said the keeper steadily. "I should like never to take it from them," said Fancy. "But 'tis the money," said Enoch musingly. "For without money man is a shadder!" The lantern-light had disturbed many bees that had escaped from hives destroyed some days earlier, and, demoralized by affliction, were now getting a living as marauders about the doors of other hives. Several flew round the head and neck of Geoffrey; then darted upon him with an irritated bizz. Enoch threw down the lantern, and ran off and pushed his head into a currant bush; Fancy scudded up the path; and Mr. Shiner floundered away helter-skelter among the cabbages. Geoffrey stood his ground, unmoved and firm as a rock. Fancy was the first to return, followed by Enoch picking up the lantern. Mr. Shiner still remained invisible. "Have the craters stung ye?" said Enoch to Geoffrey. "No, not much--on'y a little here and there," he said with leisurely solemnity, shaking one bee out of his shirt sleeve, pulling another from among his hair, and two or three more from his neck. The rest looked on during this proceeding with a complacent sense of being out of it,--much as a European nation in a state of internal commotion is watched by its neighbours. "Are those all of them, father?" said Fancy, when Geoffrey had pulled away five. "Almost all,--though I feel one or two more sticking into my shoulder and side. Ah! there's another just begun again upon my backbone. You lively young mortals, how did you get inside there? However, they can't sting me many times more, poor things, for they must be getting weak. They mid as well stay in me till bedtime now, I suppose." As he himself was the only person affected by this arrangement, it seemed satisfactory enough; and after a noise of feet kicking against cabbages in a blundering progress among them, the voice of Mr. Shiner was heard from the darkness in that direction. "Is all quite safe again?" No answer being returned to this query, he apparently assumed that he might venture forth, and gradually drew near the lantern again. The hives were now removed from their position over the holes, one being handed to Enoch to carry indoors, and one being taken by Geoffrey himself. "Bring hither the lantern, Fancy: the spade can bide." Geoffrey and Enoch then went towards the house, leaving Shiner and Fancy standing side by side on the garden-plot. "Allow me," said Shiner, stooping for the lantern and seizing it at the same time with Fancy. "I can carry it," said Fancy, religiously repressing all inclination to trifle. She had thoroughly considered that subject after the tearful explanation of the bird-catching adventure to Dick, and had decided that it would be dishonest in her, as an engaged young woman, to trifle with men's eyes and hands any more. Finding that Shiner still retained his hold of the lantern, she relinquished it, and he, having found her retaining it, also let go. The lantern fell, and was extinguished. Fancy moved on. "Where is the path?" said Mr. Shiner. "Here," said Fancy. "Your eyes will get used to the dark in a minute or two." "Till that time will ye lend me your hand?" Fancy gave him the extreme tips of her fingers, and they stepped from the plot into the path. "You don't accept attentions very freely." "It depends upon who offers them." "A fellow like me, for instance." A dead silence. "Well, what do you say, Missie?" "It then depends upon how they are offered." "Not wildly, and yet not careless-like; not purposely, and yet not by chance; not too quick nor yet too slow." "How then?" said Fancy. "Coolly and practically," he said. "How would that kind of love be taken?" "Not anxiously, and yet not indifferently; neither blushing nor pale; nor religiously nor yet quite wickedly." "Well, how?" "Not at all." * * * * * Geoffrey Day's storehouse at the back of his dwelling was hung with bunches of dried horehound, mint, and sage; brown-paper bags of thyme and lavender; and long ropes of clean onions. On shelves were spread large red and yellow apples, and choice selections of early potatoes for seed next year;--vulgar crowds of commoner kind lying beneath in heaps. A few empty beehives were clustered around a nail in one corner, under which stood two or three barrels of new cider of the first crop, each bubbling and squirting forth from the yet open bunghole. Fancy was now kneeling beside the two inverted hives, one of which rested against her lap, for convenience in operating upon the contents. She thrust her sleeves above her elbows, and inserted her small pink hand edgewise between each white lobe of honeycomb, performing the act so adroitly and gently as not to unseal a single cell. Then cracking the piece off at the crown of the hive by a slight backward and forward movement, she lifted each portion as it was loosened into a large blue platter, placed on a bench at her side. "Bother these little mortals!" said Geoffrey, who was holding the light to her, and giving his back an uneasy twist. "I really think I may as well go indoors and take 'em out, poor things! for they won't let me alone. There's two a stinging wi' all their might now. I'm sure I wonder their strength can last so long." "All right, friend; I'll hold the candle whilst you are gone," said Mr. Shiner, leisurely taking the light, and allowing Geoffrey to depart, which he did with his usual long paces. He could hardly have gone round to the house-door when other footsteps were heard approaching the outbuilding; the tip of a finger appeared in the hole through which the wood latch was lifted, and Dick Dewy came in, having been all this time walking up and down the wood, vainly waiting for Shiner's departure. Fancy looked up and welcomed him rather confusedly. Shiner grasped the candlestick more firmly, and, lest doing this in silence should not imply to Dick with sufficient force that he was quite at home and cool, he sang invincibly-- "'King Arthur he had three sons.'" "Father here?" said Dick. "Indoors, I think," said Fancy, looking pleasantly at him. Dick surveyed the scene, and did not seem inclined to hurry off just at that moment. Shiner went on singing-- "'The miller was drown'd in his pond, The weaver was hung in his yarn, And the d--- ran away with the little tail-or, With the broadcloth under his arm.'" "That's a terrible crippled rhyme, if that's your rhyme!" said Dick, with a grain of superciliousness in his tone. "It's no use your complaining to me about the rhyme!" said Mr. Shiner. "You must go to the man that made it." Fancy by this time had acquired confidence. "Taste a bit, Mr. Dewy," she said, holding up to him a small circular piece of honeycomb that had been the last in the row of layers, remaining still on her knees and flinging back her head to look in his face; "and then I'll taste a bit too." "And I, if you please," said Mr. Shiner. Nevertheless the farmer looked superior, as if he could even now hardly join the trifling from very importance of station; and after receiving the honeycomb from Fancy, he turned it over in his hand till the cells began to be crushed, and the liquid honey ran down from his fingers in a thin string. Suddenly a faint cry from Fancy caused them to gaze at her. "What's the matter, dear?" said Dick. "It is nothing, but O-o! a bee has stung the inside of my lip! He was in one of the cells I was eating!" "We must keep down the swelling, or it may be serious!" said Shiner, stepping up and kneeling beside her. "Let me see it." "No, no!" "Just let me see it," said Dick, kneeling on the other side: and after some hesitation she pressed down her lip with one finger to show the place. "O, I hope 'twill soon be better! I don't mind a sting in ordinary places, but it is so bad upon your lip," she added with tears in her eyes, and writhing a little from the pain. Shiner held the light above his head and pushed his face close to Fancy's, as if the lip had been shown exclusively to himself, upon which Dick pushed closer, as if Shiner were not there at all. "It is swelling," said Dick to her right aspect. "It isn't swelling," said Shiner to her left aspect. "Is it dangerous on the lip?" cried Fancy. "I know it is dangerous on the tongue." "O no, not dangerous!" answered Dick. "Rather dangerous," had answered Shiner simultaneously. "I must try to bear it!" said Fancy, turning again to the hives. "Hartshorn-and-oil is a good thing to put to it, Miss Day," said Shiner with great concern. "Sweet-oil-and-hartshorn I've found to be a good thing to cure stings, Miss Day," said Dick with greater concern. "We have some mixed indoors; would you kindly run and get it for me?" she said. Now, whether by inadvertence, or whether by mischievous intention, the individuality of the you was so carelessly denoted that both Dick and Shiner sprang to their feet like twin acrobats, and marched abreast to the door; both seized the latch and lifted it, and continued marching on, shoulder to shoulder, in the same manner to the dwelling-house. Not only so, but entering the room, they marched as before straight up to Mrs. Day's chair, letting the door in the oak partition slam so forcibly, that the rows of pewter on the dresser rang like a bell. "Mrs. Day, Fancy has stung her lip, and wants you to give me the hartshorn, please," said Mr. Shiner, very close to Mrs. Day's face. "O, Mrs. Day, Fancy has asked me to bring out the hartshorn, please, because she has stung her lip!" said Dick, a little closer to Mrs. Day's face. "Well, men alive! that's no reason why you should eat me, I suppose!" said Mrs. Day, drawing back. She searched in the corner-cupboard, produced the bottle, and began to dust the cork, the rim, and every other part very carefully, Dick's hand and Shiner's hand waiting side by side. "Which is head man?" said Mrs. Day. "Now, don't come mumbudgeting so close again. Which is head man?" Neither spoke; and the bottle was inclined towards Shiner. Shiner, as a high-class man, would not look in the least triumphant, and turned to go off with it as Geoffrey came downstairs after the search in his linen for concealed bees. "O--that you, Master Dewy?" Dick assured the keeper that it was; and the young man then determined upon a bold stroke for the attainment of his end, forgetting that the worst of bold strokes is the disastrous consequences they involve if they fail. "I've come on purpose to speak to you very particular, Mr. Day," he said, with a crushing emphasis intended for the ears of Mr. Shiner, who was vanishing round the door-post at that moment. "Well, I've been forced to go upstairs and unrind myself, and shake some bees out o' me" said Geoffrey, walking slowly towards the open door, and standing on the threshold. "The young rascals got into my shirt and wouldn't be quiet nohow." Dick followed him to the door. "I've come to speak a word to you," he repeated, looking out at the pale mist creeping up from the gloom of the valley. "You may perhaps guess what it is about." The keeper lowered his hands into the depths of his pockets, twirled his eyes, balanced himself on his toes, looked as perpendicularly downward as if his glance were a plumb-line, then horizontally, collecting together the cracks that lay about his face till they were all in the neighbourhood of his eyes. "Maybe I don't know," he replied. Dick said nothing; and the stillness was disturbed only by some small bird that was being killed by an owl in the adjoining wood, whose cry passed into the silence without mingling with it. "I've left my hat up in chammer," said Geoffrey; "wait while I step up and get en." "I'll be in the garden," said Dick. He went round by a side wicket into the garden, and Geoffrey went upstairs. It was the custom in Mellstock and its vicinity to discuss matters of pleasure and ordinary business inside the house, and to reserve the garden for very important affairs: a custom which, as is supposed, originated in the desirability of getting away at such times from the other members of the family when there was only one room for living in, though it was now quite as frequently practised by those who suffered from no such limitation to the size of their domiciles. The head-keeper's form appeared in the dusky garden, and Dick walked towards him. The elder paused and leant over the rail of a piggery that stood on the left of the path, upon which Dick did the same; and they both contemplated a whitish shadowy shape that was moving about and grunting among the straw of the interior. "I've come to ask for Fancy," said Dick. "I'd as lief you hadn't." "Why should that be, Mr. Day?" "Because it makes me say that you've come to ask what ye be'n't likely to have. Have ye come for anything else?" "Nothing." "Then I'll just tell 'ee you've come on a very foolish errand. D'ye know what her mother was?" "No." "A teacher in a landed family's nursery, who was foolish enough to marry the keeper of the same establishment; for I was only a keeper then, though now I've a dozen other irons in the fire as steward here for my lord, what with the timber sales and the yearly fellings, and the gravel and sand sales and one thing and 'tother. However, d'ye think Fancy picked up her good manners, the smooth turn of her tongue, her musical notes, and her knowledge of books, in a homely hole like this?" "No." "D'ye know where?" "No." "Well, when I went a-wandering after her mother's death, she lived with her aunt, who kept a boarding-school, till her aunt married Lawyer Green--a man as sharp as a needle--and the school was broke up. Did ye know that then she went to the training-school, and that her name stood first among the Queen's scholars of her year?" "I've heard so." "And that when she sat for her certificate as Government teacher, she had the highest of the first class?" "Yes." "Well, and do ye know what I live in such a miserly way for when I've got enough to do without it, and why I make her work as a schoolmistress instead of living here?" "No." "That if any gentleman, who sees her to be his equal in polish, should want to marry her, and she want to marry him, he sha'n't be superior to her in pocket. Now do ye think after this that you be good enough for her?" "No." "Then good-night t'ee, Master Dewy." "Good-night, Mr. Day." Modest Dick's reply had faltered upon his tongue, and he turned away wondering at his presumption in asking for a woman whom he had seen from the beginning to be so superior to him. CHAPTER III: FANCY IN THE RAIN The next scene is a tempestuous afternoon in the following month, and Fancy Day is discovered walking from her father's home towards Mellstock. A single vast gray cloud covered the country, from which the small rain and mist had just begun to blow down in wavy sheets, alternately thick and thin. The trees of the fields and plantations writhed like miserable men as the air wound its way swiftly among them: the lowest portions of their trunks, that had hardly ever been known to move, were visibly rocked by the fiercer gusts, distressing the mind by its painful unwontedness, as when a strong man is seen to shed tears. Low-hanging boughs went up and down; high and erect boughs went to and fro; the blasts being so irregular, and divided into so many cross-currents, that neighbouring branches of the same tree swept the skies in independent motions, crossed each other, or became entangled. Across the open spaces flew flocks of green and yellowish leaves, which, after travelling a long distance from their parent trees, reached the ground, and lay there with their under-sides upward. As the rain and wind increased, and Fancy's bonnet-ribbons leapt more and more snappishly against her chin, she paused on entering Mellstock Lane to consider her latitude, and the distance to a place of shelter. The nearest house was Elizabeth Endorfield's, in Higher Mellstock, whose cottage and garden stood not far from the junction of that hamlet with the road she followed. Fancy hastened onward, and in five minutes entered a gate, which shed upon her toes a flood of water-drops as she opened it. "Come in, chiel!" a voice exclaimed, before Fancy had knocked: a promptness that would have surprised her had she not known that Mrs. Endorfield was an exceedingly and exceptionally sharp woman in the use of her eyes and ears. Fancy went in and sat down. Elizabeth was paring potatoes for her husband's supper. Scrape, scrape, scrape; then a toss, and splash went a potato into a bucket of water. Now, as Fancy listlessly noted these proceedings of the dame, she began to reconsider an old subject that lay uppermost in her heart. Since the interview between her father and Dick, the days had been melancholy days for her. Geoffrey's firm opposition to the notion of Dick as a son-in- law was more than she had expected. She had frequently seen her lover since that time, it is true, and had loved him more for the opposition than she would have otherwise dreamt of doing--which was a happiness of a certain kind. Yet, though love is thus an end in itself, it must be believed to be the means to another end if it is to assume the rosy hues of an unalloyed pleasure. And such a belief Fancy and Dick were emphatically denied just now. Elizabeth Endorfield had a repute among women which was in its nature something between distinction and notoriety. It was founded on the following items of character. She was shrewd and penetrating; her house stood in a lonely place; she never went to church; she wore a red cloak; she always retained her bonnet indoors and she had a pointed chin. Thus far her attributes were distinctly Satanic; and those who looked no further called her, in plain terms, a witch. But she was not gaunt, nor ugly in the upper part of her face, nor particularly strange in manner; so that, when her more intimate acquaintances spoke of her the term was softened, and she became simply a Deep Body, who was as long-headed as she was high. It may be stated that Elizabeth belonged to a class of suspects who were gradually losing their mysterious characteristics under the administration of the young vicar; though, during the long reign of Mr. Grinham, the parish of Mellstock had proved extremely favourable to the growth of witches. While Fancy was revolving all this in her mind, and putting it to herself whether it was worth while to tell her troubles to Elizabeth, and ask her advice in getting out of them, the witch spoke. "You be down--proper down," she said suddenly, dropping another potato into the bucket. Fancy took no notice. "About your young man." Fancy reddened. Elizabeth seemed to be watching her thoughts. Really, one would almost think she must have the powers people ascribed to her. "Father not in the humour for't, hey?" Another potato was finished and flung in. "Ah, I know about it. Little birds tell me things that people don't dream of my knowing." Fancy was desperate about Dick, and here was a chance--O, such a wicked chance--of getting help; and what was goodness beside love! "I wish you'd tell me how to put him in the humour for it?" she said. "That I could soon do," said the witch quietly. "Really? O, do; anyhow--I don't care--so that it is done! How could I do it, Mrs. Endorfield?" "Nothing so mighty wonderful in it." "Well, but how?" "By witchery, of course!" said Elizabeth. "No!" said Fancy. "'Tis, I assure ye. Didn't you ever hear I was a witch?" "Well," hesitated Fancy, "I have heard you called so." "And you believed it?" "I can't say that I did exactly believe it, for 'tis very horrible and wicked; but, O, how I do wish it was possible for you to be one!" "So I am. And I'll tell you how to bewitch your father to let you marry Dick Dewy." "Will it hurt him, poor thing?" "Hurt who?" "Father." "No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke by your acting stupidly." Fancy looked rather perplexed, and Elizabeth went on: "This fear of Lizz--whatever 'tis-- By great and small; She makes pretence to common sense, And that's all. "You must do it like this." The witch laid down her knife and potato, and then poured into Fancy's ear a long and detailed list of directions, glancing up from the corner of her eye into Fancy's face with an expression of sinister humour. Fancy's face brightened, clouded, rose and sank, as the narrative proceeded. "There," said Elizabeth at length, stooping for the knife and another potato, "do that, and you'll have him by-long and by-late, my dear." "And do it I will!" said Fancy. She then turned her attention to the external world once more. The rain continued as usual, but the wind had abated considerably during the discourse. Judging that it was now possible to keep an umbrella erect, she pulled her hood again over her bonnet, bade the witch good-bye, and went her way. CHAPTER IV: THE SPELL Mrs. Endorfield's advice was duly followed. "I be proper sorry that your daughter isn't so well as she might be," said a Mellstock man to Geoffrey one morning. "But is there anything in it?" said Geoffrey uneasily, as he shifted his hat to the right. "I can't understand the report. She didn't complain to me a bit when I saw her." "No appetite at all, they say." Geoffrey crossed to Mellstock and called at the school that afternoon. Fancy welcomed him as usual, and asked him to stay and take tea with her. "I be'n't much for tea, this time o' day," he said, but stayed. During the meal he watched her narrowly. And to his great consternation discovered the following unprecedented change in the healthy girl--that she cut herself only a diaphanous slice of bread-and-butter, and, laying it on her plate, passed the meal-time in breaking it into pieces, but eating no more than about one-tenth of the slice. Geoffrey hoped she would say something about Dick, and finish up by weeping, as she had done after the decision against him a few days subsequent to the interview in the garden. But nothing was said, and in due time Geoffrey departed again for Yalbury Wood. "'Tis to be hoped poor Miss Fancy will be able to keep on her school," said Geoffrey's man Enoch to Geoffrey the following week, as they were shovelling up ant-hills in the wood. Geoffrey stuck in the shovel, swept seven or eight ants from his sleeve, and killed another that was prowling round his ear, then looked perpendicularly into the earth as usual, waiting for Enoch to say more. "Well, why shouldn't she?" said the keeper at last. "The baker told me yesterday," continued Enoch, shaking out another emmet that had run merrily up his thigh, "that the bread he've left at that there school-house this last month would starve any mouse in the three creations; that 'twould so! And afterwards I had a pint o' small down at Morrs's, and there I heard more." "What might that ha' been?" "That she used to have a pound o' the best rolled butter a week, regular as clockwork, from Dairyman Viney's for herself, as well as just so much salted for the helping girl, and the 'ooman she calls in; but now the same quantity d'last her three weeks, and then 'tis thoughted she throws it away sour." "Finish doing the emmets, and carry the bag home-along." The keeper resumed his gun, tucked it under his arm, and went on without whistling to the dogs, who however followed, with a bearing meant to imply that they did not expect any such attentions when their master was reflecting. On Saturday morning a note came from Fancy. He was not to trouble about sending her the couple of rabbits, as was intended, because she feared she should not want them. Later in the day Geoffrey went to Casterbridge and called upon the butcher who served Fancy with fresh meat, which was put down to her father's account. "I've called to pay up our little bill, Neighbour Haylock, and you can gie me the chiel's account at the same time." Mr. Haylock turned round three quarters of a circle in the midst of a heap of joints, altered the expression of his face from meat to money, went into a little office consisting only of a door and a window, looked very vigorously into a book which possessed length but no breadth; and then, seizing a piece of paper and scribbling thereupon, handed the bill. Probably it was the first time in the history of commercial transactions that the quality of shortness in a butcher's bill was a cause of tribulation to the debtor. "Why, this isn't all she've had in a whole month!" said Geoffrey. "Every mossel," said the butcher--"(now, Dan, take that leg and shoulder to Mrs. White's, and this eleven pound here to Mr. Martin's)--you've been treating her to smaller joints lately, to my thinking, Mr. Day?" "Only two or three little scram rabbits this last week, as I am alive--I wish I had!" "Well, my wife said to me--(Dan! not too much, not too much on that tray at a time; better go twice)--my wife said to me as she posted up the books: she says, 'Miss Day must have been affronted this summer during that hot muggy weather that spolit so much for us; for depend upon't,' she says, 'she've been trying John Grimmett unknown to us: see her account else.' 'Tis little, of course, at the best of times, being only for one, but now 'tis next kin to nothing." "I'll inquire," said Geoffrey despondingly. He returned by way of Mellstock, and called upon Fancy, in fulfilment of a promise. It being Saturday, the children were enjoying a holiday, and on entering the residence Fancy was nowhere to be seen. Nan, the charwoman, was sweeping the kitchen. "Where's my da'ter?" said the keeper. "Well, you see she was tired with the week's teaching, and this morning she said, 'Nan, I sha'n't get up till the evening.' You see, Mr. Day, if people don't eat, they can't work; and as she've gie'd up eating, she must gie up working." "Have ye carried up any dinner to her?" "No; she don't want any. There, we all know that such things don't come without good reason--not that I wish to say anything about a broken heart, or anything of the kind." Geoffrey's own heart felt inconveniently large just then. He went to the staircase and ascended to his daughter's door. "Fancy!" "Come in, father." To see a person in bed from any cause whatever, on a fine afternoon, is depressing enough; and here was his only child Fancy, not only in bed, but looking very pale. Geoffrey was visibly disturbed. "Fancy, I didn't expect to see thee here, chiel," he said. "What's the matter?" "I'm not well, father." "How's that?" "Because I think of things." "What things can you have to think o' so mortal much?" "You know, father." "You think I've been cruel to thee in saying that that penniless Dick o' thine sha'n't marry thee, I suppose?" No answer. "Well, you know, Fancy, I do it for the best, and he isn't good enough for thee. You know that well enough." Here he again looked at her as she lay. "Well, Fancy, I can't let my only chiel die; and if you can't live without en, you must ha' en, I suppose." "O, I don't want him like that; all against your will, and everything so disobedient!" sighed the invalid. "No, no, 'tisn't against my will. My wish is, now I d'see how 'tis hurten thee to live without en, that he shall marry thee as soon as we've considered a little. That's my wish flat and plain, Fancy. There, never cry, my little maid! You ought to ha' cried afore; no need o' crying now 'tis all over. Well, howsoever, try to step over and see me and mother- law to-morrow, and ha' a bit of dinner wi' us." "And--Dick too?" "Ay, Dick too, 'far's I know." "And when do you think you'll have considered, father, and he may marry me?" she coaxed. "Well, there, say next Midsummer; that's not a day too long to wait." On leaving the school Geoffrey went to the tranter's. Old William opened the door. "Is your grandson Dick in 'ithin, William?" "No, not just now, Mr. Day. Though he've been at home a good deal lately." "O, how's that?" "What wi' one thing, and what wi' t'other, he's all in a mope, as might be said. Don't seem the feller he used to. Ay, 'a will sit studding and thinking as if 'a were going to turn chapel-member, and then do nothing but traypse and wamble about. Used to be such a chatty boy, too, Dick did; and now 'a don't speak at all. But won't ye step inside? Reuben will be home soon, 'a b'lieve." "No, thank you, I can't stay now. Will ye just ask Dick if he'll do me the kindness to step over to Yalbury to-morrow with my da'ter Fancy, if she's well enough? I don't like her to come by herself, now she's not so terrible topping in health." "So I've heard. Ay, sure, I'll tell him without fail." CHAPTER V: AFTER GAINING HER POINT The visit to Geoffrey passed off as delightfully as a visit might have been expected to pass off when it was the first day of smooth experience in a hitherto obstructed love-course. And then came a series of several happy days, of the same undisturbed serenity. Dick could court her when he chose; stay away when he chose,--which was never; walk with her by winding streams and waterfalls and autumn scenery till dews and twilight sent them home. And thus they drew near the day of the Harvest Thanksgiving, which was also the time chosen for opening the organ in Mellstock Church. It chanced that Dick on that very day was called away from Mellstock. A young acquaintance had died of consumption at Charmley, a neighbouring village, on the previous Monday, and Dick, in fulfilment of a long-standing promise, was to assist in carrying him to the grave. When on Tuesday, Dick went towards the school to acquaint Fancy with the fact, it is difficult to say whether his own disappointment at being denied the sight of her triumphant debut as organist, was greater than his vexation that his pet should on this great occasion be deprived of the pleasure of his presence. However, the intelligence was communicated. She bore it as she best could, not without many expressions of regret, and convictions that her performance would be nothing to her now. Just before eleven o'clock on Sunday he set out upon his sad errand. The funeral was to be immediately after the morning service, and as there were four good miles to walk, driving being inconvenient, it became necessary to start comparatively early. Half an hour later would certainly have answered his purpose quite as well, yet at the last moment nothing would content his ardent mind but that he must go a mile out of his way in the direction of the school, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his Love as she started for church. Striking, therefore, into the lane towards the school, instead of across the ewelease direct to Charmley, he arrived opposite her door as his goddess emerged. If ever a woman looked a divinity, Fancy Day appeared one that morning as she floated down those school steps, in the form of a nebulous collection of colours inclining to blue. With an audacity unparalleled in the whole history of village-school-mistresses at this date--partly owing, no doubt, to papa's respectable accumulation of cash, which rendered her profession not altogether one of necessity--she had actually donned a hat and feather, and lowered her hitherto plainly looped-up hair, which now fell about her shoulders in a profusion of curls. Poor Dick was astonished: he had never seen her look so distractingly beautiful before, save on Christmas-eve, when her hair was in the same luxuriant condition of freedom. But his first burst of delighted surprise was followed by less comfortable feelings, as soon as his brain recovered its power to think. Fancy had blushed;--was it with confusion? She had also involuntarily pressed back her curls. She had not expected him. "Fancy, you didn't know me for a moment in my funeral clothes, did you?" "Good-morning, Dick--no, really, I didn't know you for an instant in such a sad suit." He looked again at the gay tresses and hat. "You've never dressed so charming before, dearest." "I like to hear you praise me in that way, Dick," she said, smiling archly. "It is meat and drink to a woman. Do I look nice really?" "Fie! you know it. Did you remember,--I mean didn't you remember about my going away to-day?" "Well, yes, I did, Dick; but, you know, I wanted to look well;--forgive me." "Yes, darling; yes, of course,--there's nothing to forgive. No, I was only thinking that when we talked on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday about my absence to-day, and I was so sorry for it, you said, Fancy, so were you sorry, and almost cried, and said it would be no pleasure to you to be the attraction of the church to-day, since I could not be there." "My dear one, neither will it be so much pleasure to me . . . But I do take a little delight in my life, I suppose," she pouted. "Apart from mine?" She looked at him with perplexed eyes. "I know you are vexed with me, Dick, and it is because the first Sunday I have curls and a hat and feather since I have been here happens to be the very day you are away and won't be with me. Yes, say it is, for that is it! And you think that all this week I ought to have remembered you wouldn't be here to- day, and not have cared to be better dressed than usual. Yes, you do, Dick, and it is rather unkind!" "No, no," said Dick earnestly and simply, "I didn't think so badly of you as that. I only thought that--if you had been going away, I shouldn't have tried new attractions for the eyes of other people. But then of course you and I are different, naturally." "Well, perhaps we are." "Whatever will the vicar say, Fancy?" "I don't fear what he says in the least!" she answered proudly. "But he won't say anything of the sort you think. No, no." "He can hardly have conscience to, indeed." "Now come, you say, Dick, that you quite forgive me, for I must go," she said with sudden gaiety, and skipped backwards into the porch. "Come here, sir;--say you forgive me, and then you shall kiss me;--you never have yet when I have worn curls, you know. Yes, just where you want to so much,--yes, you may!" Dick followed her into the inner corner, where he was probably not slow in availing himself of the privilege offered. "Now that's a treat for you, isn't it?" she continued. "Good-bye, or I shall be late. Come and see me to-morrow: you'll be tired to-night." Thus they parted, and Fancy proceeded to the church. The organ stood on one side of the chancel, close to and under the immediate eye of the vicar when he was in the pulpit, and also in full view of the congregation. Here she sat down, for the first time in such a conspicuous position, her seat having previously been in a remote spot in the aisle. "Good heavens--disgraceful! Curls and a hat and feather!" said the daughters of the small gentry, who had either only curly hair without a hat and feather, or a hat and feather without curly hair. "A bonnet for church always," said sober matrons. That Mr. Maybold was conscious of her presence close beside him during the sermon; that he was not at all angry at her development of costume; that he admired her, she perceived. But she did not see that he loved her during that sermon-time as he had never loved a woman before; that her proximity was a strange delight to him; and that he gloried in her musical success that morning in a spirit quite beyond a mere cleric's glory at the inauguration of a new order of things. The old choir, with humbled hearts, no longer took their seats in the gallery as heretofore (which was now given up to the school-children who were not singers, and a pupil-teacher), but were scattered about with their wives in different parts of the church. Having nothing to do with conducting the service for almost the first time in their lives, they all felt awkward, out of place, abashed, and inconvenienced by their hands. The tranter had proposed that they should stay away to-day and go nutting, but grandfather William would not hear of such a thing for a moment. "No," he replied reproachfully, and quoted a verse: "Though this has come upon us, let not our hearts be turned back, or our steps go out of the way." So they stood and watched the curls of hair trailing down the back of the successful rival, and the waving of her feather, as she swayed her head. After a few timid notes and uncertain touches her playing became markedly correct, and towards the end full and free. But, whether from prejudice or unbiassed judgment, the venerable body of musicians could not help thinking that the simpler notes they had been wont to bring forth were more in keeping with the simplicity of their old church than the crowded chords and interludes it was her pleasure to produce. CHAPTER VI: INTO TEMPTATION The day was done, and Fancy was again in the school-house. About five o'clock it began to rain, and in rather a dull frame of mind she wandered into the schoolroom, for want of something better to do. She was thinking--of her lover Dick Dewy? Not precisely. Of how weary she was of living alone: how unbearable it would be to return to Yalbury under the rule of her strange-tempered step-mother; that it was far better to be married to anybody than do that; that eight or nine long months had yet to be lived through ere the wedding could take place. At the side of the room were high windows of Ham-hill stone, upon either sill of which she could sit by first mounting a desk and using it as a footstool. As the evening advanced here she perched herself, as was her custom on such wet and gloomy occasions, put on a light shawl and bonnet, opened the window, and looked out at the rain. The window overlooked a field called the Grove, and it was the position from which she used to survey the crown of Dick's passing hat in the early days of their acquaintance and meetings. Not a living soul was now visible anywhere; the rain kept all people indoors who were not forced abroad by necessity, and necessity was less importunate on Sundays than during the week. Sitting here and thinking again--of her lover, or of the sensation she had created at church that day?--well, it is unknown--thinking and thinking she saw a dark masculine figure arising into distinctness at the further end of the Grove--a man without an umbrella. Nearer and nearer he came, and she perceived that he was in deep mourning, and then that it was Dick. Yes, in the fondness and foolishness of his young heart, after walking four miles, in a drizzling rain without overcoat or umbrella, and in face of a remark from his love that he was not to come because he would be tired, he had made it his business to wander this mile out of his way again, from sheer wish of spending ten minutes in her presence. "O Dick, how wet you are!" she said, as he drew up under the window. "Why, your coat shines as if it had been varnished, and your hat--my goodness, there's a streaming hat!" "O, I don't mind, darling!" said Dick cheerfully. "Wet never hurts me, though I am rather sorry for my best clothes. However, it couldn't be helped; we lent all the umbrellas to the women. I don't know when I shall get mine back!" "And look, there's a nasty patch of something just on your shoulder." "Ah, that's japanning; it rubbed off the clamps of poor Jack's coffin when we lowered him from our shoulders upon the bier! I don't care about that, for 'twas the last deed I could do for him; and 'tis hard if you can't afford a coat for an old friend." Fancy put her hand to her mouth for half a minute. Underneath the palm of that little hand there existed for that half-minute a little yawn. "Dick, I don't like you to stand there in the wet. And you mustn't sit down. Go home and change your things. Don't stay another minute." "One kiss after coming so far," he pleaded. "If I can reach, then." He looked rather disappointed at not being invited round to the door. She twisted from her seated position and bent herself downwards, but not even by standing on the plinth was it possible for Dick to get his lips into contact with hers as she held them. By great exertion she might have reached a little lower; but then she would have exposed her head to the rain. "Never mind, Dick; kiss my hand," she said, flinging it down to him. "Now, good-bye." "Good-bye." He walked slowly away, turning and turning again to look at her till he was out of sight. During the retreat she said to herself, almost involuntarily, and still conscious of that morning's triumph--"I like Dick, and I love him; but how plain and sorry a man looks in the rain, with no umbrella, and wet through!" As he vanished, she made as if to descend from her seat; but glancing in the other direction she saw another form coming along the same track. It was also that of a man. He, too, was in black from top to toe; but he carried an umbrella. He drew nearer, and the direction of the rain caused him so to slant his umbrella that from her height above the ground his head was invisible, as she was also to him. He passed in due time directly beneath her, and in looking down upon the exterior of his umbrella her feminine eyes perceived it to be of superior silk--less common at that date than since--and of elegant make. He reached the entrance to the building, and Fancy suddenly lost sight of him. Instead of pursuing the roadway as Dick had done he had turned sharply round into her own porch. She jumped to the floor, hastily flung off her shawl and bonnet, smoothed and patted her hair till the curls hung in passable condition, and listened. No knock. Nearly a minute passed, and still there was no knock. Then there arose a soft series of raps, no louder than the tapping of a distant woodpecker, and barely distinct enough to reach her ears. She composed herself and flung open the door. In the porch stood Mr. Maybold. There was a warm flush upon his face, and a bright flash in his eyes, which made him look handsomer than she had ever seen him before. "Good-evening, Miss Day." "Good-evening, Mr. Maybold," she said, in a strange state of mind. She had noticed, beyond the ardent hue of his face, that his voice had a singular tremor in it, and that his hand shook like an aspen leaf when he laid his umbrella in the corner of the porch. Without another word being spoken by either, he came into the schoolroom, shut the door, and moved close to her. Once inside, the expression of his face was no more discernible, by reason of the increasing dusk of evening. "I want to speak to you," he then said; "seriously--on a perhaps unexpected subject, but one which is all the world to me--I don't know what it may be to you, Miss Day." No reply. "Fancy, I have come to ask you if you will be my wife?" As a person who has been idly amusing himself with rolling a snowball might start at finding he had set in motion an avalanche, so did Fancy start at these words from the vicar. And in the dead silence which followed them, the breathings of the man and of the woman could be distinctly and separately heard; and there was this difference between them--his respirations gradually grew quieter and less rapid after the enunciation, hers, from having been low and regular, increased in quickness and force, till she almost panted. "I cannot, I cannot, Mr. Maybold--I cannot! Don't ask me!" she said. "Don't answer in a hurry!" he entreated. "And do listen to me. This is no sudden feeling on my part. I have loved you for more than six months! Perhaps my late interest in teaching the children here has not been so single-minded as it seemed. You will understand my motive--like me better, perhaps, for honestly telling you that I have struggled against my emotion continually, because I have thought that it was not well for me to love you! But I resolved to struggle no longer; I have examined the feeling; and the love I bear you is as genuine as that I could bear any woman! I see your great charm; I respect your natural talents, and the refinement they have brought into your nature--they are quite enough, and more than enough for me! They are equal to anything ever required of the mistress of a quiet parsonage-house--the place in which I shall pass my days, wherever it may be situated. O Fancy, I have watched you, criticized you even severely, brought my feelings to the light of judgment, and still have found them rational, and such as any man might have expected to be inspired with by a woman like you! So there is nothing hurried, secret, or untoward in my desire to do this. Fancy, will you marry me?" No answer was returned. "Don't refuse; don't," he implored. "It would be foolish of you--I mean cruel! Of course we would not live here, Fancy. I have had for a long time the offer of an exchange of livings with a friend in Yorkshire, but I have hitherto refused on account of my mother. There we would go. Your musical powers shall be still further developed; you shall have whatever pianoforte you like; you shall have anything, Fancy, anything to make you happy--pony-carriage, flowers, birds, pleasant society; yes, you have enough in you for any society, after a few months of travel with me! Will you, Fancy, marry me?" Another pause ensued, varied only by the surging of the rain against the window-panes, and then Fancy spoke, in a faint and broken voice. "Yes, I will," she said. "God bless you, my own!" He advanced quickly, and put his arm out to embrace her. She drew back hastily. "No no, not now!" she said in an agitated whisper. "There are things;--but the temptation is, O, too strong, and I can't resist it; I can't tell you now, but I must tell you! Don't, please, don't come near me now! I want to think, I can scarcely get myself used to the idea of what I have promised yet." The next minute she turned to a desk, buried her face in her hands, and burst into a hysterical fit of weeping. "O, leave me to myself!" she sobbed; "leave me! O, leave me!" "Don't be distressed; don't, dearest!" It was with visible difficulty that he restrained himself from approaching her. "You shall tell me at your leisure what it is that grieves you so; I am happy--beyond all measure happy!--at having your simple promise." "And do go and leave me now!" "But I must not, in justice to you, leave for a minute, until you are yourself again." "There then," she said, controlling her emotion, and standing up; "I am not disturbed now." He reluctantly moved towards the door. "Good-bye!" he murmured tenderly. "I'll come to-morrow about this time." CHAPTER VII: SECOND THOUGHTS The next morning the vicar rose early. The first thing he did was to write a long and careful letter to his friend in Yorkshire. Then, eating a little breakfast, he crossed the meadows in the direction of Casterbridge, bearing his letter in his pocket, that he might post it at the town office, and obviate the loss of one day in its transmission that would have resulted had he left it for the foot-post through the village. It was a foggy morning, and the trees shed in noisy water-drops the moisture they had collected from the thick air, an acorn occasionally falling from its cup to the ground, in company with the drippings. In the meads, sheets of spiders'-web, almost opaque with wet, hung in folds over the fences, and the falling leaves appeared in every variety of brown, green, and yellow hue. A low and merry whistling was heard on the highway he was approaching, then the light footsteps of a man going in the same direction as himself. On reaching the junction of his path with the road, the vicar beheld Dick Dewy's open and cheerful face. Dick lifted his hat, and the vicar came out into the highway that Dick was pursuing. "Good-morning, Dewy. How well you are looking!" said Mr. Maybold. "Yes, sir, I am well--quite well! I am going to Casterbridge now, to get Smart's collar; we left it there Saturday to be repaired." "I am going to Casterbridge, so we'll walk together," the vicar said. Dick gave a hop with one foot to put himself in step with Mr. Maybold, who proceeded: "I fancy I didn't see you at church yesterday, Dewy. Or were you behind the pier?" "No; I went to Charmley. Poor John Dunford chose me to be one of his bearers a long time before he died, and yesterday was the funeral. Of course I couldn't refuse, though I should have liked particularly to have been at home as 'twas the day of the new music." "Yes, you should have been. The musical portion of the service was successful--very successful indeed; and what is more to the purpose, no ill-feeling whatever was evinced by any of the members of the old choir. They joined in the singing with the greatest good-will." "'Twas natural enough that I should want to be there, I suppose," said Dick, smiling a private smile; "considering who the organ-player was." At this the vicar reddened a little, and said, "Yes, yes," though not at all comprehending Dick's true meaning, who, as he received no further reply, continued hesitatingly, and with another smile denoting his pride as a lover-- "I suppose you know what I mean, sir? You've heard about me and--Miss Day?" The red in Maybold's countenance went away: he turned and looked Dick in the face. "No," he said constrainedly, "I've heard nothing whatever about you and Miss Day." "Why, she's my sweetheart, and we are going to be married next Midsummer. We are keeping it rather close just at present, because 'tis a good many months to wait; but it is her father's wish that we don't marry before, and of course we must submit. But the time 'ill soon slip along." "Yes, the time will soon slip along--Time glides away every day--yes." Maybold said these words, but he had no idea of what they were. He was conscious of a cold and sickly thrill throughout him; and all he reasoned was this that the young creature whose graces had intoxicated him into making the most imprudent resolution of his life, was less an angel than a woman. "You see, sir," continued the ingenuous Dick, "'twill be better in one sense. I shall by that time be the regular manager of a branch o' father's business, which has very much increased lately, and business, which we think of starting elsewhere. It has very much increased lately, and we expect next year to keep a' extra couple of horses. We've already our eye on one--brown as a berry, neck like a rainbow, fifteen hands, and not a gray hair in her--offered us at twenty-five want a crown. And to kip pace with the times I have had some cards prented and I beg leave to hand you one, sir." "Certainly," said the vicar, mechanically taking the card that Dick offered him. "I turn in here by Grey's Bridge," said Dick. "I suppose you go straight on and up town?" "Yes." "Good-morning, sir." "Good-morning, Dewy." Maybold stood still upon the bridge, holding the card as it had been put into his hand, and Dick's footsteps died away towards Durnover Mill. The vicar's first voluntary action was to read the card:-- DEWY AND SON, TRANTERS AND HAULIERS, MELLSTOCK. NB.--Furniture, Coals, Potatoes, Live and Dead Stock, removed to any distance on the shortest notice. Mr. Maybold leant over the parapet of the bridge and looked into the river. He saw--without heeding--how the water came rapidly from beneath the arches, glided down a little steep, then spread itself over a pool in which dace, trout, and minnows sported at ease among the long green locks of weed that lay heaving and sinking with their roots towards the current. At the end of ten minutes spent leaning thus, he drew from his pocket the letter to his friend, tore it deliberately into such minute fragments that scarcely two syllables remained in juxtaposition, and sent the whole handful of shreds fluttering into the water. Here he watched them eddy, dart, and turn, as they were carried downwards towards the ocean and gradually disappeared from his view. Finally he moved off, and pursued his way at a rapid pace back again to Mellstock Vicarage. Nerving himself by a long and intense effort, he sat down in his study and wrote as follows: "DEAR MISS DAY,--The meaning of your words, 'the temptation is too strong,' of your sadness and your tears, has been brought home to me by an accident. I know to-day what I did not know yesterday--that you are not a free woman. "Why did you not tell me--why didn't you? Did you suppose I knew? No. Had I known, my conduct in coming to you as I did would have been reprehensible. "But I don't chide you! Perhaps no blame attaches to you--I can't tell. Fancy, though my opinion of you is assailed and disturbed in a way which cannot be expressed, I love you still, and my word to you holds good yet. But will you, in justice to an honest man who relies upon your word to him, consider whether, under the circumstances, you can honourably forsake him?--Yours ever sincerely, "ARTHUR MAYBOLD." He rang the bell. "Tell Charles to take these copybooks and this note to the school at once." The maid took the parcel and the letter, and in a few minutes a boy was seen to leave the vicarage gate, with the one under his arm, and the other in his hand. The vicar sat with his hand to his brow, watching the lad as he descended Church Lane and entered the waterside path which intervened between that spot and the school. Here he was met by another boy, and after a free salutation and pugilistic frisk had passed between the two, the second boy came on his way to the vicarage, and the other vanished out of sight. The boy came to the door, and a note for Mr. Maybold was brought in. He knew the writing. Opening the envelope with an unsteady hand, he read the subjoined words: "DEAR MR. MAYBOLD,--I have been thinking seriously and sadly through the whole of the night of the question you put to me last evening and of my answer. That answer, as an honest woman, I had no right to give. "It is my nature--perhaps all women's--to love refinement of mind and manners; but even more than this, to be ever fascinated with the idea of surroundings more elegant and pleasing than those which have been customary. And you praised me, and praise is life to me. It was alone my sensations at these things which prompted my reply. Ambition and vanity they would be called; perhaps they are so. "After this explanation I hope you will generously allow me to withdraw the answer I too hastily gave. "And one more request. To keep the meeting of last night, and all that passed between us there, for ever a secret. Were it to become known, it would utterly blight the happiness of a trusting and generous man, whom I love still, and shall love always.--Yours sincerely, "FANCY DAY. The last written communication that ever passed from the vicar to Fancy, was a note containing these words only: "Tell him everything; it is best. He will forgive you." PART THE FIFTH: CONCLUSION CHAPTER I: 'THE KNOT THERE'S NO UNTYING' The last day of the story is dated just subsequent to that point in the development of the seasons when country people go to bed among nearly naked trees, are lulled to sleep by a fall of rain, and awake next morning among green ones; when the landscape appears embarrassed with the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves; when the night-jar comes and strikes up for the summer his tune of one note; when the apple-trees have bloomed, and the roads and orchard-grass become spotted with fallen petals; when the faces of the delicate flowers are darkened, and their heads weighed down, by the throng of honey-bees, which increase their humming till humming is too mild a term for the all-pervading sound; and when cuckoos, blackbirds, and sparrows, that have hitherto been merry and respectful neighbours, become noisy and persistent intimates. The exterior of Geoffrey Day's house in Yalbury Wood appeared exactly as was usual at that season, but a frantic barking of the dogs at the back told of unwonted movements somewhere within. Inside the door the eyes beheld a gathering, which was a rarity indeed for the dwelling of the solitary wood-steward and keeper. About the room were sitting and standing, in various gnarled attitudes, our old acquaintance, grandfathers James and William, the tranter, Mr. Penny, two or three children, including Jimmy and Charley, besides three or four country ladies and gentlemen from a greater distance who do not require any distinction by name. Geoffrey was seen and heard stamping about the outhouse and among the bushes of the garden, attending to details of daily routine before the proper time arrived for their performance, in order that they might be off his hands for the day. He appeared with his shirt-sleeves rolled up; his best new nether garments, in which he had arrayed himself that morning, being temporarily disguised under a weekday apron whilst these proceedings were in operation. He occasionally glanced at the hives in passing, to see if his wife's bees were swarming, ultimately rolling down his shirt-sleeves and going indoors, talking to tranter Dewy whilst buttoning the wristbands, to save time; next going upstairs for his best waistcoat, and coming down again to make another remark whilst buttoning that, during the time looking fixedly in the tranter's face as if he were a looking-glass. The furniture had undergone attenuation to an alarming extent, every duplicate piece having been removed, including the clock by Thomas Wood; Ezekiel Saunders being at last left sole referee in matters of time. Fancy was stationary upstairs, receiving her layers of clothes and adornments, and answering by short fragments of laughter which had more fidgetiness than mirth in them, remarks that were made from time to time by Mrs. Dewy and Mrs. Penny, who were assisting her at the toilet, Mrs. Day having pleaded a queerness in her head as a reason for shutting herself up in an inner bedroom for the whole morning. Mrs. Penny appeared with nine corkscrew curls on each side of her temples, and a back comb stuck upon her crown like a castle on a steep. The conversation just now going on was concerning the banns, the last publication of which had been on the Sunday previous. "And how did they sound?" Fancy subtly inquired. "Very beautiful indeed," said Mrs. Penny. "I never heard any sound better." "But how?" "O, so natural and elegant, didn't they, Reuben!" she cried, through the chinks of the unceiled floor, to the tranter downstairs. "What's that?" said the tranter, looking up inquiringly at the floor above him for an answer. "Didn't Dick and Fancy sound well when they were called home in church last Sunday?" came downwards again in Mrs. Penny's voice. "Ay, that they did, my sonnies!--especially the first time. There was a terrible whispering piece of work in the congregation, wasn't there, neighbour Penny?" said the tranter, taking up the thread of conversation on his own account and, in order to be heard in the room above, speaking very loud to Mr. Penny, who sat at the distance of three feet from him, or rather less. "I never can mind seeing such a whispering as there was," said Mr. Penny, also loudly, to the room above. "And such sorrowful envy on the maidens' faces; really, I never did see such envy as there was!" Fancy's lineaments varied in innumerable little flushes, and her heart palpitated innumerable little tremors of pleasure. "But perhaps," she said, with assumed indifference, "it was only because no religion was going on just then?" "O, no; nothing to do with that. 'Twas because of your high standing in the parish. It was just as if they had one and all caught Dick kissing and coling ye to death, wasn't it, Mrs. Dewy?" "Ay; that 'twas." "How people will talk about one's doings!" Fancy exclaimed. "Well, if you make songs about yourself, my dear, you can't blame other people for singing 'em." "Mercy me! how shall I go through it?" said the young lady again, but merely to those in the bedroom, with a breathing of a kind between a sigh and a pant, round shining eyes, and warm face. "O, you'll get through it well enough, child," said Mrs. Dewy placidly. "The edge of the performance is took off at the calling home; and when once you get up to the chancel end o' the church, you feel as saucy as you please. I'm sure I felt as brave as a sodger all through the deed--though of course I dropped my face and looked modest, as was becoming to a maid. Mind you do that, Fancy." "And I walked into the church as quiet as a lamb, I'm sure," subjoined Mrs. Penny. "There, you see Penny is such a little small man. But certainly, I was flurried in the inside o' me. Well, thinks I, 'tis to be, and here goes! And do you do the same: say, ''Tis to be, and here goes!'" "Is there such wonderful virtue in ''Tis to be, and here goes!'" inquired Fancy. "Wonderful! 'Twill carry a body through it all from wedding to churching, if you only let it out with spirit enough." "Very well, then," said Fancy, blushing. "'Tis to be, and here goes!" "That's a girl for a husband!" said Mrs. Dewy. "I do hope he'll come in time!" continued the bride-elect, inventing a new cause of affright, now that the other was demolished. "'Twould be a thousand pities if he didn't come, now you be so brave," said Mrs. Penny. Grandfather James, having overheard some of these remarks, said downstairs with mischievous loudness-- "I've known some would-be weddings when the men didn't come." "They've happened not to come, before now, certainly," said Mr. Penny, cleaning one of the glasses of his spectacles. "O, do hear what they are saying downstairs," whispered Fancy. "Hush, hush!" She listened. "They have, haven't they, Geoffrey?" continued grandfather James, as Geoffrey entered. "Have what?" said Geoffrey. "The men have been known not to come." "That they have," said the keeper. "Ay; I've knowed times when the wedding had to be put off through his not appearing, being tired of the woman. And another case I knowed was when the man was catched in a man-trap crossing Oaker's Wood, and the three months had run out before he got well, and the banns had to be published over again." "How horrible!" said Fancy. "They only say it on purpose to tease 'ee, my dear," said Mrs. Dewy. "'Tis quite sad to think what wretched shifts poor maids have been put to," came again from downstairs. "Ye should hear Clerk Wilkins, my brother-law, tell his experiences in marrying couples these last thirty year: sometimes one thing, sometimes another--'tis quite heart-rending--enough to make your hair stand on end." "Those things don't happen very often, I know," said Fancy, with smouldering uneasiness. "Well, really 'tis time Dick was here," said the tranter. "Don't keep on at me so, grandfather James and Mr. Dewy, and all you down there!" Fancy broke out, unable to endure any longer. "I am sure I shall die, or do something, if you do!" "Never you hearken to these old chaps, Miss Day!" cried Nat Callcome, the best man, who had just entered, and threw his voice upward through the chinks of the floor as the others had done. "'Tis all right; Dick's coming on like a wild feller; he'll be here in a minute. The hive o' bees his mother gie'd en for his new garden swarmed jist as he was starting, and he said, 'I can't afford to lose a stock o' bees; no, that I can't, though I fain would; and Fancy wouldn't wish it on any account.' So he jist stopped to ting to 'em and shake 'em." "A genuine wise man," said Geoffrey. "To be sure, what a day's work we had yesterday!" Mr. Callcome continued, lowering his voice as if it were not necessary any longer to include those in the room above among his audience, and selecting a remote corner of his best clean handkerchief for wiping his face. "To be sure!" "Things so heavy, I suppose," said Geoffrey, as if reading through the chimney-window from the far end of the vista. "Ay," said Nat, looking round the room at points from which furniture had been removed. "And so awkward to carry, too. 'Twas ath'art and across Dick's garden; in and out Dick's door; up and down Dick's stairs; round and round Dick's chammers till legs were worn to stumps: and Dick is so particular, too. And the stores of victuals and drink that lad has laid in: why, 'tis enough for Noah's ark! I'm sure I never wish to see a choicer half-dozen of hams than he's got there in his chimley; and the cider I tasted was a very pretty drop, indeed;--none could desire a prettier cider." "They be for the love and the stalled ox both. Ah, the greedy martels!" said grandfather James. "Well, may-be they be. Surely," says I, "that couple between 'em have heaped up so much furniture and victuals, that anybody would think they were going to take hold the big end of married life first, and begin wi' a grown-up family. Ah, what a bath of heat we two chaps were in, to be sure, a-getting that furniture in order!" "I do so wish the room below was ceiled," said Fancy, as the dressing went on; "we can hear all they say and do down there." "Hark! Who's that?" exclaimed a small pupil-teacher, who also assisted this morning, to her great delight. She ran half-way down the stairs, and peeped round the banister. "O, you should, you should, you should!" she exclaimed, scrambling up to the room again. "What?" said Fancy. "See the bridesmaids! They've just a come! 'Tis wonderful, really! 'tis wonderful how muslin can be brought to it. There, they don't look a bit like themselves, but like some very rich sisters o' theirs that nobody knew they had!" "Make 'em come up to me, make 'em come up!" cried Fancy ecstatically; and the four damsels appointed, namely, Miss Susan Dewy, Miss Bessie Dewy, Miss Vashti Sniff, and Miss Mercy Onmey, surged upstairs, and floated along the passage. "I wish Dick would come!" was again the burden of Fancy. The same instant a small twig and flower from the creeper outside the door flew in at the open window, and a masculine voice said, "Ready, Fancy dearest?" "There he is, he is!" cried Fancy, tittering spasmodically, and breathing as it were for the first time that morning. The bridesmaids crowded to the window and turned their heads in the direction pointed out, at which motion eight earrings all swung as one:--not looking at Dick because they particularly wanted to see him, but with an important sense of their duty as obedient ministers of the will of that apotheosised being--the Bride. "He looks very taking!" said Miss Vashti Sniff, a young lady who blushed cream-colour and wore yellow bonnet ribbons. Dick was advancing to the door in a painfully new coat of shining cloth, primrose-coloured waistcoat, hat of the same painful style of newness, and with an extra quantity of whiskers shaved off his face, and hair cut to an unwonted shortness in honour of the occasion. "Now, I'll run down," said Fancy, looking at herself over her shoulder in the glass, and flitting off. "O Dick!" she exclaimed, "I am so glad you are come! I knew you would, of course, but I thought, Oh if you shouldn't!" "Not come, Fancy! Het or wet, blow or snow, here come I to-day! Why, what's possessing your little soul? You never used to mind such things a bit." "Ah, Mr. Dick, I hadn't hoisted my colours and committed myself then!" said Fancy. "'Tis a pity I can't marry the whole five of ye!" said Dick, surveying them all round. "Heh-heh-heh!" laughed the four bridesmaids, and Fancy privately touched Dick and smoothed him down behind his shoulder, as if to assure herself that he was there in flesh and blood as her own property. "Well, whoever would have thought such a thing?" said Dick, taking off his hat, sinking into a chair, and turning to the elder members of the company. The latter arranged their eyes and lips to signify that in their opinion nobody could have thought such a thing, whatever it was. "That my bees should ha' swarmed just then, of all times and seasons!" continued Dick, throwing a comprehensive glance like a net over the whole auditory. "And 'tis a fine swarm, too: I haven't seen such a fine swarm for these ten years." "A' excellent sign," said Mrs. Penny, from the depths of experience. "A' excellent sign." "I am glad everything seems so right," said Fancy with a breath of relief. "And so am I," said the four bridesmaids with much sympathy. "Well, bees can't be put off," observed the inharmonious grandfather James. "Marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any moment; but a swarm o' bees won't come for the asking." Dick fanned himself with his hat. "I can't think," he said thoughtfully, "whatever 'twas I did to offend Mr. Maybold, a man I like so much too. He rather took to me when he came first, and used to say he should like to see me married, and that he'd marry me, whether the young woman I chose lived in his parish or no. I just hinted to him of it when I put in the banns, but he didn't seem to take kindly to the notion now, and so I said no more. I wonder how it was." "I wonder!" said Fancy, looking into vacancy with those beautiful eyes of hers--too refined and beautiful for a tranter's wife; but, perhaps, not too good. "Altered his mind, as folks will, I suppose," said the tranter. "Well, my sonnies, there'll be a good strong party looking at us to-day as we go along." "And the body of the church," said Geoffrey, "will be lined with females, and a row of young fellers' heads, as far down as the eyes, will be noticed just above the sills of the chancel-winders." "Ay, you've been through it twice," said Reuben, "and well mid know." "I can put up with it for once," said Dick, "or twice either, or a dozen times." "O Dick!" said Fancy reproachfully. "Why, dear, that's nothing,--only just a bit of a flourish. You be as nervous as a cat to-day." "And then, of course, when 'tis all over," continued the tranter, "we shall march two and two round the parish." "Yes, sure," said Mr. Penny: "two and two: every man hitched up to his woman, 'a b'lieve." "I never can make a show of myself in that way!" said Fancy, looking at Dick to ascertain if he could. "I'm agreed to anything you and the company like, my dear!" said Mr. Richard Dewy heartily. "Why, we did when we were married, didn't we, Ann?" said the tranter; "and so do everybody, my sonnies." "And so did we," said Fancy's father. "And so did Penny and I," said Mrs. Penny: "I wore my best Bath clogs, I remember, and Penny was cross because it made me look so tall." "And so did father and mother," said Miss Mercy Onmey. "And I mean to, come next Christmas!" said Nat the groomsman vigorously, and looking towards the person of Miss Vashti Sniff. "Respectable people don't nowadays," said Fancy. "Still, since poor mother did, I will." "Ay," resumed the tranter, "'twas on a White Tuesday when I committed it. Mellstock Club walked the same day, and we new-married folk went a-gaying round the parish behind 'em. Everybody used to wear something white at Whitsuntide in them days. My sonnies, I've got the very white trousers that I wore, at home in box now. Ha'n't I, Ann?" "You had till I cut 'em up for Jimmy," said Mrs. Dewy. "And we ought, by rights, after doing this parish, to go round Higher and Lower Mellstock, and call at Viney's, and so work our way hither again across He'th," said Mr. Penny, recovering scent of the matter in hand. "Dairyman Viney is a very respectable man, and so is Farmer Kex, and we ought to show ourselves to them." "True," said the tranter, "we ought to go round Mellstock to do the thing well. We shall form a very striking object walking along in rotation, good-now, neighbours?" "That we shall: a proper pretty sight for the nation," said Mrs. Penny. "Hullo!" said the tranter, suddenly catching sight of a singular human figure standing in the doorway, and wearing a long smock-frock of pillow- case cut and of snowy whiteness. "Why, Leaf! whatever dost thou do here?" "I've come to know if so be I can come to the wedding--hee-hee!" said Leaf in a voice of timidity. "Now, Leaf," said the tranter reproachfully, "you know we don't want 'ee here to-day: we've got no room for ye, Leaf." "Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf, fie upon ye for prying!" said old William. "I know I've got no head, but I thought, if I washed and put on a clane shirt and smock-frock, I might just call," said Leaf, turning away disappointed and trembling. "Poor feller!" said the tranter, turning to Geoffrey. "Suppose we must let en come? His looks are rather against en, and he is terrible silly; but 'a have never been in jail, and 'a won't do no harm." Leaf looked with gratitude at the tranter for these praises, and then anxiously at Geoffrey, to see what effect they would have in helping his cause. "Ay, let en come," said Geoffrey decisively. "Leaf, th'rt welcome, 'st know;" and Leaf accordingly remained. They were now all ready for leaving the house, and began to form a procession in the following order: Fancy and her father, Dick and Susan Dewy, Nat Callcome and Vashti Sniff, Ted Waywood and Mercy Onmey, and Jimmy and Bessie Dewy. These formed the executive, and all appeared in strict wedding attire. Then came the tranter and Mrs. Dewy, and last of all Mr. and Mrs. Penny;--the tranter conspicuous by his enormous gloves, size eleven and three-quarters, which appeared at a distance like boxing gloves bleached, and sat rather awkwardly upon his brown hands; this hall- mark of respectability having been set upon himself to-day (by Fancy's special request) for the first time in his life. "The proper way is for the bridesmaids to walk together," suggested Fancy. "What? 'Twas always young man and young woman, arm in crook, in my time!" said Geoffrey, astounded. "And in mine!" said the tranter. "And in ours!" said Mr. and Mrs. Penny. "Never heard o' such a thing as woman and woman!" said old William; who, with grandfather James and Mrs. Day, was to stay at home. "Whichever way you and the company like, my dear!" said Dick, who, being on the point of securing his right to Fancy, seemed willing to renounce all other rights in the world with the greatest pleasure. The decision was left to Fancy. "Well, I think I'd rather have it the way mother had it," she said, and the couples moved along under the trees, every man to his maid. "Ah!" said grandfather James to grandfather William as they retired, "I wonder which she thinks most about, Dick or her wedding raiment!" "Well, 'tis their nature," said grandfather William. "Remember the words of the prophet Jeremiah: 'Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?'" Now among dark perpendicular firs, like the shafted columns of a cathedral; now through a hazel copse, matted with primroses and wild hyacinths; now under broad beeches in bright young leaves they threaded their way into the high road over Yalbury Hill, which dipped at that point directly into the village of Geoffrey Day's parish; and in the space of a quarter of an hour Fancy found herself to be Mrs. Richard Dewy, though, much to her surprise, feeling no other than Fancy Day still. On the circuitous return walk through the lanes and fields, amid much chattering and laughter, especially when they came to stiles, Dick discerned a brown spot far up a turnip field. "Why, 'tis Enoch!" he said to Fancy. "I thought I missed him at the house this morning. How is it he's left you?" "He drank too much cider, and it got into his head, and they put him in Weatherbury stocks for it. Father was obliged to get somebody else for a day or two, and Enoch hasn't had anything to do with the woods since." "We might ask him to call down to-night. Stocks are nothing for once, considering 'tis our wedding day." The bridal party was ordered to halt. "Eno-o-o-o-ch!" cried Dick at the top of his voice. "Y-a-a-a-a-a-as!" said Enoch from the distance. "D'ye know who I be-e-e-e-e-e?" "No-o-o-o-o-o-o!" "Dick Dew-w-w-w-wy!" "O-h-h-h-h-h!" "Just a-ma-a-a-a-a-arried!" "O-h-h-h-h-h!" "This is my wife, Fa-a-a-a-a-ancy!" (holding her up to Enoch's view as if she had been a nosegay.) "O-h-h-h-h-h!" "Will ye come across to the party to-ni-i-i-i-i-i-ight!" "Ca-a-a-a-a-an't!" "Why n-o-o-o-o-ot?" "Don't work for the family no-o-o-o-ow!" "Not nice of Master Enoch," said Dick, as they resumed their walk. "You mustn't blame en," said Geoffrey; "the man's not hisself now; he's in his morning frame of mind. When he's had a gallon o' cider or ale, or a pint or two of mead, the man's well enough, and his manners be as good as anybody's in the kingdom." CHAPTER II: UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day's premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous extent, though having no great pretensions to height. Many hundreds of birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree; tribes of rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year; quaint tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of its forks; and countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots. Beneath and beyond its shade spread a carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose being to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chickens and pheasants; the hens, their mothers, being enclosed in coops placed upon the same green flooring. All these encumbrances were now removed, and as the afternoon advanced, the guests gathered on the spot, where music, dancing, and the singing of songs went forward with great spirit throughout the evening. The propriety of every one was intense by reason of the influence of Fancy, who, as an additional precaution in this direction, had strictly charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying 'thee' and 'thou' in their conversation, on the plea that those ancient words sounded so very humiliating to persons of newer taste; also that they were never to be seen drawing the back of the hand across the mouth after drinking--a local English custom of extraordinary antiquity, but stated by Fancy to be decidedly dying out among the better classes of society. In addition to the local musicians present, a man who had a thorough knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of Tantrum Clangley,--a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as performers on instruments of percussion. These important members of the assembly were relegated to a height of two or three feet from the ground, upon a temporary erection of planks supported by barrels. Whilst the dancing progressed the older persons sat in a group under the trunk of the tree,--the space being allotted to them somewhat grudgingly by the young ones, who were greedy of pirouetting room,--and fortified by a table against the heels of the dancers. Here the gaffers and gammers, whose dancing days were over, told stories of great impressiveness, and at intervals surveyed the advancing and retiring couples from the same retreat, as people on shore might be supposed to survey a naval engagement in the bay beyond; returning again to their tales when the pause was over. Those of the whirling throng, who, during the rests between each figure, turned their eyes in the direction of these seated ones, were only able to discover, on account of the music and bustle, that a very striking circumstance was in course of narration--denoted by an emphatic sweep of the hand, snapping of the fingers, close of the lips, and fixed look into the centre of the listener's eye for the space of a quarter of a minute, which raised in that listener such a reciprocating working of face as to sometimes make the distant dancers half wish to know what such an interesting tale could refer to. Fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was obtainable out of six hours' experience as a wife, in order that the contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the matter was intended to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied the most wondrous position in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained, she was almost unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat prominent position in which that wonderfully-emblazoned left hand was continually found to be placed, when handing cups and saucers, knives, forks, and glasses, was quite the result of accident. As to wishing to excite envy in the bosoms of her maiden companions, by the exhibition of the shining ring, every one was to know it was quite foreign to the dignity of such an experienced married woman. Dick's imagination in the meantime was far less capable of drawing so much wontedness from his new condition. He had been for two or three hours trying to feel himself merely a newly- married man, but had been able to get no further in the attempt than to realize that he was Dick Dewy, the tranter's son, at a party given by Lord Wessex's head man-in-charge, on the outlying Yalbury estate, dancing and chatting with Fancy Day. Five country dances, including 'Haste to the Wedding,' two reels, and three fragments of horn-pipes, brought them to the time for supper, which, on account of the dampness of the grass from the immaturity of the summer season, was spread indoors. At the conclusion of the meal Dick went out to put the horse in; and Fancy, with the elder half of the four bridesmaids, retired upstairs to dress for the journey to Dick's new cottage near Mellstock. "How long will you be putting on your bonnet, Fancy?" Dick inquired at the foot of the staircase. Being now a man of business and married, he was strong on the importance of time, and doubled the emphasis of his words in conversing, and added vigour to his nods. "Only a minute." "How long is that?" "Well, dear, five." "Ah, sonnies!" said the tranter, as Dick retired, "'tis a talent of the female race that low numbers should stand for high, more especially in matters of waiting, matters of age, and matters of money." "True, true, upon my body," said Geoffrey. "Ye spak with feeling, Geoffrey, seemingly." "Anybody that d'know my experience might guess that." "What's she doing now, Geoffrey?" "Claning out all the upstairs drawers and cupboards, and dusting the second-best chainey--a thing that's only done once a year. 'If there's work to be done I must do it,' says she, 'wedding or no.'" "'Tis my belief she's a very good woman at bottom." "She's terrible deep, then." Mrs. Penny turned round. "Well, 'tis humps and hollers with the best of us; but still and for all that, Dick and Fancy stand as fair a chance of having a bit of sunsheen as any married pair in the land." "Ay, there's no gainsaying it." Mrs. Dewy came up, talking to one person and looking at another. "Happy, yes," she said. "'Tis always so when a couple is so exactly in tune with one another as Dick and she." "When they be'n't too poor to have time to sing," said grandfather James. "I tell ye, neighbours, when the pinch comes," said the tranter: "when the oldest daughter's boots be only a size less than her mother's, and the rest o' the flock close behind her. A sharp time for a man that, my sonnies; a very sharp time! Chanticleer's comb is a-cut then, 'a believe." "That's about the form o't," said Mr. Penny. "That'll put the stuns upon a man, when you must measure mother and daughter's lasts to tell 'em apart." "You've no cause to complain, Reuben, of such a close-coming flock," said Mrs. Dewy; "for ours was a straggling lot enough, God knows!" "I d'know it, I d'know it," said the tranter. "You be a well-enough woman, Ann." Mrs. Dewy put her mouth in the form of a smile, and put it back again without smiling. "And if they come together, they go together," said Mrs. Penny, whose family had been the reverse of the tranter's; "and a little money will make either fate tolerable. And money can be made by our young couple, I know." "Yes, that it can!" said the impulsive voice of Leaf, who had hitherto humbly admired the proceedings from a corner. "It can be done--all that's wanted is a few pounds to begin with. That's all! I know a story about it!" "Let's hear thy story, Leaf," said the tranter. "I never knew you were clever enough to tell a story. Silence, all of ye! Mr. Leaf will tell a story." "Tell your story, Thomas Leaf," said grandfather William in the tone of a schoolmaster. "Once," said the delighted Leaf, in an uncertain voice, "there was a man who lived in a house! Well, this man went thinking and thinking night and day. At last, he said to himself, as I might, 'If I had only ten pound, I'd make a fortune.' At last by hook or by crook, behold he got the ten pounds!" "Only think of that!" said Nat Callcome satirically. "Silence!" said the tranter. "Well, now comes the interesting part of the story! In a little time he made that ten pounds twenty. Then a little time after that he doubled it, and made it forty. Well, he went on, and a good while after that he made it eighty, and on to a hundred. Well, by-and-by he made it two hundred! Well, you'd never believe it, but--he went on and made it four hundred! He went on, and what did he do? Why, he made it eight hundred! Yes, he did," continued Leaf, in the highest pitch of excitement, bringing down his fist upon his knee with such force that he quivered with the pain; "yes, and he went on and made it A THOUSAND!" "Hear, hear!" said the tranter. "Better than the history of England, my sonnies!" "Thank you for your story, Thomas Leaf," said grandfather William; and then Leaf gradually sank into nothingness again. Amid a medley of laughter, old shoes, and elder-wine, Dick and his bride took their departure, side by side in the excellent new spring-cart which the young tranter now possessed. The moon was just over the full, rendering any light from lamps or their own beauties quite unnecessary to the pair. They drove slowly along Yalbury Bottom, where the road passed between two copses. Dick was talking to his companion. "Fancy," he said, "why we are so happy is because there is such full confidence between us. Ever since that time you confessed to that little flirtation with Shiner by the river (which was really no flirtation at all), I have thought how artless and good you must be to tell me o' such a trifling thing, and to be so frightened about it as you were. It has won me to tell you my every deed and word since then. We'll have no secrets from each other, darling, will we ever?--no secret at all." "None from to-day," said Fancy. "Hark! what's that?" From a neighbouring thicket was suddenly heard to issue in a loud, musical, and liquid voice-- "Tippiwit! swe-e-et! ki-ki-ki! Come hither, come hither, come hither!" "O, 'tis the nightingale," murmured she, and thought of a secret she would never tell. Footnotes: {1} This, a local expression, must be a corruption of something less questionable. 
175	----	The footnotes have been incrementally numbered in [ ] marks, and placed after the paragraph in which they appear The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux Author of "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" and "The Perfume of the Lady in Black" Contents Chapter PROLOGUE I IS IT A GHOST? II THE NEW MARGARITA III THE MYSTERIOUS REASON IV BOX FIVE V THE ENCHANTED VIOLIN VI A VISIT TO BOX FIVE VII FAUST AND WHAT FOLLOWED VIII THE MYSTERIOUS BROUGHAM IX AT THE MASKED BALL X FORGET THE NAME OF THE MAN'S VOICE XI ABOVE THE TRAP-DOORS XII APOLLO'S LYRE XIII A MASTER-STROKE OF THE TRAP-DOOR LOVER XIV THE SINGULAR ATTITUDE OF A SAFETY-PIN XV CHRISTINE! CHRISTINE! XVI MME. GIRY'S REVELATIONS XVII THE SAFETY-PIN AGAIN XVIII THE COMMISSARY, THE VISCOUNT AND THE PERSIAN XIX THE VISCOUNT AND THE PERSIAN XX IN THE CELLARS OF THE OPERA XXI INTERESTING VICISSITUDES XXII IN THE TORTURE CHAMBER XXIII THE TORTURES BEGIN XXIV BARRELS! BARRELS! XXV THE SCORPION OR THE GRASSHOPPER: WHICH XXVI THE END OF THE GHOST'S LOVE STORY EPILOGUE {plus a "bonus chapter" called "THE PARIS OPERA HOUSE"} The Phantom of the Opera Prologue IN WHICH THE AUTHOR OF THIS SINGULAR WORK INFORMS THE READER HOW HE ACQUIRED THE CERTAINTY THAT THE OPERA GHOST REALLY EXISTED The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daae, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the Rue-Scribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story. The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that at every moment was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked upon as superhuman; and more than once I was within an ace of abandoning a task in which I was exhausting myself in the hopeless pursuit of a vain image. At last, I received the proof that my presentiments had not deceived me, and I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade. On that day, I had spent long hours over THE MEMOIRS OF A MANAGER, the light and frivolous work of the too-skeptical Moncharmin, who, during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious behavior of the ghost and who was making all the fun of it that he could at the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious financial operation that went on inside the "magic envelope." I had just left the library in despair, when I met the delightful acting-manager of our National Academy, who stood chatting on a landing with a lively and well-groomed little old man, to whom he introduced me gaily. The acting-manager knew all about my investigations and how eagerly and unsuccessfully I had been trying to discover the whereabouts of the examining magistrate in the famous Chagny case, M. Faure. Nobody knew what had become of him, alive or dead; and here he was back from Canada, where he had spent fifteen years, and the first thing he had done, on his return to Paris, was to come to the secretarial offices at the Opera and ask for a free seat. The little old man was M. Faure himself. We spent a good part of the evening together and he told me the whole Chagny case as he had understood it at the time. He was bound to conclude in favor of the madness of the viscount and the accidental death of the elder brother, for lack of evidence to the contrary; but he was nevertheless persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken place between the two brothers in connection with Christine Daae. He could not tell me what became of Christine or the viscount. When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed. He, too, had been told of the curious manifestations that seemed to point to the existence of an abnormal being, residing in one of the most mysterious corners of the Opera, and he knew the story of the envelope; but he had never seen anything in it worthy of his attention as magistrate in charge of the Chagny case, and it was as much as he had done to listen to the evidence of a witness who appeared of his own accord and declared that he had often met the ghost. This witness was none other than the man whom all Paris called the "Persian" and who was well-known to every subscriber to the Opera. The magistrate took him for a visionary. I was immensely interested by this story of the Persian. I wanted, if there were still time, to find this valuable and eccentric witness. My luck began to improve and I discovered him in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had lived ever since and where he died five months after my visit. I was at first inclined to be suspicious; but when the Persian had told me, with child-like candor, all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the proofs of the ghost's existence--including the strange correspondence of Christine Daae--to do as I pleased with, I was no longer able to doubt. No, the ghost was not a myth! I have, I know, been told that this correspondence may have been forged from first to last by a man whose imagination had certainly been fed on the most seductive tales; but fortunately I discovered some of Christine's writing outside the famous bundle of letters and, on a comparison between the two, all my doubts were removed. I also went into the past history of the Persian and found that he was an upright man, incapable of inventing a story that might have defeated the ends of justice. This, moreover, was the opinion of the more serious people who, at one time or other, were mixed up in the Chagny case, who were friends of the Chagny family, to whom I showed all my documents and set forth all my inferences. In this connection, I should like to print a few lines which I received from General D----: SIR: I can not urge you too strongly to publish the results of your inquiry. I remember perfectly that, a few weeks before the disappearance of that great singer, Christine Daae, and the tragedy which threw the whole of the Faubourg Saint-Germain into mourning, there was a great deal of talk, in the foyer of the ballet, on the subject of the "ghost;" and I believe that it only ceased to be discussed in consequence of the later affair that excited us all so greatly. But, if it be possible--as, after hearing you, I believe--to explain the tragedy through the ghost, then I beg you sir, to talk to us about the ghost again. Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will always be more easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent people have tried to picture two brothers killing each other who had worshiped each other all their lives. Believe me, etc. Lastly, with my bundle of papers in hand, I once more went over the ghost's vast domain, the huge building which he had made his kingdom. All that my eyes saw, all that my mind perceived, corroborated the Persian's documents precisely; and a wonderful discovery crowned my labors in a very definite fashion. It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opera, before burying the phonographic records of the artist's voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse. Well, I was at once able to prove that this corpse was that of the Opera ghost. I made the acting-manager put this proof to the test with his own hand; and it is now a matter of supreme indifference to me if the papers pretend that the body was that of a victim of the Commune. The wretches who were massacred, under the Commune, in the cellars of the Opera, were not buried on this side; I will tell where their skeletons can be found in a spot not very far from that immense crypt which was stocked during the siege with all sorts of provisions. I came upon this track just when I was looking for the remains of the Opera ghost, which I should never have discovered but for the unheard-of chance described above. But we will return to the corpse and what ought to be done with it. For the present, I must conclude this very necessary introduction by thanking M. Mifroid (who was the commissary of police called in for the first investigations after the disappearance of Christine Daae), M. Remy, the late secretary, M. Mercier, the late acting-manager, M. Gabriel, the late chorus-master, and more particularly Mme. la Baronne de Castelot-Barbezac, who was once the "little Meg" of the story (and who is not ashamed of it), the most charming star of our admirable corps de ballet, the eldest daughter of the worthy Mme. Giry, now deceased, who had charge of the ghost's private box. All these were of the greatest assistance to me; and, thanks to them, I shall be able to reproduce those hours of sheer love and terror, in their smallest details, before the reader's eyes. And I should be ungrateful indeed if I omitted, while standing on the threshold of this dreadful and veracious story, to thank the present management the Opera, which has so kindly assisted me in all my inquiries, and M. Messager in particular, together with M. Gabion, the acting-manager, and that most amiable of men, the architect intrusted with the preservation of the building, who did not hesitate to lend me the works of Charles Garnier, although he was almost sure that I would never return them to him. Lastly, I must pay a public tribute to the generosity of my friend and former collaborator, M. J. Le Croze, who allowed me to dip into his splendid theatrical library and to borrow the rarest editions of books by which he set great store. GASTON LEROUX. Chapter I Is it the Ghost? It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes--the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders--who gave the explanation in a trembling voice: "It's the ghost!" And she locked the door. Sorelli's dressing-room was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance. A pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or two provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. But the room seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet, who were lodged in common dressing-rooms where they spent their time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and hair-dressers and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rhum, until the call-boy's bell rang. Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard little Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a "silly little fool" and then, as she was the first to believe in ghosts in general, and the Opera ghost in particular, at once asked for details: "Have you seen him?" "As plainly as I see you now!" said little Jammes, whose legs were giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair. Thereupon little Giry--the girl with eyes black as sloes, hair black as ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor little skin stretched over poor little bones--little Giry added: "If that's the ghost, he's very ugly!" "Oh, yes!" cried the chorus of ballet-girls. And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who had suddenly stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from. He seemed to have come straight through the wall. "Pooh!" said one of them, who had more or less kept her head. "You see the ghost everywhere!" And it was true. For several months, there had been nothing discussed at the Opera but this ghost in dress-clothes who stalked about the building, from top to bottom, like a shadow, who spoke to nobody, to whom nobody dared speak and who vanished as soon as he was seen, no one knowing how or where. As became a real ghost, he made no noise in walking. People began by laughing and making fun of this specter dressed like a man of fashion or an undertaker; but the ghost legend soon swelled to enormous proportions among the corps de ballet. All the girls pretended to have met this supernatural being more or less often. And those who laughed the loudest were not the most at ease. When he did not show himself, he betrayed his presence or his passing by accident, comic or serious, for which the general superstition held him responsible. Had any one met with a fall, or suffered a practical joke at the hands of one of the other girls, or lost a powderpuff, it was at once the fault of the ghost, of the Opera ghost. After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men in dress-clothes at the Opera who are not ghosts. But this dress-suit had a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the ballet-girls said. And, of course, it had a death's head. Was all this serious? The truth is that the idea of the skeleton came from the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet, the chief scene-shifter, who had really seen the ghost. He had run up against the ghost on the little staircase, by the footlights, which leads to "the cellars." He had seen him for a second--for the ghost had fled--and to any one who cared to listen to him he said: "He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can't see it side-face; and THE ABSENCE of that nose is a horrible thing TO LOOK AT. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears." This chief scene-shifter was a serious, sober, steady man, very slow at imagining things. His words were received with interest and amazement; and soon there were other people to say that they too had met a man in dress-clothes with a death's head on his shoulders. Sensible men who had wind of the story began by saying that Joseph Buquet had been the victim of a joke played by one of his assistants. And then, one after the other, there came a series of incidents so curious and so inexplicable that the very shrewdest people began to feel uneasy. For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing, least of all fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone to make a round of inspection in the cellars and who, it seems, had ventured a little farther than usual, suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared, trembling, with his eyes starting out of his head, and practically fainted in the arms of the proud mother of little Jammes.[1] And why? Because he had seen coming toward him, AT THE LEVEL OF HIS HEAD, BUT WITHOUT A BODY ATTACHED TO IT, A HEAD OF FIRE! And, as I said, a fireman is not afraid of fire. The fireman's name was Pampin. The corps de ballet was flung into consternation. At first sight, this fiery head in no way corresponded with Joseph Buquet's description of the ghost. But the young ladies soon persuaded themselves that the ghost had several heads, which he changed about as he pleased. And, of course, they at once imagined that they were in the greatest danger. Once a fireman did not hesitate to faint, leaders and front-row and back-row girls alike had plenty of excuses for the fright that made them quicken their pace when passing some dark corner or ill-lighted corridor. Sorelli herself, on the day after the adventure of the fireman, placed a horseshoe on the table in front of the stage-door-keeper's box, which every one who entered the Opera otherwise than as a spectator must touch before setting foot on the first tread of the staircase. This horse-shoe was not invented by me--any more than any other part of this story, alas!--and may still be seen on the table in the passage outside the stage-door-keeper's box, when you enter the Opera through the court known as the Cour de l'Administration. To return to the evening in question. "It's the ghost!" little Jammes had cried. An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressing-room. Nothing was heard but the hard breathing of the girls. At last, Jammes, flinging herself upon the farthest corner of the wall, with every mark of real terror on her face, whispered: "Listen!" Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. There was no sound of footsteps. It was like light silk sliding over the panel. Then it stopped. Sorelli tried to show more pluck than the others. She went up to the door and, in a quavering voice, asked: "Who's there?" But nobody answered. Then feeling all eyes upon her, watching her last movement, she made an effort to show courage, and said very loudly: "Is there any one behind the door?" "Oh, yes, yes! Of course there is!" cried that little dried plum of a Meg Giry, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt. "Whatever you do, don't open the door! Oh, Lord, don't open the door!" But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key and drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner dressing-room and Meg Giry sighed: "Mother! Mother!" Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty; a gas-flame, in its glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light into the surrounding darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it. And the dancer slammed the door again, with a deep sigh. "No," she said, "there is no one there." "Still, we saw him!" Jammes declared, returning with timid little steps to her place beside Sorelli. "He must be somewhere prowling about. I shan't go back to dress. We had better all go down to the foyer together, at once, for the 'speech,' and we will come up again together." And the child reverently touched the little coral finger-ring which she wore as a charm against bad luck, while Sorelli, stealthily, with the tip of her pink right thumb-nail, made a St. Andrew's cross on the wooden ring which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand. She said to the little ballet-girls: "Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has ever seen the ghost." "Yes, yes, we saw him--we saw him just now!" cried the girls. "He had his death's head and his dress-coat, just as when he appeared to Joseph Buquet!" "And Gabriel saw him too!" said Jammes. "Only yesterday! Yesterday afternoon--in broad day-light----" "Gabriel, the chorus-master?" "Why, yes, didn't you know?" "And he was wearing his dress-clothes, in broad daylight?" "Who? Gabriel?" "Why, no, the ghost!" "Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. That's what he knew him by. Gabriel was in the stage-manager's office. Suddenly the door opened and the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye----" "Oh, yes!" answered the little ballet-girls in chorus, warding off ill-luck by pointing their forefinger and little finger at the absent Persian, while their second and third fingers were bent on the palm and held down by the thumb. "And you know how superstitious Gabriel is," continued Jammes. "However, he is always polite. When he meets the Persian, he just puts his hand in his pocket and touches his keys. Well, the moment the Persian appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gave one jump from his chair to the lock of the cupboard, so as to touch iron! In doing so, he tore a whole skirt of his overcoat on a nail. Hurrying to get out of the room, he banged his forehead against a hat-peg and gave himself a huge bump; then, suddenly stepping back, he skinned his arm on the screen, near the piano; he tried to lean on the piano, but the lid fell on his hands and crushed his fingers; he rushed out of the office like a madman, slipped on the staircase and came down the whole of the first flight on his back. I was just passing with mother. We picked him up. He was covered with bruises and his face was all over blood. We were frightened out of our lives, but, all at once, he began to thank Providence that he had got off so cheaply. Then he told us what had frightened him. He had seen the ghost behind the Persian, THE GHOST WITH THE DEATH'S HEAD just like Joseph Buquet's description!" Jammes had told her story ever so quickly, as though the ghost were at her heels, and was quite out of breath at the finish. A silence followed, while Sorelli polished her nails in great excitement. It was broken by little Giry, who said: "Joseph Buquet would do better to hold his tongue." "Why should he hold his tongue?" asked somebody. "That's mother's opinion," replied Meg, lowering her voice and looking all about her as though fearing lest other ears than those present might overhear. "And why is it your mother's opinion?" "Hush! Mother says the ghost doesn't like being talked about." "And why does your mother say so?" "Because--because--nothing--" This reticence exasperated the curiosity of the young ladies, who crowded round little Giry, begging her to explain herself. They were there, side by side, leaning forward simultaneously in one movement of entreaty and fear, communicating their terror to one another, taking a keen pleasure in feeling their blood freeze in their veins. "I swore not to tell!" gasped Meg. But they left her no peace and promised to keep the secret, until Meg, burning to say all she knew, began, with her eyes fixed on the door: "Well, it's because of the private box." "What private box?" "The ghost's box!" "Has the ghost a box? Oh, do tell us, do tell us!" "Not so loud!" said Meg. "It's Box Five, you know, the box on the grand tier, next to the stage-box, on the left." "Oh, nonsense!" "I tell you it is. Mother has charge of it. But you swear you won't say a word?" "Of course, of course." "Well, that's the ghost's box. No one has had it for over a month, except the ghost, and orders have been given at the box-office that it must never be sold." "And does the ghost really come there?" "Yes." "Then somebody does come?" "Why, no! The ghost comes, but there is nobody there." The little ballet-girls exchanged glances. If the ghost came to the box, he must be seen, because he wore a dress-coat and a death's head. This was what they tried to make Meg understand, but she replied: "That's just it! The ghost is not seen. And he has no dress-coat and no head! All that talk about his death's head and his head of fire is nonsense! There's nothing in it. You only hear him when he is in the box. Mother has never seen him, but she has heard him. Mother knows, because she gives him his program." Sorelli interfered. "Giry, child, you're getting at us!" Thereupon little Giry began to cry. "I ought to have held my tongue--if mother ever came to know! But I was quite right, Joseph Buquet had no business to talk of things that don't concern him--it will bring him bad luck--mother was saying so last night----" There was a sound of hurried and heavy footsteps in the passage and a breathless voice cried: "Cecile! Cecile! Are you there?" "It's mother's voice," said Jammes. "What's the matter?" She opened the door. A respectable lady, built on the lines of a Pomeranian grenadier, burst into the dressing-room and dropped groaning into a vacant arm-chair. Her eyes rolled madly in her brick-dust colored face. "How awful!" she said. "How awful!" "What? What?" "Joseph Buquet!" "What about him?" "Joseph Buquet is dead!" The room became filled with exclamations, with astonished outcries, with scared requests for explanations. "Yes, he was found hanging in the third-floor cellar!" "It's the ghost!" little Giry blurted, as though in spite of herself; but she at once corrected herself, with her hands pressed to her mouth: "No, no!--I, didn't say it!--I didn't say it!----" All around her, her panic-stricken companions repeated under their breaths: "Yes--it must be the ghost!" Sorelli was very pale. "I shall never be able to recite my speech," she said. Ma Jammes gave her opinion, while she emptied a glass of liqueur that happened to be standing on a table; the ghost must have something to do with it. The truth is that no one ever knew how Joseph Buquet met his death. The verdict at the inquest was "natural suicide." In his Memoirs of Manager, M. Moncharmin, one of the joint managers who succeeded MM. Debienne and Poligny, describes the incident as follows: "A grievous accident spoiled the little party which MM. Debienne and Poligny gave to celebrate their retirement. I was in the manager's office, when Mercier, the acting-manager, suddenly came darting in. He seemed half mad and told me that the body of a scene-shifter had been found hanging in the third cellar under the stage, between a farm-house and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. I shouted: "'Come and cut him down!' "By the time I had rushed down the staircase and the Jacob's ladder, the man was no longer hanging from his rope!" So this is an event which M. Moncharmin thinks natural. A man hangs at the end of a rope; they go to cut him down; the rope has disappeared. Oh, M. Moncharmin found a very simple explanation! Listen to him: "It was just after the ballet; and leaders and dancing-girls lost no time in taking their precautions against the evil eye." There you are! Picture the corps de ballet scuttling down the Jacob's ladder and dividing the suicide's rope among themselves in less time than it takes to write! When, on the other hand, I think of the exact spot where the body was discovered--the third cellar underneath the stage!--imagine that SOMEBODY must have been interested in seeing that the rope disappeared after it had effected its purpose; and time will show if I am wrong. The horrid news soon spread all over the Opera, where Joseph Buquet was very popular. The dressing-rooms emptied and the ballet-girls, crowding around Sorelli like timid sheep around their shepherdess, made for the foyer through the ill-lit passages and staircases, trotting as fast as their little pink legs could carry them. [1] I have the anecdote, which is quite authentic, from M. Pedro Gailhard himself, the late manager of the Opera. Chapter II The New Margarita On the first landing, Sorelli ran against the Comte de Chagny, who was coming up-stairs. The count, who was generally so calm, seemed greatly excited. "I was just going to you," he said, taking off his hat. "Oh, Sorelli, what an evening! And Christine Daae: what a triumph!" "Impossible!" said Meg Giry. "Six months ago, she used to sing like a CROCK! But do let us get by, my dear count," continues the brat, with a saucy curtsey. "We are going to inquire after a poor man who was found hanging by the neck." Just then the acting-manager came fussing past and stopped when he heard this remark. "What!" he exclaimed roughly. "Have you girls heard already? Well, please forget about it for tonight--and above all don't let M. Debienne and M. Poligny hear; it would upset them too much on their last day." They all went on to the foyer of the ballet, which was already full of people. The Comte de Chagny was right; no gala performance ever equalled this one. All the great composers of the day had conducted their own works in turns. Faure and Krauss had sung; and, on that evening, Christine Daae had revealed her true self, for the first time, to the astonished and enthusiastic audience. Gounod had conducted the Funeral March of a Marionnette; Reyer, his beautiful overture to Siguar; Saint Saens, the Danse Macabre and a Reverie Orientale; Massenet, an unpublished Hungarian march; Guiraud, his Carnaval; Delibes, the Valse Lente from Sylvia and the Pizzicati from Coppelia. Mlle. Krauss had sung the bolero in the Vespri Siciliani; and Mlle. Denise Bloch the drinking song in Lucrezia Borgia. But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daae, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the Opera Comique after it had been produced at the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trio in FAUST, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or seen anything like it. Daae revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room. A few subscribers, however, protested. Why had so great a treasure been kept from them all that time? Till then, Christine Daae had played a good Siebel to Carlotta's rather too splendidly material Margarita. And it had needed Carlotta's incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daae, at a moment's warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the program reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the subscribers wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to Daae, when Carlotta was taken ill? Did they know of her hidden genius? And, if they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden? And why had she kept it hidden? Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing at that moment. She had often said she meant to practise alone for the future. The whole thing was a mystery. The Comte de Chagny, standing up in his box, listened to all this frenzy and took part in it by loudly applauding. Philippe Georges Marie Comte de Chagny was just forty-one years of age. He was a great aristocrat and a good-looking man, above middle height and with attractive features, in spite of his hard forehead and his rather cold eyes. He was exquisitely polite to the women and a little haughty to the men, who did not always forgive him for his successes in society. He had an excellent heart and an irreproachable conscience. On the death of old Count Philibert, he became the head of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in France, whose arms dated back to the fourteenth century. The Chagnys owned a great deal of property; and, when the old count, who was a widower, died, it was no easy task for Philippe to accept the management of so large an estate. His two sisters and his brother, Raoul, would not hear of a division and waived their claim to their shares, leaving themselves entirely in Philippe's hands, as though the right of primogeniture had never ceased to exist. When the two sisters married, on the same day, they received their portion from their brother, not as a thing rightfully belonging to them, but as a dowry for which they thanked him. The Comtesse de Chagny, nee de Moerogis de La Martyniere, had died in giving birth to Raoul, who was born twenty years after his elder brother. At the time of the old count's death, Raoul was twelve years of age. Philippe busied himself actively with the youngster's education. He was admirably assisted in this work first by his sisters and afterward by an old aunt, the widow of a naval officer, who lived at Brest and gave young Raoul a taste for the sea. The lad entered the Borda training-ship, finished his course with honors and quietly made his trip round the world. Thanks to powerful influence, he had just been appointed a member of the official expedition on board the Requin, which was to be sent to the Arctic Circle in search of the survivors of the D'Artoi's expedition, of whom nothing had been heard for three years. Meanwhile, he was enjoying a long furlough which would not be over for six months; and already the dowagers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain were pitying the handsome and apparently delicate stripling for the hard work in store for him. The shyness of the sailor-lad--I was almost saying his innocence--was remarkable. He seemed to have but just left the women's apron-strings. As a matter of fact, petted as he was by his two sisters and his old aunt, he had retained from this purely feminine education manners that were almost candid and stamped with a charm that nothing had yet been able to sully. He was a little over twenty-one years of age and looked eighteen. He had a small, fair mustache, beautiful blue eyes and a complexion like a girl's. Philippe spoiled Raoul. To begin with, he was very proud of him and pleased to foresee a glorious career for his junior in the navy in which one of their ancestors, the famous Chagny de La Roche, had held the rank of admiral. He took advantage of the young man's leave of absence to show him Paris, with all its luxurious and artistic delights. The count considered that, at Raoul's age, it is not good to be too good. Philippe himself had a character that was very well-balanced in work and pleasure alike; his demeanor was always faultless; and he was incapable of setting his brother a bad example. He took him with him wherever he went. He even introduced him to the foyer of the ballet. I know that the count was said to be "on terms" with Sorelli. But it could hardly be reckoned as a crime for this nobleman, a bachelor, with plenty of leisure, especially since his sisters were settled, to come and spend an hour or two after dinner in the company of a dancer, who, though not so very, very witty, had the finest eyes that ever were seen! And, besides, there are places where a true Parisian, when he has the rank of the Comte de Chagny, is bound to show himself; and at that time the foyer of the ballet at the Opera was one of those places. Lastly, Philippe would perhaps not have taken his brother behind the scenes of the Opera if Raoul had not been the first to ask him, repeatedly renewing his request with a gentle obstinacy which the count remembered at a later date. On that evening, Philippe, after applauding the Daae, turned to Raoul and saw that he was quite pale. "Don't you see," said Raoul, "that the woman's fainting?" "You look like fainting yourself," said the count. "What's the matter?" But Raoul had recovered himself and was standing up. "Let's go and see," he said, "she never sang like that before." The count gave his brother a curious smiling glance and seemed quite pleased. They were soon at the door leading from the house to the stage. Numbers of subscribers were slowly making their way through. Raoul tore his gloves without knowing what he was doing and Philippe had much too kind a heart to laugh at him for his impatience. But he now understood why Raoul was absent-minded when spoken to and why he always tried to turn every conversation to the subject of the Opera. They reached the stage and pushed through the crowd of gentlemen, scene-shifters, supers and chorus-girls, Raoul leading the way, feeling that his heart no longer belonged to him, his face set with passion, while Count Philippe followed him with difficulty and continued to smile. At the back of the stage, Raoul had to stop before the inrush of the little troop of ballet-girls who blocked the passage which he was trying to enter. More than one chaffing phrase darted from little made-up lips, to which he did not reply; and at last he was able to pass, and dived into the semi-darkness of a corridor ringing with the name of "Daae! Daae!" The count was surprised to find that Raoul knew the way. He had never taken him to Christine's himself and came to the conclusion that Raoul must have gone there alone while the count stayed talking in the foyer with Sorelli, who often asked him to wait until it was her time to "go on" and sometimes handed him the little gaiters in which she ran down from her dressing-room to preserve the spotlessness of her satin dancing-shoes and her flesh-colored tights. Sorelli had an excuse; she had lost her mother. Postponing his usual visit to Sorelli for a few minutes, the count followed his brother down the passage that led to Daae's dressing-room and saw that it had never been so crammed as on that evening, when the whole house seemed excited by her success and also by her fainting fit. For the girl had not yet come to; and the doctor of the theater had just arrived at the moment when Raoul entered at his heels. Christine, therefore, received the first aid of the one, while opening her eyes in the arms of the other. The count and many more remained crowding in the doorway. "Don't you think, Doctor, that those gentlemen had better clear the room?" asked Raoul coolly. "There's no breathing here." "You're quite right," said the doctor. And he sent every one away, except Raoul and the maid, who looked at Raoul with eyes of the most undisguised astonishment. She had never seen him before and yet dared not question him; and the doctor imagined that the young man was only acting as he did because he had the right to. The viscount, therefore, remained in the room watching Christine as she slowly returned to life, while even the joint managers, Debienne and Poligny, who had come to offer their sympathy and congratulations, found themselves thrust into the passage among the crowd of dandies. The Comte de Chagny, who was one of those standing outside, laughed: "Oh, the rogue, the rogue!" And he added, under his breath: "Those youngsters with their school-girl airs! So he's a Chagny after all!" He turned to go to Sorelli's dressing-room, but met her on the way, with her little troop of trembling ballet-girls, as we have seen. Meanwhile, Christine Daae uttered a deep sigh, which was answered by a groan. She turned her head, saw Raoul and started. She looked at the doctor, on whom she bestowed a smile, then at her maid, then at Raoul again. "Monsieur," she said, in a voice not much above a whisper, "who are you?" "Mademoiselle," replied the young man, kneeling on one knee and pressing a fervent kiss on the diva's hand, "I AM THE LITTLE BOY WHO WENT INTO THE SEA TO RESCUE YOUR SCARF." Christine again looked at the doctor and the maid; and all three began to laugh. Raoul turned very red and stood up. "Mademoiselle," he said, "since you are pleased not to recognize me, I should like to say something to you in private, something very important." "When I am better, do you mind?" And her voice shook. "You have been very good." "Yes, you must go," said the doctor, with his pleasantest smile. "Leave me to attend to mademoiselle." "I am not ill now," said Christine suddenly, with strange and unexpected energy. She rose and passed her hand over her eyelids. "Thank you, Doctor. I should like to be alone. Please go away, all of you. Leave me. I feel very restless this evening." The doctor tried to make a short protest, but, perceiving the girl's evident agitation, he thought the best remedy was not to thwart her. And he went away, saying to Raoul, outside: "She is not herself to-night. She is usually so gentle." Then he said good night and Raoul was left alone. The whole of this part of the theater was now deserted. The farewell ceremony was no doubt taking place in the foyer of the ballet. Raoul thought that Daae might go to it and he waited in the silent solitude, even hiding in the favoring shadow of a doorway. He felt a terrible pain at his heart and it was of this that he wanted to speak to Daae without delay. Suddenly the dressing-room door opened and the maid came out by herself, carrying bundles. He stopped her and asked how her mistress was. The woman laughed and said that she was quite well, but that he must not disturb her, for she wished to be left alone. And she passed on. One idea alone filled Raoul's burning brain: of course, Daae wished to be left alone FOR HIM! Had he not told her that he wanted to speak to her privately? Hardly breathing, he went up to the dressing-room and, with his ear to the door to catch her reply, prepared to knock. But his hand dropped. He had heard A MAN'S VOICE in the dressing-room, saying, in a curiously masterful tone: "Christine, you must love me!" And Christine's voice, infinitely sad and trembling, as though accompanied by tears, replied: "How can you talk like that? WHEN I SING ONLY FOR YOU!" Raoul leaned against the panel to ease his pain. His heart, which had seemed gone for ever, returned to his breast and was throbbing loudly. The whole passage echoed with its beating and Raoul's ears were deafened. Surely, if his heart continued to make such a noise, they would hear it inside, they would open the door and the young man would be turned away in disgrace. What a position for a Chagny! To be caught listening behind a door! He took his heart in his two hands to make it stop. The man's voice spoke again: "Are you very tired?" "Oh, to-night I gave you my soul and I am dead!" Christine replied. "Your soul is a beautiful thing, child," replied the grave man's voice, "and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. THE ANGELS WEPT TONIGHT." Raoul heard nothing after that. Nevertheless, he did not go away, but, as though he feared lest he should be caught, he returned to his dark corner, determined to wait for the man to leave the room. At one and the same time, he had learned what love meant, and hatred. He knew that he loved. He wanted to know whom he hated. To his great astonishment, the door opened and Christine Daae appeared, wrapped in furs, with her face hidden in a lace veil, alone. She closed the door behind her, but Raoul observed that she did not lock it. She passed him. He did not even follow her with his eyes, for his eyes were fixed on the door, which did not open again. When the passage was once more deserted, he crossed it, opened the door of the dressing-room, went in and shut the door. He found himself in absolute darkness. The gas had been turned out. "There is some one here!" said Raoul, with his back against the closed door, in a quivering voice. "What are you hiding for?" All was darkness and silence. Raoul heard only the sound of his own breathing. He quite failed to see that the indiscretion of his conduct was exceeding all bounds. "You shan't leave this until I let you!" he exclaimed. "If you don't answer, you are a coward! But I'll expose you!" And he struck a match. The blaze lit up the room. There was no one in the room! Raoul, first turning the key in the door, lit the gas-jets. He went into the dressing-closet, opened the cupboards, hunted about, felt the walls with his moist hands. Nothing! "Look here!" he said, aloud. "Am I going mad?" He stood for ten minutes listening to the gas flaring in the silence of the empty room; lover though he was, he did not even think of stealing a ribbon that would have given him the perfume of the woman he loved. He went out, not knowing what he was doing nor where he was going. At a given moment in his wayward progress, an icy draft struck him in the face. He found himself at the bottom of a staircase, down which, behind him, a procession of workmen were carrying a sort of stretcher, covered with a white sheet. "Which is the way out, please?" he asked of one of the men. "Straight in front of you, the door is open. But let us pass." Pointing to the stretcher, he asked mechanically: "What's that?" The workmen answered: "'That' is Joseph Buquet, who was found in the third cellar, hanging between a farm-house and a scene from the ROI DE LAHORE." He took off his hat, fell back to make room for the procession and went out. Chapter III The Mysterious Reason During this time, the farewell ceremony was taking place. I have already said that this magnificent function was being given on the occasion of the retirement of M. Debienne and M. Poligny, who had determined to "die game," as we say nowadays. They had been assisted in the realization of their ideal, though melancholy, program by all that counted in the social and artistic world of Paris. All these people met, after the performance, in the foyer of the ballet, where Sorelli waited for the arrival of the retiring managers with a glass of champagne in her hand and a little prepared speech at the tip of her tongue. Behind her, the members of the Corps de Ballet, young and old, discussed the events of the day in whispers or exchanged discreet signals with their friends, a noisy crowd of whom surrounded the supper-tables arranged along the slanting floor. A few of the dancers had already changed into ordinary dress; but most of them wore their skirts of gossamer gauze; and all had thought it the right thing to put on a special face for the occasion: all, that is, except little Jammes, whose fifteen summers--happy age!--seemed already to have forgotten the ghost and the death of Joseph Buquet. She never ceased to laugh and chatter, to hop about and play practical jokes, until Mm. Debienne and Poligny appeared on the steps of the foyer, when she was severely called to order by the impatient Sorelli. Everybody remarked that the retiring managers looked cheerful, as is the Paris way. None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom or indifference over his inward joy. You know that one of your friends is in trouble; do not try to console him: he will tell you that he is already comforted; but, should he have met with good fortune, be careful how you congratulate him: he thinks it so natural that he is surprised that you should speak of it. In Paris, our lives are one masked ball; and the foyer of the ballet is the last place in which two men so "knowing" as M. Debienne and M. Poligny would have made the mistake of betraying their grief, however genuine it might be. And they were already smiling rather too broadly upon Sorelli, who had begun to recite her speech, when an exclamation from that little madcap of a Jammes broke the smile of the managers so brutally that the expression of distress and dismay that lay beneath it became apparent to all eyes: "The Opera ghost!" Jammes yelled these words in a tone of unspeakable terror; and her finger pointed, among the crowd of dandies, to a face so pallid, so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the straddling eyebrows, that the death's head in question immediately scored a huge success. "The Opera ghost! The Opera ghost!" Everybody laughed and pushed his neighbor and wanted to offer the Opera ghost a drink, but he was gone. He had slipped through the crowd; and the others vainly hunted for him, while two old gentlemen tried to calm little Jammes and while little Giry stood screaming like a peacock. Sorelli was furious; she had not been able to finish her speech; the managers, had kissed her, thanked her and run away as fast as the ghost himself. No one was surprised at this, for it was known that they were to go through the same ceremony on the floor above, in the foyer of the singers, and that finally they were themselves to receive their personal friends, for the last time, in the great lobby outside the managers' office, where a regular supper would be served. Here they found the new managers, M. Armand Moncharmin and M. Firmin Richard, whom they hardly knew; nevertheless, they were lavish in protestations of friendship and received a thousand flattering compliments in reply, so that those of the guests who had feared that they had a rather tedious evening in store for them at once put on brighter faces. The supper was almost gay and a particularly clever speech of the representative of the government, mingling the glories of the past with the successes of the future, caused the greatest cordiality to prevail. The retiring managers had already handed over to their successors the two tiny master-keys which opened all the doors--thousands of doors--of the Opera house. And those little keys, the object of general curiosity, were being passed from hand to hand, when the attention of some of the guests was diverted by their discovery, at the end of the table, of that strange, wan and fantastic face, with the hollow eyes, which had already appeared in the foyer of the ballet and been greeted by little Jammes' exclamation: "The Opera ghost!" There sat the ghost, as natural as could be, except that he neither ate nor drank. Those who began by looking at him with a smile ended by turning away their heads, for the sight of him at once provoked the most funereal thoughts. No one repeated the joke of the foyer, no one exclaimed: "There's the Opera ghost!" He himself did not speak a word and his very neighbors could not have stated at what precise moment he had sat down between them; but every one felt that if the dead did ever come and sit at the table of the living, they could not cut a more ghastly figure. The friends of Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin thought that this lean and skinny guest was an acquaintance of Debienne's or Poligny's, while Debienne's and Poligny's friends believed that the cadaverous individual belonged to Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin's party. The result was that no request was made for an explanation; no unpleasant remark; no joke in bad taste, which might have offended this visitor from the tomb. A few of those present who knew the story of the ghost and the description of him given by the chief scene-shifter--they did not know of Joseph Buquet's death--thought, in their own minds, that the man at the end of the table might easily have passed for him; and yet, according to the story, the ghost had no nose and the person in question had. But M. Moncharmin declares, in his Memoirs, that the guest's nose was transparent: "long, thin and transparent" are his exact words. I, for my part, will add that this might very well apply to a false nose. M. Moncharmin may have taken for transparency what was only shininess. Everybody knows that orthopaedic science provides beautiful false noses for those who have lost their noses naturally or as the result of an operation. Did the ghost really take a seat at the managers' supper-table that night, uninvited? And can we be sure that the figure was that of the Opera ghost himself? Who would venture to assert as much? I mention the incident, not because I wish for a second to make the reader believe--or even to try to make him believe--that the ghost was capable of such a sublime piece of impudence; but because, after all, the thing is impossible. M. Armand Moncharmin, in chapter eleven of his Memoirs, says: "When I think of this first evening, I can not separate the secret confided to us by MM. Debienne and Poligny in their office from the presence at our supper of that GHOSTLY person whom none of us knew." What happened was this: Mm. Debienne and Poligny, sitting at the center of the table, had not seen the man with the death's head. Suddenly he began to speak. "The ballet-girls are right," he said. "The death of that poor Buquet is perhaps not so natural as people think." Debienne and Poligny gave a start. "Is Buquet dead?" they cried. "Yes," replied the man, or the shadow of a man, quietly. "He was found, this evening, hanging in the third cellar, between a farm-house and a scene from the Roi de Lahore." The two managers, or rather ex-managers, at once rose and stared strangely at the speaker. They were more excited than they need have been, that is to say, more excited than any one need be by the announcement of the suicide of a chief scene-shifter. They looked at each other. They, had both turned whiter than the table-cloth. At last, Debienne made a sign to Mm. Richard and Moncharmin; Poligny muttered a few words of excuse to the guests; and all four went into the managers' office. I leave M. Moncharmin to complete the story. In his Memoirs, he says: "Mm. Debienne and Poligny seemed to grow more and more excited, and they appeared to have something very difficult to tell us. First, they asked us if we knew the man, sitting at the end of the table, who had told them of the death of Joseph Buquet; and, when we answered in the negative, they looked still more concerned. They took the master-keys from our hands, stared at them for a moment and advised us to have new locks made, with the greatest secrecy, for the rooms, closets and presses that we might wish to have hermetically closed. They said this so funnily that we began to laugh and to ask if there were thieves at the Opera. They replied that there was something worse, which was the GHOST. We began to laugh again, feeling sure that they were indulging in some joke that was intended to crown our little entertainment. Then, at their request, we became 'serious,' resolving to humor them and to enter into the spirit of the game. They told us that they never would have spoken to us of the ghost, if they had not received formal orders from the ghost himself to ask us to be pleasant to him and to grant any request that he might make. However, in their relief at leaving a domain where that tyrannical shade held sway, they had hesitated until the last moment to tell us this curious story, which our skeptical minds were certainly not prepared to entertain. But the announcement of the death of Joseph Buquet had served them as a brutal reminder that, whenever they had disregarded the ghost's wishes, some fantastic or disastrous event had brought them to a sense of their dependence. "During these unexpected utterances made in a tone of the most secret and important confidence, I looked at Richard. Richard, in his student days, had acquired a great reputation for practical joking, and he seemed to relish the dish which was being served up to him in his turn. He did not miss a morsel of it, though the seasoning was a little gruesome because of the death of Buquet. He nodded his head sadly, while the others spoke, and his features assumed the air of a man who bitterly regretted having taken over the Opera, now that he knew that there was a ghost mixed up in the business. I could think of nothing better than to give him a servile imitation of this attitude of despair. However, in spite of all our efforts, we could not, at the finish, help bursting out laughing in the faces of MM. Debienne and Poligny, who, seeing us pass straight from the gloomiest state of mind to one of the most insolent merriment, acted as though they thought that we had gone mad. "The joke became a little tedious; and Richard asked half-seriously and half in jest: "'But, after all, what does this ghost of yours want?' "M. Poligny went to his desk and returned with a copy of the memorandum-book. The memorandum-book begins with the well-known words saying that 'the management of the Opera shall give to the performance of the National Academy of Music the splendor that becomes the first lyric stage in France' and ends with Clause 98, which says that the privilege can be withdrawn if the manager infringes the conditions stipulated in the memorandum-book. This is followed by the conditions, which are four in number. "The copy produced by M. Poligny was written in black ink and exactly similar to that in our possession, except that, at the end, it contained a paragraph in red ink and in a queer, labored handwriting, as though it had been produced by dipping the heads of matches into the ink, the writing of a child that has never got beyond the down-strokes and has not learned to join its letters. This paragraph ran, word for word, as follows: "'5. Or if the manager, in any month, delay for more than a fortnight the payment of the allowance which he shall make to the Opera ghost, an allowance of twenty thousand francs a month, say two hundred and forty thousand francs a year.' "M. Poligny pointed with a hesitating finger to this last clause, which we certainly did not expect. "'Is this all? Does he not want anything else?' asked Richard, with the greatest coolness. "'Yes, he does,' replied Poligny. "And he turned over the pages of the memorandum-book until he came to the clause specifying the days on which certain private boxes were to be reserved for the free use of the president of the republic, the ministers and so on. At the end of this clause, a line had been added, also in red ink: "'Box Five on the grand tier shall be placed at the disposal of the Opera ghost for every performance.' "When we saw this, there was nothing else for us to do but to rise from our chairs, shake our two predecessors warmly by the hand and congratulate them on thinking of this charming little joke, which proved that the old French sense of humor was never likely to become extinct. Richard added that he now understood why MM. Debienne and Poligny were retiring from the management of the National Academy of Music. Business was impossible with so unreasonable a ghost. "'Certainly, two hundred and forty thousand francs are not be picked up for the asking,' said M. Poligny, without moving a muscle of his face. 'And have you considered what the loss over Box Five meant to us? We did not sell it once; and not only that, but we had to return the subscription: why, it's awful! We really can't work to keep ghosts! We prefer to go away!' "'Yes,' echoed M. Debienne, 'we prefer to go away. Let us go.'" "And he stood up. Richard said: 'But, after all all, it seems to me that you were much too kind to the ghost. If I had such a troublesome ghost as that, I should not hesitate to have him arrested.' "'But how? Where?' they cried, in chorus. 'We have never seen him!' "'But when he comes to his box?' "'WE HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM IN HIS BOX.' "'Then sell it.' "'Sell the Opera ghost's box! Well, gentlemen, try it.' "Thereupon we all four left the office. Richard and I had 'never laughed so much in our lives.'" Chapter IV Box Five Armand Moncharmin wrote such voluminous Memoirs during the fairly long period of his co-management that we may well ask if he ever found time to attend to the affairs of the Opera otherwise than by telling what went on there. M. Moncharmin did not know a note of music, but he called the minister of education and fine arts by his Christian name, had dabbled a little in society journalism and enjoyed a considerable private income. Lastly, he was a charming fellow and showed that he was not lacking in intelligence, for, as soon as he made up his mind to be a sleeping partner in the Opera, he selected the best possible active manager and went straight to Firmin Richard. Firmin Richard was a very distinguished composer, who had published a number of successful pieces of all kinds and who liked nearly every form of music and every sort of musician. Clearly, therefore, it was the duty of every sort of musician to like M. Firmin Richard. The only things to be said against him were that he was rather masterful in his ways and endowed with a very hasty temper. The first few days which the partners spent at the Opera were given over to the delight of finding themselves the head of so magnificent an enterprise; and they had forgotten all about that curious, fantastic story of the ghost, when an incident occurred that proved to them that the joke--if joke it were--was not over. M. Firmin Richard reached his office that morning at eleven o'clock. His secretary, M. Remy, showed him half a dozen letters which he had not opened because they were marked "private." One of the letters had at once attracted Richard's attention not only because the envelope was addressed in red ink, but because he seemed to have seen the writing before. He soon remembered that it was the red handwriting in which the memorandum-book had been so curiously completed. He recognized the clumsy childish hand. He opened the letter and read: DEAR MR. MANAGER: I am sorry to have to trouble you at a time when you must be so very busy, renewing important engagements, signing fresh ones and generally displaying your excellent taste. I know what you have done for Carlotta, Sorelli and little Jammes and for a few others whose admirable qualities of talent or genius you have suspected. Of course, when I use these words, I do not mean to apply them to La Carlotta, who sings like a squirt and who ought never to have been allowed to leave the Ambassadeurs and the Cafe Jacquin; nor to La Sorelli, who owes her success mainly to the coach-builders; nor to little Jammes, who dances like a calf in a field. And I am not speaking of Christine Daae either, though her genius is certain, whereas your jealousy prevents her from creating any important part. When all is said, you are free to conduct your little business as you think best, are you not? All the same, I should like to take advantage of the fact that you have not yet turned Christine Daae out of doors by hearing her this evening in the part of Siebel, as that of Margarita has been forbidden her since her triumph of the other evening; and I will ask you not to dispose of my box to-day nor on the FOLLOWING DAYS, for I can not end this letter without telling you how disagreeably surprised I have been once or twice, to hear, on arriving at the Opera, that my box had been sold, at the box-office, by your orders. I did not protest, first, because I dislike scandal, and, second, because I thought that your predecessors, MM. Debienne and Poligny, who were always charming to me, had neglected, before leaving, to mention my little fads to you. I have now received a reply from those gentlemen to my letter asking for an explanation, and this reply proves that you know all about my Memorandum-Book and, consequently, that you are treating me with outrageous contempt. IF YOU WISH TO LIVE IN PEACE, YOU MUST NOT BEGIN BY TAKING AWAY MY PRIVATE BOX. Believe me to be, dear Mr. Manager, without prejudice to these little observations, Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant, OPERA GHOST. The letter was accompanied by a cutting from the agony-column of the Revue Theatrale, which ran: O. G.--There is no excuse for R. and M. We told them and left your memorandum-book in their hands. Kind regards. M. Firmin Richard had hardly finished reading this letter when M. Armand Moncharmin entered, carrying one exactly similar. They looked at each other and burst out laughing. "They are keeping up the joke," said M. Richard, "but I don't call it funny." "What does it all mean?" asked M. Moncharmin. "Do they imagine that, because they have been managers of the Opera, we are going to let them have a box for an indefinite period?" "I am not in the mood to let myself be laughed at long," said Firmin Richard. "It's harmless enough," observed Armand Moncharmin. "What is it they really want? A box for to-night?" M. Firmin Richard told his secretary to send Box Five on the grand tier to Mm. Debienne and Poligny, if it was not sold. It was not. It was sent off to them. Debienne lived at the corner of the Rue Scribe and the Boulevard des Capucines; Poligny, in the Rue Auber. O. Ghost's two letters had been posted at the Boulevard des Capucines post-office, as Moncharmin remarked after examining the envelopes. "You see!" said Richard. They shrugged their shoulders and regretted that two men of that age should amuse themselves with such childish tricks. "They might have been civil, for all that!" said Moncharmin. "Did you notice how they treat us with regard to Carlotta, Sorelli and Little Jammes?" "Why, my dear fellow, these two are mad with jealousy! To think that they went to the expense of, an advertisement in the Revue Theatrale! Have they nothing better to do?" "By the way," said Moncharmin, "they seem to be greatly interested in that little Christine Daae!" "You know as well as I do that she has the reputation of being quite good," said Richard. "Reputations are easily obtained," replied Moncharmin. "Haven't I a reputation for knowing all about music? And I don't know one key from another." "Don't be afraid: you never had that reputation," Richard declared. Thereupon he ordered the artists to be shown in, who, for the last two hours, had been walking up and down outside the door behind which fame and fortune--or dismissal--awaited them. The whole day was spent in discussing, negotiating, signing or cancelling contracts; and the two overworked managers went to bed early, without so much as casting a glance at Box Five to see whether M. Debienne and M. Poligny were enjoying the performance. Next morning, the managers received a card of thanks from the ghost: DEAR, MR. MANAGER: Thanks. Charming evening. Daae exquisite. Choruses want waking up. Carlotta a splendid commonplace instrument. Will write you soon for the 240,000 francs, or 233,424 fr. 70 c., to be correct. Mm. Debienne and Poligny have sent me the 6,575 fr. 30 c. representing the first ten days of my allowance for the current year; their privileges finished on the evening of the tenth inst. Kind regards. O. G. On the other hand, there was a letter from Mm. Debienne and Poligny: GENTLEMEN: We are much obliged for your kind thought of us, but you will easily understand that the prospect of again hearing Faust, pleasant though it is to ex-managers of the Opera, can not make us forget that we have no right to occupy Box Five on the grand tier, which is the exclusive property of HIM of whom we spoke to you when we went through the memorandum-book with you for the last time. See Clause 98, final paragraph. Accept, gentlemen, etc. "Oh, those fellows are beginning to annoy me!" shouted Firmin Richard, snatching up the letter. And that evening Box Five was sold. The next morning, Mm. Richard and Moncharmin, on reaching their office, found an inspector's report relating to an incident that had happened, the night before, in Box Five. I give the essential part of the report: I was obliged to call in a municipal guard twice, this evening, to clear Box Five on the grand tier, once at the beginning and once in the middle of the second act. The occupants, who arrived as the curtain rose on the second act, created a regular scandal by their laughter and their ridiculous observations. There were cries of "Hush!" all around them and the whole house was beginning to protest, when the box-keeper came to fetch me. I entered the box and said what I thought necessary. The people did not seem to me to be in their right mind; and they made stupid remarks. I said that, if the noise was repeated, I should be compelled to clear the box. The moment I left, I heard the laughing again, with fresh protests from the house. I returned with a municipal guard, who turned them out. They protested, still laughing, saying they would not go unless they had their money back. At last, they became quiet and I allowed them to enter the box again. The laughter at once recommenced; and, this time, I had them turned out definitely. "Send for the inspector," said Richard to his secretary, who had already read the report and marked it with blue pencil. M. Remy, the secretary, had foreseen the order and called the inspector at once. "Tell us what happened," said Richard bluntly. The inspector began to splutter and referred to the report. "Well, but what were those people laughing at?" asked Moncharmin. "They must have been dining, sir, and seemed more inclined to lark about than to listen to good music. The moment they entered the box, they came out again and called the box-keeper, who asked them what they wanted. They said, 'Look in the box: there's no one there, is there?' 'No,' said the woman. 'Well,' said they, 'when we went in, we heard a voice saying THAT THE BOX WAS TAKEN!'" M. Moncharmin could not help smiling as he looked at M. Richard; but M. Richard did not smile. He himself had done too much in that way in his time not to recognize, in the inspector's story, all the marks of one of those practical jokes which begin by amusing and end by enraging the victims. The inspector, to curry favor with M. Moncharmin, who was smiling, thought it best to give a smile too. A most unfortunate smile! M. Richard glared at his subordinate, who thenceforth made it his business to display a face of utter consternation. "However, when the people arrived," roared Richard, "there was no one in the box, was there?" "Not a soul, sir, not a soul! Nor in the box on the right, nor in the box on the left: not a soul, sir, I swear! The box-keeper told it me often enough, which proves that it was all a joke." "Oh, you agree, do you?" said Richard. "You agree! It's a joke! And you think it funny, no doubt?" "I think it in very bad taste, sir." "And what did the box-keeper say?" "Oh, she just said that it was the Opera ghost. That's all she said!" And the inspector grinned. But he soon found that he had made a mistake in grinning, for the words had no sooner left his mouth than M. Richard, from gloomy, became furious. "Send for the box-keeper!" he shouted. "Send for her! This minute! This minute! And bring her in to me here! And turn all those people out!" The inspector tried to protest, but Richard closed his mouth with an angry order to hold his tongue. Then, when the wretched man's lips seemed shut for ever, the manager commanded him to open them once more. "Who is this 'Opera ghost?'" he snarled. But the inspector was by this time incapable of speaking a word. He managed to convey, by a despairing gesture, that he knew nothing about it, or rather that he did not wish to know. "Have you ever seen him, have you seen the Opera ghost?" The inspector, by means of a vigorous shake of the head, denied ever having seen the ghost in question. "Very well!" said M. Richard coldly. The inspector's eyes started out of his head, as though to ask why the manager had uttered that ominous "Very well!" "Because I'm going to settle the account of any one who has not seen him!" explained the manager. "As he seems to be everywhere, I can't have people telling me that they see him nowhere. I like people to work for me when I employ them!" Having said this, M. Richard paid no attention to the inspector and discussed various matters of business with his acting-manager, who had entered the room meanwhile. The inspector thought he could go and was gently--oh, so gently!--sidling toward the door, when M. Richard nailed the man to the floor with a thundering: "Stay where you are!" M. Remy had sent for the box-keeper to the Rue de Provence, close to the Opera, where she was engaged as a porteress. She soon made her appearance. "What's your name?" "Mme. Giry. You know me well enough, sir; I'm the mother of little Giry, little Meg, what!" This was said in so rough and solemn a tone that, for a moment, M. Richard was impressed. He looked at Mme. Giry, in her faded shawl, her worn shoes, her old taffeta dress and dingy bonnet. It was quite evident from the manager's attitude, that he either did not know or could not remember having met Mme. Giry, nor even little Giry, nor even "little Meg!" But Mme. Giry's pride was so great that the celebrated box-keeper imagined that everybody knew her. "Never heard of her!" the manager declared. "But that's no reason, Mme. Giry, why I shouldn't ask you what happened last night to make you and the inspector call in a municipal guard." "I was just wanting to see you, sir, and talk to you about it, so that you mightn't have the same unpleasantness as M. Debienne and M. Poligny. They wouldn't listen to me either, at first." "I'm not asking you about all that. I'm asking what happened last night." Mme. Giry turned purple with indignation. Never had she been spoken to like that. She rose as though to go, gathering up the folds of her skirt and waving the feathers of her dingy bonnet with dignity, but, changing her mind, she sat down again and said, in a haughty voice: "I'll tell you what happened. The ghost was annoyed again!" Thereupon, as M. Richard was on the point of bursting out, M. Moncharmin interfered and conducted the interrogatory, whence it appeared that Mme. Giry thought it quite natural that a voice should be heard to say that a box was taken, when there was nobody in the box. She was unable to explain this phenomenon, which was not new to her, except by the intervention of the ghost. Nobody could see the ghost in his box, but everybody could hear him. She had often heard him; and they could believe her, for she always spoke the truth. They could ask M. Debienne and M. Poligny, and anybody who knew her; and also M. Isidore Saack, who had had a leg broken by the ghost! "Indeed!" said Moncharmin, interrupting her. "Did the ghost break poor Isidore Saack's leg?" Mme. Giry opened her eyes with astonishment at such ignorance. However, she consented to enlighten those two poor innocents. The thing had happened in M. Debienne and M. Poligny's time, also in Box Five and also during a performance of FAUST. Mme. Giry coughed, cleared her throat--it sounded as though she were preparing to sing the whole of Gounod's score--and began: "It was like this, sir. That night, M. Maniera and his lady, the jewelers in the Rue Mogador, were sitting in the front of the box, with their great friend, M. Isidore Saack, sitting behind Mme. Maniera. Mephistopheles was singing"--Mme. Giry here burst into song herself--"'Catarina, while you play at sleeping,' and then M. Maniera heard a voice in his right ear (his wife was on his left) saying, 'Ha, ha! Julie's not playing at sleeping!' His wife happened to be called Julie. So. M. Maniera turns to the right to see who was talking to him like that. Nobody there! He rubs his ear and asks himself, if he's dreaming. Then Mephistopheles went on with his serenade... But, perhaps I'm boring you gentlemen?" "No, no, go on." "You are too good, gentlemen," with a smirk. "Well, then, Mephistopheles went on with his serenade"--Mme. Giry, burst into song again--"'Saint, unclose thy portals holy and accord the bliss, to a mortal bending lowly, of a pardon-kiss.' And then M. Maniera again hears the voice in his right ear, saying, this time, 'Ha, ha! Julie wouldn't mind according a kiss to Isidore!' Then he turns round again, but, this time, to the left; and what do you think he sees? Isidore, who had taken his lady's hand and was covering it with kisses through the little round place in the glove--like this, gentlemen"--rapturously kissing the bit of palm left bare in the middle of her thread gloves. "Then they had a lively time between them! Bang! Bang! M. Maniera, who was big and strong, like you, M. Richard, gave two blows to M. Isidore Saack, who was small and weak like M. Moncharmin, saving his presence. There was a great uproar. People in the house shouted, 'That will do! Stop them! He'll kill him!' Then, at last, M. Isidore Saack managed to run away." "Then the ghost had not broken his leg?" asked M. Moncharmin, a little vexed that his figure had made so little impression on Mme. Giry. "He did break it for him, sir," replied Mme. Giry haughtily. "He broke it for him on the grand staircase, which he ran down too fast, sir, and it will be long before the poor gentleman will be able to go up it again!" "Did the ghost tell you what he said in M. Maniera's right ear?" asked M. Moncharmin, with a gravity which he thought exceedingly humorous. "No, sir, it was M. Maniera himself. So----" "But you have spoken to the ghost, my good lady?" "As I'm speaking to you now, my good sir!" Mme. Giry replied. "And, when the ghost speaks to you, what does he say?" "Well, he tells me to bring him a footstool!" This time, Richard burst out laughing, as did Moncharmin and Remy, the secretary. Only the inspector, warned by experience, was careful not to laugh, while Mme. Giry ventured to adopt an attitude that was positively threatening. "Instead of laughing," she cried indignantly, "you'd do better to do as M. Poligny did, who found out for himself." "Found out about what?" asked Moncharmin, who had never been so much amused in his life. "About the ghost, of course! ... Look here ..." She suddenly calmed herself, feeling that this was a solemn moment in her life: "LOOK HERE," she repeated. "They were playing La Juive. M. Poligny thought he would watch the performance from the ghost's box... Well, when Leopold cries, 'Let us fly!'--you know--and Eleazer stops them and says, 'Whither go ye?' ... well, M. Poligny--I was watching him from the back of the next box, which was empty--M. Poligny got up and walked out quite stiffly, like a statue, and before I had time to ask him, 'Whither go ye?' like Eleazer, he was down the staircase, but without breaking his leg. "Still, that doesn't let us know how the Opera ghost came to ask you for a footstool," insisted M. Moncharmin. "Well, from that evening, no one tried to take the ghost's private box from him. The manager gave orders that he was to have it at each performance. And, whenever he came, he asked me for a footstool." "Tut, tut! A ghost asking for a footstool! Then this ghost of yours is a woman?" "No, the ghost is a man." "How do you know?" "He has a man's voice, oh, such a lovely man's voice! This is what happens: When he comes to the opera, it's usually in the middle of the first act. He gives three little taps on the door of Box Five. The first time I heard those three taps, when I knew there was no one in the box, you can think how puzzled I was! I opened the door, listened, looked; nobody! And then I heard a voice say, 'Mme. Jules' my poor husband's name was Jules--'a footstool, please.' Saving your presence, gentlemen, it made me feel all-overish like. But the voice went on, 'Don't be frightened, Mme. Jules, I'm the Opera ghost!' And the voice was so soft and kind that I hardly felt frightened. THE VOICE WAS SITTING IN THE CORNER CHAIR, ON THE RIGHT, IN THE FRONT ROW." "Was there any one in the box on the right of Box Five?" asked Moncharmin. "No; Box Seven, and Box Three, the one on the left, were both empty. The curtain had only just gone up." "And what did you do?" "Well, I brought the footstool. Of course, it wasn't for himself he wanted it, but for his lady! But I never heard her nor saw her." "Eh? What? So now the ghost is married!" The eyes of the two managers traveled from Mme. Giry to the inspector, who, standing behind the box-keeper, was waving his arms to attract their attention. He tapped his forehead with a distressful forefinger, to convey his opinion that the widow Jules Giry was most certainly mad, a piece of pantomime which confirmed M. Richard in his determination to get rid of an inspector who kept a lunatic in his service. Meanwhile, the worthy lady went on about her ghost, now painting his generosity: "At the end of the performance, he always gives me two francs, sometimes five, sometimes even ten, when he has been many days without coming. Only, since people have begun to annoy him again, he gives me nothing at all. "Excuse me, my good woman," said Moncharmin, while Mme. Giry tossed the feathers in her dingy hat at this persistent familiarity, "excuse me, how does the ghost manage to give you your two francs?" "Why, he leaves them on the little shelf in the box, of course. I find them with the program, which I always give him. Some evenings, I find flowers in the box, a rose that must have dropped from his lady's bodice ... for he brings a lady with him sometimes; one day, they left a fan behind them." "Oh, the ghost left a fan, did he? And what did you do with it?" "Well, I brought it back to the box next night." Here the inspector's voice was raised. "You've broken the rules; I shall have to fine you, Mme. Giry." "Hold your tongue, you fool!" muttered M. Firmin Richard. "You brought back the fan. And then?" "Well, then, they took it away with them, sir; it was not there at the end of the performance; and in its place they left me a box of English sweets, which I'm very fond of. That's one of the ghost's pretty thoughts." "That will do, Mme. Giry. You can go." When Mme. Giry had bowed herself out, with the dignity that never deserted her, the manager told the inspector that they had decided to dispense with that old madwoman's services; and, when he had gone in his turn, they instructed the acting-manager to make up the inspector's accounts. Left alone, the managers told each other of the idea which they both had in mind, which was that they should look into that little matter of Box Five themselves. Chapter V The Enchanted Violin Christine Daae, owing to intrigues to which I will return later, did not immediately continue her triumph at the Opera. After the famous gala night, she sang once at the Duchess de Zurich's; but this was the last occasion on which she was heard in private. She refused, without plausible excuse, to appear at a charity concert to which she had promised her assistance. She acted throughout as though she were no longer the mistress of her own destiny and as though she feared a fresh triumph. She knew that the Comte de Chagny, to please his brother, had done his best on her behalf with M. Richard; and she wrote to thank him and also to ask him to cease speaking in her favor. Her reason for this curious attitude was never known. Some pretended that it was due to overweening pride; others spoke of her heavenly modesty. But people on the stage are not so modest as all that; and I think that I shall not be far from the truth if I ascribe her action simply to fear. Yes, I believe that Christine Daae was frightened by what had happened to her. I have a letter of Christine's (it forms part of the Persian's collection), relating to this period, which suggests a feeling of absolute dismay: "I don't know myself when I sing," writes the poor child. She showed herself nowhere; and the Vicomte de Chagny tried in vain to meet her. He wrote to her, asking to call upon her, but despaired of receiving a reply when, one morning, she sent him the following note: MONSIEUR: I have not forgotten the little boy who went into the sea to rescue my scarf. I feel that I must write to you to-day, when I am going to Perros, in fulfilment of a sacred duty. To-morrow is the anniversary of the death of my poor father, whom you knew and who was very fond of you. He is buried there, with his violin, in the graveyard of the little church, at the bottom of the slope where we used to play as children, beside the road where, when we were a little bigger, we said good-by for the last time. The Vicomte de Chagny hurriedly consulted a railway guide, dressed as quickly as he could, wrote a few lines for his valet to take to his brother and jumped into a cab which brought him to the Gare Montparnasse just in time to miss the morning train. He spent a dismal day in town and did not recover his spirits until the evening, when he was seated in his compartment in the Brittany express. He read Christine's note over and over again, smelling its perfume, recalling the sweet pictures of his childhood, and spent the rest of that tedious night journey in feverish dreams that began and ended with Christine Daae. Day was breaking when he alighted at Lannion. He hurried to the diligence for Perros-Guirec. He was the only passenger. He questioned the driver and learned that, on the evening of the previous day, a young lady who looked like a Parisian had gone to Perros and put up at the inn known as the Setting Sun. The nearer he drew to her, the more fondly he remembered the story of the little Swedish singer. Most of the details are still unknown to the public. There was once, in a little market-town not far from Upsala, a peasant who lived there with his family, digging the earth during the week and singing in the choir on Sundays. This peasant had a little daughter to whom he taught the musical alphabet before she knew how to read. Daae's father was a great musician, perhaps without knowing it. Not a fiddler throughout the length and breadth of Scandinavia played as he did. His reputation was widespread and he was always invited to set the couples dancing at weddings and other festivals. His wife died when Christine was entering upon her sixth year. Then the father, who cared only for his daughter and his music, sold his patch of ground and went to Upsala in search of fame and fortune. He found nothing but poverty. He returned to the country, wandering from fair to fair, strumming his Scandinavian melodies, while his child, who never left his side, listened to him in ecstasy or sang to his playing. One day, at Ljimby Fair, Professor Valerius heard them and took them to Gothenburg. He maintained that the father was the first violinist in the world and that the daughter had the making of a great artist. Her education and instruction were provided for. She made rapid progress and charmed everybody with her prettiness, her grace of manner and her genuine eagerness to please. When Valerius and his wife went to settle in France, they took Daae and Christine with them. "Mamma" Valerius treated Christine as her daughter. As for Daae, he began to pine away with homesickness. He never went out of doors in Paris, but lived in a sort of dream which he kept up with his violin. For hours at a time, he remained locked up in his bedroom with his daughter, fiddling and singing, very, very softly. Sometimes Mamma Valerius would come and listen behind the door, wipe away a tear and go down-stairs again on tiptoe, sighing for her Scandinavian skies. Daae seemed not to recover his strength until the summer, when the whole family went to stay at Perros-Guirec, in a far-away corner of Brittany, where the sea was of the same color as in his own country. Often he would play his saddest tunes on the beach and pretend that the sea stopped its roaring to listen to them. And then he induced Mamma Valerius to indulge a queer whim of his. At the time of the "pardons," or Breton pilgrimages, the village festival and dances, he went off with his fiddle, as in the old days, and was allowed to take his daughter with him for a week. They gave the smallest hamlets music to last them for a year and slept at night in a barn, refusing a bed at the inn, lying close together on the straw, as when they were so poor in Sweden. At the same time, they were very neatly dressed, made no collection, refused the halfpence offered them; and the people around could not understand the conduct of this rustic fiddler, who tramped the roads with that pretty child who sang like an angel from Heaven. They followed them from village to village. One day, a little boy, who was out with his governess, made her take a longer walk than he intended, for he could not tear himself from the little girl whose pure, sweet voice seemed to bind him to her. They came to the shore of an inlet which is still called Trestraou, but which now, I believe, harbors a casino or something of the sort. At that time, there was nothing but sky and sea and a stretch of golden beach. Only, there was also a high wind, which blew Christine's scarf out to sea. Christine gave a cry and put out her arms, but the scarf was already far on the waves. Then she heard a voice say: "It's all right, I'll go and fetch your scarf out of the sea." And she saw a little boy running fast, in spite of the outcries and the indignant protests of a worthy lady in black. The little boy ran into the sea, dressed as he was, and brought her back her scarf. Boy and scarf were both soaked through. The lady in black made a great fuss, but Christine laughed merrily and kissed the little boy, who was none other than the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, staying at Lannion with his aunt. During the season, they saw each other and played together almost every day. At the aunt's request, seconded by Professor Valerius, Daae consented to give the young viscount some violin lessons. In this way, Raoul learned to love the same airs that had charmed Christine's childhood. They also both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends; and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage-doors, like beggars: "Ma'am ..." or, "Kind gentleman ... have you a little story to tell us, please?" And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the "korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather. But their great treat was, in the twilight, in the great silence of the evening, after the sun had set in the sea, when Daae came and sat down by them on the roadside and, in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should frighten the ghosts whom he evoked, told them the legends of the land of the North. And, the moment he stopped, the children would ask for more. There was one story that began: "A king sat in a little boat on one of those deep, still lakes that open like a bright eye in the midst of the Norwegian mountains ..." And another: "Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her little red shoes and her fiddle, but most of all loved, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music." While the old man told this story, Raoul looked at Christine's blue eyes and golden hair; and Christine thought that Lotte was very lucky to hear the Angel of Music when she went to sleep. The Angel of Music played a part in all Daddy Daae's tales; and he maintained that every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life. Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle, as happened to Lotte, and that is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men at fifty, which, you must admit, is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practise their scales. And, sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience. No one ever sees the Angel; but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad and disheartened. Then their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Persons who are visited by the Angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. And they can not touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame. Then people who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have genius. Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daae shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up, as he said: "You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!" Daddy was beginning to cough at that time. Three years later, Raoul and Christine met again at Perros. Professor Valerius was dead, but his widow remained in France with Daddy Daae and his daughter, who continued to play the violin and sing, wrapping in their dream of harmony their kind patroness, who seemed henceforth to live on music alone. The young man, as he now was, had come to Perros on the chance of finding them and went straight to the house in which they used to stay. He first saw the old man; and then Christine entered, carrying the tea-tray. She flushed at the sight of Raoul, who went up to her and kissed her. She asked him a few questions, performed her duties as hostess prettily, took up the tray again and left the room. Then she ran into the garden and took refuge on a bench, a prey to feelings that stirred her young heart for the first time. Raoul followed her and they talked till the evening, very shyly. They were quite changed, cautious as two diplomatists, and told each other things that had nothing to do with their budding sentiments. When they took leave of each other by the roadside, Raoul, pressing a kiss on Christine's trembling hand, said: "Mademoiselle, I shall never forget you!" And he went away regretting his words, for he knew that Christine could not be the wife of the Vicomte de Chagny. As for Christine, she tried not to think of him and devoted herself wholly to her art. She made wonderful progress and those who heard her prophesied that she would be the greatest singer in the world. Meanwhile, the father died; and, suddenly, she seemed to have lost, with him, her voice, her soul and her genius. She retained just, but only just, enough of this to enter the CONSERVATOIRE, where she did not distinguish herself at all, attending the classes without enthusiasm and taking a prize only to please old Mamma Valerius, with whom she continued to live. The first time that Raoul saw Christine at the Opera, he was charmed by the girl's beauty and by the sweet images of the past which it evoked, but was rather surprised at the negative side of her art. He returned to listen to her. He followed her in the wings. He waited for her behind a Jacob's ladder. He tried to attract her attention. More than once, he walked after her to the door of her box, but she did not see him. She seemed, for that matter, to see nobody. She was all indifference. Raoul suffered, for she was very beautiful and he was shy and dared not confess his love, even to himself. And then came the lightning-flash of the gala performance: the heavens torn asunder and an angel's voice heard upon earth for the delight of mankind and the utter capture of his heart. And then ... and then there was that man's voice behind the door--"You must love me!"--and no one in the room... Why did she laugh when he reminded her of the incident of the scarf? Why did she not recognize him? And why had she written to him? ... Perros was reached at last. Raoul walked into the smoky sitting-room of the Setting Sun and at once saw Christine standing before him, smiling and showing no astonishment. "So you have come," she said. "I felt that I should find you here, when I came back from mass. Some one told me so, at the church." "Who?" asked Raoul, taking her little hand in his. "Why, my poor father, who is dead." There was a silence; and then Raoul asked: "Did your father tell you that I love you, Christine, and that I can not live without you?" Christine blushed to the eyes and turned away her head. In a trembling voice, she said: "Me? You are dreaming, my friend!" And she burst out laughing, to put herself in countenance. "Don't laugh, Christine; I am quite serious," Raoul answered. And she replied gravely: "I did not make you come to tell me such things as that." "You 'made me come,' Christine; you knew that your letter would not leave me indignant and that I should hasten to Perros. How can you have thought that, if you did not think I loved you?" "I thought you would remember our games here, as children, in which my father so often joined. I really don't know what I thought... Perhaps I was wrong to write to you ... This anniversary and your sudden appearance in my room at the Opera, the other evening, reminded me of the time long past and made me write to you as the little girl that I then was..." There was something in Christine's attitude that seemed to Raoul not natural. He did not feel any hostility in her; far from it: the distressed affection shining in her eyes told him that. But why was this affection distressed? That was what he wished to know and what was irritating him. "When you saw me in your dressing-room, was that the first time you noticed me, Christine?" She was incapable of lying. "No," she said, "I had seen you several times in your brother's box. And also on the stage." "I thought so!" said Raoul, compressing his lips. "But then why, when you saw me in your room, at your feet, reminding you that I had rescued your scarf from the sea, why did you answer as though you did not know me and also why did you laugh?" The tone of these questions was so rough that Christine stared at Raoul without replying. The young man himself was aghast at the sudden quarrel which he had dared to raise at the very moment when he had resolved to speak words of gentleness, love and submission to Christine. A husband, a lover with all rights, would talk no differently to a wife, a mistress who had offended him. But he had gone too far and saw no other way out of the ridiculous position than to behave odiously. "You don't answer!" he said angrily and unhappily. "Well, I will answer for you. It was because there was some one in the room who was in your way, Christine, some one that you did not wish to know that you could be interested in any one else!" "If any one was in my way, my friend," Christine broke in coldly, "if any one was in my way, that evening, it was yourself, since I told you to leave the room!" "Yes, so that you might remain with the other!" "What are you saying, monsieur?" asked the girl excitedly. "And to what other do you refer?" "To the man to whom you said, 'I sing only for you! ... to-night I gave you my soul and I am dead!'" Christine seized Raoul's arm and clutched it with a strength which no one would have suspected in so frail a creature. "Then you were listening behind the door?" "Yes, because I love you everything ... And I heard everything ..." "You heard what?" And the young girl, becoming strangely calm, released Raoul's arm. "He said to you, 'Christine, you must love me!'" At these words, a deathly pallor spread over Christine's face, dark rings formed round her eyes, she staggered and seemed on the point of swooning. Raoul darted forward, with arms outstretched, but Christine had overcome her passing faintness and said, in a low voice: "Go on! Go on! Tell me all you heard!" At an utter loss to understand, Raoul answered: "I heard him reply, when you said you had given him your soul, 'Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight.'" Christine carried her hand to her heart, a prey to indescribable emotion. Her eyes stared before her like a madwoman's. Raoul was terror-stricken. But suddenly Christine's eyes moistened and two great tears trickled, like two pearls, down her ivory cheeks. "Christine!" "Raoul!" The young man tried to take her in his arms, but she escaped and fled in great disorder. While Christine remained locked in her room, Raoul was at his wit's end what to do. He refused to breakfast. He was terribly concerned and bitterly grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet, slip past without the presence of the young Swedish girl. Why did she not come to roam with him through the country where they had so many memories in common? He heard that she had had a mass said, that morning, for the repose of her father's soul and spent a long time praying in the little church and on the fiddler's tomb. Then, as she seemed to have nothing more to do at Perros and, in fact, was doing nothing there, why did she not go back to Paris at once? Raoul walked away, dejectedly, to the graveyard in which the church stood and was indeed alone among the tombs, reading the inscriptions; but, when he turned behind the apse, he was suddenly struck by the dazzling note of the flowers that straggled over the white ground. They were marvelous red roses that had blossomed in the morning, in the snow, giving a glimpse of life among the dead, for death was all around him. It also, like the flowers, issued from the ground, which had flung back a number of its corpses. Skeletons and skulls by the hundred were heaped against the wall of the church, held in position by a wire that left the whole gruesome stack visible. Dead men's bones, arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the walls of the sacristy had been built. The door of the sacristy opened in the middle of that bony structure, as is often seen in old Breton churches. Raoul said a prayer for Daae and then, painfully impressed by all those eternal smiles on the mouths of skulls, he climbed the slope and sat down on the edge of the heath overlooking the sea. The wind fell with the evening. Raoul was surrounded by icy darkness, but he did not feel the cold. It was here, he remembered, that he used to come with little Christine to see the Korrigans dance at the rising of the moon. He had never seen any, though his eyes were good, whereas Christine, who was a little shortsighted, pretended that she had seen many. He smiled at the thought and then suddenly gave a start. A voice behind him said: "Do you think the Korrigans will come this evening?" It was Christine. He tried to speak. She put her gloved hand on his mouth. "Listen, Raoul. I have decided to tell you something serious, very serious ... Do you remember the legend of the Angel of Music?" "I do indeed," he said. "I believe it was here that your father first told it to us." "And it was here that he said, 'When I am in Heaven, my child, I will send him to you.' Well, Raoul, my father is in Heaven, and I have been visited by the Angel of Music." "I have no doubt of it," replied the young man gravely, for it seemed to him that his friend, in obedience to a pious thought, was connecting the memory of her father with the brilliancy of her last triumph. Christine appeared astonished at the Vicomte de Chagny's coolness: "How do you understand it?" she asked, bringing her pale face so close to his that he might have thought that Christine was going to give him a kiss; but she only wanted to read his eyes in spite of the dark. "I understand," he said, "that no human being can sing as you sang the other evening without the intervention of some miracle. No professor on earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel of Music, Christine." "Yes," she said solemnly, "IN MY DRESSING-ROOM. That is where he comes to give me my lessons daily." "In your dressing-room?" he echoed stupidly. "Yes, that is where I have heard him; and I have not been the only one to hear him." "Who else heard him, Christine?" "You, my friend." "I? I heard the Angel of Music?" "Yes, the other evening, it was he who was talking when you were listening behind the door. It was he who said, 'You must love me.' But I then thought that I was the only one to hear his voice. Imagine my astonishment when you told me, this morning, that you could hear him too." Raoul burst out laughing. The first rays of the moon came and shrouded the two young people in their light. Christine turned on Raoul with a hostile air. Her eyes, usually so gentle, flashed fire. "What are you laughing at? YOU think you heard a man's voice, I suppose?" "Well! ..." replied the young man, whose ideas began to grow confused in the face of Christine's determined attitude. "It's you, Raoul, who say that? You, an old playfellow of my own! A friend of my father's! But you have changed since those days. What are you thinking of? I am an honest girl, M. le Vicomte de Chagny, and I don't lock myself up in my dressing-room with men's voices. If you had opened the door, you would have seen that there was nobody in the room!" "That's true! I did open the door, when you were gone, and I found no one in the room." "So you see! ... Well?" The viscount summoned up all his courage. "Well, Christine, I think that somebody is making game of you." She gave a cry and ran away. He ran after her, but, in a tone of fierce anger, she called out: "Leave me! Leave me!" And she disappeared. Raoul returned to the inn feeling very weary, very low-spirited and very sad. He was told that Christine had gone to her bedroom saying that she would not be down to dinner. Raoul dined alone, in a very gloomy mood. Then he went to his room and tried to read, went to bed and tried to sleep. There was no sound in the next room. The hours passed slowly. It was about half-past eleven when he distinctly heard some one moving, with a light, stealthy step, in the room next to his. Then Christine had not gone to bed! Without troubling for a reason, Raoul dressed, taking care not to make a sound, and waited. Waited for what? How could he tell? But his heart thumped in his chest when he heard Christine's door turn slowly on its hinges. Where could she be going, at this hour, when every one was fast asleep at Perros? Softly opening the door, he saw Christine's white form, in the moonlight, slipping along the passage. She went down the stairs and he leaned over the baluster above her. Suddenly he heard two voices in rapid conversation. He caught one sentence: "Don't lose the key." It was the landlady's voice. The door facing the sea was opened and locked again. Then all was still. Raoul ran back to his room and threw back the window. Christine's white form stood on the deserted quay. The first floor of the Setting Sun was at no great height and a tree growing against the wall held out its branches to Raoul's impatient arms and enabled him to climb down unknown to the landlady. Her amazement, therefore, was all the greater when, the next morning, the young man was brought back to her half frozen, more dead than alive, and when she learned that he had been found stretched at full length on the steps of the high altar of the little church. She ran at once to tell Christine, who hurried down and, with the help of the landlady, did her best to revive him. He soon opened his eyes and was not long in recovering when he saw his friend's charming face leaning over him. A few weeks later, when the tragedy at the Opera compelled the intervention of the public prosecutor, M. Mifroid, the commissary of police, examined the Vicomte de Chagny touching the events of the night at Perros. I quote the questions and answers as given in the official report pp. 150 et seq.: Q. "Did Mlle. Daae not see you come down from your room by the curious road which you selected?" R. "No, monsieur, no, although, when walking behind her, I took no pains to deaden the sound of my footsteps. In fact, I was anxious that she should turn round and see me. I realized that I had no excuse for following her and that this way of spying on her was unworthy of me. But she seemed not to hear me and acted exactly as though I were not there. She quietly left the quay and then suddenly walked quickly up the road. The church-clock had struck a quarter to twelve and I thought that this must have made her hurry, for she began almost to run and continued hastening until she came to the church." Q. "Was the gate open?" R. "Yes, monsieur, and this surprised me, but did not seem to surprise Mlle. Daae." Q. "Was there no one in the churchyard?" R. "I did not see any one; and, if there had been, I must have seen him. The moon was shining on the snow and made the night quite light." Q. "Was it possible for any one to hide behind the tombstones?" R. "No, monsieur. They were quite small, poor tombstones, partly hidden under the snow, with their crosses just above the level of the ground. The only shadows were those of the crosses and ourselves. The church stood out quite brightly. I never saw so clear a night. It was very fine and very cold and one could see everything." Q. "Are you at all superstitious?" R. "No, monsieur, I am a practising Catholic," Q. "In what condition of mind were you?" R. "Very healthy and peaceful, I assure you. Mlle. Daae's curious action in going out at that hour had worried me at first; but, as soon as I saw her go to the churchyard, I thought that she meant to fulfil some pious duty on her father's grave and I considered this so natural that I recovered all my calmness. I was only surprised that she had not heard me walking behind her, for my footsteps were quite audible on the hard snow. But she must have been taken up with her intentions and I resolved not to disturb her. She knelt down by her father's grave, made the sign of the cross and began to pray. At that moment, it struck midnight. At the last stroke, I saw Mlle. Daae life{sic} her eyes to the sky and stretch out her arms as though in ecstasy. I was wondering what the reason could be, when I myself raised my head and everything within me seemed drawn toward the invisible, WHICH WAS PLAYING THE MOST PERFECT MUSIC! Christine and I knew that music; we had heard it as children. But it had never been executed with such divine art, even by M. Daae. I remembered all that Christine had told me of the Angel of Music. The air was The Resurrection of Lazarus, which old M. Daae used to play to us in his hours of melancholy and of faith. If Christine's Angel had existed, he could not have played better, that night, on the late musician's violin. When the music stopped, I seemed to hear a noise from the skulls in the heap of bones; it was as though they were chuckling and I could not help shuddering." Q. "Did it not occur to you that the musician might be hiding behind that very heap of bones?" R. "It was the one thought that did occur to me, monsieur, so much so that I omitted to follow Mlle. Daae, when she stood up and walked slowly to the gate. She was so much absorbed just then that I am not surprised that she did not see me." Q. "Then what happened that you were found in the morning lying half-dead on the steps of the high altar?" R. "First a skull rolled to my feet ... then another ... then another ... It was as if I were the mark of that ghastly game of bowls. And I had an idea that false step must have destroyed the balance of the structure behind which our musician was concealed. This surmise seemed to be confirmed when I saw a shadow suddenly glide along the sacristy wall. I ran up. The shadow had already pushed open the door and entered the church. But I was quicker than the shadow and caught hold of a corner of its cloak. At that moment, we were just in front of the high altar; and the moonbeams fell straight upon us through the stained-glass windows of the apse. As I did not let go of the cloak, the shadow turned round; and I saw a terrible death's head, which darted a look at me from a pair of scorching eyes. I felt as if I were face to face with Satan; and, in the presence of this unearthly apparition, my heart gave way, my courage failed me ... and I remember nothing more until I recovered consciousness at the Setting Sun." Chapter VI A Visit to Box Five We left M. Firmin Richard and M. Armand Moncharmin at the moment when they were deciding "to look into that little matter of Box Five." Leaving behind them the broad staircase which leads from the lobby outside the managers' offices to the stage and its dependencies, they crossed the stage, went out by the subscribers' door and entered the house through the first little passage on the left. Then they made their way through the front rows of stalls and looked at Box Five on the grand tier, They could not see it well, because it was half in darkness and because great covers were flung over the red velvet of the ledges of all the boxes. They were almost alone in the huge, gloomy house; and a great silence surrounded them. It was the time when most of the stage-hands go out for a drink. The staff had left the boards for the moment, leaving a scene half set. A few rays of light, a wan, sinister light, that seemed to have been stolen from an expiring luminary, fell through some opening or other upon an old tower that raised its pasteboard battlements on the stage; everything, in this deceptive light, adopted a fantastic shape. In the orchestra stalls, the drugget covering them looked like an angry sea, whose glaucous waves had been suddenly rendered stationary by a secret order from the storm phantom, who, as everybody knows, is called Adamastor. MM. Moncharmin and Richard were the shipwrecked mariners amid this motionless turmoil of a calico sea. They made for the left boxes, plowing their way like sailors who leave their ship and try to struggle to the shore. The eight great polished columns stood up in the dusk like so many huge piles supporting the threatening, crumbling, big-bellied cliffs whose layers were represented by the circular, parallel, waving lines of the balconies of the grand, first and second tiers of boxes. At the top, right on top of the cliff, lost in M. Lenepveu's copper ceiling, figures grinned and grimaced, laughed and jeered at MM. Richard and Moncharmin's distress. And yet these figures were usually very serious. Their names were Isis, Amphitrite, Hebe, Pandora, Psyche, Thetis, Pomona, Daphne, Clytie, Galatea and Arethusa. Yes, Arethusa herself and Pandora, whom we all know by her box, looked down upon the two new managers of the Opera, who ended by clutching at some piece of wreckage and from there stared silently at Box Five on the grand tier. I have said that they were distressed. At least, I presume so. M. Moncharmin, in any case, admits that he was impressed. To quote his own words, in his Memoirs: "This moonshine about the Opera ghost in which, since we first took over the duties of MM. Poligny and Debienne, we had been so nicely steeped"--Moncharmin's style is not always irreproachable--"had no doubt ended by blinding my imaginative and also my visual faculties. It may be that the exceptional surroundings in which we found ourselves, in the midst of an incredible silence, impressed us to an unusual extent. It may be that we were the sport of a kind of hallucination brought about by the semi-darkness of the theater and the partial gloom that filled Box Five. At any rate, I saw and Richard also saw a shape in the box. Richard said nothing, nor I either. But we spontaneously seized each other's hand. We stood like that for some minutes, without moving, with our eyes fixed on the same point; but the figure had disappeared. Then we went out and, in the lobby, communicated our impressions to each other and talked about 'the shape.' The misfortune was that my shape was not in the least like Richard's. I had seen a thing like a death's head resting on the ledge of the box, whereas Richard saw the shape of an old woman who looked like Mme. Giry. We soon discovered that we had really been the victims of an illusion, whereupon, without further delay and laughing like madmen, we ran to Box Five on the grand tier, went inside and found no shape of any kind." Box Five is just like all the other grand tier boxes. There is nothing to distinguish it from any of the others. M. Moncharmin and M. Richard, ostensibly highly amused and laughing at each other, moved the furniture of the box, lifted the cloths and the chairs and particularly examined the arm-chair in which "the man's voice" used to sit. But they saw that it was a respectable arm-chair, with no magic about it. Altogether, the box was the most ordinary box in the world, with its red hangings, its chairs, its carpet and its ledge covered in red velvet. After, feeling the carpet in the most serious manner possible, and discovering nothing more here or anywhere else, they went down to the corresponding box on the pit tier below. In Box Five on the pit tier, which is just inside the first exit from the stalls on the left, they found nothing worth mentioning either. "Those people are all making fools of us!" Firmin Richard ended by exclaiming. "It will be FAUST on Saturday: let us both see the performance from Box Five on the grand tier!" Chapter VII Faust and What Followed On the Saturday morning, on reaching their office, the joint managers found a letter from O. G. worded in these terms: MY DEAR MANAGERS: So it is to be war between us? If you still care for peace, here is my ultimatum. It consists of the four following conditions: 1. You must give me back my private box; and I wish it to be at my free disposal from henceforward. 2. The part of Margarita shall be sung this evening by Christine Daae. Never mind about Carlotta; she will be ill. 3. I absolutely insist upon the good and loyal services of Mme. Giry, my box-keeper, whom you will reinstate in her functions forthwith. 4. Let me know by a letter handed to Mme. Giry, who will see that it reaches me, that you accept, as your predecessors did, the conditions in my memorandum-book relating to my monthly allowance. I will inform you later how you are to pay it to me. If you refuse, you will give FAUST to-night in a house with a curse upon it. Take my advice and be warned in time. O. G. "Look here, I'm getting sick of him, sick of him!" shouted Richard, bringing his fists down on his office-table. Just then, Mercier, the acting-manager, entered. "Lachenel would like to see one of you gentlemen," he said. "He says that his business is urgent and he seems quite upset." "Who's Lachenel?" asked Richard. "He's your stud-groom." "What do you mean? My stud-groom?" "Yes, sir," explained Mercier, "there are several grooms at the Opera and M. Lachenel is at the head of them." "And what does this groom do?" "He has the chief management of the stable." "What stable?" "Why, yours, sir, the stable of the Opera." "Is there a stable at the Opera? Upon my word, I didn't know. Where is it?" "In the cellars, on the Rotunda side. It's a very important department; we have twelve horses." "Twelve horses! And what for, in Heaven's name?" "Why, we want trained horses for the processions in the Juive, The Profeta and so on; horses 'used to the boards.' It is the grooms' business to teach them. M. Lachenel is very clever at it. He used to manage Franconi's stables." "Very well ... but what does he want?" "I don't know; I never saw him in such a state." "He can come in." M. Lachenel came in, carrying a riding-whip, with which he struck his right boot in an irritable manner. "Good morning, M. Lachenel," said Richard, somewhat impressed. "To what do we owe the honor of your visit?" "Mr. Manager, I have come to ask you to get rid of the whole stable." "What, you want to get rid of our horses?" "I'm not talking of the horses, but of the stablemen." "How many stablemen have you, M. Lachenel?" "Six stablemen! That's at least two too many." "These are 'places,'" Mercier interposed, "created and forced upon us by the under-secretary for fine arts. They are filled by protegees of the government and, if I may venture to ..." "I don't care a hang for the government!" roared Richard. "We don't need more than four stablemen for twelve horses." "Eleven," said the head riding-master, correcting him. "Twelve," repeated Richard. "Eleven," repeated Lachenel. "Oh, the acting-manager told me that you had twelve horses!" "I did have twelve, but I have only eleven since Cesar was stolen." And M. Lachenel gave himself a great smack on the boot with his whip. "Has Cesar been stolen?" cried the acting-manager. "Cesar, the white horse in the Profeta?" "There are not two Cesars," said the stud-groom dryly. "I was ten years at Franconi's and I have seen plenty of horses in my time. Well, there are not two Cesars. And he's been stolen." "How?" "I don't know. Nobody knows. That's why I have come to ask you to sack the whole stable." "What do your stablemen say?" "All sorts of nonsense. Some of them accuse the supers. Others pretend that it's the acting-manager's doorkeeper ..." "My doorkeeper? I'll answer for him as I would for myself!" protested Mercier. "But, after all, M. Lachenel," cried Richard, "you must have some idea." "Yes, I have," M. Lachenel declared. "I have an idea and I'll tell you what it is. There's no doubt about it in my mind." He walked up to the two managers and whispered. "It's the ghost who did the trick!" Richard gave a jump. "What, you too! You too!" "How do you mean, I too? Isn't it natural, after what I saw?" "What did you see?" "I saw, as clearly as I now see you, a black shadow riding a white horse that was as like Cesar as two peas!" "And did you run after them?" "I did and I shouted, but they were too fast for me and disappeared in the darkness of the underground gallery." M. Richard rose. "That will do, M. Lachenel. You can go ... We will lodge a complaint against THE GHOST." "And sack my stable?" "Oh, of course! Good morning." M. Lachenel bowed and withdrew. Richard foamed at the mouth. "Settle that idiot's account at once, please." "He is a friend of the government representative's!" Mercier ventured to say. "And he takes his vermouth at Tortoni's with Lagrene, Scholl and Pertuiset, the lion-hunter," added Moncharmin. "We shall have the whole press against us! He'll tell the story of the ghost; and everybody will be laughing at our expense! We may as well be dead as ridiculous!" "All right, say no more about it." At that moment the door opened. It must have been deserted by its usual Cerberus, for Mme. Giry entered without ceremony, holding a letter in her hand, and said hurriedly: "I beg your pardon, excuse me, gentlemen, but I had a letter this morning from the Opera ghost. He told me to come to you, that you had something to ..." She did not complete the sentence. She saw Firmin Richard's face; and it was a terrible sight. He seemed ready to burst. He said nothing, he could not speak. But suddenly he acted. First, his left arm seized upon the quaint person of Mme. Giry and made her describe so unexpected a semicircle that she uttered a despairing cry. Next, his right foot imprinted its sole on the black taffeta of a skirt which certainly had never before undergone a similar outrage in a similar place. The thing happened so quickly that Mme. Giry, when in the passage, was still quite bewildered and seemed not to understand. But, suddenly, she understood; and the Opera rang with her indignant yells, her violent protests and threats. About the same time, Carlotta, who had a small house of her own in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, rang for her maid, who brought her letters to her bed. Among them was an anonymous missive, written in red ink, in a hesitating, clumsy hand, which ran: If you appear to-night, you must be prepared for a great misfortune at the moment when you open your mouth to sing ... a misfortune worse than death. The letter took away Carlotta's appetite for breakfast. She pushed back her chocolate, sat up in bed and thought hard. It was not the first letter of the kind which she had received, but she never had one couched in such threatening terms. She thought herself, at that time, the victim of a thousand jealous attempts and went about saying that she had a secret enemy who had sworn to ruin her. She pretended that a wicked plot was being hatched against her, a cabal which would come to a head one of those days; but she added that she was not the woman to be intimidated. The truth is that, if there was a cabal, it was led by Carlotta herself against poor Christine, who had no suspicion of it. Carlotta had never forgiven Christine for the triumph which she had achieved when taking her place at a moment's notice. When Carlotta heard of the astounding reception bestowed upon her understudy, she was at once cured of an incipient attack of bronchitis and a bad fit of sulking against the management and lost the slightest inclination to shirk her duties. From that time, she worked with all her might to "smother" her rival, enlisting the services of influential friends to persuade the managers not to give Christine an opportunity for a fresh triumph. Certain newspapers which had begun to extol the talent of Christine now interested themselves only in the fame of Carlotta. Lastly, in the theater itself, the celebrated, but heartless and soulless diva made the most scandalous remarks about Christine and tried to cause her endless minor unpleasantnesses. When Carlotta had finished thinking over the threat contained in the strange letter, she got up. "We shall see," she said, adding a few oaths in her native Spanish with a very determined air. The first thing she saw, when looking out of her window, was a hearse. She was very superstitious; and the hearse and the letter convinced her that she was running the most serious dangers that evening. She collected all her supporters, told them that she was threatened at that evening's performance with a plot organized by Christine Daae and declared that they must play a trick upon that chit by filling the house with her, Carlotta's, admirers. She had no lack of them, had she? She relied upon them to hold themselves prepared for any eventuality and to silence the adversaries, if, as she feared, they created a disturbance. M. Richard's private secretary called to ask after the diva's health and returned with the assurance that she was perfectly well and that, "were she dying," she would sing the part of Margarita that evening. The secretary urged her, in his chief's name, to commit no imprudence, to stay at home all day and to be careful of drafts; and Carlotta could not help, after he had gone, comparing this unusual and unexpected advice with the threats contained in the letter. It was five o'clock when the post brought a second anonymous letter in the same hand as the first. It was short and said simply: You have a bad cold. If you are wise, you will see that it is madness to try to sing to-night. Carlotta sneered, shrugged her handsome shoulders and sang two or three notes to reassure herself. Her friends were faithful to their promise. They were all at the Opera that night, but looked round in vain for the fierce conspirators whom they were instructed to suppress. The only unusual thing was the presence of M. Richard and M. Moncharmin in Box Five. Carlotta's friends thought that, perhaps, the managers had wind, on their side, of the proposed disturbance and that they had determined to be in the house, so as to stop it then and there; but this was unjustifiable supposition, as the reader knows. M. Richard and M. Moncharmin were thinking of nothing but their ghost. "Vain! In vain do I call, through my vigil weary, On creation and its Lord! Never reply will break the silence dreary! No sign! No single word!" The famous baritone, Carolus Fonta, had hardly finished Doctor Faust's first appeal to the powers of darkness, when M. Firmin Richard, who was sitting in the ghost's own chair, the front chair on the right, leaned over to his partner and asked him chaffingly: "Well, has the ghost whispered a word in your ear yet?" "Wait, don't be in such a hurry," replied M. Armand Moncharmin, in the same gay tone. "The performance has only begun and you know that the ghost does not usually come until the middle of the first act." The first act passed without incident, which did not surprise Carlotta's friends, because Margarita does not sing in this act. As for the managers, they looked at each other, when the curtain fell. "That's one!" said Moncharmin. "Yes, the ghost is late," said Firmin Richard. "It's not a bad house," said Moncharmin, "for 'a house with a curse on it.'" M. Richard smiled and pointed to a fat, rather vulgar woman, dressed in black, sitting in a stall in the middle of the auditorium with a man in a broadcloth frock-coat on either side of her. "Who on earth are 'those?'" asked Moncharmin. "'Those,' my dear fellow, are my concierge, her husband and her brother." "Did you give them their tickets?" "I did ... My concierge had never been to the Opera--this is, the first time--and, as she is now going to come every night, I wanted her to have a good seat, before spending her time showing other people to theirs." Moncharmin asked what he meant and Richard answered that he had persuaded his concierge, in whom he had the greatest confidence, to come and take Mme. Giry's place. Yes, he would like to see if, with that woman instead of the old lunatic, Box Five would continue to astonish the natives? "By the way," said Moncharmin, "you know that Mother Giry is going to lodge a complaint against you." "With whom? The ghost?" The ghost! Moncharmin had almost forgotten him. However, that mysterious person did nothing to bring himself to the memory of the managers; and they were just saying so to each other for the second time, when the door of the box suddenly opened to admit the startled stage-manager. "What's the matter?" they both asked, amazed at seeing him there at such a time. "It seems there's a plot got up by Christine Daae's friends against Carlotta. Carlotta's furious." "What on earth ... ?" said Richard, knitting his brows. But the curtain rose on the kermess scene and Richard made a sign to the stage-manager to go away. When the two were alone again, Moncharmin leaned over to Richard: "Then Daae has friends?" he asked. "Yes, she has." "Whom?" Richard glanced across at a box on the grand tier containing no one but two men. "The Comte de Chagny?" "Yes, he spoke to me in her favor with such warmth that, if I had not known him to be Sorelli's friend ..." "Really? Really?" said Moncharmin. "And who is that pale young man beside him?" "That's his brother, the viscount." "He ought to be in his bed. He looks ill." The stage rang with gay song: "Red or white liquor, Coarse or fine! What can it matter, So we have wine?" Students, citizens, soldiers, girls and matrons whirled light-heartedly before the inn with the figure of Bacchus for a sign. Siebel made her entrance. Christine Daae looked charming in her boy's clothes; and Carlotta's partisans expected to hear her greeted with an ovation which would have enlightened them as to the intentions of her friends. But nothing happened. On the other hand, when Margarita crossed the stage and sang the only two lines allotted her in this second act: "No, my lord, not a lady am I, nor yet a beauty, And do not need an arm to help me on my way," Carlotta was received with enthusiastic applause. It was so unexpected and so uncalled for that those who knew nothing about the rumors looked at one another and asked what was happening. And this act also was finished without incident. Then everybody said: "Of course, it will be during the next act." Some, who seemed to be better informed than the rest, declared that the "row" would begin with the ballad of the KING OF THULE and rushed to the subscribers' entrance to warn Carlotta. The managers left the box during the entr'acte to find out more about the cabal of which the stage-manager had spoken; but they soon returned to their seats, shrugging their shoulders and treating the whole affair as silly. The first thing they saw, on entering the box, was a box of English sweets on the little shelf of the ledge. Who had put it there? They asked the box-keepers, but none of them knew. Then they went back to the shelf and, next to the box of sweets, found an opera glass. They looked at each other. They had no inclination to laugh. All that Mme. Giry had told them returned to their memory ... and then ... and then ... they seemed to feel a curious sort of draft around them ... They sat down in silence. The scene represented Margarita's garden: "Gentle flow'rs in the dew, Be message from me ..." As she sang these first two lines, with her bunch of roses and lilacs in her hand, Christine, raising her head, saw the Vicomte de Chagny in his box; and, from that moment, her voice seemed less sure, less crystal-clear than usual. Something seemed to deaden and dull her singing... "What a queer girl she is!" said one of Carlotta's friends in the stalls, almost aloud. "The other day she was divine; and to-night she's simply bleating. She has no experience, no training." "Gentle flow'rs, lie ye there And tell her from me ..." The viscount put his head under his hands and wept. The count, behind him, viciously gnawed his mustache, shrugged his shoulders and frowned. For him, usually so cold and correct, to betray his inner feelings like that, by outward signs, the count must be very angry. He was. He had seen his brother return from a rapid and mysterious journey in an alarming state of health. The explanation that followed was unsatisfactory and the count asked Christine Daae for an appointment. She had the audacity to reply that she could not see either him or his brother... "Would she but deign to hear me And with one smile to cheer me ..." "The little baggage!" growled the count. And he wondered what she wanted. What she was hoping for... She was a virtuous girl, she was said to have no friend, no protector of any sort ... That angel from the North must be very artful! Raoul, behind the curtain of his hands that veiled his boyish tears, thought only of the letter which he received on his return to Paris, where Christine, fleeing from Perros like a thief in the night, had arrived before him: MY DEAR LITTLE PLAYFELLOW: You must have the courage not to see me again, not to speak of me again. If you love me just a little, do this for me, for me who will never forget you, my dear Raoul. My life depends upon it. Your life depends upon it. YOUR LITTLE CHRISTINE. Thunders of applause. Carlotta made her entrance. "I wish I could but know who was he That addressed me, If he was noble, or, at least, what his name is ..." When Margarita had finished singing the ballad of the KING OF THULE, she was loudly cheered and again when she came to the end of the jewel song: "Ah, the joy of past compare These jewels bright to wear! ..." Thenceforth, certain of herself, certain of her friends in the house, certain of her voice and her success, fearing nothing, Carlotta flung herself into her part without restraint of modesty ... She was no longer Margarita, she was Carmen. She was applauded all the more; and her debut with Faust seemed about to bring her a new success, when suddenly ... a terrible thing happened. Faust had knelt on one knee: "Let me gaze on the form below me, While from yonder ether blue Look how the star of eve, bright and tender, lingers o'er me, To love thy beauty too!" And Margarita replied: "Oh, how strange! Like a spell does the evening bind me! And a deep languid charm I feel without alarm With its melody enwind me And all my heart subdue." At that moment, at that identical moment, the terrible thing happened... Carlotta croaked like a toad: "Co-ack!" There was consternation on Carlotta's face and consternation on the faces of all the audience. The two managers in their box could not suppress an exclamation of horror. Every one felt that the thing was not natural, that there was witchcraft behind it. That toad smelt of brimstone. Poor, wretched, despairing, crushed Carlotta! The uproar in the house was indescribable. If the thing had happened to any one but Carlotta, she would have been hooted. But everybody knew how perfect an instrument her voice was; and there was no display of anger, but only of horror and dismay, the sort of dismay which men would have felt if they had witnessed the catastrophe that broke the arms of the Venus de Milo... And even then they would have seen ... and understood ... But here that toad was incomprehensible! So much so that, after some seconds spent in asking herself if she had really heard that note, that sound, that infernal noise issue from her throat, she tried to persuade herself that it was not so, that she was the victim of an illusion, an illusion of the ear, and not of an act of treachery on the part of her voice.... Meanwhile, in Box Five, Moncharmin and Richard had turned very pale. This extraordinary and inexplicable incident filled them with a dread which was the more mysterious inasmuch as for some little while, they had fallen within the direct influence of the ghost. They had felt his breath. Moncharmin's hair stood on end. Richard wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Yes, the ghost was there, around them, behind them, beside them; they felt his presence without seeing him, they heard his breath, close, close, close to them! ... They were sure that there were three people in the box ... They trembled ... They thought of running away ... They dared not ... They dared not make a movement or exchange a word that would have told the ghost that they knew that he was there! ... What was going to happen? This happened. "Co-ack!" Their joint exclamation of horror was heard all over the house. THEY FELT THAT THEY WERE SMARTING UNDER THE GHOST'S ATTACKS. Leaning over the ledge of their box, they stared at Carlotta as though they did not recognize her. That infernal girl must have given the signal for some catastrophe. Ah, they were waiting for the catastrophe! The ghost had told them it would come! The house had a curse upon it! The two managers gasped and panted under the weight of the catastrophe. Richard's stifled voice was heard calling to Carlotta: "Well, go on!" No, Carlotta did not go on ... Bravely, heroically, she started afresh on the fatal line at the end of which the toad had appeared. An awful silence succeeded the uproar. Carlotta's voice alone once more filled the resounding house: "I feel without alarm ..." The audience also felt, but not without alarm. .. "I feel without alarm ... I feel without alarm--co-ack! With its melody enwind me--co-ack! And all my heart sub--co-ack!" The toad also had started afresh! The house broke into a wild tumult. The two managers collapsed in their chairs and dared not even turn round; they had not the strength; the ghost was chuckling behind their backs! And, at last, they distinctly heard his voice in their right ears, the impossible voice, the mouthless voice, saying: "SHE IS SINGING TO-NIGHT TO BRING THE CHANDELIER DOWN!" With one accord, they raised their eyes to the ceiling and uttered a terrible cry. The chandelier, the immense mass of the chandelier was slipping down, coming toward them, at the call of that fiendish voice. Released from its hook, it plunged from the ceiling and came smashing into the middle of the stalls, amid a thousand shouts of terror. A wild rush for the doors followed. The papers of the day state that there were numbers wounded and one killed. The chandelier had crashed down upon the head of the wretched woman who had come to the Opera for the first time in her life, the one whom M. Richard had appointed to succeed Mme. Giry, the ghost's box-keeper, in her functions! She died on the spot and, the next morning, a newspaper appeared with this heading: TWO HUNDRED KILOS ON THE HEAD OF A CONCIERGE That was her sole epitaph! Chapter VIII The Mysterious Brougham That tragic evening was bad for everybody. Carlotta fell ill. As for Christine Daae, she disappeared after the performance. A fortnight elapsed during which she was seen neither at the Opera nor outside. Raoul, of course, was the first to be astonished at the prima donna's absence. He wrote to her at Mme. Valerius' flat and received no reply. His grief increased and he ended by being seriously alarmed at never seeing her name on the program. FAUST was played without her. One afternoon he went to the managers' office to ask the reason of Christine's disappearance. He found them both looking extremely worried. Their own friends did not recognize them: they had lost all their gaiety and spirits. They were seen crossing the stage with hanging heads, care-worn brows, pale cheeks, as though pursued by some abominable thought or a prey to some persistent sport of fate. The fall of the chandelier had involved them in no little responsibility; but it was difficult to make them speak about it. The inquest had ended in a verdict of accidental death, caused by the wear and tear of the chains by which the chandelier was hung from the ceiling; but it was the duty of both the old and the new managers to have discovered this wear and tear and to have remedied it in time. And I feel bound to say that MM. Richard and Moncharmin at this time appeared so changed, so absent-minded, so mysterious, so incomprehensible that many of the subscribers thought that some event even more horrible than the fall of the chandelier must have affected their state of mind. In their daily intercourse, they showed themselves very impatient, except with Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions. And their reception of the Vicomte de Chagny, when he came to ask about Christine, was anything but cordial. They merely told him that she was taking a holiday. He asked how long the holiday was for, and they replied curtly that it was for an unlimited period, as Mlle. Daae had requested leave of absence for reasons of health. "Then she is ill!" he cried. "What is the matter with her?" "We don't know." "Didn't you send the doctor of the Opera to see her?" "No, she did not ask for him; and, as we trust her, we took her word." Raoul left the building a prey to the gloomiest thoughts. He resolved, come what might, to go and inquire of Mamma Valerius. He remembered the strong phrases in Christine's letter, forbidding him to make any attempt to see her. But what he had seen at Perros, what he had heard behind the dressing-room door, his conversation with Christine at the edge of the moor made him suspect some machination which, devilish though it might be, was none the less human. The girl's highly strung imagination, her affectionate and credulous mind, the primitive education which had surrounded her childhood with a circle of legends, the constant brooding over her dead father and, above all, the state of sublime ecstasy into which music threw her from the moment that this art was made manifest to her in certain exceptional conditions, as in the churchyard at Perros; all this seemed to him to constitute a moral ground only too favorable for the malevolent designs of some mysterious and unscrupulous person. Of whom was Christine Daae the victim? This was the very reasonable question which Raoul put to himself as he hurried off to Mamma Valerius. He trembled as he rang at a little flat in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. The door was opened by the maid whom he had seen coming out of Christine's dressing-room one evening. He asked if he could speak to Mme. Valerius. He was told that she was ill in bed and was not receiving visitors. "Take in my card, please," he said. The maid soon returned and showed him into a small and scantily furnished drawing-room, in which portraits of Professor Valerius and old Daae hung on opposite walls. "Madame begs Monsieur le Vicomte to excuse her," said the servant. "She can only see him in her bedroom, because she can no longer stand on her poor legs." Five minutes later, Raoul was ushered into an ill-lit room where he at once recognized the good, kind face of Christine's benefactress in the semi-darkness of an alcove. Mamma Valerius' hair was now quite white, but her eyes had grown no older; never, on the contrary, had their expression been so bright, so pure, so child-like. "M. de Chagny!" she cried gaily, putting out both her hands to her visitor. "Ah, it's Heaven that sends you here! ... We can talk of HER." This last sentence sounded very gloomily in the young man's ears. He at once asked: "Madame ... where is Christine?" And the old lady replied calmly: "She is with her good genius!" "What good genius?" exclaimed poor Raoul. "Why, the Angel of Music!" The viscount dropped into a chair. Really? Christine was with the Angel of Music? And there lay Mamma Valerius in bed, smiling to him and putting her finger to her lips, to warn him to be silent! And she added: "You must not tell anybody!" "You can rely on me," said Raoul. He hardly knew what he was saying, for his ideas about Christine, already greatly confused, were becoming more and more entangled; and it seemed as if everything was beginning to turn around him, around the room, around that extraordinary good lady with the white hair and forget-me-not eyes. "I know! I know I can!" she said, with a happy laugh. "But why don't you come near me, as you used to do when you were a little boy? Give me your hands, as when you brought me the story of little Lotte, which Daddy Daae had told you. I am very fond of you, M. Raoul, you know. And so is Christine too!" "She is fond of me!" sighed the young man. He found a difficulty in collecting his thoughts and bringing them to bear on Mamma Valerius' "good genius," on the Angel of Music of whom Christine had spoken to him so strangely, on the death's head which he had seen in a sort of nightmare on the high altar at Perros and also on the Opera ghost, whose fame had come to his ears one evening when he was standing behind the scenes, within hearing of a group of scene-shifters who were repeating the ghastly description which the hanged man, Joseph Buquet, had given of the ghost before his mysterious death. He asked in a low voice: "What makes you think that Christine is fond of me, madame?" "She used to speak of you every day." "Really? ... And what did she tell you?" "She told me that you had made her a proposal!" And the good old lady began laughing wholeheartedly. Raoul sprang from his chair, flushing to the temples, suffering agonies. "What's this? Where are you going? Sit down again at once, will you? ... Do you think I will let you go like that? ... If you're angry with me for laughing, I beg your pardon... After all, what has happened isn't your fault... Didn't you know? ... Did you think that Christine was free? ..." "Is Christine engaged to be married?" the wretched Raoul asked, in a choking voice. "Why no! Why no! ... You know as well as I do that Christine couldn't marry, even if she wanted to!" "But I don't know anything about it! ... And why can't Christine marry?" "Because of the Angel of Music, of course! ..." "I don't follow ..." "Yes, he forbids her to! ..." "He forbids her! ... The Angel of Music forbids her to marry!" "Oh, he forbids her ... without forbidding her. It's like this: he tells her that, if she got married, she would never hear him again. That's all! ... And that he would go away for ever! ... So, you understand, she can't let the Angel of Music go. It's quite natural." "Yes, yes," echoed Raoul submissively, "it's quite natural." "Besides, I thought Christine had told you all that, when she met you at Perros, where she went with her good genius." "Oh, she went to Perros with her good genius, did she?" "That is to say, he arranged to meet her down there, in Perros churchyard, at Daae's grave. He promised to play her The Resurrection of Lazarus on her father's violin!" Raoul de Chagny rose and, with a very authoritative air, pronounced these peremptory words: "Madame, you will have the goodness to tell me where that genius lives." The old lady did not seem surprised at this indiscreet command. She raised her eyes and said: "In Heaven!" Such simplicity baffled him. He did not know what to say in the presence of this candid and perfect faith in a genius who came down nightly from Heaven to haunt the dressing-rooms at the Opera. He now realized the possible state of mind of a girl brought up between a superstitious fiddler and a visionary old lady and he shuddered when he thought of the consequences of it all. "Is Christine still a good girl?" he asked suddenly, in spite of himself. "I swear it, as I hope to be saved!" exclaimed the old woman, who, this time, seemed to be incensed. "And, if you doubt it, sir, I don't know what you are here for!" Raoul tore at his gloves. "How long has she known this 'genius?'" "About three months ... Yes, it's quite three months since he began to give her lessons." The viscount threw up his arms with a gesture of despair. "The genius gives her lessons! ... And where, pray?" "Now that she has gone away with him, I can't say; but, up to a fortnight ago, it was in Christine's dressing-room. It would be impossible in this little flat. The whole house would hear them. Whereas, at the Opera, at eight o'clock in the morning, there is no one about, do you see!" "Yes, I see! I see!" cried the viscount. And he hurriedly took leave of Mme. Valerius, who asked herself if the young nobleman was not a little off his head. He walked home to his brother's house in a pitiful state. He could have struck himself, banged his head against the walls! To think that he had believed in her innocence, in her purity! The Angel of Music! He knew him now! He saw him! It was beyond a doubt some unspeakable tenor, a good-looking jackanapes, who mouthed and simpered as he sang! He thought himself as absurd and as wretched as could be. Oh, what a miserable, little, insignificant, silly young man was M. le Vicomte de Chagny! thought Raoul, furiously. And she, what a bold and damnable sly creature! His brother was waiting for him and Raoul fell into his arms, like a child. The count consoled him, without asking for explanations; and Raoul would certainly have long hesitated before telling him the story of the Angel of Music. His brother suggested taking him out to dinner. Overcome as he was with despair, Raoul would probably have refused any invitation that evening, if the count had not, as an inducement, told him that the lady of his thoughts had been seen, the night before, in company of the other sex in the Bois. At first, the viscount refused to believe; but he received such exact details that he ceased protesting. She had been seen, it appeared, driving in a brougham, with the window down. She seemed to be slowly taking in the icy night air. There was a glorious moon shining. She was recognized beyond a doubt. As for her companion, only his shadowy outline was distinguished leaning back in the dark. The carriage was going at a walking pace in a lonely drive behind the grand stand at Longchamp. Raoul dressed in frantic haste, prepared to forget his distress by flinging himself, as people say, into "the vortex of pleasure." Alas, he was a very sorry guest and, leaving his brother early, found himself, by ten o'clock in the evening, in a cab, behind the Longchamp race-course. It was bitterly cold. The road seemed deserted and very bright under the moonlight. He told the driver to wait for him patiently at the corner of a near turning and, hiding himself as well as he could, stood stamping his feet to keep warm. He had been indulging in this healthy exercise for half an hour or so, when a carriage turned the corner of the road and came quietly in his direction, at a walking pace. As it approached, he saw that a woman was leaning her head from the window. And, suddenly, the moon shed a pale gleam over her features. "Christine!" The sacred name of his love had sprung from his heart and his lips. He could not keep it back... He would have given anything to withdraw it, for that name, proclaimed in the stillness of the night, had acted as though it were the preconcerted signal for a furious rush on the part of the whole turn-out, which dashed past him before he could put into execution his plan of leaping at the horses' heads. The carriage window had been closed and the girl's face had disappeared. And the brougham, behind which he was now running, was no more than a black spot on the white road. He called out again: "Christine!" No reply. And he stopped in the midst of the silence. With a lack-luster eye, he stared down that cold, desolate road and into the pale, dead night. Nothing was colder than his heart, nothing half so dead: he had loved an angel and now he despised a woman! Raoul, how that little fairy of the North has trifled with you! Was it really, was it really necessary to have so fresh and young a face, a forehead so shy and always ready to cover itself with the pink blush of modesty in order to pass in the lonely night, in a carriage and pair, accompanied by a mysterious lover? Surely there should be some limit to hypocrisy and lying! ... She had passed without answering his cry ... And he was thinking of dying; and he was twenty years old! ... His valet found him in the morning sitting on his bed. He had not undressed and the servant feared, at the sight of his face, that some disaster had occurred. Raoul snatched his letters from the man's hands. He had recognized Christine's paper and hand-writing. She said: DEAR: Go to the masked ball at the Opera on the night after to-morrow. At twelve o'clock, be in the little room behind the chimney-place of the big crush-room. Stand near the door that leads to the Rotunda. Don't mention this appointment to any one on earth. Wear a white domino and be carefully masked. As you love me, do not let yourself be recognized. CHRISTINE. Chapter IX At the Masked Ball The envelope was covered with mud and unstamped. It bore the words "To be handed to M. le Vicomte Raoul de Chagny," with the address in pencil. It must have been flung out in the hope that a passer-by would pick up the note and deliver it, which was what happened. The note had been picked up on the pavement of the Place de l'Opera. Raoul read it over again with fevered eyes. No more was needed to revive his hope. The somber picture which he had for a moment imagined of a Christine forgetting her duty to herself made way for his original conception of an unfortunate, innocent child, the victim of imprudence and exaggerated sensibility. To what extent, at this time, was she really a victim? Whose prisoner was she? Into what whirlpool had she been dragged? He asked himself these questions with a cruel anguish; but even this pain seemed endurable beside the frenzy into which he was thrown at the thought of a lying and deceitful Christine. What had happened? What influence had she undergone? What monster had carried her off and by what means? ... By what means indeed but that of music? He knew Christine's story. After her father's death, she acquired a distaste of everything in life, including her art. She went through the CONSERVATOIRE like a poor soulless singing-machine. And, suddenly, she awoke as though through the intervention of a god. The Angel of Music appeared upon the scene! She sang Margarita in FAUST and triumphed! ... The Angel of Music! ... For three months the Angel of Music had been giving Christine lessons ... Ah, he was a punctual singing-master! ... And now he was taking her for drives in the Bois! ... Raoul's fingers clutched at his flesh, above his jealous heart. In his inexperience, he now asked himself with terror what game the girl was playing? Up to what point could an opera-singer make a fool of a good-natured young man, quite new to love? O misery! ... Thus did Raoul's thoughts fly from one extreme to the other. He no longer knew whether to pity Christine or to curse her; and he pitied and cursed her turn and turn about. At all events, he bought a white domino. The hour of the appointment came at last. With his face in a mask trimmed with long, thick lace, looking like a pierrot in his white wrap, the viscount thought himself very ridiculous. Men of the world do not go to the Opera ball in fancy-dress! It was absurd. One thought, however, consoled the viscount: he would certainly never be recognized! This ball was an exceptional affair, given some time before Shrovetide, in honor of the anniversary of the birth of a famous draftsman; and it was expected to be much gayer, noisier, more Bohemian than the ordinary masked ball. Numbers of artists had arranged to go, accompanied by a whole cohort of models and pupils, who, by midnight, began to create a tremendous din. Raoul climbed the grand staircase at five minutes to twelve, did not linger to look at the motley dresses displayed all the way up the marble steps, one of the richest settings in the world, allowed no facetious mask to draw him into a war of wits, replied to no jests and shook off the bold familiarity of a number of couples who had already become a trifle too gay. Crossing the big crush-room and escaping from a mad whirl of dancers in which he was caught for a moment, he at last entered the room mentioned in Christine's letter. He found it crammed; for this small space was the point where all those who were going to supper in the Rotunda crossed those who were returning from taking a glass of champagne. The fun, here, waxed fast and furious. Raoul leaned against a door-post and waited. He did not wait long. A black domino passed and gave a quick squeeze to the tips of his fingers. He understood that it was she and followed her: "Is that you, Christine?" he asked, between his teeth. The black domino turned round promptly and raised her finger to her lips, no doubt to warn him not to mention her name again. Raoul continued to follow her in silence. He was afraid of losing her, after meeting her again in such strange circumstances. His grudge against her was gone. He no longer doubted that she had "nothing to reproach herself with," however peculiar and inexplicable her conduct might seem. He was ready to make any display of clemency, forgiveness or cowardice. He was in love. And, no doubt, he would soon receive a very natural explanation of her curious absence. The black domino turned back from time to time to see if the white domino was still following. As Raoul once more passed through the great crush-room, this time in the wake of his guide, he could not help noticing a group crowding round a person whose disguise, eccentric air and gruesome appearance were causing a sensation. It was a man dressed all in scarlet, with a huge hat and feathers on the top of a wonderful death's head. From his shoulders hung an immense red-velvet cloak, which trailed along the floor like a king's train; and on this cloak was embroidered, in gold letters, which every one read and repeated aloud, "Don't touch me! I am Red Death stalking abroad!" Then one, greatly daring, did try to touch him ... but a skeleton hand shot out of a crimson sleeve and violently seized the rash one's wrist; and he, feeling the clutch of the knucklebones, the furious grasp of Death, uttered a cry of pain and terror. When Red Death released him at last, he ran away like a very madman, pursued by the jeers of the bystanders. It was at this moment that Raoul passed in front of the funereal masquerader, who had just happened to turn in his direction. And he nearly exclaimed: "The death's head of Perros-Guirec!" He had recognized him! ... He wanted to dart forward, forgetting Christine; but the black domino, who also seemed a prey to some strange excitement, caught him by the arm and dragged him from the crush-room, far from the mad crowd through which Red Death was stalking... The black domino kept on turning back and, apparently, on two occasions saw something that startled her, for she hurried her pace and Raoul's as though they were being pursued. They went up two floors. Here, the stairs and corridors were almost deserted. The black domino opened the door of a private box and beckoned to the white domino to follow her. Then Christine, whom he recognized by the sound of her voice, closed the door behind them and warned him, in a whisper, to remain at the back of the box and on no account to show himself. Raoul took off his mask. Christine kept hers on. And, when Raoul was about to ask her to remove it, he was surprised to see her put her ear to the partition and listen eagerly for a sound outside. Then she opened the door ajar, looked out into the corridor and, in a low voice, said: "He must have gone up higher." Suddenly she exclaimed: "He is coming down again!" She tried to close the door, but Raoul prevented her; for he had seen, on the top step of the staircase that led to the floor above, A RED FOOT, followed by another ... and slowly, majestically, the whole scarlet dress of Red Death met his eyes. And he once more saw the death's head of Perros-Guirec. "It's he!" he exclaimed. "This time, he shall not escape me! ..." But Christian{sic} had slammed the door at the moment when Raoul was on the point of rushing out. He tried to push her aside. "Whom do you mean by 'he'?" she asked, in a changed voice. "Who shall not escape you?" Raoul tried to overcome the girl's resistance by force, but she repelled him with a strength which he would not have suspected in her. He understood, or thought he understood, and at once lost his temper. "Who?" he repeated angrily. "Why, he, the man who hides behind that hideous mask of death! ... The evil genius of the churchyard at Perros! ... Red Death! ... In a word, madam, your friend ... your Angel of Music! ... But I shall snatch off his mask, as I shall snatch off my own; and, this time, we shall look each other in the face, he and I, with no veil and no lies between us; and I shall know whom you love and who loves you!" He burst into a mad laugh, while Christine gave a disconsolate moan behind her velvet mask. With a tragic gesture, she flung out her two arms, which fixed a barrier of white flesh against the door. "In the name of our love, Raoul, you shall not pass! ..." He stopped. What had she said? ... In the name of their love? ... Never before had she confessed that she loved him. And yet she had had opportunities enough ... Pooh, her only object was to gain a few seconds! ... She wished to give the Red Death time to escape ... And, in accents of childish hatred, he said: "You lie, madam, for you do not love me and you have never loved me! What a poor fellow I must be to let you mock and flout me as you have done! Why did you give me every reason for hope, at Perros ... for honest hope, madam, for I am an honest man and I believed you to be an honest woman, when your only intention was to deceive me! Alas, you have deceived us all! You have taken a shameful advantage of the candid affection of your benefactress herself, who continues to believe in your sincerity while you go about the Opera ball with Red Death! ... I despise you! ..." And he burst into tears. She allowed him to insult her. She thought of but one thing, to keep him from leaving the box. "You will beg my pardon, one day, for all those ugly words, Raoul, and when you do I shall forgive you!" He shook his head. "No, no, you have driven me mad! When I think that I had only one object in life: to give my name to an opera wench!" "Raoul! ... How can you?" "I shall die of shame!" "No, dear, live!" said Christine's grave and changed voice. "And ... good-by. Good-by, Raoul ..." The boy stepped forward, staggering as he went. He risked one more sarcasm: "Oh, you must let me come and applaud you from time to time!" "I shall never sing again, Raoul! ..." "Really?" he replied, still more satirically. "So he is taking you off the stage: I congratulate you! ... But we shall meet in the Bois, one of these evenings!" "Not in the Bois nor anywhere, Raoul: you shall not see me again ..." "May one ask at least to what darkness you are returning? ... For what hell are you leaving, mysterious lady ... or for what paradise?" "I came to tell you, dear, but I can't tell you now ... you would not believe me! You have lost faith in me, Raoul; it is finished!" She spoke in such a despairing voice that the lad began to feel remorse for his cruelty. "But look here!" he cried. "Can't you tell me what all this means! ... You are free, there is no one to interfere with you... You go about Paris ... You put on a domino to come to the ball... Why do you not go home? ... What have you been doing this past fortnight? ... What is this tale about the Angel of Music, which you have been telling Mamma Valerius? Some one may have taken you in, played upon your innocence. I was a witness of it myself, at Perros ... but you know what to believe now! You seem to me quite sensible, Christine. You know what you are doing ... And meanwhile Mamma Valerius lies waiting for you at home and appealing to your 'good genius!' ... Explain yourself, Christine, I beg of you! Any one might have been deceived as I was. What is this farce?" Christine simply took off her mask and said: "Dear, it is a tragedy!" Raoul now saw her face and could not restrain an exclamation of surprise and terror. The fresh complexion of former days was gone. A mortal pallor covered those features, which he had known so charming and so gentle, and sorrow had furrowed them with pitiless lines and traced dark and unspeakably sad shadows under her eyes. "My dearest! My dearest!" he moaned, holding out his arms. "You promised to forgive me ..." "Perhaps! ... Some day, perhaps!" she said, resuming her mask; and she went away, forbidding him, with a gesture, to follow her. He tried to disobey her; but she turned round and repeated her gesture of farewell with such authority that he dared not move a step. He watched her till she was out of sight. Then he also went down among the crowd, hardly knowing what he was doing, with throbbing temples and an aching heart; and, as he crossed the dancing-floor, he asked if anybody had seen Red Death. Yes, every one had seen Red Death; but Raoul could not find him; and, at two o'clock in the morning, he turned down the passage, behind the scenes, that led to Christine Daae's dressing-room. His footsteps took him to that room where he had first known suffering. He tapped at the door. There was no answer. He entered, as he had entered when he looked everywhere for "the man's voice." The room was empty. A gas-jet was burning, turned down low. He saw some writing-paper on a little desk. He thought of writing to Christine, but he heard steps in the passage. He had only time to hide in the inner room, which was separated from the dressing-room by a curtain. Christine entered, took off her mask with a weary movement and flung it on the table. She sighed and let her pretty head fall into her two hands. What was she thinking of? Of Raoul? No, for Raoul heard her murmur: "Poor Erik!" At first, he thought he must be mistaken. To begin with, he was persuaded that, if any one was to be pitied, it was he, Raoul. It would have been quite natural if she had said, "Poor Raoul," after what had happened between them. But, shaking her head, she repeated: "Poor Erik!" What had this Erik to do with Christine's sighs and why was she pitying Erik when Raoul was so unhappy? Christine began to write, deliberately, calmly and so placidly that Raoul, who was still trembling from the effects of the tragedy that separated them, was painfully impressed. "What coolness!" he said to himself. She wrote on, filling two, three, four sheets. Suddenly, she raised her head and hid the sheets in her bodice ... She seemed to be listening ... Raoul also listened ... Whence came that strange sound, that distant rhythm? ... A faint singing seemed to issue from the walls ... yes, it was as though the walls themselves were singing! ... The song became plainer ... the words were now distinguishable ... he heard a voice, a very beautiful, very soft, very captivating voice ... but, for all its softness, it remained a male voice ... The voice came nearer and nearer ... it came through the wall ... it approached ... and now the voice was IN THE ROOM, in front of Christine. Christine rose and addressed the voice, as though speaking to some one: "Here I am, Erik," she said. "I am ready. But you are late." Raoul, peeping from behind the curtain, could not believe his eyes, which showed him nothing. Christine's face lit up. A smile of happiness appeared upon her bloodless lips, a smile like that of sick people when they receive the first hope of recovery. The voice without a body went on singing; and certainly Raoul had never in his life heard anything more absolutely and heroically sweet, more gloriously insidious, more delicate, more powerful, in short, more irresistibly triumphant. He listened to it in a fever and he now began to understand how Christine Daae was able to appear one evening, before the stupefied audience, with accents of a beauty hitherto unknown, of a superhuman exaltation, while doubtless still under the influence of the mysterious and invisible master. The voice was singing the Wedding-night Song from Romeo and Juliet. Raoul saw Christine stretch out her arms to the voice as she had done, in Perros churchyard, to the invisible violin playing The Resurrection of Lazarus. And nothing could describe the passion with which the voice sang: "Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!" The strains went through Raoul's heart. Struggling against the charm that seemed to deprive him of all his will and all his energy and of almost all his lucidity at the moment when he needed them most, he succeeded in drawing back the curtain that hid him and he walked to where Christine stood. She herself was moving to the back of the room, the whole wall of which was occupied by a great mirror that reflected her image, but not his, for he was just behind her and entirely covered by her. "Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!" Christine walked toward her image in the glass and the image came toward her. The two Christines--the real one and the reflection--ended by touching; and Raoul put out his arms to clasp the two in one embrace. But, by a sort of dazzling miracle that sent him staggering, Raoul was suddenly flung back, while an icy blast swept over his face; he saw, not two, but four, eight, twenty Christines spinning round him, laughing at him and fleeing so swiftly that he could not touch one of them. At last, everything stood still again; and he saw himself in the glass. But Christine had disappeared. He rushed up to the glass. He struck at the walls. Nobody! And meanwhile the room still echoed with a distant passionate singing: "Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!" Which way, which way had Christine gone? ... Which way would she return? ... Would she return? Alas, had she not declared to him that everything was finished? And was the voice not repeating: "Fate links thee to me for ever and a day!" To me? To whom? Then, worn out, beaten, empty-brained, he sat down on the chair which Christine had just left. Like her, he let his head fall into his hands. When he raised it, the tears were streaming down his young cheeks, real, heavy tears like those which jealous children shed, tears that wept for a sorrow which was in no way fanciful, but which is common to all the lovers on earth and which he expressed aloud: "Who is this Erik?" he said. Chapter X Forget the Name of the Man's Voice The day after Christine had vanished before his eyes in a sort of dazzlement that still made him doubt the evidence of his senses, M. le Vicomte de Chagny called to inquire at Mamma Valerius'. He came upon a charming picture. Christine herself was seated by the bedside of the old lady, who was sitting up against the pillows, knitting. The pink and white had returned to the young girl's cheeks. The dark rings round her eyes had disappeared. Raoul no longer recognized the tragic face of the day before. If the veil of melancholy over those adorable features had not still appeared to the young man as the last trace of the weird drama in whose toils that mysterious child was struggling, he could have believed that Christine was not its heroine at all. She rose, without showing any emotion, and offered him her hand. But Raoul's stupefaction was so great that he stood there dumfounded, without a gesture, without a word. "Well, M. de Chagny," exclaimed Mamma Valerius, "don't you know our Christine? Her good genius has sent her back to us!" "Mamma!" the girl broke in promptly, while a deep blush mantled to her eyes. "I thought, mamma, that there was to be no more question of that! ... You know there is no such thing as the Angel of Music!" "But, child, he gave you lessons for three months!" "Mamma, I have promised to explain everything to you one of these days; and I hope to do so but you have promised me, until that day, to be silent and to ask me no more questions whatever!" "Provided that you promised never to leave me again! But have you promised that, Christine?" "Mamma, all this can not interest M. de Chagny." "On the contrary, mademoiselle," said the young man, in a voice which he tried to make firm and brave, but which still trembled, "anything that concerns you interests me to an extent which perhaps you will one day understand. I do not deny that my surprise equals my pleasure at finding you with your adopted mother and that, after what happened between us yesterday, after what you said and what I was able to guess, I hardly expected to see you here so soon. I should be the first to delight at your return, if you were not so bent on preserving a secrecy that may be fatal to you ... and I have been your friend too long not to be alarmed, with Mme. Valerius, at a disastrous adventure which will remain dangerous so long as we have not unraveled its threads and of which you will certainly end by being the victim, Christine." At these words, Mamma Valerius tossed about in her bed. "What does this mean?" she cried. "Is Christine in danger?" "Yes, madame," said Raoul courageously, notwithstanding the signs which Christine made to him. "My God!" exclaimed the good, simple old woman, gasping for breath. "You must tell me everything, Christine! Why did you try to reassure me? And what danger is it, M. de Chagny?" "An impostor is abusing her good faith." "Is the Angel of Music an impostor?" "She told you herself that there is no Angel of Music." "But then what is it, in Heaven's name? You will be the death of me!" "There is a terrible mystery around us, madame, around you, around Christine, a mystery much more to be feared than any number of ghosts or genii!" Mamma Valerius turned a terrified face to Christine, who had already run to her adopted mother and was holding her in her arms. "Don't believe him, mummy, don't believe him," she repeated. "Then tell me that you will never leave me again," implored the widow. Christine was silent and Raoul resumed. "That is what you must promise, Christine. It is the only thing that can reassure your mother and me. We will undertake not to ask you a single question about the past, if you promise us to remain under our protection in future." "That is an undertaking which I have not asked of you and a promise which I refuse to make you!" said the young girl haughtily. "I am mistress of my own actions, M. de Chagny: you have no right to control them, and I will beg you to desist henceforth. As to what I have done during the last fortnight, there is only one man in the world who has the right to demand an account of me: my husband! Well, I have no husband and I never mean to marry!" She threw out her hands to emphasize her words and Raoul turned pale, not only because of the words which he had heard, but because he had caught sight of a plain gold ring on Christine's finger. "You have no husband and yet you wear a wedding-ring." He tried to seize her hand, but she swiftly drew it back. "That's a present!" she said, blushing once more and vainly striving to hide her embarrassment. "Christine! As you have no husband, that ring can only have been given by one who hopes to make you his wife! Why deceive us further? Why torture me still more? That ring is a promise; and that promise has been accepted!" "That's what I said!" exclaimed the old lady. "And what did she answer, madame?" "What I chose," said Christine, driven to exasperation. "Don't you think, monsieur, that this cross-examination has lasted long enough? As far as I am concerned ..." Raoul was afraid to let her finish her speech. He interrupted her: "I beg your pardon for speaking as I did, mademoiselle. You know the good intentions that make me meddle, just now, in matters which, you no doubt think, have nothing to do with me. But allow me to tell you what I have seen--and I have seen more than you suspect, Christine--or what I thought I saw, for, to tell you the truth, I have sometimes been inclined to doubt the evidence of my eyes." "Well, what did you see, sir, or think you saw?" "I saw your ecstasy AT THE SOUND OF THE VOICE, Christine: the voice that came from the wall or the next room to yours ... yes, YOUR ECSTASY! And that is what makes me alarmed on your behalf. You are under a very dangerous spell. And yet it seems that you are aware of the imposture, because you say to-day THAT THERE IS NO ANGEL OF MUSIC! In that case, Christine, why did you follow him that time? Why did you stand up, with radiant features, as though you were really hearing angels? ... Ah, it is a very dangerous voice, Christine, for I myself, when I heard it, was so much fascinated by it that you vanished before my eyes without my seeing which way you passed! Christine, Christine, in the name of Heaven, in the name of your father who is in Heaven now and who loved you so dearly and who loved me too, Christine, tell us, tell your benefactress and me, to whom does that voice belong? If you do, we will save you in spite of yourself. Come, Christine, the name of the man! The name of the man who had the audacity to put a ring on your finger!" "M. de Chagny," the girl declared coldly, "you shall never know!" Thereupon, seeing the hostility with which her ward had addressed the viscount, Mamma Valerius suddenly took Christine's part. "And, if she does love that man, Monsieur le Vicomte, even then it is no business of yours!" "Alas, madame," Raoul humbly replied, unable to restrain his tears, "alas, I believe that Christine really does love him! ... But it is not only that which drives me to despair; for what I am not certain of, madame, is that the man whom Christine loves is worthy of her love!" "It is for me to be the judge of that, monsieur!" said Christine, looking Raoul angrily in the face. "When a man," continued Raoul, "adopts such romantic methods to entice a young girl's affections. .." "The man must be either a villain, or the girl a fool: is that it?" "Christine!" "Raoul, why do you condemn a man whom you have never seen, whom no one knows and about whom you yourself know nothing?" "Yes, Christine ... Yes ... I at least know the name that you thought to keep from me for ever ... The name of your Angel of Music, mademoiselle, is Erik!" Christine at once betrayed herself. She turned as white as a sheet and stammered: "Who told you?" "You yourself!" "How do you mean?" "By pitying him the other night, the night of the masked ball. When you went to your dressing-room, did you not say, 'Poor Erik?' Well, Christine, there was a poor Raoul who overheard you." "This is the second time that you have listened behind the door, M. de Chagny!" "I was not behind the door ... I was in the dressing-room, in the inner room, mademoiselle." "Oh, unhappy man!" moaned the girl, showing every sign of unspeakable terror. "Unhappy man! Do you want to be killed?" "Perhaps." Raoul uttered this "perhaps" with so much love and despair in his voice that Christine could not keep back a sob. She took his hands and looked at him with all the pure affection of which she was capable: "Raoul," she said, "forget THE MAN'S VOICE and do not even remember its name... You must never try to fathom the mystery of THE MAN'S VOICE." "Is the mystery so very terrible?" "There is no more awful mystery on this earth. Swear to me that you will make no attempt to find out," she insisted. "Swear to me that you will never come to my dressing-room, unless I send for you." "Then you promise to send for me sometimes, Christine?" "I promise." "When?" "To-morrow." "Then I swear to do as you ask." He kissed her hands and went away, cursing Erik and resolving to be patient. Chapter XI Above the Trap-Doors The next day, he saw her at the Opera. She was still wearing the plain gold ring. She was gentle and kind to him. She talked to him of the plans which he was forming, of his future, of his career. He told her that the date of the Polar expedition had been put forward and that he would leave France in three weeks, or a month at latest. She suggested, almost gaily, that he must look upon the voyage with delight, as a stage toward his coming fame. And when he replied that fame without love was no attraction in his eyes, she treated him as a child whose sorrows were only short-lived. "How can you speak so lightly of such serious things?" he asked. "Perhaps we shall never see each other again! I may die during that expedition." "Or I," she said simply. She no longer smiled or jested. She seemed to be thinking of some new thing that had entered her mind for the first time. Her eyes were all aglow with it. "What are you thinking of, Christine?" "I am thinking that we shall not see each other again ..." "And does that make you so radiant?" "And that, in a month, we shall have to say good-by for ever!" "Unless, Christine, we pledge our faith and wait for each other for ever." She put her hand on his mouth. "Hush, Raoul! ... You know there is no question of that ... And we shall never be married: that is understood!" She seemed suddenly almost unable to contain an overpowering gaiety. She clapped her hands with childish glee. Raoul stared at her in amazement. "But ... but," she continued, holding out her two hands to Raoul, or rather giving them to him, as though she had suddenly resolved to make him a present of them, "but if we can not be married, we can ... we can be engaged! Nobody will know but ourselves, Raoul. There have been plenty of secret marriages: why not a secret engagement? ... We are engaged, dear, for a month! In a month, you will go away, and I can be happy at the thought of that month all my life long!" She was enchanted with her inspiration. Then she became serious again. "This," she said, "IS A HAPPINESS THAT WILL HARM NO ONE." Raoul jumped at the idea. He bowed to Christine and said: "Mademoiselle, I have the honor to ask for your hand." "Why, you have both of them already, my dear betrothed! ... Oh, Raoul, how happy we shall be! ... We must play at being engaged all day long." It was the prettiest game in the world and they enjoyed it like the children that they were. Oh, the wonderful speeches they made to each other and the eternal vows they exchanged! They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them. One day, about a week after the game began, Raoul's heart was badly hurt and he stopped playing and uttered these wild words: "I shan't go to the North Pole!" Christine, who, in her innocence, had not dreamed of such a possibility, suddenly discovered the danger of the game and reproached herself bitterly. She did not say a word in reply to Raoul's remark and went straight home. This happened in the afternoon, in the singer's dressing-room, where they met every day and where they amused themselves by dining on three biscuits, two glasses of port and a bunch of violets. In the evening, she did not sing; and he did not receive his usual letter, though they had arranged to write to each other daily during that month. The next morning, he ran off to Mamma Valerius, who told him that Christine had gone away for two days. She had left at five o'clock the day before. Raoul was distracted. He hated Mamma Valerius for giving him such news as that with such stupefying calmness. He tried to sound her, but the old lady obviously knew nothing. Christine returned on the following day. She returned in triumph. She renewed her extraordinary success of the gala performance. Since the adventure of the "toad," Carlotta had not been able to appear on the stage. The terror of a fresh "co-ack" filled her heart and deprived her of all her power of singing; and the theater that had witnessed her incomprehensible disgrace had become odious to her. She contrived to cancel her contract. Daae was offered the vacant place for the time. She received thunders of applause in the Juive. The viscount, who, of course, was present, was the only one to suffer on hearing the thousand echoes of this fresh triumph; for Christine still wore her plain gold ring. A distant voice whispered in the young man's ear: "She is wearing the ring again to-night; and you did not give it to her. She gave her soul again tonight and did not give it to you... If she will not tell you what she has been doing the past two days ... you must go and ask Erik!" He ran behind the scenes and placed himself in her way. She saw him for her eyes were looking for him. She said: "Quick! Quick! ... Come!" And she dragged him to her dressing-room. Raoul at once threw himself on his knees before her. He swore to her that he would go and he entreated her never again to withhold a single hour of the ideal happiness which she had promised him. She let her tears flow. They kissed like a despairing brother and sister who have been smitten with a common loss and who meet to mourn a dead parent. Suddenly, she snatched herself from the young man's soft and timid embrace, seemed to listen to something, and, with a quick gesture, pointed to the door. When he was on the threshold, she said, in so low a voice that the viscount guessed rather than heard her words: "To-morrow, my dear betrothed! And be happy, Raoul: I sang for you to-night!" He returned the next day. But those two days of absence had broken the charm of their delightful make-believe. They looked at each other, in the dressing-room, with their sad eyes, without exchanging a word. Raoul had to restrain himself not to cry out: "I am jealous! I am jealous! I am jealous!" But she heard him all the same. Then she said: "Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good." Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel walking within the walls ... the jailer Erik ... But she took him to the stage and made him sit on the wooden curb of a well, in the doubtful peace and coolness of a first scene set for the evening's performance. On another day, she wandered with him, hand in, hand, along the deserted paths of a garden whose creepers had been cut out by a decorator's skilful hands. It was as though the real sky, the real flowers, the real earth were forbidden her for all time and she condemned to breathe no other air than that of the theater. An occasional fireman passed, watching over their melancholy idyll from afar. And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable pout of her lips: "You, a sailor!" And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between six and ten were practising their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day, "covered with diamonds ..." Meanwhile, Christine gave them sweets instead. She took him to the wardrobe and property-rooms, took him all over her empire, which was artificial, but immense, covering seventeen stories from the ground-floor to the roof and inhabited by an army of subjects. She moved among them like a popular queen, encouraging them in their labors, sitting down in the workshops, giving words of advice to the workmen whose hands hesitated to cut into the rich stuffs that were to clothe heroes. There were inhabitants of that country who practised every trade. There were cobblers, there were goldsmiths. All had learned to know her and to love her, for she always interested herself in all their troubles and all their little hobbies. She knew unsuspected corners that were secretly occupied by little old couples. She knocked at their door and introduced Raoul to them as a Prince Charming who had asked for her hand; and the two of them, sitting on some worm-eaten "property," would listen to the legends of the Opera, even as, in their childhood, they had listened to the old Breton tales. Those old people remembered nothing outside the Opera. They had lived there for years without number. Past managements had forgotten them; palace revolutions had taken no notice of them; the history of France had run its course unknown to them; and nobody recollected their existence. The precious days sped in this way; and Raoul and Christine, by affecting excessive interest in outside matters, strove awkwardly to hide from each other the one thought of their hearts. One fact was certain, that Christine, who until then had shown herself the stronger of the two, became suddenly inexpressibly nervous. When on their expeditions, she would start running without reason or else suddenly stop; and her hand, turning ice-cold in a moment, would hold the young man back. Sometimes her eyes seemed to pursue imaginary shadows. She cried, "This way," and "This way," and "This way," laughing a breathless laugh that often ended in tears. Then Raoul tried to speak, to question her, in spite of his promises. But, even before he had worded his question, she answered feverishly: "Nothing ... I swear it is nothing." Once, when they were passing before an open trapdoor on the stage, Raoul stopped over the dark cavity. "You have shown me over the upper part of your empire, Christine, but there are strange stories told of the lower part. Shall we go down?" She caught him in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear down the black hole, and, in a trembling voice, whispered: "Never! ... I will not have you go there! ... Besides, it's not mine ... EVERYTHING THAT IS UNDERGROUND BELONGS TO HIM!" Raoul looked her in the eyes and said roughly: "So he lives down there, does he?" "I never said so ... Who told you a thing like that? Come away! I sometimes wonder if you are quite sane, Raoul ... You always take things in such an impossible way ... Come along! Come!" And she literally dragged him away, for he was obstinate and wanted to remain by the trap-door; that hole attracted him. Suddenly, the trap-door was closed and so quickly that they did not even see the hand that worked it; and they remained quite dazed. "Perhaps HE was there," Raoul said, at last. She shrugged her shoulders, but did not seem easy. "No, no, it was the 'trap-door-shutters.' They must do something, you know ... They open and shut the trap-doors without any particular reason ... It's like the 'door-shutters:' they must spend their time somehow." "But suppose it were HE, Christine?" "No, no! He has shut himself up, he is working." "Oh, really! He's working, is he?" "Yes, he can't open and shut the trap-doors and work at the same time." She shivered. "What is he working at?" "Oh, something terrible! ... But it's all the better for us... When he's working at that, he sees nothing; he does not eat, drink, or breathe for days and nights at a time ... he becomes a living dead man and has no time to amuse himself with the trap-doors." She shivered again. She was still holding him in her arms. Then she sighed and said, in her turn: "Suppose it were HE!" "Are you afraid of him?" "No, no, of course not," she said. For all that, on the next day and the following days, Christine was careful to avoid the trap-doors. Her agitation only increased as the hours passed. At last, one afternoon, she arrived very late, with her face so desperately pale and her eyes so desperately red, that Raoul resolved to go to all lengths, including that which he foreshadowed when he blurted out that he would not go on the North Pole expedition unless she first told him the secret of the man's voice. "Hush! Hush, in Heaven's name! Suppose HE heard you, you unfortunate Raoul!" And Christine's eyes stared wildly at everything around her. "I will remove you from his power, Christine, I swear it. And you shall not think of him any more." "Is it possible?" She allowed herself this doubt, which was an encouragernent, while dragging the young man up to the topmost floor of the theater, far, very far from the trap-doors. "I shall hide you in some unknown corner of the world, where HE can not come to look for you. You will be safe; and then I shall go away ... as you have sworn never to marry." Christine seized Raoul's hands and squeezed them with incredible rapture. But, suddenly becoming alarmed again, she turned away her head. "Higher!" was all she said. "Higher still!" And she dragged him up toward the summit. He had a difficulty in following her. They were soon under the very roof, in the maze of timber-work. They slipped through the buttresses, the rafters, the joists; they ran from beam to beam as they might have run from tree to tree in a forest. And, despite the care which she took to look behind her at every moment, she failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own shadow, which stopped when she stopped, which started again when she did and which made no more noise than a well-conducted shadow should. As for Raoul, he saw nothing either; for, when he had Christine in front of him, nothing interested him that happened behind. Chapter XII Apollo's Lyre On this way, they reached the roof. Christine tripped over it as lightly as a swallow. Their eyes swept the empty space between the three domes and the triangular pediment. She breathed freely over Paris, the whole valley of which was seen at work below. She called Raoul to come quite close to her and they walked side by side along the zinc streets, in the leaden avenues; they looked at their twin shapes in the huge tanks, full of stagnant water, where, in the hot weather, the little boys of the ballet, a score or so, learn to swim and dive. The shadow had followed behind them clinging to their steps; and the two children little suspected its presence when they at last sat down, trustingly, under the mighty protection of Apollo, who, with a great bronze gesture, lifted his huge lyre to the heart of a crimson sky. It was a gorgeous spring evening. Clouds, which had just received their gossamer robe of gold and purple from the setting sun, drifted slowly by; and Christine said to Raoul: "Soon we shall go farther and faster than the clouds, to the end of the world, and then you will leave me, Raoul. But, if, when the moment comes for you to take me away, I refuse to go with you--well you must carry me off by force!" "Are you afraid that you will change your mind, Christine?" "I don't know," she said, shaking her head in an odd fashion. "He is a demon!" And she shivered and nestled in his arms with a moan. "I am afraid now of going back to live with him ... in the ground!" "What compels you to go back, Christine?" "If I do not go back to him, terrible misfortunes may happen! ... But I can't do it, I can't do it! ... I know one ought to be sorry for people who live underground ... But he is too horrible! And yet the time is at hand; I have only a day left; and, if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his voice. And he will drag me with him, underground, and go on his knees before me, with his death's head. And he will tell me that he loves me! And he will cry! Oh, those tears, Raoul, those tears in the two black eye-sockets of the death's head! I can not see those tears flow again!" She wrung her hands in anguish, while Raoul pressed her to his heart. "No, no, you shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you! You shall not see his tears! Let us fly, Christine, let us fly at once!" And he tried to drag her away, then and there. But she stopped him. "No, no," she said, shaking her head sadly. "Not now! ... It would be too cruel ... let him hear me sing to-morrow evening ... and then we will go away. You must come and fetch me in my dressing-room at midnight exactly. He will then be waiting for me in the dining-room by the lake ... we shall be free and you shall take me away ... You must promise me that, Raoul, even if I refuse; for I feel that, if I go back this time, I shall perhaps never return." And she gave a sigh to which it seemed to her that another sigh, behind her, replied. "Didn't you hear?" Her teeth chattered. "No," said Raoul, "I heard nothing." "It is too terrible," she confessed, "to be always trembling like this! ... And yet we run no danger here; we are at home, in the sky, in the open air, in the light. The sun is flaming; and night-birds can not bear to look at the sun. I have never seen him by daylight ... it must be awful! ... Oh, the first time I saw him! ... I thought that he was going to die." "Why?" asked Raoul, really frightened at the aspect which this strange confidence was taking. "BECAUSE I HAD SEEN HIM!" This time, Raoul and Christine turned round at the same time: "There is some one in pain," said Raoul. "Perhaps some one has been hurt. Did you hear?" "I can't say," Christine confessed. "Even when he is not there, my ears are full of his sighs. Still, if you heard ..." They stood up and looked around them. They were quite alone on the immense lead roof. They sat down again and Raoul said: "Tell me how you saw him first." "I had heard him for three months without seeing him. The first time I heard it, I thought, as you did, that that adorable voice was singing in another room. I went out and looked everywhere; but, as you know, Raoul, my dressing-room is very much by itself; and I could not find the voice outside my room, whereas it went on steadily inside. And it not only sang, but it spoke to me and answered my questions, like a real man's voice, with this difference, that it was as beautiful as the voice of an angel. I had never got the Angel of Music whom my poor father had promised to send me as soon as he was dead. I really think that Mamma Valerius was a little bit to blame. I told her about it; and she at once said, 'It must be the Angel; at any rate, you can do no harm by asking him.' I did so; and the man's voice replied that, yes, it was the Angel's voice, the voice which I was expecting and which my father had promised me. From that time onward, the voice and I became great friends. It asked leave to give me lessons every day. I agreed and never failed to keep the appointment which it gave me in my dressing-room. You have no idea, though you have heard the voice, of what those lessons were like." "No, I have no idea," said Raoul. "What was your accompaniment?" "We were accompanied by a music which I do not know: it was behind the wall and wonderfully accurate. The voice seemed to understand mine exactly, to know precisely where my father had left off teaching me. In a few weeks' time, I hardly knew myself when I sang. I was even frightened. I seemed to dread a sort of witchcraft behind it; but Mamma Valerius reassured me. She said that she knew I was much too simple a girl to give the devil a hold on me ... My progress, by the voice's own order, was kept a secret between the voice, Mamma Valerius and myself. It was a curious thing, but, outside the dressing-room, I sang with my ordinary, every-day voice and nobody noticed anything. I did all that the voice asked. It said, 'Wait and see: we shall astonish Paris!' And I waited and lived on in a sort of ecstatic dream. It was then that I saw you for the first time one evening, in the house. I was so glad that I never thought of concealing my delight when I reached my dressing-room. Unfortunately, the voice was there before me and soon noticed, by my air, that something had happened. It asked what was the matter and I saw no reason for keeping our story secret or concealing the place which you filled in my heart. Then the voice was silent. I called to it, but it did not reply; I begged and entreated, but in vain. I was terrified lest it had gone for good. I wish to Heaven it had, dear! ... That night, I went home in a desperate condition. I told Mamma Valerius, who said, 'Why, of course, the voice is jealous!' And that, dear, first revealed to me that I loved you." Christine stopped and laid her head on Raoul's shoulder. They sat like that for a moment, in silence, and they did not see, did not perceive the movement, at a few steps from them, of the creeping shadow of two great black wings, a shadow that came along the roof so near, so near them that it could have stifled them by closing over them. "The next day," Christine continued, with a sigh, "I went back to my dressing-room in a very pensive frame of mind. The voice was there, spoke to me with great sadness and told me plainly that, if I must bestow my heart on earth, there was nothing for the voice to do but to go back to Heaven. And it said this with such an accent of HUMAN sorrow that I ought then and there to have suspected and begun to believe that I was the victim of my deluded senses. But my faith in the voice, with which the memory of my father was so closely intermingled, remained undisturbed. I feared nothing so much as that I might never hear it again; I had thought about my love for you and realized all the useless danger of it; and I did not even know if you remembered me. Whatever happened, your position in society forbade me to contemplate the possibility of ever marrying you; and I swore to the voice that you were no more than a brother to me nor ever would be and that my heart was incapable of any earthly love. And that, dear, was why I refused to recognize or see you when I met you on the stage or in the passages. Meanwhile, the hours during which the voice taught me were spent in a divine frenzy, until, at last, the voice said to me, 'You can now, Christine Daae, give to men a little of the music of Heaven.' I don't know how it was that Carlotta did not come to the theater that night nor why I was called upon to sing in her stead; but I sang with a rapture I had never known before and I felt for a moment as if my soul were leaving my body!" "Oh, Christine," said Raoul, "my heart quivered that night at every accent of your voice. I saw the tears stream down your cheeks and I wept with you. How could you sing, sing like that while crying?" "I felt myself fainting," said Christine, "I closed my eyes. When I opened them, you were by my side. But the voice was there also, Raoul! I was afraid for your sake and again I would not recognize you and began to laugh when you reminded me that you had picked up my scarf in the sea! ... Alas, there is no deceiving the voice! ... The voice recognized you and the voice was jealous! ... It said that, if I did not love you, I would not avoid you, but treat you like any other old friend. It made me scene upon scene. At last, I said to the voice, 'That will do! I am going to Perros to-morrow, to pray on my father's grave, and I shall ask M. Raoul de Chagny to go with me.' 'Do as you please,' replied the voice, 'but I shall be at Perros too, for I am wherever you are, Christine; and, if you are still worthy of me, if you have not lied to me, I will play you The Resurrection of Lazarus, on the stroke of midnight, on your father's tomb and on your father's violin.' That, dear, was how I came to write you the letter that brought you to Perros. How could I have been so beguiled? How was it, when I saw the personal, the selfish point of view of the voice, that I did not suspect some impostor? Alas, I was no longer mistress of myself: I had become his thing!" "But, after all," cried Raoul, "you soon came to know the truth! Why did you not at once rid yourself of that abominable nightmare?" "Know the truth, Raoul? Rid myself of that nightmare? But, my poor boy, I was not caught in the nightmare until the day when I learned the truth! ... Pity me, Raoul, pity me! ... You remember the terrible evening when Carlotta thought that she had been turned into a toad on the stage and when the house was suddenly plunged in darkness through the chandelier crashing to the floor? There were killed and wounded that night and the whole theater rang with terrified screams. My first thought was for you and the voice. I was at once easy, where you were concerned, for I had seen you in your brother's box and I knew that you were not in danger. But the voice had told me that it would be at the performance and I was really afraid for it, just as if it had been an ordinary person who was capable of dying. I thought to myself, 'The chandelier may have come down upon the voice.' I was then on the stage and was nearly running into the house, to look for the voice among the killed and wounded, when I thought that, if the voice was safe, it would be sure to be in my dressing-room and I rushed to my room. The voice was not there. I locked my door and, with tears in my eyes, besought it, if it were still alive, to manifest itself to me. The voice did not reply, but suddenly I heard a long, beautiful wail which I knew well. It is the plaint of Lazarus when, at the sound of the Redeemer's voice, he begins to open his eyes and see the light of day. It was the music which you and I, Raoul, heard at Perros. And then the voice began to sing the leading phrase, 'Come! And believe in me! Whoso believes in me shall live! Walk! Whoso hath believed in me shall never die! ...' I can not tell you the effect which that music had upon me. It seemed to command me, personally, to come, to stand up and come to it. It retreated and I followed. 'Come! And believe in me!' I believed in it, I came ... I came and--this was the extraordinary thing--my dressing-room, as I moved, seemed to lengthen out ... to lengthen out ... Evidently, it must have been an effect of mirrors ... for I had the mirror in front of me ... And, suddenly, I was outside the room without knowing how!" "What! Without knowing how? Christine, Christine, you must really stop dreaming!" "I was not dreaming, dear, I was outside my room without knowing how. You, who saw me disappear from my room one evening, may be able to explain it; but I can not. I can only tell you that, suddenly, there was no mirror before me and no dressing-room. I was in a dark passage, I was frightened and I cried out. It was quite dark, but for a faint red glimmer at a distant corner of the wall. I tried out. My voice was the only sound, for the singing and the violin had stopped. And, suddenly, a hand was laid on mine ... or rather a stone-cold, bony thing that seized my wrist and did not let go. I cried out again. An arm took me round the waist and supported me. I struggled for a little while and then gave up the attempt. I was dragged toward the little red light and then I saw that I was in the hands of a man wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a mask that hid his whole face. I made one last effort; my limbs stiffened, my mouth opened to scream, but a hand closed it, a hand which I felt on my lips, on my skin ... a hand that smelt of death. Then I fainted away. "When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, 'Who are you? Where is the voice?' His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the man's black shape, in the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and I murmured, 'Cesar!' The animal quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the PROFETA, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost's prisoner. I called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera ghost, have you not, Raoul?" "Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the Profeta?" "I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up, and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I calculated that we were in a narrow circular gallery, probably running all round the Opera, which is immense, underground. I had once been down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away. There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces ... Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still holding me up and Cesar walked on, unled and sure-footed. I could not tell you, even approximately, how long this ride lasted; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was turning, but I don't think so: no, my mind was quite clear. At last, Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and Cesar stopped. The darkness had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!" "A boat!" "Yes, but I knew that all that existed and that there was nothing supernatural about that underground lake and boat. But think of the exceptional conditions in which I arrived upon that shore! I don't know whether the effects of the cordial had worn off when the man's shape lifted me into the boat, but my terror began all over again. My gruesome escort must have noticed it, for he sent Cesar back and I heard his hoofs trampling up a staircase while the man jumped into the boat, untied the rope that held it and seized the oars. He rowed with a quick, powerful stroke; and his eyes, under the mask, never left me. We slipped across the noiseless water in the bluey light which I told you of; then we were in the dark again and we touched shore. And I was once more taken up in the man's arms. I cried aloud. And then, suddenly, I was silent, dazed by the light... Yes, a dazzling light in the midst of which I had been put down. I sprang to my feet. I was in the middle of a drawing-room that seemed to me to be decorated, adorned and furnished with nothing but flowers, flowers both magnificent and stupid, because of the silk ribbons that tied them to baskets, like those which they sell in the shops on the boulevards. They were much too civilized flowers, like those which I used to find in my dressing-room after a first night. And, in the midst of all these flowers, stood the black shape of the man in the mask, with arms crossed, and he said, 'Don't be afraid, Christine; you are in no danger.' IT WAS THE VOICE! "My anger equaled my amazement. I rushed at the mask and tried to snatch it away, so as to see the face of the voice. The man said, 'You are in no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask.' And, taking me gently by the wrists, he forced me into a chair and then went down on his knees before me and said nothing more! His humility gave me back some of my courage; and the light restored me to the realties of life. However extraordinary the adventure might be, I was now surrounded by mortal, visible, tangible things. The furniture, the hangings, the candles, the vases and the very flowers in their baskets, of which I could almost have told whence they came and what they cost, were bound to confine my imagination to the limits of a drawing-room quite as commonplace as any that, at least, had the excuse of not being in the cellars of the Opera. I had, no doubt, to do with a terrible, eccentric person, who, in some mysterious fashion, had succeeded in taking up his abode there, under the Opera house, five stories below the level of the ground. And the voice, the voice which I had recognized under the mask, was on its knees before me, WAS A MAN! And I began to cry... The man, still kneeling, must have understood the cause of my tears, for he said, 'It is true, Christine! ... I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost ... I am Erik!'" Christine's narrative was again interrupted. An echo behind them seemed to repeat the word after her. "Erik!" What echo? ... They both turned round and saw that night had fallen. Raoul made a movement as though to rise, but Christine kept him beside her. "Don't go," she said. "I want you to know everything HERE!" "But why here, Christine? I am afraid of your catching cold." "We have nothing to fear except the trap-doors, dear, and here we are miles away from the trap-doors ... and I am not allowed to see you outside the theater. This is not the time to annoy him. We must not arouse his suspicion." "Christine! Christine! Something tells me that we are wrong to wait till to-morrow evening and that we ought to fly at once." "I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause him infinite pain." "It is difficult not to cause him pain and yet to escape from him for good." "You are right in that, Raoul, for certainly he will die of my flight." And she added in a dull voice, "But then it counts both ways ... for we risk his killing us." "Does he love you so much?" "He would commit murder for me." "But one can find out where he lives. One can go in search of him. Now that we know that Erik is not a ghost, one can speak to him and force him to answer!" Christine shook her head. "No, no! There is nothing to be done with Erik except to run away!" "Then why, when you were able to run away, did you go back to him?" "Because I had to. And you will understand that when I tell you how I left him." "Oh, I hate him!" cried Raoul. "And you, Christine, tell me, do you hate him too?" "No," said Christine simply. "No, of course not ... Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves," said Raoul bitterly. "The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it... Picture it: a man who lives in a palace underground!" And he gave a leer. "Then you want me to go back there?" said the young girl cruelly. "Take care, Raoul; I have told you: I should never return!" There was an appalling silence between the three of them: the two who spoke and the shadow that listened, behind them. "Before answering that," said Raoul, at last, speaking very slowly, "I should like to know with what feeling he inspires you, since you do not hate him." "With horror!" she said. "That is the terrible thing about it. He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness! ... He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love... He has carried me off for love! ... He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love! ... But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps! ... And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty ... he offered it ... he offered to show me the mysterious road ... Only ... only he rose too ... and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice ... for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed! ... That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep. "When I woke up, I was alone, lying on a sofa in a simply furnished little bedroom, with an ordinary mahogany bedstead, lit by a lamp standing on the marble top of an old Louis-Philippe chest of drawers. I soon discovered that I was a prisoner and that the only outlet from my room led to a very comfortable bath-room. On returning to the bedroom, I saw on the chest of drawers a note, in red ink, which said, 'My dear Christine, you need have no concern as to your fate. You have no better nor more respectful friend in the world than myself. You are alone, at present, in this home which is yours. I am going out shopping to fetch you all the things that you can need.' I felt sure that I had fallen into the hands of a madman. I ran round my little apartment, looking for a way of escape which I could not find. I upbraided myself for my absurd superstition, which had caused me to fall into the trap. I felt inclined to laugh and to cry at the same time. "This was the state of mind in which Erik found me. After giving three taps on the wall, he walked in quietly through a door which I had not noticed and which he left open. He had his arms full of boxes and parcels and arranged them on the bed, in a leisurely fashion, while I overwhelmed him with abuse and called upon him to take off his mask, if it covered the face of an honest man. He replied serenely, 'You shall never see Erik's face.' And he reproached me with not having finished dressing at that time of day: he was good enough to tell me that it was two o'clock in the afternoon. He said he would give me half an hour and, while he spoke, wound up my watch and set it for me. After which, he asked me to come to the dining-room, where a nice lunch was waiting for us. "I was very angry, slammed the door in his face and went to the bath-room ... When I came out again, feeling greatly refreshed, Erik said that he loved me, but that he would never tell me so except when I allowed him and that the rest of the time would be devoted to music. 'What do you mean by the rest of the time?' I asked. 'Five days,' he said, with decision. I asked him if I should then be free and he said, 'You will be free, Christine, for, when those five days are past, you will have learned not to see me; and then, from time to time, you will come to see your poor Erik!' He pointed to a chair opposite him, at a small table, and I sat down, feeling greatly perturbed. However, I ate a few prawns and the wing of a chicken and drank half a glass of tokay, which he had himself, he told me, brought from the Konigsberg cellars. Erik did not eat or drink. I asked him what his nationality was and if that name of Erik did not point to his Scandinavian origin. He said that he had no name and no country and that he had taken the name of Erik by accident. "After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and gave a cry. What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony; and I remembered that his hands smelt of death. 'Oh, forgive me!' he moaned. And he opened a door before me. 'This is my bedroom, if you care to see it. It is rather curious.' His manners, his words, his attitude gave me confidence and I went in without hesitation. I felt as if I were entering the room of a dead person. The walls were all hung with black, but, instead of the white trimmings that usually set off that funereal upholstery, there was an enormous stave of music with the notes of the DIES IRAE, many times repeated. In the middle of the room was a canopy, from which hung curtains of red brocaded stuff, and, under the canopy, an open coffin. 'That is where I sleep,' said Erik. 'One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity.' The sight upset me so much that I turned away my head. "Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the walls. On the desk was a music-book covered with red notes. I asked leave to look at it and read, 'Don Juan Triumphant.' 'Yes,' he said, 'I compose sometimes.' I began that work twenty years ago. When I have finished, I shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up again.' 'You must work at it as seldom as you can,' I said. He replied, 'I sometimes work at it for fourteen days and nights together, during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a time.' 'Will you play me something out of your Don Juan Triumphant?' I asked, thinking to please him. 'You must never ask me that,' he said, in a gloomy voice. 'I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns; and yet he is not struck by fire from Heaven.' Thereupon we returned to the drawing-room. I noticed that there was no mirror in the whole apartment. I was going to remark upon this, but Erik had already sat down to the piano. He said, 'You see, Christine, there is some music that is so terrible that it consumes all those who approach it. Fortunately, you have not come to that music yet, for you would lose all your pretty coloring and nobody would know you when you returned to Paris. Let us sing something from the Opera, Christine Daae.' He spoke these last words as though he were flinging an insult at me." "What did you do?" "I had no time to think about the meaning he put into his words. We at once began the duet in Othello and already the catastrophe was upon us. I sang Desdemona with a despair, a terror which I had never displayed before. As for him, his voice thundered forth his revengeful soul at every note. Love, jealousy, hatred, burst out around us in harrowing cries. Erik's black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Moor of Venice. He was Othello himself. Suddenly, I felt a need to see beneath the mask. I wanted to know the FACE of the voice, and, with a movement which I was utterly unable to control, swiftly my fingers tore away the mask. Oh, horror, horror, horror!" Christine stopped, at the thought of the vision that had scared her, while the echoes of the night, which had repeated the name of Erik, now thrice moaned the cry: "Horror! ... Horror! ... Horror!" Raoul and Christine, clasping each other closely, raised their eyes to the stars that shone in a clear and peaceful sky. Raoul said: "Strange, Christine, that this calm, soft night should be so full of plaintive sounds. One would think that it was sorrowing with us." "When you know the secret, Raoul, your ears, like mine, will be full of lamentations." She took Raoul's protecting hands in hers and, with a long shiver, continued: "Yes, if I lived to be a hundred, I should always hear the superhuman cry of grief and rage which he uttered when the terrible sight appeared before my eyes ... Raoul, you have seen death's heads, when they have been dried and withered by the centuries, and, perhaps, if you were not the victim of a nightmare, you saw HIS death's head at Perros. And then you saw Red Death stalking about at the last masked ball. But all those death's heads were motionless and their dumb horror was not alive. But imagine, if you can, Red Death's mask suddenly coming to life in order to express, with the four black holes of its eyes, its nose, and its mouth, the extreme anger, the mighty fury of a demon; AND NOT A RAY OF LIGHT FROM THE SOCKETS, for, as I learned later, you can not see his blazing eyes except in the dark. "I fell back against the wall and he came up to me, grinding his teeth, and, as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and curses at me. Leaning over me, he cried, 'Look! You want to see! See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like! Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a very good-looking fellow, eh? ... When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me for ever. I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!' And, drawing himself up to his full height, with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, 'Look at me! I AM DON JUAN TRIUMPHANT!' And, when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair." "Enough! Enough!" cried Raoul. "I will kill him. In Heaven's name, Christine, tell me where the dining-room on the lake is! I must kill him!" "Oh, be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know!" "Yes, I want to know how and why you went back; I must know! ... But, in any case, I will kill him!" "Oh, Raoul, listen, listen! ... He dragged me by my hair and then ... and then ... Oh, it is too horrible!" "Well, what? Out with it!" exclaimed Raoul fiercely. "Out with it, quick!" "Then he hissed at me. 'Ah, I frighten you, do I? ... I dare say! ... Perhaps you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this ... this ... my head is a mask? Well,' he roared, 'tear it off as you did the other! Come! Come along! I insist! Your hands! Your hands! Give me your hands!' And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful face. He tore his flesh with my nails, tore his terrible dead flesh with my nails! ... 'Know,' he shouted, while his throat throbbed and panted like a furnace, 'know that I am built up of death from head to foot and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you! ... Look, I am not laughing now, I am crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again! ... As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back, I know you would have come back ... but, now that you know my hideousness, you would run away for good... So I shall keep you here! ... Why did you want to see me? Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me! ... When my own father never saw me and when my mother, so as not to see me, made me a present of my first mask!' "He had let go of me at last and was dragging himself about on the floor, uttering terrible sobs. And then he crawled away like a snake, went into his room, closed the door and left me alone to my reflections. Presently I heard the sound of the organ; and then I began to understand Erik's contemptuous phrase when he spoke about Opera music. What I now heard was utterly different from what I had heard up to then. His Don Juan Triumphant (for I had not a doubt but that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget the horror of the moment) seemed to me at first one long, awful, magnificent sob. But, little by little, it expressed every emotion, every suffering of which mankind is capable. It intoxicated me; and I opened the door that separated us. Erik rose, as I entered, BUT DARED NOT TURN IN MY DIRECTION. 'Erik,' I cried, 'show me your face without fear! I swear that you are the most unhappy and sublime of men; and, if ever again I shiver when I look at you, it will be because I am thinking of the splendor of your genius!' Then Erik turned round, for he believed me, and I also had faith in myself. He fell at my feet, with words of love ... with words of love in his dead mouth ... and the music had ceased ... He kissed the hem of my dress and did not see that I closed my eyes. "What more can I tell you, dear? You now know the tragedy. It went on for a fortnight--a fortnight during which I lied to him. My lies were as hideous as the monster who inspired them; but they were the price of my liberty. I burned his mask; and I managed so well that, even when he was not singing, he tried to catch my eye, like a dog sitting by its master. He was my faithful slave and paid me endless little attentions. Gradually, I gave him such confidence that he ventured to take me walking on the banks of the lake and to row me in the boat on its leaden waters; toward the end of my captivity he let me out through the gates that closed the underground passages in the Rue Scribe. Here a carriage awaited us and took us to the Bois. The night when we met you was nearly fatal to me, for he is terribly jealous of you and I had to tell him that you were soon going away ... Then, at last, after a fortnight of that horrible captivity, during which I was filled with pity, enthusiasm, despair and horror by turns, he believed me when I said, 'I WILL COME BACK!'" "And you went back, Christine," groaned Raoul. "Yes, dear, and I must tell you that it was not his frightful threats when setting me free that helped me to keep my word, but the harrowing sob which he gave on the threshold of the tomb. ... That sob attached me to the unfortunate man more than I myself suspected when saying good-by to him. Poor Erik! Poor Erik!" "Christine," said Raoul, rising, "you tell me that you love me; but you had recovered your liberty hardly a few hours before you returned to Erik! Remember the masked ball!" "Yes; and do you remember those hours which I passed with you, Raoul ... to the great danger of both of us?" "I doubted your love for me, during those hours." "Do you doubt it still, Raoul? ... Then know that each of my visits to Erik increased my horror of him; for each of those visits, instead of calming him, as I hoped, made him mad with love! And I am so frightened, so frightened! ..." "You are frightened ... but do you love me? If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?" She rose in her turn, put her two trembling arms round the young man's neck and said: "Oh, my betrothed of a day, if I did not love you, I would not give you my lips! Take them, for the first time and the last." He kissed her lips; but the night that surrounded them was rent asunder, they fled as at the approach of a storm and their eyes, filled with dread of Erik, showed them, before they disappeared, high up above them, an immense night-bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to the string of Apollo's lyre. Chapter XIII A Master-Stroke of the Trap-Door Lover Raoul and Christine ran, eager to escape from the roof and the blazing eyes that showed only in the dark; and they did not stop before they came to the eighth floor on the way down. There was no performance at the Opera that night and the passages were empty. Suddenly, a queer-looking form stood before them and blocked the road: "No, not this way!" And the form pointed to another passage by which they were to reach the wings. Raoul wanted to stop and ask for an explanation. But the form, which wore a sort of long frock-coat and a pointed cap, said: "Quick! Go away quickly!" Christine was already dragging Raoul, compelling him to start running again. "But who is he? Who is that man?" he asked. Christine replied: "It's the Persian." "What's he doing here?" "Nobody knows. He is always in the Opera." "You are making me run away, for the first time in my life. If we really saw Erik, what I ought to have done was to nail him to Apollo's lyre, just as we nail the owls to the walls of our Breton farms; and there would have been no more question of him." "My dear Raoul, you would first have had to climb up to Apollo's lyre: that is no easy matter." "The blazing eyes were there!" "Oh, you are getting like me now, seeing him everywhere! What I took for blazing eyes was probably a couple of stars shining through the strings of the lyre." And Christine went down another floor, with Raoul following her. "As you have quite made up your mind to go, Christine, I assure you it would be better to go at once. Why wait for to-morrow? He may have heard us to-night." "No, no, he is working, I tell you, at his Don Juan Triumphant and not thinking of us." "You're so sure of that you keep on looking behind you!" "Come to my dressing-room." "Hadn't we better meet outside the Opera?" "Never, till we go away for good! It would bring us bad luck, if I did not keep my word. I promised him to see you only here." "It's a good thing for me that he allowed you even that. Do you know," said Raoul bitterly, "that it was very plucky of you to let us play at being engaged?" "Why, my dear, he knows all about it! He said, 'I trust you, Christine. M. de Chagny is in love with you and is going abroad. Before he goes, I want him to be as happy as I am.' Are people so unhappy when they love?" "Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved." They came to Christine's dressing-room. "Why do you think that you are safer in this room than on the stage?" asked Raoul. "You heard him through the walls here, therefore he can certainly hear us." "No. He gave me his word not to be behind the walls of my dressing-room again and I believe Erik's word. This room and my bedroom on the lake are for me, exclusively, and not to be approached by him." "How can you have gone from this room into that dark passage, Christine? Suppose we try to repeat your movements; shall we?" "It is dangerous, dear, for the glass might carry me off again; and, instead of running away, I should be obliged to go to the end of the secret passage to the lake and there call Erik." "Would he hear you?" "Erik will hear me wherever I call him. He told me so. He is a very curious genius. You must not think, Raoul, that he is simply a man who amuses himself by living underground. He does things that no other man could do; he knows things which nobody in the world knows." "Take care, Christine, you are making a ghost of him again!" "No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all." "A man of Heaven and earth ... that is all! ... A nice way to speak of him! ... And are you still resolved to run away from him?" "Yes, to-morrow." "To-morrow, you will have no resolve left!" "Then, Raoul, you must run away with me in spite of myself; is that understood?" "I shall be here at twelve to-morrow night; I shall keep my promise, whatever happens. You say that, after listening to the performance, he is to wait for you in the dining-room on the lake?" "Yes." "And how are you to reach him, if you don't know how to go out by the glass?" "Why, by going straight to the edge of the lake." Christine opened a box, took out an enormous key and showed it to Raoul. "What's that?" he asked. "The key of the gate to the underground passage in the Rue Scribe." "I understand, Christine. It leads straight to the lake. Give it to me, Christine, will you?" "Never!" she said. "That would be treacherous!" Suddenly Christine changed color. A mortal pallor overspread her features. "Oh heavens!" she cried. "Erik! Erik! Have pity on me!" "Hold your tongue!" said Raoul. "You told me he could hear you!" But the singer's attitude became more and more inexplicable. She wrung her fingers, repeating, with a distraught air: "Oh, Heaven! Oh, Heaven!" "But what is it? What is it?" Raoul implored. "The ring ... the gold ring he gave me." "Oh, so Erik gave you that ring!" "You know he did, Raoul! But what you don't know is that, when he gave it to me, he said, 'I give you back your liberty, Christine, on condition that this ring is always on your finger. As long as you keep it, you will be protected against all danger and Erik will remain your friend. But woe to you if you ever part with it, for Erik will have his revenge!' ... My dear, my dear, the ring is gone! ... Woe to us both!" They both looked for the ring, but could not find it. Christine refused to be pacified. "It was while I gave you that kiss, up above, under Apollo's lyre," she said. "The ring must have slipped from my finger and dropped into the street! We can never find it. And what misfortunes are in store for us now! Oh, to run away!" "Let us run away at once," Raoul insisted, once more. She hesitated. He thought that she was going to say yes... Then her bright pupils became dimmed and she said: "No! To-morrow!" And she left him hurriedly, still wringing and rubbing her fingers, as though she hoped to bring the ring back like that. Raoul went home, greatly perturbed at all that he had heard. [Illustration: They Sat Like that for a Moment in Silence] "If I don't save her from the hands of that humbug," he said, aloud, as he went to bed, "she is lost. But I shall save her." He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice over, he shouted: "Humbug! ... Humbug! ... Humbug!" But, suddenly, he raised himself on his elbow. A cold sweat poured from his temples. Two eyes, like blazing coals, had appeared at the foot of his bed. They stared at him fixedly, terribly, in the darkness of the night. Raoul was no coward; and yet he trembled. He put out a groping, hesitating hand toward the table by his bedside. He found the matches and lit his candle. The eyes disappeared. Still uneasy in his mind, he thought to himself: "She told me that HIS eyes only showed in the dark. His eyes have disappeared in the light, but HE may be there still." And he rose, hunted about, went round the room. He looked under his bed, like a child. Then he thought himself absurd, got into bed again and blew out the candle. The eyes reappeared. He sat up and stared back at them with all the courage he possessed. Then he cried: "Is that you, Erik? Man, genius, or ghost, is it you?" He reflected: "If it's he, he's on the balcony!" Then he ran to the chest of drawers and groped for his revolver. He opened the balcony window, looked out, saw nothing and closed the window again. He went back to bed, shivering, for the night was cold, and put the revolver on the table within his reach. The eyes were still there, at the foot of the bed. Were they between the bed and the window-pane or behind the pane, that is to say, on the balcony? That was what Raoul wanted to know. He also wanted to know if those eyes belonged to a human being... He wanted to know everything. Then, patiently, calmly, he seized his revolver and took aim. He aimed a little above the two eyes. Surely, if they were eyes and if above those two eyes there was a forehead and if Raoul was not too clumsy ... The shot made a terrible din amid the silence of the slumbering house. And, while footsteps came hurrying along the passages, Raoul sat up with outstretched arm, ready to fire again, if need be. This time, the two eyes had disappeared. Servants appeared, carrying lights; Count Philippe, terribly anxious: "What is it?" "I think I have been dreaming," replied the young man. "I fired at two stars that kept me from sleeping." "You're raving! Are you ill? For God's sake, tell me, Raoul: what happened?" And the count seized hold of the revolver. "No, no, I'm not raving... Besides, we shall soon see ..." He got out of bed, put on a dressing-gown and slippers, took a light from the hands of a servant and, opening the window, stepped out on the balcony. The count saw that the window had been pierced by a bullet at a man's height. Raoul was leaning over the balcony with his candle: "Aha!" he said. "Blood! ... Blood! ... Here, there, more blood! ... That's a good thing! A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!" he grinned. "Raoul! Raoul! Raoul!" The count was shaking him as though he were trying to waken a sleep-walker. "But, my dear brother, I'm not asleep!" Raoul protested impatiently. "You can see the blood for yourself. I thought I had been dreaming and firing at two stars. It was Erik's eyes ... and here is his blood! ... After all, perhaps I was wrong to shoot; and Christine is quite capable of never forgiving me ... All this would not have happened if I had drawn the curtains before going to bed." "Raoul, have you suddenly gone mad? Wake up!" "What, still? You would do better to help me find Erik ... for, after all, a ghost who bleeds can always be found." The count's valet said: "That is so, sir; there is blood on the balcony." The other man-servant brought a lamp, by the light of which they examined the balcony carefully. The marks of blood followed the rail till they reached a gutter-spout; then they went up the gutter-spout. "My dear fellow," said Count Philippe, "you have fired at a cat." "The misfortune is," said Raoul, with a grin, "that it's quite possible. With Erik, you never know. Is it Erik? Is it the cat? Is it the ghost? No, with Erik, you can't tell!" Raoul went on making this strange sort of remarks which corresponded so intimately and logically with the preoccupation of his brain and which, at the same time, tended to persuade many people that his mind was unhinged. The count himself was seized with this idea; and, later, the examining magistrate, on receiving the report of the commissary of police, came to the same conclusion. "Who is Erik?" asked the count, pressing his brother's hand. "He is my rival. And, if he's not dead, it's a pity." He dismissed the servants with a wave of the hand and the two Chagnys were left alone. But the men were not out of earshot before the count's valet heard Raoul say, distinctly and emphatically: "I shall carry off Christine Daae to-night." This phrase was afterward repeated to M. Faure, the examining-magistrate. But no one ever knew exactly what passed between the two brothers at this interview. The servants declared that this was not their first quarrel. Their voices penetrated the wall; and it was always an actress called Christine Daae that was in question. At breakfast--the early morning breakfast, which the count took in his study--Philippe sent for his brother. Raoul arrived silent and gloomy. The scene was a very short one. Philippe handed his brother a copy of the Epoque and said: "Read that!" The viscount read: "The latest news in the Faubourg is that there is a promise of marriage between Mlle. Christine Daae, the opera-singer, and M. le Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. If the gossips are to be credited, Count Philippe has sworn that, for the first time on record, the Chagnys shall not keep their promise. But, as love is all-powerful, at the Opera as--and even more than--elsewhere, we wonder how Count Philippe intends to prevent the viscount, his brother, from leading the new Margarita to the altar. The two brothers are said to adore each other; but the count is curiously mistaken if he imagines that brotherly love will triumph over love pure and simple." "You see, Raoul," said the count, "you are making us ridiculous! That little girl has turned your head with her ghost-stories." The viscount had evidently repeated Christine's narrative to his brother, during the night. All that he now said was: "Good-by, Philippe." "Have you quite made up your mind? You are going to-night? With her?" No reply. "Surely you will not do anything so foolish? I SHALL know how to prevent you!" "Good-by, Philippe," said the viscount again and left the room. This scene was described to the examining-magistrate by the count himself, who did not see Raoul again until that evening, at the Opera, a few minutes before Christine's disappearance. Raoul, in fact, devoted the whole day to his preparations for the flight. The horses, the carriage, the coachman, the provisions, the luggage, the money required for the journey, the road to be taken (he had resolved not to go by train, so as to throw the ghost off the scent): all this had to be settled and provided for; and it occupied him until nine o'clock at night. At nine o'clock, a sort of traveling-barouche with the curtains of its windows close-down, took its place in the rank on the Rotunda side. It was drawn by two powerful horses driven by a coachman whose face was almost concealed in the long folds of a muffler. In front of this traveling-carriage were three broughams, belonging respectively to Carlotta, who had suddenly returned to Paris, to Sorelli and, at the head of the rank, to Comte Philippe de Chagny. No one left the barouche. The coachman remained on his box, and the three other coachmen remained on theirs. A shadow in a long black cloak and a soft black felt hat passed along the pavement between the Rotunda and the carriages, examined the barouche carefully, went up to the horses and the coachman and then moved away without saying a word, The magistrate afterward believed that this shadow was that of the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny; but I do not agree, seeing that that evening, as every evening, the Vicomte de Chagny was wearing a tall hat, which hat, besides, was subsequently found. I am more inclined to think that the shadow was that of the ghost, who knew all about the whole affair, as the reader will soon perceive. They were giving FAUST, as it happened, before a splendid house. The Faubourg was magnificently represented; and the paragraph in that morning's EPOQUE had already produced its effect, for all eyes were turned to the box in which Count Philippe sat alone, apparently in a very indifferent and careless frame of mind. The feminine element in the brilliant audience seemed curiously puzzled; and the viscount's absence gave rise to any amount of whispering behind the fans. Christine Daae met with a rather cold reception. That special audience could not forgive her for aiming so high. The singer noticed this unfavorable attitude of a portion of the house and was confused by it. The regular frequenters of the Opera, who pretended to know the truth about the viscount's love-story, exchanged significant smiles at certain passages in Margarita's part; and they made a show of turning and looking at Philippe de Chagny's box when Christine sang: "I wish I could but know who was he That addressed me, If he was noble, or, at least, what his name is." The count sat with his chin on his hand and seemed to pay no attention to these manifestations. He kept his eyes fixed on the stage; but his thoughts appeared to be far away. Christine lost her self-assurance more and more. She trembled. She felt on the verge of a breakdown ... Carolus Fonta wondered if she was ill, if she could keep the stage until the end of the Garden Act. In the front of the house, people remembered the catastrophe that had befallen Carlotta at the end of that act and the historic "co-ack" which had momentarily interrupted her career in Paris. Just then, Carlotta made her entrance in a box facing the stage, a sensational entrance. Poor Christine raised her eyes upon this fresh subject of excitement. She recognized her rival. She thought she saw a sneer on her lips. That saved her. She forgot everything, in order to triumph once more. From that moment the prima donna sang with all her heart and soul. She tried to surpass all that she had done till then; and she succeeded. In the last act when she began the invocation to the angels, she made all the members of the audience feel as though they too had wings. In the center of the amphitheater a man stood up and remained standing, facing the singer. It was Raoul. "Holy angel, in Heaven blessed ..." And Christine, her arms outstretched, her throat filled with music, the glory of her hair falling over her bare shoulders, uttered the divine cry: "My spirit longs with thee to rest!" It was at that moment that the stage was suddenly plunged in darkness. It happened so quickly that the spectators hardly had time to utter a sound of stupefaction, for the gas at once lit up the stage again. But Christine Daae was no longer there! What had become of her? What was that miracle? All exchanged glances without understanding, and the excitement at once reached its height. Nor was the tension any less great on the stage itself. Men rushed from the wings to the spot where Christine had been singing that very instant. The performance was interrupted amid the greatest disorder. Where had Christine gone? What witchcraft had snatched her, away before the eyes of thousands of enthusiastic onlookers and from the arms of Carolus Fonta himself? It was as though the angels had really carried her up "to rest." Raoul, still standing up in the amphitheater, had uttered a cry. Count Philippe had sprung to his feet in his box. People looked at the stage, at the count, at Raoul, and wondered if this curious event was connected in any way with the paragraph in that morning's paper. But Raoul hurriedly left his seat, the count disappeared from his box and, while the curtain was lowered, the subscribers rushed to the door that led behind the scenes. The rest of the audience waited amid an indescribable hubbub. Every one spoke at once. Every one tried to suggest an explanation of the extraordinary incident. At last, the curtain rose slowly and Carolus Fonta stepped to the conductor's desk and, in a sad and serious voice, said: "Ladies and gentlemen, an unprecedented event has taken place and thrown us into a state of the greatest alarm. Our sister-artist, Christine Daae, has disappeared before our eyes and nobody can tell us how!" Chapter XIV The Singular Attitude of a Safety-Pin Behind the curtain, there was an indescribable crowd. Artists, scene-shifters, dancers, supers, choristers, subscribers were all asking questions, shouting and hustling one another. "What became of her?" "She's run away." "With the Vicomte de Chagny, of course!" "No, with the count!" "Ah, here's Carlotta! Carlotta did the trick!" "No, it was the ghost!" And a few laughed, especially as a careful examination of the trap-doors and boards had put the idea of an accident out of the question. Amid this noisy throng, three men stood talking in a low voice and with despairing gestures. They were Gabriel, the chorus-master; Mercier, the acting-manager; and Remy, the secretary. They retired to a corner of the lobby by which the stage communicates with the wide passage leading to the foyer of the ballet. Here they stood and argued behind some enormous "properties." "I knocked at the door," said Remy. "They did not answer. Perhaps they are not in the office. In any case, it's impossible to find out, for they took the keys with them." "They" were obviously the managers, who had given orders, during the last entr'acte, that they were not to be disturbed on any pretext whatever. They were not in to anybody. "All the same," exclaimed Gabriel, "a singer isn't run away with, from the middle of the stage, every day!" "Did you shout that to them?" asked Mercier, impatiently. "I'll go back again," said Remy, and disappeared at a run. Thereupon the stage-manager arrived. "Well, M. Mercier, are you coming? What are you two doing here? You're wanted, Mr. Acting-Manager." "I refuse to know or to do anything before the commissary arrives," declared Mercier. "I have sent for Mifroid. We shall see when he comes!" "And I tell you that you ought to go down to the organ at once." "Not before the commissary comes." "I've been down to the organ myself already." "Ah! And what did you see?" "Well, I saw nobody! Do you hear--nobody!" "What do you want me to do down there for{sic}?" "You're right!" said the stage-manager, frantically pushing his hands through his rebellious hair. "You're right! But there might be some one at the organ who could tell us how the stage came to be suddenly darkened. Now Mauclair is nowhere to be found. Do you understand that?" Mauclair was the gas-man, who dispensed day and night at will on the stage of the Opera. "Mauclair is not to be found!" repeated Mercier, taken aback. "Well, what about his assistants?" "There's no Mauclair and no assistants! No one at the lights, I tell you! You can imagine," roared the stage-manager, "that that little girl must have been carried off by somebody else: she didn't run away by herself! It was a calculated stroke and we have to find out about it ... And what are the managers doing all this time? ... I gave orders that no one was to go down to the lights and I posted a fireman in front of the gas-man's box beside the organ. Wasn't that right?" "Yes, yes, quite right, quite right. And now let's wait for the commissary." The stage-manager walked away, shrugging his shoulders, fuming, muttering insults at those milksops who remained quietly squatting in a corner while the whole theater was topsyturvy{sic}. Gabriel and Mercier were not so quiet as all that. Only they had received an order that paralyzed them. The managers were not to be disturbed on any account. Remy had violated that order and met with no success. At that moment he returned from his new expedition, wearing a curiously startled air. "Well, have you seen them?" asked Mercier. "Moncharmin opened the door at last. His eyes were starting out of his head. I thought he meant to strike me. I could not get a word in; and what do you think he shouted at me? 'Have you a safety-pin?' 'No!' 'Well, then, clear out!' I tried to tell him that an unheard-of thing had happened on the stage, but he roared, 'A safety-pin! Give me a safety-pin at once!' A boy heard him--he was bellowing like a bull--ran up with a safety-pin and gave it to him; whereupon Moncharmin slammed the door in my face, and there you are!" "And couldn't you have said, 'Christine Daae.'" "I should like to have seen you in my place. He was foaming at the mouth. He thought of nothing but his safety-pin. I believe, if they hadn't brought him one on the spot, he would have fallen down in a fit! ... Oh, all this isn't natural; and our managers are going mad! ... Besides, it can't go on like this! I'm not used to being treated in that fashion!" Suddenly Gabriel whispered: "It's another trick of O. G.'s." Rimy gave a grin, Mercier a sigh and seemed about to speak ... but, meeting Gabriel's eye, said nothing. However, Mercier felt his responsibility increased as the minutes passed without the managers' appearing; and, at last, he could stand it no longer. "Look here, I'll go and hunt them out myself!" Gabriel, turning very gloomy and serious, stopped him. "Be careful what you're doing, Mercier! If they're staying in their office, it's probably because they have to! O. G. has more than one trick in his bag!" But Mercier shook his head. "That's their lookout! I'm going! If people had listened to me, the police would have known everything long ago!" And he went. "What's everything?" asked Remy. "What was there to tell the police? Why don't you answer, Gabriel? ... Ah, so you know something! Well, you would do better to tell me, too, if you don't want me to shout out that you are all going mad! ... Yes, that's what you are: mad!" Gabriel put on a stupid look and pretended not to understand the private secretary's unseemly outburst. "What 'something' am I supposed to know?" he said. "I don't know what you mean." Remy began to lose his temper. "This evening, Richard and Moncharmin were behaving like lunatics, here, between the acts." "I never noticed it," growled Gabriel, very much annoyed. "Then you're the only one! ... Do you think that I didn't see them? ... And that M. Parabise, the manager of the Credit Central, noticed nothing? ... And that M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, has no eyes to see with? ... Why, all the subscribers were pointing at our managers!" "But what were our managers doing?" asked Gabriel, putting on his most innocent air. "What were they doing? You know better than any one what they were doing! ... You were there! ... And you were watching them, you and Mercier! ... And you were the only two who didn't laugh." "I don't understand!" Gabriel raised his arms and dropped them to his sides again, which gesture was meant to convey that the question did not interest him in the least. Remy continued: "What is the sense of this new mania of theirs? WHY WON'T THEY HAVE ANY ONE COME NEAR THEM NOW?" "What? WON'T THEY HAVE ANY ONE COME NEAR THEM?" "AND THEY WON'T LET ANY ONE TOUCH THEM!" "Really? Have you noticed THAT THEY WON'T LET ANY ONE TOUCH THEM? That is certainly odd!" "Oh, so you admit it! And high time, too! And THEN, THEY WALK BACKWARD!" "BACKWARD! You have seen our managers WALK BACKWARD? Why, I thought that only crabs walked backward!" "Don't laugh, Gabriel; don't laugh!" "I'm not laughing," protested Gabriel, looking as solemn as a judge. "Perhaps you can tell me this, Gabriel, as you're an intimate friend of the management: When I went up to M. Richard, outside the foyer, during the Garden interval, with my hand out before me, why did M. Moncharmin hurriedly whisper to me, 'Go away! Go away! Whatever you do, don't touch M. le Directeur!' Am I supposed to have an infectious disease?" "It's incredible!" "And, a little later, when M. de La Borderie went up to M. Richard, didn't you see M. Moncharmin fling himself between them and hear him exclaim, 'M. l'Ambassadeur I entreat you not to touch M. le Directeur'?" "It's terrible! ... And what was Richard doing meanwhile?" "What was he doing? Why, you saw him! He turned about, BOWED IN FRONT OF HIM, THOUGH THERE WAS NOBODY IN FRONT OF HIM, AND WITHDREW BACKWARD." "BACKWARD?" "And Moncharmin, behind Richard, also turned about; that is, he described a semicircle behind Richard and also WALKED BACKWARD! ... And they went LIKE THAT to the staircase leading to the managers' office: BACKWARD, BACKWARD, BACKWARD! ... Well, if they are not mad, will you explain what it means?" "Perhaps they were practising a figure in the ballet," suggested Gabriel, without much conviction in his voice. The secretary was furious at this wretched joke, made at so dramatic a moment. He knit his brows and contracted his lips. Then he put his mouth to Gabriel's ear: "Don't be so sly, Gabriel. There are things going on for which you and Mercier are partly responsible." "What do you mean?" asked Gabriel. "Christine Daae is not the only one who suddenly disappeared to-night." "Oh, nonsense!" "There's no nonsense about it. Perhaps you can tell me why, when Mother Giry came down to the foyer just now, Mercier took her by the hand and hurried her away with him?" "Really?" said Gabriel, "I never saw it." "You did see it, Gabriel, for you went with Mercier and Mother Giry to Mercier's office. Since then, you and Mercier have been seen, but no one has seen Mother Giry." "Do you think we've eaten her?" "No, but you've locked her up in the office; and any one passing the office can hear her yelling, 'Oh, the scoundrels! Oh, the scoundrels!'" At this point of this singular conversation, Mercier arrived, all out of breath. "There!" he said, in a gloomy voice. "It's worse than ever! ... I shouted, 'It's a serious matter! Open the door! It's I, Mercier.' I heard footsteps. The door opened and Moncharmin appeared. He was very pale. He said, 'What do you want?' I answered, 'Some one has run away with Christine Daae.' What do you think he said? 'And a good job, too!' And he shut the door, after putting this in my hand." Mercier opened his hand; Remy and Gabriel looked. "The safety-pin!" cried Remy. "Strange! Strange!" muttered Gabriel, who could not help shivering. Suddenly a voice made them all three turn round. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Could you tell me where Christine Daae is?" In spite of the seriousness of the circumstances, the absurdity of the question would have made them roar with laughter, if they had not caught sight of a face so sorrow-stricken that they were at once seized with pity. It was the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. Chapter XV Christine! Christine! Raoul's first thought, after Christine Daae's fantastic disappearance, was to accuse Erik. He no longer doubted the almost supernatural powers of the Angel of Music, in this domain of the Opera in which he had set up his empire. And Raoul rushed on the stage, in a mad fit of love and despair. "Christine! Christine!" he moaned, calling to her as he felt that she must be calling to him from the depths of that dark pit to which the monster had carried her. "Christine! Christine!" And he seemed to hear the girl's screams through the frail boards that separated him from her. He bent forward, he listened, ... he wandered over the stage like a madman. Ah, to descend, to descend into that pit of darkness every entrance to which was closed to him, ... for the stairs that led below the stage were forbidden to one and all that night! "Christine! Christine! ..." People pushed him aside, laughing. They made fun of him. They thought the poor lover's brain was gone! By what mad road, through what passages of mystery and darkness known to him alone had Erik dragged that pure-souled child to the awful haunt, with the Louis-Philippe room, opening out on the lake? "Christine! Christine! ... Why don't you answer? ... Are you alive? ..." Hideous thoughts flashed through Raoul's congested brain. Of course, Erik must have discovered their secret, must have known that Christine had played him false. What a vengeance would be his! And Raoul thought again of the yellow stars that had come, the night before, and roamed over his balcony. Why had he not put them out for good? There were some men's eyes that dilated in the darkness and shone like stars or like cats' eyes. Certainly Albinos, who seemed to have rabbits' eyes by day, had cats' eyes at night: everybody knew that! ... Yes, yes, he had undoubtedly fired at Erik. Why had he not killed him? The monster had fled up the gutter-spout like a cat or a convict who--everybody knew that also--would scale the very skies, with the help of a gutter-spout ... No doubt Erik was at that time contemplating some decisive step against Raoul, but he had been wounded and had escaped to turn against poor Christine instead. Such were the cruel thoughts that haunted Raoul as he ran to the singer's dressing-room. "Christine! Christine!" Bitter tears scorched the boy's eyelids as he saw scattered over the furniture the clothes which his beautiful bride was to have worn at the hour of their flight. Oh, why had she refused to leave earlier? Why had she toyed with the threatening catastrophe? Why toyed with the monster's heart? Why, in a final access of pity, had she insisted on flinging, as a last sop to that demon's soul, her divine song: "Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, My spirit longs with thee to rest!" Raoul, his throat filled with sobs, oaths and insults, fumbled awkwardly at the great mirror that had opened one night, before his eyes, to let Christine pass to the murky dwelling below. He pushed, pressed, groped about, but the glass apparently obeyed no one but Erik ... Perhaps actions were not enough with a glass of the kind? Perhaps he was expected to utter certain words? When he was a little boy, he had heard that there were things that obeyed the spoken word! Suddenly, Raoul remembered something about a gate opening into the Rue Scribe, an underground passage running straight to the Rue Scribe from the lake ... Yes, Christine had told him about that... And, when he found that the key was no longer in the box, he nevertheless ran to the Rue Scribe. Outside, in the street, he passed his trembling hands over the huge stones, felt for outlets ... met with iron bars ... were those they? ... Or these? ... Or could it be that air-hole? ... He plunged his useless eyes through the bars ... How dark it was in there! ... He listened ... All was silence! ... He went round the building ... and came to bigger bars, immense gates! ... It was the entrance to the Cour de l'Administration. Raoul rushed into the doorkeeper's lodge. "I beg your pardon, madame, could you tell me where to find a gate or door, made of bars, iron bars, opening into the Rue Scribe ... and leading to the lake? ... You know the lake I mean? ... Yes, the underground lake ... under the Opera." "Yes, sir, I know there is a lake under the Opera, but I don't know which door leads to it. I have never been there!" "And the Rue Scribe, madame, the Rue Scribe? Have you never been to the Rue Scribe?" The woman laughed, screamed with laughter! Raoul darted away, roaring with anger, ran up-stairs, four stairs at a time, down-stairs, rushed through the whole of the business side of the opera-house, found himself once more in the light of the stage. He stopped, with his heart thumping in his chest: suppose Christine Daae had been found? He saw a group of men and asked: "I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Could you tell me where Christine Daae is?" And somebody laughed. At the same moment the stage buzzed with a new sound and, amid a crowd of men in evening-dress, all talking and gesticulating together, appeared a man who seemed very calm and displayed a pleasant face, all pink and chubby-cheeked, crowned with curly hair and lit up by a pair of wonderfully serene blue eyes. Mercier, the acting-manager, called the Vicomte de Chagny's attention to him and said: "This is the gentleman to whom you should put your question, monsieur. Let me introduce Mifroid, the commissary of police." "Ah, M. le Vicomte de Chagny! Delighted to meet you, monsieur," said the commissary. "Would you mind coming with me? ... And now where are the managers? ... Where are the managers?" Mercier did not answer, and Remy, the secretary, volunteered the information that the managers were locked up in their office and that they knew nothing as yet of what had happened. "You don't mean to say so! Let us go up to the office!" And M. Mifroid, followed by an ever-increasing crowd, turned toward the business side of the building. Mercier took advantage of the confusion to slip a key into Gabriel's hand: "This is all going very badly," he whispered. "You had better let Mother Giry out." And Gabriel moved away. They soon came to the managers' door. Mercier stormed in vain: the door remained closed. "Open in the name of the law!" commanded M. Mifroid, in a loud and rather anxious voice. At last the door was opened. All rushed in to the office, on the commissary's heels. Raoul was the last to enter. As he was about to follow the rest into the room, a hand was laid on his shoulder and he heard these words spoken in his ear: "ERIK'S SECRETS CONCERN NO ONE BUT HIMSELF!" He turned around, with a stifled exclamation. The hand that was laid on his shoulder was now placed on the lips of a person with an ebony skin, with eyes of jade and with an astrakhan cap on his head: the Persian! The stranger kept up the gesture that recommended discretion and then, at the moment when the astonished viscount was about to ask the reason of his mysterious intervention, bowed and disappeared. Chapter XVI Mme. Giry's Astounding Revelations as to Her Personal Relations with the Opera Ghost Before following the commissary into the manager's office I must describe certain extraordinary occurrences that took place in that office which Remy and Mercier had vainly tried to enter and into which MM. Richard and Moncharmin had locked themselves with an object which the reader does not yet know, but which it is my duty, as an historian, to reveal without further postponement. I have had occasion to say that the managers' mood had undergone a disagreeable change for some time past and to convey the fact that this change was due not only to the fall of the chandelier on the famous night of the gala performance. The reader must know that the ghost had calmly been paid his first twenty thousand francs. Oh, there had been wailing and gnashing of teeth, indeed! And yet the thing had happened as simply as could be. One morning, the managers found on their table an envelope addressed to "Monsieur O. G. (private)" and accompanied by a note from O. G. himself: The time has come to carry out the clause in the memorandum-book. Please put twenty notes of a thousand francs each into this envelope, seal it with your own seal and hand it to Mme. Giry, who will do what is necessary. The managers did not hesitate; without wasting time in asking how these confounded communications came to be delivered in an office which they were careful to keep locked, they seized this opportunity of laying hands, on the mysterious blackmailer. And, after telling the whole story, under the promise of secrecy, to Gabriel and Mercier, they put the twenty thousand francs into the envelope and without asking for explanations, handed it to Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions. The box-keeper displayed no astonishment. I need hardly say that she was well watched. She went straight to the ghost's box and placed the precious envelope on the little shelf attached to the ledge. The two managers, as well as Gabriel and Mercier, were hidden in such a way that they did not lose sight of the envelope for a second during the performance and even afterward, for, as the envelope had not moved, those who watched it did not move either; and Mme. Giry went away while the managers, Gabriel and Mercier were still there. At last, they became tired of waiting and opened the envelope, after ascertaining that the seals had not been broken. At first sight, Richard and Moncharmin thought that the notes were still there; but soon they perceived that they were not the same. The twenty real notes were gone and had been replaced by twenty notes, of the "Bank of St. Farce"![1] The managers' rage and fright were unmistakable. Moncharmin wanted to send for the commissary of police, but Richard objected. He no doubt had a plan, for he said: "Don't let us make ourselves ridiculous! All Paris would laugh at us. O. G. has won the first game: we will win the second." He was thinking of the next month's allowance. Nevertheless, they had been so absolutely tricked that they were bound to suffer a certain dejection. And, upon my word, it was not difficult to understand. We must not forget that the managers had an idea at the back of their minds, all the time, that this strange incident might be an unpleasant practical joke on the part of their predecessors and that it would not do to divulge it prematurely. On the other hand, Moncharmin was sometimes troubled with a suspicion of Richard himself, who occasionally took fanciful whims into his head. And so they were content to await events, while keeping an eye on Mother Giry. Richard would not have her spoken to. "If she is a confederate," he said, "the notes are gone long ago. But, in my opinion, she is merely an idiot." "She's not the only idiot in this business," said Moncharmin pensively. "Well, who could have thought it?" moaned Richard. "But don't be afraid ... next time, I shall have taken my precautions." The next time fell on the same day that beheld the disappearance of Christine Daae. In the morning, a note from the ghost reminded them that the money was due. It read: Do just as you did last time. It went very well. Put the twenty thousand in the envelope and hand it to our excellent Mme. Giry. And the note was accompanied by the usual envelope. They had only to insert the notes. This was done about half an hour before the curtain rose on the first act of Faust. Richard showed the envelope to Moncharmin. Then he counted the twenty thousand-franc notes in front of him and put the notes into the envelope, but without closing it. "And now," he said, "let's have Mother Giry in." The old woman was sent for. She entered with a sweeping courtesy. She still wore her black taffeta dress, the color of which was rapidly turning to rust and lilac, to say nothing of the dingy bonnet. She seemed in a good temper. She at once said: "Good evening, gentlemen! It's for the envelope, I suppose?" "Yes, Mme. Giry," said Richard, most amiably. "For the envelope ... and something else besides." "At your service, M. Richard, at your service. And what is the something else, please?" "First of all, Mme. Giry, I have a little question to put to you." "By all means, M. Richard: Mme. Giry is here to answer you." "Are you still on good terms with the ghost?" "Couldn't be better, sir; couldn't be better." "Ah, we are delighted ... Look here, Mme. Giry," said Richard, in the tone of making an important confidence. "We may just as well tell you, among ourselves ... you're no fool!" "Why, sir," exclaimed the box-keeper, stopping the pleasant nodding of the black feathers in her dingy bonnet, "I assure you no one has ever doubted that!" "We are quite agreed and we shall soon understand one another. The story of the ghost is all humbug, isn't it? ... Well, still between ourselves, ... it has lasted long enough." Mme. Giry looked at the managers as though they were talking Chinese. She walked up to Richard's table and asked, rather anxiously: "What do you mean? I don't understand." "Oh, you, understand quite well. In any case, you've got to understand... And, first of all, tell us his name." "Whose name?" "The name of the man whose accomplice you are, Mme. Giry!" "I am the ghost's accomplice? I? ... His accomplice in what, pray?" "You do all he wants." "Oh! He's not very troublesome, you know." "And does he still tip you?" "I mustn't complain." "How much does he give you for bringing him that envelope?" "Ten francs." "You poor thing! That's not much, is it? "Why?" "I'll tell you that presently, Mme. Giry. Just now we should like to know for what extraordinary reason you have given yourself body and soul, to this ghost ... Mme. Giry's friendship and devotion are not to be bought for five francs or ten francs." "That's true enough ... And I can tell you the reason, sir. There's no disgrace about it... on the contrary." "We're quite sure of that, Mme. Giry!" "Well, it's like this ... only the ghost doesn't like me to talk about his business." "Indeed?" sneered Richard. "But this is a matter that concerns myself alone ... Well, it was in Box Five one evening, I found a letter addressed to myself, a sort of note written in red ink. I needn't read the letter to you sir; I know it by heart, and I shall never forget it if I live to be a hundred!" And Mme. Giry, drawing herself up, recited the letter with touching eloquence: MADAM: 1825. Mlle. Menetrier, leader of the ballet, became Marquise de Cussy. 1832. Mlle. Marie Taglioni, a dancer, became Comtesse Gilbert des Voisins. 1846. La Sota, a dancer, married a brother of the King of Spain. 1847. Lola Montes, a dancer, became the morganatic wife of King Louis of Bavaria and was created Countess of Landsfeld. 1848. Mlle. Maria, a dancer, became Baronne d'Herneville. 1870. Theresa Hessier, a dancer, married Dom Fernando, brother to the King of Portugal. Richard and Moncharmin listened to the old woman, who, as she proceeded with the enumeration of these glorious nuptials, swelled out, took courage and, at last, in a voice bursting with pride, flung out the last sentence of the prophetic letter: 1885. Meg Giry, Empress! Exhausted by this supreme effort, the box-keeper fell into a chair, saying: "Gentlemen, the letter was signed, 'Opera Ghost.' I had heard much of the ghost, but only half believed in him. From the day when he declared that my little Meg, the flesh of my flesh, the fruit of my womb, would be empress, I believed in him altogether." And really it was not necessary to make a long study of Mme. Giry's excited features to understand what could be got out of that fine intellect with the two words "ghost" and "empress." But who pulled the strings of that extraordinary puppet? That was the question. "You have never seen him; he speaks to you and you believe all he says?" asked Moncharmin. "Yes. To begin with, I owe it to him that my little Meg was promoted to be the leader of a row. I said to the ghost, 'If she is to be empress in 1885, there is no time to lose; she must become a leader at once.' He said, 'Look upon it as done.' And he had only a word to say to M. Poligny and the thing was done." "So you see that M. Poligny saw him!" "No, not any more than I did; but he heard him. The ghost said a word in his ear, you know, on the evening when he left Box Five, looking so dreadfully pale." Moncharmin heaved a sigh. "What a business!" he groaned. "Ah!" said Mme. Giry. "I always thought there were secrets between the ghost and M. Poligny. Anything that the ghost asked M. Poligny to do M. Poligny did. M. Poligny could refuse the ghost nothing." "You hear, Richard: Poligny could refuse the ghost nothing." "Yes, yes, I hear!" said Richard. "M. Poligny is a friend of the ghost; and, as Mme. Giry is a friend of M. Poligny, there we are! ... But I don't care a hang about M. Poligny," he added roughly. "The only person whose fate really interests me is Mme. Giry... Mme. Giry, do you know what is in this envelope?" "Why, of course not," she said. "Well, look." Mine. Giry looked into the envelope with a lackluster eye, which soon recovered its brilliancy. "Thousand-franc notes!" she cried. "Yes, Mme. Giry, thousand-franc notes! And you knew it!" "I, sir? I? ... I swear ..." "Don't swear, Mme. Giry! ... And now I will tell you the second reason why I sent for you. Mme. Giry, I am going to have you arrested." The two black feathers on the dingy bonnet, which usually affected the attitude of two notes of interrogation, changed into two notes of exclamation; as for the bonnet itself, it swayed in menace on the old lady's tempestuous chignon. Surprise, indignation, protest and dismay were furthermore displayed by little Meg's mother in a sort of extravagant movement of offended virtue, half bound, half slide, that brought her right under the nose of M. Richard, who could not help pushing back his chair. "HAVE ME ARRESTED!" The mouth that spoke those words seemed to spit the three teeth that were left to it into Richard's face. M. Richard behaved like a hero. He retreated no farther. His threatening forefinger seemed already to be pointing out the keeper of Box Five to the absent magistrates. "I am going to have you arrested, Mme. Giry, as a thief!" "Say that again!" And Mme. Giry caught Mr. Manager Richard a mighty box on the ear, before Mr. Manager Moncharmin had time to intervene. But it was not the withered hand of the angry old beldame that fell on the managerial ear, but the envelope itself, the cause of all the trouble, the magic envelope that opened with the blow, scattering the bank-notes, which escaped in a fantastic whirl of giant butterflies. The two managers gave a shout, and the same thought made them both go on their knees, feverishly, picking up and hurriedly examining the precious scraps of paper. "Are they still genuine, Moncharmin?" "Are they still genuine, Richard?" "Yes, they are still genuine!" Above their heads, Mme. Giry's three teeth were clashing in a noisy contest, full of hideous interjections. But all that could be clearly distinguished was this LEIT-MOTIF: "I, a thief! ... I, a thief, I?" She choked with rage. She shouted: "I never heard of such a thing!" And, suddenly, she darted up to Richard again. "In any case," she yelped, "you, M. Richard, ought to know better than I where the twenty thousand francs went to!" "I?" asked Richard, astounded. "And how should I know?" Moncharmin, looking severe and dissatisfied, at once insisted that the good lady should explain herself. "What does this mean, Mme. Giry?" he asked. "And why do you say that M. Richard ought to know better than you where the twenty-thousand francs went to?" As for Richard, who felt himself turning red under Moncharmin's eyes, he took Mme. Giry by the wrist and shook it violently. In a voice growling and rolling like thunder, he roared: "Why should I know better than you where the twenty-thousand francs went to? Why? Answer me!" "Because they went into your pocket!" gasped the old woman, looking at him as if he were the devil incarnate. Richard would have rushed upon Mme. Giry, if Moncharmin had not stayed his avenging hand and hastened to ask her, more gently: "How can you suspect my partner, M. Richard, of putting twenty-thousand francs in his pocket?" "I never said that," declared Mme. Giry, "seeing that it was myself who put the twenty-thousand francs into M. Richard's pocket." And she added, under her voice, "There! It's out! ... And may the ghost forgive me!" Richard began bellowing anew, but Moncharmin authoritatively ordered him to be silent. "Allow me! Allow me! Let the woman explain herself. Let me question her." And he added: "It is really astonishing that you should take up such a tone! ... We are on the verge of clearing up the whole mystery. And you're in a rage! ... You're wrong to behave like that... I'm enjoying myself immensely." Mme. Giry, like the martyr that she was, raised her head, her face beaming with faith in her own innocence. "You tell me there were twenty-thousand francs in the envelope which I put into M. Richard's pocket; but I tell you again that I knew nothing about it ... Nor M. Richard either, for that matter!" "Aha!" said Richard, suddenly assuming a swaggering air which Moncharmin did not like. "I knew nothing either! You put twenty-thousand francs in my pocket and I knew nothing either! I am very glad to hear it, Mme. Giry!" "Yes," the terrible dame agreed, "yes, it's true. We neither of us knew anything. But you, you must have ended by finding out!" Richard would certainly have swallowed Mme. Giry alive, if Moncharmin had not been there! But Moncharmin protected her. He resumed his questions: "What sort of envelope did you put in M. Richard's pocket? It was not the one which we gave you, the one which you took to Box Five before our eyes; and yet that was the one which contained the twenty-thousand francs." "I beg your pardon. The envelope which M. le Directeur gave me was the one which I slipped into M. le Directeur's pocket," explained Mme. Giry. "The one which I took to the ghost's box was another envelope, just like it, which the ghost gave me beforehand and which I hid up my sleeve." So saying, Mme. Giry took from her sleeve an envelope ready prepared and similarly addressed to that containing the twenty-thousand francs. The managers took it from her. They examined it and saw that it was fastened with seals stamped with their own managerial seal. They opened it. It contained twenty Bank of St. Farce notes like those which had so much astounded them the month before. "How simple!" said Richard. "How simple!" repeated Moncharmin. And he continued with his eyes fixed upon Mme. Giry, as though trying to hypnotize her. "So it was the ghost who gave you this envelope and told you to substitute it for the one which we gave you? And it was the ghost who told you to put the other into M. Richard's pocket?" "Yes, it was the ghost." "Then would you mind giving us a specimen of your little talents? Here is the envelope. Act as though we knew nothing." "As you please, gentlemen." Mme. Giry took the envelope with the twenty notes inside it and made for the door. She was on the point of going out when the two managers rushed at her: "Oh, no! Oh, no! We're not going to be 'done' a second time! Once bitten, twice shy!" "I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the old woman, in self-excuse, "you told me to act as though you knew nothing ... Well, if you knew nothing, I should go away with your envelope!" "And then how would you slip it into my pocket?" argued Richard, whom Moncharmin fixed with his left eye, while keeping his right on Mme. Giry: a proceeding likely to strain his sight, but Moncharmin was prepared to go to any length to discover the truth. "I am to slip it into your pocket when you least expect it, sir. You know that I always take a little turn behind the scenes, in the course of the evening, and I often go with my daughter to the ballet-foyer, which I am entitled to do, as her mother; I bring her her shoes, when the ballet is about to begin ... in fact, I come and go as I please ... The subscribers come and go too... So do you, sir ... There are lots of people about ... I go behind you and slip the envelope into the tail-pocket of your dress-coat ... There's no witchcraft about that!" "No witchcraft!" growled Richard, rolling his eyes like Jupiter Tonans. "No witchcraft! Why, I've just caught you in a lie, you old witch!" Mme. Giry bristled, with her three teeth sticking out of her mouth. "And why, may I ask?" "Because I spent that evening watching Box Five and the sham envelope which you put there. I did not go to the ballet-foyer for a second." "No, sir, and I did not give you the envelope that evening, but at the next performance ... on the evening when the under-secretary of state for fine arts ..." At these words, M. Richard suddenly interrupted Mme. Giry: "Yes, that's true, I remember now! The under-secretary went behind the scenes. He asked for me. I went down to the ballet-foyer for a moment. I was on the foyer steps ... The under-secretary and his chief clerk were in the foyer itself. I suddenly turned around ... you had passed behind me, Mme. Giry ... You seemed to push against me ... Oh, I can see you still, I can see you still!" "Yes, that's it, sir, that's it. I had just finished my little business. That pocket of yours, sir, is very handy!" And Mme. Giry once more suited the action to the word, She passed behind M. Richard and, so nimbly that Moncharmin himself was impressed by it, slipped the envelope into the pocket of one of the tails of M. Richard's dress-coat. "Of course!" exclaimed Richard, looking a little pale. "It's very clever of O. G. The problem which he had to solve was this: how to do away with any dangerous intermediary between the man who gives the twenty-thousand francs and the man who receives it. And by far the best thing he could hit upon was to come and take the money from my pocket without my noticing it, as I myself did not know that it was there. It's wonderful!" "Oh, wonderful, no doubt!" Moncharmin agreed. "Only, you forget, Richard, that I provided ten-thousand francs of the twenty and that nobody put anything in my pocket!" [1] Flash notes drawn on the "Bank of St. Farce" in France correspond with those drawn on the "Bank of Engraving" in England.--Translator's Note. Chapter XVII The Safety-Pin Again Moncharmin's last phrase so dearly expressed the suspicion in which he now held his partner that it was bound to cause a stormy explanation, at the end of which it was agreed that Richard should yield to all Moncharmin's wishes, with the object of helping him to discover the miscreant who was victimizing them. This brings us to the interval after the Garden Act, with the strange conduct observed by M. Remy and those curious lapses from the dignity that might be expected of the managers. It was arranged between Richard and Moncharmin, first, that Richard should repeat the exact movements which he had made on the night of the disappearance of the first twenty-thousand francs; and, second, that Moncharmin should not for an instant lose sight of Richard's coat-tail pocket, into which Mme. Giry was to slip the twenty-thousand francs. M. Richard went and placed himself at the identical spot where he had stood when he bowed to the under-secretary for fine arts. M. Moncharmin took up his position a few steps behind him. Mme. Giry passed, rubbed up against M. Richard, got rid of her twenty-thousand francs in the manager's coat-tail pocket and disappeared ... Or rather she was conjured away. In accordance with the instructions received from Moncharmin a few minutes earlier, Mercier took the good lady to the acting-manager's office and turned the key on her, thus making it impossible for her to communicate with her ghost. Meanwhile, M. Richard was bending and bowing and scraping and walking backward, just as if he had that high and mighty minister, the under-secretary for fine arts, before him. Only, though these marks of politeness would have created no astonishment if the under-secretary of state had really been in front of M. Richard, they caused an easily comprehensible amazement to the spectators of this very natural but quite inexplicable scene when M. Richard had no body in front of him. M. Richard bowed ... to nobody; bent his back ... before nobody; and walked backward ... before nobody ... And, a few steps behind him, M. Moncharmin did the same thing that he was doing in addition to pushing away M. Remy and begging M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, and the manager of the Credit Central "not to touch M. le Directeur." Moncharmin, who had his own ideas, did not want Richard to come to him presently, when the twenty-thousand francs were gone, and say: "Perhaps it was the ambassador ... or the manager of the Credit Central ... or Remy." The more so as, at the time of the first scene, as Richard himself admitted, Richard had met nobody in that part of the theater after Mme. Giry had brushed up against him... Having begun by walking backward in order to bow, Richard continued to do so from prudence, until he reached the passage leading to the offices of the management. In this way, he was constantly watched by Moncharmin from behind and himself kept an eye on any one approaching from the front. Once more, this novel method of walking behind the scenes, adopted by the managers of our National Academy of Music, attracted attention; but the managers themselves thought of nothing but their twenty-thousand francs. On reaching the half-dark passage, Richard said to Moncharmin, in a low voice: "I am sure that nobody has touched me ... You had now better keep at some distance from me and watch me till I come to door of the office: it is better not to arouse suspicion and we can see anything that happens." But Moncharmin replied. "No, Richard, no! You walk ahead and I'll walk immediately behind you! I won't leave you by a step!" "But, in that case," exclaimed Richard, "they will never steal our twenty-thousand francs!" "I should hope not, indeed!" declared Moncharmin. "Then what we are doing is absurd!" "We are doing exactly what we did last time ... Last time, I joined you as you were leaving the stage and followed close behind you down this passage." "That's true!" sighed Richard, shaking his head and passively obeying Moncharmin. Two minutes later, the joint managers locked themselves into their office. Moncharmin himself put the key in his pocket: "We remained locked up like this, last time," he said, "until you left the Opera to go home." "That's so. No one came and disturbed us, I suppose?" "No one." "Then," said Richard, who was trying to collect his memory, "then I must certainly have been robbed on my way home from the Opera." "No," said Moncharmin in a drier tone than ever, "no, that's impossible. For I dropped you in my cab. The twenty-thousand francs disappeared at your place: there's not a shadow of a doubt about that." "It's incredible!" protested Richard. "I am sure of my servants ... and if one of them had done it, he would have disappeared since." Moncharmin shrugged his shoulders, as though to say that he did not wish to enter into details, and Richard began to think that Moncharmin was treating him in a very insupportable fashion. "Moncharmin, I've had enough of this!" "Richard, I've had too much of it!" "Do you dare to suspect me?" "Yes, of a silly joke." "One doesn't joke with twenty-thousand francs." "That's what I think," declared Moncharmin, unfolding a newspaper and ostentatiously studying its contents. "What are you doing?" asked Richard. "Are you going to read the paper next?" "Yes, Richard, until I take you home." "Like last time?" "Yes, like last time." Richard snatched the paper from Moncharmin's hands. Moncharmin stood up, more irritated than ever, and found himself faced by an exasperated Richard, who, crossing his arms on his chest, said: "Look here, I'm thinking of this, I'M THINKING OF WHAT I MIGHT THINK if, like last time, after my spending the evening alone with you, you brought me home and if, at the moment of parting, I perceived that twenty-thousand francs had disappeared from my coat-pocket ... like last time." "And what might you think?" asked Moncharmin, crimson with rage. "I might think that, as you hadn't left me by a foot's breadth and as, by your own wish, you were the only one to approach me, like last time, I might think that, if that twenty-thousand francs was no longer in my pocket, it stood a very good chance of being in yours!" Moncharmin leaped up at the suggestion. "Oh!" he shouted. "A safety-pin!" "What do you want a safety-pin for?" "To fasten you up with! ... A safety-pin! ... A safety-pin!" "You want to fasten me with a safety-pin?" "Yes, to fasten you to the twenty-thousand francs! Then, whether it's here, or on the drive from here to your place, or at your place, you will feel the hand that pulls at your pocket and you will see if it's mine! Oh, so you're suspecting me now, are you? A safety-pin!" And that was the moment when Moncharmin opened the door on the passage and shouted: "A safety-pin! ... somebody give me a safety-pin!" And we also know how, at the same moment, Remy, who had no safety-pin, was received by Moncharmin, while a boy procured the pin so eagerly longed for. And what happened was this: Moncharmin first locked the door again. Then he knelt down behind Richard's back. "I hope," he said, "that the notes are still there?" "So do I," said Richard. "The real ones?" asked Moncharmin, resolved not to be "had" this time. "Look for yourself," said Richard. "I refuse to touch them." Moncharmin took the envelope from Richard's pocket and drew out the bank-notes with a trembling hand, for, this time, in order frequently to make sure of the presence of the notes, he had not sealed the envelope nor even fastened it. He felt reassured on finding that they were all there and quite genuine. He put them back in the tail-pocket and pinned them with great care. Then he sat down behind Richard's coat-tails and kept his eyes fixed on them, while Richard, sitting at his writing-table, did not stir. "A little patience, Richard," said Moncharmin. "We have only a few minutes to wait ... The clock will soon strike twelve. Last time, we left at the last stroke of twelve." "Oh, I shall have all the patience necessary!" The time passed, slow, heavy, mysterious, stifling. Richard tried to laugh. "I shall end by believing in the omnipotence of the ghost," he said. "Just now, don't you find something uncomfortable, disquieting, alarming in the atmosphere of this room?" "You're quite right," said Moncharmin, who was really impressed. "The ghost!" continued Richard, in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should be overheard by invisible ears. "The ghost! Suppose, all the same, it were a ghost who puts the magic envelopes on the table ... who talks in Box Five ... who killed Joseph Buquet ... who unhooked the chandelier ... and who robs us! For, after all, after all, after all, there is no one here except you and me, and, if the notes disappear and neither you nor I have anything to do with it, well, we shall have to believe in the ghost ... in the ghost." At that moment, the clock on the mantlepiece gave its warning click and the first stroke of twelve struck. The two managers shuddered. The perspiration streamed from their foreheads. The twelfth stroke sounded strangely in their ears. When the clock stopped, they gave a sigh and rose from their chairs. "I think we can go now," said Moncharmin. "I think so," Richard a agreed. "Before we go, do you mind if I look in your pocket?" "But, of course, Moncharmin, YOU MUST! ... Well?" he asked, as Moncharmin was feeling at the pocket. "Well, I can feel the pin." "Of course, as you said, we can't be robbed without noticing it." But Moncharmin, whose hands were still fumbling, bellowed: "I can feel the pin, but I can't feel the notes!" "Come, no joking, Moncharmin! ... This isn't the time for it." "Well, feel for yourself." Richard tore off his coat. The two managers turned the pocket inside out. THE POCKET WAS EMPTY. And the curious thing was that the pin remained, stuck in the same place. Richard and Moncharmin turned pale. There was no longer any doubt about the witchcraft. "The ghost!" muttered Moncharmin. But Richard suddenly sprang upon his partner. "No one but you has touched my pocket! Give me back my twenty-thousand francs! ... Give me back my twenty-thousand francs! ..." "On my soul," sighed Moncharmin, who was ready to swoon, "on my soul, I swear that I haven't got it!" Then somebody knocked at the door. Moncharmin opened it automatically, seemed hardly to recognize Mercier, his business-manager, exchanged a few words with him, without knowing what he was saying and, with an unconscious movement, put the safety-pin, for which he had no further use, into the hands of his bewildered subordinate ... Chapter XVIII The Commissary, The Viscount and the Persian The first words of the commissary of police, on entering the managers' office, were to ask after the missing prima donna. "Is Christine Daae here?" "Christine Daae here?" echoed Richard. "No. Why?" As for Moncharmin, he had not the strength left to utter a word. Richard repeated, for the commissary and the compact crowd which had followed him into the office observed an impressive silence. "Why do you ask if Christine Daae is here, M. LE COMMISSAIRE?" "Because she has to be found," declared the commissary of police solemnly. "What do you mean, she has to be found? Has she disappeared?" "In the middle of the performance!" "In the middle of the performance? This is extraordinary!" "Isn't it? And what is quite as extraordinary is that you should first learn it from me!" "Yes," said Richard, taking his head in his hands and muttering. "What is this new business? Oh, it's enough to make a man send in his resignation!" And he pulled a few hairs out of his mustache without even knowing what he was doing. "So she ... so she disappeared in the middle of the performance?" he repeated. "Yes, she was carried off in the Prison Act, at the moment when she was invoking the aid of the angels; but I doubt if she was carried off by an angel." "And I am sure that she was!" Everybody looked round. A young man, pale and trembling with excitement, repeated: "I am sure of it!" "Sure of what?" asked Mifroid. "That Christine Daae was carried off by an angel, M. LE COMMISSAIRE and I can tell you his name." "Aha, M. le Vicomte de Chagny! So you maintain that Christine Daae was carried off by an angel: an angel of the Opera, no doubt?" "Yes, monsieur, by an angel of the Opera; and I will tell you where he lives ... when we are alone." "You are right, monsieur." And the commissary of police, inviting Raoul to take a chair, cleared the room of all the rest, excepting the managers. Then Raoul spoke: "M. le Commissaire, the angel is called Erik, he lives in the Opera and he is the Angel of Music!" "The Angel of Music! Really! That is very curious! ... The Angel of Music!" And, turning to the managers, M. Mifroid asked, "Have you an Angel of Music on the premises, gentlemen?" Richard and Moncharmin shook their heads, without even speaking. "Oh," said the viscount, "those gentlemen have heard of the Opera ghost. Well, I am in a position to state that the Opera ghost and the Angel of Music are one and the same person; and his real name is Erik." M. Mifroid rose and looked at Raoul attentively. "I beg your pardon, monsieur but is it your intention to make fun of the law? And, if not, what is all this about the Opera ghost?" "I say that these gentlemen have heard of him." "Gentlemen, it appears that you know the Opera ghost?" Richard rose, with the remaining hairs of his mustache in his hand. "No, M. Commissary, no, we do not know him, but we wish that we did, for this very evening he has robbed us of twenty-thousand francs!" And Richard turned a terrible look on Moncharmin, which seemed to say: "Give me back the twenty-thousand francs, or I'll tell the whole story." Moncharmin understood what he meant, for, with a distracted gesture, he said: "Oh, tell everything and have done with it!" As for Mifroid, he looked at the managers and at Raoul by turns and wondered whether he had strayed into a lunatic asylum. He passed his hand through his hair. "A ghost," he said, "who, on the same evening, carries off an opera-singer and steals twenty-thousand francs is a ghost who must have his hands very full! If you don't mind, we will take the questions in order. The singer first, the twenty-thousand francs after. Come, M. de Chagny, let us try to talk seriously. You believe that Mlle. Christine Daae has been carried off by an individual called Erik. Do you know this person? Have you seen him?" "Yes." "Where?" "In a church yard." M. Mifroid gave a start, began to scrutinize Raoul again and said: "Of course! ... That's where ghosts usually hang out! ... And what were you doing in that churchyard?" "Monsieur," said Raoul, "I can quite understand how absurd my replies must seem to you. But I beg you to believe that I am in full possession of my faculties. The safety of the person dearest to me in the world is at stake. I should like to convince you in a few words, for time is pressing and every minute is valuable. Unfortunately, if I do not tell you the strangest story that ever was from the beginning, you will not believe me. I will tell you all I know about the Opera ghost, M. Commissary. Alas, I do not know much! ..." "Never mind, go on, go on!" exclaimed Richard and Moncharmin, suddenly greatly interested. Unfortunately for their hopes of learning some detail that could put them on the track of their hoaxer, they were soon compelled to accept the fact that M. Raoul de Chagny had completely lost his head. All that story about Perros-Guirec, death's heads and enchanted violins, could only have taken birth in the disordered brain of a youth mad with love. It was evident, also, that Mr. Commissary Mifroid shared their view; and the magistrate would certainly have cut short the incoherent narrative if circumstances had not taken it upon themselves to interrupt it. The door opened and a man entered, curiously dressed in an enormous frock-coat and a tall hat, at once shabby and shiny, that came down to his ears. He went up to the commissary and spoke to him in a whisper. It was doubtless a detective come to deliver an important communication. During this conversation, M. Mifroid did not take his eyes off Raoul. At last, addressing him, he said: "Monsieur, we have talked enough about the ghost. We will now talk about yourself a little, if you have no objection: you were to carry off Mlle. Christine Daae to-night?" "Yes, M. le Commissaire." "After the performance?" "Yes, M. le Commissaire." "All your arrangements were made?" "Yes, M. le Commissaire." "The carriage that brought you was to take you both away... There were fresh horses in readiness at every stage ..." "That is true, M. le Commissaire." "And nevertheless your carriage is still outside the Rotunda awaiting your orders, is it not?" "Yes, M. le Commissaire." "Did you know that there were three other carriages there, in addition to yours?" "I did not pay the least attention." "They were the carriages of Mlle. Sorelli, which could not find room in the Cour de l'Administration; of Carlotta; and of your brother, M. le Comte de Chagny..." "Very likely..." "What is certain is that, though your carriage and Sorelli's and Carlotta's are still there, by the Rotunda pavement, M. le Comte de Chagny's carriage is gone." "This has nothing to say to ..." "I beg your pardon. Was not M. le Comte opposed to your marriage with Mlle. Daae?" "That is a matter that only concerns the family." "You have answered my question: he was opposed to it ... and that was why you were carrying Christine Daae out of your brother's reach... Well, M. de Chagny, allow me to inform you that your brother has been smarter than you! It is he who has carried off Christine Daae!" "Oh, impossible!" moaned Raoul, pressing his hand to his heart. "Are you sure?" "Immediately after the artist's disappearance, which was procured by means which we have still to ascertain, he flung into his carriage, which drove right across Paris at a furious pace." "Across Paris?" asked poor Raoul, in a hoarse voice. "What do you mean by across Paris?" "Across Paris and out of Paris ... by the Brussels road." "Oh," cried the young man, "I shall catch them!" And he rushed out of the office. "And bring her back to us!" cried the commisary gaily ... "Ah, that's a trick worth two of the Angel of Music's!" And, turning to his audience, M. Mifroid delivered a little lecture on police methods. "I don't know for a moment whether M. le Comte de Chagny has really carried Christine Daae off or not ... but I want to know and I believe that, at this moment, no one is more anxious to inform us than his brother ... And now he is flying in pursuit of him! He is my chief auxiliary! This, gentlemen, is the art of the police, which is believed to be so complicated and which, nevertheless appears so simple as soon its you see that it consists in getting your work done by people who have nothing to do with the police." But M. le Commissaire de Police Mifroid would not have been quite so satisfied with himself if he had known that the rush of his rapid emissary was stopped at the entrance to the very first corridor. A tall figure blocked Raoul's way. "Where are you going so fast, M. de Chagny?" asked a voice. Raoul impatiently raised his eyes and recognized the astrakhan cap of an hour ago. He stopped: "It's you!" he cried, in a feverish voice. "You, who know Erik's secrets and don't want me to speak of them. Who are you?" "You know who I am! ... I am the Persian!" Chapter XIX The Viscount and the Persian Raoul now remembered that his brother had once shown him that mysterious person, of whom nothing was known except that he was a Persian and that he lived in a little old-fashioned flat in the Rue de Rivoli. The man with the ebony skin, the eyes of jade and the astrakhan cap bent over Raoul. "I hope, M. de Chagny," he said, "that you have not betrayed Erik's secret?" "And why should I hesitate to betray that monster, sir?" Raoul rejoined haughtily, trying to shake off the intruder. "Is he your friend, by any chance?" "I hope that you said nothing about Erik, sir, because Erik's secret is also Christine Daae's and to talk about one is to talk about the other!" "Oh, sir," said Raoul, becoming more and more impatient, "you seem to know about many things that interest me; and yet I have no time to listen to you!" "Once more, M. de Chagny, where are you going so fast?" "Can not you guess? To Christine Daae's assistance..." "Then, sir, stay here, for Christine Daae is here!" "With Erik?" "With Erik." "How do you know?" "I was at the performance and no one in the world but Erik could contrive an abduction like that! ... Oh," he said, with a deep sigh, "I recognized the monster's touch! ..." "You know him then?" The Persian did not reply, but heaved a fresh sigh. "Sir," said Raoul, "I do not know what your intentions are, but can you do anything to help me? I mean, to help Christine Daae?" "I think so, M. de Chagny, and that is why I spoke to you." "What can you do?" "Try to take you to her ... and to him." "If you can do me that service, sir, my life is yours! ... One word more: the commissary of police tells me that Christine Daae has been carried off by my brother, Count Philippe." "Oh, M. de Chagny, I don't believe a word of it." "It's not possible, is it?" "I don't know if it is possible or not; but there are ways and ways of carrying people off; and M. le Comte Philippe has never, as far as I know, had anything to do with witchcraft." "Your arguments are convincing, sir, and I am a fool! ... Oh, let us make haste! I place myself entirely in your hands! ... How should I not believe you, when you are the only one to believe me ... when you are the only one not to smile when Erik's name is mentioned?" And the young man impetuously seized the Persian's hands. They were ice-cold. "Silence!" said the Persian, stopping and listening to the distant sounds of the theater. "We must not mention that name here. Let us say 'he' and 'him;' then there will be less danger of attracting his attention." "Do you think he is near us?" "It is quite possible, Sir, if he is not, at this moment, with his victim, IN THE HOUSE ON THE LAKE." "Ah, so you know that house too?" "If he is not there, he may be here, in this wall, in this floor, in this ceiling! ... Come!" And the Persian, asking Raoul to deaden the sound of his footsteps, led him down passages which Raoul had never seen before, even at the time when Christine used to take him for walks through that labyrinth. "If only Darius has come!" said the Persian. "Who is Darius?" "Darius? My servant." They were now in the center of a real deserted square, an immense apartment ill-lit by a small lamp. The Persian stopped Raoul and, in the softest of whispers, asked: "What did you say to the commissary?" "I said that Christine Daae's abductor was the Angel of Music, ALIAS the Opera ghost, and that the real name was ..." "Hush! ... And did he believe you?" "No." "He attached no importance to what you said?" "No." "He took you for a bit of a madman?" "Yes." "So much the better!" sighed the Persian. And they continued their road. After going up and down several staircases which Raoul had never seen before, the two men found themselves in front of a door which the Persian opened with a master-key. The Persian and Raoul were both, of course, in dress-clothes; but, whereas Raoul had a tall hat, the Persian wore the astrakhan cap which I have already mentioned. It was an infringement of the rule which insists upon the tall hat behind the scenes; but in France foreigners are allowed every license: the Englishman his traveling-cap, the Persian his cap of astrakhan. "Sir," said the Persian, "your tall hat will be in your way: you would do well to leave it in the dressing-room." "What dressing-room?" asked Raoul. "Christine Daae's." And the Persian, letting Raoul through the door which he had just opened, showed him the actress' room opposite. They were at the end of the passage the whole length of which Raoul had been accustomed to traverse before knocking at Christine's door. "How well you know the Opera, sir!" "Not so well as 'he' does!" said the Persian modestly. And he pushed the young man into Christine's dressing-room, which was as Raoul had left it a few minutes earlier. Closing the door, the Persian went to a very thin partition that separated the dressing-room from a big lumber-room next to it. He listened and then coughed loudly. There was a sound of some one stirring in the lumber-room; and, a few seconds later, a finger tapped at the door. "Come in," said the Persian. A man entered, also wearing an astrakhan cap and dressed in a long overcoat. He bowed and took a richly carved case from under his coat, put it on the dressing-table, bowed once again and went to the door. "Did no one see you come in, Darius?" "No, master." "Let no one see you go out." The servant glanced down the passage and swiftly disappeared. The Persian opened the case. It contained a pair of long pistols. "When Christine Daae was carried off, sir, I sent word to my servant to bring me these pistols. I have had them a long time and they can be relied upon." "Do you mean to fight a duel?" asked the young man. "It will certainly be a duel which we shall have to fight," said the other, examining the priming of his pistols. "And what a duel!" Handing one of the pistols to Raoul, he added, "In this duel, we shall be two to one; but you must be prepared for everything, for we shall be fighting the most terrible adversary that you can imagine. But you love Christine Daae, do you not?" "I worship the ground she stands on! But you, sir, who do not love her, tell me why I find you ready to risk your life for her! You must certainly hate Erik!" "No, sir," said the Persian sadly, "I do not hate him. If I hated him, he would long ago have ceased doing harm." "Has he done you harm?" "I have forgiven him the harm which he has done me." "I do not understand you. You treat him as a monster, you speak of his crime, he has done you harm and I find in you the same inexplicable pity that drove me to despair when I saw it in Christine!" The Persian did not reply. He fetched a stool and set it against the wall facing the great mirror that filled the whole of the wall-space opposite. Then he climbed on the stool and, with his nose to the wallpaper, seemed to be looking for something. "Ah," he said, after a long search, "I have it!" And, raising his finger above his head, he pressed against a corner in the pattern of the paper. Then he turned round and jumped off the stool: "In half a minute," he said, "he shall be ON HIS ROAD!" and crossing the whole of the dressing-room he felt the great mirror. "No, it is not yielding yet," he muttered. "Oh, are we going out by the mirror?" asked Raoul. "Like Christine Daae." "So you knew that Christine Daae went out by that mirror?" "She did so before my eyes, sir! I was hidden behind the curtain of the inner room and I saw her vanish not by the glass, but in the glass!" "And what did you do?" "I thought it was an aberration of my senses, a mad dream. "Or some new fancy of the ghost's!" chuckled the Persian. "Ah, M. de Chagny," he continued, still with his hand on the mirror, "would that we had to do with a ghost! We could then leave our pistols in their case ... Put down your hat, please ... there ... and now cover your shirt-front as much as you can with your coat ... as I am doing ... Bring the lapels forward ... turn up the collar ... We must make ourselves as invisible as possible." Bearing against the mirror, after a short silence, he said: "It takes some time to release the counterbalance, when you press on the spring from the inside of the room. It is different when you are behind the wall and can act directly on the counterbalance. Then the mirror turns at once and is moved with incredible rapidity." "What counterbalance?" asked Raoul. "Why, the counterbalance that lifts the whole of this wall on to its pivot. You surely don't expect it to move of itself, by enchantment! If you watch, you will see the mirror first rise an inch or two and then shift an inch or two from left to right. It will then be on a pivot and will swing round." "It's not turning!" said Raoul impatiently. "Oh, wait! You have time enough to be impatient, sir! The mechanism has obviously become rusty, or else the spring isn't working... Unless it is something else," added the Persian, anxiously. "What?" "He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked the whole apparatus." "Why should he? He does not know that we are coming this way!" "I dare say he suspects it, for he knows that I understand the system." "It's not turning! ... And Christine, sir, Christine?" The Persian said coldly: "We shall do all that it is humanly possible to do! ... But he may stop us at the first step! ... He commands the walls, the doors and the trapdoors. In my country, he was known by a name which means the 'trap-door lover.'" "But why do these walls obey him alone? He did not build them!" "Yes, sir, that is just what he did!" Raoul looked at him in amazement; but the Persian made a sign to him to be silent and pointed to the glass ... There was a sort of shivering reflection. Their image was troubled as in a rippling sheet of water and then all became stationary again. "You see, sir, that it is not turning! Let us take another road!" "To-night, there is no other!" declared the Persian, in a singularly mournful voice. "And now, look out! And be ready to fire." He himself raised his pistol opposite the glass. Raoul imitated his movement. With his free arm, the Persian drew the young man to his chest and, suddenly, the mirror turned, in a blinding daze of cross-lights: it turned like one of those revolving doors which have lately been fixed to the entrances of most restaurants, it turned, carrying Raoul and the Persian with it and suddenly hurling them from the full light into the deepest darkness. Chapter XX In the Cellars of the Opera "Your hand high, ready to fire!" repeated Raoul's companion quickly. The wall, behind them, having completed the circle which it described upon itself, closed again; and the two men stood motionless for a moment, holding their breath. At last, the Persian decided to make a movement; and Raoul heard him slip on his knees and feel for something in the dark with his groping hands. Suddenly, the darkness was made visible by a small dark lantern and Raoul instinctively stepped backward as though to escape the scrutiny of a secret enemy. But he soon perceived that the light belonged to the Persian, whose movements he was closely observing. The little red disk was turned in every direction and Raoul saw that the floor, the walls and the ceiling were all formed of planking. It must have been the ordinary road taken by Erik to reach Christine's dressing-room and impose upon her innocence. And Raoul, remembering the Persian's remark, thought that it had been mysteriously constructed by the ghost himself. Later, he learned that Erik had found, all prepared for him, a secret passage, long known to himself alone and contrived at the time of the Paris Commune to allow the jailers to convey their prisoners straight to the dungeons that had been constructed for them in the cellars; for the Federates had occupied the opera-house immediately after the eighteenth of March and had made a starting-place right at the top for their Mongolfier balloons, which carried their incendiary proclamations to the departments, and a state prison right at the bottom. The Persian went on his knees and put his lantern on the ground. He seemed to be working at the floor; and suddenly he turned off his light. Then Raoul heard a faint click and saw a very pale luminous square in the floor of the passage. It was as though a window had opened on the Opera cellars, which were still lit. Raoul no longer saw the Persian, but he suddenly felt him by his side and heard him whisper: "Follow me and do all that I do." Raoul turned to the luminous aperture. Then he saw the Persian, who was still on his knees, hang by his hands from the rim of the opening, with his pistol between his teeth, and slide into the cellar below. Curiously enough, the viscount had absolute confidence in the Persian, though he knew nothing about him. His emotion when speaking of the "monster" struck him as sincere; and, if the Persian had cherished any sinister designs against him, he would not have armed him with his own hands. Besides, Raoul must reach Christine at all costs. He therefore went on his knees also and hung from the trap with both hands. "Let go!" said a voice. And he dropped into the arms of the Persian, who told him to lie down flat, closed the trap-door above him and crouched down beside him. Raoul tried to ask a question, but the Persian's hand was on his mouth and he heard a voice which he recognized as that of the commissary of police. Raoul and the Persian were completely hidden behind a wooden partition. Near them, a small staircase led to a little room in which the commissary appeared to be walking up and down, asking questions. The faint light was just enough to enable Raoul to distinguish the shape of things around him. And he could not restrain a dull cry: there were three corpses there. The first lay on the narrow landing of the little staircase; the two others had rolled to the bottom of the staircase. Raoul could have touched one of the two poor wretches by passing his fingers through the partition. "Silence!" whispered the Persian. He too had seen the bodies and he gave one word in explanation: "HE!" The commissary's voice was now heard more distinctly. He was asking for information about the system of lighting, which the stage-manager supplied. The commissary therefore must be in the "organ" or its immediate neighborhood. Contrary to what one might think, especially in connection with an opera-house, the "organ" is not a musical instrument. At that time, electricity was employed only for a very few scenic effects and for the bells. The immense building and the stage itself were still lit by gas; hydrogen was used to regulate and modify the lighting of a scene; and this was done by means of a special apparatus which, because of the multiplicity of its pipes, was known as the "organ." A box beside the prompter's box was reserved for the chief gas-man, who from there gave his orders to his assistants and saw that they were executed. Mauclair stayed in this box during all the performances. But now Mauclair was not in his box and his assistants not in their places. "Mauclair! Mauclair!" The stage-manager's voice echoed through the cellars. But Mauclair did not reply. I have said that a door opened on a little staircase that led to the second cellar. The commissary pushed it, but it resisted. "I say," he said to the stage-manager, "I can't open this door: is it always so difficult?" The stage-manager forced it open with his shoulder. He saw that, at the same time, he was pushing a human body and he could not keep back an exclamation, for he recognized the body at once: "Mauclair! Poor devil! He is dead!" But Mr. Commissary Mifroid, whom nothing surprised, was stooping over that big body. "No," he said, "he is dead-drunk, which is not quite the same thing." "It's the first time, if so," said the stage-manager "Then some one has given him a narcotic. That is quite possible." Mifroid went down a few steps and said: "Look!" By the light of a little red lantern, at the foot of the stairs, they saw two other bodies. The stage-manager recognized Mauclair's assistants. Mifroid went down and listened to their breathing. "They are sound asleep," he said. "Very curious business! Some person unknown must have interfered with the gas-man and his staff ... and that person unknown was obviously working on behalf of the kidnapper ... But what a funny idea to kidnap a performer on the stage! ... Send for the doctor of the theater, please." And Mifroid repeated, "Curious, decidedly curious business!" Then he turned to the little room, addressing the people whom Raoul and the Persian were unable to see from where they lay. "What do you say to all this, gentlemen? You are the only ones who have not given your views. And yet you must have an opinion of some sort." Thereupon, Raoul and the Persian saw the startled faces of the joint managers appear above the landing--and they heard Moncharmin's excited voice: "There are things happening here, Mr. Commissary, which we are unable to explain." And the two faces disappeared. "Thank you for the information, gentlemen," said Mifroid, with a jeer. But the stage-manager, holding his chin in the hollow of his right hand, which is the attitude of profound thought, said: "It is not the first time that Mauclair has fallen asleep in the theater. I remember finding him, one evening, snoring in his little recess, with his snuff-box beside him." "Is that long ago?" asked M. Mifroid, carefully wiping his eye-glasses. "No, not so very long ago ... Wait a bit! ... It was the night ... of course, yes ... It was the night when Carlotta--you know, Mr. Commissary--gave her famous 'co-ack'!" "Really? The night when Carlotta gave her famous 'co-ack'?" And M. Mifroid, replacing his gleaming glasses on his nose, fixed the stage-manager with a contemplative stare. "So Mauclair takes snuff, does he?" he asked carelessly. "'Yes, Mr. Commissary ... Look, there is his snuff-box on that little shelf ... Oh! he's a great snuff-taker!" "So am I," said Mifroid and put the snuff-box in his pocket. Raoul and the Persian, themselves unobserved, watched the removal of the three bodies by a number of scene-shifters, who were followed by the commissary and all the people with him. Their steps were heard for a few minutes on the stage above. When they were alone the Persian made a sign to Raoul to stand up. Raoul did so; but, as he did not lift his hand in front of his eyes, ready to fire, the Persian told him to resume that attitude and to continue it, whatever happened. "But it tires the hand unnecessarily," whispered Raoul. "If I do fire, I shan't be sure of my aim." "Then shift your pistol to the other hand," said the Persian. "I can't shoot with my left hand." Thereupon, the Persian made this queer reply, which was certainly not calculated to throw light into the young man's flurried brain: "It's not a question of shooting with the right hand or the left; it's a question of holding one of your hands as though you were going to pull the trigger of a pistol with your arm bent. As for the pistol itself, when all is said, you can put that in your pocket!" And he added, "Let this be clearly understood, or I will answer for nothing. It is a matter of life and death. And now, silence and follow me!" The cellars of the Opera are enormous and they are five in number. Raoul followed the Persian and wondered what he would have done without his companion in that extraordinary labyrinth. They went down to the third cellar; and their progress was still lit by some distant lamp. The lower they went, the more precautions the Persian seemed to take. He kept on turning to Raoul to see if he was holding his arm properly, showing him how he himself carried his hand as if always ready to fire, though the pistol was in his pocket. Suddenly, a loud voice made them stop. Some one above them shouted: "All the door-shutters on the stage! The commissary of police wants them!" Steps were heard and shadows glided through the darkness. The Persian drew Raoul behind a set piece. They saw passing before and above them old men bent by age and the past burden of opera-scenery. Some could hardly drag themselves along; others, from habit, with stooping bodies and outstretched hands, looked for doors to shut. They were the door-shutters, the old, worn-out scene-shifters, on whom a charitable management had taken pity, giving them the job of shutting doors above and below the stage. They went about incessantly, from top to bottom of the building, shutting the doors; and they were also called "The draft-expellers," at least at that time, for I have little doubt that by now they are all dead. Drafts are very bad for the voice, wherever they may come from.[1] The two men might have stumbled over them, waking them up and provoking a request for explanations. For the moment, M. Mifroid's inquiry saved them from any such unpleasant encounters. The Persian and Raoul welcomed this incident, which relieved them of inconvenient witnesses, for some of those door-shutters, having nothing else to do or nowhere to lay their heads, stayed at the Opera, from idleness or necessity, and spent the night there. But they were not left to enjoy their solitude for long. Other shades now came down by the same way by which the door-shutters had gone up. Each of these shades carried a little lantern and moved it about, above, below and all around, as though looking for something or somebody. "Hang it!" muttered the Persian. "I don't know what they are looking for, but they might easily find us ... Let us get away, quick! ... Your hand up, sir, ready to fire! ... Bend your arm ... more ... that's it! ... Hand at the level of your eye, as though you were fighting a duel and waiting for the word to fire! Oh, leave your pistol in your pocket. Quick, come along, down-stairs. Level of your eye! Question of life or death! ... Here, this way, these stairs!" They reached the fifth cellar. "Oh, what a duel, sir, what a duel!" Once in the fifth cellar, the Persian drew breath. He seemed to enjoy a rather greater sense of security than he had displayed when they both stopped in the third; but he never altered the attitude of his hand. And Raoul, remembering the Persian's observation--"I know these pistols can be relied upon"--was more and more astonished, wondering why any one should be so gratified at being able to rely upon a pistol which he did not intend to use! But the Persian left him no time for reflection. Telling Raoul to stay where he was, he ran up a few steps of the staircase which they had just left and then returned. "How stupid of us!" he whispered. "We shall soon have seen the end of those men with their lanterns. It is the firemen going their rounds."[2] The two men waited five minutes longer. Then the Persian took Raoul up the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture. Something moved in the darkness before them. "Flat on your stomach!" whispered the Persian. The two men lay flat on the floor. They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch them. They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat ... It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a kick into a corner. "Whew!" said the Persian. "We've had a narrow escape; that shade knows me and has twice taken me to the managers' office." "Is it some one belonging to the theater police?" asked Raoul. "It's some one much worse than that!" replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation.[3] "It's not ... he?" "He? ... If he does not come behind us, we shall always see his yellow eyes! That is more or less our safeguard to-night. But he may come from behind, stealing up; and we are dead men if we do not keep our hands as though about to fire, at the level of our eyes, in front!" The Persian had hardly finished speaking, when a fantastic face came in sight ... a whole fiery face, not only two yellow eyes! Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a man's height, but with no body attached to it. The face shed fire, looked in the darkness like a flame shaped as a man's face. "Oh," said the Persian, between his teeth. "I have never seen this before! ... Pampin was not mad, after all: he had seen it! ... What can that flame be? It is not HE, but he may have sent it! ... Take care! ... Take care! Your hand at the level of your eyes, in Heaven's name, at the level of your eyes! ... know most of his tricks ... but not this one ... Come, let us run ... it is safer. Hand at the level of your eyes!" And they fled down the long passage that opened before them. After a few seconds, that seemed to them like long minutes, they stopped. "He doesn't often come this way," said the Persian. "This side has nothing to do with him. This side does not lead to the lake nor to the house on the lake ... But perhaps he knows that we are at his heels ... although I promised him to leave him alone and never to meddle in his business again!" So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head; and they again saw the head of fire behind their two heads. It had followed them. And it must have run also, and perhaps faster than they, for it seemed to be nearer to them. At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound seemed to move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise as though thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard, the perfectly unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little stone inside the chalk that grates on the blackboard. They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when the moon is quite red, bright red. How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness, at a man's height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently? And how did it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring, staring eyes? And what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound which it brought with it? The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened themselves against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen because of that incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now, because of the more intense, swarming, living, "numerous" sound, for the sound was certainly made up of hundreds of little sounds that moved in the darkness, under the fiery face. And the fiery face came on ... with its noise ... came level with them! ... And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair stand on end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand noises meant. They came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow by innumerable little hurried waves, swifter than the waves that rush over the sands at high tide, little night-waves foaming under the moon, under the fiery head that was like a moon. And the little waves passed between their legs, climbing up their legs, irresistibly, and Raoul and the Persian could no longer restrain their cries of horror, dismay and pain. Nor could they continue to hold their hands at the level of their eyes: their hands went down to their legs to push back the waves, which were full of little legs and nails and claws and teeth. Yes, Raoul and the Persian were ready to faint, like Pampin the fireman. But the head of fire turned round in answer to their cries, and spoke to them: "Don't move! Don't move! ... Whatever you do, don't come after me! ... I am the rat-catcher! ... Let me pass, with my rats! ..." And the head of fire disappeared, vanished in the darkness, while the passage in front of it lit up, as the result of the change which the rat-catcher had made in his dark lantern. Before, so as not to scare the rats in front of him, he had turned his dark lantern on himself, lighting up his own head; now, to hasten their flight, he lit the dark space in front of him. And he jumped along, dragging with him the waves of scratching rats, all the thousand sounds. Raoul and the Persian breathed again, though still trembling. "I ought to have remembered that Erik talked to me about the rat-catcher," said the Persian. "But he never told me that he looked like that ... and it's funny that I should never have met him before ... Of course, Erik never comes to this part!" [Illustration: two page color illustration] "Are we very far from the lake, sir?" asked Raoul. "When shall we get there? ... Take me to the lake, oh, take me to the lake! ... When we are at the lake, we will call out! ... Christine will hear us! ... And HE will hear us, too! ... And, as you know him, we shall talk to him!" "Baby!" said the Persian. "We shall never enter the house on the lake by the lake! ... I myself have never landed on the other bank ... the bank on which the house stands. ... You have to cross the lake first ... and it is well guarded! ... I fear that more than one of those men--old scene-shifters, old door-shutters--who have never been seen again were simply tempted to cross the lake ... It is terrible ... I myself would have been nearly killed there ... if the monster had not recognized me in time! ... One piece of advice, sir; never go near the lake... And, above all, shut your ears if you hear the voice singing under the water, the siren's voice!" "But then, what are we here for?" asked Raoul, in a transport of fever, impatience and rage. "If you can do nothing for Christine, at least let me die for her!" The Persian tried to calm the young man. "We have only one means of saving Christine Daae, believe me, which is to enter the house unperceived by the monster." "And is there any hope of that, sir?" "Ah, if I had not that hope, I would not have come to fetch you!" "And how can one enter the house on the lake without crossing the lake?" "From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away. We will go back there now ... I will tell you," said the Persian, with a sudden change in his voice, "I will tell you the exact place, sir: it is between a set piece and a discarded scene from ROI DE LAHORE, exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died... Come, sir, take courage and follow me! And hold your hand at the level of your eyes! ... But where are we?" The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous corridors that crossed each other at right angles. "We must be," he said, "in the part used more particularly for the waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces." He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he was afraid of meeting some waterman. Then they had to protect themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity. In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the stage. They must at this time have been at the very bottom of the "tub" and at an extremely great depth, when we remember that the earth was dug out at fifty feet below the water that lay under the whole of that part of Paris.[4] The Persian touched a partition-wall and said: "If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the house on the lake." He was striking a partition-wall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be as well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partition-walls of the tub were built. In order to prevent the water surrounding the building-operations from remaining in immediate contact with the walls supporting the whole of the theatrical machinery, the architect was obliged to build a double case in every direction. The work of constructing this double case took a whole year. It was the wall of the first inner case that the Persian struck when speaking to Raoul of the house on the lake. To any one understanding the architecture of the edifice, the Persian's action would seem to indicate that Erik's mysterious house had been built in the double case, formed of a thick wall constructed as an embankment or dam, then of a brick wall, a tremendous layer of cement and another wall several yards in thickness. At the Persian's words, Raoul flung himself against the wall and listened eagerly. But he heard nothing ... nothing ... except distant steps sounding on the floor of the upper portions of the theater. The Persian darkened his lantern again. "Look out!" he said. "Keep your hand up! And silence! For we shall try another way of getting in." And he led him to the little staircase by which they had come down lately. They went up, stopping at each step, peering into the darkness and the silence, till they came to the third cellar. Here the Persian motioned to Raoul to go on his knees; and, in this way, crawling on both knees and one hand--for the other hand was held in the position indicated--they reached the end wall. Against this wall stood a large discarded scene from the ROI DE LAHORE. Close to this scene was a set piece. Between the scene and the set piece there was just room for a body ... for a body which one day was found hanging there. The body of Joseph Buquet. The Persian, still kneeling, stopped and listened. For a moment, he seemed to hesitate and looked at Raoul; then he turned his eyes upward, toward the second cellar, which sent down the faint glimmer of a lantern, through a cranny between two boards. This glimmer seemed to trouble the Persian. At last, he tossed his head and made up his mind to act. He slipped between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, with Raoul close upon his heels. With his free hand, the Persian felt the wall. Raoul saw him bear heavily upon the wall, just as he had pressed against the wall in Christine's dressing-room. Then a stone gave way, leaving a hole in the wall. This time, the Persian took his pistol from his pocket and made a sign to Raoul to do as he did. He cocked the pistol. And, resolutely, still on his knees, he wiggled through the hole in the wall. Raoul, who had wished to pass first, had to be content to follow him. The hole was very narrow. The Persian stopped almost at once. Raoul heard him feeling the stones around him. Then the Persian took out his dark lantern again, stooped forward, examined something beneath him and immediately extinguished his lantern. Raoul heard him say, in a whisper: "We shall have to drop a few yards, without making a noise; take off your boots." The Persian handed his own shoes to Raoul. "Put them outside the wall," he said. "We shall find them there when we leave."[5] He crawled a little farther on his knees, then turned right round and said: "I am going to hang by my hands from the edge of the stone and let myself drop INTO HIS HOUSE. You must do exactly the same. Do not be afraid. I will catch you in my arms." Raoul soon heard a dull sound, evidently produced by the fall of the Persian, and then dropped down. He felt himself clasped in the Persian's arms. "Hush!" said the Persian. And they stood motionless, listening. The darkness was thick around them, the silence heavy and terrible. Then the Persian began to make play with the dark lantern again, turning the rays over their heads, looking for the hole through which they had come, and failing to find it: "Oh!" he said. "The stone has closed of itself!" And the light of the lantern swept down the wall and over the floor. The Persian stooped and picked up something, a sort of cord, which he examined for a second and flung away with horror. "The Punjab lasso!" he muttered. "What is it?" asked Raoul. The Persian shivered. "It might very well be the rope by which the man was hanged, and which was looked for so long." And, suddenly seized with fresh anxiety, he moved the little red disk of his lantern over the walls. In this way, he lit up a curious thing: the trunk of a tree, which seemed still quite alive, with its leaves; and the branches of that tree ran right up the walls and disappeared in the ceiling. Because of the smallness of the luminous disk, it was difficult at first to make out the appearance of things: they saw a corner of a branch ... and a leaf ... and another leaf ... and, next to it, nothing at all, nothing but the ray of light that seemed to reflect itself ... Raoul passed his hand over that nothing, over that reflection. "Hullo!" he said. "The wall is a looking-glass!" "Yes, a looking-glass!" said the Persian, in a tone of deep emotion. And, passing the hand that held the pistol over his moist forehead, he added, "We have dropped into the torture-chamber!" What the Persian knew of this torture-chamber and what there befell him and his companion shall be told in his own words, as set down in a manuscript which he left behind him, and which I copy VERBATIM. [1] M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few additional posts as door-shutters for old stage-carpenters whom he was unwilling to dismiss from the service of the Opera. [2] In those days, it was still part of the firemen's duty to watch over the safety of the Opera house outside the performances; but this service has since been suppressed. I asked M. Pedro Gailhard the reason, and he replied: "It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter inexperience of the cellars of the Opera, the firemen might set fire to the building!" [3] Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching the apparition of this shade. Whereas, in this historic narrative, everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal the course of events may seem, I can not give the reader expressly to understand what the Persian meant by the words, "It is some one much worse than that!" The reader must try to guess for himself, for I promised M. Pedro Gailhard, the former manager of the Opera, to keep his secret regarding the extremely interesting and useful personality of the wandering, cloaked shade which, while condemning itself to live in the cellars of the Opera, rendered such immense services to those who, on gala evenings, for instance, venture to stray away from the stage. I am speaking of state services; and, upon my word of honor, I can say no more. [4] All the water had to be exhausted, in the building of the Opera. To give an idea of the amount of water that was pumped up, I can tell the reader that it represented the area of the courtyard of the Louvre and a height half as deep again as the towers of Notre Dame. And nevertheless the engineers had to leave a lake. [5] These two pairs of boots, which were placed, according to the Persian's papers, just between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, on the spot where Joseph Buquet was found hanging, were never discovered. They must have been taken by some stage-carpenter or "door-shutter." Chapter XXI Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake. I had often begged the "trap-door lover," as we used to call Erik in my country, to open its mysterious doors to me. He always refused. I made very many attempts, but in vain, to obtain admittance. Watch him as I might, after I first learned that he had taken up his permanent abode at the Opera, the darkness was always too thick to enable me to see how he worked the door in the wall on the lake. One day, when I thought myself alone, I stepped into the boat and rowed toward that part of the wall through which I had seen Erik disappear. It was then that I came into contact with the siren who guarded the approach and whose charm was very nearly fatal to me. I had no sooner put off from the bank than the silence amid which I floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing that hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music; it rose softly from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew not what artifice. It followed me, moved with me and was so soft that it did not alarm me. On the contrary, in my longing to approach the source of that sweet and enticing harmony, I leaned out of my little boat over the water, for there was no doubt in my mind that the singing came from the water itself. By this time, I was alone in the boat in the middle of the lake; the voice--for it was now distinctly a voice--was beside me, on the water. I leaned over, leaned still farther. The lake was perfectly calm, and a moonbeam that passed through the air hole in the Rue Scribe showed me absolutely nothing on its surface, which was smooth and black as ink. I shook my ears to get rid of a possible humming; but I soon had to accept the fact that there was no humming in the ears so harmonious as the singing whisper that followed and now attracted me. Had I been inclined to superstition, I should have certainly thought that I had to do with some siren whose business it was to confound the traveler who should venture on the waters of the house on the lake. Fortunately, I come from a country where we are too fond of fantastic things not to know them through and through; and I had no doubt but that I was face to face with some new invention of Erik's. But this invention was so perfect that, as I leaned out of the boat, I was impelled less by a desire to discover its trick than to enjoy its charm; and I leaned out, leaned out until I almost overturned the boat. Suddenly, two monstrous arms issued from the bosom of the waters and seized me by the neck, dragging me down to the depths with irresistible force. I should certainly have been lost, if I had not had time to give a cry by which Erik knew me. For it was he; and, instead of drowning me, as was certainly his first intention, he swam with me and laid me gently on the bank: "How imprudent you are!" he said, as he stood before me, dripping with water. "Why try to enter my house? I never invited you! I don't want you there, nor anybody! Did you save my life only to make it unbearable to me? However great the service you rendered him, Erik may end by forgetting it; and you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself." He spoke, but I had now no other wish than to know what I already called the trick of the siren. He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real monster--I have seen him at work in Persia, alas--is also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing people, as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind. He laughed and showed me a long reed. "It's the silliest trick you ever saw," he said, "but it's very useful for breathing and singing in the water. I learned it from the Tonkin pirates, who are able to remain hidden for hours in the beds of the rivers."[1] I spoke to him severely. "It's a trick that nearly killed me!" I said. "And it may have been fatal to others! You know what you promised me, Erik? No more murders!" "Have I really committed murders?" he asked, putting on his most amiable air. "Wretched man!" I cried. "Have you forgotten the rosy hours of Mazenderan?" "Yes," he replied, in a sadder tone, "I prefer to forget them. I used to make the little sultana laugh, though!" "All that belongs to the past," I declared; "but there is the present ... and you are responsible to me for the present, because, if I had wished, there would have been none at all for you. Remember that, Erik: I saved your life!" And I took advantage of the turn of conversation to speak to him of something that had long been on my mind: "Erik," I asked, "Erik, swear that ..." "What?" he retorted. "You know I never keep my oaths. Oaths are made to catch gulls with." "Tell me ... you can tell me, at any rate..." "Well?" "Well, the chandelier ... the chandelier, Erik? ..." "What about the chandelier?" "You know what I mean." "Oh," he sniggered, "I don't mind telling you about the chandelier! ... IT WASN'T I! ... The chandelier was very old and worn." When Erik laughed, he was more terrible than ever. He jumped into the boat, chuckling so horribly that I could not help trembling. "Very old and worn, my dear daroga![2] Very old and worn, the chandelier! ... It fell of itself! ... It came down with a smash! ... And now, daroga, take my advice and go and dry yourself, or you'll catch a cold in the head! ... And never get into my boat again ... And, whatever you do, don't try to enter my house: I'm not always there ... daroga! And I should be sorry to have to dedicate my Requiem Mass to you!" So saying, swinging to and fro, like a monkey, and still chuckling, he pushed off and soon disappeared in the darkness of the lake. From that day, I gave up all thought of penetrating into his house by the lake. That entrance was obviously too well guarded, especially since he had learned that I knew about it. But I felt that there must be another entrance, for I had often seen Erik disappear in the third cellar, when I was watching him, though I could not imagine how. Ever since I had discovered Erik installed in the Opera, I lived in a perpetual terror of his horrible fancies, not in so far as I was concerned, but I dreaded everything for others.[3] And whenever some accident, some fatal event happened, I always thought to myself, "I should not be surprised if that were Erik," even as others used to say, "It's the ghost!" How often have I not heard people utter that phrase with a smile! Poor devils! If they had known that the ghost existed in the flesh, I swear they would not have laughed! Although Erik announced to me very solemnly that he had changed and that he had become the most virtuous of men SINCE HE WAS LOVED FOR HIMSELF--a sentence that, at first, perplexed me most terribly--I could not help shuddering when I thought of the monster. His horrible, unparalleled and repulsive ugliness put him without the pale of humanity; and it often seemed to me that, for this reason, he no longer believed that he had any duty toward the human race. The way in which he spoke of his love affairs only increased my alarm, for I foresaw the cause of fresh and more hideous tragedies in this event to which he alluded so boastfully. On the other hand, I soon discovered the curious moral traffic established between the monster and Christine Daae. Hiding in the lumber-room next to the young prima donna's dressing-room, I listened to wonderful musical displays that evidently flung Christine into marvelous ecstasy; but, all the same, I would never have thought that Erik's voice--which was loud as thunder or soft as angels' voices, at will--could have made her forget his ugliness. I understood all when I learned that Christine had not yet seen him! I had occasion to go to the dressing-room and, remembering the lessons he had once given me, I had no difficulty in discovering the trick that made the wall with the mirror swing round and I ascertained the means of hollow bricks and so on--by which he made his voice carry to Christine as though she heard it close beside her. In this way also I discovered the road that led to the well and the dungeon--the Communists' dungeon--and also the trap-door that enabled Erik to go straight to the cellars below the stage. A few days later, what was not my amazement to learn by my own eyes and ears that Erik and Christine Daae saw each other and to catch the monster stooping over the little well, in the Communists' road and sprinkling the forehead of Christine Daae, who had fainted. A white horse, the horse out of the PROFETA, which had disappeared from the stables under the Opera, was standing quietly beside them. I showed myself. It was terrible. I saw sparks fly from those yellow eyes and, before I had time to say a word, I received a blow on the head that stunned me. When I came to myself, Erik, Christine and the white horse had disappeared. I felt sure that the poor girl was a prisoner in the house on the lake. Without hesitation, I resolved to return to the bank, notwithstanding the attendant danger. For twenty-four hours, I lay in wait for the monster to appear; for I felt that he must go out, driven by the need of obtaining provisions. And, in this connection, I may say, that, when he went out in the streets or ventured to show himself in public, he wore a pasteboard nose, with a mustache attached to it, instead of his own horrible hole of a nose. This did not quite take away his corpse-like air, but it made him almost, I say almost, endurable to look at. I therefore watched on the bank of the lake and, weary of long waiting, was beginning to think that he had gone through the other door, the door in the third cellar, when I heard a slight splashing in the dark, I saw the two yellow eyes shining like candles and soon the boat touched shore. Erik jumped out and walked up to me: "You've been here for twenty-four hours," he said, "and you're annoying me. I tell you, all this will end very badly. And you will have brought it upon yourself; for I have been extraordinarily patient with you. You think you are following me, you great booby, whereas it's I who am following you; and I know all that you know about me, here. I spared you yesterday, in MY COMMUNISTS' ROAD; but I warn you, seriously, don't let me catch you there again! Upon my word, you don't seem able to take a hint!" He was so furious that I did not think, for the moment, of interrupting him. After puffing and blowing like a walrus, he put his horrible thought into words: "Yes, you must learn, once and for all--once and for all, I say--to take a hint! I tell you that, with your recklessness--for you have already been twice arrested by the shade in the felt hat, who did not know what you were doing in the cellars and took you to the managers, who looked upon you as an eccentric Persian interested in stage mechanism and life behind the scenes: I know all about it, I was there, in the office; you know I am everywhere--well, I tell you that, with your recklessness, they will end by wondering what you are after here ... and they will end by knowing that you are after Erik ... and then they will be after Erik themselves and they will discover the house on the lake ... If they do, it will be a bad lookout for you, old chap, a bad lookout! ... I won't answer for anything." Again he puffed and blew like a walrus. "I won't answer for anything! ... If Erik's secrets cease to be Erik's secrets, IT WILL BE A BAD LOOKOUT FOR A GOODLY NUMBER OF THE HUMAN RACE! That's all I have to tell you, and unless you are a great booby, it ought to be enough for you ... except that you don't know how to take a hint." He had sat down on the stern of his boat and was kicking his heels against the planks, waiting to hear what I had to answer. I simply said: "It's not Erik that I'm after here!" "Who then?" "You know as well as I do: it's Christine Daae," I answered. He retorted: "I have every right to see her in my own house. I am loved for my own sake." "That's not true," I said. "You have carried her off and are keeping her locked up." "Listen," he said. "Will you promise never to meddle with my affairs again, if I prove to you that I am loved for my own sake?" "Yes, I promise you," I replied, without hesitation, for I felt convinced that for such a monster the proof was impossible. "Well, then, it's quite simple ... Christine Daae shall leave this as she pleases and come back again! ... Yes, come back again, because she wishes ... come back of herself, because she loves me for myself! ..." "Oh, I doubt if she will come back! ... But it is your duty to let her go." "My duty, you great booby! ... It is my wish ... my wish to let her go; and she will come back again ... for she loves me! ... All this will end in a marriage ... a marriage at the Madeleine, you great booby! Do you believe me now? When I tell you that my nuptial mass is written ... wait till you hear the KYRIE..." He beat time with his heels on the planks of the boat and sang: "KYRIE! ... KYRIE! ... KYRIE ELEISON! ... Wait till you hear, wait till you hear that mass." "Look here," I said. "I shall believe you if I see Christine Daae come out of the house on the lake and go back to it of her own accord." "And you won't meddle any more in my affairs?" "No." "Very well, you shall see that to-night. Come to the masked ball. Christine and I will go and have a look round. Then you can hide in the lumber-room and you shall see Christine, who will have gone to her dressing-room, delighted to come back by the Communists' road... And, now, be off, for I must go and do some shopping!" To my intense astonishment, things happened as he had announced. Christine Daae left the house on the lake and returned to it several times, without, apparently, being forced to do so. It was very difficult for me to clear my mind of Erik. However, I resolved to be extremely prudent, and did not make the mistake of returning to the shore of the lake, or of going by the Communists' road. But the idea of the secret entrance in the third cellar haunted me, and I repeatedly went and waited for hours behind a scene from the Roi de Lahore, which had been left there for some reason or other. At last my patience was rewarded. One day, I saw the monster come toward me, on his knees. I was certain that he could not see me. He passed between the scene behind which I stood and a set piece, went to the wall and pressed on a spring that moved a stone and afforded him an ingress. He passed through this, and the stone closed behind him. I waited for at least thirty minutes and then pressed the spring in my turn. Everything happened as with Erik. But I was careful not to go through the hole myself, for I knew that Erik was inside. On the other hand, the idea that I might be caught by Erik suddenly made me think of the death of Joseph Buquet. I did not wish to jeopardize the advantages of so great a discovery which might be useful to many people, "to a goodly number of the human race," in Erik's words; and I left the cellars of the Opera after carefully replacing the stone. I continued to be greatly interested in the relations between Erik and Christine Daae, not from any morbid curiosity, but because of the terrible thought which obsessed my mind that Erik was capable of anything, if he once discovered that he was not loved for his own sake, as he imagined. I continued to wander, very cautiously, about the Opera and soon learned the truth about the monster's dreary love-affair. He filled Christine's mind, through the terror with which he inspired her, but the dear child's heart belonged wholly to the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. While they played about, like an innocent engaged couple, on the upper floors of the Opera, to avoid the monster, they little suspected that some one was watching over them. I was prepared to do anything: to kill the monster, if necessary, and explain to the police afterward. But Erik did not show himself; and I felt none the more comfortable for that. I must explain my whole plan. I thought that the monster, being driven from his house by jealousy, would thus enable me to enter it, without danger, through the passage in the third cellar. It was important, for everybody's sake, that I should know exactly what was inside. One day, tired of waiting for an opportunity, I moved the stone and at once heard an astounding music: the monster was working at his Don Juan Triumphant, with every door in his house wide open. I knew that this was the work of his life. I was careful not to stir and remained prudently in my dark hole. He stopped playing, for a moment, and began walking about his place, like a madman. And he said aloud, at the top of his voice: "It must be finished FIRST! Quite finished!" This speech was not calculated to reassure me and, when the music recommenced, I closed the stone very softly. On the day of the abduction of Christine Daae, I did not come to the theater until rather late in the evening, trembling lest I should hear bad news. I had spent a horrible day, for, after reading in a morning paper the announcement of a forthcoming marriage between Christine and the Vicomte de Chagny, I wondered whether, after all, I should not do better to denounce the monster. But reason returned to me, and I was persuaded that this action could only precipitate a possible catastrophe. When, my cab set me down before the Opera, I was really almost astonished to see it still standing! But I am something of a fatalist, like all good Orientals, and I entered ready, for anything. Christine Daae's abduction in the Prison Act, which naturally surprised everybody, found me prepared. I was quite certain that she had been juggled away by Erik, that prince of conjurers. And I thought positively that this was the end of Christine and perhaps of everybody, so much so that I thought of advising all these people who were staying on at the theater to make good their escape. I felt, however, that they would be sure to look upon me as mad and I refrained. On the other hand, I resolved to act without further delay, as far as I was concerned. The chances were in my favor that Erik, at that moment, was thinking only of his captive. This was the moment to enter his house through the third cellar; and I resolved to take with me that poor little desperate viscount, who, at the first suggestion, accepted, with an amount of confidence in myself that touched me profoundly. I had sent my servant for my pistols. I gave one to the viscount and advised him to hold himself ready to fire, for, after all, Erik might be waiting for us behind the wall. We were to go by the Communists' road and through the trap-door. Seeing my pistols, the little viscount asked me if we were going to fight a duel. I said: "Yes; and what a duel!" But, of course, I had no time to explain anything to him. The little viscount is a brave fellow, but he knew hardly anything about his adversary; and it was so much the better. My great fear was that he was already somewhere near us, preparing the Punjab lasso. No one knows better than he how to throw the Punjab lasso, for he is the king of stranglers even as he is the prince of conjurors. When he had finished making the little sultana laugh, at the time of the "rosy hours of Mazenderan," she herself used to ask him to amuse her by giving her a thrill. It was then that he introduced the sport of the Punjab lasso. He had lived in India and acquired an incredible skill in the art of strangulation. He would make them lock him into a courtyard to which they brought a warrior--usually, a man condemned to death--armed with a long pike and broadsword. Erik had only his lasso; and it was always just when the warrior thought that he was going to fell Erik with a tremendous blow that we heard the lasso whistle through the air. With a turn of the wrist, Erik tightened the noose round his adversary's neck and, in this fashion, dragged him before the little sultana and her women, who sat looking from a window and applauding. The little sultana herself learned to wield the Punjab lasso and killed several of her women and even of the friends who visited her. But I prefer to drop this terrible subject of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. I have mentioned it only to explain why, on arriving with the Vicomte de Chagny in the cellars of the Opera, I was bound to protect my companion against the ever-threatening danger of death by strangling. My pistols could serve no purpose, for Erik was not likely to show himself; but Erik could always strangle us. I had no time to explain all this to the viscount; besides, there was nothing to be gained by complicating the position. I simply told M. de Chagny to keep his hand at the level of his eyes, with the arm bent, as though waiting for the command to fire. With his victim in this attitude, it is impossible even for the most expert strangler to throw the lasso with advantage. It catches you not only round the neck, but also round the arm or hand. This enables you easily to unloose the lasso, which then becomes harmless. After avoiding the commissary of police, a number of door-shutters and the firemen, after meeting the rat-catcher and passing the man in the felt hat unperceived, the viscount and I arrived without obstacle in the third cellar, between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore. I worked the stone, and we jumped into the house which Erik had built himself in the double case of the foundation-walls of the Opera. And this was the easiest thing in the world for him to do, because Erik was one of the chief contractors under Philippe Garnier, the architect of the Opera, and continued to work by himself when the works were officially suspended, during the war, the siege of Paris and the Commune. I knew my Erik too well to feel at all comfortable on jumping into his house. I knew what he had made of a certain palace at Mazenderan. From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into a house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was overheard or repeated by an echo. With his trap-doors the monster was responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds. He hit upon astonishing inventions. Of these, the most curious, horrible and dangerous was the so-called torture-chamber. Except in special cases, when the little sultana amused herself by inflicting suffering upon some unoffending citizen, no one was let into it but wretches condemned to death. And, even then, when these had "had enough," they were always at liberty to put an end to themselves with a Punjab lasso or bowstring, left for their use at the foot of an iron tree. My alarm, therefore, was great when I saw that the room into which M. le Vicomte de Chagny and I had dropped was an exact copy of the torture-chamber of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. At our feet, I found the Punjab lasso which I had been dreading all the evening. I was convinced that this rope had already done duty for Joseph Buquet, who, like myself, must have caught Erik one evening working the stone in the third cellar. He probably tried it in his turn, fell into the torture-chamber and only left it hanged. I can well imagine Erik dragging the body, in order to get rid of it, to the scene from the Roi de Lahore, and hanging it there as an example, or to increase the superstitious terror that was to help him in guarding the approaches to his lair! Then, upon reflection, Erik went back to fetch the Punjab lasso, which is very curiously made out of catgut, and which might have set an examining magistrate thinking. This explains the disappearance of the rope. And now I discovered the lasso, at our feet, in the torture-chamber! ... I am no coward, but a cold sweat covered my forehead as I moved the little red disk of my lantern over the walls. M. de Chagny noticed it and asked: "What is the matter, sir?" I made him a violent sign to be silent. [1] An official report from Tonkin, received in Paris at the end of July, 1909, relates how the famous pirate chief De Tham was tracked, together with his men, by our soldiers; and how all of them succeeded in escaping, thanks to this trick of the reeds. [2] DAROGA is Persian for chief of police. [3] The Persian might easily have admitted that Erik's fate also interested himself, for he was well aware that, if the government of Teheran had learned that Erik was still alive, it would have been all up with the modest pension of the erstwhile daroga. It is only fair, however, to add that the Persian had a noble and generous heart; and I do not doubt for a moment that the catastrophes which he feared for others greatly occupied his mind. His conduct, throughout this business, proves it and is above all praise. Chapter XXII In the Torture Chamber THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE CONTINUED We were in the middle of a little six-cornered room, the sides of which were covered with mirrors from top to bottom. In the corners, we could clearly see the "joins" in the glasses, the segments intended to turn on their gear; yes, I recognized them and I recognized the iron tree in the corner, at the bottom of one of those segments ... the iron tree, with its iron branch, for the hanged men. I seized my companion's arm: the Vicomte de Chagny was all a-quiver, eager to shout to his betrothed that he was bringing her help. I feared that he would not be able to contain himself. Suddenly, we heard a noise on our left. It sounded at first like a door opening and shutting in the next room; and then there was a dull moan. I clutched M. de Chagny's arm more firmly still; and then we distinctly heard these words: "You must make your choice! The wedding mass or the requiem mass!" I recognized the voice of the monster. There was another moan, followed by a long silence. I was persuaded by now that the monster was unaware of our presence in his house, for otherwise he would certainly have managed not to let us hear him. He would only have had to close the little invisible window through which the torture-lovers look down into the torture-chamber. Besides, I was certain that, if he had known of our presence, the tortures would have begun at once. The important thing was not to let him know; and I dreaded nothing so much as the impulsiveness of the Vicomte de Chagny, who wanted to rush through the walls to Christine Daae, whose moans we continued to hear at intervals. "The requiem mass is not at all gay," Erik's voice resumed, "whereas the wedding mass--you can take my word for it--is magnificent! You must take a resolution and know your own mind! I can't go on living like this, like a mole in a burrow! Don Juan Triumphant is finished; and now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets. You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased." Soon the moans that accompanied this sort of love's litany increased and increased. I have never heard anything more despairing; and M. de Chagny and I recognized that this terrible lamentation came from Erik himself. Christine seemed to be standing dumb with horror, without the strength to cry out, while the monster was on his knees before her. Three times over, Erik fiercely bewailed his fate: "You don't love me! You don't love me! You don't love me!" And then, more gently: "Why do you cry? You know it gives me pain to see you cry!" A silence. Each silence gave us fresh hope. We said to ourselves: "Perhaps he has left Christine behind the wall." And we thought only of the possibility of warning Christine Daae of our presence, unknown to the monster. We were unable to leave the torture-chamber now, unless Christine opened the door to us; and it was only on this condition that we could hope to help her, for we did not even know where the door might be. Suddenly, the silence in the next room was disturbed by the ringing of an electric bell. There was a bound on the other side of the wall and Erik's voice of thunder: "Somebody ringing! Walk in, please!" A sinister chuckle. "Who has come bothering now? Wait for me here ... I AM GOING TO TELL THE SIREN TO OPEN THE DOOR." Steps moved away, a door closed. I had no time to think of the fresh horror that was preparing; I forgot that the monster was only going out perhaps to perpetrate a fresh crime; I understood but one thing: Christine was alone behind the wall! The Vicomte de Chagny was already calling to her: "Christine! Christine!" As we could hear what was said in the next room, there was no reason why my companion should not be heard in his turn. Nevertheless, the viscount had to repeat his cry time after time. At last, a faint voice reached us. "I am dreaming!" it said. "Christine, Christine, it is I, Raoul!" A silence. "But answer me, Christine! ... In Heaven's name, if you are alone, answer me!" Then Christine's voice whispered Raoul's name. "Yes! Yes! It is I! It is not a dream! ... Christine, trust me! ... We are here to save you ... but be prudent! When you hear the monster, warn us!" Then Christine gave way to fear. She trembled lest Erik should discover where Raoul was hidden; she told us in a few hurried words that Erik had gone quite mad with love and that he had decided TO KILL EVERYBODY AND HIMSELF WITH EVERYBODY if she did not consent to become his wife. He had given her till eleven o'clock the next evening for reflection. It was the last respite. She must choose, as he said, between the wedding mass and the requiem. And Erik had then uttered a phrase which Christine did not quite understand: "Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead AND BURIED!" But I understood the sentence perfectly, for it corresponded in a terrible manner with my own dreadful thought. "Can you tell us where Erik is?" I asked. She replied that he must have left the house. "Could you make sure?" "No. I am fastened. I can not stir a limb." When we heard this, M. de Chagny and I gave a yell of fury. Our safety, the safety of all three of us, depended on the girl's liberty of movement. "But where are you?" asked Christine. "There are only two doors in my room, the Louis-Philippe room of which I told you, Raoul; a door through which Erik comes and goes, and another which he has never opened before me and which he has forbidden me ever to go through, because he says it is the most dangerous of the doors, the door of the torture-chamber!" "Christine, that is where we are!" "You are in the torture-chamber?" "Yes, but we can not see the door." "Oh, if I could only drag myself so far! I would knock at the door and that would tell you where it is." "Is it a door with a lock to it?" I asked. "Yes, with a lock." "Mademoiselle," I said, "it is absolutely necessary, that you should open that door to us!" "But how?" asked the poor girl tearfully. We heard her straining, trying to free herself from the bonds that held her. "I know where the key is," she said, in a voice that seemed exhausted by the effort she had made. "But I am fastened so tight ... Oh, the wretch!" And she gave a sob. "Where is the key?" I asked, signing to M. de Chagny not to speak and to leave the business to me, for we had not a moment to lose. "In the next room, near the organ, with another little bronze key, which he also forbade me to touch. They are both in a little leather bag which he calls the bag of life and death... Raoul! Raoul! Fly! Everything is mysterious and terrible here, and Erik will soon have gone quite mad, and you are in the torture-chamber! ... Go back by the way you came. There must be a reason why the room is called by that name!" "Christine," said the young man. "We will go from here together or die together!" "We must keep cool," I whispered. "Why has he fastened you, mademoiselle? You can't escape from his house; and he knows it!" "I tried to commit suicide! The monster went out last night, after carrying me here fainting and half chloroformed. He was going TO HIS BANKER, so he said! ... When he returned he found me with my face covered with blood ... I had tried to kill myself by striking my forehead against the walls." "Christine!" groaned Raoul; and he began to sob. "Then he bound me ... I am not allowed to die until eleven o'clock to-morrow evening." "Mademoiselle," I declared, "the monster bound you ... and he shall unbind you. You have only to play the necessary part! Remember that he loves you!" "Alas!" we heard. "Am I likely to forget it!" "Remember it and smile to him ... entreat him ... tell him that your bonds hurt you." But Christine Daae said: "Hush! ... I hear something in the wall on the lake! ... It is he! ... Go away! Go away! Go away!" "We could not go away, even if we wanted to," I said, as impressively as I could. "We can not leave this! And we are in the torture-chamber!" "Hush!" whispered Christine again. Heavy steps sounded slowly behind the wall, then stopped and made the floor creak once more. Next came a tremendous sigh, followed by a cry of horror from Christine, and we heard Erik's voice: "I beg your pardon for letting you see a face like this! What a state I am in, am I not? It's THE OTHER ONE'S FAULT! Why did he ring? Do I ask people who pass to tell me the time? He will never ask anybody the time again! It is the siren's fault." [Illustration: two page color illustration] Another sigh, deeper, more tremendous still, came from the abysmal depths of a soul. "Why did you cry out, Christine?" "Because I am in pain, Erik." "I thought I had frightened you." "Erik, unloose my bonds ... Am I not your prisoner?" "You will try to kill yourself again." "You have given me till eleven o'clock to-morrow evening, Erik." The footsteps dragged along the floor again. "After all, as we are to die together ... and I am just as eager as you ... yes, I have had enough of this life, you know... Wait, don't move, I will release you ... You have only one word to say: 'NO!' And it will at once be over WITH EVERYBODY! ... You are right, you are right; why wait till eleven o'clock to-morrow evening? True, it would have been grander, finer ... But that is childish nonsense ... We should only think of ourselves in this life, of our own death ... the rest doesn't matter... YOU'RE LOOKING AT ME BECAUSE I AM ALL WET? ... Oh, my dear, it's raining cats and dogs outside! ... Apart from that, Christine, I think I am subject to hallucinations ... You know, the man who rang at the siren's door just now--go and look if he's ringing at the bottom of the lake-well, he was rather like... There, turn round ... are you glad? You're free now... Oh, my poor Christine, look at your wrists: tell me, have I hurt them? ... That alone deserves death ... Talking of death, I MUST SING HIS REQUIEM!" Hearing these terrible remarks, I received an awful presentiment ... I too had once rung at the monster's door ... and, without knowing it, must have set some warning current in motion. And I remembered the two arms that had emerged from the inky waters... What poor wretch had strayed to that shore this time? Who was 'the other one,' the one whose requiem we now heard sung? Erik sang like the god of thunder, sang a DIES IRAE that enveloped us as in a storm. The elements seemed to rage around us. Suddenly, the organ and the voice ceased so suddenly that M. de Chagny sprang back, on the other side of the wall, with emotion. And the voice, changed and transformed, distinctly grated out these metallic syllables: "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY BAG?" Chapter XXIII The Tortures Begin THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE CONTINUED. The voice repeated angrily: "What have you done with my bag? So it was to take my bag that you asked me to release you!" We heard hurried steps, Christine running back to the Louis-Philippe room, as though to seek shelter on the other side of our wall. "What are you running away for?" asked the furious voice, which had followed her. "Give me back my bag, will you? Don't you know that it is the bag of life and death?" "Listen to me, Erik," sighed the girl. "As it is settled that we are to live together ... what difference can it make to you?" "You know there are only two keys in it," said the monster. "What do you want to do?" "I want to look at this room which I have never seen and which you have always kept from me ... It's woman's curiosity!" she said, in a tone which she tried to render playful. But the trick was too childish for Erik to be taken in by it. "I don't like curious women," he retorted, "and you had better remember the story of BLUE-BEARD and be careful ... Come, give me back my bag! ... Give me back my bag! ... Leave the key alone, will you, you inquisitive little thing?" And he chuckled, while Christine gave a cry of pain. Erik had evidently recovered the bag from her. At that moment, the viscount could not help uttering an exclamation of impotent rage. "Why, what's that?" said the monster. "Did you hear, Christine?" "No, no," replied the poor girl. "I heard nothing." "I thought I heard a cry." "A cry! Are you going mad, Erik? Whom do you expect to give a cry, in this house? ... I cried out, because you hurt me! I heard nothing." "I don't like the way you said that! ... You're trembling... You're quite excited ... You're lying! ... That was a cry, there was a cry! ... There is some one in the torture-chamber! ... Ah, I understand now!" "There is no one there, Erik!" "I understand!" "No one!" "The man you want to marry, perhaps!" "I don't want to marry anybody, you know I don't." Another nasty chuckle. "Well, it won't take long to find out. Christine, my love, we need not open the door to see what is happening in the torture-chamber. Would you like to see? Would you like to see? Look here! If there is some one, if there is really some one there, you will see the invisible window light up at the top, near the ceiling. We need only draw the black curtain and put out the light in here. There, that's it ... Let's put out the light! You're not afraid of the dark, when you're with your little husband!" Then we heard Christine's voice of anguish: "No! ... I'm frightened! ... I tell you, I'm afraid of the dark! ... I don't care about that room now ... You're always frightening me, like a child, with your torture-chamber! ... And so I became inquisitive... But I don't care about it now ... not a bit ... not a bit!" And that which I feared above all things began, AUTOMATICALLY. We were suddenly flooded with light! Yes, on our side of the wall, everything seemed aglow. The Vicomte de Chagny was so much taken aback that he staggered. And the angry voice roared: "I told you there was some one! Do you see the window now? The lighted window, right up there? The man behind the wall can't see it! But you shall go up the folding steps: that is what they are there for! ... You have often asked me to tell you; and now you know! ... They are there to give a peep into the torture-chamber ... you inquisitive little thing!" "What tortures? ... Who is being tortured? ... Erik, Erik, say you are only trying to frighten me! ... Say it, if you love me, Erik! ... There are no tortures, are there?" "Go and look at the little window, dear!" I do not know if the viscount heard the girl's swooning voice, for he was too much occupied by the astounding spectacle that now appeared before his distracted gaze. As for me, I had seen that sight too often, through the little window, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan; and I cared only for what was being said next door, seeking for a hint how to act, what resolution to take. "Go and peep through the little window! Tell me what he looks like!" We heard the steps being dragged against the wall. "Up with you! ... No! ... No, I will go up myself, dear!" "Oh, very well, I will go up. Let me go!" "Oh, my darling, my darling! ... How sweet of you! ... How nice of you to save me the exertion at my age! ... Tell me what he looks like!" At that moment, we distinctly heard these words above our heads: "There is no one there, dear!" "No one? ... Are you sure there is no one?" "Why, of course not ... no one!" "Well, that's all right! ... What's the matter, Christine? You're not going to faint, are you ... as there is no one there? ... Here ... come down ... there! ... Pull yourself together ... as there is no one there! ... BUT HOW DO YOU LIKE THE LANDSCAPE?" "Oh, very much!" "There, that's better! ... You're better now, are you not? ... That's all right, you're better! ... No excitement! ... And what a funny house, isn't it, with landscapes like that in it?" "Yes, it's like the Musee Grevin ... But, say, Erik ... there are no tortures in there! ... What a fright you gave me!" "Why ... as there is no one there?" "Did you design that room? It's very handsome. You're a great artist, Erik." "Yes, a great artist, in my own line." "But tell me, Erik, why did you call that room the torture-chamber?" "Oh, it's very simple. First of all, what did you see?" "I saw a forest." "And what is in a forest?" "Trees." "And what is in a tree?" "Birds." "Did you see any birds?" "No, I did not see any birds." "Well, what did you see? Think! You saw branches And what are the branches?" asked the terrible voice. "THERE'S A GIBBET! That is why I call my wood the torture-chamber! ... You see, it's all a joke. I never express myself like other people. But I am very tired of it! ... I'm sick and tired of having a forest and a torture-chamber in my house and of living like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom! ... I'm tired of it! I want to have a nice, quiet flat, with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! A wife whom I could love and take out on Sundays and keep amused on week-days ... Here, shall I show you some card-tricks? That will help us to pass a few minutes, while waiting for eleven o'clock to-morrow evening ... My dear little Christine! ... Are you listening to me? ... Tell me you love me! ... No, you don't love me ... but no matter, you will! ... Once, you could not look at my mask because you knew what was behind... And now you don't mind looking at it and you forget what is behind! ... One can get used to everything ... if one wishes... Plenty of young people who did not care for each other before marriage have adored each other since! Oh, I don't know what I am talking about! But you would have lots of fun with me. For instance, I am the greatest ventriloquist that ever lived, I am the first ventriloquist in the world! ... You're laughing ... Perhaps you don't believe me? Listen." The wretch, who really was the first ventriloquist in the world, was only trying to divert the child's attention from the torture-chamber; but it was a stupid scheme, for Christine thought of nothing but us! She repeatedly besought him, in the gentlest tones which she could assume: "Put out the light in the little window! ... Erik, do put out the light in the little window!" For she saw that this light, which appeared so suddenly and of which the monster had spoken in so threatening a voice, must mean something terrible. One thing must have pacified her for a moment; and that was seeing the two of us, behind the wall, in the midst of that resplendent light, alive and well. But she would certainly have felt much easier if the light had been put out. Meantime, the other had already begun to play the ventriloquist. He said: "Here, I raise my mask a little ... Oh, only a little! ... You see my lips, such lips as I have? They're not moving! ... My mouth is closed--such mouth as I have--and yet you hear my voice... Where will you have it? In your left ear? In your right ear? In the table? In those little ebony boxes on the mantelpiece? ... Listen, dear, it's in the little box on the right of the mantelpiece: what does it say? 'SHALL I TURN THE SCORPION?' ... And now, crack! What does it say in the little box on the left? 'SHALL I TURN THE GRASSHOPPER?' ... And now, crack! Here it is in the little leather bag ... What does it say? 'I AM THE LITTLE BAG OF LIFE AND DEATH!' ... And now, crack! It is in Carlotta's throat, in Carlotta's golden throat, in Carlotta's crystal throat, as I live! What does it say? It says, 'It's I, Mr. Toad, it's I singing! I FEEL WITHOUT ALARM--CO-ACK--WITH ITS MELODY ENWIND ME--CO-ACK!' ... And now, crack! It is on a chair in the ghost's box and it says, 'MADAME CARLOTTA IS SINGING TO-NIGHT TO BRING THE CHANDELIER DOWN!' ... And now, crack! Aha! Where is Erik's voice now? Listen, Christine, darling! Listen! It is behind the door of the torture-chamber! Listen! It's myself in the torture-chamber! And what do I say? I say, 'Woe to them that have a nose, a real nose, and come to look round the torture-chamber! Aha, aha, aha!'" Oh, the ventriloquist's terrible voice! It was everywhere, everywhere. It passed through the little invisible window, through the walls. It ran around us, between us. Erik was there, speaking to us! We made a movement as though to fling ourselves upon him. But, already, swifter, more fleeting than the voice of the echo, Erik's voice had leaped back behind the wall! Soon we heard nothing more at all, for this is what happened: "Erik! Erik!" said Christine's voice. "You tire me with your voice. Don't go on, Erik! Isn't it very hot here?" "Oh, yes," replied Erik's voice, "the heat is unendurable!" "But what does this mean? ... The wall is really getting quite hot! ... The wall is burning!" "I'll tell you, Christine, dear: it is because of the forest next door." "Well, what has that to do with it? The forest?" "WHY, DIDN'T YOU SEE THAT IT WAS AN AFRICAN FOREST?" And the monster laughed so loudly and hideously that we could no longer distinguish Christine's supplicating cries! The Vicomte de Chagny shouted and banged against the walls like a madman. I could not restrain him. But we heard nothing except the monster's laughter, and the monster himself can have heard nothing else. And then there was the sound of a body falling on the floor and being dragged along and a door slammed and then nothing, nothing more around us save the scorching silence of the south in the heart of a tropical forest! Chapter XXIV "Barrels! ... Barrels! ... Any Barrels to Sell?" THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE CONTINUED I have said that the room in which M. le Vicomte de Chagny and I were imprisoned was a regular hexagon, lined entirely with mirrors. Plenty of these rooms have been seen since, mainly at exhibitions: they are called "palaces of illusion," or some such name. But the invention belongs entirely to Erik, who built the first room of this kind under my eyes, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. A decorative object, such as a column, for instance, was placed in one of the corners and immediately produced a hall of a thousand columns; for, thanks to the mirrors, the real room was multiplied by six hexagonal rooms, each of which, in its turn, was multiplied indefinitely. But the little sultana soon tired of this infantile illusion, whereupon Erik altered his invention into a "torture-chamber." For the architectural motive placed in one corner, he substituted an iron tree. This tree, with its painted leaves, was absolutely true to life and was made of iron so as to resist all the attacks of the "patient" who was locked into the torture-chamber. We shall see how the scene thus obtained was twice altered instantaneously into two successive other scenes, by means of the automatic rotation of the drums or rollers in the corners. These were divided into three sections, fitting into the angles of the mirrors and each supporting a decorative scheme that came into sight as the roller revolved upon its axis. The walls of this strange room gave the patient nothing to lay hold of, because, apart from the solid decorative object, they were simply furnished with mirrors, thick enough to withstand any onslaught of the victim, who was flung into the chamber empty-handed and barefoot. There was no furniture. The ceiling was capable of being lit up. An ingenious system of electric heating, which has since been imitated, allowed the temperature of the walls and room to be increased at will. I am giving all these details of a perfectly natural invention, producing, with a few painted branches, the supernatural illusion of an equatorial forest blazing under the tropical sun, so that no one may doubt the present balance of my brain or feel entitled to say that I am mad or lying or that I take him for a fool.[1] I now return to the facts where I left them. When the ceiling lit up and the forest became visible around us, the viscount's stupefaction was immense. That impenetrable forest, with its innumerable trunks and branches, threw him into a terrible state of consternation. He passed his hands over his forehead, as though to drive away a dream; his eyes blinked; and, for a moment, he forgot to listen. I have already said that the sight of the forest did not surprise me at all; and therefore I listened for the two of us to what was happening next door. Lastly, my attention was especially attracted, not so much to the scene, as to the mirrors that produced it. These mirrors were broken in parts. Yes, they were marked and scratched; they had been "starred," in spite of their solidity; and this proved to me that the torture-chamber in which we now were HAD ALREADY SERVED A PURPOSE. Yes, some wretch, whose feet were not bare like those of the victims of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, had certainly fallen into this "mortal illusion" and, mad with rage, had kicked against those mirrors which, nevertheless, continued to reflect his agony. And the branch of the tree on which he had put an end to his own sufferings was arranged in such a way that, before dying, he had seen, for his last consolation, a thousand men writhing in his company. Yes, Joseph Buquet had undoubtedly been through all this! Were we to die as he had done? I did not think so, for I knew that we had a few hours before us and that I could employ them to better purpose than Joseph Buquet was able to do. After all, I was thoroughly acquainted with most of Erik's "tricks;" and now or never was the time to turn my knowledge to account. To begin with, I gave up every idea of returning to the passage that had brought us to that accursed chamber. I did not trouble about the possibility of working the inside stone that closed the passage; and this for the simple reason that to do so was out of the question. We had dropped from too great a height into the torture-chamber; there was no furniture to help us reach that passage; not even the branch of the iron tree, not even each other's shoulders were of any avail. There was only one possible outlet, that opening into the Louis-Philippe room in which Erik and Christine Daae were. But, though this outlet looked like an ordinary door on Christine's side, it was absolutely invisible to us. We must therefore try to open it without even knowing where it was. When I was quite sure that there was no hope for us from Christine Daae's side, when I had heard the monster dragging the poor girl from the Louis-Philippe room LEST SHE SHOULD INTERFERE WITH OUR TORTURES, I resolved to set to work without delay. But I had first to calm M. de Chagny, who was already walking about like a madman, uttering incoherent cries. The snatches of conversation which he had caught between Christine and the monster had contributed not a little to drive him beside himself: add to that the shock of the magic forest and the scorching heat which was beginning to make the prespiration{sic} stream down his temples and you will have no difficulty in understanding his state of mind. He shouted Christine's name, brandished his pistol, knocked his forehead against the glass in his endeavors to run down the glades of the illusive forest. In short, the torture was beginning to work its spell upon a brain unprepared for it. I did my best to induce the poor viscount to listen to reason. I made him touch the mirrors and the iron tree and the branches and explained to him, by optical laws, all the luminous imagery by which we were surrounded and of which we need not allow ourselves to be the victims, like ordinary, ignorant people. "We are in a room, a little room; that is what you must keep saying to yourself. And we shall leave the room as soon as we have found the door." And I promised him that, if he let me act, without disturbing me by shouting and walking up and down, I would discover the trick of the door in less than an hour's time. Then he lay flat on the floor, as one does in a wood, and declared that he would wait until I found the door of the forest, as there was nothing better to do! And he added that, from where he was, "the view was splendid!" The torture was working, in spite of all that I had said. Myself, forgetting the forest, I tackled a glass panel and began to finger it in every direction, hunting for the weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with Erik's system of pivots. This weak point might be a mere speck on the glass, no larger than a pea, under which the spring lay hidden. I hunted and hunted. I felt as high as my hands could reach. Erik was about the same height as myself and I thought that he would not have placed the spring higher than suited his stature. While groping over the successive panels with the greatest care, I endeavored not to lose a minute, for I was feeling more and more overcome with the heat and we were literally roasting in that blazing forest. I had been working like this for half an hour and had finished three panels, when, as ill-luck would have it, I turned round on hearing a muttered exclamation from the viscount. "I am stifling," he said. "All those mirrors are sending out an infernal heat! Do you think you will find that spring soon? If you are much longer about it, we shall be roasted alive!" I was not sorry to hear him talk like this. He had not said a word of the forest and I hoped that my companion's reason would hold out some time longer against the torture. But he added: "What consoles me is that the monster has given Christine until eleven to-morrow evening. If we can't get out of here and go to her assistance, at least we shall be dead before her! Then Erik's mass can serve for all of us!" And he gulped down a breath of hot air that nearly made him faint. As I had not the same desperate reasons as M. le Vicomte for accepting death, I returned, after giving him a word of encouragement, to my panel, but I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while speaking and, in the tangle of the illusive forest, I was no longer able to find my panel for certain! I had to begin all over again, at random, feeling, fumbling, groping. Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn ... for I found nothing, absolutely nothing. In the next room, all was silence. We were quite lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide or anything. Oh, I knew what awaited us if nobody came to our aid ... or if I did not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found nothing but branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me, or spread gracefully over my head. But they gave no shade. And this was natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest, with the sun right above our heads, an African forest. M. de Chagny and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them on again, finding at one time that they made us feel still hotter and at another that they protected us against the heat. I was still making a moral resistance, but M. de Chagny seemed to me quite "gone." He pretended that he had been walking in that forest for three days and nights, without stopping, looking for Christine Daae! From time to time, he thought he saw her behind the trunk of a tree, or gliding between the branches; and he called to her with words of supplication that brought the tears to my eyes. And then, at last: "Oh, how thirsty I am!" he cried, in delirious accents. I too was thirsty. My throat was on fire. And, yet, squatting on the floor, I went on hunting, hunting, hunting for the spring of the invisible door ... especially as it was dangerous to remain in the forest as evening drew nigh. Already the shades of night were beginning to surround us. It had happened very quickly: night falls quickly in tropical countries ... suddenly, with hardly any twilight. Now night, in the forests of the equator, is always dangerous, particularly when, like ourselves, one has not the materials for a fire to keep off the beasts of prey. I did indeed try for a moment to break off the branches, which I would have lit with my dark lantern, but I knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered, in time, that we had only images of branches to do with. The heat did not go with the daylight; on the contrary, it was now still hotter under the blue rays of the moon. I urged the viscount to hold our weapons ready to fire and not to stray from camp, while I went on looking for my spring. Suddenly, we heard a lion roaring a few yards away. "Oh," whispered the viscount, "he is quite close! ... Don't you see him? ... There ... through the trees ... in that thicket! If he roars again, I will fire! ..." And the roaring began again, louder than before. And the viscount fired, but I do not think that he hit the lion; only, he smashed a mirror, as I perceived the next morning, at daybreak. We must have covered a good distance during the night, for we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of the desert, an immense desert of sand, stones and rocks. It was really not worth while leaving the forest to come upon the desert. Tired out, I flung myself down beside the viscount, for I had had enough of looking for springs which I could not find. I was quite surprised--and I said so to the viscount--that we had encountered no other dangerous animals during the night. Usually, after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz of the tsetse fly. These were easily obtained effects; and I explained to M. de Chagny that Erik imitated the roar of a lion on a long tabour or timbrel, with an ass's skin at one end. Over this skin he tied a string of catgut, which was fastened at the middle to another similar string passing through the whole length of the tabour. Erik had only to rub this string with a glove smeared with resin and, according to the manner in which he rubbed it, he imitated to perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly. The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside us, working his trick, made me suddenly resolve to enter into a parley with him, for we must obviously give up all thought of taking him by surprise. And by this time he must be quite aware who were the occupants of his torture-chamber. I called him: "Erik! Erik!" I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert, but there was no answer to my voice. All around us lay the silence and the bare immensity of that stony desert. What was to become of us in the midst of that awful solitude? We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst ... of thirst especially. At last, I saw M. de Chagny raise himself on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon. He had discovered an oasis! Yes, far in the distance was an oasis ... an oasis with limpid water, which reflected the iron trees! ... Tush, it was the scene of the mirage ... I recognized it at once ... the worst of the three! ... No one had been able to fight against it ... no one... I did my utmost to keep my head AND NOT TO HOPE FOR WATER, because I knew that, if a man hoped for water, the water that reflected the iron tree, and if, after hoping for water, he struck against the mirror, then there was only one thing for him to do: to hang himself on the iron tree! So I cried to M. de Chagny: "It's the mirage! ... It's the mirage! ... Don't believe in the water! ... It's another trick of the mirrors! ..." Then he flatly told me to shut up, with my tricks of the mirrors, my springs, my revolving doors and my palaces of illusions! He angrily declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine that all that water flowing over there, among those splendid, numberless trees, was not real water! ... And the desert was real! ... And so was the forest! ... And it was no use trying to take him in ... he was an old, experienced traveler ... he had been all over the place! And he dragged himself along, saying: "Water! Water!" And his mouth was open, as though he were drinking. And my mouth was open too, as though I were drinking. For we not only saw the water, but WE HEARD IT! ... We heard it flow, we heard it ripple! ... Do you understand that word "ripple?" ... IT IS A SOUND WHICH YOU HEAR WITH YOUR TONGUE! ... You put your tongue out of your mouth to listen to it better! Lastly--and this was the most pitiless torture of all--we heard the rain and it was not raining! This was an infernal invention... Oh, I knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled with little stones a very long and narrow box, broken up inside with wooden and metal projections. The stones, in falling, struck against these projections and rebounded from one to another; and the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly imitated a rainstorm. Ah, you should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves toward the rippling river-bank! Our eyes and ears were full of water, but our tongues were hard and dry as horn! When we reached the mirror, M. de Chagny licked it ... and I also licked the glass. It was burning hot! Then we rolled on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair. M. de Chagny put the one pistol that was still loaded to his temple; and I stared at the Punjab lasso at the foot of the iron tree. I knew why the iron tree had returned, in this third change of scene! ... The iron tree was waiting for me! ... But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M. de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide. I took his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him ... and then I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen. I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a black-headed nail of which I knew the use. At last I had discovered the spring! I felt the nail ... I lifted a radiant face to M. de Chagny ... The black-headed nail yielded to my pressure ... And then ... And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellar-flap released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent lower and lower over the trap-door. What could there be in that cellar which opened before us? Water? Water to drink? I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another stone ... a staircase ... a dark staircase leading into the cellar. The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I, fearing a new trick of the monster's, stopped him, turned on my dark lantern and went down first. The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness. But oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs? The lake could not be far away. We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us ... circular shapes ... on which I turned the light of my lantern. Barrels! We were in Erik's cellar: it was here that he must keep his wine and perhaps his drinking-water. I knew that Erik was a great lover of good wine. Ah, there was plenty to drink here! M. de Chagny patted the round shapes and kept on saying: "Barrels! Barrels! What a lot of barrels! ..." Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two rows, one on either side of us. They were small barrels and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake. We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another. But all the barrels were hermetically closed. Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave in the bung-hole. At that moment, I seemed to hear, coming from very far, a sort of monotonous chant which I knew well, from often hearing it in the streets of Paris: "Barrels! ... Barrels! ... Any barrels to sell?" My hand desisted from its work. M. de Chagny had also heard. He said: "That's funny! It sounds as if the barrel were singing!" The song was renewed, farther away: "Barrels! ... Barrels! ... Any barrels to sell? ..." "Oh, I swear," said the viscount, "that the tune dies away in the barrel! ..." We stood up and went to look behind the barrel. "It's inside," said M. de Chagny, "it's inside!" But we heard nothing there and were driven to accuse the bad condition of our senses. And we returned to the bung-hole. M. de Chagny put his two hands together underneath it and, with a last effort, I burst the bung. "What's this?" cried the viscount. "This isn't water!" The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern ... I stooped to look ... and at once threw away the lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness. What I had seen in M. de Chagny's hands ... was gun-powder! [1] It is very natural that, at the time when the Persian was writing, he should take so many precautions against any spirit of incredulity on the part of those who were likely to read his narrative. Nowadays, when we have all seen this sort of room, his precautions would be superfluous. Chapter XXV The Scorpion or the Grasshopper: Which? THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE CONCLUDED The discovery flung us into a state of alarm that made us forget all our past and present sufferings. We now knew all that the monster meant to convey when he said to Christine Daae: "Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead AND BURIED!" Yes, buried under the ruins of the Paris Grand Opera! The monster had given her until eleven o'clock in the evening. He had chosen his time well. There would be many people, many "members of the human race," up there, in the resplendent theater. What finer retinue could be expected for his funeral? He would go down to the tomb escorted by the whitest shoulders in the world, decked with the richest jewels. Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening! We were all to be blown up in the middle of the performance ... if Christine Daae said no! Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening! ... And what else could Christine say but no? Would she not prefer to espouse death itself rather than that living corpse? She did not know that on her acceptance or refusal depended the awful fate of many members of the human race! Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening! And we dragged ourselves through the darkness, feeling our way to the stone steps, for the light in the trap-door overhead that led to the room of mirrors was now extinguished; and we repeated to ourselves: "Eleven o'clock to-morrow evening!" At last, I found the staircase. But, suddenly I drew myself up on the first step, for a terrible thought had come to my mind: "What is the time?" Ah, what was the time? ... For, after all, eleven o'clock to-morrow evening might be now, might be this very moment! Who could tell us the time? We seemed to have been imprisoned in that hell for days and days ... for years ... since the beginning of the world. Perhaps we should be blown up then and there! Ah, a sound! A crack! "Did you hear that? ... There, in the corner ... good heavens! ... Like a sound of machinery! ... Again! ... Oh, for a light! ... Perhaps it's the machinery that is to blow everything up! ... I tell you, a cracking sound: are you deaf?" M. de Chagny and I began to yell like madmen. Fear spurred us on. We rushed up the treads of the staircase, stumbling as we went, anything to escape the dark, to return to the mortal light of the room of mirrors! We found the trap-door still open, but it was now as dark in the room of mirrors as in the cellar which we had left. We dragged ourselves along the floor of the torture-chamber, the floor that separated us from the powder-magazine. What was the time? We shouted, we called: M. de Chagny to Christine, I to Erik. I reminded him that I had saved his life. But no answer, save that of our despair, of our madness: what was the time? We argued, we tried to calculate the time which we had spent there, but we were incapable of reasoning. If only we could see the face of a watch! ... Mine had stopped, but M. de Chagny's was still going ... He told me that he had wound it up before dressing for the Opera ... We had not a match upon us ... And yet we must know ... M. de Chagny broke the glass of his watch and felt the two hands... He questioned the hands of the watch with his finger-tips, going by the position of the ring of the watch ... Judging by the space between the hands, he thought it might be just eleven o'clock! But perhaps it was not the eleven o'clock of which we stood in dread. Perhaps we had still twelve hours before us! Suddenly, I exclaimed: "Hush!" I seemed to hear footsteps in the next room. Some one tapped against the wall. Christine Daae's voice said: "Raoul! Raoul!" We were now all talking at once, on either side of the wall. Christine sobbed; she was not sure that she would find M. de Chagny alive. The monster had been terrible, it seemed, had done nothing but rave, waiting for her to give him the "yes" which she refused. And yet she had promised him that "yes," if he would take her to the torture-chamber. But he had obstinately declined, and had uttered hideous threats against all the members of the human race! At last, after hours and hours of that hell, he had that moment gone out, leaving her alone to reflect for the last time. "Hours and hours? What is the time now? What is the time, Christine?" "It is eleven o'clock! Eleven o'clock, all but five minutes!" "But which eleven o'clock?" "The eleven o'clock that is to decide life or death! ... He told me so just before he went ... He is terrible ... He is quite mad: he tore off his mask and his yellow eyes shot flames! ... He did nothing but laugh! ... He said, 'I give you five minutes to spare your blushes! Here,' he said, taking a key from the little bag of life and death, 'here is the little bronze key that opens the two ebony caskets on the mantelpiece in the Louis-Philippe room... In one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return, that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no.' And he laughed like a drunken demon. I did nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of the torture-chamber, promising to be his wife if he granted me that request ... But he told me that there was no future need for that key and that he was going to throw it into the lake! ... And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last words were, 'The grasshopper! Be careful of the grasshopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!'" The five minutes had nearly elapsed and the scorpion and the grasshopper were scratching at my brain. Nevertheless, I had sufficient lucidity left to understand that, if the grasshopper were turned, it would hop ... and with it many members of the human race! There was no doubt but that the grasshopper controlled an electric current intended to blow up the powder-magazine! M. de Chagny, who seemed to have recovered all his moral force from hearing Christine's voice, explained to her, in a few hurried words, the situation in which we and all the Opera were. He told her to turn the scorpion at once. There was a pause. "Christine," I cried, "where are you?" "By the scorpion." "Don't touch it!" The idea had come to me--for I knew my Erik--that the monster had perhaps deceived the girl once more. Perhaps it was the scorpion that would blow everything up. After all, why wasn't he there? The five minutes were long past ... and he was not back... Perhaps he had taken shelter and was waiting for the explosion! ... Why had he not returned? ... He could not really expect Christine ever to consent to become his voluntary prey! ... Why had he not returned? "Don't touch the scorpion!" I said. "Here he comes!" cried Christine. "I hear him! Here he is!" We heard his steps approaching the Louis-Philippe room. He came up to Christine, but did not speak. Then I raised my voice: "Erik! It is I! Do you know me?" With extraordinary calmness, he at once replied: "So you are not dead in there? Well, then, see that you keep quiet." I tried to speak, but he said coldly: "Not a word, daroga, or I shall blow everything up." And he added, "The honor rests with mademoiselle ... Mademoiselle has not touched the scorpion"--how deliberately he spoke!--"mademoiselle has not touched the grasshopper"--with that composure!--"but it is not too late to do the right thing. There, I open the caskets without a key, for I am a trap-door lover and I open and shut what I please and as I please. I open the little ebony caskets: mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Aren't they pretty? If you turn the grasshopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up. There is enough gun-powder under our feet to blow up a whole quarter of Paris. If you turn the scorpion, mademoiselle, all that powder will be soaked and drowned. Mademoiselle, to celebrate our wedding, you shall make a very handsome present to a few hundred Parisians who are at this moment applauding a poor masterpiece of Meyerbeer's ... you shall make them a present of their lives ... For, with your own fair hands, you shall turn the scorpion ... And merrily, merrily, we will be married!" A pause; and then: "If, in two minutes, mademoiselle, you have not turned the scorpion, I shall turn the grasshopper ... and the grasshopper, I tell you, HOPS JOLLY HIGH!" The terrible silence began anew. The Vicomte de Chagny, realizing that there was nothing left to do but pray, went down on his knees and prayed. As for me, my blood beat so fiercely that I had to take my heart in both hands, lest it should burst. At last, we heard Erik's voice: "The two minutes are past ... Good-by, mademoiselle... Hop, grasshopper! "Erik," cried Christine, "do you swear to me, monster, do you swear to me that the scorpion is the one to turn? "Yes, to hop at our wedding." "Ah, you see! You said, to hop!" "At our wedding, ingenuous child! ... The scorpion opens the ball... But that will do! ... You won't have the scorpion? Then I turn the grasshopper!" "Erik!" "Enough!" I was crying out in concert with Christine. M. de Chagny was still on his knees, praying. "Erik! I have turned the scorpion!" Oh, the second through which we passed! Waiting! Waiting to find ourselves in fragments, amid the roar and the ruins! Feeling something crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trap-door, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket! It came softly, at first, then louder, then very loud. But it was not the hiss of fire. It was more like the hiss of water. And now it became a gurgling sound: "Guggle! Guggle!" We rushed to the trap-door. All our thirst, which vanished when the terror came, now returned with the lapping of the water. The water rose in the cellar, above the barrels, the powder-barrels--"Barrels! ... Barrels! Any barrels to sell?"--and we went down to it with parched throats. It rose to our chins, to our mouths. And we drank. We stood on the floor of the cellar and drank. And we went up the stairs again in the dark, step by step, went up with the water. The water came out of the cellar with us and spread over the floor of the room. If, this went on, the whole house on the lake would be swamped. The floor of the torture-chamber had itself become a regular little lake, in which our feet splashed. Surely there was water enough now! Erik must turn off the tap! "Erik! Erik! That is water enough for the gunpowder! Turn off the tap! Turn off the scorpion!" But Erik did not reply. We heard nothing but the water rising: it was half-way to our waists! "Christine!" cried M. de Chagny. "Christine! The water is up to our knees!" But Christine did not reply ... We heard nothing but the water rising. No one, no one in the next room, no one to turn the tap, no one to turn the scorpion! We were all alone, in the dark, with the dark water that seized us and clasped us and froze us! "Erik! Erik!" "Christine! Christine!" By this time, we had lost our foothold and were spinning round in the water, carried away by an irresistible whirl, for the water turned with us and dashed us against the dark mirror, which thrust us back again; and our throats, raised above the whirlpool, roared aloud. Were we to die here, drowned in the torture-chamber? I had never seen that. Erik, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, had never shown me that, through the little invisible window. "Erik! Erik!" I cried. "I saved your life! Remember! ... You were sentenced to death! But for me, you would be dead now! ... Erik!" We whirled around in the water like so much wreckage. But, suddenly, my straying hands seized the trunk of the iron tree! I called M. de Chagny, and we both hung to the branch of the iron tree. And the water rose still higher. "Oh! Oh! Can you remember? How much space is there between the branch of the tree and the dome-shaped ceiling? Do try to remember! ... After all, the water may stop, it must find its level! ... There, I think it is stopping! ... No, no, oh, horrible! ... Swim! Swim for your life!" Our arms became entangled in the effort of swimming; we choked; we fought in the dark water; already we could hardly breathe the dark air above the dark water, the air which escaped, which we could hear escaping through some vent-hole or other. "Oh, let us turn and turn and turn until we find the air hole and then glue our mouths to it!" But I lost my strength; I tried to lay hold of the walls! Oh, how those glass walls slipped from under my groping fingers! ... We whirled round again! ... We began to sink! ... One last effort! ... A last cry: "Erik! ... Christine! ..." "Guggle, guggle, guggle!" in our ears. "Guggle! Guggle!" At the bottom of the dark water, our ears went, "Guggle! Guggle!" And, before losing consciousness entirely, I seemed to hear, between two guggles: "Barrels! Barrels! Any barrels to sell?" Chapter XXVI The End of the Ghost's Love Story The previous chapter marks the conclusion of the written narrative which the Persian left behind him. Notwithstanding the horrors of a situation which seemed definitely to abandon them to their deaths, M. de Chagny and his companion were saved by the sublime devotion of Christine Daae. And I had the rest of the story from the lips of the daroga himself. When I went to see him, he was still living in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuileries. He was very ill, and it required all my ardor as an historian pledged to the truth to persuade him to live the incredible tragedy over again for my benefit. His faithful old servant Darius showed me in to him. The daroga received me at a window overlooking the garden of the Tuileries. He still had his magnificent eyes, but his poor face looked very worn. He had shaved the whole of his head, which was usually covered with an astrakhan cap; he was dressed in a long, plain coat and amused himself by unconsciously twisting his thumbs inside the sleeves; but his mind was quite clear, and he told me his story with perfect lucidity. It seems that, when he opened his eyes, the daroga found himself lying on a bed. M. de Chagny was on a sofa, beside the wardrobe. An angel and a devil were watching over them. After the deceptions and illusions of the torture-chamber, the precision of the details of that quiet little middle-class room seemed to have been invented for the express purpose of puzzling the mind of the mortal rash enough to stray into that abode of living nightmare. The wooden bedstead, the waxed mahogany chairs, the chest of drawers, those brasses, the little square antimacassars carefully placed on the backs of the chairs, the clock on the mantelpiece and the harmless-looking ebony caskets at either end, lastly, the whatnot filled with shells, with red pin-cushions, with mother-of-pearl boats and an enormous ostrich-egg, the whole discreetly lighted by a shaded lamp standing on a small round table: this collection of ugly, peaceable, reasonable furniture, AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OPERA CELLARS, bewildered the imagination more than all the late fantastic happenings. And the figure of the masked man seemed all the more formidable in this old-fashioned, neat and trim little frame. It bent down over the Persian and said, in his ear: "Are you better, daroga? ... You are looking at my furniture? ... It is all that I have left of my poor unhappy mother." Christine Daae did not say a word: she moved about noiselessly, like a sister of charity, who had taken a vow of silence. She brought a cup of cordial, or of hot tea, he did not remember which. The man in the mask took it from her hands and gave it to the Persian. M. de Chagny was still sleeping. Erik poured a drop of rum into the daroga's cup and, pointing to the viscount, said: "He came to himself long before we knew if you were still alive, daroga. He is quite well. He is asleep. We must not wake him." Erik left the room for a moment, and the Persian raised himself on his elbow, looked around him and saw Christine Daae sitting by the fireside. He spoke to her, called her, but he was still very weak and fell back on his pillow. Christine came to him, laid her hand on his forehead and went away again. And the Persian remembered that, as she went, she did not give a glance at M. de Chagny, who, it is true, was sleeping peacefully; and she sat down again in her chair by the chimney-corner, silent as a sister of charity who had taken a vow of silence. Erik returned with some little bottles which he placed on the mantelpiece. And, again in a whisper, so as not to wake M. de Chagny, he said to the Persian, after sitting down and feeling his pulse: "You are now saved, both of you. And soon I shall take you up to the surface of the earth, TO PLEASE MY WIFE." Thereupon he rose, without any further explanation, and disappeared once more. The Persian now looked at Christine's quiet profile under the lamp. She was reading a tiny book, with gilt edges, like a religious book. There are editions of THE IMITATION that look like that. The Persian still had in his ears the natural tone in which the other had said, "to please my wife." Very gently, he called her again; but Christine was wrapped up in her book and did not hear him. Erik returned, mixed the daroga a draft and advised him not to speak to "his wife" again nor to any one, BECAUSE IT MIGHT BE VERY DANGEROUS TO EVERYBODY'S HEALTH. Eventually, the Persian fell asleep, like M. de Chagny, and did not wake until he was in his own room, nursed by his faithful Darius, who told him that, on the night before, he was found propped against the door of his flat, where he had been brought by a stranger, who rang the bell before going away. As soon as the daroga recovered his strength and his wits, he sent to Count Philippe's house to inquire after the viscount's health. The answer was that the young man had not been seen and that Count Philippe was dead. His body was found on the bank of the Opera lake, on the Rue-Scribe side. The Persian remembered the requiem mass which he had heard from behind the wall of the torture-chamber, and had no doubt concerning the crime and the criminal. Knowing Erik as he did, he easily reconstructed the tragedy. Thinking that his brother had run away with Christine Daae, Philippe had dashed in pursuit of him along the Brussels Road, where he knew that everything was prepared for the elopement. Failing to find the pair, he hurried back to the Opera, remembered Raoul's strange confidence about his fantastic rival and learned that the viscount had made every effort to enter the cellars of the theater and that he had disappeared, leaving his hat in the prima donna's dressing-room beside an empty pistol-case. And the count, who no longer entertained any doubt of his brother's madness, in his turn darted into that infernal underground maze. This was enough, in the Persian's eyes, to explain the discovery of the Comte de Chagny's corpse on the shore of the lake, where the siren, Erik's siren, kept watch. The Persian did not hesitate. He determined to inform the police. Now the case was in the hands of an examining-magistrate called Faure, an incredulous, commonplace, superficial sort of person, (I write as I think), with a mind utterly unprepared to receive a confidence of this kind. M. Faure took down the daroga's depositions and proceeded to treat him as a madman. Despairing of ever obtaining a hearing, the Persian sat down to write. As the police did not want his evidence, perhaps the press would be glad of it; and he had just written the last line of the narrative I have quoted in the preceding chapters, when Darius announced the visit of a stranger who refused his name, who would not show his face and declared simply that he did not intend to leave the place until he had spoken to the daroga. The Persian at once felt who his singular visitor was and ordered him to be shown in. The daroga was right. It was the ghost, it was Erik! He looked extremely weak and leaned against the wall, as though he were afraid of falling. Taking off his hat, he revealed a forehead white as wax. The rest of the horrible face was hidden by the mask. The Persian rose to his feet as Erik entered. "Murderer of Count Philippe, what have you done with his brother and Christine Daae?" Erik staggered under this direct attack, kept silent for a moment, dragged himself to a chair and heaved a deep sigh. Then, speaking in short phrases and gasping for breath between the words: "Daroga, don't talk to me ... about Count Philippe ... He was dead ... by the time ... I left my house ... he was dead ... when ... the siren sang ... It was an ... accident ... a sad ... a very sad ... accident. He fell very awkwardly ... but simply and naturally ... into the lake! ..." "You lie!" shouted the Persian. Erik bowed his head and said: "I have not come here ... to talk about Count Philippe ... but to tell you that ... I am going ... to die..." "Where are Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daae?" "I am going to die." "Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daae?" "Of love ... daroga ... I am dying ... of love ... That is how it is ... loved her so! ... And I love her still ... daroga ... and I am dying of love for her, I ... I tell you! ... If you knew how beautiful she was ... when she let me kiss her ... alive ... It was the first ... time, daroga, the first ... time I ever kissed a woman ... Yes, alive ... I kissed her alive ... and she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!" The Persian shook Erik by the arm: "Will you tell me if she is alive or dead." "Why do you shake me like that?" asked Erik, making an effort to speak more connectedly. "I tell you that I am going to die... Yes, I kissed her alive ..." "And now she is dead?" "I tell you I kissed her just like that, on her forehead ... and she did not draw back her forehead from my lips! ... Oh, she is a good girl! ... As to her being dead, I don't think so; but it has nothing to do with me ... No, no, she is not dead! And no one shall touch a hair of her head! She is a good, honest girl, and she saved your life, daroga, at a moment when I would not have given twopence for your Persian skin. As a matter of fact, nobody bothered about you. Why were you there with that little chap? You would have died as well as he! My word, how she entreated me for her little chap! But I told her that, as she had turned the scorpion, she had, through that very fact, and of her own free will, become engaged to me and that she did not need to have two men engaged to her, which was true enough. "As for you, you did not exist, you had ceased to exist, I tell you, and you were going to die with the other! ... Only, mark me, daroga, when you were yelling like the devil, because of the water, Christine came to me with her beautiful blue eyes wide open, and swore to me, as she hoped to be saved, that she consented to be MY LIVING WIFE! ... Until then, in the depths of her eyes, daroga, I had always seen my dead wife; it was the first time I saw MY LIVING WIFE there. She was sincere, as she hoped to be saved. She would not kill herself. It was a bargain ... Half a minute later, all the water was back in the lake; and I had a hard job with you, daroga, for, upon my honor, I thought you were done for! ... However! ... There you were! ... It was understood that I was to take you both up to the surface of the earth. When, at last, I cleared the Louis-Philippe room of you, I came back alone ..." "What have you done with the Vicomte de Chagny?" asked the Persian, interrupting him. "Ah, you see, daroga, I couldn't carry HIM up like that, at once. ... He was a hostage ... But I could not keep him in the house on the lake, either, because of Christine; so I locked him up comfortably, I chained him up nicely--a whiff of the Mazenderan scent had left him as limp as a rag--in the Communists' dungeon, which is in the most deserted and remote part of the Opera, below the fifth cellar, where no one ever comes, and where no one ever hears you. Then I came back to Christine, she was waiting for me." Erik here rose solemnly. Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by all his former emotion and began to tremble like a leaf: "Yes, she was waiting for me ... waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride ... as she hoped to be saved ... And, when I ... came forward, more timid than ... a little child, she did not run away ... no, no ... she stayed ... she waited for me ... I even believe ... daroga ... that she put out her forehead ... a little ... oh, not much ... just a little ... like a living bride ... And ... and ... I ... kissed her! ... I! ... I! ... I! ... And she did not die! ... Oh, how good it is, daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead! ... You can't tell! ... But I! I! ... My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never ... let me kiss her ... She used to run away ... and throw me my mask! ... Nor any other woman ... ever, ever! ... Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And I fell at her feet, crying ... and I kissed her feet ... her little feet ... crying. You're crying, too, daroga ... and she cried also ... the angel cried! ..." Erik sobbed aloud and the Persian himself could not retain his tears in the presence of that masked man, who, with his shoulders shaking and his hands clutched at his chest, was moaning with pain and love by turns. "Yes, daroga ... I felt her tears flow on my forehead ... on mine, mine! ... They were soft ... they were sweet! ... They trickled under my mask ... they mingled with my tears in my eyes ... yes ... they flowed between my lips ... Listen, daroga, listen to what I did ... I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears ... and she did not run away! ... And she did not die! ... She remained alive, weeping over me, with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer!" And Erik fell into a chair, choking for breath: "Ah, I am not going to die yet ... presently I shall ... but let me cry! ... Listen, daroga ... listen to this ... While I was at her feet ... I heard her say, 'Poor, unhappy Erik!' ... AND SHE TOOK MY HAND! ... I had become no more, you know, than a poor dog ready to die for her ... I mean it, daroga! ... I held in my hand a ring, a plain gold ring which I had given her ... which she had lost ... and which I had found again ... a wedding-ring, you know ... I slipped it into her little hand and said, 'There! ... Take it! ... Take it for you ... and him! ... It shall be my wedding-present a present from your poor, unhappy Erik ... I know you love the boy ... don't cry any more! ... She asked me, in a very soft voice, what I meant ... Then I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her ... but that she could marry the young man when she pleased, because she had cried with me and mingled her tears with mine! ..." Erik's emotion was so great that he had to tell the Persian not to look at him, for he was choking and must take off his mask. The daroga went to the window and opened it. His heart was full of pity, but he took care to keep his eyes fixed on the trees in the Tuileries gardens, lest he should see the monster's face. "I went and released the young man," Erik continued, "and told him to come with me to Christine ... They kissed before me in the Louis-Philippe room ... Christine had my ring ... I made Christine swear to come back, one night, when I was dead, crossing the lake from the Rue-Scribe side, and bury me in the greatest secrecy with the gold ring, which she was to wear until that moment. ... I told her where she would find my body and what to do with it... Then Christine kissed me, for the first time, herself, here, on the forehead--don't look, daroga!--here, on the forehead ... on my forehead, mine--don't look, daroga!--and they went off together... Christine had stopped crying ... I alone cried ... Daroga, daroga, if Christine keeps her promise, she will come back soon! ..." The Persian asked him no questions. He was quite reassured as to the fate of Raoul Chagny and Christine Daae; no one could have doubted the word of the weeping Erik that night. The monster resumed his mask and collected his strength to leave the daroga. He told him that, when he felt his end to be very near at hand, he would send him, in gratitude for the kindness which the Persian had once shown him, that which he held dearest in the world: all Christine Daae's papers, which she had written for Raoul's benefit and left with Erik, together with a few objects belonging to her, such as a pair of gloves, a shoe-buckle and two pocket-handkerchiefs. In reply to the Persian's questions, Erik told him that the two young people, at soon as they found themselves free, had resolved to go and look for a priest in some lonely spot where they could hide their happiness and that, with this object in view, they had started from "the northern railway station of the world." Lastly, Erik relied on the Persian, as soon as he received the promised relics and papers, to inform the young couple of his death and to advertise it in the EPOQUE. That was all. The Persian saw Erik to the door of his flat, and Darius helped him down to the street. A cab was waiting for him. Erik stepped in; and the Persian, who had gone back to the window, heard him say to the driver: "Go to the Opera." And the cab drove off into the night. The Persian had seen the poor, unfortunate Erik for the last time. Three weeks later, the Epoque published this advertisement: "Erik is dead." Epilogue. I have now told the singular, but veracious story of the Opera ghost. As I declared on the first page of this work, it is no longer possible to deny that Erik really lived. There are to-day so many proofs of his existence within the reach of everybody that we can follow Erik's actions logically through the whole tragedy of the Chagnys. There is no need to repeat here how greatly the case excited the capital. The kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Comte de Chagny under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of his brother, the drugging of the gas-man at the Opera and of his two assistants: what tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine! ... What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again? ... She was represented as the victim of a rivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really happened, nobody understood that, as Raoul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count Philippe ... They took the train one day from "the northern railway station of the world." ... Possibly, I too shall take the train at that station, one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia, for the perhaps still living traces of Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valerius, who disappeared at the same time! ... Possibly, some day, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music! ... Long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of M. le Juge d'Instruction Faure, the newspapers made efforts, at intervals, to fathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the gossip of the theaters, said: "We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost." And even that was written by way of irony. The Persian alone knew the whole truth and held the main proofs, which came to him with the pious relics promised by the ghost. It fell to my lot to complete those proofs with the aid of the daroga himself. Day by day, I kept him informed of the progress of my inquiries; and he directed them. He had not been to the Opera for years and years, but he had preserved the most accurate recollection of the building, and there was no better guide than he possible to help me discover its most secret recesses. He also told me where to gather further information, whom to ask; and he sent me to call on M. Poligny, at a moment when the poor man was nearly drawing his last breath. I had no idea that he was so very ill, and I shall never forget the effect which my questions about the ghost produced upon him. He looked at me as if I were the devil and answered only in a few incoherent sentences, which showed, however--and that was the main thing--the extent of the perturbation which O. G., in his time, had brought into that already very restless life (for M. Poligny was what people call a man of pleasure). When I came and told the Persian of the poor result of my visit to M. Poligny, the daroga gave a faint smile and said: "Poligny never knew how far that extraordinary blackguard of an Erik humbugged him."--The Persian, by the way, spoke of Erik sometimes as a demigod and sometimes as the lowest of the low--"Poligny was superstitious and Erik knew it. Erik knew most things about the public and private affairs of the Opera. When M. Poligny heard a mysterious voice tell him, in Box Five, of the manner in which he used to spend his time and abuse his partner's confidence, he did not wait to hear any more. Thinking at first that it was a voice from Heaven, he believed himself damned; and then, when the voice began to ask for money, he saw that he was being victimized by a shrewd blackmailer to whom Debienne himself had fallen a prey. Both of them, already tired of management for various reasons, went away without trying to investigate further into the personality of that curious O. G., who had forced such a singular memorandum-book upon them. They bequeathed the whole mystery to their successors and heaved a sigh of relief when they were rid of a business that had puzzled them without amusing them in the least." I then spoke of the two successors and expressed my surprise that, in his Memoirs of a Manager, M. Moncharmin should describe the Opera ghost's behavior at such length in the first part of the book and hardly mention it at all in the second. In reply to this, the Persian, who knew the MEMOIRS as thoroughly as if he had written them himself, observed that I should find the explanation of the whole business if I would just recollect the few lines which Moncharmin devotes to the ghost in the second part aforesaid. I quote these lines, which are particularly interesting because they describe the very simple manner in which the famous incident of the twenty-thousand francs was closed: "As for O. G., some of whose curious tricks I have related in the first part of my Memoirs, I will only say that he redeemed by one spontaneous fine action all the worry which he had caused my dear friend and partner and, I am bound to say, myself. He felt, no doubt, that there are limits to a joke, especially when it is so expensive and when the commissary of police has been informed, for, at the moment when we had made an appointment in our office with M. Mifroid to tell him the whole story, a few days after the disappearance of Christine Daae, we found, on Richard's table, a large envelope, inscribed, in red ink, "WITH O. G.'S COMPLIMENTS." It contained the large sum of money which he had succeeded in playfully extracting, for the time being, from the treasury. Richard was at once of the opinion that we must be content with that and drop the business. I agreed with Richard. All's well that ends well. What do you say, O. G.?" Of course, Moncharmin, especially after the money had been restored, continued to believe that he had, for a short while, been the butt of Richard's sense of humor, whereas Richard, on his side, was convinced that Moncharmin had amused himself by inventing the whole of the affair of the Opera ghost, in order to revenge himself for a few jokes. I asked the Persian to tell me by what trick the ghost had taken twenty-thousand francs from Richard's pocket in spite of the safety-pin. He replied that he had not gone into this little detail, but that, if I myself cared to make an investigation on the spot, I should certainly find the solution to the riddle in the managers' office by remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trap-door lover for nothing. I promised the Persian to do so as soon as I had time, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of my investigation were perfectly satisfactory; and I hardly believed that I should ever discover so many undeniable proofs of the authenticity of the feats ascribed to the ghost. The Persian's manuscript, Christine Daae's papers, the statements made to me by the people who used to work under MM. Richard and Moncharmin, by little Meg herself (the worthy Madame Giry, I am sorry to say, is no more) and by Sorelli, who is now living in retirement at Louveciennes: all the documents relating to the existence of the ghost, which I propose to deposit in the archives of the Opera, have been checked and confirmed by a number of important discoveries of which I am justly proud. I have not been able to find the house on the lake, Erik having blocked up all the secret entrances.[1] On the other hand, I have discovered the secret passage of the Communists, the planking of which is falling to pieces in parts, and also the trap-door through which Raoul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the opera-house. In the Communists' dungeon, I noticed numbers of initials traced on the walls by the unfortunate people confined in it; and among these were an "R" and a "C." R. C.: Raoul de Chagny. The letters are there to this day. If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to stroll where he pleases, without being accompanied by a stupid guide, let him go to Box Five and knock with his fist or stick on the enormous column that separates this from the stage-box. He will find that the column sounds hollow. After that, do not be astonished by the suggestion that it was occupied by the voice of the ghost: there is room inside the column for two men. If you are surprised that, when the various incidents occurred, no one turned round to look at the column, you must remember that it presented the appearance of solid marble, and that the voice contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite side, for, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert ventriloquist. The column was elaborately carved and decorated with the sculptor's chisel; and I do not despair of one day discovering the ornament that could be raised or lowered at will, so as to admit of the ghost's mysterious correspondence with Mme. Giry and of his generosity. However, all these discoveries are nothing, to my mind, compared with that which I was able to make, in the presence of the acting-manager, in the managers' office, within a couple of inches from the desk-chair, and which consisted of a trap-door, the width of a board in the flooring and the length of a man's fore-arm and no longer; a trap-door that falls back like the lid of a box; a trap-door through which I can see a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallow-tail coat. That is the way the forty-thousand francs went! ... And that also is the way by which, through some trick or other, they were returned. Speaking about this to the Persian, I said: "So we may take it, as the forty-thousand francs were returned, that Erik was simply amusing himself with that memorandum-book of his?" "Don't you believe it!" he replied. "Erik wanted money. Thinking himself without the pale of humanity, he was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination, which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary uglinesss, to prey upon his fellow-men. His reason for restoring the forty-thousand francs, of his own accord, was that he no longer wanted it. He had relinquished his marriage with Christine Daae. He had relinquished everything above the surface of the earth." According to the Persian's account, Erik was born in a small town not far from Rouen. He was the son of a master-mason. He ran away at an early age from his father's house, where his ugliness was a subject of horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a showman exhibited him as the "living corpse." He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completed his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountain-head of art and magic, among the Gipsies. A period of Erik's life remained quite obscure. He was seen at the fair of Nijni-Novgorod, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory. He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. In this way, his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan, where the little sultana, the favorite of the Shah-in-Shah, was boring herself to death. A dealer in furs, returning to Samarkand from Nijni-Novgorod, told of the marvels which he had seen performed in Erik's tent. The trader was summoned to the palace and the daroga of Mazenderan was told to question him. Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik. He brought him to Persia, where for some months Erik's will was law. He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire. The Shah took a liking to him. This was the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, of which the daroga's narrative has given us a glimpse. Erik had very original ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as a conjuror contrives a trick-casket. The Shah ordered him to construct an edifice of this kind. Erik did so; and the building appears to have been so ingenious that His Majesty was able to move about in it unseen and to disappear without a possibility of the trick's being discovered. When the Shah-in-Shah found himself the possessor of this gem, he ordered Erik's yellow eyes to be put out. But he reflected that, even when blind, Erik would still be able to build so remarkable a house for another sovereign; and also that, as long as Erik was alive, some one would know the secret of the wonderful palace. Erik's death was decided upon, together with that of all the laborers who had worked under his orders. The execution of this abominable decree devolved upon the daroga of Mazenderan. Erik had shown him some slight services and procured him many a hearty laugh. He saved Erik by providing him with the means of escape, but nearly paid with his head for his generous indulgence. Fortunately for the daroga, a corpse, half-eaten by the birds of prey, was found on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and was taken for Erik's body, because the daroga's friends had dressed the remains in clothing that belonged to Erik. The daroga was let off with the loss of the imperial favor, the confiscation of his property and an order of perpetual banishment. As a member of the Royal House, however, he continued to receive a monthly pension of a few hundred francs from the Persian treasury; and on this he came to live in Paris. As for Erik, he went to Asia Minor and thence to Constantinople, where he entered the Sultan's employment. In explanation of the services which he was able to render a monarch haunted by perpetual terrors, I need only say that it was Erik who constructed all the famous trap-doors and secret chambers and mysterious strong-boxes which were found at Yildiz-Kiosk after the last Turkish revolution. He also invented those automata, dressed like the Sultan and resembling the Sultan in all respects,[2] which made people believe that the Commander of the Faithful was awake at one place, when, in reality, he was asleep elsewhere. Of course, he had to leave the Sultan's service for the same reasons that made him fly from Persia: he knew too much. Then, tired of his adventurous, formidable and monstrous life, he longed to be some one "like everybody else." And he became a contractor, like any ordinary contractor, building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks. He tendered for part of the foundations in the Opera. His estimate was accepted. When he found himself in the cellars of the enormous playhouse, his artistic, fantastic, wizard nature resumed the upper hand. Besides, was he not as ugly as ever? He dreamed of creating for his own use a dwelling unknown to the rest of the earth, where he could hide from men's eyes for all time. The reader knows and guesses the rest. It is all in keeping with this incredible and yet veracious story. Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be "some one," like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius OR USE IT TO PLAY TRICKS WITH, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must needs pity the Opera ghost. I have prayed over his mortal remains, that God might show him mercy notwithstanding his crimes. Yes, I am sure, quite sure that I prayed beside his body, the other day, when they took it from the spot where they were burying the phonographic records. It was his skeleton. I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and which Christine Daae had certainly slipped on his finger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise. The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where the Angel of Music first held Christine Daae fainting in his trembling arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the opera-house. And, now, what do they mean to do with that skeleton? Surely they will not bury it in the common grave! ... I say that the place of the skeleton of the Opera ghost is in the archives of the National Academy of Music. It is no ordinary skeleton. [1] Even so, I am convinced that it would be easy to reach it by draining the lake, as I have repeatedly requested the Ministry of Fine Arts to do. I was speaking about it to M. Dujardin-Beaumetz, the under-secretary for fine arts, only forty-eight hours before the publication of this book. Who knows but that the score of DON JUAN TRIUMPHANT might yet be discovered in the house on the lake? [2] See the interview of the special correspondent of the MATIN, with Mohammed-Ali Bey, on the day after the entry of the Salonika troops into Constantinople. THE END The Paris Opera House THE SCENE OF GASTON LEROUX'S NOVEL, "THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" That Mr. Leroux has used, for the scene of his story, the Paris Opera House as it really is and has not created a building out of his imagination, is shown by this interesting description of it taken from an article which appeared in Scribner's Magazine in 1879, a short time after the building was completed: "The new Opera House, commenced under the Empire and finished under the Republic, is the most complete building of the kind in the world and in many respects the most beautiful. No European capital possesses an opera house so comprehensive in plan and execution, and none can boast an edifice equally vast and splendid. "The site of the Opera House was chosen in 1861. It was determined to lay the foundation exceptionally deep and strong. It was well known that water would be met with, but it was impossible to foresee at what depth or in what quantity it would be found. Exceptional depth also was necessary, as the stage arrangements were to be such as to admit a scene fifty feet high to be lowered on its frame. It was therefore necessary to lay a foundation in a soil soaked with water which should be sufficiently solid to sustain a weight of 22,000,000 pounds, and at the same time to be perfectly dry, as the cellars were intended for the storage of scenery and properties. While the work was in progress, the excavation was kept free from water by means of eight pumps, worked by steam power, and in operation, without interruption, day and night, from March second to October thirteenth. The floor of the cellar was covered with a layer of concrete, then with two coats of cement, another layer of concrete and a coat of bitumen. The wall includes an outer wall built as a coffer-dam, a brick wall, a coat of cement, and a wall proper, a little over a yard thick. After all this was done the whole was filled with water, in order that the fluid, by penetrating into the most minute interstices, might deposit a sediment which would close them more surely and perfectly than it would be possible to do by hand. Twelve years elapsed before the completion of the building, and during that time it was demonstrated that the precautions taken secured absolute impermeability and solidity. "The events of 1870 interrupted work just as it was about to be prosecuted most vigorously, and the new Opera House was put to new and unexpected uses. During the siege, it was converted into a vast military storehouse and filled with a heterogeneous mass of goods. After the siege the building fell into the hands of the Commune and the roof was turned into a balloon station. The damage done, however, was slight. "The fine stone employed in the construction was brought from quarries in Sweden, Scotland, Italy, Algeria, Finland, Spain, Belgium and France. While work on the exterior was in progress, the building was covered in by a wooden shell, rendered transparent by thousands of small panes of glass. In 1867 a swarm of men, supplied with hammers and axes, stripped the house of its habit, and showed in all its splendor the great structure. No picture can do justice to the rich colors of the edifice or to the harmonious tone resulting from the skilful use of many diverse materials. The effect of the frontage is completed by the cupola of the auditorium, topped with a cap of bronze sparingly adorned with gilding. Farther on, on a level with the towers of Notre-Dame, is the gable end of the roof of the stage, a 'Pegasus', by M. Lequesne, rising at either end of the roof, and a bronze group by M. Millet, representing 'Apollo lifting his golden lyre', commanding the apex. Apollo, it may here be mentioned, is useful as well as ornamental, for his lyre is tipped with a metal point which does duty as a lightning-rod, and conducts the fluid to the body and down the nether limbs of the god. "The spectator, having climbed ten steps and left behind him a gateway, reaches a vestibule in which are statues of Lully, Rameau, Gluck, and Handel. Ten steps of green Swedish marble lead to a second vestibule for ticket-sellers. Visitors who enter by the pavilion reserved for carriages pass through a hallway where ticket offices are situated. The larger number of the audience, before entering the auditorium, traverse a large circular vestibule located exactly beneath it. The ceiling of this portion of the building is upheld by sixteen fluted columns of Jura stone, with white marble capitals, forming a portico. Here servants are to await their masters, and spectators may remain until their carriages are summoned. The third entrance, which is quite distinct from the others, is reserved for the Executive. The section of the building set aside for the use of the Emperor Napoleon was to have included an antechamber for the bodyguards; a salon for the aides-de-camp; a large salon and a smaller one for the Empress; hat and cloak rooms, etc. Moreover, there were to be in close proximity to the entrance, stables for three coaches, for the outriders' horses, and for the twenty-one horsemen acting as an escort; a station for a squad of infantry of thirty-one men and ten cent-gardes, and a stable for the horses of the latter; and, besides, a salon for fifteen or twenty domestics. Thus arrangements had to be made to accommodate in this part of the building about one hundred persons, fifty horses, and half-a-dozen carriages. The fall of the Empire suggested some changes, but ample provision still exists for emergencies. "Its novel conception, perfect fitness, and rare splendor of material, make the grand stairway unquestionably one of the most remarkable features of the building. It presents to the spectator, who has just passed through the subscribers' pavilion, a gorgeous picture. From this point he beholds the ceiling formed by the central landing; this and the columns sustaining it, built of Echaillon stone, are honeycombed with arabesques and heavy with ornaments; the steps are of white marble, and antique red marble balusters rest on green marble sockets and support a balustrade of onyx. To the right and to the left of this landing are stairways to the floor, on a plane with the first row of boxes. On this floor stand thirty monolith columns of Sarrancolin marble, with white marble bases and capitals. Pilasters of peach-blossom and violet stone are against the corresponding walls. More than fifty blocks had to be extracted from the quarry to find thirty perfect monoliths. "The foyer de la danse has particular interest for the habitues of the Opera. It is a place of reunion to which subscribers to three performances a week are admitted between the acts in accordance with a usage established in 1870. Three immense looking-glasses cover the back wall of the FOYER, and a chandelier with one hundred and seven burners supplies it with light. The paintings include twenty oval medallions, in which are portrayed the twenty danseuses of most celebrity since the opera has existed in France, and four panels by M. Boulanger, typifying 'The War Dance', 'The Rustic Dance', 'The Dance of Love' and 'The Bacchic Dance.' While the ladies of the ballet receive their admirers in this foyer, they can practise their steps. Velvet-cushioned bars have to this end been secured at convenient points, and the floor has been given the same slope as that of the stage, so that the labor expended may be thoroughly profitable to the performance. The singers' foyer, on the same floor, is a much less lively resort than the foyer de la danse, as vocalists rarely leave their dressing-rooms before they are summoned to the stage. Thirty panels with portraits of the artists of repute in the annals of the Opera adorn this foyer. "Some estimate ... may be arrived at by sitting before the concierge an hour or so before the representation commences. First appear the stage carpenters, who are always seventy, and sometimes, when L'Africaine, for example, with its ship scene, is the opera, one hundred and ten strong. Then come stage upholsterers, whose sole duty is to lay carpets, hang curtains, etc.; gas-men, and a squad of firemen. Claqueurs, call-boys, property-men, dressers, coiffeurs, supernumeraries, and artists, follow. The supernumeraries number about one hundred; some are hired by the year, but the 'masses' are generally recruited at the last minute and are generally working-men who seek to add to their meagre earnings. There are about a hundred choristers, and about eighty musicians. "Next we behold equeries, whose horses are hoisted on the stage by means of an elevator; electricians who manage the light-producing batteries; hydrauliciens to take charge of the water-works in ballets like La Source; artificers who prepare the conflagration in Le Profeta; florists who make ready Margarita's garden, and a host of minor employees. This personnel is provided for as follows: Eighty dressing-rooms are reserved for the artists, each including a small antechamber, the dressing-room proper, and a little closet. Besides these apartments, the Opera has a dressing-room for sixty male, and another for fifty female choristers; a third for thirty-four male dancers; four dressing-rooms for twenty female dancers of different grades; a dressing-room for one hundred and ninety supernumeraries, etc." A few figures taken from the article will suggest the enormous capacity and the perfect convenience of the house. "There are 2,531 doors and 7,593 keys; 14 furnaces and grates heat the house; the gaspipes if connected would form a pipe almost 16 miles long; 9 reservoirs, and two tanks hold 22,222 gallons of water and distribute their contents through 22,829 2-5 feet of piping; 538 persons have places assigned wherein to change their attire. The musicians have a foyer with 100 closets for their instruments." The author remarks of his visit to the Opera House that it "was almost as bewildering as it was agreeable. Giant stairways and colossal halls, huge frescoes and enormous mirrors, gold and marble, satin and velvet, met the eye at every turn." In a recent letter Mr. Andre Castaigne, whose remarkable pictures illustrate the text, speaks of a river or lake under the Opera House and mentions the fact that there are now also three metropolitan railway tunnels, one on top of the other. 
40259	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. The following possible typographical errors were left uncorrected: Page 173: "musical electicism" should possibly be "musical eclecticism" Page 228: "eflish mood" should possibly be "elfish mood" Page 295: "Dunisnane" should possibly be "Dunsinane" CHARLES AUCHESTER VOLUME II. [Illustration: MENDELSSOHN FROM A SKETCH MADE IN HIS YOUTH.] CHARLES AUCHESTER BY ELIZABETH SHEPPARD _WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_ By GEORGE P. UPTON AUTHOR OF "THE STANDARD OPERAS," "STANDARD ORATORIOS," "STANDARD CANTATAS," "STANDARD SYMPHONIES," "WOMAN IN MUSIC," ETC. In Two Volumes VOLUME II. A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY CHICAGO 1891 COPYRIGHT, BY A. C. MCCLURG AND CO. A. D. 1891. CHARLES AUCHESTER. CHAPTER I. Well, as if but yesterday, do I remember the morning I set out from Lorbeerstadt for Cecilia. I had no friends yet with whom to reconnoitre novel ground; I was quite solitary in my intentions, and rather troubled with a vague melancholy, the sun being under cloud, and I not having wished Aronach good-day. He was out in the town fulfilling the duties of his scholastic pre-eminence, and I had vainly sought him for an audience. He had surrendered me my violin when he gave me the paper in his writing, and I also carried my certificate in my hand. Of all my personal effects I took these only,--my bed and bedding, my clothes and books having preceded me; or, at least, having taken another form of flight. Iskar was to come also that time, but did not intend to present himself until the evening. Aronach had also forewarned me to take a coach, but I rather chose to walk, having divine reminiscences upon that earthly road. With Starwood I had a grievous parting, not unallayed by hope on my part, and I left him wiping his eyes,--an attention which deeply affected me, though I did not cry myself. I shall never forget the singularly material aspect of things when I arrived. Conventionalism is not so rampant in Germany as in England, and courtesy is taught another creed. I think it would be impossible to be anywhere more free, and yet this sudden liberty (like a sudden light) did but at first serve to dazzle and distress me. Only half the students had returned, and they, all knowing each other, or seeming to do so, were standing in self-interested fraternities, broken by groups and greeters, in one immense hall, or what appeared to me immense, and therefore desolate. I came in through the open gates to the open court; through the open court into the open entry and from that region was drawn to the door of that very hall by the hollow multitudinous echo that crept upon the stony solitude. It was as real to me a solitude to enter that noble space; and I was more abashed than ever, when, on looking round, I perceived none but males in all the company. There was not even a picture of the patron saintess; but there _was_ a picture, a dark empannelled portrait, high over the long dining-tables. I concluded from the style that it was a representation of one Gratianos, the Bachist, of whom I had once heard speak. The gentlemen in the hall were none of them full grown, and none wonderfully handsome at first sight. But the manner of their entertainment was truly edifying to me, who had not long been "out" in any sense. They every one either had been smoking, were smoking, or were about to smoke,--that is, most of them had pipes in their mouths, or those who had them not in their mouths had just plucked them therefrom, and were holding them in their hands, or those who had not yet begun were preparing the apparatus. In a corner of the hall, which looked dismally devoid of furniture to an English eye, there was a great exhibition of benches. There were some upright, others kicking their feet in the air, but all packed so as to take little space, and these were over and above the benches that ran all round the hall. In this corner a cluster of individuals had collected after a fashion that took my fancy in an instant, for they had established themselves without reference to the primary use and endowment of benches at all. Some sat on the legs thereof, upturned, with their own feet at the reversed bottoms, and more than a few were lying inside those reversed bottoms, with distended veins and excited complexions, suggesting the notion that they were in the enjoyment of plethoric slumber. To make a still further variation, one bench was set on end and supported by the leaning figures of two contemporaneous medalists; and on the summit of this bench, which also rested against the wall, a third medalist was sitting, like an ape upon the ledge of Gibraltar,--unlike an ape in this respect, that he was talking with great solemnity, and also that he wore gloves, which had once on a time been white. The rest were bareheaded, but all were fitted out with mustachios, either real or fictitious, for I had my doubts of the soft, dark tassels of the Stylites, as his own pate was covered with hemp,--it cannot have been hair. Despite its grotesqueness, this group, as I have said, attracted me, for there was something in every one of the faces that set me at my ease, because they appeared in earnest at their fun. I came up to them as I made out their composition, and they one and all regarded me with calm, not malicious, indifference. They were very boyish for young men, and very manly for young boys, certainly; and remained, as to their respective ages, a mystery. The gentleman on the pedestal did not even pause until he came to a proper climax,--for he was delivering an oration,--and I arrived in time to hear the sentence so significant: "So that all who in verity apply themselves to science will find themselves as much at a loss without a body as without a soul, for the animal property nourisheth and illustrateth the spiritual, and the spiritual would be of no service without the animal, any more than should the flame that eateth the wood burn in an empty stove, or than the soup we have eaten for dinner should be soup without the water that dissolved the component nutritives." Here he came to a full stop, and gazed upon me through sharp-shaped orbs. Meantime I had drawn out my certificate and handed it up to him. He took it between those streaky gloves, and having fixed a horn-set glass into his one eye, shut up the other and perused the paper. I don't know why I gave it to him in particular, except that he was very high up, and had been speaking. But I had not done wrong, for he finished by bowing to me with exceeding patronage. "One of us, I presume?" "Credentials!" groaned one who was, as I had supposed, asleep. But my patron handed me very politely my envelope, and gravely returned to the treatment of his theme,--whatever that might have been. Nobody appeared to listen except his twain supporters, and they only seemed attentive because they were thoroughly fumigated, and had their senses under a spell. The rest began to yawn, to sneer, and to lift their eyes, or rather the lids of them. I need scarcely say I felt very absurd, and at last, on the utterance of an exceedingly ridiculous peroration from the orator, I yielded at once to the impulse of timidity, and began to laugh. The effect was of sympathetic magnetism. Everybody whose lips were disengaged began to laugh too; and finally, those very somnolent machines, that the benches propped, began to stir, to open misty glances, and to grin like purgatorial saints. This laugh grew a murmur, the murmur a roar, and finally the supporters themselves, fairly shaking, became exhausted, staggered, and let the pedestal glide slowly forwards. The theorist must certainly have anticipated such a crisis, for he spread his arms and took a flying jump from that summit, descending elegantly and conveniently as a cat from a wall upon the boarded floor. "Schurke!"[1] said he to me, and held me up a threatening hand; but, seized with a gleeful intention, I caught at it, and with one pull dragged off his glove. The member thus exposed was evidently petted by its head, for it was dainty and sleek, and also garnished with a blazing ring; and he solemnly held it up to contemplate it, concluding such performance by giving one fixed stare to each nail in particular. Then he flew at me in a paroxysm of feigned fierceness; but I had already flung the glove to the other end of the hall. The whole set broke into a fresh laugh, and one said, "Thou mightest have sent it up to the beard there, if thou hadst only thought of it." "Never too late, Mareschal!" cried another, as he made a stride to fetch the glove, which, however, lay three or four strides off. He gathered it up at last, crumpled it in his hand, and threw it high against the wall. It just missed the picture though, and fell at the feet of two perambulators arm-in-arm, one of whom stood upon the glove till the other pushed him off, and gave the forlorn kidling a tremendous kick that sent it farther than ever from the extempore target. There was now a gathering and rush of a dozen towards it. They tore it one from the other again; and, once more flinging it high,--this time successfully,--it hit that panelled portrait just upon the nose. A shout, half revengeful, half triumphant, echoed through the hall; but the game was not at its height. "Gloves out, everybody!" cried several; and from all the pockets present, as it seemed, issued a miscellaneous supply. Very innocently, I gave up a pair of old wool ones that I happened to have with me; and soon, very soon, a regular systematized pelting commenced of that reverend representation in its recess. I am very sure I thought it all fun at first; and as there is nothing I like so well as fun after music, I lent myself quite freely to the sport. About fifty pairs of gloves were knotted and crumpled, pair by pair, into balls, and whoever scrambled fastest secured the most. As the unsuccessful shots fell back, they were caught by uplifted hands and banged upwards with tenfold ardor, and no one was so ardent and risibly dignified as the worthy of the pedestal. He behaved as if some valuable stake were upon his every throw; and further, I observed that after the game once began, nobody, except myself, laughed. It was, at least, for half an hour that the banging, accompanied by a tremulous hissing, continued. I myself laughed so much that I could not throw, but I stood to watch the others. So high was the picture placed that very few were the missiles to reach it; and such as touched the time-seared canvas elicited an excitement I could neither realize nor respond to. All at once it struck me as very singular they should pelt that particular spot on the wall, and I instantly conjectured them to be inimical to the subject of the delineation. I was just making up my mind to inquire, when the great door hoarsely creaked, and a voice was heard, quite in another key from the murmurous shout, to penetrate my ear at that distance, so that I immediately responded,--"Has Carl Auchester arrived?" There was no reply, nor any suspension of the performance on hand, except on my part. But for me I turned, gladly, yet timorously, and joined the speaker in a moment. He greeted me with what appeared to me an overawing polish, though, in fact, it was but the result of temperament not easily aroused. He was very slim and fair, and though not tall, gave me the impression of one very much more my senior than he really was. He held his arm as a kind of barrier between me and the door until I was safely out of the hall; then said to me, in a tone of chill but still remonstrance,-- "Why did you go in there? That was not a good beginning." "Sir," I replied, not stammered, for I felt my cause was good, "how was I to know I ought not to go in there? It seemed quite the proper place, with all those Cecilians about; and, besides, no one told me where else to go. But if I did wrong, I won't go in there again, and I certainly have not been harmed yet." "You must go there at times; it is there you will have to eat. But a few who are really students hold aloof from the rest, who idle whenever they are not strictly employed, as you have had reason to notice. I was induced to come and look for you, of whom I should otherwise have no knowledge, in obedience to the Chevalier Seraphael's request that I should do so." "Did he really remember me in that manner? How good, how angelic!" I cried. And yet I did not quite find my new companion charming; his irresistible quiescence piqued me too much, though he was anything but haughty. "Yes, he is good, and was certainly very good to bear in mind one so young as you are; I hope you will reward his kindness. He gives us great hopes of you." "Are you a professor, sir?" I asked, half afraid of my own impulse. "I am _your_ professor," he announced, with that same distance. "I am first violin." I did not know whether I was pleased or sorry at that instant, for I could detect no magnetic power that he possessed, and rather shrank from contact with him at present. He led me up many stairs,--a side staircase, quite new, built steeper and narrower than the principal flight. He led me along thwart passages, and I beheld many doors and windows too; for light and air both reigned in these regions, which were fresh, and smelled of health. He led me into a chamber so lengthened that it was almost a gallery, for it was very high besides. Here he paused to exhibit a suite of prophets' chambers, one after the other completely to the end; for in every division was a little bed, a bench, and washing-table, with a closet closed by hasps of wood. The uniform arrangement struck me as monotonous, but academical. My guide, for the first time, smiled, but very slightly, and explained,-- "This is my division,--_les petits violons_, you know, Auchester; you may see the numbers on every alcove. And here you practise, except when met in class or at lecture. Your number is 13, and you are very nearly in the middle. See, you have a curtain to draw before your bed, and in this closet there is a box for books, as well as a niche for your instrument, and abundant room for clothes, unless you bring more than you can possibly want. The portmanteau and chest, which were brought this morning, you may keep here, if you please, as well." I did not thank him, for I was pre-occupied with an infernal suggestion to my brain, which I revealed in my utter terror. "Oh, sir, do we all practise together, then? What a horrible noise! and how impossible to do anything so! I can't, I know!" Another half-smile curled the slender brown moustache. "It was indeed so in the times I can still remember. But see how much more than you can own you are indebted to this Chevalier Seraphael!" He walked to the wall opposite the alcove, and laying hold of a brass ring I had not noticed, drew out a long slide of wood, very thick and strong, which shut one in from side to side. "There is such a one to every bed," continued he; "and if you draw them on either hand, you will hear nothing, at least nothing to disturb you. Come away now; I have not much time to spare, and must leave you elsewhere." He led me from the chambers, and down the stairs again, and here and there, so that I heard an organ playing in one region, and voices that blended again to another idea; and then all was stillness, except the rustle of his gown. But before I could make up my mind to approve or criticise the arrangements which struck me on every hand, I found myself in another room,--this vaulted, and inspiring as nothing I had met with in that place. How exquisite was the radiant gloom that here pervaded within, as within a temple; for the sunshine pierced through little windows of brown and amber, and came down in wavering dusky brightness on parchment hues and vellum, morocco, and ruddy gold. Here a thick matting returned no footfall; and although the space was small, and very crowded too, yet it had an air of vastness, from the elevated concave of the roof. Benches were before each bookcase, that presented its treasury of dread tomes and gigantic scores; also reading-desks; and besides such furniture, there were the quaintest little stalls between each set of shelves,--shrine-like niches one could just sit in, or even at pleasure lie along; for seats were in them of darkest polished wood. Some were already occupied, and their occupants were profoundly quiet,--perhaps studying, perhaps asleep. "Here," observed my guide, "you are only allowed to come and remain in silence. If one word be spoken in the library, expulsion of the speaker follows. The book-keeper sits out there," pointing to an erection like a watch-box, "and hears, and is to observe all. You may use any book in this place, but never carry it away; and if required for quotation as well as for reference, you may here make your extracts, but never elsewhere. There are ink-bottles in every desk. And if you take my advice, you will remain here until the supper-bell; for while here, you will at least be out of mischief. We are not to-day in full routine; but that makes it the more dangerous to be at large." "Will you set me some task, then, sir? I do want something to be at." He seemed only to sneer at such a desire. "Nonsense! there is enough for to-day in mastering all those names;" and he took down a catalogue and handed it to me. I ran into one of those dear, dark recesses, and there he left me. When he had gone, I did not open my book for a time. I was in a highly wrought mood, which was induced by that sombre-tinted, struggling sunshine, whose beams played high in the ceiling, like fireflies in a cedar shade, so fretted and so far. It was delicious as a dream to be safe and solitary in that dim palace of futurity, whose vistas stretched before me into everlasting lengths of light. I read not for a long, long hour; and when I did open my book (itself no mean volume as to size), I was bewildered and bedimmed by a swarm of names, both of works and authors, I had never heard of,--Huygens, Martini, Euler, Pfeiffer, and Marpurg alone meeting me as distant acquaintances, and Cherubini as a dear old friend. This was, in fact, a _catalogue raisonné_, and I was not in a very rational mood. I therefore shut the book, and began to pace the library. It is extraordinary how intense is the power of application in the case of those who are apprenticed to a master they can worship as well as serve. I thought so then. Nothing could divert the attention of those supine students in the recesses, nor of the scribes at the desks. I went quite close to many of them, and could have looked into their eyes, but that they were, for the most part, closed; and I should have accused them of being asleep but that their lips were moving, and I knew they were learning by heart. Great black-letter was the characteristic of one huge volume I stayed to examine as it lay upon a desk, and he who sat before it had a face sweeter than any present, sensible as interesting; and I did not fear him, though his eyes were wide open and alert. He was making copious extracts, and as I peeped between the pages he held by his thumb and a slight forefinger, he observed me and gave me a smile, at the same time turning back the title-page for my inspection. That was encircled by a wreath of cherubs' faces for flowers, and musical instruments for leaves, old and droll as the title, "Caspar Bartholin, his Treatise on the Wind Music of the Ancients." I smiled then, and nodded, to express my thanks; but a moment afterwards he wrote for me, on a sheet in his blotting-case, which he carried with him,-- "We may write, though we may not speak. Are you just arrived?" He handed me the pen to answer, and I wrote: "Only an hour or two ago; and I got into a scrape directly. I am Carl Auchester, from England; but I am not English. What is your name?" He smiled warmly as he read, and thus our correspondence proceeded: "Franz Delemann. What was your scrape? I wonder you had one, now I know your name." "Why?" I replied. "There is no reason why I should keep clear any more than another; but I went into the great hall, where so many of them were about, and they made a great noise, for they were pelting the picture that is on the wall; and while I was helping them, just for fun, the gentleman who brought me in here fetched me out, and said it was a bad beginning." "That was his way of putting it," resumed my new associate. "He is very matter-of-fact, that Anastase, but I know what he meant. We are a very small party, and the rest persecute us. They would have been glad to get you over to their side, because it would have been such a triumph for them,--coming first, as you did come." Oh! how I did scribble in response. "I have not an idea what you mean. Pray tell me quickly." "The Chevalier Seraphael took the place here of somebody very unlike him. I thought the Cerinthias had told you." "The what?" "The Fräulein who came in with you the day of the concert, who came to the pavilion with Seraphael and yourself, was one of the Cerinthias. I thought, of course, you knew all; for her words are better than any one's, and you had been together,--so she told me afterwards." "Is she Cerinthia? What a queer name!" "They are a queer set, though I don't suppose there ever was such a set. The brother and the two sisters appear to possess every natural gift among them. The father was a great singer and celebrated master, but not a German. He came here to secure their education in a certain style, and just as he got here, he died. Then the brother, though they had not a penny among them all, made way by his extraordinary talent; and as he could play on any instrument, he was admitted to the second place in the band, and his sister was taken upon the foundation. Milans-André made a great deal of their being here, though it was perfectly natural, _I_ think. The youngest had been put out to nurse, and kept in some province of France until old enough to be admitted also; but then something happened which changed that notion. For when Seraphael took the place of Milans-André, he had every arrangement investigated, that he might improve to the utmost; and it was discovered--after this fashion--that this Maria Cerinthia had been allowed to occupy a room which was inferior to all the others. I think the rain came in, but I am not sure of that,--I only know it was out of the way and wretched. Seraphael was exceedingly vexed, almost in a passion, but turned it into amusement, as he does so often before others when he is serious at heart. He had the room turned into what it was just fit for,--a closet for fagots. "Then this proud Cerinthia--the brother, I mean, whose name, by the way, is Joseph--took offence himself; and declaring no arrangement should be altered on account of his sister, took her away, and had a lodging in the village instead. She comes here every day at the same time, and is what we call an out-Cecilian,--never staying to meals or to sleep, that is. Seraphael took no notice; and I was rather surprised to discover that he has been to see them several times,--because, you see, I thought _he_ was proud in his way to have his generosity rejected." "Does he like them so very much, then?" "He ought." Now, I wanted to be very angry at the intimation, but my informant had too expressive a face; so I merely added, "They are then very wonderful?" "They are all wonderful, and the little one, who is not quite eight years old (for she has come to live with them since they lived alone), is a prodigy, but not beautiful, like the one you saw." "_She_ is, I suppose, the cleverest in all the house?" "She must be so; but is so very quiet one does not hear about her, except at the close of the semester, when she carries off the medals,--for everything of the best belongs to her. She is a vocalist, and studies, of course, in the other wing; we never meet the ladies, you know, except in public." "Oh! of course not. Now, do tell me what you mean about the two parties." "I mean that when Milans-André went away no one knew how much mischief he had done. His whole system was against Bach, and this is properly a school for Bach. He could not eradicate the foundation, and he could not confess his dislike against our master in so many words. The only thing was to introduce quite a new style, or I am sure it might be called 'school,' for he has written such an immense deal. It was an opera of his, performed in this town, that at once did for him as far as those were concerned whom he had deceived, and that determined us not to submit ourselves any longer. He was becoming so unpopular that he was too happy to resign. Still, he left a number for himself behind him greater than those who had risen against him." "Tell me about that opera, pray. You write interesting letters, sir." "I have interesting matter, truly. The opera was called 'Emancipation; or, the Modern Orpheus.' The overture took in almost all of us, it was so well put together; but I fancy you would not have approved of it, somehow. The theatre here is very small, and was quite filled by our own selves and a few artists,--not one amateur, for it was produced in rehearsal. The scenery was very good, the story rambling and fiendish; but we thought it fairy-like. There was a perfect hit in the hero, who was a monstrous fiddle-player, to represent whom he had Paganini, as he had not to speak a word. The heroines, who were three in number, were a sort of musical nuns, young ladies dedicated to the art; but they, first one, then another, fell in with the fiddler, and finding him, became enamoured of him. He condescends to listen to the first while she sings, or rather he comes upon her as she is singing the coolest of all Bach's solos in the coolest possible style. He waits till the end with commendable patience, and then, amidst infernal gesticulations, places before her a cantata of his own, which is something tremendous when accompanied by the orchestra. The contrasted style, with the artful florid instrumentation, produces rapture, and is really an _effect_, though I do not say of what kind. The next heroine he treats to a grand scena, in which the violin is absolutely made to speak; and as it was carried through by Paganini, you may conjecture it was rather bewitching. The last lady he bears off fairly, and they converse in an outlandish duet between the voice of the lady and the violin. I can give you no outline of the plan, for there is no plot that I could find afterwards, but merely the heads of each part. Next comes a tumble-down church, dusty, dark, repelling to the idea from the beginning; and you are aware of the Lutheran service which is being droned through as we are not very likely to hear it, in fact. By magic the scene dissolves; colored lights break from tapering windows; arches rise and glitter like rainbows; altar-candles blaze and tremble; crimson velvet and rustling satin fill the Gothic stalls on either side; and while you are trying to gather in the picture, the Stabat Mater bursts out in strains about as much like weeping as all the mummery is like music. "The last scene of all is a kind of temple where priests and priestesses glide in spangled draperies, while the hierarch is hidden behind a curtain. Busts and statues, that I suppose are intended for certain masters, but whom it is not very easy to identify, as they are ill fashioned and ill grouped, are placed in surrounding shrines. At strains for signs from that curtained chief, the old heads and figures are prostrated from the pedestals, the ruins are swept aside by some utilitarian angel, and the finale consists in a great rush of individuals masked, who crown the newly inaugurated statue of the elevated Orpheus, and then dance around him to the ballet music, which is accompanied by the chorus also, who sing his praise. "It was very exciting while it went on,--as exciting to see as it is absurd to remember; and there was nothing for it but applause upon the spot. When the curtain fell, and we were crushing and pressing to get out, having been hardly able to wake ourselves up, and yet feeling the want that succeeds enjoyment or excitement that goes no further,--you know how,--one chord sounded behind the curtain from one instrument within the orchestra. It arrested us most curiously; it was mystical, as we call it, though so simple: enough to say that under those circumstances it seemed a sound from another sphere. It continued and spread,--it was the People's Song you heard the day you first came to us. It was once played through without vocal illustration, but we all knew the words, and began to sing them. "We were singing still in a strange sort of roar I can't describe to you, when the music failed, and the curtain was raised on one side. He--Seraphael, whom we knew not then--stood before us for the first time. You know how small he is: as he stood there he looked like a child of royal blood, his head quite turned me, it was so beautiful; and we all stood with open mouths to see him, hoping to hear him speak. He spread out those peculiar hands of his, and said, in his sweet, clear voice: 'That song, oh ladies and gentlemen, which you have shown you love so well, is very old, and you do not seem to be aware that it is so, nor of its author. Who wrote it, made it for us, think you?' "His beauty and his soft, commanding voice had just the effect you will imagine,--everybody obeyed him. One and another exclaimed, 'Hasse!' 'Vogler!' 'Hegel!' 'Storace!' 'Weber!' But it was clear the point had not been contested. Then he folded his arms together and laid them on his breast, with a very low bow that brought all the hair into his eyes. Then he shook back the curls and laughed. "'It is _Bach_, my dear and revered Sebastian Bach,--of all the Bachs alone _the_ Bach; though indeed to any one Bach, one of us present is not fit to hold a candle. You do not love Bach,--I do. You do not reverence him,--he is in my religion. You do not understand him,--I am very intimate with him. If you knew him, you too would love and worship and desire of him to know more and more. Ladies and gentlemen, you are all just. He has no one to take his part, as has your nondescript modern Orpheus. I shall give a lecture on Bach in this theatre to-morrow evening. Everybody comes in free. Only come!' "Who could refuse him? Who could have refused him as he stood there, and flying behind the curtain, peeped again between the folds of it and bowed? Besides, there was a strong curiosity at work,--a curiosity of which many were ashamed. Do I tire you?" "More likely yourself. Do finish about the lecture." "The supper-bell will be soon ringing, and will shake the story out of me, so I must make haste. I can tell it you properly some time. The next evening there was such a crowd at the door that they kicked it in, and stood listening outside. The curtain was done away with, and we never could make out how that organ came there which towered behind; but there it stood, and a pianoforte in front. The Chevalier appeared dressed in black, with nothing in his arms but a heap of programmes, written in his own hand, which he distributed himself, for he had no assistant. You know that Forkel has written a life of Bach? Well, I have since read this, and have been puzzled to find how such a poem as we listened to could have sprung from the prose of those dry memoirs. The voice was enough, if it had not said what it did say,--so delicious a voice to hear that no one stirred for fear of losing it. "I cannot give you the slightest outline; but I have never read any romance so brilliant, nor any philosophy that I could so take into myself. The illustrations were fugue upon fugue. Oh, to hear that organ with its grand interpretations, and the silver voice between! and study upon study for the harpsichord that from the new pianoforte seemed to breathe its old excitement--chorale upon chorale--until, with that song restored to its own proper form, it ended,--I mean, the lecture. I cannot say, though, about the ending, for I was obliged to leave before it was over; the clear intellect was too much for me, and the genius knocked me down. Many others left upon my very heels; but those who stayed seemed hardly to recall a word that had been said. All were so impressed, for that night, at least, that I can remember nothing to compare with it, except the descriptions in your English divinity books of the revivals in religion of your country. The next day, however, the scoffers found their tongues again, and only we to whom the whole affair had appeared on the occasion itself a dream, awoke to a reality that has never left us. We have not been the same since, and that is one reason we were so anxious you should be one with the students of Bach even before you knew what you must profess." "Oh! I come from a good school, for Aronach is full of Bach. But do tell me about the others." "The Andréites, as they call themselves, are not precisely inimical to Seraphael,--that would be impossible, he is so companionable, so free and truly great; but they, one and all, slight Bach, and as some of them are professors, and we all study under the professor of our voice or instrument in particular, it is a pity for the fresh comers to fall into the wrong set." "But I am safe, at least, for I am certain that Anastase is of the right school." "The very best; he is a Seraphaelite. They call us Seraphaelites, and we like it; but Seraphael does not like it, so we only use the word now for parole,--Bruderschaft."[2] "Why, I wonder, does he not like it?" "Because he is too well bred." Oh, how I enjoyed that expression! It reminded me of Lenhart Davy and his sayings. I was just going to intrude another question when my intention was snapped by the ringing of the bell, which made a most imposing noise. The sound caused a sudden rush and rustle through the library; gowned and ungowned figures forsook the nooks and benches, and they each and all put by their books as deftly, dexterously as Millicent used to lay her thimble into her work-box when she was a wee maiden. They did not stare at me at all, which was very satisfactory; and I found occasion to admire all their faces. I told my companion so, and he laughed, rubbing his eyes and stretching; then he put his arm about my neck in strict fraternal fashion, which gratified me exceedingly, and not the less because he was evidently by several years my elder. We left the library together, and right rejoiced was I to hear myself speak again; the first thing that occurred to me to say, I said: "Oh! I wanted so much to know what is your instrument." "I don't think I shall tell you," he replied, in a guileless voice, interesting as his behavior and language. "Why not? I must know it at last, must I not?" "Perhaps you will not think so well of me, when you know what I exist for." "That would make no difference, for every instrument is as great with reference to others as some are in themselves." "Seraphael could not have put it better. I play the trombone. It is a great sacrifice at present." "But," I returned, "I have not heard the instrument,--is it not a splendid sort of trumpet? You mean it is not good for solos?" "It is quite to itself,--a mere abstraction considered by itself; but to the orchestra what red is to the rainbow." "I know who said that. He puts brass last, I see." "Oh, you are a thief! You know everything already. Yes, he does put the violet first." "The violin? Yes, so he called it to me; but I did not know he was fond of calling it so." "It is one of his theories. It was, however, one day after he had been expounding it to a few of us who were fortunate enough to be present, when he was glancing through the class-rooms, that he put up his hands, and in his bright way, you know, scattering your reasoning faculties like a burst of sunshine, said, 'Oh, you must not entertain a word I have said to you,--it is only to be dreamed.'" "What did he say? What had he said? Do, pray, out with it, or I cannot eat, I am sure." We were just outside the hall doorway now; within were light and a hundred voices mingled. Into the dusk he gave his own, and I took it safely home in silence. "His theory,--oh, it was in this way! Strings first, of course, violet, indigo, blue,--violin, violoncello, double-bass,--upon these you repose; the vault is quite perfect. Green, the many-sounded kinds of wood, spring-hued flutes, deeper, yet softer, clarinetti, bassoons the darkest tone, not to be surpassed in its shade,--another vault. The brass, of course, is yellow; and if the horns suggest the paler dazzle, the trumpets take the golden orange, and the red is left for the trombones,--vivid, or dun and dusk."[3] "Oh, my goodness! I don't wonder he said it was a dream!" "It certainly would be dangerous to think of it in any other light!" "And you a German!" I cried. "Did you think I meant it?" "You would mean it," he retorted, "if you knew what lip-distorting and ear-distracting work it is practising this same trombone." "But what is your reason, then, for choosing it, when you might choose _mine_?" "Do you not know that Seraphael has written as no one else for the trombone? And he was heard to sigh, and to say, 'I shall never find any one to play these passages!'" "Oh, Delemann! and that was the reason you took it up? How I love you for it!" FOOTNOTES: [1] Wretch. [2] Brotherhood. [3] The theory of the correspondence of tones and colors is an old one. Gardner, in his "Music of Nature," traces it in the following manner, which will be interesting as contrasted with the above:-- WIND INSTRUMENTS. Trombone--deep red. Trumpet--scarlet. Clarinet--orange. Oboe--yellow. Bassoon--deep yellow. Flute--sky blue. Diapason--deeper blue. Double diapason--purple. Horn--violet. STRINGED INSTRUMENTS. Violin--pink. Viola--rose. Violoncello--red. Double-bass--crimson. Laura Bridgman, the blind and deaf mute, it will be remembered, likened the tone of the trumpet to scarlet. CHAPTER II. All lives have their prose translation as well as their ideal meaning; how seldom _this_ escapes in language worthy, while _that_ tells best in words. I was a good deal exhausted for several days after I entered the school, and saw very little except my own stuntedness and deficiency in the mirror of contemplation. For Anastase took me to himself awfully the first morning, all alone; examined me, tortured me, made me blush and hesitate and groan; bade me be humble and industrious; told me I was not so forward as I might be; drenched me with medicinal advices that lowered my mental system; and, finally, left me in possession of a minikin edition of what I had conceived myself the day before, but which he deprived me of at present, if not annihilated forever. It was doubtless a very good thing to go back to the beginning, if he intended to re-create me; but it happened that such transmutation could not take place twice, and it had already occurred once. Still, I was absolved from obvious discomfiture to the regenerator by my silent adaptations to his behavior. That which would assuredly become a penance to the physique in dark or wintry weather, remained still a charming matutinal romance; namely, that we all rose at four o'clock, except any one who might be delicate, and that we practised a couple of hours before we got anything to eat,--I mean formally, for, in fact, we almost all smuggled into our compartments wherewithal to keep off the natural, which might not amalgamate with the spiritual, constraining appetite. Those early mornings were ineffaceably effective for me; I advanced more according to my desires than I had ever advanced before, and I laid up a significant store of cool, sequestered memories. I could, however, scarcely realize my own existence under these circumstances, until the questioner within me was subdued to "contemplation" by my first "adventure." I had been a week in durance, if not vile, very void, for I had seen nothing of the Cerinthias nor of their interesting young advocate, except at table,--though certainly on these latter occasions we surfeited ourselves with talk that whetted my curiosity to a double edge. On the first Sunday, however, I laid hold of him coming out of church, when we had fulfilled our darling duties in the choir,--for the choir of our little perfect temple, oak-shaded and sunlit, was composed entirely of Cecilians, and I have not time in this place to dilate upon its force and fulness. Delemann responded joyously to my welcome; and when I asked him what was to be our task on Sunday, he answered that the rest of the day was our own, and that if I pleased we would go together and call upon that Maria and her little sister, of whom I knew all that could be gained out of personal intercourse. "Just what I wished," said I; "how exactly you guessed it!" "Oh, but I wanted to go myself!" answered Franz, laughing, "for I have an errand thither;" and together we quitted the church garden, with its sheltering lime shadow, for the sultry pavement. It cannot have been five minutes that we walked, before we came in front of one of those narrowest and tallest of the droll abodes I was pretty well used to now, since I had lived with Aronach. We went upstairs, too, in like style to that of the old apprentice home, and even as there, did not rest until nearly at the top. Delemann knocked at a door, and, as if perfectly accustomed to do so, walked in without delay. The room we entered was slightly furnished, but singularly in keeping with each other were the few ornaments, unsurpassably effective. Also a light clearness threw up and out each decoration from the delicate hue of the walls and the mild fresco of their borders, unlike anything I had yet seen, and startling, in spite of the simplicity of the actual accommodations, from their excelling taste. Upon brackets stood busts, three or four, and a single vase of such form that it could only have been purchased in Italy. At the window were a couch and reading-desk, also a table ready prepared with some kind of noonday meal; and at the opposite end of the apartment rose from the polished floor the stove itself, entirely concealed under lime-branches and oak-leaves. The room, too, was not untenanted, for upon the couch, though making no use whatever of the desk, lay a gentleman, who was reading, nevertheless, a French newspaper. He was very fine,--grand-looking, I thought; his dress appeared courtly, so courtly was his greeting. "You have not come for me, I know," he observed to Delemann, having seated us; "but the girls, having dined, are gone to rest: we don't find it easy to dispense with our siesta. You will surely eat first, for you must be hungry, and I am but just come in." He was, in fact, waiting for the soup, which swiftly followed us; and so we sat down together. Franz then produced a little basket, which I had noticed him to carry very carefully as we came along; but he did not open it, he placed it by his side upon the table. It was covered, and the cover was tied down with green ribbon. I was instantly smitten curious; but a great stay to my curiosity was the deportment of our host. I had seen a good many musicians by this time, and found them every one the alone civilized and polished of the human race; but there were evidences of supremacy in a few that I detected not even in the superior many. Some had enthralled me more than this young Cerinthia for I now know he was young, though at that time he appeared extremely my elder, and I could have believed him even aged; but there was about him an unassuming nobility that bespoke the highest of all educations,--that according to the preparations and purposes of nature. He seemed to live rationally, and I believe he did, though he was not to the immediate perception large-hearted. He ate, himself, with the frugality of Ausonia, but pressed us with cordial attention; and for me, I enjoyed my dinner immensely, though I had not come there to eat. Franz did not talk to him about his sisters, as I should have perhaps wished, and I dared not mention them, for there was that in Cerinthia's hazy, lustrous eyes that made me afraid to be as audacious as my disposition permitted. Presently, while we were drinking to each other, I heard little steps in the passage; and as I expected an apparition, I was not surprised when there entered upon those light feet a little girl, who, the first moment reminded me of Laura, but not the next, for her face was unlike as my own. She was very young, indeed, but had a countenance unusually formed, though the head was infantine,--like enough to our entertainer to belong to him, like as to delicacy of extremities and emerald darkness of eye. She wore a short white frock and two beautiful plaits of thick bright hair kept and dressed like that of a princess. She took no notice of me, but courtesyed to Delemann with an alien air most strange to me, and then ran past him to her brother, whom she freely caressed, at the same time, as it were, to hide her face. "Look up! my shy Josephine," said he, "and make another courtesy to that young gentleman, who is a great friend and connoisseur of the Chevalier Seraphael." Josephine looked back at me from beneath her heavy eyelashes, but still did not approach. Then I said, "How is your sister, Miss Josephine? I am only a little friend of the Chevalier,--she is the great one." "I know," replied she, in a sage child's voice, then looking up at her brother, "Maria is tired, and will not come in here, Joseph." "She is lying down, then?" "No, she is brushing her hair." We all laughed at this. "But run to tell her that Franz Delemann is here, and Carl Auchester with him; or if you cannot remember this name, Delemann's alone will do." "But she knows, for we heard them come in, and she said she should stay in her room; but that if Mr. Delemann had a letter for her I might carry it there." "I don't know whether there is a letter in here, Josephine, but this basket came for her." "How pretty!" said Josephine; and she stretched her tiny hand, a smile just shining over her face that reminded me of her beautiful sister. I saw she was anxious to possess herself of it, but I could not resist my own desire to be the bearer. "Let me take it to her!" I exclaimed impulsively. Cerinthia looked up, and Franz, too, surprised enough; but I did not care, I rose. "She can send me back again, if she is angry," I pleaded; and Cerinthia fairly laughed. "Oh, you may go! She will not send you back, though I should certainly be sent back if _I_ took such a liberty." "Neither would she admit me," said Delemann. "Why, you came last Sunday," put in little Josephine and then she looked at me, with one little finger to her lip. "Come too!" So we went, she springing before me to a door which she left ajar as she entered, while I discreetly remained outside. "May he come, Maria?" I heard her say; and then I heard that other voice. "Who, dear little Josephine,--which of them?" "The little boy." "The little boy!" she gave a kind of bright cry, and herself came to the door. She opened it, and standing yet there, said, with the loveliest manner, "You will not quarrel with this little thing! But forgive her, and pray come in. It was kind to come all the way up those stairs, which are steep as the road to fame." "Is that steep?" I asked, for her style instantly excited me to a rallying mood. "Some say so," she replied,--"those who seek it. But come and rest." And she led me by her flower-soft finger-tips to a sofa, also in the light, as in the room I had quitted, and bathed in airs that floated above the gardens, and downwards from the heavens into that window also open. A curtain was drawn across the alcove at the end, and between us and its folds of green, standing out most gracefully, was a beautiful harp; there were also more books than I had seen in a sitting-room since I left my Davy, and I concluded they had been retrieved from her lost father's library. But upon the whole room there was an atmosphere thrown neither from the gleaming harp nor illustrating volumes; and as my eyes rested upon her, after roving everywhere else, I could only wonder I had ever looked away. Her very dress was such as would have become no other, and was that which she herself invested with its charm. She wore a dark-blue muslin, darker than the summer heaven, but of the self-same hue; this robe was worn loosely, was laced in front over a white bodice. Upon those folds was flung a shawl of some dense rose-color and an oriental texture, and again over that shady brilliance fell the long hair, velvet-soft, and darker than the pine-trees in the twilight. The same unearthly hue slept in the azure-emerald of her divinely moulded eyes, mild and liquid as orbed stars, and just as superhuman. The hair, thus loosened, swept over her shoulder into her lap. There was not upon its stream the merest ripple,--it was straight as long; and had it not been so fine, must have wearied with its weight a head so small as hers. "What magnificent hair you have!" said I. "It seems I was determined to make of it a spectacle. If I had known you were coming, I should have put it out of the way; but whenever I am lazy or tired, I like to play with it. The Chevalier calls it my rosary." I was at home directly. "The Chevalier! Oh! have you seen him since that day?" "Four, five, six times." "And I have not seen him once." "You shall see him eight, nine, ten times. Never mind! He comes to see me, you know, out of that kindness whose prettiest name is charity." "Where is he now?" I inquired, impatient of that remark of hers. "Now? I do not know. He has been away a fortnight, conducting everywhere. Have you not heard?" "No,--what?" "Of the Mer de Glace overture and accompaniments?" "I have not heard a word." She took hold of her hair and stroked it impatiently; still, there was such sweetness in her accent as made me doubt she was angry. "I told Florimond to tell you. He always forgets those things!" I looked up inquiringly; there was that in her eye which might be the light of an unfallen tear. "But I don't know who you mean." "I am glad not. How silly I am! Oh, _madre mia_! this hot weather softens the brain, I do believe,--I should never have done it in the winter. And all this time I have been wondering what is that basket upon which Josephine seems to have set her whole soul." "It is for you," said Josephine. "Oh," I exclaimed, "how careless I am! Yes, but I do not know who it comes from. Franz brought it." "Young Delemann? Oh, thank him, please! I know very well. Here, then, _piccola, carina_! you shall have to open it. Where are the ivory scissors?" "Oh, how exquisite!" I cried; for I knew she meant those tiny fingers. "Exquisite, is it? It is again from the Chevalier." "Did he say so? I thought it like him; but you are so like him." "I well, I believe you are right,--there is a kind of likeness." She raised her eyes, so full of lustre, that I even longed for the lids to fall. The brilliant smile, like the most ardent sunlight, had spread over her whole face. I forgot her strange words in her unimaginable expression, until she spoke again. All this while the little one was untwisting the green bands which were passed over and under the basket. At length the cover was lifted: there were seven or eight immense peaches. I had thought there must be fruit within, from the exhaling scent, but still I was surprised. There was no letter. This disappointed me; but there were fresh leaves at the very bottom. My chief companion took out these, and laid each peach upon a leaf: her fingers shone against the downy blush. She presented me with one after another. "Pray eat them, or as many as you can; I do not eat fruit to-day, for it is too hot weather, and _she_ must not eat so many." I instantly began to eat, and made efforts to do even more than I ought. Josephine carried off her share on a doll's plate. Then her sister rose and took in a birdcage from outside the window, where it had hung, but I had not seen it. There was within it a small bird, and dull enough it looked until she opened the door, when it fluttered to the bars, hopped out, stood upon a peach, and then, espying me, flew straight into her bosom. It lay there hidden for some minutes, and she covered and quite concealed it with her lovely little hand. I said,-- "Is it afraid of me? Shall I go?" "Oh dear no!" she replied; "it does like you, and is only shy. Do you never wish to be hidden when you see those you like?" "I never have yet, but I daresay I shall, now I come to think about it." "You certainly will. This silly little creature is not yet quite sure of us; that is it." "Where did it come from?" "It came from under the rye-stacks. He--that is always the Chevalier, you know--was walking through the rye-fields when the moon was up; the reapers had all gone home. He heard a small cry withering under the wheat, and stayed to listen. Most men would not have heard such a weak cry; no man would have stayed to listen, except one, perhaps, besides. He put aside all the loose ears, and he found under them--for it could not move--this wretched lark, with its foot broken,--broken by the sickle." There was no quiver of voice or lip as she spoke. I mention this merely because I am not fond of the mere sentiment almost all women infuse into the sufferings of inferior creatures, while those with loftier claims and pains are overlooked. She went on,-- "How do you think he took it up? He spread his handkerchief over the stubble, and shelled a grain or two, which he placed within reach of the lark upon the white table-cloth. The lark tried very hard, and hopped with its best foot to reach the grains, then he drew the four corners together, and brought it here to me. I thought it would die, but it has not died; and now it knows me, and has no mind to go away." "Does it know him?" "Not only so, but for him alone will it sing. I let it fly one day when its foot was well; but the next morning I found it outside the window pecking at its cage-wires, and it said, 'Take me back again, if you please.'" "That is like the Chevalier too. But you _are_ like him; I suppose it is being so much with him." "And yet I never saw him till the first day I saw you, and you had seen him long before. I think it must be dead, it is so still." Hereupon she uncovered the lark's head; it peeped up, and slowly, with sly scrutiny, hopped back to the peach and began to feed, driving in its little bill. I wanted to know something now, and my curiosity in those days had not so much as received a wholesome check, much less a quietus; and therefore presumptuously demanded,-- "Who was the somebody, Fräulein Cerinthia, that might stop to listen to a bird's cry besides the Chevalier. You stopped." "And that is why you wished to know. I had better have said it in the right place. Did anybody ever tell you you are audacious? It was Florimond Anastase." "My master!" and I clapped my hands. "Mine, sir, if you please." "But he teaches me the violin." "And he does not teach me the violin, but is yet my master." "How, why?" "I belong to him, or shall." "Do you mean that you are married to Anastase?" "Not yet, or I should not be here." "But you will be?" "Yes,--that is, if nothing should happen to prevent our being married." "You like to be so, I suppose?" She gazed up and smiled. Her eyes grew liquid as standing dew. "I will not say you are again audacious, because you are so very innocent. I do wish it." "I said _like_, Fräulein Cerinthia." "You can make a distinction too. Suppose I said, No." "I should not believe you while you look so." "And if I said, Yes, I daresay you would not believe me either. Dear little Carl,--for I must call you little, you are so much less than I,--do you really think I would marry, loving music as I do, unless I really loved that which I was to marry more than music?" So thrilling were her tones in these simple words, of such intensity her deep glance, with its fringe all quivering now, that I was alienated at once from her,--the child from the woman; yet could like a child have wept too, when she bent her head and sobbed. "Could anything be more beautiful?" I thought; and now, in pausing, my very memory sobs, heavy laden with pathetic passion. For it was not exactly sorrow, albeit a very woful bliss. She covered her eyes and gave way a moment; then sweeping off the tears with one hand, she broke into a smile. The shower ceased amidst the sunlight, but still the sunlight served to fling a more peculiar meaning upon the rain-drops,--an iris lustre beamed around her eyes. I can but recall that ineffable expression, the April playing over the oriental mould. "I might have known you would have spoken so, Fräulein Cerinthia," I responded, at last roused to preternatural comprehension by her words; "but so few people think in that way about those things." "You are right, and agree with me, or at least you will one day. But for that, all would be music here; we should have it all _our own way_." "You and the Chevalier. Do you know I had forgotten all about your music till this very minute?" "I am very happy to hear that, because it shows we are to be friends." "We have the best authority to be so," I replied; "and it only seems too good to be true. I am really, though, mad to hear you sing. Delemann says there never was in Europe a voice like yours, and that its only fault is it is so heavenly that it makes one discontented." "That is one of the divinest mistakes ever made, Carlino." "The Chevalier calls me Carlomein. I like you to say 'Carlino,' it is so coaxing." "You have served me with another of your high authorities, Maestrino. The Chevalier says I have scarcely a voice at all; it is the way I sing he likes." "I did not think it possible. And yet, now I come to consider, I don't think you look so much like a singer as another sort of musician." She smiled a little, and looked into her lap, but did not reply. It struck me that she was too intuitively modest to talk about herself. But I could not help endeavoring to extort some comment, and I went on. "I think you look too much like a composer to be a singer also." "Perhaps," she whispered. I took courage. "Don't you mean to be a composer, Fräulein Cerinthia?" "Carlino, yes. The Chevalier says that to act well is to compose." "But then," I proceeded hastily, "my sister--at least Mr. Davy--at least--you don't know who I mean, but it does not matter,--a gentleman who is very musical told me and my sister that the original purpose of the drama is defeated in England, and that instead of bringing the good out of the beautiful, it produces the artificial out of the false,--those were his very words; he was speaking of the _music_ of operas, though, I do remember, and perhaps I made some mistake." "I should think not." "In England it is very strange, is it not, that good people, really good people, think the opera a dreadful place to be seen in, and the theatres worse? My sister used to say it was so very unnatural, and it seems so." "I have heard it is so in England,--and really, after all, I don't so much wonder; and perhaps it is better for those good people you spoke of to keep away. It is not so necessary for them to go as for us. And this is it, as I have heard, and you will know how, when I have said it to you. Music is the soul of the drama, for the highest drama is the opera,--the highest possible is the soul, of course; and so the music should be above the other forms, and they the ministers. But most people put the music at the bottom, and think of it last in this drama. If the music be high, all rise to it; and the higher it is, the higher will all rise. So, the dramatic personification passes naturally into that spiritual height, as the forms of those we love, and their fleeting actions fraught with grace, dissolve into our strong perception of the soul we in them love and long for. The lights and shades of scenery cease to have any meaning in themselves, but again are drawn upwards into the concentrated performing souls, and so again pass upwards into the compass of that tonal paradise. But let the music be degraded or weak, and down it will pull performers, performance, and intention, crush the ideal, as persons without music crush _our_ ideal,--have you not felt? All dramatic music is not thus weak and bad, but much that they use most is vague as well as void. I am repeating to you, Carlino, the very words of the Chevalier: do not think they were my own." "I did, then, think them very like his words, but I see your thoughts too, for you would say the same. Is there no music to which you would act, then?" "Oh, yes! I would act to any music, not because I am vain, but because I think I could help it upwards a little. Then there is a great deal for us: we cannot quarrel over Mozart and Cimarosa, neither Gluck nor Spohr; and there is one, but I need hardly name him, who wrote 'Fidelio.' And the Chevalier says if there needed a proof that the highest acting is worthy of the highest music, the highest music of the highest form or outward guise of love in its utmost loveliness, that opera stands as such. And, further, that all the worst operas, and ill-repute of them in the world, will not weigh against the majesty and purity of Beethoven's own character in the opposing scale." "Oh! thank you for having such a memory." "I have a memory in my memory for those things." "Yes, I know. Does the Chevalier know you are to marry Anastase?" "No." I was surprised at this, though she said it so very simply; she looked serene as that noonday sky, and very soon she went on to say: "Florimond, my friend, is very young, though I look up to him as no one else could believe. I am but fifteen, you know, and have yet been nearly three years betrothed." "Gracious! you were only a little girl." "Not much less than now. I don't think you would ever have called me a little girl, and Florimond says I shall never be a woman. I wished to tell the Chevalier, thinking he would be so good as to congratulate me, and hoping for such a blessing; but I have never found myself able to bring it out of my lips. I always felt it withdraw, as if I had no reason, and certainly I had no right, to confide my personal affairs to him. Our intercourse is so different." "Yes, I should think so. I wonder what you generally talk about." "Never yet of anything but music." "That is strange, because the Chevalier does not usually talk so,--but of little things, common things he makes so bright; and Franz tells me, and so did another of our boys, that he only talks of such small affairs generally, and avoids music." "So I hear from my brother. He talks to Josephine about her doll. He did tell me once that with me alone he 'communed music.'" "Again his words!" She assented by her flying smile. "He never plays to you, then?" "Never to myself; but then, you see, I should never ask him." "And he would not do it unless he were asked. I understand that. You feel as I should about asking _you_." "Me to sing?" she inquired in a tone beguiling, lingering, an echo of _his_ voice ever sleepless in my brain, or that if sleeping, ever awoke to music. I nodded. "No," said she again, with quickness, "I will not wait to be asked." As she spoke she arose, and those dark streams of hair fell off her like some shadow from her spirit; she shone upon me in rising,--so seemed her smile. "Oh!" I cried eagerly, and I caught, by some impulse, the hem of her garment, "you are going to be so good!" "If you let me be so," she replied, and drew away those folds, passing to her harp. Her hand, suddenly thrown upon the wires, whose resistance to embrace so sweet made all their music, caught the ear of little Josephine, who had been playing very innocently, for a prodigy, in the corner; and now she came slowly forwards, her doll in her arms, and stood about a yard from the harp, again putting up one finger to her lip, and giving me a glance across the intervening space. She looked, as she so peered, both singular and interesting in the blended curiosity and shyness that appertain to certain childhoods; but it seemed to me at that moment as if she were a strayed earthling into some picture of a scene in that unknown which men call heaven. For the harp and the form which appeared now to have grown to it--so inseparable are the elements of harmony, so intuitively they blend in meeting--were not a sight to suggest anything this side of death. All beauty is the gauge of immortality; and as I wondered at her utter loveliness, I became calm as immortality only permits and sanctions when on it our thoughts repose, for it our affections languish. Her arms still rested behind and before the strings as she tuned them; still her hair swept that cloud upon the softness of her cheek, toned the melancholy arch of her brow: but the deep rose-hues of her now drooping mantle, and the Italian azure of her robe, did not retrieve the fancy to any earthly apparition. They seemed but transparent and veil-like media through which the whiteness of light found way in colors that sheathed an unendurable naked lustre. I thought not in such words, but such thoughts were indeed mine; and while I was yet gazing,--dreaming, I should say, for I ever dream on beauty,--she played some long, low chords, attenuated golden thwarting threads of sound, and began forthwith to sing. She sang in German, and her song was a prayer for rest,--a Sunday song, as little Josephine said afterwards to me. But it might have been a lay of revenge, of war, or of woe, for all I heard that the words conveyed, as I could not exist except in the voice itself, or the spirit of which the voice was formed. I felt then that it is not in voice, it is not in cunning instrument, that the thing called music hides; it is the uncreate intelligence of tone that genius breathes into the created elements of sound. This girl's or angel's voice was not so sweet as intelligible, not so boundless as intense. It went straight into the brain, it stirred the soul without disturbing; the ear was unconscious as it entered that dim gallery, and rushed through it to the inward sympathetic spirit. The quality of the voice, too, as much pertained to that peculiar organization as certain scents pertain to particular flowers. It was as in the open air, not in the hothouse, that this foreign flower expanded, and breathed to the sun and wind its secrets. It was what dilettanti call a contralto voice, but such a contralto, too, that either Nature or culture permitted the loftiest flights; the soprano touches were vivid and vibrating as the topmost tones of my violin. While the fragrance yet fanned my soul, the flower shut up. She ceased singing and came to me. "Do you like that little song? It is the Chevalier's." "A Sunday song," observed Josephine, as I mentioned. "A Sunday song!" I cried, and started. "I have not heard a word!" "Oh!" she said, not regretfully, but with excitement, "you must then hear it again; and Josephine shall sing it, that you may not think of my voice instead of the song." I had not time to remonstrate, nor had I the right. The child began quite composedly, still holding her doll. She had a wonderful voice. But what have I to do with voices? I mean style. Josephine's voice was crude as a green whortleberry; its sadness was sour, its strength harsh; though a voice shrill and small as the cricket's chirp, with scarcely more music. But she sang divinely; she sang like a cherub before the Great White Throne. The manner was her sister's; the fragrance another, a peculiar wood-like odor, as from moss and evanescent wild-flowers, if I may so compare, as then it struck me. I listened to the words this while, to the melody,--the rush of melodies; for in that composer's slightest effect each part is a separate soul, the counterpoint a subtle, fiery chain imprisoning the soul in bliss. Ineffable as was that air,--ineffable as is every air of his,--I longed to be convinced it had been put together by a _man_. I could not, and I cannot to this hour, associate anything material with strains of his. When Josephine concluded, I was about to beg for more; but the other left her harp, and kissing her little care, brought her with herself to the couch where she had quitted me. How strange was the sweetness, how sweet the change in her manner now! "How pale you look!" said she; "I shall give you some wine. I can feel for you, if you are delicate in health, for I am so myself; and it is so sad sometimes." "No wine, please; I have had wine, and am never the better for it. I believe I was born pale, and shall never look anything else." "I like you pale, if it is not that you are delicate." "I think I am pretty strong; I can work hard, and do." "Do not!" she said, putting her loveliest hand on my hair, and turning my face to hers, "do not, _lieber_, work hard,--not too hard." "And why not? for I am sure you do." "That is the very reason I would have you not do so. I _must_ work hard." "But if you are delicate, Fräulein Cerinthia?" "God will take care of me; I try to serve him. None have to answer for themselves as musicians." She suddenly ceased, passed one hand over her face. She did not stir, but I heard her sigh; she arose, and looked from the window; she sat down again, as if undecided. "Can I do anything for you?" I asked. "No, I want nothing; I am only thinking that it is very troublesome the person who sent those fruits could not come instead of them. I ought to have kept it from you, child as you are." "Child, indeed! why, what are you yourself?" "Young, very young," she replied, with some passion in her voice; "but so much older than you are in every sense. I never remember when I did not feel I had lived a long time." I was struck by these words, for they often returned upon me afterwards, and I rose to go, feeling something disturbed at having wearied her; for she had not the same fresh bloom and unfatigued brightness as when I entered. She did not detain me, though she said, "Call me Maria, please; I should like it best,--we are both so young, you know! We might have been brother and sister." And in this graceful mood my memory carried her away. CHAPTER III. I need not say I looked upon Anastase with very different eyes next time I crossed his path. He had never so much interested me; he had never attracted me before,--he attracted me violently now, but not for his own sake. I watched every movement and gesture,--every intimation of his being, separable from his musical nature and dissociated from his playing. He seemed to think me very inattentive on the Monday morning, though, in fact, I had never been so attentive to him before; but I did not get on very well with my work. At last he fairly stopped me, and touched my chin with his bow. "What are you thinking about this morning, sir?" he inquired, in that easy voice of his, with that cool air. I never told a lie in my life, white or black. "Of you, sir," I replied. With his large eyes on mine, I felt rather scorched, but still I kept faith with myself. "Of the Fräulein Cerinthia." "I thought as much. The next Sunday you will remain at home." "Yes, sir; but that won't prevent my thinking about you and her." "Exactly; you shall therefore have sufficient time to think about us. As you have not control enough to fasten your mind on your own affairs, we must indulge your weakness by giving it plenty of room." Then he pointed to my page with his bow, and we went on quietly. I need not say we were alone. After my lesson, just before he proceeded to the next violin, he spoke again. "You do not know, perhaps, what test you are about to endure. We shall have a concert next month, and you will play a first violin with me." "Sir!" I gasped, "I cannot--I never will!" "Perhaps you will change your note when you are aware who appointed you. It is no affair of mine." "If you mean, sir, that it is the Chevalier who appointed me, I don't believe it, unless you gave your sanction." He turned upon me with a short smile,--just the end of one,--and raised his delicate eyebrows. "Be that as it may, to-night we rehearse first, in the lesser hall; there will be nobody present but the band. The Chevalier will hold his own rehearsal the week after next, for there is a work of his on this occasion,--therefore we shall prepare, and, I trust, successfully; so that the polishing only will remain for him." "Bravo, sir!" "I hope it will be bravo; but it is no bravo at present," said he, in dismissing me. I had never heard Anastase play yet, and was very curious,--I mean, I had never heard him play consecutively; his exhibitions to us being confined to short passages we could not surmount,--bar upon bar, phrase upon phrase, here a little, and there a very little. But now he must needs bring himself before me, to play out his own inner nature. I found Delemann in his own place presently,--a round box, like a diminutive observatory, at the very top of the building, and communicating only with similar boxes occupied by the brass in general. I let myself in, for it would have been absurd to knock amidst the demonstrations of the alto trombone. He was so ardent over that metallic wonder of his that I had to pluck his sleeve. Even then he would not leave off, at the risk of splitting that short upper lip of his by his involuntary smile, until he had finished what lay before him. It was one great sheet, and I espied at the top the words: "Mer de Glace,--Ouverture; Seraphael." Madder than ever for a conclusion, I stopped my ears till he laid down that shining monster and took occasion to say, "That is what we are to have to-night." "I know. But how abominable is Anastase not to let me have my part to practise!" "Very likely it is not ready. The brass came this morning, and the strings were to follow. Mine was quite damp when I had it." We went into rehearsal together, Franz and I. What a different rehearsal from my first in England! Here we were all instruments. Franz was obliged to leave me on entering, and soon I beheld him afar off, at the top of the wooden platform, on whose raised steps we stood, taking his place by the tenor trombone,--a gentleman of adult appearance who had a large mouth. I have my own doubts, private and peculiar, about the superior utility of large mouths, because Franz, of the two, played best; but that is no matter here. Our _saal_ was a simple room enough, guiltless of ornament; our orchestra deal, clear of paint or varnish; our desks the same, but light as ladies' hand-screens,--this was well, as Anastase, who was not without his crochet, made us continually change places with each other, and we had to carry them about. There were wooden benches all down the _saal_, but nobody sat in them; there was not the glimmer of a countenance, nor the shine of two eyes. The door-bolts were drawn inside; there was a great and prevalent awe. The lamps hung over us, but not lighted; the sun was a long way from bed yet, and so were we. Anastase kept us at "L'Amour Fugitif" and "Euryanthe,"--I mean, their respective overtures,--a good while, and was very quiet all the time, until our emancipation in the "Mer de Glace." His _face_ did not change even then; but there was a fixity and straightening of the arm, as if an iron nerve had passed down it suddenly, and he mustered us still more closely to him and to each other. My stand was next his own; and, looking here and there, I perceived Iskar among the second violins, and was stirred up,--for I had not met with him except at table since I came there. It is not in my power to describe my own sensations on my first introduction to Seraphael's orchestral definite creation. Enough to say that I felt all music besides, albeit precious, albeit inestimable, to have been but affecting the best and highest portion of myself, but as exciting to loftier aspirations my constant soul; but that _his_ creation did indeed not only first affect me beyond all analysis of feeling, but cause upon me, and through me, a change to pass,--did first recreate, expurge of all earthly; and then inspire, surcharged with heavenly hope and holiest ecstasy. That qualitative heavenly, and this superlative holiest, are alone those which disabuse of the dread to call what we love best and worship truest by name. No other words are expressive of that music which alone realizes the desire of faith,--faith supernal alike with the universal faith of love. As first awoke the strange, smooth wind-notes of the opening _adagio_, the fetterless chains of ice seemed to close around my heart. The movement had no blandness in its solemnity, and so still and shiftless was the grouping of the harmonies that a frigidity actual, as well as ideal, passed over my pores and hushed my pulses. After a hundred such tense, yet clinging chords, the sustaining calm was illustrated, not broken, by a serpentine phrase of one lone oboe, _pianissimo_ over the _piano_ surface, which it crisped not, but on and above which it breathed like the track of a sunbeam aslant from a parted cloud. The slightest possible retardation at its close brought us to the refrain of the simple _adagio_, interrupted again by a rush of violoncello notes, rapid and low, like some sudden under-current striving to burst through the frozen sweetness. Then spread wide the subject as plains upon plains of _water-land_, though the time was gradually increased. Amplifications of the same harmonies introduced a fresh accession of violoncelli, and oboi contrasted artfully in syncopation, till at length the strides of the _accelerando_ gave a glittering precipitation to the entrance of the second and longest movement. Then Anastase turned upon me, and with the first bar we fell into a tumultuous _presto_. Far beyond all power to analyze as it was just then, the complete idea embraced me as instantaneously as had the picturesque chilliness of the first. I have called it tumultuous, but merely in respect of rhythm; the harmonies were as clear and evolved as the modulation itself was sharp, keen, unanticipated, unapproachable. Through every bar reigned that vividly enunciated ideal, whose expression pertains to the one will alone in any age,--the ideal that, binding together in suggestive imagery every form of beauty, symbolizes and represents something beyond them all. Here over the surge-like, but fast-bound _motivo_--only like those tossed ice-waves, dead still in their heaped-up crests--were certain swelling _crescendos_ of a second subject, so unutterably, if vaguely, sweet that the souls of all deep blue Alp-flowers, the clarity of all high blue skies, had surely passed into them, and was passing from them again. Scarcely is it legitimate to describe what so speaks for itself as music; yet there are assuredly effects produced by music which may be treated of to the satisfaction of the initiated. It was not until the very submerging climax that the playing of Anastase was recalled to me. Then, amidst long, ringing notes of the wild horns, and intermittent sighs of the milder wood, swept from the violins a torrent of coruscant _arpeggi_, and above them all I heard his tone, keen but solvent, as his bow seemed to divide the very strings with fire; and I felt as if some spark had fallen upon my fingers to kindle mine. As soon as it was over, I looked up and laughed in his face with sheer pleasure; but he made no sign, nor was there the slightest evidence of the strenuous emotion to which he had been abandoned,--no flush of cheek nor flash of eye, only the least possible closer contraction of the slight lips. He did nothing but find fault, and his authority appeared absolute; for when he reprimanded Iskar in particular, and called him to account for the insertion extraordinary of a queer _appogiatura_, which I did not know he had heard, that evil one came down without a smirk, and minced forth some apology, instead of setting up his crest, as usual. I was very thankful at last when the room was cleared, as it was infernally hot, and I had made up my mind to ask Anastase whether my violin were really such a good one; for I had not used it before this night. When no one was left except he and I, I ventured to ask him whether I could carry anything anywhere for him, to attract his attention. "Yes," said he, "you may gather up all the parts and lay them together in that closet," pointing to a wooden box behind the platform; "but do not put your own away, because you are going to look over it with me." I did as he directed, and then brought myself back to him. But before I could begin, he took my fiddle from my arms, and turning it round and round, demanded, "Where did you get this?" I told him in a few words its history, or what I imagined to be its history. He looked rather astonished, but made no comment, and then he began to play to me. I do not suppose another ever played like him; I may, perhaps, myself a very little, but I never heard anybody else. The peculiar strength of his tone I believe never to have been surpassed; the firmness of his _cantabile_ never equalled; his expression in no case approached. Santonio's playing dwindled in my mind, for Anastase, though so young, performed with a pointedness altogether mature; it was that on which to repose unshifting security for the most ardent musical interest; yet, with all its solidity, it was not severe even in the strictest passages. Of all playing I ever heard on my adopted instrument, and I have heard every first-rate and every medium performer in Europe, it was the most forceful,--let this term suffice just here. I said to him when he had finished with me, "How much fuller your playing is than Santonio's! I thought his wonderful until I heard yours." But with more gentleness than I had given him credit for, he responded, laying down my little treasure, "I consider his playing myself far more wonderful than mine. Mine is not wonderful; it is a wrong word to use. It is full, because I have studied to make it the playing of a leader, which must not follow its own vagaries. Neither does Santonio, who is also a leader, but a finer player than I,--finer in the sense of delicacy, experience, finish. Now go and eat your supper, Auchester." "Sir, I don't want any supper." "But I do, and I cannot have you here." I knew he meant he was going to practise,--it was always his supper, I found; but he had become again unapproachable. I had not gained an inch nearer ground to him, really, yet. So I retired, and slipped into the refectory, where Franz was keeping a seat for me. I was positively afraid to go out the next Sunday, and the next it rained,--we all stayed in. On the following Wednesday would come our concert, and by this time I knew that the Chevalier would be accompanied by certain of his high-born relations. But do not imagine that we covered for them galleries with cloth and yellow fringe. It was altogether to me one of my romance days; and, as such, I partook in the spirit of festivity that stirred abroad. The day before was even something beyond romance. After dinner we all met in the garden-house, as we called the pillared alcove, to arrange the decorations for our hall, which were left entirely to ourselves, at our united request. About fifty of us were of one mind, and, somehow or other, I got command of the whole troop,--I am sure I did not mean to put myself so. I sent out several in different directions to gather oak-branches and lime-boughs, vine-leaves and evergreens, and then sat down to weave garlands for the arches among a number more. Having seen them fairly at work, I went forth myself, and found Maria Cerinthia at home; she came with me directly, and we made another pilgrimage in search of roses and myrtles. Josephine went too, and we all three returned laden from the garden of a sincere patroness down in the valley beneath the hill, of whom we had asked such alms. Entering Cecilia, after climbing the slope leisurely, we saw a coach at the porter's door,--the door where letters and messages were received, not the grand door of the school, which all day stood open for the benefit of bustling Cecilians. I thought nothing of this coach, however, as one often might have seen one there; but while Maria took back Josephine, I obtained possession of all the flowers which she had placed in my arms, promising to be with us anon in the garden-house. Past the professors' rooms I walked; and I have not yet mentioned the name of Thauch, our nominal superintendent, the appointed of the Chevalier, who always laughingly declared he had selected him because he knew nothing about music, to care for us _out_ of music. Thauch sat at the head of the middle table, and we scarcely saw him otherwise or spoke to him; thus I was astonished, and rather appalled, to be called upon by him when I reached his room, which was enclosed, and where he was writing accounts. I was not aware he even knew my name; but by it he called upon me. "Sir," I said, "what do you want?" as I did not desire to halt, for fear of crushing up my sweet fresh roses. He had risen, and was in the doorway, waiting, with true German deliberation, until I was quite recovered from my breathlessness; and then he did not answer, but took my shoulders and pushed me into his parlor, himself leaving the room, and shutting himself out into the passage. Shall I ever forget it? For, gasping still, though I had thrown all my flowers out of my arms, I confronted the bright, old-fashioned, distinct, yet dream-like faces of two who sat together upon the chairs behind the door. You will not expect me to say how I felt when I found they were my own sister Millicent, my own Lenhart Davy, and that they did not melt away. I suppose I did something,--put out my hands, perhaps, or turned some strange color which made Davy think I should faint; for he rose, and coming to me, with his hilarious laugh put his arms about me and took me to my sister. When once she had kissed me, and I had felt her soft face and the shape of her lips, and smelled the scent of an Indian box at home that clung to her silk handkerchief yet, I cried, and she cried too; but we were both quiet enough about it,--she I only knew was crying by her cheek pressing wet against mine. After a few moments so unutterable, I put myself away from her, and began distinctly to perceive the strangeness of our position. Millicent, as I examined her, seemed to have grown more a woman than I remembered; but that may have pertained to her dress, so different from the style with which I associated her,--the white ribbons and plain caps under the quaint straw bonnet, and the black-silk spencer. Now, she wore a mantle of very graceful cut, and the loveliest pink lining to her delicate fancy hat; this gave to her oval countenance a blushful clearness that made her look lovely in my eyes. And when I did speak, what do you think I said? "Oh, Millicent, how odd it is! Oh, Mr. Davy, how odd you look!" "Now, Charles," said he, in answer,--and how the English accents thrilled the tears into my eyes,--"now, Charles, tell me what you mean by growing so tall and being so self-possessed. You are above my shoulder, and you have lost all your impudence." "No, Mr. Davy, I haven't--kiss me!" said I; and I threw my arms about him, and clung on there till curiosity swelled unconquerable. "Oh, Mr. Davy, how extraordinary it is of you to come so suddenly, without telling me! And mother never said the least word about it. Oh, Millicent, how did you get her to let you come? And, oh," suddenly it struck me very forcibly, "how very strange you should come with Mr. Davy! Is anybody ill? No, you would have told me directly, and you would not be dressed so." Millicent looked up at Davy with an unwonted expression, a new light in her eyes, that had ever slept in shade; and he laughed again. "No, nobody is ill, and she would _not_ be dressed so if I had not given her that bonnet, for which she scolded me instead of thanking me,--for it came from Paris." "Oh!" I exclaimed, and I felt all over bathed in delight. I ran to Millicent, and whispered into that same bonnet, "Oh, Millicent! are you married to Mr. Davy?" She pulled off one of her pale-colored gloves and showed me the left hand. I saw the ring--oh, how strange I felt,--hot and cold; glad and sorry; excited, and yet staid! I flew to my first friend and kissed his hand: "Dear Mr. Davy, I am so glad!" "I thought you would be, Charles. If I had anticipated any objection on your part, I should have written to you first!" "Oh, Mr. Davy!" I cried, laughing, "but why did they not write and tell me?" "My dear brother, it was that we wished to spare you all disappointment." "You mean I could not have come home. No, I don't think I could, even for your wedding, Millicent, and yours, Mr. Davy; we have been so busy lately." Davy laughed. "Oh, I see what an important person you have become! We knew it; and it was I who persuaded your mother not to unsettle you. I did it for the best." "It was for the best, dearest Charles," said Millicent, looking into Davy's face as if perfectly at home with it. She had never used to look into his face at all. "Oh!" I again exclaimed, suddenly reminded, "what did you wear, Millicent, to be married in?" "A white muslin pelisse, Charles, and Miss Benette's beautiful veil." "Yes; and, Charles," continued Davy, "Millicent gratified us both by asking Miss Benette to be her bridesmaid." "And did she come?" I asked, rather eagerly. "No, Charles; she did not." "I knew she would not," I thought, though I scarcely knew why. "But she came, Charles, the night before, and helped them to dress the table; and so beautiful she made it look that everybody was astonished,--yet she had only a few garden flowers, and a _very_ few rare ones." "But how long have you been married, Mr. Davy? and are you going to live _here_? What will the class do? Oh, the dear class! Who sits by Miss Benette now, Mr. Davy?" He laughed. "Oh, Charles, if you please, one question at a time! We have been married one week,--is it not, Millicent?" She smiled and blushed. "And I am not going to leave my class,--it is larger now than you remember it. And I have not left my little house, but I have made one more room, and we find it quite wide enough to contain us." "Oh, sir, then you came here for a trip! How delicious! Oh, Millicent, do you like Germany? Oh, you will see the Chevalier." "Well, Charles, it is only fair, for we have heard so much about him. Nothing in your letters but the Chevalier, and the Chevalier, and we do not even know his name from _you_. Clo says whenever your letters come, 'I wish he would tell us how he sleeps;' and my mother hopes that Seraphael is 'a good man,' as you are so fond of him." "But, Charles," added Davy, with his old earnestness and with a sparkling eye, "how, then, shall we see him, and where? For I would walk barefoot through Germany for that end." "Without any trouble, Mr. Davy, because to-morrow will be our concert, and he is coming to conduct his new overture,--only his new overture, mind! He will sit in the hall most part, and you will see him perfectly." "My dear, dear Charles," observed Millicent, "it is something strange to hear you say 'our concert.' How entirely you have fulfilled your destiny! And shall we hear you play?" "Yes," I replied, with mock modesty, but in such a state of glowing pride that it was quite as much as I could do to answer with becoming indifference. "Yes, I am to play a first violin." "A first violin, Charles?" said Davy, evidently surprised. "What! already? Oh, I did not predict wrong! What if I had kept you in my class? But, Millicent, we must not stay," he added, turning to her; "we only came to carry Charles away, as we are here on forbidden ground." "Not at all, Mr. Davy," I cried, eager to do the honors of Cecilia. "A great many of them go out to see their friends and have their friends come to see them; but I had no one until now, you see." "Yes, but, Charles," replied my sister, "we understand that no visitors are permitted entrance the day before a concert, and thought it a wise regulation too. They made an exception in our case because we came so far, and also because we came to take you away." "Where are we going, then? Going away?" "Only to the inn, where we have a bed for you engaged, that we may see something of you out of study. You must go with us now, for we have obtained permission." "Whatever shall I do?" "What now, Charles?" "Well, Mr. Davy, you may laugh, but we are to decorate our concert-hall, and they are waiting for me, I daresay. All those flowers, too, that you made me throw down, were for garlands. If I might only go and tell them how it is--" "See, Charles, there is some one wanting to speak to _you_. I heard a knock." I turned, and let in Franz. He could not help glancing at the pink lining, while he breathlessly whispered, "Do not mind us. Fräulein Cerinthia is gone to fetch her brother; and while they are at supper, we shall dress the hall under her directions, and she says you are to go with your friends." "That is my sister, Delemann," said I; and then I introduced them, quite forgetting that Millicent had changed her name, which amused them immensely after Franz was gone, having gathered up my roses and taken them off. Then Davy begged me to come directly, and I hurried to my room and took him with me. How vain I felt to show him my press, my screen, my portmanteau full of books, and my private bed, my violin, asleep in its case; and last, not least, his china cup and saucer, in the little brown box! While I was combing my hair, he stood and watched me with delight in his charming countenance, not a cloud upon it. "Oh, dear Mr. Davy, how exquisite it is that you should be my brother! I shall never be able to call you anything but Mr. Davy, though." "You shall call me whatever you please. I shall always like it." "And, sir, please to tell me, am I tidy,--fit to walk with a bride and bridegroom?" "Not half smart enough! Your sister has brought your part of the wedding ceremony in her only box,--and, let me tell you, Charles, you are highly favored; for the muslin dresses and laces will suffer in consequence!" "I don't believe that, sir," said I, laughing. "And why not, sir?" "Because, sir, my sisters would none of them travel about with muslin dresses if they had only one box." "They would travel about, as Mrs. Davy does, in black silk," answered Davy, pursuing me as I ran; but I escaped him, and rejoined Millicent first, who was waiting for us with all possible patience. There are a few times of our life--not the glorious eternal days, that stand alone, but, thank God! many hours which are nothing for us but pure and passive enjoyment, in which we exist. How exquisitely happy was I on this evening, for example! The prospect of the morrow so intensely bright, the present of such tender sweetness! How divine is Love in all its modifications! How inseparable is it from repose, from rapture! As we went along the village and passed the shops, in the freshening sunbeams, low-shining from the bare blue heaven, I fetched a present for my brother and sister in the shape of two concert-tickets, which, contrary to Tedescan custom, were issued for the advantage of any interested strangers. I put them into Millicent's hand, saying, "You know I gave you no wedding-gift." "Yes, Charles, you gave me this," and she looked up at Davy; "I should never have known him but for you." "Which means, my love, that I am also to thank Charles for introducing me to you;" and Davy took off his hat with mock reverence. "Oh! that won't do, Mr. Davy; for you said you had seen a beautiful Jewess at our window before you knew who lived in our house; and of course you would have got in there somehow, at last." "_Never!_" said Davy, in a manner that convinced me he never would. "Then I _am_ very glad," said I,--"glad that I ran away one morning. The Chevalier says that nothing happens accidentally to such as I." They laughed till they saw how serious I had grown again, and then smiled at each other. Arrived at our inn, we rested. Will it be believed that Davy had brought some of his own tea, besides several other small comforts? This much amused me. After our tea--a real home tea, which quite choked my unaccustomed faculties at first--Davy put his wife on the sofa, and with a bright authority there was no resisting, bade her be still while he fetched my part of the ceremony. This consisted of half a dozen pairs of beautiful white kid gloves,--treasures these indeed to a fiddler!--a white silk waistcoat, a small case of Spanish chocolate, and a large cake, iced and almonded. "That was made at home, Charles," said Millicent, "and is exactly like that we sent to our friends." In those days it was not old fashion, gentle reader, to send out bride-cake to one's friends. I need only mention a white favor or two, and a frosted silver flower, because I reserved the same for Josephine Cerinthia. CHAPTER IV. In my box-bed at that flower-baptized inn, I certainly did not sleep so well as in my own nest at school. Here it was in a box, as ever in that country of creation; and in the middle of the night I sat up to wonder whether my sister and new-found brother thought the _locale_ as stifling as I did. I was up before the sun, and dressed together with his arrangement of his beams. We had--in spite of the difficulty to get served in rational fashion--a right merry breakfast, thanks to the company and the tea. I had not tasted such, as it appeared to me, since my infancy. How Davy did rail against the toilet short-comings,--the meagre, shallow depths of his basin! And he was not happy until I took him to my portion (as we called our sleeping-places at Cecilia), and let him do as he pleased with my own water-magazine. This was an artificial lake of red ware, which was properly a baking-dish, and which I had purchased under that name for my private need. If it had not been for the little river which flowed not half a mile from our school, and which our Cecilians haunted as a bath through summer, I could not answer, in my memory's conscience, for their morality if, as I of course believe, cleanliness be next to godliness. After breakfast, and after I had taken Davy back, I returned myself alone to seek Maria and escort her. Davy and Millicent seemed so utterly indisposed to stir out until it was necessary, and so unfit for any society but each other's, that I did not hesitate to abscond. I left them together,--Davy lazier than I had ever seen him, and _she_ more like brilliant evening than unexcited morning. What am I writing? Is morning ever unexcited to the enthusiast? I think his only repose is in the magical supervention of the mystery night brings to his heart. I was sorry to find that neither Maria, Josephine, nor Joseph was at home. The way was clear upstairs, but all the doors were locked, as usual, when they were out; and I went on to Cecilia in a pet. It was nine when I arrived,--quite restored. Our concert was to be at ten. What different hours are kept in Germany; what different hearts cull the honey of the hours! Our dining-hall was full; there was a great din. Our garden-house was swept and garnished as I remembered it the day I came with one, but not quite so enticing in its provisions,--that is to say, there were no strawberries, which had been so interesting to me on the first occasion. I retreated to the library. No one was there. I might not go among the girls, whose establishment was apart, but I knew I should meet them before we had to take our places; and off I scampered to Franz's observatory. Will it be believed?--he was still at work, those brass lips embracing his, already dressed, his white gloves lying on his monster's cradle. "My dear Delemann," I exclaimed, "for pity's sake, put that down now!" "My dear Carl, how shall I feel when that moment comes?" pointing to the up-beat of bar 109, where he first came in upon the field of the score. "I don't think you will feel different if you practise half an hour more, any how." "Yes, I shall; I want rubbing up. Besides, I have been here since six." "Oh, Delemann, you are a good boy! But I don't feel nervous at all." "You, Carl! No, I should think not. You will have no more responsibility than the hand of a watch, with that Anastase for the spring,--works, too, that never want winding up, and that were bought ready made by our patroness." "Dear Franz, do come; I am dying to see the hall." "I don't think it is done. Fräulein Cerinthia went out to get some white roses for a purpose she held secret. The boughs are all up, though." "My dear Franz, you are very matter of fact." "No, I am not, Carl; the tears ran down my face at rehearsal." "That was because I made a mouth at you, which you wanted to laugh at, and dared not." "Well," said Franz, mock mournfully, "I can do nothing with you here, so come." He rolled up his monster and took up his gloves. I had a pair of Millicent's in my pocket. "We must not forget to call at the garden-house for a rose to put here," said Franz, running his slight forefinger into his button-hole. We accordingly went in there. A good many had preceded us, and rifled the baskets of roses, pinks, and jasmine, that stood about. While we were turning over those still left, up came somebody, and whispered that Anastase was bringing in the Cerinthias. I eagerly gazed, endeavoring, with my might, to look innocent of so gazing. But I only beheld, between the pillars, the clear brow and waving robes of my younger master as he bent so lowly before a maiden raimented in white, and only as he left her; for he entered not within the alcove. As he retreated, Maria advanced. She was dressed in white, as I have said; but so dazzling was her beauty that all eyes were bent upon her. All the chorus-singers were in white; but who looked the least like her? With the deep azure of our order folded around her breast, and on that breast a single full white rose, with that dark hair bound from the arch of her delicate forehead, she approached and presented us each also with a single rose, exquisite as her own, from the very little basket I had carried to her that Sunday, now quite filled with the few flowers it contained. "They are so fresh," said she, "that they will not die the whole morning!" And I thought, as I saw her, that nothing in the whole realm of flowers was so beautiful, or just then so fresh, as herself! A very little while now, and our conductor, Zittermayer, the superior in age of Anastase, but his admirer and sworn ally, came in and ordered the chorus forwards. They having dispersed, he returned for ourselves,--the gentry of the band. As soon as I aspired through the narrow orchestra door, I beheld the same sight in front as from the other end at the day of my initiation into those sceneries, or very much the same,--the morning sun, which gleamed amidst the leafy arches, and in the foreground on many a rosy garland. For over the seats reserved for the Chevalier and his party, the loveliest flowers, relieved with myrtle only, hung in rich festoons; and as a keystone to the curtained entrance below the orchestra, the Cecilia picture--framed in virgin roses by Maria's hand--showed only less fair than she. At once did this flower-work form a blooming barrier between him and the general audience, and illustrate his exclusiveness by a fair, if fading, symbol. The hall had begun to fill; and I was getting rather nervous about my English brother and sister, who could not sit together, however near, when they entered, and found just the seats I could have chosen for them. Millicent, at the side of the chamber, was just clear of the flowery division; for I gesticulated violently at her to take such place. I felt so excited then, seeing them down there,--of all persons those I should have most desired in those very spots,--that I think I should have burst into tears but for a sudden and fresh diversion. While I had been watching my sister and brother, a murmur had begun to roll amidst the gathered throng, and just as the conductor came to the orchestra steps, at the bottom he arrested himself. The first stroke of ten had sounded from our little church, and simultaneously with that stroke the steward, bearing on his wand the blue rosette and bunch of oak-leaves, threw open the curtain of the archway under us and ushered into the appropriated space the party for whose arrival we auspiciously waited. I said Zittermayer arrested himself,--he waited respectfully until they were seated, and then bowed, but did not advance to salute them further. They also bowed, and he mounted the steps. I was enchanted at the decorum which prevailed at that moment; for, as it happened, it was a more satisfactory idea of homage than the most unmitigated applause on the occasion. The perfect stillness also reigned through Cherubini's overture, not one note of which I heard, though I played as well as any somnambule, for I need scarcely say I was looking at that party; and being blessed with a long sight, I saw as well as it was possible to see all that I required to behold. First in the line sat a lady, at once so stately and so young looking, that I could only conjecture she was, as she was, _his_ mother. A woman was she like, in the outlines of her beauty, to the Medicis and Colonnas, those queens of historic poesy; unlike in that beauty's aspect which was beneficent as powerful, though I traced no trait of semblance between her and her super-terrestrial son. She sat like an empress, dressed in black, with a superb eye-glass, one star of diamonds at its rim, in her hand; but still and stately, and unsmiling as she was, she was ever turned slightly towards him, who, placed by her side, almost nestled into the sable satin of her raiment. He was also dressed in black, this day, and held in those exquisite hands a tiny pair of gloves, which he now swung backwards and forwards in time to the movement of our orchestra, and then let fall upon the floor; when that stately mother would stoop and gather them up, and he would receive them with a flashing smile, to drop them again with inadvertence, or perhaps to slide into them his slender fingers. Hardly had I seen and known him before I saw and recognized another close beside him. If _he_ were small and sylphid, seated by his majestic mother, how tiny was that delicate satellite of his, who was nestled as close to his side as he to hers. It was my own, my little Starwood, so happily attired in a dove-colored dress, half frock, half coat, trimmed with silver buttons, and holding a huge nosegay in his morsels of hands. I had scarcely time to notice him after the first flush of my surprise; but it was impossible to help seeing that my pet was as happy as he could well be, and that he was quite at home. Next Starwood was a brilliant little girl with long hair, much less than he, nursing a great doll exquisitely dressed; and again, nearest the doll and the doll's mamma, I perceived a lady and a pair of gentlemen, each of whom, as to size, would have made two Seraphaels. They were all very attentive, apparently, except the Chevalier; and though he was still by fits, I knew he was not attending, from the wandering, wistful gaze, now in the roof, now out at the windows, now downcast, shadowy, and anon flinging its own brightness over my soul, like a sunbeam astray from the heavens of Paradise. When at length the point in the programme, so dearly longed for, was close at hand, he slid beneath the flowery balustrade, and as noiselessly as in our English music-hall, he took the stairs, and leaned against the desk until the moment for taking possession. Then when he entered, still so inadvertent, the applause broke out, gathering, rolling, prolonging itself, and dissolving like thunder in the mountains. I especially enjoyed the fervent shouts of Anastase; his eye as clear as fire, his strict frame relaxed. Almost before it was over, and as if to elude further demonstrations, though he bowed with courteous calmness, Seraphael signed to us to begin. Then, midst the delicious, yet heart-wringing ice tones, shone out those beaming lineaments; the same peculiar and almost painful keenness turned upon the sight the very edge of beauty. Fleeting from cheek to brow, the rosy lightnings, his very heart's flushes, were as the mantling of a sudden glory. But of his restless and radiant eyes I could not bear the stressful brightness, it dimmed my sight; whether dazzled or dissolved, I know not. And yet,--will it be believed?--affectionate, earnest, and devoted as was the demeanor of those about me, no countenance glistened except my own in that atmosphere of bliss. Perhaps I misjudge; but it appears to me that pure Genius is as unrecognizable in human form as was pure Divinity. I encroach upon such a subject no further. To feel, to feel exquisitely, is the lot of very many,--it is the charm that lends a superstitious joy to fear; but to appreciate belongs to the few, to the one or two alone here and there,--the blended passion and understanding that constitute, in its essence, worship. I did not wonder half so much at the strong delight of the audience in the composition. How many there are who _perceive_ art as they perceive beauty,--perceive the fair in Nature, the pure in science,--but receive not what these intimate and symbolize; how much more fail in realizing the Divine ideal, the soul beyond the sight, the ear! Here, besides, there were plenty of persons weary with mediocre impressions, and the effect upon them was as the fresh sea-breeze to the weakling, or the sight of green fields after trackless deserts. I never, never can have enough,--is _my_ feeling when that exalted music overbrims my heart; sensation is trebled; the soul sees double; it is as if, brooding on the waste of harmony, the spirit met its shadow, like the swan, and embraced it as itself. I do not know how the composition went, I was so lost in the author's brightness face to face; but I never knew anything go ill under his direction. The sublimity of the last movement, so sudden yet complete in its conclusion, left the audience in a trance; the spell was not broken for a minute and a half, and then burst out a tremendous call for a repeat. But woe to those fools! thought I. It was already too late; with the mystical modesty of his nature, Seraphael had flown downstairs, forgetting the time-stick, which he held in his hand still, and which he carried with him through the archway. As soon as it was really felt he had departed, a great cry for him was set up,--all in vain; and a deputation from the orchestra was instructed to depart and persuade him to return: such things were done in Germany in those days! Anastase was at the head of this select few, but returned together with them discomfited; no Seraphael being, as they asserted, to be found. Anastase announced this fact, in his rare German, to the impatient audience, not a few of whom were standing upright on the benches, to the end that they might make more clatter with their feet than on the firmer floor. As soon as all heard, there was a great groan, and some stray hisses sounded like the erection of a rattlesnake or two; but upon second thoughts the people seemed to think they should be more likely to find him if they dispersed,--though what they meant to do with him when they came upon him I could not conjecture, so vulgar did any homage appear as an offering to that fragrant soul. My dear Millicent and her spouse waited patiently, though they looked about them with some curiosity, till the crowd grew thin; and then, as the stately party underneath me made a move and disappeared through the same curtain that had closed over Seraphael, I darted downwards past the barrier and climbed the intervening forms to my sister and brother. Great was my satisfaction to stand there and chatter with them; but presently Davy suggested our final departure, and I recollected to have left my fiddle in the orchestra, not even sheltered by its cradle, but where every dust could insult its face. "Stay here," I begged them, "and I will run and put it by; I will not keep you waiting five minutes." "Fly, my dear boy," cried Davy, "and we will wait until you return, however long you stay." I did not _mean_ to stay more than five minutes, nor should I have delayed, but for my next adventure. When I came to my door, which I reached in breathless haste, lo! it was fastened within, or at least would not be pulled open. I was cross, for I was in a hurry, and very curious too; so I set down my violin, to bang and push against the door. I had given it a good kick, almost enough to fracture the panel, when a voice came creeping through that darkness, "Only wait one little moment, and don't knock me down, please!" I knew that voice, and stood stoned with delight to the spot, while the bolt slid softly back in some velvet touch, and the door was opened. "Oh, sir!" I cried, as I saw the Chevalier, looking at that instant more like some darling child caught at its pretty mischief than the commanding soul of myriads, "oh, sir! I beg your pardon. I did not know you were here." "I did not suppose so," he answered, laughing brightly. "I came here because I knew the way, and because I wanted to be out of the way. It is I who ought to beg _thy_ pardon, Carlomein." "Oh, sir! to think of your coming into my room,--I shall always like to think you came. But if I had only known you were here, I would not have interrupted you." "And I, had I known thou wouldst come, should not have bolted thy door. But I was afraid of Anastase, Carlomein." "Afraid of Anastase, sir,--of _Anastase_?" I could find no other words. "Yes, I am of Anastase even a little afraid." "Oh, sir! don't you like him?" I exclaimed; for I remembered Maria's secret. "My child," said the Chevalier, "he is as near an angel as artist can be,--a ministering spirit; but yet I tell thee, I fear before him. He is so still, severe, and perfect." "Perfect! perfect before _you_!" I could have cried; but a restraining spell was on my soul,--a spell I could not resist nor appreciate, but in whose after revelation the reason shone clear of that strange, unwonted expression in Seraphael's words. Thus, instead, I went on, "Sir, I understand why you came here, that they might not persecute you,--and I don't wonder, for they are dreadfully noisy; but, sir, they did not mean to be rude." "It is I who have been rude, if it were such a thing at all; but it is not. And now let me ask after what I have not forgotten,--thy health." "Sir, I am very well, I thank you. And you, sir?" "I never was so well, thank God! And yet, Carlomein, thy cheek is thinner." "Oh! that is only because I grow so tall. My sister, who is just come from England--" Here I suddenly arrested myself, for my unaddress stared me in the face. He just laid his little hand on my hair, and smiled inquiringly, "Oh! tell me about thy sister." "Sir, she said I looked so very well." "That's good. But about her,--is she young and pretty?" "Sir, she is a very darling sister to me, but not pretty at all,--only very interesting; and she is very young to be married." "She is married, then?" He smiled still more inquiringly. "Yes, sir, she is married to Mr. Davy, my musical godfather." "I remember; and this Mr. Davy, is he here too?" He left off speaking, and sat upon the side of my bed, tucking up one foot like a little boy. "Yes, sir." "And now, I shall ask thee a favor." "What is that, sir?" "That thou wilt let me see her and speak to her; I want to tell her what a brother she has. Not only so, to invite her--do not be shy, Carlomein--to my birthday feast." "Oh, sir!" I exclaimed; and regardless of his presence, I threw myself into the very length of my bed and covered my face. "Now, if _thou_ wilt come to my feast, is another question. I have not reached that yet." "But please to reach it, sir!" I cried, rendered doubly audacious by joy. "But thou wilt have some trouble in coming,--shalt thou be afraid? Not only to dance and eat sugar-plums." "It is all the better, sir, if I have something to do; I am never so well as then." "But thy sister must come to see thee. She must not meddle, nor the godpapa either." "Oh! sir, Mr. Davy could not meddle, and he would rather stay with Millicent,--but he does sing so beautifully." He made no answer, but with wayward grace he started up. "I think they are all gone. Cannot we now go? I am afraid of losing my _queen_." "Sir, who is she?" "Cannot it be imagined by thee?" "Well, sir, I only know of _one_." "Thou art right. A queen is only _one_, just like any other lady. Come, say thou the name; it is a virgin name, and stills the heart like solitude." "I don't think that does still." "Ah! thou hast found that too!" "Sir, you said you wished to go." He opened the door, the lock of which he had played with as he stood, and I ran out first. The pavilion was crowded. "Oh, dear!" said Seraphael, a little piqued, "it's exceedingly hot. Canst thou contrive to find thy friends in all this fuss? I cannot find _mine_." "Sir, my brother and sister were to wait for me in the concert-hall; they cannot come here, you know, sir. If I knew your friends, I think I could find them, even in this crowd." "No," answered the Chevalier, decisively, as he cast his brilliant eyes once round the room, "I know they are not here. I do not _feel_ them. Carlomein, I am assured they are in the garden. For one thing, they could not breathe here." "Let us go to them to the garden." He made way instantly, gliding through the assembly, so that they scarcely turned a head. We were soon on the grass,--so fresh after the autumn rains. Crossing that green, we entered the lime-walk. The first person I saw was Anastase. He was walking lonely, and looking down, as he rarely appeared. So abstracted, indeed, was he that we might have walked over him if Seraphael had not forced me by a touch to pause, and waited until he should approach to our hand. "See," said the Chevalier gleefully, "how solemn he is! No strange thing, Carlomein, that I should be afraid of him. I wonder what he is thinking of! He has quite a countenance for a picture." But Anastase had reached us before I had time to say, as I intended, "I know of what he is thinking." He arrested himself suddenly, with a grace that charmed from his cool demeanor, and swept off his cap involuntarily. Holding it in his hand, and raising his serious gaze, he seemed waiting for the voice of the Chevalier. But, to my surprise, he had to wait several moments, during which they both regarded each other. At last Seraphael fairly laughed. "Do you know, I had forgotten what I had to say, in contemplating you? It is what I call a musical phiz, yours." Anastase smiled slightly, and then shut up his lips; but a sort of flush tinged his cheeks, I thought. "Perhaps, Auchester, you can remind the Chevalier Seraphael." I was so irritated at this observation that I kicked the gravel and dust, but did not trust myself to speak. "Oh!" exclaimed Seraphael, quickly, "it was to request of you a favor,--a favor I should not dare to ask you unless I had heard what I heard to-day, and seen what I saw." It might have been my fancy, but it struck me that the tones were singularly at variance with the words here. A suppressed disdain breathed underneath his accent. "Sir," returned Anastase, with scarcely more warmth, "it is impossible but that I shall be ready to grant any favor in my power. I rejoice to learn that such a thing is so. I shall be much indebted if you can explain it to me at once, as I have to carry a message from Spoda to the Fräulein Cerinthia." Spoda was Maria's master for the voice. "Let us turn back, then," exclaimed Seraphael, adroitly. "I will walk with you wherever you may be going, and tell you on the way." Seraphael's "I will" was irresistible, even to Anastase. I suddenly remembered my relations, who would imagine I had gone to a star on speculation. It was too bad of me to have left them all that time. My impression that Seraphael had to treat at some length with my master, induced me to say, "Sir, I have left my brother and sister ever so long; I must run to them, I think." "Run, then," said the Chevalier; "thou certainly shouldst, and tell them what detained thee. But return to me, and bring them with thee." I conceived this could not be done, and said so. "I will come to thee, then, in perhaps half an hour. But if thou canst not wait so long, go home with thy dear friends, and I will write thee a letter." I would have given something for a letter, it is true; but I secretly resolved to wait all day rather than not see him instead, and rather than _they_ should not see him. I ran off at full speed; and it was not until I reached the sunny lawn beyond the leafy shade that I looked back. They were both in the distance, and beneath the flickering limes showed bright and dark as sunlight crossed the shadow. I watched them to the end of the avenue, and then raced on. It was well I did so, or I should have missed Davy and my sister, who, astonished at my prolonged absence, were just about to institute a search. "Oh, Millicent!" I cried, as I breathlessly attained a seat in front of both their faces, "I am so sorry, but I was obliged to go with the Chevalier." And then I related how I had found him in my room. They were much edified; and then I got into one of my agonies to know what they both thought about him. Davy, with his bright smile at noonday, said in reply to my impassioned queries, "He certainly is, Charles, the very handsomest person I have ever seen." "Mr. Davy! Handsome! I am quite sure you are laughing, or you would never call him handsome." "Well, I have just given offence to my wife in the same way. It is very well for me that Millicent does not especially care for what is handsome." "But she likes beauty, Mr. Davy; she likes whatever I like; and I know just exactly how she feels when she looks at your eyes. What very beautiful eyes yours are, Mr. Davy! Don't you think so, Millicent?" Davy laughed so very loud that the echoes called back to him again, and Millicent said,-- "He knows what I think, Charles." "But you never told me so much, did you, my love?" "I like to hear you say 'my love' to Millicent, Mr. Davy." "And I like to say it, Charles." "And she likes to hear it. Now, Mr. Davy, about 'handsome.' You should not call him so,--why do you? You did not at the festival." "Well, Charles, when I saw this wonderful being at the festival, there was a melancholy in his expression which was, though touching, almost painful; and I do not see it any longer, but, on the contrary, an exquisite sprightliness instead. He was also thinner then, and paler,--no one can wish to see him so pale; but his colour now looks like the brightest health. He certainly _is_ handsome, Charles." "Oh, Mr. Davy, I am sorry you think so! But he does look well. I know what you mean, and I should think that he must be very happy. But besides that, Mr. Davy, you cannot tell how often his face changes. I have seen it change and change till I wondered what was coming next. I suppose, Mr. Davy, it is his forehead you call handsome?" "It is the brow of genius, and as such requires no crown. Otherwise, I should say his air is quite royal. Does he teach here, Charles? Surely not." "No, Mr. Davy, but he appoints our professors. I suppose you know he chose my master, Anastase, though he is so young, to be at the head of all the violins?" "No, Charles, it is not easy to find out what is done here, without the walls." "No, Mr. Davy, nor within them either. I don't know much about the Chevalier's private life, but I know he is very rich, and has no Christian name. He has done an immense deal for Cecilia. No one knows exactly how much, for he won't let it be told; but it is because he is so rich, I suppose, that he does not give lessons. But he is to superintend our grand examination next year." "You told us so in your last letter, Charles," observed Millicent; and then I was entreated to relate the whole story of my first introduction to Cecilia, and of the Volkslied, to which I had only alluded,--for indeed it was not a thing to write about, though of it I have sadly written! I was in the heart of my narration, in the middle of the benches, and, no doubt, making a great noise, when Davy, who was in front, where he could see the door, motioned me to silence; I very well knew why, and obeyed him with the best possible grace. As soon as I decently could, I turned and ran to meet the Chevalier, who was advancing almost timidly, holding little Starwood in his hand. The instant Starwood saw me coming, he left his hold and flew into my arms; in spite of my whispered remonstrances, he _would_ cling to my neck so fast that I had to present the Chevalier while his arms were entwined about me. But no circumstance could interfere with even the slightest effect _he_ was destined to produce. Standing before Davy, with his little hands folded and his whole face grave, though his eyes sparkled, he said, "Will you come to my birthday-feast, kind friends? For we cannot be strangers with this Carl between us. My birthday is next week, and as I am growing a man, I wish to make the most of it." "How old, sir, shall you be on your birthday?" I asked, I fear rather impertinently, but because I could not help it. "Ten, Carlomein." "Oh, sir!" we all laughed, Millicent most of all. He looked at her. "You are a bride, madam, and can readily understand my feelings when I say it is rather discomposing to step into a new state. Having been a child so long, I feel it soon becoming a man; but in your case the trial is even more obvious." Millicent now blushed with all her might, as well as laughed, Davy, to relieve her embarrassment taking up the parable. "And when, sir, and where, will it be our happiness to attend you?" "At the Glückhaus, not four miles off. It is a queer place which I bought, because it suited me better than many a new one, for it is very old; but I have dressed it in new clothes. I shall hope to make Charles at home some time or other before we welcome you, that he may make you, too, feel at home." "It would be difficult, sir, to feel otherwise in your society," said Davy, with all his countenance on flame. "I hope we shall find it so together, and that this is only the beginning of our friendship." He held out his hand to Millicent, and then to Davy, with the most perfect adaptation to an English custom considered uncouth in Germany; Millicent looking as excited as if she were doing her part of the nuptial ceremony over again. Meantime, for I knew we must part, I whispered to Starwood,--"So you are happy enough, Star, I should suppose?" "Oh, Charles! too happy. My master was very angry, at first, that the Chevalier carried me away." "He carried you away, then? I thought as much. And so Aronach was angry?" "Only for a little bit, but it didn't matter; for the Chevalier took me away in his carriage, and said to master, 'I'll send you a rainbow when the storm is over.' And oh! Charles, I practise four hours at a time now, and it never tires me in the least. I shall never play like _him_, but I mean to be his shadow." I loved my little friend for this. "Oh, Charles! I am so glad you are coming to his birthday. Oh, Charles! I wish I could tell you everything all in a minute, but I can't." "Never mind about that, for if you are happy, it is all clear to me. Only one thing, Star. Tell me what I have got to do on this birthday." "Charles, it's the silver wedding, don't you know?" "What, is he going to be married?" "Who, Carlomein? Starwood won't tell!" said the Chevalier, turning sharply upon me and bending his eyes till he seemed to peep through the lashes. "He knows all about it, but he won't tell. Wilt thou, my shadow? By the by, there is a better word in English,--'chum;' but we must not talk slang, at least not till we grow up. As for thee, Carlomein, Anastase will enlighten thee, and thou shalt not be blinded in that operation, I promise thee. 'Tis nothing very tremendous." "Charles, I think we detain the Chevalier," observed Davy, ever anxious; and this time I thought so too. "That would be impossible, after my detaining _you_; but I think I must find my mother,--she will certainly think I have taken a walk to the moon. Come, Stern! Or wilt thou leave me in the lurch for that Carl of thine?" "Oh! I beg pardon, sir; please let me come too." And I dearly longed to "come too," when I saw them leave the hall hand in hand. "Now, Charles, we will carry you off and give you some dinner." "I don't want any dinner, Mr. Davy; I must go to Anastase." "I knew he was going to say so!" said Millicent. "But, Charles, duty calls first; and if you don't dine we shall have you ill." "I don't know whether I may go to the inn." "Oh, yes! Lenhart obtained leave of absence at meals for you as long as we are here." "Oh! by the by, Millicent, you said you had only come for one week." "But, Charles, we may never have such another opportunity." "Yes," added Davy, "I would willingly _starve_ a month or two for the sake of this feast." "Bravo, Mr. Davy. But then, Millicent?" "Oh, Millicent! she shall starve along with me." We all laughed, and as we walked out of the courtyard into the bright country, he continued,-- "You know, Charles, I suppose, what is to be done, musically, at this birthday?" "No, Mr. Davy, not in the least; and it is because I did not that I refused my dinner. After dinner, though, I shall go and call on Maria Cerinthia, and make her tell me." "A beautiful name, Charles,--is she a favorite of yours?" "She is the most wonderful person I ever saw or dreamt of, Millicent; she does treat me very kindly, but she is above all of us except the Chevalier." "Is she such a celebrated singer, then?" "She is only fifteen; but then she seems older than you are, she is so lofty, and yet so full of lightness." "A very good description of the Chevalier himself, Charles." "Yes, Mr. Davy, and the Chevalier, too, treats her in a very high manner,--I mean as if he held her to be very high." "Is she at the school too?" "She only attends for her lessons; she lives in the town with her brother, who teaches her himself and her little sister. They are orphans, and so fond of one another." I was just about to say, "She is to marry Anastase;" but as I had not received general permission to open out upon the subject, I forbore. We dined at our little inn, and then, after depositing Davy by the side of Millicent, who was reposing,--for he tended her like some choice cutting from the Garden of Eden,--I set out on my special errand. On mounting the stairs to Maria's room, I took the precaution to listen; there were no voices to be heard just then, and I knocked, was admitted, and entered. In the bright chamber I found my dread young master certainly in the very best company; for Josephine was half lost in leaning out of the window, and side by side sat Anastase and Maria. I did not expect to see him in the least, and felt inclined to effect a retreat, when she, without turning her eyes, which were shining full upon his face, stretched out both her lovely hands to me: and Anastase even said. "Do not go, Auchester, for we had, perhaps, better consult together." "Yes, oh, yes, there is room here, Carlino; sit by me." But having spoken thus, she opened not her lips again, and seemed to wait upon his silence. I took the seat beside her,--she was between us; and I felt as one feels when one stands in a flower garden in the dusk of night, for her spiritual presence as fragrance spelled me, and the mystery of her passion made its outward form as darkness. Her white dress was still folded round me, and her hair was still unruffled; but she was leaning back, and I perceived, for the first time, that his arm was round her. The slender fingers of his listless hand rested upon the shoulder near me, and they seemed far too much at ease to trifle even with the glorious hair, silk-drooping its braids within his reach. _He_ leaned forwards, and looked from one to the other of us, his blue eyes all tearless and unperturbed; but there was a stirring blush upon his cheeks, especially the one at her side, and so deep it burned that I could but fancy her lips had lately left their seal upon it,--a rose-leaf kiss. Such a whirl of excitement this fancy raised around me (I hope I was not preternatural either) that I could scarcely attend to what was going on. "The Chevalier Seraphael," said Anastase, in his stilly voice, "has been writing a two-act piece to perform at his birth-night feast,[4] which is in honor, not so much of his own nativity, as of his parents arriving just that day at the twenty-fifth anniversary of their nuptials. He was born in the fifth year of their marriage, and upon their marriage-day. We have not too much time to work (but a week), as I made bold to tell him; but it appears this little work suggested itself to him suddenly,--in his sleep, as he says. It is a fairy libretto, and I should imagine of first-rate attraction. This is the score; and as it is only in manuscript, I need not say all our care is required to preserve it just as it now is. Your part, Auchester, will be sufficiently obvious when you look it over with the Fräulein Cerinthia, as she is good enough to permit you to do so; but you had better not look at it at all until that time." "But, sir, she can't undertake to perfect me in the fiddle part, can she?" "She could, I have no doubt, were it necessary," said Anastase, not satirically, but seriously; "but it just happens you are not to play." "Not to play! Then what on earth am I to do? Sing?" "Just so,--sing." "Oh, how exquisite! but I have not sung for ever so long. In a chorus, I suppose, sir?" "By no means. You see, Auchester, _I_ don't know your vocal powers, and may not do you justice; but the Chevalier is pleased to prefer them to all others for this special part." "But I never sang to him." "He has a prepossession, I suppose. At all events, it will be rather a ticklish position for you, as you are to exhibit yourself and your voice in counterpart to the person who takes the precedence of all others in songful and personal gifts." "Sir,"--I was astonished, for his still voice thrilled with the slightest tremble, and I knew he meant Maria,--"I am not fit to sing with her, or to stand by her, I know; but I think perhaps I could manage better than most other people, for most persons would be thinking of their own voices, and how to set them off against _hers_; now I shall only think how to keep my voice down, so that hers may sound above it, and everybody may listen to it, rather than to mine." Maria looked continually in her lap, but her lips moved. "Will you not love him, Florimond?" she whispered, and something more; but I only heard this. "I could well, Maria, if I had any love left to bestow; but you know how it is. I am not surprised at Charles's worship." It was the first time he had called me Charles, and I liked it very well,--him better than ever. "I suppose, sir, I _may_ have a look at the score, though?" "No, you may not," said Maria, "for I don't mean we should use this copy. I shall write it all out first." "But that will be useless," answered Anastase; "he made that copy for us." "I beg your pardon; I took care to ask him, and he has only written out the parts for the instruments. He thinks nothing of throwing about his writing; but it shall be preserved, for all that." "And how do you mean to achieve this copy?" demanded Anastase. "When will it be written?" "It will be ready to-morrow morning." "Fräulein Cerinthia!" I cried, aghast, "you are not going to sit up all night?" "No, she is not," returned Anastase, coolly; and he left the sofa and walked to the table in the window where it lay,--a green-bound oblong volume of no slight thickness. "I take this home with me, Maria; and you will not see it until to-morrow at recreation time, when I will arrange for Auchester to join you, and you shall do what you can together." "Thanks, sir! but surely you won't sit up all night?" "No, I shall not, nor will a copy be made. In the first place, it will not be proper to make a copy. Leave has not been given, and it cannot be thought of without leave,--did you not know that, Maria? No, I shall not sit up; I am too well off, and far too selfish, too considerate perhaps, besides, to wish to be ill." Maria bore this as if she were thinking of something else,--namely, Florimond's forehead, on which she had fixed her eyes; and truly, as he stood in the full light which so few contours pass into without detriment, it looked like lambent pearl beneath the golden shadow of his calm brown hair. My hand was on the back of the sofa; she caught it suddenly in her own and pressed it, as if stirred to commotion by agony of bliss; and at the same moment, yet looking on him, she said, "I wonder whether the Chevalier had so many fine reasons when he chose somebody to administer the leadership, or whether he did it simply because there was no better to be had?" He smiled, still looking at the book, which he had safely imprisoned between his two arms. "Most likely, in all simplicity. But a leader, even of an orchestra, under _his_ direction is not a fairy queen." "Is Herr Anastase to lead the violins, then? How glorious!" I said to Maria. "I knew you would say so. What then can go wrong?" "And now I know what the Chevalier meant when he said, 'I must go find my queen.' You are to be Titania." "They say so. You shall hear all to-morrow,--I have not thought about it, for when Florimond brought me home, I was thinking of something else." "He brought you home, then?" "And told me on the way. But he had to tell me all over again when we came upstairs." "But about the rehearsals?" "We shall rehearse here, in this very room, and also with the orchestra at a room in the village where the Chevalier will meet us; for he has his parents staying with him, and they are to know nothing that is to happen." "I wish I could begin to study it to-night; I am so dreadfully out of voice since I had my violin,--I have never sung at all, indeed, except on Sundays, and then one does not hear one's self sing at all." "It is of no consequence, for the Chevalier told us your master, Aronach, told him that your voice was like your violin, but that it would not do to tell you so, because you might lose it, and your violin, once gained, you could never lose." "That is true; but how very kind of him to say so! He need not have been afraid, though, for all I am so fond of singing. Perhaps he was afraid of making me vain." Anastase caught me up quickly. "Carl, do not speak nonsense. No musicians are vain; no true artists, ever so young: they could no more be vain than the angels of the Most High!" "Well said, Florimond!" cried Maria, in a moment. "But it strikes me that many a false artist, fallen-angel like, indulges in that propensity; so that it is best to guard against the possibility of being suspected, by announcing, with free tongues, the pride we have in our art." "That is better to be announced by free fingers, or a voice like thine, than by tongues, however free; for even the false prophet can prate of truth." I perceived now the turn they were taking; so I said, "And do miracles in the name of music too, sir, can't they?--like Marc Iskar, who, I know, is not a true artist, for all that." Anastase raised his brows. "True artists avoid personalities: that is the reason why we should use our hands instead of our tongues. Play a false artist down by the interpretation of true music; but never cavil, out of music, about what is false and true." "Florimond, that is worthy to be your creed! You have mastery; we are only children." "And children always chatter,--I remember that; but it is, perhaps, scarcely fair to blame those who own the power of expression for using it, when we feel our own tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth." "So generous, too!" I thought; and the thought fastened on me. I felt more than ever satisfied that all should remain as it was between them. FOOTNOTE: [4] Mendelssohn wrote the "Son and Stranger" in 1829 for the silver wedding of his parents. CHAPTER V.[5] The day had come, the evening,--an early evening; for entertainments are early in Germany, or were so in my German days. The band had preceded us, and we four drove alone,--Maria, shrouded in her mantilla, which she had never abandoned, little Josephine, Anastase, and myself. Lumberingly enough under any other circumstances; on this occasion as if in an aërial car. Dark glitter fell from pine-groves, the sun called out the green fields, the wild flowers looked enchanted; but for quite two hours we met no one, and saw nothing that reminded us of our destination. At length, issuing from a valley haunted by the oldest trees, and opening upon the freest upland, we beheld an ancient house all gabled, pine-darkened also from behind, but with torrents of flowers in front sweeping its windows and trailing heavily upon the stone of the illustrated gateway. A new-made lawn, itself more moss than grass, was also islanded with flowers in a thick mosaic: almost English in taste and keeping was this garden-land. I had expected something of the kind from the allusion of the Chevalier; but it was evident much had been done,--more than any could have done but himself to mask in such loveliness that gray seclusion. The gateway was already studded with bright-hued lamps unlighted, hung among the swinging garlands; and as we entered we were smitten through and through with the festal fragrance. In the entrance-hall I grew bewildered, and only desired to keep as near to Anastase and Maria as possible. Here we were left a few minutes, as it were, alone; and while I was expecting a special retainer to lead us again thence, as in England, the curtain of a somewhat obscure gateway, at the end of the space, was thrust aside, and a little hand beckoned us instantaneously forward. Forward we all flew, and I was the first to sunder the folded damask and stand clear of the mystery. As I passed beneath it, and felt who stood so near me, I was subdued, and not the less when I discovered where I stood. It was in a little theatre, real and sound, but of design rare as if raised within an Oriental dream. We entered at the side of the stage; before us, tier above tier, stretched tiny boxes with a single chair in each, and over each, festooned, a curtain of softest rose-color met another of softest blue. The central chandelier, as yet unlighted, hung like a gigantic dewdrop from a grove of oak-branches, and the workmen were yet nailing long green wreaths from front to front of the nest-like boxes. Seraphael had been directing, and he led us onward to the centre of the house. "How exquisite!"--"How dream-like!"--"How fairy!" broke from one and another; but I was quite in a maze at present, and in mortal fear of forgetting my part. The Chevalier, in complete undress, was pale and restless; still to us all he seemed to cling, passing amidst us confidingly, as a fearful and shy-smitten child. I thought I understood this mood, but was not prepared for its sudden alteration; for he called to some one behind the curtain, and the curtain rose,--rose upon the empty theatre, with the scenery complete for the first act. And then the soul of all that scenery, the light of the fairy life, flashed back into his eyes; elfin-like in his jubilance, he clapped those little hands. Our satisfaction charmed him. But I must not anticipate. Letting the curtain again fall, he preceded us to the back of the scenery; and I will not, because I cannot in conscience, reveal what took place in that seclusion for artists great and small,--sacred itself to art, and upon which no one dwells who is pressing onward to the demonstration, ever so reduced and concentrated, of art in its highest form. At seven o'clock the curtain finally rose. It rose upon that tiny theatre crowded now with clustering faces, upon the chandelier, all glittering, like a sphere of water with a soul of fire, the lingering day-beams shut out and shaded by a leaf-like screen. Out of all precedent the curtain rose, not even on the overture; for as yet not a note had sounded, since the orchestra was tuned, before the theatre filled. It rose upon a hedge of mingled green and silver, densely tangled leafage, and a burst of moon-colorless flowers, veiling every player from view, and hiding every instrument of the silent throng, who, with arm and bow uplifted, awaited the magic summons. But by all the names of magic, how arose that flower-tower in the midst? For raised above the screen of sylvan symbol was a turret of roots, entwisted as one sees in old oaks that interlace their gnarled arms, facing the audience, and also in sight of the orchestra; and this wild nest was clad with silver lilies twice the size of life, whose drooping buds made a coronal of the margin where the turret edged into the air. And in the turret, azure-robed, glitter-winged,--those wings sweeping the folded lilies as with the lustrous shadow of their light,--stood our Ariel, the Ariel of our imaginations, the Ariel of that haunted music, yet unspelled from the silent strings and pipes! We behind, among the rocks,--those gently painted rocks that faded into a heavenly distance,--could only glimpse that delicate form, hovering amidst up-climbing lilies, those silver-shadowy plumes; that glorious face was shining into the light of the theatre itself, and we waited for his voice to reassure us. We need not have feared, even Maria and I. I was quivering and shuddering; but yet she did not sigh, her confidence was too unshaken, albeit in such a trying position, so minutely critical to maintain, did author perhaps never appear. In an instant, as the first soft blaze had broken on the world in front, did our Ariel raise his wand, no longer _like_ the stem of a lily, but a lily-stem itself, all set with silver leaves, and whose crowning blossom sparkled with silver frostwork. He raised it, but not yet again let it sweep,--descending downwards, on the contrary, he clasped it in his roseate lilied fingers; and all amidst the great white buds, that made him shrink to elfin clearness, he began, in a voice that might have been the soul of that charmed orchestra, to recite the little prologue, which may thus be rendered into English: "A while ago, a long bright while, I dwelt In that old Island with my Prospero. He gave, not lent, me Freedom, which I fed Sometimes on spicy airs that heavenward roll From flowers that wing their spirits to the stars, And scented shade that droppeth fruit or balm. But soon a change smote through me, and I fell Weary of stillness in the wide blue day, Weary of breathless beauty, where the rose Of sunset flushes with no fragrant sigh, For that my soul was native with the spheres Where music makes an everlasting morn. All music in that ancient isle was mine That pulsed the air or floated on the calm,-- Old music veiled in the bemoaning breeze, Or whispering kisses to the yearning sea, Where foam upblown sprayed with its liquid stars My plumes for all their dim cerulean grain. From age to age the lonely tones I stored In crystal deeps of unheard memory; Froze them with virgin cold fast to the cups Of wavering lilies; bade the roses bind The orbed harmonies in burning rest; Thrilled with that dread elixir, dreaming song, The veins of violets; made the green gloom Of myrtle-leaves hush the sounds intricate; Charged the deep cedars with all mourning chords. And having wide and far diffused my wealth,-- Safe garnered, spelled, unknown of reasoning men,-- I long to summon it, to disenchant My most melodious treasure breathless hid In bell and blade, in blossom-blush and buds And mystic verdure, the soft shade of rest. Methinks in this wild wood, this home of flowers, My harmonies are clustered; yea, I feel The voiceless silence stir with voiceful awe; I feel the fanning of a thousand airs That will not be repressed, that crave to wake In resurrection of tone infinite From the tranced beauty, her divinest death. Arise, my spirits! wake, my slumbering spells! Dawn on the dreamland of these alien dells!" As the last words died away, pronounced alike with the rest in accents so peculiar, yet so pure, so soft, yet so unshaken,--he swept the stem of lilies around his brow. The frosted flower flashed shudderingly against the lamplight, and with its motion without a pause opened the overture, as by those words themselves invoked and magically won from the abyss of sylvan silence. Three long, longing sighs from the unseen wind instruments, in withering notes, prepared the brain for the rush of fairy melody that was as the subtlest essences of thought and fragrance enfranchised. The elfin progression, _prestissimo_, of the subject, was scarcely realized as the full suggestion dawned of the leafy shivering it portrayed. The violins, their splendors concentrated like the rainbows of the dewdrops, seemed but the veiling voices for that ideal strain to filter through; and yet, when the horns spoke out, a blaze of golden notes, one felt the deeper glory of the strings to be more than ever quenchless as they returned to that ever-pulsing flow. Accumulating in orchestral richness, as if flower after flower of music were unsheathing to the sun, no words, no expression self-agonized to caricature, can describe that fairy overture. I am only reverting to the feeling, the passion it suggested; not to its existent art and actual interpretation. Its dissolution not immediate, but at its fullest stream subsiding, ebbing, seemed, instead of breaking up and scattering the ideal impression received, to retain it and expand it in itself through another transition of ecstasy into a musical state beyond. During the ethereal modulations, by a sudden illumination of the stage, the scenery behind uncurtained all along, started into light. Still beneath the leafy cloud, by mystic management, the hidden band reposed; but before the audience a sylvan dream had spread. The time was sunset, and upon those hills I spoke of it seemed to blush and burn, still leaving the foreground distinct in a sort of pearly shadow. That foreground was masked in verdure, itself precipitous with descending sides clothed thick with shrubs that lifted their red bells clear to the crimson beams behind, and shelving into a bed of enormous leaves of black-green growth such as one sometimes comes upon in the very core of the forest. Beneath those leaves we nestled, Maria and I. I can only speak of what I felt and others saw; not of that which any of us heard. For simultaneously with the blissful modulation into the keynote of the primeval strain, we began our part side by side unseen. It was a duet for Titania and Oberon, the alto being mine, the mezzo-soprano hers; and it was to be treated with the most distant softness. The excitement had overpassed its crisis with me, and no calm could have been more trance-like than that of both our voices, so far fulfilling his aspiration, which conceived for that effect all the passionless serenity of a nature devoid of pain,--the prerogative of a fairy life alone. "Ariel, we hear thee! Slumbering, dreaming, near thee, Bursting from control As from death the soul, From the bud the flower, From the will the power; Risen, by the spell Thou alone canst quell, Hear we, Ariel, Ariel, we feel thee! Music, to reveal thee, Drowns, as dawn the night, Us in thy delight. We, immortal, own Thee supreme alone. Strongest, in the spell Thou canst raise or quell, Feel we, Ariel!" And Maria shook the leaves above her spreading, and waving aside the broad-green fans, stood out to the audience as a freshly blossomed idea from the shadows of a poet's dream. For here had music and poetry met together, here even as righteousness and peace had embraced, heaven-sent and spiritual; nor was there aught of earth in that fancy hour. I was nearest her, and supported her with my arm; her floating scarf, transparent, spangled, fell upon my own rose-hued mantle, which blushed through its lucid mist. Her hair, trembling with water-like gems, clothed her to the very knees; her cheek was white as her streaming robe, but her eye was as a midnight moon, bright yet lambent; and while she sang she looked at Anastase, as he stood a little above the others in the band, and appeared to have eyes for his violin alone. The next movement was a fairy march _pianissimo_,--a rustling, gathering accompaniment that muffled a measure delicate as precise: it was as for the marshalling of troops of fairies, who by the shifting of the scenery appeared clustering to the stems of the red foxgloves that bent not beneath that fragile weight. And as the march waned ravishingly, another verse arose for the duet we sang,-- "Ariel, behold us! In thy strains enfold us, Minding but that we Ministrant may be. On thy freak or sport Waits our fairy court: Mortals cannot tell How to cross thy spell, Nor we, Ariel!" And Ariel lifted the lily wand, and silence awaited his reply. Still, while he spoke in that recitative so singularly contrasting with the voice of any song, might be heard weird snatches from the veiled orchestra, as if music fainted from delight of him,--strange sounds, indeed, now sigh, now sob, that broke against his unfaltering accents, yet disturbed them not. "Friends, royal darlings of mine ancient age, Welcome, right welcome, in the realm of sound To majesty and honor! Sooth to say Long time I languished for your presences That nothing save our Music seeks and finds; Though Poesy seeks to find and has not met, As we, through might of Music, face to face. Your potence is my boon; I bid it work With mine own spells, in soul-like, eager flame To flash about my spirit and make day, Till, as in times of old, we shine as one. Far in those undulating vales apart A castle lifts its glittering ghostly hue, In whose calm walls, that years spare tenderly, Dwelleth the rival soul of Faërie And Music,--one whose very name is spell Immutable,--for that fixed name is Love. And Love holds yonder his best festal rite This evening, when the moontime draweth nigh. Twain souls love there, and meet; but not as cleft By late long parting--they have met and loved Years upon years, since youth; none ever loved So long as they unparted, unappalled, Save my Titania and her Oberon! For twenty-five their one-like summers count Since the dim rapture of the bridal dream. Such among mortals jubilant they call The Silver Wedding,--rare and purer crown Than the wreathed myrtle of the marriage morn. All that is rare and pure is of our own; Our elements mix gladly into joy: But chiefly Love is our own atmosphere, And chiefly those who love our pensioners Remain,--for where unsullied Love remains, Doth Faërie consecrate its festal strains." The curtain fell on the first act as Ariel finished speaking. Again rising, the scene indeed had changed. The gray castle immediately fronted the audience, its buttresses glistening in the perfect moonlight, the full languid orb itself divided by the dark edge of a tower. The many windows shone ruby with the gleam inside that seemed ready to pour through the stonework; and on the ground-floor especially, the radiance was as if sun-lamps blazed within. And midst the blaze, scarcely softened by the outer silver shine, rose the exciting, exhilarating burden of an exquisite dance-measure, brilliant, almost delirious; albeit distance-clouded, as it issued from another band behind the stage. The long, straight alleys of moon-bathed lindens to which the waltz-whirlwind floated, parted on either hand and left a smooth expanse of lawn, now white, heaving like a moon-kissed sea; and as soon as the measure had passed into its glad refrain, two little Loves struck from the lime avenues to the lawn, directly before the ball-room. I call them Loves; but they were anything but Cupids, for they were mystical little creatures enough, and in the prevailing moonlight showed like bright birds of blushing plumage as they each carried a roseate torch of tinted flame that made their small bodies look much like flame themselves. They were no others than Josephine and my own Starwood; but it would have been impossible to recognize them unprepared. As they stood they paused an instant, and then flung the torches high into the air against the side of the castle; and as the rose-flame kissed the moonbeams upon the walls, it was extinguished, but the whole building burst into an illumination entirely of silver lamps,--calm, not coruscant; translucent, streaming; itself like concentrated moonshine, or the light of the very lilies. And with the light that drank up into itself the rose-radiance, our Ariel with the silvered hedge, the lilies, the shine, the shimmer, swelled upon the vision in softest swiftness; and Ariel, leaning upon his nest, seemed listening to the dance symphonies afar. Soon a great shout arose,--no elfin call, but a cry of wonder-stricken earthlings. And then the hall front opened,--a massy portal that rolled back; and out of the ball-room, amidst the diminishing dance-song, poured the dancers upon the lawn in ranks, their fluttering airy dresses passing into the silver light like clouds. And as they streamed forth, there broke a delicate peal of laughter in response to the wondering shout, accompanied by the top-notes of the violins, vividly _piano_; then Ariel arose, and himself addressed the multitude. Sharp, sweet notes in unison, intermitted this time with his words, but ceased when he turned to his fairy troop and incited them to do homage to the name of love. Nor do I even essay to describe our feats subsequently, which might in their relation tend to deteriorate from the conviction that the illustrated music was all in all, not their companion, but their element and creator. Except that in the last scene, after exhibiting every kind of charm that can co-exist with scenic transition, the portraits of the father and mother in whose honor the fairydom had united, appeared framed in an archway of lilies with their leaves of silver, painted with such skill that the imagery almost issued from the canvas; and while Titania and Oberon supported the lustrous framework on either hand,--themselves all shivering with the silver radiance,--on either hand, to form a vista from which the gazers caught the picture, rose trees of giant harebells, all silver,--white as if veined with moonshine; and the attendant fairies, springing winged from their roots, shook them until the tremulous silver shudder was, as it were, itself a sound,--for as they quivered, or seemed to quiver, did the final chorus in praise of wedded love rise chime upon chime from the fairy voices and the rapt Elysian orchestra. "All that's bright must fade." This passionate proverb is trite and travestied enough, but neither in its interpretation of necessity irrelevant or grotesque. I do not envy those who would strangle melancholy as it is born into the soul; and again to quote, though from a source far higher and less investigated, "There are woes ill bartered for the garishness of joy." Such troubles we may not christen in the name of sorrow, for sorrow concerns our personality; and in these we agonize for others, not a thought of self intrudes,--we only feel and know that we can do nothing, and are silent. At this distance of time, with the mists of boyish inexperience upon my memory of myself, I can only advert to the issues of that evening as they appeared. As they are, they can only be read where all things tell, where nothing that has happened shall be in vain, where mystery is eternal light. How strangely I recall the smothered sound, the long-repressed shout of rapture, that soared and pierced through the fallen and folded curtain,--the eminent oblivion of everything but him for whom it was uttered, or rather kept back. For the music bewitched them still, and they could no more realize their position in front, even among the garlanded tiers, than we behind, stumbling into regions of lampless chaos. I felt I must faint if I could not retreat, and as instinctively I had sought for Maria's hand. I found it, and it saved me; for though I could not hear her speak, I knew she was leading me away. I had closed my eyes, and when I opened them we were together again in the little dressing-room that had been devoted to us alone, and in which we had robed and waited. "Oh, Carlino!" said Maria, "I hope no one is coming, for I feel I must cry." "Do not, pray!" I cried, for her paleness frightened me; "but let me help you to undress. I can do that, though I could not dress you, as the Chevalier seemed to think." For the Chevalier had slyly entered beforehand and had himself invested her with the glittering costume. I was still in a dream of those elfin hands as they had sleeked the plumes and soothed the spangled undulations of the scarf, and I could not bear her to be denuded of them, they had become so natural now. I had stripped off my own roseate mantle and all the rest in a moment, and had my own coat on before she had moved from the chair into which she had flung herself, or I had considered what was to be done next. I was running my fingers through my hair, somewhat distraught in fancy, when some one knocked at the door. I went to it, and beheld, as I expected, our Ariel,--_unarielized_ yet, except that he had doffed his wings. "Is she tired?" he whispered softly; "is she very tired?" And without even looking at me, he passed in and stood before her. "Thank you for all your goodness!" said he, in the tenderest of all his voices, no longer cold, but as if fanned by the same fire that had scorched his delicate cheek to a hectic like the rose fresh open to the sun. "And you, sir, oh you!" Maria exclaimed with enthusiasm, lifting her eyes from all that cloud of hair, as twin sunbeams from the dark of night. "Oh, your music! your music! it is of all that is the most divine, and nothing ever has been or shall be to excel it. It breaks the heart with beauty; it is for the soul that seeks and comprehends it, all in all. And will you not, as you even promised, reform the drama?" "If it yet remains to me, after all is known; that I cannot yet discern. Infant germ of all my art's dread children, inspiration demands thee only!" He checked himself; but as naturally as if no deep, insufferable sentiment had imbued his words, his caressing calm returned. "I did not come for a compliment, I came to help you; also to bring you some pretty ice, made in a mould like a little bird in a little nest. But I will not give it you now, because you are too warm." He was smiling now, as he glanced downwards at the crystal plate he held. "I am not warm," she answered, very indifferently, still with grateful intention, "and I should like some ice better than anything, if you are so kind as to give it me." "Let me feed you, then," was his sweet reply; and she made no resistance. And he fed her, spoonful by spoonful, presenting her with morsels so fairy that I felt he prolonged the opportunity vaguely, and almost wondered why. Before it was over, another knock came,--very impatient for so cool a hand, as it was that of Anastase himself. However, there was no exhilaration of manner on his part; one would not have thought he had just been playing the violin. "They are all inquiring for you, sir," he said, very respectfully, to Seraphael; "your name is calling through and through the theatre." "I daresay," replied the Chevalier lightly, daringly; but he made no show of moving, though Maria had finished the ice-bird and last straw of the nest. Then Anastase approached. "That weight of hair will tire you; let me fasten it up for you, Maria, and then we need detain no one, for Carl, I see, is ready." A change came upon the Chevalier; as if ice had passed upon his cheek, he paled, he turned proud to the very topmost steep of his shadeless brow, he laughed coldly but airily. "Oh, if that is it, and you want to get rid of us, Carl and I will go. Come, Carlomein, for we are both of us in the way; but I will say it is the first time any one ever dared to interfere between the queen and her chosen consort." "It would be impossible," said Anastase, with still politeness, "that you should be in the way,--that is our case, indeed; but Maria, as _Maria_, would certainly not detain you." "Maria, as Maria, would have said you are too good, sir, to notice the least of your servants,--too good to have come and stayed; but," she added, looking at Anastase with her most enchanting sweetness, a smile like love itself, "_he_ will always have it that I am content he should do everything for me." I was astonished, for nothing, except the seasonable excitement, could have drawn forth such demonstration from her before the Chevalier. He was not looking at her, he looked at me vividly; I could not bear his eyes simultaneously with Maria's words, he had so allured my own, though I longed to gaze away. "Come!" he continued, holding his hand to me, "come, Carlomein." I took his hand. He grasped me as if those elfin fingers were charged with lightning. I shook and trembled, even outwardly, but he drew me on with that convulsive pressure never heeding, and holding his head so high that the curls fell backwards from the forehead. We passed to the stage. He led me behind the stage--deserted, dim--to another door behind that, opened by waving drapery, to the garden-land. He led me in the air, round the outside of the temporary theatre, to the main front of the house, to the entrance through the hall, swiftly, silently, up the stairs into the corridor, and so to a chamber I had never known nor entered. I saw nothing that was in the room, and generally I see everything. I believe there were books; I felt there was an organ, and I heard it a long time afterwards. But I was only conscious this night that then I was with him,--shut up and closed together with his awful presence, in the travail of presentiment. He had placed me on a seat, and he sat by me, still holding my hand; but his own was now relaxed and soft, the fingers cold, as if benumbed. "Carlomein," he said, "I have always loved you, as you know; but I little thought it would be for this." "How, sir? Why? I am frightened; for you look so strange and speak so strangely, and I feel as if I were going to die." "I wish we both were! But do not be frightened. Ah! that is only excitement, my darling. You will let me call you so to-night?" "Let you, dear, dearest sir! You have always been my darling. But I am too weak and young to be of any use to you; and that is why I wish to die." "My child, if thou wert strong and manly, how could I confide in thee? Yet God forgive me if I show this little one too much too early!" His eyes wore here an expression so divine, so little earthly that I turned away, still holding his hand, which I bathed in tears that fell shiveringly from my dull heart like rain from a sultry sky. It was the tone that pierced me; for I knew not what he meant, or only had a dream of perceiving _how much_. "Sir, you could not tell me too much. You have taught me all I know already, and I don't intend ever to learn of anybody else." "My child, it is God who taught thee. It is something thou hast to teach _me_ now." "Sir, is it anything about myself?" I chose to say so, but did not think it. "No; about some one those eyes of thine do love to watch and wait on, so that sometimes I am almost jealous of thine eyes! But it cannot be a hardened jealousy while they are so baby-kind." "It is Maria, then, sir, of course. But they are not babies,--my eyes, I mean; for they know all about her, and so do I. I know why sometimes she seems looking through us instead of at us. It is because she is seeing other eyes in her soul, and our eyes are only just eyes to her, and nothing else,--you know what I mean, sir?" I said all this because I had an instinctive dread of his self-betrayal beyond what was needed. Alas! I had not even curiosity left. But I was mistaken in him, so far. He leaned forwards, stroked my hair, and kissed it. "Whose eyes, then, Carlomein?" "My master, Anastase, is that person whose eyes I mean." "Impossible! But I was wrong to ask thee. Assuredly, thou art an infant, and couldst even make me smile. That is a fancy only. Not Anastase, my child! Any one but Anastase." What anguish curled beneath those coaxing tones! "Sir, I know nothing about it, except that it is true. But that it is true I _do_ know, for Maria told me so herself; and they will be married as soon as she is educated." I trembled as I spoke in sore dismay; for the truth was borne to me that moment in a flash of misery, and all I could feel was what I was fool enough to say, "Oh that I were Maria!" He turned to me in an instant; made a sort of motion with both his arms, like wings, having released the hand I held. I looked up now, and saw that a more awful paleness--a virgin shadow appalling as that of death--had fixed his features. I threw myself into his arms; he was very still, mute, all gentleness. I kissed the glistening dress, the spangled sleeves. He moved not, murmured not. At last my tears would flow. They rushed, they scalded; I called out of the midst of them, and heard that my own voice, child as I was, fell hollow through my hot lips. "Oh, let my heart burst! Do let me break my heart!" I sobbed, and a shiver seemed to spread from my frame to his. He brought me closer to his breast, and bowed his soft curls till they were wet with my wild weeping through and through. It heaved not. No passion swelled the pulses of that heart; still he shivered as if his breath were passing. In many, many minutes I heard his voice; it was a voice all tremble, like a harp-string jarred and breaking. "Carlomein, you will ever be dearer to me than I can say from this night; for you have seen sorrow no man should have seen, and no woman could have suffered. You know what I wished; yet perhaps not yet,--how should you? Carlomein, when you become a man I hope you will love me as you do now when you know what I do feel, what I do wish. May you never despise suffering for my sake! May you never suffer as I do! You _only_ could; I know no one else, poor child! God take you first, before you suffer _so_. You see the worst of it is, Carlomein, that we need not have suffered at all, if I had only known it from the beginning. But it is very strange, is it not?" He spoke as if inviting me to question him. "What, dearest sir?" "That she should not love me. How could she help it?" Of all his words, few as they were indeed, these touched me most. I felt, indeed, how could she help it? But I was, child as I was, too wise to say so. "You see, sir, she could not help loving Anastase!" "Nor could I help loving her, nor can I; but the sorrow is, Carlomein, that neither on earth nor in heaven will she wish to be mine." "Sir, in heaven it won't matter whether she married Anastase or not; for if she were perfect here, she could but love you, and _there_ she will be perfect and will understand you, sir." "Sweet religion, if true. Sweet philosophy,--false as pleasant." "But, sir, you will not be unhappy, because it is of no use; and besides, she will find it out, and you would not like that. And you will not break your heart, sir, because of music." "I should never break my heart, Carlchen, under any earthly circumstances." He smiled upon me indifferently; a pure disdain chiselled every feature in that attitude. "There is now no more to be said. I need scarcely say, my child, never speak of this. But I _will_ command you to forget it--as I forget--have already forgotten." He rose, and passed his hand, with weary grace, over the curls that had fallen forward; and then he took me by the hand and we went out together, I knew not whither. I returned that night with my brother and sister to Cecilia. I never had taken part in a scene so brilliant as the concluding banquet, which was in the open air, and under shade lamp-fruited; but I knew nothing that happened to me, was cold all over, and for a time, at least, laid aside my very consciousness. Millicent was positively alarmed by my paleness, which she attributed, neither wrongly, to excitement; and it was in consequence of her suspicion that we retired very early. We met no one,--having bowed to the king and queen of the night's festival,--nor did I behold the Chevalier, except in the distance, as he glided from table to table to watch that all should fare well at them, though he never sat himself. Maria was seated by Anastase. I noticed them, but did not gaze upon them. Their aspect sickened me. It was well that Millicent believed me ill, for I was thus not obliged to speak, and she and Davy had it all to themselves on the road. That time, when she got me to bed, I became strangely affected in a fashion of my own, and not sleeping at all, was compelled to remain there day after day for a week, not having the most shadowy notion of that which was my affection. It was convenient that Davy knew a great deal about such suffering on his own account, or I might have been severely tampered with. He would not send for a doctor, as he understood what was the matter with me; and presently I got right. In fact, my nerves, ever in my way, were asserting themselves furiously; and as I needed no physic, I took none, but trusted Davy and kept quiet. I heard upon my resuscitation that Maria, Anastase, and Delemann had all been to inquire after me, and, oh, strange sweetness! also the Chevalier. It was some satisfaction when Millicent said he was looking very well and had talked to her for half an hour. This news tended most to my restoration of anything; and it was not ten days before I returned to school, my people having left the village the same morning only. I saw as much of Anastase as before, now; but I felt as if till now I had never known him, nor of how infinite importance a finite creature may become under certain circumstances. In a day or two I had worked up to the mark sufficiently to permit myself a breath of leisure; and towards the afternoon I went after Maria, to accompany her home. This she permitted; but I knew that Anastase would be with her in the evening, and refused her invitation to enter, for I felt I could not bear to see them together just then. I entreated her, therefore, to take a walk with me instead. She hesitated, on account of her preparation for the morrow; but when I reminded her that Anastase desired her to walk abroad daily, she assented. "Florimond would be pleased." Up the green sides of the hill we wandered, and again into the valley. It was a mild day, with no rude wind to break the silken thread of conversation, and I was mad to talk to her. I could hardly tell how to begin, though I knew what I wanted to find out well enough; but I need not have been afraid. She was singularly unsuspicious. "So, Carl," she began herself, "the Chevalier took you into his room,--his very room where he writes, was it?" "I don't know," I said, "whether he writes there. I should think he would write anywhere. But it was stuffed full of books and had an organ." "A large organ?" Heaven help and pardon me! I had not seen anything in the room specifically; but I drew upon my imagination,--usually a lively spring enough. "Oh! yes, a very large organ, with beautiful carving about it,--cherubs above, with their wings spread, I believe; and the books bound exquisitely, and set in cabinets." "What sort of furniture?" "I don't know. Oh! I think it was dark red, and very rich looking. Embroidered cloths, too, upon the tables and sofas,--but really I may be mistaken, because, you see, I was not looking at them." "No, I should think not. Carnation is his favorite color, you know; he told me so." "He tells you everything, I think, Maria." "Yes, of course he does,--just as one talks to a little child that asks for stories." "That is not the reason,--it cannot be. Besides, he always talks about himself to you, and one never talks about one's self to children." "Do not you? But, Carl, he chiefly talks to me about music." "And for that, is he not himself music? But, Maria, I can, telling you his favorite color, talking about himself as much as if he told you he had a headache." "Well, Carl, he did come to me when he had scratched his finger and ask me to tie it up." "And did you? Was that since _the_ evening?" "It was the day before yesterday. He was going to play somewhere. But, Carl, we shall not hear him play again." "What do you mean?" "I mean not until next year. He is going to travel." "To travel--going away--where--who with?" I was stupid. "He told us all so the other day,--just before you returned, Carl. He went through all the class-rooms to bid farewell. I was in the second singing-room with Spoda and two or three others. He spoke to Spoda, 'Have you any commands for Italy,--any part of Italy? I am going unexpectedly, or we would have had a concert first; but now we must wait until May for our concert.' Spoda behaved very well and exhibited no surprise, only showered forth his _confetti_ speeches about parting. Then the Chevalier bowed to us who were there and said, 'My heart will be half here, and I shall hope to find Cecilia upon the self-same hill,--not a stone wanting.' And then he sighed; but otherwise he looked exceedingly happy. And who, do you think, is going with him?" "His father, I should imagine." "No; old Aronach, and your little friend,--who, Carl, I suspect, makes a sort of chevalier of you, from what I hear." "Yes; he is very fond of me. But, Maria, what is he going away for? Is he going to be married?" She smiled with her own peculiar expression,--wayward, yet warm. "Oh, dear, no! nothing of the kind, I am sure. I cannot fancy the Chevalier in love even. It seems most absurd." "I do not think that; he is too lovable not to be loved." "And that is just why he never will love--to marry, I mean--until he has tried everything else and pleased himself in every manner." "Maria, how do you know? And do you think he will marry one day?" "Carl, I believe there is not anything he will not do; and yet he will be happy, very happy,--only not as he expects. I am certain the Chevalier thinks he should find as much in love as in music,--for himself, I mean. Now, I believe it would be nothing to him in comparison." I could scarcely contain myself, I so sincerely felt that she was mistaken. But I seriously resolved to humor her, lest I should say too much, or she should say too little. "Oh, of course! But I don't think he would _expect_ to find more in love, because he knows how he is loved." "Not _how_, Carl, only how much." "But, Maria, I fancy he wants as much love as music; and that is plenty." "But, Carl, he makes the music, and we love him in it, just as we love God in His works; and I cannot conceive of any love being acceptable to him when it infringed his right as supreme." "You mean that he is proud." "So proud that if love came to him without music, I don't think he would take any notice of it." I felt as surely as she did, sure of that singular pride, but also that it was not a fallen pride, and that she could read it not. "You mean, Maria, that if you and I were not musical,--supposing such a thing to be possible,--he would not like us nor treat us as he does now?" "I know he would not." "But then it would be impossible for us to be as we are if we were changed as to music, and we could not love as we do." "I don't think that has anything to do with it, and indeed I am sure not. You see, Carl, you make me speak to you openly. I have never done so before, and I should not, but that you force me to it,--not that I dislike to speak of it, for I think of nothing else,--but that it might be troublesome." Could it be that she was about, in any sense, to open her heart? Mine felt as if it had collapsed, and would never expand again; but I was very rejoiced, for many reasons. "Oh, Maria! if I could hear you talk all day about your own feelings, I should know really that you cared to be my friend; but I could not ask you to do so, nor wish, unless you did." "Carl, if you were not younger than I am I should hesitate, and still more if, where I came from, we did not become grown up so fast that our lives seem too quick, too bright! Oh! I have often thought so, and shall think so again; but I will not now, because I intend to be very happy. You know, Carl, you cannot understand, though you may _feel_, what I feel when I think of Florimond. And it is possible you think him higher than I do, for you do him justice now." "I suppose I do,--I am very certain that I adore his playing." "I do not care for his playing, or scarcely. And yet I am aware that it is the playing of a master, of a musician, and I am proud to say so. Still, I would rather be that violin than hear it, and endure the sweet anguish he pours into it than be as I am, so far more divided from him than it is." "Maria!" "But Florimond does not mind my feeling this, or I should not say it,--on the contrary, he feels the same; and when first Heaven made him love me, he felt it even then." "Was that long ago, Maria?" "It is beginning to be a long time, for it was in the summer that I was twelve, before my father died. I was in France that summer, and very miserable, working hard and seeming to do nothing, for my father, rest his soul! was very severe with me, and petted Josephine,--for which I thank and praise him, and love her all the better. We were twenty miles from Paris, and lodged in a cottage whose roof was all ruins; but it was a dry year, and no harm came,--besides, we had been brought up like gypsies, and were sometimes taken for them. In the day I practised my voice and studied Italian or German; then prepared our dinner, which we ate under a tree in the garden, Josephine and I, though she was almost a baby then, and slept half her time. One noon she was asleep upon the grass, and I was playing with the flowers she had plucked, with no sabots on, for I was very warm, when I heard a step and peeped behind that tree. I saw a boy, or, as I thought him, a very wonderful man, putting aside the boughs to look upon me. You have told me, Carl, how you felt when you first saw the Chevalier; well, it was a little as I felt when I saw that face, only instead of looking on, as you did, I was obliged to look away and hide my eyes with my hand. He was, to my sight, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen or dreamed about; and therefore I could not look upon him, for I know I was not thinking about myself. Still, I felt sure he was coming to speak to me, and so he did; but not for a long time, for he stepped round the tree and sat down upon the turf just near me, and played with the sabots and the wild thyme I had played with, and presently put out his hand to stroke Josephine's hair as it lay in my lap. I never thought of being angry, or of wondering at him even, for the longer I had him near me, the better, though I was rather frightened lest my father should return; but at last he did speak, and when once he began, there was not soon an end. We talked of all things. I can remember nothing, but I do know this,--that we never spoke of music, except that I told how I passed my time, and how my father taught me. He went away before Josephine awoke, and nobody knew he had come; but I returned the next day to the place where I had seen him, and again I found him there. In that country one could do such things, and it was the hour my father was absent,--for he had other pupils at the houses of the inhabitants several miles about, and we lived frugally, in order that he might give us all advantages when we should be old enough. I saw Florimond every day for a week, and then for a week he never came. That week I was taken ill,--I could not help it; I was too young to hide it. And when he came again, I told him I should have died if he had stayed away. And then he said that he loved me, but that he was going a journey, and should not for a long time see me again, but that I was never, never to forget him; and he gave me a bit of his hair softer than any curl. I gave him, too, my mother's ring, that I had always kept warm in my bosom; and I never even lamented that he was departed, because I knew I should be his forever. We had a long, long talk,--of feelings and fears and mysteries, of the flowers of heaven and earth, of glory and bliss, of hope and ecstasy. We poured out our hearts together, and did not even trouble ourselves to say we loved. I think he was there three hours; but I sent him away myself, just in time to be quite ready, and not at all in a tremble, for my father's supper. Papa came home by sunset, much later than usual, and I tried hard to wake up, but was as a wanderer in sleep, until he took from his pocket a parcel and gave it me to open. He was in great good humor to-night, for he had heard of my brother's success at the Académie; but it was not my brother who sent the parcel, which contained two tickets for a grand concert in Paris the next morning, and a little anonymous billet to beg that we would go, I and my father. "My father was much flattered, and still more because there was a handful of gold to pay the expenses of our journey. This settled the matter; we did go in the diligence that night. I took my best frock and gloves, and we slept at a grand hotel for once in our lives, and supped there, and breakfasted the next morning before setting out for the concert. When I walked into the streets with my father I envied the ladies their bonnets,--for I had not even my mantilla, it was too shabby; and I wore alone a wreath of ivy that I had gathered from under that very tree at home, and I was thinking too seriously of one only person to wish to see or to be seen. We went into the very best places, but I thought as I sat down how I must have changed in a short time; for a little while before I would have almost sold myself to go to this same concert, and now I did not care. There was a grand vocal trio first, and then a fantasia for the harp, and then a tenor solo. But next in the programme came one of Fesca's solos for the violin; and when I saw the violinist come up into the front, I fell backwards, and should have swooned had he not begun to play. His tones sustained me, drew me upwards; it was Florimond,--my Florimond; mine then as now." "I thought it would turn out so," I exclaimed, rudely enough. "But, Maria, when you said music had nothing to do with love, I think you were mistaken, or that you misunderstood yourself; for though I can't express it, I am sure that our being musical makes a great difference in the way we feel, and that though we don't allude to it, it will go through everything, and make us what we are." "Perhaps you are right, and, Carl, I should not like to contradict you; but I know I should have loved Florimond if he had not been a musician,--if he had been a shoemaker, for instance." "Yes, because he still might have been musical; and if the music had remained within him, it might have influenced his feelings even more than it does now." "Carl, but I don't love in that way all those who are musical, therefore why must it be the music that makes me love _him_? What will you say to me, now, when I tell you I cannot imagine wishing to marry the Chevalier?" "Maria!" "Carl, I could not; it would abase the power of worship in my soul, it would cloud my idea of heaven, it would crush all my life within me. I should be transported into a place where the water was all light and I could not drink, the air was all fire to wither me. I should flee from myself in him, and in fleeing, die." Her strange words, so unlike her youth, consumed my doubts as she pronounced them. I shuddered inwardly, but strove to keep serene. "Maria, that may be because you had loved when you saw him, and it would have been impossible for you to be inconstant." "Carlino, no. You and I are talking of droll things for a girl and a boy; but I would rather you knew me well, because, perhaps, it will help you when you grow up to understand some lady better than you would if I did not speak so openly. Under no circumstances could I have loved him so as to wish to belong to him in that sense. For, Carl, though it might have been inconstant, it would not have been unfaithful to myself if I had seen and loved him better than Florimond; it might have been that I had not before found out what I ought to submit my soul to, nor could I have helped it; such things have happened to many, I daresay,--to many natures, but not to mine; if I feel once, it is entirely and for always, and I cannot think how it is that so few women, even of my own race, are so unfixed about their feelings and have so many fancies. I sometimes believe there is a reason for my being different, which, if it is true, will make him sadder than the saddest,--you can guess what I mean?" "Yes, Maria, but I know there is nothing in it; it is what my mother would call a morbid presentiment, and I wish she could talk to you about it. I should think there might be truth in it, but that it always proves false. My sister had it once, so had my dear brother, Mr. Davy. I don't believe people have it when they are really going to die." "It is not a morbid presentiment, for 'morbid' means 'diseased,' and I am sure I am not diseased; but my idea is that people who form so fast cannot live long. I am only fifteen, and I feel as if I had lived longer than anybody I know." "Then," said I, laughing, for I felt it was wrong to permit her much range here, "I shall die soon, Maria." "No, Carl. You are not formed; you are like an infant,--your heart tells itself out, one may count its beats and sing songs to them, as Florimond says; but your brain keeps you back, though it is itself so forward." I was utterly puzzled. "I don't understand, Maria." "But you will, some time. Your brain is burning, busy, always dreaming and working. The dreams of the brain are often those which play through the slumbers of the heart. If your heart even awoke, your brain would still have the upper hand, and would keep down, keep back your heart. There is no fear for you, Carl, passionate as you are." "Well, Maria, I must confess it frightens me a little when you talk so,--first, because you are so young yourself; and secondly, because if it is all true, how much you must know,--you must know almost more than you feel; it is too much for a girl to know, or a boy either, and I would rather know nothing than so very much." "Carl, all that I know I get from my heart. I am really excessively ignorant, and can teach and tell of nothing in the world but love. That is my life and my faith; and when my heart is bathing in the love that is my own on earth, all earth seems to sink beneath my feet, and I tremble as if raised to heaven. I feel as if God were behind my joy, and as if it must be more than every other knowledge to make me feel so. And when I sing, it is the same,--the music wraps up the love; I feel it more and more." "But, Maria, you are so awfully musical." "Carl, till I knew Florimond I never really sang. I practised, it is true, and was very sick of failures; but _then_ my voice grew clear and strong, and I found what it was meant for,--therefore I cannot be so musical as you are. And I revere you for it, Carl, and prophesy of you such performances that you can never excel them, however much you excel." "Why, Maria, how we used to talk about music together!" "I did not know you so well then, Carl; but do you suppose that music, in one sense, is not all to me? I sometimes think when women try to rise too high, either in their deeds or their desires, that the spirit which bade them so rise sinks back again beneath the weakness of their earthly constitution and never appeals again; or else that the spirit, being too strong, does away with the mortal altogether,--they die, or rather they live again." "Do you ever talk in this strange manner to Anastase, Maria,--I mean, do you tell him you love him better than music?" "He knows of himself, not but that I have often told him; but you may imagine how I love him, Carl, when I tell you he loves music better than me, and yet I would have it so, chiefly for one reason." "What is that?" "That if I am taken from him he will still have something to live for until we meet again." It is a strange truth that I was unappalled and scarcely touched by these pathetic hints of hers; in fact, looking at her then, it was as impossible to associate with her radiant beauty any idea of death as for any but the most tasteless moralist to attach it to a new-blown rose-flower with stainless petals. It was a day also of the most perfect weather, and the suggestion to my mind was that neither the day nor she--neither the brilliant vault above, nor those transparent eyes--could ever "change or pass." I was occupied besides in reflecting upon the mystery that divided the two souls I felt ought never to have been separated, even _thought_ of, apart. I did not know then how far she was right in her mystical assertion that the premature fulness of the brain maintains the heart's first slumber in its longest unbroken rest. FOOTNOTE: [5] The description of the fairy music contained in this chapter evidently refers to the opera of "The Tempest," which Mendelssohn contemplated writing in 1846-47. The composer had agreed to write an opera on this subject for Mr. Lumley, then manager of Her Majesty's Theatre in London, the principal _rôle_ to be given to Jenny Lind. After considerable negotiation, M. Scribe, the eminent French adapter, furnished a libretto, and Mr. Lumley suggested the following distribution of parts: Prospero, Signor Lablache; Caliban, Herr Staudigl; Fernando, Signor Gardoni; Miranda, Mademoiselle Lind; Ariel, left unassigned. Mendelssohn, however, was dissatisfied with the libretto, which made serious changes in the character of the story and marred the artistic effects intended by Shakspeare; but M. Scribe would not listen to his protests, and thus the matter fell through. Mendelssohn then turned his attention to the legend of the Loreley as the subject of an opera, but died shortly afterward, leaving it in a fragmentary condition, wherefore Mr. Lumley substituted Verdi's "I Masnadieri" for the long-promised "Tempest." It proved a failure, however. Thus a three-fold fatality attended the "Tempest" episode in the friendly relations of Mendelssohn and Jenny Lind. The reader who may be curious to know the details of these interesting negotiations will find a very complete record of them in the second volume of the Life of Jenny Lind by Mr. Rockstro and Canon Holland, recently published, and there for the first time given to the public from official sources. CHAPTER VI. I left her at her house and returned to Cecilia, feeling very lonely, and as if I ought to be very miserable, but I could not continue it; for I was, instead of recalling her words, in a mood to recall those of Clara in our parting conversation. The same age as Maria, with no less power in her heavenly maidenhood, she came upon me as if I had seen them together, and watched the strange calm distance of those unclouded eyes next the transparent fervors of Maria's soul,--that soul in its self-betrayal so wildly beautiful, so undone with its own emotion. Clara I remembered as one not to be approached or reached but by fathoming her crystal intellect; and even then it appeared to me that there was more passion in her enshrining stillness than in anything but the music that claimed and owned her. But Maria had seemed on fire as she had spoken, and even when she spoke not, she passed into the very heart by sympathy abounding, summer-like. I little thought how soon, in that respect, her change would come. There was one, too, whom I saw not again until that change. Over this leaf of my history I can only glance, for it would be as a sheet of light unrelieved by any shade or pencilling; suffice it to say that day by day, in morning's golden dream, at dream-like afternoon, I studied and soared. I was--after the Chevalier had left, and the excitement of his possible presence had ceased--blissfully happy again, and in much the same state as when I lived with Aronach; certainly I did not expand, as Maria might have said. The advent of the Chevalier, which was as a king's visit, being delayed until the spring, I had left off hoping he might appear any fine morning, and my initiation--"by trance"--went on apace; I was utterly undisturbed. At Christmas we had a concert,--a concert worthy of the name; and with all the Christmas heartedness of Germany we dressed our beloved hall with its evergreens and streamers. Besides, that overture, the "Mer de Glace," which, even under an inferior conductor, would make its way, was one of our interpretations; and it appeared to have some effect upon the whole crew that was not very material, as nothing would do in our after sledging party, but that all the instruments should be carried also, and an attempt made to refrigerate the ice-movement over again, by performing it in the frosty air, upon the frost-spelled water. I was to have gone to England this year, as arranged; but the old-fashioned frump, a very hard winter, had laid in great stores of snow, with great raving winds, and my mother took fright at the idea of my crossing the water,--besides, it was agreed that as Millicent and Davy had seen me so lately, I could get on very well as I was until June. It was not such a disappointment as it should have been, for I knew that Clara had gone to London, and that I could not have seen her. She was making mysterious progress, according to Davy; but I could not get out all I wanted, for I did not like to ask for it. There was something, too, in my present mode of life exiling from all excitement; and it is difficult for me to look back and believe it anything but the dream of fiction,--still, that is not strange, for fiction often strikes us as more real than fact. I had a small letter from Starwood about this time. "Dearest Carl," he wrote, as he always spoke to me, in English, "I wish you could see the Chevalier now, how well he looks, and how he enjoys this beautiful country. We have been to see all the pictures and the palaces, and all the theatres; we have heard all the cathedral services, and climbed over all the mountains,--for, Carl, we went also to Switzerland; and when I saw the 'Mer de Glace,' I thought it was like that music. _Now_ we are in a villa all marble, not white, but a soft, pale-gray color, and there are orange-trees upon the grass. All about are green hills, and behind them hills of blue, and the sky here is like no other sky, for it is always the same, without clouds, and yet as dark as our sky at night; but yet at the same time it is day, and the sun is very clear. The moon and stars are big, but there is something in the air that makes me always want to cry. It is melancholy, and a very quiet country,--it seems quite dead after Germany; but then we do live away from the towns. "The Chevalier is writing continually, except when he is out, and the Herr Aronach is very good,--does not notice me much, which I like. His whole thoughts are upon the Chevalier, I think, and no wonder. Carl, I am getting on fast with my studies, am learning Italian," etc. There was more in the little letter; but from such a babe I could not expect the information I wanted. Maria and her suite--as I always called her brother Joseph and the little Josephine--had left Cecilia for Christmas Day, which they were to spend with some acquaintance a few leagues off, and a friend, too, of Anastase, who, indeed, accompanied them. On Christmas Eve I was quite alone; for though I had received many invitations, I had accepted none, and I went over to the old place where I had lived with Aronach, to see the illuminations in every house. It was a chilly, elfin time to me; but I got through it, and sang about the angels in the church next day. To my miraculous astonishment Maria returned alone, long before Josephine and her brother, and even without Anastase. He, it appeared, had gone to Paris to hear a new opera, and also to play at several places on the road. It was only five days after Christmas that she came and fetched me from my own room, where I was shut in practising, to her own home. When she appeared, rolled in furs, I was fain to suppose her another than herself, produced by the oldest of all old gentlemen for my edification, and I screamed aloud, for she had entered without knocking, or I had not heard her. She would not speak to me then and there, saving only to invite me, and on the road, which was lightened over with snow, she scarcely spoke more; but arrived on that floor I was so fond of, and screened by the winter hangings from the air, while the soft warmth of the stove bade all idea of winter make away, we sat down together upon the sofa to talk. I inquired why she had returned so soon. "Carl," she said, smoothing down her hair, and laying over my knees the furry cloak, "I am altering very much, I think, or else I have become a woman too suddenly. I don't care about these things any longer." "What things, Maria,--fur mantles, or hair so long that you can tread upon it?" "No, Carl. But I forget that I was not talking to you yesterday, nor yet the day before, nor for many days; and I have been dreaming more than ever since I saw you." "What about?" "Many unknown things,--chiefly how different everything is here from what it ought to be. Carl, I used to love Christmas and Easter and St. John's Day; now they are all like so many cast-off children's pictures. I can have no imagination, I am afraid, or else it is all drawn away somewhere else. Do you know, Carl, that I came away because I could not bear to stay with those creatures after Florimond was gone? Florimond is, like me, a dreamer too; and much as I used to wonder at his melancholy, it is just now quite clear to me that nothing else is worth while." "Anastase melancholy? Well, so he is, except when he is playing; but then I fancied that was because he is so abstracted, and so bound to music hand and foot, as well as heart and soul." "Very well, Carl, you are always right; but my melancholy, and such I believe his to be, is exquisite pleasure,--too fine a joy to breathe in, Carl. How people fume themselves about affairs that only last an hour, and music and joy are forever." "You have come back to music, Maria; if so, I am not sorry you went away." "I never left it, Carl, it left me; but now I know why,--it went to heaven to bring me a gift out of its eternal treasure, and I believe I have it. Carl, Carl! my fit of folly has served me in good stead." "You mean what we talked about before you went, before the Chevalier went also?" "Yes, I meant what I said then; but I was very empty, and in an idle frame. I thought the last spark of music had passed out of me; but there has come a flame from it at last." "What do you mean? And what has that to do with your coming back, and with your being melancholy,--which I cannot believe quite, Maria?" "Oh, Carl! I am very ignorant, and have read no books; but I am pretty sure it is said somewhere that melancholy is but the shadow of too much happiness, thrown by our own spirits upon the sunshine side of life. I was in that queer mood when I went to Obertheil that if an angel had walked out of the clouds I should not have taken the trouble to watch him; Florimond was all and enough. So he is still. But listen, Carl. On Christmas we were in the large room, before the table, where the green moss glittered beneath the children's tree, and there were children of all sizes gazing at the lights. They crowded so together that Florimond, who was behind, and standing next me, said, 'Come, Maria, you have seen all this before: shall we go upstairs together?' And we did go out silently, we were not even missed. We went to the room which Florimond had hired, for it was only a friend's house, and Florimond is as proud as some one who has not his light hair. The little window was full of stars; we heard no sound as we stood there except when the icicles fell from the roof. The window was open too; but I felt no cold, for he held me in his arms, and I sheltered him, and he me. We watched the stars so long that they began to dance below before we spoke. Then Florimond said that the stars often reminded him how little constancy there was in anything said or done, for that they ever shone upon that which was forgotten. And I replied it was well that they did so, for many things happened which had better be forgotten, or something as unmeaning. He said, then, it was on that account we held back from expressing, even remotely, what we felt most. And I asked him whether it might not rather be that music might maintain its privilege of expressing what it was forbidden to pronounce or articulate otherwise. Then he suggested that it was forbidden to an artist to exalt himself in his craft, as he is so fond of saying, you know, except by means of it, when it asserts itself. And then I demanded of him that he should make it assert itself; and after I had tormented him a good while, he fetched out his violin and played to me a song of the stars. "And in that wilderness of tone I seemed to fall asleep and dream,--a dream I have already begun to follow up, and _will_ fulfil. I have heard it said, Carl, that sometimes great players who are no authors have given ideas in their random moments to the greatest writers, that these have reproduced at leisure,--I suppose much as a painter takes notions from the colored clouds and verdant shadows; but I don't know. Florimond, who is certainly no writer, has given me an idea for a new musical poem, and what is more strange, I have half finished it, and have the whole in my mind." "Maria! have you actually been writing?" I sprang from the sofa quite wild, though I merely foresaw some touching memento, in wordless _Lied_ or _scherzo_ for one-voiced instrument, of a one-hearted theme. "I have not written a note, Carl,--that remains to be done, and that is why I came back so soon, to be undisturbed, and to learn of you; for you know more about these things than I do,--for instance, how to arrange a score." "Maria, you are not going to write in score? If so, pray wait until the Chevalier comes back." "The Chevalier! as if I should ever plague him about my writing. Besides, I am most particularly anxious to finish it before any one knows it is begun." "But, Maria, what will you do? I never heard of a woman writing in score except for exercise; and how will you be pleased to hear it never once?" "Ah! we shall know about that when it is written." "Maria, you look very evil,--evil as an elf; but you are pale enough already. What if this work make you ill?" "Nothing ever makes us ill that we like to do, only what we like to have. I acknowledge, Carl, that it might make me ill if this symphony were to be rehearsed, with a full band, before the Chevalier. But as nothing of that kind can happen, I shall take my own way." "A symphony, Maria? The Chevalier says that the symphony is the highest style of music, and that none can even attempt it but the most formed, as well as naturally framed musicians." "I should think I knew that; but it is not in me to attempt any but the highest effect. I would rather fail there than succeed in an inferior. The structure of the symphony is quite clear to my brain,--it always has been so; for I believe I understand it naturally, though I never knew why until now. Carl, a woman has never yet dared anything of the kind, and if I wait a few years longer I must give it up entirely. If I am married, my thoughts will not make themselves ready, and now they haunt me." "Maria, do _not_ write! Wait, at least, until Anastase returns, and ask his own advice." "Carl, I never knew you cold before,--what is it? As if Florimond could advise me! Could I advise him how to improve his present method? and why should I wait? I shall not expose myself; it is for myself alone." "Maria, this is the reason. You do look so fixed and strange, even while you talk about it, that I think you will do yourself some harm,--that is all; you did not use to look so." "Am I so frightful, then, Carl?" "You are too beautiful, Maria; but your eyes seem to have no sleep in them." "They have not had, and they will not have until I have completed this task the angel set me." "Oh, Maria! you are thinking of the Chevalier." "I was not; I was thinking of St. Cecilia. If the Chevalier had ordered me to make a symphony, I should to everlasting have remained among the dunces." I often, often lament, most sadly, that I am obliged to form her words into a foreign mould, almost at times to fuse them with my own expression; but the words about the angel were exactly her own, and I have often remembered them bitterly. "You will find it very hard to write without any prospect of rehearsal, Maria." "I can condense it, and so try it over; but I am certain of hearing it in my head, and that is enough." "You will not think so still when it is written. How did it first occur to you?" "In a moment, as I tell you, Carl, while the violin tones, hot as stars that are cold in distance, were dropping into my heart. The subjects rose in Alps before me. I both saw and heard them; there were vistas of sound, but no torrents; it was all glacier-like,--death enfolding life." "What shall you call it, Maria?" "No name, Carl. Perhaps I shall give it a name when it shall be really finished; but if it is to be what I expect, no one would remember its name on hearing it." "Is it so beautiful, then, Maria?" "To my fancy, _most_ beautiful, Carl." "That is like the Chevalier." "He has written, and knows what he has written; but I do not believe he has ever felt such satisfaction in any work as I in this." "I think in any one else it would be dreadfully presumptuous,--in you it is ambitious, I believe; but I have no fear about your succeeding." "Thank you, Carl, nor I. Will you stay here with me and help me?" "No, Maria, for you do not want help, and I should think no one could write unless alone. But I will prevent any one else from coming." "No one else will come; but if you care to stay here, Carl, I can write in my room, and you, as you said you have set yourself certain tasks, can work in this one. I am very selfish I am afraid, for I feel pleasantly safe when you are near me. I think, Carl, you must have been a Sunday-child." "No, Maria; I was born upon a Friday, and my mother was in a great fright. Shall you write this evening?" "I must go out and buy some paper." CHAPTER VII. We dined together, and then walked. I cannot record Maria's conversation, for her force now waned, and I should have had to entertain myself but for the unutterable entertainment at all times to me of a walk. She bought enough paper to score a whole opera had she been so disposed; and her preparations rather scared me on her account. For me, I returned to Cecilia to inform our powers why I should absent myself, and where remain; and when I came back with "books and work" of my own, she was very quietly awaiting me for supper, certainly not making attempts, either dread or ecstatic, at present. I was, indeed, anxious that if she accomplished her intentions at all, it should be in the vacation, as she studied so ardently at every other time; and it was this anxiety that induced me to leave her alone the next day and every morning of that week. I knew nothing of what she did meanwhile, and as I returned to Cecilia every night for sleep, I left her ever early, and heard not a note of her progress; whether she made any or not remaining at present a secret. We reassembled in February. At our first meeting, which was a very festive banquet, our nominal head and the leading professors gave us an intimation that the examinations would extend for a month, and would begin in May, when the results would be communicated to the Chevalier Seraphael, who would be amongst us again at that time, and distribute the prizes after his own device, also confer the certificates upon those who were about to leave the school. I was not, of course, in this number, as the usual term of probation was three years in any specific department, and six for the academical course,--the latter had been advised for me by Davy, and acceded to by my mother. I gave up at present nearly my whole time to mastering the mere mechanism of my instrument, and had no notion of trying for any prize at all. I believe those of my contemporaries who aspired thus were very few at all, and Marc Iskar being among them had the effect upon me of quenching the slight fever of a desire I might have had so to distinguish myself. It struck me that Maria should try for the reward of successful composition; but she was so hurt, and looked so white when I alluded to it, that it was only once I did so. As to her proceedings, whatever they were, the most perfect calm pervaded them, and also her. I scarcely now heard her voice in speech; though it was spoken aloud by Spoda, and no longer whispered, that she would very soon be fit for the next initiation into a stage career, or its attendant and inductive mysteries. One evening I went to see her expressly to ascertain whether she would really leave us, and I asked her also about her intentions. "Carl," she said, "I wish I had any. I don't really care what they do with me, though I wish to be able to marry as soon as possible. I believe I am to study under Mademoiselle Venelli at Berlin when I leave Cecilia. She teaches declamation and that style." "Maria, you are very cool about it. I suppose you don't mind a bit about going." "I should break my heart about it if I did not know I must go one day, and that the sooner I go the sooner I shall return,--to all I want, at least. But I have it not in my power to say I will do this, or will not have that, as it is my brother who educates me, and to whom I am indebted." "If you go, Maria, I shall not see you for years and years." "You will not mind that after a little time." "Maria, I have never loved to talk to any one so well." "If that is the only reason you are sorry, I am very glad I go." She smiled as she spoke, but not a happy smile. I could see she was very sad, and, as it were, at a distance from her usual self. "Maria, you have not told me one word about the symphony." "You did not ask me." "Were you so proud, then? As if I was not dying to see it, to hear it; for, Maria, don't tell me you would be contented without its being heard." "I am not contented at all, Carl. I am often discontented,--particularly now." "About Anastase? Does not Anastase approve of your writing?" "He knows nothing of it. I would not tell him for a world; nor, Carl, would you." "I don't know. I would tell him if it would do you any good, even though you disliked me to do so." "Thanks; but it would do me no good. Florimond is poor: he could not collect an orchestra; and proud: he would not like me to be laughed at." "Then what is it, Maria?" "Carl, you know I am not vain." I laughed, but answered nothing; it was too absurd a position. "Well, I am dying of thirst to hear my first movement, which is written, and which is that sight to my eyes that my ears desire it to the full as much as they. The second still lingers,--it will not be invoked. I could, if I could calculate the effect of the first, produce a second equal to it, I know. But as it is yet in my brain, it will not give place to another." "You have tried it upon the piano,--try it for me." "No, I cannot, Carl. It is nothing thus; and, strange to say, though I have written it, I cannot play it." "I can believe that." "But no one else would, Carl; and therefore it must be folly for me to have undertaken this writing,--for we are both children, and I suppose must remain so, after all." It struck me that the melancholy which poured that pale mask upon her face was both natural and not unnecessary,--I even delighted in it; for a thought, almost an idea, flashed straight across my brain, and lighted up the future, that was still to remain my own, although that dazzle was withdrawn. I knew what to do now, though I trembled lest I should not find the way to do it. "So, Maria, you are not going to finish it just now. Suppose you lend it to me for a little. I should like to examine it, and it will do me good." "Carl, it is not sufficiently scientific to do you good, but I wish you would take it away, for if I keep it with me, I shall destroy it; and I shall like it to remain until some day, when God has taught me more than in myself I know, or than I can learn of men." "I will take the greatest care of it, Maria," I said, almost fearing it to be a freak on her part that she suffered my possession, or that she might withdraw it. "You will ask me for it when you want it; and, Maria, I have heard it said that it is a good thing to let your compositions lie by, and come to them with a fresh impression." "That is exactly what I think. You see with me, Carl, that all which has to do with music is not music now." "I think that there is less of the world in music than in anything else, even in poetry, Maria. But, of course, music must itself fall short of our ideas of it; and I daresay you found that your beautiful feelings would not change themselves into music exactly as beautiful as they were. I know very little music yet, Maria, but I never found _any_ that did not disappoint my feeling about it when I was hearing it, except the Chevalier's." "That is it, Carl. What am I to endeavor, after anything that he has accomplished? But I feel that if I could not produce the very highest musical work in the very highest style, I would not produce any, and would rather die." "I cannot understand that; I would rather worship than be worshipped." "I would not. I cannot tell why, but I have a feeling, which will not let me be content with proving what has gone before me. Dearly as I love Florimond, he could not put this feeling out of me. I am not content to be an actress. There have been actresses who were queens, and some few angels. I know my heart is pure in its desires, and I should have no objection to reign. But it must be over a new kingdom. No woman has ever yet composed." "Oh, yes, Maria!" "I say no to you, Carl,--not as I mean. I mean no woman has been supreme among men, as the Chevalier among musicians. I have often wondered why. And I feel--at least, I did feel--that I could be so, and do this. But I feel it no longer,--it has passed. Carl, I am very miserable and cast down." I could easily believe it, but I was too young to trust to my own decision. Had Clara been speaking, I should have implicitly relied, for she always knew herself. But Maria was so wayward, so fitful, and of late so peculiar that I dared not entertain that confidence in her genius which was yet the strongest presentiment that had ever taken hold upon me. I carried away the score, which I had folded up while she had spoken; and I shall never forget the half-forlorn, half-wistful look with which she followed it in my arms as I left her. But I dared not stay, for fear she should change her mind; and although I would fain have entered into her heart to comfort her, I could not even try. I was in a breathless state to see that score, but not much came to my examination. The sheets were exquisitely written, the manner of Seraphael being exactly imitated, or naturally identical,--the very noting of a fac-simile, as well as the autograph. It was styled, "First Symphony," and the key was F minor. But the composition was so full and close as to swamp completely my childish criticism. I thought it appeared all right, and very, very wonderful; but that was all. I wrapped it in one of my best silk handkerchiefs, to keep it from the dust, and laid it away in my box, together with my other treasures from home, which ever reposed there; and then I returned to my work, but certainly more melancholy than I had ever remembered myself in life. In March, one day, Maria stayed from school; but her brother Joseph brought me from her a message. She was indisposed, or said to be so, and begged me to go and see her. There was no difficulty in doing so, but I was surprised that Anastase should not be with her, or at least that he should appear, as he did, so unconcerned. When I expressed my regret to Joseph Cerinthia, he added that she was only in bed for a cold. I was both pleased and flattered that she had sent for me, but still could not comprehend it, as she was so little ill. I ran down, after the morning, intending to dine with her, or not, I did not care which. But instead of her being in bed, she was in the parlor. "I thought, Maria, you were not up." "I was not; and now I am not dressed. Carl, I sent for you to ask for the manuscript again." I looked at her to see whether she meant her request, for it was by no means easy to say. She looked very brilliant, but had an unusual darkness round her eyes,--a wide ring of the deepest violet. She either had wept forth that shadow, or was in a peculiar state. Neither tears nor smiles were upon her face, and her lips burned with a living scarlet,--no rose-soft red, as wont. Her hair, fastened under her cap in long bands, fell here and there, and seemed to have no strength. She had been drinking _eau sucrée_, for a glass of it was upon the table, and a few fresh flowers, which she hastened to put away from her as I entered. I was so much affected by her looks, though no fear seized me, that I took her hand. It was dry and warm, but very weak and tremulous. "Maria, you were at that garden last night, and danced. I knew how it would be,--it was too early in the year." "I was not at the Spielheim, for when Florimond said none of you were going from Cecilia, I declined. But no dancing would have made me ill as I have been; it was nothing to care for, and is now past." "Was it cold, then? It seems more like fever." "It was neither, or perhaps a little of both. Let me have my score again, Carl. I need only ask for it, you know, as it is mine." "You need not be so proud, Maria. I shall of course return it, but not unless you promise me to do no more to it just now." "Not _just_ now. But I made believe to be ill on purpose that I might have a day's leisure. I must also copy it out." "Maria, you never made believe, for if you _could_ tell a lie, it would not be for yourself. You _have_ been ill, and I suspect much that I know how. If you will tell me, I will fetch the score,--that is, if it is good for you to have it. But I would rather burn it than that it should hurt you; and I tell you, it all depends upon that." "I will tell you, Carl, and more, because it is over now, and cannot happen again. I was lying in my bed, and heard the clock strike ten. I thought also that I had heard it rain; so I got up and looked out. There was no rain, but there were stars; and seeing them, my thoughts grew bright,--bright as when I imagined that music; and being in the same mood,--that is, quiet and yet excited, if you can believe in both together,--I went to my writing. It was all there ready for me; and Josephine, who always disturbs me, because she talks, was very fast asleep. It may sound proud, Carlino, but I am certain the Chevalier was with me,--that he stood behind my chair, and I could not look round for fear of seeing him. He guided my hand; he thrust out my ideas,--all grew clear; and I was not afraid, even of a ghost companion." "But the Chevalier is alive and well." "And yet, I tell you, his ghost was with me. Well, Carl, I had written until I could not see, for my lamp went out, and it was not yet light. I suppose I then fell asleep, for I certainly had a vision." "What was that, Maria?" "Countless crowds, Carl, first, and then a most horrible whirl and rush. Then a serene place, gray as morning before the sun, with great golden organ-pipes, that shot up into and cut through the sky; for although it was gray beneath, and I seemed to stand upon clouds, it was all blue over me, and when I looked up, it seemed to return my gaze. I heard a sound under me, like an orchestra, such as we have often heard. But _above_, there was another music, and the golden pipes quivered as if with its trembling; yet it was not the organ that seemed to speak, and no instrument was there besides. This music did not interfere with the music of the orchestra,--still playing onwards,--but it swelled through and through it, and seemed to stretch like a sky into the sky. Oh, Carl, that I could describe it to you! It was like all we feel of music,--beyond all we hear, given to us in hearing." She paused. Now a light, quenched in thrilling tears, arose, and glittered from her eyes. She looked overwrought, seraphic; for though her hand, which I still held, was not changed or cold, her countenance told unutterable wonder,--the terrors of the heavenliest enthusiasm, I knew not how to account for. "Maria, dear! I have had quite as strange dreams, and almost as sweet. It was very natural, but you were very, very naughty all the same. What did you do when you awoke?" "I awoke I don't know how, Carl, nor when; but I resolved to give into my symphony all that the dream had given me, and I wrote again. This time I left off, though in a very odd manner. The clock struck five, and all the people were in the streets. I was cold, which I had forgotten, and my feet were quite as ice. I was about to turn a leaf when I shivered and dropped my pen. But when I stooped down to find it in the early twilight, which, I thought, would help me, I fell upon the floor. My head was as if fire had burst into it, and a violent pain came on, that drove me to my bed. I have had such a pain before,--a little, but very much less; for I believed I could not bear it. I did fall asleep too, for a long time, and never heard a sound; and when I arose, I was as well as I need to be, or ever expect. But as I don't wish to be ill again, I must finish the symphony at once." "So you think I shall allow it? No, Maria, it is out of the question; but I will fetch a doctor for you." "Carl, you are a baby. I have seen a doctor in Paris for this very pain. He can do nothing for it, and says it is constitutional, and that I shall always be subject to it. Everybody has something they are subject to,--Florimond has the gout." I laughed,--glad to have anything at all to laugh at. "I am really well now, Carl,--have had a warm bath, and leeches upon my temples; everything. The woman here has waited upon me, and has been very kind; and now I have sent her away, for I do hate to seem ill and be thought ill." "Leeches, Maria?" "Oh, that is nothing! I put them on whenever I choose. Did you never have them on, Carl?" "No, never. I had a blister for the measles, because I could not bear to think about leeches. I did not know people put them on for the headache." "I always do, and so does everybody for such headaches as mine. But they have taken away the pain, and that is all I care for. They are little cold creepers, though; and I was glad to pull them off." "Show me the marks, Maria." She lifted her beautiful soft hair. Those cruel little notches were some hieroglyph to me of unknown suffering that her face expressed, though I was too young, and far too ignorant, to imagine of what kind and import. "I promise you, Maria, that if you attempt to write any more, I will tell Anastase. Or no,--I have thought of something far more clever: I will make off with the rest at once." I had an idea of finding her sheets in her own room; and plunging into it,--frightening Josephine, who was nursing her doll, into a remote corner, I gathered all the papers, and folding them together, was about to rush downstairs without returning to Maria, when she called upon me so that I dared not help listening. For, "You dare not do it, Carl!" she cried; "you will kill me, and I shall die now." Agonized by her expression, which was not even girl-like, I halted for an instant at her open door. "Then, Maria, if I leave them here, on your honor, will you not touch them or attempt to write?" "It is not your affair, Carl, and I am angry." She showed she was angry,--very pale, with two crimson spots, and she bit her lip almost black. "It _is_ my affair, as you told _me_, and not your brother or Florimond. He or Florimond would not allow it, you know as well as I do." "They should and would. And, pray, why is it I am not to write? I should say you were jealous, Carl, if you were not Carl. But you have no right to forbid it, and shall not." "I do not know how to express my fear, but I am afraid, and, Maria, I will not let it be done." Lest I should commit myself, I closed the door, stumbled down the dark staircase, tore through the street, and deposited the sheets with the others in the box. I am conscious these details are tedious and oppressive; but they cannot be withheld, because of what I shall have to touch upon. Fearful were the consequences that descended upon my devoted head. I little expected them, and suffered from them absurdly, child as I was, and most witless at that time. Maria returned on the following day week, and looking quite herself, except for those violet shades yet lingering,--still not herself to me in any sense. She scarcely looked at me, and did not speak to me at all when I managed to meet her. Anastase alone seemed conscious that she had been ill. He appeared unable to rid himself of the impression; for actually during my lesson, when his custom was to eschew a conventionalism even as a wrong note, he asked me what had been the matter with her. I told him I believed a very awful headache, with fever, and that I considered she had been very ill indeed. I saw his face cloud, though he made reply all coolness, "You are mistaken, Auchester. It was a cold, which always produces fever, and often pain." Thus we were all alike deluded; thus was that motherless one hurried to her Father's house! Meantime, silent as I kept myself on the subject of the symphony, it held me day by day more firmly. I longed almost with suffering for the season when I should emancipate myself from all my doubts. CHAPTER VIII. The season came, and I shall never forget its opening. It was late in April,--exquisite weather, halcyon, blooming; my memory expands to it now. From Italy he returned. He came upon us suddenly,--there was no time to organize a procession, to marshal a welcome chorus; none knew of his arrival until he appeared. We had been rambling in the woods, Franz and I, and were lounging homewards, laden with wild-flowers and lily bunches. Franz was a kind creature to me now, and in my loneliness I sought him always. We heard, even among the moss, a noise of distant shoutings,--nobody shouted in that spot except our own,--and we hurried homewards. I was quite faint with expectation, and being very weary, sat down to rest on one of those seats that everywhere invite in shady places, while Delemann sped onwards for information. Returning, he announced most gleefully, "The Chevalier has arrived; they are drawing the carriage up the hill." I am ashamed of what I did. I could not return to Cecilia; I wandered about in the village, possessed by a vague aspiration that I should see him there, or that he would espy me: no such thing. I came back to supper excited, expectant; he was gone. I deserved it, and felt I did, for my cowardice; but at the end of supper the head of the central table, having waited until then, deliberately took from his deep pocket and presented me with a note, a very tiny note, that was none the fresher for having lain an hour or two amidst snuff and "tabac." But this noteling almost set me raving. It was short indeed, yet honey sweet. I am not to find thee here, my Carl, although I came on purpose. Art not thou still my eldest child? Come to me, then, to-morrow, it will be thy Sunday, and thy room shall be ready; also two little friends of thine,--I and he. Do not forget me. Thine, SERAPHAEL. He had made every arrangement for my visit, and I never think of his kindness in these particulars without being reminded that in proportion to the power of his genius was it ever beneficently gentle. I spent such an afternoon as would have been cheaply purchased by a whole life of solitude; but I must only advert to one circumstance that distinguished it. We were walking upon the lovely terrace amongst bright marbles just arranged, and dazzling flowers; he was gentle, genial, animated,--I felt my time was come. I therefore taught myself to say: "Sir, I have a very, most particular favor to ask of you; it is that you will condescend to give me your opinion of a piece of music which some one has written. I have brought it with me on purpose,--may I fetch it? It is in my hat in the house." "By all means, this very moment, Carlomein,--or, no, rather we will go in-doors together and examine it quietly. It is thine own, of course?" "Oh, no, sir! I should have said so directly. It is a young lady's, and she knows nothing of my bringing it. I stole it from her." "Ah! true," he replied, simply; and led me to that beautiful music-room. I was fain to realize Maria's dream as I beheld those radiant organ-pipes beneath their glorious arch, that deep-wooded pianoforte, with its keys, milk-white and satin-soft, recalling me but to that which was lovelier than her very vision,--the lustrous presence pervading that luxury of artistic life. Seraphael was more innocent, more brilliant in behavior at his home than anywhere; the noble spaces and exquisitely appointed rooms seemed to affect him merely as secluded warmth affects an exotic flower; he expanded more fully, fragrantly, in the rich repose. At the cedar writing-table he paused, and stood waiting silently while I fetched the score. As I unfolded it before him I was even more astonished than ever at the perfection of its appearance; I hesitated not the least to place it in those most delicate of all delicate hands. I saw his eyes, that seemed to have drawn into them the very violet of the Italian heaven, so dark they gleamed through the down-let lashes, fasten themselves eagerly for an instant upon the title-sheet, where, after his own fashion, Maria had written her ancient name, "Cerinthia," only, in the corner; but then he laid the score, having opened the first page, upon the table, and knelt down before it, plunging his fingers into the splendid curls of his regal head, his very brow being buried in their shadow as he bent, bowed, leaned into the page, and page after page until the end. With restless rapidity his hand flashed back the leaves, his eye drank the spirit of those signs; but he spoke not, stirred not. It seemed to me that I must not watch him, as I was doing most decidedly, and I disentangled myself from that revery with a shock. I walked to the carved music-stands, the painted music-cases. I examined the costly manuscripts and olden tomes arrayed on polished cabinets. I blinded myself with the sunshine streaming through stained compartments in the windows to the carnation-toned velvet of the furniture. I peered into the pianoforte, and yearned for it to awaken; and rested long and rapturously before a mighty marble likeness of the self-crowned Beethoven. It was garlanded with grapes and vine-leaves that fondled the wild locks in gracefullest fraternity; it was mounted upon a pedestal of granite, where also the alabaster fruits and tendrils clustered, clasping it like frozen summer, and beneath the bust the own investment glittered,--"Tonkunst's Bacchus."[6] It was no longer difficult to pass away the time without being troublesome to myself or Seraphael. I was lost in a triumphant reminiscence that the stormy brow, the eyes of lightning, the torn heart, the weary soul, were now heaven's light, heaven's love, its calm, its gladness. For quite an hour I stood there, so remembering and desiring ever to remember. And then that sweet, that living voice aroused me. Without looking up, he said,-- "Do you mean to say, Carlomein, that she has had no help here?" "Sir, she could have had none; it was all and entirely her own. No one knew she had written except myself." Then in his clearest tones he answered: "It is as I expected. It is terrible, Carlomein, to think that this work might have perished; and I embrace thee, Carlomein, for having secured to me its possession." "Is it so very good then, sir? Maria was very ignorant about it, and could not even play it for herself." "I daresay not, she has made too full a score." He smiled his sweetest smile. "But for all that, we will not strike out one note. Why is it not finished, Carlomein?" I might have related the whole story from beginning to end; but his manner was very regal just now, and I merely said: "I rather think she was dissatisfied with the first two movements, for although she said she could finish it, she did not, and I have kept it some time." "You should have written to me, Carlomein, or sent it to me; it must and shall be finished. The work is of Heaven's own. What earthly inspiration could have taught her strains like these? They are of a priestess and a prophetess; she has soared beyond us all." He arose suddenly; a fixed glow was upon his face, his eyes were one solemn glory. He came to the piano, he pushed me gently aside, he took his seat noiselessly, as he began to play. I would not retire. I stood where I could both see and hear. It was the second movement that first arrested him. He gave to the white-faced keys a hundred voices. Tone upon tone was built; the chords grew larger and larger; no other hand could have so elicited the force, the burden, the breadth of the orchestral medium, from those faint notes and few. His articulating finger supplied all needs of mechanism. He doubled and redoubled his power. Never shall I forget it,--the measures so long and lingering, the modulations so like his own, the very subject moulded from the chosen key, like sculpture of the most perfect chiselling from a block of the softest grain,--so appropriate, so masterly. But what pained me through the loveliness of the conception was to realize the mood suggesting it,--a plaint of spiritual suffering, a hungering and thirsting heart, a plea of exhausted sadness. He felt it too; for as the weary, yet unreproachful strain fell from under his music-burdened fingers, he drooped his glorious head as a lily in the drenching rain, his lips grew grave, the ecstatic smile was lost, and in his eyes there was a dim expression, though they melted not to tears. I was sure that Maria had conserved her dream, for a strange, intermittent accompaniment streamed through the loftier appeal, and was as a golden mist over too much piercing brightness. The movement was very long, and he never spoke all through it, neither when he had played as far as she had written; but turned back to the first, as yet untried. Again was I forcibly reminded of what I had said on my first acquaintance with her; she had, without servile intention, caught the very spirit of Seraphael as it wandered through his compositions, and imprisoned it in the sympathy of her own. It was as two flowers whose form is single and the same, but the hues were of different distribution, and still his own supreme. I cannot describe the first movement further. I was too young to be astonished, carried away by the miracle of its consummation under such peculiar circumstances; but I can remember how completely I felt I might always trust myself in future when any one should gain such ascendency over my convictions,--which, by the way, never happened. I must not dwell upon that evening,--suffice it to say that I left the score with the Chevalier; and though he did not tell me so in so many words, I felt sure he himself would restore it to the writer. On Monday evening I was very expectant, and not in vain, for she sent me a note of invitation,--an attention I had not received from her since my rebellious behavior. She was alone, and even now writing. She arose hastily, and for some moments could not command her voice; she said what I shall not repeat, except that she was too generous as regarded her late distance, and then she explained what follows. "The Chevalier came this morning, and, Carl, I could only send for you because it is you who have done it all for me, in spite of my ingratitude; and, alas! I never can repay you. I feel, Carl, now, that it is better not to have all one wishes for at once; if I had not waited, the shock would have killed me." I looked at her, tried to make out to my sight that she did not, even now, look as if ready to die; her lips had lost their fever rose, and were pale as the violets that strewed her eyes. The faint blue threads of veins on the backs of her hands, the thin polish of those temples standing clear from her darkest hair,--these things burned upon my brain and gave me a sickening thrill. I felt, "Can Anastase have seen her? Can he have known this?" I was most of all alarmed at what I myself had done; still, I was altogether surprised at the renewal of my fears, for on the Saturday she had not only seemed, but been herself,--her cheeks, her lips, her brow, all wearing the old healthful radiance. "Maria," I exclaimed, "dear Maria, will you tell me why this symphony makes you ill, or look so ill? You were quite well on Saturday, I thought, or you may quite believe I should never have done what I did." "Do I look ill, Carl? I do not feel ill, only desperately excited. I have no headache, and, what is better, no heart-pain now. Do you know what is to be? I tell you, because you will rejoice that you have done it. This work is to be finished and to be heard. An orchestra will return my dream to God." "Ah! your dream, Maria,--I thought of that. But shall _I_ hear it, Maria?" "You will play for me, Carl,--and Florimond. Oh! I must not remember that. And the Chevalier, Carl,--he even entreated, the proud soul, the divinely missioned, entreated me to perpetuate the work. I can write now without fear; he has made me free. I feared myself before; now I only fear him." "Maria, what of Anastase? Does he know, and what does he think?" "Do not ask me, Carl, for I cannot tell you what he did. He was foolish, and so was I; but it was for joy on both our parts." "You cried then! There is nothing to be ashamed of." "We ought to have restrained ourselves when the Chevalier was by. He must love Florimond now, for he fetched him himself, and told him what I had done, and was still to do." It is well for us that time does not stay,--not grievous, but a gladsome thought that all we most dread is carried beyond our reach by its force, and that all we love and long to cherish is but taken that it may remain, beyond us, to ripen in eternity until we too ripen to enjoy it. Still, there is a pain, wholly untinctured with pleasure, in recalling certain of its shocks, re-living them, returning upon them with memory. The most glorious of our days, however, strike us with as troubled a reminiscence, so that we ought not to complain, nor to desire other than that the past should rest, as it does, and as alone the dead beside repose,--in hope. I have brought myself to the recollection of certain passages in my youth's history simply because there is nothing more precious than the sympathy, so rare, of circumstance with passion; nothing so difficult to describe, yet that we so long to win. It is seldom that what happens as chance we would have left unchanged, could we have passed sentence of our will upon it; but still more unwonted is it to feel, after a lapse of eventful times, that what _has_ happened was not only the best, but the only thing to happen, all things considered that have intervened. This I feel now about the saddest lesson I learned in my exuberant boyhood,--a lesson I have never forgotten, and can never desire to discharge from my life's remembrance. Everything prospered with us after the arrangement our friend and lord had made for Maria. I can only say of my impressions that they were of the utmost perfectibility of human wishes in their accomplishment, for she had indeed nothing left to wish for. I would fain delineate the singular and touching gratitude she evinced towards Seraphael, but it did not distribute itself in words; I believe she was altogether so much affected by his goodness that she dared not dwell upon it. I saw her constantly between his return and the approaching examinations; but our intercourse was still and silent. I watched her glide from room to room at Cecilia, or found her dark hair sweeping the score at home so calmly--she herself calmer than the calmest,--calm as Anastase himself. Indeed, to him she appeared to have transferred the whole impetuousness of her nature; he was changed also, his kindness to myself warmer than it ever had been; but from his brow oppressed, his air of agitation, I deemed him verily most anxious for the result. Maria had not more than a month to work upon the rest of the symphony and to complete it, as Seraphael had resolutely resolved that it should be rehearsed before our summer separation. Maria I believe would not have listened to such an arrangement from any other lips; and Florimond's dissatisfaction at a premature publicity was such that the Chevalier--autocratic even in granting a favor, which he must ever grant in his own way--had permitted the following order to be observed in anticipation. After our own morning performance by the pupils only and their respective masters, the hall would be cleared, the audience and members should disperse, and only the strictly required players for the orchestra remain; Seraphael himself having chosen these. Maria was herself to conduct the rehearsal, and those alone whose assistance she would demand had received an intimation of the secret of her authorship. I trembled when the concluding announcement was made to me, for I had a feeling that she could not be kept too quiet; also, Anastase, to my manifest appreciation, shared my fear. But Seraphael was irresistible, especially as Maria had assented, had absorbed herself in the contemplation of her intentions, even to eagerness, that they should be achieved. Our orchestra was, though small, brilliant, and in such perfect training as I seldom experienced in England. Our own rehearsals were concluded by the week before our concert, and there remained rather less for me to do. Those few days I was inexpressibly wretched,--a foreboding drowned my ecstatic hopes in dread; they became a constant effort to maintain, though even everything still smiled around us. The Tuesday was our concert morning, and on the Sunday that week I met Maria as we came from church. She was sitting in the sunlight, upon one of the graves. Josephine was not near her, nor her brother, only Florimond, who was behind me, ran and joined her before I beheld that she beckoned to me. I did hardly like to go forward as they were both together, but he also made me approach by a very gentle smile. The broad lime-trees shadowed the church, and the blossoms, unopened, hung over them in ripest bud; it was one of those oppressively sweet seasons that remind one--at least me--of the resurrection morning. "Sit down by me, Carl," said Maria, who had taken off her gloves, and was already playing with Florimond's fingers, as if she were quite alone with him, though the churchyard was yet half filled with people. "Maria," I said, sitting down at the foot of a cross that was hung with faded garlands, "why don't you sit in the shade? It is a very warm day." "So it is very warm, and that is what I like; I am never warm enough here, and Florimond, too, loves the sun. I could not sit under a tree this day, everything is so bright; but nothing can be as bright as I wish it. Carl, I was going to tell Florimond, and I will tell you, that I feel as if I were too glad to bear what is before me. I did not think so until it came so very near. I am afraid when I stand up my heart will fail." "Are you frightened, Maria?" I asked in my simplicity. "That is not it, though I am also frightened. But I feel as if it were scarcely the thing for me to do, to stand up and control those of whom I am not master. Is it not so, Florimond?" "Maria, the Chevalier is the only judge; and I am certain you will not, as a woman, allow your feelings to get the better of you. I have a great deal more to suffer on your account than you can possibly feel." "I do not see that." "It is so, and should be seen by you. If your work should in any respect fail, imagine what that failure would cost me." I looked up in utter indignation, but was disarmed by the expression of his countenance; a vague sadness possessed it, a certain air of tender resignation; his hauteur had melted, though his manner retained its distance. "As if it could be a failure!" I exclaimed; "why, we already know how much it is!" "I do not, Auchester, and I am not unwilling to confess my ignorance. If our symphony even prove worthy of our Cecilia, I shall still be anxious." "Why, Florimond?" she demanded, wistfully. "On account of your health. You know what you promised me." "Not to write for a year. That is easy to say." "But not so easy to do. You make every point an extreme, Maria." "I cannot think what you mean about my health." "You cannot?" She blushed lightly and frowned a shade. "I have told you, Florimond, how often I have had that pain before." "And you told me also what they said." His tones were now so grave that I could not bear to conjecture their significance. He went on. "I do not consider, Maria, that for a person of genius it is any hardship to be discouraged from too much effort, especially when the effect will become enhanced by a matured experience." "You are very unkind, Florimond." Indeed, I thought so, too. "I only care to please you." "No, Maria, you had not a thought of me in writing." "And yet you yourself gave me the first idea. But you are right; I wrote without reference to any one, and because I burned to do so." "And you burn less now for it? Tell me that." "I do not burn any longer, I weary for it to be over; I desire to hear it once, and then you may take it away, and I will never see it any more." "That is quite as unnatural as the excessive desire,--to have fatigued of what you loved. But, Maria, I trust this weariness of yours will not appear before the Chevalier, after all his pains and interest." "I hope so too, Florimond; but I do not know." It did not. The next day the Chevalier came over to Cecilia, and slept that night in the village. The tremendous consequence of the next twenty-four hours might almost have erased, as a rolling sea, all identical remembrance; and, indeed, it has sufficed to leave behind it what is as but a picture once discerned, and then forever darkened,--the cool, early romance of the wreaths and garlands (for we all rose at dawn to decorate the entrance, the corridors, the hall, the reception-room), the masses of May-bloom and lilies that arrived with the sun; the wild beauty overhanging everything; the mysterious freshness I have mentioned, or some effects just so conceived, before. I myself adorned with laurels and lilies the conductor's desk, and the whole time as much in a dream as ever when asleep,--at all events I could even realize less. Maria was not at hand, nor could I see her, she breakfasted alone with Anastase; and although I shall never know what happened between them that morning, I have ever rejoiced that she did so. When our floral arrangements were perfected I could not even criticise them. I flew to my bed and sat down upon it, holding my violin, my dearest, in my arms; there I rested, perhaps slept. Strange thoughts were mine in that short time, which seemed immeasurably lengthening,--most like dreams, too, those very thoughts, for they were all rushing to a crisis. I recalled my cue, however, and what that alarming peal of a drum meant, sounding through the avenues of Cecilia. As we ever cast off things behind, my passion could only hold upon the future. I was but, with all my speed, just in time to fall into procession with the rest. The chorus first singing, the band in the midst, behind, our professors in order, and on either side our own dark lines the female pupils,--a double streak of white. I have not alluded to our examinations, with which, however, I had had little enough to do. But we all pressed forward in contemporaneous state, and so entered the antechamber of the hall. It was the most purely brilliant scene I ever saw, prepared under the eye of the masters in our universal absence; I could recognize but one taste, but one eye, one hand, in that blending of all deep with all most dazzling flower-tints. One double garland, a harp in a circle,--the symbol of immortal harmony,--wrought out of snowy roses and azure ribbons, hung exactly above the table; but the table was itself covered with snowy damask, fold upon fluted fold, so that nothing, whatever lay beneath it, could be given to the gaze. Through the antechamber to the decorated hall we passed, and then a lapse of music half restored me to myself,--only half, despite the overture of his, with choral relief, with intersong, that I had never heard before, and that he had written only for us: despite his presence, his conducting charm. In little more than an hour we returned, pell-mell now, just as we pleased, notwithstanding calls to order and the pulses of the measuring voices. Just then I found myself by Maria. Through that sea-like resonance she whispered,-- "Do not be surprised, Carl, if the Chevalier presents you with a prize." "I have not tried for one, Maria." "I know that, but he will nevertheless distinguish you, I am certain of it." "I hope not. Keep near me, Maria." "Yes, surely, if I can; but oh, Carl, I am glad to be near you! Is that a lyre above the table? for I can scarcely see." She was, as I expected, pale,--not paler than ever; for it was very long since she had been paler than any one I ever saw, except the Chevalier. But his was as the lustre of the whitest glowing fire,--hers was as the light of snow. She was all pale except her eyes, and that strange halo she had never lost shone dim as the darkliest violets, a soft yet awful hue. I had replied to her question hurriedly, "Yes; and it must have taken all the roses in his garden." And last of all, she said to me, in a tone which suggested more suffering than all her air: "I wish I were one of those roses." The table, when the rich cover was removed, presented a spectacle of fascination scarcely to be appreciated except by those immediately affected. Masses of magnificently bound volumes, painted and carved instrument-cases, busts and portraits of the hierarchy of music, lay together in according contrast. For, as I have not yet mentioned, the Chevalier had carried out his abolition of the badges to the utmost; there was not a medal to be seen. But these prizes were beyond the worth of any medal, each by each. One after another left the table in those delicate hands, wafted to its fortunate possessor by a compliment more delicate still, and I fancied no more remained. Maria still stood near me; and as the moments flew, a stillness more utter than I could have imagined pervaded her, a marbled quietness crept over every muscle; and as I met her exquisite countenance in profile, with the eyes downward and fixed, and not an eyelash stirring, she might have been the victim of despair, or the genius of enraptured hope. I saw that the Chevalier had proceeded to toss over and over the flowers which had strewn the gifts,--as if it were all, also, over now,--and he so long continued to trifle with them that I felt as if he saw Maria, and desired to attract from her all other eyes, for he talked the whole time lightly, laughingly, with an air of the most ravishing gayety, to those about him, and to every one except ourselves. In a few minutes, which appeared to be a very hour, he gathered up, with a handful of flowers that he let slip through his fingers directly, something which he retained in his hand, and which it now struck me that he had concealed, whatever it was, by that flower-play of his all along; for it was even diffidently, certainly with reserve of some kind, that he approached us last, as we stood together and did not stir. "These," said he to me in a voice that just trembled, though aërially joyous, "are too small to make speeches about; but in memory of several secrets we have between us, I hope you will sometimes wear them." He then looked full at Maria; but she responded not even to that electric force that is itself the touch of light,--her eyes still downcast, her lips unmoved. He turned to me, and softly, seriously, yet half surprised, as it were, shook his head, placing in her hand the first of the unknown caskets he had brought, and the other in my own. She took it without looking up, or even murmuring her thanks; still, immediately as he returned to the table, I forced it from her, feeling it might and ought to occasion a revulsion of sensation, however slight. It succeeded so far as that she gazed, still bending downwards, upon what I held in my own hand now, and exhibited to her. It was a full-blown rose of beaten silver, white as snow, without a leaf, but exquisitely set upon a silver stem, and having upon one of its broad petals a large dewdrop of the living diamond. I opened my own strange treasure then, having resigned to her her own. This was a breastpin of purest gold, with the head--a great violet cut from a single amethyst--as perfectly executed as hers. I thrust it into my pocket, for I could not at that instant even rejoice in its possession. And now soon, very soon, the flower-lighted space was cleared, and we, the chosen few, alone remained. My heart felt as if it could only break, so violent was the pulse that shook it. I knew that I must make an effort transcending all, or I should lose my power to handle the bow; and at least I achieved composure of behavior. Anastase, I can remember, came to me; he touched my hand, and as if he longed, with all loosened passion, for something like sympathy, looked into my very eyes. I could scarcely endure that gaze,--it was inquisitive to scrutiny, yet dim with unutterable forecast. The flowers in the concert-hall were already withering when, after a short separation for refreshment, we returned there, and were shut in safely by the closed doors from the distant festal throng. It was a strange sight, those deserted seats in front, where now none rested saving only the Chevalier, who, after hovering amidst the orchestra until all the ranks were filled, had descended, as was arranged, into the void space, that he might be prepared to criticise the performance. He did not seem much in the mood for criticism; his countenance was lightening with excitement, his eyes burned like stars brought near: that hectic fire, that tremulous blaze were both for her. As he retreated, and folding his slender arms and raising his glorious head, still stood, Maria entered with Anastase. Florimond led her forward in her white dress, as he had promised himself to lead her captive on the day of her espousals; neither hurried nor abashed, she came in her virgin calm, her virgin paleness. But as they stood for one moment at the foot of the orchestra, he paused, arrested her, his hand was raised; and in a moment, with a smile whose tenderness for that moment triumphed, he had placed the silver rose in her dark hair, where it glistened, an angelic symbol to the recognition of every one present. She did not smile in return, nor raise her eyes, but mounted instantly and stood amidst us. I had no idea, until, indeed, she stood there, a girl amidst us,--until she appeared in that light of which she herself was light,--how very small she was, how slightly framed; every emotion was articulated by the fragility of her form as she stirred so calmly, silently. The bright afternoon from many windows poured upon the polish of her forehead, so arched, so eminent; but, alas! upon the languors also that had woven their awful mists around her eyes. Her softly curling lips spoke nothing now but the language of sleep in infancy, so gently parted, but not as in inspiration. As she raised that arm so calmly, and the first movement came upon me, I could not yet regard her, nor until a rest occurred. Then I saw her the same again, except that her eyes were filled with tears, and over all her face that there was a shadow playing as from some sweeping solemn wing, like the imagery of summer leaves that trembles upon a moonlit grass. Only once I heard that music, but I do not remember it, nor can call upon myself to describe it. I only know that while in the full thrilling tide of that first movement I was not aware of playing, or how I played, though very conscious of the weight upon my heart and upon every instrument. Even Anastase, next whom I stood, was not himself in playing. I cannot tell whether the conductress were herself unsteady, but she unnerved us all, or something too near unnerved us,--we were noiselessly preparing for that which was at hand. At the close of the movement a rushing cadence of ultimate rapidity broke from the stringed force, but the wind flowed in upon the final chords; they waned, they expanded, and at the simultaneous pause she also paused. Then strangely, suddenly, her arm fell powerless, her paleness quickened to crimson, her brow grew warm with a bursting blood-red blush,--she sank to the floor upon her side silently as in the south wind a leaf just flutters and is at rest; nor was there a sound through the stricken orchestra as Florimond raised her and carried her from us in his arms. None moved beside, except the Chevalier, who, with a gaze that was as of one suddenly blinded, followed Anastase instantaneously. We remained as we stood, in a suspense that I, for one, could never have broken. Poor Florimond's violin lay shattered upon the floor, the strings shivered, and yet shuddering; the rose lay also low. None gathered either up, none stirred, nor any brought us word. I believe I should never have moved again if Delemann, in his living kindness, had not sped from us at last. He, too, was long away,--long, long to return; nor did he, in returning, re-enter the orchestra. He beckoned to me from the screen of the antechamber. I met him amidst the glorious garlands, but I made way to him I know not how. That room was deserted also, and all who had been there had gone. Whither? Oh! where might they now remain? Franz whispered to me, and of his few, sad words--half hope, half fear, all anguish--I cannot repeat the echo. But it is sufficient for all to remind myself how soon the hope had faded, after few, not many days; how the fear passed with it, but not alone. Yet, whatever passed, whatever faded, left us love forever,--love, with its dear regrets, its infinite expectations! FOOTNOTE: [6] The Bacchus of Music. CHAPTER IX. Twelve years of after-life cannot but weigh lighter in the balance of recollection than half that number in very early youth. I think this now, pondering upon the threshold of middle age with an enthusiasm fixed and deepened by every change; but I did not think so the day to which I shall defer my particular remembrances,--the day I had left Germany forever,--except in dreams. There were other things I might have left behind that now I carried to my home,--things themselves all dreams, yet containing in their reminiscences the symbols of my every reality. Eternity alone could contain the substance of those shadows; that shore we deem itself to shadow, alone contains the resolution into glory of all our longings, into peace of all our pain. Such feelings, engendered by loneliness, took me by the very hand and led me forwards that dreary December evening when I landed in England last, having obtained all that was absolutely necessary to be made my own abroad. I have not tormented my reader or two with the most insignificant mention of myself between this evening and a time some years before; it would have been impracticable, or, if practicable, impertinent, as I lived those after years entirely within and to myself. The sudden desertion which had stricken Cecilia of her hero lord, and that suspension of his presence which ensued, had no more power upon me than to call out what was, indeed, demanded of me under such circumstances,--all the persistency of my nature. And if even there had been a complete and actual surrender of all her privileges by professors and pupils, I should have been the last to be found there, and I think that I should have played to the very empty halls until ruin hungered for them and we had fallen together. As it happened, however, my solitude was more actual than any I could have provided for myself; my spirit retreated, and to music alone remained either master or slave. The very representative of music was no longer such to me; for when we came together after that fatal midsummer no sign was left of Anastase,--"a new king had arisen in Egypt, who knew not Joseph." To him I ought, perhaps, to confess that I owed a good deal, but I cannot believe it,--I am fain to think I should have done as well alone; but there was that in the association and habitude of the place, that in the knowledge of being still under the superintendence, however formal and abstracted, of its head, that I could not, and would not, have flung up the chances of its academical career. It was, however, no effort to disengage myself from the spot, for any notion of the presence of him I best loved was, alas! now, and had been long, entirely dissociated from it. Not one smile from those fair lips, not one ray from those awful eyes, had sunned the countenances of the ever-studious throng. A monastery could not have been more secluded from the incarnate presence of the Deity than were we in that quiet institution from its distant director. Let it not be imagined, at the same time, that we could have existed in ignorance of that influence which was streaming--an "eastern star"--through the country that contained him as a light of life, which in the few fleeting years of my boyhood had garnered such illustrious immortality for one scarcely past his own first youth. But in leaving Germany I was leaving neither the name nor the fame of Seraphael, except to meet them again where they were dearer yet and brighter than in their cradle-land. None could estimate--and, young as I yet was, I well knew it--the proportion of the renown his early works had gained in this strange country. The noblest attribute of race, the irresistible conception of the power of race, had scarcely then received a remote encouragement, though physiologists abounded; but, like our artists, they lacked an ideal, or, like our politicians, "a man." Still, whether people knew it or not, they insensibly worshipped the perfect beauty whose development was itself music, and whose organization, matchless and sublimated, was but the purest type of that human nature on which the Divine One placed his signet, and which he instituted by sharing, the nearest to his own. Those who did know it, denied it in the face of their rational conviction, because it was so hard to allow that to be a special privilege in which they can bear no earthly part; for all the races of the earth cannot tread down one step of that race, nor diminish in each millennium its spiritual approximation to an everlasting endurance. Or, perhaps, to do them justice, the very conviction was as dark to them as that of death, which all must hold, and so few care to remind themselves of. At all events, it was yet a whisper--and a whisper not so universally wafted as whispers in general are--that Seraphael was of unperverted Hebrew ancestry, both recognizant of the fact and auspicious in its entertainment. Many things affected me as changes when I landed at London Bridge, for I had not been at home for three whole years, and was not prepared to meet such changes, though aware of many in myself. I cannot allude to any now, except the railway, which was the first I had seen, and whose line to our very town, almost to our very house, had been not six months completed. I shall never forget the effect, nor has it ever left me when I travel; I cannot find it monotonous, nor anything but marvel. It was certainly evening when I entered the stupendous terminus, and nothing could have so adapted itself to the architecture as the black-gray gloom, lamp-strung, streaming with gas-jets. Such gloom breathed deadly cold, presaging the white storm or the icing wind; and it was the long drear line itself that drew my spirit forth, as itself lonely to bask in loneliness, such weird, wild insecurity seemed hovering upon the darkened distance, such a dream of hopeless achievement seemed the space to be overpassed that awful evening. As I walked along the carriage-line I felt this, although the engine-fire glowed furiously, and it spit out sparks in bravery; but the murmur of exhaustless power prevented my feeling in full force what that power must really be. It was not until we rolled away and left the lamps in their ruddy sea behind us, had lost ourselves far out in the dark country, had begun to rush into the very arms of night, that I could even bear to remember how little people had told me of what steam-travelling by land would prove in my experience. It seemed to me as if I, too, ought to have changed, and to carry wings; the spirit pined for an enfranchisement of its own as peculiar, and recalled all painfully that its pinings were in vain. A thousand chapters have been expended upon the delights of return to home, and a thousand more will probably insure for themselves laudable publicity. I should be an all-ungrateful wretch if I refused my single _Ave_ at that olden shrine. I cannot quite forget, either, that none of my wildest recollections out-dazzled its near brightness as I approached; the poetic isolation of my late life, precious as it was in itself, and inseparable from my choicest appreciation, seeming but to enhance the genial sweetness of the reality in my reception. Long before I arrived in that familiar parlor a presence awaited me which had ever appeared to stand between my actual and my ideal world,--it was that of my brother and earliest friend, dear Lenhart Davy, who had walked out into the winter night expressly and entirely to meet me, and who was so completely unaged, unchanged, and unalloyed that I could but wonder at the freshness of the life within him, until I remembered the fountains where it fed. He was as bright, as earnest, as in the days of my infant faith; but there was little to be said until we arrived at home. Cold as was the season, and peculiarly susceptible as our family has ever been to cold, the street-door positively stood ajar! and hiding behind it was Margareth, oblivious of rheumatism and frost, to receive her nursling. When she had pronounced upon my growth her enchanted eulogy that I was taller than ever and more like myself, I was dragged into the parlor by Davy, and found them all, the bloom of the firelight restoring their faces exactly as I had left them. My mother, as I told her, looked younger than myself,--which might easily be the case, as I believe I was born grown up,--and Clo was very handsome in her fashion, wearing the old pictorial raiment. My sister Lydia had lately received preferment, and introduced me on the instant to her prospects,--a gentlemanly individual upon the sofa, who had not even concluded his college career, but was in full tilt for high mathematical honors at that which I have heard called Oxford's rival, but upon whose merit as a residence and Academe celestial I am not competent to sit in judgment. These worthies dismissed, I was at liberty to spend myself upon the most precious of the party. They were Millicent and her baby, which last I had never seen,--a lady of eighteen months, kept thus late out of her cradle that she, too, might greet her uncle. She was a delicious child,--I have never found her equal,--and had that indescribable rarity of appearance which belongs, or we imagine it to belong, to an only one. Carlotta--so they had christened her after unworthy me--was already calling upon my name, to the solemn ecstasy of Davy, and his wife's less sustained gratification. I have never really seen such a sight as that sister and brother of mine, with that only child of theirs. When we drew to the table, gloriously spread for supper, and my mother, in one of her old-fashioned agonies, implored for Carlotta to be taken upstairs, Davy, perfectly heedless, brought her along with him to his chair, placed on his knee and fed her, fostered her till she fell asleep and tumbled against his shoulder, when he opened his coat-breast for her and just let her sleep on,--calling no attention to her beauties in so many words, certainly, but paying very little attention to anything else; and at last, when we all retired, carrying her away with him upstairs, where I heard him walking up and down his room, with a hushing footstep, long after I had entered mine. It was not until the next morning that I was made fully aware of Davy's position. After breakfast, as soon as the sun was high enough to prepare the frosty atmosphere for the reception of the baby, I returned with Millicent and himself to their own home. I had been witness to certain improvements in that little droll house, but a great deal more had been done since my last visit. For example, there was a room downstairs, built out, for the books, which had accumulated too many; and over this room had Davy designed a very sweet green-house, to be approached from the parlor itself. The same order overlaid everything; the same perfume of cleanliness permeated every corner; and it was just as well this was the case, so jammed and choked up with all sorts of treasures and curiosities were the little landing-place, the tiny drawing-room, the very bed-room and _a half_, as Davy called my own little closet, with the little carven bed's head. Everywhere his shadow, gliding and smiling silently, though at the proper time she had plenty to say too, came Millicent after him. Nor was the baby ever far behind; for at the utmost distance might be glimpsed a nest of basket-work, lined with blush-color, placed on a chair or two among the geraniums and myrtles, and in that basket the baby lay; while her mamma, who only kept one servant, made various useful and ornamental progresses through the house. While Davy was at home, however, Carlotta was never out of his arms, or, at least, off his lap; she had learned to lie quite quiescently across his knees while he wrote or read, making no more disturbance than a dove would have done. I believe he was half-jealous because when I took her she did not cry, but began to put her fingers into my eyes and to carry my own fingers to her mouth. This morning we had her between us when we began to talk, and it was with his eyes upon her that Davy first said,-- "Well, Charles, you have told me nothing of your plans yet; I suppose they are hardly formed." "Oh, yes! quite formed,--at least as formed as they can be without your sanction. You know what you wrote to me about,--your last letter?" "You received that extemporaneous extravaganza, then, Charles,--which I afterwards desired I had burned?" "I take that as especially unkind on your part, as I could not but enter with the most eager interest into every line." "Not unkind, though I own it was a little cowardly. I felt rather awed in submitting my ideas to you when you were at the very midst of music in its most perfect exposition." "Oh! I did not quite discover that, Lenhart. There are imperfections everywhere, and will be, in such a mixed multitude as of those who press into the service of what is altogether perfect." "The old story, Charlie." "Rather the new one. I find it every day placed before me in a stronger light; but it has not long held even with me. How very little we can do, even at the utmost, and how very hard we must labor even to do that little!" "I am thankful to hear you say so, Charles, coming fresh from the severities of study; but we are some few of us in the same mind." "Then let us hold together; and this brings me to my purpose. I am not going to settle in London, Lenhart,--that is a mistake of yours. I will never leave you while I can be of any use." "Leave me, Charlie? Ah! would that I could cherish the possibility of your remaining here! But with your power and your promise of success, who would not blame those who should prevent your appearance in London?" "I will never make my appearance anywhere, my dearest brother,--at least not as you intend. I could have no objection to play anywhere if I were wanted, and if any one cared to hear me; but I will never give up the actual hold I have on this place. As much may be done here as anywhere else, and more, I am certain, than in London. There is more room here,--less strain and stress; and, once more, I will not leave you." "But how, my Charlie,--in what sense?" "I will work along with you, and for you, while I work for myself. I am young, very young, and, I daresay, very presumptuous in believing myself equal to the task; but I should wish, besides being resident professor, to devote myself especially to the organization of that band of which you wrote, and which in your letter you gave me to understand it is your desire to amalgamate with your class. You do not see, Lenhart, that, young as I am, nothing could give me a position like this, and that if I fail, I can but return to a less ambitious course." "There is no course, Charles, that I do not consider you equal to; but I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to bind you to a service so signal for my own sake,--it is a mere sketch of a Spanish castle I had reared in an idle hour." "We will raise a sure fame on solid foundations, Lenhart, and I do not care about fame for its own sake. After all, you cannot, with your musical electicism, prefer me to become mixed up in the horrible struggle for precedence which, in London, degrades the very nature of art, and renders its pursuit a misnomer." "You have not given up one of your old prejudices, Charles." "No, Davy. I feel we can do more acting together than either separately, for the cause we love best and desire to serve. You know me well, and that, whatever I have learned in my life abroad, no taste is so dear to me as yours,--no judgment I should follow to the death so gladly. Besides all the rest, which is made up of a good deal more than one can say, I could never consent, as an instrumentalist, and as holding that instrument to be part of myself, to infect my style with whims and fashions which alone would render it generally acceptable. I _must_ reserve what I musically believe as my musical expression, and nothing can satisfy me in that respect but the development of the orchestra." "Poor orchestra! it is a very germ, a winter-seed at present, my ever-sanguine Charlie." "I am not sanguine; on the contrary, I am disposed to suspect treachery everywhere, even in myself, and certainly in you, if you would have me go to London, take fashionable lodgings, and starve myself on popular precedents, among them that most magnificent one of lionizing musical professors. No, I could not bear that, and no one would care a whit for my playing as I _feel_. I should be starved out and out. If you can initiate me a little yourself into your proceedings, I think I shall be able to persuade you that I ought to be only where my impulse directs me to remain." Davy at this juncture deprived me of the baby, who had been munching my finger all the time we talked; and when he had placed her in her nest,--a portent of vast significance,--he enlightened me indeed to the full, and we informed Millicent when she came upstairs; for nothing could be done without asking her accord. It was greatly to my satisfaction that she entirely agreed with me, and a great relief to Davy, who in the plenitude of his delicate pride could hardly bear the thought of suggesting anything to anybody, lest his suggestion should unsteady any fixed idea of their own. Millicent cordially asserted that she felt there was a more interesting sphere about them than she could imagine to exist anywhere else; and perhaps she was right, for no one could sufficiently laud the extirpation of ancient prejudices by Davy's firm voice and ardent heart. I could not possibly calculate at that moment the force and extent of his singular efforts, and their still more unwonted effects in so short a time made manifest. I heard of these from Millicent, who could talk of nothing else, to me, at least, after Davy, ever anxious, had left us for his morning's lessons, which occupied him in private, though not much more than formerly, as his peculiar attention and nearly his whole time were devoted more determinately than ever to the instruction and elevation of the vocal institution he had organized. "No one can tell, Charles," said Millicent, among other things, "how heroically and patiently he has worked, rejecting all but the barest remuneration, to bring all forward as he has succeeded in doing, and has nobly done. You will say so when you hear, and you must hear, to-morrow evening." "I shall indeed feel strange, Millicent," I replied, "to sit at his feet once more, and to feel again all that went through me in the days when I learned of him alone. But I am very curious about another friend of mine. I suppose you can tell me just as well as he." "About Miss Benette, Charles?" "Yes, and also little Laura." "I know nothing; we know nothing of her or what she has been doing. But you must have heard of Clara?" "Not a word. I have been very quiet, I assure you." "So much the better for you, Charles. But she has not lost your good opinion?" "She would have that wherever she went." "I believe it. My husband has, of course, never lost sight of her; yet it was not until the other day, and quite by accident, that we heard of all she has become. A very old Italian stager, Stelli by name, called on Lenhart the other day at the class, and after hearing several of the pieces, asked him whether his pupil, Miss Benette, had not belonged to it once on a time. He said, Yes; and finding that the signor was acquainted with her, brought him home to dinner; and we were told a great deal that it is very difficult to tell, even to you, Charles. She must, however, be exactly what you always imagined." "I should not only imagine, but expect, she will remain unaltered. I do not believe such eyes could change, or the owner of such eyes." "He says just so,--he says that she is an angel; he continued to call her _angela_, _angela_, and could call her nothing else." "Is she singing in Italy just now?" "It is just that we asked him. You know she went to Italy for study, and no one heard a word about her; she did not omit to write, but never mentioned what she was doing. Only the third year she sent us news of her _début_. This was but last May. The news was in a paper, not in her letter. In her letter she only spoke of ourselves, and sent us a present for baby,--such a piece of work, Charles, as you never saw. I thought she would have quite given up work by that time. The letter was a simple, exquisite expression of regard for her old master; and when Lenhart answered it, she wrote again. _This_ letter contained the most delicate intimation of her prosperous views. She was entirely engaged at that time, but told us she trusted to come to England an early month next year, for she says she finds, having been to Italy, she loves England best." "That is rather what I should have expected. She had not an Italian touch about her; she would weary there." "I should scarcely think so, Charles, for Stelli described her beauty as something rose-like and healthful,--'fresher than your infant there,' he said, pointing to baby; and from her style of singing grand and sacred airs, she has been fancifully named, and is called everywhere, 'La Benetta benedetta.'"[7] "That strikes home to me very pleasantly, Millicent. She had something blessed and infantine in her very look. I admire that sobriquet; but those usually bestowed by the populace are most unmeaning. Her own name, however, suits her best,--it is limpid like the light in her eyes. There is no word so apt as 'clear' for the expression of her soul. And what, Millicent, of her voice and style?" "Something wonderful, no doubt, Charles, if she obtained an engagement in the midst of such an operatic pressure as there was this year. I hope she will do something for England too. We have not so many like her that we can afford to lose her altogether." "I know of not one, Millicent; and shall, if it be my good fortune to see her, persuade her not to desert us; but Lenhart will have more chance." "La Benetta benedetta!" I could not forget it; it haunted me like the words of some chosen song; I was ever singing it in my mind; it seemed the most fitting, and the only not irreverent homage with which one could have strewed the letters of her name,--a most successful hieroglyph. Nor the less was I reminded of her when, on the following evening, I accompanied my sister--who for once had allowed Clo to take charge of her baby--to the place, now so altered since I left it, where the vocal family united. We entered at the same door, we approached the same room; but none could again have known it unless, as in my case, he could have pointed out the exact spot on which he had been accustomed to sit. The roof was raised, the rafters were stained that favorite sylvan tint of Davy's, the windows lightly pencilled with it upon their ground-glass arches, the walls painted the softest shade of gray, harmonizing perfectly with the purple-crimson tone of the cloth that covered seats and platform. Alas! as I surveyed that platform I felt, with Davy, how much room there was for increased and novel yet necessary organism in the perfectibility of the system; for on that glowing void outspread, where his slight, dark form and white face and _glancing_ hands alone shone out, I could but dream of beholding the whole array, in clustering companionship, of those mystic shapes that suggest to us, in their varied yet according forms, the sounds that creep, that wind, that pierce, that electrify, through parchment or brass or string. In a word, they wanted a band very much. It would not have signified whether they had one or not, had the class continued in its primitive position, and in which its enemies would have desired it to remain,--an unprogressive mediocrity. But as it is the nature of true art to be progressive ever, it is just as ignorant to expect shortcomings of a true artist as it would be vain to look for ideal success amongst the leaders of musical taste, neither endowed with aspiration nor volition. Now, to hear those voices rise, prolong themselves, lean in uncorrupted tone upon the calm motet, or rest in unagitated simplicity over a pause of Ravenscroft's old heavenly verses, made one almost leap to reduce such a host to the service of an appropriate band, and to institute orchestral worship there. I could but remind myself of certain great works, paradises of musical creation, from whose rightful interpretation we are debarred either by the inconsistency with the chosen band of the selected chorus, or by the inequality of the band itself. It struck me that a perfect dream might here be realized in full perfection, should my own capabilities, at least, keep pace with the demand upon them, were I permitted to take my part in Davy's plan as we had treated of it to each other. I told him, as we walked home together, a little of my mind. He was in as bright spirits as at his earliest manhood; it was a favorable moment, and in the keen December moonlight we made a vow to stand by each other then and ever. Delightful as was the task, and responsive to my inmost resolutions, the final result I scarcely dared anticipate; it was no more easy at first than to trace the source of such a river as the Nile. Many difficulties darkened the way before me; and my own musical knowledge seemed but as a light flung immediately out of my own soul, making the narrow circle of a radiance for my feet that was unavailable for any others. My position as Davy's brother-in-law gave me a certain hold upon my pupils, but no one can imagine what suffering they weetlessly imposed upon me. The number I began with, receiving each singly, not at my own home, but in a hired room, was not more than eight, amateurs and neophytes either,--the amateurs esteeming themselves no less than amateurs, and something more; the neophytes chiefly connections of the choral force, and of an individual stubbornness not altogether to be appreciated at an early period. I could laugh to remember myself those awful mornings when, after a breakfast at home which I could not have touched had it been less delicately prepared, I used to repair to that room of mine and await the advent of those gentlemen, all older than myself except one, and he the most _presto_ in pretensions of the set. The room was at the back and top of a house; and over the swinging window-blind I could discern a rush now and then of a deep dark smoke, and a wail, as of a demon sorely tried, would shrill along my nerves as the train dashed by. The trains were my chief support during the predominance of my ordeal,--they superinduced a sensation that was neither of music nor of stolidity. After a month or two, however, dating from the first week of February, when, together with the outpeering of the first snowdrop from the frost, I assumed my dignities, I discovered that I had gained a certain standing, owing to the fact of my being aware what I was about, and always attending to the matter in hand. Of my senior pupils, one was immensely conversable, so conversable that until he had disgorged himself of a certain quantity of chat, it was impossible to induce him to take up his bow; another contemplative, so contemplative that I always had to unpack his instrument for him, and to send it after him when he was gone, in a general way; a third so deficient in natural musicality that he did not like my playing! and soon put up for a vacant oboe in the band of the local theatre, and left me in the lurch. But desperately irate with them as I was, and almost disgusted with my petty efforts, I made no show of either to Davy, nor did they affect my intentions nor stagger my fixed assurance. All my experiences were hoarded and husbanded by me to such purpose on my own account that I advanced myself in exact proportion to the calm _statu quo_ in which remained at present my orchestral nucleus. My patience was rewarded, however, before I could have dared to hope, by a steady increase of patronage during April and May,--in fact, I had so much to do in the eight weeks of those two months that my mother declared I was working too hard, and projected a trip for me somewhere. Bless her ever benignant heart! she always held that everybody, no matter who, and no matter what they had to do, should recreate during three months out of every twelve! How my family, all celebrated as they were for nerves of salient self-assertion, endured my home-necessary practice, I cannot divine; but they one and all made light of it, even declaring they scarcely heard that all-penetrating sound distilled down the staircase and through closed parlor doors. But I was obliged to keep in my own hand most vigorously, and sustained myself by the hope that I should one day lead off my dependants in the region now made sacred by voice and verse alone. It was my habit to give no lessons after dinner, but to pursue my own studies, sadly deficient as I was in too many respects, in the long afternoons of spring, and to walk in the lengthening evenings, more delicious in my remembrance than any of my boyish treasure-times. On class-nights I would walk to Davy's, find him in a paroxysm of anxiety just gone off, leaving Millicent to bemoan his want of appetite and to devise elegant but inexpensive suppers. I would have one good night-game with my soft-lipped niece, watch her mamma unswathe the cambric from her rosy limbs, see the white lids drop their lashes over her blue eyes' sleepfulness, listen to the breath that arose like the pulses of a flower to the air, feel her sweetness make me almost sad, and creep downstairs most noiselessly. Millicent would follow me to fetch her work-basket from the little conservatory, would talk a moment before she returned upstairs to work by the cradle-side, would steal with me to the door, look up to the stars or the moon a moment, and heave a sigh,--a sigh as from happiness too large for heart to hold; and I, having picked my path around the narrow gravel, smelling the fresh mould in the darkness, having reached the gate, would just glance round to sign adieu; and not till then would she withdraw into the warm little hall and close the door. Then off I was to the class, to see the windows a-glow from the street, to hear the choral glory greeting me in sounds like chastened organ-tones, to mount, unquestioned, into the room, to find the crimsoned seats all full, the crimson platform bare, save of that quick, dark form and those gleaming hands. I sit down behind, and bask luxuriously in that which, to me, is precious as "the sunshine to the bee;" or I come down stoopingly a few steps, and taking the edge of a bench where genial faces smile for me, I peep over the sheet of the pale mechanic or rejoicing weaver, whose visage is drawn out of its dread fatigue as by a celestial galvanism, and join in the psalm, or mix my spirit in the soaring antiphon. Davy meets me afterwards; we wait until everybody has passed out, we pack away the books, we turn down the gas,--or at least a gentleman does, who appears to think it an essential part of music that a supreme bustle should precede and follow its celebrations, and who, locking the door after we attain the street, tenders Davy the key in a perfect agony of courteous patronage, and bows almost unto the earth. I accompany my brother home, and Millicent and he and I sup together, the happiest trio in the town. On other nights I sup at home, and after my walk, as I come in earlier, and after I have given reports of Millicent and her spouse and the baby,--also, whether it has been out this day (my mother having a righteous prejudice against certain winds),--I sometimes play to them such moving melodies as I fancy will touch them, but not too deeply, and indulge in the lighter moods that music does not deny, even to the uninitiated,--often trifling with my memory of old times as they begin to seem to me, and, alas! have seemed many years already, though I am young,--so young that I scarcely know yet how young I am. FOOTNOTE: [7] The blessed Benette. CHAPTER X. I was in the most contented frame of mind that can be conceived of until the very May month of the year I speak of, when my sensations, as usual, began to be peculiar. I don't think anybody can love summer better than I do, can more approvedly languish out, by heavy-shaded stream in an atmosphere all roses, the summer noons, can easier spend, in _insomnie_ the lustrous moony nights. But May does something to me of which I am not aware during June and July, or at the first delicate spring-time. When the laburnums rain their gold, and the lilacs toss broad-bloomed their grape-like clusters, when the leaves, full swelling, are yet all veined with light, I cannot very well work hard, and would rather slave the livelong eleven months besides, to have that month a holiday. So it happened now; and though I had no absolute right to leave my pupils and desert the first stones of my musical masonry just laid and smoothed, I was obliged to think that if I were to have a holiday at all, I had better take it then. But I had not decided until I received a double intimation,--one from Davy, and one from the county newspaper, which last never chronicled events that stirred in London unless they stirred beyond it. My joyous brother brought me the letter, and the paper was upon our table the same morning when I came down to breakfast. "See here, Charles," said Clo, who, sitting in her own corner, over her own book, was unwontedly excited; "here is a piece of news for you, and my mother found it first!" I read, in a castaway paragraph enough, that the Chevalier Seraphael, the pianist and composer, was to pay a visit to England this very summer; though to remain in strict seclusion, he would not be inaccessible to professors. He brought with him, I learned, "the fruits of several years' solitary travel, no doubt worthy of his genius and peculiar industry." Extremely to the purpose were these expressions, for they told me all I wanted to know,--that he was alive, must be himself again, and had been writing for those who loved him,--for men and angels. Now, for my letter. I had held it without opening it, for I chose to do so when alone, and waited until after breakfast. It was a choice little supplement to that choicest of all invites for my spirit and heart,--a note on foreign paper; the graceful, firm character of the writing found no difficulty to stand out clear and black from that milk-and-water hue and spongy texture. It was from Clara,--a simple form that a child might have dictated, yet containing certain business reports for Davy, direct as from one who could master even business. She was coming definitely to England, not either for any purposes save those all worthy of herself; she had accepted, after much consideration, a London engagement for the season; and, said she,-- "I only have my fears lest I should do less than I ought for what I love best; it is so difficult to do what is right by music in these times, when it is fashionable to seem to like it. You will give me a little of your advice, dear sir, if I need it, as perhaps I may; but I hope not, because I have troubled you too much already. I trust your little daughter is growing like you to please her mother, and like her mother to please you. I shall be delighted to see it when I come to London, if you can allow me to do so." The style of this end of a letter both amused and absorbed me; it was Clara's very idiosyncrasy. I could but think, "Is it possible that she has not altered more than her style of expressing herself has done? I must go and see." Davy received my ravings with due compassion and more indulgence than I had dared to hope. The suspension of my duties, leaving our orchestra in limbo still longer, disconcerted him a little; but he was the first to say I must surely go to London. The only thing to be discovered was when to go, so as not to frustrate either one of my designs or the other; and I declared he must, to that end, address Clara on the very subject. He did so, and in a fortnight there came the coolest note to say she would be in London the next day, and that she had heard the great musician would arrive before the end of the month. I inly marvelled whether in all the course of his wanderings Clara and the Chevalier had met; but still I thought and prophesied not. I was really reluctant to leave Davy with his hands and head full, that I might saunter with my own in kid-gloves, and swarming with May fancies; but for once my selfishness--or something higher, whose mortal frame is selfishness--impelled me. I found myself in the train at the end of the next week, carrying Clara's address in my memorandum-book, and my violin-case in the carriage along with me. It was early afternoon, and exquisitely splendid weather when I arrived in London. In London, however, I had little to do just then, as the address of the house to which I was bound was rather out of London,--above the smoke, beyond the stir, at the very first plunge into the surrounding country that lingers yet as a dream upon her day reality, with which dreams suit not ill, and from which they seldom part. I love the heart of London, in whose awful deeps reflect the mysterious unfathomable of every secret, and where the homeless are best at home, where the home-bred fear not to wander, assured of sweet return; but I do not love its immediate precincts,--the rude waking stage between that profound and the conserved, untainted sylvan vision, that, once overpast it, dawns upon us. Dashing as abruptly as possible, and by the nearest way through all the brick wilderness outward, I reached in no long weary time, and by no long weary journey, though on foot, a quiet road, which by a continuous but gentle rise carried me to the clustered houses, neither quite hamlet nor altogether village, where Miss Benette had hidden her heart among the leaves. Cool and shady was the side I took, though the sunshine whitened the highway, and every summer promise beamed from the soft sky's azure, the green earth's bloom. The painted gates I met at intervals, or the iron-wreathed portals, guarded dim walks, through whose perspective villas glistened, all beautiful as they were discerned afar in their frames of tossing creepers, with gay verandas or flashing green-houses. But the wall I followed gave me not a transient glimpse of gardens inwards, so thickly blazed the laburnums and the paler flames of the rich acacia, not to speak of hedges all sweet-brier, matted into one embrace with double-blossomed hawthorn. I passed garden after garden and gate after gate, seeing no one; for the great charm of those regions consists in the extreme privacy of every habitation,--privacy which the most exclusive nobleman might envy, and never excel in his wilderness parks or shrubberies; and when at length I attained the summit of the elevation where two roads met and shut in a sweep of actual country, and I came to the end of the houses, I began to look about for some one to direct me; then, turning the corner, I came in turning upon what I had been seeking, without having really sought it by any effort. The turn in the road I speak of went tapering off between hedgerows; and meadow-lands, as yet unencroached upon, swept within them as far as I could see. But just where I stood, a cottage, older than any of the villas, and framed in shade more ancient than the light groves I left behind me, peeped from the golden and purple May-trees across a moss-green lawn,--a perfect picture in its silence, and a very paradise of fragrance. It was built of wood, and had its roof-hung windows and drooping eaves protected by a spreading chestnut-tree, whose great green fans beat coolness against every lattice, and whose blossoms had kindled their rose-white tapers at the sun. The garden was so full of flowers that one could scarcely bear the sweetness, except that the cool chestnut shadow dashed the breeze with freshness as it swept the heavy foliage and sank upon the checkered grass to a swoon. I was not long lost in contemplating the niche my saint had chosen, for I could have expected nothing fitter; but I was at some loss to enter, for the reminiscences of my childhood burdened me, and I dreaded lest I should be deprived of anything I now held stored within me, by a novel shock of being. I need not have feared. After waiting till I was ashamed, I opened the tiny gate and walked across the grass, still soft with the mowing of the morning, to the front door, where I pulled a little bell-handle half smothered in the wreaths of monthly roses that were quivering and fluttering like pink doves about the door and lower windows. This was as it should be, the very door-bell dressed with flowers; but more as it should be, it was that Thoné opened the door. I was almost ready to disappear again, but that her manner was the most reassuring to troublesome nerves. She did not appear to have any idea who I was, nor did she even stare when I presented my card, but like some strange bronze escaped from its pedestal, and attired in muslin, she conducted me onwards down a little low hall, half filled with the brightest plants, into a double parlor, whose folding-doors were closed, and whose diamond-paned back window looked out far, and very far, into the country. Hearing not a voice in the next room, nor any rustle, nor even a soft foot hastily cross the beamed ceiling overhead, I dared look about me for a moment, hid my hat in confusion under a chair, saw that the round table had a bowl of flowers in its centre, caught sight of my face in the intensely polished glass-door of a small closed book-case, and, as if detected in some act, walked away to the window. I could not have done a better thing to prepare myself for any fresh excitement; I was ready in an instant to weep with joy at the beauty that flooded my spirit. Over and beyond the garden I gazed; it did not detain my eye,--I passed its tree-tops, all apple-bloom and lilac, and its sudden bursts of grass where the tree-tops parted. I looked out to the country,--an undulating country, a sea of green, flushed here and there with a bloomy level, or a breeze upon the crimson clover; odorous bean-fields quivered, and their scent was floating everywhere,--it drowned the very garden sweetness, and blended in with waftures of unknown fragrance, all wild essences shed from woodbines, from dog-roses, and the new-cut grass, or plumy meadow-sweet, by the waters of rills flowing up into the distance, silver in the sunlight. Soft hills against the heaven swept over visionary valleys; the sunshine lay white and warm upon glistening summer seas and picture cottages; over all spread the purple, melting, brooding sky, transparent on every leaf and blossom, shining upon those tender sloping hills with an amethyst haze of light, not shade. As I stood, the things that seemed had never been, and the things that had been grew dilated and indefinitely bright,--the soft thrall of the suspense that bound me intertwining itself with mine "electric chain" as that May-dream mixed itself with all my music, veiling it as moonlight, the colors of the flowers, or as music itself veils passion. I waited quite half an hour, and had lost myself completely, feeling as if no change could come, when, without a sound, some one entered behind me. I knew it by the light that burst through the folding-door, which had, however, again closed when I turned, for the tread was so silent I might otherwise have gone dreaming on. Clara stood before me, so little altered that I could have imagined that she had been put away in a trance when I left her last, and but this instant was restored to me. She was not more womanly, nor less child-like; and for her being an actress, it seemed a thing impossible. I could but stand and gaze; nor did she seem surprised, nor did her eyes droop, nor her fair cheek mantle: through the untrembling lashes I caught the crystal light as she opposed me, still waiting for me to speak. I was heartily ashamed at last, and resolved to make her welcome as she maintained that strange regard. I put out my hand, and in an instant she greeted me; the infantine smile shone suddenly that had soothed me so long ago. "I am very glad to see you, Miss Benette. It was very kind of you to let me come." "By no means," she replied, with the slightest possible Italian softening of her accent. "I am very much obliged to you, and I am very pleased also. Please sit down, sir, for you have been standing, I am afraid, a long time. I was out at first, and since I returned I made haste; but still, I fear, I have kept you waiting." "I could have waited all day, Miss Benette, to see such a window as this. How did you manage to put your foot into such a nest?" "It is a very sweet little place, and the country is most beautiful. I don't know what they mean by its being too near London. I must be near London, and yet I could not exactly live in it, for it makes me idle." "How very strange! It has the same effect upon me,--that is to say, I always dream in those streets, and lose half my purpose. Still, it must be almost a temptation to indulge a certain kind of idleness here; in such a garden as that, for example, one could pass all one's time." "I do pass half my time in the garden, and yet I do not think it is too much, for it makes me well; and I cannot work when I am not well,--I was always unfortunate in that respect." "How do you think I look, by the by, Miss Benette? Am I very much changed? It is perhaps, however, not a safe question." "Quite safe, sir. You have grown more and more like your inseparable companion,--you always had a look of it, and now it takes the place of all other expression." "I don't know whether that is complimentary or not, you see, for I never heard your opinion in old times. I was a very silly boy then, and not quite so well aware of what I owed to you as I may be now." "I do not feel that you owe anything to anybody, Mr. Auchester, for you would have gone to your own desires as resolutely through peril as through pleasure; at all events, if you are still as modest as you were, it is a great blessing now you have become a soul which bears so great a part. If I must speak truth, however, about your looks, you seem as delicate as you used to be, and I do not suppose you could be anything else. You have not altered except to have grown up." "And you, if I may say so, have not altered in growing up." Nor had she. She had not gained an inch in height. She could never have worn that black silk frock those years; yet the folds, so grave and costly, still shielded her gentle breast to meet the snow-soft ruffle that fringed her throat: nor had she ornament upon her,--neither bracelet nor ring upon the dimpled hands, the delicate wrists. Though her silken hair had lengthened into wreaths upon wreaths behind, she still preserved those baby-curls upon her temples, nor had a shade more majesty gathered to her brow,--the regal innocence was throned there, and looked forth from her eyes as from a shrine; but it was evident that there was nothing about her from head to foot on which she piqued herself,--a rare shortcoming of feminine maturity. The only perceptible difference in the face was when she spoke or smiled; and then the change, the deepened sweetness, can be no more given to description than the notion of music to the destitute ear. It was something of a reserve too inward to be approached, and too subtile to subdue its own influence,--like perfume from unseen flowers diffusing itself when the wind awakens, while we know neither whence the windy fragrance comes nor whither it flows. "Is it possible, Miss Benette," I continued,--for I forced myself absolutely to speak; I should so infinitely have preferred to watch her silently,--"that you can have passed through so much since I saw you?" "No, I have lived a very quiet life; it is you who have lived in all the stir until you fancy there is not any calm at all." "I should have certainly found calm here. But you, I thought, and indeed I know, have had every kind of excitement ready made to your hand, and only waiting for you to touch the springs." "I have had no excitement till I came here." "None? Why, who could have had more, and who could have borne the same so bravely? We have heard of you here, and it must have been a transcending tempest for the shock to echo so far." "I do not call singing in theatres, and acting, excitement. I always felt cool and collected in them, for I knew they were not real, and that I should get through them soon, and very glad should I be; so I was patient and did my best. You look at me shocked. I knew I should shock you after all our talk." "Oh, fie! Miss Benette, to talk so, then, and to shock yourself, as you must, if you are faithless." "Poor I, faithless! Well, I am not important enough for it to signify. And yet I should like to tell you what I mean, because you were always kind to me, and I should not wish you to despise me now. No, Mr. Auchester, I am not faithless; I love music more and more; it is the form of my religion; I dare to call it altogether holy,--I am sure, indeed, it must be so, or it would have been trodden long ago into nothing with the evil they have heaped over it to hide it, and the mistakes they have made about it. I act and I sing, because that is what I can do best; but my idea of music goes with yours, and therefore I am not excited as I should be, if I were filling up a place such as that which you fill; though I would not leave my own for any consideration, and hope to continue in it. My excitement since I came here, where most ladies would be dull or sick, has arisen from the feeling that I am brought into contact with what is most like music, as I always find solitude, and also because since I came I have been raised higher by several spirits which are lofty in their desires, instead of being dragged through a mass of all opinions as I was abroad. My pleasures here are so great that I feel my soul to be quite young again, and to grow younger; and you cannot fancy what it is to return here after being in London, because you do not go to London, and if you did go to London, you would not do as I do." She turned to me here, and told me it was her dinner-hour, asking me to remain and dine with her. It was about two o'clock, and I hesitated not to stay,--indeed, I know not that I could have gone. We arose together, and I led her forward. We crossed the hall to a door beyond us, when, removing her little hand from my arm, and laying it on the lock, she looked into my face and smiled. "You remembered me so well that I hope you will remember an old friend of mine who is staying here with me." Before I could reply, or even marvel, she opened the door, and we entered. The little dining-room was lined with warmer hues than the airy drawing-room, but white muslin curtains made sails within the crimson ones, and some person stood within these, lightly screened, and looking out over the blind. "Laura," said Miss Benette, and she turned with exquisite elegance. Had it not been for her name, which touched my memory, I could not have remembered her,--certainly, at least, not then. Perhaps, when we were seated opposite at table, with nothing between us but a vase of garden flowers, I might have made out her lineaments; but I was called upon by my reminding chivalry to assist the hostess in the dissection of spring chickens and roasted lamb, and there was something besides about that very Laura I did not like to face until she should at least speak and reveal herself, as by the voice one cannot fail to do. However she spoke not, nor did Clara speak to her, though we two talked a good deal,--that is to say, _I_ talked, as so it behooved me to behave, and as I wished to see Miss Benette eat. When, at last, all traces of the snowy damask were swept out by a pair of careful hands, and we were left alone with the cut decanters, the early strawberries, and sweet summer oranges, I did determine to look, for fear Miss Lemark should think I did not dare to do so. I was not mistaken, as it happened, in believing her to be quite capable of this construction, as I discovered on regarding her immediately. Her childish nonchalance had ripened into a hauteur quite alarming; for though she was scarcely my own age, she might have been ten years older. Not that her form was not lithe,--lithe as it could be to be endowed with the proper complement of muscles,--but for a certain sharpness of outline her countenance would have been languid in repose; her brow retained its singular breadth, but had not gained in elevation; her eyes were large and lambent, fringed with lashes that swept her cheek, though not darker than her hair, which waved as the willow in slightly-turned tresses to her waist. That waist was so extremely slight that it scarcely looked natural, and yet was entirely so, as was evident from the way she moved in her clothes. She afforded a curious contrast to Clara in her black silk robe, for she was dressed in muslin of the deepest rose-color, with an immense skirt, its trimmings lace entirely, the sleeves dropped upon her arms, which were loaded with bracelets of all kinds, while she wore a splendid chain upon her neck. She bore this over effect very well, and would not have become any other, it appeared to me, though there was something faded in her appearance even then,--a want of color in her aspect that demanded of costume the intensest contrasts. "You have very much grown, Miss Lemark," I ventured to say, after I had contemplated her to my satisfaction. She had, indeed, grown; she was taller than I. "So have you, Mr. Auchester." "She has grown in many respects, Mr. Auchester, which you cannot imagine," said Clara, with a winning mischief in her glance. "I should imagine anything you pleased, I am afraid, Miss Benette, if you inspired me. But I have been thinking it is a very curious thing that we should meet in this way, we three alone, after meeting as we did the first time in our lives." "It was rather different then," exclaimed Laura, all abruptly, "and the difference is, not that we are grown up, but that when we met on the first occasion, we told each other our minds, and now we don't dare." "I am sure I dare," I retorted. "No, you would not, no more would Clara; perhaps I might, but it would be of no use." "What did I say then that I dare not say now? I am sure I don't remember." "You may remember," said Clara, smiling; "I think it is hardly fair to make _her_ remind you." "It is my desert, if I remembered it first. You thought me very vulgar, and you told me as much, though in more polite language." "If I thought so then, I may be allowed to have forgotten it now, Miss Lemark, as I think your friend will grant, when I look at you." "You do not admire my style, Mr. Auchester; I know you,--it is precisely against your taste. Even Clara does not approve of it, and you have not half her forbearance,--if, indeed, you have any." "Nobody, Laura dear, would dispute that you can bear more dressing than I can; it does not suit me to wear colors, and you look like a flower in them. Does not that color suit her well, Mr. Auchester?" "Indeed I think so, and especially this glorious weather, when the most vivid hues are starting out of every old stone. But Miss Lemark could afford to wear green,--a very unusual suitability; it is the hue of her eyes, I think." Laura had looked down, with that hauteur more fixed than ever now the light of her eyes was lost; she drew in the corners of her mouth, and turned a shade colder, if not paler, in complexion. I could not imagine what she was thinking, till she said, without raising her eyes,-- "You know, Clara, that is not the reason you wear black and I do not. You know that you look well in anything, because nobody looks at anything you happen to wear. Besides, there is a reason I could give if I chose." "There is no other reason that you know of, Laura," she answered, and then she asked me a question on quite another subject. I was rather anxious to discover whether Laura had fulfilled her destiny as far as we had compassed ours; but I did not find it easy, for she scarcely spoke, and had not lost a certain abstraction in her air that alienated the observer insensibly from her. After dinner Clara rose, and I made some demonstration of going, which she met so that I could not refuse her invitation to remain at least an hour or two. We all three retired into the little drawing-room; Miss Benette placed me a chair in the open window which I had admired, and herself sat down opposite, easily as a child, and saying, "I will not be rude to-day, as I used to be, in taking out my work whenever you came." "It suited you very well, however, and I perceive, by your kind present to my little niece, that you have not forgotten that delicate art of yours." "I had laid it aside, except to work for babies, some time, but it was long since I had a baby to work for; and when Mr. Davy sent me word in such joy that his little girl was born, I was so rejoiced to be able to make caps and frocks." "My sister was very much obliged to you on a former occasion too, Miss Benette." "Yes, I suppose she was very much obliged that I did not accept Mr. Davy's hand, or would have been, only she did not know it!" "I did not mean so. I was remembering whose handiwork graced her on her marriage-day." "Oh! I forgot the veil. I have made several since that one, but not one like that exactly, because I desired that should be unique. You have not told me, Mr. Auchester, anything about Seraphael and his works." I was so used to call him, and to hear him called, the Chevalier, that at first I started, but was soon in a deep monologue of all that had happened to me in connection with him and his music, only suppressing that which I was in the habit of reserving, even in my own mind, from my conscious self. In the midst of my relation, Laura, apparently uninterested, as she had been seated in a chair with a book in her hands, left the room, and we stayed in our talk and looked at each other at the same instant. "Why do you look so, Mr. Auchester?" said Clara, half amused, but with a touch of perturbation too. "I was expecting to be asked what I thought of that young lady, and you see I was agreeably disappointed, for you are too well-bred to ask." "No such thing. I thought you would tell me yourself if you liked, but that you might prefer not to do so, because you are not one, sir, to assume critical airs over a person you have only seen a very few hours." "You do me more than justice, Miss Benette. But though I despair of ever curing myself of the disposition to criticise, I am not inconvertible. I admire Miss Lemark; she is improved, she is distinguished,--a little more, and she would be lady-like." "I thought 'lady-like' meant less than 'distinguished.' You make it mean more." "Perhaps I do mean that Miss Lemark is not exactly like yourself, and that when she has lived with you a little longer, she will be indeed all that she can be made." "That would be foolish to say so,--pardon!--for she has lived with me two years now, and has most likely taken as much from me by imitation as she ever will, or by what you perhaps would call sympathy." "I find, or should fancy I might find, to exist a great dissympathy between you." "I suppose 'dissympathy' is one of those nice little German words that are used to express what nobody ought to say. I thought you would not go there for nothing. If your dissympathy means not to agree in sentiment, I do not know that any two bodies could agree quite in feeling, nor would it be so pleasant as to be alone in some moods. I should be very sorry never to be able to retreat into the cool shade, and know that, as I troubled nobody, so nobody could get at me. Would not you?" "Oh! I suppose so, in the sense you mean. But how is it I have not heard of this grace, or muse, taking leave to furl her wings at your nest? I should have thought that Davy would have known." "Should I tell Mr. Davy what I pay to Thoné for keeping my house in order,--or whether I went to church on a Sunday? Laura and I always agreed to live together, but we could not accomplish it until lately,--I mean, since I was in Italy. We met then, as we said we would. I carried her from Paris, where she was alone with every one but those who should have befriended her; her father had died, and she was living with Mademoiselle Margondret,--that person I did not like when I was young. If I had known where Laura was, I should have fetched her away before." I felt for a moment as if I wished that Laura had never been born, but only for one moment. I then resumed,-- "Does she not dance in London? She looks just ready for it." "She has accepted no engagement for this season at present. I cannot tell what she may do, however. Would you like to see my garden, Mr. Auchester?" "Indeed, I should very particularly like to see it, above all, if you will condescend to accompany me. There is a great deal more that I cannot help wishing for, Miss Benette; but I scarcely like to dream of asking about it to-night." "For me to sing? Oh! I will sing for you any time, but I would certainly rather talk to you,--at least until the beautiful day begins to go; and it is all bright yet." She walked before me without her bonnet down the winding garden-steps; the trellised balustrade was lost in rose-wreaths. We were soon in the rustling air, among the flowers that had not a withered petal, bursting hour by hour. "It would tease you to carry flowers, Mr. Auchester, or I should be tempted to gather a nosegay for you to take back to London. I cannot leave them alone while they are so fresh, and they quite ask to be gathered. Look at all the buds upon this bush,--you could not count them." "They are Provence roses. What a quantity you have!" "Thoné chose this cottage for me because of the number of the flowers. I believe she thinks there is some charm in flowers which will prevent my becoming wicked! If you had been so kind as to bring your violin, I would have filled up the case with roses, and then you would not have had to carry them in your hands." "But may I not have some, although I did not bring my violin? I never think of anything but violets, though, for strewing that sarcophagus." "Sarcophagus means 'tomb,' does it not? It is a fine idea of resurrection, when you take out the sleeping music and make it live. I know what you mean about violets,--their perfume is like the tones of your instrument, and one can separate it from all other scents in the spring, as those tones from all other tones of the orchestra." "I have a tender thought for violets,--a very sad one, Miss Benette; but still sweet now that what I remember has happened a long while ago." "That is the best of sorrow,--all passes off with time but that which is not bitter, though we can hardly call it sweet. I am grieved I talked of violets, to touch upon any sorrow you may have had to bear; still more grieved that you have had a sorrow, for you are very young." "I seem to feel, Miss Benette, as if you must know exactly what I have gone through since I saw you, and I am forced to remember it is not the case. I am not sorry you spoke about violets, or rather that I did, because some day I must tell you the whole story of my trouble. I know not why the violet should remind me more than does the beautiful white flower upon that rose-bush over there, for I have in my possession both a white rose that has lived five summers, and an everlasting violet which will never allow me to forget." "I know, from your look, that it is about some one dying: but why is that so sad? We must all die, Mr. Auchester, and cannot stay after we have been called." "It may be so, and must indeed; but it was hard to understand, and I cannot now read why a creature so formed to teach earth all that is most like heaven, should go before any one had dreamed she could possibly be taken; for she had so much to do. You would not wonder at the regret I must ever feel, if you had also known her." Clara had led me onwards as I spoke, and we stood before that rose-tree; she broke off a fresh rose quietly, and placed it in my hand. "I am more and more unhappy. It was not because I was not sorry that I said so. Pray tell me about her." "She was very young, Miss Benette, only sixteen; and more beautiful than any flower in this garden, or than any star in the sky; for it was a beauty of spirit, of passion, of awful imagination. She was at school with me, and I was taught by her how slightly I had learned all things; she had learned too much, and of what men could not teach her. I never saw such a face,--but that was nothing. I never heard such a voice,--but neither had it any power, compared with her heavenly genius and its sway upon the soul. She had written a symphony,--you know what it is to do that! She wrote it in three months, and during the slight leisure of a most laborious student life. I was alarmed at her progress, yet there was something about it that made it seem natural. She was ill once, but got over the attack; and the time came when this strange girl was to stand in the light of an orchestra and command its interpretation. It was a private performance, but I was among the players. She did not carry it through. In the very midst she fell to the ground, overwhelmed by illness. We thought her dead then, but she lived four days." "And died, sir? Oh! she did not die?" "Yes, Miss Benette, she died; but no one then could have wished her to live." "She suffered so?" "No, she was only too happy. I did not know what joy could rise to until I beheld her face with the pain all passed, and saw her smile in dying." "She must have been happy, then. Perhaps she had nothing she loved except Jehovah, and no home but heaven." "Indeed, she must have been happy, for she left some one behind her who had been to her so dear as to make her promise to become his own." "I am glad she was so wise, then, as to hide from him that she broke her heart to part with him; for she could not help it: and it was worthy of a young girl who could write a symphony," said Clara, very calmly, but with her eyes closed among the flowers she was holding in her hand. "Sir, what did they do with the symphony? and, if it is not rude, what did the rose and the violet have to do with this sad tale?" "Oh! I should have told you first, but I wished to get the worst part over; I do not generally tell people. It was the day our prizes were distributed she took her death-blow, and I received from the Chevalier Seraphael, who superintended all our affairs, and who ordered the rewards, a breast-pin, with a violet in amethyst, in memory of certain words he spoke to me in a rather mystical chat we had held one day, in which he let fall, 'the violin is the violet.' And poor Maria received a silver rose, in memory of Saint Cecilia, to whom he had once compared her, and to whom there was a too true resemblance in her fateful life. The rose was placed in her hair by the person I told you she loved best, just as she was about to stand forth before the orchestra; and when she fainted it fell to my feet. I gathered it up, and have kept it ever since. I do not know whether I had any right to do so, but the only person to whom I could have committed it, it was impossible to insult by reminding of her. In fact, he would not permit it; he left Cecilia after she was buried, and never returned." Clara here raised her eyes, bright and liquid, and yet all-searching; I had not seen them so. "I feel for him all that my heart can feel. Has he never ceased to suffer? Was she all to him?" "He will never cease to suffer until he ceases to breathe, and then he will, perhaps, be fit to bear the bliss that was withdrawn from him as too great for any mortal heart; that is his feeling, I believe, for he is still now, and uncomplaining,--ever proud, but only proud about his sorrow. Some day you will, I trust, hear him play, and you will agree with me how that grief must have grown into a soul so passionate." "You mean, when you say he is proud, he will not be comforted, I suppose? There are persons like that, I know; but I do not understand it." "I hope you never will, Miss Benette. You must suffer with your whole nature to refuse comfort." "To any one so suffering I should say, the comfort is that all those who suffer are reserved for joy." "Not here, though." "But it will not be less joy because it is saved for by and by. Now that way of talking makes me angry; I believe there is very little faith." "Very little, I grant. But poor Florimond Anastase does not fail there." She stopped beside me as we were pacing the lawn. "Florimond Anastase! you did not say so? Do you mean the great player? I have heard of that person." Her face flushed vividly, as rose hues flowing into pearl, her aspect altered, she seemed convicted of some mistaken conclusion; but, recovering herself almost instantly, resumed,-- "Thank you for telling me that story,--it will make me better, I hope. I do not deserve to have grown up so well and strong. May I do my duty for it, and at least be grateful! You did not say what was done with the symphony?" "The person I mentioned would not allow it to be retained. And, indeed, what else could be done? It was buried in her virgin grave,--a maiden work. She sleeps with her music, and I know not who could have divided them." "You have told me a story that has turned you all over, like the feeling before a thunder-storm. I will not hear a word more. You cannot afford to talk of what affects you. Now, let me be very impertinent and change the key." "By all means; I have said quite enough, and will thank you." "There is Laura in the arbor, just across the grass; we will go to her, if you please, and you shall see her pretty pink frock among the roses, instead of my black gown. On the way I will tell you that there is some one, a lady too, so much interested in you that she was going down to your neighborhood on purpose to find out about you; but I prevented her from coming, by saying you would be here, and she answered,-- "'Tell him, then, to come and call upon me.'" "It can only have been one living lady who would have sent that message,--Miss Lawrence. Actually I had forgotten all about her, and she returns upon me with a strong sense of my own ingratitude. I will certainly call upon her, and I shall be only too glad to identify my benefactress." "That you cannot do; she will not allow it,--at least, to this hour she persists in perfect innocence of the fact." "That she provided us both with exactly what we wanted at exactly the right time? She chalked out my career, at least. I'll make her understand how I feel. Is she not a character?" "Not more so than yourself, but still one, certainly; and a peculiarity of hers is, that generous--too generous almost--as she is, she will not suffer the slightest allusion to her generosities to be made, nor hint to be circulated that she has a heart at all." Laura was sitting in the arbor, which was now at hand, but not, as Clara prophesied, among the roses in any sense, for the green branches that festooned the lattice were flowerless until the later summer, and her face appeared fading into a mist of green. The delicate leaves framed her as a picture of melancholy that has attired itself in mirth, which mirth but served to fling out the shadow by contrast and betray the source. Clara sat on one side, I on the other, and presently we went in to tea. But I did not hear the voice I longed for that evening, nor was the pianoforte opened that I so well remembered standing in its "dark corner." CHAPTER XI. I determined not to let a day pass without calling on Miss Lawrence, for I had obtained her address before I left the cottage, and I set forth the following morning. It was in the midst of a desert of West-end houses, none of which have any peculiar characteristic, or suggest any peculiar notion. When I reached the door, I knocked, and it being opened, gave in my card to the footman, who showed me into a dining-room void of inhabitants, and there left me. It seemed strange enough to my perception, after I could sit down to breathe, that a lady should live all by herself in such an immense place; but I corrected myself by remembering she might possibly not live by herself, but have brothers, sisters, nay, any number of relations or dependants. She certainly did not dine in that great room, at that long table polished as a looking-glass, where half a regiment might have messed for change. There were heavy curtains, striped blue and crimson, and a noble sideboard framed in an arch of yellow marble. The walls were decorated with deep-toned pictures on a ground almost gold color; and I was fastened upon one I could not mistake as a Murillo, when the footman returned, but only to show me out, for Miss Lawrence was engaged. I was a little crestfallen, not conceitedly so, but simply feeling I had better not have taken her at her word, and retreated in some confusion. Returning very leisurely to my two apartments near the Strand, and stopping very often on the way at music or print shops, I did not arrive there for at least an hour, and was amazed on my entrance to find a note, directed to myself, lying upon the parlor table-cloth. I appealed to my landlady from the top of the kitchen stairs, and she said a man in livery had left it, and was to call for an answer. I read the same on the spot; it had no seal to break, but was twisted backwards and forwards, and had this merit, that it was very difficult to open. It was from Miss Lawrence, without any comment on my call, but requesting my company that very evening to dinner, at the awful hour of seven. Never having dined at seven o'clock in my existence, nor even at six, I was lost in the prospect, and almost desired to decline, but that I had no excuse of any kind on hand; and therefore compelled myself to frame a polite assent, which I despatched, and then sat down to practise. I made out to myself that she would certainly be alone, as she was the very person to have fashionable habits on her own account, or at least that she would be surrounded merely by the people belonging to her in her home. But I was still unconfessedly nervous when I drew the door after me and issued into the streets, precisely as the quarter chimes had struck for seven, and while the streets still streamed with daylight, and all was defined as at noon. When I entered the square so large and still, with its broad roads and tranquil centre-piece of green, I was appalled to observe a carriage or two, and flattered myself they were at another door; but they had drawn up at the very front, alas! that I had visited in the morning. I was compelled to advance, after having stood aside to permit a lady in purple satin, and two younger ladies in white, to illustrate the doorway in making their procession first. Then I came on, and was rather surprised to find myself so well treated; for a gentleman out of livery, in neater black clothes than a clergyman, deprived me of my hat and showed me upstairs directly. It struck me very forcibly that it was a very good thing my hair had the habit of staying upon my forehead as it should do, and that I was not anxious to tie my neck-handkerchief over again, as I was to be admitted into the drawing-room _in statu quo_. I ascended. It was a well-staircase, whose great height was easy of attainment from the exceeding lowness of the steps; stone, with a narrow crimson centre-strip soft as thick-piled velvet. On the landing-place was a brilliant globe of humming-birds, interspersed with gem-like spars and many a moss-wreath. The drawing-room door was opened for me before I had done looking; I walked straight in, and by instinct straight up to the lady of the house, who as instantly met me with a frank familiarity that differs from all other, and supersedes the rarest courtesy. I had a vague idea that Miss Lawrence must have been married since I saw her, so completely was she mistress of herself, and so easy was her deportment,--not to speak of her dress, which was black lace, with a single feather in her hair of the most vivid green; but unstudied as very few costumes are, even of married women. She was still Miss Lawrence, though, for some one addressed her by name,--a broad-featured man behind her,--and she turned her head alone, and answered him over her shoulder. She dismissed him very shortly, or sent him to some one else; for she led me--as a queen might lead one of her knights, by her finger-tips, small as a Spaniard's, upon the tips of my gloves, while she held her own gloves in her other hand--to a gentleman upon the rug, a real gentleman of the old school, to whom she introduced me simply as to her father; and then she brought me back again to a low easy-chair, out of a group of easy-chairs close by the piano, and herself sat down quite near me, on the extreme corner of an immense embroidered ottoman. "You see how it is, my dear Mr. Auchester," she began in her genial voice,--"a dinner, which I should not have dreamed to annoy you with, but for one party we expect. You have seen Seraphael, of course, and the little Burney? Or perhaps not; they have been in town only two days." I was about to express something rather beyond surprise, when a fresh appearance at the door carried her away, and I could only watch the green plume in despair as it waved away from me. To stifle my sensations, I just glanced round the room; it was very large, but so high and so apportioned that one felt no space to spare. The draperies, withdrawn for the sunset smile to enter, were of palest sky-color, the walls of the palest blush, the tables in corners, the chairs in clusters, the cabinets in niches, gilt and carven, were of the deepest blue and crimson, upon a carpet of all imaginable hues, like dashed flower-petals. Luxurious as was the furniture, in nothing it offended even the calmest taste, and the choicest must have lavished upon it a prodigal leisure. The pianoforte was a grand one, of dark and lustrous polish; its stools were velvet; a large lamp, unlighted, with gold tracery over its moon-like globe, issued from a branch in the wall immediately over it, and harmonized with a circle of those same lamps above the centre ottoman, and with the same upon the mantelshelf guarding a beautiful French clock, and reflected in a sheet of perfect glass sweeping to the ceiling. There were about five and twenty persons present, who seemed multiplied, by their manner and their dresses, into thrice as many, and who would have presented a formidable aspect but for the hopes roused within me to a tremendous anticipation. Still I had time, during the hum and peculiar rustle, to scrutinize the faces present. There were none worth carrying away, except that shaded by the emerald plume, and I followed it from chair to chair, fondly hoping it would return to mine. It did not; and it was evident we were waiting for some one. There was a general lull; two minutes by my watch (as I ascertained, very improperly) it lasted, and two minutes seems very long before a set dinner. Suddenly, while I was yet gazing after our hostess, the door flew open, and I heard a voice repeat,-- "The Chevalier Seraphael and Mr. Burney!" They entered calmly, as I could hear,--not see, for my eyes seemed to turn in my head, and I involuntarily looked away. The former approached the hostess, who had advanced almost to the door to meet him, and apologized, but very slightly, for his late appearance, adding a few words in a lower tone which I could not catch. He was still holding his companion by the hand, and, before they had time to part, the dinner was announced with state. I lost sight of him long before I obeyed the summons, leading a lady assigned to me, a head taller than myself, who held a handkerchief in her hand that looked like a lace veil, and shook it in my face as we walked down the stairs. I can never sympathize with the abuse heaped upon these dinner-parties, as I have heard, since I recall that especial occasion, not only grateful, but with a sense of its Arabian Night-like charm,--the long table, glistering with damask too white for the eye to endure, the shining silver, the flashing crystal, the blaze and mitigated brightness, the pyramid of flowers, the fragrance, and the picture quiet. As we passed in noiselessly and sat down one by one, I saw that the genius, apart from these, was seated by Miss Lawrence at the top of the table, and I was at the very bottom, though certainly opposite. Starwood was on my own side, but far above me. I was constrained to talk with the lady I had seated next me, and as she did not disdain to respond at length, to listen while she answered; but I was not constrained to look upon her, nor did I, nor anything but that face so long removed, so suddenly and inexplicably restored. It is impossible to describe the nameless change that had crept upon those faultless features, nor how it touched me, clove to my heart within. Seraphael had entirely lost the flitting healthful bloom of his very early youth: a perfect paleness toned his face, as if with purity out-shadowed,--such pearly clearness flinging into relief the starry distance of his full, deep-colored eyes; the forehead more bare, more arched, was distinctly veined, and the temples were of chiselled keenness; the cheek was thinner, the Hebrew contour more defined; the countenance had gained in apparent calm, but when meeting his gaze you could peer into those orbs so evening-blue, their starlight was passionately restless. He was talking to Miss Lawrence; he scarcely ceased, but his conversation was evidently not that which imported anything to himself,--not the least shade of change thwarted the paleness I have mentioned, which was that of watchfulness or of intense fatigue. She to whom he spoke, on the contrary, seemed passed into another form; she brightened more and more, she flashed, not only from her splendid eyes, but from her glowing cheek, her brilliant smile: she was on fire with joy that would not be extinguished; it assuredly was the time of "all her wealth," and had her mood possessed no other charm, it would have excited my furious taste by its interesting contrast with his pale aspect and indrawn expression. It was during dessert, when the converse had sprung up like a sudden air in a calm, when politeness quickened and elegance unconsciously thawed, that--as I watched the little hands I so loved gleaming in the purple of the grapes which the light fingers separated one by one--I passed insensibly to the countenance. It was smiling, and for me: a sudden light broke through the lips, which folded themselves again instantly, as if never to smile again; but not until I had known the dawn of the old living expression, that, though it had slept, I felt now was able to awaken, and with more thankfulness than I can put into words. He was of those who stood at the door when the ladies withdrew, and after their retreat he began to speak to me across the table, serving me, with a skill I could not appreciate too delicately, to the merest trivialities, and making a sign to Starwood to take the chair now empty next me. This was exactly what I wanted, for I had not seen him in the least,--not that I was afraid he had altered, but that I was anxious to encounter him the same. Although still a little one, he had grown more than I expected; his blue eye was the same, the same shrinking lip,--but a great power seemed called out of both. He was exceedingly well formed, muscular, though delicate; his voice was that which I remembered, but he had caught Seraphael's accent, and quite slightly his style,--only not his manner, which no one could approach or imitate. I learned from Starwood, as we sipped our single glass of wine, that the Chevalier had been to Miss Lawrence's that very morning. "He told me where he was going, and left me at the hotel; when he came back he said we were invited for to-night. Miss Lawrence had asked him to spend one evening, and he was engaged for every one but this. She was very sorry, she said, that her father had a party to-day. The Chevalier, however, did not mind, he told her, and should be very happy to come anyhow." "But how does it happen that he is so constantly engaged? It cannot be to concerts every evening?" "Carl, you have no idea how much he is engaged; the rehearsals are to be every other day, and the rest of the evenings he has been worried into accepting invitations. I wish to goodness people would let him alone; if they knew what I know they would." "What, my dear boy?" "That for every evening he spends in company, he sits up half the night. I know it, for I have watched that light under his door, and can hear him make the least little stir when all is so quiet,--at least, I could at Stralenfeld, where he stayed last, for my room was across the landing-place; and since we came to London, he told me he has not slept." "I should think you might entreat him to do otherwise, Starwood, or at least request his friends to do so." "He might have no friends, so far as any influence they have goes. Just try yourself, Carl; and when you see his face, you will not be inclined to do so any more." "You spoke of rehearsals, Star,--what may these be? I have not heard anything." "I only know that he has brought with him two symphonies, three or four quartets, and a great roll of organ fugues, besides the score of his oratorio." "I had no idea of such a thing. An oratorio?" "It is what he wrote in Italy some time ago, and only lately went over and prepared. It is in manuscript." "Shall we hear it?" "It is for the third or fourth week in June, but has been kept very quiet." "How did Miss Lawrence come to know him? She did not use to know him." "She seems to know everybody, and to get her own way in everything. You might ask her; she would tell you, and there would be no fear of her being angry." At last we rose. The lamps were lighted when we returned to the drawing-room; it was nearly ten o'clock, but all was brilliant, festive. I had scarcely found a seat when Seraphael touched my shoulder. "I want very much to go, Charles. Will you come home with me? I have all sorts of favors to ask you, and that is the first." "But, sir, Miss Lawrence is going to the piano: will not you play first?" "Not at all to-night; we agreed. There are many here who would rather be excused from music; they can get it at the opera." He laughed, and so did I. He then placed his other hand on Starwood, still touching my shoulder, when Miss Lawrence approached,-- "Sir, you know what you said, nor can I ask you to retract it. But may I say how sorry I am to have been so exacting this morning? It was a demand upon your time I would not have made had I known what I now know." "What is that? Pray have the goodness to tell me, for I cannot imagine." "That you have brought with you what calls upon every one to beware how he or she engages you with trifles, lest they suffer from that repentance which comes too late. I hear of your great work, and shall rely upon you to allow me to assist you, if it be at all possible I can, in the very least and lowest degree." She spoke earnestly, with an eager trouble in her air. He smiled serenely. "Oh! you quite mistake my motive, Miss Lawrence; it had not to do with music. It was because I have had no sleep that I wished to retire early; and you must permit me to make amends for my awkwardness. If it will not exhaust your guests, as I see you were about to play, let me make the opening, and oblige me by choosing what you like best." "Sir, I cannot refuse, selfish as I am, to permit myself such exquisite pleasure. There is another thirsty soul here who will be all the better for a taste of heavenly things." She turned to me elated. I looked into his face; he moved to the piano, made no gesture either of impatience or satisfaction, but drew the stool to him, and when seated, glanced to Miss Lawrence, who stood beside him and whispered something. I drew, with Starwood, behind, where I could watch his hands. He played for perhaps twenty minutes,--an _andante_ from Beethoven, an _allegro_ from Mozart, an _aria_ from Weber, cathedral-echoes from Purcell, fugue-points from Bach; and mixing them like gathered flowers, bound them together with a wild, delicious _scherzo finale_, his own. But though that playing was indeed unto me as heaven in forecast, and though it filled the heart up to the brim, it was extremely cold, and I do not remember ever feeling that he was separable from his playing before. When he arose so quietly, lifting his awful forehead from the curls that had fallen over it as he bent his face, he was unflushed as calm, and he instantly shook hands with Miss Lawrence, only leaving her to leave the room. I followed him naturally, remembering his request; but she detained me a moment to say,-- "You must come and see me on Thursday, and must also come to breakfast. I shall be alone, and have something to show you. You are going along with him, I find,--so much the better; take care of him, and good night." Starwood had followed Seraphael implicitly; they were both below. We got into a carriage at the door, and were driven I knew not whither; but it was enough to be with him, even in that silent mood. With the same absent grace he ordered another bed-room when we stayed at his hotel. I could no more have remonstrated with him than with a monarch when we found ourselves in the stately sitting-room. "A pair of candles for the chamber," was his next command; and when they were brought, he said to us: "The waiter will show you to your rooms, dear children; you must not wait a moment." I could not, so I felt, object, nor entreat him himself to sleep. Starwood and I departed; and whether it was from the novelty of the circumstances, or my own transcending happiness, or whether it was because I put myself into one of Starwood's dresses in default of my own, I do not conjecture, but I certainly could not sleep, and was forced to leave it alone. I sat upright for an hour or two, and then rolled amongst the great hot pillows; I examined the register of the grate; I looked into the tall glass at my own double: but all would not exhaust me, and towards the very morning I left my bed and made a sally upon the landing-place. I knew the number of Seraphael's door, for Starwood had pointed it out to me as we passed along, and I felt drawn, as by odyllic force, to that very metal lock. There was no crack, but a key-hole, and the key-hole was bright as any star; I peeped in also, and shall never forget my delight, yet dread, to behold that outline of a figure, which decided me to make an entrance into untried regions, upon inexperienced moods. Without any hesitation, I knocked; but recalling to myself his temperament, I spoke simultaneously,-- "Dear sir, may I come in?" Though I waited not for his reply, and opened the door quite innocent of the ghostly apparel I wore--and how very strange must have been my appearance!--never shall I forget the look that came home to me as I advanced more near him,--that indrawn, awful aspect, that sweetness without a smile. The table was loaded with papers, but there was no strew,--that "spirit" ever moulded to harmony its slightest "motion;" one delicate hand was outspread over a sheet, a pen was in the other: he did not seem surprised, scarcely aroused. I rushed up to him precipitately. "Dear, dearest sir, I would not have been so rude, but I could not bear to think you might be sitting up, and I came to see. I pray you, for God's sake, do go to bed!" "Carl, very Carl, little Carl, great Carl!" he answered, with the utmost gentleness, but still unsmiling, "why should I go to bed? and why shouldest thou come out of thine?" "Sir, if it is anything, I cannot sleep while you are not sleeping, and while you ought to be besides." "Is that it? How very kind, how good! I do not wake wilfully, but if I am awake I must work,--thou knowest that. In truth, Carl, hadst thou not been so weary, I should have asked thee this very night what I must ask thee to-morrow morning." "Ask me now, sir, for, if you remember, it _is_ to-morrow morning already." "Go get into your bed, then." "No, sir, certainly not while you are sitting there." A frown, like the shadow of a butterfly, floated over his forehead. "If thou wilt have it so, I will even go to this naughty bed, but not to sleep. The fact is, Carl, I cannot sleep in London. I think that something in the air distresses my brain; it will _not_ shut itself up. I was about to ask thee whether there is no country, nothing green, no pure wind, to be had within four miles?" "Sir, you have hit upon a prodigious providence. There is, as I can assure you experimentally, fresh green, pure country air of Heaven's own distilling within that distance; and there is also much more,--there is something you would like even better." "What is that, Carlomein?" "I will not tell you, sir, unless you sleep to-night." "To be sly becomes thee, precisely because thou art not a fox. I will lie down; but sleep is God's best gift, next to love, and he has deprived me of both." "If I be sly, sir, you are bitter. But there is not too much sleight, nor bitterness either, where they can be expressed from words. So, sir, come to bed." "Well spoken, Carlomein; I am coming,--sleep thou!" But I would not, and I did not leave him until I had seen his head laid low in all the bareness of its beauty, had seen his large eyelids fall, and had drawn his curtains in their softest gloom around the burdened pillow. Then I, too, went back to bed, and I slept delectably and dreamless. CHAPTER XII. Very late I slept, and before I had finished dressing, Starwood came for me. Seraphael had been down some time, he told me. I was very sorry, but relieved to discover how much more of his old bright self he wore than on the previous evening. "Now, Carlomein," he began immediately, "we are going on a pilgrimage directly after breakfast." I could tell he was excited, for he ate nothing, and was every moment at the window. To Starwood his abstinence seemed a matter of course; I was afraid, indeed, that it was no new thing. I could not remonstrate, however, having done quite enough in that line for the present. It was not half-past ten when we found ourselves in an open carriage, into which the Chevalier sprang last, and in springing said to me: "Give your own orders, Carlomein." I was for an instant lost, but recovered myself quite in time to direct, before we drove from the hotel, to the exact locality of Clara's cottage, unknowing whether I did well or ill, but determined to direct to no other place. As we passed from London and met the breeze from fields and gardens, miles and miles of flower-land, I could observe a clearing of Seraphael's countenance: its wan shadow melted, he seemed actually abandoned to enjoyment; though he was certainly in his silent mood, and only called out for my sympathy by his impressive glances as he stood up in the carriage with his hat off and swaying to and fro. And when we reached, after a rapid, exhilarating drive, the winding road with its summer trees in youngest leaf, he only began to speak,--he had not before spoken. "How refreshing!" he exclaimed, "and what a lovely shade! I will surely not go on a step farther, but remain here and make my bed. It will be very unfortunate for me if all those pretty houses that I see are full, and how can we get at them?" "I am nearly sure, sir, that you can live here if you like, or close upon this place; but if you will allow me, I will go on first and announce your arrival to a friend of mine, who will be rather surprised at our all coming together, though she would be more happy than I could express for her to welcome you at her house." "It is, then, _that_ I was brought to see,--a friend of thine; thou hast not the assurance to tell me that any friend of thine will be glad to welcome another! But go, Carlomein,"--and he opened the carriage-door,--"go and get over thy meeting first; we will give thee time. Oh, Carlomein! I little thought what a man thou hadst grown when I saw thee so tall! Get out, and go quickly; I would not keep thee now for all the cedars of Lebanon!" I could tell his mood now very accurately, but it made no difference; I knew what I was about, or I thought I knew, and did not remain to answer. I ran along the road, I turned the corner; the white gate shone upon me, and again I stopped to breathe. More roses, more narcissus lambent as lilies, more sweetness, and still more rest! The grass had been cut that morning, and lay in its little heaps all over the sunny lawn. The gravel was warm to my feet as I walked to the door, and long before the door was opened I heard a voice. So ardent did my desire expand to identify it with its owner that I begged the servant not to announce me, nor to disturb Miss Benette if singing. Thoné took the cue, gave me a kind of smile, and preceded me with a noiseless march to the very back parlor; I advanced on tiptoe and crouching forwards. Laura, too, was there, sitting at the table. She neither read nor worked, nor had anything in her hands; but with more tact than I should have expected from her, only bowed, and did not move her lips. In the morning light my angel sat, and her notes, full orbed and star-like, descended upon my brain. Few notes I heard,--she was just concluding,--the strain ebbed as the memory of a kiss itself dissolving; but I heard enough to know that her voice was, indeed, the realization of all her ideal promise. I addressed her as she arose, and told her, in very few words, my errand. She was perturbless as usual, and only looked enchanted, the enchantment betraying itself in the eye, not in any tremble or the faintest flush. "Do bring them, sir," she said; "and as you say this gentleman has eaten nothing, I will try what I can do to make him eat. It is so important that I wonder you could allow him to come out until he had breakfasted,"--for I had told her of his impatience; "afterwards, if he likes, he can go to see the houses. There are several, I do believe, if they have not been taken since yesterday." I went back to the carriage, and it was brought on to the gate, I walking beside it. Thoné was waiting, and held it open,--the sweet hay scented every breath. "Oh, how delicious!" said Seraphael, as he alighted, standing still and looking around. The meadows, the hedges, the secluded ways first attracted him; and then the garden, which I thought he would never have overpassed, then the porch, in which he stood. "And this is England!" he exclaimed; "it is strange how unlike it is to that wild dream-country I went to when last I came to London. This is more like heaven,--quiet and full of life!" These words recalled me to Clara. He had put his head into the very midst of those roses that showered over the porch. "Oh! I must gather one rose of all these,--there are so many; she will never miss it." And then he laughed. A soft, soft echo of his laugh was heard,--it startled me by its softness, it was so like an infant's. I looked over my shoulder, and there, in the shadow of the hall, I beheld her, her very self. It was she, indeed, who laughed, and her eye yet smiled. Without waiting for my introduction, she courtesied with a profound but easy air, and while, to match this singular greeting, Seraphael made his regal bow, she said, looking at him,-- "You shall have all the roses, sir, and all my flowers, if you will let my servant gather them; for I believe you might prick your fingers, there being also thorns. But while Thoné is at that work, perhaps you will like to walk in out of the sun, which is too hot for you, I am sure." She led us to the parlor where she had been singing, the piano still stood open. "But," said Seraphael, taking the first chair as if it were his own, "we disturb you! What were you doing, you and Carl? I ask his pardon,--Mr. Auchester." "We two did nothing, sir; I was only singing. But that can very well be put off till after breakfast, which will be ready in a few minutes." "Breakfast?" I thought, but Clara's face told no tales,--her loveliness was unruffled. The clear blue eye, the divine mouth, were evidently studies for Seraphael; he sat and watched her eagerly, even while he answered her. "You look as if you had had breakfast." "Indeed, I am very hungry, and so is my friend Mr. Auchester." "He always looks so, Mademoiselle!" replied the Chevalier, mirthfully, "but I do really think he might be elegant enough to tell me your name: he has forgotten to do so in his embarrassment. I cannot guess whether it be English, French, or German,--Italian, Greek, or Hebrew." "I am called Clara Benette, sir; that is my name." "It is not Benette,--La Benetta benedetta! Carlomein, why hast thou so forgotten? Allow me to congratulate you, Mademoiselle, on possessing the right to be so named. And for this do I give you joy,--that not for your gifts it has been bestowed, nor for that genius which is alone of the possessor, but for that goodness which I now experience, and feel to have been truly ascribed to you." He stood to her and held out his hand; calmly she gave hers to it, and gravely smiled. "Sir, I thank you the more because I _know_ your name. I hope you will excuse me for keeping you so long without your breakfast." He laughed again, and again sat down; but his manner, though of that playful courtliness, was quite drawn out to her. He scarcely looked at Laura; I did not even believe that he was aware of her presence, nor was _I_ aware of the power of his own upon her. After ten minutes Thoné entered and went up to Clara. She motioned to us all then, and we arose; but as she looked at Seraphael first, he took her out and into the dining-room. The table was snowed with damask; flowers were heaped up in the centre,--a bowl of honeysuckles and heartsease; the dishes here were white bread, brown bread, golden butter, new-laid eggs in a nest of moss, the freshest cream, the earliest strawberries; and before the chair which Clara took, stood a silver chocolate-jug foaming, and coffee above a day-pale spirit-lamp. On the sideboard were garnished meat, and poultry already carved, the decanters, and still more flowers; it was a feast raised as if by magic, and unutterably tempting at that hour of the day. Clara asked no questions of her chief guest, but pouring out both chocolate and coffee, offered them both; he accepted the former, nor refused the wing of a chicken which Thoné brought, nor the bread which Clara asked me to cut. I was perfectly astounded; she had helped herself also, and was eating so quietly, after administering her delicious cups all round, that no one thought of speaking. At last Starwood, by one of those unfortunate chances that befall timid people, spoke, and instantly turned scarlet, dropping his eyes forthwith, though he only said, "I never saw the Chevalier eat so much." Clara answered, with her fork in her dimpled hand, "That is because you gentlemen have had a long drive; it always raises the appetite to come out of London into the country. You cannot eat too much here." "Do you think I shall find a house that will hold me and my younger son," said Seraphael presently, pointing at Starwood his slight finger, "and a servant or two?" "If you like to send my servant, sir, she will find out for you." "No, perhaps you will not dislike to drive a little way with us. I know Carl will be so glad!" "We shall be most pleased, sir," she answered, quite quietly, though there was that in his expression which might easily have fluttered her. I could not at all account for this eflish mood, though I had been witness to freaks and fantasies in my boy days. Never had I seen his presence affect any one so little as Clara. Had she not been of a loveliness so peculiarly genial, I should have called her cold; as it was, I felt he had never made himself more at home with any one in my sight. While, having graciously deferred to her the proposal for an instant search, he sauntered out into the little front garden, she went for her bonnet, and came down in it,--a white straw, with a white-satin ribbon and lining, and a little white veil of her own work, as I could tell directly I caught her face through its wavering and web-like tracery. Seraphael placed her in the carriage, and then looked back. "Oh, Laura--that is, Miss Lemark--is not coming," observed Miss Benette; this did not strike me except as a rather agreeable arrangement, and off we drove. Fritz, Seraphael's own man, was on the box,--a perfect German, of very reserved deportment, who, however, one could see, would have allowed Seraphael to walk upon him. His heavy demonstrations about situations and suitabilities made even Clara laugh, as they were met by Seraphael's wayward answers and skittish sallies. We had a very long round, and then went back to dinner with our lady; but Seraphael, by the time the moon had risen, fell into May-evening ecstasies with a very old-fashioned tenement built of black wood and girded by a quickset hedge, because it suddenly, in the silver shine, reminded him of his own house in Germany, as he said. It was so near the cottage that two persons might even whisper together over the low and moss-greened garden-wall. The invitation of Miss Lawrence I could not forget, even through the intenser fascination spread about me. I returned with Seraphael to town again, and again to the country; he having thither removed his whole effects,--so important, though of so slight bulk, they consisting almost entirely of scored and other compositions, which were safely deposited in a little empty room of the rambling house he had chosen. This room he and Starwood and I soon made fit to be seen and inhabited, by our distribution of all odd furniture over it, and all the conveniences of the story. Three large country scented bed-rooms, with beds big enough for three chevaliers in each, and two drawing-rooms, were all that we cared for besides. Seraphael was only like a child that night that is preparing for a whole holiday: he wandered from room to room; he shut himself into pantry, wine-cellar, and china-closet; he danced like a day-beam through the low-ceiled sitting-chambers, and almost threw himself into the garden when he saw it out of the window. It was the wildest place,--the walks all sown with grass, an orchard on a bank all moss, forests of fruit-trees and moss-rose bushes, and the great white lilies in ranks all round the close-fringed lawn; all old-fashioned flowers in their favorite soils, a fountain and a grotto, and no end of weeping-ashes, arbors bent from willows, and arcades of nut and filbert trees. The back of the house was veiled with a spreading vine--too luxuriant--that shut out all but fresh green light from the upper bed-rooms; but Seraphael would not have a spray cut off, nor did he express the slightest dissatisfaction at being overlooked by the chimneys and roof-hung windows of Clara's little cottage, which peeped above the hedge. The late inhabitant and present owner of the house, an eccentric gentlewoman who abjured all innovation, had desired that no change should pass upon her tenement during her absence for a sea-side summer; even the enormous mastiff, chained in the yard to his own house, was to remain barking or baying as he listed; and we were rather alarmed, Starwood and I, to discover that Seraphael had let him loose, in spite of the warnings of the housekeeper, who rustled her scant black-silk skirts against the doorstep in anger and in dread. I was about to make some slight movement in deprecation, for the dog was fiercely strong and of a tremendous expression indeed, but he only lay down before the Chevalier and licked the leather of his boots, afterwards following him over the whole place until darkness came, when he howled on being tied up again until Seraphael carried him a bone from our supper-table. Our gentle master retired to rest, and his candle-flame was lost in the moonlight long before I could bring myself to go to bed. I can never describe the satisfaction, if not the calm, of lying between two poles of such excitement as the cottage and that haunted mansion. CHAPTER XIII. Seraphael had desired me to stay with him, therefore the next morning I intended to give up my London lodgings on the road to Miss Lawrence's square, or rather out of the road. When I came downstairs into the sun-lit breakfast-room, I found Starwood alone and writing to his father, but no Chevalier. Nor was he in his own room, for the sun was streaming through the vine-shade on the tossed bed-clothes, and the door and window were both open as I descended. Starwood said that he had gone to walk in the garden, and that we were not to wait for him. "What! without his breakfast?" said I. But Starwood smiled such a meaning smile that I was astonished, and could only sit down. We ate and drank, but neither of us spoke. I was anxious to be off, and Star to finish his letter; though as we both arose and were still alone, he yet looked naughty. I would not pretend to understand him, for if he has a fault, that darling friend of mine, it is that he sees through people rather too soon, construing their intentions before they inform experience. I could not make up my mind to ride, but set off on foot along the sun-glittering road, through emerald shades, past gold-flecked meadows, till through the mediant chaos of brick-fields and dust-heaps I entered the dense halo surrounding London,--"smoke the tiara of commerce," as a pearl of poets has called it. The square looked positively lifeless when I came there. I almost shrank from my expedition, not because of any fear I had on my own account, but because all the inhabitants might have been asleep behind the glaze of their many windows. I was admitted noiselessly and as if expected, shown into the drawing-room, so large, so light and splendid in the early sun. All was noiseless, too, within; an air of affluent calm pervaded as an atmosphere itself the rich-grouped furniture, the piano closed, the stools withdrawn. I was not kept two minutes; Miss Lawrence entered, in the act of holding out her hand. I was instantly at home with her, though she was one of the grandest persons I ever saw. She accepted my arm, and, not speaking, took me to a landing higher, and to a room which appeared to form one of a suite; for a curtain extended across one whole side,--a curtain as before an oratory in a dwelling-house. Breakfast was outspread here; on the walls, a pale sea-green, shone delectable pictures in dead-gold frames,--pictures even to an inexperienced eye pure relics of art. The windows had no curtains, only a broad gold cornice; the chairs were damask, white and green; the carpet oak-leaves, on a lighter ground. It was evidently a retreat of the lesser art,--it could not be called a boudoir; neither ornament nor mirror, vase nor book-stand, broke the prevalent array. I said I had breakfasted, but she made me sit by her and told me,-- "I have not, and I am sure you will excuse me. One must eat, and I am not so capable to exist upon little as you are. Yet you shall not sit, if you would rather see the pictures, because there are not too many to tire you in walking round. Too many together is a worse mistake than too few." I arose immediately, but I took opportunity to examine my entertainer in pauses as I moved from picture to picture. She wore black brocaded silk this morning, with a Venetian chain and her watch, and a collar all lace; her hair, the blackest I had ever seen except Maria's, was coiled in snake-like wreaths to her head so small behind while it arched so broadly and benevolently over her noble eyes. She was older than I had imagined, and may have been forty at that time; the only observation one could retain about the fact being that her gathered years had but served to soften every crudity of an extremely decided organization, and to crown wisdom with refinement. She soon pushed back her cup and plate, and came to my side. She looked suddenly, a little anxiously at me. "You must be rather curious to know why I asked you to come to me to-day; and were you not a gentleman, you would have been also curious, I fancy, to know why I could not see you on Tuesday. I want you to come this way." I followed; she slid the curtain along its rings, and we entered the oratory. I know not that it was so far unlike such precinct, for from thence art reared her consecrated offerings to the presence of every beauty. I felt this, and that the artist was pure in heart, even before her entire character faced my own. The walls here, of the same soft marine shade, were also lighted by pictures,--the strangest, the wildest, the least assorted, yet all according. A peculiar and unique style was theirs; each to each presented the atmosphere of one imagination. Dark and sombrous woods, moon-pierced, gleamed duskly from a chair where they were standing frameless; resting against them, a crowd of baby faces clustered in a giant flower-chalice; a great lotus was the hieroglyph of a third. On the walls faces smiled or frowned,--huge profiles; dank pillars mirrored in rushy pools; fragments of heathen temples; domes of diaphanous distance in a violet sky; awful palms; dread oceans, with the last ghost-shadow of a wandering wreck. I stood lost, unaccustomed either to the freaks or the triumphs of pictorial art; I could only say in my amaze, "Are these all yours? How wonderful!" She smiled very carelessly. "I did not intend you to look at those, except askance, if you were kind enough. I keep them to advertise my own deficiencies and to compare the present with the past. The present is very aspiring, and _for_ the present devours my future. I hope it will dedicate itself thereunto. I wish you to come here, to this light." She was placed before an immense easel to the right of a large-paned window, where the best London day streamed above the lower dimness. An immense sheet of canvas was turned away from us upon the easel; but in a moment she had placed it before us, and fell back in the same moment, a little from me. Nor shall I ever forget that moment's issue. I forgot it was a picture, and all I could feel was a trance-like presence brought unto me in a day-dream of immutable satisfaction. On either side, the clouds, light golden and lucid crimson, passed into a central sphere of the perfect blue. And reared into that, as it were the empyrean of the azure, gleamed in full relief the head, life-sized, of Seraphael. The bosom white-vested, the regal throat, shone as the transparent depths of the moon, not moonlight, against the blue unshadowed. The clouds deeper, heavier, and of a dense violet, were rolled upon the rest of the form; the bases of those clouds as livid as the storm, but their edges, where they flowed into the virgin raiment, sun-fringed, glittering. The visage was raised, the head thrown back into the ether; but the eyes were drooping, the snow-sealed lips at rest. The mouth faint crimson, thrilling, spiritual, appalled by its utter reminiscence; the smile so fiery-soft just touched the lips unparted. No symbol strewed the cloudy calm below, neither lyre, laurel-wreathed, nor flowery chaplet; but on either side, where the clouds disparted in wavering flushes and golden pallors, two hands of light, long, lambent, life-like, but not earthly, held over the brow a crown. Passing my eye among the cloud-lights,--for I cannot call them shadows,--I could just gather with an eager vision, as one gathers the thready moon-crescent in a mid-day sky, that on either side a visage gleamed, veiled and drenched also in the rose-golden mist. One countenance was dread and glorious, of sharp-toned ecstasy that cut through the quivering medium,--a self-sheathed seraph; the other was mild and awful, informed with steadfast beauty, a shining cherub. They were Beethoven and Bach, as they might be known in heaven; but who, except the musician, would have known them for themselves on earth? It was not for me to speak their names,--I could not utter them; my heart was dry,--I was thirsty for the realization of that picture promise. The crown they uplifted in those soft, shining hands was a circle of stars gathered to each other out of that heavenly silence, and into the azure vague arose that brow over which the conqueror's sign, suspended, shook its silver terrors. For such awful fancies shivered through the brain upon its contemplation that I can but call it _transcendental_,--beyond expression; the feeling, the fear, the mystery of starlight pressed upon the spirit and gave new pulses to the heart. The luminous essence from the large white points seemed rained upon that forehead and upon the deep tints of the god-like locks; they turned all clear upon their orbed clusters, they melted into the radiant halo which flooded, yet as with a glory one could not penetrate, the impenetrable elevation of the lineaments. I dared only gaze; had I spoken, I should have wept, and I would not disturb the image by my tears. I soon perceived how awfully the paintress had possessed herself of the inspiration, the melancholy, and the joy. The crown, indeed, was grounded upon rest, and of unbroken splendor; but it beamed upon the aspect of exhaustion and longing strife, upon lips yet thirsty, and imploring patience. I suppose my silence satisfied the artist; for before I had spoken, or even unriveted my gaze, she said, herself-- "That I have worked upon for a year. I was allowing myself to dream one day--just such a day as this--last spring; and insensibly my vision framed itself into form. The faces came before I knew,--at least those behind the clouds; and having caught them, I conceived the rest. I could not, however, be certain of my impressions about the chief countenance, and I waited with it unfinished enough until the approach of the season, for I knew he was coming now, and before he arrived I sent him a letter to his house in Germany. I had a pretty business to find out the address, and wrote to all kinds of persons; but at last I succeeded, and my suit was also successful. I had asked him to sit to me." "Then you had not known him before? You did not know him all those years?" "I had seen him often, but never known him. Oh, yes! I had seen his face. You have a tolerable share of courage: could you have asked him such a favor?" "You see, Miss Lawrence, I have received so many favors from him without asking for them. Had I possessed such genius as yours, I should not only have done the same, but have felt to do it was my duty. It is a portrait for all the ages, not only for men, but for angels." "Only for angels, if fit at all; for that face is something beyond man's utmost apprehension of the beautiful. It must ever remain a solitary idea to any one who has received it. You will be shocked if I tell you that his beauty prevails more with _me_ than his music." "But is it not the immediate consequence of such musical investment?" "I believe, on the contrary, that the musical investment, as you charmingly express it, is the direct consequence of the lofty organization." "That is a new notion for me; I must turn it over before I take it home. I would rather consider the complement of his gifts to be that heavenly heart of his which endows them each and all with what must live forever in unaltered perfection." "And it pleases me to feel that he is of like passions with us, protected from the infraction of laws celestial by the image of the Creator still conserved to his mortal nature, and stamping it with a character beyond the age. But about his actual advent. He answered my letter in person. I was certainly appalled to hear of his arrival, and that he was downstairs. I was up here muddling with my brushes, without knowing what to be at; up comes my servant-- "'Mr. Seraphael.' "Imagine such an announcement! I descend, we meet,--for the first time in private except, indeed, on the occasion when his shadow was introduced to me, as you may remember. He was in the drawing-room, pale from travelling, full of languor left by sea-sickness, looking like a spirit escaped from prison. I was almost ashamed of my daring, far more so than alarmed. I thought he was about to appoint a day; but no. He said,-- "'I am at your service this morning, if it suits you; but as you did not favor me with your address, I could not arrange beforehand. I went to my music-sellers and asked them about you. I need not tell you that you were known there, and that I am much obliged to them.' "Actually it was a fact that I had not furnished him with my address; but I was perfectly innocent of my folly. What could I do but not lose a moment? I asked him to take refreshment; no, he had breakfasted, or dined, or something, and we came up here directly. I never saw such behavior. He did not even inquire what I was about, but sat, like a god in marble, just where I had placed him,--out there. You perceive that I have lost the eyes, or at least have rendered them up to mystery. Well, when, having caught the outline of the forehead, and touched the temples, I descended to those eyes, and saw they were full upon me, I could do nothing with them. I cannot paint light, only its ghost; nor fire, only its shade. His eyes are at once fire and light,--I know not of which the most; or, at least, that which is the light of fire. Even the streaming lashes scarcely tempered the radiance there. I let them fall, and veiled what one scarcely dares to meet,--at least I. He sat to me for hours; but though I knew not how the time went, and may be forgiven for inconsideration, I had no idea that he was going straight to the committee of the choir-day on the top of that sitting. I kept him long enough for what I wanted, and as he did not ask to see the picture, I did not show it him. He shall see it when it is finished." "What finish does it require? I see no change that it can need to carry out the likeness, which is all we want." "Oh, yes! more depth in the darkness, and more glory in the light; less electric expression, more ideal serenity,--above all, more pain above the forehead, more peace about the crown. Moonlight without a moon, sunshine without the solar rays,--the day of heaven." "I can only say, Miss Lawrence, that you deserve to be able to do as you have done, and to feel that no one else could have done it." "Very exclusive, that feeling, but perhaps necessary. I have it, but my deserts will only be transcended if Seraphael himself shall approve. And now for another question,--Will you go with me to this choir-day?" "I am trying to imagine what you mean. I have not heard the name until you spoke it. Is it in the North?" "Certainly not; though even York Minster would not be a bad notion--that is to say, it would suit our Beethoven exactly; but this is another hierarch. What do you think of an oratorio in Westminster Abbey, the conductor our own, the whole affair of his? No wonder you have heard nothing; it has been kept very snug, and was only arranged by the interposition of various individuals whose influence is more of mammon than of art,--the objection at first being chiefly on the part of the profession; but that is overruled by their being pretty nearly every one included in the orchestra. Such a thing is never likely to occur again. Say that you will go with me. If it be anything to you, I shall give you one of the best seats, in the very centre, where you will see and hear better than most people. Imagine the music in that place of tombs,--it is a melancholy but glorious project; may we realize it!" _I_ could not at present,--it was out of the question; nor could I bear to stay,--there was nothing for it but to make haste out, where the air made solitude. I bade the paintress good morning, and quitted her. I believe she understood my frame. CHAPTER XIV. I walked home also, and was tolerably tired. Entering the house as one at home there, I found nobody at home, no Starwood,--no Chevalier. I lay upon the sofa in a day-dream or two, and when rested, went out into the garden. I searched every corner, too, in vain; but wandering past the dividing hedge, a voice floated articulately over the still afternoon. All was calm and warm. The slightest sound made way, and I hesitated not to scale the green barrier, nowhere too high for me to leap it, and to approach the parlor of the cottage in that unwonted fashion. I was in for pictures this while, I suppose; for when I reached the glass doors that swept the lawn wide open, and could peep through them without disturbing foot on that soft soil, I saw, indeed, another, a less impressive, not less expressive, view. Clara sat at her piano, her side-face was in the light. His own, which I was sure to find there, in profile also, was immediately behind her; but as he stood, the shade had veiled him, the shade from the trembling leaves without, through which one sunbeam shot, and upon the carpet kissed his feet. She was singing, as I could hear, scarcely see, for her lips opened not more than for a kiss, to sing. The strains moulded themselves imperceptibly, or as a warble shaken in the throat of a careless nightingale that knew no listener. Seraphael, as he stood apart drinking in the notes with such eagerness that his lips were also parted, had never appeared to me so borne out of himself, so cradled in a second nature. I could scarcely have believed that the face I knew so well had yet an expression hidden I knew not of; but it was so: kindled at another fire than that which his genius had stolen from above, his eye was charged, his cheek flushed. So exquisitely beautiful they looked together,--he in that soft shadow, she in that tremulous light,--that at first I noticed not a third figure, now brought before me. Behind them both, but sitting so that she could see his face, was Laura,--or rather she half lay; some antique figures carved in statuary have an attitude as listless, that bend on monuments, or crouch in relievo. She had both her arms outspread upon the little work-table, hanging over the edge, the hands just clasped together, as reckless in repose; her face all colorless, her eyes all clear, but with scarcely more tinting, were fixed, rapt, upon Seraphael. I could not tell whether she was feeding upon his eye, his cheek, or his beauteous hair; all her life came forth from her glance, but it spent itself without expression. Still, that deep, that feeding gaze was enough for me; there was in it neither look of hope nor of despair, as I could have interpreted it. I did not like to advance, and waited till my feet were stiff; but neither could I retire. I waited while Clara, without comment on her part or request of his, glided from song to _scena_, from the romance of a wilderness to the simplest troll. Her fingers just touched the keys as we touch them for the violin solo,--supporting, but unnoticeable. At last, when afraid to be caught,--for the face of the Chevalier in its new expression I rather dreaded,--I went back, like a thief, the way I came, and still more like a thief in that I carried away a treasure of remembrance from those who knew not they had lost it. I found Starwood yet out, and roved very impatiently all over the house until, at perhaps five o'clock, Seraphael came in for something. The dog in the yard barked out; but I was in no humor to let him loose, and ran straight into the hall. "Carlomein," said the Chevalier, "I thought you were in London. Is it possible, my child, that you have not dined?" and he gave orders for an instant preparation. "I am truly vexed that I did not know it, but Stern is gone to his father, and will stay till the last coach to-night. I thought you would be absent also." "And so, sir, I suppose you had determined to go without your dinner?" He smiled. "Not at all, Carlomein. The fact is, I _have_ dined. I could not resist La Benetta benedetta. I never knew what young potatoes were until I tasted them over there." "I daresay not," I thought; but I was wise enough to hold my tongue. "Then, sir, I shall dine alone; and very much I shall enjoy it. There is nothing I like so well as dining alone, except to dine alone with you." "Carl! Carl! hadst thou been in that devil when he tempted Eve! Pardon, but I have come home for a few things, and have promised to return." "Sir, if you will not think it rude, I must say that for once in your life you are enjoying what you confer upon others. I am so glad!" "I thought it says, 'It is better to give than to receive.' I do like receiving; but perhaps that is because I cannot give this which I now receive. Carlomein, there is a spell upon thee; there is a charm about thee, that makes thee lead all thou lovest to all they love! It is a thing I cannot comprehend, but am too content to feel." He ran into his study, and returning, just glanced into the room with an air of _allegresse_ to bid me adieu; but what had he in his arms, if it were not the score of his oratorio? I knew its name by this time; I saw it in that nervous writing which I could read at any earthly distance,--what was to be done with it, and what then? Was he going to the rehearsal, or a rehearsal of his own? I had not been half an hour quiet, playing to myself, having unpacked my fiddle for the first time since I came to London, when the lady of the scanty silk arrived at my door and aroused me. Some gentlemen had called to see the Chevalier, and as he was supposed to be absent, must see me. I went down into a great, dampish dining-room we had not lived in at all, and found three or four worthies, a deputation from the band and chorus, who had helplessly assembled two hours ago in London, and were at present waiting for the conductor. It was no pleasant task to infringe the fragrant privacy of the cottage, but I had to do it. I went to the front gate this time, and sent up a message, that I might not render myself more intrusive than necessary. He came down as upon the wings of the wind, with his hat half falling from his curls, and flew to the deputation without a syllable to me; they carried him off in triumph so immediately that I could only fancy he looked annoyed, and may have been about that matter mistaken. Certainly Clara was not annoyed, whom I went in-doors to see; Laura had vanished, and she herself was alone in the room, answering my first notes of admiration merely, "Yes, I have sung to him a good while." I was, however, so struck with the change, not in manner, but in her mien, that I would stay on to watch, at the risk of being in the way more than ever in my days. Since I had entered, she had not once looked up; but an unusual flush was upon her face, she appeared serious, but intent,--something seemed to occupy her. At last, after turning about the music-sheets that strewed the chamber everywhere, and placing them by in silence,--and a very long time she took,--she raised her eyes. Their lustre was indeed quickened; never saw I so much excitement in them; they were still not so grave as significant,--full of unwonted suggestions. I ventured to say then,-- "And now, Miss Benette, I may ask you what you feel about the personality of this hero?" I could not put it better; she replied not directly, but came and sat beside me on the sofa, by the window. She laid her little hands in her lap, and her glance followed after them. I could see she was inexpressibly burdened with some inward revelation. I could not for a moment believe she trembled, but certainly there was a quiver of her lips; her silken curls, so calm, did not hide the pulsation, infantinely rapid, of those temples where the harebell-azure veins pencilled the rose-flower skin. After a few moments' pause, during which she evidently collected herself, she addressed me, her own sweet voice as clear as ever, but the same trouble in it that touched her gaze. "Sir, I am going to tell you something, and to ask your advice besides." "I am all attention!" indeed, I was in an agony to attend and learn. "I have had a strange visitor this morning,--very sudden, and I was not prepared. You will think me very foolish when you hear what is the matter with me, that I have not written to Mr. Davy; but I prefer to ask you. You are more enlightened, though you are so young." "Miss Benette, I know your visitor; for on returning home next door, I missed my master, and I knew he could be only here. What has he done that could possibly raise a difficulty, or said that could create a question? He is my unerring faith, and should be yours." "I do not wonder; but I have not known him so long, you see, and contemplate him differently. I had been telling him, as he requested to know my plans, of the treatment I had received at the opera, and how I had not quite settled whether to come out now or next year as an actress. He answered,-- "'Do neither.' "I inquired why? "'You must not accept any engagement for the stage in England, and pray do not hold out to them any idea that you will.' "Now, what does he mean? Am I to give up my only chance of being able to live in England? For I wish to live here. And am I to act unconscientiously? For my conscience tells me that the pure-hearted should always follow their impulses. Now, I know very few persons; but I am born to be known of many,--at least I suppose so, or why was I gifted with this voice, my only gift?" "Miss Benette, you cannot suppose the Chevalier desires your voice to be lost. Has he not been informing and interpenetrating himself with it the whole morning? He has a higher range in view for you, be assured, or he had not persuaded you, _I_ am certain, to annul your present privileges. He has the right to will what he pleases." "And are we all to obey him?" "Certainly; and only him,--in matters musical. If you knew him as I do, you would feel this." "But is it like a musician to draw me away from my duty?" "Not obviously; but there may be no duty here. You do not know how completely, in the case of dramatic, and indeed of all other art, the foundations are out of course." "You mean they do not fulfil their first intentions. But then nothing does, except, certainly, as it was first created. We have lost that long." "Music, Miss Benette, it appears to me, so long as it preserves its purity, may consecrate all the forms of art by raising them into its own atmosphere,--govern them as the soul the body. But where music is itself degraded, its very type defaced, its worship rendered ridiculous, its nature mere name, by its own master the rest falls. I know not much about it, but I know how little the drama depends on music in this country, and how completely, in the first place, one must lend one's self to its meanest effect in order to fulfil the purpose of the writer. All writers for the stage have become profane, and dramatic writers whom we still confess to, are banished from the stage in proportion to the elevation of their works. I even go so far as to think an artist does worse who lends an incomparable organ to such service than an unheeded player (myself, for example), who should form one in the ranks of such an orchestra as that of our opera-houses, where the bare notion or outline of harmony is all that is provided for us. While the idea of the highest prevails with us, our artist-life must harmonize, or Art will suffer,--and it suffers enough now. I have said too long a say, and perhaps I am very ignorant; but this is what I think." "You cannot speak too much, sir, and you know a great deal more than I do. My feeling was that I could perhaps have shown the world that simplicity of life is not interfered with by a public career, and that those who love what is beautiful must also love what is good, and endeavor to live up to it besides. I have spoken to several musicians abroad, who came to me on purpose; they all extolled my voice, and entreated me to sing upon the stage. I did so then because I was poor and had several things I wished to do; but I cannot say I felt at home with music on the stage in Italy. The gentleman who was here to-day was the first who disturbed my ideas and dissuaded me. I was astonished, not because I am piqued,--for you do not know how much I should prefer to live a quiet life,--but because everybody else had told me a different story. I do not like to think I shall only be able to sing in concerts, for there are very few concerts that content me, and I do so love an orchestra. Am I to give it all up? If this gentleman had said, 'Only sing in this opera or that,' I could have made up my mind. But am I never to sing in any? Am I to waste my voice that God gave me as he gives to others a free hand or a great imagination? You cannot think so, with all your industry and all your true enthusiasm." "Miss Benette, you must not be shocked at what I shall now say, because I mean it with all reverence. I could no more call in question the decision of such genius than I could that of Providence if it sent me death-sickness or took away my friends. I am certain that the motive, which you cannot make clear just yet, is that you would approve of." "And you also, sir?" "And I also, though it is as dark to me as to you. Let it stand over, then; but for all our sakes do not thwart him,--he has suffered too much to be thwarted." "Has he suffered? I did not know that." "Can such a one live and not suffer? A nature which is all love,--an imagination all music?" "I thought that he looked delicate, but very happy,--happy as a child or an angel. I have seen your smile turn bitter, sir,--pardon,--but never his. I am sure, if it matters to him that I should accede, I will do so, and I cannot thank you enough for telling me." "Miss Benette, if you are destined to do anything great for music, it may be in one way as well as in another; that is, if you befriend the greatest musician, it is as much as if you befriended music. Now you cannot but befriend him if you do exactly as he requests you." "In all instances, you recommend?" "_I_, at least, could refuse him nothing. The nourishment such a spirit requires is not just the same as our own, perhaps, but it must not the less be supplied. If I could, now, clean his boots better than any one else, or if he liked my cookery, I would give up what I am about and take a place in his service." "What! you would give up your violin, your career, your place among the choir of ages?" "I would; for in rendering a single hour of his existence on earth unfretted,--in preserving to him one day of ease and comfort,--I should be doing more for all people, all time, at least for the ideal, who will be few in every age, but many in all the ages, and who I believe leaven society better than a priesthood. I would not say so except to a person who perfectly understands me; for as I hold laws to be necessary, I would infringe no social or religious _régime_ by one heterodox utterance to the ear of the uninitiated: still, having said it, I keep to my text, that you must do exactly as he pleases. He has not set a seal upon your throat at present, if you have been singing all the morning." "I have been singing from his new great work. There is a contralto solo, 'Art Thou not from Everlasting?' which spoiled my voice; I could not keep the tears down, it was so beautiful and entreating. He was a little angry at me; at least he said, 'You must not do that.' There is also a very long piece which I scarcely tried, we had been so long over the other, which he made me sing again and again until I composed myself. What a mercy Mr. Davy taught us to read so fast! I have found it help me ever since. Do you mean to go to this oratorio?" "I am to go with Miss Lawrence. How noble, how glorious she is!" "Your eyes sparkle when you speak of her. I knew you would there find a friend." "I hope you, too, will hear it, Miss Benette. I shall speak to the Chevalier about it." "I pray you not to do so; there will not be any reason, for I find out all about those affairs. Take care of yourself, Mr. Auchester, or rather make Miss Lawrence take care of you; she will like to have to do so." "I must go home, if it is not to be just yet, and return on purpose for the day." "But that will fatigue you very much,--cannot you prevent it? One ought to be quiet before a great excitement." "Oh! you have found that. I cannot be quiet until afterwards." "I have never had a great excitement," said Clara, innocently; "and I hope I never may. It suits me to be still." "May that calm remain in you and for you with which you never fail to heal the soul within your power, Miss Benette!" "I should indeed be proud, Mr. Auchester, to keep you quiet; but that you will never be until it is forever." "In that sense no one could, for who could ever desire to awaken from that rest? And from all rest here it is but to awaken." I felt I ought to go, or that I might even remain too long. It was harder at that moment to leave her than it had ever been before; but I had a prescience that for that very reason it was better to depart. Starwood had returned, I found, and was waiting about in the evening, before the candles came. We both watched the golden shade that bound the sunset to its crimson glow, and then the violet dark, as it melted downwards to embrace the earth. We were both silent, Starwood from habit (I have never seen such power of abstraction), I by choice. An agitated knock came suddenly, about nine, and into the room bounced the big dog, tearing the carpet up with his capers. Seraphael followed, silent at first as we; he stole after us to the window, and looked softly forth. I could tell even in the uncertain silver darkness of that thinnest shell of a moon that his face was alight with happiness, an ineffable gentleness,--not the dread alien air of heaven, soothing the passion of his countenance. He laid for long his tiny hand upon my shoulder, his arm crept round my neck, and drawing closer still, he sighed rather than said, after a thrilling pause,-- "Carlomein, wilt thou come into my room? I have a secret for thee; it will not take long to tell." "The longer the better, sir." We went out through the dark drawing-room, we came to his writing-chamber; here the white sheets shone like ghosts in the bluish blackness, for we were behind the sunset. "We will have no candles, because we shall return so soon. And I love secrets told in the dark, or between the dark and light. I have prevented that child from taking her own way. It was very naughty, and I want to be shriven. Shrive me, Charles." "In all good part, sir, instantly." "I have been quarrelling with the manager. He was very angry, and his whiskers stood out like the bristles of a cat; for I had snatched the mouse from under his paw, you see." "The mouse must have been glad enough to get away, sir. And you have drawn a line through her engagement? She has told me something of it, and we are grateful." "I have cancelled her engagement! Well, this one,--but I am going to give her another. She does not know it, but she will sing for me at another time. Art thou angry, Carl? Thou art rather a dread confessor." "I could not do anything but rejoice, sir. How little she expects to bear such a part! She is alone fitted for it; an angel, if he came into her heart, could not find one stain upon his habitation." "The reason you take home to you, then, Carlomein?" "Sir, I imagine that you consider her wanting in dramatic power; or that as a dramatic songstress under the present dispensation she would but disappoint herself, and perhaps ourselves; or that she is too delicately organized,--which is no new notion to me." "All of these reasons, and yet not one,--not even because, Carlomein, in all my efforts I have not written directly for the stage, nor because a lingering recollection ever forbids profane endeavor. There is yet a reason, obvious to myself, but which I can scarcely make clear to you. Though I would have you know, and learn as truth, that there is nothing I take from this child I will not restore to her again, nor shall she have the lesson to be taught to feel that in heaven alone is happiness." He made a long, long pause. I was in no mood to reply, and it was not until I was ashamed of my own silence that I spoke; then my own accents startled me. I told Seraphael I must return on the morrow to my own place if I were to enjoy at length what Miss Lawrence had set before me. He replied that I must come back to him when I came, and that he would write to me meantime. "If I can, Carlomein; but I cannot always write even, my child, to thee. There is one thing more between us,--a little end of business." He lit with a waxen match a waxen taper, which was coiled into a brazen cup; he brought it from the mantelshelf to the table; he took a slip of paper and a pen. The tiny flame threw out his hand, of a brilliant ivory, while his head remained in flickering shadow,--I could trace a shadow smile. "Now, Carlomein, this brother of yours. His name is David, I think?" "Lenhart Davy, sir." "Has he many musical friends?" "Only his wife particularly so,--the class are all neophytes." "Well, he can do as he pleases. Here is an order." He held out the paper in a regal attitude, and in the other hand brought near the tremulous taper, that I so might read. It was,-- ABBEY CHOIR, WESTMINSTER. Admit Mr. Lenhart Davy and party 21st June. SERAPHAEL. I could say nothing, nor even essay to thank him,--indeed he would not permit it, as I could perceive. We returned directly to the drawing-room, and roused Starwood from a blue study, as the Chevalier expressed it. "I am ready, and Miss Lemark is tired of waiting for both of us," said Miss Lawrence, as she entered that crown of days, the studio; "I have left her in the drawing-room. And, by the way, though it is nothing to the purpose, she has dressed herself very prettily." "I do not think it is nothing to the purpose,--people dress to go to church, and why not, then, to honor music? You have certainly succeeded also, Miss Lawrence, if it is not impertinent that I say so." "It is not impertinent. You will draw out the colors of that bit of canvas, if you gaze so ardently." It was not so easy to refrain. That morning the pictured presence had been restored to its easel, framed and ready for inspection. I had indeed lost myself in that contemplation; it was hard to tear myself from it even for the embrace of the reality. The border, dead gold, of great breadth and thickness, was studded thickly with raised bright stars, polished and glittering as points of steel. The effect thus seemed conserved and carried out where in general it abates. I cannot express the picture; it was finished to that high degree which conceals its own design, and mantles mechanism with pure suggestion. I turned at length and followed the paintress; my prospects more immediate rushed upon me. Our party, small and select as the most seclusive spirit could ask for, consisted of Miss Lawrence and her father,--a quiet but genuine amateur he,--of Miss Lemark, whom my friend had included without a question, with Starwood and myself. We had met at Miss Lawrence's, and went together in her carriage. She wore a deep blue muslin dress,--blue as that summer heaven; her scarf was gossamer, the hue of the yellow butterfly, and her bonnet was crested with feathers drooping like golden hair. Laura was just in white; her Leghorn hat lined with grass-green gauze; a green silk scarf waved around her. Both ladies carried flowers. Geraniums and July's proud roses were in Miss Lawrence's careless hand, and Laura's bouquet was of myrtle and yellow jasmine. We drove in that quiet mood which best prepares the heart. We passed so street by street, until at length, and long before we reached it, the gray Abbey towers beckoned us from beyond the houses, seeming to grow distant as we approached, as shapes of unstable shadow, rather than time-fast masonry. Into the precinct we passed, we stayed at the mist-hung door. It was the strangest feeling--mere physical sensation--to enter from that searching heat, those hot blue heavens, into the cool, the dream of dimness, where the shady marbles clustered, and the foot fell dead and awfully, where hints more awful pondered, and for our coming waited. Yea, as if from far and very far, as if beyond the grave descending, fell wondrous unwonted echoes from the tuning choir unseen. Involuntarily we paused to listen, and many others paused,--those of the quick hand or melodious forehead, those of the alien aspect who ever draw after music. Now the strings yearned fitfully,--a sea of softest dissonances; the wind awoke and moaned; the drum detonated and was still; past all the organ swept, a thundering calm. Entering, still hushed and awful, the centre of the nave, we caught sight of the transept already crowded with hungering, thirsting faces; still they too, and all there hushed and awful. The vision of the choir itself, as it is still preserved to me, is as a picture of heaven to infancy. What more like one's idea of heaven than that height, that aspiring form,--the arches whose sun-kissed summits glowed in distance, whose vista stretched its boundaries from the light of rainbows at one end, on the other to the organ, music's archetype? Not less powerful, predominating, this idea of our other home, because no earthly flowers nor withering garlands made the thoughts recoil on death and destiny,--the only flowers there, the rays transfused through sun-pierced windows; the blue mist strewing aisle and wreathing arch, the only garlands. Nor less because for once an assembly gathered of all the fraternities of music, had the unmixed element of pure enthusiasm thrilled through the "electric chain" from heart to heart. Below the organ stood Seraphael's desk, as yet unhaunted; the orchestra; the chorus, as a cloud-hung company, with starlike faces in the lofty front. I knew not much about London orchestras, and was taking a particular stare, when Miss Lawrence whispered in a manner that only aroused, not disturbed me: "There is our old friend Santonio. Do look and see how little he is altered!" I caught his countenance instantly,--as fine, as handsome, a little worn at its edges, but rather refined by that process than otherwise. "I did not ask about him, because I did not know he was in London. He is, then, settled here; and is he very popular?" "You need not ask the question; he is too true to himself. No, Santonio will never be rich, though he is certainly not poor." Then she pointed to me one head and another crowned with fame; but I could only spare for them a glance,--Santonio interested me still. He was reminding me especially of himself as I remembered him, by laying his head, as he had used to do, upon the only thing he ever really loved,--his violin,--when, so quietly as to take us by surprise, Seraphael entered, I may almost say rose upon us, as some new-sprung star or sun. Down the nave the welcome rolled, across the transept it overflowed the echoes; for a few moments nothing else could be felt, but there was, as it were, a tender shadow upon the very reverberating jubilance,--it was subdued as only the musical subdue their proud emotions; it was subdued for the sake of one whose beauty, lifted over us, appeared descending, hovering from some late-left heaven, ready to depart again, but not without a sign, for which we waited. Immediately, and while he yet stood with his eyes of power upon the whole front of faces, the solo-singers entered also and took their seats all calmly. There were others besides Clara, but besides her I saw nothing, except that they were in colors, while she wore black, as ever; but never had I really known her loveliness until it shone in contrast with that which was not so lovely. More I could not perceive, for now the entering bar of silence riveted; we held our breath for the coming of the overture.[8] It opened like the first dawn of lightening, yet scarce yet lightened morning, its vast subject introduced with strings alone in that joyous key which so often served him, yet as in the extreme of vaulting distance; but soon the first trombone blazed out, the second and third responding with their stupendous tones, as the amplifications of fugue involved and spread themselves more and more, until, like glory filling up and flooding the height of heaven from the heaven of heavens itself, broke in the organ, and brimmed the brain with the calm of an utter and forceful expression, realized by tone. In sympathy with each instrument, it was alike with none, even as the white and boundless ray of which all beams, all color-tones are born. The perfect form, the distinct conception of this unbrothered work, left our spirits as the sublime fulfilment confronted them. For once had genius, upon the wings of aspiration, that alone are pure, found all it rose to seek, and mastered without a struggle all that it desired to embrace; for the pervading purpose of that creation was the passioned quietude with which it wrought its way. The vibrating harmonies, pulse-like, clung to our pulses, then drew up, drew out each heart, deep-beating and undistracted, to adore at the throne above from whence all beauty springs. And opening and spreading thus, too intricately, too transcendentally for criticism, we do not essay, even feebly, to portray that immortal work of a music-veiled immortal. Inextricable holiness, precious as the old Hebrew psalm of all that hath life and breath,[9] exhaled from every modulation, each dropped celestial fragrances, the freshness of everlasting spring. Suggestive,--our oratorio suggested nothing here, nothing that we find or feel; all that we seek and yearn to clasp, but rest in our restlessness to discover is beyond us! In nothing that form of music reminded of our forms of worship,--in the day of Paradise it might have been dreamed of, an antepast of earth's last night, and of eternity at hand,--or it might be the dream of heaven that haunts the loving one's last slumber. I can no more describe the hush that hung above and seemed to spiritualize the listeners until, like a very cloud of mingling souls, they seemed congregated to wait for the coming of a Messiah who had left them long, promising to return; nor how, as chorus after chorus, built up, sustained, and self-supported, gathered to the stricken brain, the cloud of spirits sank, as in slumber sweeter than any dreamful stir, upon the alternating strains and songs, all softness,--all dread soothing, as the fire that burned upon the strings seemed suddenly quenched in tears. Faint supplications wafted now, now deep acclaims of joy; but all, all surcharged the spirit alike with the mysterious thrall and tenderness of that uncreate and unpronounceable Name, whose eternal love is all we need to assure us of eternal life. It was with one of those alternate strains that Clara rose to sing, amidst silence yet unbroken, and the more impressive because of the milder symphony that stole from the violoncello, its meandering pathos asking to support and serve her voice. Herself penetrated so deeply with the wisdom of genius, she failed to remind us of herself; even her soft brow and violet eyes--violet in the dense glory of the Abbey afternoon light--were but as outward signs and vivid shadows of the spirit that touched her voice. Deeper, stiller than the violoncello notes, hers seemed as those articulated, surcharged with a revelation beyond all sound. Calm as deep, clear as still, they were yet not passionless; though they clung and moulded themselves strictly to the passion of the music, lent not a pulse of their own; nor disturbed it the rapt serenity of her singing to gaze upon her angel-face. No child could have seemed less sensitive to the surrounding throng, nor have confided more implicitly in the father of its heart, than she leaned upon Seraphael's power. I made this observation afterwards, when I had time to think; at present I could only feel, and feeling know, that the intellect is but the servant of the soul. When at length those two hours, concentrating such an eternity in their perfection of all sensation, had reached their climax, or rather when, brightening into the final chorus, unimprisoned harmonies burst down from stormy-hearted organ, from strings all shivering alike, from blasting, rending tubes, and thus bound fast the Alleluia,--it was as if the multitude had sunk upon their knees, so profound was the passion-cradling calm. The blue-golden lustre, dim and tremulous, still crowned the unwavering arches,--tender and overwrought was laid that vast and fluctuating mind. So many tears are not often shed as fell in that silent while,--dew-stilly they dropped and quickened; but still not all had wept. Many wept then who had never wept before; many who had wept before could not weep now,--among them I. Our party were as if lost to me; as I hid my face my companion did not disturb me,--she was too far herself in my own case. I do not know whether I heard, but I was aware of a stretching and breathing; the old bones stirring underneath the pavement would have shaken me less, but could not have been less to my liking; the rush, however soft, the rustle, however subdued, were agony, were torment: I could only feel, "Oh that I were in heaven! that I might never return to earth!" But then it came upon me, to that end we must all be changed. This was sad, but of a sadness peculiarly soothing; for could we be content to remain forever as we are here, even in our holiest, our strongest moments? During the last reverberations of that unimaginable Alleluia I had not looked up at all; now I forced myself to do so, lest I should lose my sight of _him_,--his seal upon all that glory. As Seraphael had risen to depart, the applause, stifled and trembling, but not the less by heartfuls, rose for him. He turned his face a moment,--the heavenly half-smile was there; then at that very moment the summer sun, that, falling downwards in its piercing glare, glowed gorgeous against the flower-leaf windows, flung its burning bloom, its flushing gold upon that countenance. We all saw it, we all felt it,--the seraph-strength, the mortal beauty,--and that it was pale as the cheek of the quick and living changed in death,--that his mien was of no earthly triumph! FOOTNOTES: [8] The Lobgesang, or Hymn of Praise. [9] The majestic phrase with which the symphony opens, and which also appears in the vocal parts ("All that has life and breath"), is the Intonation to the second tone of the Magnificat. CHAPTER XV. To that last phase of an unworldly morning succeeded the usual contrasts both of state and mood. Pushing out all among the marbles in a graceless disorder, finding in the sacred gloom of the precinct the flashing carriages, the crested panels; a rattle, a real noise, real things, real people,--these were as one might expect; and yet I was very ungrateful, for I desired especially to avoid my dear brother and dearest sister, who had come from the country that very day, though I yet had failed to recognize or seek for them. Davy could generally express what he _felt_ about music, and I did not know how it might be. I was thankful to be with Miss Lawrence, who behaved exactly as I wished; that is to say, when we were fairly seated she began to talk to her father, not to me, and upon indifferent or adverse matters. Of Laura I had not even thought until now. She was upon my side, though not just next me; she leaned back, and was so slight that nothing could be seen of her, except her crushed-up dress. While, as an amusing point of idiosyncrasy, I may remark that Miss Lawrence's dress was as superb as ever; she also carried her flowers, not one decayed. Laura has lost hers altogether. Poor Starwood had closed his eyes, and was pretending to be asleep; he had one of those headaches of his that rendered silence a necessity, although they are "only nervous," and do not signify in the least. I had no headache; I never was better in my life, and I never felt so forcibly how much life is beyond _living_. We drove home soon enough; I was Miss Lawrence's guest, and I knew that with her generous goodness she had invited Millicent and Davy. We had scarcely entered the drawing-room, where everything was utterly unreal to me, before Davy's little quick knock came. Miss Lawrence then approached me, and putting her bonnet quite over my face, said, in a knowing whisper: "You just go along upstairs; I know you cannot bear it. I am not made quite of your stuff, and shall be happy to entertain your people. Your brother and sister are no such awful persons to me, I assure you." I obeyed,--perhaps selfishly; but I should have been poor company indeed,--and went to my large bed-room. Large and luxuriously furnished, it even looked romantic. I liked it; I passed to the window, and was disturbed a moment afterwards by a servant who bore a tray of eatables, with wine, sent by Miss Lawrence, of course, whose moments counted themselves out in deeds of kindness. I took the tray, delivered it to the charge of the first chair next the door, and returned to my own at the window-seat. The blue sky, so intense and clear, so deep piercing, was all I needed to gaze on; and I was far gone in revery when I heard a knock at the door of my room. It was a strange, short beat, almost as weird as "Jeffrey," but at least it startled me to rise. I arose, and opened it. I beheld Laura. I was scarcely surprised; yet I should indeed have been surprised but for my immediate terror, almost awe, at her unformal aspect. I never saw a living creature look so far like death. There was no gleam of life in her wan face, so fallen, agonized; no mortal, spending sickness could have so reduced her! She fixed upon me her wild eyes, clear as tearless; but at first she could not speak. She tried again and again, but at last she staggered, and I put her, I know not how, exactly, into a chair at hand. She was light almost as a child of five years old, but so listless that I was afraid of hurting her; and immediately she sat down she fainted. It was a real, unmitigated faint, and no mistake; I could see she had not herself expected it. I was accustomed to this kind of thing, however, for Lydia at home was fond of fainting away in church, or on the threshold of the door; also Fred's wife made a point of fainting at regular intervals. But I never saw any one faint as Laura: she turned to marble in a moment; there was a rigid fixing of her features that would have alarmed me had I loved her, and that rendered my very anxiety for her a grief. I could not lift her then, for light as she was, she leaned upon me, and I could only stretch my arm to reach the decanter from its stand. The wine was, however, of no use at present; I had to put the glass upon the floor after filling it with unmentionable exertion. But after ten minutes or so, as I expected from a relaxation of her countenance, she awoke as out of a breathless sleep. She looked at me, up into my face; she was again the little Laura whom I had known at Davy's class. "I only wanted to ask you to let me lie upon your bed, for I am going back to-night, and have not a room here; and I did not like to ask Miss Lawrence. I hope you do not mind it. I should not have done so, if I had not felt so very ill." The humility of her manner here, so unlike what I had seen in the little I had seen of her, made me ashamed, and it also touched me seriously. I said I was sorry, very sorry, that she should be ill, but that it was what any very delicate or feeling person might expect after so much excitement; and as I spoke, I would have assisted her, but she assisted herself, and lay down upon the bed directly. "If you please, sit in the window away from me, and go on with your thoughts. Do not trouble yourself about me, or I shall go away again." "I will keep quiet, certainly, because you yourself should keep so." And then I gave her the wine, and covered her with the quilt to the throat; for although it was so warm, she had begun to shake and tremble as she lay. I held the wine to her lips, for she could not hold the glass; and while I did so, before she tasted, she said, with an emphasis I am very unlikely ever to forget,-- "I wish it could be poison." I saw there was something the matter then, and as being responsible at that instant, I mechanically uttered the reply,-- "Will you not tell me why you wish it? I _can_ mix poison; but I should be very sorry to give it to any one, and above all to you." "Why to _me_? You would be doing more good than by going to hear all that music." I gazed at her for one moment; a suspicion (which, had it been a certainty, would have failed to turn me from her) thwarted my simple pity. I gazed, and it was enough; I felt there was nothing I needed fear to know,--that child had never sinned against her soul. I therefore said, more carelessly than just then I felt: "Miss Lemark, because you are gifted, because you are good, because you are innocent. It is not everybody who is either of these, and very few indeed are all the three. I will not have you talk just now, unless, indeed, you can tell me that I can do nothing for you. You know how slight my resources are, but you need not fear to trust me." "If you did let me talk, what should I say? But you have told a lie,--or rather, I made you tell it. I am _not_ gifted,--at least, my gifts are such as nobody really cares for. I am innocent? I am _not_ innocent; and for the other word you used, I do not think I ought to speak it,--it no more belongs to me than beauty or than happiness." "All that is beautiful belongs to all who love it, thank God, Miss Lemark, or I should be very poor indeed in that respect. But why are you so angry with yourself because, having gone through too much happiness, you are no longer happy? It must be so for all of us, and I do not regret, though I have felt it." "_You_ regret it,--you to regret anything!" said Laura, haughtily, her hauteur striking through her paleness reproachfully. "You--a man! I would sell my soul, if I have a soul, to be a man, to be able to live to myself, to be delivered from the torment of being and feeling what nobody cares for." "If we live to ourselves, we men,--if I may call myself a man,--we are not less tormented, and not less because men are expected to bear up, and may not give themselves relief in softer sorrow. My dear Miss Lemark, it appears to me that if we allow ourselves to sink, either for grief or joy, it matters not which, we are very much to blame, and more to be pitied. There is ever a hope, even for the hopeless, as they think themselves; how much more for those who need not and must not despair! And those who are born with the most hopeful temper find that they cannot exist without faith." "That is the way the people always talk who have everything the world can give them,--who have more than everything they wish for; who have all their love cared for; who may express it without being mocked, and worship without being trampled on. You are the most enviable person in the whole world except one, and I do not envy her, but I do envy you." "Very amiable, Miss Lemark!" and I felt my old wrath rising, yet smiled it down. "You see all this is a conjecture on your part; you cannot know what I feel, nor is it for you to say that because I am a man I can have exactly what I please. Very possibly, precisely because I am a man, I cannot. But anyhow, I shall not betray myself, nor is it ever safe to betray ourselves, unless we cannot help it." "I do not care about betraying myself; I am miserable, and I _will_ have comfort,--comfort is for the miserable!" "Not the comfort a human heart can bring you, however soft it may chance to be." "I should hate a soft heart's comfort; I would not take it. It is because you are not soft-hearted I want yours." "I would willingly bestow it upon you if I knew how; but you know that Keble says: "Whom oil and balsams kill, what salve can cure?'" "I do not know Keble." "Then you ought to cultivate his acquaintance, Miss Lemark, as a poet, at least, if not as a gentleman." I wished at once to twist the subject aside and to make her laugh; a laugh dispels more mental trouble than any tears at times. But, contrary to expectation on my part, my recipe failed here; she broke into a tremendous weeping, without warning, nor did she hide her face, as those for the most part do who must shed their tears. She sobbed openly, aloud; and yet her sorrow did not inspire me with contempt, for it was as unsophisticated as any child's. It was evident she had not been accustomed to suffering, and knew not how to restrain its expression, neither that it ought to be restrained. I moved a few feet from her, and waited; I did right,--in the rain the storm exhaled. She wiped away her tears, but they yet pearled the long, pale lashes as she resumed,-- "I am much obliged to you for telling me I ought not to say these things; but it would be better if you could prevent my feeling them." "No one can prevent that, Miss Lemark; and perhaps it does not signify what you feel, if you can prevent its interfering with your duty to others and to yourself." "You to talk of duty,--you, who possess every delight that the earth contains, and with whom I would rather change places than with the angels!" "I have many delights; but if I had no duties to myself, the delights would fail. An artist, I consider, Miss Lemark, has the especial duty imposed upon him or her to let it be seen that art is the nearest thing in the universe to God, after nature; and his life must be tolerably pure for that." "That is just it. But it is easy enough to do right when you have all that your heart wants and your mind asks for. I have nothing." "Miss Lemark, you are an artist." "You know very well how you despise such art as mine, even if I did my duty by that; but I do not, and that is what I want comfort for. You did not think I should tell you anything else!" "I would have you tell me nothing that you are not obliged to say; it is dangerous,--at least, I should find it so." "You have not suffered; or if you have, you have never offended. I have done what would make you spurn me. But that would not matter to me; anything is better than to seem what I am not." "What is the matter, then? I never spurned a living creature, God knows; and for every feeling of antipathy to some persons, I have felt a proportionate wish for their good. There are different ranks of spirits, Miss Lemark, and it is not because we are in one that we do not sympathize quite as much as is necessary with the rest. Albeit, you and I are of one creed, you know,--both artists, and both, I believe, desirous to serve art as we best may; thus we meet on equal grounds, and whatever you say I shall hear as if it were my sister who spoke to me." "If you meant that, it would be very kind, for I have no brother; I have none of my blood, and I can expect no one else to love me. I do not care to be loved, even; but every one must grow to something. You know Clara? I see you do; you always felt for her as you could not help. No one could feel for her as she deserves. I wish I could die for Clara, and now I cannot die even for myself, for I feel, oh! I feel that to die is not to die,--that music made me feel it; but I have never felt it before,--I have been a heathen. I cannot say I wish I had not heard it, for anything is better than to be so shut out as I was. You remember how, when I was a little girl, I loved to dance. I always liked it until I grew up; but I cannot tell you how at last, when I came out in Paris, and after the first few nights,--which were most beautiful to me,--I wearied. Night after night, in the same steps, to the same music--music--Is it music? You do not look as if you called it so. I did not know I danced,--I dreamed; I am not sure now, sometimes, that I was ever awake those nights. I was lazy, and grew indolent; and when Clara came to Paris, I went along with her. Would you believe it? I have done nothing ever since." She paused a long minute; I did not reply. "You are not shocked?" "No. I think not." "You don't scorn me, and point your face at me? Then you ought, for I lived upon her and by her, and made no effort, while she took no rest, working hard and always. But with it all she kept her health, like the angels in heaven, and I grew ill and weak. I could not dance then. I felt it to be impossible, though sometimes it came upon me that I could; and then the remembrance of those nights, all alike, night after night--I could not. Pray tell me now whether I am not worthless. But I have no beauty; I am lost." "Miss Lemark, if you were really lost, and had no beauty, it appears to me that you would not complain about it; people do not, I assure you, who are ugly or in despair. You are overdone, and you overrate your little girlish follies; everything is touched by the color of your thought, but is not really what it seems. Believe me,--as I cannot but believe,--that your inaction arose from morbid feeling and not too strong health; not from true want of energy or courage. You are young, a great deal too young, to trust all you fancy, or even feel; and you ought to be thankful there is nothing more for you to regret than that weighing down your spirit. You will do everything we expect and wish, when you become stronger,--a strong woman, I hope; for remember, you are only a girl. Nor will you find that you are less likely to succeed then because of this little voluntary of _idlesse_." "You are only speaking so because it is troublesome to you to be addressed at all. You do not mean it; you are all music." "There is only one who is all music, Miss Lemark." She hid her face for many minutes; at last she looked up, and said with more softness, a smile almost sweet: "Mr. Auchester, I feel I am detaining you; let me beg you to sit down." I just got up on the side of the bed. "That will do beautifully. And now, Miss Lemark, if I am to be your doctor, you must go to sleep." "Because I shall not talk? But I will not go to sleep, and I will talk. What should you do if you were in my place, feeling as I do?" "I do not know all." "You may if you like." "Then I may guess; at least, I may imagine all that I might feel if I were in your place,--a delicate young lady who has been fainting for the love of music." "You are sneering; I do not mind that. I have seen such an expression upon a face I admire more than yours. Suppose you felt you had seen--" "What I could never forget, nor cease to love," I answered, fast and eagerly; I _could_ not let her say it, or anything just there,--"I should earnestly learn his nature, should fill myself to the brim with his beauty, just as with his music. I should feel that in keeping my heart pure, above all from envy, and my life most like his life, I should be approaching nearer than any earthly tie could lead me, should become worthy of his celestial communion, of his immortal, his heavenly tendencies. Nor should I regret to suffer,--to suffer for his sake." I used these last words--themselves so well remembered--without remembering who said them for me first, till I had fairly spoken; then I, too, longed to weep: Maria's voice was trembling in my brain, a ghostly music. As Laura answered, the ghostly music passed, even as a wind shaken and scattered upon the sea. It was earth again, as vague, scarcely less lonely! "A worldly man would mock. You do not a much wiser thing, but you do it for the best. I will try to hide it forever, for there is, indeed, no hope." Half imploring, this was hardly a question; yet I answered,-- "I do believe none." "You are cold, not cruel. I would rather know the truth. Yes! I would hide it forever; I will not even speak of it to you." "Even from yourself hide it, if it must be hidden at all. And yet, I always think that a hidden sorrow is the best companion we can have." "I am very selfish. I know that if Miss Lawrence finds out I am with you, you will not like it. You had better let me go downstairs." "I will go myself, if you prefer to be alone; but you must not move." "I must move,--I will not be found here; I had quite forgotten that. I will go this moment." I did not dream of her actually departing; but before I could remonstrate further, she had planted herself lightly upon the carpet, and looked as well as usual: it was nothing extraordinary to see her pale. She smoothed her long hair at my glass, and arranged her dress; she shook hands with me afterwards also, and then she left the room. CHAPTER XVI. I was really alone now, but had a variety of worrying thoughts, hunting each other to death, but reproducing each other by thousands. I was irate with Laura, though I felt very sad, but of all most vexed that such an incident should have befallen my experience on that crown of days. The awful power of a single soul struggled, in my apprehension, with the vain weakness of a single heart. But more overpowering than either was the sensation connecting the two. It was a remembrance that I, too, might be called to suffer. At last Miss Lawrence sent to know whether I chose my dinner. Her own hour was six, and just at hand; but I felt so extremely disinclined to eat that I thought I would refuse, and take a walk another way. Miss Lawrence was one of those persons--gladdening souls are they!--who mean exactly what they say, and expect you to say exactly what you mean; thus I had no difficulty in explaining that I preferred to take this walk, though it was not, after all, a walk _semplice_, for I was bound to the cottage, and desired to reach it as soon as possible. I met Miss Lawrence on the stairs, and she charged me to take care of Laura. I could not refuse, of course, and we drove in one of those delightful cabs that so effectually debar from connected conversation. I was glad for once, though I need not have troubled myself to descant, for Laura, in a great green veil, opened not her lips twice, nor once looked towards me. We dismissed the conveyance at the entrance of the hamlet, and walked up together, still silent. It was about half-past seven then, and vivid as at morning the atmosphere, if not the light. Unclouded sunshine swept the clustered leaves of the intense June foliage, heavy-tressed laburnum wore it instead of blossoms; but from the secluded shade of the wayside gardens pierced the universal scent of roses above all other fragrance except the limes, which hung their golden bells out here and there, dropping their singular perfume all lights alike. I saw Seraphael's house first, and returned to it after leaving Laura at that other white gate. All our windows were open, the breeze blew over a desert of flowers,--all was "fairy-land forlorn." I felt certain no one could be at home. I was right here. I could not enter. I was drawn to that other gate,--I entered. Thoné opened the door, looking quite as eastern in the western beams. "Is Miss Benette at home?" "I will see." For Thoné could spell out a little English now. She went and saw. "Yes, sir, to you; and she wishes to see you." It was the first time Thoné had ever called me "sir," and I felt very grand. A strange, subtile fancy, sweeter than the sweetest hope, sprang daringly within me. But a crushing fear uprose, it swelled and darkened,--my butterfly was broken upon that wheel; those rooms so bright and festal, the air and sunshine falling upon clustered flowers, upon evening freshness as at morning, were not, could not be, for me! I advanced to the open piano, its glittering sheets outspread, its smiling keys. Hardly had I felt myself alone before one other entered. Alas, I was still alone! Clara herself approached me, less calm than I had ever seen her; her little hand was chilled as if by the rough kisses of an eastern wind, though the south air fanned our summer; there was agitation in her whole air, but more excitement. I had never seen her excited; I had not been aware how strangely I should feel to see her touched so deeply. "Mr. Auchester, it must have been Heaven who sent you here to-night, for I wanted to see you more than anybody, and was expecting some one else. I never thought I should see you first; I wished it so very much." "Miss Benette, if it were in my power I would give you all you wish, for the sake only of hearing you wish but once. I am grateful to be able to fulfil your wishes in the very least degree. What is it now?"--for her lip quivered like an infant's, and one tear stood in each of her blue eyes. She wiped away those dew-drops that I would have caught upon my heart, and answered, her voice of music all quiet now,-- "I have had a strange letter from the gentleman you love so well. I do not feel equal to what he asks,--that is, I am not deserving; but still I must answer it; and after what you said to me last time you were so kind as to talk to me, I do not think it right to overlook it." "I may not see the letter? I do not desire it; but suffer me to understand clearly what it is about exactly, if you do not think me too young, Miss Benette." "Sir, I always feel as if you were older, and I rely upon you. I will do as you please; I wish to do so only. This letter is to ask me to marry him. Oh! how differently I felt when I was asked to marry Mr. Davy!" "Yes, I rather suppose so. You are ready to reply?" "Not quite. I had not considered such a thing, and should have thought first of marrying a king or an angel." "He is above all kings, Miss Benette; and if he loves you, no angel's happiness could be like your own. But is it so wholly unexpected?" "I never imagined it, sir, for one single moment; nor could any woman think he would prefer her. Of course, as he is above all others, he has only to choose where he pleases." I could not look at her as she spoke; I dared not trust myself,--the most thrilling irony pointed her delicate, lovesome tones. I know not that she knew it, but I did; it cut me far deeper than to the heart, and through and through my spirit the wound made way. No tampering, however, with "oil and balsams" here! "Wherever he pleases, I should say. No one he could choose could fail (I should imagine) in pleasing him to please herself." She retorted, more tenderly: "I think it awful to remember that I may not be worthy, that I may make him less happy than he now is, instead of more so." "Only love him!" "But such a great difference! He will not always walk upon the earth. I cannot be with him when he is up so high." "I only say the same. He needs a companion for his earthly hours; then only is it he is alone. His hours of elevation require no sympathy to fill them; they are not solitude." "I will do as you please, sir, for it must be right. Do you not wish you were in my place?" She smiled softly upon me, just lifting her lovely eyes. "Miss Benette, I know no one but yourself who could fill those hours I spoke of, nor any one but that beloved and glorious one who is worthy to fill your heart _all_ hours. More I cannot say, for the whole affair has taken me by surprise." I had, indeed, been stricken by shock upon shock that day; but the last remained to me when the wailings of misfortune, the echoes of my bosom-music, alike had left my brain. I could not speak, and we both sat silent, side by side, until the sun in setting streamed into the room. Then, as I rose to lower the blind, and was absent from her at the window, I heard a knock,--I had, or ought to have, expected it; yet it turned me from head to foot, it thrilled me through and through. I well knew the hand that had raised the echoes like a salute of fairy cannon. I well knew the step that danced into the hall. I was gone through the open window, not even looking back. I ran to the bottom of the garden; I made for the Queen's highway; I walked straight back to London. There was a great party in Miss Lawrence's, I knew it from the corner of the square; and I had to leave the lustrous darkness, the sleepy stars and great suffusing moonshine, the very streets filled full and overflowing with waftures of fragrances from the country, dim yet so delicious, for that terrible drawing-room. I took advantage of the excitement, however, that distressed me as it never burned before, to plunge instantly into a duet for violin and piano; Miss Lawrence calling me to her by the white spell of her waving hand the very moment I entered at the drawing-room door. My duet, her noble playing, made me myself, _as ever music saves her own_, and I conducted myself rather less like a nightmare than I felt. The party consisted of first-rate amateurs, the flower of the morning festival, both from orchestra and audience,--all enchanted, all wordy, except my precious Davy, who was very pale, and Starwood, whose eyes almost went into his head with pain. We all did our best, though. Starwood played most beautifully, and in a style which made me glory over him. Davy sang, though his voice was rather nervous. A great many people came up to me, but they got nothing out of me. I could not descant upon my religion. When at length they descended to supper,--a miscellaneous meal, which Miss Lawrence always provided in great state,--I thought I might be permitted to retire. Will it be believed that, half an hour afterwards, hearing my sister and Davy come up leisurely to bed, and peeping out to see them, I heard Millicent distinctly say, "I hope baby is asleep"? I was to return with them on the morrow; but directly after breakfast Miss Lawrence made me one of her signs, and led me thereby, without controlling me hand or foot, out of the breakfast-room. We were soon alone together in the studio. "I thought you would like to be here this morning, for Seraphael has promised to come and see it. I think myself that he will be rather surprised." I could not help smiling at her tone, it was so unaffectedly satisfied. "I should think he will, Miss Lawrence." "I don't mean as to the merits of the picture, but because he does not know it is--what shall I say?--historical, biographical, allegorical." "You mean hieroglyphic?" "Exactly." "But he will not be likely to say anything about that part of it, will he? Is he not too modest or too proud?" "Why, one never can know what he can say or do. I should not wonder the least in the world if he took the brushes up and put the eyes in open." I laughed. "Does he paint, though?" "Between ourselves, Mr. Auchester, there is nothing he cannot do,--no accomplishment in which he does not excel. He can paint, can design, can model, can harmonize all languages into a language of his own. All mysteries, all knowledge, all wisdom, we know too well,--too well, indeed!--dwell with him, are of him. I am always afraid when I consider these things. What a blessing to us and to all men if he would only marry! We should keep him a little longer then." "Do you think so? I am fearful it would make no real difference. There is a point where all sympathy ceases." Miss Lawrence shook her head, a lull came over the animation of her manner; she hastened to arrange her scenery, now unique. She had placed before the picture a velvet screen, deep emerald and grass-like in its shade; this veil stood out alone, for she had cleared away all signs of picture, sketch, or other frame besides. Nothing was in the room but the picture on its lofty easel, and the loftier velvet shade. I appreciated to the full the artist tact of the veil itself, and said so. "I think," was her reply, "it will be more likely to please him if I keep him waiting a little bit, and his curiosity is touched a moment." And then we went downstairs. Davy, who always had occupation on hand, and would not have been destitute of duty on the shore of a desert island, was absent in the city; Millicent, who had taken her work to a window, was stitching the most delicate wristband in Europe, inside the heavy satin curtain, as comfortably as in her tiny home. Miss Lawrence went and stood by her, entertained her enchantingly, eternally reminding her of her bliss by Mrs. Davying till I could but laugh; but still my honored hostess was very impetuously excited, for her eyes sparkled as most eyes only light by candle-shine or the setting sun. She twisted the tassel of the blind, too, till I thought the silk cord would have snapped; but Millicent only looked up gratefully at her, without the slightest sign of astonishment or mystification. "Charles!" exclaimed my sister at length, when Miss Lawrence, fairly exhausted with talking, was gathering up her gown into folds and extempore plaits plaits--"Charles! you will be ready at two o'clock, and we shall get home to tea." I could not be angry with her for thinking of her baby, her little house, her heaven of home; but there was a going back to winter for me in the idea of going away. The music seemed dead, not slumbering, that I had heard the day before. But is this strange? For there is a slumber we call death. About half-past ten a footman fetched Miss Lawrence. She touched my arm, apologizing to Millicent, though not explaining, and we left the room together. She sent me onwards to the studio, and went downstairs alone. I soon heard them coming up,--indeed, I expected them directly; for Seraphael never waited for anything, and never lost a moment. They were talking, and when he entered he did not at first perceive me. His face was exquisite. A charm softened the Hebrew keenness, that was not awful, like the passion music stirring the hectic, or spreading its white light. He was flushed, but more as a child that has been playing until it is weary; his eyes, dilated, were of softer kindness than the brain gives birth to,--his happy yet wayward smile, as if he rejoiced because self-willing to rejoice. His clear gaze, his eager footstep, reminded me of other days when he trembled on the verge of manhood; it was, indeed, as a man that he shone before me that morning, and had never shone before. They stood now before the screen, and I was astonished at the utter self-possession of the paintress; she only watched his face, and seemed to await his wishes. "That screen is very beautiful velvet, and very beautifully made. Am I never to look at anything else? Is nothing hidden behind it? I have been very good, Miss Lawrence, and I waited very patiently; I do not think I can wait any longer. May I pull it away?" "Sir, most certainly. It is for you to do so at your pleasure. I am not afraid either, though you will think me not over-modest." Seraphael touched the screen,--it was massive, and resisted his little hand; he became impatient. Miss Lawrence only laughed, but I rushed out of my corner to help him. Before he looked at the picture he gave me that little hand and a smile of his very own. "Look, dearest sir!" I cried, "pray look now!" And indeed he looked; and indeed, I shall not forget it. It was so strange to turn from the living lineaments--the eye of the sun and starlight, the brilliant paleness, the changeful glow, the look of intense and concentrated vitality upon temple and lip and skin--to the still, immortal visage, the aspect of glory beyond the grave, the lustre unearthly, but not of death, that struck from those breathless lips, those snow-sealed eyes; and, above all, to see that the light seemed not to descend from the crown upon the forehead, but to aspire from the forehead to the crown,--so the rays were mixed and fused into the idea of that eternity in which there shall be a new earth besides another heaven! That transcending picture, how would it affect him? I little knew; for as he stood and gazed, he grew more like it. The smile faded, the deep melancholy I had seldom seen, and never without a shudder, swept back; as the sun goes into a cloud his face assumed a darklier paleness, he appeared to suffer, but did not speak. In some minutes still, he started, turned to Miss Lawrence, and sighing gently, as gently said,-- "I wish I were more like it! I wish I were as that is! But we may not dream dreams, though we may paint pictures. I should like to deserve your idea, but I do not at present. Happy for us all who build upon the future as you have done in that painting,--I mean entirely as to the perfection of the work." "Have I your permission to keep it, sir?" "What else, madam, would you do with it?" "Oh! if you had not approved, I should have slashed it into pieces with a carving-knife or my father's razor. I shall keep it, with your permission; it will be very valuable and precious, and I have to thank you for the inestimable privilege of possessing it." This cool treatment of Miss Lawrence's delighted me,--it was the only one to restore our Chevalier. He, indeed, returned unto his rest, for he left the house that moment. Nor could I have desired him to remain,--there was only one presence in which I cared to imagine him.... CHAPTER XVII The day had come and gone when Clara, for the first time, dressed in white. The sun-grain of August had kissed the corn, the golden-drooping sheaves waved through the land fresh cut, and the latest roses mixed pale amidst the lilies beneath the bounteous harvest-moon when she left us,--but not alone. It was like dying twice over to part with them that once, and therefore it will not be believed how soon I could recover the farewell and feed upon Clara's letters, which never failed me once a month. For a year they more sustained me than anything else could have done; for they told of a life secluded as any who loved _him_ could desire for him, and not more free from pain than care. Of herself she never spoke, except to breathe sweet wishes for her friends; but her whole soul seemed bent upon his existence, and her descriptions were almost a diary. I could not be astonished at her influence, for it had governed my best days; but that she should be able to secure such a boon to us as a year of unmitigated repose for him, was precisely what I had not anticipated, nor dared to expect. Meanwhile, and during that year, our work was harder than ever. Davy and I were quite unconscious of progressing, yet were perfectly happy, and as ever determined,--indeed, nothing like a slight contumacy on the part of the pupils kept Davy up to the mark. From Starwood, who had returned to Germany, I also received accounts; but he was no letter-writer, except when there was anything very particular to say. He was still a student, and still under Seraphael's roof. Strange and Arabian dreams were those I had of that house in the heart of a country so far away, for the Chevalier had moved nearer the Rhine, and nothing in his idiosyncrasy so betokened the Oriental tincture of his blood as his restless fondness for making many homes while he was actually at home in none. We lived very happily, as I said. It was, perhaps, not extraordinary that to my violin I grew more infinitely attached, was one with it, and could scarcely divide myself from it. I lived at home still,--that is, I slept at home, and usually ate there; but Davy's house was also home,--it had grown dearer to me than ever, and was now fairer. The summer after our friends had left us was brilliant as the last, and now the shell was almost hidden by the clinging of the loveliest creepers; the dahlias in the garden had given place to standard rose-trees, and though Carlotta could not reach them, she had learned to say, "Rose!" and to put up her pretty hand for me to pluck her one. With a flower she would sit and play an entire morning, and we never had any trouble with her. Millicent worked and studied as conveniently as though she had never been born; for it was Davy's supreme wish to educate his daughter at home, and her mamma had very elaborate ideas of self-culture in anticipation. During that autumn we found ourselves making some slight way. Davy took it into his head to give utterance, for the first time, to a public concert; and I will not say I was myself averse. We had a great deal of conversation and a great many sessions on the subject, not exactly able to settle whether we would undertake a selection or some entire work. Our people were rather revived out of utter darkness concerning music; but its light was little diffused, and seemed condensed in our class-room as a focus. The band and chorus, of course, made great demonstrations in favor of the "Messiah;" and my mother, who had taken an extraordinary interest in the affair, said, innocently enough,-- "Then why, my dears, not represent the 'Messiah'? It will be at Christmas time, and very suitable." This was not the point, for Davy had reminded me of the fact that the festival for the approaching year at the centre of the town would open with that work,--unless, indeed, the committee departed from their precedent on all former occasions. My idea would have been a performance all Bach, Beethoven, and Seraphael, with Handel's Ode for a commencement, on the 22d of November; but Davy shook his head at me,--"That would be for Germany, not for England;" and I obliged myself to believe him. At length we accepted the "Messiah,"--to the great delight of the chorus and band. It was a pressing time all through that autumn. I do not suppose I ever thought of anything but fiddles, fiddles, fiddles, from morning till night. They edged my dreams with music, and sometimes with that which was very much the reverse of music; for we had our difficulties. Prejudice is best destroyed by passion, which as yet we had not kindled. Davy met with little support, and no sympathy, except from his own,--this mattered little either, so long as his own were concerned; but now, in prospect of our illustration, it was necessary to secure certain instrumental assistance. I undertook to do this. Besides my own strings, we had brass and wind, but not sufficient. I shall not forget the difficulty of thawing the players I visited--I will not call them artists--into anything like genial participation. Their engagement was not sufficiently formal, nor did they like me,--I suppose they owed a grudge against my youth; for youth is unpardonable and inadmissible, except in the case of genius. Neither did they thaw, any more than the weather, on Christmas Eve,--it was on Christmas Eve we were to perform. It was an eve of ice, not snow,--the blue sky silvery, the earth bound fast in sleep. We had hired a ball-room at the chief hotel,--an elegant and rather rare room; it was warmed by three wide fire-places; and the crimson curtains closed, with the chairs instead of benches, gave a social and unusual charm to the whole proceeding. If our audience entered aghast, looked frozen, rolled in furs and contempts, they could not help smiling upon the fires, the roseate glow; though they also could not help being disconcerted to find themselves treated all alike, for Davy would have no roseate seats, nor any exclusiveness on this occasion. As he intended, besides, to restore the work exactly as it was first written, we expected a little cold and a few black looks. No modern listeners can receive an oratorio as orthodox without an organ of Titan-build in the very middle that takes care to sound. The overture, beautifully played, was taken down with chill politeness; but my own party were so pleased with themselves, and made such ecstatic motions with their features that it was quite enough for me. The first chorus was lightly, delicately shown up, not extinguished by the orchestra--and, indeed, chorus after chorus found no more favor; still, no one could help feeling the perfect training here. I knew as well as Davy envy or pride alone kept back the free confession. The exquisite shading in the chorus, the public's darling, "Unto us a child is born," and the grandeur of the final effect, subdued them a little. They cheered, and Davy gave me a glance over his shoulder which I understood to say, "One must come in for certain disadvantages if one is well received;" for Davy abhorred a noise as much as I did. When we waited between the parts, some one fetched Davy away in an immense hurry; he did not return immediately, and I grew alarmed. I peeped into the concert-room: there sat Millicent most composedly, and Lydia with her lord, and Clo in her dove-colored silk and spectacles, and my mother in her black satin and white-kid gloves, looking crowned with happiness; it was evident that nothing was the matter at home. But having a few minutes, I went to speak to them; and then my mother, in her surmises about Davy, whom she loved as her own son--and Clo, whose principles were flattered, not shocked, in her approval--took up so much time that I was at last obliged to fly to my little band, who were assembled again, and tuning by fits. Still, Davy was not there. But presently, and just at the moment when it was necessary to begin, he appeared, so looking that I was sure either something very dread or very joyous had befallen him. His eye gazed brightly out to the whole room as he faced instead of turning from it. He could not help smiling, and his voice quivered as he spoke. He said in those fond accents,-- "I have the pleasure to announce that the Chevalier Seraphael, having just arrived from Germany on a visit to myself, has consented to conduct the second part himself." I had been sure the Chevalier was in him before he spoke, but I little thought how it would come about. Immediately he finished speaking, the curtain above us divided, and that heavenly inspired one stood before us. There was that in his apparition which stirred the slowest and burned upon the coldest pulses. All rose and shouted with an enthusiasm, when elicited from English hearts perhaps more real and touching than any other; a quickening change, like sudden summer, swept the room; the music became infinitely at home there; we all felt as if, watching over the dead, we had seen the dead alive again; the "old familiar strains" untired us, and none either wearied among the listeners. I could not, in the trances of my own playing, forbear to worship the gentle knowledge that had led the hierarch to that humble shrine, to consecrate and ennoble it forever. But the event told even sooner than I expected; for lo! at the end, when the Chevalier turned his kingly head and bowed to the reiterated applaudings, and had passed out, those plaudits continued, and would not cease till Davy was recalled himself; the pent-up reverence, restored to its proper channel, eddied in streams around him. What an evening we spent, or rather what a night we made that night!--in that little parlor of Davy's the little green-house thrown open, and lighted by Millicent with Carlotta's Christmas-candles; the supper, where there was hardly room for us all at the table, and hardly room upon the table for all the good things my mother sent for from her pantry and larder and store-closet; the decoration of the house with green wreaths and holly-bunches, the swept and garnished air of the entire tiny premises standing us in such good stead to welcome the Christmas visitant with Christmas festivity; the punch Davy mixed in Carlotta's christening-bowl, my mother's present, she perfectly radiant, and staring with satisfaction in the arm-chair, where Seraphael himself had placed her as we closed around the fire; the Christmas music never wanting, for in the midst of our joyous talk a sudden celestial serenade, a deep-voiced carol, burst from beyond the garden, and looking out there, we beheld, through rimed and frost-glazed windows, a clustered throng, whose voices were not uncultured,--the warmest-hearted members of Davy's own. They were still singing when Carlotta awoke and cried, had to be brought down stairs, and was hushed, listening, in Seraphael's arms. So, after all, we did not go to bed that night, for it was quite two o'clock when I escorted my mother and sisters home, having left the little room I usually occupied when I slept at my brother's house for Seraphael, whom no one would suffer to sleep at the hotel. I might remind myself of the next day, too, and I surely may,--of our all going to church together after a night of snow, over the sheeted white beneath a cloudless heaven; of our all sitting together in that large pew of ours, and the excitement prevailing among the congregation afterwards as they assured themselves of our guest; of the chimes swelling high from the tower as we returned, and my walk alone with Seraphael to show him where Clara's house had stood. When we were, indeed, alone together, I asked more especially after her, and listened to his tender voice when it told of her that she was not then strong enough to cross the sea, but that though he could only leave her for a week, it was her latest request that he would come to see us all himself, nor return without having done so. And then he spoke of the affairs that had brought him over,--an entreaty from the committee of our own town festival that he would direct that of the coming year, and compose exclusively for it. It made me very indignant at first that they should have kept Davy so entirely in the dark as to their intentions, because he had been forewarned on all previous occasions, before his influence was so strong in his own circle. But when I expressed a little my indignation, Seraphael only laughed, and said,-- "It was what every one must expect who was such a purist, unless he would also condescend to amuse the people at times and seasons, or unless he were not _poor_." My obligation to accede here made me yet more indignant, until I remembered how Seraphael had introduced himself, and so taken Davy by the hand that it would not be likely for him ever again to be thrust back into obscurity afterwards, were it only because Seraphael himself was _rich_. "And will you come to us, sir?" I asked, scarcely able to frame a wish upon the subject. "If I live, Carlomein. And I do hope to live--till then, at least. I have also been rather idle lately, and must work. Indeed, I have brought nothing with me, except a psalm or two for your brother. We may write music to psalms, I suppose, Carlomein?" "You may, sir, and, indeed, anybody may; for whatever is worthless will be forgotten, and whatever is worthy will live forever." "It is not that anything we offer can be worthy of the feet at which we lay it, it is not that anything is sweet or sufficient for our love's expression, but every little word of love and smile of love is precious to us, and must be so to Love itself, I think. Only in music now does God reveal himself as in the days of old; and I do believe, Carlomein, that he, dwelling not in temples made with hands, yet dwelleth there. I suppose it may be that as we make the music that issues from the orchestra, or from the organ where all musics mingle, so he makes the love that religion burns to utter, but that music, for the musical, alone makes manifest. All worship is sacred, but that is unutterably holy. How holy should the heart of the musician be!" "Dearest sir, forgive me! If you had not spoken so, I could not have presumed to ask you. But do you, therefore, object to write for the stage, in its present promiscuous position among the arts?" "Carlomein, the drama is my greatest delight. The dramatic genius I would ever accept as a guide and standard; but from youth upwards, I have ever abstained from writing for the stage. It does not suit me; it is in some respects beyond me,--that is, as it ought to exist. But my days are numbered,--I have lately known it; and to give forth opera after opera would reduce my short span to a mere holiday task. I am too happy, Carlomein, and to you I will say it,--too blest in that I feel I can best express what others left to me because expression failed them." "Oh, dearest sir, it is so, and not alone in music, but in everything you touch or tell us! Yet you are ours for years and years. I feel it,--there is so much to be done, and you only can do it; so much to learn yet of what you only can teach us. You cannot, you will not, and are not going to leave us! I know it; I could not be so if I did not know and feel it. You are looking better than when even first I saw you--all those years ago." "I am well, Carlomein,--I have never been ill. I do not know sickness, though I have known sorrow,--thank God for that inexpressible mystery in which his light is hidden! But, Carlomein, you speak as if it were of all things the saddest thing to die! I know not that sensation; I believe it to be mere sensation. Neither is this earth a wilderness,--no weariness! There is not an air of spring that does not make me long for death; the burdening gladness is too much for life, and summer and winter call me. Eternity without years is ever present with me, and the poor music they love so well, they love because it comes to me from beyond the grave." I could not hear him speak so; it killed me to all but a ravishment of fear. I could not help saying, though I fear it was out of place,-- "There is one you must not leave; she cannot live without you." "Carlomein, any one can live who is to live, and whoever is decreed must die. There is no death for me,--I do not call it so; nor do I believe that death could touch me. I mean I should not know it, for I could not bear it; and I fear it not, for nothing we cannot bear is given us to endure." "Sir, if I did not revere too much every word you utter, I should say that a morbid presentiment clouds your enthusiasm, and that you know not what you say." "Do I look morbid, Carlomein? That is an ugly word, and you deserve it as much as I do, pale-face." He laughed out joyously. I looked at him again. How his eyes radiated their splendors, as an eastern starlight in a northern sky! How the blossom-blushes rose upon his cheek! Health, joy, vitality, all the flowers of manhood, the fairest laurels of an unsullied fame, shone visionary about him. He seemed no earthling "born to die." I could not but smile; still, it was at his beauty, not his mirth. "Sir, you don't look much like a martyr now." "Carlomein. I should rather be a martyr than a saint. The saints are robed in glory, but the glory streams from heaven upon the martyr's face." (Oh, he could feel no pain, with that light there; I know he felt none.) "The saints wear lilies, or they dream so; and dream they not the martyrs wear the roses,--have not the thorns pierced through them? They are thornless roses there, for passion is made perfect." "Sir, but I do think that the musician, if duteous, is meet for a starry crown." "And I could only think, when I saw that picture, that the crown was not mine own; but I dreamed within myself that it should not be in vain I desire to deserve the crown which I should wear, but not that star-crown. Poetry may be forgiven for hiding sorrow in bliss, but it is only music that hides bliss with sorrow. And see, Carlomein (for we are in a tale of dreams just now, and both alone), there have been martyrs for all faiths,--for love, for poetry, for patriotism, for religion. Oh! for what cause, where passion strikes and stirs, have there not been martyrs? But I think music has not many, and those were discrowned of that glory by the other crown of Fame. Shall I die young, and not be believed to have died for music? For that end must the music be rapt and purified,--stolen from itself; its pleasures must be strong to pain, its exercises sharper than agony. I know of none other choice for myself than to press forwards to fulfil the call I have heard since music spoke to me, and was as the voice of God. There is so much to undo in very doing, while those who were not called, but have only chosen music, defile her mysteries, that the few who are called must surely witness for her. We will not speak again so, Carlomein. I have made your young face careful, and I would rather see scorn work upon it than such woe. I am now going to a shop. Are there any shops here, Carlomein?" "Plenty, sir, but they are closed; still, I am certain you can get anything you want, no matter what." "I have something to make to-night which is most important, and I must have nuts, apples, and sugar-plums." We went to a large confectioner's whose windows were but semi-shuttered. Here the Chevalier quite lost himself in the treasures of those glass magazines. I should scarcely have known him as he had been. He chose very selectly, nathless, securing only the most delicate and rare of the wonders spread about him, and which excited his _naïveté_ to the utmost. His choice comprised all crisp white comfits and red-rose ones, almond-eggs, the most ravishing French bonbons, all sorts of chocolate, myriad sugar millions, like rain from fairy rainbows, twisted green angelica, golden strips of crystallized orange-peal, not to speak of rout-cakes like fish and frogs and mice and birds' nests. Nor did these suffice; off we walked to the toy-shop. Our town was of world renown for its toys. Here it was not so easy to effect an entrance; but it _was_ effected the moment the Chevalier showed his face. To this hour I believe they took him in there for some extraordinary little boy,--he certainly behaved like nothing else. He bought now beads of all colors, and spangles and shining leaf, and of all things the most exquisite doll, small-featured, waxen, dressed already in long white robes, and lying in a cradle about a foot long, perfectly finished. And next, besides this baby's baby, he snatched at a box of letters, then at a gilt watch, and finally at a magic-lantern. We so loaded ourselves with all these baubles that we could scarcely get along; for, with his wonted impetuosity on the least occasions, he would not suffer anything to be sent, lest it should not arrive in time. And then, though I reminded him of the dinner-hour at hand, there was to be no rest yet, but I must take him to some garden or nursery of winter-plants. Fortunately, a great friend of Davy's in that line lived very near him; for Davy was a great flower-fancier. This was convenient; for had it been two miles off, Seraphael would have run there, being in his uttermost wayward mood. He chose a gem of a fir-tree, and though both the florist and I remonstrated with our whole hearts, would carry it himself,--happily not very far. I was reminded of dear old Aronach's story about his child-days as I saw him clasp it in his delicate arms so nerved with power, and caught his brilliant face through the spires of the foliage. Thus we approached Davy's house, and I reminded the Chevalier that we were expected to dine at my mother's, not there. In fact, poor Millicent, in her bonnet, looked out anxiously from the door; the Chevalier called to her as she ran to open the gate, "See, Mrs. Davy, see! Here's 'Birnam Wood come to Dunisnane.' Make way!" "You are very naughty," said Davy, stepping forth. "Our beloved mamma will be coming after us." "It is very rude, I know; but I am going to dine with your daughter." "My daughter is coming too. Did you think we should leave her behind?" Millicent was about, in fact, to mount the stairs for the baby; but Seraphael rushed past her. "Pardon! but I don't wish to be seen at present;" and we both bore our burdens into the parlor, and laid them on the table. "Now, Carlomein, the moment dinner is over, we two shall come back and lock ourselves in here." "I should like it of all things, sir, selfish wretch that I am! but I don't think they will." "Oh, yes, I will make them!" When at last we descended ready, Carlotta, in her white beaver bonnet, my own present, looked as soft as any snowdrop,--too soft almost to be kissed. She held out her arms to Seraphael so very pertinaciously that he was obliged to carry her; nor would he give her up until we reached my mother's door. It was quite the same at dinner also; she would sit next him, would stick her tiny fork into his face, with a morsel of turkey at the end of it, would poke crumbs into his mouth with her finger, would put up her lips to kiss him, would say, every moment, "I like you much-much!" with all Davy's earnestness, though with just so much of her mother's modesty as made her turn pink and shy, and put herself completely over her chair into Seraphael's lap, when he laughed at her. He was in ecstasies, and every now and then a shade so tender stole upon his air that I knew he could only be adverting to the tenderest of all human probabilities,--the dream of his next year's offspring. After dinner, Miss was to retire. She was carried upstairs by Margareth, of whom I can only say she loved Carlotta better than she had loved Carl. Seraphael then arose, and gracefully, gleefully, despite the solicitations on all hands exhibited, declared he must also go, that he had to meet the Lord Chancellor, and could not keep him waiting. There was no more prayer wasted after this announcement, everybody laughed too much. Taking a handful of nuts from a dish, and throwing a glance of inexpressible elfishness at my mother, he said, "Carl and the Lord Chancellor and I are going to crack them in a corner. Come, Carlomein! we must not keep so grand a person waiting." I know not what blank he left behind him, but I know what a world he carried with him. We had such an afternoon! But we had to be really very busy; I never worked so hard in a small way. When all was finished, the guilt fruit hung, the necklaces festooned, the glitter ordered with that miraculous rapidity in which he surpassed all others, and that fairy craft of his by which he was enabled to re-create all Arabian, mystical, he placed the cradle in the shade. "You see, Carlomein, I could not have a Christ-child up there at the top, because your brother is rather particular, and might not choose to approve. It will never occur to him about the manger, if we don't tell him; but you perceive all the same that it is here, being made of straw, and very orthodox." "It appears to me, sir, that you have learned English customs to some purpose, as well as German." He replied by dancing round the tree, and twisting in the tapers red and green. "Now, you go, Carlomein, and fetch them all, and when I hear your voices, I will light the candles. Begone, Carlomeinus!" and he snapped his fingers. They came immediately, all rather mystified, but very curious. I carried Carlotta, who talked the whole way home about the stars. But after clustering a few moments in the dark passage, and her little whispered "ohs!" and wondering sighs, when the door was opened, and the arch musician for all ages, seated at the piano, played a measure only meet for child or fairy ears, her ecstasy became quite painful. She shuddered and shivered, and at last screamed outright; and then, even then, only Seraphael had power to soothe her, leading her to the fairy earth-lights as he led us to the lights of heaven. * * * * * Glorious hours that dye deep our memories in beauty, music that passes into echo and is silent, alike are conserved forever. Often and often in the months that passed when he had left us, after a visit so exquisite that it might have been diffused millenniums and yet have kept its fragrance, did my thoughts take such a form as this enunciation bears; I was so unutterably grateful for what had happened that it helped me to bear what was yet before me. The growing, glowing fame, heralded from land to land, in praise of that young genius and purest youth, had certainly reached its culmination; neither envy withered nor scandal darkened the spell of his perfect name. All grades of artists, all ranks of critics,--the old and calm, the impertinent but impetuous young,--bowed as in heart before him. It was so in every city, I believe; but in ours it was peculiar, as well as universal. An odor of heavenly altars had swept our temple; we were fitter to receive him than we had been. In no instance was this shown more clearly than on the fortunate occasion when Davy was treated with, and requested very humbly to add his vocal regiment to the festival chorus. One day just afterwards, in early April, he came running to me with a letter, anxious for me to open it, as he was in a fit of fright about the parts which ought to have arrived, and had not. It was only a line or two, addressed to me by Seraphael's hand, to tell us that Clara had borne him twin sons. Davy's astonishment amused me; it appeared that he had formed no idea of their having been likely to come at all, until this moment. I was glad, indeed, to be alone, to think of that fairest friend of mine, now so singularly blest. I thought of her in bed with her babies, I thought of the babies being his, and she no less his own, until I was not fit company for any one,--and it was long before I became so. I could hardly believe it, and more especially because they were all four so far away; for I am not of the opinion of those fortunate transcendentalists, who aver we can better realize that which is away from us than that which is at hand. Time and space must remain to us our eternity and our freedom, till freedom and eternity shall be our own. CHAPTER XVIII We were extremely busy, for a little while, in preparing a box of presents, and when it was despatched we began seriously to anticipate our awful, glorious festival; we began to have leisure to contemplate it. It was a delightful dream, amidst that dream, to reflect that we should see them all then, for Seraphael sent us word, in his grateful reply to our enclosures, that both his children and their mother would accompany him. Meantime, I was very anxious to spread the news abroad, and most extraordinary appointments were made by all kinds of people to secure places. I began to think, and had I been in Germany should, of course, have settled to my own satisfaction, that the performances must be in the open air, after all, such crowds demanded admittance so early as early in June. It was for the last week in July that our triple day was fixed, and in the second week of June the long-expected treasure, the exclusive compositions, arrived from Lilienstadt. Davy was one of the committee called immediately, and I awaited, in unuttered longing, his return, to hear our glorious doom. He came back almost wild. I was quite alarmed, and told him so. "Charles," he said, "there is almost reason; so am I, myself, in fact. Just listen to the contents of the parcel received,--an oratorio for the first morning (such a subject, 'Heaven and Earth'!); a cantata for a double choir; an organ symphony, with interludes for voices only; a sonata for the violin; a group of songs and fancies. The last are for the evenings; but otherwise the evenings are to be filled with Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Handel,--the programmes already made out. How is it possible, Charles, that such progress can have been condensed into a few mere months? Think of the excitement, the unmitigated stress of such an industry! Three completed works in less than a quarter of a year, not to speak of the lesser wonders!" It seemed to affect Davy's brain; as for me, I felt sure the works had stirred,--as the Spirit moving upon the face of the waters, before the intermomentary light, long ages, as we reckon in this world's computation, before they framed themselves into form. Nor was this conviction lessened when I first became acquainted with the new-born glories of an imagination on fire of heaven. Seraphael came to England, and of course northwards, to superintend the earliest rehearsals; it was his own wish to do so, and every one felt it necessary to be introduced by him alone to what came alone of him. Those were strange times,--I do not seem to have lived them, though in fact I was bodily present in that hall, consecrated by the passion of a child. But they were wild hours; all tempest-tossed was my spirit amidst the rush of a manifold enthusiasm. Seraphael was so anxious to be at his home again that the rehearsals were conducted daily. He was to return again, having departed, for their ultimate fulfilment. It appeared very remarkable that he should not have taken the whole affair at once, have brought his family over then, and there remained; but upon the subject he was unapproachable, only saying, with relation to his arduous life just then and then to be, that he could not be too much occupied to please himself. He did not stay in our house this time; we could not press him to do so, for he was evidently in that state to which the claims of friendship may become a burden instead of a beguiling joy. He was alone greatly at his hotel, though I can for myself say that in his intercourse with me, his gentleness towards me was so sweet that I dare not remind myself of it. Still, in all he said and did there was something seeming to be that was not; an indescribable want of interest in the charms of existence which he had ever drawn into his bosom,--a constant endeavor to rouse from a manifest abstraction. Notwithstanding, he still wore the air of the most perfect health, nor did I construe those signs, except into the fact of his being absent from his new-found, his endeared and delighted home. He left us so suddenly that I was only just in time to see him off. He would not permit me to accompany him to London, from whence he should instantly embark; but it was a letter from Clara that really hastened his departure,--his babes were ill. I could not gain from him the least idea of their affection, nor whether there was cause for fear; his face expressed alarm, but had an unutterable look besides,--a look which certainly astonished me, for it might have bespoken indifference, as it might bespeak despair. One smile I caught as he departed, that was neither indifferent nor desolate; it wrung my heart with happiness to reflect that smile had been for me. The feeling I had for those unknown babies was inexplicable after he was fairly gone. That I should have loved them, though unseen, was scarcely strange, for they were the offspring of the two I loved best on earth; but I longed and languished for one glimpse of their baby faces just in proportion to the haunting certainty which clutched me that those baby faces I should never see. Their beauty had been Seraphael's only inspiration when, in conversation with me, he had fully seemed himself: the one so light and clear, with eyes as the blue of midnight,--his brow, her eyes; the other soft and roseate, with her angel forehead and his own star-like gaze,--her smile upon them both, and the features both of him. As one who reads of the slaughtered darlings in the days of Herod, as one who pores on chronicles of the cradle plague-smitten, I felt for them; they seemed never to have been born, to me. Oh, that they had never been born, indeed! At least, there was one while I thought so. We had a heart-rending letter from Clara one fortnight after her lord returned to her: the twins were both dead, and by that time both buried in the same grave. With her pure self-forgetfulness where another suffered, she spoke no word of her own sorrow, but she could not conceal from us how fearfully the blow had fallen upon him. The little she said made us all draw close together and tremble with an emotion we could not confess. But the letter concluded with an assurance of his supreme and undaunted intention, undisturbed by the shocks and agonies of unexpected woe, to undertake the conductorship of the festival. The sorrow that now shadowed expectations which had been too bright, tempered also our joy, too keen till then. But after a week or two, when we received no further tidings, we began absolutely to expect him, and with a stronger anticipation--infatuation--than ever, built upon a future which no man may dare to call his own, either for good or evil. The hottest summer I had ever known interfered not with the industry alike of band and chorus. The intense beauty of the music and its marvellous embodiments had fascinated the very country far and wide; it was as if art stood still and waited even for him who had magnified her above the trumpery standards of her precedented progress. We were daily expecting a significant assurance that he was on our very shores. I was myself beginning to tremble in the air of sorrow that must necessarily surround them both, himself and his companion, when, one morning,--I forget the date; may I never remember it!--I was reflecting upon the contents of a paper which Davy took in every week,--a chronicle of musical events, which I ransacked conscientiously, though it was seldom much to the purpose. Strangely enough, I had been reading of the success of another friend of mine,--even Laura, who had not denied herself the privilege of artist-masonry after all, for she was dancing amidst flowers and fairy elements, and I was determining I would, at the first opportunity, go to see her. Then I considered I should like her to come to the festival, and was making up a letter of requests to my ever-generous friend, Miss Lawrence, that she might bring Laura, as I knew she would be willing, when a letter came for me, was brought by an unconscious servant and laid between my hands. It was in Clara's writing, once again. I was coward enough to spare myself a few moments. There was no one in the room; I was just on the wing to my band, but I could not help still sparing myself a little, and a very little, longer. I believe I knew as well what was in the letter as if I had opened it before I broke the seal. I believe terror and intense presentiment lent me that stillness and steadiness of perception which are the very empyrean of sorrow. Enough! I opened it at last, and found it exactly as I had expected,--Seraphael himself was ill. The hurry and trouble of the letter induced me to believe there was more behind her words than in them, mournful and unsatisfactory as they were. He was, as he believed himself to be, overwrought; and though he considered himself in no peril, he must have quiet. This struck me most; it was all over if he felt he must have quiet. But the stunning point was that he deputed his friend Lenhart Davy to the conductorship of his own works,--the concerts all being arranged by himself in preparation, and nothing but a director being required. Clara concluded by asking me to come to her if I could. She did not say he wished to see me, but I knew she wished to see me herself; and even for his sake that call was enough for me. My duties, my intentions, all lay in the dust. I considered but how to make way thither with the speed that one fain would change to wind, to lightning, or yoke to them as steeds. I packed up nothing, nor did I leave a single trace of myself behind, except Clara's letter and a postscript, in pencil, of my own. I was in my mother's house when the letter came upon me; and flying past Davy's on my way to the railroad, I saw Millicent with Carlotta looking out of one of the windows, all framed in roses. It was a sight I merely recall as we recall touches of pathos to medicine us for deeper sorrow. Two days and nights I travelled incessantly, without information or help, solitary as a pilgrim who is wandering from home to heaven; it could be nothing else, I knew. The burning, glowing summer, the tossing forests, the corn-fields yet unravished, the glory on the crested lime-trees, the vines smothering rock and wall and terrace with fruit of life,--all these I saw, and many other dreams, as a dream myself I passed. I only know I seemed taking the whole world. So wide the scattered sensations spread themselves that I dared not call home to myself; for they did but minister to the perfect appreciation that what I dreamed was true, and what I yearned to clasp as truth a dream. The city of his home was before me,--but how can I call it a city? It was a nest itself in a nest of hills. Below the river rushed, its music ever in a sleep, and its blue waves softened hyaline by distance. In the last sunset smile I saw the river and the valley, the vines at hand crawled over it, and there was not a house around that was not veiled in flowers. When I entered the valley from below, the purple evening had drowned the sunset as with a sea, there was no mist nor cloud, the starlight was all pure, it brightened moment by moment. And having hurried all along till now, at length I rested. For now I felt that of all I had ever endured, the approaching crisis was the consummation. Had I dared, I would have returned; for I even desired not to advance. My own utter impotence, my unavailing presence, weighed me down, and the might of my passion ensphered me as did that distant starlight,--I was as nothing to itself. I had shed no tears. Tears I have ever found the springs of gladness, and grief most dry. But who could weep in that breathless expectation? who would not, when he cannot, rejoice to weep? Brighter than I had ever seen them, the stars shone on me; and brighter and brighter they seemed to burn through the crystal clarity of my perception: my ear felt open, I heard sounds born of silence which, indeed, were no sounds, but _themselves_ silence. I saw the unknown which, indeed, could not be seen; and thus I waited, suspended in the midst of time, yearning for some heaven to open and take me in. Whatever air stirred was soft as the pulse of sleep; whatever sigh it carried was a sigh of flowers, late summer sweetness, first autumn sadness, poured into faint embrace. I saw the church-tower in the valley, it reached me as a dream. All was a dream round about,--the dark shade of the terraced houses, the shadier trees; and I myself the dreamer, to whom those stars above, those heights so unimaginable, were the only waking day. At midnight I had not moved, and at midnight I dreamed another dream, still standing there. The midnight hour had struck, and died along the valley into the quiet, when a sudden gathering gleam behind a distant rock rose like a red moonlight and tinged the very sky. But there was no moon, and I felt afraid and child-like. I was obliged to watch to ascertain. It grew into a glare, that gleam,--the glare of fire; and slowly, stilly as even in a dream indeed, wound about the rock and passed down along the valley a dark procession, bearing torches, with a darker in the midst of them than they. Down the valley to the church they came: I knew they were for resting there. No bell caught up the silence, I heard no tramp of feet, they might have been spirits for all the sound they made; and when at last they paused beneath me in the night, the torches streamed all steadily, and rained their flaming smiles upon the imagery in the midst. That bier was carried proudly, as of a warrior called from deadly strife to death's own sleep. But not as warrior's its ornaments, its crown. The velvet folds passed beneath into the dark grass as they paused, as storm-clouds rolling softly, as gloom itself at rest. But above, from the face of the bier, the darkness fled away,--it was covered with a mask of flowers. Wreath within wreath lay there, hue within hue, from virgin white and hopeful azure to the youngest blush of love. And in the very midst, next the pale roses and their tender green, a garland of the deepest crimson glowed, leafless, brilliant, vivid; the full petals, the orb-like glory, gave out such splendors to the flame-light that the fresh first youth's blood of a dauntless heart was alone the suggestion of its symbol. Keenly in the distance the clear vision, the blaze of softness, reached me. I stirred not, I rushed not forwards; I joined in the dread feast afar. I stood as between the living and the dead,--the dead below, the living with the stars above,--and the plague of my heart was stayed. I waited until the bier, bare of its gentle burden, stood lonely by the grave. I waited until the wreaths, flung in, covered the treasure with their kisses that was a jewel for earth to hide. I saw the torches thrown into the abyss, quenched by the kisses of the flowers, even as the earthly joy, the beauty, had been quenched in that abyss of light which to us is only darkness. I watched the black shadows draw closer round the grave; one suffocating cry arose, as if all hearts were broken in that spasm, or as if Music herself had given up the ghost. _But Music never dies._ In reply to that sickening shout, as if, indeed, a heaven opened to receive me, a burst, a peal, a shock of transcendent music fell from some distant height. I saw no sign the while I heard, nor was it a mourning strain. Triumphant, jubilant, sublime in seraph sweetness, joy immortal, it mingled into the arms of Night. While yet its echoes rang, another strain made way, came forth to meet it, and melted into its embrace, as jubilant as blissful, but farther, fainter, more ineffable. Again it yielded to the echoes; but above those echoes swelled another, a softer, and yet another and a softer voice, that was but the mingling of many voices, now far and far away. Distantly, dyingly, till death drank distance up, the music wandered. And at length, when the mystic spell was broken, and I could hear no more, I could only believe it still went on and on, sounding through all the earth, beyond my ear, and rising up to heaven from shores of lands untraversed as that country beyond the grave! All peace came there upon me; as a waveless deep it welled up and upwards from my spirit, till I dared no longer sorrow: my love was dispossessed of fear, and the demon Despair, exorcised, fled as one who wept and fain would hide his weeping. And yet that hope, if hope it could be, that cooled my heart and cheered my spirit, was not a hope of earth. My faith had fleeted as an angel into the light, and that hope alone stayed by me. It was not until the next morning, and then not early, that I visited that house and the spirit now within it whose living voice had called me thither. No longer timidly, if most tenderly, I advanced along the valley, past the church which guarded now the spot on all this earth the most like heaven, and found the mansion, now untenanted, that Heaven itself had robbed. Quiet stillness--not as of death, but most like new-born wonder--possessed that house. The overhanging balconies, the sunburst on the garden, the fresh carnations, the carved gateway, the shaded window, and over all the cloudless sky, and around, all that breathed and lived,--it was a lay beyond all poetry, and such a melancholy may never music utter. Thoné took me in, and I believe she had waited for me at the door. She spoke not, and I spoke not; she led me only forwards with the air of one who feels all words are lost between those who understand but cannot benefit each other. She led me to a room in which she left me; but I was not to be alone. I saw Clara instantly,--she came to meet me from the window, unchanged as the summer-land without by the tension or the touch of trouble. I could not possibly believe, as I saw her, and seeing her felt my courage flow back, my life resume its current, that she had ever really suffered. Her face so calm was not pale; her eye so clear was tearless. Nor was there that writhing smile about her lovely lips that is more agonizing than any tears. It was entirely in vain I tried to speak,--had she required comfort, my words would have thronged at my will; but if any there required comfort, it could not be herself. Seeing my fearful agitation, which would work through all my silence, her sweet voice startled me; I listened as to an angel, or as to an angel I should never have listened. "If I had known how it would be, I would never have been so rash as to send for you. But he was so strange--for he did not suffer--that I could not think he was going to die. I do not call it dying, nor would you if you had seen it. I wish I could make that darling feel such death was better than to live." I put a constraint upon myself which no other presence could have brought me to exhibit. "What darling, then?" said I; for I could only think of one who was darling as well as king. "Poor Starwood! But you will be able to comfort him,--you are the only person who could." "Perhaps it would not be kind to comfort him; perhaps he would rather suffer. But I will do my best to please you. Where is he now?" "I will bring him;" and she left the room. In another moment, all through the sunny light that despite the shaded windows streamed through the very shade, she entered again with Starwood. He flew at me and sank upon the ground. I have seen women--many--weep, and some few men; but I have never seen, and may I never see! such weeping as he wept. Tears--as if tropic rains should drench our Northern gardens--seemed dissolving with his very life his gentle temperament. I could not rouse nor raise him. His sodden hair, his hands as damp as death, his dreadful sobs, his moans of misery, his very crushed and helpless attitude, appealed to me not in vain; for I felt at once it was the only thing to do for him that he should be suffered to weep till he was satisfied, or till he could weep no more. And yet his tears provoked not mine, but rather drove them inwards and froze them to my heart. Nor did Clara weep; but I could not absolutely say whether she had already wept or not,--for where other eyes grow dim, hers grew only brighter; and weeping--had she wept--had only cleared her heaven. We sat for hours in that room together,--that fair but dreadful room, its brilliant furniture unworn, its frescos delicate as any dream, its busts, its pictures, crowding calm lights and glorious colors, all fresh as the face of Nature, with home upon its every look; save only where the organ towered, and muffling in dark velvet its keys and pipes, reminded us that music had left home for heaven, and we might no more find it there! And again it was longed-for evening,--the twilight tarried not. It crept, it came, it fell upon the death-struck, woful valley. O blessed hour,--the repose alike of passion and of grief! O blessed heaven! to have softened the mystic change from day to darkness so that we can bear them both,--never so blessed as when the broken-hearted seek thy twilights and find refreshment in thy shades! At that hour we two alone stood together by the glorious grave. For the first time, as the sun descended, Starwood had left off weeping. I had myself put him in his bed, and rested beside him till he was asleep; then I had returned to Clara. She was wrapped in black, waiting for me. We went together without speaking, without signifying our intentions to each other; but we both took the same way, and stood, where I have said, together; and when we had kissed the ground she spoke. She had not spoken all the day,--most grave and serious had been her air; she yet looked more as a child that had lost its father than a widowed wife,--as if she had never been married, she struck me: an almost virgin air possessed her, an unserene reserve, for now her accents faltered. "I could not say to you till we were alone," she said,--"and we could not be alone to-day,--how much I thank you for coming; so many persons are to be here in a day or two, and I wish to consult with you." "I will see them all for you, I will arrange everything; but you are not going away?" "Going away? And you to say so, too! I will never leave this place until I die!" "You love him, then, thank God!" "Love him! Shall I tell you how? You know best what it was to love him, for you loved him best,--better than I did; and yet I loved him with all love. Do I look older, and more like this world, or less?" She smiled a sweet significance,--a smile she had learned from him. "I have been thinking how young you look,--too young, almost. You are so fresh, so child-like, and--may I say it?--so fair." "You may say anything. I think I have grown fairer myself. Very strange to confess, is it? But you are my friend,--to you I should confess anything. I have been with a spirit-angel,--no wonder I am fresh. I have been in heaven,--no wonder I am fair. I felt myself grow better hour by hour. After I left you with him, when his arms were round me, when he kissed me, when his tenderness oppressed me,--I felt raised to God. No heart ever was so pure, so overflowing with the light of heaven. I can only believe I have been in heaven, and have fallen here,--not that he has left me, and I must follow him to find him. I will not follow yet, my friend! I have much to do that he has left me." "Thank God, you will not leave us,--but more, because you love him, and made him happy!" "You do not, perhaps, know that he was never anything but happy. When I think of discontent and envy and hatred and anger and care, and see them painted upon other faces, I feel that he must have tasted heaven to have made himself so happy here. I can fancy a single taste of heaven, sir, lasting a whole life long." She was his taste of heaven, as a foretaste even to me! But had she, indeed, never learned the secret of his memory, or had she turned, indeed, its darkness into light? "I wish to hear about the last." "You know nearly as much as I do, or as I can tell you. You remember the music you heard last night? It was the last he wrote, and I found it and saved it, and had done with it what you heard." But I cannot descant on death-beds; it is the only theme which I dare believe, if I were to touch, would scare me at my dying hour. I will not tamper with those scenes, but console myself by reminding that if the time had been, and that, too, lately, when upon that brain fell the light in fever and the sun in fire, the time was over; and sightless, painless, deaf to the farewells of dying music, he, indeed, could not be said to _suffer_ death. Nor did he _know_ to suffer it, as he had said. The crown that, piercing with its _fiery thorns_ unfelt, had pressed into his brow the death-sting, should also crown with its _star-flowers_ the waking unto life. * * * * * "You remember what you said, Mr. Auchester, that he needed a 'companion for his earthly hours:' I tried to be his companion,--he allowed me to be so; and one of the last times he spoke he said: 'Thank Carl for giving you to me.'" That echo reaches me from the summer-night of sadness and still communion, of _passion's slumber by the dead_. It is now some years ago; but never was any love so fresh to the spirit it enchanted, as is the enchantment of this sorrow, still mine own. So be it ever mine, till all shall be forever! I am in England, and again at home. Great changes have swept the earth; I know of none within myself. Through all convulsions the music whispers to me _that music is_. I ought to believe in its existence, for it is my own life and the life of the living round me. Davy is still at work, but not alone in hope,--sometimes in the midst of triumph. They tell me I shall never grow rich, but with my violin I shall never be poor. I have more than enough for everything, as far as I myself am concerned; and as for those I love, there is not one who prospers not, even by means of music. Starwood has been three years in London. His name, enfolded in another name, brought the whole force of music to his feet. It is not easy to procure lessons of the young professor, who can only afford twenty minutes to the most exacting pupil. It is still less easy to hear him play in public, for he has a will of his own, and will only play what he likes, and only what he likes to the people he likes; for he is a bit of a cynic, and does not believe, half so much as I do, that music is making way. He married his first feminine pupil,--a girl of almost fabulous beauty. I believe he gave her half-a-dozen lessons before the crisis,--not any afterwards; and I know that he was seventeen and she fifteen years of age at the time they married.[10] His whole nature is spent upon her; but she is kind enough to like me, and thus I sometimes receive an invitation, which I should accept did they reside in the moon. But I have other London friends. After two seasons, more satisfactory than brilliant, Laura retired from the stage. During the time she danced, her name was scarcely whispered,--I believe she was even feared in her spiritual exaltation of her art; but no sooner had she left the lights than all critics and contemporaries discovered her excellences. She was wooed with the white-flower garlands of the purest honor, with the gold so few despised, to return and resume her career, now certain fame; but she was never won, and I have since made clear to myself that she only danced in public until she had raised a certain capital, for you will only find her now in her graceful drawing-room where London is most secluded, surrounded by the most graceful and loveliest of the children of the peerage. No one but Mademoiselle Lauretta--her stage and professional name--prepares the little rarities for transplantation into the court-garden, or rehearses the quadrille for the Prince of Wales's birthnight-ball. I believe Miss Lemark, as she is known still to me, or even Laura, might have had many homes if she had chosen,--homes where she could not but have felt at home. Clara was even importunate that she should live with her in Germany; Miss Lawrence was excessively indignant at being refused herself; and there have been worthy gentlemen, shades not to be invoked or recognized, who would have been very thankful to be allowed to dream of that pale brow veiled, those clear eyes downcast, those tapering fingers twined in theirs. But Laura, like myself, will _never_ marry. For Miss Lawrence, too, that glorious friend of mine, I must have a little corner. It was Miss Lawrence who carried to Laura the news of Seraphael's death,--herself heart-broken, who bound up that bleeding heart. It is Miss Lawrence whose secretive and peculiar generosity so permeates the heart of music in London that no true musician is actually ever poor. It is Miss Lawrence who, disdaining subscription-lists, steps unseen through every embarrassment where those languish who are too proud or too humble to complain, and leaves that behind her which re-assures and re-establishes by the magic of charity strewn from her artist-hand. It is Miss Lawrence who discerns the temporality of art to be that which is as inevitable as its spiritual necessity; who yet ministers to its uttermost spiritual appreciation by her patronage of the highest only. It is Miss Lawrence you see wherever music is to be heard, with her noble brow and sublimely beneficent eyes, her careless costume, and music-beaming lips; but you cannot know, as I do, what it is to have her for a friend. Miss Lawrence certainly lost caste by receiving and entertaining, as she did, Mademoiselle Lauretta; for both when Laura was dancing before the public and had done with so dancing, Miss Lawrence would insist upon her appearing at every party or assembly she gave,--whether with her father's sanction or without, nobody knew. To be introduced to a ballet-girl, or even a dancing-lady, at the same table or upon the same carpet with barristers and baronets, with golden-hearted bankers and "earnest" men of letters!--she certainly lost caste by her resolute unconventionalism, did my friend Miss Lawrence. But then, as she said to me, "What in life does it matter about losing caste with people who have no caste to lose?" She writes to me continually, and her house is my home in London. I have never been able to make her confess that she sent me my violin; but I know she did, for her interest in me can only be explained on that ground, and there is that look upon her face, whenever I play, which assures me of something associated in her mind and memory with my playing that is not itself music. Miss Lawrence also corresponds with Clara, and Clara sees us too; but no one, seeing her, would believe her to be childless and alone. She is more beautiful than ever, and not less calm,--more loving and more beloved. We had Florimond Anastase a concert-player at our very last festival. He was exactly like the young Anastase who taught me, and I should not have been able to believe him older but for his companion, a young lady, who sat below him in the audience, and at whom I could only gaze. It was Josephine Cerinthia, no longer a child, but still a prodigy, for she has the finest voice, it is said, in Europe. No one will hear it, however, for Anastase, who adopted her eight years ago, makes her life the life of a princess, or as very few princesses' can be; he works for her, he saves for her, and has already made her rich. They say he will marry her by and by; it may be so, but I do not myself believe it. Near the house in which Seraphael died, and rising as from the ashes of his tomb, is another house which holds his name, and will ever hold it to be immortal. Sons and daughters of his own are there,--of his land, his race, his genius,--those whom music has "called" and "chosen" from the children of humanity. The grandeur of the institution, its stupendous scale, its intention, its consummation, afford, to the imagination that enshrines him, the only monument that would not insult his name. Nor is that temple without its priestess, that altar without its angel. She who devoted the wealth of his wisdom to that work gave up the treasure of her life besides, and has consecrated herself to its superintendence. At the monumental school she would be adored, but that she is too much loved as children love,--too much at home there to be feared. I hold her as my passion forever; she makes my old years young in memory, and to every new morning of my life her name is Music. With another name--not dearer, but as dear--she is indissolubly connected; and if I preserve my heart's first purity, it is to them I owe it. I write no more. Had I desired to treat of music specifically, I should not have written at all; for that theme demands a tongue beyond the tongues of men and angels,--a voice that is no more heard. But if one faithful spirit find an echo in my expression, to his beating heart for music, his inward song of praise, it is not in vain that I write, that what I have written is written. CHARLES AUCHESTER. FOOTNOTE: [10] Sterndale Bennett married Mary Anne, daughter of Captain James Wood, R. N. THE END. 
38949	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. CHARLES AUCHESTER VOLUME I. [Illustration: MENDELSSOHN FROM AN ORIGINAL PORTRAIT--1821.] CHARLES AUCHESTER BY ELIZABETH SHEPPARD _WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_ BY GEORGE P. UPTON AUTHOR OF "THE STANDARD OPERAS," "STANDARD ORATORIOS," "STANDARD CANTATAS," "STANDARD SYMPHONIES," "WOMAN IN MUSIC," ETC. In Two Volumes VOLUME I. CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 1891 COPYRIGHT, BY A. C. MCCLURG AND CO. A.D. 1891. INTRODUCTION. The romance of "Charles Auchester," which is really a memorial to Mendelssohn, the composer, was first published in England in 1853. The titlepage bore the name of "E. Berger," a French pseudonym, which for some time served to conceal the identity of the author. Its motto was a sentence from one of Disraeli's novels: "Were it not for Music, we might in these days say, The Beautiful is dead." The dedication was also to the same distinguished writer, and ran thus: "To the author of 'Contarini Fleming,' whose perfect genius suggested this imperfect history." To this flattering dedication, Mr. Disraeli replied in a note to the author: "No greater book will ever be written upon music, and it will one day be recognized as the imaginative classic of that divine art." Rarely has a book had a more propitious introduction to the public; but it was destined to encounter the proverbial fickleness of that public. The author was not without honor save in her own country. It was reserved for America first to recognize her genius. Thence her fame travelled back to her own home; but an early death prevented her from enjoying the fruits of her enthusiastic toil. Other works followed from her busy pen, among them "Counterparts,"--a musico-philosophical romance, dedicated to Mrs. Disraeli, which had a certain success; "Rumor," of which Beethoven, under the name of Rodomant, is supposed to have been the hero; "Beatrice Reynolds," "The Double Coronet," and "Almost a Heroine:" but none of them achieved the popularity which "Charles Auchester" enjoyed. They shone only by the reflected light of this wonderful girl's first book. The republication of this romance will recall to its readers of an earlier generation an old enthusiasm which may not be altogether lost, though they may smile as they read and remember. It should arouse a new enthusiasm in the younger generation of music-lovers. Elizabeth Sheppard, the author of "Charles Auchester," was born at Blackheath, near London, in 1837. Her father was a clergyman of the Established Church, and her mother a Jewess by descent,--which serves to account for the daughter's strong Jewish sympathies in this remarkable display of hero-worship. Left an orphan at a tender age, she was thrown upon her own resources, and chose school-teaching for her profession. She was evidently a good linguist and musician, for she taught music and the languages before she was sixteen. She had decided literary ambition also, and wrote plays, poems, and short stories at an age when other children are usually engaged in pastimes. Notwithstanding the arduous nature of her work and her exceedingly delicate health, she devoted her leisure hours to literary composition. How this frail girl must have toiled is evidenced by the completion of "Charles Auchester" in her sixteenth year. In her seventeenth she had finished "Counterparts,"--a work based upon a scheme even more ambitious than that of her first story. When it is considered that these two romances were written at odd moments of leisure intervening between hours of wearing toil in the school-room, and that she was a mere child and very frail, it will be admitted that the history of literary effort hardly records a parallel case. Nature however always exacts the penalty for such mental excesses. This little creature of "spirit, fire, and dew" died on March 13, 1862, at the early age of twenty-five. Apart from its intrinsic merits as a musical romance, there are some features of "Charles Auchester" of more than ordinary interest. It is well known that Seraphael, its leading character, is the author's ideal of Mendelssohn, and that the romance was intended to be a memorial of him. More thoroughly to appreciate the work, and not set it down as mere rhapsody, it must be remembered that Miss Sheppard wrote it in a period of Mendelssohn worship in England as ardent and wellnigh as universal as the Handel worship of the previous century had been. It was written in 1853. Mendelssohn had been dead but six years, and his name was still a household word in every English family. He was adored, not only for his musical genius, but also for his singular purity of character. He was personally as well known in England as any native composer. His Scotch Symphony and Hebrides Overture attested his love of Scotch scenery. He had conducted concerts in the provinces; he appeared at concerts in London in 1829 and in subsequent years, and was the idol of the drawing-rooms of that day. Some of his best works were written on commissions from the London Philharmonic Society. He conducted his "Lobgesang" at Birmingham in 1840, and he produced his immortal "Elijah" in the same town in 1846,--only a year before his death. There were numerous ties of regard, and even of affection, binding him to the English people. From a passing remark in the course of the romance, we learn that it opens about the year 1833, when Mendelssohn was in his prime; and as it closes with his death, it thus covers a period of fourteen years,--the most brilliant and productive part of his life. Curious critics of "Charles Auchester" have found close resemblances between its characters and other musicians. There is good reason to believe that Starwood Burney was intended for Sterndale Bennett, not only from the resemblance of the names in sound and meaning, but also from many other events common to each. It requires, however, some stretch of the imagination to believe that Charles Auchester was intended as a portrait of Joachim the violinist; that Aronach, the teacher at the St. Cecilia School, was meant for Zelter; Clara Benette for Jenny Lind; and Laura Lemark for Taglioni. It is altogether likely that the author in drawing these characters had the types in mind, and without intending to produce a parallel or to preserve anything like synchronism, invested them with some of the characteristics of the real persons, all of whom, it may be added, except Taglioni, were intimately associated with Mendelssohn. All this lends the charm of human interest to the book; but, after all, it is the author's personality that invests it with its rare fascination. It would not bear searching literary criticism; fortunately, no one has been so ungracious as to apply it. It is more to the purpose to remember that here is a young girl of exquisite refinement, rare intellectuality, and the most overwhelming enthusiasm, who has written herself into her work with all her girlish fancies, her great love for the art, her glowing imagination, and that rapturous devotion for the hero of her exalted world which is characteristic of her sex at sixteen. And in doing this she has pictured her dreams with most glowing colors, and told them with delicate _naïveté_ and exuberant passion. In a word, she has expressed the very spirit of music in language, and in a language so pure and adoring as to amount to worship. In Disraeli's words, it is "the imaginative classic of the divine art." To those who have not lost their early enthusiasms, this little book will come like the perfume of a flower, or some tone of a well-remembered voice, recalling the old days and reviving an old pleasure. To those who have lost such emotions, what is left but Lethe? In preparing the work for publication, I have added some brief notes, indicating the connection between the real and the ideal, and making the meaning of the text clearer to the general reader of to-day. Anything which will throw light upon this charming romance should be welcome, and the more so that the gifted author has been strangely neglected both in musical and general biographical dictionaries. It is to be hoped that an adequate sketch of her life may some day appear. GEORGE P. UPTON. _Chicago, 1891._ CHARLES AUCHESTER. CHAPTER I. I never wrote a long letter in my life. It is the manual part I dislike,--arranging the paper, holding the pen in my fingers, and finding my arm exhausted with carrying it to and from the inkstand. It does not signify, though; for I have made arrangements with my free-will to write more than a letter,--a life, or rather the life of a life. Let none pause to consider what this means,--neither quite Germanly mysterious, nor quite Saxonly simple, like my origin. There are many literal presentations of ordinary personages in books which, I am informed, and I suppose I am to assure myself, are introduced expressly to intensify and illustrate the chief and peculiar interest where an interest is, or to allure the attention of the implicit, where it is not. But how does it happen that the delineations of the gods among men, the heroic, gifted few, the beings of imaginative might or genius, are so infinitely more literal? Who--worshipping, if not strong enough to serve, the Ideal--can endure the graceless ignorance of his subject betrayed by many a biographer, accepted and accomplished in his style? Who, so worshipping, can do anything but shudder at the meagre, crude, mistakable portraits of Shakspeare, of Verulam, of Beethoven? Heaven send my own may not make me shudder first, and that in my attempt to recall, through a kind of artistic interlight, a few remembered lineaments, I be not self-condemned to blush for the spiritual craft whose first law only I had learned. I know how many notions grown persons entertain of their childhood as real, which are factitious, and founded upon elder experience, until they become confounded with it; but I also feel that in great part we neglect our earliest impressions, as vague, which were the truest and best we ever had. I believe none can recall their childish estimate or essence without identifying within their present intimate selves. In my own case the analogy is perfect between my conceptions then and my positive existence now. So every one must feel who is at all acquainted with the liabilities of those who follow art. The man of power may manage to merge his individuality in his expansive association with the individuality of others; the man of science quenches self-consciousness in abstraction; and not a few who follow with hot energy some worldly calling, become, in its exercise, as itself, nor for a solitary moment are left alone with their personality to remember even that as separate and distinctly real. But all artists, whether acknowledged or amateur, must have proved that, for themselves, the gauge of immortality, in life as in art, consists in their self-acquaintance, their self-reliance, their exact self-appreciation with reference to their masters, their models, their one supreme ideal. I was born in a city of England farthest from the sea, within whose liberties my grandfather and father had resided, acquiring at once a steady profit and an honorable commercial fame. Never mind what they were, or in which street or square their stocked warehouses were planted, alluring the eyes and hearts of the pupils of Adam Smith. I remember the buildings well; but my elder brother, the eldest of our family, was established there when I first recall them, and he was always there, residing on the premises. He was indeed very many years my senior, and I little knew him; but he was a steady, excellent person, with a tolerable tenor voice and punctilious filial observances towards our admirable mother. My father was born in England; but though his ancestors were generally Saxon, an infusion of Norman blood had taken place in his family a generation or two behind him, and I always suspected that we owed to the old breeding of Claire Renée de Fontenelle some of our peculiarities and refinements; though my father always maintained that they flowed directly from our mother. He was travelling for the house upon the Continent when he first found her out, embedded like a gem by a little German river; and she left with him, unrepiningly, her still but romantic home, not again to revisit it. My mother must have been in her girlhood, as she was in her maturest years, a domestic presence of purity, kindliness, and home-heartedness; she had been accustomed to every kind of household manoeuvre, and her needlework was something exquisite. From her German mother she inherited the quietness of which grace is born, the prudence with which wisdom dwells, and many an attribute of virtue; but from her father she inherited the right to name herself of Hebrew origin. Herein my chief glory lies; and whatever enlightenment my destiny has boasted, streams from that radiant point. I know that there are many who would as genuinely rejoice in descent from Mahomet, from Attila, or from Robin Hood, as from any of Israel's children; but I claim the golden link in my genealogy as that which connects it with eternity and with all that in my faith is glorious.[1] My mother had lived in a certain seclusion for some years before I first began to realize; for my father died before my first year's close. We still resided near the house of business,--not in it, for that was my brother's now, and Fred had lately brought home a wife. But we were quite settled and at home in the house I first remember, when it breaks, picture-like, on my dawning memory. I had three sisters: Clotilda was the oldest, and only a year younger than Fred. She was an extraordinarily clever person, though totally destitute of art or artistic yearnings. She had been educated unwontedly, and at least understood all that she had learned. Her favorite pursuits were reading, and comparing lexicons and analyses of different languages, and endeavoring to find common roots for all; but she could and did work perfectly, write a fine, close hand, and very vigorously superintend the household in my mother's absence or indisposition. She had rather a queer face, like one of the Puritan visages in antique portraits; but a very cheerful smile, and perfect composure of manner,--a great charm in mine eyes, O ye nymphs and graces! Millicent, three years younger, was a spirit of gentleness,--imperceptibly instructing me, she must be treated with a sort of awe. Her melancholy oval face and her pale eyelids showed more of the Hebrew than any of us excepting myself; only I was plain, and she remarkably pleasing. Lydia, my youngest sister, was rather showy than brilliant, and rather bright than keen,--but not much of either; and yet she was always kind to me, and I should have grieved to miss her round brown eyes at our breakfast-table, or her loud, ringing laugh upstairs from the kitchen; for she had the pantry key. Both Millicent and Lydia played and sang, if not very powerfully, yet with superior taste. Millicent's notes, not many in number, were as the notes of a cooing dove. Before I was five years old I used to sit upon the old grand piano and watch their faces while they sang on Sunday evenings,--my mother in a tremulous soprano, with Fred's tenor, and the bass of a friend of his. This did not please me; and here let me say that musical temperament as surely asserts itself in aversion to discordant, or not pure, as in desire for sweet and true sounds. I am certain this is true. I was always happy when Millicent sang alone, or even when she and Lydia mixed their notes; for both had an ear as accurate for tune and for time as can be found in England, or indeed in Germany. But oh! I have writhed beneath the dronings of Hatchardson's bass, on quartet or chorale an audible blemish, and in a rare composition now and then, the distorting and distracting point on which I was morbidly obliged to fasten my attention. We had no other music, except a little of the same kind, not quite so good, from various members of families in the neighborhood professing to play or sing. But I will not dwell on those, for they are displaced by images more significant. I can never recollect a time when I did not sing. I believe I sang before I spoke. Not that I possessed a voice of miraculous power, but that everything resolved itself into a species of inward rhythm, not responsive to by words, but which passed into sound, tone, and measure before I knew it was formed. Every sight as well as all that touched my ears produced this effect. I could not watch the smoke ascending, nor the motions of the clouds, nor, subtler yet, the stars peeping through the vaulted twilight, without the framing and outpouring of exuberant emotion in strains so expressive to my own intelligence that it was entranced by them completely. I was a very ailing child for several years, and only the cares I received preserved me then; but now I feel as if all healthfulness had been engendered by the mere vocal abstraction into which I was plunged a great part of every day. I had been used to hear music discussed, slightly, it is true, but always reverently, and I early learned there were those who followed that--the supreme of art--in the very town we inhabited,--indeed, my sisters had taken lessons of a lady a pupil of Clementi; but she had left for London before I knew my notes. Our piano had been a noble instrument,--one of the first and best that displaced the harpsichords of Kirkman.[2] Well worn, it had also been well used, and when deftly handled, had still some delights extricable. It stood in our drawing-room, a chamber of the red-brick house that held us,--rather the envy of our neighbors, for it had a beautiful ceiling, carved at the centre and in the corners with bunches and knots of lilies. It was a high and rather a large room. It was filled with old furniture, rather handsome and exquisitely kept, and was a temple of awe to me, because I was not allowed to play there, and only sometimes to enter it,--as, for example, on Sundays, or when we had tea-parties, or when morning callers came and asked to see me; and whenever I did enter, I was not suffered to touch the rug with my feet, nor to approach the sparkling steel of the fire-irons and fender nearer than its moss-like edge. Our drawing-room was, in fact, a curious confusion of German stiffness and English comfort; but I did not know this then. We generally sat in the parlor looking towards the street and the square tower of an ancient church. The windows were draped with dark-blue moreen, and between them stood my mother's dark-blue velvet chair, always covered with dark-blue cloth, except on Sundays and on New Year's day and at the feast of Christmas. The dark-blue drugget covered a polished floor, whose slippery, uncovered margin beneath the wainscot has occasioned me many a tumble, though it always tempted me to slide when I found myself alone in the room. There were plenty of chairs in the parlor, and a few little tables, besides a large one in the centre, over which hung a dark-blue cover, with a border of glowing orange. I was fond of the high mantelshelf, whose ornaments were a German model of a bad Haus, and two delicate wax nuns, to say nothing of the china candlesticks, the black Berlin screens, and the bronze pastille-box. Of all things I gloried in the oak closets--one filled with books, the other with glass and china--on either side of the fireplace; nor did I despise the blue cloth stools, beautifully embroidered by Clo, just after her sampler days, in wool oak-wreaths rich with acorns. I used to sit upon these alternately at my mother's feet, for she would not permit one to be used more than the other; and I was a very obedient infant. My greatest trial was going to church, because the singing was so wretchedly bad that it made my ears ache. Often I complained to my mother; but she always said we could not help it if ignorant persons were employed to praise God, that it ought to make us more ready to stand up and sing, and answer our very best, and that none of us could praise him really as the angels do. This was not anything of an answer, but I persisted in questioning her, that I might see whether she ever caught a new idea upon the subject. But no; and thus I learned to lean upon my own opinion before I was eight years old, for I never went to church till I was seven. Clo thought that there should be no singing in church,--she had a dash of the Puritan in her creed; but Lydia horrified my mother oftentimes by saying she should write to the organist about revising the choir. But here my childish wisdom crept in, and whispered to me that nothing could be done with such a battered, used-up, asthmatic machine as our decrepit organ, and I gave up the subject in despair. Still, Millicent charmed me one night by silencing Fred and Mr. Hatchardson when they were prosing of Sternhold and Hopkins, and Tate and Brady,[3] and singing-galleries and charity-children, by saying,-- "You all forget that music is the highest gift that God bestows, and its faculty the greatest blessing. It must be the only form of worship for those who are musically endowed,--that is, if they employ it aright." Millicent had a meek manner of administering a wholesome truth which another would have pelted at the hearer; but then Millicent spoke seldom, and never unless it was necessary. She read, she practised, she made up mantles and caps _à ravir_, and she visited poor sick people; but still I knew she was not happy, though I could not conceive nor conjecture why. She did not teach me anything, and Lydia would have dreamed first of scaling Parnassus. But Clo's honorable ambition had always been to educate me; and as she was really competent, my mother made no objection. I verily owe a great deal to her. She taught me to read English, French, and German between my eighth and tenth years; but then we all knew German in our cradles, as my mother had for us a nurse from her own land. Clo made me also spell by a clever system of her own, and she got me somehow into subtraction; but I was a great concern to her in one respect,--I never got on with my writing. I believe she and my mother entertained some indefinite notion of my becoming, in due time, the junior partner of the firm. This prescience of theirs appalled me not, for I never intended to fulfil it, and I thought, justly enough, that there was plenty of time before me to undo their arrangements. I always went to my lessons in the parlor from nine till twelve, and again in the afternoon for an hour, so that I was not overworked; but even when I was sitting by Clo,--she, glorious creature! deep in Leyden or Gesenius--I used to chant my geography or my Telemachus to my secret springs of song, without knowing how or why, but still chanting as my existence glided. I had tolerable walks in the town and about through the dusty lanes with my sisters or my nurse, for I was curious; and, to a child, freshness is inspiration, and old sights seen afresh seem new. I liked of all things to go to the chemist's when my mother replenished her little medicine-chest. There was unction in the smell of the packeted, ticketed drugs, in the rosy cinnamon, the golden manna, the pungent vinegar, and the aromatic myrrh. How I delighted in the copper weights, the spirit-lamp, the ivory scales, the vast magazines of lozenges, and the delicate lip-salve cases, to say nothing of the glittering toilet bagatelles, and perfumes and soaps! I mention all this just because the only taste that has ever become necessary to me in its cultivation, besides music, is chemistry, and I could almost say I know not which I adhere to most; but Memory comes,-- "And with her flying finger sweeps my lip." I forbear. I loved the factories, to some of which I had access. I used to think those wheels and whirring works so wonderful that they were like the inside of a man's brain. My notion was nothing pathetic of the pale boys and lank girls about, for they seemed merely stirring or moveless parts of the mechanism. I am afraid I shall be thought very unfeeling; I am not aware that I was, nevertheless. I sometimes went out to tea in the town; I did not like it, but I did it to please my mother. At one or two houses I was accustomed to a great impression of muffins, cake, and marmalade, with coffee and cream; and the children I met there did nothing adequately but eat. At a few houses, again, I fared better, for they only gave us little loaves of bread and little cups of tea, and we romped the evening long, and dramatized our elders and betters until the servants came for us. But I, at least, was always ready to go home, and glad to see my short, wide bed beside my mother's vast one, and my spotless dimity curtains with the lucid muslin frills; and how often I sang the best tunes in my head to the nameless effect of rosemary and lavender that haunted my large white pillow! We always went to bed, and breakfasted, very early, and I usually had an hour before nine wherein to disport myself as I chose. It was in these hours Millicent taught me to sing from notes and to discern the aspect of the key-board. Of the crowding associations, the teeming remembrances, just at infancy and early childhood, I reject all, except such as it becomes positively necessary I should recall; therefore I dwell not upon this phase of my life, delightful as it was, and stamped with perfect purity,--the reflex of an unperverted temperament and of kindly tenderness. FOOTNOTES: [1] The character of Charles Auchester is supposed to have been intended for a sketch of the violinist Joachim, whose talent was first recognized by Mendelssohn, and who studied for many years at Leipsic under that composer's influence, though his own writings betray a strong leaning towards Schumann. [2] A family of eminent harpsichord-makers. Jacob, the founder of the business, went to London from Germany early in the last century, and died in 1778. The business has been continued through five generations, and is now conducted by Joseph Kirkman in the same city. [3] Compilers of English psalmody in the last century. CHAPTER II. We had a town-hall,--a very imposing building of its class, and it was not five minutes' walk from the square-towered church I mentioned. It was, I well knew, a focus of some excitement at election times and during the assizes, also in the spring, when religious meetings were held there; yet I had never been in it, and seldom near it,--my mother preferring us to keep as clear of the town proper as possible. Yet I knew well where it stood, and I had an inkling now and then that music was to be heard there; furthermore, within my remembrance, Millicent and Lydia had been taken by Fred to hear Paganini within its precincts. I was too young to know anything of the triennial festival that distinguished our city as one of the most musical in England, at that time almost the only one, indeed, so honored and glorified. I said, what I must again repeat, that I knew nothing of such a prospective or past event until the end of the summer in which I entered my eleventh year. I was too slight for my health to be complete, but very strong for one so slight. Neither was I tall, but I had an innate love of grace and freedom, which governed my motions; for I was extremely active, could leap, spring, and run with the best, though I always hated walking. I believe I should have died under any other care than that expanded over me, for my mother abhorred the forcing system. Had I belonged to those who advocate excessive early culture, my brain would, I believe, have burst, so continually was it teeming. But from my lengthy idleness alternating with moderate action, I had no strain upon my faculties. How perfectly I recollect the morning, early in autumn, on which the festival was first especially suggested to me! It was a very bright day, but so chilly that we had a fire in the parlor grate, for we were all disposed to be very comfortable as part of our duty. I had said all my lessons, and was now sitting at the table writing a small text copy in a ruled book, with an outside marbled fantastically brown and blue, which book lay, not upon the cloth, of course, but upon an inclined plane formed of a great leather case containing about a quire of open blotting-paper. My sister Clotilda was over against me at the table, with the light shaded from her eyes by a green fan screen, studying, as usual, in the morning hours, a Greek Testament full of very neat little black notes. I remember her lead-colored gown, her rich washing silk, and her clear white apron, her crimson muffetees and short, close black mittens, her glossy hair rolled round her handsome tortoise-shell comb, and the bunch of rare though quaint ornaments--seals, keys, rings, and lockets,--that balanced her beautiful English watch. What a treasure they would have been for a modern châtelaine! my father having presented her with the newest, and an antique aunt having willed her the rest. She was very much like an old picture of a young person sitting there. For my part, I was usually industrious enough, because I was never persecuted with long tasks; my attention was never stretched, as it were, upon a last, so that it was no meritorious achievement if I could bend it towards all that I undertook, with a species of elasticity peculiar to the nervous temperament. My mother was also busy. She sat in her tall chair at the window, her eyes constantly drawn towards the street, but she never left off working, being deep in the knitting of an enormous black silk purse for Lydia to carry when she went to market. Millicent was somewhere out of the room, and Lydia, having given orders for dinner, had gone out to walk. I had written about six lines in great trepidation--for writing usually fevered me a little, it was such an effort--when my great goose-quill slipped through my fingers, thin as they were, and I made a desperate plunge into an O. I exclaimed aloud, "Oh, what a blot!" and my lady Mentor arose and came behind me. "Worse than a blot, Charles," she said, or something to that effect. "A blot might not have been your fault, but the page is very badly written; I shall cut it out, and you had better begin another." "I shall only blot that, Clo," I answered; and Clo appealed to my mother. "It is very strange, is it not, that Charles, who is very attentive generally, should be so little careful of his writing? He will never suit the post of all others the most important he _should_ suit." "What is that?" I inquired so sharply that my mother grew dignified, and responded gravely,-- "My dear Clotilda, it will displease me very much if Charles does not take pains in every point, as you are so kind as to instruct him. It is but little such a young brother can do to show his gratitude." "Mother!" I cried, and sliding out of my chair, I ran to hers. "I shall never be able to write,--I mean neatly; Clo may look over me if she likes, and she will know how hard I try." "But do you never mean to write, Charles?" "I shall get to write somehow, I suppose, but I shall never write what you call a beautiful hand." My mother took my fingers and laid them along her own, which were scarcely larger. "But your hands are very little less than mine; surely they can hold a pen?" "Oh, yes, I can hold anything!" And then I laughed and said, "I could do something with my hands too." I was going to finish, "I could play;" but Lydia had just turned the corner of the street, and my mother's eyes were watching her up to the door. So I stood before her without finishing my explanation. She at length said, kindly, "Well, now go and write one charming copy, and then we will walk." I ran back to my table and climbed my chair, Clo having faithfully fulfilled her word and cut out the offending leaf. But I had scarcely traced once, "Do not contradict your elders," before Lydia came in, flushed and glowing, with a basket upon her arm. She exhibited the contents to my mother,--who, I suppose, approved thereof, as she said they might be disposed of in the kitchen,--and then, with a sort of sigh, began, before she left the room, to remove her walking dress. "Oh! it is hopeless; the present price is a guinea." "I was fearful it would be so, my dear girl," replied my mother, in a tone of mingled condolence and authority she was fond of assuming. "It would be neither expedient nor fitting that I should allow you to go, though I very much wish it; but should we suffer ourselves such an indulgence, we should have to deprive ourselves of comforts that are necessary to health, and thus to well being. I should not like dear Millicent and yourself, young as you are, to go alone to the crowded seats in the town-hall; and if I went with you, we should be three guineas out of pocket for a month." This was true; my mother's jointure was small, and though we lived in ease, it was by the exercise of an economy rigidly enforced and minutely developed. It was in my own place, indeed, I learned how truly happy does comfort render home, and how strictly comfort may be expressed by love from prudence, by charity from frugality, and by wit from very slender competence. "I do not complain, dear mother," Lydia resumed, in a livelier vein; "I ventured to ask at the office because you gave me leave, and Fred thought there would be back seats lowered in price, or perhaps a standing gallery, as there was at the last festival. But it seems the people in the gallery made so much uproar last time that the committee have resolved to give it up." This was getting away from the point, so I put in, "Is the festival to be soon, then, Lydia?" "Yes, dear; it is only three weeks to-day to the first performance." "Will it be very grand?" "Oh, yes; the finest and most complete we have ever had." Then Lydia, having quite recovered her cheerfulness, went to the door, and speedily was no more seen. No one spoke, and I went on with my copy; but it was hard work for me to do so, for I was in a pricking pulsation from head to foot. It must have been a physical prescience of mental excitement, for I had scarcely ever felt so much before. I was longing, nay, crazy, to finish my page, that I might run out and find Millicent, who, child as I was, I knew could tell me what I wanted to hear better than any one of them. My eagerness impeded me, and I did not conclude it to Clo's genuine satisfaction after all. She dotted all my i's and crossed my t's, though with a condescending confession that I had taken pains,--and then I was suffered to go; but it was walking time, and my mother dressed me herself in her room, so I could not catch Millicent till we were fairly in the street. CHAPTER III. I do not pretend to remember all the conversations verbatim which I have heard during my life, or in which I have taken a part; still, there are many which I do remember word by word, and every word. My conversation that morning with Millicent I do not remember,--its results blotted it out forever; still, I am conscious it was an exposition of energy and enthusiasm, for hers kindled as she replied to my ardent inquiries, and, unknowingly, she inflamed my own. She gave me a tale of the orchestra, its fulness and its potency; of the five hundred voices, of the conductor, and of the assembly; she assured me that nothing could be at all like it, that we had no idea of its resources or its effects. She was melancholy, evidently, at first, but quite lost in her picturesque and passionate delineation, I all the while wondering how she could endure to exist and not be going. I felt in myself that it was not only a sorrow, but a shame, to live in the very place and not press into the courts of music. I adored music even then,--ay! not less than now, when I write with the strong heart and brain of manhood. I thought how easily Millicent might do without a new hat, a new cloak, or live on bread and water for a year. But I was man enough even then, I am thankful to say, to recall almost on the instant that Millicent was a woman, a very delicate girl, too, and that it would never do for her to be crushed among hundreds of moving men and women, nor for Fred to undertake the charge of more than one--he had bought a ticket for his wife. Then I returned to myself. From the first instant the slightest idea of the festival had been presented to me, I had seized upon it personally with the most perfect confidence. I had even determined how to go,--for go I felt I must; and I knew if I could manage to procure a ticket, Fred would take me in his hand, and my mother would allow me to be disposed of in the shadow of his coat-tails, he was always so careful of us all. As I walked homewards I fell silent, and with myself discussed my arrangements; they were charming. The town-hall was not distant from our house more than a quarter of a mile. I was often permitted to run little errands for my sisters: to match a silk or to post a letter. My pecuniary plan was unique: I was allowed twopence a week, to spend as I would, though Clo protested I should keep an account-book as soon as I had lived a dozen years. From my hatred of copper money I used to change it into silver as fast as possible, and at present I had five sixpences, and should have another by the end of another week. I was to take this treasure to the ticket office, and request whatever gentleman presided to let me have a ticket for my present deposit, and trust--I felt a certain assurance that no one would refuse me, I know not why, who had to do with the management of musical affairs. I was to leave my sixpences with my name and address, and to call with future allowances until I had refunded all. It struck me that not many months must pass before this desirable end might accomplish itself. I have often marvelled why I was not alarmed, nervous as I was, to venture alone into such a place, with such a purpose; but I imagine I was just too ignorant, too infantine in my notions of business. At all events, I was more eager than anxious for the morrow, and only restless from excited hope. I never manoeuvred before, I have often manoeuvred since, but never quite so innocently, as I did to be sent on an errand the next morning. It was very difficult, no one _would_ want anything, and at last in despair I dexterously carried away a skein, or half a skein, of brown sewing silk, with which Lydia was hemming two elegant gauze veils for herself and for Millicent. The veils were to be worn that day I knew, for my mother had set her heart upon their excluding a "thought" of east in the autumnal wind, and there was no other silk; I managed to twist it into my shoe, and Lydia looked everywhere for it, even into the pages of Clo's book,--greatly to her discomfiture. But in vain, and at last said Lydia, "Here, Charles, you must buy me another," handing me a penny. Poor Lydia! she did not know how long it would be before I brought the silk; but imagining I should be back _not_ directly, I had the decency to transfer my pilfered skein to the under surface of the rug, for I knew that they would turn it up as usual in a search. And then, without having been observed to stoop, I fetched my beaver broad brimmer and scampered out. I scampered the whole way to the hall. It was a chilly day, but the sun had acquired some power, and it was all summer in my veins. I believe I had never been in such a state of ecstasy. I was quite lightheaded, and madly expected to possess myself of a ticket immediately, and dance home in triumph. The hall! how well I remember it, looking very still, very cold, very blank; the windows all shuttered, the doors all closed. But never mind; the walls were glorious! They glittered with yellow placards, the black letters about a yard long announcing the day, the hour, the force,--the six-foot long list of wonders and worthies. I was something disappointed not to find the ticket-office a Spanish castle suddenly sprung from the stonework of the hall itself, but it was some comfort that it was in St. Giles' Street, which was not far. I scampered off again,--I tumbled down, having lost my breath, but I sprang again to my feet; I saw a perfect encampment of placards, and I rushed towards it. How like it was to a modern railway terminus, that ticket-office!--in more senses than one, too. The door was not closed here, but wide open to the street: within were green-baize doors besides, but the outer entrance was crowded, and those were shut,--not for a minute together, though, for I could not complain of quiet here. Constantly some one hurrying past nearly upset me, bustling out or pushing in. They were all men, it is true; but was I a girl? Besides, I had seen a boy or two who had surveyed me impertinently, and whom I took leave to stare down. A little while I stood in the entry, bewildered, to collect my thoughts,--not my courage,--and then, endeavoring to be all calmness and self-possession, I staggered in. I then saw two enclosed niches, counter-like: the one had a huge opening, and was crammed with people on this side; the other was smaller, an air of eclecticism pervaded it; and behind each stood a man. There was a staircase in front, and painted on the wall to its left I read: "Committee-room upstairs; Balloted places,"--but then I returned to my counters, and discovered, by reading also, that I must present myself at the larger for unreserved central seats. It was occupied so densely in front just now that it was hopeless to dream of an approach or appeal; I could never scale that human wall. I retreated again to the neighborhood of the smaller compartment, and was fascinated to watch the swarming faces. Now a stream poured down the staircase, all gentlemen, and most of them passed out, nodding and laughing among themselves. Not all passed out. One or two strolled to the inner doors and peeped through their glass halves, while others gossiped in the entry. But one man came, and as I watched him, planted himself against the counter I leaned upon,--the mart of the reserved tickets. He did not buy any though, and I wondered why he did not, he looked so easy, so at home there. Not that I saw his face, which was turned from me; it struck me he was examining a clock there was up on the staircase wall. I only noticed his boots, how bright they were, and his speckled trousers, and that his hand, which hung down, was very nicely covered with a doeskin glove. Before he had made out the time, a number of the stones in the human partition gave way at once,--in other words, I saw several chinks between the loungers at the larger counter. I closer clasped my sixpences, neatly folded in paper, and sped across the office. Now was my hour. I was not quite so tall as to be able to look over and see whom I addressed; nevertheless, I still spoke up. I said, "If you please, sir, I wish to speak to you very particularly about a ticket." "Certainly," was the reply instantly thrown down upon me. "One guinea, if you please." "Sir, I wish to _speak_ about one, not to buy it just this minute; and if you allow me to speak,"--I could not continue with the chance of being heard, for two more stones had just thrust themselves in and hid my chink; they nearly stifled me as it was, but I managed to escape, and stood out clear behind. I stood out not to go, but to wait, determined to apply again far more vigorously. I listened to the rattling sovereigns as they dropped; and dearly I longed for some of that money, though I never longed for money before or since. Then suddenly reminded, I turned, to see whether that noticeable personage had left the smaller counter. He was there. I insensibly moved nearer to him,--so attractive was his presence. And as I believe in various occult agencies and physical influences, I hold myself to have been actually drawn towards him. He had a face upon which it was life to look, so vivid was the intelligence it radiated, so interesting was it in expression, and if not perfect, so pure in outline. He was gazing at me too, and this, no doubt, called out of me a glance all imploring, as so I felt, yea, even towards him, for a spark of kindliest beam seemed to dart from under his strong dark lashes, and his eyes woke up,--he even smiled just at the corners of his small, but not thin lips. It was too much for me. I ran across, and again took my stand beside him. I thought, and I still think, he would have spoken to me instantly; but another man stepped up and spoke to him. He replied in a voice I have always especially affected,--calm, and very clear, but below tone in uttering remarks not intended for the public. I did not hear a word. As soon as he finished speaking, he turned and looked down upon me; and then he said, "Can I do anything for you?" I was so charmed with his frank address, I quite gasped for joy: "Sir, I am waiting to speak to the man inside over there about my ticket." "Shall I go across and get it?" "Why, no, sir. I must speak to him--or if you would tell me about it." "I will tell you anything; say on." "Sir, I am very poor, and have not a guinea, but I shall have enough in time, if you will let me buy one with the money I have brought, and pay the rest by degrees." I shall never forget the way he laid his hand on my shoulder and turned me to the light,--to scrutinize my developments, I suspect; for he stayed a moment or two before he answered, "I do think you look as if you really wanted one, but I am afraid they will not understand such an arrangement here." "I _must_ go to the festival," I returned, looking into his eyes, "I am so resolved to go; I will knock the door down if I cannot get a ticket. Oh! I will sell my clothes, I will do anything. If you will get me a ticket, sir, I will promise to pay you, and you can come and ask my mother whether I ever break my word." "I am sure you always keep it, or you would not love music so earnestly; for you are very young to be so earnest," he responded, still holding me by the arm, that thrilled beneath his kindly pressure. "Will you go a little walk with me, and then I can better understand you or what you want to do?" "I won't go till I have got my ticket." "You _cannot_ get a ticket, my poor boy; they are not so easily disposed of. Why not ask your mother?" "My sister as good as did; but my mother said it was too expensive." "Did your mamma know how very much you wished it?" "We do not say mamma, she does not like it; she likes 'liebe Mutter.'" "Ah! she is German. Perhaps she would allow you to go, if you told her your great desire." "No, sir; she told Lydia that it would put her out of pocket." My new friend smiled at this. "Now, just come outside; we are in the way of many people here, and I have done my business since I saw that gentleman I was talking to when you crept so near me." "Did you know I wanted to come close to you, sir?" "Oh, yes! and that you wanted to speak. I know the little violin face." These words transported me. "Oh! do you think I am like a violin? I wish I were one going to the festival." "Alas! in that sense you are not one, I fear." I burst into tears; but I was very angry with myself, and noiselessly put my whole face into my handkerchief as we moved to the door. Once out in the street, the wind speedily dried these dews of my youth, and I ventured to take my companion's hand. He glanced down at mine as it passed itself into his, and I could see that he was examining it. I had very pretty hands and nails,--they were my only handsome point; my mother was very vain of them. I have found this out since I have grown up. "My dear little boy, I am going to do a very daring thing." "What is that, sir?" "I am going to run away with you; I am going to take you to my little house, for I have thought of something I can only say to you in a room. But if you will tell me your name, I will carry you safe home afterwards, and explain everything to the 'liebe Mutter.'" "Sir, I am so thankful to you that I cannot do enough to make you believe it. I am Charles Auchester, and we live at No. 14 Herne Street, at a red house with little windows and a great many steps up to the door." "I know the house, and have seen a beautiful Jewess at the window." "Everybody says Millicent is like a Jewess. Sir, do you mind telling me your name? I don't want to know it unless you like to tell it me." "My name is not a very pretty one,--Lenhart Davy."[4] "From David, I suppose?" I said, quickly. My friend looked at me very keenly. "You seem to think so at least." "Yes, I thought you came from a Jew, like us,--partly, I mean. Millicent says we ought to be very proud of it; and I think so too, because it is so very ancient, and does not alter." I perfectly well remember making this speech. Lenhart Davy laughed quietly, but so heartily it was delightful to hear him. "You are quite right about that. Come! will you trust me?" "Oh! sir, I should like to go above all things, if it is not very far,--I mean I must get back soon, or they will be frightened about me." "You _shall_ get back soon. I am afraid they are frightened now,--do you think so? But my little house is on the way to yours, though you would never find it out." He paused, and we walked briskly forwards. FOOTNOTE: [4] Lenhart Davy is supposed by some to have been intended for Ferdinand David, who was Mendelssohn's concert-meister at the Gewandhaus in Leipsic and the teacher of Joachim and Wilhelmj. David never was in England, however, and the resemblance is too remote to be entertained. CHAPTER IV. Turning out of the market-place, a narrow street presented itself: here were factories and the backs of houses. Again we threaded a narrow turning: here was an outskirt of the town. It fronted a vast green space; all building-ground enclosed this quiet corner, for only a few small houses stood about. Here were no shops and no traffic. We went on in all haste, and soon my guide arrested himself at a little green gate. He unlatched it; we passed through into a tiny garden, trim as tiny, pretty as trim, and enchantingly after my own way of thinking. Never shall I forget its aspect,--the round bed in the centre, edged with box as green as moss; the big rose-tree in the middle of the bed, and lesser rose-trees round; the narrow gravel walk, quite golden in the sun; the outer edge of box, and outer bed of heaths and carnations and glowing purple stocks. But above all, the giant hollyhocks, one on each side of a little brown door, whose little latticed porch was arched with clematis, silvery as if moonlight "Minatrost" were ever brooding upon that threshold. I must not loiter here; it would have been difficult to loiter in going about the garden, it was so unusually small, and the house, if possible, was more diminutive. It had above the door two tiny casement windows, only two; and as my guide opened the little door with a key he brought out of his pocket, there was nothing to delay our entrance. The passage was very narrow, but lightsome, for a door was open at the end, peeping into a lawny kind of yard. No children were tumbling about, nor was there any kitchen smell, but the rarest of all essences, a just perceptible cleanliness,--not moisture, but freshness. We advanced to a staircase about three feet in width, uncarpeted, but of a rich brown color, like chestnut skins; so also were the balusters. About a dozen steps brought us to a proportionate landing-place, and here I beheld two other little brown doors at angles with one another. Lenhart Davy opened one of these, and led me into a tiny room. Oh, what a tiny room! It was so tiny, so rare, so curiously perfect that I could not help looking into it as I should have done into a cabinet collection. The casements were uncurtained, but a green silk shade, gathered at the top and bottom, was drawn half-way along each. The walls were entirely books,--in fact, the first thing I thought of was the book-houses I used to build of all the odd volumes in our parlor closet during my quite incipient years. But such books as adorned the sides of the little sanctum were more suitable for walls than mine, in respect of size, being as they were, or as far as I could see, all music-books, except in a stand between the casements, where a few others rested one against another. There was a soft gray drugget upon the floor; and though, of course, the book-walls took up as much as half the room (a complete inner coat they made for the outside shell), yet it did not strike me as poking, because there was no heavy furniture, only a table, rather oval than round, and four chairs; both chairs and table of the hue I had admired upon the staircase,--a rich vegetable brown. On the table stood a square inkstand of the same wood, and a little tray filled with such odds as rubber, a penknife, sealing-wax, and a pencil. The wood of the mantelshelf was the same tone, and so was that of a plain piano that stood to the left of the fireplace, in the only nook that was not books from floor to ceiling; but the books began again over the piano. All this wood, so darkly striking the eye, had an indescribably soothing effect (upon me I mean), and right glad was I to see Mr. Davy seat himself upon a little brown bench before the piano and open it carefully. "Will you take off your hat for a minute or two, my dear boy?" he asked, before he did anything else. I laid the beaver upon the oval table. "Now, tell me, can you sing at all?" "Yes sir." "From notes, or by ear?" "A great deal by ear, but pretty well by notes." "_From_ notes," he said, correctingly, and I laughed. He then handed me a little book of chorales, which he fetched from some out-of-the-way hole beneath the instrument. They were all German: I knew some of them well enough. "Oh, yes, I can sing these, I think." "Try 'Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott.'[5] Can you sing alto?" "I always do. Millicent says it is proper for boys." He just played the opening chord _slentando_, and I began. I was perfectly comfortable, because I knew what I was about, and my voice, as a child's, was perfect. I saw by his face that he was very much surprised, as well as pleased. Then he left me alone to sing another, and then a third; but at last he struck in with a bass,--the purest, mellowest, and most unshaken I have ever heard, though not strong; neither did he derange me by a florid accompaniment he made as we went along. When I concluded the fourth, he turned, and took my hand in his. "I knew you could do something for music, but I had no idea it would be so very sweetly. I believe you will go to the festival, after all. You perceive I am very poor, or perhaps you do not perceive it, for children see fairies in flies. But look round my little room. I have nothing valuable except my books and my piano, and those I bought with all the money I had several years ago. I dare say you think my house is pretty. Well, it was just as bare as a barn when I came here six months ago. I made the shelves (the houses for my precious books) of deal, and I made that table, and the chairs, and this bench, of deal, and stained each afterwards; I stained my shelves too, and my piano. I only tell you this that you may understand how poor I am. I cannot afford to give you one of these tickets, they are too dear, neither have I one myself; but if your mother approves, and you like it, I believe I can take you with me to sing in the chorus." This was too much for me to bear without some strong expression or other. I took my hat, hid my face in it, and then threw my arms round Lenhart Davy's neck. He kissed me as a young father might have done, with a sort of pride, and I was able to perceive he had taken an instant fancy to me. I did not ask him whether he led the chorus, nor what he had to do with it, nor what I should have to do; but I begged him joyously to take me home directly. He tied on my hat himself, and I scampered all the way downstairs and round the garden before he came out of his shell. He soon followed after me, smiling; and though he asked me no curious question as we went along, I could tell he was nervous about something. We walked very fast, and in little less than an hour from the time I left home, I stood again upon the threshold. FOOTNOTE: [5] Martin Luther's chorale, "A mighty fortress is our God." CHAPTER V. Of all the events of that market-day, none moved me more enjoyably than the sight of the countenances, quite petrified with amazement, of my friends in the parlor. They were my three sisters. Clo came forward in her bonnet, all but ready for a sortie; and though she bowed demurely enough, she began at me very gravely,-- "Charles, I was just about to set out and search for you. My mother has already sent a servant. She herself is quite alarmed, and has gone upstairs." Before I could manage a reply, or introduce Lenhart Davy, he had drawn out his card. He gave it to the "beautiful Jewess." Millicent took it calmly, though she blushed, as she always did when face to face with strangers, and she motioned him to the sofa. At this very instant my mother opened the door. It would not be possible for me to recover that conversation, but I remember how very refined was the manner, and how amiably deferential the explanation of my guide, as he brought out everything smooth and apparent even to my mother's ken. Lydia almost laughed in his presence, she was so pleased with him, and Millicent examined him steadfastly with her usually shrinking gray eyes. My mother, I knew, was displeased with me, but she even forgave me before he had done speaking. His voice had in it a quality (if I may so name it) of brightness,--a metallic purity when raised; and the heroic particles in his blood seemed to start up and animate every gesture as he spoke. To be more explicit as to my possibilities, he told us that he was in fact a musical professor, though with little patronage in our town, where he had only a few months settled; that for the most part he taught, and preferred to teach, in classes, though he had but just succeeded in organizing the first. That his residence and connection in our town were authorized by his desire to discover the maximum moral influence of music upon so many selected from the operative ranks as should enable him by inference to judge of its moral power over those same ranks in the aggregate. I learned this afterwards, of course, as I could not apprehend it then; but I well recall that his language, even at that time, bound me as by a spell of conviction, and I even appreciated his philanthropy in exact proportion to his personal gifts. He said a great deal more, and considerably enlarged upon several points of stirring musical interest, before he returned to the article of the festival. Then he told us that his class would not form any section of the chorus, being a private affair of his own, but that he himself should sing among the basses, and that it being chiefly amateur, any accumulation of the choral force was of consequence. He glanced expressly at my mother when he said,-- "I think your little boy's voice and training would render him a very valuable vote for the altos, and if you will permit me to take charge of him at the rehearsals, and to exercise him once or twice alone, I am certain Mr. St. Michel will receive him gladly." "Is Mr. St. Michel the conductor, Mr. Davy, then?" replied my mother with kindness. "I remember seeing him in Germany when a little theatre was opened in our village. I was a girl then, and he very young." "Yes, madam. Application was made to the wonderful Milans-André, who has been delighting Europe with his own compositions interpreted by himself; but he could not visit England at present, so St. Michel will be with us, as on former occasions. And he is a good conductor, very steady, and understands rehearsal." Let me here anticipate and obviate a question. Was not my mother afraid to trust me in such a mixed multitude, with men and women her inferiors in culture and position? My mother had never trusted me before with a stranger, but I am certain, at this distance of time, she could not resist the pure truthfulness and perfect breeding of Lenhart Davy, and was forced into desiring such an acquaintance for me. Perhaps, too, she was a little foolish over her last-born, for she certainly did indulge me in a quiet way, and with a great show of strictness. As Lenhart Davy paused, she first thanked him, then rang the bell, was silent until she had ordered refreshments, sat still even then a few minutes, and presently uttered a deliberate consent. I could not bear it. I stood on one foot for an instant behind Clo's chair, and then flung myself into the passage. Once upstairs, I capered and danced about my mother's bed-room until fairly exhausted, and then I lay down on my own bed, positively in my coat and boots, and kicked the clothes into a heap, until I cried. This brought me to, and I remembered with awe the premises I had invaded. I darted to my feet, and was occupied in restoring calm as far as possible to the tumbled coverlid, when I was horrified at hearing a step. It was only Millicent, with tears in her good eyes. "I am so glad for you, Charles," she said; "I hope you will do everything in your power to show how grateful you are." "I will be grateful to everybody," I answered. "But do tell me, is he gone?" "Dear Charles, do not say '_he_' of such a man as Mr. Davy." Now, Millicent was but seventeen; still, she had her ideas, girlishly chaste and charming, of what men ought to be. "I think he is lovely," I replied, dancing round and round her, till she seized my hands. "Yes, Mr. Davy is gone; but he is kindly coming to fetch you to-morrow, to drink tea with him, and mother has asked him to dine here on Sunday. He showed her a letter he has from the great John Andernach, because mother said she knew him, and she says Mr. Davy must be very good, as well as very clever, from what Mr. Andernach has written." "I know he is good! Think of his noticing _me_! I knew I should go! I said I would go!" and I pulled my hands away to leap again. The old windows rattled, the walls shook, and in came Clo. "Charles, my mother says if you do not keep yourself still, she will send a note after Mr. Davy. My dear boy, you must come and be put to rights. How rough your head is! What have you been doing to make it so?" and she marched me off. I was quelled directly, and it was indeed very kind of them to scold me, or I should have ecstasized myself ill. It was hard work to get through that day, I was so impatient for the next; but Millicent took me to sing a little in the evening, and I believe it sent me to sleep. I must mention that the festival was to last three days. There were to be three grand morning performances and three evening concerts; but my mother informed me she had said she did not like my being out at night, and that Lenhart Davy had answered, the evening concerts were not free of entrance to him, as there was to be no chorus, so he could not take me. I did not care; for now a new excitement, child of the first and very like its parent, sprang within my breast. To sing myself,--it was something too grand; the veins glowed in my temples as I thought of my voice, so small and thin, swelling in the cloud of song to heaven: my side throbbed and fluttered. To go was more than I dared to expect; but to be necessary to go was more than I deserved,--it was glory. I gathered a few very nice flowers to give Lenhart Davy, for we had a pretty garden behind the house, and also a bit of a greenhouse, in which Millicent kept our geraniums all the winter. She was tying up the flowers for me with green silk when he knocked at the door, and would not come in, but waited for me outside. Amiable readers, everybody was old-fashioned twenty years ago,[6] and many somebodies took tea at five o'clock. Admirable economy of social life, to eat when you hunger, and to drink when you thirst! But it is polite to invent an appetite for made-dishes, so we complain not that we dine at eight nowadays; and it is politic too, for complexions are not what they used to be, and maiden heiresses, with all their thousands, cannot purchase Beauty Sleep! Pardon my digression while Davy is waiting at the door. I did not keep him so long, be certain. We set out. He was very much pleased with my flowers, and as it was rather a chilly afternoon, he challenged me to a race. We ran together, he striding after me like a child himself in play, and snapping at my coat; I screamed all the while with exquisite sensation of pleasurable fun. Then I sped away like a hound, and still again he caught me and lifted me high into the air. Such buoyancy of spirits I never met with, such fluency of attitude; I cannot call them or their effect animal. It was rather as if the bright wit pervaded the bilious temperament, almost misleading the physiologist to name it nervous. I have never described Lenhart Davy, nor can I; but to use the keener words of my friend Dumas, he was one of the men the most "significant" I ever knew. FOOTNOTE: [6] This would make the romance open in the year 1833. CHAPTER VI. Arrived at his house,--that house, just what a house should be, to the purpose in every respect,--I flew in as if quite at home. I was rather amazed that I saw no woman-creature about, nor any kind of servant. The door at the end of the passage was still open; I still saw out into the little lawny yard, but nobody was stirring. "The house was haunted!" I believe it,--by a choir of glorious ghosts! "Dear alto, you will not be alarmed to be locked in with me, I hope, will you?" "Frightened, sir? Oh, no, it is delicious." I most truly felt it delicious. I preceded him up the staircase,--he remaining behind to lock the little door. I most truly felt it delicious. Allow me again to allude to the appetite. I was very hungry, and when I entered the parlor I beheld such preparation upon the table as reminded me it is at times satisfactory as well as necessary to eat and drink. The brown inkstand and company were removed, and in their stead I saw a little tray, of an oval form, upon which tray stood the most exquisite porcelain service for two I have ever seen. The china was small and very old,--I knew that, for we were rather curious in china at home; and I saw how very valuable these cups, that cream-jug, those plates must be. They were of pearly clearness, and the crimson and purple butterfly on each rested over a sprig of honeysuckle entwined with violets. "Oh, what beautiful china!" I exclaimed; I could not help it, and Lenhart Davy smiled. "It was a present to me from my class in Germany." "Did you have a class, sir, in Germany?" "Only little boys, Charlie, like myself." "Sir, did you teach when you were a little boy?" "I began to teach before I was a great boy, but I taught only little boys then." He placed me in a chair while he left the room for an instant. I suppose he entered the next, for I heard him close at hand. Coming back quickly, he placed a little spirit-lamp upon the table, and a little bright kettle over it; it boiled very soon. He made such tea!--I shall never forget it; and when I told him I very seldom had tea at home, he answered, "I seldom drink more than one cup myself; but I think one cannot hurt even such a nervous person as you are,--and besides, tea improves the voice,--did you know that?" I laughed, and drew my chair close to his. Nor shall I ever forget the tiny loaves, white and brown, nor the tiny pat of butter, nor the thin, transparent biscuits, crisp as hoar-frost, and delicate as if made of Israelitish manna. Davy ate not much himself, but he seemed delighted to see me eat, nor would he allow me to talk. "One never should," said he, "while eating." Frugal as he was, he never for an instant lost his cheery smile and companionable manner, and I observed he watched me very closely. As soon as I had gathered up and put away my last crumb, I slipped out of my chair, and pretended to pull him from his seat. "Ah! you are right, we have much to do." He went out again, and returned laden with a wooden tray, on which he piled all the things and carried them downstairs. Returning, he laughed and said,-- "I must be a little put out to-night, as I have a visitor, so I shall not clear up until I have taken you home." "My mother is going to send for me, sir; but I wish I might help you now." "I shall not need help,--I want it at least in another way. Will you now come here?" We removed to the piano. He took down from the shelves that overshadowed it three or four volumes in succession. At length, selecting one, he laid it upon the desk and opened it. I gazed in admiration. It was a splendid edition, in score, of Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater." He gathered from within its pages a separate sheet--the alto part, beautifully copied--and handed it to me, saying, "I know you will take care of it." So I did. We worked very hard, but I think I never enjoyed any exercise so much. He premised, with a cunning smile, that he should not let me run on at that rate if I had not to be brushed up all in a hurry; but then, though I was ignorant, I was apt and very ardent. I sang with an entire attention to his hints; and though I felt I was hurrying on too fast for my "understanding" to keep pace with my "spirit," yet I did get on very rapidly in the mere accession to acquaintance with the part. We literally rushed through the "Stabat Mater," which was for the first part of the first grand morning, and then, for the other, we began the "Dettingen Te Deum." I thought this very easy after the "Stabat Mater," but Davy silenced me by suggesting, "You do not know the difficulty until you are placed in the choir." Our evening's practice lasted about two hours and a half. He stroked my hair gently then, and said he feared he had fatigued me. I answered by thanking him with all my might, and begging to go on. He shook his head. "I am afraid we have done too much now. This day week the 'Creation,'--that is for the second morning; and then, Charles, then the 'Messiah,'--last and best." "Oh, the 'Messiah'! I know some of the songs,--at least, I have heard them. And are we to hear that? and am I to sing in 'Hallelujah'?" I had known of it from my cradle; and loving it _before_ I heard it, how did I feel for it when it was to be brought so near me? I think that this oratorio is the most beloved of any by children and child-like souls. How strangely in it all spirits take a part! Margareth, our ancient nurse, came for me at half-past eight. She was not sent away, but Davy would accompany us to our own door. Before I left his house, and while she was waiting in the parlor, he said to me, "Would you like to see where I sleep?" and called me into the most wonderful little room. A shower-bath filled one corner; there was a great closet one whole side, filled with every necessary exactly enough for one person. The bed was perfectly plain, with no curtains and but a head-board, a mattress, looking as hard as the ground, and a very singular portrait, over the head, of a gentleman, in line-engraving, which does not intellectualize the contour. This worthy wore a flowing wig and a shirt bedecked with frills. "That is John Sebastian Bach," said Lenhart Davy,--"at least, they told me so in Dresden. I keep it because it _means_ to be he." "Ah!" I replied; for I had heard the jaw-breaking name, which is dearer to many (though they, alas! too few, are scattered) than the sound of Lydian measures. CHAPTER VII. If I permit myself to pay any more visits to the nameless cottage, I shall never take myself to the festival; but I must just say that we entertained Davy the next Sunday at dinner. I had never seen my mother enjoy anybody's society so much; but I observed he talked not so much as he listened to her, and this may have been the secret. He went very early, but on the Tuesday he fetched me again. It was not in vain that I sang this time either,--my voice seemed to deliver itself from something earthly; it was joy and ease to pour it forth. When we had blended the bass and alto of the "Creation" choruses, with a long spell at "The heavens are telling," Davy observed, "Now for the 'Messiah,' but you will only be able to look at it with me; to-morrow night is rehearsal at the hall, and your mother must let you go." Rehearsal at the hall! What words were those? They rang in my brain that night, and I began to grow very feverish. Millicent was very kind to me; but I was quite timid of adverting to my auspices, and I dared not introduce the subject, as none of them could feel as I did. My mother watched me somewhat anxiously,--and no wonder; for I was very much excited. But when the morrow came, my self-importance made a man of me, and I was calmer than I had been for days. I remember the knock which came about seven in the evening, just as it was growing gray. I remember rushing from our parlor to Lenhart Davy on the doorstep. I remember our walk, when my hands were so cold and my heart was so hot, so happy. I remember the pale, pearly shade that was falling on street and factory, the shop-lit glare, the mail-coach thundering down High Street. I remember how I felt entering, from the dim evening, the chiaro-oscuro of the corridors, just uncertainly illustrated by a swinging lamp or two; and I remember passing into the hall. Standing upon the orchestra, giddy, almost fearful to fall forwards into the great unlighted chaos, the windows looked like clouds themselves, and every pillar, tier, and cornice stood dilated in the unsubstantial space. Lenhart Davy had to drag me forwards to my nook among the altos, beneath the organ, just against the conductor's desk. The orchestra was a dream to me, filled with dark shapes, flitting and hurrying, crossed by wandering sounds, whispers, and laughter. There must have been four or five hundred of us up there, but it seems to me like a lampless church, as full as it could be of people struggling for room. Davy did not lose his hold upon me, but one and another addressed him, and flying remarks reached him from every quarter. He answered in his hilarious voice; but his manner was decidedly more distant than to me when alone with him. At last some one appeared at the foot of the orchestra steps with a taper; some one or other snatched it from him, and in a moment a couple of candles beamed brightly from the conductor's desk. It was a strange, candle-light effect then. Such great, awful shadows threw themselves down the hall, and so many faces seemed darker than they had, clustered in the glooming twilight. Again some hidden hand had touched the gas, which burst in tongues of splendor that shook themselves immediately over us; _then_ was the orchestra a blaze defined as day. But still dark, and darkening, like a vast abyss, lay the hall before us; and the great chandelier was itself a blot, like a mystery hung in circumambient nothingness. I was lost in the light around me, and striving to pierce into that mystery beyond, when a whisper thrilled me: "Now, Charles, I must leave you. You are Mr. Auchester at present. Stand firm and sing on. Look alone at the conductor, and think alone of your part. Courage!" What did he say "courage" for? As if my heart could fail me then and there! I looked steadfastly on. I saw the man of many years' service in the cause of music looking fresh as any youth in the heyday of his primal fancy. A white-haired man, with a patriarchal staff besides, which he struck upon the desk for silence, and then raised, in calm, to dispel the silence. I can only say that my head swam for a few minutes, and I was obliged to shut my eyes before I could tell whether I was singing or not. I was very thankful when somebody somewhere got out as a fugue came in, and we were stopped, because it gave me a breathing instant. But then again, breathless,--nerveless, I might say, for I could not distinguish my sensations,--we rushed on, or I did, it was all the same; I was not myself yet. At length, indeed, it came, that restoring sense of self which is so precious at some times of our life. I recalled exactly where I was. I heard myself singing, felt myself standing; I was as if treading upon air, yet fixed as rock. I arose and fell upon those surges of sustaining sound; but it was as with an undulating motion itself rest. My spirit straightway soared. I could imagine my own voice, high above all the others, to ring as a lark's above a forest, tuneful with a thousand tones more low, more hidden; the attendant harmonies sank as it were beneath me; I swelled above them. It was my first idea of paradise. And it is perhaps my last. Let me not prose where I should, most of all, be poetical. The rehearsal was considered very successful. St. Michel praised us. He was a good old man, and, as Davy had remarked, very steady. There was a want of unction about his conducting, but I did not know it, certainly not feel it, that night. The "Messiah" was more hurried through than it should have been, because of the late hour, and also because, as we were reminded, "it was the most generally known." Besides, there was to be a full rehearsal with the band before the festival, but I was not to be present, Davy considerately deeming the full effect would be lost for me were it in any sense to be anticipated. I feel I should only fail if I should attempt to delineate my sensations on the first two days of performance, for the single reason that the third morning of that festival annihilated the others so effectually as to render me only master at this moment of its unparalleled incidents. _Those_ I bear on my heart and in my life even to this very hour, and shall take them with me, yea, as a part of my essential immortality. CHAPTER VIII. The second night I had not slept so well as the first, but on the third morning I was, nathless, extraordinarily fresh. I seemed to have lived ages, but yet all struck me in perfect unison as new. I was only too intensely happy as I left our house with Davy, he having breakfasted with us. He was very much pleased with my achievements. I was very much pleased with everything; I was saturated with pleasure. That day has lasted me--a light--to this. Had I been stricken blind and deaf afterwards, I ought not to have complained,--so far would my happiness, in degree and nature, have outweighed any other I can imagine to have fallen to any other lot. Let those who endure, who rejoice, alike pure in passion, bless God for the power they possess--innate, unalienable, intransferable--of suffering all they feel. I shall never forget that scene. The hall was already crowded when we pressed into our places half an hour before the appointed commencement. Every central speck was a head; the walls were pillared with human beings; the swarm increased, floating into the reserved places, and a stream still poured on beneath the gallery. As if to fling glory on music not of its own, it was a most splendid day,--the finest, warmest, and serenest we had had for weeks. Through the multitudinous panes the sky was a positive blaze of blue; the sunshine fell upon the orchestra from the great arched window at the end of the vaulted building, and through that window's purple and orange border radiated gold and amethyst upon the countenances of the entering crowd. The hands of the clock were at the quarter now; we in the chorus wondered that St. Michel had not come. Again they moved, those noiseless hands, and the "tongue" of iron told eleven. We all grew anxious. Still, as all the clocks in the town were not alike, we might be the mistaken ones by ours. It now struck eleven, though, from the last church within our hearing, and there was not yet St. Michel. We were all in the chorus fitted in so nicely that it would have been difficult for some to get out, or if out, impossible to get in. They were all in the orchestra placed as closely as possible, amidst a perfect grove of music-stands. The reserved seats were full, the organist was seated, the score lay wide open upon the lofty desk; but St. Michel did not come! I shall never forget how we wearied and wondered, and how I, at least, racked myself, writhed, and agonized. The door beneath the orchestra was shut, but every instant or two a hand turned the lock outside; one agitated face peeped in, then another, but were immediately withdrawn. I scarcely suppose the perfect silence lasted three minutes; it was like an electrical suspension, and as quickly snapped. The surcharging spleen of the audience began to break in a murmuring, humming, and buzzing, from centre to gallery. The confusion of forms and faces became a perfect dream, it dazzled me dizzy, and I felt quite sick. A hundred fans began to ply in the reserved seats, the gentlemen bent over the ladies; the sound gathered strength and portentous significance from the non-explanatory calm of the orchestra force; but all eyes were turned, all chins lengthened, towards the orchestra door. At precisely a quarter past eleven the door opened wide, and up came a gentleman in a white waistcoat. He stood somewhere in front, but he could not get his voice out at first. Oh, the hisses then! the shouts! the execrations! But it was a musical assembly, and a few cries of "Shame!" hushed the storm sufficiently to give our curiosity vent. The speaker was a member of the committee, and very woebegone he looked. He had to say (and it was of course his painful duty) that the unprecedented delay in the commencement of the performance was occasioned by an inevitable and most unexpected accident. Mr. St. Michel, in riding from his house a few miles out, had been thrown from his horse at the corner of the market-place, and falling on his right arm, had broken it below the elbow. The suddenness of the event would account for the delay sufficiently; all means at present were being employed to secure the services of an efficient resident professor, and it was trusted he would arrive shortly. Otherwise, should there among the enlightened audience be present any professor able and willing to undertake the responsible office of conductor _pro tempore_, the committee would feel--A hurricane of noes tore up the rest of the sentence in contempt, and flung it in the face of the gentleman in the white waistcoat. He still stood. It was well known that not a hand could be spared from the orchestra; but of course a fancy instantly struck me of Lenhart Davy. I looked up wistfully at him, among the basses, and endeavored to persuade him with my eyes to come down. He smiled upon me, and his eye was kindled; otherwise he seemed determined to remain as he was. Davy was very proud, though one of the most modest men I ever knew. A fresh volley of hisses broke from the very heart of the hall. Still, it did not circulate, though the confusion seemed increasing in the centre; and it was at that very instant--before poor Merlington had left his apologetic stand--that a form, gliding light, as if of air, appeared hovering on the steps at the side of the orchestra. It was a man at least, if not a spirit; but I had not seen where that gliding form came from, with its light and stealthy speed. Swift as a beam of morning he sprang up the steps, and with one hand upon the balustrade bowed to the audience. In a moment silence seemed to mantle upon the hall. He stood before the score, and as he closed upon the time-stick those pointed fingers, he raised his eyes to the chorus, and then let them fall upon the band. Those piercing eyes recalled us. Every hand was on the bow, every mouthpiece lifted. There was still silence, but we "heard" no "voice." He raised his thin arm: the overture began. The curiosity of the audience had dilated with such intensity that all who had been standing, still stood, and not a creature stirred. The calm was perfect upon which the "Grave" broke. It was not interpretation alone, it was inspiration. All knew that "Grave," but few had heard it as it had been spoken that day. It was _then_ a heard voice,--"a voice from heaven." There seemed not a string that was not touched by fire. The tranquil echo of the repeat enabled me to bear it sufficiently to look up and form some notion of him on whom so much depended. He was slight, so slight that he seemed to have grown out of the air. He was young, so young that he could not have numbered twenty summers; but the heights of eternity were far-shadowed in the forehead's marble dream. A strange transparency took the place of bloom upon that face of youth, as if from temperament too tender, or blood too rarefied; but the hair betrayed a wondrous strength, clustering in dark curls of excessive richness. The pointed fingers were pale, but they grasped the time-stick with an energy like naked nerve. But not until the violins woke up, announcing the subject of the allegro, did I feel fully conscious of that countenance absolved from its repose of perfection by an excitement itself divine. It would exhaust thought no less than words to describe the aspect of music, thus revealed, thus presented. I was a little child then, my brain was unused to strong sensation, and I can only say I remembered not how he looked after all was over. The intense impression annihilated itself, as a white, dazzling fire struck from a smith's anvil dies without ashy sign. I have since learned to discover, to adore, every express lineament of that matchless face; but then I was lost in gazing, in a spiritual, ebbless excitement,--then I was conscious of the composition that he had made one with himself, that became one with him. The fire with which he led, the energy, the speed, could only have been communicated to an English orchestra by such accurate force. The perfection with which the conductor was endued must surely have passed electrically into every player,--there fell not a note to the ground. Such precision was wellnigh oppressive; one felt some hand must drop. From beginning to end of the allegro not a disturbing sound arose throughout the hall; but on the closing chord of the overture there burst one deep toll of wonderful applause. I can only call it a "toll;" it was simultaneous. The conductor looked over his shoulder, and slightly shook his head. It was enough, and silence reigned as the heavenly sympathy of the recitative trembled from the strings surcharged with fire. Here it was as if he whispered "Hush!" for the sobbing staccato of the accompaniment I never heard so low,--it was silvery, almost awful. The bâton stirred languidly, as the stem of a wind-swept lily, in those pointed fingers. Nor would he suffer any violence to be done to the solemn brightness of the aria. It was not until we all arose that he raised his arm, and impetuously, almost imperiously, fixed upon us his eyes. He glanced not _a moment_ at the score, he never turned a leaf, but he urged the time majestically, and his rapturous beauty brightened as the voices firmly, safely, swelled over the sustaining chords, launched in glory upon those waves of sound. I almost forgot the festival. I am not certain that I remember who I was, or where I was, but I seemed to be singing at every pore. I seemed pouring out my life instead of my voice; but the feeling I had of being irresistibly borne along was so transporting that I can conceive of nothing else like it, until after death. CHAPTER IX. The chorus, I learned afterwards, was never recalled, so proudly true, so perfect, so flexible; but it was not only not difficult to keep in, it was impossible to get out. So every one said among my choral contemporaries afterwards. I might recall how the arias told, invested with that same charm of subdued and softened fulness; I might name each chorus, bent to such strength by a might scarcely mortal: but I dare not anticipate my after acquaintance with a musician who, himself supreme, has alone known how to interpret the works of others. I will merely advert to the extraordinary calm that pervaded the audience during the first part. Tremendous in revenge, perfectly tremendous, was the uproar between the parts, for there was a pause and clearance for a quarter of an hour. I could not have moved for some moments if I had wished it; as it was, I was nearly pressed to death. Everybody was talking; a clamor filled the air. I saw Lenhart Davy afar off, but he could not get to me. He looked quite white, and his eyes sparkled. As for me, I could not help thinking the world was coming to an end, so thirsty I felt, so dry, so shaken from head to foot. I could scarcely feel the ground, and I could not lift my knees, they were so stiff. But still with infatuation I watched the conductor, though I suffered not my eyes to wander to his face; I dared not look at him, I felt too awful. He was suddenly surrounded by gentlemen, the members of the committee. I knew they were there, bustling, skurrying, and I listened to their intrusive tones. As the chorus pressed by me I was obliged to advance a little, and I heard, in a quiet foreign accent, delicate as clear, these words: "Nothing, thank you, but a glass of pure water." Trembling, hot, and dizzy, almost mad with impatience, I pushed through the crowd; it was rather thinner now, but I had to drive my head against many a knot, and when I could not divide the groups I dived underneath their arms. I cannot tell how I got out, but I literally leaped the stairs; in two or three steps I cleared the gallery. Once in the refreshment room, I snatched a glass jug that stood in a pail filled with lumps of ice, and a tumbler, and made away with them before the lady who was superintending that table had turned her head. I had never a stumbling footstep, and though I sprang back again, I did not spill a drop. I knew the hall was half empty, so taking a short way that led me into it, I came to the bottom of the orchestra. I stood the tumbler upon a form, and filling it to the brim, left the beaker behind me and rushed up the orchestra stairs. He was still there, leaning upon the score, with his hands upon his face, and his eyes hidden. I advanced very quietly, but he heard me, and without raising himself from the desk, let his hands fall, elevated his countenance, and watched me as I approached him. I trembled so violently then, taken with a fresh shudder of excitement, that I could not lift the tumbler to present it. I saw a person from the other side advancing with a tray, and dreading to be supplanted, I looked up with desperate entreaty. The unknown stretched his arm and raised the glass, taking it from me, to his lips. Around those lips a shadowy half-smile was playing, but they were white with fatigue or excitement, and he drank the water instantly, as if athirst. Then he returned to me the glass, empty, with a gentle but absent air, paused one moment, and now, as if restored to himself, fully regarded me, and fully smiled. Down-gazing, those deep-colored eyes upon me seemed distant as the stars of heaven; but there was an almost pitying sweetness in his tone as he addressed me. I shall never forget that tone, nor how my eyelids quivered with the longing want to weep. "It was very refreshing," he said. "How much more strengthening is water than wine! Thank you for the trouble you took to fetch it. And you, you sang also in the chorus. It was beautifully done." "May I tell them so, sir?" I asked him, eagerly, without being able to help speaking in _some_ reply. "Yes, every one; but above all, the little ones;" and again he faintly smiled. Then he turned to the score, and drooping over the desk, seemed to pass back into himself, alone, by himself companioned. And in an agony of fear lest I should intrude for a moment even, I sped as fast as I had entered from his mysterious presence. To this hour I cannot find in my memory the tone in which he spoke that day. Though I have heard that voice so often since, have listened to it in a trance of life, I can never realize _it_,--it was too unearthly, and became part of what I shall be, having distilled from the essence of my being, as I am. Well, I came upon Lenhart Davy in one of the passages as I was running back. I fell, in fact, against him, and he caught me in his arms. "Charles Auchester, where have you been? You have frightened me sorely. I thought I had lost you, I did indeed, and have been looking for you ever since we came out of the hall." As soon as I could collect enough of myself to put into words, I exclaimed ecstatically, "Oh, Mr. Davy! I have been talking to the man in the orchestra!" "You have, indeed, you presumptuous atomy!" and he laughed in his own way, adding, "I did not expect you would blow into an hero quite so soon. And is our hero up there still? My dear Charles, you must have been mistaken, he must be in the committee-room." "No, I was not. The idea of my mistaking! as if anybody else could be like him! He is up there now, and he would not come down, though they asked him; and he said he would only drink a glass of water, and I heard him, for I waited to see, and I fetched it, and he drank it--there!" and I flung myself round Davy again, almost exhausted with joy. "And he spoke to you, did he, Charles? My own little boy, be still, or I shall have to fetch _you_ a glass of water. I am really afraid of all this excitement, for which you seem to come in naturally." "So I do, Mr. Davy; but do tell me who is that man?" "I cannot tell," said Davy, himself so flushed now that I could hardly think him the same person, "unless, by some extraordinary chance, it may be Milans-André." "No, no!" exclaimed one of our contemporaries, who, in returning to the orchestra, overheard the remark. "No, no! it is not Milans-André. Mr. Hermann, the leader, has seen Milans-André in Paris. No, it is some nobleman, they say,--a German prince. They all know Handel in Germany." "Nonsense!" replied Davy, "they don't know Handel better in Germany than we do in England;" but he spoke as if to me, having turned from the person who addressed him. "Don't they, Mr. Davy? But he does look like a prince." "Not a _German_ prince, my Charles. He is more like one of your favorite Jews,--and that is where it is, no doubt." "Davy, Davy!" exclaimed again another, one of the professors in the town, "can it be Milans-André?" "They say not, Mr. Westley. I do not know myself, but I should have thought Monsieur André must be older than this gentleman, who does not look twenty." "Oh! he is more than twenty." "As you please," muttered Davy, merrily, as he turned again to me. "My boy, we must not stand here; we shall lose our old places. Do not forget to remain in yours, when it is over, till I come to fetch you." When it is over! Oh, cruel Lenhart Davy! to remind me that it would ever end. I felt it cruel then, but perhaps I felt too much,--I always do, and I hope I always shall. Again marshalled in our places (I having crept to mine), and again fitted in very tightly, we all arose. I suppose it was the oppression of so many round me standing, superadded to the strong excitement, but the whole time the chorus lasted, "Behold the Lamb of God!" I could not sing. I stood and sobbed; but even then I had respect to Davy's neatly copied alto sheet, and I only shaded my eyes with that, and wept upon the floor. Nobody near observed me; they were all singing with all their might; I alone dared to look down, ever down, and weep upon the floor. Such tears I never shed before; they were as necessary as dew after a cloudless day, and, to pursue my figure, I awoke again at the conclusion of the chorus to a deep, rapturous serenity, pure as twilight, and gazed upwards at the stars, whose "smile was Paradise," with my heart again all voice. I believe the chorus, "Lift up your heads!" will never again be heard in England as it was heard then, and I am quite certain of the "Hallelujah." It was as close, as clear, and the power that bound the band alike constrained the chorus; both seemed freed from all responsibility, and alone to depend upon the will that swayed, that stirred, with a spell real as supernatural, and sweet as strange. Perhaps the most immediate consequence of such faultless interpretation was the remarkable stillness of the audience. Doubtless a few there were who were calm in critical pique, but I believe the majority dared not applaud, so decided had been the negative of that graceful sign at the commencement of the performance; besides, a breathless curiosity brooded, as distinctly to be traced in the countenance of the crowd as in their thrilling quietude,--for thrilling it was indeed, though not so thrilling as the outbreak, the tempest out-rolling of pent-up satisfaction at the end of the final chorus. That chorus (it was well indeed it was the last) seemed alone to have exhausted the strength of the conductor; his arm suddenly seemed to tire, he entirely relaxed, and the delicate but burning hectic on each cheek alone remained, the seal of his celestial passion. He turned as soon as the applause, instead of decreasing, persisted; for at first he had remained with his face towards the choir. As the shouts still reached him, and the sea of heads began to fluctuate, he bent a little in acknowledgment, but nevertheless preserved the same air of indifference and abstraction from all about, beneath him. Lingering only until the way was cleared below the orchestra steps, he retreated down them even before the applause had ceased, and before any one could approach him, without addressing any one, he left the hall. And of him nothing afterwards was heard,--I mean at that time. Not a soul in the whole town had learned his name, and the hotel at which he had slept the night before was in vain attacked by spies on every errand. The landlord could only say what he knew himself,--that he was a stranger who had visited the place for the purpose of attending the festival, and who, having fulfilled that purpose, had left the city unknown, unnamed, as he entered it. I believe most children of my age would have had a fit of illness after an excitement of brain and of body so peculiar; but perhaps had I been less excited I should have been worse off afterwards. As it was, the storm into which I had been wrought subsided of itself, and I was the better for it,--just as Nature is said to be after her disturbances of a similar description. Davy took me home, and then set off to his own house, where he always seemed to have so much to do; and all my people were very kind to me in listening, while I, more calmly than any one would believe, expatiated upon our grand adventure. I was extremely amused to see how astonished Clo was to find me so reasonable; for her only fear had been, she informed my mother, that Charles would not settle to anything for weeks if he were allowed to go. And Millicent was very much astonished that I spoke so little of the performance itself. I could only defend myself by saying, "If you had seen him you would not wonder." "Is he handsome, Charles?" said Lydia, innocently, with her brown eyes fixed upon her thimble (which she held upon her finger, and was shocked to perceive a little tarnished). I was so angry that I felt myself turn quite sick; but I was good enough only to answer, "_You_ would not think so;" for so I believe. Millicent softly watched me, and added, "Charlie means, I think, that it was a very beautiful face." "I do," I said bluntly; "I shall never see a beautiful face again. You will never see one at all, as you have not seen _that_." "Pity us then, Charles," replied Millicent, in her gentlest voice. I climbed upon her lap. "Oh, no, dear! It is you who must pity me, because you do not know what it is, and I do, and I have lost it." Lydia lifted her eyes and made them very round; but as I was put to bed directly, nobody heard any more of me that night. CHAPTER X. It was very strange, or rather it was just natural, that I should feel so singularly low next day. I was not exactly tired, and I was not exactly miserable. I was perfectly blank, like a sunless autumn day, with no wind about. I lay very late in bed, and as I lay there I no more believed the events of yesterday than if they had been a dream. I was literally obliged to touch myself, my hair, my face, and the bed-clothes before I could persuade myself that I was not myself a dream. The cold bath restored me, into which I daily sprang, summer and winter alike; but I grew worse again after breakfast. Yearning to re-excite myself in some fashion, I marched into the parlor and requested Clo to teach me as usual. There she was, in her gray-silk gown, peering (with her short-sightedness) into Herodotus; but though all my books were placed upon the table by her, I could tell very easily that she had not expected me, and was very much pleased I should come. Her approbation overcame me, and instead of blotting my copy with ink, I used my tears. They were tears I could no more have helped shedding than I could have helped breathing. Clo was very kind, she looked at me solemnly, not severely, and solemnly administered the consolation that they were the effect of excitement. I did not think so; I thought they were the effect of a want of excitement, but I said nothing to her. I overcame them, and was quiet for the rest of the day, and for several days; but imagine what I suffered when I saw no more of Lenhart Davy. As the world in our house went on just the same as before the festival, and as I had no hand in keeping the house so charmingly, nor any part in committees for dinner, nor in pickling speculations, I was fairly left to myself with my new discovery about myself; namely, that I must be a musician, or I should perish. Had I only seen Lenhart Davy, I could have told him all. I believe my attraction towards him was irresistible, or I should never have thought of him while he stayed away, it would have hurt me too much; for I was painfully, may be vainly, sensitive. I was not able to appreciate his delicacy of judgment, as well as feeling, in abstaining from any further communication with us until we ourselves reminded him of us. I had no hope; and the four or five days I have mentioned as passing without his apparition seemed to annihilate my future. I quite drooped, I could not help it; and my mother was evidently anxious. She made me bring out my tongue a dozen times a day, and she continually sighed, as if reproaching herself with something. How long it seemed! quite four months, as I used to reckon. I never once alluded to Lenhart Davy, but others did,--at least not Millicent, but Lydia and my eldest sister. Lydia made the observation that perhaps he was too modest to come without a special invitation; but Clo hurt me far more by saying that he had no doubt better engagements elsewhere. On the evening of the fifth day I was sitting upon the stool in the parlor by the window, after tea, endeavoring to gather my wandering fancies to "Simple Susan," her simple woes, pleasures, and loves (for Clo was there, and I did not wish to be noticed), when Millicent came into the room and said my mother wished to speak to me upstairs. I went out with Millicent. "What does she want--I mean mother?" I inquired, no doubt rather peevishly. "She wants to ask you a question you will like to answer, Charles." "Shall I?--what is it? I don't think I shall like to answer any question. Oh, Millicent!" and I hid my small face in the folds of her dark-blue frock. "Come, Charles! you know I would not deceive you. Darling, you must not feel so much." And she stooped to kiss me, smiling, though the tears were in her eyes. I still persisted in hiding my head, and when we reached the door of the dressing-room, I went in crying. My mother sat in a great white chair beside the fire; next her stood a small table covered with hose,--the hose of the whole household. "How, Charles! how now! Be a man, or at least a boy, or I am sure I had better not ask you what I sent for you to answer. Come, say, would you like to sing in Mr. Davy's class? You must not give up your old lessons, nor must you forget to take great pains to write, to cipher, and to read as well; but I think you are very fond of singing since you found your voice, and Mr. Davy, to whom I wrote, says you can be of use to him, and that he will be so very good as to teach you what he teaches the others,--to understand what you sing." Dear Millicent! I knew I owed it all to her, for there had been that in her face, her manner, and her kind eyes that told me she had felt for me in my desolation; and now as she stood apart from my mother and me, I ran to her and told her so--that I knew it all. I will not dwell upon the solicitude of Clo, lest I should become unmanageable in the midst of my satisfaction, nor upon Lydia's amazement at my mother's allowing me to join the class; but I well recollect how Millicent kept fast by me, her will, as it were, upon mine, and her reminding calmness ever possessing me, lest I should by my ecstatic behavior forfeit my right to my new privileges. I was quite good enough, though, in the general opinion, to be permitted to go, as arranged, on the following Tuesday evening. Lenhart Davy dined with us on Sunday, by special invitation, written by my mother, conveyed by my Margareth. He told me that I must not mistake his silence if he spoke not to me nor noticed me when he was amidst his pupils. I perfectly understood even then how much depended upon his sagacious self-dependence. The class assembled from six till eight in the evening, twice a week; the room Davy convoked it in was one he hired expressly. My mother sent me with Margareth, who was to fetch me again at the expiration of two hours,--at least during the winter, which was fast approaching. And thus, had it not been for the festival, I should have been at once initiated into "choral life." Though, indeed, but for that glorious time, and my own fantastic courage, first-fruit of a musical temperament, I had perhaps never been taught to give that name where I can now bestow none other, so completely has choral worship passed into my life. When Margareth left me at the door of a house I had never entered,--though I knew it well, for it was let out in auction-rooms, for committees and the like,--I felt far more wild and lost than when I attended the grand rehearsal hand in hand with Lenhart Davy. He was my master, though,--I remembered this, and also that he expected a great deal of me, for he had told me so, and that he had appointed me a high place among the altos. I had my numbered ticket in my hand, and upon it my name, and I showed it to a man who was standing above at the top of the steep staircase. He looked at it, nodded, and pushed me in. The room was tolerably large and high, and lighted by gas-burners, which fully illustrated the bareness of wall and floor and ceiling. Accustomed to carpets in every chamber, nay, in every passage, I was horrified to hear my own footfall upon the boards as I traversed the backs of those raised forms, one above the other, full of people. Boys and men, and women and girls, seemed all mixed up together, and all watching me; for I was late, and quite dreamy with walking through the twilight town. Several beckoning hands were raised as I inquired for the place of the altos, and I took my seat just where a number, nailed to the form, answered to the number on my ticket. CHAPTER XI. I was too satisfied to have found my way safely in, and too glad to feel deposited somewhere, to gaze round me just then; but a door opened with a creaking hinge on the ground floor below, and as perfect in my eyes as ever, stepped forth Lenhart Davy and bowed to his whole class. He carried a little time-stick in his hands, but nothing else; and as he placed himself in front, immediately beneath the lowest form, I was conscious, though I believe no one else present could be, of the powerful control he had placed as a barrier between himself and those before him,--between his active and his passive being. He began to address us in his fine, easy tones, in language pure enough for the proudest intellect, sufficiently simple for the least cultured ear; and he spoke chiefly of what he had said the time before, recapitulating, and pausing to receive questions or to elicit answers. But all he said, whatever it was to others, was to me a highly spiritual analysis of what most teachers endeavor to lower and to explain away,--the mystery and integrity of the musical art. He touched very lightly upon theory, but expounded sounds by signs in a manner of his own, which it is not necessary to communicate, as its results were those of no system whatever, but was applied by wisdom, and enforced by gradual acquaintance. We did not begin to sing for at least half an hour; but he then unlocked a huge closet, drew forth an enormous board, and mapped thereon in white chalk the exercises of his own preparation for our evening's practice. These were pure, were simple, as his introductory address. As I have said, the class was only just organized, but it was not a very small one; there must have been sixty or seventy present that night. I was in the topmost row of altos, and as soon as we began to sing I was irresistibly attracted to those about me; and to identify them with their voices was for me a singular fascination. I was but the fourth from the wall on my side, and a burner was directly above me. I took advantage of the light to criticise the countenances of my nearer contemporaries, who were all absorbed in watching our master's evolutions. I could not look at him until I had acquainted myself with my locality, as far as I could without staring, or being stared at. Next the wall, two boys (so alike that they could only have been brothers) nestled and bawled; they were dark-hued, yet sallow, and not inviting. I concluded they came from some factory, and so they did; but they did not please me enough to detain my attention,--they were beneath my own grade. So was a little girl nearest to them and next to me, but I could not help regarding her. She had the most imperturbable gaze I ever met,--great eyes of a yellow hazel, with no more expression in them than water; but her cheeks were brightly colored, and her long auburn hair was curled to her waist. An ease pervaded her that was more than elegance. She leaned and she lounged, singing in a flexible voice, without the slightest effort, and as carelessly as she looked. She wore a pink gingham frock, ill made to a degree, but her slender figure moved in and out of it like a reed; her hands were fitted into discolored light kid gloves, and she had on an amber necklace. This alone would have disgusted me, if she had not looked so unconcerned, so strange, and if I had not thought her hair so very pretty; but I did, and, as I have said, I could not avoid regarding her. She had her bonnet in her lap (a bruised muslin one, with tumbled satin strings); and I was surveying it rather closely, when she turned upon me and whispered loud, not low (and then went on singing herself, instantly), "Why don't you sing?" Scared and shocked, I drew myself away from her as far as possible, and moved my eyes to my other neighbor. It was a girl too; but I instantly felt the words "young lady" to be appropriate, though I knew not wherefore, except that she was, as it were, so perfectly self-possessed. She must be older than I am (it occurred to me), but I could not tell how much. She was, in fact, about fourteen. It was some relief to look upon her, after being attacked by the quick little being on my right hand, because she seemed as utterly indisposed to address me as the other had been determined. She did not seem even to see me, nor give the least glance at anybody or anything, except Lenhart Davy and his board. Upon them she fastened her whole expression, and she sang with assiduous calmness. So, though I sang too, fearing my friend would observe my silence, I turned quite towards my young lady and watched her intensely,--she noticing me no more than she would have noticed a fly walking upon the wall, or upon Lenhart Davy's board. I was very fastidious then, whatever I may be now, and I seldom gazed upon a face for the pleasure of seeing it. In this instance I experienced a feeling beyond pleasure, so exquisitely did the countenance beside me harmonize with something in myself. Not strictly fine, nor severely perfect in outline or of hue, this sweet face shone in glory not its own,--the most ardent musical intention lay upon the eyes, the lips, the brow; and the deep lashes themselves seemed born to shade from too much brightness a beholder like myself. I thought her a young woman, and so she was, compared with my age, at least; but my awe and her exaltation were measured by a distant self-possession towards me, towards all. She was not dressed with much more costliness than my wild little rebuker; but her plain black frock fitted her beautifully, and her dark gloves, and the dark ribbon on her hat, and her little round muff, satisfied me as to her gentle and her womanly pretensions. In linking these adjectives, you will realize one of my infatuations wherever they are substantively found. Enough. I dared not leave off singing, and my voice was rather strong, so I could not clearly decide upon hers, until Davy wrote up a few intervals for unisons, which very few of us achieved on the instant. My calm companion was among those who did. Her voice was more touching than any I had ever heard, and a true contralto; only more soft than deep, more distilling than low. But unknowing as I was, I was certain she had sung, and had learned to sing, long before she had joined the class; for in her singing there was that purified quality which reminds one (it did me) of filtered water, and she pronounced most skilfully the varied vocables. I felt afterwards that she must have been annoyed at my pertinacious scrutiny, but she betrayed not the remotest cognizance of me or my regards; and this indifference compelled me to watch her far more than sympathetic behavior would have done. That evening seemed long to me while we were at work, but I could not bear the breaking-up. I had become, as it were, connected with my companions, though we had not exchanged a word. I was rather disposed to wait and see who would join my little girl with her wild eyes, and my serene young lady. I believe I should have done so, but Lenhart Davy kindly came up from below and shook hands with me; and while I was receiving and returning his greeting, they were lost in the general crowd. He took me himself down stairs to Margareth, who was awaiting me with a cloak and a comforter in a little unfurnished room; and then he himself departed, looking very tired. CHAPTER XII. I did not see him again until the next class-night. It was strange to find the same faces about me; and above all, my two heroines, dressed exactly as on the first occasion, except that the pink frock was rather less brilliant. I listened eagerly for those pure tones to swell, communing with my own, and I was not disappointed. We did not sing anything that I can specify at present; but it was more than pleasure--it was vitality--to me to fling out my own buoyant notes far and wide, supported, as it were, by an atmosphere of commingling sounds. I suppose, therefore, that I may have been singing very loud when the daring little head out of the muslin bonnet put itself into my face and chanted, in strict attention to Davy's rules all the time, "How beautifully you do sing!" I was hushed for the moment, and should have been vexed if I had not been frightened; for I was ridiculously timorous as a child. She then brought from the crown of her bonnet a paper full of bonbons, which she opened and presented to me. I replied very sharply, in a low voice, "I don't eat while I am singing," and should have taken no more notice of her; but she now raised upon me her large eyes to the full, and still pushed the bonbon paper at me,--almost in my face too. I was too well bred to push it away, but too honest not to say, when she still persisted in offering the saccharine conglomeration, "I don't like curl papers." The child turned from me with a fierce gesture, but her eyes were now swimming in tears. I was astonished, angry, melted. I at length reproached myself; and though I could not bring myself to touch the colored chocolates, crumbled up as they had been in her hand, I did condescend to whisper, "Never mind!" and she took out her handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Now, all this while my young lady took no heed, and I felt almost sure she must have noticed us; but she did not turn to the large-eyed maiden, and _I_ occupied myself with both. That night again Davy joined me, and I only managed to catch a glimpse of the muslin bonneted, holding her bonbons still in one dirty glove, and with the other taking the hand of a huge, high-shouldered man, going out with the crowd. Oh, Davy was too deep for me, and delicate as deep! The next night of our meeting my number was moved to the other side of my serene neighbor, who at present divided me from the hazel eyes and the ringlets. It never occurred to me that _he_ had done it; I thought it to be a mistake, and fully intended, like a curious manikin, to go back another time to my old quarters. I could not help looking at the little one to see whether I was watched. But no; with a coquetry I was too young to appreciate, and she ought to have been too young to exercise, she sang with all her might, never once turning her eyes towards me. I found at length the fascinations of our choral force too strong not to submerge her slight individuality, and soon I forgot she was there,--though I never forgot that serene voice breathing by my side faint prophecies I could not render to myself in any form, except that they had to do with myself, and with music alike my very own. I do not think any musical taste was ever fed and fostered early in an atmosphere so pure as mine; for Lenhart Davy's class, when fully organized and entirely submitted to him, seemed invested with his own double peculiarity,--subdued, yet strong. We were initiated this evening into an ancient anthem, whose effect, when it was permitted to us to interpret, was such that I could not repress my satisfaction, and I said aloud, though I did not confront my companion, "That is something like!" My serene contralto answered, strangely to my anticipations, and with the superior womanliness I have ascribed to her, "Is it not glorious?" It was an anthem in the severe style, that tells so powerfully in four-voiced harmony; and the parts were copied upon gigantic tablets in front, against the wall that was Davy's background. "I cannot see," said the other little creature, pulling the contralto's black-silk gown. "I am sorry for you," replied the other, "but I believe that you can see, Laura, as well as I can; you mean you will not trouble yourself, or that you are idle to-night." "And what if I do? I hate those horrid hymn sort of tunes; they will not be of any use to me." "Silence!" uttered the voice of Lenhart Davy. There was seldom occasion for him to say so, but just now there had been a pause before we repeated the first movement of the anthem. He told me he had a little leisure that evening, and would take me home. I was enchanted, and fully meant to ask him to come in with me; but I actually forgot it until after he had turned away. Margareth reproved me very seriously; "Your sisters would have asked him in, Master Charles, to supper." But the fact was, I had been occupied with my own world too much. I had said to him directly we were in the street, "Dear Mr. Davy, who are those two girls whose seats are the nearest to mine?" "They belong to the class like yourself, as you perceive, but they are not persons you would be likely to meet anywhere else." "Why not, sir? I should like to be friends with all the singers." Davy smiled. "So you may be, in singing, and, I hope, will be; but they are not all companions for you _out_ of the class. You know that very well." "I suppose, sir, you mean that some are poorer than we are, some not so well brought up, some too old, and all that?" "I did, certainly; but not only so. You had better not make too many friends at your time of life,--rather too few than too many. Ask your mother if I am not correct. You see, she has a right to expect that you should love home best at present." "I always should love _home_ best," I answered quickly; and I remember well how Davy sighed. "You mean what even every boy must feel, that you should like to make a home for yourself; but the reward is after the race,--the victory at the end of the struggle." It appeared to me very readily that he here addressed something in his own soul; for his voice had fallen. I urged, "I know it, sir; but do tell me the names of those two girls,--I won't let them know you told me." He laughed long and heartily. "Oh! yes, willingly; you would soon have heard their names, though. The little one is Laura Lemark, the child of a person who has a great deal to do with the theatres in this town, and she is training for a dancer, besides being already a singer in the chorus at a certain theatre. Your mother would not like you to visit her, you may be sure; and therefore you should not try to know her. I placed you near her because she is the most knowing of all my pupils, except Miss Benette,[7] the young person who sat next you this evening." "With the lovely voice? Oh! I should never know _her_ if I wished it." "You need not wish it; but even if you did, she would never become troublesome in any respect. She is too calm, too modest." "And pray, tell me, sir, is she to be a dancer too?" "No, oh, no! She will decidedly become one of the finest singers in England, but I believe she will not go upon the stage." "You call the theatre the stage, sir, don't you?" "Yes, in this instance." "But why won't she go upon the stage? Cannot she act?" "She does not think she is called to it by any special gift." "Did she say those words, sir?" "Those very words." "I thought she would just say them, sir. Does she know you very well?" "She is my own pupil." "Oh! out of the class, sir, I suppose?" "Yes, I teach her in my house." "Sir, I wish you taught me in your house." "I should say, too, that I wished it," answered Davy, sweetly; "but you have a sister to teach you at home, and Clara Benette has no one." "I should like to have no one--to teach me, I mean,--if you would teach me. If my mother said yes, would you, sir?" "For a little while I would with pleasure." "Why not long, sir? I mean, why only for a little while?" "Because there are others of whom you ought to learn, and _will_ learn, I am persuaded," he added, almost dreamingly, as he turned me to the moonlight, now overspread about us, and surveyed me seriously. "The little violin-face,--you know, Charles, I cannot be mistaken in those lines." "I would rather sing, sir." "Ah! that is because you have not tried anything else." "But, sir, _you_ sing." "I suppose that I must say, as Miss Benette does, 'I have a special gift' that way," replied Davy, laughing. "You have a special gift all the ways, I think, sir," I cried as I ran into our house. I told Millicent all he had said, except that Laura was to be a dancer; and yet I cannot tell why I left this out, for there was that about her fairly repelling me, and at the same time I felt as if exposed to some power through her, and could not restrain myself from a desire to see her again. Millicent told my mother all that I had said to _her_ the next morning at breakfast. My mother, who had as much worldliness as any of us, and that was just none, was mightily amused at my new interests. She could not make up her mind about the private lessons yet; she thought me too young, and that I had plenty of time before me,--at present the class was sufficient excitement, and gave me enough to do. Clo quite coincided here; she, if anything, thought it rather too much already, though a very good thing indeed. FOOTNOTE: [7] Clara Benette, who plays such an important part in this romance, has been generally accepted as a sketch of Jenny Lind. The resemblances are not very close, however. At the time of the opening of the story she had not made her _début_, and she did not appear in England until 1847, the year of Mendelssohn's death. It is true, however, that she was an intimate friend of the composer and followed his advice explicitly, and that he was largely instrumental in introducing her to the English public. She also founded a musical scholarship in London in his memory. CHAPTER XIII. Next time we met we began the anthem after our first exercise. Laura[8]--by this time she was always Laura in my own world--nodded at me. She had on a green silk frock to-night; and surely no color could have so enhanced the clarified brightness of her strange eyes. Davy was pleased with us, but not with our enunciation of certain syllables. He requested us as a favor to practise between that meeting and the next. There were a great many assents, and Laura was very open in her "yes." Miss Benette whispered to herself, "Of course." And I, unable to resist the opportunity, whispered to her, "Does he mean that we are to practise alone, or one by one?" "Mr. Davy will lend us our parts, and I daresay will copy them on purpose," she replied. "It will be better to practise alone, or at least one or two together, than a great many, or even a few. We can more easily detect our faults." "How well she speaks!" I thought,--"quite as prettily as Millicent; her accent is very good, I am sure;" and I again addressed her. "I do not think you have any faults at all,--your voice seems able to do anything." "I do nothing at all with it, it seems to me, and that I have very little voice at present. I think we had better not talk, because it seems so careless." "Talk to me," broke in Laura from beyond Miss Benette; but I would not,--I steadily looked in front, full of a new plan of mine. I must explain that we proceeded slowly, because Davy's instructions were complete,--perhaps too ideal for the majority; but for some and for me there was an ineffaceable conviction in every novel utterance. Just before we separated, I ventured to make my request. "Miss Benette!" I said, and she almost stared, quite started to find I knew her name, "Mr. Davy told me who you were,--will you let me come and practise with you? He will tell you my name if you must know it, but I should so like to sing with you,--I do so admire your voice." I spoke with the most perfect innocence, at the same time quite madly wishing to know her; I did not mean to be overheard, but on the instant Laura looked over. "You don't ask _me_." "Because I don't care about your voice," I answered, bluntly. She again gazed at me brightly, her eyes swimming. "Oh, hush!" whispered Miss Benette; "you have hurt her, poor little thing." "How very good you are!" I returned, scarcely knowing what to say. "I always speak the truth." "Yes, I should think so; but it is not good taste to dislike Laura's voice, for it is very pretty." "Come, Miss Benette, do make haste and tell me whether you will let me sing with you to-morrow." "I do not mind if your friends will not object." "Tell me where you live, then." "In St. Anthony's Lane, just by the new foundation. There is a tree in front, but no garden. You must not come, if you please, until after one o'clock, because I have to practise for my other lessons." "Good-night." She ran off, having bowed a little courtesy. Laura had left while we were talking. "Now," thought I, "I shall have it all out, who she is and what she does, and I will make Millicent go to see her." Davy here joined me. "So you have made friends with Miss Benette." "Yes, sir;" but I did not tell him I was going to practise with her, for fear anything should prevent my going. "She is an excellent young person, and will be a true artist. Nevertheless, remember my injunction,--rather too few friends than too many." "I mean to keep friends with her, and to make my sister friends with her." "Your sister does not want friends, I should think." "Oh, sir, did you ever find out who the conductor was?" "Nobody knows. It is very singular," and he raised his voice, "that he has never been heard of since, and had not been seen before by anybody present, though so many foreign professors were in the hall. In London they persist it was Milans-André, though André has himself contradicted the assertion." "I should like to hear Milans-André." "You will some day, no doubt." "Do you think I shall?" "I feel in myself quite sure. Now, good-night to you." "Do come in, sir, and have some supper, please." But Davy was off in the moonlight before the door could be opened into our house. When I told Millicent I was going to practise with one of the class, she thought fit to tell my mother. My mother made various inquiries; but I satisfied her by assuring her it was one of Davy's own pupils, and his favorite, and I contrived not to be asked whether it was a young lady,--I let them think just at that time it was a young gentleman about my own standing. The only direct injunction laid upon me was that I should be home for tea at five o'clock,--and as I did not leave our house until after our one o'clock dinner, this did not give me very much time; but I ran the whole way. I forgot to mention that Davy had lent each of us our parts beautifully copied,--at least he had lent them to all who engaged to practise, and I was one. I had rolled it up very neatly. I soon found the house, but I was certainly astonished when I did find it. I could not believe such a creature as Miss Benette could remain, so bright, buried down there. It was the last house of a very dull row, all let out in lodgings,--the meanest in the town except the very poor. It was no absurd notion of relative inferiority with which I surveyed it, I was pained at the positive fact that the person to whom I had taken such a fancy should be obliged to remain where I felt as if I should never be able to breathe. I lingered but a moment though, and then I touched a little heavy, distorted knocker that hung nearly at the bottom of the door,--how unlike, I thought, to Lenhart Davy's tiny castle under lock and key! Presently the door was opened by a person, the like of whom I had never seen in all my small experience,--a universal servant, required to be ubiquitous; let this description suffice. I asked for Miss Benette. "The first door to the right, upstairs," was the reply; and passing along a dark entry, I began to ascend them, steep and carpetless. I seemed, however, to revive when I perceived how lately the wooden steps had been washed; there was not a foot-mark all the way up to the top, and they smelt of soap and water. I found several doors to embarrass me on the landing, all painted black; but I heard tones in one direction that decided me to knock. A voice as soft as Millicent's responded, "Come in." Oh, how strange I felt when I entered! to the full as strange as when I first saw Davy's sanctum. No less a sanctum this, I remember thinking, to the eyes that behold the pure in heart. It was so exquisitely tidy, I felt at once that my selfish sensibilities had nothing to fear. The room was indeed small, but no book walls darkened gloriously the daylight; the fireplace was hideous, the carpet coarse and glaring, the paper was crude green,--I hate crude greens more than yellow blues,--and the chairs were rush-bottomed, every one. But she for whom I came was seated at the window, singing; she held some piece of work in her hand, which she laid upon the table when I entered. Pardon my reverting to the table; I could not keep my eyes from it. It was covered with specimens of work,--such work as I had never seen, as I shall never see again, though all my sisters could embroider, could stitch, could sew with the very best. She did not like me to look at it though, I thought, for she drew me to the window by showing me a chair she had set for me close beside her own. The only luxury amidst the furniture was a mahogany music-stand, which was placed before our two seats. One part lay upon the stand, but it was not in Lenhart Davy's autography. "Did you copy that part yourself, Miss Benette?" said I, unable to restrain the question. "Yes; I thought it too much that Mr. Davy should copy all the parts himself for us." "Does he?" "Oh, yes; did you not know it? But we must not talk, we must work. Let us be very careful." "You show me how; please to sing it once alone." She struck the tuning-fork upon the desk, and without the slightest hesitation, flush, or effort, she began. One would not have deemed it an incomplete fragment of score; it resounded in my very brain like perfect harmony, so strangely did my own ear infer the intermediate sounds. "Oh, how lovely! how exquisite it must be to feel you can do so much!" I exclaimed, as her unfaltering accent thrilled the last amen. "I seem never to have done anything, as I told you before; it is necessary to do _so_ much. Now sing it alone once all through, and I will correct you as Mr. Davy corrects me." I complied instantly, feeling her very presence would be instruction, forgetting, or not conscious, how young she was. She corrected me a great deal, though with the utmost simplicity. I was astonished at the depth of her remarks, though too ignorant to conceive that they broke as mere ripples from the soundless deeps of genius. Then we sang together, and she wandered into the soprano part. I was transported; I was eager to retain her good opinion, and took immense pains. But it never struck me all the time that it was strange she should be alone,--apparently alone, I mean. I was too purely happy in her society. She sat as serenely as at the class, and criticised as severely as our master. "It is getting late," she said at last, "and I think you had better go. Besides, I must go on with my work. If you are so kind as to come and practise with me again, I must work while I sing, as I do when I am alone." "Oh, why did you not to-day?" "I thought it would not be polite the first time," answered she, as gravely as a judge; and I never felt so delighted with anything in all my life. I looked up at her eyes, but the lashes were so long I could not see them, for _she_ was looking down. "Will you think me rude if I ask to look at your work?" "You may look at what I am going to send to the shop." "Oh, what shop?" She got out of her chair and moved to the table. There was no smile upon her baby-mouth. She pointed to the articles I had noticed but had not dared to examine. They were, indeed, sights to see, one and all. Such delicate frock-bodies and sprigged caps for infants; such toilet-cushions rich with patterns, like ingrained pearls; such rolls of lace, with running gossamer leaves, or edges fine as the pinked carnations in Davy's garden. There were also collars with broad white leaves and peeping buds, or wreathing embroidery like sea-weed, or blanched moss, or magnified snow, or whatever you can think of as most unlike work. Then there was a central basket, lined with white satin, in which lay six cambric handkerchiefs, with all the folded corners outwards, each corner of which shone as if dead-silvered with the exquisitely wrought crest and motto of an ancient coroneted family. "Oh, I never did see anything like them!" was all I could get out, after peering into everything till the excelling whiteness pained my sight. "Do tell me where you send them?" "I used to send them to Madame Varneckel's, in High Street; but she cheated me, and I send them now to the Quaker's, in Albemarle Square." "You sell them, then?" "Yes, of course; I should not work else. I do not love it." "They ought to give you a hundred guineas for those." "I have a hundred guineas already." "You have!" I quite startled her by the start I gave. I very nearly said, "Then why do you live up here?" but I felt, in time, that it would be rude. "Oh! I must get four hundred more, and that will take me two years, or perhaps three, unless my voice comes out like a flower." Here her baby-mouth burst into a smile most radiant,--a rose of light! "Oh, Miss Benette, everything you say is like one of the German stories,--a _Märchen_,[9] you know." "Oh, do you talk German? I love it. I always spoke it till I came to this city." "What a pity you came!--at least, I should have been very sorry if you had not come; but I mean, I should have thought you would like Germany best." "So I should, but I could not help coming; I was a baby when I came. Mr. Davy brought me over in his arms, and he was just as old then as I am now." "How very odd! Mr. Davy never told me he had brought you here." "Oh, no! he would not tell you all the good things he has done." "He has done me good,--quite as much good as he can have done to you; but I should so like to hear all about it." "You must not stay,--you _shall_ go," she answered, with her grave sweetness of voice and manner; "and if you are not in time to-day, we shall never practise again. I shall be very sorry, for I like to sing with you." I was not in time, and I got the nearest thing to a scolding from my mother, and a long reproof from Clo. She questioned me as to where I had been, and I was obliged to answer. The locality did not satisfy her; she said it was a low neighborhood, and one in which I might catch all sorts of diseases. I persisted that it was as high and dry as we were, and possessed an advantage over us in that it had better air, being, as it was, all but out in the fields. My mother was rather puzzled about the whole matter, but she declared her confidence in me, and I was contented, as she ever contents me. I was very grateful to her, and assured them all how superior was Miss Benette to all the members of the class. I also supplicated Millicent to accompany me the next time I should be allowed to go, that she might see the beautiful work. "I cannot go, my dear Charles," she returned. "If this young lady be what you yourself make her out to be, it would be taking a great liberty; and besides, she could not want me,--I do not sing in the class." But she looked very much as if she wished she did. "I just wish you would ask Mr. Davy about her, that's all." FOOTNOTES: [8] The idea that Laura Lemark was intended as a sketch of Taglioni, the _danseuse_, is altogether fanciful; except the fact that Taglioni in her old age taught deportment to ladies who desired to be presented at the English court, and that Laura did the same after she had retired, there is no resemblance between them. [9] A tale, or romance. CHAPTER XIV. When I went to the class next time I was very eager to catch Mr. Davy, that I might explain to him where I had been, for I did not like acting without his cognizance. However, he was already down below when I arrived. My fair companions were both in their places, but, to my astonishment, Miss Benette took no notice of me. Her sweet face was as grave as it was before I caught from under those long lashes the azure light upon my own for the first time. Certain that she did not mean to offend me, I got on very well though, and Davy was very much pleased with our success. Little Laura looked very pale; her hair was out of its curl, and altogether she had an appearance as if she had been dragged through a river, lost and forlorn, and scarcely sensible. She sang languidly, but Miss Benette's clinging tones would not suffer me to be aware of any except hers and my own. Davy taught us something about Gregorian chants, and gave us a few to practise, besides a new but extremely simple service of his own. "He wrote that for us, I suppose," I ventured; and Clara nodded seriously, but made no assent in words. Afterwards she seemed to remember me again as her ally; for as Davy wished us his adieu in his wonted free "Good-night!" she spoke to me of her own accord. "I think it was all the better that we practised." "Oh, was it not? Suppose we practise again." "I should like it, if you will come at the same time, and not stay longer; and Laura can come too, can she not?" I did not exactly like this idea, but I could not contradict the calm, mellow voice. "Oh, if she will practise." "Of course she will practise if she comes on purpose." "I don't care about coming!" exclaimed the child, in a low, fretful voice. "I know I sha'n't get out, either." "Yes, you shall; I will coax your papa. Look, Laura! there he is, waiting for you." The child ran off instantly, with an air of fear over all her fatigue, and I felt sure she was not treated like a child; but I said nothing about it then. "Sir," said I to Mr. Davy, "pray walk a little way, for I want to tell you something. My mother particularly requests that you will go to our house to sup with us this evening." "I will accept her kindness with the greatest pleasure, as I happen to be less engaged than usual." Davy never bent his duty to his pleasure,--rather the reverse. "I went to practise with Miss Benette the day before yesterday." "So she told me." "She told you herself?" "Yes, when she came to my house for her lesson last afternoon. I was very glad to hear it, because such singing as hers will improve yours. But I should like to tell your mother how she is connected with me." "How was it, sir?" "Oh! I shall make a long story for her; but enough for you that her father was very good to me when I was an orphan boy and begged my way through Germany. He taught me all that I now teach you; and when he died, he asked me to take care of his baby and his lessons. She was only born that he might see her, and die." "Oh, sir, how strange! Poor man! he must have been very sorry." "He was not sorry to go, for he loved his wife, and she went first." "Oh, that was Miss Benette's mamma?" "Yes, her lovely mamma." "Of course she was lovely. If you please, sir, tell me about her too." But Davy reserved his tale until we were at home. My mother fully expected him, it was evident; for upon the table, besides the plain but perfectly ordered meal we always enjoyed at about nine o'clock, stood the supernumerary illustrations--in honor of a guest--of boiled custards, puff pastry, and our choicest preserves. My mother, too, was sitting by the fire in a species of state, having her hands void of occupation and her pocket-handkerchief outspread. Millicent and Lydia wore their dahlia-colored poplin frocks,--quite a Sunday costume,--and Clo revealed herself in purple silk, singularly adapted for evening wear, as it looked black by candle-light! I never sat up to supper except on very select occasions. I knew this would be one, without being told so, and secured the next chair to my darling friend's. I would that I could recall, in his own expressive language, his exact relation of his own history as told to us that night. It struck us that he should so earnestly acquaint us with every incident,--at least, it surprised us then, but his after connection with ourselves explained it in that future. No fiction could be more fraught with fascinating personality than his actual life. I pass over his birth in England (and in London), in a dark room over a dull book-shop, in his father's house. That father, from pure breeding and constitutional exclusiveness, had avoided all intercourse with his class, and conserved his social caste by his marriage only. I linger not upon his remembrance of his mother, Sybilla Lenhart,--herself a Jewess, with the most exquisite musical ability,--nor upon her death in her only son's tenth year. His father's pining melancholy meantime deepened into an abstraction of misery on her loss. The world and its claims lost their hold, and he died insolvent when Lenhart was scarcely twelve. Then came his relation of romantic wanderings in Southern France and Germany, like a troubadour, or minnesinger, with guitar and song; of his accidental friendships and fancy fraternities, till he became choir-alto at a Lutheran church in the heart of the Eichen-Land. Then came the story of his attachment to the young, sage organist of that very church, who, in a fairy-like adventure, had married a count's youngest daughter, and never dared to disclose his alliance; of her secret existence with him in the topmost room of an old house, where she never dared to look out of the window to the street for fear she should be discovered and carried back,--the etiquette requisite to cover such an abduction being quite alien from my comprehension, by the way, but so Davy assured us she found it necessary to abide; of their one beautiful infant born in the old house, and the curious saintly carving about its wooden cradle; of the young mother, too hastily weaned from luxurious calm to the struggling dream of poverty, or at least uncertain thrift; of her fading, falling into a stealthy sickness, and of the night she lay (a Sunday night) and heard the organ strains swell up and melt into the moonlight from her husband's hand; of Lenhart Davy's presence with her alone that night, unknowing, until the music-peal was over, that her soul had passed to heaven, as it were, in that cloud of music. But I must just observe that Davy made as light as possible of his own pure and characteristic decision, developed even in boyhood. He passed over, almost without comment, the more than elder brotherly care he must have bestowed on the beautiful infant, and dwelt, as if to divert us from that point, upon the woful cares that had pressed upon his poor friend,--upon his own trouble when the young organist himself, displaced by weakness from his position, made his own end, even as Lenhart's father, an end of sorrow and of love. Davy, indeed, merely mentioned that he had brought little Clara to England himself, and left her in London with his own mother's sister, whose house he always reckoned his asylum, if not his home. And then he told us of his promise to Clara's father that she should be brought up musically, and that no one should educate her until she should be capacitated to choose her own masters, except Davy, to whom her father had imparted a favorite system of his own. I remember his saying, in conclusion, to my mother: "You must think it strange, dear madam, that I brought Miss Benette away from London, and alone. I could not remain in London myself, and I have known for years that her voice, in itself, would become to her more than the expected heritage. My aunt taught her only to work. This was my stipulation; and she now not only supports herself by working,--for she is very independent,--but is in possession of a separate fund besides, which is to carry her through a course of complete instruction elsewhere,--perhaps in Italy or Germany." I saw how much my mother felt impressed by the dignity and self-reliance that so characterized him, but I scarcely expected she would take so warm an interest in his _protégée_. She said she should like to see some of Miss Benette's work; and again I descanted on its beauties and varieties, supported by my hero, who seemed to admire it almost as much as I did. "Then I may go and practise with Miss Benette?" I said, in conclusion. "Oh, certainly; and you must ask her to come and see you some evening when Mr. Davy is kind enough to drink tea with us." "That curious little Laura too," thought I; "they would not like _her_ so well, I fancy. But though I do dislike her myself, I wish I could find out what they do with her." I was going to practise the day after the next, and methought I will then discover. CHAPTER XV. I took a very small pot of honey for Miss Benette; Millicent had begged it for me of Lydia, who was queen-bee of the store-closet. I ran all the way as usual, and was very glad to get in. The same freshness pervaded the staircase; but when I reached the black door, I heard two voices instead of one. I was rather put out. "Laura is there! I shall not like singing with her; it is very tiresome!" I stood still and listened; it was very lovely. How ineffable music must be to the blind! yet oh, to miss that which may be embraced by sight! I knocked, and they did not hear me; again--they both ceased singing, and Laura ran to the door. Instead of being dressed in her old clothes, she perfectly startled me by the change in her costume,--a glittering change, and one from herself; for through it she appeared unearthly, and if not spiritual, something very near it. Large gauze pantaloons, drawn in at the ankles, looked like globes of air about her feet; her white silk slippers were covered with spangles; so also was her frock, and made of an illusive material like clouds; and her white sash, knotted at her side, was edged with silver fringe. Her amber necklace was no more there, but on her arms she had thick silver rings, with little clinking bells attached. She wore her hair, not in those stray ringlets, but drawn into two broad plaits, unfastened by knot or ribbon; but a silver net covered all her head behind, though it met not her forehead in front, over whose wide, but low expanse, her immense eyes opened themselves like lustrous moons. "Miss Lemark," cried I, unfeignedly, "what are you going to do in that dress?" "Come, Master Auchester, do not trouble her; she must be ready for her papa when he calls, so I have dressed her in order that she might practise with us." "Miss Benette," I answered, "I think it is most extremely pretty, though very queer; and I did not mean to tease her. I wish you would tell me why you put it on, though." "To dance in," said Laura, composedly. "I am going to dance in 'Scheradez, or the Magic Pumpkin.' It is so pretty! But Miss Benette is so kind to me; she lets me have tea with her the nights I dance." "But do you live in this house, then?" "Oh, I wish I did! Oh, Clara, I wish I did live with you!" and she burst into a fit of her tears. Miss Benette arose and came to her, laying down a piece of muslin she was embroidering. "Do not cry, dear; it will spoil your pretty frock,--besides, Master Auchester has come on purpose to sing, and you detain him." Laura instantly sat on a chair before the music-stand; her diaphanous skirts stood round her like the petals of a flower, and with the tears yet undried she began to sing, in a clear little voice, as expressionless as her eyes, but as enchanting to the full as her easy, painless movements. It was very pleasurable work now, and Clara corrected us both, she all the while sustaining a pure golden soprano. "I am tired," suddenly said Laura. "Then go into the other room and rest a little. Do not ruffle your hair, which I have smoothed so nicely, and be sure not to lie down upon the bed, or you will make those light skirts as flat as pancakes." "How am I to rest, then?" "In the great white chair." "But I don't want to sit still,--I only mean I am tired of singing. I want to dance my _pas_." "Then go into the other room all the same; there is no carpet,--it is best." "I don't like dancing in that room, it is so small." "It is not smaller than this one. The fact is, you want to dance to Master Auchester." "Yes, so I do." "But he came to sing, not to see you." "I should like to see her dance, though," said I. "Do let her, Miss Benette!" "If you can stay. But do not begin the whole of that dance, Laura,--only the finale, because there will not be time; and you will besides become too warm, if you dance from the beginning, for the cold air you must meet on your way to the theatre." Miss Benette's solemn manner had great authority over the child, it was certain. She waited until the elder had put aside the brown table,--"That you may not blow my bits of work about and tread upon them," she remarked. "Shall I sing for you, Laura?" "Oh, please do, pray do, Miss Benette!" I cried; "it will be so charming." She began gravely, as in the anthem, but with the same serene and genial perfection, to give the notes of a wild measure, in triple time, though not a waltz. Laura stood still and gazed upwards until the opening bars had sounded, then she sprang, as it were, into space, and her whole aspect altered. Her cheeks grew flushed as with a fiery impulse; her arms were stretched, as if embracing something more ethereal than her own presence; a suavity, that was almost languor, at the same time took possession of her motions. The figure was full of difficulty, the time rapid, the step absolutely twinkling. I was enraptured; I was lost in this kind of wonder,--"How very strange that any one should call dancing wrong when it is like that! How extraordinary that every one does not think it lovely! How mysterious that no one should talk about her as a very great wonder! She is almost as great a wonder as Miss Benette. I should like to know whether Mr. Davy has seen her dance." But though I called it dancing, as I supposed I must, it was totally unlike all that I had considered dancing to be. She seemed now suspended in the air, her feet flew out with the spangles like a shower of silver sparks, her arms were flung above her, and the silver bells, as she floated by me without even brushing my coat, clinked with a thrilling monotone against Clara's voice. Again she whirled backwards, and, letting her arms sink down, as if through water or some resisting medium, fell into an attitude that restored the undulating movement to her frame, while her feet again twinkled, and her eyes were raised. "Oh!" I exclaimed, "how lovely you look when you do that!" for the expression struck me suddenly. It was an illumination as from above, beyond the clouds, giving a totally different aspect from any other she had worn. But lost in her maze, she did not, I believe, hear me. She quickened and quickened her footsteps till they merely skimmed the carpet, and, with a slide upon the very air, shook the silver bells as she once more arched her arms and made a deep and spreading reverence. Miss Benette looked up at me and smiled. "Now you must go; it is your time, and I want to give Laura her tea." "I have brought you some honey, Miss Benette. Will you eat it with your bread? It is better than bonbons, Miss Laura." "I did not care for the bonbons; I only thought you would like them. They gave them to me at rehearsal." "Do you go to rehearsal, then, as well as the singers?" "I go to rehearsal in the ballet; and when there is no ballet I sing in the chorus." "But you are so little: do you always dance?" "I am always to dance now; I did not until this season." Her voice was dreamy and cold, the flush had already faded; she seemed not speaking with the slightest consciousness. "Do go, Master Auchester!" and Clara looked at me from her azure eyes as kindly as if she smiled. "Do go, or she will have no tea, and will be very tired. I am so much obliged to you for the sweet yellow honey; I shall keep it in my closet, in that pretty blue jar." I _would_ have the blue jar, though Lydia wanted me to take a white one. "Oh, pray eat the honey, and give me the jar to fill again! I won't stay, don't be afraid, but good-night. Won't you let me shake hands with you, Miss Lemark?" for she still stood apart, like a reed in a sultry day. She looked at me directly. "Good-night, dear!" I was so inexpressibly touched by the tone, or the manner, or the mysterious something--that haunted her dancing--in _her_, that I added, "Shall I bring you some flowers next class-night?" "If you please." "Oh, do go, Master Auchester! I prayed you ten minutes ago." "I am gone." And so I was; and this time I was not too late for my own tea at home. There must be something startlingly perfect in that which returns upon the soul with a more absolute impression after its abstraction of our faculties has passed away. So completely had the fascination of those steps sufficed that I forgot the voice of Miss Benette, resounding all the time, and only associated in my recollection the silver monotone of the clinking bells with the lulling undulation, the quivering feet. All night long, when I dreamed, it was so; and when I awoke in the morning (as usual), I thought the evening before, a dream. I dared not mention Laura to any one except Millicent, but I could not exist without some species of sympathy; and when I had finished all my tasks, I entreated her to go out with me alone. She had some purchases to make, and readily agreed. It was a great treat to me to walk with her at any time. I cannot recollect how I introduced the subject, but I managed to ask somehow, after some preamble, whether my mother thought it wrong to dance in public. "Of course not," she replied, directly. "Some people are obliged to do so in order to live. They excel in that art as others excel in other arts, and it is a rare gift to possess the faculty to excel in that, as in all other arts." "So, Millicent, she would not mind my knowing a dance-artist any more than any other artist?" "Certainly it is the greatest privilege to know true artists; but there are few in the whole world. How few, then, there must be in our little corner of it!" "You call Mr. Davy an artist, I suppose?" "I think he pursues art as a student, who, having learned its first principles for himself, is anxious to place others in possession of them before he himself soars into its higher mysteries. So far I call him philanthropist and aspirant, but scarcely an artist yet." "Was our conductor an artist?" "Oh! I should think so, no doubt. Why did you ask me about artists, Charles?" "Oh, I suppose you would not call a little girl an artist if she were as clever as possible. There is a little girl at the class who sits very near me. She is a great favorite of Miss Benette. Such a curious child, Millicent! I could not endure her till yesterday evening. She was there when I went to practise, all ready dressed for the theatre. She looked a most lovely thing,--not like a person at all, but as if she could fly; and she wore such beautiful clothes!" Millicent was evidently very much surprised. "She lives with Miss Benette, then, Charles?" "Oh, no; for I asked her, and she said she wished she did. I should rather think somebody or other is unkind to her, for Miss Benette seems to pity her so much. Well, I was going to tell you, Millicent, she danced! Oh, it was beyond everything! You never saw anything so exquisite. I could hardly watch her about the room; she quite swam, and turned her eyes upward. She looked quite different from what she was at the class." "I should think so. I have always heard that stage dancing is very fascinating, but I have never seen it, you know; and I do not think mother would like you to see her often, for she considers you too young to go to a theatre at all." "Why should I be?" "I don't know all her reasons, but the chief one I should suspect to be, is that it does not close until very late, and that the ballet is the last thing of all in the entertainment." "Yes, I know the ballet. Laura does dance in the ballet, she told me so. But she danced in the daylight when I saw her, so there could be no harm in it." "No harm! There is no harm in what is beautiful; but mother likes you to be fresh for everything you do in the daytime, and that cannot be unless you sleep early, no less than well. She asked me the other day whether I did not think you looked very pale the mornings after the classes." "Oh, what did you say?" "I said, 'He is always pale, dear mother, but he never looks so refreshed by any sleep as when he comes down those mornings, I think.'" "Dear Millicent! you are so kind, I shall never forget it. Now do come and call upon Miss Benette." "My dear Charles, I have never been introduced to her." "How formal, to be sure! She would be so glad if we went; she would love you directly,--everybody does." "I do not wish they should, Charles. You must know very well I had better keep away. I do not belong to the class, and if she lives alone, she of course prefers not to be intruded upon by strangers." "Of course not, generally. I am sure she ought not to live alone. She must be wanting somebody to speak to sometimes." "You are determined she shall have you, at all events." "Oh, no! I am nothing to her, I know; but I can sing, so she likes me to go." "I suppose she is quite a woman, Charles?" "Oh, yes! she is fourteen." "My dear Charles, she cannot live alone. She is but a child, then; I thought her so much older than that." "Oh! did not Mr. Davy say so the other night?" "I did not notice; I do not think so." "Oh! he told me the first time I asked him about her." Millicent laughed again, as we went on, at the idea of her living alone. I still persisted it was a fact. CHAPTER XVI. The next being _our_ night, after dinner the next day I went to my garden. It was growing latest autumn, but still we had had no frosts. My monthly roses were in full bloom, my fuchsias flower-laden. Then I had a geranium or two, labelled with my name, in the little greenhouse. I gathered as many as I could hold in both my hands, and carried them into the parlor. "You have some flowers there," said Clo, with condescension. "It is a pity to gather them when there are so few out," remarked Lydia, without lifting her eyes from her work. I took no notice of them. Millicent beckoned me out of the parlor. "I will give you some ribbon, Charles, if you will come to my room." So she did, and she arranged my flowers so as to infuse into their autumnal aspect the glow of summer, so skilfully she grouped the crimson of the geraniums against the pale roses and purple stocks. I set forth, holding them in my hand. For the first time, I met Davy before I went in. He shook hands, and asked me to come to tea with him on the morrow. Clara was there alone. She greeted me gravely, and yet I thought she would have smiled, had there not been something to make her grave. "Miss Benette!" I whispered, but she would not answer. Davy had just emerged below. We were making rapid progress. I always made way, not only because my ear was true and my voice pure, but because I was sustained by the purest voice and the truest ear in the class. But now the other voices grew able to support themselves, and nothing can be imagined more perfect in its way than the communion of the parts as they exactly balanced each other,--the separate voices toned down and blended into a full effect that extinguished any sensible difference between one and another. I am very matter of fact, I know; but that is better than to be commonplace,--and not the same thing, though they are often confounded. If the real be the ideal, then is the matter of fact the true. This ghost of an aphorism stalked forth from my brain, whose chambers are unfraught with book-lore as with worldly knowledge; and to lay its phantomship, I am compelled to submit it to paper. I could not make Clara attend to me until all was over. Then she said to me of her own accord,-- "Little Laura is ill; she caught cold after she danced the other evening, and has been in bed since." "Will you have these flowers, then? I am afraid they are half faded, though my hand is very cold." "I will take them to Laura,--she has no flowers." "I am very sorry; I hope it was not my fault,--I mean, I hope it did not tire her to dance before me first." "Oh, no! it was her papa's fault for letting her come into the cold air without being well wrapped up. She had a shawl to put on, and a cloak besides, of mine; but her papa gave them to somebody else." "How dreadfully unkind! Is it her papa who did such a thing?" "Her own father. But look, Master Auchester, there is Mr. Davy beckoning to you. And I must go,--my nurse is waiting for me." "So is mine, downstairs. Have you a nurse too?" "I call her so; she came from Germany to find me, and now I take care of her." I was very anxious to see how Davy would address his adopted child, who numbered half his years, and I still detained her, hoping that he would join us. I was not mistaken; for Davy, smiling to himself at my obstinate disregard of his salute, stepped up through the intervening forms. "So you would not come down, Charles! I wanted to ask you to come early, as I wish to try your voice with Miss Benette's. Come at least by five o'clock." He looked at Clara, and I looked at her. Without a smile upon her sweet face (but in the plenitude of that infantine gravity which so enchanted the _not_ youngest part of myself), she bowed to him and answered, "If you please, sir. Then I am not to come in the morning?" "Oh, yes, in the morning also, if you can spare time. You know why I wish to hear you sing together?" "Yes, sir,--you told me. Good night, Master Auchester, and, sir, to you." And she ran out, having replaced her black bonnet and long veil. Davy spoke a few words of gratified commendation in reference to our universal progress, and then, as the room was nearly empty, brought me downstairs. I asked him about Laura. "Oh! she is not dangerously ill." "But I suppose she may be suffering," I added, in a sharp tone, for which I had been reproved times without number at home. "Why, as to that, we must all instruct ourselves to suffer. I am very sorry for my little pupil. She has had an attack of inflammation, but is only now kept still by weakness, Miss Benette tells me." "Miss Benette is very good to her, I think." "Miss Benette is very good to everybody," said Davy, earnestly, with a strange, bright meaning in his accent I looked up at him, but it was too dark to see his expressive face, for now we were in the street. "She is good to me, but could hardly be so to you, sir. She says you have done everything for her, and do still." "I try to do my duty by her; but I owe to her more than I can ever repay." How curious, to be sure! I thought, but I did not say so, there was a preventive hush in his tone and manner. "I should so like to know what we shall sing to-morrow." "So you shall, _to-morrow_; but to-night I scarcely know myself. I will come in with you, that I may obtain your mother's permission to run away with you again,--but not to another festival just yet; I could almost say, 'Would that it were!'" "I could quite, sir." "But we must make a musical feast ourselves, you and I." "Oh, sir! pray let me be a side-dish." "That you shall be. But here we are." Supper was spread in our parlor, and my sisters looked a perfect picture of health, comfort, and interest--three beatitudes of domestic existence. Lydia answered to the first, Clo to the second (she having fallen asleep in her chair by the charmingly brilliant fire), and dear Millicent, on our entrance, to the third; for she looked half up and glowed, the firelight played upon her brow, but there was a gleam, more like moonlight, upon her lips as she smiled to welcome us. My mother, fresh from a doze, sympathetic with Clo, extended her hand with all her friendliness to Davy, and forced him to sit down and begin upon the plate she had filled, before she would suffer him to speak. It was too tormenting, but so it was, that she thought proper to send me to bed after I had eaten a slice of bread and marmalade, before he had finished eating. I gave Millicent a look into her eyes, however, which I knew she understood, and I therefore kept awake, expecting her after Margareth had put out my candle. My fear was lest my mother, dear creature, should come up first, for I still slept in a corner of her room; but I knew Davy could not leave without my knowing it, as every sound passed into my brain from below. At last I listened for the steps, for which I was always obliged to listen, soft as her touch and gentle eyes, and I felt Millicent enter all in the dark. "Well, Charles!" she began, as she put aside my curtain and leaned against my mattress, "it is another treat for you, though not so great a one as your first glory, and you will have to sustain your own credit rather more specially. Do you know the Priory, on the Lawborough Road, not a great way from Mr. Hargreave's factory?" "Yes, I know it; what of that?" "The Redferns live there, and the young ladies are Mr. Davy's pupils." "Not at the class, I suppose?" "No; but Mr. Davy gives them singing lessons, and he says they are rather clever, though perhaps not _too_ really musical. They are very fond of anything new; and now they intend to give a large musical party, as they have been present at one during a stay they made in London lately. It is to be a very select party; some amateur performers are expected, and Mr. Davy is going to sing professionally. Not only so, the young ladies' pianoforte master will be present, and most likely a truly great player, Charles, an artist,--the violinist Santonio." "Was he at the festival?" "Oh, no! Mr. Davy says they have written to him to come from London. But now I must explain _your_ part. Mr. Davy was requested to bring a vocal quartet from his class, as none of the guests can sing in parts. He is to take Miss Benette as a soprano, for he says her soprano is as superior as her lower voice." "So it is." "And some tenor or other." "Mr. Newton, I daresay; he leads all the others." "I think it was. And you, Charles, he wishes to take, for he says your alto voice is very beautiful. You will do your best, I know." "I would do _anything_ to hear a great violin-player." And full of the novel notion, I fell asleep much sooner than I did (as a child) when no excitement was before me. CHAPTER XVII. My mother, besides being essentially an unworldly person, had, I think, given up the cherished idea of my becoming a great mercantile character, and even the expectation that I should take kindly to the prospective partnership with Fred; for certainly she allowed me to devote more time to my music tasks with Millicent than to any others. I owe a great deal to that sister of mine, and particularly the early acquaintance I made with intervals, scales, and chords. Already she had taught me to play from figured basses a little, to read elementary books, and to write upon a ruled slate simple studies in harmony. Hardly conscious who helped me on, I was helped very far indeed. Other musicians, before whom I bow, have been guided in the first toneless symbols and effects of tone by the hand, the voice, the brain of women; but they have generally been famous women. My sister was a quiet girl. Never mind; she had a fame of her own at last. Davy, considering I was in progress, said no more about teaching me himself, and indeed it was unnecessary. I was certainly rather surprised at my mother's permission for me to accompany him to the Redferns', first and chiefly because I had never visited any house she did not frequent herself, and she had never been even introduced to this family, though we had seen them in their large pew at church, and I was rather fond of watching them,--they being about our choicest gentry. For all the while I conceived I should be a visitor, and that each of us would be on the same footing. Had I not been going to accompany Davy, I should have become nervous at the notion of attending a great party met at a fashionable house; but as it was, it did but conceal for me a glorious unknown, and I exulted while I trembled a little at my secret heart. But I went to my master as he had requested, and he let me into his shell. I smelt again that delicious tea, and it exhilarated me as on the first occasion. Upstairs, in the little room, was Miss Benette. She was dressed as usual, but I thought she had never worn anything yet so becoming as that plain black silk frock. The beautiful china was upon the table, now placed for three; and child as I was, I could not but feel most exquisitely the loveliness of that simplicity which rendered so charming and so convenient the association of three ages so incongruous. There are few girls of fourteen who are women enough to comport themselves with the inbred dignity that appertains to woman in her highest development, and there are few women who retain the perfume and essence of infancy. _These_ were flung around Clara in every movement, at each smile or glance; and _those_ adorned her as with regality,--a regality to which one is born, not with which one has been invested. She did not make tea for Davy, nor did she interfere with his little arrangements; but she sat by me and talked to me spontaneously, while she only spoke when he questioned, or listened while he spoke. There was perfect serenity upon her face,--yes! just the serenity of a cloudless heaven; and had I been older, I should have whispered to myself that her peace of soul was all safe, so far as he was concerned. But I did not think about it, though I might naturally have done so, for I was romantic to intensity, even as a boy. "How is Miss Lemark?" I suddenly inquired, while Davy was in the other little room. I forgot to mention that my surmise was well founded,--he _had_ no servant. "She is much better, thank you, or I should not have come here. The flowers look very fresh to-day, and she lies where she can see them." "When will she get up?" "I have persuaded her to remain in bed even longer than she needs; for the moment she gets up they will make her dance, and she is not strong enough for that yet." Davy here returned, and we began to sing. We had a delicious hour. In that small room Clara's voice was no more too powerfully perceptible than is the sunlight in its entrance to a tiny cell,--that glory which itself is the day of heaven. She sang with the most rarefied softness, and I quite realized how infinitely she was my superior in art no less than by nature. What we chiefly worked upon were glees, single quartet pieces, and an anthem; but last of all, Davy produced two duets for soprano and alto,--one from Purcell, the other from a very old opera, the hundred and something one of the Hamburg Kaiser, which our master had himself copied from a copy. "Shall you sing with us in all the four-parted pieces, sir?" I ventured to ask during the symphony of this last. "Yes, certainly; and I shall accompany you both invariably. But of all things do not be afraid, nor trouble yourselves the least about singing in company: nothing is so easy as to sing in a high room like that of the Redferns', and nothing is so difficult as to sing in a small room like this." "I do not find it so difficult, sir," said Clara, gravely. "That is because, Miss Benette, you have already had your voice under perfect control for months. You have been accustomed to practise nine hours a day without an instrument, and nothing is so self-supporting as such necessity." "Yes, sir, it is very good, but not so charming as to sing with your sweet piano." "Do you really practise nine hours a day, Miss Benette?" "Yes, Master Auchester, always; and I find it not enough." "But do you practise without a piano?" "Yes, it is best for me; but when I come to my lessons and hear the delightful keys, I feel as if music had come out of heaven to talk with me." "Ah, Miss Benette!" said Davy, with a kind of exultation, "what will it be when you are singing _in_ the heart of a grand orchestra?" "I never heard one, sir, you know; but I should think that it was like going into heaven after music and remaining there." "But were you not at the festival, Miss Benette?" "Oh, no!" "How very odd, when I was there!" Davy looked suddenly at her; but though his quick, bright glance might have startled away her answer, that came as calmly as all her words,--like a breeze awakening from the south. "I did not desire to go; Mr. Davy had the kindness to propose I should, but I knew it would make me idle afterwards, and I cannot afford to waste my time. I am growing old." "Now, Miss Benette, there is our servant or your nurse," for I heard a knock. "Will you let me come to-morrow?" "Just for half an hour only, because I want to sit with Laura." "I thank you; thank you!" "How did you get home last night?" I asked, on the promised meeting. She was sitting at the window, where the light was strongest, for her delicate work was in her hand; and as the beams of a paler sun came in upon her, I thought I had seen something like her somewhere before in a picture as it were framed in a dusky corner, but itself making for its own loveliness a shrine of light. Had I travelled among studios and galleries, I must have been struck by her likeness to those rich-hued but fairest ideals of the sacred schools of painting which have consecrated the old masters as worshippers of the highest in woman; but I had never seen anything of the kind except in cold prints. That strange reminiscence of what we never have really seen, in what we at present behold, appertains to a certain temperament only,--that temperament in which the ideal notion is so definite that all the realities the least approximating thereunto strike as its semblances, and all that it finds beautiful it compares so as to combine with the beautiful itself. I do not suppose I had this consciousness that afternoon, but I perfectly remember saying, before Clara rose to welcome me as she always did, "You look exactly like a picture." "Do I? But no people in pictures are made at work. Oh, it is very unpicturesque!" and she smiled. "I am not going to sing, Miss Benette; there is no time in just half an hour." "I _must_ practise, Master Auchester; I cannot afford to lose my half hours and half hours." "But I want to ask you some questions. Now do answer me, please." "You shall make long questions, then, and I short answers." She began to sing her florid exercises, a paper of which lay open upon the desk, in Davy's hand. "Well, first I want to know why are they unkind to Laura, and what they do to her which is unkind." "It would not be unkind if Laura were altogether like her father, as she is in some respects, because then she would have no feeling; but she has the feeling of which her mother died." "That is a longer answer than I expected, but not half enough; I want to know so much more. How pretty your hands are,--so pink!" I remarked admiringly, as I watched the dimples in them, and the infantinely rounded fingers, as they spread so softly amidst the delicate cambric. "So are yours very pretty hands, Master Auchester, and they are very white too. But never mind the hands now. I should like to tell you about Laura, because if you become a great musician you will perhaps be able to do her a kindness." "What sort of kindness?" "Oh, I cannot say, my thoughts do not tell me; but any kindness is great to her. She has a clever father, but he has no more heart than this needle, though he is as sharp and has as clear an eye. He made his poor little wife dance even when she was ill; but that was before I knew Laura. When I came here from London with Mr. Davy, I knew nobody; but one evening I was singing and working while Thoné (that is my nurse) was gone out to buy me food, when I suddenly heard a great crying in the street. I went downstairs and opened the door, and there I found a little girl, with no bonnet upon her head, who wore a gay frock all covered with artificial flowers. My nurse was there too. Thoné can't talk much English, but she said to me, 'Make her speak. I found her sitting down in the gutter, all bathed in tears.' "Then I said, in my English, 'Do tell me why you were in the streets, pretty one, and why you wear these fine clothes in the mud.' "'Oh, I cannot dance,' she cried, and sobbed; 'my feet are stiff with standing all this morning, and if I try to begin before those lamps on that slippery floor, I shall tumble down.' "'You have run away from the theatre,' I said; and then I took her upstairs in my arms (for she was very light and small), and gave her some warm milk. Then, when she was hushed, I said, 'Were you to dance, then? It is very pretty to dance: why were you frightened?' "'I was so tired. Oh, I wish I could go to my mamma!' "'I asked her where she was; and she began to shake her head and to tell me her mamma was dead. But in the midst there was a great knocking at the door downstairs. Laura was dreadfully alarmed, and screamed; and while she was screaming, in came a great man, his face all bedecked with paint. I could not speak to him, he would not hear me, nor could we save the child then; for he snatched her up (all on the floor as she was), and carried her downstairs in his arms. He was very big, certainly, and had a fierce look, but did not hurt her; and as I ran after him, and Thoné after me, we saw him put her into a close coach and get in after her, and then they drove away. I was very miserable that night, for I could not do anything for the poor child; but I went the first thing the next morning to the theatre that had been open the evening before. Thoné was with me, and took care of me in that wild place. At last I made out who the little dancing-girl was and where she lived, and then I went to that house. Oh, Master Auchester! I thought my house so still, so happy after it. It was full of noise and smells, and had a look that makes me very low,--a look of discomfort all about. I said I wanted the manager, and half a dozen smart, dirty people would have shown me the way; but I said, 'Only one, if you please.' "Then some young man conducted me upstairs into a greasy drawing-room. Thoné did not like my staying, but I would stay, although I did not once sit down. The carpet was gay, and there were muslin curtains; but you, Master Auchester, could not have breathed there. I felt ready to cry; but that would not have helped me, so I looked at the sky out of the window till I heard some one coming in. It was the great man. He was selfish-looking and vulgar, but very polite to me, and wanted me to sit upon his sofa. 'No,' I said, 'I am come to speak about the little girl who came to my house last night, and whom I was caring for when you fetched her away. And I want to know why she was so afraid to dance, and so afraid of you?' "The man looked ready to eat me, but Thoné (who is a sort of gypsy, Master Auchester) kept him down with her grand looks, and he turned off into a laugh,--'I suppose I may do as I please with my own child!' "'No, sir!' I said, 'not if you are an unnatural father, for in this good land the law will protect her; and if you do not promise to treat her well, I am going to the magistrate about it. I suppose she has no mother; now, I have none myself, and I never see anybody ill-treated who has no mother without trying to get them righted.' "'You are a fine young lady to talk to me so. Why, you are a child yourself! Who said I was unkind to my Laura? She must get her living, and she can't do better than dance, as her mother danced before her. I will send for her, and you shall hear what she will say for herself this morning.' "He shouted out upon the landing, and presently the child came down. I was surprised to see that she looked happy, though very tired. I said, 'Are you better to-day?' "'It was very nice,' she answered, 'and they gave me such pretty flowers!' "Then we talked a long time. I shall tire you, Master Auchester, if I tell you all; but I found myself not knowing what to do, for though the child had been made to go through a great deal of suffering--almost all dancers must--yet she did so love the art that it was useless to try and coax her out of her services for it. All I could do, then, was to entreat her papa not to be severe with her, if even he was obliged to be strict; and then (for he had told me she danced the night before, the first time in public) I added to herself, 'You must try to deserve the flowers they give you, and dance your very best And if you practise well when you are learning in the mornings, it will become so easy that you will not find it any pain at all, and very little fatigue.' "Her papa, I could see, was not ill-humored, but very selfish, and would make the most of his clever little daughter; so I would not stay any longer, lest he should forget what I had said. He was rather more polite again before I went away, and in a day or two I sent Thoné with a note to Laura, in which I asked her to tea--and, for a wonder, she came. I am tiring you, Master Auchester?" "Oh! do please, for pity's sake, go on, Miss Benette!" "Well, when she came with Thoné, she was dressed much as she dresses at the class, and I have not been able yet to persuade her to leave off that ugly necklace. She talked to me a great deal. She was not made to suffer until after her mother's death, for her mother was so tender of her that she would allow no one to touch her but herself. She taught her to dance, though; and little Laura told me so innocently how she used to practise by the side of her mother's sick bed, for she lay ill for many months. She had caught a cold--as Laura did the other night--after a great dance, in which she grew very warm; and at last she died of consumption. She had brought her husband a good deal of money, and he determined to make the most of it as soon as she was dead; for he brought Laura on very fast by teaching her all day, and torturing her too, though I really believe he thought it was necessary." "Miss Benette!" "Yes; for such persons as he have not sensations fine enough to let them understand how some can be made to suffer delicately." "Oh, go on!" "Well, she was just ready to be brought out in a kind of fairy ballet, in which children are required, the night the theatre opened this season." "And it was then she ran away?" "Yes; when she got into the theatre she took fright." "Did she dance that night, after all?" "Oh, yes! and she liked it very much, for she is very excitable and very fond of praise. Besides, she has a very bright soul, and she was pleased with the sparkling scenery. As she described it, 'It was all roses, and crystal, and beautiful music going round and round.' She is a sweet little child when you really know her, and as innocent as the two little daughters of the clergyman at St. Anthony's who go every day past hand in hand, with their white foreheads and blue eyes, and whose mamma sleeps by Laura's, in the same churchyard. Well, she came to me several times, and at last I persuaded her papa to let her drink tea with me, and it saves him trouble, so he is very glad she should. It is the end of the season now, so I hope he will give her a real holiday, and she will get quite strong." "He fetches her, then, to go to the theatre?" "Yes; it is not any trouble to him, for he calls on another person in this lane, and they all go together." "Do you know that person?" "Oh, no! and Laura does not like her. But as Laura is obliged to see a good deal of low people, I like her sometimes to see high people, that her higher nature may not want food." "I understand. Was that the reason she joined the class?" "I persuaded her papa to allow her, by assuring him it would improve her voice for singing in the chorus; and now he comes himself, though I rather suspect it is because he likes to know all that is going on in the town." "She goes home with him, then?" "Yes. The reason you saw Laura in her dancing-dress was that you might like her. I bade her bring it, and put it on her myself. I did not tell her why, but I wished you to see her too." "But why did you wish me to like her, Miss Benette?" "As I told you before,--that you may be kind to her; and also that she might see some one very gentle, I wished her to be here with you." "Am I gentle, do you consider?" "I think you are a young gentleman," she answered, with her sweet gravity. "But I do not see how it could do her good exactly to see gentle persons." "Do not you? I do; I believe she will never become ungentle by living with ungentle persons, as she does and must, if she once knows what gentle persons are. I may be all wrong, but this is what I believe; and when Laura grows up, I shall find out whether I am right. Oh! it is good to love the beautiful; and if we once really love it, we can surely not do harm." "Miss Benette!" I exclaimed suddenly,--I really could not help it,--"I think you are an angel." She raised her blue eyes from the shadowy length of their lashes, and fixed them upon the dim gray autumn heaven, then without a smile; but her bright face shining even with the light of which smiles are born, she replied in the words of Mignon, but with how apart a significance! "I wish I were one!" then going on, "because then I shall be all beautiful without and within me. But yet, no! I would not be an angel, for I could not then sing in our class!" I laughed out, with the most perfect sympathy in her sentiment; and then she laughed, and looked at me exactly as an infant does in mirthful play. "Now, Miss Benette, one more question. Mr. Davy told me the other night that you had done him good. What did he mean?" "I do not think I can tell you what I believe he meant, because you might mention it to him; and if he did not mean that, he would think me silly, and I would not seem silly to him." "Now, do pray tell me! Do you suppose I can go home unless you will? You have made me so dreadfully curious. I should not think of telling him you had told me. Now, what did you do for him that made him say so?" She replied, with an innocence the sister of which I have never seen through all my dreams of woman,-- "Mr. Davy was so condescending as to ask me one day whether I would be his wife,--sometime when I am grown up. And I said, No. I think that was the good I did him." I shall never forget the peculiar startled sensation that struck through me. I had never entertained such a notion, or any notion of the kind about anybody; and about her it was indeed new, and to me almost an awe. "The good you did him, Miss Benette!" I cried in such a scared tone that she dropped her work into her lap. "I should have thought it would have done him more good if you had said, Yes." "You are very kind to think so," she replied, in a tone like a confiding child's to a superior in age,--far from like an elder's to one so young as myself,--"but I know better, Master Auchester. It was the only thing I could do to show my gratitude." "Were you sorry to say No, Miss Benette?" "No; very glad and very pleased." "But it is rather odd. I should have thought you would have liked to say, Yes. You do not love him, then?" "Oh! yes, I do, well. But I do not wish to belong to him, nor to any one,--only to music now; and besides, I should not have had his love. He wished to marry me that he might take care of me. But when he said so, I answered, 'Sir, I can take care of myself.'" "But, Miss Benette, how much should one love, and how, then, if one is to marry? For I do not think all people marry for love!" "You are not old enough to understand, and I am not old enough to tell you," she said sweetly, with her eyes upon her work as usual, "nor do I wish to know. If some people marry not for love, what is that to me? I am not even sorry for them,--not so sorry as I am for those who know not music, and whom music does not know." "Oh! they are worse off!" I involuntarily exclaimed. "Do you think I am 'known of music,' Miss Benette?" "I daresay; for you love it, and will serve it. I cannot tell further, I am not wise. Would you like to have your fortune told?" "Miss Benette! what do you mean? You cannot tell fortunes!" "But Thoné can. She is a gypsy,--a real gypsy, Master Auchester, though she was naughty, and married out of her tribe." "What tribe?" "Hush!" said Clara, whisperingly; "she is in my other room at work, and she would be wroth if she thought I was talking about her." "But you said she cannot speak English." "Yes; but she always has a feeling when I am speaking about her. Such people have,--their sympathies are so strong." Now, it happened we had often talked over gypsies and their pretensions in our house, and various had been the utterances of our circle. Lydia doomed them all as imposters; my mother, who had but an ideal notion of them, considered, as many do, that they somehow pertained to Israel. Clo presumed they were Egyptian, because of their contour and their skill in pottery,--though, by the way, she had never read upon the subject, as she always averred. But Millicent was sufficient for me at once, when she had said one day, "At least they are a distinct race, and possess in an eminent degree the faculty of enforcing faith in the supernatural by the exercise of physical and spiritual gifts that only act upon the marvellous." I always understood Millicent, whatever she said, and I had often talked with her about them. I rather suspect she believed them in her heart to be Chaldean. I must confess, notwithstanding, that I was rather nervous when Miss Benette announced, with such child-like assurance, her intuitive credence in their especial ability to discern and decipher destiny. I said, "Do you think she can, then?" "Perhaps it is vulgar to say 'tell fortunes,' but what I mean is, that she could tell, by casting her eyes over you, and looking into your eyes, and examining your brow, what kind of life you are most fit for, and what you would make out of it." "Oh, how I should like her to tell me!" "She shall, then, if she may come in. But your half-hour has passed." "Oh, do just let me stay a little!" "You shall, of course, if you please, sir; only do not feel obliged." She arose and walked out of the room, closing the door. I could catch her tones through the wall, and she returned in less than a minute. There was something startling, almost to appall, in the countenance of the companion she ushered, coming close behind her. I can say that that countenance was all eye,--a vivid and burning intelligence concentred in orbs whose darkness was really light, flashing from thence over every feature. Thoné was neither a gaunt nor a great woman, though tall; her hands were beautifully small and slender, and though she was as brunette as her eye was dark, she was clear as that darkness was itself light. The white cap she wore contrasted strangely with that rich hue, like sun-gilt bronze. She was old, but modelled like a statue, and her lips were keen, severe, and something scornful. It was amazing to me to see how easily Miss Benette looked and worked before this prodigy; I was speechless. Thoné took my hand in hers, and feeling I trembled, she said some quick words to Clara in a species of Low German, whose accent I could not understand, and Clara replied in the same. I would have withdrawn my hand, for I was beginning to fear something dreadful in the way of an oracle, but Thoné led me with irrepressible authority to the window. Once there, she fastened upon me an almost feeling glance, and having scanned me a while, drew out all my fingers one by one with a pressure that cracked every sinew of my hand and arm. At last she looked into my palm, but made no muttering, and did not appear trying to make out anything but the streaks and texture of the skin. It could not have been ten minutes that had passed when she let fall my hand, and addressing Clara in a curt, still manner, without smile or comment, uttered in a voice whose echoes haunt me still,--for the words were rare as music,--"Tonkunst und Arzenei."[10] I knew enough of German to interpret these, at all events, and as I stood they passed into my being by conviction, they being indeed truth. Clara approached me. "Are you satisfied? Music _is_ medicine, though, I think; do not you?" She smiled with sweet mischief. "Oh, Miss Benette, thank you a thousand times! for whether it is to be true or not, I think it is a very good fortune to be told. Has she told you yours?" "Yes, often; at least as much as she told you about yourself, she has revealed to me." "Can she tell all people their fortunes?" "I will ask her." She turned to our bright Fate and spoke. On receiving a short, low reply, as Thoné left the room, she again addressed me. "She says, 'I cannot prophesy for the pure English, if there be any, because the letters of their characters are not distinct. All I know in all, is how much there is of ours in each.'" "I don't know what she means." "No more do I." "Oh, Miss Benette, you do!" For her arch smile fluttered over her lips. "So I do; but, Master Auchester, it is getting very late,--you must go, unless I may give you some tea. And your mother would like you to be home. Therefore, go now." I wanted to shake hands with her, but she made no show of willingness, so I did not dare, and instantly I departed. What a wonderful spell it was that bound me to the dull lane at the end of the town! Certainly it is out of English life in England one must go for the mysteries and realities of existence. I was just in time for our tea. As I walked into the parlor the fire shone, and so did the kettle, singing to itself; for in our English life we eschewed urns. Clo was reading, Lydia at the board, Millicent was cutting great slices of homemade bread. I thought to myself, "How differently we all manage here! If Millicent did but dare, I know she would behave and talk like Miss Benette." "How is the young lady this afternoon, Charles? I wish you to ask her to come and drink tea with us on Sunday after service." "Yes, mother; is Mr. Davy coming?" "He promised the other night." "And Charles," added Clo, "do not forget that you must go with me to-morrow and be measured for a jacket." "I am to wear one at last, then?" "Yes, for now you are really growing too tall for frocks." I was very glad; for I abjured those braided garments, compassing about my very heels with bondage, with utter satisfaction. Still, I was amused. "I suppose it is for this party I am going to," thought I. FOOTNOTE: [10] Music and Medicine. CHAPTER XVIII. The next day at class, Laura's place still being empty, I watched eagerly for Clara. The people were pouring in at the door, and I, knowing their faces, could not but feel how unlike she was to them all, when in the way she appeared, so bright in her dark dress, with her cloudless forehead and air of ecstatic innocence. She spoke to me to-day. "How are you?" "Quite well; and you, Miss Benette? But I want you to listen to me presently; seriously, I have something to say." "I'll wait," and she took her seat. Davy extolled our anthem, and did not stop us once, which fact was unprecedented. We all applauded _him_ when he praised _us_, at which he laughed, but was evidently much pleased. In fact, he had already made for himself a name and fame in the town, and the antagonistic jealousy of the resident professors could not cope therewith, without being worsted; they had given him up, and now let him alone,--thus his sensitive nature was less attacked, and his energy had livelier play. When the class divided, Miss Benette looked round at me: "I am at your service, Master Auchester." I gave her my mother's message. She was sweet and calm as ever, but still grave, and she said, "I am very grateful to your mother, and to those young ladies your sisters; but I never do go anywhere out to tea." "But, Miss Benette, you are going to that party at the Redferns'." "I am going to sing there,--that is different. It is very hard to me not to come, but I must not, because I have laid it upon myself to do nothing but study until I come out. Because, you see, if I make friends now, I might lose them then, for they might not like to know me." "Miss Benette!"--I stamped my foot--"how dare you say so? We should always be proud to know you." "I cannot tell that," she retorted; "it might be, or it might not. Perhaps you will think I am right one day. I should like to have come," she persisted bewitchingly. But I was inwardly hurt, and I daresay she thought me outwardly sulky, for it was all I could do to wish her good-evening like a "young gentleman," as she had called me. I said to Millicent, when we were walking the next morning, that I had had my fortune told. We had a long conversation. I saw she was very anxious to disabuse me of the belief that I must necessarily be what, in myself, I had always held myself ready to become, and I laughed her quite to scorn. "But, Charles," she remonstrated, "if this is to be, you must be educated with a direct view to those purposes." "So I shall be; but when she said medicine she did not mean I should be an apothecary, Millicent," and I laughed the more. "No, I rather think it is music you ought to profess. But in that case you will require high as well as profound instruction." "I mean to profess an instrument, and I mean to go to Germany and learn all about it." "My dear boy!" "Yes, I do, and I know I shall; but as I have not chosen my instrument yet, I shall wait." Millicent herself laughed heartily at this. "Would you like to learn the horn, Charles? or the flute? or perhaps that new instrument, the ophicleide?" And so the subject dwindled into a joke for that while. I then told her in strict confidence about Laura. I scarcely ever saw her so much excited to interest; she evidently almost thought Clara herself angelic, and to my delight she at length promised to call with me upon her, if I would ascertain that it would be convenient. I shall never forget, too, that Millicent begged for me from my mother some baked apples, some delicate spiced jelly, and some of her privately concocted lozenges, for Laura. I do think my mother would have liked to dispense these last _à la largesse_ among the populace. I carried these treasures in a small basket to Miss Benette, and saw her just long enough to receive her assurance that she should be so pleased if my sister would come and look at her work. Sweet child! as indeed she was by the right of Genius (who, if Eros be immortal youth, hath alone immortal fancy),--she had laid every piece of her beauteous work, every scrap of net or cambric, down to that very last handkerchief, upon the table, which she had covered with a crimson shawl, doubtless some relic of her luxurious mother conserved for her. And with the instinct of that ideal she certainly created in her life, she had interspersed the lovely manufactures with little bunches of wild-flowers and green, and a few berries of the wild rose-tree, ripe and red. I was enchanted. I was proud beyond measure to introduce to her my sister; proud of them both. Millicent was astonished, amazed; I could see she was quite puzzled with pleasure, but more than all she seemed lost in watching Clara's calm, cloudless face. "Which of the pieces do you like best?" asked Miss Benette at last, after we had fully examined all. "Oh! it is really impossible to say; but if I could prefer, I should confess, perhaps, that this is the most exquisitely imagined;" and Millicent pointed to a veil of thin white net, with the border worked in the most delicate shades of green floss silk, a perfect wreath of myrtle-leaves; and the white flowers seemed to tremble amidst that shadowy garland. I never saw anything to approach them; they were far more natural than any paintings. Miss Benette took this veil up in her little pink hands, and folding it very small, and wrapping it in silver paper, presented it to Millicent, saying, in a child-like but most touching manner, "You must take it, then, that you may not think I am ungrateful; and I am so glad you chose that." As Millicent said, it would have been impossible to have refused her anything. I quite longed to cry, and the tears stood in my tender-hearted sister's eyes; but Clara seemed entirely unconscious she had done anything touching or pretty or complete. If I go on in this way, raking the embers of reminiscence into rosy flames, I shall never emancipate myself into the second great phase of my existence. It is positively necessary that I should not revert to that veil at present, or I should have to delineate astonishment and admiration that had no end. CHAPTER XIX. At last the day came, and having excited myself the whole morning about the Redferns, I left off thinking of them, and returned to myself. Although it portends little, I may transmit to posterity the fact that my new clothes came home at half-past three, and my mother beheld me arrayed in them at five. Davy had all our parts and the songs of Miss Benette, for she was to sing alone if requested to do so, and was to be ready, when I should call, to accompany me. I was at length pronounced at liberty to depart,--that is, everybody had examined me from head to foot. I had a sprig of the largest myrtle in the greenhouse quilted into the second and third button-holes, and my white gloves were placed in my pocket by Clo, after she had wrapped them in white paper. I privately carried a sprig of myrtle, too, for Miss Benette: it was covered with blossom, and of a very fine species. Thoné never answered the door in St. Anthony's Lane, but invariably the same extraordinary figure who had startled me on my first visit. She stared so long with the door in her hand, this time, that I rushed past her and ran up the stairs. Still singing! Yes, there she was, in her little bonnet, but from head to foot enveloped in a monstrous cloak; I could not see what dress she wore. It was November now, and getting very dusk; but we had both expressed a wish to walk, and Davy always preferred it. How curious his shell looked in the uncertain gleam! The tiny garden, as immaculate as ever, wore the paler shine of asters and Michaelmas daisies; and the casement above, being open, revealed Davy watching for us through the twilight. He came down instantly, sweeping the flower-shrubs with his little cloak, and having locked the door and put the key into his pocket, he accosted us joyously, shaking hands with us both. But he held all the music under his cloak too, nor would I proceed until he suffered me to carry it. We called for Mr. Newton, our companion tenor, who lived a short way in the town. He met us with white gloves ready put on, and in the bravery of a white waistcoat, which he exhibited through the opening of his jauntily hung great-coat. I left him behind with Davy, and again found myself with Miss Benette. I began to grow nervous when, having passed the shops and factories of that district, we emerged upon the Lawborough Road, lit by a lamp placed here and there, with dark night looming in the distant highway. Again we passed house after house standing back in masses of black evergreen; but about not a few there was silence, and no light from within. At length, forewarned by rolling wheels that had left us far behind them, we left the gate of the Priory and walked up to the door. It was a very large house, and one of the carriages had just driven off as Davy announced his name. One of three footmen, lolling in the portico, aroused and led us to a room at the side of the hall, shutting us in. It was a handsome room, though small, furnished with a looking-glass; here were also various coats and hats reposing upon chairs. I looked at myself in the glass while Davy and our tenor gave themselves the last touch, and then left it clear for them. I perceived that Miss Benette had not come in with us, or had stayed behind. She had taken off her bonnet elsewhere, and when we were all ready, and the door was opened, I saw her once more, standing underneath the lamp. I could not find out how she was dressed; her frock was, as usual, black silk, but of the very richest. She wore long sleeves, and drooping falls upon her wrists of the finest black lace; no white against her delicate throat, except that in front she had placed a small but really magnificent row of pearls. Her silky dark hair she wore, as usual, slightly drooped on either temple, but neither curled nor banded. I presented her with the myrtle sprig, which she twisted into her pearls, seeming pleased with it; but otherwise she was very unexcited, though very bright. I was not bright, but very much excited; I quite shook as we walked up the soft stair-carpet side by side. She looked at me in evident surprise. "You need not be nervous, Master Auchester, I assure you!" "It is going into the drawing-room, and being introduced, I hate; will there be many people, do you think?" She opened her blue eyes very wide when I asked her, and then, with a smile quite new to me upon her face, a most enchanting but sorely contemptuous smile, she said,-- "Oh! we are not going in there,--did you think so? There is a separate room for us, in which we are to sip our coffee." I was truly astonished, but I had not time to frame any expression; we were ushered forward into the room she had suggested. It was a sort of inner drawing-room apparently, for there were closed folding-doors in the wall that opposed the entrance. An elegant chandelier hung over a central rosewood table; on this table lay abundance of music, evidently sorted with some care. Two tall wax-candles upon the mantelshelf were reflected in a tall mirror in tall silver sticks; the gold-colored walls were pictureless, and crimson damask was draperied and festooned at the shuttered window. Crimson silk chairs stood about, and so did the people in the room, whom we began, Clara and I, to scrutinize. Standing at the table by Davy, and pointing with a white kid finger to the music thereon arranged, was an individual with the organs of melody and of benevolence in about equal development; he was talking very fast. I was sure I knew his face, and so I did. It was the very Mr. Westley who came upon us in the corridor at the festival. He taught the younger Miss Redferns, of whom there was a swarm; and as they grew they were passed up to the tuition of Monsieur Mirandos, a haughtily-behaved being, in the middle of the rug, warming his hands, gloves and all, and gazing with the self-consciousness of pianist primo then and there present. It was Clara who initiated me into this fact, and also that he taught the competent elders of that exclusively feminine flock, and that he was the author of a grand fantasia which had neither predecessor nor descendant. Miss Benette and I had taken two chairs in the corner next the crimson curtain, and nestling in there we laughed and we talked. "Who is the man in a blue coat with bright buttons, now looking up at the chandelier?" I inquired. "That is a man who has given his name an Italian termination, but I forget it. He has a great name for getting up concerts, and I daresay he will be a sort of director to-night." So it was, at least so it seemed, for he at last left the room, and returning presented us each with a sheet of pink-satin note-paper, on which were named and written in order the compositions awaiting interpretation. We looked eagerly to see where our first glee came. "Oh! not for a good while, Master Auchester. But do look, here is that Mirandos going to play his _grande fantaisie sur des motifs militaires_. Oh! who is that coming in?" Here Miss Benette interrupted herself, and I, excited by her accent, looked up simultaneously. As for me, I knew directly who it was, for the gentleman entering at the door so carelessly, at the same time appearing to take in the whole room with his glance, had a violin-case in his hand. I shall not forget his manner of being immediately at home, nodding to one and another amiably, but with a slight sneer upon his lip, which he probably could not help, as his mouth was very finely cut. I felt certain it was Santonio; and while the gentleman upon the rug addressed him very excitedly, and received a cool reply, though I could not hear what it was, for all the men were talking, Davy came up to us and confirmed my presentiment. "What a handsome gentleman he is, but how he stares!" said Clara, in a serious manner that set me laughing; and then Davy whispered "Hush!" But it was of little use, for Santonio came up now to our corner, and deposited his case on the next chair to Miss Benette, looking at her all the while and at me, so that we could well see his face. It was certainly very handsome,--a trifle too handsome, perhaps, yet full of harmonious lines, and the features were very pure. His complexion was glowing, yet fair, and passed well by contrast into the hue of his eyes, which were of that musical gray more blue than slate-colored. Had he been less handsome, the Hebrew contour might have been more easily detected; as it was, it was clear to me, but might not have occurred to others who did not look for it. A brilliant person, such as I have seldom seen, he yet interested more by his gestures, his way of scanning, and smiling to himself, his defiant self-composure, something discomposing to those about him, than by his positive personal attractions. Having examined us, he examined also Davy, and said specially, "How are you?" "Quite well, thank you," replied our master; "I had no right to expect you would remember me, Mr. Santonio." "Oh! I never forget anybody," was the reply; "I often wish I did, for I have seen everybody now, and there is no one else to see." "Oh!" thought I to myself, but I said nothing, "you have not seen _one_." For I felt sure, I knew not why, that he had not. "Is this your son, Davy?" questioned he, once more speaking, and looking down upon me for an instant. "Certainly not; my pupil and favorite alto." "Is he for the profession, then?" "What do you say, Charles?" "Yes, Mr. Davy, certainly." "If I don't mistake, it will not be alto long, though," said Santonio, with lightness; "his arm and hand are ready made for me." I was so transported that I believe I should have knelt before Santonio but that, as lightly as he had spoken, he had turned again away. It was as if he had not said those words, so unaltered was his face, with those curved eyebrows; and I wished he had left me alone altogether, I felt so insignificant. It was a good thing for me that now there entered footmen very stately, with silver trays, upon which they carried coffee, very strong and cold, and chilly green tea. We helped ourselves, every one, and then it was I really began to enjoy the exclusion with which we had been visited; for we all seemed shut in and belonging to each other. The pianist primo joked with Santonio, and Mr. Westley attacked Davy, while Newton and the man in the blue coat with bright buttons wore the subject of the festival to a thread; for the former had been away, and the latter had been there, and the latter enlightened the former, and more than enlightened him, and where his memory failed, invented, never knowing that I, who had been present, was listening and judging,--as Clara said, "he was making up stories;" and indeed it was a surprise for me to discover such an imagination dwelling in a frame so adipose. Santonio at last attracted our whole attention by pouring his coffee into the fire, and asking a footman, who had re-entered with wafers and tea-cakes, for some more coffee that was hot; and while we were all laughing very loud, another footman, a shade more pompous than this, threw back the folding-doors that divided us from the impenetrable saloon. As those doors stood open we peeped in. "How many people there are!" said I. "Yes," said Clara, "but they are not very wise." "Why do you suppose not?" "First, because they have set the piano close up against the wall. Mr. Davy will have it out, I know." "I see a great many young ladies in pink frocks,--I suppose the Miss Redferns." "See that man, Master Auchester, who is looking down at the legs of the piano, to find out how they are put on." And thus we talked and laughed until Santonio had finished his coffee, quite as if no one was either in that room or in the next. "It was not warm, after all," said he to Mirandos; but this was in a lower tone, and he put on an air of hauteur withal that became him wonderfully. Then I found that we had all become very quiet, and there had grown a hush through the next room, so that it looked like a vast picture, of chandeliers all light, tall glasses, ruddy curtains, and people gayly yet lightly dressed. The men in there spoiled the picture, though,--they none of them looked comfortable: men seldom do in England at an evening party. Our set, indeed, looked comfortable enough, though Davy was a little pale; I very well knew why. At last in came the footman again; he spoke to the gentleman in the blue coat with bright buttons. _He_ bowed, looked red, and walked up to Davy. Miss Benette's song came first, I knew; and I declare the blood quite burned at my heart with feeling for her. How little I knew her really! Almost before I could look for her, she was gone from my side; I watched her into the next room. She walked across it just as she was used to cross her own little lonely room at home, except that she just touched Davy's arm. As she had predicted, he drew the piano several feet from the wall,--it was a grand piano--and she took her place by him. As serenely, as seriously, with that bright light upon her face which was as the sunshine amidst those lamps, she seemed, and I believe was, as serene, as serious, as when at home over her exquisite broidery. No music was before Davy as he commenced the opening symphony of one of Weber's most delighting airs. The public was just fresh from the pathos of Weber's early death, and everybody rushed to hear his music. She began with an intensity that astonished even me,--an ease that so completely instilled the meaning that I ceased to be alarmed or to tremble for her. Her voice even then held promise of what it has since become, as perfectly as does the rose-bud, half open, contain the rose. I have seen singers smile while they sang; I have watched them sing with the tears upon their cheeks: yet I never saw any one sing so seriously as Miss Benette, calmly, because it is her nature, and above all, with an evident facility so peculiar that I have ceased to reverence conquered difficulties so much as I believe I ought to do for the sake of art. Everybody was very quiet, quieter than at many public concerts; but this audience was half stupefied with curiosity, as well as replete with the novelty of the style itself. Everybody who has enthusiasm knows the effect of candle-light upon the brain during the performance of music anywhere, and just as we were situated there was a strange romance, I thought. Santonio stood upon the rug; a very sweet expression sat upon his lips,--I thought even _he_ was enchanted; and when Clara was silent and had come back again so quietly, without any flush upon her face, I thought he would surely come too and compliment her. But no, he was to play himself, and had taken out his violin. It was a little violin, and he lifted it as if it had been a flower or an infant, and laid his head lovingly upon it while he touched the strings. They, even those pizzicato hints, seemed to me to be sounds borne out of another sphere, so painfully susceptible I became instantly to the power of the instrument itself. "It is to be the Grand Sonata, I see." "No, sir," said Davy, who had come back with Miss Benette. "Yes, but I shall not play with Mirandos; we settled that, Miss Lawrence and I." "Who is Miss Lawrence?" "An ally of mine." "In the room?" "Yes, yes. Don't talk, Davy; she is coming after me. Your servant, Miss Lawrence!" I beheld a young lady in the doorway. "So, Mr. Santonio, you are not ready? They are all very impatient for a sight of you." "I am entirely at your service." "Come, then." She beckoned with her hand. It was all so sudden that I could only determine the color of her hair, black; and of her brocaded dress, a dark blue. Her voice was in tone satirical, and she spoke like one accustomed to be obeyed. When Santonio entered, there began a buzzing, and various worthies in white kid gloves clustered round the piano. He drew the desk this side of the instrument, so that not only his back was turned to us, but he screened Miss Lawrence also; and I was provoked that I could see nothing but the pearls that were twisted with her braided hair. It was one of Beethoven's complete works to be interpreted, a divine duo for violin and piano, that had then never been heard in England, except at the Philharmonic concerts; and I did not know the name even then of the Philharmonic. And when it began, an indescribable sensation of awe, of bliss, of almost anguish, pervaded me,--it was the very bitter of enjoyment; but I could not realize it for a long time. The perfection of Santonio's bowing never tempted him to eccentricity, and no one could have dreamed of comparing him with Paganini, so his fame was safe. But I knew nothing of Paganini, and merely felt from head to foot as if I were the violin and he was playing upon me, so completely was I drawn into the performance, body and soul,--not the performance merely, let me say; as a violinist now, my conviction is that the influence is as much physical as supernatural of my adopted instrument. That time my nerves were so much affected that I trembled in every part of me. Internally I was weeping, but my tears overflowed not my eyes. Santonio's _cantabile_, whatever they say of Ernst or of Sivori, is superior to either. There is a manly passion in his playing that never condescends to coquette with the submissive strings; it wailed enough that night for anything, and yet never degenerated into imitation. I knew directly I heard him draw the first quickening, shivering chord--shivering to my heart--I knew that the violin must become my master, or I its own. Davy, still pale, but radiant with sympathetic pleasure, continued to glance down upon me, and Clara's eyes were lost in drooping to the ground. I scarcely know how it was, but I was very inadvertent of the pianoforte part, magnificently sustained as it was and inseparable from the other, until Clara whispered to Davy, "Does she not play remarkably well, sir?" "Yes," he returned; "I am surprised. She surely must be professional." But none of us liked to inquire, at least then. I noticed afterwards, from time to time, how well the piano met the violin in divided passages, and how exactly they went together; but still those strings, that bow, were all in all for me, and Santonio was the scarcely perceptible presence of an intimate sympathy, veiled from me as it were by a hovering mist of sound. So it was especially in the slow movement, with its long sighs, like the voice of silence, and its short, broken sobs of joy. The thrill of my brain, the deep tumult of my bosom, alone prevented me from tears, just as the rain falls not when the wind is swelling highest, but waits for the subsiding hush. The analogy will not serve me out, nevertheless, for at the close of the last movement, so breathless and so impetuous as it was, there was no hush, only a great din, in the midst of which I wept not; it was neither time nor place. Miss Benette, too, whispered just at the conclusion, when Santonio was haughtily, and Miss Lawrence carelessly, retiring, "Now we shall go; but please do not make me laugh, Master Auchester." "How can you say so, when it was your fault that we laughed the other night?" And truly it did seem impossible to unsettle that sweet gravity of hers, though it often unsettled mine. CHAPTER XX. We went, and really I found it not so dreadful; and so was I drawn to listen for her voice so dear to me even then, that I forgot all other circumstances except that she was standing by me there, singing. I sang very well,--to my shame if it be spoken, I always know when I do; and the light color so seldom seen on Davy's cheek attested his satisfaction. Davy himself sang alone next, and we were cleared off every one, while he sang so beautiful a bass solo, in its delicacy and simplicity, as I had ever heard. Clara and I mutually agreed to be very nervous for our master. I am sure he was so, but nobody could have told it of him who did not know him inside and out,--not even Santonio, who, standing on the rug again, and turning down his wristbands, which had disappeared altogether while he played, said to Mirandos, "He seems very comfortable," meaning Davy. Then came a quartet, and we figured again. I was not glad to feel the intermitting tenor supplant that soprano. Truly, it seemed that the higher Clara sang, the nearer she got to heaven. The company applauded this quartet, mere thready tissue of sweet sounds as it was--Rossini's--more than even Santonio's violin; but twenty years ago there had been no universal deluge of education, as I have lived to see since, and, at least in England in the midland counties, people were few who could make out the signs of musical genius so as to read them as they ran. Perhaps it was better that the musician then only sought for sympathy among his own kind. I knew Mirandos, and his fantasia came next, and hastily retreated, pulling Miss Benette by her dress to bring her away too; for I had a horror of his spreading hands. Santonio, impelled I daresay by the small curiosity which characterizes great minds in the majority of instances, came on the contrary forwards, and stood in the doorway to watch Mirandos take his seat. I could see the sneer settle upon his lips, subtle as that was; and I should have liked to stand and watch him, for I am fond of watching the countenances of artists in their medium moments, when I saw that Miss Benette had stolen to the fire, and was leaning against the mantelshelf her infantine forehead. Her attraction was strongest; I joined her. "Now," said I, "if it were not for Santonio, would you not find this evening very dull?" "It is not an evening at all, Master Auchester, it is a candle-light day; and so far from finding it dull, I find it a great deal too bright. I could listen forever to Mr. Davy's voice." "What can it be that makes his voice so sweet, when it is such a deep voice?" "I know it is because he has never sung in theatres. It does make a deep voice rough to sing in theatres, unless a man does not begin to sing so for a long, very long time." "Miss Benette, is that the reason you do not mean to sing in theatres?" "No; but it is the reason I sing so much in my little room." "Mr. Davy says you don't mean to act." "No more I do mean, but perhaps it will come upon me, and Thoné says, 'Child, you must.'" "She thinks you have a special gift, then?" "Who said to you about the special gift, Master Auchester? Do you ever forget anything you hear?" "Never! I am like Mr. Santonio. But Mr. Davy told me the night I asked him your name." "Oh, yes, I told him I had not a special gift. I thought the words so put together would please him, and I like to please him, he is good. I do not think it is a special gift, you know, Master Auchester, to act." "What is it then, Miss Benette?" "An inspiration." "Mr. Davy called the conducting at the festival inspiration." "Oh, yes; but all great composers are inspired." "Do you consider our conductor was a great composer?" "I daresay; but you must not ask me, I am not wise. Thoné is very wise, and she said to me the other day, after you were gone, 'He is one of us.'" "But, Miss Benette, she is a gypsy, and I am not." "We are not all alike because we are one. Can there be music without many combinations, and they each of many single sounds?" Mirandos was putting on the pedal, and we paused at this moment, as he paused before the _attacca_. Santonio still remained in the doorway, and Davy was standing in the window against the crimson curtain, listening, and quite white with distress at the performance; for the keys every now and then jangled furiously, and a storm of _arpeggi_ seemed to endanger the very existence of the fragile wires. Suddenly a young lady swept past Santonio, and glanced at Davy in passing into our retreat. Santonio, of course, did not move an inch; certainly there was just room enough to clear him! But Davy fell back into the folds of the curtain, frowning, not at the young lady, but at the fantasia. It was Miss Lawrence; and lo! before I could well recognize her, she stepped up to me and said, without a bow or any introductory flourish, "Are you Mr. Davy's pupil?" "We are both, ma'am," I answered foolishly, half indicating Miss Benette, who was bending her lashes into the firelight. Miss Lawrence replied lightly, yet seriously,-- "Oh, I know _she_ is, but you first, because I knew you again." I gazed upon her at this crisis. She had a peculiar face, dark yet soft; and her eye was very fine, large, and half closed, but not at all languid. Her forehead spread wide beneath jetty hair as smooth as glass, and her mouth was very satirical,--capable of sweetness, as such mouths alone are, though the case is often reversed. How satirical are some expressions that slumber in sweetness too exquisite to gaze on! And as for this young lady's manner, very easy was she, yet so high as to be unapproachable, unless she first approached you. Her accent was polished, or her address would have been somewhat brusque; as it was, it only required, not requested, a reply. She went on all this time, though,-- "I saw you in the chorus at the festival, and I watched you well; and I saw you run out and return with that water-glass I envied you in bearing. I hope you thought yourself enviable?" "I certainly did not, because I could not think of myself at all." "That is best! Now will you--that is, can you--tell me who the conductor was?" I forgot who she was, and imploringly my whole heart said, "Oh, do pray tell us! We have tried and tried to find out, and no one knows." "No one knows, but I _will_ know!" and she shook impatiently the rich coral _négligée_ that hung about her throat. Again, with much bitterness in her tones, she resumed, "I think it was cruel and unjust besides not to tell us, that we at least might have thanked him. Even poor St. Michel was groaning over his ignorance of such a personage,--if indeed he be a wight, and not a sprite. I shall find a witch next." "Thoné!" I whispered to Clara, and her lips parted to smile, but she looked not up. And now a young man came in, out of the company, to look for Miss Lawrence. "Oh, is Miss Lawrence here?" said Santonio, carelessly turning and looking over his shoulder to find her, though I daresay he knew she was there well enough. However, he came up now and took his stand by her side, and they soon began to talk. Rather relieved that the responsibility was taken off myself, I listened eagerly. It was fascinating in the extreme to me to see how Miss Lawrence spurned the arm of the gentleman who had come to look for her and to conduct her back; he was obliged to retire discomfited, and Santonio took no heed of him at all. I could not help thinking then that Miss Lawrence must have been everywhere and have seen everything, to be so self-possessed, for I could quite distinguish between her self-possession and Clara's,--the latter natural, the former acquired, however naturally worn. It was not long, nevertheless, before I received a shock. It was something in this way. Miss Lawrence had reverted to the festival, and she said to Santonio, "I had hopes of this young gentleman, because I thought he belonged to the conductor, who spoke to him between the parts; but he is as wise as the rest of us, and I can only say my conviction bids fair to become my faith." "Your conviction that you related to me in such a romantic narrative?" asked Santonio, without appearing much interested. But he warmed as he proceeded. "The wind was very poor at the festival, I heard." "They always say so in London about country performances, you know, either at least about the wind or the strings, or else one luckless oboe is held up to ridicule, or a solitary flute, or a desolate double-bass." "But if the solitary flute or bass render themselves absurd, they should be ridiculed far more in a general orchestra than in a particular quartet or so, for the effect of the master-players thus goes for nothing. I never yet heard a stringed force go through an oratorio, and its violent exercises for the _tutti_, without falling at least a tone." "Oh, the _primi_ were very well! and in fact, had all been flat together, it would have been unnoticeable; while the _tempi_ were marked so clearly, no one had time to criticise and analyze. But the organ had better have been quiet altogether; it would have looked very well, and nobody would have known it was not sounding." "I beg your pardon, every one would then have called out for more noise." "Not so, Mr. Santonio; there was quite body enough. But there sat Erfurt, groping, as he always does, for the pedals, and punching the keys, while the stops, all out, could very often not be got in in time, and we had _fortissimo_ against the fiddles." "I wonder your conductor did not give one little tap upon Erfurt's skull. So much for his own judgment, Miss Lawrence." "I beg your pardon, Mr. Santonio; the grand point was making all go together, such as it was, so that no one realized a discrepancy anywhere. Interruptions would not only have been useless, they would have been ignorant; but in this person's strange intimacy with the exigencies of a somewhat unsteady orchestra, his consummate triumph was achieved." "Well, I believe he will be found some time hence, in some out-of-the-way hole, that shall deprive you all of enchantment." "I do believe he is my wizard of Rothseneld." "You are very credulous if you can so believe." And they said much more. But what shocked me, had been the denuding treatment of my all-glorious festival,--my romance of perfectibility, my ideal world. How they talked--for I cannot remember the phrases they strung into cold chains, at much greater length than I record--of what had been for me as heaven outspread above in mystery and beauty, and as a heaven-imaging deep beneath, beyond my fathom, yet whereon I had exulted as on the infinite unknown! they making it instead a reality not itself all lovely,--a revelation not itself complete. I had not been mixed in the musical world; for there is such a world as is not heaven, but earth, in the realm of tone, and tone-artists must pass, as it were, through it. How few receive not from it some touch, some taint of its clinging presence! How few, indeed, infuse into it--while in it they are necessitated to linger--the spirit of their heavenly home! Dimly, of a truth, had the life of music been then opened to my ken; but it seemed at that moment again enclosed, and I fell back into the first darkness. It was so sad to me to feel thus, that I could not for an instant recover my faith in myself. I fancied myself too insignificantly affected, and would, if I could, have joined in the anti-spiritual prate of Miss Lawrence and Santonio. Let me do them no injustice; they were both musicians, but I was not old enough to appreciate their actual enthusiasm, as it were by mutual consent a sealed subject between them. I am almost tempted, after all, to say that it is best not to tamper with our finest feelings,--best to keep silence; but let me beware,--it is while we muse, the fire kindles, and we are then to speak with our tongues. Let _them_ be touched too, though, with the inward fire, or we have no right to speak. CHAPTER XXI. Oh, shame upon me, thus to ramble, when I should be restoring merely! After the shock I mentioned, the best thing happened to me possible,--we had to sing again; and Clara's voice arising, like the souls of flowers, to the sun, became actually to me as the sun unto those flowery souls. I revived and recovered my warmth; but now the reaction had come, and I sang through tears. I don't know how my voice sounded, but I felt it return upon me, and Davy grew rather nervous, I knew, from his manner of accompanying. And I did not say that while Miss Lawrence had stood and chatted with Santonio, a noiseless _rentrée_ of footmen had taken place,--they bearing salvers loaded with ices and what are called "creams" at evening parties. A sort of interlude this formed, of which the guests availed themselves to come and stare in upon us; and as they looked in we peeped out, though nobody ventured on our side beyond the doorway. So our duet had happened afterwards, and the music was to be resumed until twelve o'clock, the supper-hour. And after our duet there was performed this coda, that Miss Redfern requested Miss Lawrence to play with her, and that Miss Lawrence refused, but consented, at Santonio's suggestion, to play alone. As soon as she was seen past our folding-door, the whole male squadron advanced to escort her to the piano; but as she was removing her gloves leisurely, she waved them off, and they became of no account whatever in an instant. She sat down very still and played a brilliant prelude, a more than brilliant fugue, short and sharp, then a popular air, with variations, few, but finely fingered; and at last, after a few modulations, startling from the hand of a female, something altogether new, something fresh and mystical, that affected me painfully even at its opening notes. It was a movement of such intense meaning that it was but one sigh of unblended and unfaltering melody, isolated as the fragrance of a single flower; and only the perfumes of Nature exhale a bliss as sweet, how far more unexpressed! This short movement, that in its oneness was complete, grew, as it were, by fragmentary harmonies intricate, but most gradual, into another,--a _prestissimo_, so delicately fitted, that it was like moonlight dancing upon crested ripples; or for a better similitude, like quivering sprays in a summer wind. And in less than fifty bars of regularly broken time--how ravishingly sweet I say not--the first subject in refrain flowed through the second, and they interwoven even as creepers and flowers densely tangled, closed together simultaneously. The perfect command Miss Lawrence possessed over the instrument did not in the least occur to me; I was possessed but by one idea. Yet too nervous to venture into that large room, I eagerly watched her, and endeavored to arrest her eye, that I might beckon her among us again; so resolute was I to ask her the name of the author. Santonio, as if really excited, had made a sort of rush to her, and was now addressing her, but I heard not what they said, though Davy did, for he had followed Santonio. To my surprise, I saw that Miss Benette had taken herself into a corner, and when I gazed upon her she was wiping her eyes. I was reminded then that my own were running over. Scarcely was I fit to look up again, having retreated to another corner, when I beheld Miss Lawrence, in her blue brocade, come in and look about her. She absolutely advanced to me. "Did you like that little dream? That is my notion of the gentleman at the festival, do you know." "Did you compose it?" I asked in a maze. "No, I believe he did." "Then you know who he is? Tell me, oh! tell me the name." She smiled then at me with kindness,--a beneficent sweetness. "Come, sit down, and I will sit by you and tell you the story." "May not Miss Benette come too?" "Oh, certainly, if she is not more comfortable out there. I wish you would bring her, though, for I want to see her eyes." I slipped over the carpet. "Come, Miss Benette, and hear what Miss Lawrence is saying." She looked a little more serious with surprise, but followed me across the room and took the next chair beyond mine. Santonio came up too, but Miss Lawrence said, "Go,--you have heard it before;" and he, having to play again next, retired with careful dignity. "You must know that once on a time,--which means about three months ago,"--began Miss Lawrence, as if she were reading the introductory chapter of a new novel, "I wanted some country air and some hard practice. I cannot get either in London, where I live, and I determined to combine the two. So I took a cottage in a lone part of Scotland,--mountainous Scotland; but no one went with me except my maid, and we took care together of a grand pianoforte which I hired in Edinburgh, and carried on with me, van and all. "It was glorious weather just then, and when I arrived at my cottage I found it very difficult to practise, though very charming to play; and I played a great deal,--often all the day until the evening, when I invariably ascended my nearest hill, and inhaled the purest air in the whole world. My maid went always with me; and at such seasons I left my pianoforte sometimes shut, and sometimes open, as it happened, in my parlor, which had a splendid prospect, and very wide windows opening to the garden in front. I allowed these windows to remain open always when I went out, and I have often found Beethoven's sonatas strewed over the lawn when the wind blew freshly, as very frequently it did. You may believe I often prolonged my strolls until the sun had set and the moon arisen. So one time it happened, I had been at work the whole day upon a crabbed copy of studies by Bach and Handel that my music-seller had smuggled for me from an old bureau in a Parisian warehouse,--for you must know such studies are rarely to be found." "Why not?" asked I, rather abruptly, just as if it had been Millicent who was speaking. "Oh! just because they are rare practice, I suppose. But listen, or our tale will be cut off short, as I see Santonio is about to play." "Oh, make haste then, pray!" And she resumed in a vein more lively. "The whole day I had worked, and at evening I went out. The sunshine had broken from dark, moist clouds all over those hills. The first steep I climbed was profusely covered with honeysuckle, and the rosy gold of the clusters, intermixed with the heather, just there a perfect surface, pleased me so much that I gathered more than I could well hold in both my arms. Victorine was just coming out,--that is, my handmaid,--and I returned past her to leave my flowers at home. It struck me first to throw them over the palings upon the little lawn, but second thoughts determined me to carry them in-doors for a sketch, or something. I got into my parlor by the glass door, and flung them all, fresh as they were, and glimmering with rain-drops, upon the music-stand of the pianoforte. I cannot tell you why I did it, but so it was; and I had a fancy that they would be choice companions for those quaint studies which yet lay open upon the desk. "In that lone place, such was its beauty and its virtue, we never feared to leave the windows open or the doors all night unlocked; and I think it very possible I may have left the little gate of the front garden swinging after me, for Victorine always latched it, as she came last. "At all events, I found her on the top of the honeysuckle height, carrying a camp-stool and looking very tired. The camp-stool was for her, as I always reposed on the grass, wrapped in a veritable tartan. And this night I reposed a good deal to make a flying sunset sketch. Then I stayed to find fault with my dry earth and wooden sky, and the heather with neither gold nor bloom upon it; then to watch the shadows creep up the hill, and then the moon, and then the lights in the valley, till it was just nine o'clock. Slowly strolling home, I met nobody except a shadow,--that is to say, as I was moving no faster myself than a snail, I suddenly saw a long figure upon the ground flit by me in the broad moonlight. "'It was a gentleman in a cloak,' said Victorine. But I had seen no person, only, as I have said, a shadow, and took no note. "'He had a sketching-book like Mademoiselle's, and was pale,' added Victorine. But I bade her be silent, as she was too fond of talking; still, I replied, 'Everybody looks pale by moonlight,'--a fact to be ascertained, if anywhere, on a moonlit moor. "So I came home across the lawn, and got in at my window. I rang for candles; it was not dark, certainly, but I wanted to play. I stood at the window till the goodwife of the house, from her little kitchen, brought them up. She placed them upon the piano, as I had always ordered her to do, and left the room. After I had watched the moonlight out of doors for some time, being lazy with that wild air, I walked absently up to the instrument. What had taken place there? Behold, the Bach and Handel, discarded, lay behind the desk, having been removed by some careful hand, and on the desk itself, still overhung with the honeysuckle and heather I had hastily tossed about it, I found a sheet of music-paper. I could not believe my eyes for a long time. It was covered with close, delicate composition, so small as to fill a double page, and distinct as any printing. It had this inscription, but no name, no notice else: 'Heather and Honeysuckle; a Tone-wreath from the Northern Hills."' "And that is what you played; oh, Miss Lawrence!" I cried, less in ecstasy at the sum of the story than at my own consciousness of having anticipated its conclusion. "Yes, that is what I played, and what I very seldom do play; but I thought you should hear it!" "I!" I cried, much too loud under the circumstances; but I could not have helped it. "It was very kind of you, but I don't know why you should. But it is by _him_ then?" "You have said!" answered Miss Lawrence, laughing,--"at least I think so. And if you and I agree, no doubt we are right." "No, I don't see that at all," I replied; for it was a thing I could not allow. "I am only a little boy, and you are a great player, and grown up. Besides, you saw his shadow." "Do you think so? Well, I thought so myself, though it may possibly have been the shadow of somebody else." Miss Lawrence here stopped, that she might laugh; and as she laughed, her deep eyes woke up and shone like fire-flies glancing, to and fro. Very Spanish she seemed then, and very Jewish withal. I had never seen a Spaniard I suppose then, but I conceive I had met with prints of Murillo's "Flower-girl;" for her eyes were the only things I could think of while Miss Lawrence laughed. "At all events," she at last continued, "the 'Tone-wreath' is no shadow." I was astonished here to perceive that Clara had raised her eyes,--indeed, they looked fully into those of the speaker. "He came from Germany, you can be sure at least." "Why so, Miss Benette?" replied Miss Lawrence, graciously, but with a slight deference very touching from one so self-sustained. "Because it is only in that land they call music 'Tone.'" "But still he may have visited Germany and listened to the Tongedicht[11] of Beethoven; for _he_ is not so long dead." And she sighed so deeply that I felt a deep passion indeed must have exhaled that sigh. I got out of my chair and ran to Lenhart Davy, for I saw him yet in the curtain. He detained me, saying, "My dear little boy, do stay by me and sit a while, that you may grow calm; for verily, Charles, your eyes are dancing almost out of your head. Besides, I should like you to _see_ Mr. Santonio while he plays." "Will he turn his face this way though, Mr. Davy? For he did not before." "I particularly requested him to do so, and he agreed, on purpose that you might look at him." In fact, Santonio had taken up the gilt music-stand, and very coolly turned it towards us, in the very centre of the company, who shrank with awe from his immediate presence, and left a circle round him. Then, as Mirandos, who had to play a trifling negative accompaniment to the stringed solo, advanced to the piano, the lord of the violin turned round and nodded at me as he himself took his seat. FOOTNOTE: [11] Tone poem. CHAPTER XXII. We--that is, Miss Benette and Davy and I--came away from the Redferns all in a hurry, just before supper, Santonio having informed us that he intended to stay. He indeed, if I recollect right, took Miss Lawrence down, and I have a dim remembrance of Mirandos poking haughtily in the background. Also I remember our conversation on returning home, and that Davy informed us Miss Lawrence was immensely rich. She had lost her mother when a baby, he said; but I thought her very far from pitiable,--she seemed to do so exactly as she pleased. I had no idea of her age, and I did not think about it at all; but Miss Benette said, "She is as independent as she is gifted, sir; and she spoke to me like one who is very generous." "Yes, I should think so," said Davy, cheerfully; "Santonio tells me she is a pupil of Milans-André." "Oh!" I cried, "how I wish I had known that." "Why so, my dear boy?" "Because I would have asked her what he is like,--I do so want to know." "She does not admire him so wonderfully, Santonio says, and soon tired of his instructions. I suppose the fact is she can get on very well alone." "But I wish I had asked her, sir," I again said, "because we should be quite sure about the conductor." "But you forget Miss Lawrence was at the festival, Charles, and that she saw you there. Come! my boy you are not vain." "No, sir, I don't think I am. Oh! Miss Benette, you laughed!" "Yes, Master Auchester, because you could be no more vain than I am." "Why not, Miss Benette?" "Because we could neither of us be vain, side by side with our tone-master," she answered, with such a childlike single-heartedness that I was obliged to look at Davy to see how he bore it. It was very nearly dark, yet I could make out the lines of a smile upon his face. "I am very proud to be called so, Miss Benette; but it is only a name in my case, with which I am well pleased my pupils should amuse themselves." "Master Auchester," exclaimed Miss Benette, without reply to Davy at all, "you can ask Miss Lawrence about Monsieur Milans-André, if you please, for she is coming to see my work, and I think it will be to-morrow that she will come." "Oh, thank you, Miss Benette! I suppose Miss Lawrence said that to you when Mr. Davy called me away to him?" "I did not call you, Charles; you came yourself." "But you kept me, sir,"--and it struck me on the instant that Davy's delicate device ought not to have been touched upon; so I felt awkward and kept silence. I was left at home first, and promised Clara I would come, should my mother and the weather agree to permit me. I was hurried to bed by Clo, who had sat up to receive me. I was disappointed at not seeing Millicent, with the unreasonableness which is exclusively fraternal; but Clo informed me that my mother would not permit her to stay out of bed. "And, Charles, you must not say one word to-night, but eat this slice of bacon and this egg directly, and let me take off your comforter." The idea of eating eggs and bacon! I managed the egg, but it was all I could do, and she then presented me with a cup of hot barley-water. Oh! have you ever tasted barley-water, with a squeeze of lemon-juice, after listening to the violin? I drank it off, and was just about to make a rush at the door when Clo stopped me. "My dear Charles, Margareth is gone up to bed; stay until I can light you with my candle. And come into my room to undress, that you may not wake my mother by throwing your brush down." I was marched off impotent, she preceding me upstairs with a stately step. But softly as we passed along, Millicent heard us; she just opened a little bit of her door, and stooped to kiss me in her white dressing-gown. "I have chosen my instrument," I said, in a whisper, and she smiled. "Ah, Charles!" I need not recapitulate my harangue the next morning when I came down late and found only Millicent left to make my breakfast. I was expected to be idle, and the rest had gone out to walk. But I wondered, when I came to think, that I had been so careless as to omit asking Clara the hour fixed for Miss Lawrence's visit,--though, perhaps, was my after-thought, she did not know herself. I need not have feared, though; for while I was lying about on the sofa after our dinner, having been informed that I must do so, or I should not practise in the evening, in came Margareth with a little white note directed to "Master Charles Auchester." "I am sure, Master Charles," said she, "you ought to show it to my mistress, for the person that brought it was no servant in any family hereabouts, and looks more like a gypsy than anything else." "Well, and so it is a gypsy, Margareth. Of course I shall tell my mother,--I know all about it." Margareth wanted to know, I was sure, but I did not enlighten her further; besides, I was in too great a hurry to break the seal,--a quaint little impression of an eagle carrying in his beak an oak-branch. The note was written in a hand full of character, yet so orderly it made me feel ashamed. It was as follows:-- DEAR SIR,--The young lady is here, and I said you wished to come. She has no objection, and will stay to see you. CLARA BENETTE. "How like her!" I thought; and then, with an unpardonable impulse,--I don't defend myself in the least,--I flew out of the house as if my shoes had been made of satin. I left the note open upon the table (it was in the empty breakfast-room where I had been lolling), meaning thereby to save my credit,--like a simpleton as I was, for it contained not one word of explanation. A carriage was at the door of that corner house in St. Anthony's Lane,--a dark-green carriage; very handsome, very plain, with a pair of beautiful horses: the coachman, evidently tired of waiting, was just going to turn their heads. When I got into the room upstairs, or rather while yet upon the stairs, I smelt some refined sort of foreign scent I had once before met with in my experience; namely, when my mother had received a present of an Indian shawl in an Indian box, from an uncle of hers who had gone out to India and laid his bones there. When I really entered, Miss Lawrence, in a chair by the table, was examining some fresh specimens of Miss Benette's work outspread upon the crimson as before. I abruptly wished Clara good-day, and immediately her visitor held out her hand to me. This lady made me feel queer by daylight: I could not realize, scarcely recognize, her. She looked not so brilliant, and now I found that she was slightly sallow; her countenance might have been called heavy, from its peculiar style. Still, I admired her eyes, though I discerned no more fireflies in her glance. She was dressed in a great shawl,--red, I think it was,--with a black bonnet and feather; and her gloves were so loose, they seemed as if they would fall off. She had an air of even more fashionable ease than ever, and I, not knowing that it _was_ fashionable ease, felt so abashed under its influence that I could not hold up my head. She went on talking about the work. I found she wished to purchase some; but Clara would not part with any of that which was upon the table, because it was for the Quakers in Albemarle Square. But she was very willing to work specially for Miss Lawrence. I thought I had never seen Clara so calm,--I wondered she could be so calm; at once she seemed to me like myself,--a child, so awfully grown-up did Miss Lawrence appear. I beheld, too, that the latter lady glanced often stealthily round and round the room, and I did not like her the better for it. I thought she was curious, and very fine besides; so the idea of asking her about Milans-André passed out of my brain completely. She had, as I said, been discussing the work. She gave orders for embroidered handkerchiefs, and was very particular about the flowers to be worked upon them; and she gave orders for a muslin apron, to be surrounded with vandykes, and to have vandyked pockets,--for a toilet cushion and veil; and then she said: "Will you have the goodness to send them to the Priory when they are finished? My friends live there, and will send them on to me. I wish to pay for them now,"--and she laid a purse upon the table. "I think there is too much gold here, ma'am," said Clara, innocently. "I know precisely the cost of work, Miss Benette: such work as yours is, besides, priceless. Recollect, you find my materials. That is sufficient, if you please." And to my astonishment, and rather dread, she turned full upon me as I was standing at the table. "You wish to know what Milans-André is like, Master Charles Auchester,--for that is your name, I find. Well, thus much: he is not like you, and he is not like Santonio, nor like the unknown conductor, nor like your favorite, Mr. Davy. He is narrow at the shoulders, with long arms, small white hands, and a handsome face,--rather too large for his body. He plays wonderfully, and fills a large theatre with one pianoforte. He is very amiable, but not kind; and very famous, but not beloved." "What an extraordinary description!" I thought; and I involuntarily added: "I thought he was your master." She seemed touched, and answered generously: "I am afraid you think me ungrateful, but I owe nothing to him. Ah! you owe far more to your master, Mr. Davy." I was pleased, and replied, "Oh! I know that; but I should like to hear Milans-André play." "You will be sure to hear him. He will, ere long, become common, and play everywhere. But if I had a piano here, I could show you exactly how he plays, and could play you a piece of his music." I thought it certainly a strange mistake in punctilio for Miss Lawrence to refer to the want of a piano in that room; but I little knew her. She paused, too, as she said it, and looked at Clara. Clara did not blush, nor did her sweet face change. "I am very sorry that I have no piano; I am to have one some day when I grow rich. But Mr. Davy is kind enough to teach me at his house, and I sing to his piano there. I wish I had one, though, that you might play, Miss Lawrence." The fire-flies all at once sparkled, almost dazzled, from the eyes of Miss Lawrence: a sudden glow, which was less color than light, beamed all over her face. I could tell she was enchanted about something or other,--at least she looked so. "Oh! Miss Benette," she answered, in a genial tone, "you are very, very rich with such a voice as yours, and such power to make it perfect as you possess." Clara smiled. "Thank you for saying so." Miss Lawrence had risen to go, yet she still detained herself, as having something left to do or say. "I should like to see you both again, and to hear you. You, Miss Benette, I am sure of; but I also expect to discover something very wonderful about Master Charles Auchester. You are to be a singer, of course?" she quickly said to me. "I hope I shall be a player, if I am to be anything." "What, another Santonio, or another Milans-André?" "Oh! neither; but I must learn the violin." "Oh! is that it? Have you begun, and how long?" "Not yet,--I have no violin; but I mean to begin very soon." "Only determine, and you will. Farewell!" She had passed out, leaving a purse upon the table, containing fifty guineas. Miss Benette opened it, turned out the coins one by one, and, full of trouble, said, "Oh! whatever shall I do? I shall be so unhappy to keep it." "But that is wrong, Miss Benette, because you deserve it. She is quite right." "No, but I will keep it, because she is generous, and I can see how she loves to give." CHAPTER XXIII. Laura was at the next class. I had almost forgotten her until I saw her eyes. I felt quite wicked when I perceived how thin and transparent the child had grown,--wicked to have thought so little of her in suffering, while I had been enjoying myself. I cannot give the least idea how large her eyes looked,--they quite frightened me. I was not used to see persons just out of illness. Her hair, too, was cut much shorter, and, altogether, I did not admire her so much. I felt myself again wicked for this very reason, and was quite unhappy about it. She gave me a nod. Her cheeks were quite pale, and usually they were very pink: this also affected me deeply. Clara appeared to counter-charm me, and I saw no other immediately. "Ah, Laura, dear! you are looking quite nice again, so pretty," said this sweet girl as she took her seat; and then she stooped down and kissed the little dancer. I found myself rather in the way; for to Clara it seemed quite natural to scatter happiness with her very looks. She turned to me, after whispering with Laura: "She wants to thank you for the flowers, but she does not like to speak to you." I was positively ashamed, and, to hide my confusion, said to Laura, "Do you like violets?" "Yes, but I like large flowers better. I like red roses and blue cornflowers." I did not care for cornflowers myself, except among the corn; and I thought it very likely Laura took the poppies for roses; still, I did not set her right,--it was too much trouble. But if I had known I should never see her again,--I mean, see her as she then was,--I should have taken more care to do her kindness. Is it not ever so? Clara entirely engaged me; in fact, I was getting quite used _not_ to do without her. How well I remember that evening! We sang a service. Davy had written several very simple ones, and I longed to perform them in public,--that is to say, in the singing gallery of our church. But I might as well have aspired to sing them up in heaven, so utterly would they have been spurned as innovatory. It was this evening I felt for the first time what I suppose all boys feel at one time or another,--that they cannot remain always just as they are. It was no satiety, it was no disappointed hope, nor any vague desire. It was purely a conviction that some change was awaiting me. I suppose, in fact, it was a presentiment. The voices of our choir seemed thin and far away; the pale cheek of Lenhart Davy seemed stamped with unearthly lustre; the room and roof were wider, higher; the evening colors, clustered in the shape of windows, wooed to that distant sky. I was agitated, ecstatic. I could not sing; and when I listened, I was bewildered in more than usual excitement. Snatches of hymns and ancient psalms, morsels of the Bible, lullabies and bells, speeches of no significance, uttered years and, as it seemed, centuries ago, floated into my brain and through it, despite the present, and made there a murmurous clamor, like the din of a mighty city wafted to the ear of one who stands on a commanding hill. I mention this to prove that presentiment is not a fatuity, but something mysterious in its actuality,--like love, like joy; perhaps a passion of memory, that anticipates its treasures and delights _to be_. "What beautiful words!" said Clara, in a whisper that seemed to have more sweetness than other whispers, just as some shadows have more symmetry than other shadows. She meant, "Unto whom I sware in my wrath," and the rest. "Yes," I answered, "I like those words, all of them, and the way they are put. I always liked them when I was a little boy." It was very hard to Miss Benette not to reply here, I could tell, she so entirely agreed with me; but Davy was recalling our attention. When the class was over, she resumed,-- "I know exactly what you mean; for I used to feel it at the old church in London, where I went with Mr. Davy's aunt, and could not see above the pew, it was so high." "Did you like her, Miss Benette? Is she like him?" "No, not much. She is a good deal stricter, but she is exceedingly good; taller than he is, with much darker eyes. She taught me so much, and was so kind to me, that I only wonder I did not love her a great deal more." I felt rather aghast, for, to tell the truth, I only wonder when I love,--never when I am indifferent, as to most persons. As we were going out, I asked leave to come and practise on the morrow,--I felt I _must_ come. I wonder what I should have done had she refused me! "Certainly, Master Auchester." But she was looking after Laura. "Let me pin up that shawl, dear, and tie my veil upon your bonnet,--mind you wear it down in the street." The child certainly seemed to have put on her clothes in a dream, for her great shawl trailed a yard behind her on the floor, and did not cover her shoulders at all. Her bonnet-strings, now very disorderly indeed, were entangled in a knot, which Clara patiently endeavored to divide. I waited as long as I dared, but Davy was staying for me I knew, and at last he waved his hand. I could no longer avoid seeing him, and said to Clara, "Good-night." She smiled, but did not rise; she was kneeling before Laura. "Good-night, Miss Lemark." She only looked up. The large eyes seemed like the drops of rain after a drenching shower within the chalice of some wood anemone,--too heavy for the fragile face in which they were set, and from which they gazed as if unconscious of gazing. I thought to myself, as I went out, she will die, I suppose; but I did not tell Davy so, because of his reply when I had first spoken of Laura's illness. I felt very dispirited though, and shrank from the notion, though it still obtruded itself. Davy was very quiet. I recollect it to have been a white foggy night, and more keen than cold: perhaps that was the reason, as he was never strong in health. When I came to our door--how well I remember it!--I pulled him in upon the mat before he well knew what I was about. "Oh! Master Charles," exclaimed Margareth, who was exclusive porteress in our select establishment, "your brother has brought you a parcel,--a present, no doubt." "Oh! my goodness; where is Fred?" "They are all in the parlor. But, sir, won't you walk in?" "I beg your pardon," said Davy, absently. "Oh! no; I am going back. Good-night, Charles." "Oh, dear, Mr. Davy, do stay and see my present, please!" Davy did not answer here, for the parlor door opened, and my mother appeared, benign and hospitable. "Come in, come in!" she said, extending her hand, and I at least was in before she was out of the parlor. Fred was there, and Fred's wife--a pretty black-haired little matron, full of trivialities and full of sympathy with Lydia--was sitting by that respected sister at a little table. I ran to shake hands with Mrs. Fred, and knocked over the table. Alas! they were making bead purses, and for a few moments there was a restoration of chaos among their elements. Clo came from a dark corner, where she was wide awake over Dean Prideaux, and my mother had raised her hands in some dismay, when I was caught up by Fred and lifted high into the air. "Well, and what do I hear," etc. "Oh! Fred, where is my present?" "Present, indeed! Such as it is, it lies out there. _Nobody_ left it at the office, so Vincent tells me; but I found it there among the packages, and was strongly inclined to consider it a mistake altogether. Certainly 'Charles Auchester, Esq.,' was not 'known there;' but I smelt plum-cake, and that decided me to have it opened here." I rushed to the chair behind the sofa, while the rest--except Millicent and Mr. Davy, who were addressing each other in the low voice which is the test of all human proprieties--were scolding in various styles. The fracas was no more to me than the jingling of the maternal keys. I found a large oblong parcel rolled in the thickest of brown papers, and tied with the thickest of strings round and round again so firmly that it was, or appeared to be, hopeless to open it unless I gnawed that cord. "Oh! Lydia, lend me your scissors." "For shame, Charles!" pronounced Clo. "How often have I bidden you never to waste a piece of string!" She absolutely began upon those knots with her fingers. My own trembled so violently that they were useless. Meanwhile, for she was about ten minutes engaged in the neat operation,--I scanned the address. It was, as Fred had mentioned to me, as an adult and as an esquire, and the writing was bold, black, and backward. It seemed to have come a long way, and smelt of travelling; also, when the paper was at length unfolded, it smelt of tow, and something oblong was muffled in the tow. "A box!" observed sapient Clotilda. I tore the tow out in handfuls. "Don't strew it upon the carpet, oh, my dearest Charles!" Clo, I defy you! It was a box truly, but what sort of a box? It had a lid and a handle. It was also fastened with little hooks of brass. It was open, I don't know how. There it lay,--there lay a real violin in the velvet lining of its varnished case! No, I could not bear it; it was of no use to try. I did not touch it, nor examine it. I flew away upstairs. I shut myself into the first room I came to, which happened to be Lydia's; but I did not care. I rushed up to the window and pressed my face against the cold glass. I sobbed; my head beat like a heart in my brain; I wept rivers. I don't suppose the same thing ever happened to any one else, therefore none can sympathize. It was mystery, it was passion, it was infinitude; it was to a soul like mine a romance so deep that it has never needed other. My violin was mine, and I was it, and the beauty of my romance was, in truth, an ideal charmer; for be it remembered that I knew no more how to handle it than I should have known how to conduct at the festival. The first restoring fact I experienced was the thin yet rich vibration of that very violin. I heard its voice, somebody was trying it,--Davy, no doubt; and that marvellous quality of tone which I name a double oneness--resulting, no doubt, from the so often treated harmonics--reached and pierced me up the staircase and through the closed door. I could not endure to go down, and presently when I had begun to feel rather ghostly--for it was dead dark--I heard somebody come up and grope first here, then there, overhead and about, to find me. But I would not be found until all the places had been searched where I did not happen to be hidden. Then the person came to my door. It was Millicent; she drew me into the passage. "Oh! I can't go down." "Darling do, for my sake. They are all so pleased. Mr. Davy has been playing, and he says it is a real Amati." "But don't let Fred touch it, please, Millicent!" For I had a vague idea it would not like to be touched by Fred. "Why, no one _can_ touch it but Mr. Davy,--not even _you_, Charles. Do come downstairs now and look at it." I went. Mr. Davy was holding it yet, but the instant I entered he advanced and placed it between my arms. I embraced it, much as young ladies embrace their first wax dolls, but with emotions as sweet, as deep, as mystical as those of the youth who first presses to his soul the breathing presence of his earliest love. I saw then that this violin was a tiny thing,--a very fairy of a fiddle; it was certainly not new, but I did not know how very old it was, and should not have been the least aware how valuable it was, and of what a precious costliness, but for Davy's observation, "Take care of it, Charles, and it will make you all you wish to be. I rather suspect Santonio will envy you its possession when he has tried it." "But is he to try it, then, Mr. Davy?" "Your mother has given me leave to ask him, if I see him; but I fear he has already returned to London." Davy glanced here at my mother with a peculiar expression, and resumed, "I am going to write to him, at all events, about another subject, or rather upon the same subject." "Oh, Mr. Davy, I will talk to my little boy myself." "Certainly, madam; I will not anticipate you." "Charles dear," said Clo, "you must have your supper now." It appeared to me that I had already had it; but I restored my doll to its cradle in silence, and ate unconsciously. Fred's presence at the board stimulated his lady and Lydia to extreme festivity, and they laughed the whole time; but Millicent was pale and Davy quiet, and he departed as soon as he possibly might. But a smile of sweetness all his own, and of significance sweeter than sweetness, brightened his frank adieu for me into the day-spring of my decided destiny. CHAPTER XXIV. The next morning my mother redeemed her promise. It was directly after breakfast when she had placed herself in the chair at the parlor window. She made no allusion to the evening before until she completed this arrangement of hers, and then she looked so serious, as I stood before her, that I fully expected something I should not like. "Charles," she said, "you are very dear to me, and perhaps you have given me more care than all my children, though you are the youngest. I have often wondered what you would be or become as a member of society, and it was the last of all my thoughts for you that you must leave me to be educated. But if you are to be a musician, you must be taken from me soon, or you will never grow into what we should both of us desire,--a first-rate artist. I could not wish you to be anything less than first rate, and now you are very backward." "Am I to go to London then, mother?" I shook in every limb. "I believe a first-rate musical education for you in London would be beyond my means. It is upon this subject your friend Mr. Davy is to be so good as to write to Santonio, who can tell us all about Germany, where higher advantages can be obtained more easily than anywhere in England. But, Charles, you will have to give up a great deal if you go, and learn to do everything for yourself. If you are ill, you will have to do without nursing and petting as you would have here; and if you are unhappy, you must not complain away from home. Also you must work hard, or you will lose your free self-approval, and be miserable at the end. I should be afraid to let you go if I did not know you are musical enough to do your duty by music, and loving enough to do your duty by your mother; also, that you are a true boy, and will not take to false persons. But it is hard to part with you, my child; and indeed, we need not think of that just yet." I did though, I am ashamed to say; and I wanted to set off on the next day. I knew this to be impossible, and the fact that consoled me was the very one of my unstrung ignorance; for I had a vague impression that Davy would tune me up before I left home. I could not see him that morning. My excitement was intense; I could not even cut a caper, for I had to do my lessons, and Clo always behaved about my lessons as if they were to go on forever, and I was by no means to grow any older. She was especially stationary on this morning, and I had nothing for it but to apply very hard indeed. My copy was more crabbed than ever; but while she commented so gravely thereupon, I thought of what Santonio had said about my arm and hand. I was not vain,--I have not a tincture of vanity all through me,--but I was very proud, and also most demurely humble. At dinner Millicent talked to me of my prospects; but I pretended not to admit them in all their magnificence: the prophetic longing was so painful to me that I dared not irritate it. So she rallied me in vain, and I ate a great deal of rice pudding to simulate occupation. Dinner over, they all retired to their rooms,--I to my violin in a corner of the parlor. I hung over it as it lay in its case, I fed upon it in spirit; but I did not take it out, I was afraid of any one coming in. At last I spread my pocket-handkerchief upon the case, and sitting down upon it, went to sleep in scarcely conscious possession. I did not dream anything particular, though I suppose I ought to have done so, and it had been better for these unilluminated pages; but when I awoke it was late,--that is, late for my engagement with Miss Benette. I ran all the way; and as I reached my resting-place, it occurred to me that I should have to tell her I was going to Germany. How glad she would be, and yet a little sorry; for I had an idea she liked me, or I should never have gone near her. Vaulting into the passage, I heard strange sounds--singing, but not only singing. More and more wonders, I thought, and I dashed upstairs. The sounds ceased when I knocked at the door, which Clara came to open. I gazed in first, before I even noticed her, and beheld in the centre of the room a small polished pianoforte. I flew in and up to it, and breathlessly surveyed it. "Miss Benette, where did that come from? I thought you were not to have a pianoforte for ever so long." She came to me, and replied with her steady, sweet voice a little agitated,-- "Oh! Master Auchester, I wish you could tell me who it came from, that I might give that person my heart quite full of thanks. I can only believe it comes from some one who loves music more than all things,--some one rich, whom music has made richer than could all money. It is such a sweet, darling, beautiful thing to come to me! Such a precious glory to make my heart so bright!" The tears filled her eyes, and looking at her, I perceived that she had lately wept; the veins of harebell-blue seemed to quiver round the lids. "Oh, Miss Benette! I had a violin sent to me too, and I thought it was from Mr. Davy; but now I feel quite sure it was from that lady." Clara could scarcely speak,--I had never seen her so overcome; but she presently answered,-- "I believe it was the young lady. I hope so, because I should like her to be made happy by remembering we have both got through her what we wanted more than anything in the world. She would not like to be thanked, though; so we ought not to grieve that we cannot express our gratitude." "I should like to know really, though, because it seems so strange she should recollect _me_." "Oh, Master Auchester, no! Any one can see the music in your face who has the music in his heart. Besides, she saw you at the festival, and how anxious you were to serve the great gentleman." "Now, Miss Benette, I am to tell you something." "How good! Do go on." I laid my arm on the piano, but scarcely knew how to begin. "What is it to do, then?" asked Clara, winningly. "I am going really to be a musician, Miss Benette; I am going to Germany." She did not reply at first; but when I looked up, it was as though she had not wept, so bright she beamed. "That's all right, I knew you would. Oh! if she knew how much good she had done, how happy she would be! How happy she will be when she goes to a concert some day, in some year to come, and sees you stand up, and hears you praise music in the voice it loves best!" "Do you think so? Do you think it is the best voice of music?" "Because it is like the voice of a single soul, I do. But Mr. Davy says we cannot know the power of an orchestra of souls." "_I_ can." "Oh! I beg your pardon! I forgot." "But I don't think that I remember well; for whenever I try to think of it, I seem only to see his face, and hear his voice speaking to me, saying, 'Above all, the little ones!'" "How pretty it was! You will be sure to see him in Germany, and then you can ask him whether he wrote the 'Tone-Wreath.'" Oh, how I laughed again! "What sort of place shall I go to, should you think?" "I don't know any place really, Master Auchester. I can't tell what places they have to learn at, upon the Continent. I know no places besides this house, and Mr. Davy's, and the class, and church, and Miss Lenhart's house in London." "Are you not very dull?" Alas for the excitable nature of my own temperament! I was sure I should be dull in her place, though I had never felt it until my violin came upon me, stealthy and stirring as first love. She looked at me with serene wonder. "I don't know what 'dull' means. I do not want anything I have not got, because I shall have everything I want,--some day, I mean; and I would rather not have all at once." I did not think anything could be wanting to her, indeed, in loveliness or aspiration, for my religious belief was in both for her; still I fancied it impossible she should not sometimes feel impatient, and especially as those blue shadows I have mentioned had softened the sweetness of her eyes, and the sensation of tears stole over me as I gazed upon her. "We shall not practise much, I am afraid, Master Auchester, for I want to talk, and I am so silly that when I sing, I begin to cry." "For pleasure, I suppose. I always do." "Not all for pleasure. I am vexed, and I do not love myself for being vexed. Laura is going to Paris, Master Auchester, to study under a certain master there. Her papa is going too, and that woman I do not like. She is unhappy to leave me, but they have filled her head with pictures, and she is wild for the big theatres. She came to see me this morning, and I talked to her a long time. It was that made me cry." "Why, particularly?" "Because I told her so many things about the sort of people she will see, and how to know what is beautiful in people who are not wise. She promised to come and live with me when I have been to Italy, and become a singer; but till then, I shall, perhaps, never meet her, for our ways are not the same. She looked with her clear eyes right through me, to see if I was grave; and if she only finds her art is fair, I shall not be afraid for her." "But is she not ill? I never saw anybody look so strange." "That is because her hair is shorter. You do not like her, Master Auchester?" I shook my shoulders. "No; not a great deal." "You will try, please. She will be an artist." "But don't you consider,--of course I don't know,--but don't you consider dancing the lowest art?" "Oh, Master Auchester! all the arts help each other, and are all in themselves so pure that we cannot say one is purer than the other. Besides, was it not in the dream of that Jew, in the Bible, that the angels descended as well as ascended?" "You are like Martin Luther." "Why so?" "Clo--that is my clever sister--told me what he said about the arts and religion." "Oh, Mr. Davy tells that story." "Miss Benette, you are very naughty! You seem to know everything that everybody says." "No; it is because I see so few people that I remember all they say." "Are you not at _all_ fonder of music than of dancing? Oh, Miss Benette!" She laughed heartily, showing one or two of her twinkling teeth. "I am fonder of music than of anything that lives or is, or rather I am not fond of it at all; but it is my life, though I am only a young child in that life at present. But I am rather fond of dancing, I must confess." "I think it is charming; and I can dance very well, particularly on the top of a wall. But I do not care about it, you know." "You mean, it is not enough for you to make you either glad or sorry. But be thankful that it is enough for some people." "All things make me glad, and sorry too, I think, going away now. When I come back--" "I shall be gone," said Clara. "I shall be a man--" "And I an old woman--" "For shame, Miss Benette! you will never grow old, I believe." "Oh, yes, I shall; but I do not mind, it will be like a summer to grow old." "I am sure it will!" I cried, with an enthusiasm that seemed to surprise her, so unconscious was she ever of any effect she had. "But I shall grow old too; and there is not so very much difference between us. So then I shall seem your age; and, Miss Benette, when I do grow up, will you be my friend?" "Always, Master Auchester, if you still wish it. And in my heart I do believe that friends are friends forever." The sweet smile she gave me, the sweeter words she spoke, were sufficient to assure me I should not be forgotten; and it was all I wished, for then my heart was fixed upon my future. "But you will not be going to-morrow, I suppose?" "No, I wish I were." "So do I." "Thank you," said I, rather disconcerted; "I shall go very soon, I suppose." "It will not be long, I daresay," she answered, with another sweetest smile; and I felt it to be her kind wish for me, and was consoled. And when I left her she was standing quietly by her piano; nor did she raise her eyes to follow me to the door. By one of those curious chances that befall some people more than others, I had a cold the next class-night. I was in an extremity of passion to be kept at home,--that is to say, I rolled in my stifling bed with the sulks pressing heavily on my heart, and the headache upon my forehead. Millicent sat by me, and laughingly assured me I should soon be quite well again; I solemnly averred I should never be well, should never get up, should never see Davy any more, never go to Germany. But I went to sleep after all; for Davy, with his usual philanthropy, came all the way up to the house to inquire for me after the class, and his voice aroused and soothed me together. I may say that such a cold was a godsend just then, as it prevented my having to do any lessons. The next day, being idle, I heard nothing of Davy; neither the next. I thought it very odd; but on the third morning I was permitted to go out, as it was very clear and bright. The smoke looked beautiful, almost like another kind of flame, as it swelled skywards, and I met Davy quite glowing with exercise. "What a day for December!" said he, and cheerily held up a letter. "Oh, Mr. Davy!" I cried; but he would not suffer me even to read the superscription. "First for your mother. Will you turn back and walk home with me?" "I must not, sir; I am to walk to the turnpike and back." "Away, then! and I am very glad to hear it." To do myself justice, I did not even run. I could, indeed, for all my impatient hope, scarcely help feeling there is no such blessing as pure fresh air that fans a brow whose fever has lately faded. I came at length to the toll-gate, and returned, braced for any adventure, to the door of my own home. I flew into the parlor; my mother and Davy were alone. My mother was wiping off a tear or two, and he seemed smiling on purpose. "Oh, mother!" I exclaimed, running up to her, "please don't cry." "My dear Charles, you are a silly little boy. After all, what will you do in Germany?" She lifted me upon her lap. Davy walked up to the book-case. "I find, Charles, that you must go immediately,--and, indeed, it will be best if you travel with Mr. Santonio. And how could I send you alone, with such an opportunity to be taken care of! Mr. Davy, will you have the kindness to read that letter to my little boy?" Davy, thus admonished, gathered up the letter now lying open upon the table, and began to read it quite in his class voice, as if we two had been an imposing audience. DEAR MADAM,--Although I have not had the pleasure of an introduction to you, I think the certificate of my cognizance by my friend Davy will be sufficient to induce you to allow me to take charge of your son at the end of this week, if he can then be ready, as I must leave England then, and return to Paris by the middle of February. Between this journey and that time I shall be in Germany to attend the examinations of the Cecilia School at Lorbeerstadt.[12] The Cecilia School now is exactly the place for your son, though he is six months too young to be admitted. At the same time, if he is to be admitted at all, he should at once be placed under direct training, and there are out-professors who undertake precisely this responsibility. My own experience proves that anything is better than beginning too late, or beginning too soon to work alone. I have made every inquiry which could be a proviso with you. "Then here follows what would scarcely interest you," said Davy, breaking off. "Your friend is quite right, Charles. Now can you say you are sure I may put faith in you?" "What do you mean, mother? If you mean that I am to practise, _indeed_ I will; I never want to do anything else, and I won't have any money to spend." Davy came up to us and smiled: "I really think he is safe. You will let him come to me one evening, dear madam?" "Perhaps you can come to us. I really do not think we can spare him; we have so much to do in the way of preparation." It was an admirable providence that my whole time was, from morning to night, taken up with my family. My sisters, assisted by Margareth, made me a dozen shirts, and hemmed for me three dozen handkerchiefs. I was being measured or fitted all day, and all the evening was running up and down stairs with the completed items. Oh! if you had seen my boxes you would have said that I ought to be very good to be so cared for, and very beautiful besides; yet I was neither, and was sorely longing to be away,--such kindness pained me more than it pleased. I had a little jointed bed, which you would not have believed _was_ a bed until it was set up. My mother admonished me if I found my bed comfortable to keep that in my box; but she had some experience of German beds, and English ones too, under certain circumstances. I had a gridiron, and a coffee-pot, a spirit-lamp, and a case containing one knife and fork, one plate, one spoon. I had everything I could possibly want, and felt dreadfully bewildered. Clo was marking my stockings one morning when Davy came in; he gave me one of his little brown boxes, and in the box was a single cup and saucer of that glowing, delicate china. When he pulled it out of his pocket I little knew what it was, and when I found out, how I cried! "I have, indeed, brought you a small remembrance, Charles; but I am a small man, and you are a small boy, and I understand you are to have a very small establishment." He said this cheerily, but I could not laugh; he put his kind arm round me, and I only wept the more. Clo was all the time quite seriously, as I have said, tracing ineffaceably my initials in German text, with crimson cotton,--none of your delible inks,--and Davy pretended to be very much interested in them. "What! all those stockings, Charles?" "Yes, sir: you see we have provided for summer and winter," responded Clo, as seriously as I have mentioned. "He will not want any till we see him again, for he is to pay us a visit, if God spares him, next Christmas." Davy sighed, and kissed my forehead; I clung to him. "Shall I see you again, Mr. Davy?" "I have come to ask your mother whether I may take you to London; it is precisely what I came for, and I have a little plan." Davy had actually an engagement in London, or feigned to have one,--I have never been able to discover whether it was a fact or a fiction; and he proposed to my mother that I should sleep with him at his aunt's house one night before I was deposited at the hotel where Santonio rested, and to which he had advised I should be brought. I was in fits of delight at the idea of Davy's company; yet, after all, I did not have much of that, for he travelled to London on the top of the coach, and I was an inside passenger at my mother's request. Then comes a sleep of memory, not unaccompanied by dreams,--a dream of being hurled into a corner by a lady, and of jamming myself so that I could not stir hand or foot between her and the window; a dream of desperate efforts to extricate myself; a dream of sudden respite, cold air, and high stars beyond and above the houses, a cracked horn, a flashing lantern; a dream of dark in a hackney-coach, and of stopping in a stilly street before a many-windowed mansion, as it seemed to me. Then I am aware to this hour of a dense headache, and bones almost knotted together, till there arrives the worst nightmare reality can breed,--the smell of toast, muffins, and tea; the feeling of a knife and fork you cannot manage for sleepfulness; and the utter depression of your quicksilver. I could not even look at Miss Lenhart; but I heard that her voice was going on all the time, and felt that she looked at me now and then. I was conveyed into bed by Davy without any exercise on my own part, and I slumbered in that sleep which absorbs all time, till very bright day. Then I awoke and found myself alone, though Davy had left a neat impression in the great soft bed. Presently I heard his steps, and his fingers on the lock. He brought my breakfast in his own hand, and while I forced myself to partake of it, he told me he should carry me to Santonio at two o'clock, the steamboat leaving London Bridge at six the same evening. And at two o'clock we arrived at the hotel. In a lofty apartment sat Santonio near a table laid for dinner. I beheld my boxes in one corner, and my violin-case strapped to the largest; but all Santonio's luggage consisted of that case of his which had been wrapped up warm in baize, and one portmanteau. He arose and welcomed us with a smile most amiable; and having shaken hands with Davy, took hold of both mine and held them, while still rallying in a few words about our punctuality. Then he rang for dinner, and I made stupendous efforts not to be a baby, which I should not have been sorry to find myself at that instant. The two masters talked together without noticing me, and presently I recovered; but only to be put upon the sofa, which was soft as a powder-puff, and told to go to sleep. I made magnificent determinations to keep awake, but in vain; and it was just as well I could not, though I did not think so when I awoke. For just then starting and sitting up, I beheld a lamp upon the table, and heard Santonio's voice in the entry, haranguing a waiter about a coach. But looking round and round into every corner I saw no Davy, and I cannot describe how I felt when I found he had kissed me asleep, and gone away altogether. As Santonio re-entered, the sweet cordiality with which he tempered his address to me was more painful than the roughest demeanor would have been just then, thrilling as I was with the sympathy I had never drawn except from Davy's heart, and which I had never lost since I had known him. It was as if my soul were suddenly unclad, and left to writhe naked in a sunless atmosphere; still I am glad to say I was grateful to Santonio. It was about five o'clock when we entered a hackney-coach, and were conveyed to the city from the wide West End. The great river lay as a leaden dream while we ran across the bridge; but how dreamily, drowsily, I can never describe, was conveyed to me that arched darkness spanning the lesser gloom as we turned down dank sweeping steps, and alighted amidst the heavy splash of that rolling tide. There was a confusion and hurry here that mazed my faculties; and most dreadfully alarmed I became at the thought of passing into that vessel set so deep into the water, and looking so large and helpless. I was on board, however, before I could calculate the possibilities of running away, and so getting home again. Santonio put his arm around me as I crossed to the deck, and I could not but feel how careful the great violin was of the little human instrument committed to his care. Fairly on deck, the whirling and booming, the crowd not too great, but so busy and anxious, the head-hung lamp, and the cheery peeps into cabins lighter still through glittering wires, all gave motion to my spirit. I was soon more excited than ever, and glorified myself so much that I very nearly fell over the side of the vessel into the Thames, while I was watching the wheel that every now and then gave a sleepy start from the oily, dark water. Santonio was looking after our effects for a while, but it was he who rescued me in this instance, by pulling my great-coat (exactly like Fred's) that had been made expressly, for me in the festival-town, and which, feeling very new, made me think about it a great deal more than it was worth. Then laughing heartily, but still not speaking, he led me downstairs. How magnificent I found all there! I was quite overpowered, never having been in any kind of vessel; but what most charmed me was a glimpse of a second wonderful region within the long dining-room,--the feminine retreat, whose door was a little bit ajar. The smothered noise of gathering steam came from above, and most strange was it to hear the many footed tramp overhead, as we sat upon the sofa, and spread beneath the oval windows all around. And presently I realized the long tables, and all that there was upon them, and was especially delighted to perceive some flowers mounted upon the epergnes. I was cravingly hungry by this time, for the first time since I had left my home, and everything here reminded me of eating. Santonio, I suppose, anticipated this fact, for he asked me immediately what I should like. I said I should like some tea and a slice of cold meat. He seemed amused at my choice, and while he drank a glass of some wine or other and ate a crust, I had all to myself a little round tray, with a short, stout tea-pot and enormous breakfast cup set before me; with butter as white as milk, and cream as thick as butter, the butter being developed in a tiny pat, with the semblance of the steamship we were then in stamped upon the top; also a plate covered with meat all over, upon beginning to clear which, I discovered another cartoon in blue of the same subject. After getting to the bottom of the cup, and a quarter uncovering the plate, I could do no more in that line, and Santonio asked me what I should like to do about sleeping. I was startled, for I had not thought about the coming night at all. He led me on the instant to a certain other door, and bade me peep in; I could only think of a picture I had seen of some catacombs,--in fact, I think a catacomb preferable in every respect to a sleeping cabin. The odors that rushed out, of brandy and lamp-oil, were but visionary terrors compared with the aspect of those supernaturally constructed enclosed berths, in not a few of which the victims of that entombment had already deposited themselves. "I can't sleep in there!" I said shudderingly as I withdrew, and withdrawing, was inexpressibly revived by the air blowing down the staircase. "Oh, let us sit up all night! on the sea too!" Santonio replied, with great cordiality, that he should prefer such an arrangement to any other, and would see what could be contrived for me. And so he did; and I can never surpass my own sensations of mere satisfaction as I lay upon a seat on deck by ten o'clock, with a boat-cloak for my pillow and a tarpaulin over my feet, Santonio by my side, with a cloak all over him like a skin, his feet on his fiddle-case, and an exquisitely fragrant regalia in his mouth. My feelings soon became those of careering ecstasy,--careering among stars all clear in the darkness over us; of passionate delight, rocked to a dream by the undulation I began to perceive in our seaward motion. I fell asleep about midnight, and woke again at dawn; but I experienced just enough then of existing circumstances in our position to retreat again beneath the handkerchief I had spread upon my face, and again I slept and dreamed. FOOTNOTE: [12] The Cecilia School at Lorbeerstadt is probably intended to represent the Conservatory at Leipsic, which Mendelssohn founded in 1843. CHAPTER XXV. At noon, when at length I roused myself, we were no longer upon the sea. We swept on tranquilly between banks more picturesque, more glorious, more laden with spells for me, than any haven I had fortified with Spanish castles. Castles there were too, or what I took for castles,--silvery gray amidst leafless trees, and sometimes softest pine woods with their clinging mist. Then came shining country, where the sky met the sun-bright slopes, and then a quiet sail at rest in the tiny harbor. But an hour or two brought me to the idea of cities, though even they were as cities in a dream. And yet this was not the Rhine; but I made sure it was so, having forgotten Clo's geography lessons, and that there could be any other river in Germany,--so that when Santonio told me its real name I was very angry at it. After I had wearied myself with gazing, he drew me back to my seat, and began to speak more consecutively than he had done yet. "Now, sir," said he, "do you see that castle?" pointing to something in the prospect which may or may not have been a castle, but which I immediately realized as one. "You are to be shut up there. Really and seriously, you have more faith than any one I ever had the honor of introducing yet, under any circumstances whatever. Pray don't you feel any curiosity about your destination?" "Yes, sir, plenty; but I forgot what I was going for." "And where you were going to?" "Sir, I did not know where. I thought you would tell me when you liked." "I don't know myself, but I daresay we shall fall in with your favorite 'Chevalier.'" "My favorite who, sir?" "The gentleman who enslaved you at the performance of the 'Messiah,' in your part of the world." "Oh, sir! what can I ever say to you? I cannot bear it." "Cannot bear what? Nay, you must not expect too much of him now you know who he is. He is merely a very clever composer." "Oh, sir! how did you ever find out?" "By writing to Milans-André,--another idol for you, by the way." "Oh! I know all about Milans-André." "Indeed! and pray what is all about him?" "I know he plays wonderfully, and fills a large theatre with one pianoforte. Stop! He has a handsome face and long arms,--rather too long for his body. He is very--let me see--something, but not something else; very famous, but not beloved." "Who told you that? A most coherent description, as it happens." "Miss Lawrence." "Miss Lawrence is a blab. So you have no curiosity to learn your fate?" "I know _that_; but I should like to know where I am going." "To an old gentleman in a hollow cave." "I wish I were, and then perhaps he would teach me to make gold." "That is like a Jew, fie! But the fiddle has made gold." "Why like a Jew? Because they are rich,--Jews, I mean?" "Richer generally than most folks, but not all either." "Oh, sir! I did not mean money." But as I looked at him, I felt he would not, could not, understand what I meant, so I returned to the former charge. "Does he live in a cellar, sir, or in a very old house?" "In an old house, certainly. But you won't like him, Auchester,--at least not at first; only he will work you rightly, and take care of your morals and health." "How, sir?" "By locking you up when you are at home, and sending you to walk out every day." "Don't they all send the boys out to walk in Germany then?" "I suppose so. But how shall you like being locked up?" "In the dark, sir, do you mean?" "No, boy; to practise in a little cave of your own." "What _does_ make you call it a cave?" "Because great treasures are hidden there for such as like the bore of grubbing them up. You have no idea, by the way, how much dirty work there is to do anything at all in music." "I suppose you mean, to _get_ at anything. But it cannot be worse than what people go through to get to heaven." "If that is your notion, you are all right. I have taken some trouble to get you into this place, for the old gentleman is a whimsical one, and takes very few pupils now." "Did you know him, sir, before you heard of him for me?" "He taught me all I know, except what I taught myself, and that was preciously little. But that was before he came to Lorbeerstadt. I knew nothing about this place. Your favorite learned of him when he was your age, and long afterwards." "Who, sir,--the same?" "The conductor." "Oh, sir!" It was a dreadful thing to feel I had, as it were, got hold of him and lost him again; but Santonio's manner was such that I did not think he could mean the same person. "Are you sure it is the same, Mr. Santonio?" I reiterated again, and yet again, while my companion, whose laugh had passed into a yawn, was gazing at the smoke. "Sure? Of course I am sure. I know every conductor in Europe." "I daresay you do, sir; but this is not a common conductor." "No conductors are common, my friend. He is very clever, a genius too, and will do a great deal; but he is too young at present to be talked of without caution." "Why, sir?" "Because we may spoil him." I was indignant, I was sick, but so impotent I could only say, "Sir, has he ever heard _you_ play?" "I cannot tell really all the people who hear me play. I don't know who they are in public." "Have you ever heard _him_ play?" "No." "Oh, sir! then how _can_ you know? What makes you call him Chevalier? Is that his real name?" "I tell you precisely what I was told, my boy; Milans-André calls him 'My young friend the Chevalier,'--nothing else. Most likely they gave him the order." Santonio was now talking Dutch to me, and yet I could not bring myself to detain him by further questioning, for he had strolled to the staircase. Soon afterwards the dinner-bell rang. The afternoon being a little spent, we came up again and rested. It was twilight now, and my heart throbbed as it ever does in that intermediate dream. Soon Santonio retired to smoke, and I then lay all along a seat, and looked to heaven until I fell into a doze; and all I felt was real, and I knew less of what was passing around me than of that which stirred within. Long it may have been, but it seemed very soon and suddenly that I was rudely brought to myself by a sound and skurry, and a suspension of our progress. It was dark and bleak besides, and as foggy as I had ever seen it in England,--the lamp at our head was like a moon; and all about me there were shapes, not sights, of houses, and echoes, not sounds, of voices from the shore. The shore, indeed! And my first impression of Germany was one of simple astonishment to find it, on the whole, so much like, or so little unlike, England. I told Santonio so much, as he stood next me, and curbed me with his arm from going forwards. He answered that he supposed I thought they all lived in fiddle-cases and slept upon pianofortes. I was longing to land indefinably. I knew not where I was, how near or how far from my appointed place of rest. I will not say my heart was sad, it was only sore, to find Santonio, though so handsome, not quite so beautiful a spirit as my first friend, Lenhart Davy. We watched almost half the passengers out of the boat; the rest were to continue their fresh-water route to a large city far away, and we were the last to land of all who landed there. In less than an hour, thanks to Santonio's quickening of the pulses of existence at our first landing-place, we were safe in a hackney-coach (very unlike any other conveyance), if indeed it could be called "safe" to be so bestowed, as I was continually precipitated against Santonio. His violin-case had never left his hand since we quitted the vessel,--and this was just as well, for it might have suffered from the jolting. Its master was all kindness now. "Cheer up," said he; "do not let your idea of German life begin here. You will soon find plenty to amuse you." He rubbed the reeking fog from one glass with his handkerchief forthwith, and I, peeping out, saw something of houses drawing near. They were dim and tall and dark, as if they had never fronted daylight. It took us quite half an hour to reach the village, notwithstanding, for our pace was laboriously tardy; and again and again I wished I had stayed with Santonio at the little inn where we took the coach, and to which he was himself to return to sleep, having bespoken a bed there; for I felt that day would have done everything for me in manning and spiriting me, and that there was too much mystery in my transition state already to bear the surcharging mystery of night with thought undaunted. Coming into that first street, I believed we should stop every instant, for the faint few lamps, strung here and there, gave me a notion of gabled windows and gray-black arches, nothing more definite than any dream; so much the better. Still we stopped not anywhere in that region, nor even when, having passed the market-place with its little colonnade, we turned, or were shaken, into a quiet square. It came upon me like a nook of panorama; but I heard the splash of falling water before I beheld, starting from the mist, its shape, as it poured into a basin of shadowy stone beneath a skeleton tree, whose lowest sprays I could have touched as we drove near the fountain, so close we came. And then I saw before me a church, and could discern the stately steps and portico, even the crosses on the graves, which bade me remember that they died also in Germany. No organ echoes pealed, or choral song resounded, no chime struck; but my heart beat all these tunes, and for the first time I associated the feeling of religion with any earth-built shrine. It was in a street beyond the square, and overlooked by the tower of the church itself, that at length we stopped indeed, and that I found myself bewildered at once by darkness and expectation, standing upon the pavement before a foreign doorway, enough for any picture of the brain. "Now," said my escort, "I will take you upstairs first,--for you would never find your way,--and then return and see after all these things. The man won't run away with them, I believe,--he is too ugly to be anything but honest. I hope you do not expect a footman to open the door?" "I dislike footmen, but there is no knocker. Please show me the bell, Mr. Santonio." "Please remember that this is a mountain which contains many caves besides that to which we are about to commit you. And if you interfere with anybody else's cave, the inhabitant will spring up yours with gunpowder." "I know that a great many people live in one house,--my mother said so; but she never told me how you got into the houses." "I will tell you now. You see the bells here, like organ-stops: this is yours. Number I cannot read, but I know it from the description I took care to procure. I will ring now, and they will let us in." I found, after waiting in profound expectation, that the door had set itself open, just as the gate of the London Temple Garden is wont to do; but instead of finding access to sunshine and beds of flowers, we were plunged, on our entrance, into darkness which might be felt. Santonio, evidently accustomed to all conventionalities of all countries, expressed no astonishment, and did not even grumble, as I should have expected a person of his temperament to do. I was so astonished that I could not speak. How soon I learned to love that very darkness, and to leap up and down those very stairs even in the darkness! though I now held Santonio's hand so tightly that I could feel the lissom muscles double up and bend in. He drew me after him gently and carefully to the first floor, and again to the second without speaking, and then we stood still to take breath. "That was a pull!" he observed. "Suppose the old gentleman has gone to bed?" "Oh, sir! then I will go back with you until to-morrow." "No, indeed." He laid hold upon my arm. "Listen! hush!" I stood listening from head to foot. I heard the beloved but unfamiliar voice; creeping down another story, it came--_my_ violin, or _the_ violin, somewhere up in the clouds. I longed to rush forward now, and positively ran up the stairs yet remaining. There upon my one hand was the door through whose keyhole, whose every crack, that sound had streamed, and I knew it as I passed, and waited for Santonio upon the haunted precinct. "Now," said he, arriving very leisurely at the top, "we shall go in to see the old gentleman." "Will he have a beard, sir, as he is a Jew?" "Who told you he has a Jew-beard? Nevertheless he has a beard; but pray hold your tongue about the Jews,--at least till you know him a little better." "I do not mean," thought I diffidently, "to talk to the old gentleman. If he is a Jew I shall know it, and it will be enough;" but I did not say so to Santonio, who did not appear to prize his lineage as I did the half of mine. My heart began to beat faster than from the steep ascent, when he, without preparing me further, rapped very vigorously upon another unseen door. I heard no voice reply, but I concluded he did, as he deliberately turned the lock, and drew me immediately after him as I had shrunk behind him. I need not have been afraid,--the room was empty. It was a room full of dusky light; that is, all tones which blended into it were dim, and its quaint nicety put every new-world notion out of the way for the time. The candles upon the table were brightly trimmed, but not wax,--only slender wax ones beamed in twisted sconces from the desk of an organ that took up the whole side of the room, opposing us as we entered, and whose pipes were to my imagining childhood lost in the clouds, indeed, for the roof of the room had been broken to admit them. The double key-board, open, glittered black and white, and I was only too glad to be able to examine it as closely as I wished. The room had no carpet, but I did not miss it or want it, for the floor was satin bright with polish, and its general effect was ebony, while that of the furniture was oak. There was a curious large closet in a corner, like another little room put away into this one; but what surprised me most was that the chamber was left to itself. "Where is he?" said Santonio, appealing to the silence; but then he seemed to be reminded, and shouted very loud in German some name I could not realize, but which I write, having since realized. "Aronach![13] where art thou?" In German, and very loud, a voice replied, as coming down the organ-pipes: "I am aloft chastising an evil spirit; nor will I descend until I have packed the devil downstairs." At this instant, more at hand than the sound I had met upon the staircase, there was a wail as of a violin in pain; but I could not tell whether it was a fiddle or a child, until the wail, in continuing, shifted from semitone to semitone. Santonio sat down in one of the chairs and laughed; then arose, having recovered himself, and observed, "If this is his behavior, I may as well go and see after your boxes. Keep yourself here till I come back; but if he come down, salute him in German, and it will be all right." He retired and I remained; and now I resolved to have another good look. One side of the room I had not yet examined. Next the door I found a trio or quartet of three-legged stools, fixed one into the other, and nearest them a harpsichord,--a very harpsichord with crooked legs. It was covered with baize, and a pile of music-books reposed upon the baize, besides some antique instrument-cases. Other and larger cases were on the floor beneath the harpsichord; there hung a talisman or two of glittering brass upon the wall, by floating ribbons of red. Then I fastened myself upon the pictures, and those strange wreaths of withered leaves that waved between them, and whose searest hues befitted well their vicinage. As I stood beneath those pictures, those dead-brown garlands rustled as if my light breath had been the autumn wind. I was stricken at once with melancholy and romance, but I understood not clearly the precise charm of those relics, or my melancholy would have lost itself in romance alone. There was one portrait of Bach. I knew it again, though it was a worthier hint of him than Davy's; and underneath that portrait was something of the same kind, which vividly fascinated me by its subject. It was a very young head, almost that of an infant, lying, rather than bending, over an oblong book, such in shape as those represented in pictures of literary cherubs. The face was more than half forehead, which the clustering locks could not conceal, though they strove to shadow; and in revenge, the hair swept back and tumbled sideways, curling into the very swell of the tender shoulder. The countenance was of sun-bright witchery, lustrous as an elf of summer laughing out of a full-blown rose. Tiny hands were doubled round the book, and the lips wore themselves a smile that seemed to stir and dimple, and to flutter those floating ringlets. It was strange I was, though so unutterably drawn to it, in nothing reminded of any child or man I had ever seen, but merely thought it an ideal of the infant music, if music could personate infancy. After a long, long gaze I looked away, expressly to have the delight of returning to it; and then I saw the stove and approved of it, instead of missing, as I was told at home I should miss, the hearthrug and roseate fire-shine. Indeed, the stove was much more in keeping here, according to my outlandish taste. Before I returned to the picture Santonio re-entered, and finding me still alone, took up a broom which he discovered in some region, and, mounted on a chair, made with it no very gentle demonstrations upon the ceiling, which was low, and which he could thus easily reach. In about ten minutes more, I could feel, no less than hear, a footstep I did not know, for I am generally cognizant of footsteps. This was cautious and slow, yet not heavy; and I was aware it could be none other than that of my master presumptive. If I could have turned myself into a mustard-pot, to delay my introduction, I would have done so without the slightest hesitation; but no! I remained myself, and he, all himself, opened the door and came in. I had expected a tall man,--broad; here was a little gentleman no bigger than Davy, with a firm and defiant tread, clad in a garment that wrapped about his feet, in color brown, that passed well into the atmosphere of his cave. He confronted Santonio as if that wonder were a little girl in petticoats, with no more reverence and not less benevolence, for he laid one arm upon his shoulder and embraced him, as in England only very young and tender brothers embrace, or a son embraces his father. There was complaisance together with condescension in his aspect; but when he turned upon me, both complaisance and condescension were overpast, and a lour of indifference clouded my very faculties as with a film of worldly fear. Then he chucked me under the chin, and held me by it a moment without my being aware whether he examined me or not, so conveniently disposed were his black eye-lashes; and then he let me go again, and turned his back upon me. "Sit!" said he to Santonio; and then he threw his hand behind him, and pointing, without turning his head, indicated the group of stools. I nervously disentangled one and sat down upon it then and there by the side of the very harpsichord. Santonio being also seated, and wearing, though as cool as usual, a less dominant aspect, the brisk demon marched to the bureau, which I had taken little heed of, under the window, but which, upon his opening, I discovered to be full of all sorts of drawers and pigeon-holes, where a family of young mice would have enjoyed a game at hide-and-seek. He stood there writing, without any apology, for some time, and only left off when a female servant, brilliant and stolid as a Dutch doll, threw the door open again to bring in supper. She carried both tureens and dishes, and went into the closet after bottles of wine and a tablecloth; and everything she did was very orderly, and done very quietly. She spoke to Aronach, having arranged the table; and he arose, wiped his pen, and closed the bureau. Then he came to Santonio, and addressed him in most beautiful clear German, such German as was my mother's mother-tongue. "I travelled very comfortably, thank you," said Santonio, in reply to some inquiry suggestive of the journey, "and I am glad to see you younger than ever." "Oh! my sort don't die; we are tough as hempen cloth. It is _that_ make which frets itself threadbare,"--he pointed obviously at me. "What is to be done with him, eh?" "To be left here, of course, as we agreed." "Recollect my conditions. I turn him out if he become ill." "Oh! he is very well indeed; they are all pale in England, they have no sun." "_Be_ well then!" said Aronach, threateningly, yet not terrifyingly, "and _keep_ well!" What a silvery stream swept over his shirt-bosom! it was soft as whitest moonlight. "Is that a beard?" thought I--"how beautiful must the high-priest have looked!" This thought still touched me, when in came a boy in a blouse, and I heard no more of his practice as I now recognized it, though the wail still came from above, fitful and woebegone. This boy was tall and slender, and his face, though he had an elegant head, was too formed and adult to be agreeable or very taking for me. His only expression was that of haughty self-content; but there was no real pride in his bearing, and no reserve. His hands were large, but very well articulated and extremely white; there was no spirit in them, and no spirituality in his aspect. He took no notice of me, except to curl his upper lip--which was not short, and which a curl did not become--as he lifted a second stool and carried it up to the table; nor did he wait to be asked to sit down upon it, and having done so, to smooth his hair off his forehead and lean his elbows upon the table. Then Aronach took a chair, and admonished Santonio to do the same. The latter made himself instantly at home, but most charmingly so, and began to help himself from a dish directly. The young gentleman upon the stool was just about to lift the cover from the tureen in the same style, when Aronach roused, and looking grandly upon him said, or rather muttered, "Where are thy manners? Is it thy place in my house to ape my guests? See to thy companion there, who is wearier than thou, and yet he waits. Go and bring him up, or thou shalt give thy supper to the cat's daughter." "So I will," responded the blouse, with assurance; and leaving his stool abruptly, he ran into the closet aforementioned, and brought back a kitten, which as he held it by the nape of its neck came peaceably enough, but upon his dropping it roughly to the floor, set up a squeak. Now the wrath of Aronach appeared too profound for utterance. Raising his deep-set but lightsome eyes from a perfect thicket of lashes, he gave the impertinent one look which reminded me of Van Amburgh in the lion's den. Then, ladling three or four spoonfuls of soup or broth into a plate, he set the plate upon the floor and the kitten at it, so seriously, that I dared not laugh. The kitten, meantime, unused to strong meats, for it was not a week-old mite, mewed and whined in antiphon to the savage lamentations of another cat in the closet, its maternal parent. The blouse never stirred an inch, save carelessly to sneer over his shoulder at me; and I never loved him from that moment. But Santonio nodded to me significantly, as to say, "Come here!" and I came and planted my stool at his side. Aronach took no notice, but went on pouring coffee, one cup of which he set by the kitten. Again she piteously smelled, but finding it even worse than the broth, she crept up to the closet-door and smelled at that. "Go up!" said Aronach, to the blouse, "and send Burney to his supper. He shall have the cat's supper, as thou hast given thine to the cat." He went out sulkily, and the wail above ceased. I also heard footsteps, but he came back again alone. "He won't come down." "Won't! Did he say 'won't,' Iskar? Have a care!" "He says he wants no supper." "That I have taken away his stomach, eh? Come hither, thou black and white bird that art not yet a pyet." This was to me; I was just sliding from my stool. "Eat and drink first, and then thou shalt carry it to him. Thou lookest better brought up. Don't grimace, Iskar, or thou shalt sleep in the cupboard with the cat, and the rats shall dance in thy fine curls. So now eat, Aukester, if that be thy name." "Sir, I am Carl; will you please to call me Carl?" He gave me a glance from behind the coffee-stand. Sparks as from steel seemed to come out of his orbs and fly about my brain; but I was not frightened the least, for the lips of this austerest of autocrats were smiling like sunlight beneath the silver hair. I saw at this moment that Aronach had a bowl of smoking milk crammed with bread by his side, and believing it to be for the violin up in the clouds, and concluding inferentially that the unseen was some one very small, I entreated Aronach without fear to let me carry it to him while yet it smoked. He did not object, but rather stared, and observed to Santonio, "His father makes a baby of him; to give a boy such stuff is enough to make a girl grow up instead." Still he handed it to me with the caution, "If thou fallest on thy nose in going up to heaven, the kitten will lose her supper, for the milk is all used up in the town." I could just see a very narrow set of steps, exactly like a belfry-stair, when I opened the door, and having shut it again and found myself in darkness, I concluded to leave the bowl on the ground till I had explored to the top. I did so, and spun upwards, discovering another door, to which, though also in darkness, the wail of the violin became my light. I just unlatched it, and returned for my burden, carefully adjusting spoon and basin on the road back. I knocked first, not to alarm the semi-tonic inhabitant; and then, receiving no intimation, entered of my own accord. It was a queer region, hardly so superior as a garret, extremely low and vast, with mountains of lumber in every corner, and in the midst a pile of boxes with a portmanteau or two, and many items of property which for me were nondescript. It had no furniture of its own besides, but to do it justice it was weather-proof. I could see all this rugged imagery on the instant, but not so easily I discerned a little figure in the very centre of the boxes, sitting upon the least of the boxes, and solitarily regaling the silence, without either desk or book, with what had made me suffer below stairs. The organ-pipes came up here, and reached to the very roof; they gave me a strange feeling as of something misplaced and mangled, but otherwise I was charmed to discover them. I hastened across the floor. The player was certainly not an adept,--a tiny, lonely looking boy, who as I went up to him almost let his fiddle fall with fright, and shrank from me as some little children do from dogs. I was as tall again as he, and felt quite manly. "I am only come," I said, "to bring your supper,--have it while it is hot; it is so good then!" Do not believe, sweet reader, that my German was more polished than my English,--it was quite the same. He dropped his bow upon the nearest box, and depressing his violin so that it touched the ground while he still held it, looked up at me with such a wistful wonder, his lip still quivering, his pretty hair all ruffled up. "I don't want it, thank you." "You must eat it; you have been up here ever so long." "Yes, a good while; please take it away. Are you the new one who was coming?" "Who said I was coming?" "The master. He said you would beat us both, and get first to Cecilia." "That is because I am older. I can't play the least in the world. I don't know even how to hold the bow. Come, _do_ eat this good-looking stuff." "I don't think I can, I feel so sick." "That is because you _do_ want something to eat." "It is not that"--he touched my jacket. "This is what they wear in England. I do wish you would talk English to me." I was touched almost into tears. "You are such a little darling!" I exclaimed; and I would have given anything to fondle him, but I was afraid of staying, so I took a spoonful of the milk and put it to his lips, still another and another, till he had taken it all; and then I said, "Do not practise any more;" for he was disconsolately gathering up his bow. "I must until bed-time; but I am so sleepy." "Why are you left up here? I will stay with you." "No, no, you must not. I only came up here because the master caught me looking out of the window this morning, and the windows here don't show you anything but the sky." As I went out at the door I looked after him again. He was just finishing one of those long yawns that babies delight in. The moment I found my way below, I marched to the master's chair. He was awful in his dignity then, with the wine-bottle beside him and a glass held half-way to his lips. "Sir, he has eaten it all, but he is so very sleepy; mayn't he go to bed?" Santonio was so overcome with laughter at my audacity, though I was really very much alarmed, that he leaned back in his chair and shook again. Aronach bent upon me his flowing beard: "Dost thou know to refrain thyself, as well as thou knowest to rebuke thine elders?" But I could plainly see he was not angry, for he arose and tapped upon the ceiling with a stout oak staff that he fished from the unimagined closet. Then the little one came down and into the room, shy of Santonio, and keeping behind his chair, as he murmured "Good-night" to Aronach. The latter gave him a nod which would not have disgraced Jove in full council. Santonio requested very kindly that I too might go to bed; and in a few minutes I found myself in that little cave of my own of which he had made mention. Its entrance was hard by, through one of the very doors I had noticed when the glimmer showed me the staircase, and it entirely answered my expectations, in so far as it was very dim and haunted-looking, very unlike my own room in England, or any of our rooms at home. It had a stove, a looking-glass, and a press large enough to contain a bride's trousseau complete. There was also a recess which seemed lined with London fog, but which, on examination by the light of my candle, I found to contain the bed in a box of which my mother had forewarned me. I could no more have slept in it than if it had been a coffin, and for the first time I fully appreciated her provision for my comfort in this particular. My boxes were all there, and I uncorded them and drew forth my keys. My excellent sister Clo had packed in one trunk the bed and bedding, and one set of night-clothes, also a variety of toilet necessaries in holland bags. It was quite an affair to lift out the pieces; they were fitted into each other so beautifully that it was natural to imagine they could never be got back again. None but an experienced feminine hand could have accomplished such a feat, and very carefully had I been inducted into the puzzlement of putting the parts together. I had just unfolded the tight white mattress, so narrow, but so exactly wide enough, when Santonio knocked at the door to bid me good-night and farewell; and as he came in he assisted me in the accomplishment of my plans with that assiduous deftness which pre-eminently distinguishes the instrumental artist. He most kindly offered to see me into bed; but that was out of the question, so I let him go with my hearty thanks. It was not the least a melancholy feeling with which I stretched myself, all tingling with my rapid ablutions, beneath my home-blanket. I did not the least long after home, nor the least experience the mother-sickness that is the very treble-string of humility to many a hero in his inaugurative exile; but I felt extremely old, grand, and self-reliant, especially satisfied, in spite of my present ignorance, that by some means or other this Aronach would make a man of me, and not a trifler. I was just asleep when I heard a hand on the lock, and that no dream, for a voice vociferated, roughly enough,--"Out with the light!" I sprang up and opened the door. "It is only my little lamp, sir, that I brought with me, and it is very safe, as you see; but still, if you wish it, I will try to sleep in the dark. I have never liked to do so, because it excites me." "Bah! thou art too young to know the meaning of excitement. But for the sake of some one else who loves the night-lamp, thou mayest keep thine eyes open with it, and thank him too, for it is his doing. Now get back to bed! and don't come out again,--the quick and living walk not about in night-smocks here." I heard him bolt me in as soon as I shut the door. I cannot say this proceeding pleased me, but on the contrary cost me many a cold sweat until I became accustomed to it. I lay a little while awake, now spying out such variations from English style as had escaped me on my first acquaintance with my quarters; then reverted to Aronach's dark hint about the person who, like me, was excited by the darkness; and at last recollected my contemporaries, and speculated upon their present circumstantials. Most softly did that poor little soul present himself to mine as he played with my buttons, and I secretly determined to become his protector and ally. As for the imp in the blouse, I abjured him at first sight; perhaps because he was, though repugnant to my taste, handsome and elegant, and I was neither. FOOTNOTE: [13] It is generally accepted that Aronach is a portrait of Zelter, the friend of Goethe and teacher of Mendelssohn, who was for many years director of the Sing Akademie at Berlin. He was the first who inspired Mendelssohn with his love for John Sebastian Bach's music. CHAPTER XXVI. I awoke with sonorous cries, and sounds of bells, and songs of sellers, and the dim ringing of wheels on a frosty soil. Hard and white the day-dews stood upon the windows; the sky was clear as light itself, and my soul sprang as into the arms of freedom. It occurred to me that I was perhaps late, and I dressed fast. About half-way to the end, I heard the violins begin, both of them; but now they outrageously contradicted each other in different directions, and I could keep by my ear to neither. I made the utmost haste, but, as in most cases, it was least speed. I pulled off a button, and then a shoestring came loose; I had to begin very nearly all over again. And when at length equipped, I recalled the incarceration of the previous night, and wondered how long I should stay there; but a sudden impulse sent me to the door, and immediately it yielded to my hand. "He has been here, then," I thought, "and has not awakened me, because I was tired last night. How good, to be sure! Not at all what I expected." I sallied forth to the landing; it was like a room itself, but still dark,--dark for day-time; and I could only make out its extent by the glimmer through the crack beneath every door. I listened at each first, not knowing at the instant which was which; but the violins asserted themselves, and I chose one to unlock on my own responsibility. I had made a mistake here, and come into the untenanted organ-room where we had supped. There the wintry light reigned full, and freshened up the old tints till they gleamed no more dusky, but rich. The pictures and wreaths of other years gave welcome to me, that magic child especially; nor less the harpsichord unopened, quiet, while those sounds of younger violins broke through and through my fancy, and made my heart swell up till I could have fainted with emotion. But of all that pressed upon me, the crowning sense was of that silent organ lost in the shady roof; the sun playing upon those columned tubes, and the black-white key-board clustering to hide its wealth of "unheard melodies," sweeter than those "_heard_" as one has sung, who can surely never have _heard_ them! The chamber had been brushed and swept, but still the fine dust flew, and caught the sunshine on its eddies like another shade of light. There was no one in the room, and, my first flush over, I felt alone and idle. The table was spread for breakfast, as I discovered, last of all; and I question whether such coffee as stood upon the stove so cosily could be surpassed even in Arabia. It was so perfect that it stood the test of sugarlessness, which I preferred, if possible. Standing to eat and drink in all haste, a speculation stung me,--where was my violin? It had not even slept with me; I had missed it in my room,--that baby of mine, that doll, that ladykin! I looked everywhere,--at least everywhere I could; the closet-door I did not try, justly supposing that it was not my place to do so; and at last I concluded to attack my fellow-pupils. I found my small friend's door very easily, and turned the key to admit myself. The room, to my amazement, was precisely like my own, even to that bed in the recess; and the inmate was not alarmed, for he evidently expected me. "Oh!" he said, after putting up his lips to mine, "Marc has your study for this morning; the master gave it him to keep till you were ready. But mind you lock me in again when you get out, or he will flog you and me." "Did he ever flog you yet?" "No, and he does not call it 'flog;' but he did tie Marc's hands together one day, and he said it was the same to him to do that as for an English master to flog." "A very mild type, I think. But who is Marc?" "Marc Iskar; you saw him last night. He won't speak to me; he says I am too young." "So much the better for you. And what is your little name?" "I am Starwood Burney;[14] but I should like you to call me Star, as my papa does." "That I will, my German aster!" "Aster is Latin; I have begun Latin. But do please go, I have so much to do, and he will be so very angry,--so very, very cross!" "How dare you say so, when he has never even tied your hands together! You should not be hurt nor disgraced, little Starling; if I were there, I would be punished instead, for I have twice your strength. But you should try to love him while you fear him." "You speak like a great man, and I will try. But please to go now, for I find this very hard." I left him, having selfishly shrunk from the necessity to interrogate Iskar. I stole to his door. I was really electrified as I stood,--not with envy, but with amazement! He was already a wonderful mechanist. Such sallies of execution were to me tremendous, but his tone did not charm me, and I imagined it might be the defect of his instrument that it sounded thin and cold, unlike my notion altogether, and frosty as the frost without. Clearly and crisply it saluted me as I entered. The room was like ours,--the little one's and mine; but it was gayly adorned with pictures of the lowest order (such as are hawked about the streets in England), and only conspicuous from their unnaturally vivid coloring. They were chiefly figures of ladies dancing, or of gentlemen brandishing the sword and helmet,--theatrical subjects, as I afterwards discovered. Iskar was sitting before his desk, and had his face from me. As I approached, my awe was doubled at his performance, for I beheld Corelli's solos. I had heard of those from Davy. Another desk was also near him, and a second violin-case stood upon the floor. I asked him very modestly whether they were mine. He replied, without regarding me, "That sheet of paper has your exercise upon it, and if you cannot play it, you are to look in Marenthal's Prolusion, which is in the bureau under the desk. You are to take all these things into your own room." There was something in the tones of the blouse--he was yet in blouse--that irritated me intensely. His voice was defined as that of his violin, and to the full as frosty. I was only too happy to retire. Then, sitting upon my own bed, I examined the exercise. It was drearily indistinct,--a copy, and I could make nothing of it. The mere Germanisms of the novel rests and signs appalled me. I could neither handle the violin nor steady the bow; but I had carefully borne in mind the methods I had observed when I had had opportunity, and I stooped to take this child of music from its cradle. It was no more mine own than I had expected; an awkward bulky frame it had, and I did not feel to love it nor to bring it to my heart. Something must be done, I felt, and I returned to the organ-room. I found the Prolusion, as Iskar said,--an awfully Faustish tome, with rusty clasps, the letters worn off the back. I was in doom certainly. It was close black national type, and I pored and bored myself over it,--leaf after leaf,--until, blissfully, I arrived at the very exercise prepared for me. It was presented in illustration, and there were saw-like enunciations of every step; but half the words were unknown to me, and I grew rigid with despair. "Oh!" I cried aloud, "if some one would only tell me! if Davy were only here! if Lenhart Davy knew!" Still I slackened not in my most laughable labor, endeavoring to interpret such words as I could not translate by their connection with others I did know, by their look and make,--their euphony. I was vocalizing them very loud, and had made out already the first position, when a rattle of the closet lock turned me all over cold. I listened, it came again; a tremendous "So!" followed, and the door, opening, displayed Aronach himself in the glories of a morning-gown. How could he have got in there, and how have come out upon me so suddenly without any warning? and above all, how would he behave to me, finding me so ignorant? I believe that on account of my very ignorance I found favor in his sight,--he truly wise; for, merely alluding to my condition in this form, "Thou hast shown thyself faithful, only keep thy faith," he bade me bring my traps in there, and assured me--merely by his aspect--that he would clear every stone from my path. When I returned he was standing between the organ and the window: a grander picture could not be perpetrated of the life-long laboring and, for love's sake, aspiring artist. His furrowed forehead was clear as rutted snow in the serene of sunlight as he appeared then; and through all the sternness with which he spoke I discerned the gentleness of art's impression. And after the most careful initiation into the simplest mechanical process, he dismissed me to work alone, nor did I relax from that one exercise for a week. But a great deal chanced in that week besides. We spent each day alike, except Sunday. On other days we breakfasted very soon after it was light, on milk porridge, or bread and coffee. But sometimes Aronach would breakfast alone in his cave, which was that very closet I mentioned, and in which the day must have been developed about as decidedly as beneath the ground. However, he had his lamp in there, and his private escritoire, besides all kinds of books and papers, that were seldom produced in our presence, and then only one at a time. The kitten's basket was there too, and there were shelves upon shelves, containing napery and all sorts of oddities, that had their nest there after being hatched in crannies of the old man's brain. The first time I took a peep I discerned my own violin, carefully enough housed, but quite above my reach. I fumed a little, of course, but did not betray myself; and it was well I did not, as Iskar and little Starwood both practised on common fiddles scraping could not rasp, nor inexperience injure. After breakfast we worked till noon under lock and key. At noon we dined, and at two o'clock were sent to walk. I do not know whether I put down Aronach as a tyrant. He must, at least, be so written, in that his whims, no less than his laws, were unalterable. A whim it certainly was that we should always walk one way, and the same distance every day, unless he sent us on any special errand. This promenade, though monotonous, became dear to me, and I soon learned to appreciate the _morale_ of that _régime_. We could not go to Cecilia, which had its village only two miles off, and whose soft blue gentle hill was near enough to woo, and distant enough to tempt the dreamer, nor would our guide at hand permit us to approach the precinct consecrated to such artistic graduation as we had not yet attained. In the mornings Aronach was either absent abroad instructing, or writing at home. But we never got at him, and were not suffered to apply to him until the evening. As we could not play truant unless we had battered down the doors, so we could not associate with each other unreservedly, except in our walks; and on those occasions, pretty often, our master came too, calling on his friends as he passed their houses, while we paraded up and down; but whenever he was by our side, silent as a ruminant ox, and awful as Apis to the Egyptians for Starwood and for me. When he came not, it would have been charming, but for Iskar, who was either too fine to talk, or else had nothing at his command to say, and whose deportment was so drearily sarcastic that neither of us, his companions, ever ventured an original or a sympathizing remark. On my first Sunday I took Starwood to church,--that is, we preceded Aronach, who was lecturing Iskar, and sent us on beforehand. The little one was bright this morning, and as I looked upon his musically built brow, and trembling color, and expressive eyes,--blue as the air at evening, and full of that sort of light,--I could not make clear to myself how it was that he so disliked his work, and drooped beneath it in the effort to master his frail body by his struggling soul. We had turned into the place of the church,--the leafless lindens were whispering to it,--and we rested by the stone basin, while the bells came springing through the frost-clear day like--yet how unlike--England! I was afraid my small companion would be cold, and I put one of his long little hands into my pocket with my own, while I made him tuck the other into both his warm gloves, till, by degrees,--having coaxed and comforted him to the utmost,--he told me more about himself than I had known before. He was extremely timid to talk, shy as a fawn, even to me. But at last I made out satisfactorily the secret of his antipathy to his violin. I cannot remember all his words,--besides, they were too infantine to write; but he described himself as having spent that most forlorn of all untended childhoods which befalls the motherless offspring of the needy artist in England. His father had lived in London and taught music, but had left him constantly alone; and I also discovered he had been, and was still, an organist. The child assured me his mamma had been a beautiful player, but that no one ever opened her grand piano, which stood in a parlor above the street. "I always knew I was to grow up to music," said Starwood; "for mamma had told me so, and she taught me my notes when I was only four years old. When she died, no one taught me; and while papa was out all day, I played with my toys and sat upon the stairs. One day some men came up and nearly fell over me. I ran into the parlor, and they came too. They knocked the piano about, and began to take its legs off. I called out to them, 'You must not touch that,--it is my mamma's!' "They did not take any notice, but made a great noise, and at last they carried it away--all of it--upon their shoulders. I saw it go downstairs, and I sat there all day and cried; I was very miserable, I know. Papa came home at last; when I was so unhappy I thought I must die, and it was all in the dark, and very cold. He carried me in his arms, and made me tell him why I cried. I said 'Because of the piano;' and he told me he had sold it because it was so large, and because he wanted the money. I know he was very poor, Charles; for a gentleman who was very kind to him gave him some more money to send me here, or I could not have come. But I wish he had kept me at home and taught me himself." "But how," I replied, "can you be sorry now? We ought to be most gloriously happy to find ourselves here. But you fret, my dear little boy, and mope, and that makes you thin, and takes the strength out of you that you want for music." "Ah! that is not it. You don't know, Charles, how I feel; I know you don't, for you love your violin." "I should think I did!" "Well, I am strange to it, and don't love it,--at least, don't love to play it." "But why did you not tell your father so before he sent you here? You know you will never do anything well that you don't love to do,--it is impossible. And not to love the violin, Star, for shame!" "It is not that,--oh, don't be angry with me!--but my music is in the beautiful cold keys." "Darling little Star! I beg your pardon; but then, why don't you learn the piano?" "But Charles, I cannot. I was sent here to learn the violin, and I _must_ study it. Aronach does not let any one study the pianoforte under him now." "He did then?" "Yes, a long time ago, when he lived in another place, about thirty miles off. Have you heard Aronach play the organ?" "No; have you?" "Oh! every Sunday." "You don't say so, Star! is it not delicious?" "Charles, I like it best of all the days in the week, because he plays. Such different playing from what they have at church in England!" "I shall go up to the organ and see him play." "Charles, Charles, don't; please don't,--we never do!" "Then I shall be the first, for go I must. There is precious Aronach himself. I will run after him wherever he goes." I did so most rudely--forsaking Starwood, who did not dare to follow me; but I would not miss the opportunity. I spun after Aronach so noiselessly as that he had no notion I was following, though in general he had eyes behind; and he did not perceive me until the service had absolutely begun. Then I made myself visible, and caught a frown, which was accompanied by a helpless condition truly edifying; for his arms and hands and eyes and feet were all equally on service. I therefore remained, and made out more about the instrument than I had made out my whole life before. His was a genuine organ-hand, that could stretch itself indefinitely, and yet double up so crawlingly that the fingers, as they lay, were like stems of corrugated ivory; and I watched only less than I listened. The choir--so full and perfect, trained to every individual--mounted its effects, as it were, upon those of the controlling harmonies. There was a depth in these that supported their air-waving tones, as pillars solid and polished a vaulted roof, where shadows waver and nestle. I found a book, and sang at intervals, but generally preferred to receive the actual impression. I think my first mother-feeling for Germany was born that Sunday in pleasurable pain. None can know who has not felt--none feel who has not heard--the spell of those haunting services in the land of Luther! The chorale so grave and powerful, with its interpieces so light and florid, like slender fretworks on a marble shrine,--the unisonous pause, the antiphonal repose, the deep sense of worship stirred by the sense of sound. From that Sunday I always went with Aronach, unbidden, but unforbidden; and as I learned to be very expert in stopping, I substituted very speedily the functionary who had performed the office before my advent. FOOTNOTE: [14] There is no question but that Starwood Burney is intended for a portrait of Sterndale Bennett. Mendelssohn was his friend from boyhood, and aided him greatly with his suggestions, though it is doubtful whether Bennett ever studied with him. It was through Mendelssohn's influence that he brought out Bach's music in London. He was also a pupil of the Leipsic Conservatory. CHAPTER XXVII. It cannot be supposed that I forgot my home, or that I failed to institute an immediate correspondence, which was thus checked in the bud. Aronach, finding me one night, after we had all retired, with my little ink-bottle on the floor and myself outsprawled writing upon my knees close into my lamp, very coolly carried my sheet, pen, and ink away, and informed me that he never permitted his pupils to write home at all, or to write anything except what he set them to do. I should have revolted outright against this restriction but for a saving discovery I made on the morrow,--that our master himself dismissed from his own hand a bulletin of our health and record of our progress once a month. Precious specimens, no doubt, they were, these, of hard-hearted fact! Neither were we allowed to receive letters ourselves from home. Only simple communications were permitted to himself; and the effect of this rule, so autocratic, was desperately painful upon me at first. I hungered for some sweet morsel of English, served up in English character; I wanted to hear more than that all were well; and as for Lenhart Davy, had not my love informed my memory, I should have forgotten him altogether. But it was very soon I began to realize that this judicious interdiction lent a tonic bitterness to my life. I was completely abstracted, and upon that passage of my inwardly eventful history I can never glance back without a quiet tear or two; it was heavenly in its unabsolved and absolute serenity. It was the one mood that befitted a growing heart too apt to burn,--a busy brain too apt to vision,--if that head and heart were ever to be raised from the valley of material life into the mountain heights of art. I fear my remembrances are dull just here, for the glory that touched them was of the moment, and too subtle to be retrieved; but it is impossible not just to remind myself of them before returning to my adventure-maze. For six months, that passed as swiftly as six weeks of a certain existence, we went on together--I should have said--hand-in-hand, but that my Starwood's diffident melancholy and Iskar's travestied hauteur would have held me back, and I was ardent to impel myself forward. So, though at first I had to work almost to desperation in order to join the evening contrapuntal class, I soon left the other two behind, and Aronach taught me alone,--which was an advantage it would be impossible to overrate. Not that he ever commended,--it was not in him; he was too exigent, too stern; his powers never condescended; he was never known to qualify; he was never personally made acquaintance with. Something of the hermit blended mystically with his acumen, so that the primary advantage of our position was his supreme standard, insensibly our own also,--the secondary, our undisturbed seclusion. As I said, we walked the same distance day by day. Nothing is uniform to a soul really set on the idealities of art. Everything, though it changes not, suggests to the mind of the musician. Though not a full-grown mind, I had all joy in that unchanging route; for as the year grew and rounded, all, as it were, aspired without changing. Meditation mellowed every circumstance till it ripened to an unalterable charm. I always walked with Starwood, who still made me very anxious; suddenly and increasingly so pale and frail he became that I fully expected him to die that spring. Indeed, he hardly cleared it; and I should have mentioned my fears to Aronach but that he seemed fully aware of all I feared. But instead of getting rid of the weakling, as I dreaded he might choose to do, he physicked him and kept him in his bed-box twice or thrice a week, and taciturnly indulged him; giving him hot possets at night, and cooling drinks by day. The poor little fellow was very grateful, but still sad; and I was astonished that Aronach still expected him to practise, unless he was in bed, and to write, except his head ached. The indefinite disorder very seldom reached that climax though, and chiefly asserted itself in baby-yawns and occasional whimpers, constant weariness, and entire loss of appetite. I at length discovered his age, and Iskar's also. The latter had passed eleven, but was not so nearly twelve as I; the first was scarcely nine, and so small he might have been only six. It struck me he would not be much older, and I had learned to love him too well in his infantine and affecting weakness. I ventured, one day, to ask Aronach whether his father knew he was ill. I was answered,-- "He is not ill." "But, sir, he is low and weak!" "He will always be weak while thou art petting him. Who can take more care of him than I? His father?" "Oh, master! I know you are good; but what if he dies?" "His work will not have killed him, nor his weakness. If people are to die, they die; if they are to live, they live." I was silenced, not convinced; but from that hour I did not think he would die; nor did he. Aronach was strict, he never departed from a rule; it was his chief and salient characteristic. He never held what one may call conversation with us on any subject except our studies, and then it was in exemplification, not suggestively. It was a beneficial reserve, perhaps, but I could not have endured it forever, and might have become impatient but for the auspices of the season; it was the very beginning of May. Though shut up to a great extent, as we were, the weather made itself an entrance, blue sky swelled, and the glow of morning woke me before dawn. The lindens near the fountain began to blossom, and in the garden of the church the oak-leaves clustered. I saw nothing of the country yet, and could only dream of unknown beauty in untraversed paths. The Cecilia examinations approached. Aronach attended almost every day at the school. I knew just so much and no more, and as much expected to assist thereat as I should have hoped to come of age on my twelfth birthday. My birthday was in that month of May, in the third week; and though I was innocent of the fact, it was a fact that it was one of Cecilia's feast-days as well as my own. It was, however, such a delicious morning that it nearly sent me mad up in my little room to be mewed there, when such thousands upon thousands roamed wheresoever they would; for I never took it into account how many of those wanderers would rejoice to be so shut up as I was, could they only rest. And it struck me that at least one day in the year one ought to be permitted to do exactly as one desired, even were the desire to drown one's self the prevalent aspiration. There are times when it is not only natural, but necessary, to rebel against authority; so that had I not been locked in, I would have certainly escaped and made a ramble on my own responsibility; for I should have acted upon as pure impulse as when--usually industrious enough as I was--I laid down my fiddle and wasted my time. As I gazed upon the window and smelt the utter sweetness of the atmosphere, hardly so much air as flower spirit, the voice of perfume, I was wishful of the wings of all the flies, and envious of the butterflies that blundered in and floated out. I am sure I had been idle at least an hour, and had no prospect of taking heed to my ways, so long as the sky was blue as that sky, and the breeze blew in, when I felt, rather than heard, a soft little knock at the door. I fancied it was the servant dashing her broomstick upon the landing; but in a moment it was repeated, and I was very shy to take any notice, feeling that a goblin could let itself in, and had better do so than be admitted. Then I was roused indeed, and my own inaction scared me, for I recognized Starwood's voice. "Charles, I want to come in,--mayn't I a minute, please?" "Really, Star, it is too bad of you to give me such a turn! How can I open the door? Pray come in directly, and tell me what is the matter." He boggled at the lock for a minute or two, but at last admitted himself. "Why, Star, how frightened you look! Have you been flogged at last? and is the master home already?" "No, no, Charles! Something most extraordinary." I really could but laugh, the child repeated the words with such an awe. "A gentleman, Charles, has come. He opened my door while I was practising. I should have been dreadfully frightened, but he was so kind, and came in so gently. He thought you were here, Charles, and asked for you; he says he does not know your name, but that he could tell me whether you were here if I would describe you. I said how pale you were, with such dark eyes, and about your playing, and he said,-- "'All right, go and fetch him, or send him to me: will you be so kind?'" "How could you be quite sure? It may be some one for Iskar, who is pale, and has dark eyes." "He said it was the violin that came at Christmas, I was to send; and you came at Christmas. Besides, he looks very like a friend you would have; he is not like anybody else." "What is he like, Star?" "His face is so very bright and clever that I could not look at it; but I saw his beautiful curling hair. I never saw such curling hair." "Come in with me, then, Star." "No, he said I was not to come too, that I might go on with my music. He calls it 'music,' but I don't think it is much like it." Now, I knew who was there as well as if an angel had spoken to me and said, "It is he for whom you waited." Had I not known in very assurance, I should have forced my little friend to go back with me, that I might not meet alone a stranger; as it was, I only longed to fly, and to fly alone into that presence, for which I then felt I had been waiting, though I had known it not. I rushed from my little prison enfranchised, ecstatic; but I misapprehended my own sensations. The magnetic power was so appalling that as I reached the threshold of that other room a dark shock came over my eyes, and partly from my haste, in part from that dazzling blindness, I staggered and fell across the doorway, and could not try to rise. But his arm was round me,--before I fell, I felt it; and as I lay I was crushed, abandoned in very worship. None worship as the child-enthusiast save the enthusiast who worshipped even as a child. I scarcely tried to rise; but he lifted me with that strong and slender arm, and set me upon my feet. Before he spoke I spoke, but I gasped so wildly that my words are not in my power to recall. I only remember that I named him "our Conductor--the Conductor!" and that still, with his light touch on my shoulder, he turned his head aside. I looked up freely then; and the glance I then caught of that brow, those eyes half averted, half bent upon me with the old pitying sweetness, partly shaded by earthly sympathy, but for the most part lifted into light beyond my knowledge,--the one glimpse forewarned me not to yield to the emotions he raised within me, lest I should trouble him more than needed. It was not a minute, I am sure, before I mastered myself and stood before him firmly. "Sir, the Herr Aronach is at the Cecilia School to-day; it is the first day of the grand examination,--at least I believe so; I know they are all very busy there, and have been so for some time. I don't think the master will be home until quite the evening, for he told us to dine alone; but if you will allow me, I will run and bring you a coach from the Kell Platz, which will take you to Cecilia in an hour,--I have heard the master say so." He was looking towards the window; and while I spoke, his face, so exquisitely pale, grew gradually warm and bright, his cheek mantled, his eyes laughed within the lashes. "All very good and wise and amiable, most amiable!" said he; "and such pretty German too! But I came to see you, and not your master, here! I have been a long time coming, but I could not get here before, because I had not done my lessons. I have finished them now, and want a game of play. Will you have a game with me?" Before I could answer, he resumed, in tones of the most ravishing gayety,-- "And you are all so pale,--so pale that I am ashamed of you! What have you been all doing?" "Practising, sir,--at least not I, for I have been idle all the morning, for the very first time since I came here, I assure you. I kept thinking and thinking, and expecting and expecting, though I could not tell what, and now I know." "But I am still very much ashamed of Aronach. Does he lock you up?" with a star of mischief shining from the very middle of each eye. "Yes, sir, always, as well as the others, of course. I like it very much too; it is so safe." "Not always, it seems. Well, now let us have a race to the river; and then if you are pale still, I shall take you to Cecilia, and show somebody that it is a question whether he can keep you at home, for all he bolts you in. The day is so fine, so beautiful, that I think the music itself may have a holiday." "Sir, do you really mean it? Oh, if you do, pray let us go to Cecilia _now_; for perhaps there is music to hear, and oh! it is so very, _very_ long since I heard any." "Is it so dear to you that you would rather seek it than all the sunshine and all the heart of spring? Ah! too young to find that anything is better than music, and more to be desired." "Yes, sir, yes! please to take me. I won't be in the way, it will be enough to walk by you; I don't want you to talk." "But I do want to talk; I cannot keep quiet. I have a lady's tongue, and yours, I fancy, is not much shorter. We will therefore go now." "This moment, sir? Oh! I would rather go than have the festival over again." "The festival! the festival! It _is_ the festival! Is it not to-day a festival, and _every_ day in May?" He looked as he spoke so divinely happy that it is so the angels must appear in their everlasting spring. I rushed into my room and rummaged for my cap, also for a pair of new gloves; but I was not very long, though I shook so violently that it was a task to pull on those skins. Returning, I found him still at the window; he was leaning upon the bureau, not near the harpsichord, not before the organ, but gazing, child-like, into the bright blue morning. He was dressed in a summer coat, short and very loose, that hung almost in folds upon his delicate figure. The collar, falling low, revealed the throat, so white, so regal; and through the button-hole fluttered the ribbon of the Chevalier. He carried also a robe-like cloak upon his arm, lined with silk and amply tasselled. I ventured to take it from him, but he gently, and yet forcibly, drew it again to himself, saying, "It is too heavy for thee. May I not already say 'thou'?" "Oh, sir, if you will, but let me go first; it is so dark always upon the stairs." "One does not love darkness, truly; we will escape together." He took my hand, and I tried to lead him; but after all, it was he who led me step by step. I did not know the road to Cecilia, and I said so. "Oh, I suppose not; sly Aronach! But I do, and that is sufficient, is it not? Why, the color is coming back already. And I see your eyes begin to know me. I am so glad. Ah! they tell more now than they will tell some day." "Sir, you are too good, but I thank you. I like to feel well, and I feel more than well to-day; I am too glad, I think." "Never too well or glad, it is not possible. Never too bright and hopeful. Never too blissfully rejoicing. Tell me your name, if you please." "Sir, my name is nothing." "That is better than _Norval_." He laughed, as at himself. "Sir, however did you get to hear that? O!"--I quite screamed as the reminiscence shook me,--"oh, sir, did you write the 'Tone-Wreath'?" He gave me a look which seemed to drink up my soul. "I plucked a garland, but it was beyond the Grampian Hills." "You _did_ write it! I knew it when I heard it, sir. I am so delighted! I knew the instant she played it, and she thought so too; but of course we could not be quite sure." He made the very slightest gesture of impatience. "Never mind the 'Tone-Wreath'! There are May-bells enough on the hills that we are to go to." I was insensibly reminded of his race; but its bitterness was all sheathed in beauty when I looked again. So beautiful was he that I could not help looking at his face. So we are drawn to the evening star, so to the morning roses; but with how different a spell! For just where theirs is closed, did his begin its secret, still attraction; the loveliness, the symmetry were lost as the majestic spirit seized upon the soul through the sight, and conquered. "You have not told me your name. Is it so difficult for me to pronounce? I will try very hard to say it, and I wish to know it." No "I will" was ever so irresistible.--"Charles Auchester." "That is a tell-tale name. But I can never forget what was written for me on your forehead the day you were so kind to me in a foreign country. Do you like me, Charles,--well enough to wish to know me?" I can never describe the innocent regality of his manner here,--it was something never to be imagined, that voice in that peculiar key. "Sir, I know how many friends you must have, and how they must admire you. I don't think any of them love you as I do, and always did ever since that day. I wish I could tell you, but it's of no use. I can't, though I quite burn to tell you, and to make you know. I do love you better than I love my life, and you are the only person I love better than music. I would go to the other end of the world, and never see you any more, rather than I would be in your way or tire you. Will you believe me?" "Come!" he answered brightly, delicately, "I know all you wish to say, because I can feel myself; but I could not bear you at the other end of the world just now, because I like you near me; and were you and I to go away from each other, as we must, I should still feel you near me, for whatever is, or has been, is forever to me." "Sir, I can only thank you, and that means more than I can say; but I cannot think why you like me. It is most exquisite, but I do not understand it." He smiled, and his eye kindled. "I shall not tell you, I see you do not know; I do not wish for you to know. But tell me now, will you not, do you enter the school this semester?" "Yes, sir, I believe so,--at least, I came here on purpose; but Aronach does not tell us much, you know, sir." "Is that tall young gentleman to enter?" "Yes, sir,--Marc Iskar." "And the least,--how do you name him?" Like a flash of lightning a conception struck me through and through. "Sir, he is called Starwood Burney, from England. How I do wish I might tell you something!" "You can tell me anything; there is plenty of time and room, and no one to hear, if it be a pretty little secret." "It is a secret, but not a little one, nor pretty either. It is about Starwood. I don't think I ought to trouble you about it, and yet I must tell you, because I think you can do anything you please." "Like a prince in the Arabian tales," he answered brightly; "I fear I am poor in comparison with such, for I can only help in _one_ way." "And that one way is the very way I want, sir. Starwood loves the pianoforte. I have seen him change all over when he talked of it, as if it were his real life. It is not a real life he lives with that violin." "I wish it had been thyself, whose real life it is, my child," he replied, with a tenderness I could ill brook, could less account for; "but still thy wish shall be mine. Would the little one go with me? He seems terrified to be spoken to, and it would make my heart beat to flutter him." "Sir, that is just like you to say so; but I am very certain he would soon love you,--not as I do, that would be impossible, but so much that you would not be sorry you had taken him away. But oh! if I had known that you would take and teach, I would never have taken up the violin, but have come and thrown myself at your feet, sir, and have held upon you till you promised to take me. I thought, sir, somehow that you did not teach." "Understand me, then, that what I say I say to satisfy you: you are better as you are, better than you could be with me. I am a wanderer, and it is not my right to teach; I am bound to another craft, and the only one for the perfecting of which it is not my right to call myself poor. Do you understand, Charles?" "I think, sir, that you mean you make music, and that therefore you have no time for the dirty work." He broke into a burst of laughter, like joy-bells. "There is as much dirty work, however, in what you call _making_ music. But what I meant for you to understand was this, that I do not take money for instructing; because that would be to take the bread from the mouths of hundreds I love and honor. I have money enough; and you know how sweet it is even to give money,--how much sweeter to give what cannot be bought by money! I shall take this little friend of mine to my own home, if he will go and I am permitted to do so; and I shall treat him as my son, because he will, indeed, be my music-child, and no more indebted to me than I am to music, or than we all are to Jehovah." "Sir, you are certainly a Jew if you say 'Jehovah;' I was quite sure of it before, and I am so pleased." "I cannot contradict thee, but I am almost sorry thou knowest there are even such people as Jews." "Why so, sir? Pray tell me. I should have thought that _you_, before all other persons, would have rejoiced over them." "Why so, indeed! but because the mystery of their very name is enough to break the head, and perhaps the heart. But now of this little one: he must, indeed, be covered as a bird in the nest, and shall be. And if I turn him not forth a strong-winged wonder, thou wilt stand up and have to answer for him,--is it not so?" "Sir, I am certain he will play wonderfully upon what he calls those 'beautiful cold keys.'" "Ah!" he answered dreamily, "and so, indeed, they are, whose very tones are but as different shadows of the same one-colored light, the ice-blue darkness, and the snowy azure blaze. He has right, if he thinks them cold, to find them _alone_ beautiful." He spoke as if in sleep. "Sir, I do not know what you mean, for I never heard even Milans-André." "You are to hear him, then; it is positively needful." Again the raillery pointed every word, as if arrows "dipped in balm." "I mean that I scarcely know what those keys are like, for I never heard them really played, except by one young lady. I did not find the 'Tone-Wreath' cold, but I thought, when she played with Santonio, that her playing was cold,--cold compared with his; for he was playing, as you know, sir, the violin." "You are right; yes. The violin is the violet!" These words, vividly pronounced, and so mystical to the uninitiated, were as burning wisdom to my soul. I could have claimed them as my own, so exactly did they respond to my own unexpressed necessities. But indeed, and in truth, the most singular trait of the presence beside me was that nothing falling from his lips surprised me. I was prepared for all, though everything was new. He did not talk incessantly,--on the contrary, his remarks seemed sudden, as a breeze up-borne and dying into the noonday. There was that in them which cannot be conveyed, although conserved,--the tones, the manner, so changeful, yet all cast in grace unutterable; passing from vagrant, never wanton mirth, into pungent, but never supercilious gravity. Such recollection only proves that the beautiful essence flows not well into the form of words,--for I remember every word he spoke,--but rather dies in being uttered forth, itself as music. It was dusty in the highway, and we met no one for at least a mile except the peasants, who passed into the landscape as part of its picture. The intense green of May, and its quickening blossoms, strewed every nook and plantation; but the sweetness of the country, so exuberant just there, only seemed to frame, with fitting ornament, the one idea I contemplated,--that he was close at hand. There had been much sun, and one was naturally inclined to shade in the thrilling May heats, which permeate the veins almost like love's fever, and are as exciting to the pulses. At last we came to a brook, a lovely freshet, broadening into a mill-stream; for we could see far off in the clear air the flash of that wheel, and hear its last murmuring fall. But here at hand it was all lonely, unspanned by any bridge, and having its feathery banks unspoiled by any clearing hand. A knot of beautiful beech-trees threw dark kisses on the trembling water; there were wildest rushes here, and the thick spring leaves of the yet unbloomed forget-me-not on either hand. The blue hill of Cecilia lay yet before us, but something in my companion's face made me conjecture that here he wished to rest. Before he even suggested it I pulled out my cambric handkerchief, and running on before him, laid it beneath the drooping beech-boughs on the swelling grass. I came back to him again, and entreated him to repose. He even flushed with satisfaction at my request, which I made, as I ever do, rather impertinently. He ran, too, with me, and taking out his own handkerchief, which was a royal-purple silk, he spread it beside mine, and drew me to that throne with his transparent fingers upon my hand. I say "transparent," for they were as though the roseate blood shone through, and the wandering violet veins showed the clearness of the unfretted palm. But it was a hand too refined for model beauty, too thin and rare for the youth, the almost boyhood, that shone on his forehead and in his unwearied eye. The brightness of heaven seemed to pour itself upon my soul as I sat beside him and felt that no one in the whole world was at that moment so near him as I. He pulled a few rushes from the margin, and began to weave a sort of basket. So fleetly his fingers twisted and untwisted themselves that it was as if he were accustomed to do nothing but sit and weave green rushes the livelong day. "Pull me some more!" he said at length imploringly; and I, who had been absorbed in those clear fingers playing, looked up at him as I stretched my arm. His eyes shone with the starlight of pure abstraction, and I answered not except by gathering the rushes, breaking them off, and laying them one by one across his knees. The pretty work was nearly finished; it was the loveliest green casket I could have fancied, with a plaited handle. It looked like a fairy field-flung treasure. I wished it were for me. When it was quite ready, and as complete and perfect as Nature's own work, he rose, and seizing the lowest branch of the swaying beech grove, hung the plaything upon it and said, "I wish it were filled with ripe red strawberries." "Why so, sir?" I ventured. "Because one would like to imagine a little child finding a green basket by the dusty way, filled with strawberries." We arose, and again walked on. "Sir, I would rather have the basket than the strawberries." "I wish a little child may be of your mind. Were you happy, Charles, when you were a little child?" "Sir, I was always longing to be a man. I never considered what it was to be a little child." "Thou art a boy, and that is to be a man-child,--the beautiful fate! But it is thy beautiful fate to teach others also, as only children teach." "I, sir,--how?" "Charles, a man may be always longing to be an angel, and never consider what it is to be a man." His voice was as a sudden wind springing up amidst solitary leaves, it was so fitful, so vaguely sweet. I looked upon him indeed for the first time with trembling, since I had been with him that day. He had fallen into a stiller step, for we had reached the foot of the ascent. It never occurred to me that I was not expected at Cecilia. I thought of nothing but that I should accompany him. He suddenly again addressed me in English. "Did St. Michel ever recover the use of his arm?" I was quite embarrassed. "I never asked about him, sir; but I daresay he did." "I thought you would have known. You _should_ have asked, I think. Was he a rich man or a poor man?" "How do you mean, sir? He was well off, I should suppose, for he used to dress a great deal, and had a horse, and taught all over the town. Mr. Davy said he was as popular as Giardini." "Mr. Davy was who,--your godfather?" "My musical godfather I should say, sir. He took me to the festival, and had I not accidentally met him I should never have gone there, have never seen you. Oh, sir!--" "Nothing is accidental that happens to you, to such as you. But I should have been very sorry not to have seen you. I thought you were a little messenger from the other world." "It does seem very strange, sir,--at least two things especially." "What is the first, then?" "First, that I should serve you; and the second, that you should like me." "No, believe me, it is not strange,"--he still spoke in that beautiful pure English, swift and keen, as his German was mild and slow,--"not strange that you should serve me, because there was a secret agreement between us that we should either serve the other. Had you been in my place, I should have run to fetch you water; but I fear I should have spilled a drop or two. And how could I but like you when you came before me like something of my own in that crowd, that multitude in nothing of me?" "Sir," I answered, to save myself from saying what I really felt, "how beautifully you speak English!" He resumed in German: "That is nothing, because we can have no real language. I make myself think in all. I dream first in this, and then in that; so that, amidst the floating fragments, as in the strange mixture we call an _orchestra_, some accent may be expressed from the many voices of the language of our unknown home." As he said these words, his tones, so clear and reverent, became mystical and inward. I was absolved from communion with that soul. His eye, travelling onwards, was already with the lime-trees at the summit of the hill we had nearly reached, and he appeared to have forgotten me. I felt how frail, how dissoluble, were the fiery links that bound my feeble spirit to that strong immortal. But how little I knew it yet! CHAPTER XXVIII. The school of Cecilia was not only at the summit of the hill, it was the only building on the summit; it was isolated, and in its isolation grand. There were cottages in orchards, vine-gardens, fertile lands, an ancient church, sprinkled upon the sides, or nestling in the slopes; but itself looked lonely and consecrated, as in verity it might be named. A belt of glorious trees, dark and dense as a Druid grove, surrounded with an older growth the modern superstructure; but its basis had been a feudal ruin, whose entrance still remained; a hall, a wide waste of room, of rugged symmetry and almost twilight atmosphere. A court-yard in front was paved with stone, and here were carriages and unharnessed horses feeding happily. The doorway of the hall was free; we entered together, and my companion left me one moment while he made some arrangements with the porter, who was quite alone in his corner. Otherwise silence reigned, and also it seemed with solitude; for no one peered among the strong square pillars that upheld as rude a gallery,--the approach to which was by a sweeping staircase of the brightest oak with noble balustrades. Two figures in bronze looked down from the landing-place on either hand, and as we passed between them I felt their size, if not their beauty, overawe me as the shadow of the entrance. They were, strange to say, not counterparts, though companion forms of the same head, the same face, the same dun laurel crown; but the one gathered its drapery to its breast, and stretched its hand beckoningly towards the portal,--the other with outstretched arm pointed with an expression almost amounting to menace down the gallery. In niched archways there, one door after another met the eye, massive and polished, but all closed. I implicitly trusted in my companion. I felt sure he possessed a charm to open all those doors, and I followed him as he still lightly, as if upon grass, stepped from entrance to entrance, not pausing until he reached the bend of the gallery. Here was a door unlike the others,--wider, slighter, of cloth and glass; and stealing from within those media, with a murmur soft as incense, came a mist of choral sounds, confusing me and captivating me at once, so that I did not care to stir until the mist dissolved and ceased, and I was yet by my companion's side without the door. "We may enter now, I think," he said; for he had waited reverently as I, and he gently pushed those folds. They slid back, and we entered a narrow lobby, very dim and disenchanted looking. Still softly we proceeded to another door within, which I had not discovered, and he touched that too with an air of subtile and still authority. I was dazzled the first instant; but he took my hand directly, and drew me forwards with him to a seat in some region of enchantment. As I sat by him there I soon recovered myself to the utmost, and beheld before me a sight which I shall not easily forget, nor ever cease to hold as it was presented to me on that occasion. It was a vast and vaulted room; whether of delicate or decided architecture I could not possibly declare, such a dream it was of wreaths and mystic floral arches. Pillars twined with gold-bloomed lime-branches rose burdened with them to the roof, there mixing into the long festoons of oak-leaf that hung as if they grew there from the gray-brown rafters. Everywhere was a drooping odor that had been oppressive, most unendurably sweet, but for the strong air wafted and ruffling through the open windows on either hand. We were sitting quite behind all others, on the loftiest tier of seats, that were raised step by step so gently upwards to the back, and beneath us were seats all full, where none turned nor seemed to talk; for all eyes were surely allured and riveted by the scenery to the fronting end. It was a lofty, arched recess, spanning the extreme width of the hall; a window, half a dome, of glass poured down a condensed light upon two galleries within, which leaned into the form of the arch itself, and were so thickly interlaced with green that nothing else was visible except the figures which filled them, draperied in white, side by side in shining rows,--like angels, so I thought. Young men and boys above, in flowing robes as choristers, overhung the maiden forms of the gallery below; and of these last, every one wore roses on the breast, as well as glistening raiment. These galleries of greenery were themselves overhanging a platform covered with dark-green cloth, exquisitely fluted at the sides, and drawn in front over three or four steps that raised it from the flooring of the hall. A band in two divisions graced the ground floor. I caught the sight immediately; but upon the platform itself stood a pianoforte alone, a table covered with dark-green velvet, and about a dozen dark-green velvet chairs. These last were all filled except one, and its late occupant had pushed that one chair back while he stood at the top of the table, with something glittering in his hand, and other somethings glittering before him upon the dark-green surface. As we entered, indeed, he was so standing, and I took in all I have related with one glance, it was, though green, so definite. "Look well at that gentleman who stands," whispered my guide, most slowly; "it is he who is dispensing the prizes. He is Monsieur Milans-André, whom you wished to see." I am blessed with a long sight, and I took a long survey; but lest I should prejudice the reader, my criticisms shall remain in limbo. "When we heard the singing it was that he had just dispensed a medal; and it is so the fellow-competitors hail the successful student. If I mistake not, there is another advancing; but it is too far for us to hear his name. Do you see your master at the awful table? But soft! I think his face is not this way." "Oh!" I thought, and I laughed in my sleeve, "he is dreaming I am safe at home, if he dreams about me at all, which is a question." But I was not looking after him; I took care to watch Milans-André, feeling sure my guide would prefer not to be stared upon in a public place like that. The voice that called the candidates was high in key, and not unrefined; but what best pleased me was to see one advance,--a boy, all blushing and bowing to receive a golden medal, which Milans-André, his very self, with his own hands, flung round the youngling's neck by its long blue ribbon; for then the same sweet verse in semi-chorus sounded from the loftiest gallery, the males alone repeating it for their brother. I could not distinguish the words, but the style was quite _alla Tedesca_. Then another youth approached, and received more airily a silver token, with the same blue ribbon and songful welcome. Another and another, and at last the girls were called. "See!" said my guide, "they have put the ladies last! That shall not be when I take the reins of the committee. Oh, for the Cecilian chivalry! what a taunting remembrance I will make it." He was smiling, but I was surprised at the eagerness of his tones. "Does it matter, sir?" said I. "Signify? It signifies so much the more that it is a little thing, a little token. But it shall not grow; it shall not swell. See, see! look, Charles! what name was that?" I had not heard it either, but the impetuosity in his tones was so peculiar that I was constrained to look up at him. His eye was dilated; a singular flash of light rather than flush of color glowed upon his face, as if glory from the noonday sun had poured itself through the impervious roof. But his gaze forbade my gaze, it was so fixed and piercing upon something at the end of the hall. Imperceptibly to myself I followed it. The first maiden who had approached the chair was now turning to re-pass into her place. She was clad, like the galleried ones, in white; but her whole aspect was unlike theirs, for instead of the slow step and lingering blush, her movement was a sort of flight, as if her feet were sandalled with the wind, back again among the crowd; and as she fled, you could only discern some strange gleam of unusual grace in a countenance drooping, but not bashfully, and veiled with waves, not ringlets, of hair more dark than pine-trees at midnight; also, it was impossible not to notice the angry putting back of one gloved hand, which crushed up the golden medal and an end of the azure ribbon, while the other was trailing upon the ground. "She does not like it; she is proud, I suppose!" said I; and I laughed almost loud. "I thought you knew them all, sir?" "No, Charles, I was never here before; but as I am to have something to do with what they do soon, I thought I had a right to come to-day." "A right!" said I; "who else, if you had not the right, sir? But still I wonder how we got in so easily,--I mean I; for if you had not brought me, I could not, I suppose, have come." "It is this," he answered smiling, and he touched his professor's cloak, or robe, which was now encircling his shoulders, and waved about him pliantly. "They all wear the same on entering these walls, at least who sit at the green table." The choral welcome, meantime, had pealed from the lower gallery, and another had advanced and retired from the ranks beneath. My companion was intently gazing, not at the maiden troop, but at the deep festoons above us. He seemed to see nothing there though, and the very position of his hands, resting upon each other and entirely relaxed, bore witness to the languor of his abstraction. It occurred to me how very cool they were, both those who distributed, and those who received the medals; I felt there was an absence of the strict romance, if I may so name it, I had expected when I entered; for as we sat, and whence we saw, all was ideal to the sight, and the sense was even lost in the spiritual appreciation of an exact proportionateness to the occasion. Yet the silence alternating with the rising and abating voices, the harmony of the coloring and shadowing, the dim rustle of the green festoons, the waftures of woody and blossomy fragrance, the indoor forest feeling, so fresh and wild,--all should have stood me in stead, perhaps, of the needless enthusiasm I should have looked for in such a meeting, or have witnessed without surprise. I was not wise enough at that time to define the precise degree and kind of enthusiasm I should have required to content me, but perhaps it would be impossible even now for any degree to content me, or for any kind not to find favor in my eyes, if natural and spontaneously betrayed. The want I felt, however, was just a twilight preparation of the faculties for the scene that followed. The last silver medal had been carried from the table, the last white-robed nymph had sought her seat with the ribbon streaking her drapery, when both the choral forces rose and sang together the welcome in more exciting fulness. And then they all sat down, and a murmur of voices and motion began to roll on all sides, as if some new part were to be played over. The band arose on either side, and after a short, deferential pause, as if calling attention to something, commenced with perfect precision Weber's "Jubel" overture.[15] It was my companion who told me its name, whispering it into my ear; and I listened eagerly, having heard of its author in every key of praise. I did not much care for the effect, though it was as cool as needed to be after those cool proceedings. I dearly wanted to ask him whether he loved it; but it was unnecessary, for I could see it was even nothing to him by his face. He seemed passing judgment proudly, furtively, on all that chanced around him, and I could not but feel that he searched all, governed all with his eye from that obscure corner. Immediately on the conclusion of the overture several professors left the table and clustered round the pianoforte. One opened it, and then Milans-André approached, and waving his creamy gloves, unclothed his hands, and stood at the front of the platform. Some boisterous shouts arose,--they began near his station, and were imitated from the middle benches; but there was an undemonstrative coldness even in these; they seemed from the head, not the heart, as one might say. The artist did not appear distressed,--indeed, he looked too classically self-reliant to require encouragement. He was what might be called extremely handsome. There was a largeness about his features that would have told well in a bust,--they were perfectly finished; also a Phidias could not have planed another polish on the most oval nostril, a Canova could not have pumiced unparted lips to more appropriate curve. His eyes were too far for me to search, but I did not long to come at their full expression. He stood elegantly, while the plaudits made their way among the muffling leaves, and therein went to sleep; the golden flowers of the lindens hung down withering, smitten by the terror of his presence! My companion--to my surprise, my bewilderment even--applauded also, but, as it were, mechanically; he stood beside me on that topmost tier applauding, but his eyes were still fixed upon the roof. I heard his voice among the others, and it was just at that instant that some one, and _that_ some one in a professor's robe, a gentleman of sage demeanor, started from one of the lower tiers and looked back suddenly at him; as suddenly fired, flushed, lighted, all over his face, wise and grave as it was. _He_ saw not, still rapt, still looking upwards; but I saw and felt,--felt certain of the impressions received. A sort of whisper crept along the tier,--a portentous thrill; one and another, all turned, and before I could gather with my glance who had left them, several seats were voided beneath us. In a few minutes I heard a long and silver thundering chord. I knew it was the reveille of the wonderful Milans-André; but so many persons were standing and running that I could not see, and could scarcely hear. Soon all must have heard less. As the keys continued to flash in unmitigated splendor, a rushing noise seemed arising also from the floor to the ceiling; it was, indeed, an earnest of my own pent-up enthusiasm that could not be repressed, for I found myself shouting, hurrahing beneath my breath, as all did around me. I was not mistaken; some one opened the door by which we had entered, gustily, violently, and drew my companion away. Before I thought of losing him, he was gone,--I knew not whether led or carried; I knew not whether aroused or in the midst of his high abstraction. I pressed downwards, climbing over the benches, driving my way among those who stood, that I might see all as well as feel; but at length I stood upon a seat and beheld what was worth beholding, is bright to remember; but oh, how hopeless to record! Just so might a painter dream to pour upon his canvas an extreme effect of sunset,--those gorgeous effusions of golden flame and blinding roses that are dashed into dazzling mist before our hearts have gathered them to us, have made them, in beauty so blazingly serene, our own. The sound of the keys, so brilliant, grew dulled as by a tempest voice in distance; not alone the hurrahs, the vivas, but the stir, the crash of the dividing multitude. And before almost I could believe it, I beheld moving through the cloven crowd that slight and unembarrassed form; but he seemed alone to move as if urged by some potent necessity, for his head was carried loftily, and there was not the shadow of a smile upon his face. It was evident that the people, between pressing and thronging, were determined to conduct him to the platform; and it struck me, from his hasty step and slightly troubled air, that he longed to reach it, for calm to be restored. Milans-André, meantime,--will it be believed?--continued playing, and scarcely raised his eyes as my conductor at length mounted the steps, and seemed to my sight to shrink among those who now stood about him. But it was hopeless to restore the calm. I knew that from the first. He had no sooner trodden the elevation than a burst of joyous welcome that drowned the keys, that drenched the very ear, forced the pianist to quit his place. No one looked at him of young or old, except those who had confronted him at the table. They surrounded him, some with smiles and eager questions; some with provoking gravity. The other was left alone to stem, as it were, that tide of deafening acclaim; he slightly compressed his lip, made a slight motion forwards; he lifted his hand with the slight deprecation that modesty or pride might have suggested alike,--still hopelessly. The arrears of enthusiasm demanded to be paid with interest; the trampings, the shower-like claps, the shouts, only deepened, widened tenfold: the multitude became a mob, and frantic,--but with a glorious zeal! Some tore handfuls of the green adorning the pillars, and passing it forward, it was strewn on the steps. From the galleries hung the excited children, girls and boys, and dividing their bouquets, rained the roses upon his head, that floated, crimson and pink and pearly, to the green floor beneath his feet. With a sort of delicate desperation he shook his hair from those dropped flowers, and for one instant hid his face; the next, flung down his hands, and smiled a flashing smile,--so that, from lip to brow, it was as if some sunbeam fluttered in the cage of a rosy cloud, smiling above, below, and everywhere it seemed,--ran round the group of professors to the piano, and without seating himself, without prelude, began a low and hymn-like melody. Oh! that you had heard the lull, like a dream dying, dissolving from the awakening brain,--the deep and tremendous, yet living and breathing stillness,--that sank upon each pulse of that enthusiasm raised and fanned by him, and by him absorbed and hidden to brood and be at rest! I know not which I felt the most, the passion of that almost bursting heart of silence, as it were, rolled together into a purple bud from its noon-day efflorescence by the power that had alone been able to unsheathe its glories,--or that stealing, creeping People's Song, that in few and simple chords, beneath one slender, tender pair of hands, held bound, as it were, and condensed in one voice the voice of myriads. For myself, I writhed with bliss, I was petrified into desolation by delight; but I was not singular on that occasion, for those around me seemed alone to live, to breathe, that they might receive and retain those few precious golden notes, and learn those glorious lineaments, so pale, so radiant with the suddenly starting hectic, as his hands still stirred the keys to a fiercer inward harmony than that they veiled by touch. It was not long, that holy People's Song; I scarcely think it lasted five minutes,--certainly not more; but the effect may be better conceived, and the power of the player appreciated, when I say not one note was lost: each sounded, rang almost hollow, in the intense pervading silence. "It is over," I thought, as he raised those slender hands, after a rich reverberating pause on the final chord, swelling with dim arpeggios on the harmony as into the extreme of vaulting distance,--"it is over; and they will make that dreadful noise unless he plays again." Never have I been so mistaken: but how could I anticipate aught of him? For as he moved he fixed his eyes upon the audience, so that each individual must have felt the glance within his soul,--so seemed to feel it; for it expressed a command sheathed in a supplication, unearthly, irresistible, that the applause should not be renewed. There was perfect stillness, and he turned to Milans-André and spoke. Every one beneath the roof must have heard his words, for they were distinct as authoritatively serene. "Will you be so good as to resume your seat?" And as if swayed by some angel power,--such as drove the ass of Balaam to the wall,--the imperial pianist sat down, flushed and rather ruffled, but with a certain pomp it was trying to me to witness, and re-commenced the concerto which had been so opportunely interrupted. Attention seemed restored, so far as the ear of the multitude was concerned; but every eye wandered to him who now stood behind the player and turned the leaves of the composition under present interpretation. _He_ seemed attentive enough,--not the slightest motion of his features betrayed an unsettled thought. His eyes were bent proudly, but calmly, upon the page; the rose light had faded from his cheek as the sunset flows from heaven into eternity,--but how did he feel? Hopeless to record, because hopeless to imagine. Perhaps nothing; the triumph so short but bright had no doubt become such phantasm as an unnoticeable yesterday to one whose future is fraught with expectation. The concerto was long and elaborately handled. I felt I really should have admired it, have been thereby instructed, had not _he_ been there. But there is something grotesque in talent when genius, even in repose, is by. It is as the splendor of a festive illumination when the sun is rising upon the city; that brightness of the night turns pale and sick, while the celestial darkness is passing away into day. There was an oppression upon all that I heard, for something different had unprepared me for anything, everything, except something else like itself. The committee were again at the table, and when I grew weary of the second movement, I looked for my master, and found him exactly opposite, but certainly not conscious of me. His beard was delightfully trimmed, and his ink-black eyebrows were just as usual; but I had never seen such an expression as that with which he regarded the _one_. It was as if a stone had rolled from his heart, and it had begun to beat like a child's; it was as if his youth were renewed, like the eagle's; it was as if he were drinking, silently but deeply, celestial knowledge from those younger heavenly eyes. "Does he love him so well, then?" thought I. Oh that I had known it, Aronach, for then I should have loved you, have found you out! But of course you don't think we are worthy to partake such feeling, and I don't know but that you are right to keep it from us. "Would that concerto never be over?" was my next surmise,--it was about the longest process of exhaustion to which I had ever been subjected. As for me, I yawned until I was dreadfully ashamed; but when I bethought myself to look round, lo! there were five or six just out of yawns as well, and a few who had passed that stage and closed their eyes. It never struck me as unconscionable that we should tire, when we might gaze upon the face of him who had shown himself ready to control us all; indeed, I do believe that had there been nothing going on, no concerto, no Milans-André, but that he had stood there silent, just as calm and still,--we should never have wearied the whole day long of feeding upon the voiceless presence, the harmony unresolved. But do you not know, oh, reader! the depression, the protracted suffering occasioned by the contemplation of any work of art--in music, in verse, in color, or in form--that is presented to us as model, that we coaxed to admire and enticed to appreciate, after we have accidentally but immediately beforehand experienced one of those ideal sensations that, whether awakened by Nature, by Genius, or by Passion suddenly elated, claim and condense our enthusiasm, so that we are not aware of its existence except on a renewal of that same sensation so suddenly dashed away from us as our sober self returns, and our world becomes again to-day, instead of that eternal something,--new, not vague, and hidden, but not lost? FOOTNOTE: [15] The Jubilee Overture, written in 1818 for the accession day of the King of Prussia. CHAPTER XXIX. So absorbed was I, either in review or revery, that I felt not when the concerto closed, and should have remained just where I was, had not the door swung quietly behind me. I saw who beckoned me from beyond it, and was instantly with him. He had divested himself of his cloak, and seemed ready rather to fly than to walk, so light was his frame, so elastic were his motions. He said, as soon as we were on the stairs: "I should have come for you long ago, but I thought it was of no use until such time as I could find something you might eat; for, Carlomein, you must be very hungry. I have caused you to forego your dinner, and it was very hard of me; but if you will come with me, you shall have something good and see something pretty." "I am not hungry, sir," I of course replied; but he put up his white finger,-- "I am, though; please to permit me to eat! Come this way." He led me along a passage on the ground-floor of the entrance hall and through an official-looking apartment to a lively scene indeed. This was a room without walls, a sort of garden-chamber leading to the grounds of the Academy, now crowded; for the concerto had concluded, with the whole performance, and the audience had dispersed immediately, though not by the way we came, for we had met no one. Pillars here and there upheld the roof, which was bare to the beams, and also dressed with garlands. Long tables were spread below, all down the centre, and smaller ones at the sides, each covered with beautiful white linen, and decked with fluttering ribbons and little knots of flowers. Here piles of plates and glasses, coffee-cups and tureens, betokening the purport of this pavilion; but they were nothing to the baskets trimmed with fruits, the cakes and fancy bread, the masses of sweetmeat in all imaginable preparation. The middle of the largest table was built up with strawberries only, and a rill of cream poured from a silver urn into china bowls at the will of a serene young female who seemed in charge. A great many persons found their way hither, and were crowding to the table, and the refreshing silence was only broken by the restless jingle of spoons and crockery. My guide smiled with a sprightly air. "Come! we must find means to approach as well, for the strawberry pyramid will soon not have left one stone upon another." I made way instantly to the table, and with no small difficulty smuggled a plate and had it filled with strawberries. I abjured the cream, and so did he to whom I returned; but we began to wander up and down. "Let me recommend you," said he, "a slice of white bread; it is so good with strawberries; otherwise you must eat some sausage, for that fruit will never serve alone,--you might as well starve entirely, or drink dew-water." "I don't see any bread," I answered, laughing; "it is all eaten." "Oh, oh!" he returned, and with the air of Puck he tripped across the pavilion to a certain table from which the fair superintendent had flown. The ribbons and wreaths danced in the breeze, but the white linen was bare of a single loaf. "I _must_ have some bread for thee, Carlomein; and I, indeed, myself begin to feel the want unknown to angels." Could this be the same, it struck me, who discoursed like an angel of that high throng? So animated was he, such a sharp brightness sparkled in his eyes. "Somebody has run away with the loaf on purpose," he continued, with his dancing smile; "I saw a charming loaf as I came in, but then the strawberries put it out of my head, and lo! it is gone." "I _will_ get some bread!" and off I darted out of the pavilion, he after me, and all eyes upon us. It was a beautiful scene in the air: a lovely garden, not too trim, but diversified with mounds and tree-crowned slopes, all furnished with alcoves, or seats and tables. Here was a hum of voices, there a fragment of part-song scattered by a laugh, or hushed with reverent shyness as all arose, whether sitting or lying, to uncover the head as my companion passed. There were groups of ten or twelve, five or six, or two and two together; many sat upon the grass, itself so dry and mossy; and it was upon one of these parties, arranged in half Elysian, half gypsy style, that my companion fixed his thrilling eyes. He darted across the grass. "I have it! I see it!" and I was immediately upon his footsteps. These were all ladies; and as they wore no bonnets, they could not uncover, but at the same time they were not conscious of our approach at first. They made a circle, and had spread a linen cloth upon the fervid floor: each had a plate, and almost every one was eating, except a young girl in the very middle of the ring. She was dispensing, slice by slice, our missing bread-cake. But I did not look farther, for I was lost in observing my guide; not understanding his expression, which was troubled and fallen, while his light tones shook the very leaves. "Ah, the thieves, the rogues, to steal the bread from our very mouths! Did I not know where I should find it? You cannot want it all: give us one slice, only one little slice! for we are starving, as you do not know, and beggars, as you cannot see, for we look like gentlemen." I never shall forget the effect of his words upon the little group; all were scared and scattered in a moment,--all except the young lady who held the loaf in her lap. I do not say she stirred not, on the contrary, it was the impulsive grace of her gesture, as she swayed her hand to a little mound of moss by her side, just deserted, that made me start and turn to see her, that turned me from _his_ face a moment. "Ah! who art thou?" involuntarily sounded in my yet unaverted ear. He spoke as if to me, but how could I reply? I was lost as he, but in far other feelings than his,--at least I thought so, for I was surprised at his ejaculatory wonder. "I will cut some bread for you, sir, if you will condescend to sit," said a voice, which was as that of a child at its evening prayer, so full it was of an innocent _idlesse_, not _naïveté_, but differing therefrom as differs the lisp of infancy from the stammer of diffident manhood. "I should like to sit; come also, Carlomein," replied my companion; and in defiance of all the etiquette of social Germany, which so defiantly breathes ice between the sexes, I obeyed. So did he his own intention; for he not only remained, but knelt on one knee, while gazing with two suns in his eyes, he recalled the scattered company. "Come back! come back!" he cried; "I order you!" and his silent smile seemed beckoning as he waved his elfin hand. One strayed forward, blushing through the hair; another disconcerted; and they all seemed sufficiently puzzled. The gathering completed, my conductor took up the basket and peeped into every corner, laughed aloud, handed it about, and stole no glance at the maiden president. I was watching her, though for a mighty and thrilling reason, that to describe in any measure is an expectation most like despair. Had she been his sister, the likeness between them had been more earthly,--less appalling. I am certain it struck no one else present, and it probably might have suggested itself to no one anywhere besides, as I have since thought; but _me_ it clove through heart and brain, like a two-edged sword whose temper is light instead of steel. So I saw and felt that she partook intimately, not alone of his nature, but of his inspiration; not only of his beauty, but his unearthly habit. And now, how to breathe in words the mystery that was never explained on earth! He was pure and clear, his brow like sun-flushed snow high lifted into light,--her own dark if soft, and toned with hues of night from the purple under-deeps of her heavy braiding hair. His features were of mould so rare that their study alone as models would have superseded by a new ideal the old fresh glories of the Greek marble world,--hers were flexibly inexpressive, all their splendor slept in uncharacteristic outline, and diffused themselves from her perfect eyes, as they awoke on her parted lips. His eyes, so intense and penetrative, so wise and brilliant, with all their crystal calm and rousing fire, were as unlike hers as the sun in the diamond to the sun upon the lonely sea. In hers the blue-green transparence seemed to serve alone as a mirror to reflect all hues of heaven; in his, the heaven within as often struggled with the paler show of paradise that Nature lent him in his exile. But if I spoke of the rest,--of the traits that pierce only when the mere veiling loveliness is rent asunder,--I should say it must ever bid me wonder to have discovered the divine fraternity in such genuine and artless symbol. It was as if the same celestial fire permeated their veins,--the same insurgent longings lifted their very feet from the ground. The elfin hands of which I spoke were not more rare, were not more small and subtile, than the little grasping fingers she extended to offer him the bread, and from which his own received it. Nor was there wanting in her smile the strange immortal sweetness that signalized his own,--hers broke upon her parted lips like fragrance, the fragrance that _his_ seemed to bear from the bursting buds of thought in the sunshine of inward fancy. But what riveted the resemblance most was the instancy of their sympathetic communion. While those around had quietly resumed their occupation, too busy to talk,--though certainly they might have been forgiven for being very hungry,--_he_, no more kneeling, but rather lying than sitting, with his godlike head turned upwards to the sky, continued to accost her, and I heard all they said. "I knew you again directly, you perceive, but you do not look so naughty now as you did in the school; you were even angry, and I cannot conceive why." "Cannot you, sir?" she replied, without the slightest embarrassment. "I wonder whether _you_ would like to be rewarded for serving music." "_It_ rewards _us_, you cannot avoid its reward; but I agree with you about the silver and the gold. We will have no more medals." "They like them, sir, those who have toiled for them, and who would not toil but for the promise of something to show." "And the blue ribbons are very pretty." "So is the blue sky, and they can neither give it us nor take it from us; nor can they our reward." "And that reward?" asked he. "Is to suffer for its sake," she answered. He lifted his eyebrows in a wondering archness. "To suffer? To suffer, who alone enjoy, and are satisfied, and glorify happiness above all others, and above all other things?" "Not all suffer, only the faithful; and to suffer is not to sorrow, and of all joy the blossom-sorrow prepares the fruit." "And how old are you whose blossom-sorrow I certainly cannot find in any form upon your maiden presence?" "You smile, and seem to say, 'Thou hast not yet _lived_ the right to speak,--purchased by experience the freedom of speech.' I am both young and old. I believe I am younger than any just here, and I know more than they all do." "Was it pride," thought I, "that curled beneath those tones so flowery soft?" for there was a lurking bitterness I had not found in _him_. "Not younger than this one;" he took my hand and spread it across his knee. "These fingers are to weave the azure ribbon next." "He is coming, I know, but is not come; his name is upon the books. I hope he will not be an out-Cecilian, because I should like to know him, and we cannot know very well those who do not reside within the walls." "He is one of my very friendly ones. Will you also be very friendly with him?" "I always will. Be friendly now!" and she smiled upon me an instant, very soon letting fall her eyes, in which I then detected a Spanish droop of the lids, though, when raised, her glance dispelled the notion, for the brightness there shone all unshorn by the inordinate length of the lashes, and I never saw eyes so light, with lashes so defined and dark. "So, sir, this azure ribbon which you admire is also to be woven for him?" she continued, as if to prolong the conversation. "Not if symbols are to be the order of the day, for, Carlomein, your color is not _blue_." "No, sir; it is violet, you said." "We say _blue violets_." "Yes, sir," she responded quickly. "So we say the blue sky at night; but how different at night and by day! The violet holds the blue, but also that deeper soul by the blue alone made visible. All sounds seem to sleep in one, when that is the violin." "You are speaking too well; it makes me afraid you will be disappointed," I said in my first surprise. Then, feeling I had blundered, "I mean in me." "That would make no difference. Music is, and is eternal. We cannot add one moment to its eternity, nor by our inaptitude diminish the proper glory of our art. Is it not so, sir?" she inquired of him. Like a little child somewhat impatient over a morning lesson, he shook his hair back and sprang upon his feet. "I wish you to show me the garden before I go: is this where you walk? And where is the Raphael?" "That is placed in the conservatory, by order of Monsieur Milans-André." "Monsieur myself will have it moved. Why in the conservatory, I wonder? It should be _at home_, I think." "It does look very well there to-day, as it is hung with its peculiar garland,--the white roses." "Yes, the angel-roses. Oh, come, see, let us go to the angel-roses!" and he ran down the bank of grass, and over the lawn among the people. I was very much surprised at his gleeful impatience, not knowing a whit to what they alluded; and I only marvelled that no one came to fetch him, that we were suffered so long to retain him. We followed, I not even daring to look at the girl who had so expressed herself in my hearing, as to make me feel there were others who also _felt_; and turning the corner of the pavilion, we came into the shadow of a lovely walk planted and arched with lindens. It ran from a side door of the school house to an indefinite distance. We turned into this grove, and there again we found him. "How green, how ravishing!" he exclaimed, as the sunsprent shadows danced upon the ground. "Oh! that scent of scents, and sweetest of all sweetnesses, the linden flower! You hold with me there, I think?" "Yes, entirely; and yet it seems just sweet enough to promise, not to be, all sweetness." "I do not hold with you there. All that is sweet we cherish for itself,--or I do,--and I could not be jealous of any other sweetness when one sweetness filled up my soul." "Yes," I thought; but I did not express it, even to myself, as it now occurs to me,--"_that_ is the difference between your two temperaments." And so indeed it was: _he_ aspired so high that he could taste all sweetness in every sweetness, even here; _she_--younger, weaker, frailer--could only lose herself between the earth and heaven, and dared not cherish any sweetness to the utmost, while here unsafely wandering. "And this conservatory,--how do you use it?" "We do not use it generally; we may walk round it: but on state occasions refreshments are served there to our professors and their friends. I daresay it will be so to-day." "There will be people in there, you mean? In that case I think I shall remain, and sun myself on the outside. You, Carlomein, shall go in and look at the picture for me." "Is it a picture, sir? But I cannot see it for you; I should be afraid. I wish you would come in, sir!" "Ah, I know why! You are frightened lest Aronach should pounce upon you,--is it not?" I laughed. "A little, sir." "Well, in that case I _will_ come in. It does look inviting,--pretty room!" We stopped at the conservatory door. It was rather large, and very long; a table down the centre was dressed with flowers, and overflowing dishes decked the board. There were no seats, but a narrow walk ran round, and over this the foreign plants were grouped richly, and with excelling taste. The roof was not curtained with vine-leaves, as in England, but it was covered with the immense leaves and ivory-yellow blossoms of the magnolia grandiflora, which made the small arched space appear expanded to immensity by the largeness of its type, and gave to all the exotics an air of home. At the end of the vista, some thirty feet in length, there were several persons all turned from us; and as we crept along, one by one, until we reached that end, the odors of jasmine and tuberose were heavy upon every breath. I felt as if I must faint until we attained that point where a cool air entered; refreshing, though itself just out of the hottest sunshine I had almost ever felt. This breeze came through arched doors on either hand half open and met in two embracing currents where the picture hung. All were looking at the picture, and I instantly refrained from criticism. It was hung by invisible cords to the framework of the conservatory, and thence depended. About it and around it clustered the deep purple bells and exquisite tendrils and leaves of the maurandia, while the scarlet passion-flower met it above and mingled its mystic splendors. Other strange glories, but for me nameless, pressing underneath, shed their glowing smiles from fretted urns or vases; but around the frame, and so close to the picture as to hide its other frame entirely, lay the cool white roses, in that dazzling noon so seeming, and amidst those burning colors. The picture itself was divine as painting can render its earthly ideal, so strictly significant of the set rules of beauty. All know the "Saint Cecilia" of Raphael d'Urbino; this was one of the oldest copies, and was the greatest treasure of the committee, having been purchased for an extravagant sum by the president from the funds of the foundation,--a proceeding I did not clearly comprehend, but was too ignorant to tamper with. It was the young lady who enlightened me as I stood by her side. Of those who stood there I concluded the most part had already refreshed themselves; they held plates or glasses, and in a few moments first one and then another recognized our companion, and that with a reverential impressiveness it charmed me to behold. It may have been the result of his exquisitely bright and simple manner, for he had wholly put aside the awful serene reserve that had controlled the crowd in public. Milans-André happened to be there; I beheld him now, and also saw that, taking hold upon that arm I should not have presumed to touch, he drew on our guide as if away from us. But this one stayed, and resting his hand upon the table, inquired with politeness for a court,-- "Where is your wife? Is she here to-day? I want to show her to a young gentleman." Milans-André looked down upon him, for he was quite a head taller, though not tall himself. "She is here, but not in here. I left her with the Baroness Silberung. Come and see her in-doors. She will be highly flattered." "No, I am not coming; I have two children to take charge of. Where is Professor Aronach?" "In the committee-room, and in a great rage,--with you, too, it appears, Chevalier." "With me, is it? I am so glad!" He stepped back to us. "I do not believe that any one can make him so angry as I can! It is charming, Carlomein!" Oh, that name, that dear investment! How often it thrilled me and troubled me with delight that day. "I suppose, sir, I have something to do with it." Before he could reply, Milans-André had turned back, and with scornful complacency awaited him near a glass dish of ices dressed with ice-plant. He looked revengeful, too, as he helped himself; and on our coming up, he said, "Do you eat nothing, Chevalier?" while filling a plate with the pink-frozen strawberry. "Oh! I could eat it, if I would; for who could resist that rose-colored snow? But I have no time to eat; I must go find Aronach, for I dreamed I should find him here." "My dear Chevalier, drink then with me!" "In Rhine wine? Oh, yes, mein Herr Professor! and let us drink to all other professors and chevaliers in ourselves represented." The delicately caustic tones in which he spoke were, as it were, sheathed by the unimpeachable grace of his demeanor as he snatched first one, and then another, and the third, of three tall glasses, and filling them from the tapering bottle to the brim, presented one to the lovely girl who had screened herself behind me, one to myself, and the third to himself; all the while regarding Milans-André, who was preparing his own, with a mirthful expression, still one of the very sweetest that could allure the gaze. When André looked up, he turned a curious paleness, and seemed almost stoned with surprise. I could neither understand the one nor the other; but after our pledge, which we two heartily responded to, my maiden companion gave me a singular beckoning nod, which the instant reminded me of Miss Lawrence, and at the same time moved and stood four or five steps away. I followed to the pomegranate plant. "Come even closer," she whispered; "for I daresay you are curious about those two." If she had not been, as she was, most unusually beautiful to behold, I should dearly have grudged her that expression,--"those two;" but she constrained me by her sea-blue eyes to attentive silence. "You see what a power has the greater one over the other. I have never seen _him_ before, but my brother has told me about him; besides, here he is worshipped, and no wonder. The Cecilia School was founded by one Gratianos, a _Bachist_, about forty years ago, but not to succeed all at once, of course; the foundations were too poor, and the intentions too sublime. Louis Spohr's works brought us first into notice, because our students distinguished themselves at a certain festival four years ago. The founder died about that time, and had not Milans-André put himself in the way to be elected president, we should have gone to nothing; but he was rich, and wanted to be richer, so he made of us a speculation, and his name was sufficient to fill the classes from all parts of Europe. But we should have worse than gone to nothing soon, for we were slowly crystallizing into the same order as certain other musical orders that shall not be named, for perhaps you would not know what I mean by quoting them." "I could, if you would explain to me, and I suppose you mean the music that is studied is not so select as it should be." "That is quite enough to the purpose," she proceeded, with quite an adult fluency. "About three months ago we gave a great concert. The proceeds were for enlarging the premises, and we had a great crowd,--not in the room we used to-day, which is new, but in the large room we shall now keep for rehearsals. After the concert, which André conducted, and at which all the prodigies assisted, the conductor read us a letter. It was from one we had all heard of, and whom many of us loved secretly, and dared not openly, for reasons sad and many,--from the 'Young Composer,' as André satirically chose to call him, the Chevalier Seraphael." "Oh!" I cried, "is that his name? What a wonderful name! It is like an angel to be called Seraphael." "Hush! none of that now, because I shall not be able, perhaps, to tell you what I want you to know before you come here. Seraphael had just refused the post of Imperial pianist, which had been pressed upon him very earnestly; and the reason he gave for refusing it certainly stands alone in the annals of artistic policy,--that there was only one composer living to whom the office of Imperial pianist should be confided, and by whom it must be assumed,--Milans-André himself. Then it went on to insinuate that by exclusive exchange only could such an arrangement be effected; in short, that Milans-André, who must not go out of Austria, should be prevailed upon, in that case, to resign the humble position that detained him here, to the young composer himself. Now Milans-André did resign, as you may suppose; but, they say, not without a douceur, and we presented him with a gold beaker engraved with his own arms, when he retired,--that was not the douceur, mind; he had a benefit." "That means a concert, with all the money it brought for himself. But why did you not see the Chevalier until to-day?" "Some of ours did,--the band and the chorus; but I do not belong to either. You have no idea what it is to serve music under Milans-André; and when he came to-day, we all knew what it meant, who were wishing for a new life. It was a sort of electric snapping of our chains when he played to-day." "With that Volkslied?" "Yes," she responded, with tremulous agitation, "with that Volkslied. Who shall say he does not know all hearts?" "But it is not a Burschen song,[16] nor like one; it is like nothing else." "No, thank God! a song for the women as well as the men. You never heard such tones, nor I. Well it was that we could put words to them, everybody there." "And yet it was a song without words," said a voice so gentle that it stole upon my imagination like a sigh. "Oh, sir, is it you?" I started, for he was so near to us I was afraid he might have been vexed by hearing. But she was unchanged, unruffled as a flower of the conservatory by the wind without. She looked at him full, and he smiled into her very eyes. "I only heard your very last words. Do not be afraid, for I knew you were talking secrets, and that is a play I never stop. But, Carlomein, when you have played your play, I must carry you to your master, whom I might call _ours_, and beg his pardon for all my iniquities." "Oh, sir! as if you needed," I said; but the young lady answered,-- "_I_ shall retreat, then, sir,--and indeed this is not my place." She courtesied lowly as to a monarch, but without a shadow of timidity, or so much as the flutter of one rose-leaf, and passed out among the flowers, he looking after her strangely, wistfully. "Is not that a Cecilia, Carlomein?" "If you think so, sir." "You do not think it? You ought to know as well as I. As she is gone, let us go." And lightly as she fled, he turned back to follow her. But we had lost her when we came into the garden. As he passed along, however, also among the flowers, he touched first one and then another of the delicate plants abstractedly, until at length he pulled off one blossom of an eastern jasmine,--a beautiful specimen, white as his own forehead, and of perfume sweetest next his breath. "Oh!" said he gayly, "I have bereaved the soft sisterhood; but," he added earnestly, as he held the pale blossom between his fairest fingers, "I wonder whether they are unhappy so far from home. I wonder whether they _know_ they are away!" "I should think not, sir, or they would not blossom so beautifully." "That is nothing, and no reason, O Carlomein! for I have seen such a beautiful soul that was away from home, and it was very homesick; yet it was so fair, so very fair, that it would put out the eye of this little flower." I could not help saying, or quickly murmuring rather, "It must be your soul then, sir." "Is it mine to thee? It is to me another; but that does not spoil thy pretty compliment." I never heard tones so sweet, so infantine. But we had reached the door of the glass chamber, and I then observed that he was gazing anxiously--certainly with inquiry--at the sky. At that moment it first struck me that since our entrance beneath the shadowy greenness the sun had gone in. Simultaneously a shade, as from a springing cloud, had fallen upon that brilliant countenance. We stepped out into the linden grove, and then it came upon me, indeed, that the heavens were dulled, and a leaden languor had seized upon the fresh young foliage. Both leaves and yellow blossom hung wearily in the gloom, and I felt the intense lull that precedes an electric shower. I looked at him. He was entirely pale, and the soft lids of his eyes had dropped,--their lights had gone in like the sun. His lips seemed to flutter, and he spoke with apprehensive agitation. "I think it will rain, but we cannot stay in the conservatory." "Sir, it will be dry there," I ventured. "No, but if it should thunder." At the very instant the western cloudland, as it were, shook with a quivering flash, though very far off; for the thunder was, indeed, but a mutter several minutes afterwards. But he seemed stricken into stillness, and moved not from the trees at the entrance of the avenue. "Oh! sir," I cried,--I could not help it, I was in such dread for him,--"do not stand under the trees. It is a very little way to the house, and we can run." "Run, then," he answered sweetly. "But I cannot; I never could stir in a storm." "Pray, sir, oh pray, come!" the big drops were beginning to prick the leafy calm. "And you will take cold too, sir. Oh, come!" But he seemed as if he could scarcely breathe. He pressed his hands on his brow and hid his eyes. I thought he was going to faint; and under a vague impression of fetching assistance, I rushed down the avenue. FOOTNOTE: [16] The Volkslied is a people's song; the Burschenlied a student's song. CHAPTER XXX. I can never express my satisfaction when, two or three trees from the end, I met the magic maiden herself, all hooded, and carrying an immense umbrella. "Where is this Chevalier of ours?" she asked me, with eagerness. "You surely have not left him alone in the rain?" "I was coming for you," I cried; for such was, in fact, the case. But she noticed not my reply, and sped fleetly beneath the now weeping trees. I stood still, the rain streaming upon my head, and the dim thunder every now and then bursting and dying mournfully, yet in the distance, when I heard them both behind me. How astonished was I! I turned and joined them. They were talking very fast,--the strange girl having her very eyes fixed on the threatening sky, at which she laughed. He was not smiling, but seemed borne along by some impulse he could not resist, and was even unconscious of; he held the umbrella above them both, and she cried to me to come also beneath the canopy. We had only one clap as we crossed the lawn,--now reeking and deserted; but a whole levee was in the refreshment pavilion waiting for the monarch,--so many professors robed, so many Cecilians with their badges, that I was ready to shrink into a nonentity, instead of feeling myself by my late privilege superior to all. Every person appeared to turn as we made our way. But for all the clamor I heard him whisper, "You have done with me what no one ever did yet; and oh! I do thank you for being so kind to the foolish child. But come with me, that I may thank you elsewhere." "I would rather stay, sir. Here is my place, and I went out of my place to do you that little service of which it is out of the question to speak." "You must not be proud. Is it too proud to be thanked, then?" With the gentlest grace, he held out to her the single jasmine blossom. "See, no tear has dropped upon it. Will you take its last sigh?" She drew it down into her hand, and, almost as airily as he moved, glided in among the crowd, which soon divided us from her. Seraphael himself sighed so very softly that none could have _heard_ it; but I saw it part his lips and heave his breast. "She does not care for me, you see," he said, in a sweet, half pettish manner, as we left the pavilion. "Oh! sir, because she does not come with you? That is the very reason, because she cares so much." "How do you make that out?" "I remember the day I brought you that water, sir, how I was afraid to stay, although I would have given everything to stay and look at your face; and I ran away so fast because of that." "Oh, Carlomein, hush! or you must make me vain. I wonder very much why you do like me; but, pray, let it be so." "Like you!" I exclaimed, as we moved along the corridor, "you are _all_ music,--you must be; for I knew it before I had heard you play." "They do say so. I wonder whether it is true," said he, laughing a bright, sudden laugh, as brightly sounding as his smile was bright to gaze on. "We shall all know some time, I suppose. Now, Carlomein, what am I to say to this master of yours about you? For here we are at the door, and there is he inside." "Pray, sir, say what you like, and nothing if you like, for I don't care whether he storms or not." "'Storms' is a very fine word; but, like our thunder, I expect it will go off very quietly. How kind it was not to thunder and lighten much, and to leave off so soon!" "Oh! I am so glad. I hate thunder and lightning." "Do you? and yet you ran for me. Thank you for another little lesson." He turned and bowed to me, not mockingly, but with a sweet, grave humor. He opened the door at that moment, and I went in behind him. The very first person I saw was Aronach, sitting, as if he never intended to move again, in a great wooden chair, writing in a long book, while other attentive worthies looked over his shoulder. His eyes were down, and my companion crept round the room next the wall as noiselessly as a walking shadow. Then behind the chair, and putting up his finger to those around, he embraced with one arm the chair's stubborn back, and stretched the other forwards, spreading his slender hand out wide into the shape of some pink, clear fan-shell, so as to intercept the view Aronach had of his long book and that unknown writing. "Der Teufel!" growled Aronach, "dost thou suppose I don't know thy hand among a thousand? But thy pranks won't disturb me any more now than they did of old. Take it off, then, and thyself too." "Oh! I daresay; but I won't go. I want to show thee a sight, Father Aronach." He then drew _my_ arm forwards, and held my hand by the wrist, as by a handle, just under Aronach's nose. He looked indeed now; and so sharply, snappishly, that I thought he would have bitten my fingers, and felt very nervous. Seraphael broke into one of his laughter chimes, but still dangled my member; and when Aronach really saw my phiz, he no longer snapped nor roused up grandly, but sank back impotent in that enormous chair. He winked indeed furiously, but his eyes did not flash, so I grew still in my own mind, and thought to speak to him first. I said, somehow, and never thinking a creature was by, except that companion of mine,-- "Dear master, I would not have come without your leave. But you know very well I could not refuse this gentleman, because he is a friend of yours, and you said yourself we must all obey him." "Whippersnapper and dandiprat! I never said such words to _thee_. I regard him too much to inform such as thou with obedience. Thou hast, I can see very clearly, made away with all his spirit by thy frivolities, and I especially commend thee for dragging such as he up the hill in this heat. There are no such things as coaches in the Kell Platz, I suppose, or have the horses taken a holiday too?" "Stop, stop, Aronach! for though I am a little boy," said the other, "I am bigger than he, and I brought him, not he me; and I dragged him thither too, for I don't like your coaches. And it is I who ought to beg pardon for taking him from work he likes so much better than any play, as he told me. But I did want to walk with him, that I might ask him about my English friends, with whom he is better acquainted than I am. He does know them, oh, so well! and had so many interesting anecdotes!" At the utterance of this small white fib I was almost in fits; but he still went on,-- "I know I have done very wrong, and I was an idle boy to tempt him; but you yourself could not help playing truant to-day. And, dearest master,"--here his sweet, sweet voice was retrieved from the airy gayety,--"do let me come back with you to-day, and have a story-telling. You have not told me a story for a sad long time." "If you come back, Chevalier, and if we are to get back before bed-time, I would have you go along and rest, if you can, until I shall be free; for I shall never empty my hands while you are by." Aronach did not say "thou" here, I noticed, and his voice was even courteous, though he still preserved his stateliness. Like a boy, indeed, Seraphael laid hold of my arm and pulled me from the room again. I cannot express the manly indignation of the worthies we left in there at such sportiveness. They all stood firm, and in truth they _were_ all older, both in body and soul, than we. But no sooner were we outside than he began to laugh, and he laughed so that he had to lean against the wall. I laughed too; it was a most contagious spell. "Now, Carl," he said, "very Carlomein! we will make a tour of discovery. I declare I don't know where I am, and am afraid to find myself in the young ladies' bedrooms. But I want to see how things are carried on here." We turned this way and that way, he running down all the passages and trying the very doors; but these were all locked. "Oh!" he exclaimed, vivaciously, "they are, I suppose, too fine;" and then we explored farther. One end of the corridor was screened by a large oaken door from another range of rooms, and not without difficulty we effected an entrance, for the key, although in the lock, was rusty, and no joke to turn. Here, again, were doors, right and left; here also all was hidden under lock and key that they might be supposed to contain; but we did at last discover a curious hole at the end, which we did not take for a room until we came inside,--having opened the door, which was latched, and not especially convenient. However, before we advanced I had ventured, "Sir, perhaps some one is in there, as it is not fastened up." "I shall not kill them, I suppose," he replied, with a curious eagerness. Then with the old sweetness, "You are very right, I will knock; but I know it will be knocking to nobody." He had then touched the panel with his delicate knuckles; no voice had answered, and with a mirthful look he lifted the latch and we both entered. It was a sight that surprised me; for a most desolate prison-cell could not have been darker. The window ought not to be so named; for it let in no light, only shade, through its lack-lustrous green glass. There was no furniture at all, except a very narrow bed,--looking harder than Lenhart Davy's, but wearing none of that air of his. There was a closet, as I managed to discover in a niche, but no chest, no stove; in fact, there was nothing suggestive at all, except one solitary picture, and that hung above the bed and looked down into it, as it were, to protect and bless. I felt I know not how when I saw it then and there; for it was--what picture do you think? A copy of the very musical cherub I had met with upon Aronach's wreath-hung walls. It was fresher, newer, in this instance, but it had no gold or carven frame; it was bound at its edge with fair blue ribbon only, beautifully stitched, and suspended by it too. Above the graceful tie was twisted one long branch of lately-gathered linden blossom, which looked itself sufficient to give an air of heaven to the close little cell; it was even as flowers upon a tomb,--those sighs and smiles of immortality where the mortal has passed forever! "Oh, sir!" I said, and I turned to him,--for I knew his eyes were attracted thither,--"oh, sir! do you know whose portrait that is? For my master has it, and I never dared to ask him; and the others do not know." "It is a picture of the little boy who played truant and tempted another little boy to play truant too." And then, as he replied, I wondered I had not thought of such a possibility; for looking from one to the other, I could not now but trace a certain definite resemblance between _those_ floating baby ringlets and the profuse dark curls wherein the elder's strength almost seemed to hide,--so small and infinitely spiritual was he in his incomparable organization. "Now, sir, do come and rest a little while before we go." He was standing abstractedly by that narrow bed, and looked as sad, as troubled, as in the impending thunder-cloud; but he rallied just as suddenly. "Yes, yes; we had better go, or she might come." I could not reply, for this singular prescience daunted me,--how could he tell it was _her_ very room? But when we came into the corridor, I beheld, by the noonday brightness, which was not banished thence, that there was a kind of moist light in his eyes, not tears, but as the tearful glimmer of some blue distance when rain is falling upon those hills. We threaded our way downstairs again,--for he seemed quite unwilling to explore farther,--and I wondered where he would lead me next, when we met Milans-André in the hall. The Chevalier blushed even as an angry virgin on beholding him, but still met him cordially as before. "Where are you staying, Chevalier? At the Fürstin Haus?" "I am not staying here at all. I am going back to Lorbeerstadt to sleep, and to-morrow to Altenweg, and then to many places for many days." "Oh! I thought you would have supped with me, and I could have a little initiated you. But if you are really returning to Lorbeerstadt, pray use my carriage, which is waiting in the yard." "You are only too amiable, my dear André. We shall use it with the greatest pleasure." Oh! how black did André look when Seraphael laid that small, delicate stress upon the "we;" for I knew the invitation intended his colleague, and included no one else. But the other evidently took it all for granted; and again thanking him with exquisite gayety, ran out into the court-yard, and cried to me to come and see the carriage. "I have a little coach myself," he said to me and also to André, who was lounging behind along with us; "but it is a toy compared with yours, and I wonder I did not put it into my pocket, it is so small,--only large enough for thee and me, Carlomein." "Why, Seraphael, you are dreaming. There are no such equipages in all Vienna as your father's and mother's." "They are not mine, you see; and if I drove such, I should look like a sparrow in a hencoop. Oh, Carlomein, what quantities of sparrows there are in London! Do they live upon the smuts?" At this instant the carriage, whose driver André had beckoned to draw up, approached; and then we both ran to fetch Aronach, who came out very grumbling, for the entry in the long book was scarcely dry; and he saluted nobody, but marched after us like a person suddenly wound up, putting himself heavily into the carriage, which he did not notice in the least. It was an open carriage, Paris-built (as I now know), and so luxuriously lined as not to be very fit for an expedition in any but halcyon weather. As for Seraphael, he flung himself upon the seat as a cowslip ball upon the grass, and scarcely shook the light springs; and as I followed him, he made a profound bow to the owner of the equipage, who, disconsolately enough, still stood within the porch. "Now, I do enjoy this, Carlomein! I cannot help loving to be saucy to André,--good, excellent, and wonderful as he is." I looked to find whether he was in earnest. But I could not tell, for his eyes were grave, and the lips at rest. But Aronach gave a growl, though mildly,--as the lion might growl in the day when a little child shall lead him. "You have not conquered that weakness yet, and, I prophesy, never will." "What weakness, master?" But he faltered, even as a little child. "To excuse fools and fondle slaves." "Oh, my master, do not scold me!" and he covered his eyes with his little blue-veined hands. "It is so sad to be a fool or a slave that we should do all for such we can do, especially if we are not so ourselves. I think myself right there." His pleading tone here modulated into the still authority I had noticed once or twice, and Aronach gave a smile in reply, which was the motion of the raptured look I had noticed during the improvisation. "Thou teachest yet, then, out of thy vocation. But thou art no more than thou ever hast been,--too much for thy old master. And as wrens fly faster and creep stealthier than owls, so art thou already whole heavens beyond me." But with tender scornfulness, Seraphael put out his hand in deprecation, and throwing back his hair, buried his head in the cushion of the carriage and shut his eyes. Nor did he again open them until we entered our little town. I need scarcely say I watched him; and often, as in a glassy mirror, I see that face again upturned to the light,--too beautiful to require any shadow, or to seek it,--see again the dazzling day draw forth its lustrous symmetry, while ever the soft wind tried to lift those deep locks from the lucid temples, but tried in vain; what I am unable to picture to myself in so recalling being the ever restless smile that played and fainted over the lips, while the closed eyes were feeding upon the splendors of the Secret. I shall never forget either, though, how they opened; and he came, as it were, to his childlike self again as the light carriage--light indeed for Germany--dashed round the Kell Platz, where its ponderous contemporaneous contradictions were ranged, and took the fountain square in an unwonted sweep. Then he sat forward and watched with the greatest eagerness, and he sprang out almost before we stopped. "I think Carl and I could save you these stairs, master mine," he exclaimed. "Let us carry you up between us!" But what do you think was the reply? Seraphael had spoken in his gleeful voice. But Aronach wore his gravest frown as he turned and pounced suddenly upon the other,--whipping him up in his arms, and hoisting him to his shoulder, then speeding up the staircase with his guest as if the weight were no greater than a flower or a bird! I could not stir some moments from astonishment and alarm, for I had instantaneous impressions of Seraphael flying over the balusters; but presently, when his laugh came ringing down,--and I realized it to be the laugh of one almost beside himself with fun,--I flew after them, and found them on the dark landing at the foot of our own flight. Seraphael was now upon his feet, and I quite appreciated the delicate policy of the old head here. He said in a moment, when his breath was steady,-- "Now, if they offer to chair thee again at the Quartzmayne Festival, and thou turnest giddy-pate, send for me!" "I certainly will, if they offer such an honor; but once is quite enough, and they will not do it again." "Why not?" "Because I fell into the river, and was picked up by a fisherman; and desiring to know my character after I was dead, I made him cover me with his nets and row me down to Carstein, quite three miles. There I supped with him, and slept too, and the next morning heard that I was drowned." "Oh! one knows that history, which found its way into a certain paper among the lies, and was published in illustration of the eccentricities of genius." Aronach said this very cross,--I wondered whether it was with the Press, or his pupil; but if it were with the latter, _he_ only enjoyed it the more. Then Aronach bade me conduct his guest into the organ-room, while he himself put a period to those howlings of the immured ones which yet conscientiously asserted themselves. We waited a few moments upstairs, and then Aronach carried off the Chevalier to his own room,--a sacred region I had never approached, and which I could only suppose to exist. I then rushed to mine, and was so long in collecting my senses that Starwood came to bid me to supper. I did not detain him then, though I had so much to say; but I observed that he had his Sunday coat on,--a little blue frock, braided; and I remembered that I ought to have assumed my own. Still, my wardrobe was in such perfect order (thanks to Clo) that my own week coat was more respectable than many other boys' Sunday ones; and though I have the instinct of personal cleanliness very strong, I cannot say I like to look smart. When I reached our parlor, I was quite dazzled. There was a sumptuous banquet, as I took it, arranged upon a cloth, the fineness and whiteness of which so far transcended our daily style that I immediately apprehended it had proceeded from the secret hoards in that wonderful closet of Aronach's. The tall glasses were interspersed with silver flagons, and the usual garnishings varied by all kinds of fruits and flowers, which appeared to have sprung from a magic touch or two of that novel magic presence. For the rest, there were delicious milk porridge on our accounts, and honey and butter, and I noticed those long-necked bottles, one like which Santonio had emptied, and which I had never seen upon that table since; for Aronach was very frugal, and taught us to be so. I was so from taste and by habit, but Iskar would have liked to gorge himself with dainties, I used to think. When I saw this last seated at the table I was highly indignant, for he had set his stool by Seraphael's chair. He had fished from his marine store of clothes a crumpled white-silk waistcoat, over which he had invested himself with a tarnished silver watch-chain. But I would not, if I could, recall his audacious manner of gazing over everything upon the table and everybody in the room, with those legs of his stretched out for any one to stumble over, or rather on purpose to make me stumble. I knew this very well, and avoided him by placing my stool on the opposite edge of the board, where I could still look into the eyes I loved if I raised my own. This insignificant episode will prove that Iskar had not grown in my good graces, nor had I acquainted myself better with him than on the first night of my arrival. I knew him not, but I knew _of_ him, for every voice in the house was against him; and he gave promise of no small power upon his instrument, together with small promise of musical or mental excellence, as all he did was correct to caricature and inimitably mechanical. Vain as he was of his playing, his vanity had small scope on that score under that quiet roof shadow, so it spent itself upon his person, which was certainly elegant, if vulgar. I am not clear but that one of these personal attractions always infers the other. But why I mention Iskar is that I may be permitted to recall the expressions with which our master's guest regarded him. It was a grieved, yet curious glance, with that child-like scrutiny of what is not true all abashing to the false, _unless_ the false has lost all child-likeness. Iskar must, I suppose, have lost it, for he was not the least abashed, and was really going to begin upon his porridge before we had all sat down, if Aronach had not awfully, but serenely, rebuked him. Little Starwood, by my side, looked as fair and as pretty as ever, rather more shy than usual. Seraphael, now seated, looked round with that exquisitely sweet politeness I have never met with but in him, and asked us each whether we would eat some honey, for he had the honey-pot before him. I had some, of course, for the pleasure of being helped by him, and he dropped it into my milk in a gold flowing stream, smiling as he did so. It was so we always ate honey at Aronach's, and it is so I eat it to this day. Little Star put out his bowl too. Oh! those great heavy wooden bowls! it was just too much for him, and he let it slip. Aronach was rousing to thunder upon him, and I felt as if the ceiling were coming down (for I knew he was angry on account of that guest of his), when we heard that voice in its clear authority,--"Dear Aronach, do nothing! the milk is not spoiled." And turning all of us together, we saw that he had caught the bowl on his outstretched hands, and that not a drop had fallen. I mention it as illustrative of that miraculous organization in which intent and action were simultaneous, the motions of whose will it seemed impossible to retard or anticipate. Even Iskar looked astonished at this feat; but he had not long to wonder, for Aronach sternly commended us to great haste in the disposal of our supper. I needed not urging, for it was natural to feel that the master and his master must wish to be alone,--indeed, I should have been thankful to escape eating, though I was very hungry, that I might not be in the way; but directly I took pains to do away with what I had before me, I was forbidden by Aronach to "bolt." I lay awake many hours in a vague excitement of imaginary organ sounds welling up to heaven from heaven's under-springs. I languished in a romantic vision of that face, surrounded with cloud-angels, itself their out-shining light. I waited to hear his footsteps upon the stairs when he should at length depart; but so soft was that departing motion that even I, listening with my whole existence, heard it not, nor heard anything to remind my heart-silence that he had come and gone. CHAPTER XXXI. I think I can relate nothing else of that softest month of summer, nor of sultry June. It was not until the last week I was to change my quarters; but long as it seemed in coming, it came when I was hardly prepared for the transfer. Aronach returned to his stricter self again after that supper, but I felt certain he had heard a great deal after we had left the table, as an expression of softer character forsook not his eyes and smile for many days. I could not discover whether anything had passed concerning Starwood, who remained my chief anxiety, as I felt if I left him there alone, he would not get on at all. Iskar and I preserved our mutual distance, though I would fain have been more often with him, for I wanted to make him out. He practised harder than ever, and hardly took time to eat and drink, and only on Sundays a great while to dress. He was always very jauntily put together when we set out to church, and looked like a French manikin. But for his upper lip and the shallow width of his forehead, I thought him very handsome, while, yet so young, he was so; but his charm consisted for me in his being unapproachable, and as I thought, mysterious. We saw about as little of each other as it was possible to see, living in the same house and dining in the same room; but we never talked at meals, we had no time. It is but fair to allow myself an allusion to my violin, as it was becoming a very essential feature in my history. With eight hours' practice a day I had made some solid progress; but it did not convict me of itself yet, as I was not allowed to play, only to acquaint myself with the anatomy of special compositions, as exercises in theory. Iskar played so easily, and gave such an air of playing to practice, that it never occurred to me I was getting on, though it was so, as I found in time. At this era I hated the violin, just as pianoforte students hate the pianoforte during the period of apprenticeship to mechanism. I hated the sound that saluted me morning, noon, and night; I shrank from it ever unaccustomed, for the penetralia of my brain could never be rendered less susceptible by piercing and searching its recesses. I believe my musical perception was as sensitive as ever, all through this epidemic dislike, but I felt myself personally very musically indisposed. I could completely dissociate my ideal impression of that I loved from my absolute experience of what I served. I was patient, because waiting; content, because faithful; and I pleased myself albeit with reflecting that my violin--my own property, my very own--had a very different soul from that thing I handled and tortured every day, from which the soul had long since fled. For all the creators of musical forms have not power to place in them the soul that lives for ages, and a little wear and tear separates the soul from the body. As for my Amati, I knew its race so pure that I feared for it no premature decay. In its dark box I hoped it was at least not unhappy, but I dearly longed for a sight of it, and had I dared, I would have crept into the closet, but that whenever it was unlocked I was locked up. The days flew, though they seemed to me so long, as ever in summer; and I felt how ravishing must the summer be without the town. I wearied after it; and although the features of German scenery are quite without a certain bloom I have only found in England, they have some mystic beauty of their own unspeakably more touching; and as I lived then, all life was a fairy-tale book, with half the leaves uncut. I was ever dreaming, but healthfully,--the dreams forgotten as soon as dreamed; so it chanced that I can tell you nothing of all I learned or felt, except what was tangibly and wakingly presented to myself. I remember, however, more than distinctly all that happened the last evening I passed in that secluded house, to my sojourn in which I owe all the benisons bestowed upon my after artist life. We had supped at our usual hour, but when I arose and advanced to salute Aronach as usual, and sighed to see how bright the sun was still upon everything without and within, he whispered in my ear,--an attention he had never before paid me,--"Stay up by me until the other two are off; for I wish to speak to thee and to give thee some advice." Iskar saw him whisper, and looked very black because he could not hear; but Aronach waved him out, and bade me shut the door upon him and Starwood. I trembled then, for I was not used to be along with him _tête-à-tête_; we usually had a third party present in the company of Marpurg or Albrechtsberger.[17] He went into the closet first, and rummaged a few minutes, and then returning, appeared laden with a bottle of wine and my long hid fiddle-case. Oh, how I flew to relieve him of it! But he bade me again sit down, while he went back into the closet and rummaged again; this time for a couple of glasses and two or three curious jars, rich china, and of a beautiful form. He uncorked the bottle and poured me, as I expected, a glass of wine. It was not the wine that agitated me, but the rarity of the attention, so much so that I choked instead of wishing him his health, as I ought to have done. But he was quite unmoved at my excitation, and leaned back to pour glass after glass down his own throat. I was so unused to wine that the sip I took exhilarated me, though it was the slightest wine one can imbibe for such purpose. And then he uncovered the odd gay jars, and helped me profusely to the exquisite preserves they contained. They were so luscious and delicate that they reminded me of Eden fruits; and almost before my wonder had shaped itself into form, certainly before it could have betrayed itself in my countenance, Aronach began to speak,-- "They pique thee, no doubt, and not only thy palate, for thou wast ever curious. They come from him of whom thou hast never spoken since thy holiday." "Everything comes from him, I think, sir." "No, only the good, not the evil nor the negative; and it is on this point I would advise thee, for thou art as inconsiderate as a fledgling turned out of the nest, and art ware of nothing." "Pray advise me, sir," I said, "and I shall be glad that I am inconsiderate, to be advised by you." I looked at him, and was surprised that a deep seriousness overshadowed the constant gravity,--which was as if one entered from the twilight a still more sombre wood. "I intend to advise thee because thou art ignorant, though pure; untaught, yet not weak. I would not advise thy compeers,--one is too young, the other too old." "Iskar too old!" I exclaimed. "Iskar was never a child; whatever thou couldst teach him would only ripen his follies, already too forward. He belongs to the other world." "There are two worlds then in music," I thought; for it had been ever a favorite notion of my own, but I did not say so, I was watching him. He took from the breast pocket of his coat--that long brown coat--a little leather book, rolled up like a parchment; this he opened, and unfolded a paper that had lain in the curves, and yet curled round unsubmissive to his fingers. He deliberately bent it back, and held it a moment or two, while his eyes gathered light in their fixed gaze upon what he clasped, then smoothed it to its old shape with his palm, and putting on his horn-set eye-glasses, which lent him an owl-like reverendness, he began to read to me. And as I have that little paper still, and as, if not sweet, it is very short, I shall transcribe it here and now:-- "When thou hearest the folks prate about art, be certain thou art never tempted to make friends there; for if they be wise in any other respect, they are fools in this, that they know not when to keep silence and how. For art consists not in any of its representatives, and is of itself alone. To interpret it aright we must let it make its own way, and those who talk about it gainsay its true impressions, which alone remain in the bosom that is single and serene. If thou markest well, thou wilt find how few of those who make a subsistence out of music realize its full significance; for they are too busy to recall that they live for it, and not by it, even though it brings them bread. And just as few are those who set apart their musical life from all ambition, even honorable,--for ambition is of this earth alone, and in a higher yearning doth musical life consist; so the irreligious many are incapable of the fervor of the few. And the few, those I did exclude,--the few who possess in patience this inexhaustible desire,--are those who compose my world." "You mean, sir," I exclaimed, so warm, so glowing at my heart, that the summer without, brooding over the blossomed lindens, was as winter to the summer in my veins, so suddenly penetrated I felt,--"you mean, sir, that as good people I have heard speak of the world, and of good people who are not worldly, apart, and seem to know them from each other,--in religion I mean,--so it is in music. I am sure my sister thought so,--my sister in England; but she never dared to say so." "No, of course not; there is no right to say so anywhere now, except in Germany, for here alone has music its priesthood, and here alone, though little enough here, is reverentially regarded as the highest form of life, subserving to the purposes of the soul. But thou art right to believe entirely so, that, young as thou art, thou mayest keep thy purity, and mighty may be thy aptness to discern what is new to thee in the old, no less than what answers to the old in the new. "And, first, when thou goest out of leading-strings, never accustom thyself to look for faults or feelings differing from thine own in those set over thee. It is certain that many a student of art has lost ground in this indulgence; for oftentimes the student, either from natural imagination, or from the vernal innocence of youth, will be outstripping his instructors in his grand intentions, and giving himself up to them will be losing the present hours in the air that should be informing themselves, with steady progress, in the strictest mechanical course. Never till thou hast mastered every conceivable difficulty, dream of producing the most distant musical effect. "But, secondly, lest thine enthusiasm should perish of starvation under this mechanical pressure, keep thy wits awake to contemplate every artist and token of art that come between thee and daylight. And the more thou busiest thyself in mechanical preparation, the more leisure thou shalt discover so to observe; the more serene and brilliant shall thy imagination find itself,--a clear sky filled with the sunshine of that enthusiasm which spreads itself over every object in earth and heaven. "Again, of music, or the tone-art, as thou hast heard me name it, never let thy conception cease. Never believe thou hast adopted the trammels of a pursuit bounded by progress because thine own progress bounds thine own pursuit. In despair at thy slow induction,--be it slow as it must be gradual,--doubt not that it is into a divine and immeasurable realm thou shalt at length be admitted; and if the ethereal souls of the masters gone before thee have thirsted after the infinite, even in such immeasurable space, recall thyself, and bow contented that thou hast this in common with those above thee,--the insatiable presentment of futurity with which the Creator has chosen to endow the choicest of his gifts,--the gift in its perfection granted ever to the choicest, the rarest of the race." "And that is why it is granted to the Hebrew nation,--why they all possess it like a right!" I cried, almost without consciousness of having spoken. But Aronach answered not; he only slightly, with the least motion, leaned his head so that the silver of his beard trembled, and a sort of tremor agitated his brow, that I observed not in his voice as he resumed. "Thou art young, and mayest possibly excel early, as a mechanical performer. I need not urge thee to prune the exuberance of thy fancy and to bind thy taste--by nature delicate--to the pure, strong models whose names are, at present, to thee their only revelation. For the scapegrace who figures in thy daily calendar as so magnificently thy superior, will ever stand thee instead of a warning or ominous repulsion, so long as thy style is forming; and when formed, that style itself shall fence thee alike with natural and artful antipathy against the school he serves, that confesses to no restriction, no, not the restraint of rule, and is the servant of its own caprice. "Thou shalt find that many who profess the art, confess not to that which they yet endure,--a sort of shame in their profession, as if they should ennoble _it_, and not it _them_. Such professors thou shalt ever discover are slaves, not sons; their excellence as performers owing to the accidental culture of their imitative instinct; and they are the _ripieni_ of the universal orchestra, whose chief doth appear but once in every age. "Thou shalt be set on to study by thine instructors, and, as I before hinted, wilt ever repose upon their direction. But in applying to the works they select for thine edification, whether theoretic or practical, endeavor to disabuse thyself of all thy previous impressions and prepossessions of any author whatsoever, and to absorb thyself in the contemplation of that alone thou busiest thyself upon. "Thus alone shall thine intelligence explore all styles, and so separate each from each as finally to draw the exact conclusion from thine own temperament and taste of that to which thou dost essentially incline. "In treating of music specifically, remember not to confound its elements. As in ancient mythology many religious seeds were sown, and golden symbols scattered, so may we apply its enforcing fables where the new wisdom denies us utterance, and the nearer towards the expression of the actual than if we observed the literal forms of speech. Thus ever remembering that as the 'aorasia' was a word signifying the invisibility of the gods, and the 'avatar' their incarnation, so is _time_ the aorasia of music the god-like, and _tone_ its avatar. "Then, in _time_, shalt thou realize that in which the existence of music as infallibly consists as in its manifestation, _tone_, and thine understanding shall become invested with the true nature of _rhythm_, which alike doth exist between time and tone, seeming to connect in spiritual dependence the one with the other inseparably. "In devoting thine energies to the works of art in ages behind thine own, thou shalt never be liable to depress thy consciousness of those which are meritorious _with_ thee, and _yet_ to come before thee. For thou wilt learn that to follow the supreme of art with innocence and wisdom was ever allotted to the few whose labors yet endure; while as to the many whose high-flown perfections in their day seduced the admiration of the myriads to the neglect of the few, except _by_ few, find we nothing of them at present, but the names alone of their operas, or the mention of their having been, and being now no more. And this is while the few are growing and expanding their fame, as the generations succeed, ever among the few of every generation, but yet betokening in that still, secluded renown, the immortal purpose for which they wrote and died _not_. "Be assured that in all works that have endured there is something of the nature of truth; therefore acquaint thyself with all, ever reserving the right to honor with peculiar investigation those works in which the author by scientific hold upon forceful imagination intimates that he wrote with the direct intention to illustrate his art, not alone for the love of it, but in the fear of its service. Thus apply thyself to the compositions of Palestrina, of Purcell, of Alessandro Scarlatti, and the indefatigable Corelli; thus lend thyself to the masterpieces of Pergolesi, of Mozart, and Handel; thus lean with thine entire soul upon the might and majesty of John Sebastian Bach. All others in order, but these in chief; and this last generalissimo, until thou hast learnt to govern thyself." He paused and stayed, and the summer evening-gold crowned him as he sat. That same rich gleam creeping in, for all the deep shade that filled the heavenly vault, seemed to touch me with solemn ecstasy alike with his words. He was folding up that paper, and had nearly settled it before I dared to thank him; but as he held it out, and I grasped it, I also kissed the ivory of his not unwrinkled hand, and he did not withdraw it. Then I said, "My dear master, my dear, dear Herr Aronach, is that for me to keep?" "It is for thee," he answered; "and perhaps, as there is little of it, thou wilt digest it more conveniently than a more abundant lecture. Thou art imaginative, or I should not set thee laws, and implicit, or thou wouldst not follow them." "I should like to know, sir, whether those are the sort of rules you gave the Chevalier Seraphael when he was a little boy?" "No, no; they are not such as I gave him, be certain." "I thought not, perhaps. Oh, sir, how very surprising he must have been when he was so young and little!" "He did not rudely declaim, thou mayest imagine, at eight years old, and his voice was so modest to strangers that it was hard to make him heard at all,--this it was that made me set no laws before him." "How then, sir, did you teach him?" was my bolder question. "He would discourse of music in its native tongue, when his small fingers conversed with the keys of his favorite harpsichord, so wondrously at home there, from the first time they _felt_ themselves. And in still obedience to the law of that inborn harmony that governed his soul, he would bend his curly pate over the score till all the color fell off his round cheek; and his forehead would work and frown with thoughts strong enough to make a strong man's brain quiver. I was severe with him to save my conscience; but he ever outwitted me, nor could I give him enough to do, for he made play of work, and no light work of play. It was as if I should direct the south wind to blow in summer, or the sunbeams to make haste with the fruit. At length it came to such a pass--his calm attainment--that I gave him up to die! He left off growing too, and there was of him so little that you would have thought him one the pleasant folk had changed at birth: bright enough were his eyes for such suspicion. So I clapped upon him one day as he was lying upon a bit of shade in my garden, his cap of velvet tumbled off, and the feather flying as you please, while over the score of Graun he had fallen fast asleep. When I came to him, I thought the little heart-strings had given way, to let him free altogether, he lay so still and heavy in his slumber, and no breath came through his lips that I could see. So I took him up, never waking him, and laid him away in bed, and locked up every staved sheet that lay about, and every score and note-book, and shut the harpsichord; and when at last he awoke, I took him upon my knee,--for it was then he came to my house for his lessons, and I could do with him as I pleased. 'Now,' said I, 'thou hast been asleep over thy books, and I have carried them all away, for thou art lazy, and shalt see them never again, unless thou art content to do as I shall bid thee.' "Then he looked into my face with his kind child's eyes, and said,-- "'I wish that thou wert my pupil, master; for if so, I should show thee how I should like to be taught.' "'Well, thou art now very comfortable on my knee, and mayest pull my watch-chain if thou wilt, and shalt also tell me the story of what thou shouldst teach thine old, grand pupil,--we will make a play of it.' "'I do not care to pull thy chain now, but I should like to watch thy face while I tell thee.' "So then, Master Carl, this elf stood upright on my knees, and spread out his arms, and laughed loud till the wet pearls shone; and while I held his feet--for I thought he would fly away--says he to mock me,-- "'Now, Master Aronach, thou mayest go home and play with thy little sister at kings and queens, and never do any more lessons till thou art twelve years old; for that is the time to be a man and do great things: and now thou art a poor baby, who cannot do anything but play and go to sleep. And all the big books are put away, and nobody is to bring them out again until thou art big and canst keep awake.' "Then I looked at him hard, to see whether he was still mocking me; but when I found he looked rather about to cry, I set him down, and took my hat, and walked out of my house to the lower ramparts. On the lower ramparts stood the fine house of his father, and I rang the bell quite free, and went boldly up the stairs. His mother was alone in her grand drawing-room, and I said that she might either come and fetch him away altogether, or let him stay with me and amuse himself as he cared for; that I would not teach him for those years to come, as he had said. The stately lady was offended, and carried him off from me altogether; and when he went he was very proud, and would not shed one tear, though he clung round my collar and whispered, elf that he was,--'I shall come back when I am twelve. Hush! master, hush!'" "And did he come back?" I cried, no less in ecstasy at the story than at the confidence reposed in me. "All in good time--peace," said Aronach. "I never saw him again until the twenty-second morning of May, in the fourth year after his mother carried him off. I heard of the wonder-boy from every mouth,--how he was taken here, and flourished there, to show off; and petted and praised by the king; and I thought often how piteous was it thus to spoil him. On that very morning I was up betimes, and was writing a letter to an old friend of mine whose daughter was dead, when I heard feet like a fawn that was finding quick way up my dark stairs, and I stopped to listen. The door was burst open all in a moment, as if by the wind, and there he stood, in his little hat and feather and his gay new dress, bright as a birthday prince, with a huge lumbering flower-pot in his two little arms. He set that upon the floor and danced up to me directly, climbing upon my knees. 'Will you take me back? For I am twelve, and nobody else can teach me! I know all _they_ know.' "He folded his little arms together round my collar, and held on there tight. What a minimus he was! scarcely a half-foot taller; but with such a noble air, and those same kind eyes of old. I pinched his fair cheek, which was red as any rose; but it was only a blossom born of the morning air: as he still sat upon my knees, the beauteous color fell, faded quite away, and left him pale,--pale as you now see him, Master Carl." "Oh, sir! tell me a little, little more. What did he tell you? What did he do?" "He told me, with the pale face pressed against my coat, 'Thou seest, sweet master, I would not take pains just at first, and mamma was very grand; she never blessed me for a week, and I never kissed her. I did lessons with her, though, and tried to plague her, and played very sad, very ill, and would hardly read a bar. So mamma took it into her head to say that _you_ had not taught me properly; and I grew very wild, angry,--so hurt at least that I burst out, and ran downstairs, and came no more for lessons five whole days. Then I begged her pardon, and she sent for Herr Hümmel to teach me. I played my very best to Herr Hümmel, master mine!' "'I daresay he did,' thought I, 'the naughty one! the elf!' There he lay back with his pale face, and all the mischief in his starry eyes. "'And Herr Hümmel,' my loveling went on, pursing his lips, 'said he could not teach me to play, but perhaps he could teach me to write. So I wrote for him ever so many pages, and he could not read them, for I wrote so small, so small; and Herr Hümmel has such very weak eyes!' "Oh! how naughty he looked, lying across my knees! "'And then,' he prattled, 'mamma set herself to look for somebody very new and great; and she picked up Monsieur Milans-André, who is a very young master, only nineteen years old; and mamma says he is a great genius. Now, as for me, dear master, I don't know what a great genius is; but if Monsieur André be one, _thou_ art not one, nor I.' "Oh, the haughty one! still prattling on,-- "'I did take pains, and put myself back, that he might show me over again what you, dear master, had taught me, so that I never forget, and could not forget, if I tried; and in a year I told mamma I would never touch the harpsichord again if she did not promise I should come back to you again. She said she couldn't promise, and, master, I never _did_ again touch the harpsichord, but instead, I learned what was better, to play on Monsieur André's grand pianoforte!' "'And how didst thou admire that, eh?' I asked, rather curious about the matter. "'Oh! it is very comfortable; I feel quite clear about it, and have written for it some things. But Monsieur André is to go a tour, so he told mamma yesterday, and this morning before he came I ran away, and I am returned to you, and have brought my tree to keep my birthday with you. And, master mine, I _won't_ go back again!' "Before I could answer him, as I expected, comes a pull at the bell to draw the house down, and up the stairs creaks Rathsherr Seraphael, the father, a mighty good looking and very grand man. He takes a seat, and looks queer and awful. But the little one, quitting me, dances round and round his chair and kisses away that frown. "'Dear and beautiful papa, thou must give me leave to stay I am thine only son!' "'Thou art indeed, and hast never before disobeyed me. Why didst thou run away, my Adonais?' "'Papa, _he_ can only teach me; I will _not_ leave him, for I must obey music before you, and in him music calls me.' "He ran back to my knee, and there his father left him (but very disconcerted), and I don't know how they settled it at home. But enough for me, there was never any more difficulty, and he and I kept his birthday together; the little candles burned out among the linden-flowers, and beautiful presents came for him and for me from the great house on the ramparts. "And he never left me," added Aronach, with a prodigious pleasure too big to conceal either by word or look, "he never left me until he set off for his travels all over Europe, during which travels I removed, and came up here a long distance from the old place, where I had him all to myself, and he was all to me." "Thanks, dear master, if I too may so call you. I shall always feel that you are; but I did not know how very much you had to do with him." "Thou mayest so name me, because thou art not wanting in veneration, and canst also be _mastered_." "Thanks forever. And I may keep this precious paper? In your own writing, sir, it will be more than if you had said it, you know, though I should have remembered every word. And the story, too, is just as safe as if you had written it for me." And so it was. END OF VOL. I. FOOTNOTE: [17] Famous theorists and contrapuntists of the eighteenth century; the latter was the teacher of Beethoven. THE LAUREL-CROWNED LETTERS. =The Best Letters of Lord Chesterfield.= Edited, with an Introduction, by EDWARD GILPIN JOHNSON. =The Best Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.= Edited, with an Introduction, by OCTAVE THANET. =The Best Letters of Horace Walpole.= Edited, with an Introduction, by ANNA B. MCMAHAN. =The Best Letters of Madame de Sévigné.= Edited, with an Introduction, by EDWARD PLAYFAIR ANDERSON. Each volume is finely printed and bound; 16mo, cloth, gilt tops, price, $1.00. In half calf or half morocco, per vol., $2.75. Of LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS, the _Atlantic Monthly_ says:-- The editor seems to make good his claims to have treated these letters with such discrimination as to render the book really serviceable, not only as a piece of literature, but as a text-book in politeness. Of LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU'S LETTERS, the _New York Star_ says:-- The selection is indeed an excellent one, and the notes by the present editor considerably enhance their value. 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It is a more extended and ambitious work than the former, but has the same grace of style and liveliness of treatment, together with a much more considerable plot and more subtle delineations of character and life. The action of the story takes place in India, and reveals on the part of the authoress the most intimate knowledge of the official life of the large and aristocratic English colony in Calcutta. The local coloring is strong and unusual. A more joyous story cannot be imagined.... A harum-scarum good-nature; a frank pursuit of cakes and ale; a heedless, happy-go-lucky spirit, are admirable components in a novel, however trying they may be found in the walks of daily life. Such are the pleasures of "The Beverleys." To read it is recreation, indeed.--_Public Ledger, Philadelphia._ The author writes throughout with good taste, and with a quick eye for the picturesque.--_Herald, New York._ It is a pretty story, charmingly written, with cleverly sketched pictures of various types of character.... The book abounds in keen, incisive philosophy, wrapped up in characteristic remarks.--_Times, Chicago._ An absorbing story. It is brilliantly and vivaciously written.--_Literary World, Boston._ The author has until now been known, so far as we are aware, only by her former story, "Alexia." Unless signs fail which seldom _do_ fail, these two with which her name is now associated are simply the forerunners of works in a like vein of which American literature will have reason to be proud.--_Standard, Chicago._ THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS. _A ROMANCE OF INDIAN OREGON._ By F. H. BALCH. 12mo, 280 pages. Price, $1.25. This is a masterly and original delineation of Indian life. It is a strong story, charged with the elemental forces of the human heart. The author portrays with unusual power the intense, stern piety of the ministers of colonial New England, and the strange mingling of dignity, superstition, ferocity, and stoicism that characterized the early Indian warriors. There is no need of romancing, and Mr. Balch's scenic descriptions are for all practical purposes real descriptions. The legends he relates of the great bridge which once spanned the Columbia, for which there is some substantial history, adds to the mystical charms of the story. His Indian characters are as real as if photographed from life. No writer has presented a finer character than the great chief of the Willamettes, Multnomah; Snoqualmie the Cayuse; or Tohomish the Seer. The night visit of Multnomah to the tomb of his dead wife upon that lonely island in the Willamette is a picture that will forever live in the reader's memory.... To those who have traversed the ground, and know something of Indian character and the wild, free life of pioneer days, the story will be charming.--_Inter-Ocean, Chicago._ It is a truthful and realistic picture of the powerful Indian tribes that inhabited the Oregon country two centuries ago.... It is a book that will be of value as a historical authority; and as a story of interest and charm, there are few novels that can rival it.--_Traveller, Boston._ There is much and deep insight in this book. The characters stand in clear outline, and are original. The movement of the story is quick and varied, like the running water of the great river.--_The Pacific, San Francisco._ Its field is new for fiction; it is obviously the work of one who has bestowed a great deal of study on the subjects he would illustrate. It is very interesting reading, fluently written.--_Times, Chicago._ _Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by_ A. C. MCCLURG & CO., PUBLISHERS, COR. WABASH AVE. AND MADISON ST., CHICAGO. 
3727	----	MAURICE GUEST by Henry Handel Richardson Part I S'amor non e che dunque e quel ch'io sento? Ma s'egli e amor, per Dio, che cosa e quale? PETRARCH I. One noon in 189-, a young man stood in front of the new Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and watched the neat, grass-laid square, until then white and silent in the sunshine, grow dark with many figures. The public rehearsal of the weekly concert was just over, and, from the half light of the warm-coloured hall, which for more than two hours had held them secluded, some hundreds of people hastened, with renewed anticipation, towards sunlight and street sounds. There was a medley of tongues, for many nationalities were represented in the crowd that surged through the ground-floor and out of the glass doors, and much noisy ado, for the majority was made up of young people, at an age that enjoys the sound of its own voice. In black, diverging lines they poured through the heavy swinging doors, which flapped ceaselessly to and fro, never quite closing, always opening afresh, and on descending the shallow steps, they told off into groups, where all talked at once, with lively gesticulation. A few faces had the strained look that indicates the conscientious listener; but most of these young musicians were under the influence of a stimulant more potent than wine, which manifested itself in a nervous garrulity and a nervous mirth. They hummed like bees before a hive. Maurice Guest, who had come out among the first, lingered to watch a scene that was new to him, of which he was as yet an onlooker only. Here and there came a member of the orchestra; with violin-case or black-swathed wind-instrument in hand, he deftly threaded his way through the throng, bestowing, as he went, a hasty nod of greeting upon a colleague, a sweep of the hat on an obsequious pupil. The crowd began to disperse and to overflow in the surrounding streets. Some of the stragglers loitered to swell the group that was forming round the back entrance to the building; here the lank-haired Belgian violinist would appear, the wonders of whose technique had sent thrills of enthusiasm through his hearers, and whose close proximity would presently affect them in precisely the same way. Others again made off, not for the town, with its prosaic suggestion of work and confinement, but for the freedom of the woods that lay beyond. Maurice Guest followed them. It was a blowy day in early spring. Round white masses of cloud moved lightly across a deep blue sky, and the trees, still thin and naked, bent their heads and shook their branches, as if to elude the gambols of a boisterous playfellow. The sun shone vividly, with restored power, and though the clouds sometimes passed over his very face, the shadows only lasted for a moment, and each returning radiance seemed brighter than the one before. In the pure breath of the wind, as it gustily swept the earth, was a promise of things vernal, of the tender beauties of a coming spring; but there was still a keen, delightful freshness in the air, a vague reminder of frosty starlights and serene white snow--the untrodden snow of deserted, moon-lit streets--that quickened the blood, and sent a craving for movement through the veins. The people who trod the broad, clean roads and the paths of the wood walked with a spring in their steps; voices were light and high, and each breath that was drawn increased the sense of buoyancy, of undiluted satisfaction. With these bursts of golden sunshine, so other than the pallid gleamings of the winter, came a fresh impulse to life; and the most insensible was dimly conscious how much had to be made up for, how much lived into such a day. Maurice Guest walked among the mossgreen tree-trunks, each of which vied with the other in the brilliancy of its coating. He was under the sway of a twofold intoxication: great music and a day rich in promise. From the flood of melody that had broken over him, the frenzied storms of applause, he had come out, not into a lamplit darkness that would have crushed his elation back upon him and hemmed it in, but into the spacious lightness of a fair blue day, where all that he felt could expand, as a flower does in the sun. His walk brought him to a broad stream, which flashed through the wood like a line of light. He paused on a suspension bridge, and leaning over the railing, gazed up the river into the distance, at the horizon and its trees, delicate and feathery in their nakedness against the sky. Swollen with recent rains and snows, the water came hurrying towards him--the storm-bed of the little river, which, meandering in from the country, through pleasant woods, in ever narrowing curves, ran through the town as a small stream, to be swelled again on the outskirts by the waters of two other rivers, which joined it at right angles. The bridge trembled at first, when other people crossed it, on their way to the woods that lay on the further side, but soon the last stragglers vanished, and he was alone. As he looked about, eager to discover beauty in the strip of landscape that stretched before him--the line of water, its banks of leafless trees--he was instinctively filled with a desire for something grander, for a feature in the scene that would answer to his mood. There, where the water appeared to end in a clump of trees, there, should be mountains, a gently undulating line, blue with the unapproachable blue of distance, and high enough to form a background to the view; in summer, heavy with haze, melting into the sky; in winter, lined and edged with snow. From this, his thoughts sprang back to the music he had heard that morning. All the vague yet eager hopes that had run riot in his brain, for months past, seemed to have been summed up and made clear to him, in one supreme phrase of it, a great phrase in C major, in the concluding movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. First sounded by the shrill sweet winds, it had suddenly been given out by the strings, in magnificent unison, and had mounted up and on, to the jubilant trilling of the little flutes. There was such a courageous sincerity in this theme, such undauntable resolve; it expressed more plainly than words what he intended his life of the next few years to be; for he was full to the brim of ambitious intentions, which he had never yet had a chance of putting into practice. He felt so ready for work, so fresh and unworn; the fervour of a deep enthusiasm was rampant in him. What a single-minded devotion to art, he promised himself his should be! No other fancy or interest should share his heart with it, he vowed that to himself this day, when he stood for the first time on historic ground, where the famous musicians of the past had found inspiration for their immortal works. And his thoughts spread their wings and circled above his head; he saw himself already of these masters' craft, their art his, he wrenching ever new secrets from them, penetrating the recesses of their genius, becoming one of themselves. In a vision as vivid as those that cross the brain in a sleepless night, he saw a dark, compact multitude wait, with breath suspended, to catch the notes that fell like raindrops from his fingers; saw himself the all-conspicuous figure, as, with masterful gestures, he compelled the soul that lay dormant in brass and strings, to give voice to, to interpret to the many, his subtlest emotions. And he was overcome by a tremulous compassion with himself at the idea of wielding such power over an unknown multitude, at the latent nobility of mind and aim this power implied. Even when swinging back to the town, he had not shaken himself free of dreams. The quiet of a foreign midday lay upon the streets, and there were few discordant sounds, few passers-by, to break the chain of his thought. He had movement, silence, space. And as is usual with active-brained dreamers, he had little or no eye for the real life about him; he was not struck by the air of comfortable prosperity, of thriving content, which marked the great commercial centre, and he let pass, unnoticed, the unfamiliar details of a foreign street, the trifling yet significant incidents of foreign life. Such impressions as he received, bore the stamp of his own mood. He was sensible, for instance, in face of the picturesque houses that clustered together in the centre of the town, of the spiritual GEMUTLICHKEIT, the absence of any pomp or pride in their romantic past, which characterises the old buildings of a German town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged one into the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofs and eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch with the trivial life of the day which swarmed in and about them. He wandered leisurely along the narrow streets that ran at all angles off the Market Place, one side of which was formed by the gabled RATHAUS, with its ground-floor row of busy little shops; and, in fancy, he peopled these streets with the renowned figures that had once walked them. He looked up at the dark old houses in which great musicians had lived, died and been born, and he saw faces that he recognised lean out of the projecting windows, to watch the life and bustle below, to catch the last sunbeam that filtered in; he saw them take their daily walk along these very streets, in the antiquated garments of their time. They passed him by, shadelike and misanthropic, and seemed to steal down the opposite side, to avoid his too pertinent gaze. Bluff, preoccupied, his keen eyes lowered, the burly Cantor passed, as he had once done day after day, with the disciplined regularity of high genius, of the honest citizen, to his appointed work in the shadows of the organ-loft; behind him, one who had pointed to the giant with a new burst of ardour, the genial little improviser, whose triumphs had been those of this town, whose fascinating gifts and still more fascinating personality, had made him the lion of his age. And it was only another step in this train of half-conscious thought, that, before a large lettered poster, which stood out black and white against the reds and yellows of the circular advertisement-column, and bore the word "Siegfried," Maurice Guest should not merely be filled with the anticipation of a world of beauty still unexplored, but that the world should stand to him for a symbol, as it were, of the easeful and luxurious side of a life dedicated to art--of a world-wide fame; the society of princes, kings; the gloss of velvet; the dull glow of gold.--And again, tapering vistas opened up, through which he could peer into the future, happy in the knowledge, that he stood firm in a present which made all things possible to a holy zeal, to an unhesitating grasp. But it was growing late, and he slowly retraced his steps. In the restaurant into which he turned for dinner, he was the only customer. The principal business of the day was at an end; two waiters sat dozing in corners, and a man behind the counter, who was washing metal-topped beer-glasses, had almost the whole pile polished bright before him. Maurice Guest sat down at a table by the window; and, when he had finished his dinner and lighted a cigarette, he watched the passers-by, who crossed the pane of glass like the figures in a moving photograph. Suddenly the door opened with an energetic click, and a lady came in, enveloped in an old-fashioned, circular cloak, and carrying on one arm a pile of paper-covered music. This, she laid on the table next that at which the young man was sitting, then took off her hat. When she had also hung up the unbecoming cloak, he saw that she was young and slight. For the rest, she seemed to bring with her, into the warm, tranquil atmosphere of the place, heavy with midday musings, a breath of wind and outdoor freshness--a suggestion that was heightened by the quick decisiveness of her movements: the briskness with which she divested herself of her wrappings, the quick smooth of the hair on either side, the business-like way in which she drew up her chair to the table and unfolded her napkin. She seemed to be no stranger there, for, on her entrance, the younger and more active waiter had at once sprung up with officious haste, and almost before she was ready, the little table was newly spread and set, and the dinner of the day before her. She spoke to the man in a friendly way as she took her seat, and he replied with a pleased and smiling respect. Then she began to eat, deliberately, and with an overemphasised nicety. As she carried her soup-spoon to her lips, Maurice Guest felt that she was observing him; and throughout the meal, of which she ate but little, he was aware of a peculiarly straight and penetrating gaze. It ended by disconcerting him. Beckoning the waiter, he went through the business of paying his bill, and this done, was about to push back his chair and rise to his feet, when the man, in gathering up the money, addressed what seemed to be a question to him. Fearful lest he had made a mistake in the strange coinage, Maurice looked up apprehensively. The waiter repeated his words, but the slight nervousness that gained on the young man made him incapable of separating the syllables, which were indistinguishably blurred. He coloured, stuttered, and felt mortally uncomfortable, as, for the third time, the waiter repeated his remark, with the utmost slowness. At this point, the girl at the adjacent table put down her knife and fork, and leaned slightly forward. "Excuse me," she said, and smiled. "The waiter only said he thought you must be a stranger here: DER HERR IST GEWISS FREMD IN LEIPZIG?" Her rather prominent teeth were visible as she spoke. Maurice, who understood instantly her pronunciation of the words, was not set any more at his ease by her explanation. "Thanks very much." he said, still redder than usual. "I ... er ... thought the fellow was saying something about the money." "And the Saxon dialect is barbarous, isn't it?" she added kindly. "But perhaps you have not had much experience of it yet." "No. I only arrived this morning." At this, she opened her eyes wide. "Why, you are a courageous person!" she said and laughed, but did not explain what she meant, and he did not like to ask her. A cup of coffee was set on the table before her; she held a lump of sugar in her spoon, and watched it grow brown and dissolve. "Are you going to make a long stay?" she asked, to help him over his embarrassment. "Two years, I hope," said the young man. "Music?" she queried further, and, as he replied affirmatively: "Then the Con. of course?"--an enigmatic question that needed to be explained. "You're piano, are you not?" she went on. "I thought so. It is hardly possible to mistake the hands"--here she just glanced at her own, which, large, white, and well formed, were lying on the table. "With strings, you know, the right hand is as a rule shockingly defective." He found the high clearness of her voice very agreeable after the deep roundnesses of German, and could have gone on listening to it. But she was brushing the crumbs from her skirt, preparatory to rising. "Are you an old resident here?" he queried in the hope of detaining her. "Yes, quite. I'm at the end of my second year; and don't know whether to be glad or sorry," she answered. "Time goes like a flash.--Now, look here, as one who knows the ways of the place, would you let me give you a piece of advice? Yes?--It's this. You intend to enter the Conservatorium, you say. Well, be sure you get under a good man--that's half the battle. Try and play privately to either Schwarz or Bendel. If you go in for the public examination with all the rest, the people in the BUREAU will put you to anyone they like, and that is disastrous. Choose your own master, and beard him in his den beforehand." "Yes ... and you recommend? May I ask whom you are with?" he said eagerly. "Schwarz is my master; and I couldn't wish for a better. But Bendel is good, too, in his way, and is much sought after by the Americans--you're not American, are you? No.--Well, the English colony runs the American close nowadays. We're a regular army. If you don't want to, you need hardly mix with foreigners as long as you're here. We have our clubs and balls and other social functions--and our geniuses--and our masters who speak English like natives ... But there!--you'll soon know all about it yourself." She nodded pleasantly and rose. "I must be off," she said. "To-day every minute is precious. That wretched PROBE spoils the morning, and directly it is over, I have to rush to an organ-lesson--that's why I'm here. For I can't expect a PENSION to keep dinner hot for me till nearly three o'clock--can I? Morning rehearsals are a mistake. What?--you were there, too? Really?--after a night in the train? Well, you didn't get much, did you, for your energy? A dull aria, an overture that 'belongs in the theatre,' as they say here, an indifferently played symphony that one has heard at least a dozen times. And for us poor pianists, not a fresh dish this season. Nothing but yesterday's remains heated up again." She laughed as she spoke, and Maurice Guest laughed, too, not being able at the moment to think of anything to say. Getting the better of the waiter, who stood by, napkin on arm, smiling and officious, he helped her into the unbecoming cloak; then took up the parcel of music and opened the door. In his manner of doing this, there may have been a touch of over-readiness, for no sooner was she outside, than she quietly took the music from him, and, without even offering him her hand, said a friendly but curt good-bye: almost before he had time to return it, he saw her hurrying up the street, as though she had never vouchsafed him word or thought. The abruptness of the dismissal left him breathless; in his imagination, they had walked at least a strip of the street together. He stepped off the pavement into the road, that he might keep her longer in sight, and for some time he saw her head, in the close-fitting hat, bobbing along above the heads of other people. On turning again, he found that the waiter was watching him from the window of the restaurant, and it seemed to the young man that the pale, servile face wore a malicious smile. With the feeling of disconcertion that springs from being caught in an impulsive action we have believed unobserved, Maurice spun round on his heel and took a few quick steps in the opposite direction. When once he was out of range of the window, however, he dropped his pace, and at the next corner stopped altogether. He would at least have liked to know her name. And what in all the world was he to do with himself now? Clouds had gathered; the airy blue and whiteness of the morning had become a level sheet of grey, which wiped the colour out of everything; the wind, no longer tempered by the sun, was chilly, as it whirled down the narrow streets and freaked about the corners. There was little temptation now to linger on one's steps. But Maurice Guest was loath to return to the solitary room that stood to him for home, to shut himself up with himself, inside four walls: and turning up his coat collar, he began to walk slowly along the curved GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE. But the streets were by this time black with people, most of whom came hurrying towards him, brisk and bustling, and gay, in spite of the prevailing dullness, at the prospect of the warm, familiar evening. He was continually obliged to step off the pavement into the road, to allow a bunch of merry, chattering girls, their cheeks coloured by the wind beneath the dark fur of their hats, or a line of gaudy capped, thickset students, to pass him by, unbroken; and it seemed to him that he was more frequently off the pavement than on it. He began to feel disconsolate among these jovial people, who were hastening forward, with such spirit, to some end, and he had not gone far, before he turned down a side street to be out of their way. Vaguely damped by his environment, which, with the sun's retreat, had lost its charm, he gave himself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in thinking over all that had been said by his quondam acquaintance of the dinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and felicitous replies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down quiet streets, quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to where he was going. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look strangely alike; it gave them, too, an air of fantastic unreality: the dark old houses, marshalled in rows on either side, stood as if lost in contemplation, in the saddening dusk. The lighting of the street-lamps, which started one by one into existence, and the conflict with the fading daylight of the uneasily beating flame, that was swept from side to side in the wind like a woman's hair--these things made his surroundings seem still shadowier and less real. He was roused from his reverie by finding himself on what was apparently the outskirts of the town. With much difficulty he made his way back, but he was still far from certain of his whereabouts, when an unexpected turn to the right brought him out on the spacious AUGUSTUSPLATZ, in front of the New Theatre. He had been in this square once already, but now its appearance was changed. The big buildings that flanked it were lit up; the file of droschkes waiting for fares, under the bare trees, formed a dotted line of lights. A double row of hanging lamps before the CAFE FRANCAIS made the corner of the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE dazzling to the eyes; and now, too, the massive white theatre was awake as well. Lights shone from all its high windows, streamed out through the Corinthian columns and low-porched doorways. Its festive air was inviting, after his twilight wanderings, and he went across the square to it. Immediately before the theatre, early corners stood in knots and chatted; programme--and text-vendors cried and sold their wares; people came hurrying from all directions, as to a magnet; hastily they ascended the low steps and disappeared beneath the portico. He watched until the last late-comer had vanished. Only he was left; he again was the outsider. And now, as he stood there in the deserted square, which, a moment before, had been so animated, he had a sudden sinking of the heart: he was seized by that acute sense of desolation that lies in wait for one, caught by nightfall, alone in a strange city. It stirs up a wild longing, not so much for any particular spot on earth, as for some familiar hand or voice, to take the edge off an intolerable loneliness. He turned and walked rapidly back to the small hotel near the railway station, at which he was staying until he found lodgings. He was tired out, and for the first time became thoroughly conscious of this; but the depression that now closed in upon him, was not due to fatigue alone, and he knew it. In sane moments--such as the present--when neither excitement nor enthusiasm warped his judgment, he was under no illusion about himself; and as he strode through the darkness, he admitted that, all day long, he had been cheating himself in the usual way. He understood perfectly that it was by no means a matter of merely stretching out his hand, to pluck what he would, from this tree that waved before him; he reminded himself with some bitterness that he stood, an unheralded stranger, before a solidly compact body of things and people on which he had not yet made any impression. It was the old story: he played at expecting a ready capitulation of the whole--gods and men--and, at the same time, was only too well aware of the laborious process that was his sole means of entry and fellowship. Again--to instance another of his mental follies--the pains he had been at to take possession of the town, to make it respond to his forced interpretation of it! In reality, it had repelled him--yes, he was chilled to the heart by the aloofness of this foreign town, to which not a single tie yet bound him. By the light of a fluttering candle, in the dingy hotel bedroom, he sat and wrote a letter, briefly announcing his safe arrival. About to close the envelope, he hesitated, and then, unfolding the sheet of paper again, added a few lines to what he had written. These cost him more trouble than all the rest. ONCE MORE, HEARTY THANKS TO YOU BOTH, MY DEAR PARENTS, FOR LETTING ME HAVE MY OWN WAY. I HOPE YOU WILL NEVER HAVE REASON TO REGRET IT. ONE THING, AT LEAST, I CAN PROMISE YOU, AND THAT IS, THAT NOT A DAY OF MY TIME HERE SHALL BE WASTED OR MISSPENT. YOU HAVE NOT, I KNOW, THE SAME FAITH IN ME THAT I HAVE MYSELF, AND THIS HAS OFTEN BEEN A BITTER THOUGHT TO ME. BUT ONLY HAVE PATIENCE. SOMETHING STRONGER THAN MYSELF DROVE ME TO IT, AND IF I AM TO SUCCEED ANYWHERE, IT WILL BE HERE. AND I MEAN TO SUCCEED, IF HUMAN WILL CAN DO IT. He threw himself on the creaking wooden bed and tried to sleep. But his brain was active, and the street was noisy; people talked late in the adjoining room, and trod heavily in the one above. It was long after midnight before the house was still and he fell into an uneasy sleep. Towards morning, he had a strange dream, from which he wakened in a cold sweat. Once more he was wandering through the streets, as he had done the previous day, apparently in search of something he could not find. But he did not know himself what he sought. All of a sudden, on turning a corner, he came upon a crowd of people gathered round some object in the road, and at once said to himself, this is it, here it is. He could not, however, see what it actually was, for the people, who were muttering to themselves in angry tones, strove to keep him back. At all costs, he felt, he must get nearer to the mysterious thing, and, in a spirit of bravado, he was pushing through the crowd to reach it, when a great clamour arose; every one sprang back, and fled wildly, shrieking: "Moloch, Moloch!" He did not know in the least what it meant, but the very strangeness of the word added to the horror, and he, too, fled with the rest; fled blindly, desperately, up streets and down, watched, it seemed to him, from every window by a cold, malignant eye, but never daring to turn his head, lest he should see the awful thing behind him; fled on and on, through streets that grew ever vaguer and more shadowy, till at last his feet would carry him no further: he sank down, with a loud cry, sank down, down, down, and wakened to find that he was sitting up in bed, clammy with fear, and that dawn was stealing in at the sides of the window. II. In Maurice Guest, it might be said that the smouldering unrest of two generations burst into flame. As a young man, his father, then a poor teacher in a small provincial town, had been a prey to certain dreams and wishes, which harmonised ill with the conditions of his life. When, for example, on a mild night, he watched the moon scudding a silvery, cloud-flaked sky; when white clouds sailed swiftly, and soft spring breezes were hastening past; when, in a word, all things seemed to be making for some place, unknown, afar-off, where he was not, then he, too, was seized with a desire to be moving, to strap on a knapsack and be gone, to wander through foreign countries, to see strange cities and hear strange tongues, was unconsciously filled with the desire to taste, lighthearted, irresponsible, the joys and experiences of the WANDERJAHRE, before settling down to face the matter-of-factnesss of life. And as the present continually pushed the realisation of his dreams into the future, he satisfied the immediate thirst of his soul by playing the flute, and by breathing into the thin, reedy tones he drew from it, all that he dreamed of, but would never know. For he presently came to a place in his life where two paths diverged, and he was forced to make a choice between them. It was characteristic of the man that he chose the way of least resistance, and having married, more or less improvidently, he turned his back on the visions that had haunted his youth: afterwards, the cares, great and small, that came in the train of the years, drove them ever further into the background. Want of sympathy in his home-life blunted the finer edges of his nature; of a gentle and yielding disposition, he took on the commonplace colour of his surroundings. After years of unhesitating toil, it is true, the most pressing material needs died down, but the dreams and ambitions had died, too, never to come again. And as it is in the nature of things that no one is less lenient towards romantic longings than he who has suffered disappointment in them, who has failed to transmute them into reality, so, in this case, the son's first tentative leanings to a wider life, met with a more deeply-rooted, though less decisive, opposition, on the part of the father than of the mother. But Maurice Guest had a more tenacious hold on life. The home in which he grew up, was one of those cheerless, middle-class homes, across which never passes a breath of the great gladness, the ideal beauty of life; where thought never swings itself above the material interests of the day gone, the day to come, and existence grows as timid and trivial as the petty griefs and pleasures that intersperse it. The days drip past, one by one, like water from a spout after a rain-shower; and the dull monotony of them benumbs all wholesome temerity at its core. Maurice Guest had known days of this kind. For before the irksomeness of the school-bench was well behind him, he had begun his training as a teacher, and as soon as he had learnt how to instil his own half-digested knowledge into the minds of others, he received a small post in the school at which his father taught. The latter had, for some time, secretly cherished a wish to send the boy to study at the neighbouring university, to make a scholar of his eldest son; but the longer he waited, the more unfavourable did circumstances seem, and the idea finally died before it was born. Maurice Guest looked back on the four years he had just come through, with bitterness; and it was only later, when he was engrossed heart and soul in congenial work, that he began to recognise, and be vaguely grateful for, the spirit of order with which they had familiarised him. At first, he could not recall them without an aversion that was almost physical: this machine-like regularity, which, in its disregard of mood and feeling, had something of a divine callousness to human stirrings; the jarring contact with automaton-like people; his inadequacy and distaste for a task that grew day by day more painful. His own knowledge was so hesitating, so uncertain, too slight for self-confidence, just too much and too fresh to allow him to generalise with the unthinking assurance that was demanded of him. Yet had anyone, he asked himself, more obstacles to overcome than he, in his efforts to set himself free? This silent, undemonstrative father, who surrounded himself with an unscalable wall of indifference; this hard-faced, careworn mother, about whose mouth the years had traced deep lines, and for whom, in the course of a single-handed battle with life, the true reality had come to be success or failure in the struggle for bread. What was art to them but an empty name, a pastime for the drones and idlers of existence? How could he set up his ambitions before them, to be bowled over like so many ninepins? When, at length, after much heartburning and conscientious scrupling, he was mastered by a healthier spirit of self-assertion, which made him rebel against the uselessness of the conflict, and doggedly resolve to put an end to it, he was only enabled to stand firm by summoning to his aid all the strengthening egoism, which is latent in every more or less artistic nature. To the mother, in her honest narrowness, the son's choice of a calling which she held to be unfitting, was something of a tragedy. She allowed no item of her duty to escape her, and moved about the house as usual, sternly observant of her daily task, but her lips were compressed to a thin line, and her face reflected the anger that burnt in her heart, too deep for speech. In the months that followed, Maurice learnt that the censure hardest to meet is that which is never put into words, which refuses to argue or discuss: he chafed inwardly against the unspoken opposition that will not come out to be grappled with, and overthrown. And, as he was only too keenly aware, there was more to be faced than a mere determined aversion to the independence with which he had struck out: there was, in the first place, a pardonably human sense of aggrievedness that the eldest-born should cross their plans and wishes; that, after the year-long care and thought they had bestowed on him, he should demand fresh efforts from them; and, again, most harassing of all and most invulnerable, such an entire want of faith in the powers he was yearning to test--the prophet's lot in the mean blindness of the family--that, at times, it threatened to shake his hard-won faith in himself.--But before the winter drew to a close he was away. Away!--to go out into the world and be a musician--that was his longing and his dream. And he never came to quite an honest understanding with himself on this point, for desire and dream were interwoven in his mind; he could not separate the one from the other. But when he weighed them, and allowed them to rise up and take shape before him, it was invariably in this order that they did so. In reality, although he himself was but vaguely conscious of the fact, it was to some extent as means to an end, that, when his eyes had been opened to its presence, he clutched--like a drowning man who seizes upon a spar--clutched and held fast to his talent. But the necessary insight into his powers had first to be gained, for it was not one of those talents which, from the beginning, strut their little world with the assurance of the peacock. He was, it is true, gifted with an instinctive feeling for the value and significance of tones--as a child he sang by ear in a small, sweet voice, which gained him the only notice he received at school, and he easily picked out his notes, and taught himself little pieces, on the old-fashioned, silk-faced piano, which had belonged to his mother as a girl, and at which, in the early days of her marriage, she had sung in a high, shrill voice, the sentimental songs of her youth. But here, for want of incentive, matters remained; Maurice was kept close at his school-books, and, boylike, he had no ambition to distinguish himself in a field so different from that in which his comrades won their spurs. It was only when, with the end of his schooldays in sight, he was putting away childish things, that he seriously turned his attention to the piano and his hands. They were those of the pianist, broad, strong and supple, and the new occupation soon engrossed him deeply; he gave up all his spare time to it, and, in a few months, attained so creditable a proficiency, that he went through a course of instruction with a local teacher of music, who, scenting talent, dismissed preliminaries with the assurance of his kind, and initiated his pupil into all that is false and meretricious in the literature of the piano--the cheaply pathetic, the tinsel of transcription, the titillating melancholy of Slavonic dance-music--to leave him, but for an increased agility of finger, not a whit further forward than he had found him. Then followed months when the phantom of discontent stalked large through Maurice's life, grew, indeed, day by day more tangible, more easily defined; for there came the long, restless summer evenings, when it seemed as if a tranquil darkness would never fall and bar off the distant, the unattainable; and as he followed some flat, white country road, that was lost to sight on the horizon as a tapering line, or looked out across a stretch of low, luxuriant meadows, the very placidity of which made heart and blood throb quicker, in a sense of opposition: then the desire to have finished with the life he knew, grew almost intolerable, and only a spark was needed to set his resolve ablaze. It was one evening when the summer had already dragged itself to a close, that Maurice walked through a drizzling rain to the neighbouring cathedral town, to attend a performance of ELIJAH. It was the first important musical experience of his life, and, carried away by the volumes of sound, he repressed his agitation so ill, that it became apparent to his neighbour, a small, wizened, old man, who was leaning forward, his hands hanging between his knees and his eyes fixed on the floor, alternately shaking and nodding his head. In the interval between the parts, they exchanged a few words, halting, excited on Maurice's part, interrogative on his companion's; when the performance was over, they walked a part of the way together, and found so much to say, that often, after this, when his week's work was behind him, Maurice would cover the intervening miles for the pleasure of a few hours' conversation with this new friend. In a small, dark room, the air of which was saturated with tobacco-smoke, he learned, by degrees, the story of the old musician's life: how, some thirty years previously, he had drifted into the midst of this provincial population, where he found it easy to earn enough for his needs, and where his position was below that of a dancing-master; but how, long ago, in his youth--that youth of which he spoke with a far-away tone in his voice, and at which he seemed to be looking out as at a fading shore--it had been his intention to perfect himself as a pianist. Life had been against him; when, the resolve was strongest, poverty and ill-heath kept him down, and since then, with the years that passed, he had come to see that his place would only have been among the multitude of little talents, whose destiny it is to imitate and vulgarise the strivings of genius, to swell the over-huge mass of mediocrity. And so, he had chosen that his life should be a failure--a failure, that is, in the eyes of the world; for himself, he judged otherwise. The truth that could be extracted from words was such a fluctuating, relative truth. Failure! success!--what WAS success, but a clinging fast, unabashed by smile or neglect, to that better part in art, in one's self, that cannot be taken away?--never for a thought's space being untrue to the ideal each one of us bears in his breast; never yielding jot or tittle to the world's opinion. That was what it meant, and he who was proudly conscious of having succeeded thus, could well afford to regard the lives of others as half-finished and imperfect; he alone was at one with himself, his life alone was a harmonious whole. To Maurice Guest, all this mattered little or not at all; it was merely the unavoidable introduction. The chief thing was that the old man had known the world which Maurice so desired to know; he had seen life, had lived much of his youth in foreign lands, and had the conversation been skilfully set agoing in this direction, he would lay a wrinkled hand on his listener's shoulder, and tell him of this shadowy past, with short hoarse chuckles of pleasure and reminiscence, which invariably ended in a cough. He painted it in vivid colours, and with the unconscious heightening of effect that comes natural to one who looks back upon a happy past, from which the countless pricks and stings that make up reality have faded, leaving in their place a sense of dreamy, unreal brightness, like that of sunset upon distant hills. He told him of Germany, and the gay, careless years he had spent there, working at his art, years of inspiriting, untrammelled progress; told him of famous musicians he had seen and known, of great theatre performances at which he had assisted, of stirring PREMIERES, long since forgotten, of burning youthful enthusiasms, of nights sleepless with holy excitement, and days of fruitful, meditative idleness. Under the spell of these reminiscences, he seemed to come into touch again with life, and his eyes lit with a spark of the old fire. At moments, he forgot his companion altogether, and gazed long and silently before him, nodding and smiling to himself at the memories he had stirred up in his brain, memories of things that had long ceased to be, of people who had long been quiet and unassertive beneath their handful of earth, but for whom alone, the brave, fair world had once seemed to exist. Then he would lose himself among strange names, in vague histories of those who had borne these names, and of what they had become in their subsequent journeyings towards the light, for which they had set out, side by side, with so much ardour (and oftenest what he had to tell was a modest mediocrity); but the greater number of them had lost sight one of the other; the most inseparable friends had, once parted, soon forgotten. And the bluish smoke sent upwards as he talked, in clouds and spirals that mounted rapidly and vanished, seemed to Maurice symbolic of the brief and shadowy lives that were unrolled before him. But, after all this, when the lights came, the piano was opened, and then, for an hour or two, the world was forgotten in a different way. It was here that the chief landmarks of music emerged from the mists in which, for Maurice, they had hitherto been enveloped; here he learned that Bach and Beethoven were giants, and made uncertain efforts at appreciation; learnt that Gluck was a great composer, Mozart a genius of many parts, Mendelssohn the direct successor in this line of kings. Sonatas, symphonies, operas, were hammered out with tremendous force and precision on the harsh, scrupulously tuned piano; and all were dominated alike by the hoarse voice of the old man, who never wavered, never faltered, but sang from beginning to end with all his might. Each one of the pleasant hours spent in this new world helped to deepen Maurice's resolution to free himself while there was yet time; each one gave more clearness and precision to his somewhat formless desires; for, in all that concerned his art, the nameless old musician hated his native land, with the hatred of the bigot for those who are hostile or indifferent to his faith. With a long and hot-chased goal in sight, a goal towards which our hearts, in joyous eagerness, have already leapt out, it is astonishing how easy it becomes to make light of the last, monotonous stretch of road that remains to be travelled. Is there not, just beyond, a resting-place?--and cool, green shadows? Events and circumstances which had hitherto loomed forth gigantic, threatening to crush, now appeared to Maurice trivial and of little moment; he saw them in other proportions now, for it seemed to him that he was no longer in their midst: he stood above them and overlooked them, and, with his eyes fixed upon a starry future, he joyfully prepared himself for his new life. What is more, those around him helped him to this altered view of things. For as the present marched steadily upon the future, devouring as it went; as the departure this future contained took on the shape of a fact, the countless details of which called for attention, it began to be accepted as even the most unpalatable facts in the long run usually are, with an ungracious resignation in face of the inevitable. Thus, with all his ardour to be gone, Maurice Guest came to see the last stage of his home-life almost in a bright light, and even with a touch of melancholy, as something that was fast slipping from him, never to be there in all its entirety, exactly as it now was, again: the last calm hour of respite before he plunged into the triumphs, but also into the tossings and agitations of the future. III. It was April, and a day such as April will sometimes bring: one of those days when the air is full of a new, mysterious fragrance, when the sunshine lies like a flood upon the earth, and high clouds hang motionless in the far-distant blue--a day at the very heels of which it would seem that summer was lurking. Maurice Guest stood at his window, both sides of which were flung open, drinking in the warm air, and gazing absently up at the stretch of sky, against which the dark roof-lines of the houses opposite stood out abruptly. His hands were in his pockets, and, to a light beat of the foot, he hummed softly to himself, but what, he could not have told: whether some fragment of melody that had lingered in a niche of his brain and now came to his lips, or whether a mere audible expression of his mood. The strong, unreal sun of the afternoon was just beginning to reach the house; it slanted in, golden, by the side of the window, and threw on the wall above the piano, a single long bar of light. He leaned over and looked down into the street far below--still no one there! But it was only half-past four. He stretched himself long and luxuriously, as if, by doing so, he would get rid of a restlessness which arose from repressed physical energy, and also from an impatience to be more keenly conscious of life, to feel it, as it were, quicken in him, not unakin to that passionate impulse towards perfection, which, out-of-doors, was urging on the sap and loosening firm green buds: he had a day's imprisonment behind him, and all spring's magic was at work to ferment his blood. How small and close the room was! He leaned out on the sill, as far out as he could, in the sun. It was shining full down the street now, gilding the canal-like river at the foot, and throwing over the tall, dingy houses on the opposite side, a tawdry brightness, which, unlike that of the morning with its suggestion of dewy shade, only served to bring out the shabbiness of broken plaster and paintless window; a shamefaced yet aggressive shabbiness, where high-arched doorways and wide entries spoke to better days, and also to a subsequent decay, now openly admitted in the little placards which dotted them here and there, bearing the bold-typed words GARCON LOGIS, and dangling bravely yellow from the windows of the cheap lodgings they proclaimed vacant. It was very still; the hoarse voice of a fruit-seller crying his wares in the adjoining streets, was to be heard at intervals, but each time less distinctly, and from the distance came the faint tones of a single piano. How different it was in the morning! Then, if, pausing a moment from his work, he opened the window and leaned out for a brief refreshment, what a delightful confusion of sounds met his ear! Pianos rolled noisily up and down, ploughing one through the other, beating one against the other, key to key, rhythm to rhythm, each in a clamorous despair at being unable to raise its voice above the rest, at having to form part of this jumble of discord: some so near at hand or so directly opposite that, none the less, it was occasionally possible to follow them through the persistent reiterations of a fugue, or through some brilliant glancing ETUDE, the notes of which flew off like sparks; others, further away, of which were audible only the convulsive treble outbursts and the toneless rumblings of the bass, now and then cut shrilly through by the piercing sharpness of a violin, now and then, at quieter moments, borne up and accompanied by the deep, guttural tones of a neighbouring violoncello. This was always discovered at work upon scales, uncertain, hesitating scales on the lower strings, and, heard suddenly, after the other instruments' genial hubbub, it sounded like some inarticulate animal making uncouth attempts at expression. At rare intervals there came a lull, and then, before all burst forth again together, or fell in, one by one, a single piano or the violin would, like a solo voice in a symphony, bear the whole burden; or if the wind were in the west, it would sometimes carry over with it, from the woods on the left, the mournful notes of a French horn, which some unskilful player had gone out to practise. This was that new world of which he was now a part--into which he had been so auspiciously received. Yes, the beginning and the thousand petty disquiets that go with beginnings, were behind him; he had made a start, and he believed a good one--thanks to Dove. He was really grateful to Dove. A chance acquaintance, formed on one of those early days when he loitered, timid and unsure, about the BUREAU of the Conservatorium, Dove had taken him up with what struck even the grateful new-comer as extraordinary good-nature, going deliberately out of his way to be of service to him, meeting him at every turn with assistance and advice. It was Dove who had helped him over the embarrassments of the examination; it was through Dove's influence that he had obtained a private interview with Schwarz, and, in Dove's opinion, Schwarz was the only master in Leipzig under whom it was worth while to study; the only one who could be relied on to give the exhaustive TECHNIQUE that was indispensable, without, in the process, destroying what was of infinitely more account, the individuality, the TEMPERAMENT of the student. This and more, Dove set forth at some length in their conversations; then, warming to his work, he would go further: would go on to speak of phrasings and interpretations; of an artistic use of the pedals, and the legitimate participation of the emotions; of the confines of absolute music as touched in the Ninth Symphony: would refer incidentally to Schopenhauer and make Wagner his authority, using terms that were new to his hearer, and, now and then, by way of emphasis, bringing his palm down flat and noiselessly upon the table.--It had not taken them long to become friends; fellow-countrymen, of the same age, with similar aims and interests, they had soon slipped into one of the easy-going friendships of youth. A quarter to five! As the strokes from the neighbouring church--clock died away, the melody of Siegfried's horn was whistled up from the street, and looking over, Maurice saw his friend. He seized his music and went hastily down the four flights of stairs. They crossed the river and came to newer streets. It was delightful out-of-doors. A light breeze met them as they turned, and a few ragged, fleecy clouds that it was driving up, only made the sky seem bluer, The two young men walked leisurely, laughing and talking rather loudly. Maurice Guest had already, in dress and bearing, taken on a touch of musicianly disorder, but Dove's lengthier residence had left no trace upon him; he might have stepped that day from the streets of the provincial English town to which he belonged. His well brushed clothes sat with an easy inelegance, his tie was small, his linen clean, and the only concession he made to his surroundings, the broad-brimmed, soft felt hat, looked oddly out of place on his close-cut hair. He carried himself erectly, swinging a little on his hips. As they went, he passed in review the important items of the day: so-and-so had strained a muscle, so-and-so had spoilt a second piano. But his particular interest centred upon that evening's ABENDUNTERHALTUNG. A man named Schilsky, whom it was no exaggeration to call their finest, very finest violinist was to play Vieuxtemps' Concerto in D. Dove all but smacked his lips as he spoke of it. In reply to a query from Maurice, he declared with vehemence that this Schilsky was a genius. Although so great a violinist, he could play almost every other instrument with case; his memory had become a by-word; his compositions were already famous. At the present moment, he was said to be at work upon a symphonic poem, having for its base a new and extraordinary book, half poetry, half philosophy, a book which he, Dove, could confidently assert, would effect a revolution in human thought, but of which, just at the minute, he was unable to remember the name. Infected by his friend's enthusiasm, Maurice here recalled having, only the day before, met some one who answered to Dove's description: the genial Pole had been storming up the steps of the Conservatorium, two at a time, with wild, affrighted eyes, and a halo of dishevelled auburn hair.--Dove made no doubt that he had been seized with a sudden inspiration. Gewandhaus and Conservatorium lay close together, in a new quarter of the town. The Conservatorium, a handsome, stone-faced building, three lofty storeys high, was just now all the more imposing in appearance as it stood alone in an unfinished street-block, and as, opposite, hoardings still shut in all that had yet been raised of the great library, which would eventually overshadow it. The severe plainness of its long front, with the unbroken lines of windows, did not fail to impress the unused beholder, who had not for very long gone daily out and in; it suggested to him the earnest, unswerving efforts, imperative on his pursuit of the ideal; an ideal which, to many, was as it were personified by the concert-house in the adjoining square: it was hither, towards this clear-limned goal, that bore him, like a magic carpet, the young enthusiast's most ambitious dream.--But in the life that swarmed about the Conservatorium, there was nothing of a tedious austerity. It was one of the briskest times of day, and the short street and the steps of the building were alive with young people of both sexes. Young men sauntered to and from the cafe at the corner, or stood gesticulating in animated groups. All alike were conspicuous for a rather wilful slovenliness, for smooth faces and bushy hair, while the numerous girls, with whom they paused to laugh and trifle, were, for the most part, showy in dress and loudly vivacious in manner. On the kerbstone, a knot of the latter, tittering among themselves, shot furtive glances at Dove and Maurice as they passed. Here, a pretty, laughing face was the centre of a little circle; there, a bevy of girls clustered about a young man, who, his hands in his pockets, leaned carelessly against the door-arch; and again, another, plump and much befeathered, with a string of large pearlbeads round her fat, white neck, had isolated herself from the rest, to take up, on the steps, a more favourable stand. A master who went by, a small, jovial man in a big hat, had a word for all the girls, even a chuck of the chin for one unusually saucy face. Inside, classes were filing out of the various rooms, other classes were going in; there was a noisy flocking up and down the broad, central staircase, a crowding about the notice-board, a going and coming in the long, stone corridors. The concert-hall was being lighted. Maurice slowly made his way through the midst of all these people, while Dove loitered, or stepped out of hearing, with one friend after another. In a side corridor, off which, cell like, opened a line of rooms, they pushed a pair of doubledoors, and went in to take their lesson. The room they entered was light and high, and contained, besides a couple of grand pianos, a small table and a row of wooden chairs. Schwarz stood with his back to the window, biting his nails. He was a short, thickset man, with keen eyes, and a hard, prominent mouth, which was rather emphasised than concealed, by the fair, scanty tuft of hair that hung from his chin. Upon the two new-comers, he bent a cold, deliberate gaze, which, for some instants, he allowed to rest chillingly on them, then as deliberately withdrew, having--so at least it seemed to those who were its object--having, without the tremor of an eyelid, scanned them like an open page: it was the look, impenetrable, all-seeing, of the physician for his patient. At the piano, a young man was playing the Waldstein Sonata. So intent was he on what he was doing, that his head all but touched the music standing open before him, while his body, bent thus double, swayed vigorously from side to side. His face was crimson, and on his forehead stood out beads of perspiration. He had no cuffs on, and his sleeves were a little turned back. The movement at an end, he paused, and drawing a soiled handkerchief from his pocket, passed it rapidly over neck and brow. In the ADAGIO which followed, he displayed an extreme delicacy of touch--not, however, but what this also cost him some exertion, for, previous to the striking of each faint, soft note, his hand described a curve in the air, the finger he was about to use, lowered, the others slightly raised, and there was always a second of something like suspense, before it finally sank upon the expectant note. But suddenly, without warning, just as the last, lingering tones were dying to the close they sought, the ADAGIO slipped over into the limpid gaiety of the RONDO, and then, there was no time more for premeditation: then his hands twinkled up and down, joining, crossing, flying asunder, alert with little sprightly quirks and turns, going ever more nimbly, until the brook was a river, the allegretto a prestissimo, which flew wildly to its end amid a shower of dazzling trills. Schwarz stood grave and apparently impassive; from time to time, however, when unobserved, he swept the three listeners with a rapid glance. Maurice Guest was quite carried away; he had never heard playing like this, and he leaned forward in his seat, and gazed full at the player, in open admiration. But his neighbour, a pale, thin man, with one of those engaging and not uncommon faces which, in mould of feature, in mildness of expression, and still more in the cut of hair and beard, bear so marked a likeness to the conventional Christ-portrait: this neighbour looked on with only a languid interest, which seemed unable to get the upper hand of melancholy thoughts. Maurice, who believed his feelings shared by all about him, was chilled by such indifference: he only learned later, after they had become friends, that nothing roused in Boehmer a real or lasting interest, save what he, Boehmer, did himself. Dove sat absorbed, as reverent as if at prayer; but there were also moments when, with his head a little on one side, he wore an anxious air, as if not fully at one with the player's rendering; others again, after a passage of peculiar brilliancy, when he threw at Schwarz a humbly grateful look. While Schwarz, the sonata over, was busy with his pencil on the margin of the music, Dove leaned over to Maurice and whispered behind his hand: "Furst--our best pianist." Now came the turn of the others, and the master's attention wandered; he stretched himself, yawned, and sighed aloud, then, in the search for something he could not find, turned out on the lid of the second piano the contents of sundry pockets. While Dove played, he wrote as if for life in a bulky notebook. Maurice remarked this without being properly conscious of it, so impressed had he been by the sonata. The exultant beauty of the great final theme had permeated his every fibre, inciting him, emboldening him, and, still under the sway of this little elation when his own turn to play came, he was the richer by it, and acquitted himself with unusual verve. As the class was about to leave the room, Schwarz signed to Maurice to remain behind. For several moments, he paced the floor in silence; then he stopped suddenly short in front of the young man, and, with legs apart, one hand at his back, he said in a tone which wavered between being brutal and confidential, emphasising his words with a series of smart pencil-raps on his hearer's shoulder: "Let me tell you something: if I were not of the opinion that you had ability, I should not detain you this evening. It is no habit of mine, mark this, to interfere with my pupils. Outside this room, most of them do not exist for me. In your case, I am making an exception, because ..."--Maurice was here so obviously gratified that the speaker made haste to substitute: "because I should much like to know how it is that you come to me in the state you do." And without waiting for a reply: "For you know nothing, or, let us say, worse than nothing, since what you do know, you must make it your first concern to forget." He paused, and the young man's face fell so much that he prolonged the pause, to enjoy the discomfiture he had produced. "But give me time," he continued, "adequate time, and I will undertake to make something of you." He lowered his voice, and the taps became more confidential. "There is good stuff here; you have talent, great talent, and, as I have observed to-day, you are not wanting in intelligence. But," and again his voice grew harsher, his eye more piercing, "understand me, if you please, no trifling with other studies; let us have no fiddling, no composing. Who works with me, works for me alone. And a lifetime, I repeat it, a lifetime, is not long enough to master such an instrument as this!" He brought his hand down heavily on the lid of the piano, and glared at Maurice as if he expected the latter to contradict him. Then, noisily clearing his throat, he began anew to pace the room. As Maurice stood waiting for his dismissal, with very varied feelings, of which, however, a faint pride was uppermost; as he stood waiting, the door opened, and a girl looked in. She hesitated a moment, then entered, and going up to Schwarz, asked him something in a low voice. He nodded an assent, nodded two or three times, and with quite another face; its hitherto unmoved severity had given way to an indulgent friendliness. She laid her hat and jacket on the table, and went to the piano. Schwarz motioned Maurice to a chair. He sat down almost opposite her. And now came for him one of those moments in life, which, unlooked-for, undivined, send before them no promise of being different, in any way, from the commonplace moments that make up the balance of our days. No gently graduated steps lead up to them: they are upon us with the violent abruptness of a streak of lightning, and like this, they, too, may leave behind them a scarry trace. What such a moment holds within it, is something which has never existed for us before, something it has never entered our minds to go out and seek--the corner of earth, happened on by chance, which comes most near the Wineland of our dreams; the page, idly perhaps begun, which brings us a new god; the face of the woman who is to be our fate--but, whatever it may be, let it once exist for us, and the soul responds forthwith, catching in blind haste at the dimly missed ideal. For one instant Maurice Guest had looked at the girl before him with unconcern, but the next it was with an intentness that soon became intensity, and feverishly grew, until he could not tear his eyes away. The beauty, whose spell thus bound him, was of that subtle kind which leaves many a one cold, but, as if just for this reason, is almost always fateful for those who feel its charm: at them is lanced its accumulated force. The face was far from faultless; there was no regularity of feature, no perfection of line, nor was there more than a touch of the sweet girlish freshness that gladdens like a morning in May. The features, save for a peremptory turn of mouth and chin, were unremarkable, and the expression was distant, unchanging ... but what was that to him? This deep white skin, the purity of which was only broken by the pale red of the lips; this dull black hair, which lay back from the low brow in such wonderful curves, and seemed, of itself, to fall into the loose knot on the neck--there was something romantic, exotic about her, which was unlike anything he had ever seen: she made him think of a rare, hothouse flower; some scentless, tropical flower, with stiff, waxen petals. And then her eyes! So profound was their darkness that, when they threw off their covering of heavy lid, it seemed to his excited fancy as if they must scorch what they rested on; they looked out from the depths of their setting like those of a wild beast crouched within a cavern; they lit up about them like stars, and when they fell, they went out like stars, and her face took on the pallor of early dawn. She was playing from memory. She gazed straight before her with far-away eyes, which only sometimes looked down at her hands, to aid them in a difficult passage. At her belt, she wore a costly yellow rose, and as she once leaned towards the treble, where both hands were at work close together, it fell to the floor. Maurice started forward, and picking it up, laid it on the piano; beneath the gaslight, it sank a shadowy gold image in the mirror-like surface. As yet she had paid no heed to him, but, at this, she turned her head, and, still continuing to play, let her eyes rest absently on him. They sank their eyes in each other's. A thrill ran through Maurice, a quick, sharp thrill, which no sensation of his later life outdid in keenness and which, on looking back, he could always feel afresh. The colour rose to his face and his heart beat audibly, but he did not lower his eyes, and for not doing so, seemed to himself infinitely bold. A host of confused feelings bore down upon him, well-nigh blotting out the light; but, in a twinkling, all were swallowed up in an overpowering sense of gratitude, in a large, vague, happy thankfulness, which touched him almost to the point of tears. As it swelled through him and possessed him, he yearned to pour it forth, to make an offering of this gratefulness--fine tangle of her beauty and his own glad mood--and, by sustaining her look, he seemed to lay the offering at her feet. Nor would any tongue have persuaded him that she did not understand. The few seconds were eternities: when she turned away it was as if untold hours had passed over him in a body, like a flight of birds; as if a sudden gulf had gaped between where he now was and where he had previously stood. Dismissed curtly, with a word, he hung about the corridor in the hope of seeing her again; but the piano went on and on, unceasingly. Here, after some time, he was found by Dove, who carried him off with loud expressions of surprise. The concert was more than half over. The main part of the hall was brightly lit and full of people: from behind, one looked across a sea of heads. On the platform at the other end, a girl in red was playing a sonata; a master sat by her side, and leant forward, at regular intervals, to turn the leaves of the music. Dove and Maurice remained standing at the back, under the gallery, among a portion of the audience which shifted continuously: those about them wandered in and out of the hall at pleasure, now inside, head in hand, critically intent, now out in the vestibule, stretching their legs, lounging in easy chat. In the pause that followed the sonata, Dove went towards the front, to join some ladies who beckoned him, and, while some one sang a noisy aria, Maurice gave himself up to his own thoughts. They all led to the same point: how he should contrive to see her again, how he should learn her name, and, beside them, everything else seemed remote, unreal; he saw the people next him as if from a distance. But in a wait that was longer than usual, he was awakened to his surroundings: a stir ran over the audience, like a gust of wind over still water; the heads in the seats before him inclined one to another, wagged and nodded; there was a gentle buzz of voices. Behind him, the doors opened and shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had come down the platform and commenced tuning. He bent his long, thin body as he pressed his violin to his knee, and his reddish hair fell over his face. The accompanist, his hands on the keys, waited for the signal to begin. Maurice drew a deep breath of anticipation. But the first shrill, sweet notes had hardly cut the silence, when, the door opening once more, some one entered and pushed through the standing crowd. He looked round, uneasy at the disturbance, and found that it was she: what is more, she came up to his very side. He turned away so hastily that he touched her arm, causing it to yield a little, and some moments went by before he ventured to look again. When he did, in some tremor, he saw that, without fear of discovery, he might look as long or as often as he chose. She was listening to the player with the raptness of a painted saint: her whole face listened, the tightened lips, the open nostrils, the wide, vigilant eyes. Maurice, lost in her presence, grew dizzy with the scent of her hair--that indefinable odour, which has something of the raciness in it of new-turned earth--and foolish wishes arose and jostled one another in his mind: he would have liked to plunge both hands into the dark, luxuriant mass; still better, cautiously to draw his palm down this whitest skin, which, seen so near, had a faint, satin-like sheen. The mere imagining of it set him throbbing, and the excitement in his blood was heightened by the sensuous melancholy of the violin, which, just beyond the pale of his consciousness, throbbed and languished with him under the masterful bow. Shortly before the end of the concerto, she turned and made her way out. Maurice let a few seconds elapse, then followed. But the long white corridors stretched empty before him; there was no trace of her to be seen. As he was peering about, in places that were strange to him, a tumult of applause shook the hall, the doors flew open and the audience poured out. Dove had joined other friends, and a number of them left the building together; everyone spoke loudly and at once. But soon Maurice and Dove outstepped their companions, for these came to words over the means used by Schilsky to mount, with bravour, a certain gaudy scale of octaves, and, at every second pace, they stopped, and wheeled round with eloquent gesture. In their presence Dove had said little; now he gave rein to his feelings: his honest face glowed with enthusiasm, the names of renowned players ran off his lips like beads off a string, and, in predicting Schilsky a career still more brilliant, his voice grew husky with emotion. Maurice listened unmoved to his friend's outpouring, and the first time Dove stopped for breath, went straight for the matter which, in his eyes, had dwarfed all others. So eager was he to learn something of her, that he even made shift to describe her; his attempt fell out lamely, and a second later he could have bitten off his tongue. Dove had only half an ear for him. "Eh? What? What do you say?" he asked as Maurice paused; but his thoughts were plainly elsewhere. This fact is, just at this moment, he was intent on watching some ladies: were they going to notice him or not? The bow made and returned, he brought his mind back to Maurice with a great show of interest. Here, however, they all turned in to Seyffert's Cafe and, seating themselves at a long, narrow table, waited for Schilsky, whom they intended to fete. But minutes passed, a quarter, then half of an hour, and still he did not come. To while the time, his playing of the concerto was roundly commented and discussed. There was none of the ten or twelve young men but had the complete jargon of the craft at his finger-tips; not one, too, but was rancorous and admiring in a breath, now detecting flaws as many as motes in a beam, now heaping praise. The spirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through the gamut of opinion, went forward chiefly in German, which the foreigners of the party spoke with various accents, but glibly enough; only now and then did one of them spring over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy idiom or point a joke. Not having heard a note of Schilsky's playing, Maurice did not trust himself to say much, and so was free to observe his right-hand neighbour, a young man who had entered late, and taken a vacant chair beside him. To the others present, the new-comer paid no heed, to Maurice he murmured an absent greeting, and then, having called for beer and emptied his glass at a draught, he appeared mentally to return whence he had come, or to engage without delay in some urgent train of thought. His movements were noiseless, but startlingly abrupt. Thus, after sitting quiet for a time, his head in his hands, he flung back in his seat with a sort of wildness, and began to stare fixedly at the ceiling. His face was one of those, which, as by a mystery, preserve the innocent beauty of their childhood, long after childhood is a thing of the past: delicate as the rosy lining of a great sea-shell was the colour that spread from below the forked blue veins of the temples, and it paled and came again as readily as a girl's. Girlish, too, were the limpid eyes, which, but for a trick of dropping unexpectedly, seemed always to be gazing, in thoughtful surprise, at something that was visible to them alone. As to the small, frail body, it existed only for sake of the hands: narrow hands, with long, fleshless fingers, nervous hands, that were never still. All at once, in a momentary lull, he leant towards Maurice, and, without even looking up, asked the latter if he could recall the opening bars of the prelude to TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. If so, there was a certain point he would like to lay before him. "You see, it's this way, old fellow," he said confidentially. "I've come to the conclusion that if, at the end of the third bar, Wagner had----" "Throw him out, throw him out!" cried an American who was sitting opposite them. "You might as well try to stop a nigger in heat as Krafft on Wagner." "That's so," said another American named Ford, who, on arriving, had not been quite sober, and now, after a few glasses of beer, was exceedingly tipsy. "That's so. As I've always said, it's a disgrace to the township, a disgrace, sir. Ought to be put down. Why don't he write them himself?" From the depths of his brown study, Krafft looked vaguely at the speakers, and checked, but not discomposed, drew out a notebook and jotted down an idea. Meanwhile, at the far end of the table, Boehmer and a Russian violinist still harped upon the original string. And, having worked out Schilsky, they passed on to Zeppelin, his master, and the Russian, who was not Zeppelin's pupil, set to showing with vehemence that his "method" was a worthless one. He was barely started when a wiry American, in a high, grating voice, called Schilsky a wretched fool: why had he not gone to Berlin at Easter, as he had planned, instead of dawdling on here where he had no more to gain? At this, several of the young men laughed and looked significant. Furst--he had proved to be a jolly little man, who, with unbuttoned vest, absorbed large quantities of beer and perspired freely--Furst alone was of the opinion, which he expressed forcibly, in his hearty Saxon dialect, that had Schilsky left Leipzig at this particular time, he would have been a fool indeed. "Look here, boys," he cried, pounding the table to get attention. "That's all very well, but he must have an eye to the practical side of things, too----" "DER BIEDERE SACHSE HOCH!" threw in Boehmer, who was Prussian, and of a more ideal cast of mind. "--and a chance such as this, he will certainly never have again. A hundred thousand marks, if a pfennig, and a face to turn after in the street! No, he is a confounded deal wiser to stay here and make sure of her, for that sort is as slippery as an eel." "Krafft can tell us; he let her go; is she?--is it true?" shouted half a dozen. Krafft looked up and winked. His reply was so gross and so witty that there was a very howl of mirth. "KRAFFT HOCH, HOCH KRAFFT!" they cried, and roared again, until the proprietor, a mild, round-faced man, who was loath to meddle with his best customers, advanced to the middle of the floor, where he stood smiling uneasily and rubbing his hands. But it was growing late. "Why the devil doesn't he come?" yawned Boehmer. "Perhaps," said Dove, mouthing deliberately as if he had a good thing on his tongue; perhaps, by now, he is safe in the arms of----" "Jesus or Morpheus?" asked a cockney 'cellist. "Safe in the arms of Jesus!" sang the tipsy pianist; but he was outsung by Krafft, who, rising from his seat, gave with dramatic gesture: O sink' hernieder, Nacht der Liebe, gieb Vergessen, dass ich lebe ... After this, with much laughter and ado, they broke up to seek another cafe in the heart of the town, where the absinthe was good and the billiard-table better, two of his friends supporting Ford, who was testily debating with himself why a composer should compose his own works. At the first corner, Maurice whispered a word to Dove, and, unnoticed by the rest, slipped away. For some time, he heard the sound of their voices down the quiet street. A member of the group, in defiance of the night, began to sing; and then, just as one bird is provoked by another, rose a clear, sweet voice he recognised as Krafft's, in a song the refrain of which was sung by all: Give me the Rose of Sharon, And a bottle of Cyprus wine! What followed was confused, indistinct, but over and over again he heard: ... the Rose of Sharon, ... a bottle of Cyprus wine! until that, too, was lost in the distance. When he reached his room, he did not light the lamp, but crossed to the window and stood looking out into the darkness. The day's impressions, motley as the changes of a kaleidoscope, seethed in his brain, clamoured to be recalled and set in order; but he kept them back; he could not face the task. He felt averse to any mental effort, in need of a repose as absolute as the very essence of silence itself. The sky was overcast; a wayward breeze blew coolly in upon him and refreshed him; a few single raindrops fell. In the air a gentle melancholy was abroad, and, as he stood there, wax for any passing mood, it descended on him and enveloped him. He gave himself up to it, unresistingly, allowed himself to toy with it, to sink beneath it. Just, however, as he was sinking, sinking, he was roused, suddenly, as from sleep, by the vivid presentiment that something was about to happen to him: it seemed as if an important event were looming in the near distance, ready to burst in upon his life, and not only instantly, but with a monstrous crash of sound. His pulses beat more quickly, his nerves stretched, like bows. But it was very still; everything around him slept, and the streets were deserted. A keen sense of desolation came over him; never, in his life, had he felt so utterly alone. In all this great city that spread, ocean-like, around him, not a heart was the lighter for his being there. Oh, to have some one beside him!--some one who would talk soothingly to him, of shadowy, far-off things, or, still better, be merely a sympathetic presence. He passed rapidly in review people he had known, saw their faces and heard their voices, but not one of them would do. No, he wanted a friend, the friend he had often dreamed of, whose thoughts would be his thoughts, with whom there would be no need of speech. Then his longing swelled, grew fiercer and more undefined, and a sudden burst of energy convulsed him and struggled to find vent. His breath came hard, and he stretched his arms out into the night, uncertainly, as if to grasp something he did not see; but they fell to his side again. He would have liked to sweep through the air, to feel the wind rushing dizzily through him; or to be set down before some feat that demanded the strength of a Titan--anything, no matter what, to be rid of the fever in his veins. But it beset him, again and again, only by slow degrees weakening and dying away. A bitter moisture sprang to his eyes. Leaning his head on his arms, he endeavoured to call up her face. But it was of no use, though he strained every nerve; for some time he could see only the rose that had lain beside her on the piano, and in the troubled image that at last crowned his patience, her eyes looked out, like jewels, from a setting of golden petals. Lying wakeful in the darkness, he saw them more clearly. Now, though, they had a bluish light, were like moons, moons that burnt. If he lit the lamp and tried to read, they got between him and the book, and danced up and down the pages, with jerky, clockwork movements, like stage fireflies. He put the light out, and lay staring vacantly at the pale square of the window. And then, just when he was least expecting it, he saw the whole face, so close to him and so distinctly, that he started up on his elbow; and in the second or two it remained--a Medusa-face, opaquely white, with deep, unfathomable eyes--he recognised, with a shock, that his peace of mind was gone; that the sudden experience of a few hours back had given his life new meaning; that something had happened to him which could not be undone; in other words--with an incredulous gasp at his own folly--that he was head over ears in love. Through the uneasy sleep into which he ultimately fell, she, and the yellow rose, and the Rose of Sharon--a giant flower, with monstrous crimson petals--passed and repassed, in one of those glorious tangles, which no dreamer has ever unravelled. When he wakened, it was broad daylight, and things wore a different aspect. Not that his impression of the night had faded, but it was forced to retire behind the hard, clear affairs of the morning. He got up, full of vigour, impatient to be at work, and having breakfasted, sat down at the piano, where he remained until his hands dropped from the keys with fatigue. Throughout these hours, his mind ran chiefly on the words Schwarz had said to him, the previous evening. They rose before him in their full significance, and he leisurely chewed the honeyed cud of praise. "I will undertake to make something of you, undertake to make something of you"--his brain tore the phrase to tatters. "Something" was properly vague, as praise should be, and allowed the imagination free scope. Under the stimulus, everything came easy; he mastered a passage of bound sixths that had baffled him for days. And in this elated frame of mind, there was something almost pleasurable in the pang with which he would become conscious of a shadow in the background, a spot on his sun to make him unhappy. Unhappy?--no: it gave a zest to his goings--out and comings-in. Through long hours of work he was borne up by an ardent hope: afterwards, he might see her. It made the streets exciting places of possible surprises. Might she not, at any moment, turn the corner and be before him? Might she not, this very instant, be going in the same direction as he, in the next street? But a very little of this pleasant dallying with chance was enough. One morning, when the houses opposite were ablaze with sunshine, and he had settled down to practice with a keen relish for the obstacles to be overcome; on this morning, within half an hour, his mood swung round to the other extreme, and, from now on, his desire to see her again was a burning unrest, which roused him from sleep, and drove him out, at odd hours, no matter what he was doing. Moodily he scoured the streets round the Conservatorium, disconcerted by his own folly, and pricked incessantly by the consciousness of time wasted. A companion at his side might have dispelled the cobwebs; but Dove, his only friend, he avoided, for the reason that Dove's unfailing good spirits needed to be met with a similar mood. And as for speaking of the matter, the mere thought of the detailed explanation that would now be necessary, did he open his lips, filled him with dismay. When four or five days had gone by in this manner, without result, he took to hanging about, with other idlers, on the steps of the Conservatorium, always hoping that she would suddenly emerge from the doors behind him, or come towards him, a roll of music in her hand. But she never came. One afternoon, however, as he loitered there, he encountered his acquaintance of the very first day. He recognised her while she was still some distance off, by her peculiar springy gait; at each step, she rose slightly on the front part of her foot, as if her heels were on springs. As before, she was indifferently dressed; a small, close hat came down over her face and hid her forehead; her skirt seemed shrunken, and hung limp about her ankles, accentuating the straightness of her figure. But below the brim of the hat her eyes were as bright as ever, and took note of all that happened. On seeing Maurice, she professed to remember him "perfectly," beginning to speak before she had quite come up to him. The following day they met once more at the same place. This time, she raised her eyebrows. "You here again?" she said. She disappeared inside the building; but a few minutes later returned, and said she was going for a walk: would he come, too? He assented, with grateful surprise, and they set off together in the direction of the woods, as briskly as though they were on an errand. But when they had crossed the suspension-bridge and reached the quieter paths that ran through the NONNE, they simultaneously slackened their pace. The luxuriant undergrowth of shrub, which filled in, like lacework, the spaces between the tree-trunks, was sprinkled with its first dots and pricks of green, and the afternoon was pleasant for walking--sunless and still, and just a little fragrantly damp from all the rife budding and sprouting. It was a day to further a friendship more effectually than half a dozen brighter ones; a day on which to speak out thoughts which a June sky, the indiscreet playing of full sunlight, even the rustling of the breeze in the leaves might scare, like fish, from the surface. When they had laughingly introduced themselves to each other Maurice Guest's companion talked about herself, with a frankness that left nothing to be desired, and impressed the young man at her side very agreeably. Before they had gone far, he knew all about her. Her name was Madeleine Wade; she came from a small town in Leicestershire, and, except for a step-brother, stood alone in the world. For several years, she had been a teacher in a large school near London, and the position was open for her to return to, when she had completed this, the final year of her course. Then, however, she would devote herself exclusively to the teaching of music, and, with this in view, she had here taken up as many branches of study as she had time for. Besides piano, which was her chief subject, she learned singing, organ, counterpoint, and the elements of the violin. "So much is demanded nowadays," she said in her dear soprano. "And if you want to get on, it doesn't do to be behindhand. Of course, it means hard work, but that is nothing to me--I am used to work and love it. Since I was seventeen--I am twenty-six now--I can fairly say I have never got up in the morning, without having my whole day mapped and planned before me.--So you see idlers can have no place on my list of saints." She spoke lightly, yet with a certain under-meaning. As, however, Maurice Guest, on whom her words made a sympathetic impression, as of something strong and self-reliant--as he did not respond to it, she fell back on directness, and asked him what he had been doing when she met him, both on this day and the one before. "I tell you candidly, I was astonished to find you there again," she said. "As a rule, new-comers are desperately earnest brooms." His laugh was a trifle uneasy; and he answered evasively, not meaning to say much. But he had reckoned without the week of silence that lay behind him; it had been more of a strain than he knew, and his pent-up speech once set agoing could not be brought to a stop. An almost physical need of communication made itself felt in him; he spoke with a volubility that was foreign to him, began his sentences with a confidential "You see," and said things at which he himself was amazed. He related impressions, not facts, and impressions which, until now, he had not been conscious of receiving; he told unguardedly of his plans and ambitions, and even went back and touched on his home-life, dwelling with considerable bitterness on the scant sympathy he had received. His companion looked at him curiously. She had expected a casual answer to her casual words, a surface frankness, such as she herself had shown, and, at first, she felt sceptical towards this unbidden confidence: she did not care for people who gave themselves away at a word; either they were naive to foolishness or inordinately vain. But having listened for some time to his outpourings, she began to feel reassured; and soon she understood that he was talking thus at random, merely because he was lonely and bottled-up. Before he had finished, she was even a little gratified by his openness, and on his confiding to her what Schwarz had said to him, she smiled indulgently. "Perhaps I took it to mean more than it actually did," said Maurice apologetically. "But anyhow it was cheering to hear it. You see, I must prove to the people at home that I was right and they were wrong. Failure was preached at me on every side. I was the only soul to believe in myself." "And you really disliked teaching so?" "Hated it with all my heart." She frankly examined him. He had a pale, longish face, with thin lips, which might indicate either narrow prejudice or a fanatic tenacity. When he grew animated, he had a habit of opening his eyes very wide, and of staring straight before him. At such moments, too, he tossed back his head, with the impatient movements of a young horse. His hands and feet were good, his clothes of a provincial cut. Her fingers itched to retie the bow of his cravat for him, to pull him here and there into shape. Altogether, he made the impression upon her of being a very young man: when he coloured, or otherwise grew embarrassed, under her steady gaze, she mentally put him down for less than twenty. But he had good manners; he allowed her to pass before him, where the way grew narrow; walked on the outside of the path; made haste to draw back an obstreperous branch; and not one of these trifling conventionalities was lost on Madeleine Wade. They had turned their steps homewards, and were drawing near the edge of the wood, when, through the tree-trunks, which here were bare and far apart, they saw two people walking arm in arm; and on turning a corner found the couple coming straight towards them, on the same path as themselves. In the full flush of his talk, Maurice Guest did not at first grasp what was about to happen. He had ended the sentence he was at, and begun another, before the truth broke on him. Then he stuttered, lost the thread of his thought, was abruptly silent; and what he had been going to say, and what, a moment before, had seemed of the utmost importance, was never said. His companion did not seem to notice his preoccupation; she gave an exclamation of what sounded like surprise, and herself looked steadily at the approaching pair. Thus they went forward to a meeting which the young man had imagined to himself in many ways, but not in this. The moment he had waited for had come; and now he wished himself miles away. Meanwhile, they walked on, in a brutal, matter-of-fact fashion, and at a fairish pace, though each step he took was an event, and his feet were as heavy and awkward as if they did not belong to him. The other two sauntered towards them, without haste. The man she was with had his arm through hers, her hand in his left hand, while in his right he twirled a cane. They were not speaking; she looked before her, rather listlessly, with dark, indifferent eyes. To see this, to see also that she was taller and broader than he had believed, and in full daylight somewhat sallow, Maurice had first to conquer an aversion to look at all, on account of the open familiarity of their attitude. It was not like this that he had dreamt of finding her. And so it happened that when, without a word to him, his companion crossed the path and confronted the other two, he only lingered for an instant, in an agony of indecision, and then, by an impulse over which he had no control, walked on and stood out of earshot. He drew a deep breath, like one who has escaped a danger; but almost simultaneously he bit his lip with mortification: could any power on earth make it clear to him why he had acted in this way? All his thoughts had been directed towards this moment for so long, only to take this miserable end. A string of contemptuous epithets for himself rose to his lips. But when he looked back at the group, the reason of his folly was apparent to him; at the sight of this other beside her, a sharp twinge of jealousy had run through him and disturbed his balance. He gazed ardently at her in the hope that she would look round, but it was only the man--he was caressing his slight moustache and hitting at loose stones while the girls talked--who turned, as if drawn by Maurice's stare, and looked full at him, with studied insolence. In him, Maurice recognised the violinist of the concert, but he, too, was taller than he had believed, and much younger. A mere boy, said Maurice to himself; a mere boy, with a disagreeable dissipated face. Madeleine Wade came hurrying to rejoin him, apologising for the delay; the meeting had, however, been fortunate, as she had had a message from Schwarz to deliver. Maurice let a few seconds elapse, then asked without preamble: "Who is that?" His companion looked quickly at him, struck both by his tone and by his unconscious use of the singular. The air of indifference with which he was looking out across the meadowland, told its own tale. "Schilsky? Don't you know Schilsky? Our Joachim IN SPE?" she asked, to tease him. Maurice Guest coloured. "Yes, I heard him play the other night," he answered in good faith. "But I didn't mean him. I meant the--the lady he was with." The girl at his side laughed, not very heartily. "ET TU, BRUTE!" she said. "I might have known it. It really is remarkable that though so many people don't think Louise goodlooking--I have often heard her called plain--yet I never knew a man go past her without turning his head.--You want to know who and what she is? Well, that depends on whom you ask. Schwarz would tell you she was one of his most gifted pupils--but no: he always says that of his pretty girls, and some do find her pretty, you know." "She is, indeed, very," said Maurice with warmth. "Though I think pretty is not just the word." "No, I don't suppose it is," said Madeleine, and this time there was a note of mockery in her laugh. But Maurice did not let himself be deterred. As it seemed likely that she was going to let the subject rest here, he persisted: "But suppose I asked you--what would you say?" She gave him a shrewd side-glance. "I think I won't tell you," she said, more gravely. "If a man has once thought a girl pretty, and all the rest of it, he's never grateful for the truth. If I said Louise was a baggage, or a minx, or some other horrid thing, you would always bear me a grudge for it, so please note, I don't say it--for we are going to be friends, I hope?" "I hope so, too," said the young man. They walked some distance along the unfinished end of the MOZARTSTRASSE, where only a few villas stood, in newly made gardens. "At least, I should like to know her name her whole name. You said Louise, I think?" She laughed outright at this. "Her name is Dufrayer, Louise Dufrayer, and she has been here studying with Schwarz for about a year and a half now. She has some talent, but is indolent to the last degree, and only works when she can't help it. Also she always has an admirer of some kind in tow. This, to-day, is her last particular friend.--Is that biographical matter enough?" He was afraid he had made himself ridiculous in her eyes, and did not answer. They walked the rest of the way in silence. At her house-door, they paused to take leave of each other. "Good-bye. Come and see me sometimes when you have time. We were once colleagues, you know, and are now fellow-pupils. I should be glad to help you if you ever need help." He thanked her and promised to remember; then walked home without, knowing how he did it. He had room in brain for one thought only; he knew her name, he knew her name. He said it again and again to himself, walked in time with it, and found it as heady as wine; the mere sound of the spoken syllables seemed to bring her nearer to him, to establish a mysterious connection between them. Moreover, in itself it pleased him extraordinarily; and he was vaguely grateful to something outside himself, that it was a name he could honestly admire. In a kind of defiant challenge to unseen powers, he doubled his arm and felt the muscles in it. Then he sat down at his piano, and, to the dismay of his landlady--for it was now late evening--practised for a couple of hours without stopping. And the scales he sent flying up and down in the darkness had a ring of exultation in them, were like cries of triumph. He had discovered the "Open Sesame" to his treasure. And there was time and to spare. He left everything to the future, in blind trust that it would bring him good fortune. It was enough that they were here together, inhabitants of the same town. Besides, he had formed a friendship with some one who knew her; a way would surely open up, in which he might make her aware of his presence. In the meantime, it was something to live for. Each day that dawned might be THE day. But little by little, like a fountain run dry, his elation subsided, and, as he lay sleepless, he had a sudden fit of jealous despair. He remembered, with a horrid distinctness, how he had seen her. Again she came towards them, at the other's side, hand in hand with him, inattentive to all but him. Now he could almost have wept at the recollection. Those clasped hands!--he could have forgiven everything else, but the thought of these remained with him and stung him. Here he lay, thinking wild and foolish things, building castles that had no earthly foundation, and all the time it was another who had the right to be with her, to walk at her side, and share her thoughts. Again he was the outsider; behind these two was a life full of detail and circumstance, of which he knew nothing. His excited brain called up pictures, imagined fiercely at words and looks, until the darkness and stillness of the room became unendurable; and he sprang up, threw on his clothing, and went out. Retracing his steps, he found the very spot where they had met. Guiltily, with a stealthy look round him, though wood and night were black as ink, he knelt down and kissed the gravel where he thought she had stood. IV. It was through Dove's agency--Dove was always on the spot to guide and assist his friends; to advise where the best, or cheapest, or rarest, of anything was to be had, from secondhand Wagner scores to hair pomade; he knew those shops where the "half-quarters" of ham or roast-beef weighed heavier than elsewhere, restaurants where the beer had least froth and the cutlets were largest for the money; knew the ins and outs of Leipzig as no other foreigner did, knew all that went on, and the affairs of everybody, as though he went through life garnering in just those little facts that others were apt to overlook. Through Dove, Maurice became a paying guest at a dinner-table kept by two maiden ladies, who eked out their income by providing a plain meal, at a low price, for respectable young people. The company was made up to a large extent of English-speaking foreigners. There were several university students--grave-faced, older men, with beards and spectacles--who looked down on the young musicians, and talked, of set purpose, on abstruse subjects. More noteworthy were two American pianists: Ford, who could not carry a single glass of beer, and played better when he had had more than one; and James, a wiry, red-haired man, with an unfaltering opinion of himself, and an iron wrist--by means of a week's practice, he could ruin any piano. Two ladies were also present. Philadelphia Jensen; of German-American parentage, was a student of voice-production, under a Swedish singing master who had lately set musical circles in a ferment, with his new and extraordinary method: its devotees swore that, in time, it would display marvellous results; but, in the meantime, the most advanced pupils were only emitting single notes, and the greater number stood, every morning, before their respective mirrors, watching their mouths open and shut, fish-fashion, without producing a sound. Miss Jensen--she preferred the English pronunciation of the J--was a large, fleshy woman, with a curled fringe and prominent eyes. Her future stage-presence was the object of general admiration; it was whispered that she aimed at Isolde. Loud in voice and manner, she was fond of proclaiming her views on all kinds of subjects, from diaphragmatic respiration, through GHOSTS, which was being read by a bold, advanced few, down to the continental methods of regulating vice--to the intense embarrassment of those who sat next her at table. Still another American lady, Miss Martin, was studying with Bendel, the rival of Schwarz; and as she lived in the same quarter of the town as Dove and Maurice, the three of them often walked home together. For the most part, Miss Martin was in a state of tragic despair. With the frankness of her race, she admitted that she had arrived in Leipzig, expecting to astonish. In this she had been disappointed; Bendel had treated her like any other of his pupils; she was still playing Haydn and Czerny, and saw endless vistas of similar composers "back of these." Dove laid the whole blame on Bendel's method--which he denounced with eloquence--and strongly advocated her becoming a pupil of Schwarz. He himself undertook to arrange matters, and, in what seemed an incredibly short time, the change was effected. For a little, things went better; Schwarz was reported to have said that she had talent, great talent, and that he would make something of her; but soon, she was complaining anew: if there were any difference between Czerny and Bertini, Haydn and Dussek, some one might "slick up" and tell her what it was. Off the subject of her own gifts, she was a lively, affable girl, with china-blue eyes, pale flaxen hair, and coal-black eyebrows; and both young men got on well with her, in the usual superficial way. For Maurice Guest, she had the additional attraction, that he had once seen her in the street with the object of his romantic fancy. Since the afternoon when he had heard from Madeleine Wade who this was, he had not advanced a step nearer making her acquaintance; though a couple of weeks had passed, though he now knew two people who knew her, and though his satisfaction at learning her name had immediately yielded to a hunger for more. And now, hardly a day went by, on which he did not see her. His infatuation had made him keen of scent; by following her, with due precaution, he had found out for himself in the BRUDERSTRASSE, the roomy old house she lived in; had found out how she came and went. He knew her associates, knew the streets she preferred, the hour of day at which she was to be met at the Conservatorium. Far away, at the other end of one of the quiet streets that lay wide and sunny about the Gewandhaus, when, to other eyes she was a mere speck in the distance, he learned to recognise her--if only by the speed at which his heart beat--and he even gave chase to imaginary resemblances. Once he remained sitting in a tramway far beyond his destination, because he traced, in one of the passengers, a curious likeness to her, in long, wavy eyebrows that were highest in the middle of the forehead. Thus the pale face with the heavy eyes haunted him by day and by night. He was very happy and very unhappy, by turns--never at rest. If he imagined she had looked observantly at him as she passed, he was elated for hours after. If she did not seem to notice him, it was brought home to him anew that he was nothing to her; and once, when he had gazed too boldly, instead of turning away his eyes, as she went close by him to Schwarz's room, and she had resented the look with cold surprise, he felt as culpable as if he had insulted her. He atoned for his behaviour, the next time they met, by assuming his very humblest air; once, too, he deliberately threw himself in her way, for the mere pleasure of standing aside with the emphatic deference of a slave. Throughout this period, and particularly after an occasion such as the last, his self-consciousness was so peculiarly intensified that his surroundings ceased to exist for him--they two were the gigantic figures on a shadow background--and what he sometimes could not believe was, that such feelings as these should be seething in him, and she remain ignorant of them. He lost touch with reality, and dreamed dreams of imperceptible threads, finer than any gossamer, which could be spun from soul to soul, without the need of speech. He heaped on her all the spiritual perfections that answered to her appearance. And he did not, for a time, observe anything to make him waver in his faith that she was whiter, stiller, and more unapproachable--of a different clay, in short, from other women. Then, however, this illusion was shattered. Late one afternoon, she came down the stairs of the house she lived in, and, pausing at the door, looked up and down the hot, empty street, shading her eyes with her hand. No one was in sight, and she was about to turn away, when, from where he was watching in a neighbouring doorway, Maurice saw the red-haired violinist come swiftly round the corner. She saw him, too, took a few, quick steps towards him, and, believing herself unseen, looked up in is face as they met; and the passionate tenderness of the look, the sudden lighting of lip and eye, racked the poor, unwilling spy for days. To suit this abrupt descent from the pedestal, he was obliged to carve a new attribute to his idol, and laboriously adapt it. Schilsky, this insolent boy, was the thorn in his side. It was Schilsky she was oftenest to be met with; he was her companion at the most unexpected hours; and, with reluctance, Maurice had to admit to himself that she had apparently no thought to spare for anyone else. But it did not make any difference. The curious way in which he felt towards her, the strange, overwhelming effect her face had on him, took no account of outside things. Though he might never hope for a word from her; though he should learn in the coming moment that she was the other's promised wife; he could not for that reason banish her from his mind. His feelings were not to be put on and off, like clothes; he had no power over them. It was simply a case of accepting things as they were, and this he sought to do. But his imagination made it hard for him, by throwing up pictures in which Schilsky was all-prominent. He saw him the confidant of her joys and troubles; HE knew their origin, knew what key her day was set in. If her head ached, if she were tired or spiritless, his hand was on her brow. The smallest events in her life were an open book to him; and it was these worthless details that Maurice Guest envied him most. He kept a tight hold on his fancy, but if, as sometimes happened, it slipped control, and painted further looks of the kind he had seen exchanged between them, a kiss or an embrace, he was as wretched as if he had in reality been present. At other times, this jealous unrest was not the bitterest drop in his cup; it was bitterer to know that she was squandering her love on one who was unworthy of it. At first, from a feeling of exaggerated delicacy, he had gone out of his way to escape hearing Schilsky's name; but this mood passed, and gave place to an undignified hankering to learn everything he could, concerning the young man. What he heard amounted to this: a talented rascal, the best violinist the Conservatorium had turned out for years, one to whom all gates would open; but--this "but" always followed, with a meaning smile and a wink of the eye: and then came the anecdotes. They had nothing heaven-scaling in them--these soiled love-stories; this perpetual impecuniosity; this inability to refuse money, no matter whose the hand that offered it; this fine art in the disregarding of established canons--and, to Maurice Guest, bred to sterner standards, they seemed unspeakably low and mean. Hours came when he strove in vain to understand her. Ignorant of these things she could not be; was it within the limits of the possible that she could overlook them?--and he shivered lest he should be forced to think less highly of her. Ultimately, sending his mind back over what he had read and heard, drawing on his own slight experience, he came to a compromise with himself. He said that most often the best and fairest women loved men who were unworthy of them. Was it not a weakness and a strength of her sex to see good where no good was?--a kind of divine frailty, a wilful blindness, a sweet inability to discern. At times, again, he felt almost content that Schilsky was what he was. If the day should ever come when, all barriers down, he, Maurice Guest, might be intimately associated with her life; if he should ever have the chance of proving to her what real love was, what a holy mystic thing, how far removed from a blind passing fancy; if he might serve her, be her slave, lay his hands under her feet, lead her up and on, all suffused in a sunset of tenderness: then, she would see that what she had believed to be love had been nothing but a FATA MORGANA, a mirage of the skies. And he heard himself whispering words of incredible fondness to her, saw her listening with wonder in her eyes. At still other moments, he was ready to renounce every hope, if, by doing so, he could add jot or tittle to her happiness. The further he spun himself into his dreams, however, and the better he learnt to know her in imagination, the harder it grew to take the first step towards realising his wishes. In those few, brief days, when he hugged her name to him as a talisman, he waited cheerfully for something to happen, something unusual, that would bring him to her notice--a dropped handkerchief, a seat vacated for her at a concert, even a timely accident. But as day after day went by, in eventless monotony, he began to cast about him for human aid. From Dove, his daily companion, Dove of the outstretched paws of continual help, he now shrank away. Miss Martin was not to be spoken to except in Dove's company. There was only one person who could assist him, if she would, and that was Madeleine Wade. He called to mind the hearty invitation she had given him, and reproached himself for not having taken advantage of it. One afternoon, towards six o'clock, he rang the bell of her lodgings in the MOZARTSTRASSE. This was a new street, the first blocks of which gave directly on the Gewandhaus square; but, at the further end, where she lived, a phalanx of redbrick and stucco fronts looked primly across at a similar line. In the third storey of one of these houses, Madeleine Wade had a single, large room, the furniture of which was so skilfully contrived, that, by day, all traces of the room's double calling were obliterated. As he entered, on this first occasion, she was practising at a grand piano which stood before one of the windows. She rose at once, and, having greeted him warmly, made him sit down among the comfortable cushions that lined the sofa. Then she took cups and saucers from a cupboard in the wall, and prepared tea over a spirit-lamp. He soon felt quite at home with her, and enjoyed himself so well that many such informal visits followed. But the fact was not to be denied: it was her surroundings that attracted him, rather than she herself. True, he found her frankness delightfully "refreshing," and when he spoke of her, it was as of an "awfully good sort," "a first-class girl"; for Madeleine was invariably lively, kind and helpful. At the same time, she was without doubt a trifle too composed, too sure of herself; she had too keen an eye for human foibles; she came towards you with a perfectly natural openness, and she came all the way--there was nothing left for you to explore. And when not actually with her, it was easy to forget her; there was never a look or a smile, never a barbed word, never a sudden spontaneous gesture--the vivid translation of a thought--to stamp itself on your memory. But it was only at the outset that he thought things like these. Madeleine Wade had been through experiences of the same kind before; and hardly a fortnight later they were calling each other by their Christian names. When he came to her, towards evening, tired and inclined to be lonely, she seated him in a corner of the sofa, and did not ask him to say much until she made the tea. Then, when the cups were steaming in front of them, she discussed sympathetically with him the progress of his work. She questioned him, too, about his home and family, and he read her parts of his mother's letters, which arrived without fail every Tuesday morning. She also drew from him a more detailed account of his previous life; and, in this connection, they had several animated discussions about teaching, a calling to which Madeleine looked composedly forward to returning, while Maurice, in strong superlative, declared he had rather force a flock of sheep to walk in line. She told him, too, some of the gossip the musical quarter of the town was rife with, about those in high places; and, in particular, of the bitter rivalry that had grown up with the years between Schwarz and Bendel, the chief masters of the piano. If these two met in the street, they passed each other with a stony stare; if, at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, a pupil of one was to play, the other rose ostentatiously and left the hall. She also hinted that in order to obtain all you wanted at the Conservatorium, to be favoured above your fellows, it was only necessary flagrantly to bribe one of the clerks, Kleefeld by name, who was open to receive anything, being wretchedly impecunious and the father of a large family. Finding, too, that Maurice was bent on learning German, she, who spoke the language fluently, proposed that they should read it together; and soon it became their custom to work through a few pages of QUINTUS FIXLEIN, a scene or two of Schiller, some lyrics of Heine. They also began to play duets, symphonies old and new, and Madeleine took care constantly to have something fresh and interesting at hand. To all this the young man brought an unbounded zeal, and, if he had had his way, they would have gone on playing or reading far into the evening. She smiled at his eagerness. "You absorb like a sponge." When it grew too dark to see, he confided to her that his dearest wish was to be a conductor. He was not yet clear how it could be managed, but he was sure that this was the branch of his art for which he had most aptitude. Here she interrupted him. "Do you never write verses?" Her question seemed to him so meaningless that he only laughed, and went on with what he was saying. For the event of his plan proving impracticable--at home they had no idea of it--he was training as a concert-player; but he intended to miss no chance that offered, of learning how to handle an orchestra. Throughout these hours of stimulating companionship, however, he did not lose sight of his original purpose in going to see Madeleine. It was only that just the right moment never seemed to come; and the name he was so anxious to hear, had not once been mentioned between them. Often, in the dusk, his lips twitched to speak it; but he feared his own awkwardness, and her quick tongue; then, too, the subject was usually far aside from what they were talking of, and it would have made a ludicrous impression to drag it in by the hair. But one day his patience was rewarded. He had carelessly taken up a paper-bound volume of Chopin, and was on the point of commenting upon it, for he had lately begun to understand the difference between a Litolff and a Mikuli. But it slipped from his hand, and he was obliged to crawl under the piano to pick it up; on a corner of the cover, in a big, black, scrawly writing, was the name of Marie Louise Dufrayer. He cleared his throat, laid the volume down, took it up again; then, realising that the moment had come, he put a bold face on the matter. "I see this belongs to Miss Dufrayer," he said bluntly, and, as his companion's answer was only a careless: "Yes, Louise forgot it the last time she was here," he went on without delay: "I should like to know Miss Dufrayer, Madeleine. Do you think you could introduce me to her?" Madeleine, who was in the act of taking down a book from her hanging shelves, turned and looked at him. He was still red in the face, from the exertion of stooping. "Introduce you to Louise?" she queried. "Why?--why do you want to be introduced to her?" "Oh, I don't know. For no particular reason." She sat down at the table, opened the book, and turned the leaves. "Oh well, I daresay I can, if you wish it, and an opportunity occurs--if you're with me some day when I meet her.--Now shall we go on with the JUNGFRAU? We were beginning the third act, I think. Here it is: Wir waren Herzensbruder, Waffenfreunde, Fur eine Sache hoben wir den Arm!" But Maurice did not take the book she handed him across the table. "Won't you give me a more definite promise than that?" Madeleine sat back in her chair, and, folding her arms, looked thoughtfully at him. Only a momentary silence followed his words, but, in this fraction of time, a series of impressions swept through her brain with the continuity of a bird's flight. It was clear to her at once, that what prompted his insistence was not an ordinary curiosity, or a passing whim; in a flash, she understood that here, below the surface, something was at work in him, the existence of which she had not even suspected. She was more than annoyed with herself at her own foolish obtuseness; she had had these experiences before, and then, as now, the object of her interest had invariably been turned aside by the first pretty, silly face that came his way. The main difference was that she had been more than ordinarily drawn to Maurice Guest; and, believing it impossible, in this case, for anyone else to be sharing the field with her, she had over-indulged the hope that he sought her out for herself alone. She endeavoured to learn more. But this time Maurice was on his guard, and the questions she put, straight though they were, only elicited the response that he had seen Miss Dufrayer shortly after arriving, and had been much struck by her. Madeleine's brain travelled rapidly backwards. "But if I remember rightly, Maurice, we met Louise one day in the SCHEIBENHOLZ, the first time we went for a walk together. Why didn't you stop then, and be introduced to her, if you were so anxious?" "Why do we ever do foolish things?" Her amazement was so patent that he made uncomfortable apology for himself. "It is ridiculous, I know," he said and coloured. "And it must seem doubly so to you. But that I should want to know her--there's nothing strange in that, is there? You, too, Madeleine, have surely admired people sometimes--some one, say, who has done a fine thing--and have felt that you must know them personally, at all costs?" "Perhaps I have. But romantic feelings of that kind are sure to end in smoke. As a rule they've no foundation but our own wishes.--If you take my advice, Maurice, you will be content to admire Louise at a distance. Think her as pretty as you like, and imagine her to be all that's sweet and charming: but never mind about knowing her." "But why on earth not?" "Why, nothing will come of it." "That depends on what you mean by nothing." "You don't understand. I must be plainer.--Do sit down, and don't fidget so.--How long have you been here now? Nearly two months. Well, that's long enough to know something of what's going on. You must have both seen and heard that Louise has no eyes for anyone but a certain person, to put it bluntly, that she is wrapped up in Schilsky. This has been going on for over a year now, and she seems to grow more infatuated every day. When she first came to Leipzig, we were friends; she lived in this neighbourhood, and I was able to be of service to her. Now, weeks go by and I don't see her; she has broken with every one--for Louise is not a girl to do things by halves.--Introduce you? Of course I can. But suppose it done, with all pomp and ceremony, what will you get from it? I know Louise. A word or two, if her ladyship is in the mood; if not, you will be so much thin air for her. And after that, a nod if she meets you in the street--and that's all." "It's enough." "You're easily satisfied.--But tell me, honestly now, Maurice, what possible good can that do you?" He moved aimlessly about the room. "Good? Must one always look for good in everything?--I can see quite well that from your point of view the whole thing must seem absurd. I expect nothing whatever from it, but I'm going to know her, and that's all about it." Still in the same position, with folded arms, Madeleine observed him with unblinking eyes. "And you won't bear me a grudge, if things go badly?--I mean if you are disappointed, or dissatisfied?" He made a gesture of impatience. "Yes, but I know Louise, and you don't." He had picked up from the writing-table the photograph of a curate, and he stared at it as if he had no thought but to let the mild features stamp themselves on his mind. Madeleine's eyes continued to bore him through. At last, out of a silence, she said slowly: "Of course I can introduce you--it's done with a wave of the hand. But, as your friend, I think it only right to warn you what you must expect. For I can see you don't understand in the least, and are laying up a big disappointment for yourself. However, you shall have your way--if only to show you that I am right." "Thanks, Madeleine--thanks awfully." They settled down to read Schiller. But Maurice made one slip after another, and she let them pass uncorrected. She was annoyed with herself afresh, for having made too much of the matter, for having blown it up to a fictitious importance, when the wiser way would have been to treat it as of no consequence at all. The next afternoon he arrived, with expectation in his face; but not on this day, nor the next, nor the next again, did she bring the subject up between them. On the fourth, however, as he was leaving, she said abruptly: "You must have patience for a little, Maurice. Louise has gone to Dresden." "That's why the blinds are down," he exclaimed without thinking, then coloured furiously at his own words, and, to smooth them over, asked: "Why has she gone? For how long?" But Madeleine caught him up. "SIEH DA, some one has been playing sentinel!" she said in raillery; and it seemed to him that every fold in his brain was laid bare to her, before she answered: "She has gone for a week or ten days--to visit some friends who are staying there." He nodded, and was about to open the door, when she added: "But set your mind at rest--HE is here." Maurice looked sharply up; but a minute or two passed before the true meaning of her words broke on him. He coloured again--a mortifying habit he had not outgrown, and one which seemed to affect him more in the presence of Madeleine than of anyone else. "It's hardly a thing to joke about." "Joke!--who is joking?" she asked, and raised her eyebrows so high that her forehead was filled with wrinkles. "Nothing was further from my thoughts." Maurice hesitated, and stood undecided, holding the doorhandle. Then, following an impulse, he turned and sat down again. "Madeleine, tell me--I wouldn't ask anyone but you--what sort of a fellow IS this Schilsky?" "What sort of a fellow?" She laughed sarcastically. "To be quite truthful, Maurice, the best fiddler the Con. has turned out for years." "Now you're joking again. As if I didn't know that. Everyone says the same." "You want his moral character? Well, I'll be equally candid. Or, at least, I'll give you my opinion of him. It's another superlative. Just as I consider him the best violinist, I also hold him to be the greatest scamp in the place--and I've no objection to use a stronger word if you like. I wouldn't take his hand, no, not if he offered it to me. The last time he was in this room, about six months ago, he--well, let us say he borrowed, without a word to me, five or six marks that were lying loose on the writing-table. Yes, it's a fact," she repeated, complacently eyeing Maurice's dismay. "Otherwise?--oh, otherwise, he was born, I think, with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has one piece of luck after another. Zeppelin discovered him ten years ago, on a concert-tour--his father is a smith in Warsaw--and brought him to Leipzig. He was a prodigy, then, and a rich Jewish banker took him up, and paid for his education; and when he washed his hands of him in disgust, Schaefele's wife--Schaefele is head of the HANDELVEREIN, you know--adopted him as a son--some people say as more than a son, for, though she was nearly forty, she was perfectly crazy over him, and behaved as foolishly as any of the dozens of silly girls who have lost their hearts to him." "I suppose they are engaged," said Maurice after a pause, speaking out of his own thoughts. "Do you?" she asked with mild humour. "I really never asked them.--But this is just another example of his good fortune. When he has worn out every one else's patience, through his dishonest extravagance, he picks up a rich wife, who is not averse to supporting him before marriage." Maurice looked at her reproachfully. "I wonder you care to repeat such gossip." "It's not gossip, Maurice. Every one knows it. Louise makes no mystery of her doings--doesn't care that much what people say. While as for him--well, it's enough to know it's Schilsky. The thing is an open secret. Listen, now, and I'll tell you how it began--just to let you judge for yourself what kind of a girl you have to deal with in Louise, and how Schilsky behaves when he wants a thing, and whether such a pair think a formal engagement necessary to their happiness. When Louise came here, a year and a half ago, Schilsky was away somewhere with Zeppelin, and didn't get back till a couple of months afterwards. As I said, I knew Louise pretty well at that time; she had got herself into trouble with--but that's neither here nor there. Well, my lord returns--he himself tells how it happened. It was a Thursday evening, and a Radius Commemoration was going on at the Con. He went in late, and stood at the back of the hall. Louise was there, too, just before him, and, from the first minute he saw her, he couldn't take his eyes off her--others who were by say, too, he seemed perfectly fascinated. No one can stare as rudely as Schilsky, and he ended by making her so uncomfortable that she couldn't bear it any longer, and went out of the hall. He after her, and it didn't take him an hour to find out all about her. The next evening, at an ABEND, they were both there again it was just like Louise to go!--and the same thing was repeated. She left again before it was over, he followed, and this time found her in one of the side corridors; and there--mind you, without a single word having passed between them!--he took her in his arms and kissed her, kissed her soundly, half a dozen times--though they had never once spoken to each other: he boasts of it to this day. That same evening----" "Don't, Madeleine--please, don't say any more! I don't care to hear it," broke in Maurice. He had flushed to the roots of his hair, at some points of resemblance to his own case, then grown pale again, and now he waved his arm meaninglessly in the air. "He is a scoundrel, a--a----" But he recognised that he could not condemn one without the other, and stopped short. "My dear boy, if I don't tell you, other people will. And at least you know I mean well by you. Besides," she went on, not without a touch of malice as she eyed him sitting there, spoiling the leaves of a book. "Besides, I may as well show you, how you have to treat Louise, if you want to make an impression on her. You call him a scoundrel, but what of her? Believe me, Maurice," she said more seriously, "Louise is not a whit too good for him; they were made for each other. And of course he will marry her eventually, for the sake of her, money "--here she paused and looked deliberately at him--"if not for her own." This time there was no mistaking the meaning of her words. "Madeleine!" He rose from his seat with such force that the table tilted. But Madeleine did not falter. "I told you already, you know, that Louise doesn't care what is said about her. As soon as this unfortunate affair began, she threw up the rooms she was in at the time, and moved nearer the TALSTRASSE--where he lives. Rumour has it also that she provided herself with an accommodating landlady, who can be blind and deaf when necessary." "How CAN you repeat such atrocious scandal?" He stared at her, in incredulous dismay. Her words were so many arrows, the points of which remained sticking in him. She shrugged her shoulders. "Your not believing it doesn't affect the truth of the story, Maurice. It was the talk of the place when it happened. And you may despise rumour as you will, my experience is, a report never springs up that hasn't some basis of fact to go on--however small." He choked back, with an effort, the eloquent words that came to his lips; of what use was it to make himself still more ridiculous in her eyes? His hat had fallen to the floor; he picked it up, and brushed it on his sleeve, without knowing what he did. "Oh, well, of course, if you think that," he said as coolly as he was able, "nothing I could say would make any difference. Every one is free to his opinions, I suppose. But, all the same, I must say, Madeleine"--he grew hot in spite of himself. "You have been her friend, you say; you have known her intimately; and yet just because she ... she cares for this fellow in such a way that she sets caring for him above being cautious--why, not one woman in a thousand would have the courage for that sort of thing! It needs courage, not to mind what people--no, what your friends imagine, and how falsely they interpret what you do. Besides, one has only to look at her to see how absurd it is. That face and--I don't know her, Madeleine; I've never spoken to her, and never may, yet I am absolutely certain that what is said about her isn't true. So certain that--But after all, if this is what you think about ... about it, then all I have to say is, we had better not discuss the subject again. It does no good, and we should never be of the same opinion." Not without embarrassment, now that he had said his say, he turned to the door. But Madeleine was not in the least angry. She gave him her hand, and said, with a smile, yet gravely, too: "Agreed, Maurice! We will not speak of Louise again." V. He shunned Madeleine for days after this. He was morose and unhappy, and brooded darkly over the baseness of wagging tongues. For the first time in his life he had come into touch with slander, that invisible Hydra, and straightway it seized upon the one person to whom he was not indifferent. In this mood it was a relief to him that certain three windows in the BRUDERSTRASSE remained closed and shuttered; with the load of malicious gossip fresh on his mind, he chose rather not to see her; he must first accustom himself to it, as to the scar left by a wound. He did not, of course, believe what Madeleine, with her infernal frankness, had told him; but the knowledge that such a report was abroad, depressed him unspeakably: it took colour from the sky and light from the sun. Sometimes in these days, as he sat at his piano, he had a sudden fit of discouragement, which made it seem not worth while to continue playing. It was unthinkable that she could be aware how busy scandal was with her name, and how her careless acts were spied on and misrepresented; and he turned over in his mind ways and means by which she might be induced to take more thought for herself in future. He did not believe it; but hours of distracting uncertainty came, none the less, when small things which his memory had stored up made him go so far as to ask himself, what if it should be true?--what then? But he had not courage enough to face an answer; he put the possibility away from him, in the extreme background of his mind, refused to let his brain piece its observations together. The mere suspicion was a blasphemy, a blasphemy against her dignified reserve, against her sweet pale face, her supreme disregard of those about her. Not thus would guilt have shown itself. Schilsky, who was the origin of all the evil, he made wide circuits to avoid. He thought of him, at this time, with what he believed to be a feeling of purely personal antipathy. In his most downcast moments, he had swift and foolish visions publicly executing vengeance on him; but if, a moment later, he saw the violinist's red hair or big hat before him in the street, he turned aside as though the other had been plague-struck. Once, however, when he was going up the steps of the Conservatorium, and Schilsky, in leaping down, pushed carelessly against him, he returned the knock so rudely and swore with such downrightness that, in spite of his hurry, Schilsky stopped and fixed him, and with equal vehemence damned him for a fool of an Englishman. His despondency spread like a weed. A furious impatience overcame him, too, at the thought of the innumerable hours he would be forced to spend at the piano, day in, day out, for months to come, before the result could be compared with the achievements even of many a fellow-student. As the private lessons Schwarz gave were too expensive for him, he decided, as a compromise, to take a course of extra lessons with Furst, who prepared pupils for the master, and was quite willing to come to terms, in other words, who taught for what he could get. Once a week, then, for the rest of the summer, Maurice climbed the steep, winding stair of the house in the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE where Furst lived with his mother. It was so dark on this stair that, in dull weather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all day long on the different landings. To its convolutions, in its unaired corners, clung what seemed to be the stale, accumulated smells of years; and these were continually reinforced; since every day at dinnertime, the various kitchen-windows, all of which gave on the stair, were opened to let the piercing odours of cooking escape. The house, like the majority of its kind in this relatively new street, was divided into countless small lodgings; three families, with three rooms apiece, lived on each storey, and on the fifth floor, at the top of the house, the same number of rooms was let out singly. Part of the third storey was occupied by a bird-fancier; and between him and the Fursts above waged perpetual war, one of those petty, unending wars that can only arise and be kept up when, as here, such heterogeneous elements are forced to live side by side, under one roof. The fancier, although his business was nominally in the town, had enough of his wares beside him to make his house a lively, humming kind of place, and the strife dated back to a day when, the door standing temptingly ajar, Peter, the Fursts' lean cat, had sneaked stealthily in upon this, to him, enchanted ground, and, according to the fancier, had caused the death, from fright, of a delicate canary, although the culprit had done nothing more than sit before the cage, licking his lips. This had happened several years ago, but each party was still fertile in planning annoyances for the other, and the females did not bow when they met. On the fourth floor, next the Fursts, lived a pale, harassed teacher, with a family which had long since outgrown its accommodation; for the wife was perpetually in childbed, and cots and cradles were the chief furniture of the house. As the critical moments of her career drew nigh, the "Frau Lehrer" complained, with an aggravated bitterness, of the unceasing music that went on behind the thin partition; and this grievance, together with the racy items of gossip left behind the midwife's annual visit, like a trail of smoke, provided her and Furst's mother with infinite food for talk. They were thick friends again a few minutes after a scene so lively that blows seemed imminent, and they met every morning on the landing, where, with broom or child in hand, they stood gossiping by the hour. When Maurice rang, Frau Furst opened the door to him herself, having first cautiously examined him through the kitchen window. Drying her hands on her apron, she ushered him through the tiny entry--a place of dangers, pitch-dark as it was, and lumbered with chests and presses--into Franz's room, the "best room" of the house. Here were collected a red plush suite, which was the pride of Frau Furst's heart, and all the round, yellowing family photographs; here, too, stood the well-used Bechstein, pile upon pile of music, a couple of music-stands, a bust of Schubert, a faded, framed diploma. For years, assuredly, the windows had never been thrown wide open; the odours of stale coffee and forgotten dinners, of stove and warmed wood, of piano, music and beeswax: all these lay as it were in streaks in the atmosphere, and made it heavy and thought-benumbing. A willing listener was worth more than gold to Frau Furst and here, the first time he came, while waiting for Franz, Maurice heard in detail the history of the family. The father had been an oboist in the Gewandhaus orchestra, and had died a few years previously, of a chill incurred after a performance of DIE MEISTERSINGER. At his death, it had fallen on Franz to support the family; and, thanks to Schwarz's aid and influence, Franz was able to get as many pupils as he had time to teach. It was easy to see that this, her eldest son, was the apple of Frau Furst's eye; her other children seemed to be there only to meet his needs; his lightest wish was law. Each additional pupil that sought him out, was a fresh tribute to his genius, each one that left him, no matter after how long, was unthankful and a traitor. For the nights on which his quartet met at the house, she prepared as another woman would for a personal fete; and she watched the candles grow shorter without a tinge of regret. When Franz played at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, the family turned out in a body. Schwarz was a god, all-powerful, on whom their welfare depended; and it was necessary to propitiate him by a quarterly visit on a Sunday morning, when, over wine and biscuits, she wept real and feigned tears of gratitude. In this hard-working, careworn woman, who was seldom to be seen but in petticoat, bed-jacket, and heelless, felt shoes; who, her whole life long, had been little better than a domestic servant; in her there existed a devotion to art which had never wavered. It would have seemed to her contrary to nature that Franz should be anything but a musician, and it was also quite in the order of things for them to be poor. Two younger boys, who were still at school, gave up all their leisure time to music--they had never in their lives tumbled round a football or swung a bat--and Franz believed that the elder would prove a skilful violinist. Of the little girls, one had a pure voice and a good ear, and was to be a singer--for before this Juggernaut, prejudice went down. Had anyone suggested to Frau Furst that her daughter should be a clerk, even a teacher, she would have flung up hands of horror; but music!--that was a different matter. It was, moreover, the single one of the arts, in which this staunch advocate of womanliness granted her sex a share. "Ask Franz," she said to Maurice. "Franz knows. He will explain. All women can do is to reproduce what some one else has thought or felt." As an immortal example of the limits set by sex, she invariably fell back on Clara Schumann, with whom she had more than once come into personal contact. In her youth, Frau Furst had had a clear soprano voice, and, to Maurice's interest, she told him how she had sometimes been sent for to the Schumann's house in the INSELSTRASSE, to sing Robert's songs for him. "Clara accompanied me," she said, relating this, the great reminiscence of her life; "and he was there, too, although I never saw him face to face. He was too shy for that. But he was behind a screen, and sometimes he would call: 'I must alter that; it is too high;' or 'Quicker, quicker!' Sometimes even 'Bravo!'" Her motherly ambitions for Franz knew no bounds. One of the few diversions she allowed herself was a visit to the theatre--when Franz had tickets given to him; when one of her favourite operas was performed; or on the anniversary of her husband's death--and, on such occasions, she pointed out to the younger children, the links that bound and would yet bind them to the great house. "That was your father's seat," she reminded them every time. "The second row from the end. He came in at the door to the left. And that," pointing to the conductor's raised chair, "is where Franz will sit some day." For she dreamed of Franz in all the glory of KAPELLMEISTER; saw him swinging the little stick that dominated the theatre-audience, singers and players alike. And the children, hanging over the high gallery, shuffling their restless feet, thus had their path as dearly traced for them, their destiny as surely sealed, as any fate-shackled heroes of antiquity. * * * * * Late one afternoon about this time, Franz might have been found together with his friends Krafft and Schilsky, at the latter's lodging in the TALSTRASSE. He was astride a chair, over the back of which he had folded his arms; and his chubby, rubicund face glistened with moisture. In the middle of the room, at the corner of a bare deal table that was piled with loose music and manuscript, Schilsky sat improving and correcting the tails and bodies of hastily made, notes. He was still in his nightshirt, over which he had thrown coat and trousers; and, wide open at the neck, it exposed to the waist a skin of the dead whiteness peculiar to red-haired people. His face, on the other hand, was sallow and unfresh; and the reddish rims of the eyes, and the coarsely self-indulgent mouth, contrasted strikingly with the general youthfulness of his appearance. He had the true musician's head: round as a cannon-ball, with a vast, bumpy forehead, on which the soft fluffy hair began far back, and stood out like a nimbus. His eyes were either desperately dreamy or desperately sharp, never normally attentive or at rest; his blunted nose and chin were so short as to make the face look top-heavy. A carefully tended young moustache stood straight out along his cheeks. He had large, slender hands, and quick movements. The air of the room was like a thin grey veiling, for all three puffed hard at cigarettes. Without removing his from between his teeth, Schilsky related an adventure of the night before. He spoke in jerks, with a strong lisp, intent on what he was doing than on what he was saying. "Do you think he'd budge?" he asked in a thick, spluttery way. "Not he. Till nearly two. And then I couldn't get him along. He thought it wasn't eleven, and wanted to relieve himself at every corner. To irritate an imaginary bobby. He disputed with them, too. Heavens, what sport it was! At last I dragged him up here and got him on the sofa. Off he rolls again. So I let him lie. He didn't disturb me." Heinrich Krafft, the hero of the episode lay on the short, uncomfortable sofa, with the table-cover for a blanket. In answer to Schilsky, he said faintly, without opening his eyes: "Nothing would. You are an ox. When I wake this morning, with a mouth like gum arabic, he sits there as if he had not stirred all night. Then to bed, and snores till midday, through all the hellish light and noise." Here Furst could not resist making a little joke. He announced himself by a chuckle-like the click of a clock about to strike. "He's got to make the most of his liberty. He doesn't often get off duty. We know, we know." He laughed tonelessly, and winked at Krafft. Krafft quoted: In der Woche zwier-- "Now, you fellows, shut up!" said Schilsky. It was plain that banter of this kind was not disagreeable to him; at the same time he was just at the moment too engrossed, to have more than half an car for what was said. With his short-sighted eyes close to the paper, he was listening with all his might to some harmonies that his fingers played on the table. When, a few minutes later he rose and stretched the stiffness from his limbs, his face, having lost its expression of rapt concentration, seemed suddenly to have grown younger. He set about dressing himself by drawing off his nightshirt over his head. At a word from him, Furst sprang to collect utensils for making coffee. Heinrich Krafft opened his eyes and followed their movements; and the look he had for Schilsky was as warily watchful as a cat's. Schilsky, an undeveloped Hercules--he was narrow in proportion to his height--and still naked to the waist, took some bottles from a long line of washes and perfumes that stood on the washstand, and, crossing to an elegant Venetian-glass mirror, hung beside the window, lathered his chin. It was a peculiarity of his only to be able to attend thoroughly to one thing at a time, and a string of witticisms uttered by Furst passed unheeded. But Krafft's first words made him start. Having watched him for some time, the latter said slowly. "I say, old fellow, are you sure it's all square about Lulu and this Dresden business?" Razor in hand, Schilsky turned and looked at him. As he did so, he coloured, and answered with an over-anxious haste: "Of course I am. I made her go. She didn't want to." "That's a well-known trick." The young man scowled and thrust out his under-lip. "Do you think I'm not up to their tricks? Do you want to teach me how to manage a woman? I tell you I sent her away." He tried to continue shaving, but was visibly uneasy. "Well, if you won't believe me," he said, with sudden anger, though neither of the others had spoken. "Now where the deuce is that letter?" He rummaged among the music and papers on the table; in chaotic drawers; beneath dirty, fat-scaled dinner-dishes on the washstand; between door and stove, through a kind of rubbishheap that had formed with time, of articles of dress, spoiled sheets of music-paper, soiled linen, empty bottles, and boots, countless boots, single and in pairs. When he had found what he looked for, he ran his eyes down the page, as if he were going to read it aloud. Then, however, he changed his mind; a boyish gratification overspread his face, and, tossing the letter to Krafft, he bade them read it for themselves. Furst leaned over the end of the sofa. It was written in English, in a bold, scrawly hand, and ran, without date or heading: MY OWN DEAREST NOW ONLY FOUR DAYS MORE--I COUNT THEM MORNING AND NIGHT. I AM GOOD FOR NOTHING--MY THOUGHTS ARE ALWAYS WITH YOU. YESTERDAY AT THE GALLERY I SAT ALONE IN THE ROOM WHERE THE MADONNA IS, PRETENDING ENTHUSIASM--WHILE THE REST WENT TO HOLBEIN--AND READ YOUR LETTER OVER AND OVER AGAIN. BUT IT MADE ME A LITTLE UNHAPPY TOO, FOR I SOON FOUND OUT THAT YOU HAD WRITTEN IT AT THREE DIFFERENT TIMES. IS IT REALLY SO HARD TO WRITE TO LULU? HAVE YOU WORKED BETTER FOR WANT OF INTERRUPTION?--MY DAMNED INTERRUPTIONS, AS YOU CALLED THEM LAST WEEK WHEN YOU WERE SO ANGRY WITH ME. SHALL YOU HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO SHOW ME WHEN I COME HOME? NO--DON'T SAY YOU WILL--OR I SHALL HATE ZARATHUSTRA MORE THAN I DO ALREADY. AND NOW ONLY TILL FRIDAY. THIS TIME YOU WILL MEET ME YES?--AND NOT COME TO THE STATION AN HOUR LATE, AS YOU SAID YOU DID LAST TIME. IF YOU ARE NOT THERE--I WARN YOU--I SHALL THROW MYSELF UNDER THE TRAIN. I AM WRITING, TO GRUNHUT. GET FLOWERS--THERE IS MONEY IN ONE OF THE VASES ON THE WRITING-TABLE. OH, IF YOU ONLY WILL, WE SHALL HAVE SUCH A HAPPY EVENING--IF ONLY YOU WILL. AND I SHALL NEVER LEAVE YOU AGAIN, NEVER AGAIN. YOUR OWN LOVING, L. Furst could not make out much of this; he was still spelling through the first paragraph when Krafft had finished. Schilsky, who had gone on dressing, kept a sharp eye on his friends--particularly on Krafft. "Well?" he asked eagerly as the letter was laid down. Krafft was silent, but Furst kissed his finger-tips to a large hanging photograph of the girl in question, and was facetious on the subject of dark, sallow women. "And you, Heinz? What do you say?" demanded Schilsky with growing impatience. Still Krafft did not reply, and Schilsky was mastered by a violent irritation. "Why the devil can't you open your mouth? What's the matter with you? Have YOU anything like that to show--you Joseph, you?" Krafft let a waxen hand drop over the side of the sofa and trail on the floor. "The letters were burned, dear boy--when you appeared." He closed his eyes and smiled, seeming to remember something. But a moment later, he fixed Schilsky sharply, and asked: "You want my opinion, do you?" "Of course I do," said Schilsky, and flung things about the room. "Lulu," said Krafft with deliberation, "Lulu is getting you under her thumb." The other sprang up, swore, and aimed a boot, which he had been vainly trying to put on the wrong foot, at a bottle that protruded from the rubbish-heap. "Me? Me under her thumb?" he spluttered--his lips became more marked under excitement. "I should like to see her try it. You don't know me. You don't know Lulu. I am her master, I tell you. She can't call her soul her own." "And yet," said Krafft, unmoved, "it's a fact all the same." Schilsky applied a pair of curling tongs to his hair, at such a degree of heat that a lock frizzled, and came off in his hand. His anger redoubled. "Is it my fault that she acts like a wet-nurse? Is that what you call being under her thumb?" he cried. Furst tried to conciliate him and to make peace. "You're a lucky dog, old fellow, and you know you are. We all know it--in spite of occasional tantaras. But you would be still luckier if you took a friend's sound advice and got you to the registrar. Ten minutes before the registrar, and everything would be different. Then she might play up as she liked; you would be master in earnest." "Registrar?" echoed Krafft with deep scorn. "Listen to the ape! Not if we can hinder it. When he's fool enough for that--I know him--it will be with something fresher and less faded, something with the bloom still on it." Schilsky winced as though he had been struck. Her age--she was eight years older than he--was one of his sorest points. "Oh, come on, now," said Furst as he poured out the coffee. "That's hardly fair. She's not so young as she might be, it's true, but no one can hold a candle to her still. Lulu is Lulu." "Ten minutes before the registrar," continued Krafft, meditatively shaking his head. "And for the rest of life, chains. And convention. And security, which stales. And custom, which satiates. Oh no, I am not for matrimony!" Schilsky's ill-humour evaporated in a peal of boisterous laughter. "Yes, and tell us why, chaste Joseph, tell us why," he cried, throwing a brush at his friend. "Or go to the devil--where you're at home." Krafft warded off the brush. "Look here," he said, "confess. Have you kissed another girl for months? Have you had a single billet-doux?" But Schilsky only winked provokingly. Having finished laughing, he said with emphasis: "But after Lulu, they are all tame. Lulu is Lulu, and that's the beginning and end of the matter." "Exactly my opinion," said Furst. "And yet, boys, if I wanted to make your mouths water, I could." He closed one eye and smacked his lips. "I know of something--something young and blond ... and dimpled ... and round, round as a feather-pillow"--he made descriptive movements of the hand--"with a neck, boys, a neck, I say----" Here in sheer ecstasy, he stuck fast, and could get no further. Schilsky roared anew. "He knows of something ... so he does," he cried--Furst's pronounced tastes were a standing joke among them. "Show her to us, old man, show her to us! Where are you hiding her? If she's under eighteen, she'll do--under eighteen, mind you, not a day over. Come along, I'm on for a spree. Up with you, Joseph!" He was ready, come forth from the utter confusion around him, like a god from a cloud. He wore light grey clothes, a loosely knotted, bright blue tie, with floating ends and conspicuous white spots, and buttoned boots of brown kid. Hair and handkerchief were strongly scented. Krafft, having been prevailed on to rise, made no further toilet than that of dipping his head in a basin of water, which stood on the tail of the grand piano. His hair emerged a mass of dripping ringlets, covetously eyed by his companions. They walked along the streets, Schilsky between the others, whom he overtopped by head and shoulders: three young rebels out against the Philistines: three bursting charges of animal spirits. There was to be a concert that evening at the Conservatorium, and, through vestibule and entrance-halls, which, for this reason, were unusually crowded, the young men made a kind of triumphal progress. Especially Schilsky. Not a girl, young or old, but peddled for a word or a look from him; and he was only too prodigal of insolently expressive glances, whispered greetings, and warm pressures of the hand. The open flattery and bold adoration of which he was the object mounted to his head; he felt secure in his freedom, and brimful of selfconfidence; and, as the three of them walked back to the town, his exhilaration, a sheer excess of well-being, was no longer to be kept within decent bounds. "Wait!" he cried suddenly as they were passing the Gewandhaus. "Wait a minute! See me make that woman there take a fit." He ran across the road to the opposite pavement, where the only person in sight, a stout, middle-aged woman, was dragging slowly along, her arms full of parcels; and, planting himself directly in front of her, so that she was forced to stop, he seized both her hands and worked them up and down. "Now upon my soul, who would have thought of seeing you here, you baggage, you?" he cried vociferously. The woman was speechless from amazement; her packages fell to the ground, and she gazed open-mouthed at the wild-haired lad before her, making, at the same time, vain attempts to free her hands. "No, this really is luck," he went on, holding her fast. "Come, a kiss, my duck, just one! EIN KUSSCHEN IN EHREN, you know----" and, in very fact, he leaned forward and pecked at her cheek. The blood dyed her face and she panted with rage. "You young scoundrel!" she gasped. "You impertinent young dog! I'll give you in charge. I'll--I'll report you to the police. Let me go this instant--this very instant, do you hear?--or I'll scream for help." The other two had come over to enjoy the fun. Schilsky turned to them with a comical air of dismay, and waved his arm. "Well I declare, if I haven't been and made a mistake!" he exclaimed, and slapped his forehead. "I'm out by I don't know how much--by twenty years, at least. No thank you, Madam, keep your kisses! You're much too old and ugly for me." He flourished his big hat in her face, pirouetted on his heel, and the three of them went down the street, hallooing with laughter. They had supper together at the BAVARIA, Schilsky standing treat; for they had gone by way of the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he called in to investigate the vase mentioned in the letter. Afterwards, they commenced an informal wandering from one haunt to another, now by themselves, now with stray acquaintances. Krafft, who was still enfeebled by the previous night, and who, under the best of circumstances, could not carry as much as his friends, was the first to give in. For a time, they got him about between them. Then Furst grew obstreperous, and wanted to pour his beer on the floor as soon as it was set before him, so that they were put out of two places, in the second of which they left Krafft. But the better half of the night was over before Schilsky was comfortably drunk, and in a state to unbosom himself to a sympathetic waitress, about the hardship it was to be bound to some one older than yourself. He shed tears of pity at his lot, and was extremely communicative. "'N KORPER, SCHA-AGE IHNEN, 'N KORPER!" but old, old, a "HALB'SCH JAHR' UND'RT" older than he was, and desperately jealous. "It's too bad; such a nice young man as you are," said the MAMSELL, who, herself not very sober, was sitting at ease on his knee, swinging her legs. "But you nice ones are always chicken-hearted. Treat her as she deserves, my chuck, and make no bones about it. Just let her rip--and you stick to me!" VI. One cold, windy afternoon, when dust was stirring and rain seemed imminent, Maurice Guest walked with bent head and his hat pulled over his eyes. He was returning from the ZEITZERSTRASSE, where, in a photographer's show-case, he had a few days earlier discovered a large photograph of Louise. This was a source of great pleasure to him. Here, no laws of breeding or delicacy hindered him from gazing at her as often as he chose. On this particular day, whether he had looked too long, or whether the unrest of the weather, the sense of something impending, the dusty dryness that craved rain, had got into his blood and disquieted him: whatever it was, he felt restless and sick for news of her, and, at this very moment, was on his way to Madeleine, in the foolish hope of hearing her name. But a little adventure befell him which made him forget his intention. He was about to turn the corner of a street, when a sudden blast of wind swept round, bearing with it some half dozen single sheets of music. For a moment they whirled high, then sank fluttering to the ground, only to rise again and race one another along the road. Maurice instinctively gave chase, but it was not easy to catch them; no sooner had he secured one than the next was out of his reach. Meanwhile their owner, a young and very pretty girl, looked on and laughed, without making any effort to help him; and the more he exerted himself, the more she laughed. In one hand she was carrying a violin-case, in the other a velvet muff, which now and again she raised to her lips, as if to conceal her mirth. It was a graceful movement, but an unnecessary one, for her laughter was of that charming kind, which never gives offence; and, besides that, although it was continuous, it was neither hearty enough nor frank enough to be unbecoming the face was well under control. She stood there, with her head slightly on one side, and the parted lips showed both rows of small, even teeth; but the smile was unvarying, and, in spite of her merriment, her eyes did not for an instant quit the young man's face, as he darted to and fro. Maurice could not help laughing himself, red and out of breath though he was. "Now for the last one," he said in German. At these words she seemed more amused than ever. "I don't speak German," she answered in English, with a strong American accent. Having captured all the sheets, Maurice tried to arrange them for her. "It's my Kayser," she explained with a quick, upward glance, adding the next minute with a fresh ripple of laughter. "He's all to pieces." "You have too much to carry," said Maurice. "On such a windy day, too." "That's what Joan said--Joan is my sister," she continued. "But I guess it's so cold this afternoon I had to bring a muff along. If my fingers are stiff I can't play, and then Herr Becker is angry." But she laughed again as she spoke, and it was plain that the master's wrath did not exactly incite fear. "Joan always comes along, but to-day she's sick." "Will you let me help you?" asked Maurice, and a moment later he was walking at her side. She handed over music and violin to him without a trace of hesitation; and, as they went along the PROMENADE, she talked to him with as little embarrassment as though they were old acquaintances. It was so kind of him to help her, she thought; she couldn't imagine how she would ever have got home without him, alone against the wind; and she was perfectly sure he must be American--no one but an American would be so nice. When Maurice denied this, she laughed very much indeed, and was not sure, this being the case, whether she could like him or not; as a rule, she didn't like English people; they were stiff and horrid, and were always wanting either to be introduced or to shake hands. Here she carried her muff up to her lips again, and her eyes shone mischievously at him over the dark velvet. Maurice had never known anyone so easily moved to laughter; whenever she spoke she laughed, and she laughed at everything he said. Off the PROMENADE, where the trees were of a marvellous Pale green, they turned into a street of high spacious houses, the dark lines of which were here and there broken by an arched gateway, or the delicate tints of a spring garden. To a window in one of the largest houses Maurice's little friend looked up, and smiled and nodded. "There's my sister." The young man looked, too, and saw a dark, thin-faced girl, who, when she found four eyes fixed on her, abruptly drew in her head, and as abruptly put it out again, leaning her two hands on the sill. "She's wondering who it is," said Maurice's companion gleefully. Then, turning her face up, she made a speaking-trumpet of her hands, and cried: "It's all right, Joan.--Now I must run right up and tell her about it," she said to Maurice. "Perhaps she'll scold; Joan is very particular. Good-bye. Thank you ever so much for being so good to me--oh, won't you tell me your name?" The very next morning brought him a small pink note, faintly scented. The pointed handwriting was still childish, but there was a coquettish flourish beneath the pretty signature: Ephie Cayhill. Besides a graceful word of thanks, she wrote: WE ARE AT HOME EVERY SUNDAY. MAMMA WOULD BE VERY PLEASED. Maurice did not scruple to call the following week, and on doing so, found himself in the midst of one of those English-speaking coteries, which spring up in all large, continental towns. Foreigners were not excluded--Maurice discovered two or three of his German friends, awkwardly balancing their cups on their knees. In order, however, to gain access to the circle, it was necessary for them to have a smattering of English; they had also to be flint against any open or covert fun that might be made of them or their country; and above all, to be skilled in the art of looking amiable, while these visitors from other lands heatedly readjusted, to their own satisfaction, all that did not please them in the life and laws of this country that was temporarily their home. Mrs. Cayhill was a handsome woman, who led a comfortable, vegetable existence, and found it a task to rise from the plump sofa-cushion. Her pleasant features were slack, and in those moments of life which called for a sudden decision, they wore the helpless bewilderment of a woman who has never been required to think for herself. Her grasp on practical matters was rendered the more lax, too, by her being an immoderate reader, who fed on novels from morning till night, and slept with a page turned down beside her bed. She was for ever lost in the joys or sorrows of some fictitious person, and, in consequence, remained for the most part completely ignorant of what was going on around her. When she did happen to become conscious of her surroundings, she was callous, or merely indifferent, to them; for, compared with romance, life was dull and diffuse; it lacked the wilful simplicity, the exaggerative omissions, and forcible perspectives, which make up art: in other words, life demanded that unceasing work of selection and rejection, which it is the story-teller's duty to Perform for his readers. All novels were fish to Mrs. Cayhill's net; she lived in a world of intrigue and excitement, and, seated in her easy-chair by the sitting-room window, was generally as remote from her family as though she were in Timbuctoo. There was a difference of ten years in age between her daughters, and it was the younger of the two whose education was being completed. Johanna, the elder, had been a disappointment to her mother. Left to her own devices at an impressionable age, the girl had developed bookish tastes at the cost of her appearance: influenced by a free-thinking tutor of her brothers', she had read Huxley and Haeckel, Goethe and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university career, but she was not of a self-assertive nature, and when Mrs. Cayhill, who felt her world toppling about her ears at the mention of such a thing, said: "Not while I live!" she yielded, without a further word; and the fact that such an emphatic expression of opinion had been drawn from the mild-tempered mother, made it a matter of course that no other member of the family took Johanna's part. So she buried her ambitions, and kept her mother's house in an admirable, methodical way. It was not the sacrifice it seemed, however, because Johanna adored her little sister, and would cheerfully have given up more than this for her sake. Ephie, who was at that time just emerging from childhood, was very pretty and precocious, and her mother had great hopes of her. She also tired early of her lesson-books, and, soon after she turned sixteen, declared her intention of leaving school. As at least a couple of years had still to elapse before she was old enough to be introduced in society, Mrs. Cayhill, taking the one decisive step of her life, determined that travel in Europe should put the final touches to Ephie's education: a little German and French; some finishing lessons on the violin; a run through Italy and Switzerland, and then to Paris, whence they would carry back with them a complete and costly outfit. So, valiantly, Mrs. Cayhill had her trunks packed, and, together with Johanna, who would as soon have thought of denying her age as of letting these two helpless beings go out into the world alone, they crossed the Atlantic. For some three months now, they had been established in Leipzig. A circulating library, rich in English novels, had been discovered; Mrs. Cayhill was content; and it began to be plain to Johanna that the greater part of their two years' absence would be spent in this place. Ephie, too, had already had time to learn that, as far as music was concerned, her business was not so much with finishing as with beginning, and that the road to art, which she with all the rest must follow, was a steep one. She might have found it still more arduous, had Herr Becker, her master, not been a young man and very impressionable. And Ephie never looked more charming than when, with her rounded, dimpled arm raised in an exquisite curve, she leaned her cheek against the glossy brown wood of her violin. She was pretty with that untouched, infantine prettiness, before which old and young go helplessly down. She was small and plump, with a full, white throat and neck, and soft, rounded hands and wrists, that were dimpled like a baby's. Her brown hair was drawn back from the low forehead, but, both here and at the back of her neck, it broke into innumerable little curls, which were much lighter in colour than the rest. Her skin, faintly tinged, was as smooth as the skin of a cherry; it had that exquisite freshness which is only to be found in a very young girl, and is lovelier than the bloom on ripe fruit. Her dark blue eyes were well opened, but the black lashes were so long and so peculiarly straight that the eyes themselves were usually hidden, and this made it all the more effective did she suddenly look up. Moulded like wax, the small, upturned nose seemed to draw the top lip after it; anyhow, the upper lip was too short to meet the lower, and consequently, they were always slightly apart, in a kind of questioning amaze. This mouth was the real beauty of the face: bright red, full, yet delicate, arched like a bow, with corners that went in and upwards, it belonged, by right of its absolute innocence, to the face of a little child; and the thought was monstrous that nature and the years would eventually combine to destroy so perfect a thing. She also had a charming laugh, with a liquid note in it, that made one think of water bubbling on a dry summer day. It was this laugh that held the room on Sunday afternoon, and drew the handful of young men together, time after time. Mrs. Cayhill, who, on these occasions, was wont to lay aside her book, was virtually a deeper echo of her little daughter, and Johanna only counted in so far as she made and distributed cups of tea at the end of the room. She did not look with favour on the young men who gathered there, and her manner to them was curt and unpleasing. Each of them in turn, as he went up to her for his cup, cudgelled his brain for something to say; but it was no easy matter to converse with Johanna. The ordinary small change and polite commonplace of conversation, she met with a silent contempt. In musical chit-chat, she took no interest whatever, and pretended to none, openly indeed "detested music," and was unable to distinguish Mendelssohn from Wagner, "except by the noise;" while if a bolder man than the rest rashly ventured on the literary ground that was her special demesne, she either smiled at what he said, in a disagreeably sarcastic way, or flatly contradicted him. She was the thorn in the flesh of these young men; and after having dutifully spent a few awkward moments at her side, they stole back, one by one, to the opposite end of the room. Here Ephie, bewitchingly dressed in blue, swung to and fro in a big American rocking-chair--going backwards, it carried her feet right off the ground--and talked charming nonsense, to the accompaniment of her own light laugh, and her mother's deeper notes, which went on like an organ-point, Mrs. Cayhill finding everything Ephic said, matchlessly amusing. As Dove and Maurice walked there together for the first time--it now leaked out that Dove spent every Sunday afternoon in the LESSINGSTRASSE--he spoke to Maurice of Johanna. Not in a disparaging way; Dove had never been heard to mention a woman's name otherwise than with respect. And, in this case, he deliberately showed up Johanna's good qualities, in the hope that Maurice might feel attracted by her, and remain at her side; for Dove had fallen deeply in love with Ephie, and had, as it was, more rivals than he cared for, in the field. "You should get on with her, I think, Guest," he said slily. "You read these German writers she is so interested in. But don't be discouraged by her manner. For though she's one of the most unselfish women I ever met, her way of Speaking is sometimes abrupt. She reminds me, if it doesn't sound unkind, of a faithful watch-dog, or something of the sort, which cannot express its devotion as it would like to." When, after a lively greeting from Ephie, and a few pleasant words from Mrs. Cayhill, Maurice found himself standing beside Johanna, the truth of Dove's simile was obvious to him. This dark, unattractive girl had apparently no thought for anything but her tea-making; she moved the cups this way and that, filled the pot with water, blew out and lighted again the flame of the spirit-lamp, without paying the least heed to Maurice, making, indeed, such an ostentatious show of being occupied, that it would have needed a brave man to break in upon her duties with idle words. He remained standing, however, in a constrained silence, which lasted until she could not invent anything else to do, and was obliged to drink her own tea. Then he said abruptly, in a tone which he meant to be easy, but which was only jaunty: "And how do you like being in Germany, Miss Cayhill? Does it not seem very strange after America?" Johanna lifted her shortsighted eyes to his face, and looked coolly and disconcertingly at him through her glasses, as if she had just become aware of his presence. "Strange? Why should it?" she asked in an unfriendly tone. "Why, what I mean is, everything must be so different here from what you are accustomed to--at least it is from what we are used to in England," he corrected himself. "The ways and manners, and the language, and all that sort of thing, you know." "Excuse me, I do not know," she answered in the same tone as before. "If a person takes the trouble to prepare himself for residence in a foreign country, nothing need seem either strange or surprising. But English people, as is well known, expect to find a replica of England in every country they go to." There was a pause, in which James, the pianist, who was a regular visitor, approached to have his cup refilled. All the circle knew, of course, that Johanna was "doing for a new man"; and it seemed to Maurice that James half closed one eye at him, and gave him a small, sympathetic nudge with his elbow. So he held to his guns. When James had retired, he began anew, without preamble. "My friend Dove tells me you are interested in German literature?" he said with a slight upward inflection in his voice. Johanna did not reply, but she shot a quick glance at him, and colouring perceptibly, began to fidget with the tea-things. "I've done a little in that line myself," continued Maurice, as she made no move to answer him. "In a modest way, of course. Just lately I finished reading the JUNGFRAU VON ORLEANS." "Is that so?" said Johanna with an emphasis which made him colour also. "It is very fine, is it not?" he asked less surely, and as she again acted as though he had not spoken, he lost his presence of mind. "I suppose you know it? You're sure to." This time Johanna turned scarlet, as if he had touched her on a sore spot, and answered at once, sharply and rudely. "And I suppose," she said, and her hands shook a little as they fussed about the tray, "that you have also read MARIA STUART, and TELL, and a page or two of Jean Paul. You have perhaps heard of Lessing and Goethe, and you consider Heine the one and only German poet." Maurice did not understand what she meant, but she had spoken so loudly and forbiddingly that several eyes were turned on them, making it incumbent on him not to take offence. He emptied his cup, and put it down, and tried to give the matter an airy turn. "And why not?" he asked pleasantly. "Is there anything wrong in thinking so? Schiller and Goethe WERE great poets, weren't they? And you will grant that Heine is the only German writer who has had anything approaching a style?" Johanna's face grew stony. "I have no intention of granting anything," she said. "Like all English people--it flatters your national vanity, I presume--you think German literature began and ended with Heine.--A miserable Jew!" "Yes, but I say, one can hardly make him responsible for being a Jew, can you? What has that got to do with it?" exclaimed Maurice, this being a point of view that had never presented itself to him. And as Johanna only murmured something that was inaudible, he added lamely: "Then you don't think much of Heine?" But she declined to be drawn into a discussion, even into an expression of opinion, and the young man continued, with apology in his tone: "It may be bad taste on my part, of course. But one hears it said on every side. If you could tell me what I ought to read ... or, perhaps, advise me a little?" he ended tentatively. "I don't lend my books," said Johanna more rudely than she had yet spoken. And that was all Maurice could get from her. A minute or two later, she rose and went out of the room. It became much less restrained as soon as the door had closed behind her. Ephie laughed more roguishly, and Mrs. Cayhill allowed herself to find what her little daughter said, droller than before. With an appearance of unconcern, Maurice strolled back to the group by the window. Dove was also talking of literature. "That reminds me, how did you like the book I lent you on Wednesday, Mrs. Cayhill?" he asked, at the same instant springing forward to pick up Ephie's handkerchief, which had fallen to the ground. "Oh, very much indeed, very interesting, very good of you," answered Mrs. Cayhill. "Ephie, darling, the sun is shining right on your face." "What was it?" asked James, while Dove jumped up anew to lower the blind, and Ephie raised a bare, dimpled arm to shade her eyes. Mrs. Cayhill could not recollect the title just at once she had a "wretched memory for names"--and went over what she had been reading. "Let me see, it was ... no, that was yesterday: SHADOWED BY THREE, a most delightful Book. On Friday, RICHARD ELSMERE, and--oh, yes, I know, it was about a farm, an Australian farm." "THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM," put in Dove mildly, returning to his seat. "Australian or African, it doesn't matter which," said Mrs. Cayhill. "Yes, a nice book, but a little coarse in parts, and very foolish at the end--the disguising, and the dying out of doors, and the looking-glass, and all that." "I must say I think it a very powerful book," said Dove solemnly. "That part, you know, where the boy listens to the clock ticking in the night, and thinks to himself that with every tick, a soul goes home to God. A very striking idea!" "Why, I think it must be a horrid book," cried Ephie. "All about dying. Fancy some one dying every minute. It couldn't possibly be true. For then the world would soon be empty." "Always there are coming more into it," said Furst, in his blunt, broken English. A pause ensued. Dove flicked dust off his trouser-leg; and the American men present were suddenly fascinated by the bottoms of their cups. Ephie was the first to regain her composure. "Now let us talk of something pleasant, something quite different--from dying." She turned and, over her shoulder, laughed mischievously at Maurice, who was siting behind her. Then, leaning forward in her chair, with every eye upon her, she told how Maurice had saved her music from the wind, and, with an arch face, made him appear very ridiculous. By her prettily exaggerated description of a heated, perspiring young man, darting to and fro, and muttering to himself in German, her hearers, Maurice included, were highly diverted--and no one more than Mrs. Cayhill. "You puss, you puss!" she cried, wiping her eyes and shaking a finger at the naughty girl. The general amusement had hardly subsided when Furst rose to his feet, and, drawing his heels together, made a flowery little speech, the gist of which was, that he would have esteemed himself a most fortunate man, had he been in Maurice's place. Ephie and her mother exchanged looks, and shook with ill-concealed mirth, so that Furst, who had spoken seriously and in good faith, sat down red and uncomfortable; and Boehmer, who was dressed in what he believed to be American fashion, smiled in a superior manner, to show he was aware that Furst was making himself ridiculous. "Look here, Miss Ephie," said James; "the next time you have to go out alone, just send for me, and I'll take care of you." "Or me" said Dove. "You have only to let me know." "No, no, Mr. Dove!" cried Mrs. Cayhill. "You do far too much for her as it is. You'll spoil her altogether." But at this, several of the young men exclaimed loudly: that would be impossible. And Ephie coloured becomingly, raised her lashes, and distributed winning smiles. Then quiet had been restored, she assured them that they all very kind, but she would never let anyone go with her but Joan--dear old Joan. They could not imagine how fond she was of Joan. "She is worth more than all of you put together." And at the cries of: "Oh, oh!" she was thrown into a new fit of merriment, and went still further. "I would not give Joan's little finger for anyone in the world." And meanwhile, as all her hearers--all, that is to say, except Dove, who sat moody, fingering his slight moustache, and gazing at Ephie with fondly reproachful eyes--as all of them, with Mrs. Cayhill at their head, made vehement protest against this sweeping assertion, Johanna sat alone in her bedroom, at the back of the house. It was a dull room, looking on a courtyard, but she was always glad to escape to it from the flippant chatter in the sitting-room. Drawing a little table to the window, she sat down and began to read. But, on this day, her thoughts wandered; and, ultimately, propping her chin on her hand, she fell into reverie, which began with something like "the fool and his Schiller!" and ended with her rising, and going to the well-stocked book-shelves that stood at the foot of the bed. She took out a couple of volumes and looked through them, then returned them to their places on the shelf. No, she said to herself, why should she? What she had told the young man was true: she never lent her books; he would soil them, or, worse still, not appreciate them as he ought--she could not give anyone who visited there on Sunday, credit for a nice taste. Unknown to herself, however, something worked in her, for, the very next time Maurice was there, she met him in the passage, as he was leaving, and impulsively thrust a paper parcel into his hand. "There is a book, if you care to take it." He did not express the surprise he felt, nor did he look at the title. But Ephie, who was accompanying him to the door, made a face of laughing stupefaction behind her sister's back, and went out on the landing with him, to whisper: "What HAVE you been doing to Joan?"--at which remark, and at Maurice's blank face, she laughed so immoderately that she was forced to go down the stairs with him, for fear Joan should hear her; and, in the house-door, she stood, a white-clad little figure, and waved her hand to him until he turned the corner. Having read the first volume of HAMMER UND AMBOSS deep into two nights, Maurice returned it and carried away the second. But it was only after he had finished PROBLEMATISCHE NATUREN, and had expressed himself with due enthusiasm, that Johanna began to thaw a little. She did not discuss what he read with him; but, going on the assumption that a person who could relish her favourite author had some good in him, she gave the young man the following proof of her favour. Between Ephie and him there had sprung up spontaneously a mutual liking, which it is hard to tell the cause of. For Ephie knew nothing of Maurice's tastes, interests and ambitions, and he did not dream of asking her to share them. Yet, with the safe instincts of a young girl, she chose him for a brother from among all her other acquaintances; called him "Morry"; scarcely ever coquetted with him; and let him freely into her secrets. It is easier to see why Maurice was attracted to her; for not only was Ephie pretty and charming; she was also adorably equable--she did not know what it was to be out of humour. And she was always glad to see him, always in the best possible spirits. When he was dull or tired, it acted like a tonic on him, to sit and let her merry chatter run over him. And soon, he found plenty of makeshifts to see her; amongst other things, he arranged to help her twice a week with harmony, which was, to her, an unexplorable abyss; and he ransacked the rooms and shelves of his acquaintances to find old Tauchnitz volumes to lend to Mrs. Cayhill. The latter paid even less attention to the sudden friendship of her daughter with this young man than the ordinary American mother would have done; but Johanna's toleration of it was, for the most part, to be explained by the literary interests before mentioned. For Johanna was always in a tremble lest Ephie should become spoiled; and thoughtless Ephie could, at times, cause her a most subtle torture, by being prettily insincere, by assuming false coquettish airs, or by seeming to have private thoughts which she did not confide to her sister. This, and the knowledge that Ephie was now of an age when every day might be expected to widen the distance between them, sometimes made Johanna very gruff and short, even with Ephie herself. As her sister, she alone knew how much was good and true under the child's light exterior; she admired in Ephie all that she herself had not--her fair prettiness, her blithe manner, her easy, graceful words--and, had it been necessary, she would have gone down on her knees to remove the stones from Ephie's path. Thus although on the casual observer, Johanna only made the impression of a dark, morose figure, which hovered round two childlike beings, intercepting the sunshine of their lives, yet Maurice had soon come often enough into contact with her to appreciate her unselfishness; and, for the care she took of Ephie, he could almost have liked her, had Johanna shown the least readiness to be liked. Naturally, he did not understand how highly he was favoured by her; he knew neither the depth of her affection for Ephie, nor the exact degree of contempt in which she held the young men who dangled there on a Sunday--poor fools who were growing fat on emotion and silly ideas, when they should have been taking plain, hard fare at college. To Dove, Johanna had a particular aversion; chiefly, and in a contradictory spirit, because it was evident to all that his intentions were serious. But she could not hinder wayward Ephie from making a shameless use of him, and then laughing at him behind his back--a laugh in which Mrs. Cayhill was not always able to refrain from joining, though it must be said that she was usually loud in her praises of Dove, at the expense of all visitors who were not American. "From these Dutch you can't expect much, one way or the other," she declared. "And young Guest sometimes sits there with a face as long as my arm. But Dove is really a most sensible young fellow--why, he thinks just as I do about Arnerica." And as a special mark of favour, when Dove left the house on Sunday afternoon, his pockets bulged with NEW YORK HERALDS. VII. Meanwhile, before the blinds in the BRUDERSTRASSE were drawn up again, Maurice had found his way back to Madeleine. When they met, she smiled at him in a somewhat sarcastic manner, but no reference was made to the little falling-out they had had, and they began afresh to read and play together. On the first afternoon, Maurice was full of his new friends, and described them at length to her. But Madeleine damped his ardour. "I know them, yes, of course," she said. "The usual Americans--even the blue-stocking, from whom heaven defend us. The little one is pretty enough as long as she keeps her mouth shut. But the moment she speaks, every illusion is shattered.--Why I don't go there on a Sunday? Good gracious, do you think they want me?--me, or any other petticoat? Are honours made to be divided?--No, Maurice, I don't like Americans. I was once offered a position in America, as 'professor of piano and voice-production' in a place called Schenectady; but I didn't hesitate. I said to myself, better one hundred a year in good old England, than five in a country where the population is so inflated with its importance that I should always be in danger of running amuck. And besides that, I should lose my accent, and forget how to say 'leg'; while the workings of the stomach would be discussed before me with an unpleasant freedom." "You're too hard on them, Madeleine," said Maurice, smiling in spite of himself. But he was beginning to stand in awe of her sharp tongue and decided opinions; and, in the week that followed, he took himself resolutely together, and did not let a certain name cross his lips. Consequently, he was more than surprised on returning to his room one day, to find a note from Madeleine, saying that she expected Louise that very afternoon at three. It was not news to Maurice that Louise had come home. The evening before, as he turned out of the BRUDERSTRASSE, a closed droschke turned into it. After the vehicle had lumbered past him and disappeared, the thought crossed his mind that she might be inside it. He had not then had time to go back but early this very morning, he had passed the house and found the windows open. So Madeleine had engaged her immediately! As usual, Furst had kept him waiting for his lesson; it was nearly three o'clock already, and he was so hurried that he could only change his collar; but, on the way there, in a sudden spurt of gratitude, he ran to a flower-shop, and bought a large bunch of carnations. He arrived at Madeleine's room in an elation he did not try to hide; and over the carnations they had a mock reconciliation. Madeleine wished to distribute the flowers in different vases about the room, but he asked her put them all together on the centre table. She laughed and complied. For several weeks now, musical circles had been in a stir over the advent of a new piano-teacher named Schrievers--a person who called himself a pupil of Liszt, held progressive views, arid, being a free lance, openly ridiculed the antiquated methods of the Conservatorium. Madeleine was extremely interested in the case, and, as they sat waiting, talked about it to Maurice with great warmth, enlarging especially upon the number of people who had the audacity to call themselves pupils of Liszt. To Maurice, in his present frame of mind, the matter seemed of no possible consequence--for all he cared, the whole population of the town might lay claim to having been at Weimar--and he could not understand Madeleine finding it important. For he was in one of those moods when the entire consciousness is so intently directed towards some end that, outside this end, nothing has colour or vitality: all that has previously impressed and interested one, has no more solidity than papier mache. Meanwhile she spoke on, and did not appear to notice how time was flying. He was forced at length to take out his watch, and exclaim, in feigned surprise, at the hour. "A quarter to four already!" "Is it so late?" But on seeing his disturbance, she added: "It will be all right. Louise was never punctual in her life." He did his best to look unconcerned, and they spoke of that evening's ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, at which Furst was to play. But by the time the clock struck four, Maurice had relapsed, in spite of himself, into silence. Madeleine rallied him. "You must make shift with my company, Maurice. Not but what I am sure Louise will come. But you see from this what she is--the most unreliable creature in the world." To pass the time, she suggested that he should help her to make tea, and they were both busy, when the electric bell in the passage whizzed harshly, and the next moment there came a knock at the door. But it was not Louise. Instead, two persons entered, one of whom was Heinrich Krafft, the other a short, thickset girl, in a man's felt hat and a closely buttoned ulster. On recognising her visitors, Madeleine made a movement of annoyance, and drew her brows together. "You, Heinz!" she said. Undaunted by this greeting, Krafft advanced to her and, taking her hands, kissed them, one after the other. He was also about to kiss her on the lips, but she defended herself. "Stop! We are not alone." "Just for that reason," said the girl in the ulster drily. "What ill wind blows you here to-day?" Madeleine asked him. As he was still wearing his hat, she took it off, and dropped it on the floor beside him; then she recollected Maurice, and made him known to the other two. Coming forward, Maurice recalled to Krafft's memory where they had already met, and what had passed between them. Before he had finished speaking, Krafft burst into an unmannerly peal of laughter. Madeleine laughed, too, and shook her finger at him. "You have been up to your tricks again!" Avery Hill, the girl in the ulster, did not laugh aloud, but a smile played round her mouth, which Maurice found even more disagreeable than the mirth of which he had been the innocent cause. He coloured, and withdrew to the window. Krafft was so convulsed that he was obliged to sit down on the sofa, where Madeleine fanned him with a sheet of music. He had been seized by a kind of paroxysm, and laughed on and on, in a mirthless way, till Avery Hill said suddenly and angrily: "Stop laughing at once, Heinz! You will have hysterics." In an instant he was sobered, and now he seemed to fall, without transition, into a mood of dejection. Taking out his penknife, he set to paring his nails, in a precise and preoccupied manner. Madeleine turned to Maurice. "You'll wonder what all this is about," she said apologetically. "But Heinz is never happier than when he has succeeded in imposing on some one--as he evidently did on you." "Indeed!" said Maurice. Their laughter had been offensive to him, and he found Krafft, and Madeleine with him, exceedingly foolish. There was a brief silence. Krafft was absorbed in what he was doing, and Avery Hill, on sitting down, had lighted a cigarette, which she smoked steadily, in long-drawn whiffs. She was a pretty girl, in spite of her severe garb, in spite, too, of her expression, which was too composed and too self-sure to be altogether pleasing. Her face was fresh of skin, below smooth fair hair, and her lips were the red, ripe lips of Botticelli's angels and Madonnas. But the under one, being fuller than the other, gave the mouth a look of over-decision, and it would be difficult to imagine anything less girlish than were the cold grey eyes. "We came for the book you promised to lend Heinz," she said, blowing off the spike of ash that had accumulated at the tip of the cigarette. "He could not rest till he had it." Madeleine placed a saucer on the table with the request to use it as an ash-tray, and taking down a volume of De Quincey from the hanging shelf, held it out to Krafft. "There you are. It will interest me to hear what you make of it." Krafft ceased his paring to glance at the title-page. "I shall probably not open it," he said. Madeleine laughed, and gave him a light blow on the hand with the book. "How like you that is! As soon as you know that you can get a thing, you don't want it any longer." "Yes, that's Heinz all over," said Avery Hill. "Only what he hasn't got, seems worth having." Krafft shut his knife with a click, and put it back in his pocket. "And that's what you women can't understand, isn't it?--that the best of things is the wishing for them. Once there, and they are nothing--only another delusion. The happiest man is the man whose wishes are never fulfilled. He always has a moon to cry for." "Come, come now," said Madeleine. "We know your love for paradox. But not to-day. There's no time for philosophising today. Besides, you are in a pessimistic mood, and that's a bad sign." "I and pessimism? Listen, heart of my heart, I have a new story for you." He moved closer to her, and put his arm round her neck. "There was once a man and his wife----" But, at the first word, Madeleine put her hands to her ears. "Mercy, have mercy, Heinz! No stories, I entreat you. And behave yourself, too. Take your arm away." She tried to remove it. "I have told you already, I can't have you here to-day. I'm expecting a visitor." He laid his head on her shoulder. "Let him come. Let the whole world come. I don't budge. I am happy here." "You must go and be happy elsewhere," said Madeleine more decisively than she had yet spoken. "And before she comes, too." "She? What she?" "Never mind." "For that very reason, Mada." She whispered a word in his ear. He looked at her, incredulously at first, then whimsically, with a sham dismay; and then, as if Maurice had only just taken shape for him, he turned and looked at him also, and from him to Madeleine, and back to him, finally bursting afresh into a roar of laughter. Madeleine laid her hand over his mouth. "Take him away, do," she said to Avery Hill--"as a favour to me." "Yes, when I have finished my cigarette," said the girl without stirring. Unsettled all the same, it would seem, by what he had heard, Krafft rose and shuffled about the room, with his hands in his pockets. Approaching Maurice, he even stood for a moment and contemplated him, with a kind of mock gravity. Maurice acted as if he did not see Krafft; long since, he had taken up a magazine, and, half hidden in a chair between window and writing-table, pretended to bury himself in its contents. But he heard very plainly all that passed, and, at the effect produced on Krafft by the name of the expected visitor, his hands trembled with anger. If the fellow had stood looking at him for another second, he would have got up and knocked him down. But Krafft turned nonchalantly to the piano, where his attention was caught by a song that was standing on the rack. He chuckled, and set about making merciless fun of the music--the composer was an elderly singing-teacher, of local fame. Madeleine grew angry, and tried to take it from him. "Hold your tongue, Heinz! If your own songs were more like this, they would have a better chance of success. Now be quiet! I won't hear another word. Herr Wendling is a very good friend of mine." "A friend! Heavens! She says friend as if it were an excuse for him.--Mada, let your friend cease making music if he hopes for salvation. Let him buy a broom and sweep the streets--let him----" "You are disgusting!" She had got the music from him, but he was already at the piano, parodying, from memory, the conventional accompaniment and sentimental words of the song. "And this," he said, "from the learned ass who is not yet convinced that the FEUERZAUBER is music, and who groans like a dredge when the last act of SIEGFRIED is mentioned. Wendling and Wagner! Listen to this!--for once, I am a full-blooded Wagnerite." He felt after the chords that prelude Brunnhilde's awakening by Siegfried. Until now, Avery Hill had sat indifferent, as though what went on had nothing to do with her; but no sooner had Krafft commenced to play than she grew uneasy; her eyes lost their cold assurance, and, suddenly getting up and going round to the front of the piano, she pushed the young man's hands from the keys. Krafft yielded his place to her, and, taking up the chords where he had left them, she went on. She played very well--even Maurice in his disturbance could, not but notice it--with a firm, masculine touch, and that inborn ease, that enviable appearance of perfect fitness, of being one with the instrument, which even the greatest players do not always attain. She had, besides, grip and rhythm, and long, close-knit hands insinuated themselves artfully among the complicated harmonies. When she began to play, Madeleine made "Tch, tch, tch!" and shook her head, in despair of now ever being rid of them. Krafft remained standing behind the piano at the window leaning his forehead on the glass. Maurice, who watched them both surreptitiously, saw his face change, and grow thoughtful as he stood there; but when Avery Hill ceased abruptly on a discord, he wheeled round at once and patted her on the back. While looking over to Maurice, he said: "No doubt you found that very pretty and affecting?" "I think that's none of your business," said Maurice. But Krafft did not take umbrage. "You don't say so?" he murmured with a show of surprise. "Now, go, go, go!" cried Madeleine. "What have I done to be subjected to such a visitation? No, Heinz, you don't sit down again. Here's your hat. Away with you!--or I'll have you put out by force." And at last they really did go, to a cool bow from Maurice, who still sat holding his magazine. But Madeleine had hardly closed the door behind them, when, like a whirlwind, Krafft burst into the room again. "Mada, I forgot to ask you something," he said in a stage-whisper, drawing her aside. "Tell me--you KUPPLERIN, you!--does he know her?" He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at Maurice. Madeleine shook her head, in real vexation and distress, and laid a finger on her lip. But it was of no use. Stepping over to Maurice, Krafft bowed low, and held his hat against his breast. "It is impossible for you to understand how deeply it has interested me to meet you," he said. "Allow me, from the bottom of my heart, to wish you success." Whereupon, before Maurice could say "damn!" he was gone again, leaving his elfin laugh behind him in the air, like smoke. Madeleine shut the door energetically and gave a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness! I thought they would never go. And now, the chances are, they'll run into Louise on the stairs. You'll wonder why I was so bent on getting rid of them. It's a long story. I'll tell it to you some other time. But if Louise had found them here when she came, she would not have stayed. She won't have anything to do with Heinz." "I don't wonder at it," said Maurice. He stood up and threw the magazine on the table. Madeleine displayed more astonishment than she felt. "Why what's the matter? You're surely not going to take what Heinz said, seriously? He was in a bad mood to-day, I know, and I noticed you were very short with him. But you mustn't be foolish enough to be offended by him. No one ever is. He is allowed to say and do just what he likes. He's our spoilt child." Maurice laughed. "The fellow is either a cad, or an unutterable fool. You, Madeleine, may find his impertinence amusing. I tell you candidly, I don't!" and he went on to make it clear to her that the fault would not be his, were Krafft and he ever in the same room together again. "The kind of man one wants to kick downstairs. What the deuce did he mean by guffawing like that when you told him who was coming?" "You mean about Louise?" Madeleine gave a slight shrug. "Yes, Maurice--unfortunately that was not to be avoided. But sit down again, and let me explain things to you. When you hear----" But he did not want explanations; he did not even want an answer to the question he had put; his chief concern now was to get away. To stay there, in that room, for another quarter of an hour, would be impossible, on such tenterhooks was he. To stay--for what? Only to listen to more slanderous hints, of the kind he had heard before. As it was, he did not believe he could face her frankly, should she still come. He felt as if, in some occult way, he had assisted at a tampering with her good name. "You will surely not be so childish?" said Madeleine, on seeing him take up his hat. "Childish?--you call it childish?" he exclaimed, growing angry with her, too. "Do you know what time it is? Three o'clock, you write me, and it's now a quarter past five. I have sat here doing nothing for over two mortal hours. It seems to me that's enough, without being made the butt of your friends' wit into the bargain. I'm sick of the whole thing. Good-bye." "We seem bound to quarrel," said Madeleine calmly. "And always about Louise. But there's no use in being angry. I am not responsible for what Heinz says and does. And on the mere chance of his coming in to-day, to sit down and unroll another savoury story to you, about your idol--would you have thanked me for it? Remember the time I did try to open you eyes!--It's not fair either to blame me because Louise hasn't come. I did my best for you. I can't help it if she's as stable as water." "I think you dislike her too much to want to help it," said Maurice grimly. He stood staring at the carnations, and his resentment gave way to depression, as he recalled the mood which he had bought them. "Come back as soon as you feel better. I'm not offended, remember!" Madeleine called after him as he went down the stairs. When she was alone, she said "Silly boy!" and, still smiling, made excuses for him: he had come with such pleasurable anticipations, and everything had gone wrong. Heinz had behaved disagracefully, as only he could. While as for Louise, one was no more able to rely on her than on a wisp straw; and she, Madeleine, was little better than a fool not to have known it. She moved about the room, putting chairs and papers in their places, for she could not endure disorder of any kind. Then she sat down to write a letter; and when, some half hour later, the girl for whom they had waited, actually came, she met her with exclamations of genuine surprise. "Is it really you? I had given you up long ago. Pray, do you know what time it is?" She took out her watch and dangled it before the other's eyes. But Louise Dufrayer hardly glanced at it. As, however, Madeleine persisted, she said: "I'm late, I know. But it was not my fault. I couldn't get away." She unpinned her hat, and shook back her hair; and Madeleine helped her to take off her jacket, talking all the time. "I have been much annoyed with you. Does it never occur to you that you may put other people in awkward positions, by not keeping your word? But you are just the same as of old--incorrigible." "Then why try to improve me?" said the other with a show of lightness. But almost simultaneously she turned away from Madeleine's matter-of-fact tone, passed her handkerchief over her lips, and after making a vain attempt to control herself, burst into tears. Madeleine eyed her shrewdly. "What's the matter with you?" But the girl who had sunk into a corner of the sofa merely shook her head, and sobbed; and Madeleine, to whom such emotional outbreaks were distasteful, went to the writing-table and busied herself there, with her back to the room. She did not ask for an explanation, nor did her companion offer any. Louise abandoned herself to her tears with as little restraint as though she were alone, holding her handkerchief to her eyes with both hands and giving deep, spasmodic sobs, which had apparently been held for some time in cheek. Afterwards, she sat with her elbow on the end of the sofa, her face on her hand, and, still shaken at intervals by a convulsive breath, watched Madeleine make fresh tea. But when she took the cup that was handed to her, she was so far herself again as to inquire whom she was to have met, although her voice still did not obey her properly. "Some one who is anxious to know you," replied Madeleine an air of mystery. "But he couldn't, or rather would not, wait so long." Louise showed no further curiosity. But when Madeleine said with meaning emphasis that Krafft had also been there in the course of the afternoon, she shrank perceptibly and flushed. "What! Does he still exist?" she asked with an effort at playfulness. "As you very well know," answered Madeleine drily. "Tell me, Louise, how do you manage to keep out of his way?" Louise made no rejoinder; she raised her cup to her lips, and the dark blood that had stained her face, in a manner distressing to see, slowly retreated. She continued to look down, and, the light of her big, dark eyes gone out, her face seemed wan and dead. Madeleine, studying her, asked herself, not for the first time, but, as always, with an unclear irritation, what the secret of the other's charm was. Beautiful she had never thought Louise; she was not even pretty, in an honest way--at best, a strange, foreign-looking creature, dark-skinned, black of eyes and hair, with flashing teeth, and a wonderfully mobile mouth--and some people, hopeless devotees of a pink and white fairness, had been known to call her plain. At this moment, she was looking her worst; the heavy, blue-black lines beneath her eyes were deepened by crying; her rough hair had been hastily coiled, unbrushed; and she was wearing a shabby red blouse that was pinned across in front, where a button was missing. There was nothing young or fresh about her; she looked her twenty-eight years, every day of them--and more. And yet, Madeleine knew that those who admired Louise would find her as desirable at this moment as at any other. Hers was a nameless charm; it was present in each gesture of the slim hands, in each turn of the head, in every movement of, the broad, slender body. Strangers felt it instantly; her very walk seemed provocative of notice; there was something in the way her skirts clung, and moved with her, that was different from the motion of other women's. And those whose type she embodied went crazy about her. Madeleine remembered as though it were yesterday, the afternoon on which Heinz had burst in to rave to her of his discovery; and how he would have dragged her out hatless to see this miracle. She remembered, too, after--days, when she had had him there, pacing the floor, and pouring out his feelings to her, infatuated, mad. An he was not the only one; they bowled over like ninepins; an it would be the same for years to come--was there any reason to wonder at Maurice Guest? Meanwhile, as Madeleine sat thinking these and similar things, Maurice was tramping through the ROSENTAL. The May afternoon, of lucent sunshine and heaped, fleecy clouds, had tempted a host of people into the great park, but he soon left them all behind him, for he walked as though he were pursued. These people, placid, and content of face, and the brightness of the day, jarred on him; he was out of patience with himself, with Madeleine, with the World at large. Especially with Madeleine, he bore her a grudge for her hints and innuendoes, for being behind the scenes, as it were, and also for being so ready to enlighten him; but, most of all, for a certain malicious gratification, which was to be felt in ever word she said about Louise. He went steadily on, against the level bars of the afternoon sun and, by the time he had tired himself bodily, he had worked off his inward vexation as well. As he walked back towards the town, he was almost ready to smile at his previous heat. What did all these others matter to him? They could not hinder him from carrying through what he had set his mind on. To-morrow was a day, and the next was another, and the next again; and life, considered thus in days and opportunities, was infinitely long. He now felt not only an aversion to dwelling on his thoughts of an hour back, but also the need of forgetting them altogether. And, in nearing the LESSINGSTRASSE, he followed an impulse to go to Ephie and to let her merry laugh wipe out the last traces of his ill-humour. Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were both reading in the sitting room, and though Johanna agreeably laid aside her book, conversation languished. Ephie was sent for, but did not come, and Maurice was beginning to wish he had thought twice before calling, when her voice was heard in the passage, and, a moment later, she burst into the room, with her arms full of lilac, branches of lilac, which she explained had been bought early that morning at the flower-market, by one of their fellow-boarders. She hardly greeted Maurice, but going over to him held up her scented burden, and was not content till he had buried his face in it. "Isn't it just sweet?" she cried holding it high for all to see. "And the very first that is to be had. Again, Maurice again, put your face right down into the middle of it--like that." Mrs. Cayhill laughed, as Maurice obediently bowed his head, but Johanna reproved her sister. "Don't be silly, Ephie. You behave as if you had never seen lilac before." "Well, neither I have--not such lilac as this, and Maurice hasn't either," answered Ephie. "You shall smell it too, old Joan!"--and in spite of Johanna's protests, she forced her sister also to sink her face in the fragrant white and purple blossoms. But then she left them lying on the table, and it was Johanna who put them in water. Mrs. Cayhill withdrew to her bedroom to be undisturbed, and Johanna went out on an errand. Maurice and Ephie sat side by side on the sofa, and he helped her to distinguish chords of the seventh, and watched her make, in her music-book, the big, tailless notes, at which she herself was always hugely tickled, they`reminded her so of eggs. But on this particular evening, she was not in a studious mood, and bock, pencil and india-rubber slid to the floor. Both windows were wide open; the air that entered was full of pleasant scents, while that of the room was heavy with lilac. Ephie had taken a spray from one of the vases, and was playing with it; and when Maurice chid her for thoughtlessly destroying it, she stuck the pieces in her hair. Not content with this, she also put bits behind Maurice's ears, and tried to twist one in the piece of hair that fell on his forehead. Having thus bedizened them, she leaned back, and, with her hands clasped behind her head, began to tease the young man. A little bird, it seemed, had whispered her any number of interesting things about Madeleine and Maurice, and she had stored them all up. Now, she repeated them, with a charming impertinence, and was so provoking that, in laughing exasperation, Maurice took her fluffy, flower-bedecked head between his hands, and stopped her lips with two sound kisses. He acted impulsively, without reflecting, but, as soon as it was done, he felt a curious sense of satisfaction, which had nothing to do with Ephie, and was like a kind of unconscious revenge taken on some one else. He was not, however, prepared for the effect of his hasty deed. Ephie turned scarlet, and jumping up from the sofa, so that all the blossoms fell from her hair at once, stamped her foot. "Maurice Guest! How dare you!" she cried angrily, and, to his surprise, the young man saw that she had tears in her eyes. He had never known Ephie to be even annoyed, and was consequently dumfounded; he could not believe, after the direct provocation she had given him, that his crime had been so great. "But Ephie dear!" he protested. "I had no idea, upon my word I hadn't, that you would take it like this. What's the matter? It was nothing. Don't cry. I'm a brute." "Yes, you are, a horrid brute! I shall never forgive you--never!" said Ephie, and then she began to cry in earnest. He put his arm round her, and coaxing her to sit down, wiped away her tears with his own handkerchief. In vain did he beg her to tell him why she was so vexed. To all he said, she only shook her head, and answered: "You had no right to do it." He vowed solemnly that it should never happen again, but at least a quarter of an hour elapsed before he succeeded in comforting her, and even then, she remained more subdued than usual. But when Maurice had gone, and she had dropped the scattered sprays of lilac out of the window on his head, she clasped her hands at the back of her neck, and dropped a curtsy to herself in the locking-glass. "Him, too!" she said aloud. She nodded at her reflected self, but her face was grave; for between these two, small, blue-robed figures was a deep and unsuspected secret. And Maurice, as he walked away, wondered to himself for still a little why she should have been so disproportionately angry; but not for long; for, when he was not actually with Ephie, he was not given to thinking much about her. Besides, from there, he went straight to the latter half of an ABENDANTERKALTUNG, to hear Furst play Brahms' VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY HANDEL VIII. That night he had a vivid dream. He dreamt that he was in a garden, where nothing but lilac grew--grew with a luxuriance he could not have believed possible, and on fantastic bushes: there were bushes like steeples and bushes smaller than himself, big and little, broad and slender, but all were of lilac, and in flower--an extravagant profusion of white and purple blossoms. He gazed round him in delight, and took an eager step forward; but, before he could reach the nearest bush, he saw that it had been an illusion: the bush was stripped and bare, and the rest were bare as well. "You're too late. It has all been gathered," he heard a voice say, and at this moment, he saw Ephie at the end of a long alley of bushes, coming towards him, her arms full of lilac. She smiled and nodded to him over it, and he heard her laugh, but when she was half-way down the path, he discovered his mistake: it was not Ephie but Louise. She came slowly forward, her laden arms outstretched, and he would have given his life to be able to advance and to take what she offered him; but he could not stir, could not lift hand or foot, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. Her steps grew more hesitating, she seemed hardly to move; and then, just as she reached the spot where he stood, he found that it was not she after all, but Madeleine, who laughed at his disappointment and said: "I'm not offended, remember!"--The revulsion of feeling was too great; he turned away, without taking the flowers she held out to him--and awoke. This dream was present to him all the morning, like a melody that haunts and recalls. But he worked more laboriously than usual; for he was aggrieved with himself for having idled away the previous afternoon, and then, too, Furst's playing had made a profound impression on him. In vigorous imitation, he sat down to the piano again, after a hasty dinner snatched in the neighbourhood; but as he was only playing scales, he propped open before him a little volume of Goethe's poems, which Johanna had lent him, and suiting his scales to the metre of the lines, read through one after another of the poems he liked best. At a particular favourite, he stopped playing and held the book in both hands. He had hardly begun anew when the door of his room was unceremoniously opened, and Dove entered, in the jocose way he adopted when in a rosy mood. Maurice made a movement to conceal his book, merely in order to avoid the explanation he new must follow; but was too late; Dove had espied it. He did not belie himself on this occasion; he was extremely astonished to find Maurice "still at it," but much more so to see a book open before him; and he vented his surprise loudly and wordily. "Liszt used to read the newspaper," said Maurice, for the sake of saying something. He had swung round in the piano-chair, and he yawned as he spoke, without attempting to disguise it. "Why, yes, of course, why not?" agreed Dove cordially, afraid lest he had seemed discouraging. "Why not, indeed? For those who can do it. I wish I could. But will you believe me, Guest"--here he seated himself, and settled into an attitude for talking, one hand inserted between his crossed knees--"will you believe me, when I say I find it a difficult business to read at all?--at any time. I find it too stimulating, too ANREGEND, don't you know? I assure you, for weeks now, I have been trying to read PAST AND PRESENT, and have not yet got beyond the first page. It gives one so much to think about, opens up so many new ideas, that I stop myself and say: 'Old fellow, that must be digested.' This, I see, is poetry"--he ran quickly and disparagingly through Maurice's little volume, and laid it down again. "I don't care much for poetry myself, or for novels either. There's so much in life worth knowing that is true, or of some use to one; and besides, as we all know, fact is stranger than fiction." They spoke also of Furst's performance the evening before, and Dove gave it its due, although he could not conceal his opinion that Furst's star would ultimately pale before that of a new-comer to the town, a late addition to the list of Schwarz's pupils, whom he, Dove, had been "putting up to things a bit." This was a "Manchester man" and former pupil of Halle's, and it would certainly not be long before he set the place in a stir. Dove had just come from his lodgings, where he had been permitted to sit and hear him practise finger-exercises. "A touch like velvet," declared Dove. "And a stretch!--I have never seen anything like it. He spans a tenth, nay, an eleventh, more easily than we do an octave." The object of Dove's visit was, it transpired, to propose that Maurice should accompany him that evening to the theatre, where DIE WALKURE was to be performed; and as, on this day, Dove had reasons for seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses, he suggested, out of the fulness of his heart, that they should also invite Madeleine to join them. Maurice was nothing loath to have the meeting with her over, and so, though it was not quite three o'clock, they went together to the MOZARTSTRASSE. They found Madeleine before her writing-table, which was strewn with closely written sheets. This was mail-day for America, she explained, and begged the young men to excuse her finishing an important letter to an American journalist, with whom she had once "chummed up" on a trip to Italy. "One never knows when these people may be of use to one," she was accustomed to say. Having addressed and stamped the envelope, and tossed it to the others, she rose and gave a hand to each. At Maurice, she smiled in a significant way. "You should have stayed, my son. Some one came, after all." Maurice laid an imploring finger on his lips, but Dove had seized the opportunity of glancing at his cravat in the mirror, and did not seem to hear. She agreed willingly to their plan of going to the theatre; she had thought of it herself; then, a girl she knew had asked her to come to hear her play in ENSEMBLESPIEL. "However, I will let that slip. Schelper and Moran-Olden are to sing; it will be a fine performance. I suppose some one is to be there," she said laughingly to Dove, "or you would not be of the party." But Dove only smiled and looked sly. Without delay, Madeleine began to detail to Maurice, the leading motives on which the WALKURE was built up; and Dove, having hummed, strummed and whistled all those he knew by heart, settled down to a discourse on the legitimacy and development of the motive, and especially in how far it was to be considered a purely intellectual implement. He spoke with the utmost good-nature, and was so unconscious of being a bore that it was impossible to take him amiss. Madeleine, however, could not resist, from time to time, throwing in a "Really!" "How extraordinary!" "You don't say so!" among his abstruse remarks. But her sarcasm was lost on Dove; and even if he had noticed it, he would only have smiled, unhit, being too sensible and good-humoured easily to take offence. It was always a mystery to his friends where Dove got his information; he was never seen to read, and there was little theorising about art, little but the practical knowledge of it, in the circles to which he belonged. But just as he went about picking up small items of gossip, so he also gathered in stray scraps of thought and information, and being by nature endowed with an excellent memory, he let nothing that he had once heard escape him. He had, besides, the talker's gift of neatly stringing together these tags he had pulled off other people, of connecting them, and giving them a varnish of originality. "By no means a fool," Madeleine was in the habit of saying of him. "He would be easier to deal with if he were." Here, on the leading motive as handled by Wagner and Wagner's forerunners, he had an unwritten treatise ripe in his brain. But he had only just compared the individual motives to the lettered ribbons that issue from the mouths of the figures in medieval pictures, and began to hint at the IDEE FIXE of Berlioz, when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. "HEREIN!" cried Madeleine in her clear voice; and at the sight of the person who opened the door, Maurice involuntarily started up from his chair, and taking his stand behind it, held the back of it firmly with both hands, in self-defence. It was Louise. On seeing the two young men, she hesitated, and, with the door-handle still in her hand, smiled a faint questioning smile at Madeleine, raising her eyebrows and showing a thin line of white between her lips. "May I come in?" she asked, with her head a little on one side. "Why, of course you know you may," said Madeleine with some asperity. And so Louise entered, and came forward to the table at which they had been sitting; but before anything further could be said, she raised her arms to catch up a piece of hair which had fallen loose on her neck. The young men were standing, waiting to greet her, Maurice still behind his chair; but she did not hurry on their account, or "just on their account did not hurry," as Madeleine mentally remarked. Both watched Louise, and followed her movements. To their eyes, she appeared to be very simply dressed; it was only Madeleine who appreciated the cost and care of this seeming simplicity. She wore a plain, close-fitting black dress, of a smooth, shiny stuff, which obeyed and emphasised the lines and outlines of her body; and, as she stood, with her arms upraised, composedly aware of being observed, they could see the line of her side rising and falling with the rise and fall of each breath. Otherwise, she wore a large black hat, with feathers and an overhanging brim, which threw shadows on her face, and made her eyes seem darker than ever. Letting her arms drop with a sigh of relief, she shook hands with Dove, and Dove--to Madeleine's diversion and Maurice's intense disgust--introduced Maurice to her as his friend. She looked full at the latter, and held out her hand; but before he could take it, she withdrew it again, and put both it and her left hand behind her back. "No, no," she said. "I mustn't shake hands with you to-day. Today is Friday. And to give one's hand for the first time on a Friday would bring bad luck--to you, if not to me." She was serious, but both the others laughed, and Maurice, having let his outstretched hand fall, coloured, and smiled rather foolishly. She did not seem to notice his discomfiture; turning to Madeleine, she began to speak of a piece of music she wished to borrow; and then Maurice had a chance of observing her at his ease, and of listening to her voice, in which he heard all manner of impossible things. But while Madeleine, with Dove's assistance, was looking through a pile of music, Louise came suddenly up to him and said: "You are not offended with me, are you?" She had a low voice, with a childish cadence in it, which touched him like a caress. "Offended? I with you?" He meant to laugh, but his voice shook. She stared at him, openly astonished, not only at his words, but also at the tone in which they were said; and the strange, fervent gaze bent on her by this man whom she saw for the first time in her life, confused her and made her uneasy. Slowly and coldly she turned away, but Madeleine, who was charitably occupying Dove as long as she could, did not take any notice of her. And as the young man continued to stare at her, she looked out of the window at the lowering grey sky, and said, with a shudder: "What a day for June!" All eyes followed hers, Maurice's with the rest; but almost instantly he brought them back again to her face. "Louise is a true Southerner," said Madeleine; "and is wretched if there's a cloud in the sky." Louise smiled, and he saw her strong white teeth. "It's not quite as bad as that," she said; and then, although herself not clear why she should have answered these searching eyes, she added, looking at Maurice: "I come from Australia." If she had said she was a visitant from another world, Maurice would not, at the moment, have felt much surprise; but on hearing the name of this distant land, on which he would probably never set foot, a sense of desolation overcame him. He realised anew, with a pang, what an utter stranger he was to her; of her past life, her home, her country, he knew and could know nothing. "That is very far away," he said, speaking out of this feeling, and then was vexed with himself for having done so. His words sounded foolish as they lingered on in the stillness that followed them, and would, he believed, lay him open to Madeleine's ridicule. But he had not much time in which to repent of them; the music had been found, and she was going again. He heard her refuse an invitation to stay: she had an engagement at half-past four. And now Dove, who, throughout, had kept in the background, looked at his watch and took up his hat: he had previously offered, unopposed, to do the long wait outside the theatre, which was necessary when one had no tickets, and now it was time to go. But when Louise heard the word theatre, she laid a slim, ungloved hand on Dove's arm. "The very thing for such a night!" They all said "AUF WIEDERSEHEN!" to one another; she did not offer to shake hands again, and Maurice nursed a faint hope that it was on his account. He opened the window, leant out, and watched them, until they went round the corner of the street. Madeleine smiled shrewdly behind his back, but when he turned, she was grave. She did not make any reference to what had passed, nor did she, as he feared she would, put questions to him: instead, she showed him a song of Krafft's, and asked him to play the accompaniment for her. He gratefully consented, without knowing what he was undertaking. For the song, a setting of a poem by Lenau, was nominally in C sharp minor; but it was black with accidentals, and passed through many keys before it came to a close in D flat major. Besides this, the right hand had much hard passage-work in quaint scales and broken octaves, to a syncopated bass of chords that were adapted to the stretch of no ordinary hand. "LIEBLOS UND OHNE GOTT AUF EINER HAIDE," sang Madeleine on the high F sharp; but Maurice, having collected neither his wits nor his fingers, began blunderingly, could not right himself, and after scrambling through a few bars, came to a dead stop, and let his hands fall from the keys. "Not to-day, Madeleine." She laughed good-naturedly. "Very well--not to-day. One shouldn't ask you to believe to-day that DIE GANZE WELT IST ZUM VERZWEIFELN TRAURIG." While she made tea, he returned to the window, where he stood with his hands in his pockets, lost in thought. He told himself once more what he found it impossible to believe: that he was going to see Louise again in a few hours; and not only to see her, but to speak to her, to be at her side. And when his jubilation at this had subsided, he went over in memory all that had just taken place. His first impression, he could afford now to admit it, had been almost one of disappointment: that came from having dreamed so long of a shadowy being, whom he had called by her name, that the real she was a stranger to him. Everything about her had been different from what he had expected--her voice, her smile, her gestures--and in the first moments of their meeting, he had been chill with fear, lest--lest ... even yet he did not venture to think out the thought. But this first sensation of strangeness over, he had found her more charming, more desirable, than even he had hoped; and what almost wrung a cry of pleasure from him as he remembered it, was that not the smallest trifle--no touch of coquetry, no insincerely spoken word--had marred the perfect impression of the whole. To know her, to stand before her, he recognised it now, gave the lie to false slander and report. Hardest of all, however, was it to grasp that the meeting had actually come to pass and was over: it had been so ordinary, so everyday, the most natural thing in the world; there had been no blast of trumpets, nor had any occult sympathy warned her that she was in the presence of one who had trembled for weeks at the idea of this moment and again he leaned forward and gazed at the spot in the street, where she had disappeared from sight. He was filled with envy of Dove--this was the latter's reward for his unfailing readiness to oblige others--and in fancy he saw Dove walking street after street at her side. In reality, the two parted from each other shortly after turning the first corner. On any other day, Dove would have been still more prompt to take leave of his companion; but, on this particular one, he was in the mood to be a little reckless. In the morning, he had received, with a delightful shock, his first letter from Ephie, a very frank, warmly written note, in which she relied on his great kindness to secure her, WITHOUT FAIL--these words were deeply underscored--two places in the PARQUET of the theatre, for that evening's performance. Not the letter alone, but also its confiding tone, and the reliance it placed in him, had touched Dove to a deep pleasure; he had been one of the first to arrive at the box-office that morning, and, although he had not ventured, unasked, to take himself a seat beside the sisters, he was now living in the anticipation of promenading the FOYER with them in the intervals between the acts, and of afterwards escorting them home. On leaving Louise he made for the theatre with a swinging stride--had he been in the country, stick in hand, he would have slashed off the heads of innumerable green and flowering things. As it was, he whistled--an unusual thing for him to do in the street--then assumed the air of a man hard pressed for time. Gradually the passers-by began to look at him with the right amount of attention; he jostled, as if by accident, one or two of those who were unobservant, then apologised for his hurry. It was not pleasurable anticipation alone that was responsible for Dove's state of mind, and for the heightening and radiation of his self-consciousness. In offering to go early to the theatre, and to stand at the doors for at least three-quarters of an hour, in order that the others, coming considerably later might still have a chance of gaining their favourite seats: in doing this, Dove was not actuated by a wholly unselfish motive, but by the more complicated one, which, consciously or unconsciously, was present beneath all the friendly cares and attentions he bestowed on people. He was never more content with himself, and with the world at large, than when he felt that he was essential to the comfort and well-being of some of his fellow-mortals; than when he, so to speak, had a finger in the pie of their existence. It engendered a sense of importance, gave life fulness and variety; and this far outweighed the trifling inconveniences such welldoing implied. Indeed, he throve on them. For, in his mild way, Dove had a touch of Caesarean mania--of a lust for power. Left to herself, Louise Dufrayer walked slowly home to her room in the BRUDERSTRASSE, but only to throw a hasty look round. It was just as she had expected: although it was long past the appointed time, he was not there. At a flower-shop in a big adjoining street, she bought a bunch of many-coloured roses, and with these in her hands, went straight to where Schilsky lived. Mounting to the third floor of the house in the TALSTRASSE, she opened, without ceremony, the door of his room, which gave direct on the landing; but so stealthily that the young man, who was sitting with his back to the door, did not hear her enter. Before he could turn, she had sprung forward, her arms were round his neck, and the roses under his nose. He drew his face away from their damp fragrance, but did not look up, and, without removing his cigarette, asked in a tone of extreme bad temper: "What are you doing here, Lulu? What nonsense is this? For God's sake, shut the door!" She ruffled his hair with her lips. "You didn't come. And the day has seemed so long." He tried to free himself, putting the roses aside with one hand, while, with his cigarette, he pointed to the sheets of music-paper that lay before him. "For a very good reason. I've had no time." She went back and closed the door; and then, sitting down on his knee, unpinned her big hat, and threw it and the roses on the bed. He put his arm round her to steady her, and as soon as he held her to him, his ill-temper was vanquished. He talked volubly of the instrumentation he was busy with. But she, who could point out almost every fresh note he put on paper, saw plainly that he had not been at work for more than a quarter of an hour; and, in a miserable swell of doubt and jealousy, such as she could never subdue, she asked: "Were you practising as well?" He took no notice of these words, and she did not trust herself to say more, until, with his free hand, he began jotting again, making notes that were no bigger than pin-heads. Then she laid her hand on his. "I haven't seen you all day." But he was too engrossed to listen. "Look here," he said pointing to a thick-sown bar. "That gave me the deuce of a bother. While here "--and now he explained to her, in detail, the properties of the tenor-tuba in B, and the bass-tuba in F, and the use to which he intended to put these instruments. She heard him with lowered eyes, lightly caressing the back of his hand with her finger-tips. But when he ceased speaking, she rubbed her cheek against his. "It is enough for to-day. Lulu has been lonely." Not one of his thoughts was with her, she saw that, as he answered: "I must get this finished." "To-night?" "If I can. You know well enough, Lulu, when I'm in the swing----" "Yes, yes, I know. If only it wouldn't always come, just when I want you most." Her face lost its brightness; she rose from his knee and roamed about the room, watched from the wall by her pictured self. "But is there ever a moment in the day when you don't want me? You are never satisfied." He spoke abstractedly, without interest in the answer she might make, and, relieved of her weight, leant forward again, while his fingers played some notes on the table. But when she began to let her hands stray over the loose papers and other articles that encumbered chairs, piano and washstand, he raised his head and watched her with a sharp eye. "For goodness' sake, let those things alone, can't you?" he said after he had borne her fidgeting for some time. "You have no secrets from me, I suppose?" She said it with her tenderest smile, but he scowled so darkly in reply that she went over to him again, to touch him with her hand. Standing behind him, with her fingers in his hair, she said: "Just to-day I wanted you so much. This morning I was so depressed that I could have killed myself." He turned his head, to give her a significant glance. "Good reason for the blues, Lulu. I warned you. You want too much of everything. And can't expect to escape a KATER." "Too much?" she echoed, quick to resent his words. "Does it seem so to you? Would days and days of happiness be too much after we have been separated for a week?--after Wednesday night?--after what you said to me yesterday?" "Yesterday I was in the devil of a temper. Why rake up old scores? Now go home. Or at least keep quiet, and let me get something done." He shook his head free of her caressing hand, and, worse still, scratched the place where it had lain. She stood irresolute, not venturing to touch him again, looking hungrily at him. Her eyes fell on the piece of neck, smooth, lightly browned, that showed between his hair and the low collar; and, in an uncontrollable rush of feeling, she stooped and kissed it. As he accepted the caress, without demur, she said: "I thought of going to the theatre to-night, dear." He was pleased and showed it. "That's right--it's just what you need to cheer you up." "But I want you to come, too." He struck the table with his fist. "Good God, can't you get it into your head that I want to work?" She laughed, with ready bitterness. "I should think I could. That's nothing new. You are always busy when I ask you to do anything. You have time for everything and every one but me. If this were something you yourself wanted to do to-night, neither your work nor anything else would stand in the way of it; but my wishes can always be ignored. Have you forgotten already that I only came home the day before yesterday?" He looked sullen. "Now don't make a scene, Lulu. It doesn't do a whit of good." "A scene!" she cried, seizing on his words. "Whenever I open my lips now, you call it a scene. Tell me what I have done, Eugen! Why do you treat me like this? Are you beginning to care less for me? The first evening, the very first, I get home, you won't stay with me--you haven't even kept that evening free for me--and when I ask you about it, and try to get at the truth--oh, do you remember all the cruel things you said to me yesterday? I shall never forget them as long as I live. And now, when I ask you to come out with me--it is such a little thing-oh, I can't sit at home this evening, Eugen, I can't do it! If you really loved me, you would understand." She flung herself across the bed and sobbed despairingly. Schilsky, who had again made believe during this outburst to be absorbed in his work, cast a look of mingled anger and discomfort at the prostrate figure, and for some few moments, succeeded in continuing his occupation with a show of indifference; but as, in place of abating, her sobs grew more heart-rending, his own face began to twitch, and finally he dropped pencil and cigarette, and with a loud expression of annoyance went over to the bed. "Lulu," he said persuasively. "Come, Lulu," and bending over her, he laid his hands on her shoulders and tried to force her to rise. She resisted him with all her might, but he was the stronger, and presently he had her on her feet, where, with her head on his shoulder, she wept out the rest of her tears. He held her to him, and although his face above her was still dark, did what he could to soothe her. He could never bear, to see or to hear a woman cry, and this loud passionate weeping, so careless of anything but itself, racked his nerves, and filled him with an uneasy wrath against invisible powers. "Don't cry, darling, don't cry!" he said again and again. Gradually she grew calmer, and he, too, was still; but when her sobs were hushed, and she was clinging to him in silence, he put his hands on her shoulders and held her back from him, that he might look at her. His face wore a stubborn expression, which she knew, and which made him appear years older than he was. "Now listen to me, Lulu," he said. "When you behave in this way again, you won't see me afterwards for a week--I promise you that, and you know I keep my word. Instead of being glad that I am in the right mood and can get something done, you come here--which you know I have repeatedly forbidden you to do--and make a fool of yourself like this. I have explained everything to you. I could not possibly stay on Wednesday night--why didn't you time your arrival better? But it's just like you. You would throw the whole of one's future into the balance for the sake of a whim. Yesterday I was in a beast of a temper--I've admitted it. But that was made all right last night; and no one but you would drag it up again." He spoke with a kind of dogged restraint, which only sometimes gave way, when the injustice she was guilty of forced itself upon him. "Now, like a good girl, go home--go to the theatre and enjoy yourself. I don't mind you being happy without me. At least, go!--under any circumstances you ought not to be here. How often have I told you that!" His moderation swept over into the feverish irritation she knew so well how to kindle in him, and his lisp became so marked that he was almost unintelligible. "You won't have a rag of reputation left." "If I don't care, why should you?" She felt for his hand. But he turned his back. "I won't have it, I tell you. You know what the student underneath said the last time he met you on the stair." She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep from bursting anew into sobs, and there was a brief silence--he stood at the window, gazing savagely at the opposite house-wall--before she said: "Don't speak to me like that. I'm going--now--this moment. I will never do it again--never again." As he only mumbled disbelief at this, she put her arms round his neck, and raised her tear-stained face to his: her eyes were blurred and sunken with crying, and her lips were white. He knew every line of her face by heart; he had known it in so many moods, and under so many conditions, that he was not as sensitive to its influence as he had once been; and he stood unwilling, with his hands in his pockets, while she clung to him and let him feel her weight. But he was very fond of her, and, as she continued mutely to implore forgiveness--she, Lulu, his Lulu, whom every one envied him--his hasty anger once more subsided; he put his arms round her and kissed her. She nestled in against him, over-happy at his softening, and for some moments they stood like this, in the absolute physical agreement that always overcame their differences. In his arms, with her head on his shoulder, she smoothed back his hair; and while she gazed, with adoring eyes, at this face that constituted her world, she murmured words of endearment; and all the unsatisfactory day was annulled by these few moments of perfect harmony. It was he who loosened his grasp. "Now, it's all right, isn't it? No more tears. But you really must be off, or you'll be late." "Yes. And you?" He had taken up his violin and was tuning it, preparatory to playing himself back into the mood she had dissipated. He ran his fingers up and down, tried flageolets, and slashed chords across the strings. But when she had sponged her face and pinned on her hat, he said, in response to her beseeching eyes, which, as so often before, made the granting of this one request, a touchstone of his love for her: "Look here, Lulu, if I possibly can, I'll drop in at the end of the first act. Look out for me then, in the FOYER." And with this, she was forced to be content. IX. When, shortly after five o'clock, Madeleine and Maurice arrived at the New Theatre, they took their places at the end of a queue which extended to the corner of the main building; and before they had stood very long, so many fresh people had been added to the line, that it had lengthened out until it all but reached the arch of the theatre-cafe. Dove was well to the fore, and would be one of the first to gain the box-office. A quarter of an hour had still to elapse before the doors opened; and Maurice borrowed his companion's textbook, and read studiously, to acquaint himself with the plot of the opera. Madeleine took out Wolzogen's FUHRER, with the intention of brushing up her knowledge of the motives; but, before she had finished a page, she had grown so interested in what two people behind her were saying that she turned and took part in the conversation. The broad expanse of the AUGUSTUSPLATZ facing the theatre was bare and sunny. A policeman arrived, and ordered the queue in a straighter line; then he strolled up and down, stroking and smoothing his white gloves. More people came hurrying over the square to the theatre, and ranged themselves at the end of the tail. As the hands of the big clock on the post-office neared the quarter past five, a kind of tremor ran through the waiting line; it gathered itself more compactly together. One clock after another boomed the single stroke; sounds came from within the building; the burly policeman placed himself at the head of the line. There was a noise of drawn bolts and grating locks, and after a moment's suspense, light shone out and the big door was flung open. "Gent--ly!" shouted the policeman, but the leaders of the queue charged with a will, and about a dozen people had dashed forward, before he could throw down a stemming arm, on which those thus hindered leaned as on a bar of iron. Madeleine and Maurice were to the front of the second batch. And the arm down, in they flew also, Madeleine leading through the swing-doors at the side of the corridor, up the steep, wooden stairs, one flight after another, higher and higher, round and round, past one, two, three, tiers--a mad race, which ended almost in the arms of the gate-keeper at the topmost gallery. Dove was waiting with the tickets, and they easily secured the desired places; not in the middle of the gallery, where, as Madeleine explained while she tucked her hat and jacket under the seat, the monstrous chandelier hid the greater part of the stage, but at the right-hand side, next the lattice that separated the seats at seventy-five from those at fifty pfennigs. "This is first-rate for seeing," said Maurice. Madeleine laughed. "You see too much--that's the trouble. Wait till you've watched the men running about the bottom of the Rhine, working the cages the Rhine-daughters swim in." As yet, with the exception of the gallery, the great building was empty. Now the iron fire-curtain rose; but the sunken well of the orchestra was in darkness, and the expanse of seats on the ground floor far below, was still encased in white wrappings--her and there an attendant began to peel them off. Maurice, poring over his book, had to strain his eyes to read, and this, added to the difficulty of the German, and his own sense of pleasurable excitement, made him soon give up the attempt, and attend wholly to what Madeleine was saying. It was hot already, and the air of the crowded gallery was permeated with various, pungent odours: some people behind them were eating a strong-smelling sausage, and the man on the other side of the lattice reeked of cheap tobacco. When they had been in their seats for about a quarter of an hour, the lights throughout the theatre went up, and, directly afterwards, the lower tiers and the ground floor were sprinkled with figures. One by, one, the members of the orchestra dropped in, turned up the lamps attached to their stands, and taking their instruments, commenced to tune and flourish; and soon stray motives and scraps of motives came mounting up, like lost birds, from wind and strings; the man of the drums beat a soft rattatoo, and applied his ear to the skins of his instruments. Now the players were in their seats, waiting for the conductor; late-comers in the audience entered with an air of guilty haste. The chief curtain had risen, and the stage was hidden only by stuff curtains, bordered with a runic scroll. A delightful sense of expectation pervaded the theatre. Maurice had more than once looked furtively at his watch; and, at every fresh noise behind him, he turned his head--turned so often that the people in the back seats grew suspicious, and whispered to one another. Madeleine had drawn his attention to everything worth noticing; and now, with her opera-glass at her eyes, she pointed out to him people whom he ought to know. Dove, having eaten a ham-roll at the buffet on the stair, had ever since sat with his opera-glass glued to his face, and only at this moment did he remove it with a sigh of relief. "There they are," said Madeleine, and showed Maurice the place in the PARQUET, where Ephie and Johanna Cayhill were sitting. But the young man only glanced cursorily in the direction she indicated; he was wondering why Louise did not come--the time had all but gone. He could not bring himself to ask, partly from fear of being disappointed, partly because, now that he knew her, it was harder than before to bring her name over his lips. But the conductor had entered by the orchestra-door; he stood speaking to the first violinist, and the next moment would climb into his seat. The players held their instruments in readiness--and a question trembled on Maurice's tongue. But at this very moment, a peremptory fanfare rang out behind the scene, and Madeleine said: "The sword motive, Maurice," to add in the same breath: "There's Louise." He looked behind him. "Where?" She nudged him. "Not here, you silly," she said in a loud whisper. "Surely you haven't been expecting her to come up here? PARQUET, fourth row from the front, between two women in plaid dresses--oh, now the lights have gone." "Ssh!" said at least half a dozen people about them: her voice was audible above the growling of the thunder. Maurice took her opera-glass, and, notwithstanding the darkness into which the theatre had been plunged, travelled his eyes up and down the row she named--naturally without success. When the curtains parted and disclosed the stage, it was a little lighter, but not light enough for him; he could not find the plaids; or rather there were only plaids in the row; and there was also more than one head that resembled hers. To know that she was there was enough to distract him; and he was conscious of the music and action of the opera merely as something that was going on outside him, until he received another sharp nudge from Madeleine on his righthand side. "You're not attending. And this is the only act you'll be able to make anything of." He gave a guilty start, and turned to the stage, where Hunding had just entered to a pompous measure. In his endeavours to understand what followed, he was aided by his companions, who prompted him alternately. But Siegmund's narration seemed endless, and his thoughts wandered in spite of himself. "Listen to this," said Dove of a sudden. "It's one of the few songs Wagner has written." He swayed his head from side to side, to the opening bars of the love-song; and Maurice found the rhythm so inviting that he began keeping time with his foot, to the indignation of a music-loving policeman behind them, who gave an angry: "Pst!" "One of the finest love-scenes that was ever written," whispered Madeleine in her decisive way. And Maurice believed her. From this point on, the music took him up and carried him with it; and when the great doors burst open, and let in the spring night, he applauded vigorously with the rest, keeping it up so long that Dove disappeared, and Madeleine grew impatient. "Let us go. The interval is none too long." They went downstairs to the first floor of the building, and entered a long, broad, brilliantly lighted corridor. Here the majority of the audience was walking round and round, in a procession of twos and threes; groups of people also stood at both ends and looked on; others went in and out of the doors that opened on the great loggia. Madeleine and Maurice joined the perambulating throng, Madeleine bowing and smiling to her acquaintances, Maurice eagerly scanning the faces that came towards him on the opposite side. Suddenly, a stout gentleman, in gold spectacles, kid gloves tight to bursting, and a brown frock coat, over the amplitude of which was slung an opera-glass, started up from a corner, and, seizing both Madeleine's hands, worked them up and down. At the same time, he made a ceremonious little speech about the length of time that had elapsed since their last meeting, and paid her a specious compliment on the taste she displayed in being present at so serious an opera. Madeleine laughed, and said a few words in her hard, facile German: the best was yet to come; "DIE MORAN" was divine as Brunnhilde. Having bowed and said: "Lohse" to Maurice, the stranger took no further notice of him, but, drawing Madeleine's hand through his arm, in a manner half gallant, half paternal, invited her to take ices with him, at the adjoining buffet. Maurice remained standing in a corner, scrutinising those who passed him. He exchanged a few words with one of his companions of the dinner-table--a small-bodied, big-headed chemical student called Dickensey, who had a reputation for his cynicism. He had just asked Maurice whether Siegmund reminded him more of a pork-butcher or a prizefighter, and had offered to lay a bet that he would never attend a performance in this theatre when the doors of Hunding's house flew open, or the sword lit up, at exactly the right moment--when Maurice caught sight of Dove and the Cayhills. He excused himself, and went to join them. Not one of the three looked happy. Johanna was unspeakably bored and did not conceal it; she gazed with contempt on the noisy, excited crowd. Dove was not only burning to devote himself to Ephie; he had also got himself into a dilemma, and was at this moment doing his best to explain the first act of the opera to Johanna, without touching on the relationship of the lovers. His face was red with the effort, and he hailed Maurice's appearance as a welcome diversion. But Ephie, too, greeted him with pleasure, and touching his arm, drew him back, so that they dropped behind the others. She was coquettishly dressed this evening, and looked so charming that people drew one another's attention to DIE REIZENDE KLEINE ENGLADNDERIN. But Maurice soon discovered that she was out of spirits, and disposed to be cross. For fear lest he was the offender, he asked if she had quite forgiven him, and if they were good friends again. "Oh, I had forgotten all about it!" But, a moment after, she was grave and quiet--altogether unlike herself. "Are you not enjoying yourself, Ephie?" "No, I'm not. I think it's stupid. And they're all so fat." This referred to the singers, and was indisputable; Maurice could only agree with her, and try to rally her. Meanwhile, he continued surreptitiously to scour the hall, with an evergrowing sense of disappointment. Then, suddenly, among those who were passing in the opposite direction, he saw Louise. In a flash he understood why he had not been able to find her in the row of seats: he had looked for her in a black dress, and she was all in white, with heavy white lace at her neck. Her companion was an Englishman called Eggis, of whom it was rumoured that he had found it advisable abruptly to leave his native land: here, he made a precarious living by journalism, and by doing odd jobs for the consulate. In spite of his shabby clothes, this man, prematurely bald, with dissipated features, had polished manners and an air of refinement; and, thoroughly enjoying his position, he was talking to his companion with vivacity. It was plain that Louise was only half listening to him; with a faint, absent smile on her lips, she, too, restlessly scanned the crowd. They all caught sight of Schilsky at the same moment, and Maurice, on whom nothing was lost, saw as well the quick look that passed between Louise and him, and its immediate effect: Louise flashed into a smile, and was full of gracious attentiveness to the little man at her side. Schilsky leant against the wall, with his hands in his pockets, his conspicuous head well back. On entering the FOYER, he had been pounced on by Miss Jensen. The latter, showily dressed in a large-striped stuff, had in tow a fellow-singer about half her own size, whom she was rarely to be seen without; but, on this occasion, the wan little American stood disconsolately apart, for Miss Jensen was paying no attention to him. In common with the rest of her sex, she had a weakness for Schilsky; and besides, on this evening, she needed specially receptive ears, for she had been studying the role of Sieglinde, and was full of criticisms and objections. As Ephie and Maurice passed them, she nodded to the latter and said: "Good evening, neighbour!" while Schilsky, seizing the chance, broke away, without troubling to excuse himself. Thus deserted, Miss Jensen detained Maurice, and so he lost the couple he wanted to keep in sight. But at the first pause in the conversation, Ephie plucked at his sleeve. "Let us go out on the balcony." They went outside on the loggia, where groups of people stood refreshing themselves in the mild evening air, which was pleasant with the scent of lilac. Ephie led the way, and Maurice followed her to the edge of the parapet, where they leaned against one of the pillars. Here, he found himself again in the neighbourhood of the other two. Louise, leaning both hands on the stone-work, was looking out over the square; but Schilsky, lounging as before, with his legs crossed, his hands in his pockets, had his back to it, and was letting his eyes range indifferently over the faces before him. As Maurice and Ephie came up, he yawned long and heartily, and, in so doing, showed all his defective teeth. Furtively watching them, Maurice saw him lean towards his companion and say something to her; at the same time, he touched with his fingertips the lace she wore at the front of her dress. The familiarity of the action grated on Maurice, and he turned away his head. When he looked again, a moment or two later, he was disturbed anew. Louise was leaning forward, still in the same position, but Schilsky was plainly conversing by means of signs with some one else. He frowned, half closed his eyes, shook his head, and, as if by chance, laid a finger on his lips. "Who's he doing that to?" Maurice asked himself, and followed the direction of the other's eyes, which were fixed on the corner where he and Ephie stood. He turned, and looked from side to side; and, as he did this, he caught a glimpse of Ephie's face, which made him observe her more nearly: it was flushed, and she was gazing hard at Schilsky. With a rush of enlightenment, Maurice looked back at the young man, but this time Schilsky saw that he was being watched; stooping, he said a nonchalant word to his companion, and thereupon they went indoors again. All this passed like a flash, but it left, none the less, a disagreeable impression, and before Maurice had recovered from it, Ephie said: "Let us go in." They pressed towards the door. "I'm poor company to-night, Ephie," he said, feeling already the need of apologising to her for his ridiculous suspicion. "But you are quiet, too." He glanced down at her as he spoke, and again was startled; her expression was set and defiant, but her baby lips trembled. "What's the matter? I believe you are angry with me for being so silent." "I guess it doesn't make any difference to me whether you talk or not," she replied pettishly. "But I think it's just as dull and stupid as it can be. I wish I hadn't come." "Would you like to go home?" "Of course I wouldn't. I'll stop now I'm here--oh, can't we go quicker? How slow you are! Do make haste." He thought he heard tears in her voice, and looked at her in perplexity. While he contemplated getting her into a quiet corner and making her tell him truthfully what the matter was, they came upon Madeleine, who had been searching everywhere for Maurice. Madeleine had more colour in her cheeks than usual, and, in the pleasing consciousness that she was having a successful evening, she brought her good spirits to bear on Ephie, who stood fidgeting beside them. "You look nice, child," she remarked in her patronising way. "Your dress is very pretty. But why is your face so red? One would think you had been crying." Ephie, growing still redder, tossed her head. "It's no wonder, I'm sure. The theatre is as hot as an oven. But at least my nose isn't red as well." Madeleine was on the point of retorting, but at this moment, the interval came to an end, and the electric bells rang shrilly. The people who were nearest the doors went out at once, upstairs and down. Among the first were Louise and Schilsky, the latter's head as usual visible above every one else's. "I will go, too," said Ephie hurriedly. "No, don't bother to come with me. I'll find my way all right. I guess the others are in front." "There's something wrong with that child to-night," said Madeleine as she and Maurice climbed to the gallery. "Pert little thing! But I suppose even such sparrow-brains have their troubles." "I suppose they have," said Maurice. He had just realised that the longed-for interval was over, and with it more of the hopes he had nursed. Dove was already in his seat, eating another roll. He moved along to make room for them, but not a word was to be got out of him, and as soon as he had finished eating, he raised the opera-glass to his eyes again. Behind his back, Madeleine whispered a mischievous remark to Maurice, but the latter smiled wintrily in return. He had searched swiftly and thoroughly up and down the fourth row of the PARQUET, only to find that Louise was not in it. This time there could be no doubt whatever; not a single white dress was in the row, and towards the middle a seat was vacant. They had gone home then; he would not see her again--and once more the provoking darkness enveloped the theatre. This second act had no meaning for him, and he found the various scenes intolerably long. Dove volunteered no further aid, and Madeleine's explanations were insufficient; he was perplexed and bored, and when the curtains fell, joined in the applause merely to save appearances. The others rose, but he said he would not go downstairs; and when they had drawn back to let Dove push by and hurry away, Madeleine said she, too, would stay. However they would at least go into the corridor, where the air was better. After they had promenaded several times up and down, they descended to a lower floor and there, through a little half-moon window that gave on the FOYER below, they watched the living stream which, underneath, was going round as before. Madeleine talked without a pause. "Look at Dove!" She pointed him out as he went by with the two sisters. "Did you ever see such a gloomy air? He might sit for Werther to-night. And oh, look, there's Boehmer with his widow--see, the pretty fattish little woman. She's over forty and has buried two husbands, but is crazy about Boehmer. They say she's going to marry him, though he's more than twenty years younger than she is." At this juncture, to his astonishment, Maurice saw Schilsky and Louise. He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and Madeleine understood it. She stopped her gossip to say: "You thought she had gone, didn't you? Probably she has only changed her seat. They do that sometimes--he hates PARQUET." And, after a pause: "How cross she looks! She's evidently in a temper about something. I never saw people hide their feelings as badly as they do. It's positively indecent." Her strictures were justifiable; as long as the two below were in sight, and as often as they came round, they did not exchange word or look with each other. Schilsky frowned sulkily, and his loose-knitted body seemed to hang together more loosely than usual, while as for Louise--Maurice staring hard from his point of vantage could not have believed it possible for her face to change in this way. She looked suddenly older, and very tired; and her mobile mouth was hard. When, an hour later, after a tedious colloquy between Brunnhilde and Wotan, this long and disappointing evening came to an end, to the more human strains of the FEUERZAUBER, and they, the last of the gallery-audience to leave, had tramped down the wooden stairs, Maurice's heart leapt to his throat to discover, as they turned the last bend, not only the two Cayhills waiting for them, but also, a little distance further off, Louise. She stood there, in her white dress, with a thin scarf over her head. Madeleine was surprised too. "Louise! Is it you? And alone?" The girl did not respond. "I want to borrow some money from you, Madeleine--about five or six marks," she said, without smiling, in one of those colourless voices that preclude further questioning. Madeleine was not sure if she had more than a couple of marks in her purse, and confirmed this on looking through it under a lamp; but both young men put their hands in their pockets, and the required sum was made up. As they walked across the square, Louise explained. Dressed, and ready to start for the theatre, she had not been able to find her purse. "I looked everywhere. And yet I had it only this morning. At the last moment, I came down here to Markwald's. He knows me; and he let me have the seats on trust. I said I would go in afterwards." They waited outside the tobacconist's, while she settled her debt. Before she came out again, Madeleine cast her eyes over the group, and, having made a rapid surmise, said good-naturedly to Johanna: "Well, I suppose we shall walk together as far as we can. Shall you and I lead off?" Maurice had a sudden vision of bliss; but no sooner had Louise appeared again, with the shopman bowing behind her, then Ephie came round to his side, with a naive, matter-of-course air that admitted of no rebuff, and asked him to carry her opera-glass. Dove and Louise brought up the rear. But Dove had only one thought: to be in Maurice's place. Ephie had behaved so strangely in the theatre; he had certainly done something to offend her, and, although he had more than once gone over his conduct of the past week, without finding any want of correctness on his part, whatever it was, he must make it good without delay. "You know my friend Guest, I think," he said at last, having racked his brains to no better result--not for the world would he have had his companion suspect his anxiety to leave her. "He's a clever fellow, a very clever fellow. Schwarz thinks a great deal of him. I wonder what his impressions of the opera were. This was his first experience of Wagner; it would be interesting to hear what he has to say." Louise was moody and preoccupied, but Dove's words made her smile. "Let us ask him," she said. They quickened their steps and overtook the others. And when Dove, without further ado, had marched round to Ephie's side, Louise, left slightly to herself, called Maurice back to her. "Mr. Guest, we want your opinion of the WALKURE." Confused to find her suddenly beside him, Maurice was still more disconcerted at the marked way in which she slackened her pace to let the other two get in front. Believing, too, that he heard a note of mockery in her voice, he coloured and hesitated. Only a moment ago he had had several things worth saying on his tongue; now they would not out. He stammered a few words, and broke down in them half-way. She said nothing, and after one of the most embarrassing pauses he had ever experienced, he avowed in a burst of forlorn courage: "To tell the truth, I did not hear much of the music." But Louise, who had merely exchanged one chance companion for another, did not ask the reason, or display any interest in his confession, and they went on in silence. Maurice looked stealthily at her: her white scarf had slipped back and her wavy head was bare. She had not heard what he said, he told himself; her thoughts had nothing to do with him. But as he stole glances at her thus, unreproved, he wakened to a sudden consciousness of what was happening to him: here and now, after long weeks of waiting, he was walking at her side; he knew her, was alone with her, in the summer darkness, and, though a cold hand gripped his throat at the thought, he took the resolve not to let this moment pass him by, empty-handed. He must say something that would rouse her to the fact of his existence; something that would linger in her mind, and make her remember him when he was not there. But they were half way down the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE; at the end, where the PETERSTRASSE crossed it, Dove and the Cayhills would branch off, and Madeleine return to them. He had no time to choose his phrases. "When I was introduced to you this afternoon, Miss Dufrayer, you did not know who I was," he said bluntly. "But I knew you very well--by sight, I mean, of course. I have seen you often--very often." He had done what he had hoped to do, had arrested her attention. She turned and considered him, struck by the tone in which he spoke. "The first time I saw you," continued Maurice, with the same show of boldness--"you, of course, will not remember it. It was one evening in Schwarz's room--in April--months ago. And since then, I ... well ... I----" She was gazing at him now, in surprise. She remembered at this minute, how once before, that day, his manner of saying some simple thing had affected her disagreeably. Then, she had eluded the matter with an indifferent word; now, she was not in a mood to do this, or in a mood to show leniency. She was dispirited, at war with herself, and she welcomed the excuse to vent her own bitterness on another. "And since then--well?" "Since then ..." He hesitated, and gave a nervous laugh at his own daring. "Since then ... well, I have thought about you more than--than is good for my peace of mind." For a moment amazement kept her silent; then she, too, laughed, and the walls of the dark houses they were passing seemed to the young man to re-echo the sound. "Your peace of mind!" She repeated the words after him, with such an ironical emphasis that his unreflected courage curled and shrivelled. He wished the ground had swallowed him up before he had said them. For, as they fell from her lips, the audacity he had been guilty of, and the absurdity that was latent in the words themselves, struck him in the face like pellets of hail. "Your peace of mind! What has your peace of mind to do with me?" she cried, growing extravagantly angry. "I never saw you in my life till to-day; I may never see you again, and it is all the same to me whether I do or not.--Oh, my own peace of mind, as you call it, is quite hard enough to take care of, without having a stranger's thrown at me! What do you mean by making me responsible for it! I have never done anything to you." All the foolish castles Maurice had built came tumbling about his cars. He grew pale and did not venture to look at her. "Make you responsible! Oh, how can you misunderstand me so cruelly!" His consternation was so palpable that it touched her in spite of herself. Her face had been as naively miserable as a child's, now it softened, and she spoke more kindly. "Don't mind what I say. To-night I am tired ... have a headache ... anything you like." A wave of compassion drowned his petty feelings of injury, and his sympathy found vent in a few inadequate words. "Help me?--you?" She laughed, in an unhappy way. "To help, one must understand, and you couldn't understand though you tried. All you others lead such quiet lives; you know nothing of what goes on in a life like mine. Every day I ask myself why I have not thrown myself out of the window, or over one of the bridges into the river, and put an end to it." Wrapped up though she was in herself, she could not help smiling at his frank gesture of dismay. "Don't be afraid," she said, and the smile lingered on her lips. "I shall never do it. I'm too fond of life, and too afraid of death. But at least," she caught herself up again, "you will see how ridiculous it is for you to talk to me of your peace of mind. Peace of mind! I have never even been passably content. Something is always wanting. To-night, for instance, I feel so much energy in me, and I can make nothing of it--nothing! If I were a man, I should walk for hours, bareheaded, through the woods. But to be a woman ... to be cooped up inside four walls ... when the night itself is not large enough to hold it all!----" She threw out her hands to emphasise her helplessness, then let them drop to her sides again. There was a silence, for Maurice could not think of anything to say; her fluency made him tongue-tied. He struggled with his embarrassment until they were all but within earshot of the rest, at the bottom of the street. "If I ... if you would let me ... There is nothing in the world I wouldn't do to help you," he ended fervently. She did not reply; they had reached the corner where the others waited. There was a general leave-taking. Through a kind of mist, Maurice saw that Ephie's face still wore a hostile look; and she hardly moved her lips when she bade him good-night. Madeleine drew her own conclusions as she walked the rest of the way home between two pale and silent people. She had seen, on coming out of the theatre, that Louise was in one of her bad moods--a fact easily to be accounted for by Schilsky's absence. Maurice had evidently been made to suffer under it, too, for not a syllable was to be drawn from him, and, after several unavailing attempts she let him alone. As they crossed the ROSSPLATZ, which lay wide and deserted in the starlight, Louise said abruptly: "Suppose, instead of going home, we walk to Connewitz?" At this proposal, and at Maurice's seconding of it, Madeleine laughed with healthy derision. "That is just like one of your crazy notions," she said "What a creature you are! For my part, I decline with thanks. I have to get a Moscheles ETUDE ready by to-morrow afternoon, and need all my wits. But don't let me hinder you. Walk to Grimma if you want to." "What do you say? Shall you and I go on?" Louise turned to Maurice; and the young man did not know whether she spoke in jest or in earnest. Madeleine knew her better. "Louise!" she said warningly. "Maurice has work to do to-morrow, too." "You thought I meant it," said the girl, and laughed so ungovernably that Madeleine was again driven to remonstrance. "For goodness' sake, be quiet! We shall have a policeman after us, if you laugh like that." Nothing more was said until they stood before the housedoor in the BRUDERSTRASSE. There Louise, who had lapsed once more into her former indifference, asked Madeleine to come upstairs with her. "I will look for the purse again; and then I can give you what I owe you. Or else I am sure to forget. Oh, it's still early; and the night is so long. No one can think of sleep yet." Madeleine was not a night-bird, but she was also not averse to having a debt paid. Louise looked from her to Maurice. "Will you come, too, Mr. Guest? It will only take a few minutes," she said, and, seeing his unhappy face, and remembering what had passed between them, she spoke more gently than she had yet done. Maurice felt that he ought to refuse; it was late. But Madeleine answered for him. "Of course. Come along, Maurice," and he crossed the threshold behind them. After lighting a taper, they entered a paved vestibule, and mounted a flight of broad and very shallow stairs; half-way up, there was a deep recess for pot-plants, and a wooden seat was attached to the wall. The house had been a fine one in its day; it was solidly built, had massive doors with heavy brass fittings, and thick mahogany banisters. On the first floor were two doors, a large and a small one, side by side. Louise unlocked the larger, and they stepped into a commodious lobby, off which several rooms opened. She led the way to the furthest of these, and entered in front of her companions. Maurice, hesitating just inside the door, found himself close to a grand piano, which stood free on all sides, was open, and disorderly with music. It was a large room, with three windows; and one end of it was shut off by a high screen, which stretched almost from wall to wall. A deep sofa stood in an oriel-window; a writing-table was covered with bric-a-brac, and three tall flower-vases were filled with purple lilac. But there was a general air of untidiness about the room; for strewn over the chairs and tables were numerous small articles of dress and the toilet-hairpins, a veil, a hat and a skirt--all traces of her intimate presence. As she lifted the lamp from the writing-table to place it on the square table before the sofa, Madeleine called her attention to a folded paper that had lain beneath it. "It seems to be a letter for you." She caught at it with a kind of avidity, tore it open, and heedless of their presence, devoured it, not only with her eyes: but with her parted lips and eager hands. When she looked up again, her cheeks had a tinge of colour in them; her eyes shone like faceted jewels; her smile was radiant and infectious. With no regard for appearances, she buttoned the note in the bosom of her dress. "Now we will look for the purse," she said. "But come in, Mr. Guest--you are still standing at the door. I shall think you are offended with me. Oh, how hot the room is!--and the lilac is stifling. First the windows open! And then this scarf off, and some more light. You will help me to look, will you not?" It was to Maurice she spoke, with a childlike upturning of her face to his--an irresistibly confiding gesture. She disappeared behind the screen, and came out bareheaded, nestling with both hands at the coil of hair on her neck. Then she lit two candles that stood on the piano in brass candlesticks, and Maurice lighted her round the room, while she searched in likely and unlikely places--inside the piano, in empty vases, in the folds of the curtains--laughing at herself as she did so, until Madeleine said that this was only nonsense, and came after them herself. When Maurice held the candle above the writing-table, he lighted three large photographs of Schilsky, one more dandified than the other; and he was obliged to raise his other hand to steady the candlestick. At last, following a hint from Madeleine, they discovered the purse between the back of the sofa and the seat; and now Louise remembered that it had been in the pocket of her dressing-gown that afternoon. "How stupid of me! I might have known," she said contritely. "So many things have gone down there in their day. Once a silver hair-brush that I was fond of; and I sometimes look there when bangles or hat-pins are missing," and letting her eyes dance at Maurice, she threw back her head and laughed. Here, however, another difficulty arose; except for a few nickel coins, the purse was found to contain only gold, and the required change could not be made up. "Never mind; take one of the twenty-mark pieces," she urged. "Yes, Madeleine, I would rather you did;" and when Madeleine hinted that Maurice might not find it too troublesome to come back with the change the following day, she turned to the young man, and saying: "Yes, if Mr. Guest would be so kind," smiled at him with such a gracious warmth that it was all he could do to reply with a decent unconcern. But the hands of the clock on the writing-table were nearing half-past eleven, and now it was she who referred to the lateness of the hour. "Thank you very much," she said to Maurice on parting. "And you must forget the nonsense I talked this evening. I didn't mean it--not a word of it." She laughed and held out her hand. "I wouldn't shake hands with you this afternoon, but now--if you will? For to-night I am not superstitious. Nothing bad will happen; I'm sure of that. And I am very much obliged to you--for everything. Good night." Only a few minutes back, he had been steeped in pity for her; now it seemed as if no one had less need of pity or sympathy than she. He was bewildered, and went home to pass alternately from a mood of rapture to one of jealous despair. And the latter was torturous, for, as they walked, Madeleine had let fall such a vile suspicion that he had parted from her in anger, calling as he went that if he believed what she said to be true, he would never put faith in a human being again. In the light of the morning, of course, he knew that it was incredible, a mere phantasm born of the dark; and towards four o'clock that afternoon, he called at the BRUDERSTRASSE with the change. But Louise was not at home, and as he did not find her in on three successive days, he did not venture to return. He wrote his name on a card, and left this, together with the money, in an envelope. X. After parting from the rest, Dove and the two Cayhills continued their way in silence: they were in the shadow thrown by the steep vaulting of the THOMASKIRCHE, before a word was exchanged between them. Johanna had several times glanced inquiringly at her sister, but Ephie had turned away her head, so that only the outline of her cheek was visible, and as Dove had done exactly the same, Johanna could only conclude that the two had fallen out. It was something novel for her to be obliged to talk when Ephie was present, but it was impossible for them to walk the whole way home as mum as this, especially as Dove had already heaved more than one deep sigh. So, as they turned into the PROMENADE, Johanna said with a jerk, and with an aggressiveness that she could not subdue: "Well, that is the first and the last time anyone shall persuade me to go to a so-called opera by Wagner." "Is not that just a little rash?" asked Dove. He smiled, unruffled, with a suggestion of patronage; but there was also a preoccupation in his manner, which showed that he was thinking of other things. "You call that music," said Johanna, although he had done nothing of the kind. "I call it noise. I am not musical myself, thank goodness, but at least I know a tune when I hear one." "If my opinion had been asked, I should certainly have suggested something lighter--LOHENGRIN OR TANNHAUSER, for instance," said Dove. "You would have done us a favour if you had," replied Johanna; and she meant what she said, in more ways than one. She had been at a loss to account for Ephie's sudden longing to hear DIE WALKURE, and had gone to the theatre against her will, simply because she never thwarted Ephie if she could avoid it. Now, after she had heard the opera, she felt aggrieved with Dove as well; as far as she had been able to gather from his vague explanations, from the bawling of the singers, and from subsequent events, the first act treated of relations so infamous that, by common consent, they are considered non-existent; and Johanna was of the opinion that, instead of being so ready to take tickets for them, Dove might have let drop a hint of the nature of the piece Ephie wished to see. After this last remark of Johanna's there was another lengthy pause. Then Dove, looking fondly at what he could see of Ephie's cheek, said: "I am afraid Miss Ephie has not enjoyed it either; she is so quiet--so unlike herself." Ephie, who had been staring into the darkness, bit her lip: he was at it again. After the unfriendly way in which Maurice Guest had deserted her, and forced her into Dove's company, Dove had worried her right down the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE, to know what the matter was, and how he had offended her. She felt exasperated with every one, and if he began his worryings again, would have to vent her irritation somehow. "Ephie has only herself to blame if she didn't enjoy it; she was bent on going," said Johanna, in the mildly didactic manner she invariably used towards her sister. "But I think she is only tired--or a little cross." "Oh, that is not likely," Dove hastened to interpose. "I am not cross, Joan," said Ephie angrily. "And if it was my fault you had to come--I've enjoyed myself very much, and I shall go again, as often as I like. But I won't be teased--I won't indeed!" This was the sharpest answer Johanna had ever received from Ephie. She looked at her in dismay, but made no response, for of nothing was Johanna more afraid than of losing the goodwill Ephie bore her. Mentally she put her sister's pettishness down to the noise and heat of the theatre, and it was an additional reason for bearing Wagner and his music a grudge. Dove also made no further effort to converse connectedly, but his silence was of a conciliatory kind, and, as they advanced along the PROMENADE, he could not deny himself the pleasure of drawing the pretty, perverse child's attention to the crossings, the ruts in the road, the best bits of pavement, with a: "Walk you here, Miss Ephie," "Take care," "Allow me," himself meanwhile dancing from one side of the footpath to the other, until the young girl was almost distracted. "I can see for myself, thank you. I have eyes in my head as well as anyone else," she exclaimed at length; and to Johanna's amazed: "Ephie!" she retorted: "Yes, Joan, you think no one has a right to be rude but yourself." Johanna was more hurt by these words than she would have confessed. She had hitherto believed that Ephie--affectionate, lazy little Ephie--accepted her individual peculiarities as an integral part of her nature: it had not occurred to her that Ephie might be standing aloof and considering her objectively--let alone mentally using such an unkind word as rudeness of her. But Ephie's fit of ill-temper, for such it undoubtedly was, made Johanna see things differently; it hinted at unsuspected, cold scrutinies in the past, and implied a somewhat laming care of one's words in the days to come, which would render it difficult ever again to be one's perfectly natural self. Had Johanna not been so occupied with her own feelings, she would have heard the near tears in Ephie's voice; it was with the utmost difficulty that the girl kept them back, and at the house-door, she had vanished up the stairs long before Dove had finished saying good-night. In the corridor, she hesitated whether or no, according to custom, she should go to her mother's room. Then she put a brave face on it, and opened the door. "Here we are, mummy. Good night. I hope the evening wasn't too long." Long?--on the contrary the hours had flown. Mrs. Cayhill, left to herself, had all the comfortable sensations of a tippler in the company of his bottle. She could forge ahead, undeterred by any sense of duty; she had not to interrupt herself to laugh at Ephie's wit, nor was she troubled by Johanna's cold eye--that eye which told more plainly than words, how her elder daughter regarded her self-indulgence. Propped up in bed on two pillows, she now laid down her book, and put out her hand to draw Ephie to her. "Did you enjoy it, darling? Were you amused? But you will tell me all about it in the morning." "Yes, mother, in the morning. I am a little tired--but it was very sweet," said Ephie bravely. "Good night." Mrs. Cayhill kissed her, and nodded in perfect contentment at the pretty little figure before her. Ephie was free to go. And at last she was in her own room--at last! She hastily locked both doors, one leading to the passage and one to her sister's room. A moment later, Johanna was at the latter, trying to open it. "Ephie! What is the matter? Why have you locked the door? Open it at once, I insist upon it," she cried anxiously, and as loudly as she dared, for fear of disturbing the other inmates of the house. But Ephie begged hard not to be bothered; she had a bad headache, and only wanted to be quiet. "Let me give you a powder," urged her sister. "You are so excited--I am sure you are not well;" and when this, too, was refused: "You had nothing but some tea, child--you must be hungry. And they have left our supper on the table." No, she was not hungry, didn't want any supper, and was very sleepy. "Well, at least unlock your door," begged Johanna, with visions of the dark practices which Ephie, the soul of candour, might be contemplating on the other side. "I will not come in, I promise you," she added. "Oh, all right," said Ephie crossly. But as soon as she heard that Johanna had gone, she returned to the middle of the room without touching the door; and after standing undecided for a moment, as if not quite sure what was coming next, she sat down on a chair at the foot of the bed, and suddenly began to cry. The tears had been in waiting for so long that they flowed without effort, abundantly, rolling one over another down her cheeks; but she was careful not to make a sound; for, even when sobbing bitterly, she did not forget that at any moment Johanna might enter the adjoining room and overhear her. And then, what a fuss there would be! For Ephie was one of those fortunate people who always get what they want, and but rarely have occasion to cry. All her desires had moved low, near earth, and been easily fulfilled. Did she break her prettiest doll, a still prettier was forthcoming; did anything happen to cross wish or scheme of hers, half a dozen brains were at work to think out a compensation. But now she wept in earnest, behind closed doors, for she had received an injury which no one could make good. And the more she thought of it, the more copiously her tears flowed. The evening had been one long tragedy of disappointment: her fevered anticipation beforehand, her early throbs of excitement in the theatre, her growing consternation as the evening advanced, her mortification at being slighted--a sensation which she experienced for the first time. Again and again she asked herself what she had done to be treated in this way. What had happened to change him? She was sitting upright on her chair, letting the tears stream unchecked; her two hands lay upturned on her knee; in one of them was a diminutive lace handkerchief, rolled to a ball, with which now and then she dabbed away the hottest tears. The windows of the room were still open, the blinds undrawn, and the street-lamps threw a flickering mesh of light on the wall. In the glass that hung over the washstand, she saw her dim reflection: following an impulse, she dried her eyes, and, with trembling fingers, lighted two candles, one on each side of the mirror. By this uncertain light, she leant forward with both hands on the stand, and peered at herself with a new curiosity. She was still just as she had come out of the theatre: a many-coloured silk scarf was twisted round her head, and the brilliant, dangling fringes, and the stray tendrils of hair that escaped, made a frame for the rounded oval of her face. And then her skin was so fine, her eyes were so bright, the straight lashes so black and so long!--she put her head back, looked at herself through half-closed lids, turned her face this way and that, even smiling, wet though her cheeks were, in order that she might see the even line of teeth, with their slightly notched edges. The smile was still on her lips when the tears welled up again, ran over, trickled down and dropped with a splash, she watching them, until a big, unexpected sob rose in her throat, and almost choked her. Yes, she was pretty--oh, very, very pretty! But it made what had happened all the harder to understand. How had he had the heart to treat her so cruelly? She knelt down by the open window, and laid her head on the sill. The moon, a mere sharp line of silver, hung fine and slender, like a polished scimitar, above the dark mass of houses opposite. Turning her hot face up to it, she saw that it was new, and instantly felt a throb of relief that she had not caught her first glimpse of it through glass. She bowed her head to it, quickly, nine times running, and sent up a prayer to the deity of fortune that had its home there. Good luck!--the fulfilment of one's wish! She wished in haste, with tight-closed eyes--and who knew but what, the very next day, her wish might come true! Tired with crying, above all, tired of the grief itself, she began more and more to let her thoughts stray to the morrow. And having once yielded to the allurements of hope, she even endeavoured to make the best of the past evening, telling herself that she had not been alone for a single instant; he had really had no chance of speaking to her. In the next breath, of course, she reminded herself that he might easily have made a chance, had he wished; and a healthier feeling of resentment stole over her. Rising from her cramped position, she shut the window. She resolved to show him that she was not a person who could be treated in this off-hand fashion; he should see that she was not to be trifled with. But she played with her unhappiness a little longer, and even had an idea of throwing herself on the bed without undressing. She was very sleepy, though, and the desire to be between the cool, soft sheets was too strong to be withstood. She slipped out of her clothes, leaving them just where they fell on the floor, like round pools; and before she had finished plaiting her hair, she was stifling a hearty yawn. But in bed, when the light was out, she lay and stared before her. "I am very, very unhappy. I shall not sleep a wink," she said to herself, and sighed at the prospect of the night-watch. But before five minutes had passed her closed hand relaxed, and lay open and innocent on the coverlet; her breath came regularly--she was fast asleep. The moon was visible for a time in the setting of the unshuttered window; and when she wakened next day, toward nine o'clock, the full morning sun was playing on the bed. For several months prior to this, Ephie had worshipped Schilsky at a distance. The very first time she saw him play, he had made a profound impression on her: he looked so earnest and melancholy, so supremely indifferent to every one about him, as he stood with his head bent to his violin. Then, too, he had beautiful hands; and she did not know which she admired more, his auburn hair with the big hat set so jauntily on it, or the thrillingly impertinent way he had of staring at you--through half-closed eyes, with his head well back--in a manner at once daring and irresistible. Having come through a period of low spirits, caused by an acute consciousness of her own littleness and inferiority, Ephie so far recovered her self-confidence that she was able to look at her divinity when she met him; and soon after this, she made the intoxicating discovery that not only did he return her look, but that he also took notice of her, and deliberately singled her out with his gaze. And the belief was pardonable on Ephie's part, for Schilsky made it a point of honour to stare any pretty girl into confusion; besides which, he had a habit of falling into sheep-like reveries, in which he saw no more of what or whom he looked at, than do the glassy eyes of the blind. More than once, Ephie had blushed and writhed in blissful torture under these stonily staring eyes. From this to persuading herself that her feelings were returned was only a step. Events and details, lighter than puff-balls, were to her links of iron, which formed a wonderful chain of evidence. She went about nursing the idea that Schilsky desired an introduction as much as she did; that he was suffering from a romantic and melancholy attachment, which forbade him attempting to approach her. At this date, she became an adept at inventing excuses to go to the Conservatorium when she thought he was likely to be there; and, suddenly grown rebellious, she shook off Johanna's protectorship, which until now had weighed lightly on her. She grew fastidious about her dress, studied before the glass which colours suited her best, and the effect of a particular bow or ribbon; while on the days she had her violin-lessons, she developed a coquetry which made nothing seem good enough to wear, and was the despair of Johanna. When Schilsky played at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, she sat in the front row of seats, and made her hands ache with applauding. Afterwards she lay wakeful, with hot cheeks, and dreamt extravagant dreams of sending him great baskets and bouquets of flowers, with coloured streamers to them, such as the singers in the opera received on a gala night. And though no name was given, he would know from whom they came. But on the only occasion she tried to carry out the scheme, and ventured inside a florist's shop, her scant command of German, and the excessive circumstantiality of the matter, made her feel so uncomfortable that she had fled precipitately, leaving the shopman staring after her in surprise. Things were at this pass when, one day late in May, Ephie went as usual to take her lesson. It was two o'clock on a cloudless afternoon, and so warm that the budding lilac in squares and gardens began to give out fragrance. In the whitewashed, many-windowed corridors of the Conservatorium, the light was harsh and shadowless; it jarred on one, wounded the nerves. So at least thought Schilsky, who was hanging about the top storey of the building, in extreme ill-humour. He had been forced to make an appointment with a man to whom he owed money; the latter had not yet appeared, and Schilsky lounged and swore, with his two hands deep in his pockets, and his sulkiest expression. But gradually, he found himself listening to the discordant tones of a violin--at first unconsciously, as we listen when our thoughts are elsewhere engaged, then more and more intently. In one of the junior masters' rooms, some one had begun to play scales in the third position, uncertainly, with shrill feebleness, seeking out each note, only to produce it falsely. As this scraping worked on him, Schilsky could not refrain from rubbing his teeth together, and screwing up his face as though he had toothache; now that the miserable little tones had successfully penetrated his ear, they hit him like so many blows. "Damn him for a fool!" he said savagely to himself, and found an outlet for his irritation in repeating these words aloud. Then, however, as an ETUDE was commenced, with an impotence that struck him as purely vicious, he could endure the torment no longer. He had seen in the BUREAU the particular master, and knew that the latter had not yet come upstairs. Going to the room from which the sounds issued, he stealthily opened the door. A girl was standing with her back to him, and was so engrossed in playing that she did not hear him enter. On seeing this, he proposed to himself the schoolboy pleasure of creeping up behind her and giving her a well-deserved fright. He did so, with such effect that, had he not caught it, her violin would have fallen to the floor. He took both her wrists in his, held them firm, and, from his superior height--he was head and shoulders taller than Ephie--looked down on the miscreant. He recognised her now as a pretty little American whom he had noticed from time to time about the building; but--but ... well, that she was as astoundingly pretty as this, he had had no notion. His eyes strayed over her face, picking out all its beauties, and he felt himself growing as soft as butter. Besides, she had crimsoned down to her bare, dimpled neck; her head drooped; her long lashes covered her eyes, and a tremulous smile touched the corners of her mouth, which seemed uncertain whether to laugh or to cry--the short, upper-lip trembled. He felt from her wrists, and saw from the uneasy movement of her breast, how wildly her heart was beating--it was as if one held a bird in one's hand. His ferocity died away; none of the hard words he had had ready crossed his lips; all he said, and in his gentlest voice, was: "Have I frightened you?" He was desperately curious to know the colour of her eyes, and, as she neither answered him nor looked up, but only grew more and more confused, he let one of her hands fall, and taking her by the chin, turned her face up to his. She was forced to look at him for a moment. Upon which, he stooped and kissed her on the mouth, three times, with a pause between each kiss. Then, at a noise in the corridor, he swung hastily from the room, and was just in time to avoid the master, against whom he brushed up in going out of the door. Herr Becker looked suspiciously at his favourite pupil's tell-tale face and air of extreme confusion; and, throughout the lesson, his manner to her was so cold and short that Ephie played worse than ever before. After sticking fast in the middle of a passage, she stopped altogether, and begged to be allowed to go home. When she had gone, and some one else was playing, Herr Becker stood at the window and shook his head: round this innocent baby face he had woven several pretty fancies. Meanwhile Ephie flew rather than walked home, and having reached her room unseen, flung herself on the bed, and buried her burning cheeks in the white coolness of the pillows. Johanna, finding her thus, a short time after, was alarmed, put questions of various kinds, felt sure the sun had been too hot for her, and finally stood over the bed, holding her unfailing remedy, a soothing powder for the nerves. "Oh, do for goodness' sake, leave me alone, Joan," said Ephie. "I don't want your powders. I am all right. Just let me be." She drank the mixture, however, and catching sight of Johanna's anxious face, and aware that she had been cross, she threw her arms round her sister, hugged her, and called her a "dear old darling Joan." But there was something in the stormy tenderness of the embrace, in the flushed cheeks and glittering eyes that made Johanna even more uneasy. She insisted upon Ephie lying still and trying to sleep; and, after taking off her shoes for her, and noiselessly drawing down the blinds, she went on tiptoe out of the room. Ephie burrowed more deeply in her pillow, and putting both hands to her cars, to shut out the world, went over the details of what had happened. It was like a fairy-story. She walked lazily down the sunny corridor, entered the class-room, and took off her hat, which Herr Becker hung up for her, after having playfully examined it. She had just taken her violin from its case, when he remembered something he had to do in the BUREAU, and went out of the room, bidding her practise her scales during his absence; she heard again and smiled at the funny accent with which he said: "Just a moment." She saw the bare walls of the room, the dust that lay white on the lid on the piano, was conscious of the difficulties of C sharp minor. She even knew the very note at which HE had been beside her--without a word of warning, as suddenly as though he had sprung from the earth. She heard the cry she had given, and felt his hands--the hands she had so often admired--clasp her wrists. He was so close to her that she felt his breath, and knew the exact shape of the diamond ring he wore on his little finger. She felt, too, rather than saw the audacious admiration of his eyes; and his voice was not the less caressing because a little thick. And then--then--she burrowed more firmly, held her ears more tightly to, laughed a happy, gurgling laugh that almost choked her: never, as long as she lived, would she forget the feel of his moustache as it scratched her lips! When she rose and looked at herself in the glass, it seemed extraordinary that there should be no outward difference in her; and for several days she did not lose this sensation of being mysteriously changed. She was quieter than usual, and her movements were a little languid, but a kind of subdued radiance peeped through and shone in her eyes. She waited confidently for something to happen: she did not herself know what it would be, but, after the miracle that had occurred, it was beyond belief that things could jog on in their old familiar course; and so she waited and expected--at every letter the postman brought, each time the door-bell rang, whenever she went into the street. But after a week had dragged itself to an end, and she had not even seen Schilsky again, she grew restless and unsure; and sometimes at night, when Johanna thought she was asleep, she would stand at her window, and, with a very different face from that which she wore by day, put countless questions to herself, all of which began with why and how. And Johanna was again beset by the fear that Ephie was sickening for an illness, for the child would pass from bursts of rather forced gaiety to fits of real fretfulness, or sink into brown studies, from which she wakened with a start. But if, on some such occasion, Johanna said to her: "Where ARE your thoughts, Ephie?" she would only laugh, and answer, with a hug: "Wool-gathering, you dear old bumble-bee!" From the lesson following the eventful one, Ephie played truant, on the ground of headache, partly because her fancy pictured him lying in wait like an ogre to eat her up, and partly from a poor little foolish fear lest he should think her too easily won. Now, however, she blamed herself for not having given him an opportunity to speak to her, and began to frequent the Conservatorium assiduously. When, after ten long days, she saw him again, an unfailing instinct guided her aright. It was in the vestibule, as she was leaving the building, and they met face to face. Directly she espied him, though her heart thumped alarmingly, Ephie tossed her head, gazed fixedly at some distant object, and was altogether as haughty as her parted lips would allow of. And she played her part so well that Schilsky's attention was arrested; he remembered who she was, and stared hard at her as she passed. Not only this, but pleased, he could not have told why, he turned and followed her out, and standing on the steps, looked after her. She went down the street with her head in the air, holding her dress very high to display a lace-befrilled petticoat, and clattering gracefully on two high-heeled, pointed shoes. He screwed up his eyes against the sun, in order to see her better--he was short-sighted, too, but vanity forbade him to wear glasses--and when, at the corner of the street, Ephie rather spoilt the effect of her behaviour by throwing a hasty glance back, he laughed and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "VERDAMMT!" he said with expression. And both on that day and the next, when he admired a well-turned ankle or a pretty petticoat, he was reminded of the provoking little American, with the tossed head and baby mouth. A few days later, in the street that ran alongside the Gewandhaus, he saw her again. Ephie, who, in the interval, had upbraided herself incessantly, was none the less, now the moment had come, about to pass as before--even more frigidly. But this time Schilsky raised his hat, with a tentative smile, and, in order not to appear childish, she bowed ever so slightly. When he was safely past, she could not resist giving a furtive look behind her, and at precisely the same moment, he turned, too. In spite of her trouble, Ephic found the coincidence droll; she tittered, and he saw it, although she immediately laid the back of her hand on her lips. It was not in him to let this pass unnoticed. With a few quick steps, he was at her side. He took off his hat again, and looked at her not quite sure how to begin. "I am happy to see you have not forgotten me," he said in excellent English. Ephie had impulsively stopped on hearing him come up with her, and now, colouring deeply, tried to dig a hole in the pavement with the toe of her shoe. She, too, could not think what to say; and this, together with the effect produced on her by his peculiar lisp, made her feel very uncomfortable. She was painfully conscious of his insistent eyes on her face, as he waited for her to speak; but there was a distressing pause before he added: "And sorry to see you are still angry with me." At this, she found her tongue. Looking, not at him, but at a passer-by on the opposite side of the street, she said: "Why, I guess I have a right to be." She tried to speak severely, but her voice quavered, and once more the young man was not sure whether the trembling of her lip signified tears or laughter. "Are you always so cruel?" he asked, with an intentness that made her eyes seek the ground again. "Such a little crime! Is there no hope for me?" She attempted to be dignified. "Little! I am really not accustomed----" "Then I'm not to be forgiven?" His tone was so humble that suddenly she had to laugh. Shooting a quick glance at him, she said: "That depends on how you behave in future. If you promise never to----" Before the words were well out of her mouth, she was aware of her stupidity; her laugh ended, and she grew redder than before. Schilsky had laughed, too, quite frankly, and he continued to smile at the confusion she had fallen into. It seemed a long time before he said with emphasis: "That is the last thing in the world you should ask of me." Ephie drooped her head, and dug with her shoe again; she had never been so tongue-tied as to-day, just when she felt she ought to say something very cold and decisive. But not an idea presented itself, and meanwhile he went on: "The punishment would be too hard. The temptation was so great." As she was still obstinately silent, he stooped and peeped under the overhanging brim of her hat. "Such pretty lips!" he said, and then, as on the former occasion, he took her by the chin and turned her face up to his. But she drew back angrily. "Mr. Schilskyl ... how dare you! Take your hand away at once." "There!--I have sinned again," he said, and folded his hands in mock supplication. "Now I am afraid you will never forgive me.--But listen, you have the advantage of me; you know my name. Will you not tell me yours?" Having retreated a full yard from him, Ephie regained some of her native self-composure. For the first time, she found herself able to look straight at him. "No," she said, with a touch of her usual lightness. "I shall leave you to find it out for yourself; it will give you something to do." They both laughed. "At least give me your hand," he said; and when he held it in his, he would not let her go, until, after much seeming reluctance on her part, she had detailed to him the days and hours of her lessons at the Conservatorium, and where he would be likely to meet her. As before, he stood and watched her go down the street, hoping that she would turn at the corner. But, on this day, Ephie whisked along in a great hurry. On after occasions, he waylaid her as she came and went, and either stood talking to her, or walked the length of the street beside her. At the early hour of the afternoon when Ephie had her lessons, he did not need to fear being seen by acquaintances; the sunshine was undisturbed in the quiet street. The second time they met, he told her that he had found out what her name was; and his efforts to pronounce it afforded Ephie much amusement. Their conversation was always of the same nature, half banter, half earnest. Ephie, who had rapidly recovered her assurance, invariably began in her archest manner, and it became his special pleasure to reduce her, little by little, to a crimson silence. But one day, about a fortnight later, she came upon him at a different hour, when he was not expecting to see her. He was strolling up and down in front of the Conservatorium, waiting for Louise, who might appear at any moment. Ephie had been restless all the morning, and had finally made an excuse to go out: her steps naturally carried her to the Conservatorium, where she proposed to study the notice-board, on the chance of seeing Schilsky. When she caught sight of him, her eyes brightened; she greeted him with an inviting smile, and a saucy remark. But Schilsky did not take up her tone; he cut her words short. "What are you doing here to-day?" he asked with a frown of displeasure, meanwhile keeping a watchful eye on the inner staircase--visible through the glass doors--down which Louise would come. "I haven't a moment to spare." Mortally offended by his manner, Ephie drew back her extended hand, and giving him a look of surprise and resentment, was about to pass him by without a further word. But this was more than Schilsky could bear; he put out his hand to stop her, always, though, with one eye on the door. "Now, don't be cross, little girl," he begged impatiently. "It's not my fault--upon my word it isn't. I wasn't expecting to see you to-day--you know that. Look here, tell me--this sort of thing is so unsatisfactory--is there no other place I could see you? What do you do with yourself all day? Come, answer me, don't be angry." Ephie melted. "Come and visit us on Sunday afternoon," she said. "We are always at home then." He laughed rudely, and took no notice of her words. "Come, think of something--quick!" he said. He was on tenterhooks to be gone, and showed it. Ephie grew flustered, and though she racked her brains, could make no further suggestion. "Oh well, if you can't, you know," he said crossly, and loosened his hold of her arm. Then, at the last moment, she had a flash of inspiration; she remembered how, on the previous Sunday, Dove had talked enthusiastically of an opera-performance, which, if she were not mistaken, was to take place the following night. Dove had declared that all musical Leipzig would probably be present in the theatre. Surely she might risk mentioning this, without fear of another snub. "I am going to the opera to-morrow night," she said in a small, meek voice, and was on the verge of tears. Schilsky hardly heard her; Louise had appeared at the head of the stairs. "The very thing," he said. "I shall look out for you there, little girl. Good-bye. AUF WIEDERSEHEN!" He went down the steps, without even raising his hat, and when Louise came out, he was sauntering towards the building again, as if he had come from the other end of the street. Ephie went home in a state of anger and humiliation which was new to her. For the first few hours, she was resolved never to speak to Schilsky again. When this mood passed, she made up her mind that he should atone for his behaviour to the last iota: he should grovel before her; she would scarcely deign to look at him. But the nearer the time came for their meeting, the more were her resentful feelings swallowed up by the wish to see him. She counted off the hours till the opera commenced; she concocted a scheme to escape Johanna's surveillance; she had a story ready, if it should be necessary, of how she had once been introduced to Schilsky. Her fingers trembled with impatience as she fastened on a pretty new dress, which had just been sent home: a light, flowered stuff, with narrow bands of black velvet artfully applied so as to throw the fairness of her hair and skin into relief. The consciousness of looking her best gave her manner a light sureness that was very charming. But from the moment they entered the FOYER, Ephie's heart began to sink: the crowd was great; she could not see Schilsky; and in his place came Dove, who was not to be shaken off. Even Maurice was bad enough--what concern of his was it how she enjoyed herself? When, finally, she did discover the person she sought, he was with some one else, and did not see her; and when she had succeeded in making him look, he frowned, shook his head, and made angry signs that she was not to speak to him, afterwards going downstairs with the sallow girl in white. What did it mean? All through the tedious second act, Ephie wound her handkerchief round and round, and in and out of her fingers. Would it never end? How long would the fat, ugly Brunnhilde stand talking to Siegmund and the woman who lay so ungracefully between his knees? As if it mattered a straw what these sham people did or felt! Would he speak to her in the next interval, or would he not? The side curtains had hardly swept down before she was up from her seat, hurrying Johanna away. This time she chose to stand against the wall, at the end of the FOYER. After a short time, he came in sight, but he had no more attention to spare for her than before; he did not even look in her direction. Her one consolation was that obviously he was not enjoying himself; he wore a surly face, was not speaking, and, to a remark the girl in white made, he answered by an angry flap of the hand. When they had twice gone past in this way, and she had each time vainly put herself forward, Ephie began to take an interest in what Dove was saying, to smile at him and coquet with him, and the more openly, the nearer Schilsky drew. Other people grew attentive, and Dove went into a seventh heaven, which made it hard for him placidly to accept the fit of pettish silence, she subsequently fell into. The crowning touch was put to this disastrous evening by the fact that Schilsky's companion of the FOYER walked the greater part of the way home with them; and, what was worse, that she took not the slightest notice of Ephie. XI. Before leaving her bedroom the following morning, Ephie wrote on her scented pink paper a short letter, which began: "Dear Mr. Schilsky," and ended with: "Your sincere friend, Euphemia Stokes Cayhill." In this letter, she "failed to understand" his conduct of the previous evening, and asked him for an explanation. Not until she had closed the envelope, did she remember that she was ignorant of his address. She bit the end of her pen, thinking hard, and directly breakfast was over, put on her hat and slipped out of the house. It was the first time Ephie had had occasion to enter the BUREAU of the Conservatorium; and, when the heavy door had swung to behind her, and she was alone in the presence of the secretaries, each of whom was bent over a high desk, writing in a ledger, her courage almost failed her. The senior, an old, white-haired man, with a benevolent face, did not look up; but after she had stood hesitating for some minutes, an under-secretary solemnly laid down his pen, and coming to the counter, wished in English to know what he could do for her. Growing very red, Ephie asked him if he "would ... could ... would please tell her where Mr. Schilsky lived." Herr Kleefeld leaned both hands on the counter, and disconcerted her by staring at her over his spectacles. "Mr. Schilsky? Is it very important?" he said with a leer, as if he were making a joke. "Why, yes, indeed," replied Ephie timidly. He nodded his head, more to himself than to her, went back to his desk, opened another ledger, and ran his finger down a page, repeating aloud as he did so, to her extreme embarrassment: "Mr. Schilsky--let me see. Mr. Schilsky--let me see." After a pause, he handed her a slip of paper, on which he had painstakingly copied the address: "TALSTRASSE, 12 III." "Why, I thank you very much. I have to ask him about some music. Is there anything to pay?" stammered Ephie. But Herr Kleefeld, leaning as before on the counter, shook his head from side to side, with a waggish air, which confused Ephie still more. She made her escape, and left him there, still wagging, like a china Mandarin. Having addressed the letter in the nearest post office, she entered a confectioner's and bought a pound of chocolate creams; so that when Johanna met her in the passage, anxious and angry at her leaving the house without a word, she was able to assert that her candy-box had been empty, and she felt she could not begin to practise till it was refilled. But Johanna was very cantankerous, and obliged her to study an hour overtime to atone for her escapade. Then followed for Ephie several unhappy days, when all the feeling she seemed capable of concentrated itself on the visits of the postman. She remained standing at the window until she had seen him come up the street, and she was regularly the first to look through the mails as they lay on the lobby table. Two days brought no reply to her letter. On the third fell a lesson, which she was resolved not to take. But when the hour came, she dressed herself with care and went as usual. Schilsky was nowhere to be seen. Half a week later, the same thing was repeated, except that on this day, she made herself prettier than ever: she was like some gay, garden flower, in a big white hat, round the brim of which lay scarlet poppies, and a dress of a light blue, which heightened the colour of her cheeks, and, reflected in her eyes, made them bluer than a fjord in the sun. But her spirits were low; if she did not see him this time, despair would crush her. But she did--saw him while she was still some distance off, standing near the portico of the Conservatorium; and at the sight of him, after the uncertainty she had gone through during the past week, she could hardly keep back her tears. He did not come to meet her; he stood and watched her approach, and only when she reached him, indolently held out his hand. As she refused to notice it, and went to the extreme edge of the pavement to avoid it, he made a barrier of his arms, and forced her to stand still. Holding her thus, with his hand on her elbow, he looked keenly at her; and, in spite of the obdurate way in which she kept her eyes turned from him, he saw that she was going to cry. For a moment he hesitated, afraid of the threatening scene, then, with a decisive movement, he took her violin-case out of her hand. Ephie made an ineffectual effort to get possession of it again, but he held it above her reach, and saying: "Wait a minute," ran up the steps. He came back without it, and throwing a swift glance round him, took the young girl's arm, and walked her off at a brisk pace to the woods. She made a few, faint protests. But he replied: "You and I have something to say to each other, little girl." A full hour had elapsed when Ephie appeared again. She was alone, and walked quickly, casting shy glances from side to side. On reaching the Conservatorium, she waited in a quiet corner of the vestibule for nearly a quarter of an hour, before Schilsky sauntered in, and released her violin from the keeping of the janitor, a good friend of his. They had not gone far into the wood; Schilsky knew of a secluded seat, which was screened by a kind of boscage; and here they had remained. At first, Ephie had cried heartily, in happy relief, and he had not been able to console her. He had come to meet her with many good resolutions, determined not to let the little affair, so lightly begun, lead to serious issues; but Ephie's tears, and the tale they told, and the sobbed confessions that slipped out unawares, made it hard for him to be wise. He put his arm round her, dried her tears with his own handkerchief, kissed the hand he held. And when he had in this way petted her back to composure, she suddenly looked up in his face, and, with a pretty, confiding movement, said: "Then you do care for me a little?" It would have need a stronger than he to answer otherwise. "Of course I do," was easily said, and to avoid the necessity of more, he kissed the pink dimples at the base of her four fingers, as well as the baby crease that marked the wrist. The poppy-strewn hat lay on the seat beside them; the fluffy head and full white throat were bare; in the mellow light of the trees, the lashes looked jet-black on her cheeks; at each word, he saw her small, even teeth: and he was so unnerved by the nearness of all this fresh young beauty that, when Ephie with her accustomed frankness had told him everything he cared to know, he found himself saying, in place of what he had intended, that they must be very cautious. In the meantime, it would not do for them to be seen together: it might injure his prospects, be harmful to his future. "Yes, but afterwards?" she asked him promptly. He kissed her cheek. But she repeated the question, and he was obliged to reply: that would be a different matter. It was now her turn to be curious, and one of the first questions she put related to the dark girl he had been with at the theatre. Playing lightly with her fingers, Schilsky told her that this was one of his best friends, some one he had known for a long, long time, to whom he owed much, and whom he could under no circumstances offend. Ephie looked grave for a moment; and, in the desire of provoking a pretty confession, he asked her if she had minded very much seeing him with some one else. But she made him wince by responding with perfect candour: "With her? Oh, no! She's quite old." Before parting, they arranged the date of the next meeting, and, a beginning once made, they saw each other as often as was feasible. Ephie grew wonderfully apt at excuses for going out at odd times, and for prolonged absences. Sound fictions were needed to satisfy Johanna, and even Maurice Guest was made to act as dummy: he had taken her for a walk, or they had been together to see Madeleine Wade; and by these means, and also by occasionally shirking a lesson, she gained a good deal of freedom. Johanna would as soon have thought of herself being untruthful as of doubting Ephie, whom she had never known to tell a lie; and if she did sometimes feel jealous of all the new claims made on her little sister's attention, such a feeling was only temporary, and she was, for the most part, content to see Ephie content. At night, in her own room, lying wakeful with hot cheeks and big eyes, Ephie went over in memory all that had taken place at their last meeting, or built high, top-heavy castles for the future. She was absurdly happy; and her mother and sister had never found her more charming and lovable, or richer in those trifling inspirations for brightening life, which happiness brings with it. She looked forward with secret triumph to the day when she would be able to announce her engagement to the celebrated young violinist, and the only shadow on her happiness was that she could not do this immediately. It did not once cross her mind to doubt the issue: she had always had her way, and, in her own mind, had long since arranged just how this matter was to fall out. She would return to America--where, of course, they would live--and get her clothes ready, and then he would come, and they would be married--a big wedding, with descriptions in the newspapers. They would have a big house, and he would play at concerts--as she had once heard Sarasate play in New York--and every one would stand on tiptoe to see him. She sat proud and conspicuous in the front row. "His wife. That is his wife!" people whispered, and they drew respectfully back to let her pass, as, in a very becoming dress, she swept into the little room behind the platform, which she alone was permitted to enter. One day at this time there was a violent thunderstorm. Towards midday, the eastern sky grew black with clouds, which, for hours, had been ominously gathering; a sudden wind rose and swept the dust house-high through the streets; the thunder rumbled, and each roll came nearer. When, after a prolonged period of expectation, the storm finally burst, there was a universal sigh of relief. The afternoon was damply refreshing. As soon as the rain ceased, Maurice shut his piano, and walked at a brisk pace to Connewitz, his head bared beneath the overhanging branches, which were still weighed down by their burden of drops. At the WALDCAFE on the bank of the river, in a thickly grown arbour which he entered to drink a glass of beer, he found Philadelphia Jensen and the pale little American, Fauvre, taking coffee. The lady welcomed him with a large, outstretched hand, in the effusively hearty manner with which she, as it were, took possession of people; and towards six o'clock, the three walked back through the woods together, Miss Jensen, resolute of bust as of voice, slightly ahead of her companions, carrying her hat in her hand, Fauvre dragging behind, hitting indolently at stones and shrubs, and singing scraps of melodies to himself in his deep baritone. Miss Jensen, who had once been a journalist, was an earnest worker for woman's emancipation, and having now successfully mounted her hobby, spoke with a thought-deadening eloquence. Maurice had never been called on to think about the matter, and listened to her words absent-mindedly, comparing her, as she swept along, to a ship in full sail. She was just asserting that the ordinary German woman was little more than means to an end, the end being the man-child, when his attention was arrested, and, in an instant, jerked far away from Miss Jensen's theories. As they reached the bend of a path, a sound of voices came to them through the trees, and on turning a corner, Maurice caught a glimpse of two people who were going in the opposite direction, down a side-walk--a passing but vivid glimpse of a light, flowered dress, of a grey suit of clothes, and auburn hair. Ephie! He could have sworn to voice and dress; but to whom in all the world was she talking, so confidentially? At the name that rose to his lips, he almost stopped short, but the next moment he was afraid lest his companions should also have seen who it was, and, quickening his steps, he incited Miss Jensen to talk on. First, however, that lady said in a surprised tone: "Say, that was Mr. Schilsky, wasn't it? Who was the lady? Did you perceive?" So there was no possible doubt of it. After parting from his companions, he did an errand in the town, and from there went to the Cayhills' PENSION, determined to ascertain whether it had really been Ephie he had seen, and if so, what the meaning of it was. Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were in the sitting-room; Johanna looked very surprised to see him. They had this moment risen from the supper-table, she told him; Ephie had only just got home in time. Before anything further could be said, Ephie herself came into the room; her face was flushed, and she did not seem well-pleased at his unexpected visit. She hardly greeted him, and instead, commenced talking about the weather. "Then you had a pleasant walk?" asked Johanna in a preoccupied fashion, without looking up from the letter she was writing; and before Maurice could speak, Ephie, fondling her sister's neck, answered: "How could it be anything but sweet--after the rain?" In the face of this frankness, it was on Maurice's tongue to say: "Then it was you, I saw?" but again she did not give him time. Still standing behind Johanna's chair, her eyes fixed on the young man's face with a curious intentness, she continued: "We walked right to Connewitz and back without a rest." "I don't think you should take her so far," said Mrs. Cayhill, looking up from her book with her kindly smile. "She has never been used to walking and is easily tired--aren't you, my pet?" "Yes, and then she can't get up the next morning," said Johanna, mildly dogmatic, considering the following sentence of her letter. Gradually it broke upon Maurice that Ephie had been making use of his name. His consternation at the discovery was such that he changed colour. The others, however, were both too engrossed to notice it. Ephie grew scarlet, but continued to rattle on, covering his silence. "Well, perhaps to-day it was a little too far," she admitted. "But mummy, I won't have you say I'm not strong. Why, Herr Becker is always telling me how full my tone is getting. Yes indeed. And look at my muscle." She turned back the loose sleeve of her blouse, baring almost the whole of her rounded arm; then, folding it sharply to her, she invited one after another to test its firmness. "Quite a prize-fighter, I declare!" laughed Mrs. Cayhill, at the same time drawing her little daughter to her, to kiss her. But Johanna frowned, and told Ephie to put down her sleeve at once; there was something in the childish action that offended the elder sister, she did not know why. But Maurice had first to lay two of his fingers on the soft skin, and then to help her to button the cuff. When, soon after this, he took his leave, Ephie went out of the room with him. In the dark passage, she caught at his hand. "Morry, you mustn't tell tales on me," she whispered; and added pettishly: "Why ever did you just come to-night?" He tried to see her face. "What is it all about, Ephie?" he asked. "Then it WAS you, I saw, in the NONNE--by the weir?" "Me? In the NONNE!" She was genuinely surprised. "You saw me?" He nodded. By the light that came from the stairs as she opened the hall-door, she noticed that he looked troubled, and an impulse rose in her to throw her arms round his neck and say: "Yes, yes, it was me. Oh, Morry, I am so happy!" But she remembered the reasons for secrecy that had been imposed on her, and, at the same time, felt somewhat defiantly inclined towards Maurice. After all, what business was it of his? Why should he take her to task for what she chose to do? And so she merely laughed, with assumed merriment, her own charming, assuaging laugh. "In the wood?--you old goose! Listen, Morry, I told them I had been with you, because--why, because one of the girls in my class asked me to go to the CAFE FRANCAIS with her, and we stayed too long, and ate too much ice-cream, and Joan doesn't like it, and I knew she would be cross--that's all! Don't look so glum, you silly! It's nothing," and she laughed again. As long as this laugh rang in his ears--to the bottom of the street, that is--he believed her. Then, the evidence of his senses reasserted itself, and he knew that what she had told him was false. He had heard her voice in the wood too distinctly to allow of any mistake, and she was still wearing the same dress. Besides, she had lied so artlessly to the others, without a tremor of her candid eyes--why should she not lie to him, too? She was less likely to be considerate of him than of Johanna. But his distress at her skill in deceit was so great that he said: "Ephie, little Ephie!" aloud to himself, just as he might have done had he heard that she was stricken down by a mortal illness. On the top of this, however, came less selfish feelings. What was almost a sense of guilt took possession of him; he felt as if, in some way, he were to blame for what had happened; as if nature had intended him to stand in the place of a brother to this pretty, thoughtless child. And yet what could he have done? He did not now see Ephie as often as formerly, and hardly ever alone; on looking back, he began to suspect that she had purposely avoided him. The exercises in harmony, which had previously brought them together, had been discontinued. First, she had said that her teacher was satisfied with what she herself could do; then, that he had advised her to give up harmony altogether: she would never make anything of it. In the light of what had come to pass, Maurice saw that he had let himself be duped by her; she had lied then as now. He puzzled his brains to imagine how she had learned to know Schilsky in the first instance, and when the affair had begun: what he had overheard that afternoon implied an advanced stage of intimacy; and he revolved measures by means of which a stop might be put to it. The only course he could think of was to lay the matter before Johanna; and yet what would the use of that be? Ephie would deny everything, make his story ludicrous, himself impossible, and never forgive him into the bargain. In the end, he might do more good by watching over her silently, at a distance. If it had only not been Schilsky who was concerned! Some of the ugly stories he had heard related of the young man rose up and took vivid shape before his eyes. If any harm came to Ephie, he alone would be to blame for it; not Johanna, only he knew the frivolous temptations the young girl was exposed to. Why, in Heaven's name, had he not taken both her hands, as they stood in the passage, and insisted on her confessing to him? No, credulous as usual, he had once more allowed himself to be hoodwinked and put off. Thus he fretted, without arriving at any clearer conclusion than this: that he had unwittingly been made accessory to an unpleasant secret. But where his mind baulked, and refused to work, was when he tried to understand what all this might mean to the third person involved. Did Louise know or suspect anything? Had she, perhaps, for weeks past been suffering under the knowledge? He stood irresolute, at the crossing where the MOZARTSTRASSE joined the PROMENADE. A lamp-lighter was beginning his rounds; he came up with his long pole to the lamp at the corner, and, with a mild explosion, the little flame sprang into life. Maurice turned on his heel and went to see Madeleine. The latter was making her supper of tea, bread, and cold sausage, and when she heard that he had not eaten, she set a cup and plate before him, and was glad that she happened to be late. Propped open on the table was a Danish Grammar, which she conned as she ate; for, in the coming holidays, she was engaged to go to Norway, as guide and travelling-companion to a party of Englishwomen. "I had a letter from London to-day," she said, "with definite arrangements. So I at once bought this book. I intend to try and master at least the rudiments of the language--barbarous though it is--for I want to get some good from the journey. And if one has one's wits about one, much can be learnt from cab-drivers and railway-porters." She traced on a map with her forefinger the route they proposed to follow, and laughed at the idea of the responsibility lying heavy on her. But when they had finished their supper, and she had talked informingly for a time of Norway, its people and customs, she looked at the young man, who sat irresponsive and preoccupied, and considered him attentively. "Is anything the matter to-night? Or are you only tired?" He was tired. But though she herself had suggested it, she was not satisfied with his answer. "Something has bothered you. Has your work gone badly?" No, it was nothing of that sort. But Madeleine persisted: could she be of any help to him? "The merest trifle--not worth talking about." The twilight had grown thick around them; the furniture of the room lost its form, and stood about in shapeless masses. Through the open window was heard the whistle of a distant train; a large fly that had been disturbed buzzed distractingly, undecided where to re-settle for the night. It was sultry again, after the rain. "Look here, Maurice," Madeleine said, when she had observed him for some time in silence. "I don't want to be officious, but there's something I should like to say to you. It's this. You are far too soft-hearted. If you want to get on in life, you must think more about yourself than you do. The battle is to the strong, you know, and the strong, within limits, are certainly the selfish. Let other people look after themselves; try not to mind how foolish they are--you can't improve them. It's harder, I daresay, than it is to be a person of unlimited sympathies; it's harder to pass the maimed and crippled by, than to stop and weep over them, and feel their sufferings through yourself. But YOU have really something in you to occupy yourself with. You're not one of those people--I won't mention names!--whose own emptiness forces them to take an intense interest in the doings of others, and who, the moment they are alone with their thoughts, are bored to desperation, just as there are people who have no talent for making a home home-like, and are only happy when they are out of it." Here she laughed at her own seriousness. "But you are smiling inwardly, and thinking: the real old school-marm!" "You don't practise what you preach, Madeleine. Besides, you're mistaken. At heart, I'm a veritable egoist." She contradicted him. "I know you better than you know yourself." He did not reply, and a silence fell, in which the commonplace words she had last said, went on sounding and resounding, until they had no more likeness to themselves. Madeleine rose, and pushed back her chair, with a grating noise. "I must light the lamp. Sitting in the dark makes for foolishness. Come, wake up, and tell me what plans you have for the holidays." "If I had a sister, I should like her to be like you," said Maurice, watching her busy with the lamp. "Clear-headed, and helpful to a fellow." "I suppose men always will continue to consider that the greatest compliment they can pay," said Madeleine, and turned up the light so high that they both blinked.--And then she scolded the young man soundly for his intention of remaining in Leipzig during the holidays. But when he rose to go, she said, with an impulsiveness that was foreign to her: "I wish you had a friend." It was his turn to smile. "Have you had enough of me?" Madeleine, who was sitting with crossed arms, remained grave. "I mean a man. Some one older than yourself, and who has had experience. The best-meaning woman in the world doesn't count." Only a very few days later, an occasion offered when, with profit to himself, he might have acted upon Madeleine's introductory advice. He had been for a quick, solitary walk, and was returning, in the evening between nine and ten o'clock, along one of the paths of the wood, when suddenly, and close at hand, he heard the sound of voices. He stopped instantaneously, for by the jump his heart gave, he knew that Louise was one of the speakers. What she said was inaudible to him; but it was enough to be able to listen, unseen, to her voice. Hearing it like this, as something existing for itself, he was amazed at its depth and clearness; he felt that her personal presence had, until now, hindered him from appreciating a beautiful but immaterial thing at its true worth. At first, like a cadence that repeats itself, its tones rose and fell, but with more subtle inflections than the ordinary voice has: there was a note in it that might have belonged to a child's voice; another, more primitive, that betrayed feeling with as little reserve as the cry of an animal. Then it sank, and went on in a monotone, like a Hebrew prayer, as if reiterating things worn threadbare by repetition, and already said too often. Gradually, it died away in the surrounding silence. There was no response but a gentle rustling of the leaves overhead. It began anew, and, in the interval, seemed to have gained in intensity; now there was a bitterness in it which, when it swelled, made it give out a tone like the roughly touched strings of an instrument; it seemed to be accusing, to be telling of unmerited suffering. And, this time, it elicited a reply, but a casual, indifferent one, which might have related to the weather, or to the time of night. Louise gave a shrill laugh, and then, as plainly as if the words were being carved in stone before his eyes, Maurice heard her say: "You have never given me a moment's happiness." As before, no answer was returned, and almost immediately his ear caught a muffled sound of footsteps. At the same moment, a night-wind shook the tree-tops; there was a general fluttering and swaying around him; and he came back to himself to find that he was standing rigid, holding on to a slender tree that grew close by the path. His first conscious thought was that this wind meant rain ... there would be another storm in the night ... and the summer holidays--time of partings--were at the door. She would go away ... and he would perhaps never see her again. Since the evening they had walked home from the theatre together, he had had no further chance of speaking to her. If they met in the street, she gave him, as Madeleine had foretold of her, a nod and a smile; and from this coolness, he had drawn the foolish inference that she wished to avoid him. Abnormally sensitive, he shrank out of her way. But now, the mad sympathy that had permeated him on the night she had made him her confidant grew up in him again; it swelled out into something monstrous--a gigantic pity that rebounded on himself. For he knew now why she suffered; and he was cast down both for her and for himself. It seemed unnatural that he was debarred from giving her just a fraction of the happiness she craved--he, who, had there been the least need for it, would have lain himself down for her to tread on. And in some of the subsequent nights when he could not sleep, he composed fantastic letters to her, in which he told her this and more, only to colour guiltily, with the return of daylight, at the impertinent folly of his thoughts. But he could not forget the words he had heard her say; they haunted him like an importunate refrain. Even his busiest hours were set to them--"You have never given me a moment's happiness"--and they were alike a torture and a joy. XII. The second half of July scattered the little circle in all directions. Maurice spent a couple of days at the different railway-stations, seeing his friends off. One after another they passed into that anticipatory mood, which makes an egoist of the prospective traveller: his thoughts start, as it were, in advance; he has none left for the people who are remaining behind, and receives their care and attention as his due. Dove was packed and strapped, ready to set out an hour after he had had his last lesson; and while he printed labels for his luggage, and took a circumstantial leave of his landlady and her family, with whom he was a prime favourite by reason of his decent and orderly habits, Maurice fetched for him from the lending library, the pieces of music set by Schwarz as a holiday task. Dove was on tenterhooks to be off. Of late, things had gone superlatively well with him: he had performed with applause in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, and been highly commended by Schwarz; while, as for Ephie, she had been so sweet and winning, so modestly encouraging of his suit, that he had every reason to hope for success in this quarter also. Too dutiful a son, however, to take, unauthorised, such an important step as that of proposing marriage, he was now travelling home to sound two elderly people, resident in a side street in Peterborough, on the advisability of an American daughter-in-law. The Cayhills had been among the first to leave, and would be absent till the middle of September. One afternoon, Maurice started them from the THURINGER BAHNHOF, on their journey to Switzerland. Having seen Mrs. Cayhill comfortably settled with her bags, books and cushions, in the corner of a first-class carriage, and given Johanna assistance with the tickets, he stood till the train went, talking to Ephie; and he long retained a picture of her, standing with one foot on the step, in a becoming travelling-dress, a hat with a veil flying from it, and a small hand-bag slung across her shoulder, laughing and dimpling, and well aware of the admiring glances that were cast at her. It was a relief to Maurice that she was going away for a time; his feeling of responsibility with regard to her had not flagged, and he had made a point of seeing her more often, and of knowing more of her movements than before. As, however, he had not observed anything further to disturb him, his suspicions were on the verge of subsiding--as suspicions have a way of doing when we wish them to--and in the last day or two, he had begun to feel much less sure, and to wonder if, after all, he had not been mistaken. "I shall miss you, Morry. I almost wish I were not going," said Ephie, and this was not untrue, in spite of the pretty new dresses her trunks contained. "Say, I don't believe I shall enjoy myself one bit. You will write, Morry, won't you, and tell me what goes on? All the news you hear and who you see and everything."---- "Be sure you write," said Madeleine, too, when he saw her off early in the morning to Berlin, where she was to meet her English charges. "Christiania, POSTE RESTANTE, till the first, and then Bergen. 'FROKEN WADE,' don't forget." The train started; her handkerchief fluttered from the window until the carriage was out of sight. Maurice was alone; every one he knew disappeared, even Furst, who had obtained a holiday engagement in a villa near Dresden. An odd stillness reigned in the BRAUSTRASSE and its neighbourhood; from houses which had hitherto been clangrous with musical noises, not a sound issued. Familiar rooms and lodgings were either closely shuttered, or, in process of scouring, hung out their curtains to flutter on the sill. The days passed, unmarked, eventless, like the uniform pages of a dull book. When the solitude grew unbearable, Maurice went to visit Frau Furst, and had his supper with the family. He was a welcome guest, for he not only paid for all the beer that was drunk, but also brought such a generous portion of sausage for his own supper, that it supplied one or other of the little girls as well. Afterwards, they sat round the kitchen-table, listening, the children with the old-fashioned solemnity that characterised them, to Frau Furst's reminiscences. Otherwise, he hardly exchanged a word with anyone, but sat at his piano the livelong day. Of late, Schwarz had been somewhat cool and off-hand in manner with him; the master had also not displayed the same detailed interest in his plans for the summer, as in those of the rest of the class. This was one reason why he had not gone away like every one else; the other, that he had been unwilling to write home for an increase of allowance. Sometimes, when the day was hot, he envied his friends refreshing themselves by wood, mountain or sea; but, in the main, he worked briskly at Czerny's FINGERFERTIGKEIT, and with such perseverance that ultimately his fingers stumbled from fatigue. With the beginning of August, the heat grew oppressive; all day long, the sun beat, fierce and unremittent, on this city of the plains, and the baked pavements were warm to the feet. Business slackened, and the midday rest in shops and offices was extended beyond its usual limit. Conservatorium and Gewandhaus, at first given over to relays of charwomen, their brooms and buckets, soon lay dead and deserted, too; and if, in the evening, Maurice passed the former building, he would see the janitor sitting at leisure in the middle of the pavement, smoking his long black cigar. The old trees in the PROMENADE, and the young striplings that followed the river in the LAMPESTRASSE, drooped their brown leaves thick with dust; the familiar smell of roasting coffee, which haunted most house- and stair-ways, was intensified; and out of drains and rivers rose nauseous and penetrating odours, from which there was no escape. Every three or four days, when the atmosphere of the town had reached a pitch of unsavouriness which it seemed impossible to surpass, sudden storms swept up, tropical in their violence: blasts of thunder cracked like splitting beams; lightning darted along the narrow streets; rain fell in white, sizzling sheets. But the morning after, it was as hot as ever. Maurice grew so accustomed to meet no one he knew, that one afternoon towards the middle of August, he was pulled up by a jerk of surprise in front of the PLEISSENBURG, on stumbling across Heinrich Krafft. He had stopped and impulsively greeted the young man, before he recalled his previous antipathy to him. Krafft was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, and, on being accosted, he looked vaguely and somewhat moodily at Maurice. The next moment, however, he laid a hand on the lappel of Maurice's coat, and, without preamble, burst into a witty and obscene anecdote, which had evidently been in his mind when they met. This story, and the fact that, by the North Sea, he had stood before breakers twenty feet high, were the only particulars Maurice bore away from their interview. His previous impatience with such eccentricity returned, but none the less, he looked grudgingly after the other's vanishing form. A day or two later, towards evening, he saw Krafft again. As he was going through an outlying street, he came upon a group of children, who were amusing themselves by teasing a cat; the animal had been hit in the eye by a stone, and cowered, terrified and blinded, against the wall of a house. The children formed a half circle round it, and two of the biggest boys held a young and lively dog by the collar, inciting it and restraining it, and revelling in the cat's convulsive starts at each capering bark. While Maurice was considering how to expostulate with them, Krafft came swiftly up behind, jerked two of the children apart, and, with a deft and perfectly noiseless movement, caught up the cat and hid its head under his coat. Then, cuffing the biggest boy, he kicked the dog, and ordered the rest to disperse. The children did so lingeringly; and once out of his reach, stood and mocked him. He begged Maurice to accompany him to his lodgings, and there Maurice held the animal, a large, half-starved street-cat, while Krafft, on his knees before it, examined the wound. As he did this, he crooned in a wordless language, and the cat was quiet, in spite of the pain he caused it. But directly he took his hands off it, it jumped from the table, and fled under the furthest corner of the sofa. Krafft next fetched milk and a saucer, from a cupboard in the wall, and went down on his knees again: while Maurice sat and watched and wondered at his tireless endeavours to induce the animal to advance. He explained his proceedings in a whisper. "If I put the saucer down and leave it," he said, "it won't help at all. A cat's confidence must be won straight away." He was still in this position, making persuasive little noises, when the door opened, and Avery Hill, his companion of a previous occasion, entered. At the sight of Krafft crouching on the floor, she paused with her hand on the door, and looked from him to Maurice. "Heinz?" she said interrogatively. Then she saw the saucer of milk, and understood. "Heinz!" she said again; and this time the word was a reprimand. "Ssh!--be quiet," said Krafft peevishly, without looking up. The girl took no notice of Maurice's attempt to greet her. Letting fall on the grand piano, some volumes of music she was carrying, she continued sternly: "Another cat!--oh, it is abominable of you! This is the third he has picked up this year," she said explanatorily, yet not more to Maurice than to herself. "And the last was so dirty and destructive that Frau Schulz threatened to turn him out, if he did not get rid of it. He knows as well as I do that he cannot keep a cat here." Her placidly tragic face had grown hard; and altogether, the anger she displayed seemed out of proportion to the trival offence. Krafft remained undisturbed. "It's not the least use scolding. Go and make it right with the old crow.--Come, puss, come." The girl checked the words that rose to her lips, gave a slight shrug, and went out of the room. They heard her, in the passage, disputing with the landlady, who was justly indignant. "If it weren't for you, Fraulein, I wouldn't keep him another day," she declared. Meanwhile the cat, which, in the girl's presence, had shrunk still further into its hiding-place, began to make advances. It crept a step forward, retreated again, stretched out its nose to sniff at the milk, and, all of a sudden, emerged and drank greedily. Krafft touched its head, and the animal paused in its hungry gulping to rub its back against the caressing hand. When the last drop of milk was finished, it withdrew to its corner, but less suspiciously. Krafft rose to his feet and stretched himself, and when Avery returned, he smiled at her. "Now then, is it all right?" She did not reply, but went to the piano, to search for something among the scattered music. Krafft clasped his hands behind his head, and leaning against the table, watched her with an ironical curl of the lip. "O LENE! LENE! O MAGDALENE!" he sang under his breath; and, for the second time, Maurice received the impression that a by-play was being carried on between these two. "Look at this," said Krafft after a pause. "Here, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those rare persons who have a jot of talent in them, and off she goes--I don't mean at this moment, but tomorrow, the day after, every day--to waste it in teaching children finger-exercises. If you ask her why she does it, she will tell you it is necessary to live. Necessary to live!--who has ever proved that it is?" For an instant, it seemed as if the girl were going to flash out a bitter retort that might have betrayed her. Then she showed the same self-control as before, and went, without a word, into the next room. She was absent for a few minutes, and when she reappeared, carried what was unmistakably a bundle of soiled linen, going away with this on one arm, the volumes of music she had picked out on the other. She did not wish the young men good-night, but, in passing Maurice, she said in an unfriendly tone: "Do you know what time it is?" and to Krafft: "It is late, Heiriz, you are not to play." The door had barely closed behind her, when Krafft broke into the loud, repellent laugh that had so jarred on Maurice at their former meeting. He had risen at once, and now said he must go. But Krafft would not hear of it; he pressed him into his seat again, with an effusive warmth of manner. "Don't mind her. Stay, like a good fellow. Of course, I am going to play to you." He flicked the keys of the piano with his handkerchief, adjusted the distance of his seat, threw back his head, and half closing his eyes, began to play. Except for the unsteady flickerings cast on the wall by a street-lamp, the room was soon in darkness. Maurice resumed his seat reluctantly. He had been dragged upstairs against his will; and throughout the foregoing scene, had sat an uncomfortable spectator. He had as little desire for the girl to return and find him there, as for Krafft to play to him. But no excuse for leaving offered itself, and each moment made it harder to interrupt the player, who had promptly forgotten the fact of his presence. After he had listened for a time, however, Maurice ceased to think of escaping. Madeleine had once alluded to Krafft's skill as an interpreter of Chopin, but, all the same, he had not expected anything like what he now heard, and at first he could not make anything of it. He had hitherto only known Chopin's music as played in the sentimental fashion of the English drawing-room. Here, now, came some one who made it clear that, no matter how pessimistic it appeared on the surface, this music was, at its core an essentially masculine music; it kicked desperately against the pricks of existence; what failed it was only the last philosophic calm. He could not, of course, know that various small things had combined to throw the player into one of his most prodigal moods: the rescue and taming of the cat, the passage-at-arms with Avery, her stimulating forbiddal, and, last and best, the one silent listener in the dark--this stranger, picked up at random in the streets, who had never yet heard him play, and to whom he might reveal himself with an indecency that friendship precluded. When at length, Frau Schulz entered, in her bed-jacket, to say that it was long past ten o'clock, Krafft wakened as if out of a trance, and hid his eyes from the light. Frau Schulz, a robust person, disregarded his protests, and herself locked the piano and took the key. "She makes me promise to," she whispered to Maurice, pointing over her shoulder at an imaginary person. "If I didn't, he'd go on all night. He's no more fit to look after himself than a baby--and he gets it again with his boots in the morning.--Yes, yes, call me names if it pleases you. Names don't kill. And if I am a hag, you're a rascal, that's what you are! The way you treat that poor, good creature makes one's blood boil." Krafft waved her away, and opening the window, leaned out on the sill: a wave of warm air filled the room. Maurice rose with renewed decision, and sought his hat. But Krafft also took his down from a peg. "Yes, let us go out." It was a breathless August night, laden with intensified scents and smells, and the moonlight lay thick and white on the ground: a night to provoke to extravagant follies. In the utter stillness of the woods, the young men passed from places of inky blackness into bluish white patches, dropped through the trees like monstrous silver thalers. The town lay behind them in a glorifying haze; the river stretched silver-scaled in the moonlight, like a gigantic fish-back. Krafft walked in front of his companion, in preoccupied silence. His slender hands, dangling loosely, still twitched from their recent exertions, and from time to time, he turned the palms outward, with an impatient gesture. Maurice wished himself alone. He was not at ease under this new companionship that had thrust itself upon him; indeed, a strong mental antagonism was still uppermost in him, towards the moody creature at whose heels he followed; and if, at this moment, he had been asked to give voice to his feelings, the term "crazy idiot" would have been the first to rise to his lips. Suddenly, without turning, or slackening his pace, Krafft commenced to speak: at first in a low voice, as if he were thinking aloud. But one word gave another, his thoughts came rapidly, he began to gesticulate, and finally, wrought on by the beauty of the night, by this choice moment for speech, still excited by his own playing, and in an infinite need of expression, he swept the silence before him with the force of a flood set free. If he thought Maurice were about to interrupt him, he made an imploring gesture, and left what he was saying unfinished, to spring over to the next theme ready in his brain. Names jostled one another on his tongue: he passed from Beethoven and Chopin to Berlioz and Wagner, to Liszt and Richard Strauss--and his words were to Maurice like the unrolling of a great scroll. In the same breath, he was with Nietzsche, and Apollonic and Dionysian; and from here he went on to Richard Dehmel, to ANATOL, and the gentle "Loris" of the early verses; to Max Klinger, and the propriety of coloured sculpture; to PAPA HAMLET and the future of the LIED. Maurice, listening intently, had fleeting glimpses into a land of which he knew nothing. He kept as still as a mouse, in order not to betray his ignorance; for Krafft was not didactic, and talked as if the subjects he touched on were as familiar to Maurice as to himself. On the other hand, Maurice believed it was a matter of indifference to him whether he was understood or not; he spoke for the pure joy of talking, out of the motley profusion of his knowledge. Meanwhile, he had grown personal. And while he was still speaking with fervour of Vienna--which was his home--of gay, melancholy Wien, he flung round and put a question to his companion. "Do you ever think of death?" Maurice had been the listener for so long that he started. "Death?" he echoed, and was as much embarrassed as though asked whether he believed in God. "I don't know. No, I don't think I do. Why should one think of death when one is alive and well?" Krafft laughed at this, with a pitying irony. "Happy you!" he said. "Happy you!" His voice sank, and he continued almost fearfully: "I have the vision of it before me, always wherever I go. Listen; I will tell you; it is like this." He laid his hand on Maurice's arm, and drew him nearer. "I know--no matter how strong and sound I may be at this moment; no matter how I laugh, or weep, or play the fool; no matter how little thought I give it, or whether I think about it all day long--I know the hour will come, at last, when I shall gasp, choke, grow black in the face, in the vain struggle for another single mouthful of that air which has always been mine at will. And no one will be able to help me; there is no escape from that hour; no power on earth can keep it from me. And it is all a matter of chance when it happens--a great lottery: one draws to-day, one to-morrow; but my turn will surely come, and each day that passes brings me twenty-four hours nearer the end." He drew still closer to Maurice. "Tell me, have you never stood before a doorway--the doorway of some strange house that you have perhaps never consciously gone past before--and waited, with the atrocious curiosity that death and its hideous paraphernalia waken in one, for a coffin to be carried out?--the coffin of an utter stranger, who is of interest to you now, for the first and the last time. And have you not thought to yourself, with a shudder, that some day, in this selfsame way, under the same indifferent sky, among a group of loiterers as idly curious as these, you yourself will be carried out, feet foremost, like a bale of goods, like useless lumber, all will and dignity gone from you, never to enter there again?--there, where all the little human things you have loved, and used, and lived amongst, are lying just as you left them--the book you laid down, the coat you wore--now all of a greater worth than you. You are mere dead flesh, and behind the horrid lid lie stark and cold, with rigid fingers and half-closed eyes, and the chief desire of every one, even of those you have loved most, is to be rid of you, to be out of reach of sight and smell of you. And so, after being carted, and jolted, and unloaded, you will be thrown into a hole, and your body, ice-cold, and as yielding as meat to the touch--oh, that awful icy softness!--your flesh will begin to rot, to be such that not your nearest friend would touch you. God, it is unbearable!" He wiped his forehead, and Maurice was silent, not knowing what to say; he felt that such rational arguments as he might be able to offer, would have little value in the face of this intensely personal view, which was stammered forth with the bitterness of an accusation. But as they crossed the suspension bridge, Krafft stopped, and stood looking at the water, which glistened in the moonlight like a living thing. "No, it is impossible for me to put death out of my mind," he went on. "And yet, a spring into this silver fire down here would end all that, and satisfy one's curiosity as well. Why is one not readier to make the spring?--and what would one's sensations be? The mad rush through the air--the crash--the sinking in the awful blackness ..." "Those of fear and cold. You would wish yourself out again," answered Maurice; and as Krafft nodded, without seeming to resent his tone, he ventured to put forward a few points for the other side of the question. He suggested that always to be brooding over death unfitted you for life. Every one had to die when his time came; it was foolish to look upon your own death as an exception to the rule. Besides, when sensation had left you--the soul, the spirit, whatever you liked to call it--what did it matter what afterwards became of your body? It was, then, in reality, nothing but lumber, fresh nourishment for the soil; and it was morbid to care so much how it was treated, just because it had once been your tenement, when it was now as worthless as the crab's empty shell. He stuttered this out piece-wise, in his halting German; then paused, not sure how his companion would take the didactic tone he had fallen into. But Krafft had turned, and was gazing at him, considering him attentively for the first time. When Maurice ceased to speak, he nodded a hasty assent: "Yes, yes, it is quite true. Go on." And as the former, having nothing more to say, was mute, he added: "You are like some one I once knew. He was a great musician. I saw him die; he died by inches; it lasted for months; he could neither die nor live." "Why do you brood over these things, if you find them so awful? Are you not afraid your nerves will go through with you, and make you do something foolish?" asked Maurice, and was himself astonished at his boldness. "Of course I am. My life is a perpetual struggle against suicide," answered Krafft. In the distance, a church-clock struck a quarter to twelve, and it was on Maurice's tongue to suggest that they should move homewards, when, with one of his unexpected transitions, Krafft turned to him and said in a low voice: "What do you say? Shall you and I be friends?" Maurice hesitated, in some embarrassment. "Why yes, I should be very glad." "And you will let me say 'DU' to you?" "Certainly. If you are sure you won't regret it in the morning." Krafft stretched out his hand. As Maurice held in his the fine, slim fingers, which seemed mere skin and muscle, a hitherto unknown feeling of kindliness came over him for the young man at his side. At this moment, he had the lively sensation that he was the stronger and wiser of the two, and that it was even a little beneath him to take the other too seriously. "You think so poorly of me then? You think no good thing can come out of me?" asked Krafft, and there was an appealing note in his voice, which, but a short time back, had been so overbearing. Had Maurice known him better, he would have promptly retorted: "Don't be a fool." As it was, he laughed. "Who am I to sit in judgment? The only thing I do know is, that if I had your talent--no, a quarter of it--I should pull myself together and astonish the world." "It sounds so easy; but I have too many doubts of myself," said Krafft, and laid his hand on Maurice's shoulder. "And I have never had anyone to keep me up to the mark--till now. I have always needed some one like you. You are strong and sympathetic; and one has the feeling that you understand." Maurice was far from certain that he did. However, he answered in a frank way, doing his best to keep down the sentimental tone that had invaded the conversation. At heart he was little moved by this new friendship, which hail begun with the word itself; he told himself that it was only a whim of Krafft's, which would be forgotten in the morning. But, as they stood thus on the bridge, shoulder to shoulder, he did not understand how he could ever have taken anything this frail creature did, amiss. At the moment, there was a clinging helplessness about Krafft, which instinctively roused his manlier feelings. He said to himself that he had done wrong in lightly condemning his companion; and, impelled by this sudden burst of protectiveness, he seized the moment, and spoke earnestly to Krafft of earnest things, of duty, not only to one's fellows, but to oneself and one's abilities, of the inspiring gain of unremitted endeavour. Afterwards, they sauntered home--first to Maurice's lodging, then to Krafft's, and once again to Maurice's. At this stage, Krafft was frankness itself; Maurice learnt to his surprise that the slim, boyish lad at his side was over twenty-seven years of age; that, for several semesters, Krafft had studied medicine in Vienna, then had thrown up this "disgusting occupation," to become a clerk in a wealthy uncle's counting-house. From this, he had drifted into journalism, and finally, at the instigation of Hans von Bullow, to music; he had been for two and a half years with Bullow, on travel, and in Hamburg, and was at present in Leipzig solely to have his "fingers put in order." His plans for the future were many, and widely divergent. At one time, a musical career tempted him irresistibly; every one but Schwarz--this finger-machine, this generator of living metronomes--believed that he could make a name for himself as a player of Chopin. At other times, and more often, he contemplated retiring from the world and entering a monastery. He spoke with a morbid horror--yet as if the idea of it fascinated him--of the publicity of the concert-platform, and painted in glowing colours a monastery he knew of, standing on a wooded hill, not far from Vienna. He had once spent several weeks there, recovering from an illness, and the gardens, the trimly bedded flowers, the glancing sunlight in the utter silence of the corridors, were things he could not forget. He had lain day for day on a garden-bench, reading Novalis, and it still seemed to him that the wishless happiness of those days was the greatest he had known. Beside this, Maurice's account of himself sounded tame and unimportant; he felt, too, that the circumstances of English life were too far removed from his companion's sphere, for the latter to be able to understand them. On waking next morning, Maurice recalled the incidents of the evening with a smile; felt a touch of warmth at the remembrance of the moment when he had held Krafft's hand in his; then classed the whole episode as strained, and dismissed it from his mind. He had just shut the piano, after a busy forenoon, when Krafft burst in, his cheeks pink with haste and excitement. He had discovered a room to let, in the house he lived in, and nothing would satisfy him but that Maurice should come instantly to see it. Laughing at his eagerness, Maurice put forward his reasons for preferring to remain where he was. But Krafft would take no denial, and not wishing to hurt his feelings, Maurice gave way, and agreed at least to look at the room. It was larger and more cheerful than his own, and had also, a convenient alcove for the bedstead; and after inspecting it, Maurice felt willing to expend the extra marks it cost. They withdrew to Krafft's room to come to a decision. There, however, they found Avery Hill, who, as soon as she heard what they contemplated, put a veto on it. Growing pale, as she always did where others would have flushed, she said: "It is an absurd idea--sheer nonsense! I won't have it, understand that! Pray, excuse me," she continued to Maurice, speaking in a more friendly tone than she had yet used to him, "but you must not listen to him. It is just one of his whims--nothing more. In less than a week, you would wish yourself away again. You have no idea how changeable he is--how impossible to live with." Maurice hastened to reassure her. Krafft did not speak; he stood at the window, with his back to them, his forehead pressed against the glass. So Maurice continued to live in the BRAUSTRASSE, under the despotic rule of Frau Krause, who took every advantage of his good-nature. But after this, not a day passed without his seeing Krafft; the latter sought him out on trivial pretexts. Maurice hardly recognised him: he was gentle, amiable, and amenable to reason; he subordinated himself entirely to Maurice, and laid an ever-increasing weight on his opinion. Maurice became able to wind him round his finger; and the hint of a reproof from him served to throw Krafft into a state of nervous depression. Without difficulty, Maurice found himself to rights in his role of mentor, and began to flatter himself that he would ultimately make of Krafft a decent member of society. As it was, he soon induced his friend to study in a more methodical way; they practised for the same number of hours in the forenoon, and met in the afternoon; and Krafft only sometimes broke through this arrangement, by appearing in the BRAUSTRASSE early in the morning, and, despite remonstrance, throwing himself on the sofa, and remaining there, while Maurice practised. The latter ended by growing accustomed to this whim as to several other things that had jarred on him--such as Krafft's love for a dirty jest--and overlooked or forgave them. At first embarrassed by the mushroom growth of a friendship he had not invited, he soon grew genuinely attached to Krafft, and missed him when he was absent from him. Avery Hill could hardly be termed third in the alliance; Maurice's advent had thrust her into the background, where she kept watch over their doings with her cold, disdainful eye. Maurice was not clear how she regarded his intrusion. Sometimes, particularly when she saw the improvement in Heinrich's way of life, she seemed to tolerate his presence gladly; at others again, her jealous aversion to him was too open to be overlooked. The jealousy was natural; he was an interloper, and Heinz neglected her shamefully for him; but there was something else behind it, another feeling, which Maurice could not make out. He by no means understood the relationship that existed between his friend and this girl of the stone-grey eyes and stern, red lips. The two lived almost door by door, went in and out of each other's rooms at all hours, and yet, he had never heard them exchange an affectionate word, or seen a mark of endearment pass between them. Avery's attachment--if such it could be called--was noticeable only in the many small ways in which she cared for Krafft's comfort; her manner with him was invariably severe and distant, with the exception of those occasions when a seeming trifle raised in her a burst of the dull, passionate anger, beneath which Krafft shrank. Maurice believed that his friend would be happier away from her; in spite of her fresh colouring, he, Maurice, found her wanting in attraction, nothing that a woman ought to be. But her name was rarely mentioned between them; Krafft was, as a rule, reticent concerning her, and when he did speak of her, it was in a tone of such contempt that Maurice was glad to shirk the subject. "It's all she wants," Krafft had replied, when his companion ventured to take her part. "She wouldn't thank you to be treated differently. Believe me, women are all alike; they are made to be trodden on. Ill-usage brings out their good points--just as kneading makes dough light. Let them alone, or pamper them, and they spread like a weed, and choke you"--and he quoted a saying about going to women and not forgetting the whip, at which Maurice stood aghast. "But why, if you despise a person like that--why have her always about you?" he cried, at the end of a flaming plea for woman's dignity and worth. Krafft shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose the truth is we are dependent on them--yes, dependent, from the moment we are laid in the cradle. It's a woman who puts on our first clothes and a woman who puts on our last. But why talk about these things?"--he slipped his arm through Maurice's. "Tell me about yourself; and when you are tired of talking, I will play." It usually ended in his playing. They ranged through the highways and byways of music. One afternoon--it was a warm, wet, grey day towards the end of August--Maurice found Krafft in a strangely apathetic mood. The weather, this moist warmth, had got on his nerves, he said; he had been unable to settle to anything; was weighed down by a lassitude heavier than iron. When Maurice entered, he was stretched on the sofa, with closed eyes; on his chest slept Wotan, the one-eyed cat, now growing sleek and fat. While Maurice was trying to rally him, Krafft sprang up. With a precipitance that was the extreme opposite of his previous sloth, he lowered both window-blinds, and, lighting two candles, set them on the piano, where they dispersed the immediate darkness, but no more. "I am going to play TRISTAN to you." Maurice had learnt by this time that it was useless to try to thwart Krafft. He laughed and nodded, and having nothing in particular to do, lay down in the latter's place on the sofa. Krafft shook his hair back, and began the prelude to the opera in a rapt, ecstatic way, finding in the music an outlet for all his nervousness. At first, he played from memory; when this gave out, he set the piano-score up before him, then forgot it again, and went on playing by heart. Sometimes he sang the different parts, in a light, sweet tenor; sometimes recited them, with dramatic fervour. Only he never ceased to play, never gave his hearer a moment in which to recover himself. Frau Schulz's entry with the lamp, and her grumblings at the "UNVERSCHAMTE SPEKTAKEL" passed unheeded. A strength that was more than human seemed to take possession of the frail youth at the piano. Evening crept on afternoon, night on evening, and still he continued, drunk with the most emotional music conceived by a human brain. Even when hands and fingers could do no more, the frenzy that was in him would not let him rest: he paced the room, and talked--talked for hours, his eyes ablaze. A church-clock struck ten, then half-past, then eleven, and not for a moment was he still; his speech seemed, indeed, to gather impetus as it advanced like a mountain torrent. Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of a vehement defence of anti-Semitism, to which he had been led by the misdeeds of those "arch-charlatans," Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, he stopped short, like a run-down clock, and, falling into a chair before the table, buried his face in his arms. There was silence, the more intense for all that had preceded it. Wotan wakened from sleep, and was heard to stretch his limbs, with a yawn and a sigh. The spell was broken; Maurice, his head in a whirl, rose stiff and cramped from his uncomfortable position on the sofa. "You rascal, you make one lose all sense of time. And I am starving. I must snatch something at Canitz's as I go by." Krafft started, and raised a haggard face with twitching lips. "You are not going to leave me?--like this?" Maurice was both hungry and tired--worn out, in fact. "We will go somewhere in the town," said Krafft. "And then for a walk. The rain has stopped--look!" He drew up one of the blinds, and they saw that the stars were shining. "Yes, but what about to-morrow?--and to-morrow's work?" "To-morrow may never come. And to-night is." "Those are only words. Do you know the time?" Krafft turned quickly from the window. "And if I make it a test of the friendship you have professed for me, that you stay here with me to-night?--You can sleep on the sofa." "Why on earth get personal?" said Maurice; he could not find his hat, which had fallen in a dark corner. "Heinz, dear boy, be reasonable. Come, give me the house-key--like a good fellow." "It's the first--the only thing, I have asked of you." "Nonsense. You have asked dozens." Krafft took a few steps towards him, and threw the key on the floor at his feet. Wotan, who was at the door, mewing to be let out, sprang back, in affright. "Go, go, go!" Krafft cried. "I never want to see you again." Earlier than usual the next morning, Maurice returned to set things right, and to laugh with Heinz at their extravagance the night before. But Krafft was not to be seen. From Frau Schulz, who flounced past him in the passage, first with hot water, then with black coffee, Maurice learned that Krafft had been brought home early that morning, in a disgraceful state of intoxication. Frau Schulz still boiled at the remembrance. "SO 'N SCHWEIN, SO 'N SCHWEIN!" she cried. "But this time he goes. I have said it before and, fool that I am, have always let them persuade me. But this is the end. Not a day after the fifteenth will I have him in the house." Maurice slipped away. Two days passed before he saw his friend again. He found him pale and dejected, with reddish, heavy eyes and a sneering smile. He was wholly changed; his words were tainted with the perverse irony, which, at the beginning of their acquaintance, had made his manner so repellent. But now, Maurice was not, at once, frightened away by it; he could not believe Heinrich's pique was serious, and gave himself trouble to win his friend back. He chid, laughed, rallied, was earnest and apologetic, and all this without being conscious of having done wrong. "I think you had better leave him alone," said Avery, after watching his fruitless efforts. "He doesn't want you." It was true; now Krafft had no thought for anyone but Avery. It was Avery here, and Avery there. He called her by a pet name, was anxious for her comfort, and hung affectionately on her arm.--The worst of it was, that he did not seem in the least ashamed of his fickleness. Maurice made one further attempt to move him, then, hurt and angry, intruded no more. At first, he was chiefly angry. But, gradually, the hurt deepened, and became a sense of injury, which made him avoid the street Krafft lived in, and shun him when they met. He missed him, after the close companionship of the past weeks, and felt as if he had been suddenly deprived of a part of himself. And he would no doubt have missed him more keenly still, if, just at this juncture, his attention had not been engrossed by another and more important matter. XIII. The commencement of the new term had just assembled the incoming students to sign their names in the venerable rollbook, when the report spread that Schilsky was willing to play his symphonic poem, ZARATHUSTRA, to those of his friends who cared to hear it. Curiosity swelled the number, and Furst lent his house for the occasion. "You'll come, of course," said the latter to Maurice, as they left Schwarz's room after their lesson; and Madeleine said the same thing while driving home from the railway-station, where Maurice had met her. She was no more a friend of Schilsky's than he was, but she certainly intended to be present, to hear what kind of stuff he had turned out. On the evening of the performance, Maurice and she walked together to the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE. Madeleine had still much to say. She had returned from her holiday in the best of health and spirits, liberally rewarded for her trouble, and possessed of four new friends, who, no doubt, would all be of use to her when she settled in England again. This was to be her last winter in Leipzig, and she was drawing up detailed plans of work. From now on, she intended to take private lessons from Schwarz, in addition to those she received in the class. "Even though they do cost ten marks each, it makes him ever so much better disposed towards you." She also told him that she had found a letter from Louise waiting for her, in which the latter announced her return for the following week. Louise wrote from England, and all her cry was to be back in Leipzig. "Of course--now he is here," commented Madeleine. "You know, I suppose, that he has been travelling with Zeppelin? He has the luck of I don't know what." The Cayhills would be absent till the middle of the month; Maurice had received from Ephie one widely written note, loud in praise of a family of "perfectly sweet Americans," whom they had learnt to know in Interlaken, but also expressing eagerness to be at home again in "dear old Leipzig." Dove had arrived a couple of days ago--and here Madeleine laughed. "He is absolutely shiny with resolution," she declared. "Mind, Maurice, if he takes you into confidence--as he probably will--you are not on any account to dissuade him from proposing. A snub will do him worlds of good." They were not the first to climb the ill-lighted stair that wound up to the Fursts' dwelling. The entry-door on the fourth storey stood open, and a hum of voices came from the sitting-room. The circular hat-stand in the passage was crowded with motley headgear. As they passed the kitchen, the door of which was ajar, Frau Furst peeped through the slit, and seeing Maurice, called him in. The coffee-pot was still on the stove; he must sit down and drink a cup of coffee. "There is plenty of time. Schilsky has not come yet, and I have only this moment sent Adolfchen for the beer." Maurice asked her if she were not coming in to hear the music. She laughed good-naturedly at the idea. "Bless your heart, what should I do in there, among all you young people? No, no, I can hear just as well where I am. When my good husband had his evenings, it was always from the kitchen that I listened." Pausing, with a saucepan in one hand, a cloth in the other, she said: "You will hear something good to-night, Herr Guest. Oh, he has talent, great talent, has young Schilsky! This is not the usual work of a pupil. It has form, and it has ideas, and it is new and daring. I know one of the motives from hearing Franz play it," and she hummed a theme as she replaced on the shelf, the scrupulously cleaned pot. "For such a young man, it is wonderful; but he will do better still, depend upon it, he will." Here she threw a hasty glance round the tiny kitchen, at three of the children sitting as still as mice in the corner, laid a finger on her lips, and, bursting with mystery, leaned over the table and asked Maurice if he could keep a secret. "He is going away," she whispered. Maurice stared at her. "Going away? Who is? What do you mean?" he asked, and was so struck by her peculiar manner that he set his cup down untouched. "Why Schilsky, of course." She thought his astonishment was disbelief, and nodded confirmingly. "Yes, yes, he is going away. And soon, too." "How do you know?" cried Maurice. Sitting back in his chair, he stemmed his hands against the edge of the table, and looked challengingly at Frau Furst. "Ssh--not so loud," said the latter. "It's a secret, a dead secret--though I'm sure I don't know why. Franz----" At this very moment, Franz himself came into the kitchen. He looked distrustfully at his whispering mother. "Now then, mother, haven't you got that beer yet?" he demanded. His genial bonhomie disappeared, as if by magic, when he entered his home circle, and he was particularly gruff with this adoring woman. "GLEICH, FRANZCHEN, GLEICH," she answered soothingly, and whisked about her work again, with the air of one caught napping. Maurice followed Furst's invitation to join the rest of the party. The folding-doors between the "best room" and the adjoining bedroom had been opened wide, and the guests were distributed over the two rooms. The former was brilliantly lighted by three lamps and two candles, and all the sitting-accommodation the house contained was ranged in a semicircle round the grand piano. Here, not a place was vacant; those who had come late were in the bedroom, making shift with whatever offered. Two girls and a young man, having pushed back the feather-bed, sat on the edge of the low wooden bedstead, with their arms interlaced to give them a better balance. Maurice found Madeleine on a rickety little sofa that stood at the foot of the bed. Dove sat on a chest of drawers next the sofa, his long legs dangling in the air. Beside Madeleine, with his head on her shoulder, was Krafft. "Oh, there you are," cried Madeleine. "Well, I did my best to keep the place for you; but it was of no use, as you see. Just sit down, however. Between us, we'll squeeze him properly." Maurice was glad that the room, which was lighted only by one small lamp, was in semi-darkness; for, at the sound of his own voice, it suddenly became clear to him that the piece of gossip Frau Furst had volunteered, had been of the nature of a blow. Schilsky's departure threatened, in a way he postponed for the present thinking out, to disturb his life; and, in an abrupt need of sympathy, he laid his hand on Krafft's knee. "Is it you, old man? What have you been doing with yourself?" Krafft gave him one of those looks which, in the early days of their acquaintance, had proved so disconcerting--a look of struggling recollection. "Oh, nothing in particular," he replied, without hostility, but also without warmth. His mind was not with his words, and Maurice withdrew his hand. Madeleine leaned forward, dislodging Krafft's head from its resting-place. "How long have you two been 'DU' to each other?" she asked, and at Maurice's curt reply, she pushed Krafft from her. "Sit up and behave yourself. One would think you had an evil spirit in you to-night." Krafft was nervously excited: bright red spots burnt on his cheeks, his hands twitched, and he jerked forward in his seat and threw himself back again, incessantly. "No, you are worse than a mosquito," cried Madeleine, losing patience. "Anyone would think you were going to play yourself. And he will be as cool as an iceberg. The sofa won't stand it, Heinz. If you can't stop fidgeting, get up." He had gone, before she finished speaking; for a slight stir in the next room made them suppose for a moment that Schilsky was arriving. Afterwards, Krafft was to be seen straying about, with his hands in his pockets; and, on observing his rose-pink cheeks and tumbled curly hair, Madeleine could not refrain from remarking: "He ought to have been a girl." The air was already hot, by reason of the lamps, and the many breaths, and the firmly shut double-windows. The clamour for beer had become universal by the time Adolfchen arrived with his arms full of bottles. As there were not enough glasses to go round, every two or three persons shared one between them--a proceeding that was carried out with much noisy mirth. Above all other voices was to be heard that of Miss Jensen, who, in a speckled yellow dress, with a large feather fan in her hand, sat in the middle of the front row of seats. It was she who directed how the beer should be apportioned; she advised a few late-comers where they would still find room, and engaged Furst to place the lights on the piano to better advantage. Next her, a Mrs. Lautenschlager, a plump little American lady, with straight yellow hair which hung down on her shoulders, was relating to her neighbour on the other side, in a tone that could be clearly heard in both rooms, how she had "discovered" her voice. "I come to Schwarz, last fall," she said shaking back her hair, and making effective use of her babyish mouth; "and he thinks no end of me. But the other week I was sick, and as I lay in bed, I sung some--just for fun. And my landlady--she's a regular singer herself--who was fixing up the room, she claps her hands together and says: 'My goodness me! Why YOU have a voice!' That's what put it in my head, and I went to Sperling to hear what he'd got to say. He was just tickled to death, I guess he was, and he's going to make something dandy of it, so I stop long enough. I don't know what my husband'll say though. When I wrote him I was sick, he says: 'Come home and be sick at home'--that's what he says." Miss Jensen could not let pass the opportunity of breaking a lance for her own master, the Swede, and of cutting up Sperling's method, which she denounced as antiquated. She made quite a little speech, in the course of which she now and then interrupted herself to remind Furst--who, was as soft as a pudding before her--of something he had forgotten to do, such as snuffing the candles or closing the door. "Just let me hear your scale, will you?" she said patronisingly to Mrs. Lautenschlager. The latter, nothing loath, stuck out her chin, opened her mouth, and, for a short time, all other noises were drowned in a fine, full volume of voice. On their sofa, Madeleine and Maurlee sat in silence, pretending to listen to Dove, who was narrating his journey. Madeleine was out of humour; she tapped the floor, and had a crease in her forehead. As for Maurice, he was in such poor spirits that she could not but observe it. "Why are you so quiet? Is anything the matter?" He shook his head, without speaking. His vague sense of impending misfortune had crystallised into a definite thought; he knew now what it signified. If Schilsky went away from Leipzig, Louise would probably go, too, and that would be the end of everything. "I represented to him," he heard Dove saying, "that I had seen the luggage with my own eyes at Flushing. What do you think he answered? He looked me up and down, and said: 'ICH WERDE TELEGRAPHIEREN UND ERKUNDIGUNGEN EINZIEHEN.' Now, do you think if you said to an English station-master: 'Sir, I saw the luggage with my own eyes,' he would not believe you? No, in my opinion, the whole German railway-system needs revision. Would you believe it, we did not make fifty kilometers in the hour, and yet our engine broke down before Magdeburg?" So this would be the end; the end of foolish dreams and weak hopes, which he had never put into words even to himself, which had never properly existed, and yet had been there, nevertheless, a mass of gloriously vague perhapses. The end was at hand--an end before there had been any beginning. "... the annoyance of the perpetual interruptions," went on the voice on the other side. "A lady who was travelling in the same compartment--a very pleasant person, who was coming over to be a teacher in a school in Dresden--I have promised to show her our lions when she visits Leipzig: well, as I was saying, she was quite alarmed the first time he entered in that way, and it took me some time, I assure you, to make her believe that this was the German method of revising tickets." The break occasioned by the arrival of the beer had been of short duration, and the audience was growing impatient; at the back of the room, some one began to stamp his feet; others took it up. Furst perspired with anxiety, and made repeated journeys to the stair-head, to see if Schilsky were not coming. The latter was almost an hour late by now, and jests, bald and witty, were made at his expense. Some one offered to take a bet that he had fallen asleep and forgotten the appointment, and at this, one of the girls on the bed, a handsome creature with bold, prominent eyes, related an anecdote to her neighbours, concerning Schilsky's powers of sleep. All three exploded with laughter. In a growing desire to be asked to play, Boehmer had for some time hung about the piano, and was now just about to drop, as if by accident, upon the stool, when the cry of: "No Bach!" was raised--Bach was Boehmer's specialty--and re-echoed, and he retired red and discomfited to his Place in a corner of the room, where his companion, a statuesque little English widow, made biting observations on the company's behaviour. The general rowdyism was at its height, when some one had the happy idea that Krafft should sing them his newest song. At this, there was a unanimous shriek of approval, and several hands dragged Krafft to the piano. But himself the wildest of them all, he needed no forcing. Flinging himself down on the seat, he preluded wildly in imitation of Rubinstein. His hearers sat with their mouths open, a fixed smile on their faces, laughter ready in their throats, and only Madeleine was coolly contemptuous. "Tom-fool!" she said in a low voice. Krafft was confidently expected to burst into one of those songs for which he was renowned. Few of his friends were able to sing them, and no one but himself could both sing and play them simultaneously: they were a monstrous, standing joke. Instead of this, however, he turned, winked at his audience, and began a slow, melancholy ditty, with a recurring refrain. He was not allowed to finish the first verse; a howl of disapproval went up; his hearers hooted, jeered and stamped. "Sick cats!" "Damn your 'WENIG SONNE!'"--this was the refrain. "Put your head in a bag!" "Pity he drinks!" "Give us one of the rousers--the rou ... sers!" Krafft himself laughed unbridledly. "DAS ICH SPRICHT!"--he announced. "In C sharp major." There was a hush of anticipation, in which Dove, stopping his BRETZEL half-way to his mouth, was heard to say in his tone of measured surprise: "C sharp major! Why, that is----" The rest was drowned in the wild chromatic passages that Krafft sent up and down the piano with his right hand, while his left followed with full-bodied chords, each of which exceeded the octave. Before, however, there was time to laugh, this riot ceased, and became a mournful cadence, to the slowly passing harmonies of which, Krafft sang: I am weary of everything that is, under the sun. I sicken at the long lines of rain, which are black against the sky; They drip, for a restless heart, with the drip of despair: For me, winds must rage, trees bend, and clouds sail stormily. The whirlwind of the prelude commenced anew; the chords became still vaster; the player swayed from side to side, like a stripling-tree in a storm. Madeleine said, "Tch!" in disgust, but the rest of the company, who had only waited for this, burst into peals of laughter; some bent double in their seats, some leant back with their chins in the air. Even Dove smiled. Just, however, as those whose sense of humour was most highly developed, mopped their faces with gestures of exhaustion, and assured their neighbours that they "could not, really could not laugh any more," Furst entered and flapped his hands. "Here he comes!" A sudden silence fell, broken only by a few hysterical giggles from the ladies, and by a frivolous American, who cried: "Now for ALSO SCHRIE ZENOPHOBIA!" Krafft stopped playing, but remained sitting at the piano, wiping down the keys with his handkerchief. Schilsky came in, somewhat embarrassed by the lull which had succeeded the hubbub heard in the passage, but wholly unconcerned at the lateness of the hour: except in matters of practical advancement, time did not exist for him. As soon as he appeared, the two ladies in the front row began to clap their hands; the rest of the company followed their example, then, in spite of Furst's efforts to prevent it, rose and crowded round him. Miss Jensen and her friend made themselves particularly conspicuous. Mrs Lauterischlager had an infatuation for the young man, of which she made no secret; she laid her hand caressingly on his coat-sleeve, and put her face as near his as propriety admitted. "Disgusting, the way those women go on with him!" said Madeleine. "And what is worse, he likes it." Schilsky listened to the babble of compliments with that mixture of boyish deference and unequivocal superiority, which made him so attractive to women. He was too good-natured to interrupt them and free himself, and would have stood as long as they liked, if Furst had not come to the rescue and led him to the piano. Schilsky laid his hand affectionately on Krafft's shoulder, and Krafft sprang up in exaggerated surprise. The audience took its seats again; the thick manuscript-score was set up on the music-rack, and the three young men at the piano had a brief disagreement with one another about turning the leaves: Krafft was bent on doing it, and Schilsky objected, for Krafft had a way of forgetting what he was at in the middle of a page. Krafft flushed, cast an angry look at his friend, and withdrew, in high dudgeon, to a corner. Standing beside the piano, so turned to those about him that the two on the sofa in the next room only saw him sideways, and ill at that, Schilsky gave a short description of his work. He was nervous, which aggravated his lisp, and he spoke so rapidly and in such a low voice that no one but those immediately in front of him, could understand what he said. But it did not matter in the least; all present had come only to hear the music; they knew and cared nothing about Zarathustra and his spiritual development; and one and all waited impatiently for Schilsky to stop speaking. The listeners in the bedroom----merely caught disjointed words--WERDEGANG, NOTSCHREI, TARANTELN--but not one was curious enough even to lean forward in his seat. Madeleine made sarcastic inward comments on the behaviour of the party. "It's perfectly clear to you, I suppose," she could not refrain from observing as, at the finish, Dove sagely wagged his head in agreement. It transpired that there was an ode to be sung before the last section of the composition, and a debate ensued who, should sing it. The two ladies in the front had quite a little quarrel--without knowing anything about the song--as to which of their voices would best suit it. Schilsky was silent for a moment, tapping his fingers, then said suddenly: "Come on, Heinz," and looked at Krafft. But the latter, who was standing morose, with folded arms, did not move. He had a dozen reasons why he should not sing; he had a cold, was hoarse, was out of practice, could not read the music from sight. "Good Heavens, what a fool Heinz is making of himself tonight!" said Madeleine. But Schilsky thumped his fist on the lid, and said, if Krafft did not sing it, no one should; and that was the end of the matter. Krafft was pulled to the piano. Schilsky took his seat, and, losing his nervousness as soon as he touched the keys, preluded firmly and easily, with his large, white hands. Now, every one leaned forward to see him better; especially the ladies threw themselves into positions from which they could watch hair and hands, and the slender, swaying figure. "Isn't he divine?" said the bold-eyed girl on the bed, in a loud whisper, and hung upon her companion's neck in an ecstatic attitude. After the diversity of noises which had hitherto interfered with his thinking connectedly, Maurice welcomed the continuous sound of the music, which went on without a break. He sat in a listening attitude, shading his eyes with his hand. Through his fingers, he surreptitiously watched the player. He had never before had an opportunity of observing Schilsky so closely, and, with a kind of blatant generosity, he now pointed out to himself each physical detail that he found prepossessing in the other, every feature that was likely to attract--in the next breath, only to struggle with his honest opinion that the composer was a slippery, loose-jointed, caddish fellow, who could never be proved to be worthy of Louise. But he was too down-hearted at what he had learnt in the course of the evening, to rise to any active feeling of dislike. Intermittently he heard, in spite of himself, something of Schilsky's music; but he was not in a frame of mind to understand or to retain any impression of it. He was more effectively jerked out of his preoccupation by single spoken words, which, from time to time, struck his ear: this was Furst, who, in the absence of a programme, announced from his seat beside Schilsky, the headings of the different sections of the work: WERDEGANG; SEILTANZER--here Maurice saw Dove conducting with head and hand--NOTSCHREI; SCHWERMUT; TARANTELN--and here again, but vaguely, as if at a distance, he heard suppressed laughter. But he was thoroughly roused when Krafft, picking up a sheet of music and coming round to the front of the piano, began to sing DAS TRUNKENE LIED. By way of introduction, the low F in the bass of F minor sounded persistently, at syncopated intervals; Schilsky inclined his head, and Krafft sang, in his sweet, flute-like voice: Oh, Mensch! Gieb Acht! Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? "Ich schlief, ich schlief, Aus tiefem Schlaf bin ich erwacht: Die Welt ist tief, Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht." --the last phrase of which was repeated by the accompaniment, a semitone higher. Tief ist ihr Weh, Lust--tiefer noch als Herzeleid: As far as this, the voice had been supported by simple, full-sounding harmonies. Now, from out the depths, still of F minor, rose a hesitating theme, which seemed to grope its way: in imagination, one heard it given out by the bass strings; then the violas reiterated it, and dyed it purple; voice and violins sang it together; the high little flutes carried it up and beyond, out of reach, to a half close. Weh spricht: vergeh! Suddenly and unexpectedly, there entered a light yet mournful phrase in F major, which was almost a dance-rhythm, and seemed to be a small, frail pleading for something not rightly understood. Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit, Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit. The innocent little theme passed away, and the words were sung again to a stern and fateful close in D flat major. The concluding section of the work returned to these motives, developed them, gathered them together, grouped them and interchanged them, in complicated thermatic counterpoint. Schilsky was barely able to cope with the difficulties of the score; he exerted himself desperately, laboured with his head and his whole body, and surmounted sheerly unplayable parts with the genial slitheriness that is the privilege of composers. When, at last, he crashed to a close and wiped his face in exhaustion, there was a deafening uproar of applause. Loud cries were uttered and exclamations of enthusiasm; people rose from their seats and crowded round the piano to congratulate the player. Mrs. Lautenschlager could not desist from kissing his hand. A tall, thin Russian girl in spectacles, who had assiduously taken notes throughout, asked in a loud voice, and her peculiar, hoppy German, for information about the orchestration. What use had he made of the cymbals? She trusted a purely Wagnerian one. Schilsky hastened to reopen the score, and sat himself to answer the question earnestly and at length. "Come, Maurice, let us go," said Madeleine, rising and shaking the creases from her skirt. "There will be congratulations enough. He won't miss ours." Maurice had had an idea of lingering till everybody else had gone, on the chance of picking up fresh facts. But he was never good at excuses. So they slipped out into the passage, followed by Dove; but while the latter was looking for his hat, Madeleine pulled Maurice down the stairs. "Quick, let us go!" she whispered; and, as they heard him coming after them, she drew her companion down still further, to the cellar flight, where they remained hidden until Dove had passed them, and his steps had died away in the street. "We should have had nothing but his impressions and opinions all the way home," she said, as they emerged. "He was bottled up from having to keep quiet so long--I saw it in his face. And I couldn't stand it to-night. I'm in a bad temper, as you may have observed--or perhaps you haven't." No, he had not noticed it. "Well, you would have, if you hadn't been so taken up with yourself. What on earth is the matter with you?" He feigned surprise: and they walked in silence down one street and into the next. Then she spoke again. "Do you know--but you're sure not to know that either--you gave me a nasty turn to-night?" "I?" His surprise was genuine this time. "Yes, you--when I heard you say 'DU' to Heinz." He looked at her in astonishment; but she was not in a hurry to continue. They walked another street-length, and all she said was: "How refreshing the air is after those stuffy rooms!" As they turned a corner however, she made a fresh start. "I think it's rather hard on me," she said, and laughed as she spoke. "Here am I again, having to lecture you! The fact is, I suppose, one's METIER clings to one, in spite of oneself. But there must be something about you, too, Maurice Guest, that makes one want to do it--want to look after you, so to speak--as if you couldn't be trusted to take care of yourself. Well, it disturbed me to-night, to see how intimate you and Heinz have got." "Is that all? Why on earth should that trouble you? And anyhow," he added, "the whole affair came about without any wish of mine." "How?" she demanded; and when he had told her: "And since then?" He went into detail, coolly, without the resentment he had previously felt towards Krafft. "And that's all?" "Isn't it enough--for a fellow to go on in that way?" "And you feel aggrieved?" "No, not now. At first I was rather sore, though, for Heinz is an interesting fellow, and we were very thick for a time." "Yes, of course--until Schilsky comes back. As soon as he appears on the scene, Master Heinz gives you the cold shoulder. Or perhaps you didn't know that Heinz is the attendant spirit of that heaven-born genius?" Maurice did not reply, and when she spoke again, it was with renewed seriousness. "Believe me, Maurice, he is no friend for you. It's not only that you ought to be above letting yourself be treated in this way, but Heinz's friendship won't do you any good. He belongs to a bad set here--and Schilsky, too. If you were long with Heinz, you would be bound to get drawn into it, and then it would be good-bye to anything you might have done--to work and success. No, take my advice--it's sincerely meant--and steer clear of Heinz." Maurice smiled to himself at her womanly idea of Krafft leading him to perdition. "But you're fond of him yourself, Madeleine," he said. "You can't help liking him either." "I daresay I can't. But that is quite a different matter--quite;" and as if more than enough had now been said, she abruptly left the subject. Before going home that night, Maurice made the old round by way of the BRUDERSTRASSE, and stood and looked up at the closed windows behind which Louise lived. The house was dark, and as still as was the deserted street. Only the Venetian blinds seemed to be faintly alive; the outer windows, removed for the summer, had not yet been replaced, and a mild wind flapped the blinds, just as it swayed the tops of the trees in the opposite garden. There was a breath of autumn in the air. He told himself aloud, in the nightly silence, that she was going away--as if by repeating the words, he might ultimately grow used to their meaning. The best that could be hoped for was that she would not go immediately, but would remain in Leipzig for a few weeks longer. Then a new fear beset him. What if she never came back again?--if she had left the place quietly, of set purpose?--if these windows were closed for good and all? A dryness invaded his throat at the possibility, and on the top of this evening of almost apathetic resignation to the inevitable, the knowledge surged up in him that all he asked was to be allowed to see her just once more. Afterwards, let come what might. Once again, he must stand face to face with her--must stamp a picture of her on his brain, to carry with him for ever. For ever!--And through his feverish sleep ran, like a thread, the words he had heard Krafft sing, of an eternity that was deep and dreamless, a joy without beginning or end. Madeleine had waved her umbrella at him. He crossed the road to where she was standing in rain-cloak and galoshes. She wished to tell him that the date of her playing in the ABENDUNTERHALTUNG had been definitely fixed. About to go, she said: "Louise is back--did you know?" Of course he knew, though he did not tell her so--knew almost the exact hour at which the blinds had been drawn up, the windows opened, and a flower-pot, in a gaudy pink paper, put out on the sill. Not many days after this, he came upon Louise herself. She was standing talking, at a street-corner, to the shabby little Englishman, Eggis, with whom she had walked the FOYER of the theatre. Maurice was about to bow and pass by, but she smiled and held out her hand. "You are back, too, then? To-day I am meeting all my friends." She had fur about her neck, although the weather was not really cold, and her face rose out of this setting like a flower from its cup. This meeting, and the few cordial words she had spoken, helped him over the days that followed. Sometimes, while he waited for the blow to fall, his daily life grew very unimportant; things that had hitherto interested him, now went past like shadows; he himself was a mere automaton. But sometimes, too, and especially after he had seen Louise, and touched her living hand, he wondered whether he were not perhaps tormenting himself unnecessarily. Nothing more had come to light; no one had hinted by a word at Schilsky's departure; it might yet prove to be all a mistake. Then, however, he received a postcard from Madeleine, saying that she had something interesting to tell him. He went too early, and spent a quarter of an hour pacing her room. When she entered, she threw him a look, and, before she had finished taking off her wraps, said: "Maurice, I have a piece of news for you. Schilsky is going away." He nodded; his throat was dry. "Why, you don't mean to say you knew?" she cried, and paused half-way out of her jacket. Maurice went to the window, and stood with his back to her. In one of the houses opposite, at a window on the same level, a girl was practising the violin; his eyes followed the mechanical movements of the bow. He cleared his throat. "Do you--Is it likely--I mean, do you think?----" Madeleine understood him. "Yes, I do. Louise won't stay here a day longer than he does; I'm sure of that." But otherwise she knew no more than Maurice; and she did not offer to detain him, when, a few minutes later, he alleged a pressing appointment. Madeleine was annoyed, and showed it; she had come in with the intention of being kind to him, of encouraging him, and discussing the matter sympathetically, and it now turned out that not only had he known it all the time, but had also kept it a secret from her. She did not like underhand ways, especially in people whom she believed she knew inside out. Now that the pledge of secrecy had been removed from him, Maurice felt that he wanted facts; and, without thinking more about it than if he had been there the day before, he climbed the stairs that led to Krafft's lodging. He found him at supper; Avery was present, too, and on the table sat Wotan, who was being regaled with strips of skin off the sausage. Krafft greeted Maurice with a touch of his former effusiveness; for he was in a talkative mood, and needed an audience. At his order, Avery put an extra plate on the table, and Maurice had to share their meal. It was not hard for him to lead Krafft round to the desired subject. It seemed that one of the masters in the Conservatorium had expressed a very unequivocal opinion of Schilsky's talents as a composer, and Krafft was now sarcastic, now merry, at this critic's expense. Maurice laid down his knife, and, in the first break, asked abruptly: "When does he go?" "Go?--who?" said Krafft indifferently, tickling Wotan's nose with a piece of skin which he held out of reach. "Who?--why, Schilsky, of course." It sounded as if another than he had said the words: they were so short and harsh. The plate Avery was holding fell to the floor. Krafft sat back in his chair, and stared at Maurice, with a face that was all eyes. "You knew he was going away?--or didn't you?" asked Maurice in a rough voice. "Every one knows. The whole place knows." Krafft laughed. "The whole place knows: every one knows," he repeated. "Every one, yes--every one but me. Every one but me, who had most right to know. Yes, I alone had the right; for no one has loved him as I have." He rose from the table, knocking over his chair. "Or else it is not true?" "Yes, it is true. Then you didn't know?" said Maurice, bewildered by the outburst he had evoked. "No, we didn't know." It was Avery who spoke. She was on her knees, picking up the pieces of the plate with slow, methodical fingers. Krafft stood hesitating. Then he went to the piano, opened it, adjusted the seat, and made all preparations for playing. But with his fingers ready on the keys, he changed his mind and, instead, laid his arms on the folded rack and his head on his arms. He did not stir again, and a long silence followed. The only sound that was to be heard came from Wotan, who, sitting on his haunches on a corner of the table, washed the white fur of his belly with an audible swish. XIV. Whistling to him to stop, Furst ran the length of a street-block after Maurice, as the latter left the Conservatorium. "I say, Guest," he said breathlessly, on catching up with him. "Look here, I just wanted to tell you, you must be sure and join us to-night. We are going to give Schilsky a jolly send-off." They stood at the corner of the WACHTERSTRASSE; it was a blowy day. Maurice replied evasively, with his eyes on the unbound volume of Beethoven that Furst was carrying; its tattered edges moved in the wind. "When does he go?" he asked, without any show of concern. Furst looked warily round him, and dropped his voice. "Well, look here, Guest, I don't mind telling you," he said; he was perspiring from his run, and dried his neck and face. "I don't mind telling you; you won't pass it on; for he has his reasons--family or domestic reasons, if one may say so, tra-la-la!"--he winked, and nudged Maurice with his elbow--"for not wanting it to get about. It's deuced hard on him that it should have leaked out at all. I don't know how it happened; for I was mum, 'pon my honour, I was." "Yes. And when does he go?" repeated his hearer with the same want of interest. "To-morrow morning early, by the first train." Now to be rid of him! But it was never easy to get away from Furst, and since Maurice had declared his intention of continuing to take lessons from him, as good as impossible. Furst was overpowering in his friendliness, and on this particular occasion, there was no escape for Maurice before he had promised to make one of the party that was to meet that night, at a restaurant in the town. Then he bluffly alleged an errand in the PLAGWITZERSTRASSE, and went off in an opposite direction to that which his companion had to take. As soon as Furst was out of sight, he turned into the path that led to the woods. Overhead, the sky was a monotonous grey expanse, and a soft, moist wind drove in gusts, before which, on the open meadow-land, he bent his head. It was a wind that seemed heavy with unfallen rain; a melancholy wind, as the day itself was melancholy, in its faded colours, and cloying mildness. With his music under his arm, Maurice walked to the shelter of the trees. Now that he had learnt the worst, a kind of numbness came over him; he had felt so intensely in the course of the past week that, now the crisis was there, he seemed destitute of feeling. His feet bore him mechanically to his favourite seat, and here he remained, with his head in his hands, his eyes fixed on the trodden gravel of the path. He had to learn, once and for all, that, by tomorrow, everything would be over; for, notwithstanding the wretchedness of the past days, he was as far off as ever from understanding. But he was loath to begin; he sat in a kind of torpor, conscious only of the objects his eyes rested on: some children had built a make-believe house of pebbles, with a path leading up to the doorway, and at this he gazed, estimating the crude architectural ideas that had occurred to the childish builders. He felt the wind in his hair, and listened to the soothing noise it made, high above his head. But gradually overcoming this physical dullness, his mind began to work again. With a sudden vividness, he saw himself as he had walked these very woods, seven months before; he remembered the brilliant colouring of the April day, and the abundance of energy that had possessed him. Then, on looking into the future, all his thoughts had been of strenuous endeavour and success. Now, success was a word like any other, and left him cold. For a long time, in place of passing on to his real preoccupation, he considered this, brooding over the change that had come about in him. Was it, he asked himself, because he had so little whole-hearted endurance, that when once a thing was within his grasp, that grasp slackened? Was it that he was able to make the effort required for a leap, then, the leap over, could not right himself again? He believed that the slackening interest, the inability to fix his attention, which he had had to fight against of late, must have some such deeper significance; for his whole nature--the inherited common sense of generations--rebelled against tracing it back to the day on which he had seen a certain face for the first time. It was too absurd to be credible that because a slender, dark-eyed girl had suddenly come within his range of vision, his life should thus lose form and purpose--incredible and unnatural as well--and, in his present mood, he would have laughed at the suggestion that this was love. To his mind, love was something frank and beautiful, made for daylight and the sun; whereas his condition was a source of mortification to him. To love, without any possible hope of return; to love, knowing that the person you loved regarded you with less than indifference, and, what was worse, that this person was passionately attached to another man--no, there was something indelicate about it, at which his blood revolted. It was the kind of thing that it suited poets to make tragedies of, but it did not--should not--happen in sober, daily life. And if, as it seemed in this case, it was beyond mortal's power to prevent it, then the only fitting thing to do was promptly to make an end. And because, over the approach of this end, he suffered, he now called himself hard names. What had he expected? Had he really believed that matters could always dally on, in this pleasant, torturous way? Would he always have been content to be third party, and miserable outsider? No; the best that could happen to him was now happening; let the coming day once be past, let a very few weeks have run their course, and the parting would have lost its sting; he would be able to look back, regretfully no doubt, but as on something done with, irrecoverable. Then he would apply himself to his work with all his heart; and it would be possible to think of her, and remember her, calmly. If once an end were put to these daily chances of seeing her, which perpetually fanned his unrest, all would go well. And yet ... did he close his eyes and let her face rise up before him--her sweet, white face, with the unfathomable eyes, and pale, sensuous mouth--he was shaken by an emotion that knocked his resolutions as flat as a breath knocks a house of cards. It was not love, nor anything to do with love, this he could have sworn to: it was merely the strange physical effect her presence, or the remembrance of her presence, had had upon him, from the first day on: a tightening of all centres, a heightening of all faculties, an intense hope, and as intense a despair. And in this moment, he confessed to himself that he would have been over-happy to live on just as he had been doing, if only sometimes he might see her. He needed her, as he had never felt the need of anyone before; his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He had no concern with anyone but her--her only--and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading that another person should be able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather fresh strength from each chance meeting, meant that the grip life had of him would relax--he grew sick even at the thought of how, in some unknown place, in the midst of strangers, she would go on living, and giving her hand and her smile to other people, while he would never see her again. And he said her name aloud to himself, as if he were in bodily pain, or as if the sound of it might somehow bring him aid: he inwardly implored whatever fate was above him to give him the one small chance he asked--the chance of fair play. The morning passed, without his knowing it. When, considerably after his usual dinner-hour, he was back in his room, he looked at familiar objects with unseeing eyes. He was not conscious of hunger, but going into the kitchen begged for a cup of the coffee that could be smelt brewing on Frau Krause's stove. When he had drunk this, a veil seemed to lift from his brain; he opened and read a letter from home, and was pricked by compunction at the thought that, except for a few scales run hastily that morning, he had done no work. But while he still stood, with his arm on the lid of the piano, an exclamation rose to his lips; and taking up his hat, he went down the stairs again, and out into the street. What was he thinking of? If he wished to see Louise once more, his place was under her windows, or in those streets she would be likely to pass through. He walked up and down before the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE, sometimes including a side street, in order to avoid making himself conspicuous; putting on a hurried air, if anyone looked curiously at him; lingering for a quarter of an hour on end, in the shadow of a neighbouring doorway. Gradually, yet too quickly, the grey afternoon wore to a close. He had paced to and fro for an hour now, but not a trace of her had he seen; nor did even a light burn in her room when darkness fell. A fear lest she should have already gone away, beset him again, and got the upper hand of him; and wild schemes flitted through his mind. He would mount the stairs, and ring the door-bell, on some pretext or other, to learn whether she was still there; and his foot was on the lowest stair, when his courage failed him, and he turned back. But the idea had taken root; he could not bear much longer the uncertainty he was in; and so, towards seven o'clock, when he had hung about for three hours, and there was still no sign of life in her room, he went boldly up the broad, winding stair and rang the bell. When the door was opened, he would find something to say. The bell, which he had pulled hard, pealed through the house, jangled on, and, in a series of after-tinkles, died away. There was no immediate answering sound; the silence persisted, and having waited for some time, he rang again. Then, in the distance, he heard a door creak; soft, cautious footsteps crept along the passage; a light moved; the glass window in the upper half of the door was opened, and a little old woman peered out, holding a candle above her head. On seeing the pale face close before her, she drew back, and made as if to shut the window; for, as a result of poring over newspapers, she lived in continual expectation of robbery and murder. "She is not at home," she said with tremulous bravado, in answer to the young man's question, and again was about to close the window. But Maurice thrust in his hand, and she could not shut without crushing it. "Then she is still here? Has she gone out? When will she be back?" he queried. "How should I know? And look here, young man, if you don't take away your hand and leave the house at once, I shall call from the window for a policeman." He went slowly down the stairs and across the street, and took up anew his position in the dark doorway--a proceeding which did not reassure Fraulein Grunhut, who, regarding his inquiries as a feint, was watching his movements from between the slats of a window-blind. But Maurice had not stood again for more than a quarter of an hour, when a feeling of nausea seized him, and this reminded him that he had practically eaten nothing since the morning. If he meant to hold out, he must snatch a bite of food somewhere; afterwards, he would return and wait, if he had to wait all night. In front of the PANORAMA on the ROSSPLATZ, he ran into the arms of Furst, and the latter, when he heard where Maurice was going, had nothing better to do than to accompany him, and drink a SCHNITT. Furst, who was in capital spirits at the prospect of the evening, laughed heartily, told witty anecdotes, and slapped his fat thigh, the type of rubicund good-humour; and as he was not of an observant turn of mind, he did not notice his companion's abstraction. Hardly troubling to dissemble, Maurice paid scant attention to Furst's talk; he ate avidly, and as soon as he had finished, pushed back his chair and called to the waiter for his bill. "I must go," he said, and rose. "I have something important to do this evening, and can't join you." Furst, cut short in the middle of a sentence, let his double chin fall on his collar, and gazed open-mouthed at his companion. "But I say, Guest, look here!..." Maurice heard him expostulate as the outer door slammed behind him. He made haste to retrace his steps. The wind had dropped; a fine rain was beginning to fall; it promised to be a wet night, of empty streets and glistening pavements. There was no visible change in the windows of the BRUDERSTRASSE; they were as blankly dark as before. Turning up his coat-collar, Maurice resumed his patrollings, but more languidly; he was drowsy from having eaten, and the air was chill. A weakness overcame him at the thought of the night-watch he had set himself; it seemed impossible to endure the crawling past of still more hours. He was tired to exhaustion, and a sudden, strong desire arose in him, somehow, anyhow, to be taken out of himself, to have his thoughts diverted into other channels. And this feeling grew upon him with such force, the idea of remaining where he was, for another hour, became so intolerable, that he forgot everything else, and turned and ran back towards the PANORAMA, only afraid lest Furst should have gone without him. The latter was, in fact, just coming out of the door. He stared in astonishment at Maurice. "I've changed my mind," said Maurice, without apology. "Shall we go? Where's the place?" Furst mumbled something inaudible; he was grumpy at the other's behaviour. Scanning him furtively, and noting his odd, excited manner, he concluded that Maurice had been drinking. They walked without speaking; Furst hummed to himself. In the thick-sown, business thoroughfare, the BRUHL, they entered a dingy cafe and while Furst chattered with the landlord and BUFFETDAME, with both of whom he was on very friendly terms, Maurice went into the side-room, where the KNEIPE was to be held, and sat down before a long, narrow table, spread with a soiled red and blue-checked tablecloth. He felt cold and sick again, and when the wan PICCOLO set a beer-mat before him, he sent the lad to the devil for a cognac. The waiter came with the liqueur-bottle; Maurice drank the contents of one and then another of the tiny glasses. A genial warmth ran through him and his nausea ceased. He leaned his head on his hands, closed his eyes, and, soothed by the heat of the room, had a few moments' pleasant lapse of consciousness. He was roused by the entrance of a noisy party of three. These were strangers to him, and when they had mentioned their names and learned his, they sat down at the other end of the table and talked among themselves. They were followed by a couple of men known to Maurice by sight. One, an Italian, a stout, animated man, with prominent jet-black eyes and huge white teeth, was a fellow-pupil of Schilsky's, and a violinist of repute, notwithstanding the size and fleshiness of his hands, which were out of all proportion to the delicate build of his instrument. The other was a slender youth of fantastic appearance. He wore a long, old-fashioned overcoat, which reached to his heels, and was moulded to a shapely waist; on his fingers were numerous rings; his bushy hair was scented and thickly curled, his face painted and pencilled like a woman's. He did not sit down, but, returning to the public room, leaned over the counter and talked to the BUFFETDAME, in a tone which had nothing in common with Furst's hearty familiarity. Next came a couple of Americans, loud, self-assertive, careless of dress and convention; close behind them still another group, and at its heels, Dove. The latter entered the room with an apologetic air, and on sitting down at the head of the table, next Maurice, mentioned at once that, at heart, he was not partial to this kind of thing, and was only there because he believed the present to be an exceptional occasion: who knew but what, in after years, he might not be proud to claim having, made one of the party on this particular evening?--the plain truth being that Schilsky was little popular with his own sex, and, in consequence of the difficulty of beating up a round dozen of men, Furst had been forced to be very pressing in his invitations, to have recourse to bribes and promises, or, as in the case of Dove, to stimulating the imagination. The majority of the guests present were not particular who paid for their drink, provided they got it. At Krafft's entry, a stifled laugh went round. To judge from his appearance, he had not been in bed the previous night: sleep seemed to hang on his red and sunken eyelids; his hands and face were dirty, and when he took off his coat, which he had worn turned up at the neck, it was seen that he had either lost or forgotten his collar. Shirt and waistcoat were insufficiently buttoned. His walk was steady, but his eyes had a glassy stare, and did not seem to see what they rested on. A strong odour of brandy went out from him; but he had not been many minutes in the room before a stronger and more penetrating smell made itself felt. The rest of the company began to sniff and ejaculate, and Furst, having tracked it to the corner where the overcoats hung, drew out of one of Krafft's pockets a greasy newspaper parcel, evidently some days old, containing bones, scraps of decaying meat, and rancid fish. The PICCOLO, summoned by a general shout, was bade to dispose of the garbage instantly, and to hang the coat in a draughty place to air. Various epithets were hurled at Krafft, who, however, sat picking his teeth with unconcern, as if what went on around him had nothing to do with him. They were now all collected but Schilsky, and much beer had been drunk. Furst was in his usual state of agitation lest his friend should forget to keep the appointment; and the spirits of those--there were several such present--who suffered almost physical pain from seeing another than themselves the centre of interest, went up by leaps and bounds. But at this juncture, Schilsky's voice was heard in the next room. It was raised and angry; it snarled at a waiter. Significant glances flew round the table: for the young man's outbursts of temper were well known to all. He entered, making no response to the greetings that were offered him, displaying his anger with genial indifference to what others thought of him. To the PICCOLO he tossed coat and hat, and swore at the boy for not catching them. Then he let his loose-limbed body down on the vacant chair, and drank off the glass of PILSENER that was set before him. There was a pause of embarrassment. The next moment, however, several men spoke at once: Furst continued a story he was telling, some one else capped it, and the mirth these anecdotes provoked was more than ordinarily uproarious. Schilsky sat silent, letting his sullen mouth hang, and tapping the table with his fingers. Meanwhile, he emptied one glass of beer after another. The PICCOLO could hardly cope with the demands that were made on him, and staggered about, top-heavy, with his load of glasses. But it was impossible to let the evening pass as flatly as this; besides, as the general hilarity increased, it made those present less sensitive to the mood of the guest of honour. Furst was a born speaker, and his heart was full. So, presently, he rose to his feet, struck his glass, and, in spite of Schilsky's deepening scowl, held a flowery speech about his departing friend. The only answer Schilsky gave was a muttered request to cease making an idiot of himself. This was going rather too far; but no one protested, except Ford, the pianist, who said in English: "Speesch? Call that a speesch?" Furst, inclined in the first moment of rebuff to be touchy, allowed his natural goodness of heart to prevail. He leaned forward, and said, not without pathos: "Old man, we are all your friends here. Something's the matter. Tell us what it is." Before Schilsky could reply, Krafft awakened from his apparent stupor to say with extreme distinctness: "I'll tell you. There's been the devil to pay." "Now, chuck it, Krafft!" cried one or two, not without alarm at the turn things might take. But Schilsky, whose anger had begun to subside under the influence of the two litres he had drunk, said slowly and thickly: "Let him be. What he says is the truth--gospel truth." "Oh, say, that's to' bad!" cried one of the Americans--a lean man, with the mouth and chin of a Methodist. All kept silence now, in the hope that Schilsky would continue. As he did not, but sat brooding, Furst, in his role of peacemaker, clapped him on the back. "Well, forget it for to-night, old man! What does it matter? To-morrow you'll be miles away." This struck a reminiscence in Ford, who forthwith tried to sing: I'm off by the morning train, Across the raging main---- "That's easily said!" Schilsky threw a dark look round the table. "By those who haven't been through it. I have. And I'd rather have lost a hand." Krafft laughed--that is to say, a cackle of laughter issued from his mouth, while his glazed eyes stared idiotically. "He shall tell us about it. Waiter, a round of SCHNAPS!" "Shut up, Krafft!" said Furst uneasily. "Damn you, Heinz!" cried Schilsky, striking the table. He swallowed his brandy at a gulp, and held out the glass to be refilled. His anger fell still more; he began to commiserate himself. "By Hell, I wish a plague would sweep every woman off the earth!" "The deuce, why don't you keep clear of them?" Schilsky laughed, without raising his heavy eyes. "If they'd only give one the chance. Damn them all!--old and young----I say. If it weren't for them, a man could lead a quiet life." "It'll all come out in the wash," consoled the American. Maurice heard everything that passed, distinctly; but the words seemed to be bandied at an immeasurable distance from him. He remained quite undisturbed, and would have felt like a god looking on at the doings of an infinitesimal world, had it not been for a wheel which revolved in his head, and hindered him from thinking connectedly. So far, drinking had brought him no pleasure; and he had sense enough to find the proximity of Ford disagreeable; for the latter spilt half the liquor he tried to swallow over himself, and half over his neighbour. A fresh imprecation of Schilsky's called forth more laughter. On its subsidence, Krafft awoke to his surroundings again. "What has the old woman given you?" he asked, with his strange precision of speech and his drunken eyes. Schilsky struck the table with his fist. "Look at him!--shamming drunk, the bitch!" he cried. "Never mind him; he don't count. How much did she give you?" "Oh, gee, go on!" But Schilsky, turned sullen again, refused to answer. "Out with it then, Krafft!--you know, you scoundrel, you!" Krafft put his hand to the side of his mouth. "She gave him three thousand marks." On all sides the exclamations flew. "Oh, gee-henna!" "Golly for her!" "DREI TAUSEND MARK!--ALLE EHRE!" Again Krafft leaned forward with a maudlin laugh. "JAWOHL--but on what condition?" "Heinz, you ferret out things like a pig's snout," said Furst with an exaggerated, tipsy disgust. "What, the old louse made conditions, did she?" "Is she jealous?" There was another roar at this. Schilsky looked as black as thunder. Again Furst strove to intercede. "Jealous?--in seven devils' name, why jealous? The old scarecrow! She hasn't an ounce of flesh to her bones." Schilsky laughed. "Much you know about it, you fool! Flesh or no flesh, she's as troublesome as the plumpest. I wouldn't go through the last month again for all you could offer me. Month?--no, nor the last six months either! It's been a hell of a life. Three of 'em, whole damned three, at my heels, and each ready to tear the others' eyes out." "Three! Hullo!" "Three? Bah!--what's three?" sneered the painted youth. Schilsky turned on him. "What's three? Go and try it, if you want to know, you pap-sodden suckling! Three, I said, and they've ended by making the place too hot to hold me. But I'm done now. No more for me!--if my name's what it is." Having once broken through his reserve, he talked on, with heated fluency; and the longer he spoke, the more he was carried away by his grievances. For, all he had asked for, he assured his hearers, had been peace and quiet--the peace necessary to important work. "Jesus and Mary! Are a fellow's chief obligations not his obligations to himself?" At the same time, it was not his intention to put any of the blame on Lulu's shoulders: she couldn't help herself. "Lulu is Lulu. I'm damned fond of Lulu, boys, and I've always done my best by her--is there anyone here who wants to say I haven't?" There was none; a chorus of sympathetic ayes went up from the party that was drinking at his expense. Mollified, he proceeded, asserting vehemently that he would have gone miles out of his way to avoid causing Lulu pain. "I'm a soft-hearted fool--I admit it!--where a woman is concerned." But he had yielded to her often enough--too often--as it was; the time had come for him to make a stand. Let those present remember what he had sacrificed only that summer for Lulu's sake. Would anyone else have done as much for his girl? He made bold to doubt it. For a man like Zeppelin to come to him, and to declare, with tears in his eyes, that he could teach him no more--could he afford to treat a matter like that with indifference? Had he really been free to make a choice? Again he looked round the table with emphasis, and those who had their muscles sufficiently under control, hastened to lay their faces in seemly folds. Then, however, Schilsky's mood changed; he struck the table so that the glasses danced. "And shall I tell you what my reward has been for not going? Do you want to know how Lulu has treated me for staying on here? 'You are a quarter of an hour late: where have you been? You've only written two bars since I saw you this morning: what have you been doing? A letter has come in a strange writing: who is it from? You've put on another tie: who have you been to see?' HIMMELSAKRAMENT!" He drained his glass. "I've had the life of a dog, I tell you--of a dog! There's not been a moment in the day when she hasn't spied on me, and followed me, and made me ridiculous. Over every trifle she has got up a fresh scene. She's even gone so far as to come to my room and search my pockets, when she knew I wasn't at home." "Yes, yes," sneered Krafft. "Exactly! And so, gentlemen he was now for slinking off without a word to her." "Oh, PFUI!" spat the American. "Call him a liar!" said a voice. "Liar?" repeated Schilsky dramatically. "Why liar? I don't deny it. I would have done it gladly if I could--isn't that just what I've been saying? Lulu would have got over it all the quicker alone. And then, why shouldn't I confess it? You're all my friends here." He dropped his voice. "I'm afraid of Lulu, boys. I was afraid she'd get round me, and then my chance was gone. She might have shot me, but she wouldn't have let me go. You never know how a woman of that type'll break out--never!" "But she didn't!" said Krafft. "You live." Schilsky understood him. "Some brute," he cried savagely, "some dirty brute had nothing better to do than to tell her." "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the painted boy. Furst blew his nose. "It wasn't me. I was mum. 'Pon my honour, I was." "My God!" said Schilsky, and fell to remembering it. "What a time I've been through with her this afternoon!" He threatened to be overcome by the recollection, and supported his head on his hands. "A woman has no gratitude," he murmured, and drew his handkerchief from his pocket. "It is a weak, childish sex--with no inkling of higher things." Here, however, he suddenly drew himself up. "Life is very hard!" he cried, in a loud voice. "The perpetual struggle between duty and inclination for a man of genius ...!" He grew franker, and gave gratuitous details of the scene that had taken place in his room that afternoon. Most of those present were in ecstasies at this divulging of his private life, which went forward to the accompaniment of snores from Ford, and the voice of Dove, who, with portentous gravity, sang over and over again, the first strophe of THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER. "A fury!" said Schilsky. "A ... a what do you call it?--a ... Meg ... a Meg--" He gave it up and went on: "By God, but Lulu knows how! Keep clear of her nails, boys--I'd advise you!" At this point, he pulled back his collar, and exhibited a long, dark scratch on the side of his neck. "A little remembrance she gave me to take away with me!" While he displayed it, he seemed to be rather proud of it; but immediately afterwards, his mood veered round again to one of bitter resentment. To illustrate the injustice she had been guilty of, and his own long-suffering, he related, at length, the story of his flirtation with Ephie, and the infinite pains he had been at to keep Louise in ignorance of what was happening. He grew very tender with himself as he told it. For, according to him, the whole affair had come about without any assistance of his. "What the deuce was I to do? Chucked herself full at my head, did the little one. No invitation necessary--a ripe plum, boys! Touch the plum--and off it tumbles! As pretty a little thing, too, as ever was made! Had everything arranged by the second meeting. Papa to set us up; house in New York; money IN HULLE UND FULLE!" At the mention of New York, the lean American looked grave. "Look here, you, don't think you're the whole shoot because you've got a wave in your hair!" he murmured in English. But Schilsky did not hear him; his voice droned on, giving the full particulars of this particular case. He grew momentarily opener. "One no sooner out of the door than the other was in," he asserted, and laughed long to himself. For some time past, Maurice had been possessed by the idea that what was happening concerned him very nearly, and that he ought to interfere and put his foot down. His hands had grown cold, and he sat vainly trying to speak: nothing, however, came, but little drunken gulps and hiccups. But the first mention of Ephie's name seemed to put new strength into him; he made a violent effort, and rose to his feet, holding on to the table with both hands. He could not, however, manage to attract attention; no one took any notice of him; and besides this, he had himself no notion what it was that he really wanted to say. "And drowns his sorrows in the convivial glass!" he suddenly shouted in English, at the top of his voice, which he had found. He had a vague belief that he was quoting a well-known line of poetry, and, though he did not in the least understand how it applied to the situation, he continued to repeat it, with varying shades of fervour, till some one called out: "Oh, stop your blasted rot!" He laughed hoarsely at this, could not check himself, and was so exhausted when he had finished that it took him some time to remember why he was on his feet. Schilsky was still relating: his face was darkly red, his voice husky, and he flapped his arms with meaningless gestures. A passionate rebellion, a kind of primitive hatred, gripped Maurice, and when Schilsky paused for breath, he could contain himself no longer. He felt the burning need of contradicting the speaker, even though he could not catch the drift of what was said. "It's a lie!" he cried fiercely, with such emphasis that every face was turned to him. "A damned lie!" "A lie? What the devil do you mean?" responded not one but many voices--the whole table seemed to be asking him, with the exception of Dove, who sang on in an ever decreasing tempo. "Get out!--Let him alone; he's drunk. He doesn't know what he's saying--He's got rats in his head!" he heard voices asserting. Forthwith he began a lengthy defence of himself, broken only by gaps in which his brain refused to work. Conscious that no one was listening to him, he bawled more and more loudly. "Oh, quit it, you double-barrelled ass!" said the American. Schilsky, persuaded by those next him to let the incident pass unnoticed, contented himself with a: "VERFLUCHTE SCHWEINEREI!" spat, after Furst's gurgled account of Maurice's previous insobriety, across the floor behind him, to express his contempt, and proceeded as dominatingly as before with the narration of his love-affairs. The blood rushed to Maurice's head at the sound of this voice which he could neither curb nor understand. Rage mastered him--a vehement desire to be quits. He kicked back his chair, and rocked to and fro. "It's a lie--a dirty lie!" he cried. "You make her unhappy--God, how unhappy you make her! You illtreat her. You've never given her a day's happiness. S ... said so ... herself. I heard her ... I swear ... I----" His voice turned to a whine; his words came thick and incoherent. Schilsky sprang to his feet and aimed the contents of a half-emptied glass at Maurice's face. "Take that, you blasted spy!--you Englishman!" he spluttered. "I'll teach you to mix your dirty self in my affairs!" Every one jumped up; there was noise and confusion; simultaneously two waiters entered the room, as if they had not been unprepared for something of this kind. Furst and another man restrained Schilsky by the arms, reasoning with him with more force than coherence. Maurice, the beer dripping from chin, collar and shirt-front, struggled furiously with some one who held him back. "Let me get at him--let me get at him!" he cried. "I'll teach him to treat a woman as he does. The sneak--the cur--the filthy cad! He's not fit to touch her hand--her beautiful hand--her beau ... ti ... ful----" Here, overpowered by his feelings, as much as by superior strength, he sank on a chair and wept. "I'll break his bones!" raved Schilsky. "What the hell does he mean by it?--the INFAME SCHUFT, the AAS, the dirty ENGLANDER! Thinks he'll sneak after her himself, does he?--What in Jesus' name is it to him how I treat her? I'll take a stick to her if I like--it's none of his blasted business! Look here, do you see that?" He freed one hand, fumbled in his pocket, and, almost inarticulate with rage and liquor, brandished a key across the table. "Do you see that? That's a key, isn't it, you drunken hog? Well, with that key, I can let myself into Lulu's room at any hour I want to; I can go there now, this very minute, if I like--do you think she'll turn me out, you infernal spy? Turn me out?--she'd go down on her knees here before you all to get me back to her!" Unwilling to be involved in the brawl, the more sober of the party had begun to seek out their hats and to slink away. A little group round Schilsky blarneyed and expostulated. Why should the whole sport of the evening be spoilt in this fashion? What did it matter what the damned cranky Englishman said? Let him be left to his swilling. They would clear out, and wind up the night at the BAUER; and at four, when that shut, they would go on to the BAYRISCHE BAHNHOF, where they could not only get coffee, but could also see Schilsky off by a train soon after five. These persuasions prevailed, and, still swearing, and threatening, and promising, by all that was holy, to bring Lulu there, by the hair of her head if necessary, to show whether or no he had the power over her he boasted of, Schilsky finally allowed himself to be dragged off, and those who were left lurched out in his wake. With their exit an abrupt silence fell, and Maurice sank into a heavy sleep, in which he saw flowery meadows and heard a gently trickling brook.... "Now then, up with you!--get along!" some one was shouting in his ear, and, bit by bit, a pasty-faced waiter entered his field of view. "It's past time, anyhow," and yawning loudly, the waiter turned out all the gas-jets but one. "Don't yer hear? Up with you! You'll have to look after the other--now, damn me, if there isn't another of you as well!" and, from under the table, he drew out a recumbent body. Maurice then saw that he was still in the company of Dove, who sat staring into space--like a dead man. Krafft, propped on a chair, hung his head far back, and the collarless shirt exposed the whole of his white throat. The waiter hustled them about. Maurice was comparatively steady on his legs; and it was found that Dove could walk. But over Krafft, the man scratched his head and called a comrade. At the mention of a droschke, however, Maurice all but wept anew with ire and emotion: this was his dearest friend, the friend of his bosom; he was ready at any time to stake his life for him, and now he was not to be allowed even to see him home. A difficulty arose about Maurice's hat: he was convinced that the one the waiter jammed so rudely on his head did not belong to him; and it seemed as if nothing in the world had ever mattered so much to him as now getting back his own hat. But he had not sufficient fluency to explain all he meant; before he had finished, the man lost patience; and suddenly, without any transition, the three of them were in the street. The raw night air gave them a shock; they gasped and choked a little. Then the wall of a house rose appositely and met them. They leaned against it, and Maurice threw the hat from him and trampled on it, chuckling at the idea that he was revenging himself on the waiter. It was a journey of difficulties; not only was he unclear what locality they were in, but innumerable lifeless things confronted them and formed obstacles to their progress; they had to charge an advertisement-column two or three times before they could get round it. Maurice grew excessively angry, especially with Dove. For while Heinz let himself be lugged this way and that, Dove, grown loud and wilful, had ideas of his own, and, in addition to this, sang the whole time with drunken gravity: Sez the ragman, to the bagman, I'll do yees no harm. "Stop it, you oaf!" cried Maurice, goaded to desperation. "You beastly, blathering, drunken idiot!" Then, for a street-length, he himself lapsed into semi-consciousness, and when he wakened, Dove was gone. He chuckled anew at the thought that somehow or other they had managed to outwit him. His intention had been to make for home, but the door before which they ultimately found themselves was Krafft's. Maurice propped his companion against the wall, and searched his own pockets for a key. When he had found one, he could not find the door, and when this was secured, the key would not fit. The perspiration stood out on his forehead; he tried again and again, thought the keyhole was dodging him, and asserted the fact so violently that a window in the first storey was opened and a head thrust out. "What in the name of Heaven are you doing down there?" it cried. "You drunken SCHWEIN, can't you see the door's open?" In the sitting-room, both fell heavily over a chair; after that, with infinite labour, he got Heinz on the sofa. He did not attempt to make a light; enough came in from a street-lamp for him to see what he was doing. Lying on his face, Krafft groaned a little, and Maurice suddenly grasped that he was taken ill. Heinz was ill, Heinz, his best friend, and he was doing nothing to help him! Shedding tears, he poured out a glass of water. He believed he was putting the carafe safely back on the table, but it dropped with a crash to the floor. He was afraid Frau Schulz would come in, and said in a loud voice: "It's that fellow there, he's dead drunk, beastly drunk!" Krafft would not drink the water, and in the attempt to force him, it was spilled over him. He stirred uneasily, put up his arms and dragged Maurice down, so that the latter fell on his knees beside the sofa. He made a few ineffectual efforts to free himself; but one arm held him like a vice; and in this uncomfortable position, he went to sleep. Part II O viva morte, e dilettoso male! PETRARCH. I. The following morning, towards twelve o'clock, a note from Madeleine was handed to Maurice. In it, she begged him to account to Schwarz for her absence from the rehearsal of a trio, which was to have taken place at two. GO AND EXPLAIN THAT IT IS QUITE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO COME, she wrote. LOUISE IS VERY ILL; THE DOCTOR IS AFRAID OF BRAIN FEVER. I AM RUSHING, OFF THIS MOMENT TO SEE ABOUT A NURSE--AND SHALL STAY TILL ONE COMES. He read the words mechanically, without taking in their meaning. From the paper, his eyes roved round the room; he saw the tumbled, unopened bed, from which he had just risen, the traces of his boots on the coverings. He could not remember how he had come there; his last recollection was of being turned out of Krafft's room, in what seemed to be still the middle of the night. Since getting home, he must have slept a dead sleep. "Ill? Brain fever?" he repeated to himself, and his mind strove to pierce the significance of the words. What had happened? Why should she be ill? A racking uneasiness seized him and would not let him rest. His inclination was to lay his aching head on the pillow again; but this was out of the question; and so, though he seldom braved Frau Krause, he now boldly went to her with a request to warm up his coffee. When he had drunk it, and bathed his head, he felt considerably better. But he still could not call to mind what had occurred. The previous evening was blurred in its details; he only had a sense of oppression when he thought of it, as of something that had threatened, and still did. He was glad to have a definite task before him, and went out at once, in order to catch Schwarz before he left the Conservatorium; but it was too late; the master's door was locked. It was a bright, cold day with strong sunlight; Maurice's eyes ached, and he shrank from the wind at every corner. Instead of going home, he went to Madeleine's room and sat down to wait for her. She had evidently been away since early morning; the piano was dusty and unopened; the blind at the head of it had not been drawn up. It was a pleasant dusk; he put his arms on the table, his head on his arms, and, in spite of his anxiety, fell into a sound sleep. He was wakened by Madeleine's entrance. It was three o'clock. She came bustling in, took off her hat, laid it on the piano, and at once drew up the blind. She was not surprised to find him there, but exclaimed at his appearance. "Good gracious, Maurice, how dreadful you look! Are you ill?" He hastened to reassure her, and she was a little put out at her wasted sympathy. "Well, no wonder, I'm sure, after the doings there were last night. A pretty way to behave! And that you should have mixed yourself up in it as you did!--I wouldn't have believed it of you. How I know? My dear boy, it's the talk of the place." Her words called up to him a more lucid remembrance of the past evening than he had yet been capable of. In his eagerness to recollect everything, he changed colour and looked away. Madeleine put his confusion down to another cause. "Never mind, it's over now, and we won't say any more about it. Sit still, and I'll make you some tea. That will do your head good--for you have a splitting headache, haven't you? I shall be glad of some myself, too, after all the running about I've had this morning. I'm quite worn out." When she heard that he had had no dinner, she sent for bread and sausage, and was so busy and unsettled that only when she sat down, with her cup before her, did he get a chance to say: "What is it, Madeleine? Is she very ill?" Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, she is ill enough. It's not easy to say what the matter is, though. The doctor is to see her again this evening. And I found a nurse." "Then she is not going away?" He did not mean to say the words aloud; they escaped him against his will. His companion raised her eyebrows, filling her forehead with wrinkles. "Going away?" she echoed. "I should say not. My dear Maurice, what is more, it turns out she hadn't an idea he was going either. What do you say to that?" She flushed with sincere indignation. "Not an idea--until yesterday. My lord had the intention of sneaking off without a word, and of leaving her to find it out for herself. Oh, it's an abominable affair altogether!--and has been from beginning to end. There's much about Louise, as you know, that I don't approve of, and I think she has behaved weakly--not to call it by a harder name--all through. But now, she has my entire sympathy. The poor girl is in a pitiable state." "Is she ... dangerously ill?" "Well, I don't think she'll die of it, exactly--though it might be better for her if she did. NA!... let me fill up your cup. And eat something more. Oh, he is ... no words are bad enough for him; though honestly speaking, I think we might have been prepared for something of this kind, all along. It seems he made his arrangements for going on the quiet. Frau Schaefele advanced him the money; for of course he has nothing of his own. But what condition do you think the old wretch made? That he should break with Louise. Furst has told me all about it. I went to him at once this morning. She was always jealous of Louise--though to him she only talked of the holiness of art and the artist's calling, and the danger of letting domestic ties entangle you, and rubbish of that kind. I believe she was at the bottom of it that he didn't marry Louise long ago. Well, however that may be, he now let himself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-door exit. Such things excite a man, don't you know?--and ruffle the necessary artistic composure." She laughed scornfully. "However, I'm glad to say, he didn't escape scot-free after all. Everything went well till yesterday afternoon, when Louise, who was as unsuspecting as a child, heard of it from some one--they say it was Krafft. Without thinking twice--you know her ... or rather you don't--she went straight to Schilsky and confronted him. I can't tell you what took place between them, but I can imagine something of it, for when Louise lets herself go, she knows no bounds, and this was a matter of life and death to her." Madeleine rose, blew out the flame of the spirit-lamp, and refilled the teapot. "Fraulein Grunhut, her landlady, heard her go out yesterday afternoon, but didn't hear her come in, so it must have been late in the evening. Louise hates to be pried on, and the old woman is lazy, so she didn't go to her room till about half-past eight this morning, when she took in the hot water. Then she found Louise stretched on the floor, just as she had come in last night, her hat lying beside her. She was conscious, and her eyes were open, but she was stiff and cold, and wouldn't speak or move. Grunhut couldn't do anything with her, and was mortally afraid. She sent for me; and between us we got her to bed, and I went for a doctor. That was at nine, and I have been on my feet ever since." "It's awfully good of you." "No, she won't die," continued Madeleine meditatively, stirring her tea. "She's too robust a nature for that. But I shouldn't wonder if it affected her mind. As I say, she knows no bounds, and has never learnt self-restraint. It has always been all or nothing with her. And this I must say: however foolish and wrong the whole thing was, she was devoted to Schilsky, and sacrificed everything--work, money and friends--to her infatuation. She lived only for him, and this is a moral judgment on her. Excess of any kind brings its own punishment with it." She rose and smoothed her hair before the mirror. "And now I really must get to work, and make up for the lost morning. I haven't touched a note to-day. As for you, Maurice, if you take my advice, you'll go home and go to bed. A good sleep is what you're needing. Come to-morrow, if you like, for further news. I shall go back after supper, and hear what the doctor says. Good-bye." "Good-bye, Madeleine. You're a brick." Having returned to his room, he lay face downwards on the sofa. He was sick at heart. Viewed in the light of the story he had heard from Madeleine, life seemed too unjust to be endured. It propounded riddles no one could answer; the vast output of energy that composed it, was misdirected; on every side was cruelty and suffering. Only the heartless and selfish--those who deserved to suffer--went free. He pressed the back of his hand to his tired eyes; and, despite her good deeds, he felt a sudden antipathy to Madeleine, who, on a day like this, could take up her ordinary occupation. In the morning, on awakening from a heavy sleep, he was seized by a fear lest Louise should have died in the night. Through brooding on it, the fear became a certainty, and he went early to Madeleine, making a detour through the BRUDERSTRASSE, where his suspicions were confirmed by the lowered blinds. He had almost two hours to wait; it was eleven o'clock before Madeleine returned. Her face was so grave that his heart seemed to stop beating. But there was no change in the sick girl's condition; the doctor was perplexed, and spoke of a consultation. Madeleine was returning at two o'clock to relieve the nurse. "You are foolishly letting it upset you altogether," she reproved Maurice. "And it won't mend matters in the least. Go home and settle down to work, like a sensible fellow." He tried to follow Madeleine's advice. But it was of no use; when he had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising how monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. Again he felt keenly the contrariness of life; and all the labour which those around him were expending on the cult of hand and voice and car, seemed of a ludicrous vanity compared with the grim little tragedy that touched him so nearly; and in this mood he remained, throughout the days of suspense that now ensued. He went regularly every afternoon to Madeleine, and, if she were not at home, waited till she returned, an hour, two hours, as the case might be. This was the vital moment of the day--when he read her tidings from her face. At first they were always the same: there was no change. Fever did not set in, but, day and night, Louise lay with wide, strained eyes; she refused nourishment, and the strongest sleeping-draught had no effect. Then, early one morning, for some trifling cause which, afterwards, no one could recall, she broke into a convulsive fit of weeping, went on till she was exhausted, and subsequently fell asleep. On the day Maurice learnt that she was out of danger, he walked deep into the woods. The news had lifted such a load from his mind that he felt almost happy. But before he reached home again, his brain had begun to work at matters which, during the period of anxiety, it had left untouched. At first, in desperation, he had been selfless enough to hope that Schilsky would return, on learning what had happened. Now, however, that he had not done so, and Louise had passed safely through the ordeal, Maurice was ready to tremble lest anything should occur to soil the robe of saintly suffering, in which he draped her. He began to take up the steady routine of his life again. Furst received him with open arms, and no allusion was made to the night in the BRUHL. With the cessation of his anxiety, a feeling of benevolence towards other people awakened in him, and when, one afternoon, Schwarz asked the assembled class if no one knew what had become of Krafft, whether he was ill, or anything of the kind, it was Maurice who volunteered to find out. He remembered now that he had not seen Krafft at the Conservatorium for a week or more. Frau Schulz looked astonished to see him, and, holding the door in her hand, made no mien to let him enter. Herr Krafft was away, she said gruffly, had been gone for about a week, she did not know where or why. He had left suddenly one morning, without her knowledge, and the following day a postcard had come from him, stating that all his things were to lie untouched till his return. "He was so queer lately that I'd be just as pleased if he stayed away altogether," she said. "That's all I can tell you. Maybe you'd get something more out of her. She knows more than she says, anyhow," and she pointed with her thumb at the door of the adjoining PENSION. Maurice rang there, and a dirty maid-servant showed him Avery's room. At his knock, she opened the door herself, and first looked surprised, then alarmed at seeing him. "What's the matter? Has anything happened?" she stammered, like one on the look-out for bad news. "Then what do you want?" she asked in her short, unpleasant way, when he had reassured her. "I came up to see Heinz. And they tell me he is not here; and Frau Schulz sent me to you. Schwarz was asking for him. Is it true that he has gone away?" "Yes, it's true." "Where to? Will he be away long?" "How should I know?" she cried rudely. "Am I his keeper? Find out for yourself, if you must know," and the door slammed to in his face. He mentioned the incident to Madeleine that evening. She looked strangely at him, he thought, and abruptly changed the subject. A day or two later, on the strength of a rumour that reached his ears, he tackled Furst, and the latter, who, up to this time, had been of a praiseworthy reticence, let fall a hint which made Maurice look blank with amazement. Nevertheless, he could not now avoid seeing certain incidents in his friendship with Krafft, under a different aspect. About a fortnight had elapsed since the beginning of Louise's illness; she was still obliged to keep her bed. More than once, of late, Madeleine had returned from her daily visit, decidedly out of temper. "Louise rubs me up the wrong way," she complained to Maurice. "And she isn't in the least grateful for all I've done for her. I really think she prefers having the nurse about her to me." "Sick people often have such fancies," he consoled her. "Louise shows hers a little too plainly. Besides, we have never got on well for long together." But one afternoon, on coming in, she unpinned her hat and threw it on the piano, with a decisive haste that was characteristic of her in anger. "That's the end; I don't go back again. I'm not paid for my services, and am under no obligation to listen to such things as Louise said to me to-day. Enough is enough. She is well on the mend, and must get on now as best she can. I wash my hands of the whole affair." "But you're surely not going to take what a sick person says seriously?" Maurice exclaimed in dismay. "How can she possibly get on with only those strangers about her?" "She's not so ill now. She'll be all right," answered Madeleine; she had opened a letter that was on the table, and did not look up as she spoke. "There's a limit to everything--even to my patience with her rudeness." And on returning the following day, he found, sure enough, that, true to her word, Madeleine had not gone back. She maintained an obstinate silence about what had happened, and requested that he would now let the matter drop. The truth was that Madeleine's conscience was by no means easy. She had gone to see Louise on that particular afternoon, with even more inconvenience to herself than usual. On admitting her, Fraulein Grunhut had endeavoured to detain her in the passage, mumbling and gesticulating in the mystery-mongering way with which Madeleine had no patience. It incited her to answer the old woman in a loud, clear voice; then, brusquely putting her aside, she opened the door of the sick girl's room. As she did so, she uttered an exclamation of surprise. Louise, in a flannel dressing-gown, was standing at the high tiled stove behind the door. Both her arms were upraised and held to it, and she leant her forehead against the tiles. "Good Heavens, what are you doing out of bed?" cried Madeleine; and, as she looked round the room: "And where is Sister Martha?" Louise moved her head, so that another spot of forehead came in contact with the tiles, and looked up at Madeleine from under her heavy lids, without replying. Madeleine laid one by one on the table some small purchases she had made on the way there. "Well, are you not going to speak to me to-day?" she said in a pleasant voice, as she unbuttoned her jacket. "Or tell me what I ask about the Sister?" There was not a shade of umbrage in her tone. Louise moved her head again, and looked away from Madeleine to the wall of the room. "I have got up," she answered, in such a low voice that Madeleine had to pause in what she was doing, to hear her; "because I could not bear to lie in bed any longer. And I've sent the Sister away--because ... oh, because I couldn't endure having her about me." "You have sent Sister Martha away?" echoed Madeleine. "On your own responsibility? Louise!--how absurd! Well, I suppose I must put on my hat again and fetch her back. How can you get on alone, I should like to know? Really, I have no time to come oftener than I do." "I'm quite well now. I don't need anyone." "Come, get back into bed, like a good girl, and I will make you some tea," said Madeleine, in the gently superior tone that one uses to a sick person, to a young child, to anyone with whom it is not fitting to dispute. Instead, Louise left the stove, and sat down in a low American rocking-chair, where she crouched despondently. "I wish I had died," she said in a toneless voice. Madeleine smiled with exaggerated cheerfulness, and rattled the tea-cups. "Nonsense! You mustn't talk about dying--now that you are nearly well again. Besides, you know, such things are easily said. One doesn't mean them." "I wish I had died. Why didn't you let me die?" repeated Louise in the same apathetic way. Madeleine did not reply; she was cogitating whether it would be more convenient to go after the nurse at once, and what she ought to do if she could not get her to come back. For Louise would certainly have despatched her in tragedy-fashion. Meanwhile the latter had laid her arms along the low arms of the chair, and now sat gazing from one to the other of her hands. In their way, these hands of hers had acquired a kind of fame, which she had once been vain of. They had been photographed; a sculptor had modelled them for a statue of Antigone--long, slim and strong, with closely knit fingers, and pale, deep-set nails: hands like those of an adoring Virgin; hands which had an eloquent language all their own, but little or no agility, and which were out of place on the keys of a piano. Louise sat looking at them, and her face was so changed--the hollow setting of the eyes reminded perpetually of the bones beneath; the lines were hammered black below the eyes; nostrils and lips were pinched and thinned--that Madeleine, secretly observing her, remarked to herself that Louise looked at least ten years older than before. Her youth, and, with it, such freshness as she had once had, were gone from her. "Here is your tea." The girl drank it slowly, as if swallowing were an effort, while Madeleine went round the room, touching and ordering, and opening a window. This done, she looked at her watch. "I will go now," she said, "and see if I can persuade Sister Martha to come back. If you haven't mortally offended her, that is." Louise started up from her chair, and put her cup, only half emptied, on the table. "Madeleine!--please--please, don't! I can't have her back again. I am quite well now. There was nothing more she could do for me. I shall sleep a thousand times better at night if she is not here. Oh, don't bring her back again! Her voice cut like a knife, and her hands were so hard." She trembled with excitement, and was on the brink of tears. "Hush!--don't excite yourself like that," said Madeleine, and tried to soothe her. "There's no need for it. If you are really determined not to have her, then she shall not come and that's the end of it. Not but what I think it foolish of you all the same," she could not refrain from adding. "You are still weak. However, if you prefer it, I'll do my best to run up this evening to see that you have everything for the night." "I don't want you either." Madeleine shrugged her shoulders, and her pity became tinged with impatience. "The doctor says you must go away somewhere, for a change," she said as she beat up the pillows and smoothed out the crumpled sheets, preparatory to coaxing her patient back to bed. Louise shook her head, but did not speak. "A few weeks' change of air is what you need to set you up again." "I cannot go away." "Nonsense! Of course you can. You don't want to be ill all the winter?" "I don't want to be well." Madeleine sniffed audibly. "There's no reasoning with you. When you hear on all sides that it's for your own good----" "Oh, stop tormenting me!" cried Louise, raising a drawn face with disordered hair. "I won't go away! Nothing will make me. I shall stay here--though I never get well again." "But why? Give me one sensible reason for not going.--You can't!" "Yes ... if ... if Eugen should come back." The words could only just be caught. Madeleine stood, holding a sheet with both hands, as though she could not believe her ears. "Louise!" she said at last, in a tone which meant many things. Louise began to cry, and was shaken by hard, dry sobs. Madeleine did not look at her again, but went severely on with her bedmaking. When she had finished, she crossed to the washstand, and poured out a glass of water. Louise took it, humbled and submissive, and gradually her sobs abated. But now Madeleine, in place of getting ready to leave, as she had intended, sat down at the centre table, and revolved what she felt it to be her duty to say. When all sound of crying had ceased, she began to speak, persuasively, in a quiet voice. "You have brought the matter up yourself, Louise," she said, "and, now the ice is broken, there are one or two things I should like to say to you. First then, you have been very ill, far worse than you know--the immediate danger is over now, so I can speak of it. But who can tell what may happen if you persist in remaining on here by yourself, in the state you are in?" Louise did not stir; her face was hidden. "The reason you give for staying is not a serious one, I hope," Madeleine proceeded cautiously choosing her words. "After all the ... the precautions that were taken to ensure the ... break, it is not all likely ... he would think of returning. And Louise," she added with warmth, "even though he did--suppose he did--after the way he has behaved, and his disgraceful treatment of you----" Louise looked up for an instant. "That is not true," she said. "Not true?" echoed Madeleine. "Well, if you are able to admire his behaviour--if you don't consider it disgraceful--no, more than that--infamous----" She stopped, not being able to find a stronger epithet. "It is not true," said Louise in the same expressionless voice. But now she lifted her head, and pressed the palms of her hands together. Madeleine pushed back her chair, as if she were about to rise. "Then I have nothing more to say," she said; and went on: "If you are ready to defend a man who has acted towards you as he has--in a way that makes a respectable person's blood boil--there is indeed nothing more to be said." She reddened with indignation. "As if it were not bad enough for him to go, after all you have done for him, but that he must do it in such a mean, underhand way--it's enough to make one sick. The only thing to compare with it is his conduct on the night before he left. Do you know, pray, that on the last evening, at a KNEIPE in the GOLDENE HIRSCH, he boasted of what you had done for him--boasted about everything that had happened between you--to a rowdy, tipsy crew? More than that, he gave shameless details, about you going to his room that afternoon----" "It's not true, it's not true," repeated Louise, as if she had got these few words by heart. She rose from her chair, and leaned on it, half turning her back to Madeleine, and holding her handkerchief to her lips. Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. "Do you think I should say it, if it weren't?" she asked. "I don't invent scandal. And you are bound to hear it when you go out again. He did this, and worse than I choose to tell you, and if you felt as you ought to about it, you would never give him another thought. He's not worth it. He's not worth any respectable person's----" "Respectable!" burst in Louise, and raised two blazing eyes to her companion's face. "That's the second time. Why do you come here, Madeleine, and talk like that to me? He did what he was obliged to--that's all: for I should never have let him go. Can't you see how preposterous it is to think that by talking of respectability, and unworthiness, you can make me leave off caring for him?--when for months I have lived for nothing else? Do you think one can change one's feelings so easily? Don't you understand that to love a person once is to love him always and altogether?--his faults as well--everything he does, good or bad, no matter what other people think of it? Oh, you have never really cared for anyone yourself, or you would know it." "It's not preposterous at all," retorted Madeleine. "Yes--if he had deserved all the affection you wasted on him, or if unhappy circumstances had separated you. But that's not the case. He has behaved scandalously, without the least attempt at shielding you. He has made you the talk of the place. And you may consider me narrow and prejudiced, but this I must say--I am boundlessly astonished at you. When he has shown you as plainly as he can that he's tired of you, that you should still be ready to defend him, and have so little proper pride that you even say you would take him back!----" Louise turned on her. "You would never do that, Madeleine, would you?--never so far forget yourself as to crawl to a man's feet and ask--ask?--no, implore forgiveness, for faults you were not conscious of having committed. You would never beg him to go on loving you, after he had ceased to care, or think nothing on earth worth having if he would not--or could not. As I would; as I have done." But chancing to look at Madeleine, she grew quieter. "You would never do that, would you?" she repeated. "And do you know why?" Her words came quickly again; her voice shook with excitement. "Because you will never care for anyone more than yourself--it isn't in you to do it. You will go through life, tight on to the end, without knowing what it is to care for some one--oh, but I mean absolutely, unthinkingly----" She broke down, and hid her face again. Madeleine had carried the cups and saucers to a side-table, and now put on her hat. "And I hope I never shall," she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. "If I thought it likely, I should never look at a man again." But Louise had not finished. Coming round to the front of the rocking-chair, and leaning on the table, she gazed at Madeleine with wild eyes, while her pale lips poured forth a kind of revenge for the suffering, real and imaginary, that she had undergone at the hands of this cooler nature. "And I'll tell you why. You are doubly safe; for you will never be able to make a man care so much that--that you are forced to love him like this in return. It isn't in you to do it. I don't mean because you're plain. There are plenty of plainer women than you, who can make men follow them. No, it's your nature--your cold, narrow, egotistic nature--which only lets you care for things outside yourself in a cold, narrow way. You will never know what it is to be taken out of yourself, taken and shaken, till everything you are familiar with falls away." She laughed; but tears were near at hand. Madeleine had turned her back on her, and stood buttoning her jacket, with a red, exasperated face. "I shall not answer you," she said. "You have worked yourself into such a state that you don't know what you're saying. All the same, I think you might try to curb your tongue. I have done nothing to you--but be kind to you." "Kind to me? Do you call it kind to come here and try to set me against the man I love best in the world? And who loves me best, too. Yes; he does. He would never have gone, if he hadn't been forced to--if I hadn't been a hindrance to him--a drag on him." "It makes me ashamed of my sex to hear you say such things. That a woman can so far lose her pride as to----" "Oh, other women do it in other ways. Do you think I haven't seen how you have been trying to make some one here like you?--doing your utmost, without any thoughts of pride or self-respect.--And how you have failed? Yes, failed. And if you don't believe me, ask him yourself--ask him who it is that could bring him to her, just by raising her finger. It's to me he would come, not to you--to me who have never given him look or thought." Madeleine paled, then went scarlet. "That's a direct untruth. You!--and not to egg a man on, if you see he admires you! You know every time a passer-by looks at you in the street. You feed on such looks--yes, and return them, too. I have seen you, my lady, looking and being looked at, by a stranger, in a way no decent woman allows.--For the rest, I'll trouble you to mind your own business. Whatever I do or don't do, trust me, I shall at least take care not to make myself the laughing-stock of the place. Yes, you have only succeeded in making yourself ridiculous. For while you were cringing before him, and aspiring to die for his sake, he was making love behind your back to another girl. For the last six months. Every one knew it, it seems, but you." She had spoken with unconcealed anger, and now turned to leave the room. But Louise was at the door before her, and spread herself across it. "That's a lie, Madeleine! Of your own making. You shall prove it to me before you go out of this room. How dare you say such a thing!--how dare you!" Madeleine looked at her with cold aversion, and drew back to avoid touching her. "Prove it?" she echoed. "Are his own words not proof enough! He told the whole story that night, just as he had first told all about you. It had been going on for months. Sometimes, you were hardly out of his room, before the other was in. And if you don't believe me, ask the person you're so proud of having attracted, without raising your finger." Louise moved away from the door, and went back to the table, on which she leaned heavily. All the blood had left her face and the dark rings below her eyes stood out with alarming distinctness. Madeleine felt a sudden compunction at what she had done. "It's entirely your own fault that I told you anything whatever about it," she said, heartily annoyed with herself. "You had no right to provoke me by saying what you did. I declare, Louise, to be with you makes one just like you. If it's any consolation to you to know it, he was drunk at the time, and there's a possibility it may not be true." "Go away--go out of my room!" cried Louise. And Madeleine went, without delay, having almost a physical sensation about her throat of the slender hands stretched so threateningly towards her.--And this unpleasant feeling remained with her until she turned the corner of the street. II. On the afternoon when Maurice found that Madeleine had kept her word he went home and paced his room in perplexity. He pictured Louise lying helpless, too weak to raise her hand. His brain went stupidly over the few people to whom he might turn for aid. Avery Hill?--Johanna Cayhill? But Avery was occupied with her own troubles; and Johanna's relationship to Ephie put her out of the question. He was thinking fantastic thoughts of somehow offering his own services, or of even throwing himself on the goodness of a person like Miss Jensen, whose motherly form must surely imply a corresponding motherliness of heart, when Frau. Krause entered the room, bearing a letter which she said had been left for him an hour or two previously. She carried a lamp in her hand, and eyed her restless lodger with suspicion. "Why, in the name of goodness, didn't you bring this in when it came?" he demanded. He held the unopened letter at arm's length, as if he were afraid of it. Frau Krause bridled instantly. Did he think she had nothing else to do than to carry things in and out of his room? The letter had lain on the chest of drawers in the passage; he could have seen it for himself, had he troubled to look. Maurice waved her away. He was staring at the envelope; he believed he knew the handwriting. His heart beat with precise hammerings. He laid the letter on the table, and took a few turns in the room before he picked it up again. On examining it anew, it seemed to him that the lightly gummed envelope had been tampered with, and he made a threatening movement towards the door, then checked himself, remembering that if the letter were what he believed, it would be written in English. He tore it open, destroying the envelope in his nervousness. There was no heading, and it was only a few lines long. I MUST SPEAK TO YOU. WILL YOU COME TO ME THIS EVENING? LOUISE DUFRAYER. His heart was thumping now. He was to go to her, she said so herself; to go this moment, for it was evening already. As it was, she was perhaps waiting for him, wondering why he did not come. He had not shaved that day, and his first impulse was to call for hot water. In the same breath he gave up the idea: it was out of the question by the poor light of the lamp, and the extraordinary position of the looking-glass. He made, however, a hasty toilet in his best, only to colour at himself when finished. Was there ever such a fool as he? His act contained the germ of an insult: and he rapidly changed back to his workaday wear. All this took time, and it was eight o'clock before he rang the door-bell in the BRUDERSTRASSE. Now, the landlady did not mistake him for a possible thief. But she looked at him in an unfriendly way, and said grumblingly that Fraulein had been expecting him for an hour or more. Then she pointed to the door of the room, and left him to make his way in alone. He knocked gently, but no one answered. The old woman, who stood watching his movements, signed to him to enter, and he turned the handle. The large room was dark, except for the light shed by a small lamp, which stood on the table before the sofa. From somewhere out of the dusk that lay beyond, a white figure rose and came towards him. Louise was in a crumpled dressing-gown, and her hair was loosened from its coil on her neck. Maurice saw so much, before she was close beside him, her eyes searching his face. "Oh, you have come," she said with a sigh, as if a load had been lifted from her mind. "I thought you were not coming." "I only got your note a few minutes ago. I ... I came at once," he said, and stammered, as he saw how greatly illness had changed her. "I knew you would." She did not give him her hand, but stood gazing at him; and her look was so helpless and forlorn that he grew uncomfortable. "You have been ill?" he said, to render the pause that followed less embarrassing. "Yes; but I'm better now." She supported herself on the table; her indecision seemed to increase, and several seconds passed before she said: "Won't you sit down?" He took one of the stuffed arm-chairs she indicated; and she went back to the sofa. Again there was silence. With her elbows on her knees, her chin on her two hands, Louise stared hard at the pattern of the tablecloth. Maurice sat stiff and erect, waiting for her to tell him why she had summoned him. "You will think it strange that I should send for you like this ... when I know you so slightly," she began at length. "But ...since I saw you last ... I have been in trouble,"--her voice broke, but her eyes remained fixed on the cloth. "And I am quite alone. I have no one to help me. Then I thought of you; you were kind to me once; you offered to help me." She paused, and wound her handkerchief to a ball. "Anything!--anything that lies in my power," said Maurice fervently. He fidgeted his hands round the brim of his hat, which he was holding to him. "Won't you tell me what it is?" he asked, after another long break. "I should be so glad, and grateful--yes, indeed, grateful--if there were anything I could do for you." She met his eyes, and tried to say something, but no sound came over her lips. She was trying to fasten her thoughts on what she had to say, but, in spite of her efforts, they eluded her. For more than twenty-four hours she had brooded over one idea; the strain had been too great; and, now that the moment had come, her strength deserted her. She would have liked to lay her head on her arms and sleep; it almost seemed to her now, in the indifference of sheer fatigue, that it did not matter whether she spoke or not. But as she looked at the young man, she became conscious of an expression in his face, which made her own grow hard. "I won't be pitied." Maurice turned very red. His heart had gone out to her in her distress; and his feelings were painted on his face. His discomfiture at her discovery was so palpable that it gave her courage to go on. "You were one of those, were you not, who were present at a certain cafe in the BRUHL, one evening, three weeks ago." It was more of a statement than a question. Her eyes held him fast. His retreating colour rose again; he had a presentiment of what was coming. "Then you must have heard----" she began quickly, but left the sentence unended. His suspicions took shape, and he made a large, vague gesture of dissent. "You heard all that was said," she continued, without paying any heed to him. "You heard how ... how some one--no, how the man I loved and trusted ... how he boasted about my caring for him; and not only that, but how, before that drunken crowd, he told how I had been to him ... to his room ... that afternoon----" She could not finish, and pressed her knotted handkerchief to her lips. Maurice looked round him for assistance. "You are mistaken," he declared. "I heard nothing of the kind. Remember, I, too, was among those ... in the state you mention," he added as an afterthought, lowering his voice. "That is not it." Leaning forward, she opened her eyes so wide that he saw a rim of white round the brown of the pupils. "You must also have heard ... how, all this time, behind my back, there was some one else ... someone he cared for ... when I thought it was only me." The young man coloured, with her and for her. "It is not true; you have been misled," he said with vehemence. And, again, a flash of intuition suggested an afterthought to him. "Can you really believe it? Don't you think better of him than that?" For the first time since she had known him, Louise gave him a personal look, a look that belonged to him alone, and held a warm ray of gratitude. Then, however, she went on unsparingly: "I want you to tell me who it was." He laid his hat on a chair, and used his hands. "But if I assure you it is not true? If I give you my word that you have been misinformed?" "Who was it? What is her name?" He rose, and went away from the table. "I knew him better than you," she said slowly, as he did not speak: "you or anyone else--a hundred thousand times better--and I KNOW it is true." Still he did not answer. "Then you won't tell me?" "Tell you? How can I? There's nothing to tell." "I was wrong then. You have no pity for me?" "Pity!--I no pity?" he cried, forgetting how, a minute ago, she had resented his feeling it. "But all the same I can't tell you what you ask me. You don't realise what it means: putting a slur on a young girl's name ... which has never been touched." Directly he had said this, he was aware of his foolishness; but she let the admission contained in the words pass unnoticed. "Then she is not with him?" she cried, springing to her feet, and there was a jubilation in her voice, which she did not attempt to suppress. Maurice made no answer, but in his face was such a mixture of surprise and disconcertion that it was answer enough. She remained standing, with her head bowed; and Maurice, who, in his nervousness, had gripped the back of his chair, held it so tightly that it left a furrow in his hand. He was looking into the lamp, and did not at first see that Louise had raised her head again and was contemplating him. When she had succeeded in making him look at her, she sat down on the sofa and drew the folds of her dressing-gown to her. "Come and sit here. I want to speak to you." But Maurice only shot a quick glance at her, and did not move. She leaned forward, in her old position. She had pushed the heavy wings of hair up from her forehead, and this, together with her extreme pallor, gave her face a look of febrile intensity. "Maurice Guest," she said slowly, "do you remember a night last summer, when, by chance, you happened to walk with me, coming home from the theatre?--Or have you perhaps forgotten?" He shook his head. "Then do you remember, too, what you said to me? How, since the first time you had seen me--you even knew where that was, I believe--you had thought about me ... thought too much, or words to that effect. Do you remember?" "Do you think when a man says a thing like that he forgets it?" asked Maurice in a gruff voice. He turned, as he spoke, and looked down on her with a kind of pitying wisdom. "If you knew how often I have reproached myself for it!" he added. "There was no need for that," she answered, and even smiled a little. "We women never resent having such things said to us--never--though it is supposed we do, and though we must pretend to. But I remember, too, I was in a bad mood that night, and was angry with you, after all. Everything seemed to have gone against me. In the theatre--in ... Oh, no, no!" she cried, as she remembrance of that past night, with its alternations of pain and pleasure, broke over her. "My God!" Maurice hardly breathed, for fear he should remind her of his presence. When the paroxysm had passed, she crossed to the window; the blinds had not been drawn, and leaning her forehead on the glass, she looked out into the darkness. In spite of his trouble of mind, the young man could not but comment on the ironic fashion in which fate was treating him: not once, in all the hours he had spent on the pavement below, had Louise come, like this, to the window; now that she did so, he was in the room beside her, wishing himself away. Then, with a swift movement, she came back to him, and stood at his side. "Then it was not true?--what you said that night." "True?" echoed Maurice. He instinctively moved a step away from her, and threw a quick glance at the pale face so near his own. "If I were to tell you how much more than that is true, you wouldn't have anything more to do with me." For the second time, she seemed to see him and consider him. But he kept his head turned stubbornly away. "You feel like that," she began in slow surprise, to continue hurriedly: "You care for me like that, and yet, when I ask the first and only thing I shall ever ask of you, you won't do it? It is a lesson to me, I suppose, not to come to you for help again.--Oh, I can't understand you men! You are all--all alike." "I would do anything in the world for you. Anything but this." She repeated his last words after him. "But I want nothing else." "This I can't tell you." "Then you don't really care. You only think you do. If you can't do this one small thing for me! Oh, there is no one else I can turn to, or I would. Oh, please tell me!--you who make-believe to care for me. You won't? When it comes to the point, a man will do nothing--nothing at all." "I would cut off my hands for you. But you are asking me to do something I think wrong." "Wrong! What is wrong?--and what is right? They are only words. Is it right that I should be left like this?--thrown away like a broken plate? Oh, I shall not rest till I know who it was that took him from me. And you are the only person who can help me. Are you not a little sorry for me? Is there nothing I can do to make you sorry?" "You won't realise what you are asking me to do." He spoke in a constrained voice, for he felt the impossibility of standing out much longer against her. Louise caught the note of yielding, and taking his hand in hers, laid it against her forehead. "Feel that! Feel how it throbs and burns! And so it has gone on for hours now, for days. I can't think or feel--with that fever in me. I must know who it was, or I shall go mad. Don't torture me then--you, too! You are good. Be kind to me now. Be my friend, Maurice Guest." Maurice was vanquished; in a low voice he told her what she wished to hear. She read the syllables from his lips, repeated the name slowly after him, then shook her head; she did not know it. Letting his hand drop, she went back to the sofa. "Tell me everything you know about her," she said imperiously. "What is she like?--what is she like? What is the colour of her hair?" Maurice was a poor hand at description. Questioned thus, he was not even sure whether to call Ephie pretty or not; he knew that she was small, and very young, but of her hair he could say little, except that it was not black. Louise caught at the detail. "Not black, no, not black!" she cried. "He had black enough here," and she ran her hands through her own unruly hair. There was nothing she did not want to know, did not try to force from his lips; and a relentless impatience seized her at his powerlessness. "I must see her for myself," she said at length, when he had stammered into silence. "You must bring her to me." "No, that you really can't ask me to do." She came over to him again, and took his hands. "You will bring her here to-morrow--to-morrow afternoon. Do you think I shall hurt her? Is she any better than I am? Oh, don't be afraid! We are not so easily soiled." Maurice demurred no more. "For until I see her, I shall not know--I shall not know," she said to herself, when he had pledged his word. The tense expression of her face relaxed; her mouth drooped; she lay back in the sofa-corner and shut her eyes. For what seemed a long time, there was no sound in the room. Maurice thought she had fallen asleep. But at his first light movement she opened her eyes. "Now go," she said. "Please, go!" And he obeyed. The night was cold, but, as he stood irresolute in the street, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He felt very perplexed. Only one thing was clear to him: he had promised to bring Ephie to see her the next day, and, however wrong it might be, the promise was given and must be kept. But what he now asked himself was: did not the bringing of the child, under these circumstances, imply a tacit acknowledgment that she was seriously involved?--a fact which, all along, he had striven against admitting. For, after his one encounter with Ephie and Schilsky, in the woods that summer, and the first firing of his suspicions, he had seen nothing else to render him uneasy; a few weeks later, Ephie had gone to Switzerland, and, on her return in September, or almost directly afterwards--three or four days at most--Schilsky had taken his departure. There had been, of course, his drunken boasts to take into account, but firstly, Maurice had only retained a hazy idea of their nature, and, in the next place, the events which had followed that evening had been of so much greater importance to him that he had had no thoughts to spare for Ephie--more especially as he then knew that Schilsky was out of the way. But now the whole affair rose vividly before his mind again, and in his heart he knew that he had always believed--just as Louise believed--in Ephie's guilt. No: guilt was too strong a word. Yet however harmless the flirtation might have been in itself, it had been carried on in secret, in an underhand way: there had been nothing straightforward or above-board about it; and this alone was enough to compromise a young girl. The Cayhills had been in Leipzig again for three weeks, but so occupied had Maurice been during this time, that he had only paid them one hasty call. Now he felt that he must see Ephie at once, not only to secure her word that she would come out with him, the following day, but also to read from her frank eyes and childish lips the assurance of her innocence, or, at least, the impossibility of her guilt. But as he walked to the LESSINGSTRASSE, he remembered, without being able to help it, all the trifles which, at one time or another, had disturbed his relations with Ephie. He recalled each of the thin, superficial untruths, by means of which she had defended herself, the day he had met her with Schilsky: it seemed incredible to him now that he had not seen through them instantly. He called up her pretty, insincere behaviour with the circle of young men that gathered round her; the language of signs by which she had conversed with Schilsky in the theatre. He remembered the astounding ease with which he had made her acquaintance in the first case, or rather, with which she had made his. Even the innocent kiss she had once openly incited him to, and on the score of which she had been so exaggeratedly angry--this, too, was summoned to bear witness against her. Each of these incidents now seemed to point to a fatal frivolity, to a levity of character which, put to a real test, would offer no resistance. Supper was over in the PENSION, but only Mrs. Cayhill sat in her accustomed corner. Ephie was with the rest of the boarders in the general sitting-room, where Johanna conducted Maurice. Boehmer was paying an evening visit, as well as a very young American, who laughed: "Heh, heh!" at everything that was said, thereby displaying two prominently gold teeth. Mrs. Tully sat on a small sofa, with her arm round Ephie's waist: they were the centre of the group, and it did not appear likely that Maurice would get an opportunity of speaking to Ephie in private. She was in high spirits, and had only a saucy greeting for him. He sat down beside Johanna, and waited, ill at ease. Soon his patience was exhausted; rising, he went over to the sofa, and asked Ephie if he might come to take her for a walk, the next afternoon. But she would not give him an express promise; she pouted: after all these weeks, it suddenly occurred to him to come and see them, and then, the first thing he did, was to ask a favour of her. Did he really expect her to grant it? "Don't, Ephie, love, don't!" cried Mrs. Tully in her sprightly way. "Men are really shocking creatures, and it is our duty, love, to keep them in their place. If we don't, they grow presumptuous," and she shot an arch look at Boehmer, who returned it, fingered his beard, and murmured: "Cruel--cruel!" "And even if I wanted to go when the time came, how do you expect me to know so long beforehand? Ever so many things may happen before to-morrow," said Ephie brilliantly; at which Mrs. Tully laughed very much indeed, and still more at Boehmer's remark that it was an ancient privilege of the ladies, never to be obliged to know their own minds. "It's a libel--take that, you naughty boy!" she cried, and slapped him playfully on the hand. "Ephie, love, how shall we punish him?" "He is not to come again for a week," answered Ephie slily; and at Boehmer's protestations of penitence and despair, both she and Mrs. Tully laughed till the tears stood in their eyes, Ephie all the more extravagantly because Maurice stood unsmiling before her. "I ask this as a direct favour, Ephie. There's something I want to say to you--something important," he added in a low voice, so that only she could hear it. Ephie changed colour at once, and tried to read his face. "Then I may come at five? You will be ready? Good night." Johanna followed him into the passage, and stood by while he put on his coat. They had used up all their small talk in the sitting-room, and had nothing more to say to each other. When however they shook hands, she observed impulsively: "Sometimes I wish we were safe back home again." But Maurice only said: "Indeed?" and displayed no curiosity to know the reason why. After he had gone, Ephie was livelier than before, as long as she was being teased about her pale, importunate admirer. Then, suddenly, she pleaded a headache, and went to her own room. Johanna, listening outside the door, concluded from the stillness that her sister was asleep. But Ephie heard Johanna come and go. She could not sleep, nor could she get Maurice's words out of her mind. He had something important to say to her. What could it be? There was only one important subject in the world for her now; and she longed for the hour of his visit--longed, hoped, and was more than half afraid. III. Since her return to Leipzig, Ephie's spirits had gone up and down like a barometer in spring. In this short time, she passed through more changes of mood than in all her previous life. She learned what uncertainty meant, and suspense, and helplessness; she caught at any straw of hope, and, for a day on end, would be almost comforted; she invented numberless excuses for Schilsky, and rejected them, one and all. For she was quite in the dark about his movements; she had not seen him since her return, and could hear nothing of him. Only the first of the letters she had written to him from Switzerland had elicited a reply, and he had left all the notes she had sent him, since getting back, unanswered. Her fellow-boarder, Mrs. Tully, was her only confidant; and that, only in so far as this lady, knowing that what she called "a little romance" was going on, had undertaken to enclose any letters that might arrive during Ephie's absence. Johanna had no suspicions, or rather she had hitherto had none. In the course of the past week, however, it had become plain even to her blind, sisterly eyes that something was the matter with Ephie. She could still be lively when she liked, almost unnaturally lively, and especially in the company of Mrs. Tully and her circle; but with these high spirits alternated fits of depression, and once Johanna had come upon her in tears. Driven into a corner, Ephie declared that Herr Becker had scolded her at her lesson; but Johanna was not satisfied with this explanation; for formerly, the master's blame or praise had left no impression on her little sister's mind. Even worse than this, Ephie could now, on slight provocation, be thoroughly peevish--a thing so new in her that it worried Johanna most of all. The long walks of the summer had been given up; but Ephie had adopted a way of going in and out of the house, just as it pleased her, without a word to her sister. Johanna scrutinised her keenly, and the result was so disturbing that she resolved to broach the subject to her mother. On the morning after Maurice's visit, therefore, she appeared in the sitting-room, with a heap of undarned stockings in one hand, her work-basket in the other, and with a very determined expression on her face. But the moment was not a happy one: Mrs. Cayhill was deep in WHY PAUL FERROL KILLED HIS WIFE; and would be lost to her surroundings until the end of the book was reached. Had Johanna been of an observant turn of mind, she would have waited a little; for, finding the intermediate portion of the novel dry reading, Mrs. Cayhill was getting over the pages at the rate of three or four a minute, and would soon have been finished. But Johanna sat down at the table and opened fire. "I wish to speak to you, mother," she said firmly. Mrs. Cayhill did not even blink. Johanna drew several threads across a hole she was darning, before she repeated, in the same decided tone: "Do you hear me, mother? There is something I wish to speak to you about." "Hm," said Mrs. Cayhill, without raising her eyes from the page. She heard Johanna, and was even vaguely distracted by her from the web of circumstance that was enveloping her hero; but she believed, from experience, that if she took no notice of her, Johanna would not persist. What the latter had to say would only be a reminder that it was mail-day, and no letters were ready; or that if she did not put on her bonnet and go out for a walk, she would be obliged to take another of her nerve-powders that night: and Mrs. Cayhill hated moral persuasion with all her heart. "Put down your book, mother, please, and listen to me," continued Johanna, without any outward sign of impatience, and as she spoke, she drew another stocking over her hand. "What IS the matter, Joan? I wish you would let me be," answered Mrs. Cayhill querulously, still without looking up. "It's about Ephie, mother. But you can't hear me if you go on reading." "I can hear well enough," said Mrs. Cayhill, and turning a page, she lost herself, to all appearance, in the next one. Johanna did not reply, and for some minutes there was silence, broken only by the turning of the leaves. Then, compelled by something that was stronger than herself, Mrs. Cayhill laid her book on her knee, gave a loud sigh, and glanced at Johanna's grave face. "You are a nuisance, Joan. Well, make haste now--what is it?" "It's Ephie, mother. I am not easy about her lately. I don't think she can be well. She is so unlike herself." "Really, Joan," said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing with an exaggerated carelessness. "I think I should be the first to notice if she were sick. But you like to make yourself important, that's what it is, and to have a finger in every pie. There is nothing whatever the matter with the child." "She's not well, I'm sure," persisted Johanna, without haste. "I have noticed it for some time now. I think the air here is not agreeing with her. I constantly hear it said that this is an enervating place. I believe it would be better for her if we went somewhere else for the winter--even if we returned home. Nothing binds us, and health is the first and chief----" "Go home?" cried Mrs. Cayhill, and turned her book over on its face. "Really, Joan, you are absurd! Because Ephie finds it hard to settle down again, after such a long vacation--and that's all it is--you want to rush off to a fresh place, when ... when we are just so comfortably fixed here for the winter, and where we have at last gotten us a few friends. As for going home, why, every one would suppose we'd gone crazy. We haven't been away six months yet--and when Mr. Cayhill is coming over to fetch us back--and ... and everything." She spoke with heat; for she knew from experience that what her elder daughter resolved on, was likely to be carried through. "That is all very well, mother," continued Johanna unmoved. "But I don't think your arguments are sound if we find that Ephie is really sick, and needs a change." "Arguments not sound! What big words you love to use, Joan! You let Ephie be. She grows prettier every day, and she's a favourite wherever she goes." "That's another thing. Her head is being turned, and she will soon be quite spoilt. She begins to like the fuss and attention so well that----" "You had your chances too, Joan. You needn't be jealous." Johanna had heard this remark too often to be sensitive to it. "When it comes to serious 'chances,' as you call them, no one will be more pleased for Ephie or more interested than I. But this is something different. You see that yourself, mother, I am sure. These young men who come about the house are so foolish, and immature, and they have such different ideas of things from ourselves. They think so... so"--Johanna hesitated for a word--"so laxly on earnest subjects. And it is telling on Ephie--Look, for instance, at Mr. Dove! I don't want to say anything against him, in particular. He is really more serious than the rest. But for some time now, he has been making himself ridiculous,"--Johanna had blushed for Dove on the occasion of his last visit. "No one could be more in earnest than he is; but Ephie only makes fun of him, in a heartless way. She won't see what a grave matter it is to him." Mrs. Cayhill laughed, not at all displeased. "Young people will be young people. You can't put old heads on young shoulders, Joan, or shut them up in separate houses. Ephie is an extremely pretty girl, and it will be the same wherever we go.--As for young Dove, he knows well enough that nothing can come of it, and if he chooses to continue his attentions, why, he must take the consequences--that's all. Absurd!--a boy and girl flirtation, and to make so much of it! A mountain of a molehill, as usual. And half the time, you only imagine things, and don't see what is going on under your very nose. Anyone but you, I'm sure, would find more to object to in the way young Guest behaves than Dove." "Maurice Guest?" said Johanna, and laid her hands with stocking and needle on the table. "Yes, Maurice Guest," repeated Mrs. Cayhill, with complacent mockery. "Do you think no one has eyes but yourself?--No, Joan, you're not sharp enough. Just look at the way he went on last night! Every one but you could see what was the matter with him. Mrs. Tully told me about it afterwards. Why, he never took his eyes off her." "Oh, I'm sure you are mistaken," said Johanna earnestly, and was silent from sheer surprise. "He has been here so seldom of late," she added after a pause, thinking aloud. "Just for that very reason," replied Mrs. Cayhill, with the same air of wisdom. "A nice-minded young man stays away, if he sees that his feelings are not returned, or if he has no position to offer.--And another thing I'll tell you, Joan, though you do think yourself so clever. You don't need to worry if Ephie is odd and fidgety sometimes just now. At her age, it's only to be expected. You know very well what I mean. All girls go through the same thing. You did yourself." After this, she took up her book again, having, she knew, successfully silenced her daughter, who, on matters of this nature, was extremely sensitive. Johanna went methodically on with her darning; but the new idea which her mother had dropped into her mind, took root and grew. Strange that it had not occurred to her before! Dove's state of mind had been patent from the first; but she had had no suspicions of Maurice Guest. His manner with Ephie had hitherto been that of a brother: he had never behaved like the rest. Yet, when she looked back on his visit of the previous evening, she could not but be struck by the strangeness of his demeanour: his distracted silence, his efforts to speak to Ephie alone, and the expression with which he had watched her. And Ephie?--what of her? Now that Johanna thought of it, a change had also come over Ephie's mode of treating Maurice; the gay insouciance of the early days had given place to the pert flippancy which, only the night before, had so pained her sister. What had brought about this change? Was it pique? Was Ephie chafing, in secret, at his prolonged absences, and was she, girl-like, anxious to conceal it from him? Johanna gathered up her work to go to her own room and think the matter out in private. In the passage, she ran into the arms of Mrs. Tully, whom she disliked; for, ever since coming to the PENSION, this lady had carried on a kind of cult with Ephie, which was distasteful in the extreme to Johanna. "Oh, Miss Cayhill!" she now exclaimed. "I was just groping my way--it is indeed groping, is it not?--to your sitting-room. WHERE is your sister? I want SO much to ask her if she will have tea with me this afternoon. I am expecting a few friends, and should be so glad if she would join us." "Ephie is practising, Mrs. Tully," said Johanna in her coolest tone. "And I cannot have her disturbed." "She is so very, very diligent," said Mrs. Tully with enthusiasm. "I always remark to myself on hearing her, how very idle a life like mine is in comparison. I am able to do SO little; just a mere trifle here and there, a little atom of good, one might say. I have no talents.--And you, too, dear Miss Cayhill. So studious, so clever! I hear of you on every side," and, letting her eyes rest on Johanna's head, she wondered why the girl wore her hair so unbecomingly. Johanna did not respond. "If only you would let your hair grow, it would make such a difference to your appearance," said Mrs. Tully suddenly, with disconcerting outspokenness. Johanna drew herself up. "Thanks," she said. "I have always worn my hair like this, and at my age, have no intention of altering it," and leaving Mrs. Tully protesting vehemently at such false modesty, she went past her, into her own room, and shut the door. She sat down by the window to sew. But her hands soon fell to her lap, and with her eyes on the backs of the neighbouring houses, she continued her interrupted reflections. First, though, she threw a quick, sarcastic side-glance on her mother and herself. As so often before, when she had wanted to pin her mother's attention to a subject, the centre of interest had shifted in spite of her efforts, and they had ended far from where they had begun: further, she, Johanna, had a way, when it came to the point, not of asking advice or of faithfully discussing a question, but of emphatically giving her opinion, or of stating what she considered to be the facts of the case. From an odd mixture of experience and self-distrust, Johanna had, however, acquired a certain faith in her mother's opinions--these blind, instinctive hits and guesses, which often proved right where Johanna's carefully drawn conclusions failed. Here, once more, her mother's idea had broken in upon her like a flash of light, even though she could not immediately bring herself to accept it. Maurice and Ephie! She could not reconcile the one with the other. Yet what if the child were fretting? What if he did not care? A pang shot through her at the thought that any outsider should have the power to make Ephie suffer. Oh, she would make him care!--she would talk to him as he had never been talked to in his life before. The sisters' rooms were connected by a door; and, gradually, in spite of her preoccupation, Johanna could not but become aware how brokenly Ephie was practising. Coaxing, encouragement, and sometimes even severity, were all, it is true, necessary to pilot Ephie through the two hours that were her daily task; but as idle as to-day, she had never been. What could she be doing? Johanna listened intently, but not a sound came from the room; and impelled by a curiosity to observe her sister in a new light, she rose and opened the door. Ephie was standing with her back to it, staring out of the window, and supporting herself on the table by her violin, which she held by the neck. At Johanna's entrance, she started, grew very red, and hastily raised the instrument to her shoulder. "What are you doing, Ephie? You are wasting a great deal of time," said Johanna in the tone of mild reproof that came natural to her, in speaking to her little sister. "Is anything the matter to-day? If you don't practice better than this, you won't have the ETUDE ready by Friday, and Herr Becker will make you take it again--for the third time." "He can if he likes. I guess I don't care," said Ephie nonchalantly, and, seizing the opportunity offered for a break, she sat down, and laid bow and fiddle on the table. "Have you remembered everything he pointed out to you at your last lesson?" asked Johanna, going over to the music-stand, and peering at the pages with her shortsighted eyes. "Let me see--what was it now? Something about this double-stopping here, and the fingering in this position." Ephie laughed. "Old Joan, what do you know about it?" "Not much, dear, I admit," said Johanna pleasantly. "But try and master it, like a good girl. So you can get rid of it, and go on to something else." Ephie sat back, clasped her hands behind her head, and gave a long sigh. "Yes, to the next one," she said. "Oh, if you only knew how sick I am of them, Joan! The next won't be a bit better than this. They are all alike--a whole book of them." Johanna looked down at the little figure with the plump, white arms, and discontented expression; and she tried to find in the childish face something she had previously not seen there. "Are you tired of studying, Ephie?" she asked. "Would you like to leave off and go away?" "Go away from Leipzig? Where to?" Ephie did not unclasp her hands, but her eyes grew vigilant. "Oh, there are plenty of other places, child. Dresden--or Weimar--or Stuttgart--where you could take lessons just as well. Or if you are tired of studying altogether, there is no need for you to go on with it. We can return home, any day. Sometimes, I think it would be better if we did. You have not been yourself lately, dear. I don't think you are very well." "I not myself?--not well? What rubbish you talk, Joan! I am quite well, and wish you wouldn't tease me. I guess you want to go away yourself. You are tired of being here. But nothing shall induce me to go. I love old Leipzig. And I still have heaps to learn before I leave off studying.--I don't even know whether I shall be ready by spring. It all depends. And now, Joan, go away." She took up her violin and put it on her shoulder. "Now it's you who are wasting time. How can I practise when you stand there talking?" Johanna was silent. But after this, she did not venture to mention Maurice's name; and she had turned to leave the room when she remembered her meeting with Mrs. Tully. "I would rather you did not go to tea, Ephie," she ended, and then regretted having said it. "That's another of your silly prejudices, Joan. I want to know why you feel so about Mrs. Tully. I think she's lovely. Not that I'd have gone anyway. I promised Maurice to go for a walk with him at five. I know what her 'few friends' means, too--just Boehmer, and she asks me along so people will think he comes to see me, and not her. He sits there, and twirls his moustache, and makes eyes at her, and she makes them back. I'm only for show. No, I shouldn't have gone. I can't bear Boehmer. He's such a goat." "You didn't think that as long as he came to see us," expostulated Johanna. "No, of course not. But so he only comes to see her, I do.--And sometimes, Joan, why it's just embarrassing. The last afternoon, why, he had a headache or something, and she made him lie on the sofa, with a rug over him, so she could bathe his head with eau-de-cologne. I guess she's going to marry him. And I'm not the only one. The other day I heard Frau Walter and Frau von Baerle talking in the dining-room after dinner, and they said the little English widow was very HEIRATSLUSTIG." "Ephie, I don't like to hear you repeat such foolish gossip," said Johanna in real distress. "And if you can understand and remember a word like that, you might really take more pains with your German. It is not impossible for you to learn, you see." "Joan the preacher, and Joan the teacher, and Joan the wise old bird," sang Ephie, and laughed. "I think Mrs. Tully is real kind. She's going to show me a new way to do my hair. This style is quite out in London, she says." "Don't let her touch your hair. It couldn't be better than it is," said Johanna quickly. But Ephie turned her head this way and that, and considered herself in the looking-glass. Now that she knew Maurice was expected that afternoon, Johanna awaited his arrival with impatience. Meanwhile, she believed she was not wrong in thinking Ephie unusually excited. At dinner, where, as always, the elderly boarders made a great fuss over her, her laughter was so loud as to grate on Johanna's ear; but afterwards, in their own sitting-room, a trifle sufficed to put her out of temper. A new hat had been sent home, a hat which Johanna had not yet seen. Now that it had come, Ephie was not sure whether she liked it or not; and all the cries of admiration her mother and Mrs. Tully uttered, when she put it on, were necessary to reassure her. Johanna was silent, and this unspoken disapproval irritated Ephie. "Why don't you say something, Joan?" she cried crossly. "I suppose you think it's homely?" "Frankly, I don't care for it much, dear. To my mind, it's overtrimmed." This was so precisely Ephie's own feeling that she was more annoyed than ever; she taunted Johanna with old-fashioned, countrified tastes; and, in spite of her mother's comforting assurances, retired in a pet to her own room. That afternoon, as they sat together at tea, Mrs. Cayhill, who for some time had considered Ephie fondly, said: "I can't understand you thinking she isn't well, Joan. I never saw her look better." Ephie went crimson. "Now what has Joan been saying about me?" she asked angrily. Johanna had left the table, and was reading on the sofa. "I only said what I repeated to yourself, Ephie. That I didn't think you were looking well." "Just fancy," said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing good-humouredly, "she was saying we ought to leave Leipzig and go to some strange place. Even back home to America. You don't want to go away, darling, do you?" "No, really, Joan is too bad," cried Ephie, with a voice in which tears and exasperation struggled for the mastery. "She always has some new fad in her head. She can't leave us alone--never! Let her go away, so she wants to. I won't. I'm happy here. I love being here. Even if you both go away, I shall stop." She got up from the table, and went to a window, where she stood biting her lips, and paying small attention to her mother's elaborate protests that she, too, had no intention of being moved. Johanna did not raise her eyes from her book. She could have wept: not only at the spirit of rebellious dislike, which was beginning to show more and more clearly in everything Ephie said. But was no one but herself awake to the change that was taking place in the child, day by day? She would write to her father, without delay, and make him insist on their returning to America. From the moment Maurice entered the room, she did not take her eyes off him; and, under her scrutiny, the young man soon grew nervous. He sat and fidgeted, and found nothing to say. Ephie was wayward: she did not think she wanted to go out; it looked like rain. Johanna refrained from interfering; but Maurice was most persistent: he begged Ephie not to disappoint him, and, when this failed, said angrily that she had no business to bring him there for such capricious whims. This treatment cowed Ephie; and she went at once to put on her hat and jacket. "He wants to speak to her; and she knows it; and is trying to avoid it," said Johanna to herself; and her heart beat fast for both of them. But she was alone with Maurice; she must not lose the chance of sounding him a little. "Where do you think of going for a walk?" she asked, and her voice had an odd tone to her ears. "Where? Oh, to the ROSENTAL--or the SCHEIBENHOLZ--or along the river. Anywhere. I don't know." She coughed. "Have you noticed anything strange about Ephie lately? She is not herself. I'm afraid she is not well." He had noticed nothing. But he did not face Johanna; and he held the photograph he was looking at upside down. She leaned out of the window to watch them walk along the street. At this moment, she was fully convinced of the correctness of her mother's assumption; and by the thought of what might take place within the next hour, she was much disturbed. During the rest of the afternoon, she found it impossible to settle to anything; and she wandered from one room to another, unable even to read. But it struck six, seven, eight o'clock; it was supper-time; and still Ephie had not come home. Mrs. Cayhill grew anxious, too, and Johanna strained her eyes, watching the dark street. At nine and at ten, she was pacing the room, and at eleven, after a messenger had been sent to Maurice's lodging and had found no one there she buttoned on her rain-cloak, to accompany one of the servants to the police-station. "Why did I let her go?--Oh, why did I let her go!" IV. Maurice and Ephie walked along the LESSINGSTRASSE without speaking--it was a dull, mild day, threatening to rain, as it had rained the whole of the preceding night. But Ephie was not accustomed to be silent; she found the stillness disconcerting, and before they had gone far, shot a furtive look at her companion. She did not intend him to see it; but he did, and turned to her. He cleared his throat, and seemed about to speak, then changed his mind. Something in his face, as she observed it more nearly, made Ephie change colour and give an awkward laugh. "I asked you before how you liked my hat," she said, with another attempt at the airiness which, to-day, she could not command. "And you didn't say. I guess you haven't looked at it. You're in such a hurry." Maurice turned his head; but he did not see the hat. Instead, he mentally answered a question Louise had put to him the day before, and which he had then not known how to meet. Yes, Ephie was pretty, radiantly pretty, with the fresh, unsullied charm of a flower just blown. "Joan was so stupid about it," she went on at random; her face still wore its uncertain smile. "She said it was overtrimmed, and top-heavy, and didn't become me. As if she ever wore anything that suited her! But Joan is an old maid. She hasn't a scrap of taste. And as for you, Maurice, why I just don't believe you know one hat from another. Men are so stupid." Again they went forward in silence. "You are tiresome to-day," she said at length, and looked at him with a touch of defiance, as a schoolgirl looks at the master with whom she ventures to remonstrate. "Yes, I'm a dull companion." "Knowing it doesn't make it any better." But she was not really cross; all other feelings were swallowed up by the uneasiness she felt at his manner of treating her. "Where are we going?" she suddenly demanded of him, with a little quick upward note in her voice. "This is not the way to the SCHEIBENHOLZ." "No." He had been waiting for the question. "Ephie,"--he cleared his throat anew. "I am taking you to see a friend--of mine." "Is that what you brought me out for? Then you didn't want to speak to me, as you said? Then we're not going for a walk?" "Afterwards, perhaps. It's like this. Some one I know has been very ill. Now that she is getting better, she needs rousing and cheering up, and that kind of thing; and I said I would bring you to call on her. She knows you by sight--and would like to know you personally," he added, with a lame effort at explanation. "Is that so?" said Ephie with sudden indifference; and her heart, which had begun to thump at the mention of a friend, quieted down at once. In fancy, she saw an elderly lady with shawls and a footstool, who had been attracted by her fresh young face; the same thing had happened to her before. Now, however, that she knew the object of their walk, she was greatly relieved, as if a near danger had been averted; but she had not taken many steps forward before she was telling herself that another hope was gone. The only thing to do was to take the matter into her own hands; it was now or never; and simply a question of courage. "Maurice, say, do many people go away from here in the fall?--leave the Con., I would say?" she asked abruptly. "I mean is this a time more people leave than in spring?" Maurice started; he had been lost in his own thoughts, which all centred round this meeting he had weakly agreed to arrange. Again and again he had tried to imagine how it would fall out. But he did not know Louise well enough to foresee how she would act; and the nearer the time came, the stronger grew his presentiment of trouble. His chief remaining hope was that there would be no open speaking, that Schilsky's name would not be mentioned; and plump into the midst of this hope fell Ephie's question. He turned on her; she coloured furiously, and walked into a pool of water; and, at this moment, everything was as clear to Maurice as though she had said: "Where is be? Why has he gone?" "Why do you ask?" he queried with unconscious sharpness. "No, Easter is the general time for leaving. But people who play in the PRUFUNGEN then, sometimes stay for the summer term. Why do you ask?" "Gracious, Maurice, how tiresome you are! Must one always say why? I only wanted to know. I missed people I used to see about, that's all." "Yes, a number have not come back." He was so occupied with what they were saying that he, in his turn, stepped into a puddle, splashing the water up over her shoe. Ephie was extremely annoyed. "Look!--look what you've done!" she cried, showing him her spikey little shoe. "Why don't you look where you're going? How clumsy you are!" and, in a sudden burst of illhumour: "I don't know why you're bringing me here. It's a horrid part of the city anyway. I didn't have any desire to come. I guess I'll turn back and go home." "We're almost there now." "I don't care. I don't want to go." "But you shall, all the same. What's the matter with you to-day that you don't know your own mind for two minutes together?" "You didn't inquire if I wanted to come. You're just horrid, Maurice." "And you're a capricious child." He quickened his pace, afraid she might still escape him; and Ephie had hard work to keep up with him. As she trotted along, a few steps behind, there arose in her a strong feeling of resentment against Maurice, which was all the stronger because she suspected that she was on the brink of hearing her worst suspicions confirmed. But she could not afford to yield to the feeling, when the last chance she had of getting definite information was passing from her. Knitting both hands firmly inside her muff, she asked, with an earnestness which, to one who knew, was fatally tale-telling: "Did anyone you were acquainted with leave, Maurice?" "Yes," said the young man at her side, with brusque determination. He remained untouched by the tone of appeal in which Ephie put the question; for he himself suffered under her continued hedging. "Yes," he said, "some one did, and that was a man called Schilsky--a tall, red-haired fellow, a violinist. But he has only just gone. He came back after the vacation to settle his affairs, and say good-bye to his friends. Is there anything else you want to know?" He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. After all, Ephie was such a child. He could not see her face, which was hidden by the brim of the big hat, but there was something pathetic in the line of her chin, and the droop of her arms and shoulders. She seemed to shrink under his words--to grow smaller. As he stood aside to let her pass before him, through the house-door in the BRUDERSTRASSE, he had a quick revulsion of feeling. Instead of being rough and cruel to her, he should have tried to win her confidence with brotherly kindness. But he had had room in his mind for nothing but the meeting with Louise, and now there was no more time; they were going up the stairs. All he could do was to say gently: "I ought to tell you, Ephie, that the person we are going to see has been very, very ill--and needs treating with the utmost consideration. I rely on your tact and good-feeling." But Ephie did not reply; the colour had left her face, and for once, the short upper-lip closed firmly on the lower one. For some minutes amazed anger with Maurice was all she felt. Then, however, came the knowledge of what his words meant: he knew--Maurice knew; he had seen through her fictions; he would tell on her; there would be dreadful scenes with Joan; there would be reproaches and recriminations; she would be locked up, or taken away. As for what lay beyond, his assertion that Schilsky had been there--had been and gone, without a word to her--that was a sickening possibility, which, at present, her mind could not grasp. She grew dizzy under these blows that rained down on her, one after the other. And meanwhile, she had to keep up appearances, to go on as though nothing had happened, when it seemed impossible even to drag herself to the top of the winding flight of stairs. She held her head down; there was a peculiar clicking in her throat, which she could not master; she felt at every step as if she would have to burst out crying. At the glass of the door, and at the wizened old face that appeared behind it, she looked with unseeing eyes; and she followed Maurice mechanically along the passage to a door at the end. In his agitation the young man forgot to knock; and as they entered, a figure sprang up from the sofa-corner, and made a few impulsive steps towards them. Maurice went over to Louise and took her hand. "I've brought her," he said in a low tone, and with a kind of appeal in voice and eyes, which he was not himself aware of. Louise answered the look, and went on looking at him, as if she were fearful of letting her eyes stray. Both turned at an exclamation from Ephie. She was still standing where Maurice had left her, close beside the door; but her face was flaming, and her right hand fumbled with the doorhandle. "Ephie!" said Maurice warningly. He was afraid she would turn the handle, and, going over to her, took her by the arm. "Say, Maurice, I'm going home," she said under her breath. "I can't stop here. Oh, why did you bring me?" "Ssh!--be a good girl, Ephie," he replied as though speaking to a child. "Come with me." An inborn politeness struggled with Ephie's dread. "I can't. I don't know her name," she whispered. But she let him draw her forward to where Louise was standing; and she held out her hand. "Miss--?" she said in a small voice, and waited for the name to be filled in. Louise had watched them whispering, with a stony fare, but, at Ephie's gesture, life came into it. Her eyes opened wide; and drawing back from the girl's outstretched hand, yet without seeming to see it, she turned with a hasty movement, and went over to the window, where she stood with her back to them. This was the last straw; Ephie dropped on a chair, and hiding her face in her hands, burst into the tears she had hitherto restrained. Her previous trouble was increased a hundredfold. For she had recognised Louise at once; she felt that she was in a trap; and the person who had entrapped her was Maurice. Holding a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes, she sobbed as though her heart would break. "Don't cry, dear, don't cry," said the young man. "It's all right." But his thoughts were with Louise. He was apprehensive of what she might do next. As if in answer to his fear, she crossed the room. "Ask her to take her hands down. I want to see her face." Maurice bent over Ephie, and touched her shoulder. "Ephie, dear, do you hear? Look up, like a good girl, and speak to Miss Dufrayer." But Ephie shook off his hand. Over her bowed head, their eyes met; and the look Louise gave the young man was cold and questioning. He shrugged his shoulders: he could do nothing; and retreating behind the writing-table, he left the two girls to themselves. "Stand up, please," said Louise in an unfriendly voice; and as Ephie did not obey, she made a movement to take her by the wrists. "No, no!--don't touch me," cried Ephie, and rose in spite of herself. "What right have you to speak to me like this?" She could say no more, for, with a quick, unforeseen movement, Louise took the young girl's face in both hands, and turned it up. And after her first instinctive effort to draw back, Ephie kept still, like a fascinated rabbit, her eyes fixed on the dark face that looked down at her. Seconds passed into minutes; and the minutes seemed hours. Maurice watched, on the alert to intervene, if necessary. At the entrance of her visitors, Louise had been unable to see distinctly, so stupefied was she by the thought that the person on whom her thoughts had run, with a kind of madness, for more than forty-eight hours, was actually in the room beside her--it was just as though a nightmare phantom had taken bodily form. And then, too, though she had spent each of these hours in picturing to herself what this girl would be like, the reality was so opposed to her imagining that, at first, she could not reconcile the differences. Now she forced herself to see every line of the face. Nothing escaped her. She saw how loosened tendrils of hair on neck and forehead became little curls; saw the finely marked brows, and the dark blue veins at the temples; the pink and white colouring of the cheeks; the small nose, modelled as if in wax; the fascinating baby mouth, with its short upper-lip. Like most dark, sallow women, whose own brief freshness is past, the elder girl passionately admired such may-blossom beauty, as something belonging to a different race from herself. And this was not all: as she continued to look into Ephie's face, she ceased to be herself; she became the man whose tastes she knew better than her own; she saw with his eyes, felt with his senses. She pictured Ephie's face, arch and smiling, lifted to his; and she understood and excused his weakness. He had not been able to help what had happened: this was the prettiness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to look back at, in the street--something fair and round, adorably small and young, something to be petted and protected, that clung, and was childishly subordinate. For her dark sallowness, for her wilful mastery, he had only had a passing fancy. She was not his type, and she knew it. But to have known it vaguely, when it did not matter, and to know it at a moment like the present, were two different things. In a burst of despair she let her arms fall to her sides; but her insatiable eyes gazed on; and Ephie, though she was now free, did not stir, but remained standing, with her face raised, in a silly fascination. And the eyes, having taken in the curves of cheeks and chin, and the soft white throat, passed to the rounded, drooping shoulders, to the plumpness of the girlish figure, embracing the whole body in their devouring gaze. Ephie went hot and cold beneath them; she felt as if her clothes were being stripped from her, and she left standing naked. Louise saw the changing colour, and interpreted it in her own way. His--all his! He was not the mortal--she knew it only too well--to have this flower within his reach, and not clutch at it, instinctively, as a child clutches at sunbeams. It would riot have been in nature for him to do otherwise than take, greedily, without reflection. At the thought of it, a spasm of jealousy caught her by the throat; her hanging hands trembled to hurt this infantile prettiness, to spoil these lips that had been kissed by his. Maurice was at her side. "Don't hurt her," he said, and did not know how the words came to his lips. The spell was broken. The unnatural expression died out of her face; she was tired and apathetic. "Hurt her?" she repeated faintly. "No, don't be afraid. I shall not hurt her. But if I beat her with ropes till all my strength was gone, I couldn't hurt her as she has hurt me." "Hush! Don't say such things." "I? I hurt you?" said Ephie, and began to cry afresh. "How could I? I don't even know you." "No, you don't know me; and yet you have done me the cruellest wrong." "Oh, no, no," sobbed Ephic. "No, indeed!" "He was all I had--all I cared for. And you plotted, and planned, and stole him from me--with your silly baby face." "It's not true," wept Ephie. "How could I? I didn't know anything about you. He ... he never spoke of you." Louise laughed. "Oh, I can believe that! And you thought, didn't you, you poor little fool, that he only cared for you? That was why my name was never mentioned. He didn't need to scheme, and contrive, and lie, lie abominably, for fear I should come to hear what he was doing!" "No, indeed," sobbed Ephie. "Never! And you've no right to say such things of him." "I no right?" Louise drew herself up. "No right to say what I like of him? Are you going to tell me what I shall say and what I shan't of the man I loved?--yes, and who loved me, too, but in a way you couldn't understand you who think all you have to do is to smile your silly smile, and spoil another person's life. You didn't know, no, of course not!--didn't know this was his room as well as mine. Look, his music is still lying on the piano; that's the chair he sat in, not many days ago; here," she took Ephie by the shoulder and drew her behind the screen, where a small door, papered like the wall, gave, direct from the stair-head, a second entrance to the room--"here's the door he came in at.--For he came as he liked, whenever he chose." "It's not true; it can't be true," said Ephie, and raised her tear-stained face defiantly. "We are engaged--since the summer. He's coming back to marry me soon." "He's coming back to marry you!" echoed Louise in a blank voice. "He's coming back to marry you!" She moved a few steps away, and stood by the writing-table, looking dazed, as if she did not understand. Then she laughed. Ephie cried with renewed bitterness. "I want to go home." But Maurice did not pay any attention to her. He was watching Louise, with a growing dismay. For she continued to laugh, in a breathless way, with a catch in the throat, which made the laughter sound like sobbing. On his approaching her, she tried to check herself, but without success. She wiped her lips, and pressed her handkerchief to them, then took the handkerchief between her teeth and bit it. She crossed to the window, and stood with her back to the others; but she could not stop laughing. She went behind the low, broad screen that divided the room, and sat down on the edge of the bed; but still she had to laugh on. She came out again into the other part of the room, and saw Maurice pale and concerned, and Ephie's tears dried through pure fear; but the sight of these two made her laugh more violently than before. She held her face in her hands, and pressed her jaws together as though she would break them; for they shook with a nervous convulsion. Her whole body began to shake, with the efforts she made at repression. Ephie cowered in her seat. "Oh, Maurice, let us go. I'm so afraid," she implored him. "Don't be frightened! It's all right." But he was following Louise about the room, entreating her to regain the mastery of herself. When he did happen to notice Ephie more closely, he said: "Go downstairs, and wait for me there. I'll come soon." Ephie did not need twice telling: she turned and fled. He heard the hall-door bang behind her. "Do try to control yourself. Miss Dufrayer--Louise! Every one in the house will hear you." But she only laughed the more. And now the merest trifles helped to increase the paroxysm--the way Maurice worked his hands, Ephie's muff lying forgotten on a chair, the landlady's inquisitive face peering in at the door. The laugh continued, though it had become a kind of cackle--a sound without tone. Maurice could bear it no longer. He went up to her and tried to take her hands. She repulsed him, but he was too strong for her. He took both her hands in his, and pressed her down on a chair. He was not clear himself what to do next; but, the moment he touched her, the laughter ceased. She gasped for breath; he thought she would choke, and let her hands go again. She pressed them to her throat; her breath came more and more quickly; her eyes closed; and falling forward on her knees, she hid her face in the cushioned seat of the sofa. Then the tears came, and what tears! In all his life, Maurice had never heard crying like this. He moved as far away from her as he could, stood at the window, staring out and biting his lips, while she sobbed, regardless of his presence, with the utter abandon of a child. Like a child, too, she wept rebelliously, unchastenedly, as he could not have believed it possible for a grown person to cry. Such grief as this, so absolute a despair, had nothing to do with reason or the reasoning faculties; and the words were not invented that would be able to soothe it. But, little by little, a change came over her crying. The rebellion died out of it; it grew duller, and more blunted, hopeless, without life. Her strength was almost gone. Now, however, there was another note of childishness in it, that of complete exhaustion, which it is so hard to hear. The tears rose to his own eyes; he would have liked to go to her, to lay his hand on her head, and treat her tenderly, to make her cease and be happy once more; but he did not dare. Had he done so, she might not have repelled him; for, in all intensely passionate grief, there comes a moment of subsidence, when the grief and its origin are forgotten, and the one overruling desire is the desire to be comforted, no matter who the comforter and what his means, so long as they are masterful and strong. She grew calmer; and soon she was only shaken at widening intervals by a sob. Then these, too, ceased, and Maurice held his breath. But as, after a considerable time had elapsed, she still lay without making sound or movement, he crossed the room to look at her. She was fast asleep, half sitting, half lying, with her head on the cushions, and the tears wet on her cheeks. He hesitated between a wish to see her in a more comfortable position, and an unwillingness to disturb her. Finally, he took an eider-down quilt from the bed, and wrapped it round her; then slipped noiselessly from the room. It was past eight o'clock. * * * * * Ephie ran down the stairs as if a spectre were at her heels, and even when in the street, did not venture to slacken her speed. Although the dusk was rapidly passing into dark, a good deal of notice was attracted by the sight of a well-dressed young girl running along, holding a handkerchief to her face, and every now and then emitting a loud sob. People stood and stared after her, and some little boys ran with her. Instead of dropping her pace when she saw this, Ephie grew confused, and ran more quickly than before. She had turned at random, on coming out of the house; and she was in a part of the town she did not know. In her eagerness to get away from people, she took any turn that offered; and after a time she found that she had crossed the river, and was on what was almost a country road. A little further off, she knew, lay the woods; if once she were in their shelter, she would be safe; and, without stopping to consider that night was falling, she ran towards them at full speed. On the first seat she came to she sank breathless and exhausted. Her first sensation was one of relief at being alone. She unpinned and took off the big, heavy hat, and laid it on the seat beside her, in order to be more at her case; and then she cried, heartily, and without precautions, enjoying to the full the luxury of being unwatched and unheard. Since teatime, she seemed to have been fighting her tears, exercising a self-restraint that was new to her and very hard; and not to-day alone--oh, no, for weeks past, she had been obliged to act a part. Not even in her bed at night had she been free to indulge her grief; for, if she cried then, it made her pale and heavy-eyed next day, and exposed her to Joan's comments. And there were so many things to cry about: all the emotional excitement of the summer, with its ups and downs of hope and fear; the never-ceasing need of dissimulation; the gnawing uncertainty caused by Schilsky's silence; the growing sense of blankness and disappointment; Joan's suspicions; Maurice's discovery; the knowledge that Schilsky had gone away without a word to her; and, worst of all, and most inexplicable, the terrible visit of the afternoon--at the remembrance of the madwoman she had escaped from, Ephie's tears flowed with renewed vigour. Her handkerchief was soaked and useless; she held her fur tippet across her eyes to receive the tears as they fell; and when this grew too wet, she raised the skirt of her dress to her face. Not a sound was to be heard but her sobbing; she was absolutely alone; and she wept on till those who cared for her, whose chief wish was to keep grief from her, would hardly have recognized in her the child they loved. How long she had been there she did not know, when she was startled to her feet by a loud rustling in the bushes behind her. Then, of a sudden, she became aware that it was pitch-dark, and that she was all by herself in the woods. She took to her heels, in a panic of fear, and did not stop running till the street-lamps came into sight. When she was under their friendly shine, and could see people walking on the other side of the river, she remembered that she had left her hat lying on the seat. At this fresh misfortune, she began to cry anew. But not for anything in the world would she have ventured back to fetch it. She crossed the Pleisse and came to a dark, quiet street, where few people were; and here she wandered up and down. It was late; at home they would be sitting at supper now, exhausting themselves in conjectures where she could be. Ephie was very hungry, and at the thought of the warmth and light of the supper-table, a lump rose in her throat. If it had been only her mother, she might have faced her--but Joan! Home in this plight, at this hour, hatless, and with swollen face, to meet Joan's eyes and questions!--she shivered at the idea. Moreover, the whole PENSION would get to know what had happened to her; she would need to bear inquisitive looks and words; she would have to explain, or, still worse, to invent and tell stories again; and of what use were they now, when all was over? A feeling of lassitude overcame her--an inability to begin fresh. All over: he would never put his arm round her again, never come towards her, careless and smiling, and call her his "little, little girl." She sobbed to herself as she walked. Everything was bleak, and black, and cheerless. She would perhaps die of the cold, and then all of them, Joan in particular, would be filled with remorse. She stood and looked at the inky water of the river between its stone walls. She had read of people drowning themselves; what if she went down the steps and threw herself in?--and she feebly fingered at the gate. But it was locked and chained; and at the idea of her warm, soft body touching the icy water; at the picture of herself lying drowned, with dank hair, or, like the Christian Martyr, floating away on the surface; at the thought of their grief, of HIM wringing his hands over her corpse, she was so moved that she wept aloud again, and almost ran to be out of temptation's way. It had begun to drizzle. Oh, how tired she was! And she was obliged constantly to dodge impertinently staring men. In a long, wide street, she entered a door-way that was not quite so dark as the others, and sat down on the bottom step of the stairs. Here she must have dozed, for she was roused by angry voices on the floor above. It sounded like some one who was drunk; and she fled trembling back to the street. A neighbouring clock struck ten. At this time of night, she could not go home, even though she wished to. She was wandering the streets like any outcast, late at night, without a hat--and her condition of hatlessness she felt to be the chief stigma. But she was starving with hunger, and so tired that she could scarcely drag one foot after the other. Oh, what would they say if they knew what their poor little Ephie was enduring! Her mother--Joan---Maurice! Maurice! The thought of him came to her like a ray of light. It was to Maurice she would turn. He would be good to her, and help her; he had always been kind to her, till this afternoon. And he knew what had happened; it would not be necessary to explain.--Oh, Maurice, Maurice! She knew his address, if she could but find the street. A droschke passed, and she tried to hail it; but she did not like to advance too far out of the shadow, on account of her bare head. Finally, plucking up courage, she inquired the way of a feather-hatted woman, who had eyed her with an inquisitive stare. It turned out that the BRAUSTRASSE was just round the corner; she had perhaps been in the street already, without knowing it; and now she found it, and the house, without difficulty. The street-door was still open; or she would never have been bold enough to ring. The stair was poorly lighted, and full of unsavoury smells. In her agitation, Ephie rang on a wrong floor, and a strange man answered her timid inquiry. She climbed a flight higher, and rang again. There was a long and ominous pause, in which her heart beat fast; if Maurice did not live here either, she would drop where she stood. She was about to ring a second time, when felt slippers and an oil lamp moved along the passage, the glass window was opened, and a woman's face peered out at her. Yes, Herr Guest lived there, certainly, said Frau Krause, divided between curiosity and indignation at having to rise from bed; and she held the lamp above her head, in order to see Ephie better. But he was not at home, and, even if he were, at this hour of night ... The heavy words shuffled along, giving the voracious eyes time to devour. At the thought that her request might be denied her, Ephie's courage took its last leap. "Why, I must see him. I have something important to tell him. Could I not wait?" she urged in her broken German, feeling unspeakably small and forlorn. And yielding to a desire to examine more nearly the bare, damp head and costly furs, Frau Krause allowed the girl to pass before her into Maurice's room. She loitered as long as she could over lighting the lamp that stood on the table; and meanwhile threw repeated glances at Ephie, who, having given one look round the shabby room, sank into a corner of the sofa and hid her face: the coarse browed woman, in petticoat and night-jacket, seemed to her capable of robbery or murder. And so Frau Krause unwillingly withdrew, to await further developments outside: the holy, smooth-faced Herr Guest was a deep one, after all. When Maurice entered, shortly before eleven, Ephie started up from a broken sleep. He came in pale and disturbed, for Frau Krause had met him in the passage with angry mutterings about a FRAUENZIMMER in his room; and his thoughts had at once leaped fearfully to Louise. When he saw Ephie, he uttered a loud exclamation of surprise. "Good Lord, Ephie! What on earth are you doing here?" She sprang at his hands, and caught her breath hysterically. "Oh, Morry, you've come at last. Oh, I thought you would never come. Where have you been? Oh, Morry, help me--help me, or I shall die!" "Whatever is the matter? What are you doing here?" At his perturbed amazement, she burst into tears, still clinging fast to his hands. He led her back to the sofa, from which she had sprung. "Hush, hush! Don't cry like that. What's the matter, child? Tell me what it is--at once--and let me help you." "Oh, yes, Morry, help me, help me! There's no one else. I didn't know where to go. Oh, what shall I do!" Her own words sounded so pathetic that she sobbed piteously. Maurice stroked her hand, and waited for her to grow quieter. But now that she had laid the responsibility of herself on other shoulders, Ephie was quite unnerved: after the dark and fearful wanderings of the evening, to be beside some one who knew, who would take care of her, who would tell her what to do! She sobbed and sobbed. Only with perseverance did Maurice draw from her, word by word, an account of where she had been that evening, broken by such cries as: "Oh, what shall I do! I can't ever go home again--ever! ... and I lost my hat. Oh, Morry, Morry! And I didn't know he had gone away--and it wasn't true what I said, that he was coming back to marry me soon.. I only said it to spite her, because she said such dreadful things to me. But we were engaged, all the same; he said he would come to New York to marry me. And now ... oh, dear, oh, Morry! ..." "Then he really promised to marry you, did he?" "Yes, oh, yes. Everything was fixed. The last day I was there," she wept. "But I didn't know he was going away; he never said a word about it. Oh, what shall I do! Go after him, and bring him back, Morry. He must come back. He can't leave me like this, he can't--oh, no, indeed!" "You don't mean to say you went to see him, Ephie?--alone?--at his room?" queried Maurice slowly, and he did not know how sternly. "When? How often? Tell me everything. This is no time for fibbing." But he could make little of Ephie's sobbed and hazy version of the story; she herself could not remember clearly now; the impressions of the last few hours had been so intense as to obliterate much of what had gone before. "I thought I would drown myself ... but the water was so black. Oh, why did you take me to that dreadful woman? Did you hear what she said? It wasn't true, was it? Oh, it can't be!" "It was quite true, Ephie. What he told YOU wasn't true. He never really cared for anyone but her. They were--were engaged for years." At this, she wept so heart-rendingly that he was afraid Frau Krause would come in and interfere. "You MUST control yourself. Crying won't alter things now. If you had been frank and candid with us, it would never have happened." This was the only reproach he could make her; what came after was Johanna's business, not his. "And now I'm going to take you home. It's nearly twelve o'clock. Think of the state your mother and sister will be in about you." But at the mention of Johanna, Ephie flung herself on the sofa again and beat the cushions with her hands. "Not Joan, not Joan!" she wailed. "No, I won't go home. What will she say to me? Oh, I am so frightened! She'll kill me, I know she will." And at Maurice's confident assurance that Johanna would have nothing but love and sympathy for her, she shook her head. "I know Joan. She'll never forgive me. Morry, let me stay with you. You've always been kind to me. Oh, don't send me away!" "Don't be a silly child, Ephie. You know yourself you can't stay here." But he gave up urging her, coaxed her to lie down, and sat beside her, stroking her hair. As he said no more, she gradually ceased to sob, and in what seemed to the young man an incredibly short time, he heard from her breathing that she was asleep. He covered her up, and stood a sheet of music before the lamp, to shade her eyes. In the passage he ran up against Frau Krause, whom he charged to prevent Ephie in the event of her attempting to leave the house. Buttoning up his coat-collar, he hastened through the mistlike rain to fetch Johanna. There was a light in every window of the PENSION in the LESSINGSTRASSE; the street-door and both doors of the flat stood open. As he mounted the stairs a confused sound of voices struck his car; and when he entered the passage, he heard Mrs. Cayhill crying noisily. Johanna came out to him at once; she was in hat and cloak. She listened stonily to his statement that Ephie was safe at his lodgings, and put no questions; but, on her returning to the sitting-room, Mrs. Cayhill's sobs stopped abruptly, and several women spoke at once. Johanna preserved her uncompromising attitude as they walked the midnight streets. But as Maurice made no mien to explain matters further, she so far conquered her aversion as to ask: "What have you done to her?" The young man's consternation at this view of the case was so evident that even she felt the need of wording her question differently. "Answer me. What is Ephie doing at your rooms?" Maurice cleared his throat. "It's a long and unpleasant story, Miss Cayhill. And I'm afraid I must tell it from the beginning.--You didn't suspect, I fear, that ... well, that Ephie had a fancy for some one here?" At these words, which were very different from those she had expected, Johanna eyed him in astonishment. "A fancy!" she repeated incredulously. "What do you mean?" "Even more--an infatuation," said Maurice with deliberation. "And for some one I daresay you have never even heard of--a...a man here, a violinist, called Schilsky." The elaborate fabric she had that day reared, fell together about Johanna's ears. She stared at Maurice as if she doubted his sanity; and she continued to listen, with the same icy air of disbelief, to his stammered and ineffectual narrative, until he said that he believed "it" had been "going on since summer." At this Johanna laughed aloud. "That is quite impossible," she said. "I knew everything Ephie did, and everywhere she went." "She met him nearly every day. They exchanged letters, and-----" "It is impossible," repeated Johanna with vehemence, but less surely. "----and a sort of engagement seems to have existed between them." "And you knew this and never said a word to me?" "I didn't know--not till to-night. I only suspected something--once ... long ago. And I couldn't--I mean--one can't say a thing like that without being quite sure----" But here he broke down, conscious, as never before, of the negligence he had been guilty of towards Ephie. And Johanna was not likely to spare him: there was, indeed, a bitter antagonism to his half-hearted conduct in the tone in which she said: "I stood to Ephie in a mother's place. You might have warned me--oh, you might, indeed!" They walked on in silence--a hard, resentful silence. Then Johanna put the question he was expecting to hear. "And what has all this to do with to-night?" Maurice took up the thread of his narrative again, telling how Ephie had waited vainly for news since returning from Switzerland, and how she had only learnt that afternoon that Schilsky had been in Leipzig, and had gone away again, without seeing her, or letting her know that he did not intend to return. "And how did she hear it?" "At a friend's house." "What friend?" "A friend of mine, a--No; I had better be frank with you: the girl this fellow was engaged to for a year or more." "And Ephie did not know that?" He shook his head. "But you knew, and yet took her there?" It was a hopeless job to try to exonerate himself. "Yes, there were reasons--I couldn't help it, in fact. But I'm afraid I should not be able to make you understand." "No, never!" retorted Johanna, and squared her shoulders. But there was more to be said--she had worse to learn before Ephie was handed over to her care. "And Ephie has been very foolish," he began anew, without looking at her. "It seems--from what she has told me tonight--that she has been to see this man ... been at his rooms ... more than once." At first, he was certain, Johanna did not grasp the meaning of what he said; she turned a blank face curiously to him. But, a moment later, she gave a low cry, and hardly able to form the words for excitement, asked: "Who ... what ... what kind of a man was he--this ... Schilsky?" "Rotten," said Maurice; and she did not press him further. He heard her breath coming quickly, and saw the kind of stiffening that went through her body; but she kept silence, and did not speak again till they were almost at his house-door. Then she said, in a voice that was hoarse with feeling: "It has been all my fault. I did not take proper care of her. I was blind and foolish. And I shall never be able to forgive myself for it--never. But that Ephic--my little Ephie--the child I--that Ephie could ... could do a thing like this ..." Her voice tailed off in a sob. Maurice struck matches, to light her up the dark staircase; and the condition of the stairs, the disagreeable smells, the poverty of wall and door revealed, made Johanna's heart sink still further: to surroundings such as these had Ephie accustomed herself. They entered without noise; everything was just as Maurice had left it, except that the lamp had burned too high and filled the room with its fumes. As Johanna paused, undecided what to do, Ephie started up, and, at the sight of her sister, burst into loud cries of fear. Hiding her face, she sobbed so alarmingly that Johanna did not venture to approach her. She remained standing beside the table, one thin, ungloved hand resting on it, while Maurice bent over Ephie and tried to soothe her. "Please fetch a droschke," Johanna said grimly, as Ephie's sobs showed no signs of abating; and when, after a lengthy search in the night, Maurice returned, she was standing in the same position, staring with drawn, unblinking eyes at the smoky lamp, which no one had thought of lowering. Ephie was still crying, and only Maurice might go near her. He coaxed her to rise, wrapped his rug round her, and carried her, more than he led her, down the stairs. "Be good enough to drive home with us," said Johanna. And so he sat with his arm round Ephie, who pressed her face against his shoulder, while the droschke jolted over the cobbled streets, and Johanna held herself pale and erect on the opposite seat. She mounted the stairs in front of them. Ephie was limp and heavy going up; but no sooner did she catch sight of Mrs. Cayhill than, with a cry, she rushed from the young man's side, and threw herself into her mother's arms. "Oh, mummy, mummy!" Downstairs, in the rain-soaked street, Maurice found the droschke-driver waiting for his fare. It only amounted to a couple of marks, and it was no doubt a just retribution for what had happened that he should be obliged to lay it out; but, none the less, it seemed like the last straw--the last dismal touch--in a day of forlorn discomfort. V. A few weeks later, a great variety of cabin-trunks and saratogas blocked the corridor of the PENSION. The addresses they bore were in Johanna's small, pointed handwriting. On this, the last afternoon of the Cayhills' stay in Leipzig, Maurice saw Johanna again for the first time. She had had her hands full. In the woods, on that damp October night, and on her subsequent wanderings, Ephie had caught a severe cold; and the doctor had feared an inflammation of the lungs. This had been staved off; but there was also, it seemed, a latent weakness of the chest, hitherto unsuspected, which kept them anxious. Ephie still had a dry, grating cough, which was troublesome at night, and left her tired and fretful by day. They were travelling direct to the South of France, where they intended to remain until she had quite recovered her strength. Maurice sat beside Johanna on the deep sofa where he and Ephie had worked at harmony together. But the windows of the room were shut now, and the room itself looked unfamiliar; for it had been stripped of all the trifles and fancy things that had given it such a comfortable, home-like air, and was only the bare, lodging-house room once more. Johanna was as self-possessed as of old, a trifle paler, a trifle thinner of lip. She told him that they intended leaving quietly the next morning, without partings or farewells. Ephie was still weak and the less excitement she had to undergo, the better it would be for her. "Then I shall not see Ephie again?" queried Maurice in surprise. Johanna thought not: it would only recall the unhappy night to her memory; besides, she had not asked to see him, as she no doubt would have done, had she wished it.--At this, the eleventh hour, Johanna did not think it worth while to tell Maurice that Ephie bore him an unalterable grudge. "I never want to see him again." That was all she said to Johanna; but, during her illness, she had brooded long over his treachery. And even if things had come all right in the end, she would never have been able to forgive his speaking to her of Schilsky in the way he had done. No, she was finished with Maurice Guest; he was too double-faced, too deceitful for her.--And she cried bitterly, with her face turned to the wall. The young man could not but somewhat lamely agree with Johanna that it was better to let the matter end thus: for he felt that towards the Cayhills he had been guilty of a breach of trust such as it is difficult to forgive. At the same time, he was humanly hurt that Ephie would not even say good-bye to him. He asked their further plans, and learnt that as soon as Ephie was well again, they would sail for New York. "My father has cabled twice for us." Johanna's manner was uncompromisingly dry and short. After her last words, there was a long pause, and Maurice made a movement to rise. But she put out her hand and detained him. "There is something I should like to say to you." And thereupon, with the abruptness of a nervous person: "When I have seen my sister and mother safe back, I intend leaving home myself. I am going to Harvard." Maurice realised that the girl was telling him a fact of considerable importance to herself, and did his best to look interested. "Really? That's always been a wish of yours, hasn't it?" "Yes." Johanna coloured, hesitated as he had never known her to do, then burst out: "And now there is nothing in the way of it." She drew her thumb across the leaf-corners of a book that was lying on the table. "Oh, I know what you will say: how, now that Ephie has turned out to be weak and untrustworthy, there is all the more reason for me to remain with her, to look after her. But that is not possible." She faced him sharply, as though he had contradicted her. "I am incapable of pretending to be the same when my feelings have changed; and, as I told you--as I knew that night--I shall never be able to feel for Ephie as I did before. I am ready, as I said, to take all the blame for what has happened; I was blind and careless. But if the care and affection of years count for nothing; if I have been so little able to win her confidence; if, indeed, I have only succeeded in making her dislike me, by my care of her, so that when she is in trouble, she turns from me, instead of to me--why, then I have failed lamentably in what I had made the chief duty of my life." "Besides," she continued more quietly, "there is another reason: Ephie is going to fall a victim to her nerves. I see that; and my poor, foolish mother is doing her best to foster it.--You smile? Only because you do not understand what it means. It is no laughing matter. If an American woman once becomes conscious of her nerves, then Heaven help her!--Now I am not of a disinterested enough nature to devote myself to sick-nursing where there is no real sickness. And then, too, my mother intends taking a French maid back with her, and a person of that class will perform such duties much more competently than I." She spoke with bitterness. Maurice mumbled some words of sympathy, wondering why she should choose to say these things to him. "Even at home my place is filled," continued Johanna. "The housekeeper who was appointed during our absence has been found so satisfactory that she will continue in the post after our return. Everywhere, you see, I have proved superfluous. There, as here." "I'm sure you're mistaken," said Maurice with more warmth. "And, Miss Joan, there's something I should like to say, if I may. Don't you think you take what has happened here a little too seriously? No doubt Ephie behaved foolishly. But was it after all any more than a girlish escapade?" "Too seriously?" Johanna turned her shortsighted eyes on the young man, and gazed at him almost pityingly. How little, oh, how little, she said to herself, one mortal knew and could know of another, in spite of the medium of speech, in spite of common experiences! Some of the nights at the beginning of Ephie's illness returned vividly to her mind, nights, when she, Johanna, had paced her room by the hour, filled with a terrible dread, a numbing uncertainty, which she would sooner have died than have let cross her lips. She had borne it quite alone, this horrible fear; her mother had been told of the whole affair only what it was absolutely necessary for her to know. And, naturally enough, the young man who now sat at her side, being a man, could not be expected to understand. But the consciousness of her isolation made Johanna speak with renewed harshness. "Too seriously?" she repeated. "Oh, I think not. The girlish escapade, as you call it, was the least of it. If that had been all, if it had only been her infatuation for some one who was unworthy of her, I could have forgiven Ephie till seventy times seven. But, after all these years, after the way I have loved her--no, idolised her!--for her to treat me as she did--do you think it possible to take that too seriously? There was no reason she should not have had her little secrets. If she had let me see that something was going on, which she did not want to tell me about, do you think I should have forced her?"--and Johanna spoke in all good faith, forgetful of how she had been used to clip and doctor Ephie's sentiments. "But that she could deceive me wilfully, and lie so lightly, with a smile, when, all the time, she was living a double life, one to my face and one behind my back--that I cannot forgive. Something has died in me that I used to feel for her. I could never trust her again, and where there is no trust there can be no real love." "She didn't understand what she was doing. She is so young." "Just for that reason. So young, and so skilled in deceit. That is hardest of all, even to think of: that she could wear her dear innocent face, while behind it, in her brain, were cold, calculating thoughts how she could best deceive me! If there had been but a single sign to waken my suspicions, then, yes, then I could have forgiven her," said Johanna, and again forgot how often of late she had been puzzled by the subtle change in Ephie. "If I could just know that, in spite of her efforts, she had been too candid to succeed!" She had unburdened herself and it had been a relief to her, but nothing could be helped or mended. Both knew this, and after a few polite questions about her future plans and studies, Maurice rose to take his leave. "Say good-bye to them both for me, and give Ephie my love." "I will. I think she will be sorry afterwards that she did not see you. She has always liked you." "Good-bye then. Or perhaps it is only AUF WIEDERSEHEN?" "I hardly think so." Johanna had returned to her usual sedate manner. "If I do visit Europe again, it will not be for five or six years at least." "And that's a long time. Who knows where I may be, by then!" He held Johanna's hand in his, and saw her gauntly slim figure outlined against the bare sitting-room. It was not likely that they would ever meet again. But he could not summon up any very lively feelings of regret. Johanna had not touched him deeply; she had left him as cool as he had no doubt left her; neither had found the key to the other. Her chief attraction for him had been her devotion to Ephie; and now, having been put to the test, this was found wanting. She had been wounded in her own pride and self-love, and could not forgive. At heart she was no more generous and unselfish than the rest. He repeated farewell messages as he stood in the passage. Johanna held the front door open for him, and, as he went down the stairs, he heard it close behind him, with that extreme noiselessness that was characteristic of Johanna's treatment of it. The following morning, shortly after ten o'clock, a train steamed out of the THURINGER BAHNHOF, carrying the Cayhills with it. The day was misty and cheerless, and none of the three travellers turned her head to give the town a parting glance. They left unattended, without flowers or other souvenirs, without any of the demonstratively pathetic farewells, the waving of hats, and crowding about the carriage-door, which one of the family, at least, had connected inseverably with their departure. And thus Ephie's musical studies came to an abrupt and untimely end. * * * * * "My faith in women is shattered. I shall never believe in a woman again." Dove paced the floor of Maurice's room with long and steady strides, beneath which a particular board creaked at intervals. His voice was husky, and the ruddiness of his cheeks had paled. At the outset of Ephie's illness, Dove had called every morning at the PENSION, to make inquiries and to leave his regards. But when the story leaked out, as it soon did, in an exaggerated and distorted form, he straightway ceased his visits. Thus he was wholly unprepared for the family's hurried departure, the news of which was broken to him by Maurice. Dove was dumbfounded. Not a single sententious phrase crossed his lips; and he remained unashamed of the moisture that dimmed his eyes. But he maintained his bearing commendably; and it was impossible not to admire the upright, manly air with which he walked down the street. The next day, however, he returned, and was silent no longer. He made no secret of having been hard hit; just as previously he had let his friends into his hopes and intentions, so now every one heard of his reverses. He felt a tremendous need of unbosoming himself; he had been so sure of success, or, at least, so unthinking of failure, and the blow to his selfesteem was a rude one. Maurice sat with his hands in his pockets, and tried to urge reason. But Dove would not admit even the possibility of his having been mistaken. He had received innumerable proofs of Ephie's regard for him. "Remember how young she was! Girls of that age never know their own minds," said Maurice. But Dove was inclined to take Johanna's sterner view, and to cry: "So young and so untender!" for which he, too, substituted "untrue"; and, just on this score, to deduce unfavourable inferences for Ephie's whole moral character. As Maurice listened to him, he could not help thinking that Johanna's affection had been of the same nature as Dove's, in other words, had had a touch of the masculine about it: it had existed only as long as it could guide and subordinate; it denied to its object any midget attempt at individual life; it set up lofty moral standards, and was implacable when a smaller, frailer being found it impossible to live up to them. At the same time, he was sorry for Dove, who, in his blindness, had laid himself open to receive this snubbing; and he listened patiently, even a thought flattered by his confidence, until he learnt from Madeleine that Dove was making the round of his acquaintances, and behaving in the same way to anyone who would let him. Then he found that the openness with which Dove related his past hopes, and the marks of affection Ephie had given him, bordered on indecency. He said so, with a wrathful frankness; but Dove could not see it in that light, and was not offended. As the personal smart weakened, the more serious question that Dove had to face was, what he was going to tell his relatives at home. For it now came out that he had represented the affair to them as settled; in his perfectly sincere optimism, he had regarded himself as an all but engaged man. And the point that disturbed him was, how to back out with dignity, yet without violating the truth, on which he set great store. "I'm sure he needn't let that trouble him," said Madeleine, on hearing of his dilemma. "He has only to say that HE has changed his mind, which is true enough." This was the conclusion Dove eventually came to himself--though not with such unseemly haste as Madeleine. Having approached the matter from all sides, he argued that it would be more considerate to Ephie to put it in this light than to tell the story in detail. And consequently, two elderly people in Peterborough nodded to each other one morning over the breakfast-table, and agreed that Edward had done well. They had not been much in favour of the American match, but they had trusted implicitly in their son's good sense, and now, as ever, he had acted in the most becoming way. He had never given them an hour's uneasiness since his birth. Dove wrote: CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE ARISEN, MY DEAR PARENTS, WHICH MAKE IT INCONTROVERTIBLY CLEAR TO ME THAT THE YOUNG LADY TO WHOM I WAS PAYING MY ADDRESSES WHEN I CONSULTED YOU IN SUMMER AND MYSELF WOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN TRUE HAPPINESS IN OUR UNION. ON MORE INTIMATE ACQUAINTANCE IT TRANSPIRED THAT OUR CHARACTERS WERE TOTALLY UNSUITED. I HAVE THEREFORE FOUND IT ADVISABLE TO BANISH THE AFFAIR FROM MY MIND AND TO DEVOTE MYSELF WHOLLY TO MY STUDIES. As time passed, and Dove was able to view what had happened more objectively, he began to feel and even to hint that, all things considered, he had had a rather lucky escape; and from this, it was not very far to believing that if he had not just seen through the whole affair from the beginning, he had at any rate had some inkling of it; and now, instead of giving proofs of Ephie's affection, he narrated the gradual growth of his suspicions, and how these had ultimately been verified. In conclusion, he congratulated himself on having drawn back, with open eyes, while there was still time. "Like his cheek!" said Madeleine. "But he could imagine himself into being the Shah of Persia, if he sat down and gave his mind to it. I don't believe the snub is going to do him a bit of good. He bobs up again like a cork, irrepressible. HAVE you heard him quote: 'Frailty thy name is woman!' or: 'If women could be fair and yet not fond'?--It's as good as a play." But altogether, Madeleine was very sharp of tongue since she learnt the part Maurice had played in what, for a day, was the scandal of the English-speaking colony. She had taken him to task at once, for his "lamentable interference." "Haven't I warned you, Maurice, not to mix yourself up in Louise's affairs? No good can come of it. She breeds mischief. And if that absurd child had really drowned herself"--in the version of the story that had reached Madeleine's ears, Maurice was represented fishing Ephie bodily from the river--"you would have had to bear the whole brunt of the blame. It ought to teach you a lesson. For you're just the kind of boy women will always take advantage of, a mean advantage, you know. Consider how you were treated in this case--by both of them! They were not a scrap grateful to you for what you did--women never are. They only look down on you for letting them have their own way. Kindness and complaisance don't move them. A well-developed biceps and a cruel mouth--that's what they want, and that's all!" she wound up with a flourish, in an extreme bad temper. She sat, one dull November afternoon, at her piano, and continued to run her fingers over the keys. Maurice leant on the lid, and listened to her. But they had barely exchanged a word, when there was a light tap at the door, and Krafft entered. Both started at his unexpected appearance, and Madeleine cried: "You come in like a ghost, to frighten people out of their wits." Krafft was buttoned to the chin in a travelling-ulster, and looked pale and thin. "What news from St. Petersburg?" queried Madeleine with a certain asperity. But Maurice recalled an errand he had to do in town; and, on hearing this, Krafft, who was lolling aimlessly, declared that he would accompany him. "But you've only just come!" expostulated Madeleine. "What in the name of goodness did you climb the stairs for?" He patted her cheek, without replying. The young men went away together, Maurice puffing somewhat ostentatiously at a cigarette. The wind was cold, and Krafft seemed to shrink into his ulster before it, keeping his hands deep in his pockets. But from time to time, he threw a side-glance at his friend, and at length asked, in the tone of appeal which Maurice found it hard to withstand: "What's the matter, LIEBSTER? Why are you so different?--so changed?" "The matter? Nothing--that I'm aware of," said Maurice, and considered the tip of his cigarette. "Oh, yes, there is," and Krafft laid a caressing hand on his companion's arm. "You are changed. You're not frank with me. I feel such things at once." "Well, how on earth am I to know when to be frank with you, and when not? Before you ... not very long ago, you behaved as if you didn't want to have anything more to do with me." "You are changed, and, if I'm not mistaken, I know why," said Krafft, ignoring his answer. "You have been listening to gossip--to what my enemies say of me." "I don't listen to gossip. And I didn't know you had enemies, as you call them." "I?--and not have enemies?" He flared up as though Maurice had affronted him. "My good fellow, did you ever bear of a man worth his salt, who didn't have enemies? It's the penalty one pays: only the dolts and the 'all-too-many' are friends with the whole world. No one who has work to do that's worth doing, can avoid making enemies. And who knows what a friend is, who hasn't an enemy to match him? It's a question of light and shade, theme and counter-theme, of artistic proportion." He laughed, in his superior way. But directly afterwards, he dropped back into his former humble tone. "But that you, my friend, are so ready to let yourself be influenced--I should not have believed it of you." "What I heard, I heard from Furst; and I have no reason to suspect him of falsehood.--Of course, if you assure me it was not true, that's a different thing." He turned so sharply that he sent a beautiful flush over Krafft's face. "Come, give me your word, Heirtz, and things will be straight again." But Krafft merely shrugged his shoulders, and his colour subsided as rapidly as it had risen. "Are you still such an outsider," he asked, "after all this time--in my society--as to attach importance to a word? What is 'giving a word'? Do you really think it is of any value? May I not give it tonight, and take it back to-morrow, according to the mood I am in, according to whether I believe it myself or not, at the moment?--You think a thing must either be true or not true? You are wrong. Do you believe, when you answer a question in the affirmative or the negative, that you are actually telling the truth? No, my friend, to be perfectly truthful one would need to lose oneself in a maze of explanation, such as no questioner would have the patience to listen to. One would need to take into account the innumerable threads that have gone to making the statement what it is. Do you think, for instance, if I answered yes or no, in the present case, it would be true? If I deny what you heard--does that tell you that I have longed with all my heart for it to come to pass? Or say I admit it--I should need to unroll my life before you to make you understand. No, there's no such thing as absolute truth. If there were, the finest subtleties of existence would be lost. There is neither positive truth nor positive untruth; life is not so coarse-fibred as that. And only the grossest natures can be satisfied with a blunt yes or no. Truth?--it is one of the many miserable conventions the human brain has tortured itself with, and its first principle is an utter lack of the imaginative faculties.--A DIEU!" VI. In the days that followed, Maurice threw himself heart and soul into his work. He had lost ground of late, he saw it plainly now: after his vigorous start, he had quickly grown slack. He was not, to-day, at the stage he ought to be, and there was not a doubt but that Schwarz saw it, too. Now that he, came to think of it, he had more than once been aware of a studied coolness in the master's manner, of a rather ostentatious indifference to the quality of the work he brought to the class: and this he knew by hearsay to be Schwarz's attitude towards those of his pupils in whom his interest was waning. If he, Maurice, wished to regain his place in the little Pasha's favour, he must work like a coal-heaver. But the fact was, the strenuous industry to which he now condemned himself, was something of a relaxation after the mental anxiety he had recently undergone; this striking of a black and white keyboard was a pleasant, thought-deadening employment, and could be got through, no matter what one's mood.--And so he rose early again, and did not leave the house till he had five hours' practice behind him. WER SICH DER EINSAMKEIT ERGIEBT, ACH, DER IST BALD ALLEIN: at the end of a fortnight, Maurice smiled to find the words of Goethe's song proved on himself. If he did not go to see his friends, none of them came to him. Dove, who was at the stage of: "I told you so," in the affair of the Cayhills, had found fresh listeners, who were more sympathetic than Maurice could be expected to be: and Madeleine was up to her ears in work, as she phrased it, with the "C minor Beethoven." "Agility of finger equals softening of the brain" was a frequent gibe of Krafft's; and now and then, at the close of a hard day's work, Maurice believed that the saying contained a grain of truth. Opening both halves of his window, he would lean out on the sill, too tired for connected thought. But when dusk fell, he lay on the sofa, with his arms clasped under his head, his knees crossed in the air. At first, in his new buoyancy of spirit, he was able to keep foolish ideas behind him, as well as to put away all recollection of the disagreeable events he had been mixed up in of late: after having, for weeks, borne a load that was too heavy for him, he breathed freely once more. The responsibility of taking care of Ephie had been removed from him--and this by far outweighed the little that he missed her. The matter had wound up, too, in a fairly peaceable way; all being considered, things might have been worse. So, at first, he throve under his light-heartedness; and only now became aware how great the strain of the past few weeks had been. His chief sensation was relief, and also of relief at being able to feel relieved--indeed, the moment even came when he thought it would be possible calmly to accept the fact of Louise having left the town, and of his never being likely to see her again. Gradually, however, he began to be astonished at himself, and in the background of his mind, there arose a somewhat morbid curiosity, even a slight alarm, at his own indifference. He found it hard to understand himself. Could his feelings, those feelings which, a week or two ago, he had believed unalterable, have changed in so short a time? Was his nature one of so little stability? He began to consider himself with something approaching dismay, and though, all this time, he had been going about on a kind of mental tiptoe, for fear of rousing something that might be dormant in him, he now could not help probing himself, in order to see if the change he observed were genuine or not. And this with a steadily increasing frequency. Instead of continuing thankful for the respite, he ultimately grew uneasy under it. Am I a person of this weak, straw-like consistency, to be tossed about by every wind that blows? Is there something beneath it all that I cannot fathom? He had not seen Louise since the night he had left her asleep, beside the sofa; and he was resolved not to see her--not, at least, until she wished to see him. It was much better for him that the uncertainties of the bygone months did not begin anew; then, too, she had called him to her when she was in trouble, and not for anything in the world would he presume on her appeal. Besides, his presence would recall to her the unpleasant details connected with Ephie's visit, which he hoped she had by this time begun to forget. Thus he argued with himself, giving several reasons where one would have served; and the upshot of it was, that his own state of mind occupied him considerably. His friends noticed the improvement in him; the careworn expression that had settled down on him of late gave way to his old air of animation; and on all the small topics of the day, he brought a sympathetic interest to bear, such as people had ceased to expect from him. Madeleine, in particular, was satisfied with her "boy," as she took to calling him. She noted and checked off, in wise silence, each inch of his progress along the road of healthy endeavour; and the relations between them became almost as hearty as at the commencement of their friendship. Privately, she believed that the events of the past month had taught him a lesson, which he would not soon forget. It was sufficient, however, if they had inspired him with a distrust of Louise, which would keep him from her for the present; for Madeleine had grounds for believing that before many weeks had passed, Louise would have left Leipzig. So she kept Maurice as close to her as work permitted; and as the winter's flood of concerts set in, in full force, he accompanied her, almost nightly, to the Old Gewandhaus or the ALBERTHALLE; for Madeleine was an indefatigable concert-goer, and never missed a performer of note, rarely even a first appearance at the HOTEL DE PRUSSE or a BLUTHNER MATINEE. On the night she herself played in an AIBENDUNTERHALTUNG, with the easily gained success that attended all she did, Maurice went with her to the green-room, and was the first afterwards to tell her how her performance had "gone." That same evening she took him with her to the house of friends of hers, the Hensels. There he met some of the best musical society of the place, made a pleasant impression, and was invited to return. Meanwhile, winter had set in, with extreme severity. Piercing north winds drove down the narrow streets, and raged round the corners of the Gewandhaus square: on emerging from the PROBE on a Wednesday morning, one's breath was cut clean off, and the tears raced down one's cheeks. When the wind dropped, there were hard black frosts--a deadly, stagnant kind of cold, which seemed to penetrate every pore of the skin and every cranny of the house. Then came the snow, which fell for three days and nights on end, and for several nights after, so that the town was lost under a white pall: house-entrances were with difficulty kept free, and the swept streets were banked with walls of snow, four and five feet high. The night-frosts redoubled their keenness; the snow underfoot crackled like electric sparks; the sleighs crunched the roads. But except for this, and for the tinkling of the sleigh-bells, the streets were as noiseless as though laid with straw, and especially while fresh snow still formed a soft coating on the crisp layer below. All dripping water hung as icicles; water froze in ewers and pitchers; milk froze in cans and jugs; and this though the great stoves in the dwelling-rooms were heated to bursting-point. Red-nosed, red-eared men, on whose beards and moustaches the breath had turned to ice-drops, cried to one another at street-corners that such a winter had not been known for thirty years; and, as they spoke, they stamped their feet, and clapped their hands, to keep the chilly blood agoing. Women muffled and veiled themselves like Orientals, hardly showing the tips of their noses; and all manner of strange, antiquated fur-garments saw the day. At night, if one opened a window, and peered out at the houses crouching beneath their thick white load, and at the deserted, snow-bound streets, over which the street-lamps threw a pale, uncertain light--at night, familiar things took on an unfamiliar aspect, and the well-known streets might have been the untrodden ways that led to a new world. Early in November, all ponds and pools were bearing, and forthwith many hundreds of people forgot the severity of the weather, and thronged out with their skates. Maurice was among the first. He was a passionate skater; and it was the one form of sport in which he excelled. As four o'clock came round, he could contain himself no longer; he would rather have gone without his dinner, than have missed, on the JOHANNATEICH, the two hours that elapsed before the sweepers, crying: "FEIERABEND!" drove the skaters before them, with their brooms. In a tightly buttoned square jacket, the collar of which was turned up as far as it would go, with the flaps of his astrachan cap drawn over his cars, his hands in coarse woollen gloves, Maurice defied the cold, flying round the two ponds that formed the JOHANNATEICH, or practising intricate figures with a Canadian acquaintance in a corner. Madeleine watched him approvingly from one of the wooden bridges that spanned the neck connecting the ponds. She rejoiced at his glowing face and vigorous, boyish pleasure, also at the skill that marked him out as one of the best skaters present. For some time, Maurice tried in vain to persuade her to join him. Madeleine, usually so confident, was here diffident and timid. She had never in her life attempted to skate, and was sure she would fall. And what should she do if she broke a thumb or strained a finger?--with her PRUFUNG just before the door. She would never have the courage to confess to Schwarz how it had happened; for he was against "sport" in any form. But Maurice laughed at her fears. "There is not the least chance of your falling," he cried up to her. "Do come down, Madeleine. Before you've gone round twice, you'll be able to throw off all those mufflings." Finally, she let herself be persuaded, and according to his promise, Maurice remained at her side from the moment of her first, hesitating steps, each of which was accompanied by a faint scream, to the time when, with the aid of only one of his hands, she made uncertain efforts at striking out. She did not learn quickly; but she was soon as enthusiastic a skater as Maurice himself; and he fell into the habit of calling for her, every afternoon, on his way to the ponds. Dove was also of assistance in the beginning, and, as usual, was well up in the theory of the thing, though he did not shine in practice. "Oh, bother, never mind how you go at first. That'll come afterwards," said Maurice impatiently. But Dove thought the rules should be observed from the beginning, and gave Madeleine minute instructions how to place her feet. Towards five o'clock, the ice grew more crowded, and especially was this the case on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when the schools had half-holidays. On one of these latter days, Maurice did not find Madeleine at home; and he had been on the ponds for nearly an hour, before he espied her on a bench beside the GARDEROBE, having her skates put on by a blue-smocked attendant. He waved his cap to her, and skated over. "Why are you so late?" "Oh, thank goodness, there you are. I should never have dared to stand up alone in this crowd. Aren't these children awful? Get away, you little brutes! If you touch me, I'll fall.--Here, give me change," she said to the ice-man, holding out a twenty-pfennig piece. Maurice saw that she was unusually excited, and as soon as he had drawn her out of reach of the children, asked her the reason. "I've something interesting to tell you, Maurice." But here Dove, coming up behind, took possession of her left hand, with no other greeting than the military salute, which, on the ice, he adopted for all his friends, male and female, alike; and Madeleine hastily swallowed the rest of her sentence. They skated round the larger of the ponds several times without stopping. The cold evening air stung their faces; the sun had gone down in a lurid haze; Madeleine's skirts swayed behind her and lent her a fictitious grace. But presently she cried a halt, and while she rested in a quiet corner, they watched Maurice doing a complicated figure, which he and his Canadian friend had invented the day before. Dove was explaining how it was done--"It is really not so hard as it looks"--when, with a cry of "ACHTUNG!" some one whizzed in among them, scattered the group, and, revolving on himself, ended with a jump in the air. It was James. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, in the most unconcerned manner possible. "I don't think such acrobatic tricks should be allowed," said Madeleine disapprovingly; she had been forced to grab Dove's arm to keep her balance. "Say, do you boys know the river has six inches and will be open to-morrow, if it isn't to-day?" asked James, stooping to tighten a strap. "Is that so? Oh gee, that's fine!" cried Miss Martin, who had skated leisurely up in his rear. "Say, you people, why don't we fix up a party an' go up it nights? A lady in my boarding-house done that with some folks she was acquainted with last year. Seems to me we oughtn't to be behind." Miss Martin was a skilled and graceful skater, and looked her best in a dark fur hat and jacket, which set off her abundance of pale flaxen hair. Others had followed her, and it was resolved to form a party for the following evening, provided Dove had previously ascertained if the river actually was "free," in order that they ran no risk of being ignominiously turned off. "The ice may be a bit rough, but it's a fine run to Connewitz." "An' by moonlight, too--but say, is there a moon? Why, I presume there ought to be," said Miss Martin. "'Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?'" quoted Dove, examining a tiny pocket-calendar. "Oh gee, that's fine!" repeated Miss Martin, on hearing his answer. "Say, we must dance a FRANCAISE. Mr. Guest, you an' I'll be partners, I surmise," and ceasing to waltz and pirouette with James, she took a long sweep, then stood steady, and let her skates bear her out to the middle of the pond. Her skirts clung close in front, and swept out behind her lithe figure, until it was lost in the crowd. "Don't you wish YOU could skate like that?" asked the sharp-tongued little student, called Dickensey, who was standing beside Madeleine. Madeleine, who held him in contempt because his trousers were baggy at the knees, and because he had once appeared at a ball in white cotton gloves, answered with asperity that there were other things in life besides skating. She had no further chance of speaking to Maurice in private, so postponed telling her news till the following evening. Shortly after eight o'clock, the next night, a noisy party whistled and hallooed in the street below Maurice's window. He was the last to join, and then some ten or eleven of them picked their steps along the hard-frozen ruts of the SCHLEUSSIGER WEG, a road that followed the river to the outskirts of the town. Just above the GERMANIABAD, a rough scat had been erected on the ice, for the convenience of skaters. They were the first to make use of it; the snow before it was untrodden; and the Pleisse wound white and solitary between its banks of snow. They set off in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, each striking out for himself. When, however, they had passed the narrower windings, gone under the iron bridge which was low enough to catch the unwary by the forehead, and when the full breadth of the river was before them, they took hands, and, forming a long line, skated in time to the songs some one struck up, and in which all joined: THE ROSE OF SHARON, JINGLE BELLS, THERE IS A TAVERN IN OUR TOWN. As they advanced to the corners where the big trees trailed their naked branches on the ice, just as in summer they sank their leaves in the water, Miss Jensen, who, despite her proportions, was a surprisingly good skater, sent her big voice over the snow-bound stillness in an aria from the PROPHET; and after this, Miss Martin, no; to be done, struck up the popular ALLERSEELEN. This was the song of the hour; they all knew it, and up and down and across the ice rang out their voices in unison: WIE EINST IM MAI, WIE EINST IM MAI. Inside Wagner's WALDCAFE at Connewitz, they sat closely packed round one of the wooden tables, and drank beer and coffee, and ate BERLINER PFANNKUCHEN. The great iron stove was almost red-hot; the ladies threw off their wrappings; cold faces glowed and burnt, and frozen hands tingled. One and all were in high spirits, and the jollity reached a climax when, having exchanged hats, James and Miss Jensen cleared a space in the middle of the floor and danced a nigger-dance, the lady with her skirts tucked up above her ankles. In the adjoining room, some one began to play a concertina, and then two or three couples stood up and danced, with much laughter and many outcries at the narrowness of the space. Even Dove joined in, his partner being a very pretty American, whom Miss Martin had brought with her, and whose side Dove had not left for a moment. Only Madeleine and Dickensey sat aloof, and for once were agreed: Americans were really "very bad form." There was no livelier pair than Maurice and Miss Martin; the latter's voice could be heard above all others, as she taught Maurice new steps in a corner of the room. Her flaxen hair had partly come loose, and she did not stop to put it up. They were the first to run through the dark garden, past the snow-laden benches and arbours, which, in summer, were buried in greenery; and, from the low wooden landing place, they jumped hand in hand on to the ice, and had shot a long way down the river before any of the rest could follow them. But this did not please Madeleine. As it was, she was vexed at not having had the opportunity of a quiet word with Maurice; and when she had laboriously skated up, with Dickensey, to the spot where, in a bright splash of moonlight, Maurice and Miss Martin were cutting ingenious capers, she cried to the former in a peremptory tone: "There's something wrong with my skate, Maurice. Will you look at it, please?" and as sharply declined Dickensey's proffered aid. Maurice came to her side at once, and in this way she detained him. But Dickensey hovered not far off, and Miss Martin was still in sight. Madeleine caught her skate in a crack, fell on her knee, and said she had now loosened the strap altogether. She sat down on a heap of snow, and Dickensey's shade vanished good-naturedly round a corner. "Well, YOU seem to be enjoying yourself," she said as Maurice drew off his gloves and knelt down. "Why, yes, aren't you?" he replied so frankly that she did not continue the subject. "I've been trying all the evening to get a word with you. I told you yesterday, you remember, that I wanted to speak to you. Sit down here, for a moment, so that we can talk in peace," and she spread part of her skirt over the snow-heap. Maurice complied, and she could not discover any trace of reluctance in his manner. "I want your advice," she continued. "I was taken quite by surprise myself. Schwarz sent for me, you know, after counterpoint. It was about my PRUFUNG at Easter. If I play then, it's a case of the C minor Beethoven. Well, now he says it's a thousand pities for me to break off just at the stage I'm at, and he wants me to stay for another year. If I do, he'll give me the G major--that's a temptation, isn't it? On the other hand, I shall have been here my full time--three years--at Easter. That's a year longer than I originally intended, and I feel I'm getting too old to be a pupil. But this talk with Schwarz has upset my plans. I'm naturally flattered at his interesting himself in me. He wouldn't do it for every one. And I do feel I could gain an immense deal in another year.--Now, what do you think?" "Why, stay, of course, Madeleine. If you can afford it, that is. I can't imagine anyone wanting to leave." "Oh, my capital will last so long, and it's a good enough investment." "But wasn't a place being kept open for you in a school?" "Yes; but I don't think a year more or less will make much difference to them. I must sound them, of course, though," said Madeleine, and did not mention that she had written and posted the letter the night before. "Then you advise me to stay?" "Why, of course," he repeated, and was mildly astonished at her. "If everything is as smooth as you say." "You would miss me, if I left?" "Why, of course I should," he said again, and wondered what in the world she was driving at. "Well, all the better," replied Madeleine. "For when one has really got to like a person, one would rather it made a difference than not." She was silent after this, and sat looking down the stretch of ice they had travelled: the moon was behind a cloud, and the woods on either side were masses of dense black shadow. Not a soul was in sight; the river was like a deserted highway. Madeleine stared down it, and did not feel exactly satisfied with the result of her investigation. She had not expected anything extraordinary--Heaven forbid!--but she had been uncomfortably conscious of Maurice's surprise. To her last remark, he had made no answer: he was occupied with the screw of one of his skates. She drew his attention to the fact that, if she remained in Leipzig for another twelvemonth, they would finish at the same time; and thereupon she sketched out a plan of them going somewhere together, and starting a music-school of their own. Maurice, who thought she was jesting, laughingly assented. But Madeleine was in earnest: "Other people have done it--why shouldn't we? We could take a 'cellist with us, and go to America, or Australia, or Canada--there are hundreds of places. And there's a great deal of money in it, I'm sure. A little capital would be needed to begin with, but not much, and I could supply that. You've always said you dreaded going back to the English provinces to decay--here's your chance!" She saw the whole scheme cut and dried before her. As they, skated after the rest, she continued to enlarge upon it, in a detailed way that astonished Maurice. He confessed that, with a head like hers to conduct it, such a plan stood a fair chance of success; and thus encouraged, Madeleine undertook to make a kind of beginning at once, by sounding some of the numerous friends she had, scattered through America. Her idea was that they should go over together, and travel to various places, giving concerts, and acquainting themselves, as they did so, with the musical conditions of the towns they visited. "And the 'cellist shall be an American--that will draw." According to the pace at which they were skating, the others should have remained well out of reach. But on turning a corner, they came upon the whole party dancing a FRANCAISE--which two members whistled--on a patch of ice that was smoother than the rest. "Here, Guest, come along, we want you," was the cry as soon as Maurice appeared; and, to Madeleine's deep displeasure, she was thrown on Dove, whose skill had not sufficed. When the dancing was over, Maurice once more found himself with Miss Martin, whom, for some distance, he pushed before him, she standing steady on her skates, and talking to him over her shoulder. "That wasn't a bit pretty of you, Mr. Guest," she asserted, with her long, slow, twanged speech. "It was fixed up yesterday, I recollect, that you were to dance the FRANCAISE with me. Yes, indeed. An' then I had to take up with Mr. Dove. Now Mr. Dove is just a lovely gentleman, but he don't skate elegantly, an' he nearly tumbled me twice. Yes, indeed. But I presume when Miss Wade says come, then you're most obliged to go." "How is it one don't ever see you now?" she queried a moment later. "It isn't anyhow so pleasurable at dinner as it used to be. But I hear you're working most hard--it's to' bad." "It's what one comes to here." "I guess it is. But I do like to see my friends once in a while. Say, now, Mr. Guest, won't you drink coffee with me one afternoon? I'll make you some real American coffee if you do, sir. What they call coffee here don't count." She turned, offered him her hand, and they began to skate in long, outward curving lines. "I think one has just a fine time here, don't you?" she continued. "Momma, she came right with me, an' stopped a bit, till I was fixed up in a boarding-house. But she didn't find it agreeable, no sir. She missed America, an' presumed I would, too. When she was leaving, she said to me: 'EI'nor Martin, if you find you can't endure it among these Dutch, just you cable, and poppa he'll come along an' fetch you right home,' But I'm sure I haven't desired to quit, no, not once. I think it's just fine. But then I've gotten me so many friends I don't ever need to feel lonesome. Why, my friend Susie Fay, she says: 'Why, EI'nor, I guess you're acquainted with most every one in the place.' An' I reckon she's not far out. Anyways there ain't more than two Americans in the city I don't know. An' I see most all strangers that come. Say, are you acquainted with Miss Moses? She's from Chicago, an' resides in a boarding-house way down by the COLONNADEN. I got acquainted with her yesterday. She's a lovely lady, an', why, she's just as smart as she can be. Say, if you like, I'll invite her along, so you can get acquainted with her too." Maurice expressed pleasure at the prospect; and Miss Martin continued to rattle on, with easy frankness, of herself, her family, and her friends. He listened vaguely, with half an ear, since it was only required of him to throw in an occasional word of assent. But suddenly his attention was arrested, and brought headlong back to what she was saying: in the string of names that fell from her tongue, he believed he had caught one he knew. "Miss Dufrayer?" he queried. "That's it," replied his companion. "Louise Dufrayer. Well, sir, as I was going on to remark, when first I was acquainted with her, she was just as sweet as she could be; yes, indeed; why, she was just dandy. But she hasn't behaved a bit pretty--I presume you heard tell of what took place here this fall?" "Then you know Miss Dufrayer?" "Yes, indeed. But I don't see her any more, an' I guess I don't want to. Not but what I've heard she feels pretty mean about it now--beg pardon?--how I know? Why, indeed, the other day, Schwarz come in an' told us how she's moping what she can--moping herself to death--if I recollect, those were his very words. Yes, indeed. She don't take lessons no more, I presume. I think she should go right away from this city. It ain't possible to be acquainted with her any more, for all she's so lonesome, an' one feels sort of bad about it, yes, indeed. But momma, the last thing she said to me was: 'Now EI'nor Martin, just keep your eyes open, an' don't get acquainted with people you might feel bad about afterwards.' An' I presume momma was right. I don't-- Oh, say, do look at her, isn't she a peach?"--this, as her pretty friend, with Dove in tow, came gliding up to them. "Say, Susie Fay, are you acquainted with Mr. Guest?" "MR. Guest. Pleased to know you," said Susie cordially; and Miss Martin was good-natured enough to skate off with Dove, leaving Maurice to her friend. But afterwards, at the bench, as he was undoing Madeleine's skates, he overheard pretty Susie remark, without much care to moderate her voice: "Say, EI'nor Martin, that's the quietest sort of young man I've ever shown round a district. Why, seems to me, he couldn't say 'shoh.' Guess you shouldn't have left us, EI'nor." And Miss Martin guessed so, too. VII. When he had seen Madeleine home, Maurice returned to his room, and not feeling inclined to sleep, sat down to read. But his thoughts strayed; he forgot to turn the page; and sat staring over the book at the pattern of the tablecloth. Incidents of the evening flashed before him: Miss Jensen, in James's hat, with her skirts pinned up; Madeleine earnest and decisive on the bank of snow; the maze and laughter of the FRANCAISE; Miss Martin's slim, straight figure as he pushed her before him. He did not try to control these details, nor was he conscious of a mental effort; they stood out for an instant, as vivid sensations, then glided by, to make room for others. But, as he let them pass, he became aware that below them, in depths of his mind he had believed undisturbed, there was present a feeling of strange unhappiness, which he did not know the cause of: these sharp pictures resembled an attempt on the part of his mind, to deceive him as to what was really going on in him. But he did not want to know, and he allowed his thoughts to take wider flights: recalling the scheme Madeleine had proposed, he considered it with a clearness of view, which, at the time, had been impossible. From this, he turned to America itself, and reflected on the opportunities the country offered. He saw the two of them sweeping through vast tracts of uncultivated land, in a train that outdid all real trains in swiftness; saw unknown tropical places, where the yellow fruit hung low and heavy, and people walked shadeless, sandy roads, in white hats, under white umbrellas. He saw Madeleine and himself on the awning-spanned deck of an ocean steamer, anchoring in a harbour where the sea was the colour of turquoise, touched to sapphire where the mountains came down to the shore. "Moping herself to death": the phrase crystallised in his brain with such suddenness that he said it aloud. Now he knew what it was that was troubling him. He had not consciously recalled the words, nor had they even made a very incisive impression on him at the time; but they had evidently lain dormant, now to return and to strike him, as if no others had been said. He explained to himself what they meant. It was this: outside, in the crisp, stinging air, people lived and moved, busy with many matters, or sported, as he and his companions had done that evening: inside, she sat alone, mournful, forsaken. He saw her in the dark sofacorner, with her head on her hands. Day passed and night passed, but she was always in the same place; and her head was bowed so low that her white fingers were lost in the waves of her hair. He saw her thus with the distinctness of a vision, and except in this way could not see her at all. He felt it little short of shameful that he should have carelessly amused himself; and, as always where she was concerned, a deep, unreasoning sense of his own unworthiness, filled him. He demanded of himself, with a new energy, what he could do to help her. Fantastic plans rose as usual in his mind, and as usual were dismissed. For the one thing he was determined not to do, was to thrust himself on her uncalled. Her solitude was of her own choosing, and no one had the right to break in upon it. It was perhaps her way of doing penance; and, at this thought, he felt a thrill of satisfaction. At night, he consoled himself that things would seem different in the morning; but when he wakened from a restless sleep, crowded with dreams one more grotesque than another, he was still prone to be gloomy. He could think more clearly by daylight--that was all: his pitying sympathy for her had only increased. It interfered with everything he did; just as it had formerly done--just in the old way. And he had been on the brink of believing himself grown indifferent, and stronger in common sense. Fool that he was! Only a word was needed to bring his card-house down. The placidity of the past weeks had been a mere coating of thin ice, which had given way beneath the first test. A distrust of himself took him, a distrust so deep that it amounted to aversion; for in his present state of mind he discerned only a despicable weakness. But though he was thus bewildered at his own inconsistency, he was still assured that he would not approach Louise--not, that is, unless she sent for him. So much control he still had over his actions: and he went so far as to make his staying away a touchstone of his stability. This, too, although reason told him the end of it all would be, that Louise would actually leave Leipzig, without sending for him, or even remembering his existence. He worked steadily enough. A skilled observer might have remarked a slight contraction of the corners of his mouth; none of his friends, however, noticed anything, with the exception of Madeleine, and all she said was: "You look so cross sometimes. Is anything the matter?" Late one afternoon, they were on the ice as usual. While Madeleine talked to Dickensey, Maurice practised beside them. In making a particularly complicated gyration, he all but overbalanced himself, and his cap fell on the ice. As he was brushing the snow off it, he chanced to raise his eyes. A number of people were standing on the wooden bridge, watching the skaters; to the front, some children climbed and pushed on the wooden railing. His eye was ranging carelessly over them, when he started so violently that he again let his cap drop. He picked it up, threw another hasty look at the bridge, then turned and skated some distance away, where he could see without being seen. Yes, he had not been mistaken; it was Louise; he recognised her although a fur hat almost covered her hair. She was gazing down, with an intentness he knew in her; one hand rested on the parapet. And then, as he looked, his blood seemed to congeal: she was not alone; he saw her turn and speak to some one behind her. For a moment things swam before him. Then, a blind curiosity drove him forward to find out whom she spoke to. People moved on the bridge, obstructing his view, then several went away, and there was no further hindrance to his seeing: her companion was the shabby little Englishman, of doubtful reputation, with whom he had met her once or twice that summer. He felt himself grow cold. But now that he had certainty, his chief idea was to prevent the others from knowing, too; he grew sick at the thought of Madeleine's sharp comments, and Dickensey's cynicism. Rejoining them, he insisted--so imperiously that Madeleine showed surprise--on their skating with him on the further pond; and he kept them going round and round without a pause. When the bridge was empty, and he had made sure that Louise was not standing anywhere about the edge of the ice, he left his companions, and, without explanation, crossed to the benches and took off his skates. He did not, however, go home; he went into the SCHEIBENHOLZ, and from there along outlying roads till he reached the river; and then, screwing on his skates again, he struck out with his face to the wind. Dusk was falling; at first he met some skaters making for home; but these were few, and he soon left them behind. When the state of the ice did not allow of his skating further, he plunged into the woods again, beyond Connewitz, tumbling in his haste, tripping over snow-bound roots, sinking kneedeep in the soft snow. His endeavour was to exhaust himself. If he sat at home now, before this fever was out of him, he might be tempted to knock his head against the wall of his room. Movement, space, air--plenty of air!--that was what he needed. Hitherto, he had been surprised at his own conduct; now he was aghast: the hot rush of jealousy that had swept through him at the sight of the couple on the bridge, was a revelation even to himself. His previous feelings had been those of a child compared with this--a mere weak revolt against the inevitable. But what had now happened was not inevitable; that was the sting of it: it was a violent chance-effect. And his distress was so keen that, for the first time, she, too, had to bear her share of blame. He said jeeringly to himself, that, quixotic as ever, he had held aloof from her, leaving her in solitude to an atonement of his own imagining; and meanwhile, some one who was not troubled by foolish ideals stepped in and took his place. For it WAS his place; he could not rid himself of that belief. If anyone had a right to be at her side it was he, unless, indeed, all that he had undergone on her behalf during the past months counted for nothing. Of course this Eggis was an unscrupulous fellow; but it was just such men as this--he might note that for future use--who won where others lost. At the same time, he shrank from the idea of imitating him; and even had he been bold enough, not a single errand could he devise to serve him as an excuse. He could not go to her and say: I come because I have seen you with some one else. And yet that would be the truth; and it would lurk beneath all he said. The days of anxiety that followed were hard to bear. He dreaded every street-corner, for fear Louise and the other should turn it; dreaded raising his eyes to the bridges over the ice; and was so irritable in temper that Madeleine suggested he should go to Dresden in the Christmas holidays, for change of air. For, over all this, Christmas had come down--the season of gift-making, and glittering Christmas trees, of BOWLE, STOLLEN, and HONIGKUCHEN. For a fortnight beforehand, the open squares and places were set out with fir-trees of all sizes--their pungent fragrance met one at every turn: the shops were ablaze till late evening, crowded with eagerly seeking purchasers; the streets were impassible for the masses of country people that thronged them. Every one carried brown paper parcels, and was in a hurry. As the time drew near, subordinates and officials grew noticeably polite; the very houseporter touched his cap at your approach. Bakers' shops were piled high with WEIHNACHTSSTOLLEN, which were a special mark of the festival: cakes shaped like torpedoes, whose sugared, almonded coats brisked brown and tempting. But the spicy scent of the firs was the motive that recurred most persistently: it clung even to the stairways of the houses. Maurice had assisted Madeleine with her circumstantial shopping; and, at dusk on Christmas Eve, he helped her to carry her parcels to the house of some German friends. He himself was invited to Miss Jensen's, where a party of English and Americans would celebrate the evening in their own fashion; but not till eight o'clock. When he had picked out at a confectioner's, a TORTE for the Fursts, he did not know how to kill time. He was in an unsettled mood, and the atmosphere of excitement, which had penetrated the familiar details of life, jarred on him. It seemed absurdly childish, the way in which even the grown-up part of the population surrendered itself to the sentimental pleasures of the season. But foreigners were only big children; or, at least, they could lay aside age and dignity at will. He felt misanthropic, and went for a long walk; and when he had passed the last tree-market, where poor buyers were bargaining for the poor trees that were left, he met only isolated stragglers. In some houses, the trees were already lighted. On his return, he went to a flower-shop in the KONIGSPLATZ, and chose an azalea to take to Miss Jensen. While he was waiting for the pot to be swathed in crimped paper, his eye was caught by a large bunch of red and yellow roses, which stood in a vase at the back of the counter. He regarded them for a moment, without conscious thought; then, suddenly colouring, he stretched out his hand. "I'll take those roses, too. What do they cost?" The girl who served him--a very pretty girl, with plaits of straw-coloured hair, wound Madonna-like round her head--named a sum that seemed exorbitant to his inexperience, and told a wordy story of how they had been ordered, and then countermanded at the last moment. "A pity. Such fine flowers!" Her interest was awakened in the rather shabby young man who paid the price without flinching; and she threw inquisitive looks at him as she wrapped the roses in tissue-paper. A moment later, Maurice was in the street with the flowers in his hand. He had acted so spontaneously that he now believed his mind to have been made up before he entered the shop; no, more, as if all that had happened during the past week had led straight up to his impulsive action. Or was it only that, at the sight of the flowers, a kind of refrain had begun to run through his head: she loves roses, loves roses? But he did not give himself time for reflection; he hurried through the cold night air, sheltering the flowers under his coat. Soon he was once more in the BRUDERSTRASSE, on the stair, every step of which, though he had only climbed it some three or four times, he seemed to know by heart. As, however, he waited for the door to be opened, his heart misgave him; he was not sure how she would regard his gift, and, in a burst of cowardice, he resolved just to hand in the roses, without even leaving his name. But his first ring remained unanswered, and before he rang again, he had time to be afraid she would not be at home--a simple, but disappointing solution. There was another pause. Then he heard sounds, steps came along the passage, and the door was opened by Louise herself. He was so unprepared for this that he could not collect his wits; he thrust the flowers into her hand, with a few stammered words, and his foot was on the stair before she could make a movement to stop him. Louise had peered out from the darkness of the passage to the dusk of the landing, with the air of one roused from sleep. She looked from him to the roses in her hand, and back at him. He tried to say something else, raised his hat, and was about to go. But, when she saw this, she impulsively stepped towards him. "Are they for me?" she asked. And added: "Will you not come in? Please, come in." At the sound of her voice, Maurice came back from the stair-head. But it was not possible for him to stay: friends--engaged--a promise of long standing. "Ah then ... of course." She retreated into the shadow of the doorway. "But I am quite alone. There is no one in but me." "Why, however does that happen?" Maurice asked quickly, and was ready at once to be wrath with all the world. He paused irresolute, with his hand on the banisters. "I said I didn't mind. But it is lonely." "I should think it was.--On this night of all others, too." He followed her down the passage. In the room there was no light except what played on the walls from the streetlamps, the blinds being still undrawn. She had been sitting in the dark. Now, she took the globe off the lamp, and would have lighted it, but she could not find matches. "Let me do it," said Maurice, taking out his own; and, over the head of this trifling service, he had a feeling of intense satisfaction. By the light that was cast on the table, he watched her free the roses from their paper, and raise them to her face. She did not mention them again, but it was ample thanks to see her touch several of them singly, as she put them in a jug of water. But this done, they sat on opposite sides of the table, and had nothing to say to each other. After each banal observation he made came a heart-rending pause; she let a subject drop as soon as it was broached. It was over two months now since Maurice had seen her, and he was startled by the change that had taken place in her. Her face seemed to have grown longer; and there were hollows in the fine oval of the cheeks, in consequence of which the nose looked larger, and more pinched. The chin-lines were sharpened, the eyes more sunken, while the shadows beneath them were as dark as though they were plastered on with bistre. But it was chiefly the expression of the face that had altered: the lifelessness of the eyes was new to it, and the firm compression of the mouth: now, when she smiled, no thin line of white appeared, such as he had been used to watch for. Even more marked than this, though, was the change that had taken place in her manner. He had known her as passionately self-assertive; and he could not now accustom himself to the condition of apathy in which he found her. "Moping to death" had been no exaggeration; help was needed here, and at once, if she were not to be irretrievably injured. As he thought these things, he talked at random. There were not many topics, however, that could be touched on with impunity, and he returned more than once to the ice and the skating, as offering a kind of neutral ground, on which he was safe. And Louise listened, and sometimes assented; but her look was that of one who listens to the affairs of another world. Could she not be persuaded to join them on the JOHANNATEICH, he was asking her. What matter though she did not skate! It was easily learned. Madeleine had been a beginner that winter, and now seldom missed an afternoon. "Oh, if Madeleine is there, I should not go," she said with a touch of the old arrogance. Then he told her of the frozen river, with its long, lonely, grey-white reaches. Her eyes kindled at this, he fancied, and in her answer was more of herself. "I have never trodden on ice in my life. Oh, I should be afraid--horribly afraid!" For those who did not skate there were chairs, he urged--big, green-painted, sledge-like chairs, which ran smoothly. The ice was many inches thick; there was not the least need to be afraid. But she only smiled, and did not answer. "Then I can't persuade you?" he asked, and was annoyed at his own powerlessness. She can go with Eggis, he told himself, and simultaneously spoke out the thought. "I saw you on the bridge the other day." But if he had imagined this would rouse her, he was wrong. "Yes?" she said indifferently, and with that laming want of curiosity which prevents a subject from being followed up. They sat in silence for some seconds. With her fingers, she pulled at the fringe of the tablecloth. Then, all of a sudden rising from her chair, she went over to the jug of roses, which she had placed on the writing-table, bent over the flowers with a kind of perceptible hesitation, and as suddenly came back to her seat. "Suppose we went to-night." she said, and for the first time looked hard at Maurice. "To-night?" he had echoed, before he could check himself. "Ah yes--I forgot. You are going out." "That's the least of it," he answered, and stood up, fearful lest she should sink back into her former listlessness. "But it's Christmas Eve. There wouldn't be a soul on the river but ourselves. Are you sure you would like it?" "Just for that reason," she replied, and wound her handkerchief in and out of her hands, so afraid was she now that he would refuse. "I could be ready in five minutes." With his brain in a whirl, Maurice went back to the flowershop, and, having written a few words of apology on a card, ordered this to be sent with his purchase to Miss Jensen. When he returned, Louise was ready. But he was not satisfied: she did not know how cold it would be: and he made her put on a heavy jacket under her fur cape, and take a silk shawl, in which, if necessary, she could muffle up her head. He himself carried a travelling-rug for her knees. "As if we were going on a journey!" she said, as she obeyed him. Her eyes shone with a spark of their old light, in approval of the adventurous nature of their undertaking. The hard-frozen streets, over which a cutting wind drove, were deserted. In many windows, the golden glory of the CHRISTBAUM was visible; the steep blackness of the houses was splashed with patches of light. At intervals, a belated holidaymaker was still to be met with hurrying townwards: only they two were leaving the town, and its innocent revels, behind them. Maurice had a somewhat guilty feeling about the whole affair: they also belonged by rights to the town to-night. He was aware, too, of a vague anxiety, which he could not repress; and these feelings successfully prevented him taking an undue pleasure in what was happening to him. He had swung his skates, fetched in passing, over his shoulder; and they walked as quickly as the slippery snow permitted. Louise had not spoken since leaving the house; she also stood mutely by, while the astonished boatman, knocked out in the middle of his festivities, unlocked the boat-shed where the ice-chairs were kept. The Christmas punch had made him merry; he multiplied words, and was even a little facetious at their expense. According to him, a snow-storm was imminent, and he warned them not to be late in returning. Maurice helped Louise into the chair, and wrapped the rug round her. If she were really afraid, as she had asserted, she did not show it. Even after they had started, she remained as silent as before; indeed, on looking back, Maurice thought they had not exchanged a word all the way to Connewitz. He pushed in a kind of dream; the wind was with them, and it was comparatively easy work; but the ice was rough, and too hard, and there were seamy cracks to be avoided. The snow had drifted into huge piles at the sides; and, as they advanced, it lay unswept on their track. It was a hazily bright night, but rapid clouds were passing. Not a creature was to be seen: had a rift opened in the ice, and had they two gone through it, the mystery of their disappearance would never have been solved. Slight, upright, unfathomable as the night, Louise sat before him. What her thoughts were on this fantastic journey, he never knew, nor just what secret nerve in her was satisfied by it. By leaning sideways, he could see that her eyes were fixed on the grey-white stretch to be travelled: her warm breath came back to him; and the coil of her hair, with its piquant odour, was so close that, by bending, he could have touched it with his lips. But he was still in too detached a mood to be happy; he felt, throughout, as if all this were happening to some one else, not to him. At their journey's end, he helped her, cold and stiff, along the snowy path to the WALDCAFE. In a corner of the big room, which was empty, they sat beside the stove, before cups of steaming coffee. The landlady served them herself, and looked with the same curious interest as the boatman at the forlorn pair. Louise had laid her fur cap aside with her other wraps, and had drawn off her gloves; and now she sat with her hand propping her chin. She was still disinclined to speak; from the expression of her eyes, Maurice judged that her thought were very far away. Sitting opposite her, he shaded his own eyes with his hand, and scrutinised her closely. In the stronger light of this room, he could see more plainly than before the havoc trouble had made of her face. And yet, in spite of the shadows that had descended on it, it was still to him the most adorable face in the world. He could not analyse his feelings any better now than in the beginning; but this face had exactly the same effect upon him now as then. It seemed to be a matter of the nerves. Nor was it the face alone: it was also the lines of throat and chin, when she turned her head; it was the gesture with which she fingered the knot of hair on her neck; above all, her hands, whose every movement was full of meaning: yes, these things sent answering ripples through him, as sound does through air. He had stared too openly: she felt his eyes, and raised her own. For a few seconds, they looked at each other. Then she held out her hand. "You are my friend." He pressed it, without replying; he could not think of anything suitable to say; what rose to his lips was too emotional, too tell-tale. But he made a vow that, from this day on, she should never doubt the truth of what she said. "You are my friend." He would take care of her as no one had ever yet tried to do. She might safely give herself into his charge. The unobtrusive aid that was mingled tenderness and respect, should always be hers. "Are you warmer now?" He could not altogether suppress the new note that had got into his voice. All strangeness seemed to have been swept away between them; he was wide-awake to the fact that he was sitting alone with her, apart from the rest of the world. He looked at his watch: it was time to go; but she begged for a little longer, and so they sat on for another half-hour, in the warm and drowsy stillness. Outside, they found a leaden sky; and they had not gone far before snow began to fall: great flakes came flying to them, smiting their faces, stinging their eyes, melting on their lips. The wind was against them; they were exposed to the full force of the blizzard. Maurice pushed till he panted; but their progress was slow. At intervals, he stopped, to shake the snow off the rug, and to enwrap Louise afresh; and each violent gust that met him when he turned a corner, smote him doubly; for he pictured to himself the fury with which it must hurl itself against her, sitting motionless before it. It took them twice as long to return; and when Louise tried to get out of the chair, she found herself so paralysed with cold that she could hardly stand. Blinded by the snow, she clung to Maurice's arm; he heard her teeth chatter, as they toiled their way along the ARNDTSTRASSE, through the thick, new snow-layer. Not a droschke was to be seen; and they were half-way home before they met one. The driver was drunk or asleep, and had first to be roused. Louise sank limply into a corner. The cab slithered and slipped over the dangerous roads, jolting them from side to side. Maurice had laid the rug across her knees, and she had ceased to shiver. But, by the light of a street-lamp which they passed, he was dismayed to see that tears were running down her cheeks. "What is it? Are you so cold?--Just a little patience. We shall soon be there." He took her hand, and chafed it. At this, she began to cry. He did not know how to comfort her, and looked out of the window, scanning each house they passed, to see if it were not the last. She was still crying when the cab drew up. The house-key had been forgotten; there was nothing for it but to ring for the landlady, and to stand in the wind till she came down. The old woman was not so astonished as Maurice had expected; but she was very wroth at the folly of the proceeding, and did not scruple to say so. "SO 'NE DUMMHEIT, SO 'NE DUMMHEIT!" she mumbled, as, between them, they got Louise up the stairs; and she treated Maurice's advice concerning cordials and hot drinks with scant courtesy. "JA, JA--JAWOHL!" she sniffed. And, on the landing, the door was shut in his face. VIII. What she needed, what she had always needed, was a friend, he said to himself. She had never had anyone to stand by her and advise her to wisdom, in the matter of impulsive acts and wishes. He would be that friend. He had not, it was true, made a very happy beginning, with the expedition that had ended so unfortunately; but he promised himself not to be led into an indiscretion of the kind again. It was a friend's part to warn in due time, and to point out the possible consequences of a rash act. He only excused his behaviour because he had not seen her for over two months, and had felt too sorry for her to refuse the first thing she asked of him. But from now on, he would be firm. He would win her back to life--reawaken her interest in what was going on around her. He would devote himself to serving her: not selfishly, as others had done, with their own ends in view; the gentle, steady aid should be hers, which he had always longed to give her. He felt strong enough to face any contingency: it seemed, indeed, as if his love for her had all along been aiming at this issue; as if each of the unhappy hours he had spent, since first meeting her, was made up for by the words: "You are my friend." A deep sense of responsibility filled him. In obedience, however, to a puritanic streak in his nature, he hedged himself round with restrictions, lest he should believe he was setting out on all too primrose a path. He erected limiting boundaries, which were not to be overstepped. For example, on the two days that followed the memorable Christmas Eve, he only made inquiries at the door after Louise, and when he learned that the cold she had caught was better, did not return. For, on one point, his mind was made up: idle tongues should have no fresh cause for gossip. At the expiry of a fortnight, however, he began to fear that if he remained away any longer, she would think him indifferent to her offer of friendship. So, late one afternoon, he called to see her. But when he was face to face with her, he doubted whether she had given him a thought in the interval: she seemed mildly surprised at his coming. It was even possible that she had forgotten, by now, what she had said to him; and he sought anew for a means of impressing himself on her consciousness. She was crouched in the rocking-chair, close beside the stove, and was wrapped in a thick woollen shawl; but the hand she gave him was as cold as stone. She was trying to keep warm, she said; she had not been properly warm since the night on the ice. "But there's an easy remedy for that," said Maurice, who came in ruddy from the sharp air. "You must go out and walk. Then you will soon get warm." But she shuddered at the suggestion, and also made an expressive gesture to indicate the general laxity of her dress--the soiled dressing-gown, her untidy hair. Then she leaned forward again, holding both hands, palms out, to the mica pane in the door of the stove, through which the red coals glowed. "If only winter were over!" He gazed at the expressive lines of hand and wrist, and was reminded of an adoring Madonna he had somewhere seen engraved: her hands were held back in the same way; the thumbs slightly thrown out, the three long fingers together, the little one apart: here as there, was the same supple, passionate indolence. But he could find no more to say than on the occasion of his former visit; she did not help him; and more and more did it seem to the young man as if the words he had gone about hugging to him, had never been spoken. After a desperate quarter of an hour, he rose to take leave. But simultaneously, she, too, got up from the rocking-chair, and, standing pale and uncertain before him, asked him if she might trouble him to do something for her. A box had been sent to her from England, she told him, while she tumbled over the dusty letters and papers accumulated on the writing-table, and had been lying unclaimed at the custom-house for several weeks now--how many she did not know, and she spread out her fingers, with a funny little movement, to show her ignorance. She had only remembered it a day or two ago; the dues would no doubt be considerable. If it were not too much trouble ... she would be so grateful; she would rather ask him than Mr. Eggis. "I should be delighted," said Maurice. He went the next morning, at nine o'clock, spent a trying hour with uncivil officials, and, in the afternoon, called to report to Louise. As he was saying good-bye to her, he inquired if there were nothing else of a similar nature he could do for her; he was glad to be of use. Smiling, Louise admitted that there were other things, many of them, more than he would have patience for. She should try him and see, said Maurice, and laid his hat down again, to hear what they were. As a consequence of this, the following days saw him on various commissions in different quarters of the town, scanning the names of shops, searching for streets he did not know. But matters did not always run smoothly; complications arose, for instance, over a paid bill that had been sent in a second time, and over an earlier one that had not been paid at all; and Maurice was forced to confess his ignorance of the circumstances. When this had happened more than once, he sat down, with her consent, at the writing-table, to work through the mass of papers, and the contents of a couple of drawers. In doing this, he became acquainted with some of the more intimate details of her life--minute and troublesome details, for which she had no aptitude. From her scat at the stove, Louise watched him sorting and reckoning, and she was as grateful to him as it was possible for her to be, in her present mood. No one had ever done a thing of the kind for her before; and she was callous to the fact of its being a stranger, who had his hands thus in her private life. When, horrified beyond measure at the confusion that reigned in all belonging to her, Maurice asked her how she had ever succeeded in keeping order, she told him that, before her illness, there had, now and again, come a day of strength and purpose, on which she had had the "courage" to face these distasteful trifles and to end them. But she did not believe such a day would ever come again. Bills, bills, bills: dozens of bills, of varying dates, sent in once, twice, three times, and invariably tossed aside and forgotten--a mode of proceeding incomprehensible to Maurice, who had never bought anything on credit in his life. And not because she was in want of money: there were plenty of gold pieces jingling loose in a drawer; but from an aversion, which was almost an inability, to take in what the figures meant. And the amounts added up to alarming totals; Maurice had no idea what a woman's dress cost, and could only stand amazed; but the sum spent on fruit and flowers alone, in two months, represented to his eyes a small fortune. Then there was the Bluthner, the unused piano; the hire of it had not been paid since the previous summer. Three terms were owed at Klemm's musical library, from which no music was now borrowed; fees were still being charged against her at the Conservatorium, where she had given no formal notice of leaving. It really did not matter, she said, with that carelessness concerning money, which was characteristic of her; but it went against the grain in Maurice to let several pounds be lost for want of an effort; and he spent a diplomatic half-hour with the secretaries in the BUREAU, getting her released from paying the whole of the term that had now begun. As, however, she would not appear personally, she was under the necessity of writing a letter, stating that she had left the Conservatorium; and when she had promised twice to do, it, and it was still unwritten, Maurice stood over her, and dictated the words into her pen. A day or two afterwards, he prevailed upon her to do the same for Schwarz, to inform him of her illness, and to say that, at Easter, if she were better, she would come to him for a course of private lessons. This was an idea of Maurice's own, and Louise looked up at him before putting down the words. "It's not true. But if you think I should say so--it doesn't matter." This was the burden of all she said: nothing mattered, nothing would ever matter again. There was not the least need for the half-jesting tone in which Maurice clothed his air of authority. She obeyed him blindly, doing what he bade her without question, glad to be subordinate to his will. As long as he did not ask her to think, or to feel, or to stir from her chair beside the stove. But it was only with regard to small practical things; in matters of more importance she was not to be moved. And the day came, only too soon, when the positive help Maurice could give her was at an end; she did not owe a pfennig to anyone; her letters and accounts were filed and in order. Then she seemed to elude him again. He did what lay in his power: brought her books that she did not read, brought news and scraps of chit-chat, which he thought might interest her and which did not, and an endless store of sympathy. But to all he said and did, she made the same response: it did not matter. Since the night on the river, she had not set foot across the threshold of her room; nervous fears beset her. Maurice was bent on her going out into the open air; he also wished her to mix with people again, and thus rid herself of the morbid fancies that were creeping on her. But she shrank as he spoke of it, and pressed both hands to her face: it was too cold, she murmured, and too cheerless; and then the streets! ... the publicity of the streets, the noise, the people! This was what she said to him; to herself she added: and all the old familiar places, to each of which a memory was attached! He spent hours in urging her to take up some regular occupation; it would be her salvation, he believed, and, not allowing himself to be discouraged, he returned to the attack, day after day. But she only smiled the thin smile with which she defeated most of his proposals for her good. Work?--what had she to do with work? It had never been anything to her but a narcotic, enabling her to get through those hours of the day in which she was alone. She let Maurice talk on, and hardly heard what he said. He meant well, but he did not understand. No one understood. No one but herself knew the weight of the burden she had borne since the day when her happiness was mercilessly destroyed. Now she could not raise a finger to help herself. On waking, in the morning, she turned with loathing from the new day. In the semi-darkness of the room, she lay motionless, half sleeping, or dreaming with open eyes. The clock ticked benumbingly the long hours away; the wind howled, or the wind was still; snow fell, or it was frostily clear; but nothing happened--nothing at all. The day was well advanced before she left her bed for the seat by the stove; there she brooded until she dragged herself back to bed. One day was the exact counterpart of another. The only break in the deathlike monotony was Maurice's visit. He came in, fresh, and eager to see her; he held her hand and said kind things to her; he talked persuasively, and she listened or not, as she felt disposed. But little though he was able to touch her, she unconsciously began to look to his visits; and one day, when he was detained and could not come, she was aware of a feeling of injury at his absence. As time went by, however, Maurice felt more and more clearly that he was making no headway. His uneasiness increased; for her want of spirit had something about it that he could not understand. It began to look to him like a somewhat morbid indulgence in grief. "This can't go on," he said sternly. She was in one of her most pitiable moods; for there were gradations in her unhappiness, as he had learned to know. "This can't go on. You are killing yourself by inches--and I'm a party to it." For the first time, there was a hint of impatience in his manner. To his surprise, Louise raised her head, raised it quickly, as he had not seen her make a movement for weeks. "By inches? Inches only? Oh, I am so strong ... Nothing hurts me. Nothing is of any use." "If you look in the glass, you will see that you're hurting yourself considerably." "You mean that I'm getting old?--and ugly?" she caught him up. "Do you think I care?--Oh, if I had only had the courage, that day! A few grains of something, and it would have been all over, long ago. But I wasn't brave enough. And now I have no more courage in me than strength in my little finger." Maurice looked meditatively at her, without replying: this was the single occasion on which she had been roused to a retort of any kind; and, bitter though her words were, he could not prevent the spark of hope which, by their means, was lit in him. And from this day on, things went forward of themselves. Again and again, some harmless observation on his part drew forth a caustic reply from her; it was as if, having once experienced it, she found an outcry of this kind a relief to her surcharged nerves. At first, what she said was directed chiefly against herself--this self for which she now nursed a fanatic hatred, since it had failed her in her need. But, little by little, he, too, was drawn within the circle of her bitterness; indeed, it sometimes seemed as if his very kindness incited her, by laying her under an obligation to him, which it was in her nature to resent: at others, again, as if she merely wished to try him, to see how far she might go. "Do I really deserve that thrust?" he once could not help asking. He smiled, as he spoke, to take the edge off his words. Louise threw a penitent glance at him, and, for all answer, held out her hand. But, the very next day, after a similar incident, she crossed the room to him, with the swiftness of movement that was always disturbing in her, contrasting as it did with her customary indolence. "Forgive me. I ought not to. And you are the only friend I have. But there's so much I must say to some one. If I don't say it, I shall go mad." "Why, of course. That's what I'm here for," said Maurice. And so it went on--a strange state of things, in which he never called her by her name, and seldom touched her hand. He had himself well under control--except for the moment immediately before he saw her, and the moment after. He could not yet meet her, after the briefest absence, unmoved. For a week on end that penetrating rawness had been abroad, which precedes and accompanies a thaw; and one day, early in February, when, after the unequalled severity of the winter, the air seemed of an incredible mildness, the thaw was there in earnest; on the ice of more than three months' standing, pools of water had formed overnight. By the JOHANNATEICH, Maurice and Madeleine stood looking dubiously across the bank of snow, which, here and there, had already collapsed, leaving miniature crater-rings, flecked with moisture. Several people who could not tear themselves away, were still flying about the ice, dexterously avoiding the watery places; and Dove and pretty Susie Fay called out to them that it was better than it looked. But Maurice was fastidious and Madeleine indifferent; she was really rather tired of skating, she admitted, as they walked home, and was ashamed to think of the time she had wasted on it. As, however, this particular afternoon was already broken into, she would have been glad to go for a walk; but Maurice did not take up her suggestion, and parted from her at her house-door. "Spring is in the air," he sought to tempt Louise, when, a few minutes later, he entered her room. She, too, had been aware of the change; for it had aggravated her dejection. She raised her eyes to his like a tired child, and had not strength enough to make her usual stand against him. Oh, if he really wished it so much, she would go out, she said at last. And so he left her to dress, and ran to the Conservatorium, arriving just in time for a class. Later on, a curious uneasiness drew him back to see how she had fared. It was almost dark, but she had not returned; and he waited for half an hour before he heard her step in the hall. Directly she came in, he knew that something was the matter. In each of her movements was a concentrated, but noiseless energy: she shut the door after her as if it were never to open again; tore off rather than unpinned the thick black veil in which she had shrouded herself; threw her hat on the sofa, furs and jacket to the hat; then stood motionless, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. Her face had emerged from its wrappings with renewed pallor; her eyes shone as if with belladonna. She took no notice of the silent figure in the corner, did not even look in his direction. "You've got back," said Maurice, for the sake of saying something. "It's too late." At his words, she dropped on a chair, put her arms on the table, and hid her face in them. "What's the matter? Has anything happened?" he asked, in quick alarm, as she burst into violent sobs. He should have been accustomed to her way of crying by this time--it sounded worse than it was, as he knew--but it invariably racked him anew. He stood over her; but the only comfort he ventured on was to lay his hand on her hair--this wild black hair, which met his fingers springily, with a will of its own. "What is the matter?" he besought her. "Tell me, Louise--tell me what it is." He had to ask several times before he received an answer. Finally, she sobbed in a muffled voice, without raising her head: "How could you make me go out! Oh, how COULD you!" "What do you mean? I don't understand. What is it?" He had visions of her being annoyed or insulted. But she only repeated: "How could you! Oh, it was cruel of you!" and wept afresh. Word by word, Maurice drew her story from her. There was not very much to tell. She had gone out, and had walked hurriedly along quiet by-streets to the ROSENTAL. But before she had advanced a hundred yards, her courage began to fail, and the further she went, the more her spirits sank. Her surroundings were indescribably depressing: the smirched, steadily retreating snow was leaving bare all the drab brownness it had concealed--all the dismal little gardens, and dirty corners. Houses, streets and people wore their most bedraggled air. Particularly the people: they were as ugly as the areas of roof and stone, off which the soft white coating had slid; their contours were as painful to see. And the mud--oh, God, the mud! It spread itself over every inch of the way; the roads were rivers of filth, which spattered and splashed; at the sides of the streets, the slush was being swept into beds. Before she had gone any distance, her boots and skirts were heavy with it; and she hated mud, she sobbed--hated it, loathed it, it affected her with a physical disgust--and this lie might have known when he sent her out. In the ROSENTAL, it was no better; the paths were so soaked that they squashed under her feet; on both sides, lay layers of rotten leaves from the autumn; the trees were only a net-work of blackened twigs, their trunks surrounded by an undergrowth that was as ragged as unkempt hair. And everything was mouldering: the smell of moist, earthy decay reminded her of open graves. Not a soul was visible but herself. She sat on a seat, the only living creature in the scene, and the past rose before her with resistless force: the intensity of her happiness; the base cruelty of his conduct; her misery, her unspeakable misery; her forlorn desolation, which was of a piece with the desolation around her, and which would never again be otherwise, though she lived to be an old woman.--How long she sat thinking things of this kind, she did not know. But all of a sudden she started up, frightened both by her wretched thoughts and by the loneliness of the wood; and she fled, not looking behind her, or pausing to take breath, till she reached the streets. Into the first empty droschke she met, she had sunk exhausted, and been driven home. It was of no use trying to reason with her, or to console her. "I can't bear my life," she sobbed. "It's too hard ... and there is no one to help me. If I had done anything to deserve it ... then it would be different ... then I shouldn't complain. But I didn't--didn't do anything--unless it was that I cared too much. At least it was a mistake--a dreadful mistake. I should never have shown him how I cared: I should have made him believe he loved me best. But I was a fool. I flung it all at his feet. And it was only natural he should get tired of me. The wonder was that I held him so long. But, oh, how can one care as I did, and yet be able to plot and plan? I couldn't. It isn't in me to do it." She wept despairingly, with her head on her outstretched arms. When she raised it again, her tear-stained face looked out, Medusa-like, from its setting of ruffled hair. More to herself than to the young man, as if, on this day, secret springs had been touched in her, she continued with terse disconnectedness: "I couldn't believe it; I wouldn't--even when I heard it from his own lips. You thought, all of you, that I was ill; but I wasn't; I was only trying to get used to the terrible thought--just as a suddenly blinded man has to get used to being always in the dark. And while I was still struggling came Madeleine, with her cruel tongue, and told me--you know what she told me. Oh, if his leaving me had been hard to bear, this stung like scorpions. I wonder I didn't go mad. I should have, if you hadn't come to help me. For a day and night, I did not move from the corner of that sofa there. I turned her words over till there was no sense left in them. My nails cut my palms." Her clasped hands were slightly stretched from her: her whole attitude betrayed the tension at which she was speaking. "Oh, my God, how I hated him ... hated him ... how I hate him still! If I live to be an old, old woman, I shall never forgive him. For, in time, I might have learnt to bear his leaving me, if it had only been his work that took him from me. It was always between us, as it was; but it was at least only a pale brain thing, not living flesh and blood. But that all the time he should have been deceiving me, taking pains to do it--that I cannot forgive. At first, I implored, I prayed there might be some mistake: you, too, told me there was. And I hoped against hope--till I saw her. Then, I knew it was true-----as plainly as if it had been written on that wall." She paused for breath, in this bitter pleasure of laying her heart bare. "For I wasn't the person he could always have been satisfied with--I see it now. He liked a woman to be fair, and soft, and gentle--not dark, and hot-tempered. It was only a phase, a fancy, that brought him to me, and it couldn't have lasted for ever. But all I asked of him was common honesty--to be open with me: it wasn't much to ask, was it? Not more than we expect of a stranger in the street. But it was too much for him, all the same. And so ... now ... I have nothing left to remind me that I ever knew him. That night, when I had seen her, I burned everything--every photograph, every scrap of writing I had ever had from him ... if only one could burn memories too! I had to tear my heart over it; I used to think I felt it bleeding, drop by drop. For all the suffering fell on me, who had done nothing. He went free." "Are you sure of that? It may have been hard for him, too--harder than you think." Maurice was looking out of the window, and did not turn. She shook her head. "The person who cares, can't scheme and contrive. He didn't care. He never really cared for me--only for himself; at heart, he was cold and selfish. No, I paid for it all--I who hate and shrink from pain, who would do anything to avoid it. I want to go through life knowing only what is bright and happy; and time and again, I am crushed and flung down. But, in all my life, I haven't suffered like this. And now perhaps you understand, why I never want to hear his name again, and why I shall never--not if I live to be a hundred years old--never forgive him. It isn't in me to do it. As a child, I ground my heel into a rose if it pricked me." There was a silence. Then she sighed, and pushed her hair back from forehead. "I don't know why I should say all this to you," she said contritely. "But often, just with you, I seem to forget what I am saying. It must be, I think, because you're so quiet yourself." At this, Maurice turned and came over to her. "No, it's for another reason. You need to say these things to some one. You have brooded over them to yourself till they are magnified out of all proportion. It's the best thing in the world for you to say them aloud." He drew up a chair, and sat down beside her. "Listen to me. You told me once, not very long ago, that I was your friend. Well, I want to speak to you to-night as that friend, and to play the doctor a little as well. Will you not go away from here, for a time?--go away and be with people who know nothing of ... all this--people you don't need to be afraid of? Let yourself be persuaded. You have such a healthy nature. Give it a chance." She looked at him with a listless forbearance. "Don't go on. I know everything you are going to say.--That's always the way with you calm, quiet people, who are not easily moved yourselves. You still but faith in these trite remedies; for you've never known the ills they're supposed to cure." "Never mind me. It's you we have to think of. And I want you to give my old-fashioned remedy a trial." But she did not answer, and again a few minutes went by, before she stretched out her hand to him. "Forget what I've said to-night. I shall never speak of it again.--But then you, too, must promise not to make me go out alone--to think and remember--in all the dirt and ugliness of the streets." And Maurice promised. IX. The unnatural position circumstances had forced him into, was to him summed up in the fact that he had spoken in defence of the man he despised above all others. Only at isolated moments was he content with the part he played; it was wholly unlike what he had intended. He had wished to be friend and mentor to her, and he was now both; but nevertheless, there was something wrong about his position. It seemed as if he had at first been satisfied with too low a place in her esteem, ever to allow of him taking a higher one. He was conscious that in her liking for him, there was a drop of contempt. And he tormented himself with such a question as: should a new crisis in her life arise, would she, now that she knows you, turn to you? And in moments of despondency he answered no. He felt the tolerance that lurked in her regard for him. Kindness and care on his part were not enough. None of his friends had an idea of what was going on. No one he knew lived in the neighbourhood of the BRUDERSTRASSE; and, the skating at an end, he was free to spend his time as he chose. When another brief nip of frost occurred, he alleged pressure of work, and did not take advantage of it. Then, early one morning, Dove paid him a visit, with a list in his hand. Since the night of the skating party, his acquaintances had not seen much of Dove; for he had been in close attendance on the pretty little American, who made no scruple of exacting his services. Now, after some preamble, it came out that he wished to include Maurice in a list of mutual friends, who were clubbing to give a ball--a "Bachelors' Ball," Dove called it, since the gentlemen were to pay for the tickets, and to invite the ladies. But Maurice, vexed at the interruption, made it clear that he had neither time nor inclination for an affair of this kind: he did not care a rap for dancing. And after doing his best to persuade him, and talking round the matter for half an hour, Dove said he did not of course wish to press anyone against his will, and departed to disturb other people. Maurice had also to stand fire from Madeleine; for she had counted on his inviting her. She was first incredulous, then offended, at his refusal: and she pooh-poohed his strongest argument--that he did not own a dress-suit. If that was all, she knew a shop in the BRUHL, where such things could be hired for a song. Maurice now thought the matter closed. Not many days later, however, Dove appeared again, with a crestfallen air. He had still over a dozen tickets on his hands, and, at the low price fixed, unless all were sold, the expenses of the evening would not be covered. In order to get rid of him, Maurice bought a ticket, on the condition that he was not expected to use it, and also suggested some fresh people Dove might try; so that the latter went off with renewed courage on his disagreeable errand. Maurice mentioned the incident to Louise that evening, as he mentioned any trifle he thought might interest her. He sat on the edge of his chair, and did not mean to stay; for he had found her on the sofa with a headache. So far, she had listened to him with scant attention; but at this, she raised her eyebrows. "Then you don't care for dancing?"--she could hardly believe it. He repeated the words he had used to Dove. She smiled faintly, looking beyond him, at a sombre patch of sky. "I should think not. If it were me!----" She raised her hand, and considered her fingers. "If it were you?--yes?" But she did not continue. It had been almost a spring day: that, no doubt, accounted for her headache. Maurice made a movement to rise. But Louise turned quickly on her side, and, in her own intense way, said: "Listen. You have the ticket, you say? Use it, and take me with you. Will you?" He smiled as at the whim of a child. But she was in earnest. "Will you?" "No, of course not." He tempered his answer with the same smile. But she was not pleased--he saw that. Her nostrils tightened, and then, dilated, as they had a way of doing when she was annoyed. For some time after, she did not speak. But the very next day, when he was remonstrating with her over some small duty which she had no inclination to perform, she turned on him with an unreasonable irritation. "You only want me to do disagreeable things. Anything that is pleasant, you set yourself against." It took him a minute to grasp that she was referring to what he had said the evening before. "Yes, but then ... I didn't think you were in earnest." "Am I in the habit of saying things I don't mean? And haven't you said yourself that I am killing myself, shut up in here?--that I must go out and mix with people? Very well, here is my chance." He kept silence: he did not know whether she was not mainly inspired by a spirit of contradiction, and he was afraid of inciting her, by resistance, to say something she would be unable to retract. "I don't think you've given the matter sufficient thought," he said at last. "It can't be decided offhand." She was angry, even more with herself than with him. "Oh, I know what you mean. You think I shall be looked askance at. As if it mattered what people say! All my life I haven't cared, and I shall not begin now, when I have less reason than ever before." He did not press the subject; he hoped she would change her mind, and thus render further discussion unnecessary. But this was not the case; she clung to the idea, and was deaf to reason. To a certain extent, he could feel for her; but he was too troubled by the thought of unpleasant possibilities, not to endeavour to persuade her against it: he knew, as she did not, how unkindly she had been spoken of; and he was not sure whether her declared bravado was strong enough to sustain her. But the more he reasoned, the more determined she was to have her own way; and she took his efforts in very bad part. "You pretend to be solicitous about me," she said one afternoon, from her seat by the fire. "Yet when a chance of diversion comes you begrudge it to me. You would rather I mouldered on here." "That's not generous of you. It is only you I am thinking of--in all this ridiculous affair." The word stung her. "Ridiculous? How dare you say that! I'm still young, am I not? And I have blood in my veins, not water. Well, I want to feel it. For months now, I have been walled up in this tomb. Now I want to live. Not--do you understand?--to go out alone, on a filthy day, with no companion but my own thoughts. I want to dance--to forget myself--with light and music. It's the most natural thing in the world. Anyone but you would think so." "It is not life you mean; it's excitement." "What it means is that you don't want to take me.--Yes, that's what it is. But I can get some one else. I will send for Eggis; he will have no objection." "Why drag in that cad's name? You know very well if you do go, it will be with me, and no one else." A slight estrangement grew up between them. Maurice was hurt: she had shown too openly the small value she set on his opinion. In addition to this, he was disagreeably affected by her craving for excitement at any cost. To his mind, there was more than a touch of impropriety in the proceeding; it was just as if a mourner of a few months' standing should suddenly discard his mourning, and with it all the other decencies of grief. She had not been entirely wrong in accusing him of unreadiness to accompany her. When he pictured to himself the astonished faces of his friends, he found it impossible to look forward to the event with composure. He saw now that it would have been better to make no secret of his friendship with Louise; so harmless was it that every one he knew might have assisted at it; but now, the very abruptness of its disclosure would put it in a bad light. Through Dove, he noised it abroad that he would probably be present at the ball after all; but he shunned Madeleine with due precaution, and could not bring himself even to hint who his companion might be. In his heart, he still thought it possible that Louise might change her mind at the last moment--take fright in the end, at what she might have to face. But the night came, and this had not happened. While he dressed himself in the hired suit, which was too large here, too small there, he laid a plan of action for the evening. Since it had to be gone through with, it must be carried off in a highhanded way. He would do what he could to make her presence in the hall seem natural; he would be attentive, without devoting himself wholly to her; and he would induce her to leave early. He called for her at eight o'clock. The landlady said that Fraulein was not quite ready, and told him to wait in the passage. But the door of the room was ajar, and Louise herself called to him to come in. It was comparatively dark; for she had the lamp behind the screen, where he heard her moving about. Her skirts rustled; drawers and cupboards were pulled noisily open. Then she came out, with the lamp in her hand. Maurice was leaning against the piano. He raised his eyes, and made a step forward, to take the lamp from her. But after one swift, startled glance, he drew back, colouring furiously. For a moment he could not collect himself: his heart seemed to have leapt into his throat, and there to be hammering so hard that he had no voice with which to answer her greeting. Owing to what he now termed his idiotic preoccupation with himself, he had overlooked the fact that she, too, would be in evening dress. Another thing was, he had never seen Louise in any but street-dress, or the loose dressing-gown. Now he called himself a fool and absurd; this was how she was obliged to be. Convention decreed it, hence it was perfectly decorous; it was his own feelings that were unnatural, overstrained. But, in the same breath, a small voice whispered to him that all dresses were not like this one; also that every girl was not of a beauty, which, thus emphasised, made the common things of life seen poor and stale. Louise wore a black dress, which glistened over all its surface, as if it were sown with sparks; it wound close about her, and out behind her on the floor. But this was only the sheath, from which rose the whiteness of her arms and shoulders, and the full column of her throat, on which the black head looked small. Until now, he had seen her bared wrist--no more. Now the only break on the long arm was a band of black velvet, which as it were insisted on the petal-white purity of the skin, and served in place of a sleeve. Strange thoughts coursed through the young man's mind. His first impulse had been to avert his eyes; in this familiar room it did not seem fitting to see her dressed so differently from the way he had always known her. Before, however, he had followed this sensation to an end, he made himself the spontaneous avowal that, until now, he had never really seen her. He had known and treasured her face--her face alone. Now he became aware that to the beautiful head belonged also a beautiful body, that, in short, every bit of her was beautiful and desirable. And this feeling in its turn was overcome by a painful reflection: others besides himself would make a similar observation; she was about to show herself to a hundred other eyes: and this struck him as such an unbearable profanation, that he could have gone down on his knees to her, to implore her to stay at home. Unconscious of his embarrassment, Louise had gone to the console-glass; and there, with the lamp held first above her head, then placed on the console-table, she critically examined her appearance. As if dissatisfied, she held a velvet bow to the side of her hair, and considered the effect; she took a powderpuff, and patted cheeks and neck with powder. Next she picked up a narrow band of velvet, on which a small star was set, and put it round her throat. But the clasp would not meet behind, and, having tried several times in vain to fasten it, she gave an impatient exclamation. "I can't get it in." As Maurice did not offer to help her, she went out of the room with the thing in her hand. During the few seconds she was absent, the young man racked his brain to invent telling reasons which would induce her not to go; but when she returned, slightly flushed at the landlady's ready flattery, she was still so engrossed in herself, and so unmindful of him, that he recognised once more his utter powerlessness. He only half existed for her this evening: her manner was as different as her dress. She gathered her skirts high under her cloak, displaying her feet in fur-lined snow-boots. In the turmoil of his mind, Maurice found nothing to say as they went. But she did not notice his silence; there was a suppressed excitement in her very walk; and she breathed in the cold, crisp air with open lips and nostrils, like a wild animal. "Oh, how glad I am I came! I might still have been sitting in that dull room--when I haven't danced for years--and when I love it so!" "I can't understand you caring about it," he said, and the few words contained all his bitterness. "That is only because you don't know me," she retorted, and laughed. "Dancing is a passion with me. I have dance-rhythms in my blood, I think.--My mother was a dancer." He echoed her words in a helpless way, and a set of new images ran riot in his brain. But Louise only smiled, and said no more. They were late in arriving; dancing had already begun; the cloak-rooms were black with coats and mantles. In the narrow passage that divided the rooms, two Englishmen were putting on their gloves. As Maurice changed his shoes, close to the door, he overheard one of these men say excitedly: "By Jove, there's a pair of shoulders! Who the deuce is it?" Maurice knew the speaker by sight: he was a medical student, named Herries, who, on the ice, had been conspicuous for his skill as a skater. He had a small dark moustache, and wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. "You haven't been here long enough, old man, or you wouldn't need to ask," answered his companion. Then he dropped his voice, and made a somewhat disparaging remark--so low, however, but what the listener was forced to hear it, too. Both laughed a little. But though Maurice rose and clattered his chair, Herries persisted, with an Englishman's supreme indifference to the bystander: "Do you think she can dance?" "Can't tell. Looks a trifle heavy." "Well, I'll risk it. Come on. Let's get some one to introduce us." The blood had rushed to Maurice's head and buzzed there: another second, and he would have stepped out and confronted the speaker. But the incident had passed like a flash. And it was better so: it would have been a poor service to her, to begin the evening with an unpleasantness. Besides, was this not what he had been bracing himself to expect? He looked stealthily over at Louise; considering the proximity of the rooms, it was probable that she, too, had overheard the derogatory words. But when she had put on her gloves, she took his arm without a trace of discomfiture. They entered the hall at the close of a polka, and slipped unnoticed into the train of those who promenaded. But they had not gone once round, when they were the observed of all eyes; although he looked straight in front of him, Maurice could see the astonished eyebrows and open mouths that greeted their advance. At one end of the hall was an immense mirror: he saw that Louise, who was flushed, held her head high, and talked to him without a pause. In a kind of bravado, she made him take her round a second time; and after the third, which was a solitary progress, they remained standing with their backs to the mirror. Eggis at once came up, with Herries in his train, and, on learning that she had no programme, the latter ran off to fetch one. Before he returned, a third man had joined them, and soon she was the centre of a little circle. Herries, having returned with the programme, would not give it up until he had put his initials opposite several dances. Louise only smiled--a rather artificial smile that had been on her lips since she entered the hall. Maurice had fallen back, and now stood unnoticed behind the group. Once Louise turned her head, and raised her eyebrows interrogatively; but a feeling that was mingled pride and dismay restrained him; and as, even when the choosing of dances was over, he did not come forward, she walked down the hall on Herries's arm. The musicians began to tune; Dove, as master of ceremonies, was flying about, with his hands in gloves that were too large for him; people ranged themselves for the lancers in lines and squares. Maurice lost sight for a moment of the couple he was watching. As soon as the dance began, however, he saw them again; they were waltzing to the FRANCAISE, at the lower end of the hall. He was driven from the corner in which he had taken refuge, by hearing some one behind him say, in an angry whisper: "I call it positively horrid of her to come." It was Susie Fay who spoke; through some oversight, she had not been asked to dance. Moving slowly along, behind the couples that began a schottische, he felt a tap on his arm, and, looking round, saw Miss Jensen. She swept aside her ample skirts, and invited him to a seat beside her. But he remained standing. "You don't care for dancing?" she queried. And, when he had replied: "Well, say, now, Mr. Guest,--we are all dying to know--however have you gotten Louise Dufrayer along here this evening? It's the queerest thing out." "Indeed?" said the young man drily. "Well, maybe queer is not just the word. But, why, we all presumed she was perfectly inconsolable--thinking only of another world. That's so. And then you work a miracle, and out she pops, fit as can be." "I persuaded her ... for the sake of variety," mumbled Maurice. Little Fauvre, the baritone, had come up; but Miss Jensen did not heed his meek reminder that this was their dance. "That was excessively kind of you," said the big woman, and looked at Maurice with shrewd, good-natured eyes. "And no doubt, Louise is most grateful. She seems to be enjoying herself. Keep quiet, Fauvre, do, till I am ready.--But I don't like her dress. It's a lovely goods, and no mistake. But it ain't suitable for a little hop like this. It's too much." "How Miss Dufrayer dresses is none of my business." "Well, maybe not.--Now, Fauvre, come along"--she called it "Fover." "I reckon you think you've waited long enough." Maurice, left to himself again, was astonished to hear Madeleine's voice in his ear. She had made her way to him alone. "For goodness' sake, pull yourself together," she said cuttingly. "Every one in the hall can see what's the matter with you." Before he could answer, she was claimed by her partner--one of the few Germans scattered through this Anglo-American gathering. "Is zat your brozzer?" Maurice heard him ask as they moved away. He watched them dancing together, and found it a ridiculous sight: round Madeleine, tall and angular, the short, stout man rotated fiercely. From time to time they stopped, to allow him to wipe his face. Maurice contemplated escaping from the hall to some quiet room beyond. But as he was edging forward, he ran into Dove's arms, and that was the end of it. Dove, it seemed, had had his eye on him. The originator of the ball confessed that he was not having a particularly good time; he had everything to superintend--the dances, the musicians, the arrangements for supper. Besides this, there were at least a dozen too many ladies present; he believed some of the men had simply given their tickets away to girl-friends, and had let them come alone. So far, Dove had been forced to sacrifice himself entirely, and he was hot and impatient. "Besides, I've routed half a dozen men out of the billiardroom, more than once," he complained irrelevantly, wiping the moisture from his brow. "But it's of no----Now just look at that!" he interrupted himself. "The 'cellist has had too much to drink already, and they're handing him more beer. Another glass, and he won't be able to play at all.--I say, you're not dancing. My dear fellow, it really won't do. You must help me with some of these women." Taking Maurice by the arm, he steered him to a corner of the hall where sat two little provincial English sisters, looking hopeless and forlorn. Who had invited them, it was impossible to say; but no one wished to dance with them. They were dressed exactly alike, were alike in face, too--as like as two nuts, thought Maurice, as he bowed to them. Their hair was of a nutty brown, their eyes were brown, and they wore brown dresses. He led them out to dance, one after the other, and they were overwhelmingly grateful to him. He could hardly tell them apart; but that did not matter; for, when he took one back to her seat, the other sat waiting for her turn. In dancing, he was thrown together with more of his friends, and he was not slow to catch the looks--cynical, contemptuous, amused--that were directed at him. Some were disposed to wink, and to call him a sly dog; others found food for malicious gossip in the way Louise had deserted him; and, when he met Miss Martin in a quadrille, she snubbed his advances with a definiteness that left no room for doubt. Round dances succeeded to square dances; the musicians' playing grew more mechanical; flowers drooped, and dresses were crushed. An Englishman or two ran about complaining of the ventilation. As often as Maurice saw Louise, she was with Herries. At first, she had at least made a feint of dancing with other people; now she openly showed her preference. Always this dapper little man, with the violets and the simpering smile. They were the two best dancers in the hall. Louise, in particular, gave herself up to the rhythm of the music with an abandon not often to be seen in a ball-room. Something of the professional about it, said Maurice to himself as he watched her; and, in his own estimation, this was the hardest thought he had yet had of her. At supper, he sat between the two little sisters, whose birdlike chatter acted upon him as a reiterated noise acts on the nerves of one who is trying to sleep. He could hardly bring himself to answer civilly. At the further end of the table, on the same side as he, sat Louise. She was with those who had been her partners during the evening. They were drinking champagne, and were very lively. Maurice could not see her face; but her loud, excited laugh jarred on his ears. Afterwards, the same round was to begin afresh, except that the sisters had generously introduced him to a friend. But when the first dance was over, Maurice abruptly excused himself to his surprised partner, and made his way out of the hall. At the disordered supper-table, a few people still lingered; and deserters were again knocking balls about the green cloth of the billiard-table. Maurice went past them, and up a flight of stairs that led to a gallery overlooking the hall. This gallery was in semidarkness. At the back of it, chairs were piled one on top of the other; but the two front rows had been left standing, from the last concert held in the building, and here, two or three couples were sitting out the dance. He went into the extreme corner, where it was darkest. At last he was alone. He no longer needed to dance with girls he did not care a jot for, or to keep up appearances. He was free to be as wretched as he chose, and he availed himself unreservedly of the chance. It was not only the personal slight Louise had put upon him throughout the evening, making use of him, as it were, to the very door, and then throwing him off: but that she could be attracted by a mere waxen prettiness, and well-fitting clothes--for the first time, distrust of her was added to his hurt amazement. He had not been in his hiding-place for more than a very few minutes, when the door he had entered by reopened, and a couple came down the steps to the corner where he was sitting. "Oh, there's some one there!" cried Louise at the sight of the dark figure. "Maurice! Is it you? What are you doing here?" "Sssh!" said Herries warningly, afraid lest her clear voice should carry too far. "Yes. It's me," said Maurice stiffly, and rose. "But I'm going. I shan't disturb you." "Disturb?" she said, and laughed a little. "Nonsense! Of course not." From her position on Herries's arm, she looked down at him, uncertain how to proceed. Then she laughed again. "But how fortunate that I found you! The next is our dance, isn't it?"---she pretended to examine her programme. "It will begin in a minute. I think I'll wait here." "The next may be, but not the next again, remember," said Herries, before he allowed her to withdraw her arm. Louise nodded and laughed. "AUF WIEDERSEHEN!" But after the door had dosed behind Herries, she remained standing, a step higher than Maurice, tipping her face with her handkerchief. When she descended the step, and was on a level with him, he could see how her eyes glittered. "Was that lie necessary?--for me?" "What's the matter, Maurice? Why are you like this? Why have you not asked me to dance?" He was unpleasantly worked on by her free use of his name. "I, you? Have I had a chance?" "Wasn't it for you to make the chance? Or did you expect me to come to you: Mr. Guest, will you do me the honour of dancing with me?--Oh, please, don't be cross. Don't spoil my pleasure--for this one night at least." But she laughed again as she spoke, as though she did not fear his power to do so, and laid her hand on his arm: and, at her touch, he seemed to feel through sleeve and glove, the superabundance of vitality that was throbbing in her this evening. She was unable to be still for a moment; in the delicate pallor of her face, her eyes burned, black as jet. "Are you really enjoying yourself so much? What CAN you find in it all?" "Come--come down and dance. Listen!--can you resist that music? Quick, let us go down." "I dance badly. I'm not Herries." "But I can suit my step to anyone's. Won't you dance with me?--when I ask you?" She had been leaning forward, looking over the balustrade at the couples arranging themselves below. Now she turned, and put her arm through his. They went down the stairs, into the hall. Close beside the door at which they entered, they began to dance. In all these months, Maurice had scarcely touched her hand. Now convention required that he should take her in his arms: he had complete control over her, could draw her closer, or put her further away, as he chose. For the first round or two, this was enough to occupy him entirely: the proximity of the lithe body, the nearness of the dark head, the firm, warm resistance that her back offered to his hand. They were dancing to the music of the WIENER BLUT, most melancholy gay of waltzes, in which the long, legato, upward sweep of the violins says as plainly as in words that all is vanity. But with the passing of the players to the second theme, the melody made a more direct appeal: there was a passionate unrest in it, which disquieted all who heard it. The dancers, with flushed cheeks and fixed eyes, responded instinctively to its challenge: the lapidary swing with which they followed the rhythm became less circumspect; and a desire to dance till they could dance no more, took possession of those who were fanatic. No one yielded to the impulse more readily than Louise; she was quite carried away. Maurice felt the change in her; an uneasiness seized him, and increased with every turn. She had all but closed her eyes; her hair brushed his shoulder; she answered to the lightest pressure of his arm. Even her face looked strange to him: its expression, its individuality, all that made it hers, was as if wiped out. Involuntarily he straightened himself, and his own movements grew stiffer, in his effort to impart to her some of his own restraint. But it was useless. And, as they turned and turned, to the maddening music, cold spots broke out on his forehead: in this manner she had danced with all her previous partners, and would dance with those to come. Such a pang of jealousy shot through him at the thought that, without knowing what he was doing, he pulled her sharply to him. And she yielded to the tightened embrace as a matter of course. With a jerk he stopped dancing and loosened his hold of her. She stood and blinked at lights and people: she had been far away, in a world of melody and motion, and could not come back to herself all at once. Wonderingly she looked at Maurice; for the music was going on, and no one else had left off dancing; and, with the same of comprehension, but still too dazed to resist, she followed him up the stairs. "It's easy to see you don't care for dancing," she said, when they were back in the corner of the gallery. Her breath came unsteadily, and again she touched her face with the small, scented handkerchief. "No. Not dancing like that," he answered rudely. But now again, as so often before, directly it was put into words, his feeling seemed strained and puritanic. Louise leaned forward in her seat to look into his face. "Like what?--what do you mean? Oh, you foolish boy, what is the matter with you to-night? You will tell me next I can't dance." "You dance only too well." "But you would rather I was a wooden doll--is that it How is one to please you? First you are vexed with me because YOU did not ask ME to dance; and when I send my partner away, on your account, you won't finish one dance with me but exact that I shall sit here, in a dark corner, and let that glorious music go by. I don't know what to make of you." But her attention had already wandered to the dancers below. "Look at them!--Oh, it makes me envious! No one else has dreamt of stopping yet. For no matter how tired you are beforehand, when you dance you don't feel it, and as long as the music goes on, you must go on, too, though it lasted all night.--Oh, how often I have longed for a night like this! And then I've never met a better dancer than Mr. Herries." "And for the sake of his dancing, you can forget what a puppy he is?" "Puppy?" At the warmth of his interruption, she laughed, the low, indolent laugh, by means of which she seemed determined, on this night, to keep anything from touching her too nearly. "How crude you men are! Because he is handsome and dances well, you reason that he must necessarily be a simpleton." "Handsome? Yes--if a tailor's dummy is handsome." But Louise only laughed again, like one over whom words had no power. "If he were the veriest scarecrow, I would forgive him--for the sake of his dancing." She leant forward, letting her gloved arms lie along her knees; and above the jet-trimmed line of her bodice, he saw her white chest rise and fall. At a slight sound behind, she turned and looked expectantly at the door. "No, not yet," said the young man at her side. "Besides, even if it were, this is my dance, remember. You said so yourself." "You are rude to-night, Maurice--and LANGWEILIG." She averted her face, and tapped her foot. But the content that lapped her made it impossible for her to take anything earnestly amiss, and even that others should show displeasure jarred on her like a false note. "Don't be angry. To-morrow it will all be different again. Let me have just this one night of pleasure--let me enjoy myself in my own way." "To hear you talk, one would think I had no wish but to spoil your pleasure." "Oh, I didn't mean that. You misunderstand everything." "What I say or think has surely no weight with you?" She gave up the attempt to pacify him, and leaning back in her chair, stifled a yawn. Then with an exclamation of: "How hot it is up here!" she peeled off her gloves. With her freed hands, she tidied her hair, drawing out and thrusting in again the silver dagger that held the coil together. Then she let her bare arms fall on her lap, where they lay in strong outline against the black of her dress. One was almost directly under Maurice's eyes; even by the poor light, he could see the mark left on the inside of the wrist, by the buttons of the glove. It was a generously formed arm, but so long that it looked slender, and its firm white roundness was flawless from wrist to shoulder. He shut his eyes, but he could see it through his eyelids. Sitting beside her like this, in the semidarkness, morbidly aware of the perfume of her hair and dress, he suddenly forgot that he had been rude, and she indifferent. He was conscious only of the wish to drive it home to her, how unhappy she was making him. "Louise," he said so abruptly that she started. "I'm going to ask you to do something for me. I haven't made many demands, have I?--since you first called me your friend." He paused and fumbled for words. "Don't--don't dance any more to-night. Don't dance again." She stooped forward to look at him. "Not dance again?--I? What do you mean?" "What I say. Let us go home." "Home? Now? When it's only half over?--You don't know what you are saying." But her surprise was already on the wane. "Oh, yes, I do. I'm not going to let you dance again." She laughed, in spite of herself, at the new light in which he was showing himself. But, the moment after, she ceased to laugh; for, with an audacity he had not believed himself capable of, Maurice took the arm that was lying next him, and, midway between wrist and elbow, put his lips to it, kissing it several times, in different places. Taken unawares, Louise was helpless. Then she freed herself, ungently. "No, no, I won't have it. Oh, how can you be so foolish! My gloves--where is my glove? Pick it up, and give it to me--at once!" He groped on the dusty floor; the veins in his forehead hammered. She had moved to a distance, and now stood busy with the gloves; she would not look at him. In the uneasy silence that ensued, Herries opened the door: a moment later, they went out together. Maurice remained standing until he saw them appear below. Then he dropped back into his seat, and covered his face with his hands. He did not regret what he had done; he did not care in the least, whether he had made her angry with him or not. On the contrary, the feeling he experienced was akin to relief: disapproval and mortification, jealousy and powerlessness--all the varying emotions of the evening--had found vent and alleviation in the few hastily snatched kisses. He no longer felt injured by her treatment of him: that hardly seemed to concern him now. His sensations, at this minute, resolved themselves into the words: "She is mine, she is mine!" which went round and round in his brain. And then, in a sudden burst of clearness, he understood what it meant for him to say this. It meant that the farce of friendship, at which he had played, was at an end; it meant that he loved her--not as hitherto, with a touch of elegiac resignation--but with a violence that made him afraid. If seemed incredible to him now that he had spent two months in close fellowship with her: it was ludicrous, inhuman. For he now saw, that his ultimate desire had been neither to help her nor to restore her to life--that was a comedy he had acted for the benefit of the traditions in his blood. Brutally, at this moment, he acknowledged that he had only wished to hear her voice and to touch her hand: to make for himself so indispensable a place among the necessities of her life that no one could oust him from it.--Mine--mine! Instinct alone spoke in him to-night--that same blunt instinct which had reared its head the first time he saw her, but which, until now, he had kept under, like a medieval ascetic. No reason came to his aid; he neither looked into the future nor did he consider the past: he only swore to himself in a kind of stubborn wrath that she was his, and that no earthly power should take her from him. One by one the slow-dragging hours wore away. The dancers' ranks were thinned; but those who remained, gyrated as insensately as ever. There was an air of greater freedom over the ball-room. The chaperons who, earlier in the evening, had sat patiently on the red velvet sofas, had vanished with their charges, and, in their train, the more sedate of the company: it was past three o'clock, and now, every few minutes, a cloaked couple crossed a corner of the hall to the street-door. When Maurice went downstairs, he could not find Louise, and some time elapsed before she and Herries emerged from the supper-room. Although the lines beneath her eyes were like rings of hammered iron, she danced anew, went on to the very end, with a few other infatuated people. Finally, the tired musicians rose stiffly to pack their instruments; and, with a sigh of exhaustion, she received on her shoulders the cloak Maurice stood holding. They were among the last to leave the hall; the lights went out behind them. Herries walked a part of the way home with them, and talked much and idly--ineffable in his self-conceit, thought Maurice. But Louise urged him on, saying wild, disconnected things, as if, as long as words were spoken, it did not matter what they were. Again and again her laugh resounded: it was hoarse, and did not ring true. "She has had too much champagne," Maurice said to himself, as he walked silent at her side. In the ROSSPLATZ, Herries, who was in a becoming fur cap, and a coat with a fur-lined collar, took a circumstantial leave of her. He raised both her hands to his lips. "To the memory of those divine waltzes--our waltzes!" he said sentimentally. "And to all the others the future has in store for us!" She left her hands in his, and smiled at him. "Till to-morrow then," said Herries. "Or shall you forget your promise?" "It is you who will forget--not I." After this, Maurice and she walked on alone together. It was that dreariest of all the hours between sunset and dawn, when it is scarcely night any longer, and yet not nearly day. The crisp frost of the previous evening had given place to a bleak rawness; the day that was coming would crawl in, lugubriously, unable to get the better of the darkness. The houses about them were wrapped in sleep; they two were the only people abroad, and their footsteps echoed in the damp streets. But, for once, Louise was not affected by the gloom of her surroundings. She walked swiftly, and her chief aim seemed to be to render any but the most trival words impossible. Now, however, her strained gaiety had the aspect of a fever; Maurice believed that, for the most part, she did not know what she was saying. Until they stood in front of the house-door, she kept up the tension. But when the young man had fitted the key in the lock and turned it, she looked at him, and, for the first time this night, gave him her full attention. "Good night--my friend!" She was leaning against the woodwork; beneath the lace scarf, her eyes were bent on him with a strange expression. Maurice looked down into them, and, for a second or two, held them with his own, in one of those looks which are not for ordinary use between a man and a woman. Louise shivered under it, and gave a nervous laugh; the next moment, she made a slight movement towards him, an involuntary movement, which was so imperceptible as to be hardly more than an easing of her position against the doorway, and yet was unmistakable--as unmistakable as was the little upward motion with which she resigned herself at the outset of a dance. For an instant, his heart stopped beating; in a flash he knew that this was the solution: there was only one ending to this night of longing and excitement, and that was to take her in his arms, as she stood, to hold her to him in an infinite embrace, till his own nerves were stilled, and the madness had gone from her. But the returning beat of his blood brought the knowledge that a morrow must surely come--a morrow for both of them--a cold, grey day to be faced and borne. She was not herself, in the bonds of her unnatural excitement; it was for him to be wise. He took her limply hanging hand, and looked at her gravely and kindly. "You are very tired." At his voice, the wild light died out of her eyes; she seemed to shrink into herself. "Yes, very tired. And oh, so cold!" "Can't you get a cup of tea?--something to warm you?" But she did not hear him; she was already on the stair. He waited till her steps had died away, then went headlong down the street. But, when he came to think things over, he did not pride himself on the self-control he had displayed. On the contrary, he was tormented by the wish to know what she would have said or done had he yielded to his impulse; and, for the remainder of the night, his brain lost itself in a maze of hazardous conjecture. Only when day broke, a cheerless February day, was he satisfied that he could not have acted differently. Upstairs, in her room, Louise lay face downwards on her bed, and there, her arms thrown wildly out over the pillows, all the froth and intoxication of the evening gone from her--there lay, and wished she were dead. * * * * * Three days later, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, Maurice watched the train that carried her from him steam out of the DRESDENER BAHNHOF. The clearness he had gained as to his own motives, and the ruthless probing of himself it induced, both led to the same conclusion: Louise must go away. The day after the ball, too, he had found her in a state of collapse, which was unparalleled even in the ups and downs of the past weeks. "Anything!--do anything you like with me. I wish I had never been born;" and, though no muscle of her face moved, large slow tears ran down her sallow cheeks. Unconsciously twisting and bending Herries's card, which was lying on the table, Maurice laid his plan before her. And having won the above consent, he did not let the grass grow under his feet. He applied to Miss Jensen for practical aid, and that lady was tactful enough to give it without curiosity. She knew Dresden well, recommended it as a lively place, and wrote forthwith to a PENSION there, engaging rooms for a lady who had just recovered from a severe illness. By tacit agreement, this was understood to cover any extravagance or imprudence, of which Louise might make herself guilty. Now she had gone, and with her, the central interest of his life. But the tired gesture, with which he took off his hat and wiped his forehead, as he walked home, was expressive of the relief he felt that he was not going to see her again for some time. He let a fortnight elapse--a fortnight of colourless days, unbroken by word or sign from her. Then, one night, he spent several hours writing to her--writing a carefully worded letter, in which he put forward the best reasons he could devise, for her remaining away altogether. To this he received no answer. X. From one of the high, wooden benches, at the back of the amphitheatre in the ALBERTHALLE, where he had lain at full length, listening to the performance of a Berlin pianist, Krafft rose, full to the brim of impressions, and eager to state them. "That man," he began, as he left the hall between Maurice and Avery Hill, "is a successful teacher. And therewith his fate as an artist is sealed. No teacher can get on to the higher rungs of the ladder, and no inspired musician be a satisfactory teacher. If the artist is obliged to share his art, his pupils, should they be intelligent, may pick up something of his skill, learn the trick of certain things; but the moment he begins to set up dogmas, it is the end of him.--As if it were possible for one person to prescribe to another, of a totally different temperament, how he ought to feel in certain passages, or be affected by certain harmonies! If I, for example, choose to play the later Beethoven sonatas as I would the Brahms Concerto in B flat, with a thoroughly modern irony, what is it that hinders me from doing it, and from satisfying myself, and kindred souls, who are honest enough to admit their feelings? Tradition, nothing in the world but tradition; tradition in the shape of the teacher steps in and says anathema: to this we are not accustomed, ERGO, it cannot be good.--And it is just the same with those composers who are also pedagogues. They know, none better, that there are no hard and fast rules in their art; that it is only convention, or the morbid car of some medieval monk, which has banished, say, consecutive fifths from what is called g pure writing '; that further, you need only to have the regulation number of years behind you, to fling squeamishness to the winds. In other words, you learn rules to unlearn them with infinite pains. But the pupil, in his innocence, demands a rigid basis to go on--it is a human weakness, this, the craving for rules--and his teachers pamper him. Instead of saying: develop your own ear, rely on yourself, only what you teach yourself is worth knowing--instead of this, they build up walls and barriers to hedge him in, behind which, for their benefit, he must go through the antics of a performing dog. But nemesis overtakes them; they fall a victim to their own wiles, just as the liar finally believes his own lies. Ultimately they find their chief delight in the adroitness with which they themselves overcome imaginary obstacles." His companions were silent. Avery Hill had a nine hours' working-day behind her, and was tired; besides, she made a point of never replying to Krafft's tirades. Once only, of late, had she said to him in Maurice's presence: "You would reason the skin off one's bones, Heinz. You are the most self-conscious person alive." Krafft had been much annoyed at this remark, and had asked her to call him a Jew and be done with it; but afterwards, he admitted to Maurice that she was right. "And it's only the naive natures that count." Maurice had found his way back to Krafft; for, in the days of uncertainty that followed the posting of his letter, he needed human companionship. Until the question whether Louise would return or not was decided, he could settle to nothing; and Krafft's ramblings took him out of himself. Since the ball, his other friends had given him the cold shoulder; hence it did not matter whether or no they approved of his renewed intimacy with Krafft--he said "they," but it was Madeleine who was present to his mind. And Krafft was an easy person to take up with again; he never bore a grudge, and met Maurice readily, half-way. It had not taken the latter long to shape his actions or what he believed to be the best. But his thoughts were beyond control. He was as helpless against sudden spells of depression as against dreams of an iridescent brightness. He could no more avoid dwelling on the future than reliving the Past. If Louise did not return, these memories were all that were left him. If she did, what form were their relations to each other going to assume?--and this was the question that cost him most anxious thought. A thing that affected him oddly, at this time, was his growing inability to call up her face. It was incredible. This face, which he had supposed he knew so well that he could have drawn it blindfold, had taken to eluding him; and the more impatient he became, the poorer was his success. The disquieting thing, however, was, that though he could not materialise her face, what invariably rose before his eyes was her long, bare arm, as it had lain on the black stuff of her dress. At first, it only came when he was battling to secure the face; then it took to appearing at unexpected moments; and eventually, it became a kind of nightmare, which haunted him. He would start up from dreaming of it, his hair moist with perspiration, for, strangely enough, he was always on the point of doing it harm: either his teeth were meeting in it, or he had drawn the blade of a knife down the middle of the blue-veined whiteness, and the blood spurted out along the line, which reddened instantly in the wake of the knife. April had come, bringing April weather; it was fitfully sunny, and a mild and generous dampness spurred on growth: shrubs and bushes were so thickly sprinkled with small buds that, at a distance, it seemed as though a transparent green veil had been flung over them. In the Gewandhaus, according to custom, the Ninth Symphony had brought the concert season to a close; once more, the chorus had struggled victoriously with the ODE TO JOY. And early one morning, Maurice held a note in his hand, in which Louise announced that she had "come home," the night before. She had been away for almost two months, and, to a certain extent, he had grown inured to her absence. At the sight of her handwriting, he had the sensation of being violently roused from sleep. Now he shrank from the moment when he should see her again; for it seemed that not only the present, but all his future depended on it. Late in the evening, he returned from the visit, puzzled and depressed. Seven had boomed from church-clocks far and near, before he reached the BRUDERSTRASSE, but, nevertheless, he had been kept waiting in the passage for a quarter of an hour: and he was in such an apprehensive frame of mind that he took the delay as a bad omen. When he crossed the threshold, Louise came towards him with one of those swift movements which meant that she was in good spirits, and confident of herself. She held out her hands, and smiled at him with all her dark, mobile face, saying words that were as impulsive as her gesture. Maurice was always vaguely chilled by her outbursts of light-heartedness: they seemed to him strained and unreal, so accustomed had he grown to the darker, less adaptable side of her nature. "You have come back?" he said, with her hand in his. "Yes, I'm here--for the present, at least." The last words caught in his ear, and buzzed there, making his foreboding a certainty. On the spot, his courage failed him; and though Louise continued to ring all the changes her voice was capable of, he did not recover his spirits. It was not merely the sense of strangeness, which inevitably attacked him after he had not seen her for some time; on this occasion, it was more. Partly, it might be due to the fact that she was dressed in a different way; her hair was done high on her head, and she wore a light grey dress of modish cut and design. Her face, too, had grown fuller; the hollows in her cheeks had vanished; and her skin had that peculiar clear pallor that was characteristic of it in health. He was stupidly silent; he could not join in her careless vivacity. Besides, throughout the visit, nothing was said that it was worth his coming to hear. But when she wished him good-bye, she said, with a strange smile: "Altogether, I am very grateful to you, Maurice, for having made me go away." He himself no longer felt any satisfaction at what he had done. As soon as he left her, he tried to comprehend what had happened: the change in her was too marked for him to be able to console himself that he had imagined it. Not only had she seemingly recovered, as if by magic, from the lassitude of the winter--he could even have forgiven her the alteration in her style of dress, although this, too, helped to alienate her from him. But what he ended by recognising, with a jealous throb, was that she had mentally recovered as well; she was once more the self-contained girl he had first known, with a gift for keeping an outsider beyond the circle of her thoughts and feelings. An outsider! The weeks of intimate companionship were forgotten, seemed never to have been. She had no further need of him, that was the clue to the mystery, and the end of the matter. And so it continued, the next day, and the next again; Louise deliberately avoided touching on anything that lay below the surface. She vouchsafed no explanation of the words that had disquieted him, nor was the letter Maurice had written her once mentioned between them. But, though she seemed resolved not to confide in him, she could not dispense with the small, practical services, he was able to render her. They were even more necessary to her than before; for, if one thing was clear, it was that she no longer intended to cloister herself up inside her four walls: the day after her return, she had been out till late in the afternoon, and had come home with her hands full of parcels. She took it now as a matter of course that Maurice should accompany her; and did not, or would not, notice his abstraction. After the lapse of a very short time, however, the young man began to feel that there was something feverish in the continual high level of her mood. She broke down, once or twice, in trying to sustain it, and was more of her eloquently silent self again: one evening, he came upon her, in the dusk, when she was sitting with her chin on her hand, looking out before her with the old questioning gaze. Occasionally he thought that she was waiting for something: in the middle of a sentence, she would break off, and grow absent-minded; and more than once, the unexpected advent of the postman threw her into a state of excitement, which she could not conceal. She was waiting for a letter. But Maurice was proud, and asked no questions; he took pains to use the cool, friendly tone, she herself adopted. Not a week had dragged out, however, since her return, before he was suffering in a new way, in the oldest, cruellest way of all. The PENSION at which she had stayed in Dresden, had been frequented by leisured foreigners: over twenty people, of various nationalities, had sat down daily at the dinner-table. Among so large a number, it would have been easy for Louise to hold herself aloof. But, as far as Maurice could gather, she had felt no inclination to do this. From the first, she seemed to have been the nucleus of an admiring circle, chief among the members of which was a family of Americans--a brother and two sisters, rich Southerners, possessed of a vague leaning towards art and music. The names of these people recurred persistently in her talk; and, as the days went by, Maurice found himself listening for one name in particular, with an irritation he could not master. Raymond van Houst--a ridiculous name!--fit only for a backstairs romance. But as often as she spoke of Dresden, it was on her lips. Whether in the Galleries, or at the Opera, on driving excursions, or on foot, this man had been at her side; and soon the mere mention of him was enough to set Maurice's teeth on edge. One afternoon, he found her standing before an extravagant mass of flowers, which were heaped up on the table; there were white and purple violets, a great bunch of lilies of the valley, and roses of different colours. They had been sent to her from Dresden, she said; but, beyond this, she offered no explanation. All the vases in the room were collected before her; but she had not begun to fill them: she stood with her hands in the flowers, tumbling them about, enjoying the contact of their moist freshness. To Maurice's remark that she seemed to take a pleasure in destroying them, she returned a casual: "What does it matter?" and taking up as many violets as she could hold, looked defiantly at him over their purple leaves. Through all she said and did ran a strong undercurrent of excitement. But before Maurice left, her manner changed. She came over to him, and said, without looking up: "Maurice I want to tell you something." "Yes; what is it?" He spoke with the involuntary coolness this mood of hers called out in him; and she was quick to feel it. She returned to the table. "You ask so prosaically: you are altogether prosaic to-day. And it is not a thing I can tell you off-hand. You would need to sit down again. It's a long story; and you were going; and it's late. We will leave it till to-morrow: that will be time enough. And if it is fine, we can go out somewhere, and I'll tell you as we go." It was a brilliant May afternoon: great white clouds were piled one on the top of another, like bales of wool; and their fantastic bulging roundnesses made the intervening patches of blue seem doubly distant. The wind was hardly more than a breath, which curled the tips of thin branches, and fluttered the loose ends of veils and laces. In the ROSENTAL, where the meadow-slopes were emerald-green, and each branch bore its complement of delicately curled leaves, the paths were so crowded that there could be no question of a connected conversation. But again, Louise was not in a hurry to begin. She continued meditative, even when they had reached the KAISERPARK, and were sitting with their cups before them, in the long, wooden, shed-like building, open at one side. She had taken off her hat--a somewhat showy white hat, trimmed with large white feathers--and laid it on the table; one dark wing of hair fell lower than the other, and shaded her forehead. Maurice, who was on tenterhooks, subdued his impatience as long as he could. Finally, he emptied his cup at a draught, and pushed it away. "You wanted to speak to me, you said."--His manner was curt, from sheer nervousness. His voice startled her. "Yes, I have something to tell you," she said, with a hesitation he did not know in her. "But I must go back a little.--If you remember, Maurice, you wrote to me while I was away, didn't you?" she said, and looked not at him, but at her hands clasped before her. "You gave me a number of excellent reasons why it would be better for me not to come back here. I didn't answer your letter at the time because ... What should you say, Maurice, if I told you now, that I intended to take your advice?" "You are going away?" The words jerked out gratingly, of themselves. "Perhaps.--That is what I want to speak to you about. I have a chance of doing so." "Chance? How chance?" he asked sharply. "That's what I am going to tell you, if you will give me time." Drawing a letter from her pocket, she smoothed the creases out of the envelope, and handed it to him. While he read it, she looked away, looked over the enclosure. Some people were crossing it, and she followed them with her eyes, though she had often seen their counterparts before. A man in a heavy ulster--notwithstanding the mildness of the day--stalked on ahead, unconcerned about the fate of his family, which dragged, a woman and two children, in the rear: like savages, thought Louise, where the male goes first, to scent danger. But the crackling of paper recalled her attention; Maurice was folding the sheet, and replacing it in the envelope, with a ludicrous precision. His face had taken on a pinched expression, and he handed the letter back to her without a word. She looked at him, expecting him to say something; but he was obdurate. "This was what I was waiting all these days to tell you," she said. "You knew it was coming then?" He scarcely recognised his own voice; he spoke as he supposed a judge might speak to a proven criminal. Louise shrugged her shoulders. "No. Yes.--That is, as far as it's possible to know such a thing." Through the crude glass window, the sun cast a medley of lines and lights on her hands, and on the checkered table-cloth. There were two rough benches, and a square table; the coffeecups stood on a metal tray; the lid of the pot was odd, did not match the set: all these inanimate things, which, a moment ago, Maurice had seen without seeing them, now stood out before his eyes, as if each of them had acquired an independent life, and no longer fitted into its background. "Let us go home," he said, and rose. "Go home? But we have only just come!" cried Louise, with what seemed to him pretended surprise. "Why do you want to go home? It is so quiet here: I can talk to you. For I need your advice, Maurice. You must help me once again." "I help you?--in this? No, thank you. All I can do, it seems, is to wish you joy." He remained standing, with his hand on the back of the bench. But at the cold amazement of her eyes, he took his seat again. "It is a matter for yourself--only you can decide. It's none of my business." He moved the empty cups about on the cloth. "But why are you angry?" "Haven't I good reason to be? To see you--you!--accepting an impertinence of this kind so quietly. For it IS an impertinence, Louise, that a man you hardly know should write to you in this cocksure way and ask you to marry him. Impertinent and absurd!" "You have a way of finding most things I want to do absurd," she answered. "In this case, though, you're mistaken. The tone of the letter is all it should be. And, besides, I know Mr. Van Houst very well." Maurice looked at her with a sardonic smile. "Seven weeks is a long time," she added. "Seven weeks!--and for a lifetime!" "Oh, one can get to know a man inside out, in seven weeks," she said, with wilful flippancy. "Especially if, from the first, he shows so plainly ... Maurice, don't be angry. You have always been kind to me; you're not going to fail me now that I really need help? I have no one else, as you very well know." She smiled at him, and held out her hand. He could not refuse to take it; but he let it drop again immediately. "Let me tell you all about it, and how it happened, and then you will understand," Louise went on, in a persuasive voice--he had once believed that the sound of this voice would reconcile him to any fate. "You think the time was short, but we were together every day, and sometimes all day long. I knew from the first that he cared for me; he made no secret of it. If anything, it is a proof of tactfulness on his part that he should have written rather than have spoken to me himself. I like him for doing it, for giving me time. And then, listen, Maurice, what I should gain by marrying him. He is rich, really rich, and good-looking--in an American way--and thirty-two years old. His sisters would welcome me--one of them told me as much, and told me, too, that her brother had never cared for anyone before. He would make an ideal husband," she added with a sudden recklessness, at the sight of Maurice's unmoved face. "Americanly chivalrous to the fingertips, and with just enough of the primitive animal in him to ward off monotony." Maurice raised his hand, as if in self-defence. "So you, too, then, like any other woman, would marry just for the sake of marrying?" he asked, with bitter disbelief. "Yes.--And just especially and particularly I." "For Heaven's sake, let us get out of here!" Without listening to her protest, he went to find the waiter. Louise followed him out of the enclosure, carrying hat and gloves in her hand. They struck into narrow by-paths going back, to avoid the people. But it was impossible to escape all, and those they met, eyed them with curiosity. The clear English voices rang out unconcerned; the pale girl with the Italian eyes was visibly striving to appease her companion, who marched ahead, angry and impassive. For a few hundred yards neither of them spoke. Then Louise began anew. "And that is not all. You judge harshly and unfairly because you don't know the facts. I am almost quite alone in the world. I have no relatives that I care for, except one brother. I lived with him, on his station in Queensland, until I came here. But now he's married, and there would be no room for me in the house--figuratively speaking. If I go back now, I must share his home with his wife, whom I knew and disliked. While here is some one who is fond of me, and is rich, and who offers me not only a home of my own, but, what is far more to me, an entirely new life in a new world." "Excellent reasons! But in reckoning them up, you have forgotten what seems to me the most important one of all; whether or no you care for him, for this ..." this in his trouble, he could not find a suitable epithet. But Louise refused to be touched. "I like him," she answered, and looked across the slope of meadow they were passing. "I liked him, yes, as any woman would like a man who treated her as he did me. He was very good tome. And not in the least repugnant.--But care?" she interrupted herself. "If by care, you mean ... Then no, a hundred thousand times, no! I shall never care for anyone in that way again, and you know it. I had enough of that to last me all my life." "Very well, then, and I say, if you married a man you care for as little as that, I should never believe in a woman again.--Not, of course, that it matters to you what I believe in and what I don't? But to hear you--you, Louise!--counting up the profits to be gained from it, like ... like--oh, I don't know what! I couldn't have believed it of you." "You are a very uncomfortable person, Maurice." "I mean to be. And more than uncomfortable. Listen to me! You talk of it lightly and coolly; but if you married this man, without caring for him more than you say you do, just for the sake of a home, or his money, or his good manners, or the primitive animal, or whatever it is that attracts you in him:"--he grew bitter again in spite of himself--"if you did this, you would be stifling all that is good and generous in your nature. For you may say what you like; the man is little more than a stranger to you. What can you know of his real character? And what can he know of you?" "He knows as much of me as I ever intend him to know." "Indeed! Then you wouldn't tell him, for instance, that only a few months ago, you were eating your heart out for some one else?" Louise winced as though the words had struck her in the face. Before she answered, she stood still, in the middle of the path, and pinned on, with deliberate movements, the big white hat, beneath the drooping brim and nodding feathers of which, her eyes were as black as coals. "No, I should not," she said. "Why should I? Do you think it would make him care more for me to know that I had nearly died of love for another man?" "Certainly not. And it might also make him less ready to marry you." "That's exactly what I think." One was as bitter as the other; but Maurice was the more violent of the two. "And so you would begin the new life you talk of, with lies and deceit?--A most excellent beginning!" "If you like to call it that. I only know, that no one with any sense thinks of dragging up certain things when once they are dead and buried. Or are you, perhaps, simple enough to believe any man living would get over what I have to tell him, and care for me afterwards in the same way?" He turned, with tell-tale words on his tongue. But the expression of her face intimidated him. He had only to look at her to know that, if he spoke of himself at this moment, she would laugh him to scorn. But the beloved face acted on him in its own way; his sense of injury weakened. "Louise," he said in an altered tone; "whatever you say to the contrary, in a matter like this, I can't advise you. For I don't understand--and never should.--But of one thing I'm as sure as I am that the sun will rise to-morrow, and that is, that you won't do it. Do you honestly think you could go on living, day after day, with a man you don't sincerely care for?--of whom the most you can say is that he's not repugnant to you? You little know what it would mean!--And you may reason as you will; I answer for you; and I say no, and again no. It isn't in you to do it. You are not mean and petty enough. You can't hide your feelings, try as you will.--No, you couldn't deceive some one, by pretending to care for him, for months on end. You would be miserably unhappy; and then--then I know what would happen. You would be candid--candid about everything--when it was too late." There was no mistaking the sincerity of his words. But Louise was boundlessly irritated, and made no further effort to check her resentment. "You have an utterly false and ridiculous idea of me, and of everything belonging to me." "I haven't spent all this time with you for nothing. I know you better than you know yourself. I believe in you, Louise. And I know I am right. And some day you'll know it, too." These words only incensed her the more. "What you know--or think you know--is nothing to me. If you had listened to me patiently, as I asked you to, instead of losing your temper, and taking what I said as a personal affront, then, yes, then I should have told you something else besides. How, when I came back, a fortnight ago, I was quite resolved to marry this man, if he asked me marry him and cut myself off for ever from my old life and its hateful memories.--And why not? I'm still young. I still have a right to pleasure--and change--and excitement.--And in all these days, I didn't once hesitate--not till the letter came yesterday--and then not till night. It wasn't like me; for when once I have made up my mind, I never go back. So I determined to ask you--ask you to help me to decide. For you had always been kind to me.--But this is what I get for doing it." Her anger flared up anew. "You have treated me abominably, to-day, Maurice; and I shan't forget it. All your ridiculous notions about right and wrong don't matter a straw. What does matter is, that when I ask for help, you should behave as if--as if I were going to commit a crime. Your opinion is nothing to me. If I decide to marry the man, I shall do it, no matter what you say." "I'm sure you will." "And if I don't, let me tell you this: it won't be because of anything you've said to-day. Not from any high-flown notions of honesty, or generosity, as you would like to make yourself believe; but merely because I haven't the energy in me. I couldn't keep it up. I want to be quiet, to have an easy life. The fact that some one else had to suffer, too, wouldn't matter to me, in the least. It's myself I think of, first and foremost, and as long as I live it will always be myself." Her voice belied her words; he expected each moment that she would burst out crying. However, she continued to walk on, with her head erect; and she did not take back one of the unkind things she had said. They parted without being reconciled. Maurice stood and watched her mount the staircase, in the vain hope that she would turn, before reaching the top. He did not see how the fine May afternoon declined, and passed into evening; how the high stacks of cloud were broken up at sunset, and shredded into small flakes and strips of cloud, which, saturated with gold, vanished in their turn: how the shadows in the corners turned from blue to black; nor did he note the mists that rose like steam from the ground, intensifying the acrid smell of garlic, with which the woods abounded. Screened by the thicket, he sat on his accustomed scat, and gave himself up to being miserable. For some time he was conscious only of how deeply he had been wounded--just as one suffers from the bruise after the blow. At the moment, he had been stunned into a kind of quiescence; now his nerves throbbed and tingled. But, little by little, a vivid recollection of what had actually occurred returned to sting him: and certain details stood out fixed and unforgettable. Yet, in reliving the hours just past, he felt no regret at the fact that they had quarrelled. What first smote him was an unspeakable amazement at Louise. The knowledge that, for weeks on end, she had been contemplating marriage, was beyond his belief. Hardly recovered from the throes of a suffering believed incurable, and while he was still going about her with gloved hands, as it were, she was ready to throw herself into the arms of the first likely man she met. He could not help himself: in this connection, every little trait in her that was uncongenial to him, started up with appalling distinctness. Hitherto, he had put it down to his own sensitiveness; he was over-nice. But for the most part, he had forgiven her on account of all she had come through; for he believed that this grief had swept destructively through her nature, leaving a jagged wound, which only time could heal. Now, as if to prove to him what a fool he was, she showed him that he had been mistaken in this also; she could recover her equilibrium, while he still hedged her round with solicitude--recover herself, and transfer her affection to another person. Good God! Was it so easy, a matter of so little moment, to grow fond of one who was almost a stranger to her?--for, in spite of what she said to the contrary, he was persuaded that she had a stronger feeling for this man than she had been willing to admit: this riper man, with his experienced way of treating women. Was, then, his own idea of her wholly false? Was there, after all, something in her nature that he could not, would not, understand? He denied it fiercely, almost before he had formulated the question: no matter what her actions were, or what words she said, deep down in her was an intense will for good, a spring of noble impulse. It was only that she had never had a proper chance. But he denied it to a vision of her face: the haunting eyes which, at first sight, had destroyed his peace of mind; the dead black hair against the ivory-coloured skin. It was in these things that the truth lay, not in the blind promptings of her inclination. For the first time, the idea of marriage took definite shape in his mind. For all he knew, it might have been lying dormant there, all along; but he would doubtless have remained unconscious of it, for weeks to come, had it not been for the events of the afternoon. Now, however, Louise had made it plain that his feelings for her were of an exaggerated delicacy; plain that she herself had no such scruples. He need hesitate no longer. But marry! ... marriage! ... he marry Louise!--at the thought of it, he laughed. That he, Maurice Guest, should, for an instant, put himself on a par with her American suitor! The latter, rich, leisured, able to satisfy her caprices, surround her with luxury: himself, younger than she by several years, without prospects, with nothing to offer her but a limitless devotion. He tried to imagine himself saying: "Louise, will you marry me?" and the words stuck in his throat; for he saw the amused astonishment of her eyes. And not merely at the presumption he would be guilty of; what was as clear to him as day was that she did not really care for him; not as he cared for her; not with the faintest hint of a warmer feeling. If he had never grasped this before, he did so now, to the full. Sitting there, he affirmed to himself that she did not even like him. She was grateful to him, of course, for his help and friendship; but that was all. Beyond this, he would not have been surprised to learn from her own lips that she actually disliked him: for there was something irreconcilable about their two natures. And never, for a moment, had she considered him in the light of an eligible lover--oh, how that stung! Here was she, with an attraction for him which nothing could weaken; and in him was not the smallest lineament, of body or of mind, to wake a response in her. He was powerless to increase her happiness by a hair's breadth. Her nerves would never answer to the inflection of his voice, or the touch of his hand. How could such things be? What anomaly was here? To-day, her face rose before him unsought--the sweet, dark face with the expression of slight melancholy that it wore in repose, as he loved it best. It was with him when, stiff and tired, he emerged from his seclusion, and walked home through the trails of mist that hung, breast-high, on the meadow-land. It was with him under the street-lamps, and, to its accompanying presence, the strong conviction grew in him that evasion on his part was no longer possible. Sooner or later, come what might, the words he had faltered over, even to himself, would have to be spoken. XI. One day, some few weeks later, Madeleine sat at her writingtable, biting the end of her pen. A sheet of note-paper lay before her; but she had not yet written a word. She frowned to herself, as she sat. Hard at work that morning, she had heard a ring at the door-bell, and, a minute after, her landlady ushered in a visitor, in the shape of Miss Martin. Madeleine rose from the piano with ill-concealed annoyance, and having seated Miss Martin on the sofa, waited impatiently for the gist of her visit; for she was sure that the lively American would not come to see her without an object. And she was right: she knew to a nicety when the important moment arrived. Most of the visit was preamble; Miss Martin talked at length of her own affairs, assuming, with disarming candour, that they interested other people as much as herself. She went into particulars about her increasing dissatisfaction with Schwarz, and retailed the glowing accounts she heard on all sides of a teacher called Schrievers. He was not on the staff of the Conservatorium; but he had been a favourite of Liszt's, and was attracting many pupils. From this, Miss Martin passed to more general topics, such as the blow Dove had recently received over the head of his attachment to pretty Susie Fay. "Why, Sue, she feels perfectly DREADFUL about it. She can't understand Mr. Dove thinking they were anything but real good friends. Most every one here knew right away that Sue had her own boy down home in Illinois. Yes, indeed." Madeleine displayed her want of interest in Dove's concerns so plainly, that Miss Martin could not do otherwise than cease discussing them. She rose to end her call. As, however, she stood for the momentary exchange of courtesies that preceded the hand-shake, she said, in an off-hand way: "Miss Wade, I presume I needn't inquire if you're acquainted with the latest about Louise Dufrayer? I say, I guess I needn't inquire, seeing you're so well acquainted with Mr. Guest. I presume, though, you don't see so much of him now. No, indeed. I hear he's thrown over all his friends. I feel real disappointed about him. I thought he was a most agreeable young man. But, as momma says, you never can tell. An' I reckon Louise is most to blame. Seems like she simply CAN'T exist without a beau. But I wonder she don't feel ashamed to show herself, the way she's talked of. Why, the stories I hear about her! ... an' they're always together. She's gotten her a heap of new things, too--a millionaire asked her to marry him, when she was in Dresden, but he wasn't good enough for her, no ma'am, an' all on account of Mr. Guest.--Yes, indeed. But I must say I feel kind of sorry for him, anyway. He was a real pleasant young man." "Maurice Guest is quite able to look after himself," said Madeleine drily. "Is that so? Well, I presume you ought to know, you were once so well acquainted with him--if I may say, Miss Wade, we all thought it was you was his fancy. Yes, indeed." "Oh, I always knew he liked Louise." But this was the chief grudge she, too, bore him: that he had been so little open with her. His seeming frankness had been merely a feint; he had gone his own way, and had never really let her know what he was thinking and planning. She now recalled the fact that Louise had only once been mentioned between them, since the time of her illness, over six months ago; and she, Madeleine, had foolishly believed his reticence to be the result of a growing indifference. Since the night of the ball, they had shunned each other, by tacit consent. But, though she could avoid him in person, Madeleine could not close her cars to the gossipy tales that circulated. In the last few weeks, too, the rumours had become more clamatory: these two misguided creatures had obviously no regard for public opinion; and several times, Madeleine had been obliged to go out of her own way, to escape meeting them face to face. On these occasions, she told herself that she had done with Maurice Guest; and this decision was the more easy as, since the beginning of the year, she had moved almost entirely in German circles. But now the distasteful tattle was thrust under her very nose. It seemed to put things in a different light to hear Maurice pitied and discussed in this very room. In listening to her visitor, she had felt once more how strong her right of possession was in him; she was his oldest friend in Leipzig. Now she was ready to blame herself for having let her umbrage stand in the way of them continuing friends: had he been dropping in as he had formerly done, she might have prevented things from going so far, and certainly have been of use in hindering them from growing worse; for, with Louise, one was never sure. And so she determined to write to him, without delay. In this, though, she was piqued as well by a violent curiosity. Louise said to have given up a good match for his sake! xxx she could not believe it. It was incredible that she could care for him as he cared for her. Madeleine knew them both too well; Maurice was not the type of man by whom Louise was attracted. She wrote in a guarded way. IT SEEMS ABSURD THAT OLD FRIENDS SHOULD BEHAVE AS WE ARE DOING. IF ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED WAS MY FAULT, FORGIVE IT, AND SHOW ME YOU DON'T BEAR ME A GRUDGE, BY COMING TO SEE ME TO-MORROW AFTERNOON. They had not met for close on four months, and, for the first few minutes after his arrival, Madeleine was confused by the change that had taken place in Maurice. It was not only that he was paler and thinner than of old: his boyish manner had deserted him; and, when he forgot himself, his eyes had a strange, brooding expression. "Other-worldly ... almost," thought Madeleine; and, in order to surmount an awkwardness she had been resolved not to feel, she talked glibly. Maurice said he could not stay long, and wished to keep his hat in his hand; but before he knew it, he was sitting in his accustomed place on the sofa. As they stirred their tea, she told him how annoyed she had felt at having recently had a performance postponed in favour of Avery Hill: and how the latter was said to be going crazy, with belief in her own genius. Maurice seemed to be in the dark about what was happening, and made no attempt to hide his ignorance. She could see, too, that he was not interested in these things; he played with a tassel of the sofa, and did not notice when she stopped speaking. It is his turn now, she said to herself, and left the silence that followed unbroken. Before it had lasted long, however, he looked up from his employment of twisting the tassel as far round as it would go, and then letting it fly back. "I say, Madeleine, now I'm here, there's something I should like to ask you. I hope, though, you won't think it impertinence on my part." He cleared his throat. "Once or twice lately I've heard a report about you--several times, indeed. I didn't pay any attention to it--not till a few days back, that is--when I saw it--or thought I saw it--confirmed with my own eyes. I was at Bonorand's on Monday evening; I was behind you." In an instant Madeleine had grasped what he was driving at. "Well, and what of that, pray?" she asked. "Do you think I should have been there, if I had been ashamed of it?" "I saw whom you were with," he went on, and treated the tassel so roughly that it came away in his hand. "I say, Madeleine, it can't be true, what they say--that you are thinking of ... of marrying that old German?" Madeleine coloured, but continued to meet his eyes. "And why not?" she asked again.--"Don't destroy my furniture, please." "Why not?" he echoed, and laid the tassel on the table. "Well, if you can ask that, I should say you don't know the facts of the case. If I had a sister, Madeleine, I shouldn't care to see her going about with that man. He's an old ?? ??--don't you know he has had two wives, and is divorced from both?" "Fiddle-dee-dee! You and your sister! Do you think a man is going to come to nearly fifty without knowing something of life? That he hasn't been happy in his matrimonial relations is his misfortune, not his fault." "Then it's true?" "Why not?" she asked for the third time. "Then, of course, I've nothing more to say. I've no right to interfere in your private affairs. I hoped I should still be in time--that's all." "No, you can't go yet, sit still," she said peremptorily. "I too, have something to say.--But will you first tell me, please, what it can possibly matter to you, whether you are in time, as you call it, or not?" "Why, of course, it matters.--We haven't seen much of each other lately; but you were my first friend here, and I don't forget it. Particularly in a case like this, where everything is against the idea of you marrying this man: your age--your character--all common sense." "Those are only words, Maurice. With regard to my age, I am over twenty-seven, as you know. I need no boy of eighteen for a husband. Then I am plain: I shall never attract anyone by my personal appearance, nor will a man ever be led to do foolish things for my sake. I have worked hard all my life, and have never known what it is to let to-morrow take care of itself.--Now here, at last, comes a man of an age not wholly unsuitable to mine, whatever you may say. What though he has enjoyed life? He offers me, not only a certain social standing, but material comfort for the rest of my days. Whereas, otherwise, I may slave on to the end, and die eventually in a governesses' home." "YOU would never do that. You are not one of that kind. But do you think, for a moment, you'd be happy in such a position of dependence?" "That's my own affair. There would certainly be nothing extraordinary in it, if I were." "As you put it, perhaps not. But------If it were even some one of your own race! But these foreigners think so queerly. And then, too, Madeleine, you'll laugh, I daresay, but I've always thought of you as different from other women--strong and independent, and quite sure of yourself. The kind of girl that makes others seem little and stupid. No one here was good enough for you." Madeleine's amazement was so great that she did not reply immediately. Then she laughed. "You have far too high an opinion of me. Do you really think I like standing alone? That I do it by preference?--You were never more mistaken, if you do. It has always been a case of necessity with me, no one ever having asked me to try the other way. I suppose like you, they thought I enjoyed it. However, set your mind at rest. Your kind intervention has not come too late. There is still nothing definite." "I'm glad to hear it." "I don't say there mayn't be," she added. "Herr Lohse and I are excellent friends, and it won't occur to me not to accept the theatre-tickets and other amusements he is able to give me.--But it is also possible that for the sake of 'your ideals, I may die a solitary old maid." Here she was overcome by the comical side of the matter, and burst out laughing. "What a ridiculous boy you are! If you only knew how you have turned the tables on me. I sent for you, this afternoon, to give you a sound talking-to, and instead of that, here you sit and lecture me." "Well, if I have achieved something----" "It's too absurd," she repeated more tartly. "For you to come here in this way to care for my character, when you yourself are the talk of the place." His face changed, as she had meant it to do. He choked back a sharp rejoinder. "I'd be obliged, if you'd leave my affairs out of the question." "I daresay you would. But that's just what I don't intend to do. For if there are rumours going the round about me, what on earth is one to say of you? I needn't go into details. You know quite well what I mean. Let me tell you that your name is in everybody's mouth, and that you are being made to appear not only contemptible, but ridiculous." "The place is a hot-bed of scandal. I've told you that before," he cried, angry enough now. "These dirty-minded MUSIKER think it outside the bounds of possibility for two people to be friends." But his tone was unsure, and he was conscious of it. "Yes--when one of the two is Louise." "Kindly leave Miss Dufrayer out of the question." "Oh, Maurice, don't Miss Dufrayer me!--I knew Louise before you even knew that she existed.--But answer me one question, and I'm done. Are you engaged to Louise?" "Most certainly not." "Well, then, you ought to be.--For though you don't care what people say about yourself, your conscience will surely prick you when you hear that you're destroying the last shred of reputation Louise had left.--I should be sorry to repeat to you what is being said of her." But after he had gone, she reproached herself for having put such a question to him. At the pass things had reached, it was surely best for him to go through with his infatuation, and get over it. Whereas she, in a spasm of conventionality, had pointed him out the sure road to perdition; for the worst thing that could happen would be for him to bind himself to Louise, in any fashion. As if her reputation mattered! The more rapidly she got rid of what remained to her, the better it would be for every one, and particularly for Maurice Guest. Had Maurice been in doubt as to Madeleine's meaning, it would have been removed within a few minutes of his leaving the house. As he turned a corner of the Gewandhaus, he came face to face with Krafft. Though they had not met for weeks, Heinrich passed with no greeting but a disagreeable smile. Maurice was not half-way across the road, however, when Krafft came running back, and, taking the lappel of his friend's coat, allowed his wit to play round the talent Maurice displayed for wearing dead men's shoes. CARMEN was given that night in the theatre; Maurice had fetched tickets from the box-office in the morning. An ardent liking for the theatre had sprung up in Louise of late; and they were there sometimes two or three evenings in succession. Besides this, CARMEN was her favourite opera, which she never missed. They heard it from the second-top gallery. Leaning back in his corner, Maurice could see little of the stage; but the bossy waves of his companion's head were sharply outlined for him against the opposite tier. Louise was engrossed in what was happening on the stage; her eyes were wide open, immovable. He had never known anyone surrender himself so utterly to the mimic life of the theatre. Under the influence of music or acting that gripped her, Louise lost all remembrance of her surroundings: she lived blindly into this unreal world, without the least attempt at criticism. Afterwards, she returned to herself tired and dispirited, and with a marked distaste for the dullness of real life. Here, since the first lively clash of the orchestra, since the curtain rose on gay Sevilla, she had been as far away from him as if she were on another planet. Not, he was obliged to confess to himself, that it made very much difference. Though he was now her constant companion, though his love for her was stronger than it had ever been, he knew less of her to-day than he had known six months ago, when one all-pervading emotion had made her life an open book. Since that unhappy afternoon on which he learnt the contents of the letter from Dresden, they had spent a part of nearly every day in each other's company. Louise had borne him no malice for what he had said to her; indeed, with the generous forgetfulness of offence, which was one of the most astonishing traits in her character, she met him, the day after, as though nothing had passed between them. By common consent, they never referred to the matter again; Maurice did not know to this day, whether or how she had answered the letter. For, although she had forgiven him, she was not quite the same with him as before; a faint change had come over their relation to each other. It was something so elusive that he could not have defined it; yet nevertheless it existed, and he was often acutely conscious of it. It was not that she kept her thoughts to herself; but she did not say ALL she thought--that was it. And this shade of reserve, in her who had been so frank, ate into him sorely. He accepted it, though, as a chastisement, for he had been in a very contrite frame of mind on awakening to the knowledge that he had all but lost her. And so the days had slipped away. An outsider had first to open his eyes to the fact that it was impossible for things to go on any longer as they were doing; that, for her sake, he must make an end, and quickly. And yet it had been so easy to drift, so hard to do otherwise, when Louise accepted all he did for her as a matter of course, in that high-handed way of hers which took no account of details. He felt sorry for her, too, for she was not happy. There was a gnawing discontent in her just now, and for this, in great measure, he held himself responsible: for a few weeks she had been buoyed up by the hope of a new life, and he had been the main agent in destroying this hope. In return, he had had nothing to offer her--nothing but a rigid living up to certain uncomfortable ideals, which brought neither change nor pleasure with them: and, despite his belief in the innate nobility of her nature, he could not but recognise that ideals were for her something colder and sterner than for other people. She made countless demands on his indulgence, and he learnt to see, only too clearly, what a dependent creature she was. It was more than a boon, it was a necessity to her, to have some one at her side who would care for her comfort and well-being. He could not picture her alone; for no one had less talent than she for the trifles that compose life. Her thoughts seemed always to be set on something larger, vaguer, beyond. He devoted as much time to her as he could spare from his work, and strove to meet her half-way in all she asked. But it was no slight matter; for her changes of mood had never been so abrupt as they were now. He did not know how to treat her. Sometimes, she was cold and unapproachable, so wrapped up in herself that he could not get near her; and perhaps only an hour later, her lips would curve upwards in the smile which made her look absurdly young, and her eyes, too, have all the questioning wonder of a child's. Or she would be silent with him, not unkindly, but silent as a sphinx; and, on the same day, a fit of loquacity would seize her, when she was unable to speak quickly enough for the words that bubbled to her lips. He managed to please her seldomer than ever. But however she behaved, he never faltered. The right to be beside her was now his; and the times she was the hardest on him were the times he loved her best. As spring, having reached and passed perfection, slipped over into summer, she was invaded by a restlessness that nothing could quell. It got into her hands and her voice, into all her movements, and worked upon her like a fever-like a crying need. So intense did it become that it communicated itself to him also. He, too, began to feel that rest and stillness were impossible for them both, and to be avoided at any cost. "I have never really seen spring," Louise said to him, one day, in excuse of some irrational impulse that had driven her out of the house. And the quick picture she drew, of how, in her native land, the brief winter passed almost without transition into the scathing summer; her suggestion of unchanging leaves, brown barrenness, and and dryness; of grass burnt to cinders, of dust, drought, and hot, sandy winds: all this helped him to understand something of what she was feeling. A remembrance of this parched heat was in her veins, making her eager not to miss any of the young, teeming beauty around her, or one of the new strange scents; eager to let the magic of this awakening permeate her and amaze her, like a primeval happening. But, though he thus grasped something of what was going on in her, he was none the less uneasy under it: just as her feverish unburdening of herself after hours of silence, so now her attitude towards this mere change of nature disquieted him; she over-enjoyed it, let herself go in its exuberance. And, as usual, when she lost hold of her nerves, he found himself retreating into his shell, practising self-control for two. Often, how often he could not count, the words that had to be said had risen to his lips. But they had never crossed them--in spite of the wanton greenness of the woods, which should have been the very frame in which to tell a woman you loved her. But not one drop of her nervous exaltation was meant for him: she had never shown, by the least sign, that she cared a jot for him; and daily he became more convinced that he was chasing a shadow, that he was nothing to her but the STAFFAGE in the picture of her life. He was torn by doubts, and mortally afraid of the one little word that would put an end to them. He recollected one occasion when he had nearly succeeded in telling her, and when, but for a trick of fate, he would have done so. They were on their way home from the NONNE, where the delicate undergrowth of the high old trees was most prodigal, and where Louise had closed her eyes, and drunk in the rich, earthy odours. They had paused on the suspension bridge, and stood, she with one ungloved hand on the railing, to watch the moving water. Looking at her, it had seemed to him that just on this afternoon, she might listen to what he had to say with a merciful attentiveness; she was quiet, and her face was gentle. He gripped the rail with both hands. But, before he could open his lips, a third person turned from the wood-path on to the bridge, making it tremble with his steps--a jaunty cavalry officer, with a trim moustache and bright dancing eyes. He walked past them, but threw a searching look at Louise, and, a little further along the bridge, stood still, as if to watch something that was floating in the water, in reality to look covertly back at her. She had taken no notice of him as he passed, but when he paused, she raised her head; and then she looked at him--with a preoccupied air, it was true, but none the less steadily, and for several seconds on end. The words died on Maurice's lips: and going home, he was as irresponsive as she herself ... "I love you, Louise--love you." He said it now, sitting back in his dark corner in the theatre; but amid the buzz and hum of the music, and the shouting of the toreadors, he might have called the words aloud, and still she would not have heard them. Strangely enough, however, at this moment, for the first time during the evening, she turned her head. His eyes were fixed on her, in a dark, exorbitant gaze. Her own face hardened. "The opera-glass!" Maurice opened the leather case, and gave her the glass. Their fingers met, and hers groped for a moment round his hand. He withdrew it as though her touch had burnt him. Louise flashed a glance at him, and laid the opera-glass en the ledge in front of her, without making use of it. Slowly the traitorous blood subsided. To the reverberating music, which held all ears, and left him sitting alone with his fate, Maurice had a moment of preternatural clearness. He realised that only one course was open to him, and that was to go away. BEI NACHT UND NEBEL, if it could not be managed otherwise, but, however it happened, he must go. More wholly for her sake than Madeleine had dreamed of: unless he wanted to be led into some preposterous folly that would embitter the rest of his life. Who could say how long the wall he had built up round her--of the knowledge he shared with her, of pity for what she had undergone--would stand against the onset of this morbid, overmastering desire? To the gay, feelingless music, he thought out his departure in detail, sparing himself nothing. But in the long interval after the second act, when they were downstairs on the LOGGIA, where it was still half daylight; where the lights of cafes and street-lamps were only beginning here and there to dart into existence; where every man they met seemed to notice Louise with a start of attention: here Maurice was irrevocably convinced that it would be madness to resign his hard-won post without a struggle. For that it would long remain empty, he did not for a moment delude himself. They hardly exchanged a word during the remainder of the evening. His mouth was dry. Carmen, and her gaudy fate, drove past him like the phantasmagoria of a sleepless night. When, the opera was over, and they stood waiting for the crowd to thin, he scanned his companion's face with anxiety, to discover her mood. With her hand on the wire ledge, Louise watched the slow fall of the iron curtain. Her eyes were heavy; she still lived in what she had seen. Her preoccupation continued as they crossed the square; her movements were listless. Maurice's thoughts went back to a similar night, a year ago, when, for the first time, he had walked at her side: it had been just such a warm, lilac-scented night as this, and then, as now, he had braced himself up to speak. At that time he had known her but slightly; perhaps, for that very reason, he had been bolder in taking the plunge. He turned and looked at her. Her face was averted: he could only see the side of her cheek, and the clear-cut line of her chin. "Are you tired, Louise?" he asked, and, in the protective tenderness of his tone, her name sounded like a term of endearment. She made a vague gesture, which might signify either yes or no. "It was too hot for you up there, to-night," he went on. "Next time, I shall take you a scat downstairs--as I've always wanted to." As she still did not respond, he added, in a changed voice: "Altogether, though, it will be better for you to get accustomed to going alone to the theatre." She turned at this, with an indolent curiosity. "Why?" "Because--why, because it will soon be necessary. I'm going away." He had made a beginning now, clumsily, and not as he had intended, but it was made, and he would stand fast. "You are going away?" She said each word distinctly, as if she doubted her ears. "Yes." "Why, Maurice?" "For several reasons. It's not a new decision. I've been thinking about it for some time." "Indeed? Then why choose just to-night to tell me?--you've had plenty of other chances. And to-night I had enjoyed the theatre, and the music, and coming out into the air ..." "I'm sorry. But I've put it off too long as it is. I ought to have told you before.--Louise ... you must see that things can't go on like this any longer?" His voice begged her for once to look at the matter as he did. But she heard only the imperative. "Must?" she repeated. "I don't see--not at all." "Yes.--For your sake, I must go." "Ah!--that makes it clearer. People have been talking, have they? Well, let them talk." "I can't hear you spoken of in that way." "Oh, you're very good. But if we, ourselves, know that what's being said is not true, what can it matter?" "I refuse to be the cause of it." "Do you, indeed?" She laughed. "You refuse? After doing all you can to make yourself indispensable, you now say: get on as best you can alone; I've had enough; I must go.--Don't say it's on my account--that the thought of yourself is not at the bottom of it--for I wouldn't believe you though you did." "I give you my word, I have only thought of you. I meant it ... I mean it, for the best." She quickened her steps, and he saw that she was nervously worked up. "No man can want to injure the woman he respects--as I respect you." Her shoulders rose, in her own emotional way. "But tell me one thing," he begged, as she walked inexorable before him. "Say it will matter a little to you if I go--that you will miss me--if ever so little ... Louise!" "Miss you? What does it matter whether I miss you or not? It seems to me that counts least of all. You, at any rate, will have acted properly. You will have nothing to reproach yourself with.--Oh, I wouldn't be a man for anything on earth! You are all--all alike. I hate you and despise you--every one of you!" They were within a few steps of the house. She pressed on, and, without looking back at him, or wishing him good-night, disappeared in the doorway. XII. It was a hot evening in June: the perfume of the lilac, now in fullest bloom, lay over squares and gardens like a suspended wave. The sun had gone down in a cloudless sky; an hour afterwards, the pavements were still warm to the touch, and the walls of the buildings radiated the heat they had absorbed. The high old houses in the inner town had all windows set open, and the occupants leaned out on their window-cushions, with continental nonchalance. The big garden-cafes were filled to the last scat. In the woods, the midges buzzed round people's heads in accompanying clouds; and streaks of treacherous white mist trailed, like fixed smoke, over the low-lying meadow-land. Maurice and Louise had rowed to Connewitz; but so late in the evening that most of the variously shaped boats, with coloured lanterns at their bows, were returning when they started. Louise herself had proposed it. When he went to her that afternoon, he found her stretched on the sofa. A theatre-ticket lay on the table--for she had taken him at his word, and shown him that she could do without him. But to-night she had no fancy for the theatre: it was too hot. She looked very slight and young in her white dress; but was moody and out of spirits. On the way to Connewitz, they spoke no more than was necessary. Coming back, however, they had the river to themselves; and she no longer needed to steer. He placed cushions for her at the bottom of the boat; and there she lay, with her hands clasped under her neck, watching the starry strip of sky, which followed them, between the tops of the trees above, like a complement of the river below. The solitude was unbroken; they might have gone down in the murky water, and no one would ever know how it had happened: a snag caught unawares; a clumsy movement in the light boat; half a minute, and all would be over.--Or, for the first and the last time in his life, he would take her in his arms, hold her to him, feel her cheek on his; he would kiss her, with kisses that were at once an initiation and a farewell; then, covering her eyes with his hands, he would gently, very gently, tilt the boat. A moment's hesitation; it sought to right itself; rocked violently, and overturned: and beneath it, locked in each other's arms, they found a common grave.... In fancy, he saw it all. Meanwhile, he rowed on, with long, leisurely strokes; and the lapping of the water round the oars was the only sound to be heard. At home, on the lid of his piano, lay the prospectuses of music-schools in other towns. They were still arriving, in answer to the impulsive letters he had written off, the night after the theatre. But the last to come had remained unopened.--He was well aware of it: his lingering on had all the appearance of a weak reluctance to face the inevitable. For he could never make mortal understand what he had come through, in the course of the past week. He could no more put into words the isolated spasms of ecstasy he had experienced--when nothing under the sun seemed impossible--than he could describe the slough of misery and uncertainty, which, on occasion, he had been forced to wade through. For the most part, he believed that the words of contempt Louise had spoken, came straight from her heart; but he had also known the faint stir ring of a new hope, and particularly was this the case when he had not seen Louise for some time. Then, at night, as he lay staring before him, this feeling became a sudden refulgence, which lighted him through all the dark hours, only to be remorselessly extinguished by daylight. Most frequently, however, it was so slender a hope as to be a mere distracting flutter at his heart. Whence it sprang, he could not tell--he knew Louise too well to believe, for a moment, that she would make use of pique to hide her feelings. But there was a something in her manner, which was strained; in the fact that she, who had never cared, should at length be moved by words of his; in a certain way she had looked at him, once or twice in these days; or in a certain way she had avoided looking at him. No, he did not know what it was. But nevertheless it was there--a faint, inarticulate existence--and, compared with it, the tangible facts of life were the shadows of a shadow. Surely she had fallen asleep. He said her name aloud, to try her. "Louise!" She did not stir, and the word floated out into the night--became an expression of the night itself. They had passed the weir and its foaming, and now glided under the bridges that spanned the narrower windings of the river. The wooden bathing-house looked awesome enough to harbour mysteries. Another sharp turn, among sedge and rushes, and the outlying streets of the town were on their right. The boat-sheds were in darkness, when they drew up alongside the narrow landing-place. Maurice got out with the chain in his hand, and secured the boat. Louise did not follow immediately. Her hair had come down, and she was stiff from the cramped position in which she had been lying. When she did rise to her feet, she could hardly stand. He put out his hand, and steadied her by the arm. "A heavy dew must be falling. Your sleeve is wet." She made a movement to draw her arm away; at the same moment, she tangled her foot in her skirt, tripped, and, if he had not caught her, would have fallen forward. "Take care what you're doing! Do you want to drown yourself?" "I don't know. I shouldn't mind, I think," she answered tonelessly. His own balance had been endangered. Directly he had righted himself, he set her from him. But it could not be undone: he had had her in his arms, had felt all her weight on him. The sensation seemed to take his strength away: after the long, black, silent evening, her body was doubly warm, doubly real. He walked her back, along the deserted streets, at a pace she could not keep up with. She lagged behind. She was very pale, and her face wore an expression of almost physical suffering. She looked resolutely away from Maurice; but when her eyes did chance to rest on him, she was swept by such a sense of nervous irritation that she hated the sight of him, as he walked before her. Upstairs, in her room, when he had laid the cushions on the sofa; when the lamp was lighted and set on the table; when he still stood there, pale, and wretched, and undecided, Louise came to an abrupt decision. Advancing to the table, she leaned her hands on it, and bending forward, raised her white face to his. "You told me you were going away; why do you not go? Why have you not already gone?" she asked, and her mouth was hard. "I am waiting ... expecting to hear." His answer was so hasty that it was all but simultaneous. "Louise!--can't you forgive me?--for what I said the other night?" "I have nothing to forgive," she replied, coldly in spite of herself. "You said you must go. I can't keep you here against your will." "It has made you angry with me. I have made you unhappy." "You are making us both unhappy," she said in a low voice. "Now, it is I who say, things can't go on like this." "I know it." He drew a deep breath. "Louise! ... if only you could care a little!" There was silence after these words, but not a silence of conclusion; both knew now that more must follow. He raised his head, and looked into her eyes. "Can you not see how I love you--and how I suffer?" It was a statement rather than a question, but he was not aware of this: he was only amazed that, after all, he should be able to speak so quietly, in such an even tone of voice. There was another pause of suspense; his words seemed like balls of down that he had tossed into the still air: they sank, lingeringly, without haste; and she stood, and let them descend on her. His haggard eyes hung on her face; and, as he watched, he saw a change come over it: the enmity that had been in it, a few seconds back, died out; the lips softened and relaxed; and when the eyes were raised to his again, they were kind, full of pity. "I'm sorry. Poor boy ... poor Maurice." She seemed to hesitate; then, with one of her frankest gestures, held out her hand. At its touch, soft and living, he forgot everything: plans and resolutions, hopes and despairs, happiness and unhappiness no longer existed for him; he knew only that she was sorry for him, that some swift change in her had made her sympathise and understand. He looked down, with dim eyes, at the sweet, pale face, now alight with compassion then, with disarming abruptness, he took her head between his hands, and kissed her, repeatedly, whereever his lips chanced to fall--on the warm mouth, the closed eyes, temples, and hair. He was gone before she recovered from her surprise. She had instinctively stemmed her hands against his shoulders; but, when she was alone, she stood just as he left her, her eyes still shut, letting the sensation subside, of rough, unexpected kisses. She had been taken unawares; her heart was beating. For a moment or two, she remained in the same attitude; then she passed her hand over her face. "That was foolish of him ... very," she said. She looked down at herself and saw her hands. She stretched them out before her, with a sudden sense of emptiness. "If I could care! Yes--if I could only care!" At two o'clock that morning, Maurice wrote: FORGIVE ME--I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING. FOR I LOVE YOU, LOUISE--NO WOMAN HAS EVER BEEN LOVED AS YOU ARE. I KNOW IT IS FOLLY ON MY PART. I HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER YOU. BUT BE MY WIFE, AND I WILL WORK MY FINGERS TO THE BONE FOR YOU. He went out into the summer night, and posted the letter. Returning to his room, he threw himself on the sofa, and fell into a heavy sleep, from which he did not wake till the morning was well advanced. Work was out of the question that day, when he waited as if for a sentence of death. He paced his narrow room, incessantly, afraid to go out, for fear of missing her reply. The hours dragged themselves by, as it is their special province to do in crises of life; and with each one that passed, he grew more convinced what her answer to his letter would be. It was late in the afternoon when the little boy she employed as a messenger, put a note into his hands. COME TO ME THIS EVENING. It was all but evening now; he went, just as he was, on the heels of the child. The windows of her room were open. She sprang up to meet him, then paused. He looked desperately yet stealthily at her. The commiseration of the previous night was still in her face; but she was now quite sure of herself: she drew him to the sofa and made him sit down beside her. Then, however, for a few seconds, in which he waited with hammering pulses, she did not speak. The dull fear at his heart became a certainty; and, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he took one of her hands and laid it on his forehead. Then she said: "Maurice--poor, foolish Maurice!--it is not possible. You see that yourself, I'm sure." "Yes. I know quite well: it is presumption." "Oh, I don't mean that. But there are so many reasons. And you, too, Maurice ... Look at me, and tell me if what you wrote was not just an attempt to make up for what happened last night." And as he did not reply, she added: "You mustn't make yourself reproaches. I, too, was to blame." "It was nothing of the sort. I've been trying for weeks now to tell you. I love you--have loved you since the first time I saw you." He let go of her hand, and she sat forward, with her arms along her knees. Her eyes were troubled; but she did not lose her calm manner of speaking. "I'm sorry, Maurice, very sorry--you believe me' don't you, when I say so? But believe me, too, it's not so serious as you think. You are young. You will get over it, and forget--if not soon, at least in time. You must forget me, and some day you will meet the nice, good woman, who is to be your wife. And when that happens, you will look back on your fancy for me as something foolish, and unreal. You won't be able to understand it then, and you will be grateful to me, for not having taken you at your word." Maurice laughed. All the same, he tried to take his dismissal well: he rose, wrung her hand, and left her. In the seclusion of his own room, he went through the blackest hour of his life. He began to make final preparations for his departure. His choice had fallen on Stuttgart: it was far distant from Leipzig; he would be well out of temptation's way--the temptation suddenly to return. He wrote a letter home, apprising his relatives of his intention: by the time they received the letter, it would be too late for them to interfere. Otherwise, he took no one into his confidence. He would greatly have liked to wait until the present term was over; another month, and the summer vacation would have begun, and he would have been able to leave without making himself conspicuous. But every day it grew more impossible to be there and not to see her--for four days now he had kept away, fighting down his unreasoning desire to know what she was doing. He intended only to see her once more, to bid her good-bye. The afternoon before his interview with Schwarz--he had arranged this with himself for the morning, at the master's private house--he sat at his writing-table, destroying papers and old letters. There was a heap of ashes in the cold stove by the time he took out, tied up in a separate packet, the few odd scraps of writing he had received from Louise. He balanced the bundle in his hand, hesitating what to do with it. Finally, he untied the string, to glance through the letters once again. At the sight of the bold, black, familiar writing, in which each word--two or three to a line--seemed to have a life of its own; at the well-conned pages, each of which he knew by heart; at the characteristic, almost masculine signature, and the faint perfume that still clung to the paper: at the sight of these things all--that he had been thinking and planning since seeing her last, was effaced from his mind. As often before, where she was concerned, a wild impulse, surging up in him, took entire possession of him; and hours of patient and laborious reasoning were by one swift stroke blotted out. He rose, locked the letters up again, rested his arm on the lid of the piano, his head on his arm. The more he toyed with his inclination to go to her, the more absorbent it became, and straightway it was an ungovernable longing: it came over him with a dizzy force, which made him close his eyes; and he was as helpless before it as the drunkard before his craving to drink. Standing thus, he saw with a flash of insight that, though he went away as far as steam could carry him, he would never, as long as he lived, be safe from overthrows of this kind. It was something elemental, which he could no more control than the flow of his blood. And he did not even stay to excuse himself to himself: he went headlong to her, with burning words on his lips. "My poor boy," she said, when he ceased to speak. "Yes, I know what it is--that sudden rage that comes over one, to rush back, at all costs, no matter what happens afterwards.--I'm so sorry for you, Maurice. It is making me unhappy." "You are not to be unhappy. It shall not happen again, I promise you.--Besides, I shall soon be gone now." But at his own words, the thought of his coming desolation pierced him anew. "Give me just one straw to cling to! Tell me you won't forget me all at once; that you will miss me and think of me--if ever so little." "You asked me that the other night. Was what I said then, not answer enough?--And besides, in these last four days, since I have been alone, I've learnt just how much I shall miss you, Maurice. It's my punishment, I suppose, for growing so dependent on anyone." "You must go away, too. You can't stay here by yourself. We must both go, in opposite directions, and begin afresh." She did not reply at once. "I shouldn't know where to go," she said, after a time. "Will nothing else do, Maurice? Is there no other way?--Oh, why can't we go on being friends, as we were!" He shook his head. "I've struggled against it so long--you don't know. I've never really been your friend--only I couldn't hurt you before, by telling you. And it has worn me out; I'm good for nothing. Louise!--think, just once more--ask yourself, once more, if it's quite impossible, before you send me into the outer darkness." She was silent. "I don't ask you to love me," he went on, in a low voice. "I've come down from that, in these wretched days. I would be content with less, much less. I only ask you to let yourself be loved--as I could love you. If only you could say you liked me a little, all the rest would come, I'm confident of it. In time, I should make you love me. For I would take, oh, such care of you! I want to make you happy, only to make you happy. I've no other wish than to show you what happiness is." "It sounds so good ... you are good, Maurice. But the future--tell me, have thought of the future?" "I should think I have.--Do you suppose it means nothing to me to be so despicably poor as I am? To have absolutely nothing to offer you?" She took his hand. "That's not what I mean. And you know it. Come, let us talk sensibly this afternoon, and look things straight in the face.--You want to marry me, you say, and let the rest come? That is very, very good of you, and I shall never forget it.--But what does it mean, Maurice? You have been here a little over a year now, haven't you?--and still have about a year to stay. When that's over, you will go back to England. You will settle in some small place, and spend your life, or the best part of your life, there--oh, Maurice, you are my kind friend, but I tell you frankly, I couldn't face life in an English provincial town. I'm not brave enough for that." He gleaned a ray of hope from her words. "We could live here--anywhere you liked. I would make it possible. I swear I would." She shook her head, and went on, with the same reasonable sweetness. "And then, there's another thing. If I married you, sooner or later you would have to take me home to your people. Have you really thought of that, and how you would feel about it, when it came to the point?--No, no, it's impossible for me to marry you." "But that--that American!--you would have married him?" "That was different," she said, and her voice grew thinner. "It's the knowing that tells, Maurice. You would have that still to learn. You don't realise it yet, but afterwards, it would come home to you.--Listen! You have always been kind to me, I owe you such a debt of gratitude, that I'm going to be frank, brutally frank with you. I've told you often that I shall never really care for anyone again. You know that, don't you? Well, I want to tell you, too--I want you to understand quite, quite clearly that ... that I belonged to him altogether--entirely--that I ... Oh, you know what I mean!" Maurice covered his face with his hands. "The past is the past. It should never be mentioned between us. It doesn't matter--nothing matters now." "You say that--every one says that--beforehand," she answered; and not only her words, but also her way of saying them, seemed to set her down miles away from him, on a lonely pinnacle of experience. "Afterwards, you would think differently." "Louise, if you really cared, it would be different. You wouldn't say such things, then--you would be only too glad not to say them." In her heart she knew that he was right, and did not contradict him. The busy little clock on the writing-table ticked away a few seconds. With a jerk, Maurice rose to his feet. Louise remained sitting, and he looked down on her black head. His gaze was so insistent that she felt it, and raised her eyes. His forlorn face moved her. "Why is it--what is the matter with me?--that I must upset your life like this? I can't bear to see you so unhappy.--And yet I haven't done anything, have I? I have always been honest with you; I've never made myself out to be better than I am. There must be something wrong with me, I think, that no one can ever be satisfied to be just my friend.--Yet with you I thought it was different. I thought things could go on as they were. Maurice, isn't it possible? Say it is! Show me just one little spark of good in myself!" "I'm not different from other men, Louise. I deluded myself long enough, God knows!" She made a despondent gesture, and turned away. "Well, then, if either of us should go, I'm the one. You have your work. I do nothing; I have no ties, no friends--I never even seem to have been able to make acquaintances. And if I went, you could stay quietly on. In time, you would forget me.--If I only knew where to go! I am so alone, and it is all so hard. I shall never know what it is to be happy myself, or to make anyone else happy--never!" and she burst into tears. It was his turn now to play the comforter. Drawing a. chair up before her, he took her hand, and said all he could think of to console her. He could bear anything, he told her, but to see her unhappy. All would yet turn out to be for the best. And, on one point, she was to set her mind at rest: her going away would not benefit him in the least. He would never consent to stay on alone, where they had been so much together. "I've nothing to look forward to, nothing," she sobbed. "There's nothing I care to live for." As soon as she was quieter, he left her. For an hour or more Louise lay huddled up on the sofa, with her face pressed to her arm. When she sat up again, she pushed back her heavy hair, and, clasping her hands loosely round her knees, stared before her with vacant eyes. But not for long; tired though she was, and though her head ached from crying, there was still a deep residue of excitement in her. The level beams of the sun were pouring blindly into the room; the air was dense and oppressive. She rose to her feet and moved about. She did not know what to do with herself: she would have liked to go out and walk; but the dusty, jarring light of the summer streets frightened her. She thought of music, of the theatre, as a remedy for the long evening that yawned before her: then dismissed the idea from her mind. She was in such a condition of restlessness, this night, that the fact of being forced to sit still between two other human beings, would make her want to scream. The sun was getting low; the foliage of the trees in the opposite gardens was black, with copper edges, against the refulgence of the sky. She leaned her hands on the sill, and gazed fixedly at the stretch of red and gold, which, like the afterglow of a fire, flamed behind the trees. Her eyes were filled with it. She did not think or feel: she became one, by looking, with the sight before her. As she stood there, nothing of her existed but her two widely opened eyes; she was a miracle wrought by the sunset; she WAS the sunset--in one of those vacancies of mind, which all intense gazers know. How long she had remained thus she could not have told, when a strange thing happened to her. From some sub-conscious layer of her brain, which started into activity because the rest of it was so passive, a small, still thought glided in, and took possession of her mind. At first, it was so faint that she hardly grasped it; but, once established there, it became so vivid that, with one sweep, it blotted out trees and sunset; so real that it seemed always to have been present to her. Without conscious effort on her part, the solution to her difficulties had been found; a decision had been arrived at, but not by her; it was the work of some force outside herself. She turned from the window, and pressed her hands to her blinded eyes. Good God! it was so simple. To think that this had not occurred to her before!--that, throughout the troubled afternoon, the idea had never once suggested itself! There was no need of loneliness and suffering for either of them. He might stay; they both might stay; she could make him happy, and ward off the change she so dreaded.--Who was she to stick at it? But she remained dazed, doubtful as it were of this peaceful ending; her hand still covered her eyes. Then, with one of the swift movements by which it was her custom to turn thought into action, she went to the writing-table, and scrawled a few, big words. MAURICE, I HAVE FOUND A WAY. COME BACK TO-MORROW EVENING. She hesitated only over the last two words, and, before writing them, sat with her chin in her hand, and deliberately considered. Then she addressed the envelope, and stamped it: it would be soon enough if he got it through the post, the following morning. But, with her, to resolve was to act; she was ill at ease under enforced procrastination; and had often to fight against a burning impatience, when circumstances delayed the immediate carrying out of her will. In this case, however, she had voluntarily postponed Maurice's return for twenty-four hours, when he might have been with her in less than one: for, in her mind, there lurked the seductive thought of a long, summer day, with an emotion at its close to which she could look forward. In the meantime, she was puzzled how to fill up the evening. After all, she decided to go to the theatre, where she arrived in time to hear the last two acts of AIDA. From a seat in the PARQUET, close to the orchestra, she let the showy music play round her. Afterwards, she walked home through the lilac-haunted night, went to bed, and at once fell asleep. Next morning, she wakened early--that was the sole token of disturbance, she could detect in herself. It was very still; there was a faint twittering of birds, but the noises of the street had not yet begun. She lay in the subdued yellow light of her room, with one arm across her eyes. Fresh from sleep, she understood certain things as never before. She saw all that had happened of late--her slow recovery, her striving and seeking, her growing friendship with Maurice--in a different light. On this morning, too, she was able to answer one of the questions that had puzzled her the night before. She saw that the relations in which they had stood to each other, during the bygone months, would have been impossible, had she really cared for him. She liked him, yes, had always liked him; and, in addition, his patience and kindness had made her deeply grateful to him. But that was all. Neither his hands, nor his voice, nor his eyes, nor anything he did, had had the power to touch her--SO to touch her, that her own hands and eyes would have met his half-way; that the old familiar craving, which was partly fear and partly attraction, would have made her callous to his welfare. Had there been a breath of this, things would have come to a climax long ago. Hot and eager as she was, she could not have lived on coolly at his side--and, at this moment, she found it difficult to make up her mind whether she admired Maurice or the reverse, for having been able to carry his part through. And yet, though no particle of personal feeling drew her to him, she, too, had suffered, in her own way, during these weeks of morbid tension, when he had been incapable either of advancing or retreating. How great the strain had been, she recognised only in the instant when he had spanned the breach, in clear, unmistakable words. If he had not done it, she would have been forced to; for she could never find herself to rights, for long, in half circumstances: if she were not to grow bewildered, she had to see her road simple and straight before her. His words to her after they had been on the river together--more, perhaps, his bold yet timid kisses--had given her back strength and assurance. She was no longer the miserable instrument on which he tried his changes of mood; she was again the giver and the bestower, since she held a heart and a heart's happiness in the hollow of her hand. What people would think and say was a matter of indifference to her: besides, they practically believed the worst of her already. No; she had nothing to lose and, it might be, much to gain. And after all, it meant so little! The first time, perhaps; or if one cared too much. But in this case, where she had herself well in hand, and where there was no chance of the blind desire to kill self arising, which had been her previous undoing; where the chief end aimed at was the retention of a friend--here, it meant nothing at all. The thought that she might possibly have scruples on his part to combat, crossed her mind. She stretched her arm straight above her head, then laid it across her eyes again. She would like him none the less for these scruples, did they exist: now, she believed that, at heart, she had really appreciated his reserve, his holding back, where others would have been so ready to pounce in. For the first time, she considered him in the light of a lover, and she saw him differently. As if the mere contemplation of such a change brought her nearer to him, she was stirred by a new sensation, which had him as its object. And under the influence of this feeling, she told herself that perhaps just in this gentler, kindlier love, which only sought her welfare, true happiness lay. She strained to read the future. There would be storms neither of joy nor of pain; but watchful sympathy, and the fine, manly tenderness that shields and protects. Oh, what if after all her passionate craving for happiness, it was here at her feet, having come to her as good things often do, unexpected and unsought! She could lie still no longer; she sprang up, with an alacrity that had been wanting in her movements of late. And throughout the long day, this impression, which was half a hope and half a belief was present to her mind, making everything she did seem strangely festive. She almost feared the moment when she would see him again, lest anything he said should dissipate her hope. When he came, her eyes followed him searchingly. With an instinct that was now morbidly sharpened, Maurice was aware of the change in her, even before he saw her eyes. His own were one devouring question. She made him sit down beside her. "What is it, Louise? Tell me--quickly. Remember, I've been all day in suspense," he said, as seconds passed and she did not speak. "You got my note then?" "What is it?--what did you mean?" "Just a little patience, Maurice. You take one's breath away. You want to know everything at once. I sent for you because--oh, because ... I want you to let us go on being friends." "Is that all?" he cried, and his face fell. "When I have told you again and again that's just what I can't do?" She smiled. "I wish I had known you as a boy, Maurice--oh, but as quite a young boy!" she said in such a changed voice that he glanced up in surprise. Whether it was the look she bent on him, or her voice, or her words, he did not know; but something emboldened him to do what he had often done in fancy: he slid to his knees before her, and laid his head on her lap. She began to smooth back his hair, and each time her hand came forward, she let it rest for a moment.--She wondered how he would look when he knew. "You can't care for me, I know. But I would give my life to make you happy." "Why do you love me?" She experienced a new pleasure in postponing his knowing, postponing it indefinitely. "How can I say? All I know is how I love you--and how I have suffered." "My poor Maurice," she said, in the same caressing way. "Yes, I shall always call you poor.--For the love I could give you would be worthless compared with yours." "To me it would be everything.--If you only knew how I have longed for you, and how I have struggled!" He took enough of her dress to bury his face in. She sat back, and looked over him into the growing dusk of the room: and, in the alabaster of her face, nothing seemed to live except her black eyes, with the half-rings of shadow. Suddenly, with the unexpectedness that marked her movements when she was very intent, she leant forward again, and, with her elbow on her knee, her chin on her hand, said in a low voice: "Is it for ever?" "For ever and ever." "Say it's for ever." She still looked past him, but her lips had parted, and her face wore the expression of a child's listening to fairy-tales. At her own words, a vista seemed to open up before her, and, at the other end, in blue haze, shone the great good that had hitherto eluded her. "I shall always love you," said the young man. "Nothing can make any difference." "For ever," she repeated. "They are pretty words." Then her expression changed; she took his head between her hands. "Maurice ... I'm older than you, and I know better than you, what all this means. Believe me, I'm not worth your love. I'm only the shadow of my old self. And you are still so young and so ... so untried. There's still time to turn back, and be wise." He raised his head. "What do you mean? Why are you saying these things? I shall always love you. Life itself is nothing to me, without you. I want you ... only you." He put his arms round her, and tried to draw her to him. But she held back. At the expression of her face, he had a moment of acute uncertainty, and would have loosened his hold. But now it was she who knotted her hands round his neck, and gave him a long, penetrating look. He was bewildered; he did not understand what it meant; but it was something so strange that, again, he had the impulse to let her go. She bent her head, and laid her face against his; cheek rested on cheek. He took her face between his hands, and stared into her eyes, as if to tear from them what was passing in her brain. Over both, in the same breath, swept the warm, irresistible wave of self-surrender. He caught her to him, roughly and awkwardly, in a desperate embrace, which the kindly dusk veiled and redeemed. XIII. "Now you will not leave me, Maurice?" "Never ... while I live." "And you ..." "No. Don't ask me yet. I can't tell you." "Maurice!" "Forgive me! Not yet. That after all you should care a little! After all ... that you should care so much!" "And it is for ever?" "For ever and ever ... what do you take me for? But not here! Let us go away--to some new place. We will make it our very own." Their words came in haste, yet haltingly; were all but inaudible whispers; went flying back and forwards, like brief cries for aid, implying a peculiar sense of aloofness, of being cut adrift and thrown on each other's mercy. Louise raised her head. "Yes, we will go away. But now, Maurice--at once!" "Yes. To-night ... to-morrow ... when you like." The next morning, he set out to find a place. Three weeks of the term had still to run, and he was to have played in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, before the vacation. But, compared with the emotional upheaval he had undergone, this long-anticipated event was of small consequence. To Schwarz, he alleged a succession of nervous headaches, which interfered with his work. His looks lent colour to the statement; and though, as a rule, highly irritated by opposition to his plans, Schwarz only grumbled in moderation. He would have let no one else off so easily, and, at another time, the knowledge of this would have rankled in Maurice, as affording a fresh proof of the master's indifference towards him. As it was, he was thankful for the freedom it secured him. On the strength of a chance remark of Madeleine's, which he had remembered, he found what he looked for, without difficulty. It could not have been better: a rambling inn, with restaurant, set in a clearing on the top of a wooded hill, with an open view over the undulating plains. That night, he wrote to Louise from the Rochlitzer Berg, painting the nest he had found for them in glowing colours, and begging her to come without delay. But the whole of the next day passed without a word from her, and the next again, and not till the morning of the third, did he receive a note, announcing her arrival for shortly after midday. He took it with him to the woods, and lay at full length on the moss. Although he had been alone now for more than forty-eight hours--a July quiet reigned over the place--he had not managed to think connectedly. He was still dazed, disbelieving of what had happened. Again and again he told himself that his dreams and hopes--which he had always pushed forward into a vague and far-off future--had actually come to pass. She was his, all his; she had given herself ungrudgingly: as soon as he could make it possible, she would be his wife. But, in the meantime, this was all he knew: his nearer vision was obstructed by the stupefying thought of the weeks to come. She was to be there, beside him, day after day, in a golden paradise of love. He could only think of it with moist eyes; and he swore to himself that he would repay her by being more infinitely careful of her than ever man before of the woman he loved. But though he repeated this to himself, and believed it, his feelings had unwittingly changed their pole. On his knees before her, he had vowed that her happiness was the end of all his pleading; now it was frankly happiness he sought, the happiness of them both, but, first and foremost, happiness. And it could hardly have been otherwise: the one unpremeditated mingling of their lives had killed thought; he could only feel now, and, throughout these days, he was conscious of each movement he made, as of a song sung aloud. He wandered up and down the wooded paths, blind to everything but the image of her face, which was always with him, and oftenest as it had bent over him that last evening, with the strange new fire in its eyes. Closing his own, he felt again her arms on his shoulders, her lips meeting his, and, at such moments, it could happen that he threw his arms round a tree, in an ungovernable rush of longing. Beyond the moment when he should clasp her to him again, he could not see: the future was as indistinct as were the Saxon plains, in the haze of morning or evening. He set out to meet her far too early in the day, and when he had covered the couple of miles that lay between the inn on the hill and the railway-station at the foot, he was obliged to loiter about the sleepy little town for over an hour. But gradually the time ticked away; the hands of his watch pointed to a quarter to two, and presently he found himself on the shadeless, sandy station which lay at the end of a long, sandy street, edged with two rows of young and shadeless trees; found himself looking along the line of rail that was to bring her to him. Would the signal never go up? He began to feel, in spite of the strong July sunlight, that there was something illusive about the whole thing. Or perhaps it was just this harsh, crude light, without relieving shadows, which made his surroundings seem unreal to him. However it was, the nearer the moment came when he would see her again, the more improbable it seemed that the train, which was even now overdue, should actually be carrying her towards him--her to him! He would yet waken, with a shock. But then, coming round a corner in the distance, at the side of a hill, he saw the train. At first it appeared to remain stationary, then it increased in size, approached, made a slight curve, and was a snaky line; it vanished, and reappeared, leaving first a white trail of cloud, then thick rounded puffs of cloud, until it was actually there, a great black object, with a creak and a rattle. He had planted himself at the extreme end of the platform, and the carriages went past him. He hastened, almost running, along the train. At the opposite end, a door was opened, the porter took out some bags, and Louise stepped down, and turned to look for him. He was the only person on the station, besides the two officials, and in passing she had caught a glimpse of his face. If he looks like that, every one will know, she thought to herself, and her first words, as he came breathlessly up, were: "Maurice, you mustn't look so glad!" He had never really seen her till now, when, in a white dress, with eyes and lips alight, she stood alone with him on the wayside platform. To curb his first, impetuous gesture, Louise had stretched out both her hands. He stood holding them, unable to take his eyes from her face. At her movement to withdraw them, he stooped and kissed them. "Not look glad? Then you shouldn't have come." They left her luggage to be sent up later in the day, and set out on their walk. Going down the shadeless street, and through the town, she was silent. At first, as they went, Maurice pointed out things that he thought would interest her, and spoke as if he attached importance to them. While, in reality, nothing mattered, now that she was beside him. And gradually, he, too, lapsed into silence, walking by her side across the square, and through the narrow streets, with the solemnly festive feelings of a child on Sunday. They crossed the moat, passed through the gates and courtyard of the old castle, and began to ascend the steep path that was a short-cut to the woods. It was exposed to the full glare of the sun, and, on reaching the sheltering trees, Louise gave a sigh of relief, and stood still to take off her hat. "It's so hot. And I like best to be bareheaded." "Yes, and now I can see you better. Is it really you, at last? I still can't believe it.--That you should have come to me!" "Yes, I'm real," she smiled, and thrust the pins through the crown of the hat. "But very tired, Maurice. It was so hot, and the train was so slow." "Tired?--of course, you must be. Come, there's a seat just round this corner. You shall rest there." They sat, and he laid his arm along the back of the bench. With his left hand he turned her face towards him. "I must see you. I expect every minute to wake and find it's not true." "And yet you haven't even told me you're glad to see me." "Glad? No. Glad is only a word." She leaned lightly against the protective pressure of his arm. On one of her hands lying in her lap, a large spot of sunlight settled. He stooped and put his lips to it. She touched his head. "Were the days long without me?" "Why didn't you come sooner?" Not that he cared, or even cared to know, now that she was there. But he wanted to hear her speak, to remember that he could now have her voice in his ears, whenever he chose. But Louise was not disposed to talk; the few words she said, fell unwillingly from her lips. The stillness of the forest laid its spell upon them: each faint rustling among the leaves was audible; not a living thing stirred except themselves. The tall firs and beeches stretched infinitely upwards, and the patches of light that lay here and there on the moss, made the cool darkness seem darker. When they walked on again, Maurice put his arm through hers, and, in. this intimacy of touch, was conscious of every step she took. It made him happy to suit his pace to hers, to draw her aside from a spreading root or loose stone, and to feel her respond to his pressure. She walked for the most part languidly, looking to the ground. But at a thickly wooded turn of the path, where it was very dark, where the sunlight seemed far away, and the pine-scent was more pungent than elsewhere, she stopped, to drink in the spicy air with open lips and nostrils. "It's like wine. Maurice, I'm glad we came here--that you found this place. Think of it, we might still be sitting indoors, with the blinds drawn, knowing that the pavements were baking in the sun. While here! ... Oh, I shall be happy here!" She was roused for a moment to a rapturous content with her surroundings. She looked childishly happy and very young. Maurice pressed her arm, without speaking: he was so foolishly happy that her praise of the place affected him like praise of himself. Again, he had a chastened feeling of exhilaration: as though an acme of satisfaction had been reached, beyond which it was impossible to go. On catching sight of the rambling wooden building, in the midst of the clearing that had been made among the encroaching trees, Louise gave another cry of pleasure, and before entering the house, went to the edge of the terrace, and looked down on the plains. But upstairs, in her room on the first storey, he made her rest in an arm-chair by the window. He himself prepared the tea, proud to perform the first of the trivial services which, from now on, were to be his. There was nothing he would not do for her, and, as a beginning, he persuaded her to lie down on the sofa and try to sleep. Once outside again, he did not know how to kill time; and the remainder of the afternoon seemed interminable. He endeavoured to read, but could not take in the meaning of two consecutive sentences. He was afraid to go far away, in case she should wake and miss him. So he loitered about in the vicinity of the house, and returned every few minutes, to see if her blind were not drawn up. Finally, he sat down at one of the tables on the terrace, where he had her window in sight. Towards six o'clock, his patience was exhausted; going upstairs, he listened outside the door of her room. Not a sound. With infinite precaution, he turned the handle, and looked in. She was lying just as he had left her, fast asleep. Her head was a little on one side; her left hand was under her cheek, her right lay palm upwards on the rug that covered her. Maurice sat down in the arm-chair. At first, he looked furtively, afraid of disturbing her; then more openly, in the hope that she would waken. Sitting thus, and thinking over the miracle that had happened to him, he now sought to find something in her face for him alone, which had previously not been there. But his thoughts wandered as he gazed. How he loved it!--this face of hers. He was invariably worked on afresh by the blackness of the lustreless hair; by the pale, imperious mouth; by the dead white pallor of the skin, which shaded to a dusky cream in the curves of neck and throat, and in the lines beneath the eyes was of a bluish brown. Now the lashes lay in these encircling rings. Without doubt, it was the eyes that supplied life to the face: only when they were open, and the lips parted over the strong teeth, was it possible to realise how intense a vitality was latent in her. But his love would wipe out the last trace of this wan tiredness. He would be infinitely careful of her: he would shield her from the impulsiveness of her own nature; she should never have cause to regret what she had done. And the affection that bound them would day by day grow stronger. All his work, all his thoughts, should belong to her alone; she would be his beloved wife; and through him she would learn what love really was. He rose and stood over her, longing to share his feelings with her. But she remained sunk in her placid sleep, and as he stood, he became conscious of a different sensation. He had never seen her face--except convulsed by weeping--when it was not under full control. Was it because he had stared so long at it, or was it really changed in sleep? There was something about it, at this moment, which he could not explain: it almost looked less fine. The mouth was not so proudly reticent as he had believed it to be; there was even a want of restraint about it; and the chin had fallen. He did not care to see it like this: it made him uneasy. He stooped and touched her hand. She started up, and could not remember where she was. She put both hands to her forehead. "Maurice!--what is it? Have I been asleep long?" He held his watch before her eyes. With a cry she sprang to her feet. Then she sent him downstairs. They were the only guests. They had supper alone in a longish room, at a little table spread with a coloured cloth. The window was open behind them, and the branches of the trees outside hung into the room. In honour of the occasion, Maurice ordered wine, and they remained sitting, after they had finished supper, listening to the rustling and swishing of the trees. The only drawback to the young man's happiness was the pertinacious curiosity of the girl who waited on them. She lingered after she had served them, and stared so hard that Maurice turned at length and asked her what the matter was. The girl coloured to the roots of her hair. "Ach, Fraulein is so pretty," she answered naively, in her broad Saxon dialect. Both laughed, and Louise asked her name, and if she always lived there. Thus encouraged, Amalie, a buxom, thickset person, with a number of flaxen plaits, came forward and began to talk. Her eyes were fixed on Louise, and she only occasionally glanced from her to the young man. "It's nice to have a sweetheart," she said suddenly. Louise laughed again and coloured. "Haven't you got one, Amalie?" Amalie shook her head, and launched out into a tale of faithlessness and desertion. "Yes, if I were as pretty as you, Fraulein, it would be a different thing," she ended, with a hearty sigh. Maurice clattered up from the table. "All right, Amalie, that'll do." They went out of doors, and strolled about in the twilight. He had intended to show her some of the pretty nooks in the neighbourhood of the house. But she was not as affable with him as she had been with Amalie; she walked at his side with an air of preoccupied indifference. When they sat down on a seat, on the side of the hill, the moon had risen. It was almost at the full, and a few gently sailing scraps of cloud, which crossed it, made it seem to be coming towards them. The plains beneath were veiled in haze; detached sounds mounted from them: the prolonged barking of a dog, the drone of an approaching train. Round about them, the air was heavy with the scent of the sun-warmed pines. Maurice had taken her hand and sat holding it: it was the one thing that existed for him. All else was vague and unreal: only their two hearts beat in all the universe. But there was no interchange between them of binding words or endearments, such as pass between most lovers. How long they sat, neither could have told. But suddenly, far below, a human voice was raised in a long cry, which echoed against the side of the hill. Louise shivered: and he had a moment of apprehension. "You're cold. We have sat too long. Let us go." They rose, and walked slowly back to the house. Although the doors were still open, the building was in darkness, and they had to grope their way up the stairs. Outside her room, he paused to light the candle that was standing on the table, but Louise opened the door and went in. As she did so, she gave a cry. The blind had not been lowered, and a patch of greenish-white moonlight lay on the floor before the window, throwing the rest of the room into massy shadow. She went forward and stood in it. "Don't make a light," she said to him over her shoulder. Maurice put down the matches, with which he had been fumbling, went quickly in after her, and shut the door. Before anyone else was astir, he had flung out into the freshness of the morning. It was cool in the shade of the woods; grass and moss were a little moist with dew. He did not linger under the trees; he needed movement; and striding along the driving-road, which ran down the hill where the incline was easiest, he went out on the plains, among the little villages that dotted the level land like huge clumps of mushrooms. He carried his cap in his hand, and let the early sun play on his head. When he returned, it was nine o'clock, and he was ravenously hungry. Amalie carried the coffee and the crisp brown rolls to one of the small tables on the terrace, and herself stood, after she had served him, and looked over the edge of the hill. When he had finished eating, he opened a volume of DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT, which he carried in his pocket, and began to read. But after a few lines, his thoughts wandered; the book had a chilling effect on him in his present mood; the writing seemed stiff and strained--the work of a very old man. At first, that morning, he had not ventured to review even in thought the past hours. Now, however, that he was again within a stone's throw of Louise, memories crowded upon him; he gazed, with a passion of gratefulness, at her window. One detail stood out more vividly than all the rest. It was that of waking suddenly at dawn, from a dreamless sleep, and of finding on his pillow, a thick tress of black ruffled hair. For a moment, he had hardly been able to believe his eyes; and even yet, the mere remembrance of this dusky hair on the pillow's whiteness, seemed to bring what had happened home to him, as nothing else could have done. She had slept on, undisturbed, and she was still asleep, to judge from the lowered blind. But though hours seemed to pass while he sat there, he was not dissatisfied; it was enough to know how near she was to him. When she came, she was upon him before he was aware of it. At the light step behind, he sprang from his seat. "At last!" "Are you tired of waiting for me?" She was in the same white dress, and a soft-brimmed hat fell over her forehead. He did not answer her words; for Amalie followed on her heels with fresh coffee, and made a great business of re-setting the table. "WUNSCHE GUTEN APPETIT!" The girl retired to a distance, but still lingered, keeping them in sight. Maurice leaned across the table. "Tell me how you are. Have you forgotten me?" He tried to take her hand. "Take care, Maurice. We can be seen here." "How that girl stares! Why doesn't she go away?" "She is envying me my sweetheart again ... who won't let me eat my breakfast." "I've been alone for hours, Louise. Tell me what I want to know." "Yes--afterwards. The coffee is getting cold." He sat back and watched her movements, with fanatic eyes. She was not confused by the insistence of his gaze; but she did not return it. She was paler than usual; and the lines beneath her eyes were blacker. Maurice believed that he could detect a new note in her voice this morning; and he tried to make her speak, in order that he might hear it; but she was as chary of her words as of her looks. Attracted by the two strangers, a little child of the landlord's came running up to stare shyly. She spread a piece of bread with honey, and gave it to the child. He was absurdly jealous, and she knew it. For the rest of the morning, she would have been content to bask in the sun, but when she saw how impatient he was, she gave way, and they went out of the sight of other people, into the friendly, screening woods. "I thought you would never come." "Why didn't you wake me? Oh, gently, Maurice! You forget that I've just done my hair." "To-day I shall forget everything. Let me look at you again ... right into your eyes." "To-day you believe I'm real, don't you? Are you satisfied?" "And you, Louise, you?--Say you're happy, too!" They came upon the FRIEDRICH AUGUST TURM, a stone tower, standing on the highest point of the hill, beside a large quarry; and, too idly happy to refuse, climbed the stone steps, led by a persuasive old pensioner, who, on the platform at the top, adjusted the telescope, and pointed out the distant landmarks, with something of an owner's pride. On this morning, Maurice would not have been greatly surprised to hear that the streaky headline of the Dover coast was visible: he had eyes for her alone, as, with assumed interest, she followed the old man's hand, learned where Leipzig lay, and how, on a clear day, its many spires could be distinguished. "Over there, Maurice ... a little more to the right. How far away we seem!" Leaning against the parapet, he continued to look at her. The few ordinary words meant in reality something quite different. It was as if she had said to him: "Yes, yes, be at rest--I am still yours;" and he told himself, with a feverish pleasure, that, from now on, everything she said in the presence of others would be a cloak for what she really meant to say. He had been right, there was a new tone in her voice this morning, an imperceptible vibration, a sensuous undertone, which seemed to have been left over from those moments when it had quivered like a roughly touched string beneath a bow. Going down the steps behind her, he heard her dress swish from step to step, and saw the fine grace of her strong, supple body. At a bend in the stair, he held her back and kissed her neck, just where the hair stopped growing. On the ground-floor, she paused to pick out a trifle from a table set with mementoes. The old man praised his wares with zeal, taking up this and that in his old, reddened hands, on which the skin was drawn and glazed, like a coating of gelatine. Louise chose a carved wooden pen; a tiny round of glass was set in the handle, through which might be seen a view of the tower, with an encircling motto. After this, he had her to himself, for the rest of the day. They sat on a seat that was screened by trees, and thickly grown about. His arm lay along the back of the bench, and every now and then his hand sought and pressed the warm, soft round of her shoulder. In this attitude, he poured out his heart to her. Hitherto, the very essence of his love had been taciturn endurance; now, he felt how infinitely much he had to say to her: all that he had undergone since knowing her first, all the hopes and feelings that had so long been pent up in him, struggled to escape. Now, there was no hindrance to his telling her everything; it was not only permissible, but right that he should: henceforth there must be no strangeness between them, no knowledge, pleasant or unpleasant, that she did not share. And he went back, and dwelt on details and events long past, which, unknown to himself, his memory had stored up; but it was chiefly the restless misery of the past half year that was his theme--he took the same pleasure in reciting it, now that it was over, as the convalescent in relating his sufferings. Besides that, it was easier, there being nothing to conceal; whereas, in referring to an earlier time, a certain name had to be shirked and gone round about, like a plague-spot. His impassioned words knew no halt; he was amazed at his own eloquence. And the burden of months fell away from him as he talked. The receptiveness of her silence spurred him on. She sat motionless, with loosely clasped hands; and spots of light settled on her bare head, and on the white stuff of her dress. Occasionally, at something he said, a smile would raise the corners of her mouth; sometimes, but less often, she turned her head with incredulous eyes. But, though she was emotionally so irresponsive, Maurice had the feeling that she was content, even happy, to sit inactive at his side, and listen to his story. Each of these first wonderful days was of the same pattern. They themselves lost count of time, so like was one day to another; and yet each that passed was a little eternity in itself. The weather was superb, and to them, in their egotism, it came to seem in the order of things that they should rise in the morning to cloudless skies and golden sunshine; that the cool green seclusion of the woods should be theirs, where they were more securely shut off from the world than inside the house. Louise lay on the moss, with her arms under her head, or sat with her back against a tree-trunk. Maurice was always in front of her, so that he could see her face as he talked--this face of which he could never see enough. He was happy, in a dazed way; he could not appraise the extent of his happiness all at once. Its chief outward sign was the nervous flood of talk that poured from his lips--as though they had been sealed and stopped for years. But Louise urged him on; what he had first felt dimly, he soon knew for certain: that she was never tired of learning how much he loved her, how he had hoped, and ventured, and despaired, and how he had been prepared to lose her, up to the very last day. She also made him describe to her more than once how he had first seen her: his indelible impression of her as she played; her appearance at his side in the concert-hall; how he had followed her out and looked for her, and had vainly tried to learn who she was. "I stood quite close to you, you say, Maurice? Perhaps I even looked at you. How strange things are!" Still, the interest she displayed was of a wholly passive kind; she took no part herself in this building up of the past. She left it to him, just as she left all that called for firmness or decision, in this new phase of her life. The chief step taken, it seemed as if no further initiative were left in her; she let herself be loved, waited for everything to come from him, was without will or wish. He had to ask no self-assertion of her now, no impulsive resolutions. Over all she did, lay a subtle languor; and her abandon was absolute--he heard it in the very way she said his name. In the first riotous joy of possession, Maurice had been conscious of the change in her as of something inexpressibly sweet and tender, implying a boundless faith in him. But, before long, it made him uneasy. He had imagined several things as likely to happen; had imagined her the cooler and wiser of the two, checking him and chiding him for his over-devotion; had imagined even moments of self-reproach, on her part, when she came to think over what she had done. What he had not imagined was the wordless, unthinking fashion in which she gave herself into his hands. The very expression of her face altered in these days: the somewhat defiant, bitter lines he had so loved in it, and behind which she had screened herself, were smoothed out; the lips seemed to meet differently, were sweeter, even tremulous; the eyes were more veiled, far less sure of themselves. He did not admit to himself how difficult she made things for him. Strengthened, from the first, by his good resolutions, he was determined not to let himself be carried off his feet. But it would have been easier for him to stand firm, had she met him in almost any other way than this--even with a frank return of feeling, for then they might have spoken openly, and have helped each other. As it was, he had no thoughts but of her; his watchful tenderness knew no bounds; but the whole responsibility was his. It was he who had to maintain the happy mean in their relations; he to draw the line beyond which it was better for all their after-lives that they should not go. He affirmed to himself more than once that he loved her the more for her complete subjection: it was in keeping with her openhanded nature which could do nothing by halves. Yet, as time passed, he began to suffer under it, to feel her absence of will as a disquieting factor--to find anything to which he could compare it, he had to hark back to the state she had been in when he first offered her aid and comfort. That was the lassitude of grief, this of ... he could not find a word. But it began to tell on him, and more than once made him a little sharp with her; for, at moments, he would be seized by an overpowering temptation to shake her out of her lassitude, to rouse her as he very well knew she could be roused. And then, strange desires awoke in him; he did not himself know of what he was capable. One afternoon, they were in the woods as usual. It was very sultry; not a leaf stirred. Louise lay with her elbow on the moss-grown roots of a tree; her eyes were heavy. Maurice, before her, smoked a cigarette, and watched for the least recognition of his presence, thinking, meanwhile, that she looked better already for these days spent out-of-doors--the tiny lines round her eyes were fast disappearing. By degrees, however, he grew restless under her protracted silence; there was something ominous about it. He threw his cigarette away, and, taking her hand, began to pull apart the long fingers with the small, pink nails, or to gather them together, and let them drop, one by one, like warm, but lifeless things. "What ARE you thinking of?" he asked at last, and shut her hand firmly within his. She started. "I? ... thinking? I don't know. I wasn't thinking at all." "But you were. I saw it in your face. Your thoughts were miles away." "I don't know, Maurice. I couldn't tell you now." And a moment later, she added: "You think one must always be thinking, when one is silent." "Yes, I'm jealous of your thoughts. You tell me nothing of them. But now you have come back to me, and it's all right." He drew her nearer to him by the hand he held, and, putting his arm under her neck, bent her head back on the moss. Her stretched throat was marked by two encircling lines; he traced them with his finger. She lay and smiled at him. But her eyes remained shaded: they were meditative, and seemed to be considering him, a little deliberately. "Tell me, Louise," he said suddenly; "why do you look at me like that? It's not the first time--I've seen it before. And then, I can't help thinking there's some mistake--that after all you don't really care for me. It is so--so critical." "You are curious to-day, Maurice." "Yes. There's so much I want to know, and you tell me nothing. It is I who talk and talk--till you must be tired of hearing me." "No, I like to listen best. And I have nothing to say." "Nothing? Really nothing?" "Only that I'm glad to be here--that I am happy." He kissed her on the throat, the eyes and the lips; kissed her, until, under his touch, that vague, elusive influence began to emanate from her, which, he was aware, might some day overpower him, and drag him down. They were quite alone, shut in by high trees; no one would find them, or disturb them. And it was just this mysterious power in her that his nerves had dreamed of waking: yet now, some inexplicable instinct made him hesitate, and forbear. He drew his arm from under her head, and rose to his feet, where he stood looking down at her. She lay just as he had left her, and he felt unaccountably impatient. "There it is again!" he cried. "You are looking at me just as you did before." Louise passed her hand over her eyes, and sat up. "Why, Maurice, what do you mean? It was nothing--only something I was trying to understand." But what it was that she did not understand, he could not get her to tell him. A fortnight passed. One morning, when a soft south breeze was in motion, Maurice reminded her with an air of playful severity, that, so far, they had not learned to know even their nearer surroundings; while of all the romantic explorings in the pretty Muldental, which he had had in view for them, not one had been undertaken. Louise was not fond of walking in the country; she tired easily, and was always content to bask in the sun and be still. But she did not attempt to oppose his wish; she put on her hat, and was ready to start. His love of movement reasserted itself. They went down the driving-road, and out upon the long, ribbon-like roads that zigzagged the plains, connecting the dotted villages. These roads were edged with fruit-trees--apple and cherry. The apples were still hard, green, polished balls, but the berries were at their prime. And everywhere men were aloft on ladders, gathering the fruit for market. For the sum of ten pfennigs, Maurice could get his hat filled, and, by the roadside, they would sit down to make a second breakfast off black, luscious cherries, which stained the lips a bluish purple. When it grew too hot for the open roads, they descended the steep, wooded back of the bill, to the romantic little town of Wechselburg at its base. Here, a massive bridge of reddish-yellow stone spanned the winding, slate-grey Mulde; a sombre, many-windowed castle of the same stone as the bridge looked out over a wall of magnificent chestnuts. On returning from these, and various other excursions, they were pleasantly tired and hungry. After supper, they sat upstairs by the window in her room, Louise in the big chair, Maurice at her feet, and there watched the darkness come down, over the tops of the trees. Somewhat later in the month, the fancy took her to go to a place called Amerika. Maurice consulted the landlord about the distance. Their original plan of taking the train a part of the way was, however, abandoned when the morning came; for it was an uncommonly lovely day, and a fresh breeze was blowing. So, having scrambled down to Wechselburg again, they struck out on the flat, and began their walk. The whole day lay before them; they were bound to no fixed hours; and, throughout the morning, they made frequent halts, to gather the wild raspberries that grew by the roadside. Having passed under a great railway viaduct, which dominated the landscape, they stopped at a village inn, to rest and drink coffee. About two o'clock, they came to Rochsburg, and finally arrived, towards the middle of the afternoon, at the picturesque restaurant that bore the name, of Amerika. Here they dined. Afterwards, they returned to Rochsburg, but much less buoyantly--for Louise was growing footsore--paid a bridge-toll, were shown through the castle, and, at sunset, found themselves on the little railway-station, waiting for an overdue train. The restaurant in which they sat, was a kind of shed, roofed by a covering of Virginia creeper; the station stood on an eminence; the plains stretched before them, as far as they could see; the evening sky was an unbroken sheet of red and gold. The half-hour's journey over--it was made in a narrow wooden compartment, crowded with peasants returning from a market--they left the train, and began to climb the hill. But, by now, Louise was at the end of her strength, and Maurice began to fear that he would never get her home; she could with difficulty drag one foot after the other, and had to rest every few minutes, so that it was nearly ten o'clock before they entered the house. In her room, he knelt before her and took off her boots; Amalie carried her supper up on a tray. She hardly touched it: her eyes were closing with fatigue, and she was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. Next day she did not waken till nearly noon, and she remained in bed till after dinner. For the rest of the day, she sat in the armchair. Maurice wished to read to her, but she preferred quiet--did not even want to be talked to. The weather was on her nerves, she said--for it had grown very sultry, and the sky was overcast. The landlord prophesied a thunderstorm. In the evening, however, as it was still dry, and he had been in the house all day, Maurice went out for a solitary walk. He swung down the road at a pace he could only make when he was alone. It had looked threatening when he left the house, but, as he went, the clouds piled themselves up with inconceivable rapidity, and before he was three miles out on the plain, the storm broke, with a sudden fury from which there was no escape. He took to his heels, and ran to the next village, some quarter of a mile in front of him. There, in the smoky room of a tiny inn, together with a handful of country-people, he was held a prisoner for over two hours; the rain pelted, and the thunder cracked immediately overhead. When, drenched to the skin, he reached the top of the hill again, it was going on for midnight. He had been absent for close on four hours. The candle in her room was guttering in its socket. By its failing light, he saw that she was lying across the bed, still dressed. Over her bent Amalie. He had visions of sudden illness, and brushed the girl aside. "What is it? What's the matter?" At his voice, Louise lifted a wild face, stared at him as though she did not recognise him, then rose with a cry, and flung herself upon him. "Take care! I'm wet through." For all answer, she burst out crying, and trembled from head to foot. "What is it, darling? Were you afraid?" But she only clung to him and trembled. Amalie was weeping with equal vehemence; he ordered her out of the room. Notwithstanding his dripping clothes, he was forced to support Louise. In vain he implored her to speak; it was long before she was in a state to reply to his questionings. Outside the storm still raged; it was a wild night. "What was it? Were you afraid? Did you think I was lost?" "I don't know--Oh, Maurice! You will never leave me, will you?" She wounded her lips against his shoulder. "Leave you! What has put such foolish thoughts into your head?" "I don't know.--But on a night like this, I feel that anything might happen." "And did it really matter so much whether I came back or not?" He felt her arms tighten round him. "Did you care as much as that?--Louise!" "I said: my God!--what if he should never come back! And then, then ..." "Then----?" "And then the noise of the storm ... and I was so alone ... and all the long, long hours ... and at every sound I said, there he is ... and it never was you ... till I knew you were lying somewhere ... dead ... under a tree." "You poor little soul!" he began impulsively, then stopped, for he felt the sudden thrill that ran through her. "Say that again, Maurice!--say it again!" "You poor, little fancy-ridden soul!" "Oh, if you knew how good it sounds!--if I could make you understand! You're the only person who has ever said a thing like that to me--the only one who has ever been in the least sorry for me. Promise me now--promise again--that you will never leave me.--For you are all I have." "Promise?--again? When you are more to me than my own life?" "And you will never get tired of me?--never?" "My own dear wife!" She strained him to her with a strength for which he would not have given her credit. He tried to see her face. "Do you know what that means?" "Yes, I know. It means, if you leave me now, I shall die." By the next morning, all traces of the storm had vanished; the sun shone; the slanting roads were hard and dry again. Other storms followed--for it was an exceptionally hot summer--and many an evening the two were prisoners in her room, listening to the angry roar of the trees, which lashed each other with a sound like that of the open sea. Every Sunday in August, too, brought a motley crowd of guests to the inn, and then the whole terrace was set out with little tables. Two waiters came to assist Amalie; a band played in an arbour; carts and wagonettes were hitched to the front of the house; and the noise and merry-making lasted till late in the night. Together they leaned from the window of Louise's room, to watch the people; they hardly ventured out of doors, for it was unpleasant to see their favourite nooks invaded by strangers. Except on Sundays, however, their seclusion remained undisturbed; half a dozen visitors were staying in the other wing of the building, and of these they sometimes caught a glimpse at meals; but that was all: the solitude they desired was still theirs. And so the happy days slid past; August was well advanced, by this time, and the tropical heat was at its height. In the beginning, it had been Maurice who regretted the rapid flight of the days: now it was Louise. Occasionally, a certain shadow settled on her face, and, at such moments, he well knew what she was thinking of: for, once, out of the very fulness of his content, he had said to her with a lazy sigh: "To-day is the first of August," and then, for the first time, he had seen this look of intense regret cross her face. She had entreated him not to say any more; and, after that, the speed with which the month decreased, was not mentioned between them. But his carelessly dropped words had sown their seed. A couple of weeks later, the remembrance of the work he had still to do for Schwarz, before the beginning of the new term, broke over him like a douche of cold water. It was a resplendent morning; he had been leaning out of the window, idly tapping his fingers on the sill. Suddenly they seemed to him to have grown stiff, to have lost their agility; and by the thoughts that now came, he was so disquieted that he shut himself up in his own room. At his first words to her, Louise, who was still in bed, turned pale. "Yes, yes, be quiet!--I know," she said, and buried her face in the down pillow. In this position she remained for some seconds; Maurice stood staring out of the window. Then, without raising her face, she held out her hand to him. He took it; but he did not do what she expected he would: sit down on the side of the bed, and put his arm round her. He stood holding it, absent-mindedly. She stole a glance at him, and turned still paler. Then, with a jerk, she released her hand, sat up in bed, and pushed her hair from her face. "Maurice! ... then if it has to be ... then to-day ... please, please, to-day! Don't ask me to stay here, and think, and remember, that it's all over--that this is the end--that we shall never, never be here in this little room again! Oh, I couldn't bear it!--! can't bear it, Maurice! Let us go away--please, let us go!" In vain he urged reason; there was no gainsaying her: she brushed aside, without listening to it, his objection that their rooms in Leipzig would not be ready for them. Throwing back the bedclothes, she got up at once and dressed herself, with cold fingers, then flung herself upon the packing, helped and hindered by Amalie, who wept beside her. The hour that followed was like a bad dream. Finally, however, the luggage was carried downstairs, the bill paid, and the circumstantial good-byes were said: they set off, at full speed, down the woodpath to the station, to catch the midday train. Louise was white with exhaustion: her breath came sobbingly. In a firstclass carriage, he made her lie down on the seat. With her hand in his, he said what he could to comfort her; for her face was tragic. "We will come again, darling. It is only AUF WIEDERSEHEN, remember!" But she shook her head. "We shall never be here again." Leipzig, at three o'clock on an August afternoon, lay baking in the sun. He put her in a covered droschke, himself carrying the bags, for he could not find a porter. "At seven, then! Try to sleep. You are so pale." "Good-bye--good-bye!" His hand rested on the door of the droschke. She laid hers on it, and clung to it as though she would never, let it go. Part III. ... dove il Sol tace. DANTE I. Frau Krause was ill pleased at his unlooked-for reappearance, and did not scruple to say so. From the condition of disorder in which he found his room, Maurice judged that it had been occupied, during his absence, by the entire family. Having been caught napping, Frau Krause carried the matter off with a high hand: she gave him to understand that his behaviour in descending upon her thus, was not that of a decent lodger. Maurice never parleyed with her; ascertaining by a glance that his books and music had been left untouched, he made his escape from the pails of water that were straightway brought into evidence, as well as from her irate assurances that the room would be ready for him in a quarter of an hour. He went into the town, and did various small errands necessary to the taking up anew of the old life. After he had had dinner, and had looked through the newspapers, the temptation was strong to go to Louise, and spend the hot afternoon hours at her side. But he resisted; for that would have been a poor beginning to the sensible way of life they would have to follow, from now on. Besides, with the certainty of seeing her again in a very short time, it was not impossible to be patient. No more uncertainty, no more doubts and fears!--the day for these was over.--And so, having satisfied himself that his room was still uninhabitable, he strolled to the Conservatorium, to see what notices had remained affixed to the notice-board. As he was leaving again, he met the janitor, and from him learned that his name was down for the first ADBENDUNTERHALTUNG of the coming month. In the shadeless street, he paused irresolute. The heat of the slumbrous afternoon was oppressive; all animation seemed suspended. The trees in streets and gardens drooped, brownishyellow, and heavy with dust. The sun met the eyes blindingly, and was reflected from every house-wall. Maurice went for a walk in the woods. In his pocket he had a letter, still unread, which he had found waiting for him that day. It was from his mother, and his eyes slid carelessly over the pages. There were the usual reproaches for his prolonged silences, the never-failing reminders that his time in Leipzig would come to an end the following spring, as well as several details of domestic interest. Then, however, followed a piece of news, which rallied his attention. YOU WILL DOUBTLESS BE INTERESTED TO HEAR, she wrote, THAT YOUR FRIEND THE OLD MUSIC TEACHER IN NORWICH DIED SUDDENLY LAST WEEK. HIS PUPILS HAD FALLEN OFF GREATLY OF LATE AND WHEN EVERYTHING HAD BEEN SOLD THERE WAS SCARCELY ENOUGH TO COVER THE FUNERAL EXPENSES. YOUR FATHER THINKS THAT THOUGH A YOUNG PERSON FROM LONDON OF THE NAME OF SMITH OR SMYTHE HAS LATELY SET UP THERE AND ATTRACTED MANY OF THE BEST PAYING FAMILIES YET THE OLD CONNECTION MIGHT BE WORKED UP AGAIN AND IT WOULD BE WORTH YOUR WHILE TRYING TO DO IT. AT FIRST YOU COULD LIVE AT HOME AND GO OVER ONCE OR TWICE A WEEK. YOUR FATHER HAS BEEN MAKING INQUIRIES ABOUT A SUITABLE ROOM. This news called up a feeling of repugnance in Maurice: it came like a message from another world; the very baldness of its expression seemed to throw him back, at one stroke, into the hated atmosphere of his home. He folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope, with such a conscious hostility to all that his blood-relations did or said, as he had not felt since the day when, in their midst, he had struggled to assert his independence. How little they understood him! It was like them, in their unimaginative dulness, to suppose that they could arrange his life for him--draw up the lines on which it was to be spent. He saw himself bound down hand and foot again, to the occupation he so hated; saw himself striving to oust the young person from London, just as no doubt his old friend had striven; saw himself becoming proficient in all the mean, petty tricks of rival teachers, and either vanquishing or being vanquished, in the effort to earn a living. However he viewed them, his prospects had nothing hopeful in them. They were vague, too, to the last degree. On one question alone was his mind made up: he meant to marry Louise at the earliest possible date. Whatever else happened, this should come to pass. For the first time, he thought with something akin to remorse, over the turn affairs had taken. He had been blind and dizzy with his infatuation, sick for her to his very marrow--he could only look back on those feverish weeks in June as on the horrors of a nightmare--and he would not have missed a single hour of the happy days at Rochlitz. But, none the less, he had always felt a peculiar aversion to people who allowed their feelings to get the better of them. Now, he himself was one of them. If only she were his wife! Had she consented, he would have married her there and then, without reflection. They might have lived on, just as they were going to do, and have kept their marriage a secret, reserving to themselves the pleasure of knowing that their intimacy was legal. At it was, he must console himself with the thought that, married or not, they were indissolubly bound: he knew now better than before, that no other woman would ever exist for him; and surely, in the case of an all-absorbing passion such as this, the overstepping of conventional boundaries would not be counted too heavily against them: laws and conventions existed only for the weak and vacillating loves of the rest of the world. Then, however, and almost against his will, the other side of the question forced itself upon his notice. As the marriage had not already taken place, as, indeed, Louise chose to evade the subject when he brought it up, he could not but admit to it would be pleasanter for him if it were now postponed until he was independent of home-support. His family would, he knew, bitterly resent his taking the step; and in regard to them, he was proud. Where Louise was concerned, of course, it was a different matter: there, no misplaced pride should stand in the way. She had ample means for her own needs; it was merely a question of earning enough to keep himself. The sole advantage of the present state of affairs was, that it might still be concealed; whereas even a secret marriage implied a possible publicity; it might somehow leak out, and, in the event of this, he knew that his parents would immediately cut off supplies. If once he were independent of them, he could do as he liked. He set his teeth at the thought of it. To no small extent, his way was mapped out for him. Marrying Louise meant giving up all idea of returning home. He understood now, more clearly than before, how unfitted she was for the narrow life that would there be expected of her. And even--if he had longed for approval and consent, he would never have had courage to ask her to face the petty, ignoble details of conventional propriety, which such a sanction implied. No, if he wished to ensure her happiness, he must secure to her the freer atmosphere in which she was accustomed to live. He must burn his ships behind him, and the most satisfactory thing was, that he was able to do it without a pang. He racked his brains as to the means of making a livelihood. There was nothing he would not do. He was more ready to work than ever a labourer with a starving family at his back. But, having let every possibility pass before his mind's eye, he was forced to the conclusion that the only occupation open to him was the one he had come to Leipzig to escape. He was fit for nothing but to be a teacher. All he could do at the piano, hundreds of others could do better; his talents as a conductor were, he had learned, of the meagrest; the pleasing little songs he might compose, of small value. Yet, if this were the price he had to pay for making her his wife, he was content to pay it: no sacrifice was too great for him. And then, to be a teacher here meant something different from what it meant in England. Here, it was possible to retain your self-respect--the caste of the class was another to begin with--and also to remain in touch with all that was best worth knowing. As a foreigner, he might add to his earnings by teaching English; but piano-lessons would of necessity be his chief source of income. They were plentiful enough: Avery Hill supported herself entirely by them, and Furst kept his family. Of course, though, this was due to Schwarz: his influence was a key to all doors. Both of these were favourite pupils; while a melancholy fact, which had to be faced, was, that he did not stand well with Schwarz. Somehow, they had never taken to each other: he, perhaps, had had too open an eye for the master's foibles, and Schwarz had no doubt been aware, from the first, of his pupil's fatally divided interests. The crown had probably been set by his ill-considered flight in July. If he wished ultimately to achieve something, the interest he had forfeited must be regained, cost what it might. He would work, in these coming months, as never before. Could he make a brilliant, even a wholly respectable job of the trio he was to play, it would go far towards reinstating him in Schwarz's good graces: and he might then venture to approach the master with a request for assistance. This was the first piece of work that lay to his hand, and he would do it with all his might. After that, the rest. There was no time to lose. A mild despair overcame him at the thought of the intricate sonata, the long, mazy concerto by Hummel, which had formed his holiday task. In exactly a fortnight from this date, the vacation came to an end, and, as yet, he did not know a note of them. Through the motionless heat of the paved streets, he went home, and turning Frau Krause out of his room, sat down at the piano to scales and exercises. Not until he felt suppleness and strength coming back to his fingers, did he allow his thoughts to wander. Then, however, they leapt to Louise; after this break in his consciousness, he seemed to have been absent from her for days. The sun was full on her windows; curtains and blinds were drawn against it. While he hesitated, still dazzled by the glare of the streets, she sprang to meet him, laying both hands on his shoulders. "At last!" He blinked, and laughed, and held her at arm's length. "At last?--Why, what does that mean?" "That I have been waiting for you, and hoping you would come--for hours." "But, dearest, I'm too early as it is. It's not six o'clock." "Yes, I know. But I was so sure you would come sooner,--that you wouldn't be able to stay away! Oh, the afternoon has been endless; and the heat was suffocating. I couldn't dress, and I haven't unpacked a thing." Now he saw that she was in her dressing-gown, and that the bags and valises stood in a corner, just as they had been carried up from the droschke. With her hands still on his shoulders, she put back her head. A thin line of white appeared between her lips, and, under their drooped lids, her eyes shone with a moist brilliance. She looked at him eagerly for some seconds, and it seemed to him wistfully, too. Then, in an inexplicable change of mood, she let her arms fall, and turned away. She had grown pale and despondent. There was only one thing for him to do: to put his arms round her and draw her to his knee. Holding her thus, he whispered in her ear words such as she loved to hear. He had grown skilled in repeating them. Under the even murmur of his voice, her face grew tranquil; she sank little by little into a state of well-being; her one fear was that he would cease speaking. On the writing-table, a gold-faced clock ticked solemnly: its minutes went by unheeded. Maurice was the first to feel the disillusioning shudder of reality; simultaneously, the remembrance returned to him of what he had come intending to tell her.--He loosened her arms. "Louise!" he said in an altered voice. "Look up, dear!--and let me see your eyes. You won't believe me, I think, but I came this evening meaning to talk very sensibly--nothing but common sense, in fact. There's a great deal I want to say to you. Come, let us be two rational people--yes? As a beginning, I'll draw up the blinds. The sun's behind the houses now, and the room is so close." Louise shrank from the violent, dusty light; and her face, a moment back rapturously content, took on at once a look of apprehension. "Not to-night, Maurice--not to-night! It's too ... too hot for common sense to-night." He laughed and took her hand. "Be my own brave girl, and help me. You have only to look at me, as you know, to make me forget everything. And that mustn't be. We have got to be serious for a little--have you ever thought, Louise, how seldom you and I have talked seriously together? There was never time, was there? ... in all these weeks. There was only time to tell you how much you are to me.--But now--well, so many things were running in my head this afternoon. This letter from home was the beginning of them. Read it--this page here, at least--and then I'll tell you what I've been thinking." He put the letter into her hand, and she ran her eyes over the page. But she laid it down without comment. A fear crossed his mind. "Don't misunderstand it," he said hastily. "You know that point was settled months ago. There's no question of going back for me now--and I'm glad of it. I never want to see England again. But it gave me a lot to think about--how the staying here was to be managed, and things like that." He was conscious of becoming somewhat wordy; and as she did not respond, his uneasiness grew. In his anxiety to make her think as he did, he clasped his hand over hers. "I needn't say again, need I, darling, what the past weeks have meant to me? I'm so grateful to you for them that I could only prove it with years of my life. But--and don't misunderstand this either, or think I don't love you more now than ever before--you know I do. But, look at it as we will, those weeks were play--glorious play, worth half one's existence, but still only play. They couldn't last for ever. Now we've come back, and we have to face work and the workaday world--you see what I mean, I'm sure?" There was a note of entreaty in his voice. As she still kept silence, he gave his whole strength to demolishing the mute opposition he felt in her. "From now on, dear, we must make up our minds to be two very sensible people. I've an enormous amount of work to get through, in the coming months. And at Easter, I shall probably be thrown on my own resources. But I'll fight my way somehow--here, beside you. We'll live our own life. Just you and I.--Let me tell you what I propose to do,"--and here, he laid before her, in their entirety, his plans for winning over Schwarz, for gaining a foothold, and for making a modest income. "A good PRUFUNG," he concluded, "and I'll be able to get anything I want out of him. In the meantime, I've got to make a decent job next month of the trio--I'm pretty well in his black books, I can guess, for going off as I did in July. I must work as I've never done before. Each single day must be mapped out, and nothing allowed to interfere. It's an undertaking; but you'll help me, won't you, darling?--as only you can. I've let things go, far too much--I see it now. But it was impossible--frankly, I didn't care. I only wanted you. Now, it will ... it must be different. The unrest is gone; you belong to me, and I to you. We are sure of each other." "Oh, it's stifling! There's no air in the room." She rose from his side, and went to the open window, where she stood with her back to him. As a result of his words, her life seemed suddenly to stretch before her, just as dry, and dusty, and commonplace, as the street she looked down on. "I want to show you, too," he continued behind her, "that you haven't utterly thrown yourself away. I know how little I can do; but honest endeavour must count for something. I ask nothing better than to work for you, Louise--and you know it." A wave of warm air came in at the window; the dying afternoon turned to twilight. "Yes ... and I? What am I to do? What room is there for me in your plans of work?" He glanced sharply at her; but she had not moved. "Louise, dearest! I know that what I say must sound selfish and inconsiderate. And yet I can't help it. I'm forced to ask you to wait ... merely to wait. And for what? Good Heavens, no one realises it as I do! I have nothing to offer you, in return--but my love for you. But if you knew how strong that is--if you knew how happy I am resolved to make you! Have a little patience, darling! It will all come right in the end--if only you love me! And you do, don't you? Say once more you do." She turned so swiftly that the tail of her dressing-gown twisted, and fell over on itself. "Can you still ask that? Have you not had proof enough? Is there an inch of you that doesn't believe in my love for you? Oh, Maurice! ... It's only that I'm tired to-night--and restless. I was so wretched at having to come back. And the heat has got on my nerves. I wish a great storm would come, and shake the house, and make the branches of the trees beat against the panes--do you remember? And we were so safe. The worse the storm was, the closer you held me." She sat down beside him, on the arm of the sofa. "Such a night seemed doubly wild after the long, still days that had gone before it--do you remember?--Oh, why had it all to end? Weren't we happy enough? Or did we ask too much? Why must time go just the same over happiness and unhappiness alike?" She got up again, and strayed back to the window. "Days like those will never--CAN never--come again. Even as it is, coming back has made a difference. Could you even yesterday have spoken as you do to-day? Was there any room then for common sense between us? No, we were too happy. It was enough to know we were alive." "Be reasonable, darling. I am as sorry as you that these weeks are over; but, glorious as they were, they couldn't last for ever. And trust me; we shall know other days just as happy.--But if, because I talk like this, you imagine I don't love you a hundred times better even than yesterday--but you don't mean that! You know me better, my Rachel!" "Yes. Perhaps you're right--you ARE right. But I am right, too." She came back, and sat down on the sofa again, and propped her chin on her hand. "You're tired to-night, dear--that's all. To-morrow things will look different, and you'll see the truth of what I say. At night, things get distorted----" "No, no, one only really sees in the dark," she interrupted him. --"but in the morning, one can smile at one's fears. Trust me, Louise, and believe in me. All our future happiness depends on how we act just now." "Our future happiness ... yes," she said slowly. "But what of the present?" "Isn't it worth while sacrificing a brief present to a long future?" She threw him a quick glance. "You talk like an orthodox Christian, Maurice," she said, and added: "The present is here: it belongs to us. The future is so unclear--who knows what it will bring us!" "And isn't it just for that very reason that I speak as I do? If everything lay clear and straight before us, do you think I should bother about anything but you? It's the uncertainty of the whole thing that troubles me. But however vague it is, I can tell you one thing that will happen. And you know, dearest, what that is--the only ambition I have left: to make you my wife at the earliest possible moment." She gazed at him meditatively. "Why wouldn't you let me have my way at first?" he cried. "Why were you against it? We could have kept it a secret: no one need have known a thing about it. And I should never have asked you to go to England, or to see my people. Call it narrow, if you must, I can't help it; it's the only thing for us to do. Why won't you agree? Tell me what you have against it. Listen!" He knelt down and put his arms round her. "We have still a fortnight--that's time enough. Let us go to England to-morrow, and be married without a word to anyone--in the first registrar's office we find. Only marry me!" "Would it make you love me more?" She looked at him intently, turning the whole weight of her dark glance upon him. "You!" he said. "You to ask such a thing! You with these eyes ... and this hair! And these hands!--I love every line of them ... You can't understand, can you, you bundle of emotions, that I should care for you as I do, and yet be able to talk soberly? It seems to you a man's way of loving--and poor at that. But if you imagine I don't love you all the more for what you have sacrificed for me--no, you didn't say that, I know, but it comes to the same thing in the end." She made no answer; and a feeling of discouragement began to creep over him. He rose to his feet. "A man who loves a woman as I love you," he said almost violently, "has only one wish--can have only one. I shall never rest or be thoroughly happy till you consent to marry me. That you can refuse as you do, seems to prove that you don't care for me enough." She put her arms round his neck: her wide sleeves fell back, leaving her arms bear. "Maurice," she said gently, "why must you worry yourself?--You know if you are set on our marrying, I'll give way. But I don't want to be married--not yet. There's plenty of time. It's only a small matter now; it doesn't seem as if it could make any difference; and yet it might. The sense of being bound; of some one--no, of the law permitting us to love each other ... no, Maurice, not yet.--Listen! I'm older and wiser than you, and I know. Happiness like this doesn't come every day. Instead of brooding and hesitating, one must seize it while it's there: it's such a slippery thing; it's gone before you know it. You can't bind it fast, and say it shall last so and so long. We have it now; don't let us talk and reason about it.--Oh, to-day, I'm nervous! Let me make a confession. As a child I had presentiments--things I foresaw came true, and on the morning of a misfortune, I've felt such a load on my chest that I could hardly breathe. Well, to-day, when I came into this room again, it seemed as if two black wings shut out the sunlight; and I was afraid. The past weeks have been so unreasonably happy--such happiness mustn't be let go. Help me to hold it; I can't do it alone. Don't try to make it fast to the future; while you do that, it's going--do you think one can draw out happiness like a thread? Oh, help me!--don't let any thing take it from us. And I will give up everything to it. Only you must always be beside me, Maurice, and love me. Don't let anything come between us! For my sake, for my sake!" In the face of this outpouring, his own opinions seemed of little matter; his one concern was to ward off the tears that he saw were imminent. He held her to him, stroked her hair, and murmured words of comfort. But when she raised her head again, her eyelids were reddened, as though she had actually wept. "Now I know you. Now you are my own again," she whispered. "How could I know you as you were then? I'd never seen you like that--seen you cold and sensible." He looked down at her without speaking, in a preoccupied way. She touched his face with her finger. "Here are lines I don't know--I see them now for the first time--lines of reason, of common sense, of all that is strange to me in you." He caught her hand, continuing to gaze at her with the same expression of aloofness. "I need them for us both. You have none." Her lips parted in a smile. Then this faded, and she looked at him with eyes that reminded him of an untamed animal, or of a startled child. "Mine ... still mine!" she said passionately.--And in the hours it took to reassure her, his primly reasoned conclusions were blown like chaff before the wind. II. The next fortnight flew by; and familiar faces began to appear again. The steps and inner vestibule of the Conservatorium became a lounge for seeing acquaintances. In the cafe at the corner, the click of billiard balls was to be heard from early morning on. Maurice looked forward to meeting his friends, with some embarrassment. It was unlikely that the events of the summer had remained a secret; for that, there was a clique in the place over-much on the alert for scandal, to which unfortunately the name of Louise Dufrayer lent itself only too readily. He could not decide what position to take up, with regard to their present intimacy; to flaunt it openly, to be pointed at as her lover, would for her sake be repugnant to him. It made him reject an idea he had revolved, of begging her to let him announce their engagement: for, in the present state of things, the word "BRAUTIGAM" had an evil sound. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that they must be more cautious than they had ever been, and give absolutely no food for talk. One day, in the GRASSISTRASSE, he came upon a little knot of men he knew. And it was just as he supposed; the secret was a secret no longer. He saw it at once in their treatment of him. There was a spice of deference in their manner: and their looks expressed curiosity, envious surprise, even a kind of brotherly welcome. After this, Maurice changed his mind. The only course open to him was to brazen things out. He would not wait for his friends to show him what they thought; he would be beforehand with them. A chance soon offered of putting his intentions into practice. On entering Seyffert's one afternoon, he espied Dove, who had just returned. Dove sat alone at a small table, reading the TAGEBLATT; before him stood a cup of cocoa. When he saw Maurice, he raised the newspaper a trifle higher, so that it covered the level of his eyes. But Maurice went across the room, and touched him on the shoulder. Dove dropped his shield, and sprang up, exclaiming with surprise. Maurice sat down beside him, and, by dint of a little wheedling, put Dove at his ease. The latter was bubbling over with new experiences and future prospects. It seemed that in Peterborough, Dove's native town, the art of music was taking strides that were nothing short of marvellous. To hear Dove talk, the palm for progress must be awarded to Peterborough, over and above all the other towns of Great Britain; and he was agog with plans and expectations. During the holidays, he had held conversations with several local magnates, all of whom expressed themselves in favour of his scheme for founding a school of music, and promised him their support. Dove had returned to Leipzig in a brand-new outfit, and a hard hat; his studies were coming to an end in spring, and he began to think already of casting the skin of Bohemianism. Maurice listened to him leniently--even drew Dove out a little. But he kept his eye on the clock. In less than half an hour, he would be with Louise; from some corner of the semidarkened room, she would spring towards him, and throw herself into his arms. The majority of the classes were not yet assembled, when one day, a rumour rose, and spreading, ran from mouth to mouth. Those who heard it were at first incredulous; as, however, it continued to make headway, they whistled to themselves, or vented their surprise in a breathless "ACH!" Later in the day, they stood about in groups, and excitedly discussed the subject. Ten of Schwarz's most advanced pupils had left the master for the outsider named Schrievers. At the head of the list stood Furst. The Conservatorium, royally endowed and municipally controlled, held to its time-honoured customs with tenacity. The older masters laboured to uphold tradition, and such younger ones as were progressively inclined, had not the influence to effect a change. Unattached teachers were regarded with suspicion--unless they happened to be former pupils of the institution, in which case it was assumed that they carried out its precepts. There had naturally always been plenty of others as well; but these were comparatively powerless: they could give their pupils neither imposing certificates, nor gala public performances, such as the PRUFUNGEN, and, for the most part, they flourished unknown. This was previous to the arrival of Schrievers. It was now about a year and a half ago that his settling in Leipzig had caused a flutter in musical circles. Then, however, he had been forgotten, or at least remembered only at intervals, when it was heard that he had caught another fish, in the shape of a renegade pupil. Schrievers was a burly, red-bearded man, still well under middle age, and possessed of plenty of push and self-confidence. It soon transpired that he was an out-and-out champion of modern ideas in music; for, from the first, he was connected with a leading paper, in which he made his views known. He had a trenchant pen, and, with unfailing consistency, criticised the musical conditions of Leipzig adversely. The progressive LISZTVEREIN, of which he was soon the leading spirit, alone escaped; the opera, bereft of Nikisch, and the Gewandhaus, under its gentle and aged conductor, were treated by him with biting sarcasm. But his chief butt was the Conservatorium, and its ancient methods. He asserted that not a jot of the curriculum had been altered for fifty years; and its speedy downfall was the sole result to be expected and hoped for. The fact that, at this time, some seven hundred odd students were enrolled on its books went far to discredit this pious hope; but, nevertheless, Schrievers harped always on the same string; and just as perpetual dropping wears a stone, so his continued diatribes ate into emotional and sensitive natures. He began to attract a following, and, simultaneously, to make himself known as a pupil of Liszt. This brought him a fresh batch of enemies. Even a small German town is seldom without its Liszt-pupil, and in Leipzig several were settled, none of whom had ever heard of Martin Schrievers. They refused to admit him to their jealous clique. In their opinion, he belonged to that goodly class of persons, who, having by hook or by crook, contrived to spend an hour in the Abbe of Weimar's presence, afterwards abused the sacred narre of pupil. He was hated by these chosen few with more vigour than by the conservative pedagogues, who, naturally enough, saw the ruin of art in all he did. Various reasons were given for his success, no one being willing to believe that it was due to his merits as a teacher. Some said that he recognised in a twinkling the weak points of the individual with whom he had to deal. He humoured foibles, was tender of self-conceit. He also flattered his pupils by giving them music that was beyond their powers of execution: those, for instance, who had worked long and with feeble interest at Czerny, Dussek and Hummel, were dazzled at the prospect of Liszt and Chopin, which was suddenly thrust beneath their eyes. Other ill-wishers believed that his chief bait was the musical SOIREES he gave when a famous pianist came to the town. By virtue of his journalistic position, he was personally acquainted with all the great; they visited at his house, and his pupils had thus not merely the opportunity of getting to know artists like Rubinstein and d'Albert, and of hearing them play in private, but, what was more to the point, of themselves taking part in the performance, and perhaps receiving a golden word from the great man's lips. And though no huge parchment scroll was forthcoming on the termination of one's studies, yet Schrievers held the weapon of criticism in his hand, and, at the first tentative public appearance of the young performer, could make or mar as he chose. He lived on good terms, too, with his fellow-critics, so that wire-pulling was easy--incomparably more so than were the embarrassing visits, open to any snub, which were common if one was only a pupil of the Conservatorium, and which, in the case of the ladypupils, included costly bouquets of flowers. Among those who had deserted Schwarz were some, like Miss Martin, malcontents, who had flitted from place to place, and from master to master, in the perpetual hope of discovering that ideal teacher who would estimate them at their true worth. These were radiantly satisfied with the change. Miss Martin bore, wherever she went, an octave-study by Liszt, and flaunted it in the faces of her friends: and Miss Moses, who had been under Bendel, could not say two sentences without throwing in: "That Chopin ETUDE I studied last," or: "The Polonaise in E flat I'm working at;" for, beforehand, she too had been a humble performer of Haydn and Bertini. James had the prospect of playing a Concerto by Liszt--forbidden fruit to the pupils of the Conservatorium--in one of the concerts of the LISZTVEREIN, and was sure, in advance, of being favourably criticised. Boehmer wished to specialise in Bach, and if Schwarz set himself against one thing more than another, it was a one-sided musical taste: within the bounds of classicism, the master demanded catholic sympathies; those students who had romantic leanings towards Chopin and Schumann, were castigated with severely classical compositions; and, vice versa, he had insisted on Boehmer widening his horizon on Schubert and Mendelssohn. And there were also several others, who, having been dragged forward by Schwarz, from inefficient beginnings, now left him, to write their acquired skill to Schrievers' credit. Furst was the greatest riddle of all. It was he who, on subsequent concert-tours, was to have extended the fame of the Conservatorium; he was the show pupil of the institution, and, in the coming PRUFUNGEN, was to have distinguished himself, and his master with him, by playing Beethoven's Concerto in E flat. Other teachers besides Schwarz had been forsaken for the new-comer, but in no case by so large a body of students. They bore their losses philosophically. Bendel, one of the few masters who spoke English--it was against the principles of Schwarz to know a word of it: foreign pupils had to learn his language, not he theirs--Bendel, frequented chiefly by the American colony, was of a phlegmatic temperament and not easily roused. He alluded to the backsliders with an ironical jest, preferring to believe that they were the losers. But Schwarz was of a diametrically opposite nature. In the short, thickset man, with the all-seeing eyes, and the head of carefully waved hair, just streaked with grey--a head at once too massive and too fine for the clumsy body--in Schwarz, dwelt a fierce and indomitable pride. His was one of those moody, sensitive natures, quick to resent, always on the look-out for offence. He was ever ready to translate things into the personal; for though he had an overweening sense of his own importance, there was yet room in him for a secret doubt; and with this doubt, he, as it were, put other people to the test. The loss of the flower of his flock made him doubly unsure; he felt himself a marked man, for Bendel and other enemies to jeer at. Aloud, he spoke long and vehemently, as if mere noisy words would heal the wound. And the pupils who had remained faithful to him, gathered all the more closely round him, and burned as he did. If wishes could have injured or killed, Furst's career would then and there have come to an end: his ingratitude, his treachery, and his lack of moral fibre, were denounced on every hand. One day, at this time, Maurice entered Schwarz's room. The class was assembled; but, although the hour was well advanced, no one had begun to play. The master stood at the window, with his back to the grass-grown courtyard. He was haranguing, in a strident voice, the three pupils who sat along the wall. From what followed, Maurice gathered that that very afternoon Schwarz had been informed of the loss of four more pupils; and though, as every one knew, he had hitherto not set much store by any of them, he now discovered latent talent in all four, and was, at the same time, exasperated that such nonentities should presume to judge him. To infer from the appearance of those present, the storm had raged fora considerable period. And still it went on. After the expiry of a further interval, Krafft who, throughout, had sat shading his eyes with his hand, woke as though from sleep, yawned heartily, stretched himself and, taking out his watch, studied it with profound attention. For the first time, Schwarz was checked in his flow of words; he coughed, fumbled for an epithet, then stopped, and, to the general surprise, motioned Krafft to the piano. But Heinrich was in a bad mood. He stifled another yawn before beginning, and played in a mechanical way. Schwarz had often enough made allowance for this pupil's varying moods; he was not now in the humour to do so. "HALT!" he cried before the first page was turned. "What in God's name is the meaning of this? Do you come here to read from sight?" Krafft continued to play as if nothing had been said. "Do you hear me?" thundered Schwarz. "It's impossible," said Krafft, and proceeded. "BARMHERZIGER GOTT!--" The master's short neck reddened, and twisted in its collar. "Give me music I care to play, and I'll show you how it should be done. I can make nothing of this," answered Krafft. Schwarz strode up to the piano, and swept the volume from the rack; it fell with a crash on the keys and on Krafft's hands, and effectually hindered him from continuing. What had gone before was as a summer shower to a deluge. With his arms stiffly knotted behind his back, Schwarz paced the floor with a tread that shook it. His steely blue eyes flashed with passion; the veins stood out on his forehead; his large, prominent mouth gaped above his tuft of beard; he struck ludicrous attitudes, pouring out, meanwhile, without stint--for he had soon passed from Krafft's particular case of insubordination to the general one--pouring out the savage anger and deep-felt injury that had accumulated in him. Finally, he invited the class to rise and leave him, there and then. For what, in God's name, were they waiting? Let them up and away, without more ado! On receiving the volume of Beethoven on his fingers, Krafft straightened out the pages, and taking down his hat from its peg, left the room, with movements of a calculated coolness. But only a pupil of Bullow's might take such a liberty; the rest had to assist quietly at the painful scene. Maurice studied his finger nails, and Dove did not once remove his eyes from the leg of the piano. They, at least, knew from experience that, in time, the storm would pass; also that it sounded worse, than it actually was. But a new-comer, a stout Bavarian lad, with hair cut like Rubinstein's, who was present at the lesson for the first time, was pale and frightened, and sat drinking in every word. Towards the end of the hour, when quiet was re-established, one's inclination was rather to escape from the room and be free, than to sit down to play something that demanded coolness and concentration. Dove, who was not sensitive to externals, came safely through the ordeal; but Maurice made a poor job of the trio in which he had hoped to excel. Schwarz did not even offer to turn the pages. This, Beyerlein, the new-comer, did, in a nervous desire to ingratiate himself; but he was still so flustered that, at a critical moment, he brought the music down on the keys. Schwarz said nothing; wrapped in the moody silence that invariably followed his outbursts, he hardly seemed aware that anyone was playing. After two movements of the trio, he signed to Beyerlein to take his turn, and proffered no comment on Maurice's work. Maurice would have hurried away, without a further word, had he not already learned the early date of his performance. He knew, too, that if the practical side of the affair--rehearsals with string players, and so on--was not satisfactorily arranged, he would be blamed for it. So he reminded Schwarz of the matter. From what ensued, it was plain that the master still bore him a grudge for absconding in summer. Schwarz glared coldly at him, as if unsure to what Maurice alluded; and when the latter had recalled the details of the case to his mind, he said rudely: "You went your way, Herr Guest. Now I go mine." He commenced to turn the leaves of his ponderous note-book, and after Maurice had stood for some few minutes, listening to Beyerlein trip and stumble through Mozart, he felt that, for this day at least, he could put up with no more, and left the class. III. Shaking all disagreeable impressions from him, he sped through the fading light of the September afternoon. This was the time--it was six o'clock--at which he could rejoin Louise with a free mind. It was the exception for him to go earlier, or at other hours; but, did he chance to go, no matter when, she met him in the same way--sprang towards him from the window, where she had been sitting or standing, with her eyes on the street. "I believe you watch for me all day long," he said to her once. On this particular afternoon, when he had used much the same words to her, she put back her head and looked up at him, with a pale, unsmiling face. "Not quite," she answered slowly. "But I have a fancy, Maurice--a foolish, fancy--that once you will come early--in the morning--and we shall have the whole day together again. Perhaps even go away somewhere ... before summer is quite over." "And I promise you, dearest, we will. Just let me get through the next fortnight, and then I shall be freer. We'll take the train, and go back to Rochlitz, or anywhere you like. In the meantime, take more care of yourself. You are far too pale. You will go out tomorrow, yes?--to please me?" But this was a request he had often made, and generally in vain. Since the afternoon of their return, Louise had made no further attempt to stem or alter circumstance. She accepted Maurice's absences without demur. But one result was, that her feelings were hoarded up for the few hours he passed with her: these were then a working-off of emotion; and it seemed impossible to cram enough into them, to make good the starved remainder of the day. Maurice was vaguely troubled. He was himself so busy at this time, and so full of revived energy, that he could not imagine her happy, living as she did, entirely without occupation. At first he had tried to persuade her to take up her music again; but she would not even consider it. To all his arguments, she made the same reply. "I have no real talent. With me, it was only an excuse--to get away from home." Nor could he induce her to renew her acquaintance with people she had known. "Do you know, I once thought you didn't care a jot what people said of you?" It was not a very kind thing to say; it slipped out unawares. But she did not take it amiss. "I used not to," she answered with her invincible frankness. "But now--it seems--I do." "Why, dearest? Aren't you happy enough not to care?" For answer, she took his face between her hands, and looked at him with such an ill-suppressed fire in her eyes that all he could do was to draw her into his arms. His pains for her good came to nothing. He took her his favourite books, but--with the exception of an occasional novel--Louise was no reader. In those he brought her, she seldom advanced further than the first few pages; and she could sit for an hour without turning a leaf. He had never seen her with a piece of sewing or any such feminine employment in her hands. Nor did she spend time on her person; as a rule, he found her in her dressing-gown. He had to give up trying to influence her, and to become reconciled to the fact that she chose to live only for him. But on this September day, after the unpleasant episode with Schwarz, he had a fancy to go for a walk; Louise was unwilling; and he felt anew how preposterous it was for her to spend these fine autumn days, in this half-dark room. "You are burying yourself alive--just as you did last winter." She laid her hand on his lips. "No, no!--don't say that. Now I am happy." "But are you really? Sometimes I'm not sure." He was tired himself this evening, and found it difficult to be convinced. "It troubles me when I think how dull it must be for you. Dearest, are you--can you really be happy like this?" "I have you, Maurice." "But only for an hour or two in the twenty-four. Tell me, what do you think of?" "Of you." "All that time? Of poor, plain, ordinary me?" "You are mine," she said with vehemence, and looked at him with what he called her "hungry-beast" eyes. "You would like to eat me, I think." "Yes. And I should begin here; this is the bit of you I love best"--and before he knew what she was going to do, she had stooped, and he felt her teeth in the skin of his neck. "That's a strange way of showing your love," he said, and involuntarily put his hand to the spot, where two bluish-red marks had appeared. "It's my way. I want you--I WANT you. I want to feel that you're mine--to make you more mine than you've ever been. I wish I had a hundred arms. I would hold you with them all, and never let you go." "But, dearest, one would think I wanted to go. Do you really believe if I had my own way, I should be anywhere but here with you?" "No.--I don't know.--How should I know?" "Doubts?--beloved!" "No, no, not doubts. It's only--oh, I don't know what it is. If you could always be with me, Maurice, they wouldn't come. For what I never meant to happen HAS happened. I have grown to care too much--far too much. I want you, I need you, at every moment of the day. I want you never to be out of my sight." Maurice held her at arm's length, and looked at her. "You can say that--at last!" And drawing her to him: "Patience, darling. Just a little patience. Some day you will never be alone again." "I do have patience, Maurice. But let me be patient in my own way. For I'm not like you. I have no room in me now for other things. I can't think of anything else. If I had my way, we should shut ourselves up alone, and live only for each other. Not share it, not make it just a part of what we do." "But man can't live on nectar and honey alone. It wouldn't be life." "It wouldn't be life, no. It would be more than life." Some of the evening shadows seemed to invade her face. Her expression was childishly pathetic. He drew her to his knee. "I should like to see you happier, Louise--yes, yes, I know!--but I mean perfectly happy, as you were sometimes at Rochlitz. Since we came back, it has never been just the right thing--say what you like." "If only we had never come back!" "If you still think so, darling, when I've finished here, we'll go away at once. In the meantime, patience." "Oh, I don't mean to be unreasonable!" But her head was on his shoulder, his arms were round her; and in this position, nothing mattered greatly to her. Patience?--yes, there was need for him to exhort her to patience. It ate already into her soul as iron bands eat into flesh. The greater part of her life was now spent in practising it. And for sheer loathing of it, she turned over, on waking, and kept her eyes closed, in an attempt to prolong the night. For the day stretched empty before her; the hours passed, one by one, like grey-veiled ghosts. Yet not for a moment had she harboured his idea of regular occupation; she knew herself too well for that. In the fever into which her blood had worked itself she could settle to nothing: her attention was centred wholly in herself; and all her senses were preternaturally acute. But she suffered, too, under the stress of her feeling; it blunted her, and made her, on the one hand, regardless of everything outside it, on the other, morbidly sensitive to trifles. She waited for him, hour after hour, crouched in a corner of the sofa, or stretched at full length, with closed eyes. Long before it was time for him to come, she was stationed at the window. She learned to know the people who appeared in the street between the hours of four and six so accurately that she could have described them blindfold. There was the oldfaced little girl who delivered milk; there was the postman who emptied into his canvas receptacle, the blue letter-box affixed to the opposite wall; the student with the gashed face and red cap, who lived a couple of doors further down, and always whistled the same tune; the big Newfoundland dog that stalked majestically at his side, and answered to the name of Tasso--she knew them all. These two last hours were weighted with lead. He came, sometimes a poor half-hour too soon, but usually not till past six o'clock. Never, in her life, had she waited for anyone like this, and, towards the end of the time, a sense of injury, of more than mortal endurance, would steal through her and dull her heart towards him, in a way that frightened her. When, at length, she saw him turn the corner, when she had caught and answered his swift upward glance, she drew back into the shadow of the room, and hid her face in her hands. Then she listened. He had the key of the little papered door in the wall. Between the sound of his step on the stair, and the turning of the key in the lock, there was time for her to undergo a moment of suspense that drove her hand to her throat. What if, after the tension of the afternoon, her heart, her nerves--parts of her over which she had no control--should not take their customary bound towards him? What if her pulses should not answer his? But before she could think her thought to the end, he was there; and when she saw his kind eyes alight, his eager hands outstretched, her nervous fears were vanquished. Maurice hardly gave himself time to shut the door, before catching her to him in a long embrace. And yet, though she did not suspect it, he, too, had a twinge of uncertainty on entering. Her bodily presence still affected him with a sense of strangeness--it took him a moment to get used to her again, as it were--and he was forced to reassure himself that nothing had changed during his absence, that she was still all his own. When the agitation of these first, few, speechless minutes had subsided, a great tenderness seized Louise; freeing one hand, she smoothed back his hair from his forehead, with movements each of which was a caress. As for him, his first impetuous rush of feeling was invariably followed by an almost morbid pity for her, which, in this form, was a new note in their relation to each other, or a harking back to the oldest note of all. When he considered how dependent she was on him, how her one desire was to have him with her, he felt that he could never repay her or do enough for her: and, whatever his own state of mind previous to coming, when once he was there, he exerted himself to the utmost, to cheer her. It was always she who needed consolation; and, by means of his endearments, she was petted back to happiness like a tired child. In his efforts to take her out of herself, Maurice told her how he had spent the day: where he had been, and whom he had met--every detail that he thought might interest her. She listened, in grateful silence, but she never put a question. This at an end, he returned once more, in a kind of eternal circle, to the one subject of which she never wearied. He might repeat, for the thousandth time, how dear she was to him, without the least fear that the story would grow stale in the telling. And once here, amidst the deep tenderness of his words, he felt her slowly come to life again, and unfold like a flower. After the long, dead day, Louise was consumed by a desire to drain such moments as these to the dregs. She did not let a word of his pass unchallenged, and all that she herself said, was an attempt to discover some spasm of mental ecstasy, which they had not yet experienced. Sometimes, the feeling grew so strong that it forced her to give an outward sign. Slipping to her knees, she gazed at him with the eyes of a faithful animal. "What have I done to make you look at me like that?" asked Maurice, amazed. "What can I do to show you how I love you? Tell me what I can do." "Do?--what do you want to do? Be your own dear self--that's all, and more than enough." But she continued to look beseechingly at him, waiting for the word that might be the word of her salvation. "Haven't you done enough already, in giving yourself to me?" he asked, seeing how she hung on his lips. But she repeated: "What can I do? Let me do something. Oh, I wish you would hurt me, or be unkind to me!" He tried to make her understand that he wished for no such humble adoration, that, indeed, he could not be happy under it. If either was to serve the other, it was he; he asked nothing better than to put his hands under her feet. But he could neither coax her nor laugh her out of her absorption: she had the will to self-abasement; and she remained unsatisfied, waiting for the word he would not speak. Once or twice, during these weeks, they went out in the evening, and, in the corner of some quiet restaurant, took a festive little meal. But, for the most part, she preferred to stay at home. She was not dressed, she said, or she was tired, or it was too hot, or it had rained. And Maurice did not urge her; for, on the last occasion, the evening had been spoiled for him by the conduct of some people at a neighbouring table; they had stared at Louise, and whispered remarks about her. At home, she herself prepared the supper, moving indolently about the room, her dressing-gown dragging after her, from table to cupboard, and back again, often with a pause at his side, in which she forgot what she had set out for. Maurice disputed each trifling service with her; he could only think of Louise as made to be waited on, slow to serve herself. "Let me do it, dearest." She had risen anew to fetch something. Now she stood beside him, and put her arms round his neck. "What can I do for you? Tell me what I can do," she said, and crushed his head against her breast. He loosened her fingers, and drew her to his knee. "What do you want me to say, dear discontent? Do?--you were never meant to do anything in this world. Your hands were made to lie one on top of the other...so! Look at them! Most white and most useless!" "There are things not made with hands," she answered obscurely. She let him do what he liked; but she kept her face turned away; and over her eyes passed a faint shadow of resignation. But this mood also was a transient one; hours followed, when she no longer sought and questioned, but when she gave, recklessly, in a wild endeavour to lose the sense of twofold being. And before these outbreaks, the young man was helpless. His past life, and such experience as he had gathered in it, grew fantastic and unreal, might all have belonged to some one else: the sole reality in a world of shadows was this soft human body that he held in his arms. Point by point, however, each of which wounded, consciousness fought itself free again. Such violent extremes of emotion were, in truth, contrary to his nature. They made him unsure. And, as the pendulum swung back, something vital in him made protest. "Sometimes, it seems as if there were something else ... something that's not love at all ... more like hate--yes, as if you hated me ... would like to kill me." Her whole body was moved by the sigh she drew. "If I only could! Then I should know that you were mine indeed." "Is it possible for me to be more yours than I am?" "Part of you would never be mine, though we spent all our lives together." He roused himself from his lethargy. "How can you say that?--And yet I think I know what you mean. It's like a kind of rage that comes over one--Yes, I've felt it, too. Listen, darling!--there are things one can't say in daylight. I, too, have felt ... sometimes ... that in spite of all my love for you--I mean our love for each other--yet there was still something, a part of you, I had no power over. The real you is something--some one I don't really know in spite of all the kisses. Yes"--and the more he tried to find words for what he meant, the more convinced he grew of its truth. "Nothing keeps us apart; you love me, are here in my arms, and yet ...yet there's a bit of you I can't influence--that is still strange to me. How often I have to ask you why you look at me in a certain way, or what you are thinking of! I never know your thoughts; I've never once been able to read them; you always keep something back.--Why is it, dear? Is it my fault? If I could just once get at your real self--if I knew that once, only once, in all these weeks, you had been mine--every bit of you--then ... yes, then, I believe I would be satisfied to ... to--I don't know what!" He had spoken in an even, monotonous voice, almost more to himself than to her. Now, however, he was forced to the opposite extreme of anxious solicitude. "No, no, I didn't really mean it. Darling! ... hush!--don't cry like that. I didn't know what I was saying; it isn't true, not a word of it." She had flung herself across him; her own elemental weeping shook her from head to foot. He realised, for the first time, the depth and strength of it, now that it, as it were, went through him, too. Gathering her to him, he made wild and foolish promises. But nothing soothed her: she wept on, until the dawn crept in, thinly grey, round the windows. But when it grew so light that the objects in the room were recovering their form, she fell asleep, and he hardly dared to breathe, for fear of disturbing her. By day, the sensations he had tried to express to her seemed the figments of the night. He needed only to be absent from her to feel the old restlessness tug at his heart-strings. At such moments, it seemed to him ridiculous to torment himself about an infinitesimal flaw in their love, and one which perhaps existed only in his imagination. To be with her again was his sole desire; and to feel her cheek on his, to be free to run his hands through her exciting hair, belonged, when he was separated from her, to that small category of things for which he would have bartered his soul. One evening, towards the end of September, Louise watched for him at the window. It had been a warm autumn day, rich in varying lights and shades. Now it was late, nearly half-past six, and still he had not come: her eyes were tired with staring down the street. When at last he appeared, she saw that that he was carrying flowers. Her heart, which, at the sight of him, had set up a glad and violent beating, settled down again at once, to its normal course. She knew what the flowers meant: in a spirit of candour, which had something disarming in it, he invariably brought them when he could not stay long with her; and she had learned to dread seeing them in his hand. In very truth, he was barely inside the room before he told her that he could only stay for an hour. He was to play his trio the following evening, and now, at the last moment, the 'cellist had been taken ill. He had spent the greater part of the afternoon looking for a substitute, and having found one, had still to interview him again, to let him know the time at which Schwarz had appointed an extra rehearsal for the next day. Maurice had mentioned more than once the date of his playing; but it had never seemed more to Louise than a disturbing outside fact, to be put out of mind or kissed away. She had forgotten all about it, and the knowledge of this overcame her disappointment; she tried to atone, by being reasonable. Maurice had steeled himself against pleadings and despondency, and was grateful to her for making things easy. He wished to outdo himself in tender encouragement; but she remained evasive: and since, in spite of himself, he could not hinder his thoughts from slipping forward to the coming evening, he, too, had moments of preoccupied silence. When the clock struck eight, he rose to go. In saying goodnight, he turned her face up, and asked her had she decided if she were coming to hear him play. It was on her direct lips to reply that she had not thought anything about it. A glance at his face checked her. He was waiting anxiously for her answer: it was a matter of importance to him. Her previous sense of remissness was still with her, hampering her, making her unfree; and for a minute she did not know what to say. "Would you mind much if I asked you not to come?" he said as she hesitated. "No, of course not," she hastened to respond, glad to be relieved of the decision. "If you would rather I didn't." "It's a fancy of mine, dearest--foolish, I know--that I shall get on better if you're not there." "It's all right. I understand." When he had gone, she returned to her place at the window. It was a fine night: there was no moon; but the stars glittered furiously in the inky-blue sky, a stretch of which was visible above the gardens. The vastness of the night, the distance of sky and stars, made her shiver. Leaning her wrists on the cold, moist sill, she looked down into the street; it was not very far; but a jump from where she was, to the pavement, would suffice to put an end to every feeling. She was very lonely; no one wanted her. Here she might stand, at this forlorn post, for hours, for the whole night; no one would either know or care.--And her feeling of error, of unfreedom and desolation grew so hard to bear that, for fear she should actually throw herself down, she banged the window to, with a crash that resounded through the street. But there was something else at work in her to-night, which she could not understand. She struggled with it, as one struggles with a forgotten melody, which hovers behind the consciousness, and will not emerge. Except for the light thrown by a small lamp, the room was in shadow. She went slowly back to the sofa. On the way she trod on the roses; they had been knocked down and forgotten. She picked them up, and laid them on the cushioned seat beside her. They were dark crimson, and gave out a strong scent: Maurice had seldom brought her such beautiful roses. She sat with her elbows on her knees, her hands closed and pressed to her cheeks, as though she could only think with her muscles at a strain. In memory, she went over what he had said, reflected on what his words meant, and strove, honestly, to project herself into that part of his life, of which she knew nothing. But it was not easy; for one thing, the smell of the roses was too strong; it seemed to hinder her imagination. They had the scent that only deep red roses have--one which seems to come from a distance, from the very heart of cool, pure things--and more and more, she felt as if something within her were trying to find vent in it, something that swelled up, subsided, and mounted again, with what was almost a physical effort. It had been the truth when she told him that she understood; but it had touched her strangely all the same: for it had let her see into an unsuspected corner of his nature. He, too, then, had a cranny in his brain, where such fancies lodged--such an eccentric, artist fancy, or whim, or superstition--as that, out of several hundred people, a single individual could distract and disturb. He ... too! The little word had done it. Now she knew--knew what the roses had been trying to tell her. And as if invisible hands had touched a spring in her brain, thereby opening some secret place, the memory of a certain hour returned to her, returned with such force that she fell on her knees, and pressed her face to the seat of the sofa. On the floor beside her lay the roses. Why, oh why, had he needed to bring them to her, on this night of all others? On the day she remembered, they had been lavished over the room-one June evening, two years ago. And ever afterwards, the scent of blood-red roses had been associated for her with one of the sweet, leading themes in Beethoven's violin concerto. There was a special concert that night at the Conservatorium; the hall was filled to the last place. She waited with him in the green-room, until his turn came to play. Then she went into the hall, and stood at the back, under the gallery. Once more, she was aware of the stir that ran through the audience, as Schilsky walked down the platform. Hardly, however, had he drawn his bow across the strings, when she felt a touch on her arm, and a Russian, who was an intimate friend of his, beckoned her outside. There, he told her that he had been sent to ask her to leave the hall; and they smiled at each other, in understanding of the whim. Afterwards, she learned how, just about to step on to the platform, Schilsky had had a presentiment that things would go wrong if she remained inside. In his gratitude, and in the boyish exultation with which success filled him, he had collected all the roses, and wantonly pulled them to pieces. Red petals fell like flakes of red snow; and, crushed and bruised, the fragile leaves had yielded a scent, tenfold increased. While it lasted, the vision was painfully intense: on returning to herself, she was obliged to look round and think where she was. The lamp burned steadily; the dull room was just as she had left it. With a cry, she buried her face in the cushions again, and held her hands to her ears. More, more, and more again! She was as hungry for these memories as a child for dainties. She was starved for them. And now, dead to the present, she relived the past happy hours of triumph and excitement, not one of which had hung heavy, in each of which her craving for sensation had been stilled. She saw herself as she had then been, proud, secure, unspeakably content. Forgotten words rang in her ears, words of love and of anger, words that were like ointment and like knives. Then, not a day had been empty or tedious; life was always highly coloured, and there was neither pleasure nor pain that she had not tasted to the full. Even the suffering she had gone through, for his sake, was no longer hateful to her. Anything--anything rather than this dead level of monotony on which she had fallen. When, finally, she raised her head, she might, for all she knew, have been absent for days. Things had lost their familiar aspect; she had once more lived right through the great experience of her life. Putting her hands to her forehead, she tried to force her thoughts back to reality. Then, stiffly, she rose from her knees. In doing so, she touched the roses. With a gesture that was her real awakening, she caught them up and pressed them to her face. It was a satisfaction to her that fingers and cheeks were pricked by their thorns. She was conscious of wishing to hurt herself. With her lips on the cool buds, she stammered broken words: "Maurice--my poor Maurice!" and kissed the flowers, feeling as if, in some occult way, he would be aware of her kisses, of the love she was thus expending on him. For, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, she was sensible of a great compassion for him; and with each pressure of her lips to the roses, she implored his forgiveness for her unpremeditated desertion. She called to mind his tenderness, his unceasing care of her, and, closing her eyes, stretched out her arms to him, in the empty room. Already she began to live for the following evening, when he would come again. Now, only to sleep through as many as she could of the hours that separated them! She would be to him the next night, what she had never yet been: his own rival in fondness. And as a beginning, she crossed the room, and put the fading roses in a pitcher of water. IV. Towards seven o'clock the following evening, Maurice loitered about the vestibule of the Conservatorium. In spite of his attempt to time himself, he had arrived too early, and his predecessor on the programme had still to play two movements of a sonata by Beethoven. As he stood there, Madeleine entered by the street-door. "Is that you?" she asked, in the ironical tone she now habitually used to him. "You look just as if you were posing for the John in a Rubens Crucifixion.--Feel shaky? No? You ought to, you know. One plays all the better for it.--Well, good luck to you! I'll hold my thumbs." He went along the passage to the little green-room, at the heels of his string-players. On seeing them go by, it had occurred to him that he might draw their attention to a passage in the VARIATIONS, with which he had not been satisfied at rehearsal that day. But when he caught them up, they were so deep in talk that he hesitated to interrupt. The 'cellist, a greasy, little fellow with a mop of touzled hair, was relating an adventure he had had the night before. His droll way of telling it was more amusing than the long-winded story, and he himself was more tickled by it than was the violinist, a lanky German-American boy, with oily black hair and a pimpled face. Throughout, both tuned their instruments assiduously, with that air of inattention common to string-players. Meanwhile, the sonata by Beethoven ran its course. While the story-teller still smacked his lips, it came to an end, and the performer, a tall, Polish girl, with a long, sallow, bird-like neck, round which was wound a piece of black velvet, descended the steps. Behind her was heard the applause of many hands. As this showed no sign of ceasing, Schwarz, who had come out of the hall by a lower door, bade her return and bow her thanks. At his words, the girl burst into tears. "NA, NA, NA!" he said soothingly. "What's all this about? You did excellently." She seized his hand and clung to it. The 'cellist ran to fetch water; the other two young men were embarrassed, and looked away. Here, however, several friends burst into the room, and bore Fraulein Prybowski off. Schwarz gave the signal, the stringplayers picked up their instruments, and the little procession, with Maurice at its head, mounted the steps to the platform. Although before an audience for the first time in his life, Maurice had never felt more composed. Passing by the organ, and the empty seats of the orchestra, he descended to the front of the platform, where two grand pianos stood side by side; and, as he went, he noted that the hall was exceptionally well filled. He let down the lid of the piano to the peg for chambermusic; he lowered the piano-chair, and flicked the keys with his handkerchief. And Schwarz, sitting by him, to turn the pages of the music, felt so sure of this pupil's coolness that he yawned, and stroked the insides of his trouser-legs. Maurice was just ready for the start, when the 'cellist, who was restless, discovered that the stand which had been placed for him was insecure; rising from his scat, he went to fetch another from the back of the platform. In the delay that ensued, Maurice looked round at the audience. He saw innumerable heads and faces, all turned expectantly towards him, like lines of globular fruits. His eye ranged indifferently over the occupants of the front seats--strange faces, which told him nothing--until his attention was arrested by a face almost directly beneath him, in the second row. For the flash of a second, he thought he knew the person to whom it belonged, and struggled to recall a name. Then, almost as swiftly, he dismissed the idea. It was, however, a face of that kind which, once seen, is never forgotten--a frog-like face, with protruding eyes, and the frog's expressive leer. Somewhere, not very long ago, this face had been before him, and had stared at him in the same disconcerting manner--but where? when? In the few seconds that remained, his brain worked furiously, sped back in desperate haste over all the likely places where he might have seen it. And a restaurant evolved itself; a table in a secluded corner; chrysanthemums and their acrid scent; a screen, round which this repulsive face had peered. It had fixed them both, with such malevolence that it had destroyed his pleasure, and he had persuaded Louise to go home. His memory was now so alert that he could recall the man's two companions as well. The scene built itself up with inconceivable rapidity. And while he was still absorbed by it, Schwarz raised a decisive hand. It was the signal to begin; he obeyed unthinkingly; and was at the bottom of the first page before he knew it. Throughout the whole of the opening movement, he was not rightly awake to what he was doing. His fingers, like well-drilled soldiers, went automatically through their work, neither blundering nor forgetting; but the mind which should have controlled them was unable to concentrate itself: he heard himself play as though he were listening to some one else. He was only roused by the burst of applause that succeeded the final chords. As he struck the first notes of the ANDANTE WITH VARIATIONS, he nerved himself for an effort; but now, as if it were the result of his previous inattention, an odd uneasiness beset him; and his beginning to weigh each note as he played it, his fingers hesitated and grew less sure. Having failed, through over-care, in the rounding of a turn, he resolved to let things go as they would, and his thoughts wander at will. The movements of the trio succeeded one another; the VARIATIONS ceased, and were followed by the crisp gaiety of the MINUET. The lights above his head were reflected in the shining ebony of the piano; regularly, every moment or two, he was struck by the appearance of Schwarz's broad, fat hand, which crossed his range of vision to turn a leaf; he meditated absently on a sharp uplifting of this hand that occurred, as though the master were dissatisfied with the rhythm--the 'cellist's fault, no doubt: he had been inexact at rehearsal, and, this evening, was too much taken up with his own witticisms beforehand, to think about what he had to do. And thus the four divisions of the trio slipped past, separated by a disturbing noise of hands, which continued to seem as unreal to Maurice as everything else. Only as the last notes of the PRESTISSIMO died away, in the disappointing, ineffectual scales in C major, with which the trio closed--not till then did he grasp that the event to which he had looked forward for many weeks was behind him, and also that no one present knew less of how it had passed off than he himself. With his music in his hand, he turned to Schwarz, to learn what success he had had, from the master's face. According to custom, Schwarz shook hands with him; he also nodded, but he did not smile. He was, however, in a hurry; the old: white-haired director had left his seat, and stood waiting to speak to him. Both 'cellist and violinist had vanished on the instant; the audience, eager as ever at the end of a concert to shake off an imposed restraint, had risen while Maurice still played the final notes; and, by this time, the hall was all but empty. He slowly ascended the platform. Now that it was over, he felt how tired he was; his very legs were tired, as though he had walked for miles. The green-room was deserted; the gas-jet had been screwed down to a peep. None of his friends had come to say a word to him. He had really hardly expected it; but, all the same, a hope had lurked in him that Krafft would perhaps afterwards make some sign--even Madeleine. As, however, neither of them appeared, he seemed to read a confirmation of his failure in their absence, and he loitered for some time in the semi-darkness, unwilling to face the dispersing crowd. When at length he went down the passage, only a few stragglers remained. One or two acquaintances congratulated him in due form, but he knew neither well enough to try to get at the truth. As he was nearing the street-door, however, Dove came out of the BUREAU. He made for Maurice at once; his manner was eager, his face bore the imprint of interesting news. "I say, Guest!" he cried, while still some way off. "An odd coincidence. Young Leumann is to play this very same trio next week. A little chap in knickerbockers, you know--pupils of Rendel's. He is said to have a glorious LEGATO--just the very thing for the VARIATIONS." "Indeed?" said Maurice with a well-emphasised dryness. His tone nudged Dove's memory. "By the way, all congratulations, of course," he hastened to add. "Never heard you play better. Especially the MENUETTO. Some people sitting behind me were reminded of Rubinstein." "Well, good-night, I'm off," said Maurice, and, even as he spoke, he shot away, leaving his companion in some surprise. Once out of Dove's sight, he took off his hat and passed his hand over his forehead. Any slender hope he might have had was now crushed; his playing had been so little remarkable that even Dove had been on the point of overlooking it altogether. Louise threw herself into his arms. At last! she exulted to herself. But his greeting had not its usual fervour; instead of kissing her, he laid his face against her hair. Instantly, she became uncertain. She did not quite know what she had been expecting; perhaps it had been something of the old, pleasurable excitement that she had learnt to associate with an occasion like the present. She put back her head and looked at him, and her look was a question. "Yes. At least it's over, thank goodness!" he said in reply. Not knowing what answer to make to this, she led him to the sofa. They sat down, and, for a few minutes, neither spoke. Then, he did what on the way there, he had imagined himself doing: laid his head on her lap, and himself placed her hands on his hair. She passed them backwards and forwards; her sense of having been repulsed, yielded, and she tried to change the current of his thoughts. "Did you notice, Maurice, as you came along, how full the air was of different scents to-night?" she asked as her cool hands went to and fro. "It was like an evening in July. I was at the window trying to make them out. But the roses were too strong for them; for you see--or rather you have not seen--all the roses I have got for you--yes, just dark red roses. This afternoon I went to the little shop at the corner, and bought all they had. The pretty girl served me--do you remember the pretty girl with the yellow hair, who tried to make friends with you last summer? You like roses, too, don't you? Though not as much as I do. They were always my favourite flowers. As a child, I used to imagine what it would be like to gather them for a whole day, without stopping. But, like all my wishes then, this had to be postponed, too, till that wonderful future, which was to bring me all I wanted. There were only a few bushes where I lived; it was too dry for them. But the smell of them takes me back--always. I have only to shut my eyes, and I am full of the old extravagant longings--the childish impatience with time, which seemed to crawl so slowly ... even to stand still." "Tell me all about it," he murmured, without raising his head. She smiled and humoured him. "I like flowers best for their scents," she went on. "No matter what beautiful colours they have. A camelia is a foolish flower; like a blind man's face--the chief thing is wanting. But then, of course, the smell must remind one of pleasant things. It's strange, isn't it, how much association has to do with pleasure?--or pain. Some things affect me so strongly that they make me wretched. There's music I can't listen to; I have to put my hands to my ears, and run away from it; and all because it takes me back to an unhappy hour, or to a time of my life that I hated. There are streets I never walk through, even words I dread to hear anyone say, because they are connected with some one I disliked, or a day I would rather not have lived. And it is just the same with smells. Wood smouldering outside!--and all the country round is smoky with bush fires. Mimosa in the room--and I can feel the sun beating down on deserted shafts and the stillness of the bush. Rotting leaves and the smell of moist earth, and I am a little girl again, in short dresses, standing by a grave--my father's to which I was driven in a high buggy, between two men in black coats. I can't remember crying at all, or even feeling sorry; I only smelt the earth--it was in the rainy season and there was water in the grave.--But flowers give me my pleasantest memories. Passion-flowers and periwinkles--you will say they have no smell, but it's not true. Flat, open passionflowers--red or white--with purplish-fringed centres, have a honey-smell, and make me think of long, hot, cloudless days, which seemed to have neither beginning nor end. And little periwinkles have a cool green smell; for they grew along an old paling fence, which was shady and sometimes even damp. And violets? I never really cared for violets; not till ... I mean ... I never ..." She had entangled herself, and broke off so abruptly that he moved. He was afraid this soothing flow of words was going to cease. "Yes, yes, go on, tell me some more--about violets." She hastened to recover herself. "They are silly little flowers. Made to wither in one's dress ... or to be crushed. Unless one could have them in such masses that they filled the room. But lilac, Maurice, great sprays and bunches of lilac-white and purple--you know, don't you, who will always be associated with lilac for me? Do you remember some of those evenings at the theatre, on the balcony between the acts? The gallery was so hot, and out there it seemed as if the whole town were steeped in lilac. Or walking home--those glorious nights--when some one was so silent ... so moody--do you remember?" At the peculiar veiled tone that had come into her voice; at this reminder of a past day of alternate rapture and despair, so different from the secured happiness of the present; at the thought of this common memory that had built itself up for them round a flower's scent, a rush of grateful content overcame Maurice, and, for the first time since entering the room, he looked up at her with a lover's eyes. Safe, with her arms round him, he was strong enough to face the worst. "How good you are to me, dearest! And I don't deserve it. To-night, you might just have sent me away again, when I came. For I was in a disagreeable mood--and still am. But you won't give me up just yet for all that, will you? However despondent I get about myself? For you are all I have, Louise--in the whole world. Yes, I may as well confess it to you, to-night was a failure--not a noisy, open one but all the same, it's no use calling it anything else." He had laid his head on her lap again, so did not see her face. While he spoke, Louise looked at him, in a kind of unwilling surprise. Instinctively, she ceased to pass her hands over his hair. "Oh, no, Maurice," she then protested, but weakly, without conviction. "Yes--failure," he repeated, and put more emphasis than before on the word. "It's no good beating about the bush.--And do you realise what it--what failure means for us, Louise?" "Oh, no," she said again, vaguely trying to ward off what she foresaw was coming. "And why talk about it to-night? You are tired. Things will seem different in the morning. Shut your eyes again, and lie quite still." But, the ice once broken, he felt the need of speaking--of speaking out relentlessly all that was in him. And, as he talked, he found it impossible to keep still; he paced the room. He was very pale and very voluble, and made a clean breast of everything that troubled him; not so much, however, with the idea of confessing it to her, as of easing his own mind. And now, again, he let her see into his real self, and, unlike the previous occasion, it was here more than a glimpse that she caught. He was distressingly frank with her. She heard now, for the first time, of the foolish ambitions with which he had begun his studies in Leipzig; heard of their gradual subsidence, and his humble acceptance of his inferiority, as well as of his present fear that, when his time came to an end, he would have nothing to show for it--and under the influence of what had just happened, this fear grew more vivid. It was one thing, he made clear to her, and unpleasant enough at best, to have to find yourself to rights as a mediocrity, when you had hoped with all your heart that you were something more. But what if, having staked everything on it, you should discover that you had mistaken your calling altogether? "To-night, you see, I think I should have been a better chimney-sweep. The real something that makes the musician--even the genuinely musical outsider--is wanting in me. I've learnt to see that, by degrees, though I don't know in the least what it is.--But even suppose I were mistaken--who could tell me that I was? One's friends are only too glad to avoid giving a downright opinion, and then, too, which of them would one care to trust? I believe in the end I shall go straight to Schwarz, and get him to tell me what he thinks of me--whether I'm making a fool of myself or not." "Oh, I wouldn't do that," Louise said quickly. It was the first time she had interrupted him. She had sat and followed his restless movements with a look of apprehension. A certain board in the floor creaked when he trod on it, and she found herself listening, each time, for the creaking of this board. She was sorry for him, but she could not attach the importance he did to his assumed want of success, nor was she able to subdue the feeling of distaste with which his doubtings inspired her. It was so necessary, too, this outpouring; she had never felt curious about the side of his nature which was not the lover's side. Tonight, it became clear to her that she would have preferred to remain in ignorance of it. And besides, what he said was so palpable, so undeniable, that she could not understand his dragging the matter to the surface: she had never thought of him but as one of the many honest workers, who swell the majority, and are not destined to rise above the crowd. She had not dreamed of his considering himself in another light, and it was painful to her now, to find that he had done so. To put an end to such embarrassing confidences, she went over to him, and, with her hands on his shoulders, her face upturned, said all the consoling words she could think of, to make him forget. They had never yet failed in their effect. But to-night too much was at work in Maurice, for him to be influenced by them. He kissed her, and touched her cheek with his hand, then began anew; and she moved away, with a slight impatience, which she did not try to conceal. "You brood too much, Maurice ... and you exaggerate things, too. What if every one took himself so seriously?--and talked of failure because on a single occasion he didn't do himself justice?" "It's more than that with me, dear.--But it's a bad habit, I know--not that I really mean to take myself too seriously; but all my life I have been forced to worry about things, and to turn them over." "It's unhealthy always to be looking into yourself. Let things go more, and they'll carry you with them." He took her hands. "What wise-sounding words! And I'm in the wrong, I know, as usual. But, in this case, it's impossible not to worry. What happened this evening seems a trifle to you, and no doubt would to every one else, too. But I had made a kind of touchstone of it; it was to help to decide the future--that hideously uncertain future of ours! I believe now, as far as I'm concerned, I don't care whether I ever come to anything or not. Of course, I should rather have been a success--we all would!--but caring for you has swallowed up the ridiculous notions I once had. For your sake--it's you I torment myself about. WHAT is to become of us?" "If that's all, Maurice! Something will turn up, I'm sure it will. Have a little patience, and faith in luck ... or fate ... or whatever you like to call it." "That's a woman's way of looking at things." He was conscious of speaking somewhat unkindly; but he was hurt by her lack of sympathy. Instead, however, of smoothing things over, he was impelled, by an unconquerable impulse, to disclose himself still further. "Besides, that's not all," he said, and avoided her eyes. "There's something else, and I may just as well make a clean breast of it. It's not only that the future is every bit as shadowy to-night as it has always been: I haven't advanced it by an inch. But I feel to-night that if I could have been what I once hoped to be--no, how shall I put it? You know, dear, from the very beginning there has been something wrong, a kind of barrier between us hasn't there? How often I've tried to find out what it is! Well, to-night I seem to know. If I were not such an out-and-out mediocrity, if I had really been able to achieve something, you would care for me--yes, that's it!--as you can't possibly care now. You would have to; you wouldn't be able to help yourself." Her first impulsive denial died on her lips; as he continued to speak, she seemed to feel in his words an intention to wound her, or, at least, to accuse her of want of love. When she spoke, it was in a cool voice, as though she were on her guard against being touched too deeply. "That has nothing whatever to do with it," she said. "It's you yourself, Maurice, I care for--not what you can or can't do." But these words added fuel to his despondency. "Yes, that's just it," he answered. "For you, I'm in two parts, and one of them means nothing to you. I've felt it, often enough, though I've never spoken of it till to-night. Only one side of me really matters to you. But if I'd been able to accomplish what I once intended--to make a name for myself, or something of that sort--then it would all have been different. I could have forced you to be interested in every single thing I did--not only in the me that loves you, but in every jot of my outside life as well." Louise did not reply: she had a moment of genuine despondency. The staunch tenderness she had been resolved to feel for him this evening, collapsed and shrivelled up; for the morbid self-probing in which he was indulging made her see him with other eyes. What he said belonged to that category of things which are too true to be put into words: why could not he, like every one else, let them rest, and act as if they did not exist? It was as clear as day: if he were different, the whole story of their relations would be different, too. But as he could not change his nature, what was the use of talking about it, and of turning out to her gaze, traits of mind with which she could not possibly sympathise? Standing, a long white figure, beside the piano, she let her arms hang weakly at her sides. She did not try to reason with him again, or even to comfort him; she let him go on and on, always in the same strain, till her nerves suddenly rebelled at the needless irritation. "Oh, WHY must you be like this to-night?" she broke in on him. "Why try to destroy such happiness as we have? Can you never be content?" From the way in which he seized upon these words, it seemed as if he had only been waiting for her to say them. "Such happiness as we have!" he repeated. "There!--listen!--you yourself admit it. Admit all I've been saying.--And do you think I can realise that, and be happy? No, I've suffered under it from the first day. Oh, why, loving you as I do, could I not have been different?--more worthy of you. Why couldn't I, too, be one of those favoured mortals ...? Listen to me," he said lowering his voice, and speaking rapidly. "Let me make another confession. Do you know why to-night is doubly hard to bear? It's because--yes, because I know you must be forced--and not to-night only, but often--to compare me what I am and what I can do--with ... with ... you know who I mean. It's inevitable--the comparison must be thrust on you every day of your life. But does that, do you think, make it any the easier for me?" As the gist of what he was trying to say was borne in upon her, Louise winced. Her face lost its tired expression, and grew hard. "You are breaking your word," she said, in a tone she had never before used to him. "You promised me once, the past should never be mentioned between us." "I'm not blind, Louise," he went on, as though she had not spoken. "Nor am I in a mood to-night to make myself any illusions. The remembrance of what he was--he was never doubtful of himself, was he?--must always--HAS always stood between us, while I have racked my brains to discover what it was. To-night it came over me like a flash that it was he--that he ... he spoiled you utterly for anyone else; made it impossible for you to care for anyone who wasn't made of the same stuff as he was. It would never have occurred to him, would it, to torment you and make you suffer for his own failure? For the very good reason that he never was a failure. Oh, I haven't the least doubt what a sorry figure I must cut beside him!" The unhappy words came out slowly, and seemed to linger in the air. Louise did not break the pause that followed, and by her silence, assented to what he said. She still stood motionless beside the piano. "Or tell me," Maurice cried abruptly, with a ray of hope; "tell me the truth about it all, for once. Was it mere exaggeration, or was he really worth so much more than all the rest of us? Of course he could play--I know that--but so can many a fool. But all the other part of it--his incredible talent, or luck in everything he touched--was it just report, or was it really something else?--Tell me." "He was a genius," she answered, very coldly and distinctly; and her voice warned him once more that he was trespassing on ground to which he had no right. But he was too excited to take the warning. "A genius!" he echoed. "He was a genius! Yes, what did I tell you? Your very words imply a comparison as you say them. For I?--what am I? A miserable bungler, a wretched dilettant--or have you another word for it? Oh, never mind--don't be afraid to say it!--I'm not sensitive tonight. I can bear to hear your real opinion of me; for it could not possibly be lower than my own. Let us get at the truth for once, by all means!--But what I want to know," he cried a moment later, "is, why one should be given so much and the other so little. To one all the talents and all your love; and the other unhappy wretch remains an outsider his whole life long. When you speak in that tone about him, I could wish with all my heart that he had been no better than I am. It would give me pleasure to know that he, too, had only been a dabbling amateur--the victim of a pitiable wish to be what he hadn't the talent for." He could not face her amazement; he stared at the yellow globe of the lamp till his eyes smarted. "It no doubt seems despicable to you," he went on, "but I can't help it. I hate him for the way he was able to absorb you. He's my worst enemy, for he has made it impossible for you--the woman I love--to love me wholly in return.--Of course, you can't--you WON'T understand. You're only aghast at what you think my littleness. Of all I've gone through, you know nothing, and don't want to know. But with him, it was different; you had no difficulty in understanding him. He had the power over you. Look!--at this very moment, you are siding, not with me, but with him. All my struggling and striving counts for nothing.--Oh, if I could only understand you!" He moved to and fro in his agitation. "Why is a woman so impossible? Does nothing matter to her but tangible success? Do care and consideration carry no weight? Even matched against the blackguardly egoism of what you call genius?--Or will you tell me that he considered you? Didn't he treat you from beginning to end like the scoundrel he was?" She raised hostile eyes. "You have no right to say that," she said in a small, icy voice, which seemed to put him at an infinite distance from her. "You are not able to judge him. You didn't know him as ... as I did." With the last words a deeper note came into her voice, and this was all Maurice heard. A frenzied fear seized him. "Louise!" he cried violently. "You care for him still!" She started, and raised her arms, as if to ward off a blow. "I don't ... I don't ... God knows I don't! I hate him--you know I do!" She had clapped both hands to her face, and held them there. When she looked up again, she was able to speak as quietly as before. "But do you want to make me hate you, too? Do you think it gives me a higher opinion of you, to hear you talk like that about some one I once cared for? How can I find it anything but ungenerous?--Yes, you are right, he WAS different--in every way. He didn't know what it meant to be envious of anyone. He was as different from you as day from night." Maurice was hurt to the quick. "Now I know your real opinion of me! Till now you have been considerate enough to hide it. But to-night I have heard it from your own lips. You despise me!" "Well, you drove me to say it," she burst out, wounded in her turn. "I should never have said it of my own accord--never! Oh, how ungenerous you are! It's not the first time you've goaded me into saying something, and then turned round on me for it. You seem to enjoy finding out things you can feel hurt by.--But have I ever complained? Did I not take you just as you were, and love you--yes, love you! I knew you couldn't be different--that it wasn't your fault if you were faint-hearted and ... and--But you?--what do you do? You talk as if you worship the ground I walk on: but you can't let me alone. You are always trying to change me--to make me what you think I ought to be." Her words came in haste, stumbling one over the other, as it became plain to her how deeply this grievance, expressed now for the first time, had eaten into her soul. "You've never said to yourself, she's what she is because it's her nature to be. You want to remake my nature and correct it. You are always believing something is wrong. You knew very well, long ago, that the best part of me had belonged to some one else. You swore it didn't matter. But to-night, because there's absolutely nothing else you can cavil at, you drag it up again--in spite of your promises. I have always been frank with you. Do you thank me for it? No, it's been my old fault of giving everything, when it would have been wiser to keep something back, or at least to pretend to. I might have taken a lesson from you, in parsimonious reserve. For there's a part of you, you couldn't give away--not if you lived with a person for a hundred years." Of all she said, the last words stung him most. "Yes, and why?" he cried. "Ask yourself why I You are unjust, as only a woman can be. You say there's a part of me you don't know. If that's true, what does it mean? It means you don't want to know it. You don't want it even to exist. You want everything to belong to you. You don't care for me well enough to be interested in that side of my life which has nothing to do with you. Your love isn't strong enough for that." "Love!--need we talk about love?" Her face was so unhappy that it seemed to have grown years older. "Love is something quite different. It takes everything just as it is. You have never really loved me.". "I have never really loved you?" He repeated the words after her, as if he did not understand them, and with his right hand grasped the table; the ground seemed to be slipping from under his feet. But Louise did not offer to retract what she had said, and Maurice had a moment of bewilderment: there, not three yards from him, sat the woman who was the centre of his life; Louise sat there, and with all appearance of believing it, could cast doubts on his love for her. At the thought of it, he was exasperated. "I not love you!" His voice was rough, had escaped control. "You have only to lift your finger, and I'll throw myself from that window on to the pavement." Louise sat as if turned to stone. "Don't you hear?" he cried more loudly. "Look up! ... tell me to do it!" Still she did not move. "Louise, Louise!" he implored, throwing himself down before her. "Speak to me! Don't you hear me?--Louise!" "Oh, yes, I hear," she said at last. "I hear how ready you are with promises you know you will not be asked to keep. But the small, everyday things--those are what you won't do for me." "Tell me ... tell me what I shall do!" "All I ask of you is to be happy. And to let me be happy, too." He stammered promises and entreaties. Never, never again!--if only this once she would forgive him; if only she would smile at him, and let the light come back to her eyes. He had not been responsible for his actions this evening. "It was more of a strain than I knew. And after it was over, I had to vent my disappointment somehow; and it was you, poor darling, who suffered. Forgive me, Louise!--But try, dear, a little to understand why it was. Can't you see that I was only like that through fear--yes, fear!--that somehow you might slip from me. I can't help feeling, one day you will have had enough of me, and will see me for what I really am." He tried to put his arms round her, but she held back: she had no desire to be reconciled. The sole response she made to his beseeching words was: "I want to be happy." "But you shall.--Do you think I live for anything else? Only forgive me! Remember the happiest hours we have spent together. Come back to me; be mine again! Tell me I am forgiven." He was in despair; he could not get at her, under her coating of insensibility. And since his words had no power to move her, he took to kissing her hands. She left them limply in his; she did not resist him. From this, he drew courage: he began to treat her more inconsiderately, compelling her to bend down to him, making her feel his strength; and he did not cease his efforts till her head had sunk forward, heavy and submissive, on his shoulder. They were at peace again: and the joys of reconciliation seemed almost worth the price they had paid for them. V. The following morning, having drunk his coffee, Maurice pushed back the metal tray on which the delf-ware stood, and remained sitting idle with his hands before him. It was nine o'clock, and the houses across the road were beginning to catch stray sunbeams. By this time, his daily work was as a rule in full swing; but to-day he was in no hurry to commence. He was even more certain now than he had been on the night before, of his lack of success; and the idea of starting anew on the dull round filled him with distaste. He had been so confident that his playing would, in some way or other, mark a turning-point in his musical career; and lo! it had gone off with as little fizz and effect as a damp rocket. Lighting a cigarette, he indulged in ironical reflections. But, none the less, he heard the minutes ticking past, and as he was not only a creature of habit, but had also a troublesome northern conscience, he rose before the cigarette had formed its second spike of ash, and went to the piano: no matter how rebellious he felt, this was the only occupation open to him; and so he set staunchly out on the unlovely mechanical exercising, which no pianist can escape. Meanwhile, he recapitulated the scene in the concert hall, from the few anticipatory moments, when the 'cellist related amatory adventures, to the abrupt leave he had taken of Dove at the door of the building. And in the course of doing this, he was invaded by a mild and agreeable doubt. On such shadowy impressions as these had he built up his assumption of failure! Was it possible to be so positive? The unreal state of mind in which he had played, hindered him from acting as his own judge. The fact that Schwarz had not been effusive, and that none of his friends had sought him out, admitted of more than one interpretation. The only real proof he had was Dove's manner to him; and was not Dove always too full of his own affairs, or, at least, the affairs of those who were not present at the moment, to have any attention to spare for the person he was actually with? At the idea that he was perhaps mistaken, Maurice grew so unsettled that he rose from the piano. But, by the time he took his seat again, he had wavered; say what he would, he could not get rid of the belief that if he had achieved anything out of the common, Madeleine would not have made it her business to avoid him. After this, however, his fluctuating hopes rallied, then sank once more, until it ended in his leaving the piano. For it was of no use trying to concentrate his thoughts until he knew. Even as he said this to himself, his resolution was taken. There was only one person to whom he could apply, and that was Schwarz. The proceeding might be unusual, but then the circumstances in which he was placed were unusual, too. Besides, he asked neither praise nor flattery, merely a candid opinion. If, however, he faced Schwarz on this point, there were others on which he might as well get certainty at the same time. The matter of the PRUFUNG, for instance, had still to be decided. So much depended on the choice of piece. His fingers itched towards Chopin or Mendelssohn, for the sole reason that the technique of these composers was in his blood. Whereas Beethoven!--he knew from experience how difficult it was to get a satisfactory effect out of the stern barenesses of Beethoven. They demanded a skill he could never hope to possess. Between five and six that afternoon, he made his way to the SEBASTIAN BACH-STRASSE, where Schwarz lived. It was hot in the new, shadeless streets through which he passed, and also in crossing the JOHANNAPARK; hardly a hint of September was in the air. He walked at a slow pace, in order not to arrive too early, and, for some reason unclear to himself, avoided stepping on the joins of the paving-stones. On hearing that he had not come for a lesson, the dirty maidservant, who opened the third-floor door to him, showed him as a visitor into the best sitting-room. Maurice remained standing, in prescribed fashion. But he had no sooner crossed the threshold than he was aware of loud voices in the adjoining room, separated from the one he was in by large foldingdoors. "If you think," said a woman's voice, and broke on "think"--"if you think I'm going to endure a repetition of what happened two years ago, you're mistaken. Never again shall she enter this house! Oh, you pig, you wretch! Klara has told me; she saw you through the keyhole--with your arm round her waist. And I know myself, scarcely a note was struck in the hour. You have her here on any pretext; you keep her in the class after all the others have gone. But this time I'm not going to sit still till the scandal comes out, and she has to leave the place. A man of your age!--the father of four children!--and this ugly little hussy of seventeen! Was there ever such a miserable woman as I am! No, she shall never enter this house again." "And I say she shall!" came from Schwarz so fiercely that the listener started. "Aren't you ashamed, woman, at your age, to set a servant spying at keyholes?--or, what is more likely, spying yourself? Keep to your kitchen and your pots, and don't dictate to me. I am the master of the house." "Not in a case like this. It concerns me. It concerns the children. I say she shall never enter the door again." "And I say she shall. Go out of the room!" A chair grated roughly on a bare floor; a door banged with such violence that every other door in the house vibrated. In the silence that ensued, Maurice endeavoured to make his presence known by walking about. But no one came. His eyes ranged round the room. It was, with a few slight differences, the ordinary best room of the ordinary German house. The windows were heavily curtained, and, in front of them, to the further exclusion of light and air, stood respectively a flower-table, laden with unlovely green plants, and a room-aquarium. The plush furniture was stiffly grouped round an oblong table and dotted with crochet-covers; under a glass shade was a massy bunch of wax flowers; a vertikow, decorated with shells and grasses, stood cornerwise beside the sofa; and, at the door, rose white and gaunt a monumental Berlin stove. But, in addition to this, which was DE RIGUEUR, there were personal touches: on the walls, besides the usual group of family photographs, in oval frames, hung the copy of a Madonna by Gabriel Max, two etchings after Defregger, several large group-photographs of Schwarz's classes in different years, a framed concert programme, yellow with age, and a silhouette of Schumann. Over one of the doors hung a withered laurelwreath of imposing dimensions, and with faded silken ends, on which the inscription was still legible: DEM GROSSEN KUNSTLER, JOHANNES SCHWARZ!--Open on a chair, with an embroidered book-marker between its pages, lay ATTA TROLL; and by the stove, a battered wooden doll sat against the wall, in a relaxed attitude, with a set leer on its painted face. Maurice waited, in growing embarrassment. He had unconsciously fixed his eyes on the doll; and, in the dead silence of the house, the senseless face of the creature ruffled his nerves; crossing the room, he knocked it over with his foot, so that its head fell with a bump on the parquet floor, where it lay in a still more tipsy position. There was no doubt that he had arrived at a most inopportune moment; it seemed, too, as if the servant had forgotten even to announce him. On cautiously opening the door, with the idea of slipping away, he heard a child screaming in a distant room, and the mother's voice sharp in rebuke. The servant was clattering pots and pans in the kitchen, but she heard Maurice, and put her head out of the door. Her face was red and swollen with crying. "What!--you still here?" she said rudely. "I'd forgotten all about you." "It doesn't matter--another time," murmured Maurice. But the girl had spoken in a loud voice to make herself heard above the screaming, which was increasing in volume, and, at her words, a door at the end of the passage, and facing down it, was opened by about an inch, and Frau Schwarz peered through the slit. "Who is it?" The servant tossed her head, and made no reply. She went back into her kitchen, and, after a brief absence, during which Frau Schwarz continued surreptitiously to scrutinise Maurice, came out carrying a large plateful of BERLINER PFANNKUCHEN. With these she crossed to an opposite room, and, as she there planked the plate down on the table, she announced the visitor. A surly voice muttered something in reply. As, however, the girl insisted in her sulky way, on the length of time the young man had waited, Schwarz called out stridently: "Well, then, in God's name, let him come in! And Klara, you tell my wife, if that noise isn't stopped, I'll throw either her or you downstairs." Klara appeared again, scarlet with anger, jerked her arm at Maurice, to signify that he might do the rest for himself, and, retreating into her kitchen, slammed the door. Left thus, with no alternative, Maurice drew his heels together, gave the customary rap, and went into the room. Schwarz was sitting at the table with his head on his hand, tracing the pattern of the cloth with the blade of his knife. A coffee-service stood on a tray before him; he had just refilled his cup, and helped himself from the dish of PFANNKUCHEN, which, freshly baked, sent an inviting odour through the room. He hardly looked up on Maurice's entrance, and cut short the young man's apologetic beginnings. "Well, what is it? What brings you here?" As Maurice hesitated before the difficulty of plunging offhand into the object of his visit, Schwarz pointed with his knife at a chair: he could not speak, for he had just put the best part of a PFANNKUCHEN in his mouth, and was chewing hard. Maurice sat down, and holding his hat by the brim, proceeded to explain that he had called on a small personal matter, which would not occupy more than a minute of the master's time. "It's in connection with last night that I wished to speak to you, Herr Professor," he said: the title, which was not Schwarz's by right, he knew to be a sop. "I should be much obliged to you if you would give me your candid opinion of my playing. It's not easy to judge oneself--although I must say, both at the time, and afterwards, I was not too well pleased with what I had done--that is to say ..." "WIE? WAS?" cried Schwarz, and threw a hasty glance at his pupil, while he helped himself anew from the dish. Maurice uncrossed his legs, and crossed them again, the same one up. "My time here comes to an end at Easter, Herr Professor. And it's important for me to learn what you think of the progress I have made since being with you. I don't know why," he added less surely, "but of late I haven't felt satisfied with myself. I seem to have got a certain length and to have stuck there. I should like to know if you have noticed it, too. If so, does the fault lie with my want of talent, or--" "Or with ME, perhaps?" broke in Schwarz, who had with difficulty thus far restrained himself. He laughed offensively. "With ME--eh?" He struck himself on the chest, several times in succession, with the butt-end of his knife, that there might be no doubt to whom he referred. "Upon my soul, what next I wonder!--what next!" He ceased to laugh, and grew ungovernably angry. "What the devil do you mean by it? Do you think I've nothing better to do, at the end of a hard day's work, than to sit here and give candid opinions, and discuss the progress made by each strummer who comes to me twice a week for a lesson? Oho, if you are of that opinion, you may disabuse your mind of it! I'm at your service on Tuesday and Friday afternoon, when I am paid to be; otherwise, my time is my own." He laid two of the cakes on top of each other, sliced them through, and put one of the pieces thus obtained in his mouth. Maurice had risen, and stood waiting for the breathing-space into which he could thrust words of apology. "I beg your pardon, Herr Professor," he now began. "You misunderstand me. Nothing was further from my mind than----" But Schwarz had not finished speaking; he rapped the table with his knife-handle, and, working himself up to a white heat, continued: "But plain and plump, I'll tell you this, Herr Guest"--he pronounced it "Gvest." "If you are not satisfied with me, and my teaching, you're at liberty to try some one else. If this is a preliminary to inscribing yourself under that miserable humbug, that wretched charlatan, who pretends to teach the piano, do it, and have done with it! No one will hinder you--certainly not I. You're under no necessity to come here beforehand, and apologise, and give your reasons--none of the others did. Slink off like them, without a word! it's the more decent way in the long run. They at least knew they were behaving like blackguards." "You have completely misunderstood me, Herr Schwarz. If you will give me a moment to explain----" But Schwarz was in no mood for explanations; he went on again, paying no heed to Maurice's interruption. "Who wouldn't rather break stones by the roadside than be a teacher?" he asked, and sliced and ate, sliced and ate. "Look at the years of labour I have behind me--twenty and more!--in which I've toiled to the best of my ability, eight and nine hours, day after day, and eternally for ends that weren't my own!--And what return do I get for it? A new-comer only needs to wave a red flag before them, and all alike rush blindly to him. A pupil of Liszt?--bah! Who was Liszt? A barrel-organ of execution; a perverter of taste; a worthy ally of that upstart who ruined melody, harmony, and form. Don't talk to me of Liszt!" He spoke in spurts, blusteringly, but indistinctly, owing to the fullness of his mouth. "But I'm not to be imposed on. I know their tricks. Haven't I myself had pupils turn to me from Bulow and Rubinstein? Is that not proof enough? Would they have come if they hadn't known what my method was worth? And I took them, and spared no pains to make something of them. Haven't I a right to expect some gratitude from them in return?--Gratitude? Such a thing doesn't exist; it's a word without meaning, a puffing of the air. Look at him for whom I did more than for all the rest. Did I take a pfennig from him in payment?--when I saw that he had talent? Not I! And I did it all. When he came to me, he couldn't play a scale. I gave him extra lessons without charge, I put pupils in his way, I got him scholarships, I enabled him to support his family--they would have been beggars in the street, but for me. And now soon will be! Yes, I have had his mother here, weeping at my feet, imploring me to reason with him and bring him back to his senses. SHE sees where his infamy will land them. But I? I snap my fingers in his face. He has sown, and he shall reap his sowing.--But the day will come, I know it, when he will return to me, and all the rest will follow him, like the sheep they are. Let them come! They'll see then whether I have need of them or not. They'll see then what they were worth to me. For I can produce others others, I say!--who will put him and his fellows out of the running. Do they think I'm done for, because of this? I'll show them the contrary. I'll show them! Why, I set no more store by the lot of you than I do by this plate of cakes!" Again he ate voraciously, and for a few moments, the noise his jaws made in working was the only sound in the room. Maurice stood in the same attitude, with his hat in his hand. "I regret more than I can express, having been the cause of annoying you, Herr Professor," he said at length with stiff formality. "But I should like to repeat, once more, that my only object in coming here was to speak to you about last night. I felt dissatisfied with myself and ..." "Dissatisfied?" echoed Schwarz, bringing his jaws together with a snap. "And what business of yours is it to feel dissatisfied, I'd like to know? Leave that to me! You'll hear soon enough, I warrant you, when I have reason to be dissatisfied. Until then, do me the pleasure of minding your own business." "Excuse me," said Maurice with warmth, "if this isn't my own business! ... As I see it, it's nobody's but mine. And it seemed to me natural to appeal to you, as the only person who could decide for me whether I should have anything further to do with art, or whether I should throw it up altogether." Schwarz, who was sometimes not averse to a spirited opposition, caught at the one unlucky word on which he could hang his scorn. "ART!" he repeated with jocose emphasis--he had finished the plate of cakes, risen from the table, and was picking teeth at the window. "Art!--pooh, pooh!--what's art got to do with it? In your place, I should avoid taking such highflown words on my tongue. Call it something else. Do you think it makes a jot of difference whether you call it art or ... pludderdump? Not so much"--and he snapped his fingers--"will be changed, though you never call it anything! Vanity!--it's nothing but vanity! A set of raw youths inflate themselves like frogs, and have opinions on art, as on what they have eaten for their dinner.--Do your work and hold your tongue! A scale well played is worth all the words that were ever said--and that, the majority of you can't do." He closed his toothpick with a snap, spat dexterously at a spittoon which stood in a corner of the room, and the interview was over. As Maurice descended the spiral stair, he said to himself that, no matter how long he remained in Leipzig, he would never trouble Schwarz with his presence again. The man was a loose-mouthed bully. But in future he might seek out others to be the butt of his clumsy wit. He, Maurice, was too good for that.--And squaring his shoulders, he walked erectly down the street, and across the JOHANNAPARK. But none the less, he did not go straight home. For, below the comedy of intolerance at which he was playing, lurked, as he well knew, the consciousness that his true impression of the past hour had still to be faced. He might postpone doing this; he could not shirk it. It was all very well: he might repeat to himself that he had happened on Schwarz at an inopportune moment. That did not count. For him, Maurice, the opportune moment simply did not exist; he was one of those people who are always inopportune, come and go as they will. He might have waited for days; he would never have caught Schwarz in the right mood, or in the nick of time. How he envied those fortunate mortals who always arrived at the right moment, and instinctively said the right thing! That talent had never been his. With him it was blunder. One thing, though, that still perplexed him, was that not once, since he had been in Leipzig, had he caught a glimpse of that native goodness of heart, for which he had heard Schwarz lauded. The master had done his duty by him--nothing more. Neither had had any personal feeling for the other; and the words Schwarz had used this afternoon had only been the outcome of a long period of reserve, even of distrust. At this moment, when he was inclined to take the onus of the misunderstanding on his own shoulders, Maurice admitted, besides his constant preoccupation--or possibly just because of it--an innate lack of sympathy in himself, an inability, either of heart or of imagination, to project himself into the lives and feelings of people he did not greatly care for. Otherwise, he would not have gone to Schwarz on such an errand as today's; he would have remembered that the master was likely to be sore and suspicious. And, from now on, things would be worse instead of better. Schwarz had no doubt been left under the impression that Maurice had wished to complain of his teaching; and impressions of this nature were difficult to erase. There was nothing to be done, however, but to plod along in the familiar rut. He must stomach aspersions and injuries, behave as if nothing had happened. His first hot intention of turning his back on Schwarz soon yielded to more worldly-wise thoughts. Every practical consideration was against it. He might avenge himself, if he liked, by running to the rival teacher like a crossed child; Schrievers would undoubtedly receive him with open arms, and promise him all he asked. But what could he hope to accomplish, under a complete change of method, in the few months that were left? He would also have to forfeit his fees for the coming term, which were already paid. Schrievers' lessons were expensive, and out of the small sum that remained to him to live on, it would be impossible to take more than half a dozen. Another than he might have appealed to Schrievers' satisfaction in securing a fresh convert; but Maurice had learnt too thoroughly by now, that he was not one of those happy exceptions--exceptions by reason of their talent or their temperament--to whom a master was willing to devote his time free of charge. Over these reflections night had fallen; and rising, he walked speedily back by the dark wood-paths. But before he reached the meadows, from which he could see lights blinking in the scattered villas, his steps had lagged again. His discouragement had nothing chimerical in it at this moment; it was part and parcel of himself.--The night was both chilly and misty, and it was late. But a painful impression of the previous evening lingered in his mind. Louise would be annoyed with him for keeping her waiting; and he shrank, in advance, from the thought of another disagreeable scene. He was not in the mood to-night, to soothe and console. As he entered the MOZARTSTRASSE, he saw that there was a light in Madeleine's window. She was at home, then. He imagined her sitting quiet and busy in her pleasant room, which, except for the ring of lamplight, was sunk in peaceful shadow. This was what he needed: an hour's rest, dim light, and Madeleine's sympathetic tact. Without giving himself time for thought, he mounted the stair and pressed the bell-knob on the third floor. On seeing who her visitor was, Madeleine rose with alacrity from the writing-table. "Maurice! Is it really you?" "I was passing. I thought I would run up ... you're surprised to see me?" "Oh, well--you're a stranger now, you know." She was vexed with herself for showing astonishment. Moving some books, she made room for him to sit down on the sofa, and, as he was moody, and seemed in no hurry to state why he had come, she asked if she might finish the letter she was writing. "Make yourself comfortable. Here's a cushion for your head." Through half-closed eyes, he watched her hand travelling across the sheet of note-paper, and returning at regular intervals, with a sure swoop, to begin a fresh line. There was no sound except the gentle scratching of her pen. Madeleine did not look up till she had finished her letter and addressed the envelope. Maurice had shut his eyes. "Are you asleep?" she roused him. "Or only tired?" "I've a headache." "I'll make you some tea." He watched her preparing it, and, by the time she handed him his cup, he was in the right mood for making her his confidant. "Look here, Madeleine," he said; "I came up to-night--The fact is, I've done a foolish thing. And I want to talk to some one about it." Her eyes grew more alert. "Let me see if I can help you." He shook his head. "I'm afraid you can't. But first of all, tell me frankly, how you thought I got on last night." "How you got on?" echoed Madeleine, unclear what this was to lead to. "Why, all right, of course.--Oh, well, if you insist on the truth!--The fact is, Maurice, you did no better and no worse than the majority of those who fill the ABEND programmes. What you didn't do, was to reach the standard your friends had set up for you." "Thanks. Now listen," and he related to her in detail his misadventure of the afternoon. Madeleine followed with close attention. But more distinctly than what he said, she heard what he did not say. His account of the two last days, with the unintentional sidelight it threw on just those parts he wished to keep in darkness, made her aware how complicated and involved his life had become. But before he finished speaking, she brought all her practical intelligence to bear on what he said. "Maurice!" she exclaimed, with a consternation that was three parts genuine. "I should like to shake you. How COULD you!--what induced you to do such a foolish thing?" And, as he did not speak: "If only you had come to me before, instead of after! I should have said: hold what ridiculous opinions you like yourself, but for goodness' sake keep clear of Schwarz with them. Yes, ridiculous, and offensive, too. Anyone would have taken your talk about being dissatisfied just as he did. And after the way he has been treated of late, he's of course doubly touchy." "I knew that, when it was too late. But I meant merely to speak straight out to him, Madeleine--one man to another. You surely don't want to say he's incapable of allowing one to have an independent opinion? If that's the case, then he's nothing but the wretched little tyrant Heinz declares him to be." "Wait till you have taught as long as he has," said Madeleine, and, at his muttered: "God forbid!" she continued with more warmth: "You'll know then, too, that it doesn't matter whether your pupils have opinions or not. He has seen this kind of thing scores of times before, and knows it must be kept down." She paused, and looked at him. "To get on in life, one must have a certain amount of tact. You are too naive, Maurice, too unsuspecting--one of those people who would like to carry on social intercourse on a basis of absolute truth, and then be surprised that it came to an end. You are altogether a very difficult person to deal with. You are either too candid, or too reserved. There's no middle way in you. I haven't the least doubt that Schwarz finds you both perplexing and irritating; he takes the candour for impertinence, and the reserve for distrust." Maurice smiled faintly. "Go on--don't spare me. No one ever troubled before to tell me my failings." "Oh, I'm quite in earnest. As I look at it, it's entirely your own fault that you don't stand better with Schwarz. You have never condescended to humour him, as you ought to have done. You thought it was enough to be truthful and honest, and to leave the rest to him. Well, it wasn't. I won't hear a word against Schwarz; he's goodness itself to those who deserve it. A little bluff and rude at times; but he's too busy to go about in kid gloves for fear of hurting sensitive people's feelings." "Why did you never take private lessons from him?" was her next question. "I told you months ago, you remember, that you ought to.--Oh, yes, you said they were too expensive, I know, but you could have scraped a few marks together somehow. You managed to buy books, and books were quite unnecessary. One lesson a fortnight would have brought you' more into touch with Schwarz than all you have had in the class. As it is, you don't know him any better than he knows you." And as she refilled his tea-cup, she added: "You quoted Heinz to me just now. But you and I can't afford to measure people by the same standards as Heinz. We are everyday mortals, remember.--Besides, in all that counts, he is not worth Schwarz's little finger." "You're a warm advocate, Madeleine." "Yes, and I've reason to be. No one here has been as kind to me as Schwarz. I came, a complete stranger, and with not more than ordinary talent. But I went to him, and told him frankly what I wanted to do, how long I could stay, and how much money I had to spend. He helped me and advised me. He has let me study what will be of most use to me afterwards, and he takes as much interest in my future as I do myself. How can I speak anything but well of him?--What I certainly didn't do, was to go to him and talk ambiguously about feeling dissatisfied with him ..." "With myself, Madeleine. Haven't I made that clear?" But Madeleine only sniffed. "Well, it's over and done with now," she said after a pause. "And talking about it won't mend it.--Tell me, rather, what you intend to do. What are your plans?" "Plans? I don't know. I haven't any. Sufficient unto the day, etc." But of this she disapproved with open scorn. "Rubbish! When your time here is all but up! And no plans!--One thing, I can tell you anyhow, is, after to-day you needn't rely on Schwarz for assistance. You've spoilt your chances with him. The only way of repairing the mischief would be the lesson I spoke of--one a week as long as you re here." "I couldn't afford it." "No, I suppose not," she said sarcastically, and tore a piece of paper that came under her fingers into narrow strips. "Tell me," she added a moment later, in a changed tone: "where do you intend to settle when you return to England? And have you begun to think of advertising yourself yet?" He waved his hand before his face as if he were chasing away a fly. "For God's sake, Madeleine! ... these alluring prospects!" "Pray, what else do you expect to do?" "Well, the truth is, I ... I'm not going back to England at all. I mean to settle here." Madeleine repressed the exclamation that rose to her lips, and stooped to brush something off the skirt of her dress. Her face was red when she raised it. She needed no further telling; she understood what his words implied as clearly as though it were printed black on white before her. But she spoke in a casual tone. "However are you going to make that possible?" He endeavoured to explain. "I don't envy you," she said drily, when he had finished. "You hardly realise what lies before you, I think. There are people here who are glad to get fifty pfennigs an hour, for piano lessons. Think of plodding up and down stairs, all day long, for fifty pfennigs an hour!" He was silent. "While in England, with a little tact and patience, you would soon have more pupils than you could take at five shillings." "Tact and patience mean push and a thick skin. But don't worry! I shall get on all right. And if I don't--life's short, you know." "But you are just at: the beginning of it--and ridiculously young at that! Good Heavens, Maurice!" she burst out, unable to contain herself. "Can't you see that after you've been at home again for a little while, things that have seemed so important here will have shrunk into their right places? You'll be glad to have done with them then, when you are in orderly circumstances again." "I'm afraid not," answered the young man. "I'm not a good forgetter." "A good forgetter!" repeated Madeleine, and laughed sarcastically. She was going on to say more, but, just at this moment, a clock outside struck ten, and Maurice sprang to his feet. "So late already? I'd no idea. I must be off." She stood by, and watched him look for his hat. "Here it is." She picked it up, and handed it to him, with an emphasised want of haste. "Good night, Madeleine. Thanks for the truth. I knew I could depend on you." "It was well meant. And the truth is always beneficial, you know. Good night.--Come again, soon." He heard her last words half-way down the stairs, which he took two at a time. The hour he had now to face was a painful ending to an unpleasant day. It was not merely the fact that he had kept Louise waiting, in aching suspense, for several hours. It now came out that, after their disagreement of the previous night, she had confidently expected him to return to her early in the day, had expected contrition and atonement. That he had not even suspected this made her doubly bitter against him. In vain he tried to excuse himself, to offer explanations. She would not listen to him, nor would she let him touch her. She tore her dress from between his fingers, brushed his hand off her arm; and, retreating into a corner of the room, where she stood like an animal at bay, she poured out over him her accumulated resentment. All she had ever suffered at his hands, all the infinitesimal differences there had been between them, from the beginning, the fine points in which he had failed--things of which he had no knowledge--all these were raked up and cast at him till, numb with pain, he lost even the wish to comfort her. Sitting down at the table, he laid his head on his folded arms. At his feet were the fragments of the little clock, which, in her anger at his desertion of her, she had trodden to pieces. VI. Their first business the next morning was to buy another clock. By daylight, Louise was full of remorse at what she had done, and in passing the writing-table, averted her eyes. They went out early to a shop in the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE; and Maurice stood by and watched her make her choice. She loved to buy, and entered into the purchase with leisurely enjoyment. The shopman and his assistant spared themselves no trouble in fetching and setting out their wares. Louise handled each clock as it was put before her, discussed the merits of different styles, and a faint colour mounted to her cheeks over the difficulty of deciding between two which she liked equally well. She had pushed up her veil; it swathed her forehead like an Eastern woman's. Her eagerness, which was expressed in a slight unsteadiness of nostril and lip, would have had something childish in it, had it not been for her eyes. They remained heavy and unsmiling; and the disquieting half-rings below them were more bluely brown than ever. Leaning sideways against the counter, Maurice looked away from them to her hands; her fingers were entirely without ornament, and he would have liked to load them with rings. As it was, he could not even pay for the clock she chose; it cost more than he had to spend in a month. In the street again, she said she was hungry, and, glad to be able to add his mite to her pleasure, he took her by the arm and steered her to the CAFE FRANCAIS, where they had coffee and ices. The church-steeples were booming eleven when they emerged; it did not seem worth while going home and settling down to work. Instead, they went to the ROSENTAL. It was a brilliant autumn day, rich in light and shade, and there was only a breath abroad of the racy freshness that meant subsequent decay. The leaves were turning red and orange, but had not begun to fall; the sky was deeply blue; outlines were sharp and precise. They were both in a mood this morning to be susceptible to their surroundings; they were even eager to be affected by them, and made happy. The disagreements of the two preceding nights were like bad dreams, which they were anxious to forget, or at least to avoid thinking of. Her painful, unreasonable treatment of him, the evening before, had not been touched on between them; after his incoherent attempts to justify himself, after his bitter self-reproaches, when she lay sobbing in his arms, they had both, with one accord, been silent. Neither of them felt any desire for open-hearted explanations; they were careful not to stir up the depths anew. Louise was very quiet; had it not been for her eyes, he might have believed her happy. But here, just as an hour before in the watchmaker's shop, they brooded, unable to forget. And yet there was a pliancy about her this morning, a readiness to meet his wishes, which, as he walked at her side, made him almost content. The old, foolish dreams awoke in him again, and vistas opened, of a gentle comradeship, which might still come true, when the strenuous side of her love for him had worn itself out. If only an hour like the present could have lasted indefinitely! It was a happy morning. They ended it with an improvised lunch at the KAISERPARK; and it remained imprinted on their minds as an unexpected patch of colour, in an unending row of grey days, given up to duty. The next one, and the next again, Louise continued in the same yielding mood, which was wholly different from the emotional expansiveness of the past weeks. Maurice took a glad advantage of her willingness to please him, and they had several pleasant walks together: to Napoleon's battlefields; along the GRUNE GASSE and the POETENWEG to Schiller's house at Gohlis; and into the heart of the ROSENTAL--DAS WILDE ROSENTAL--where it was very solitary, and where the great trees seemed to stagger under their load of stained leaves. A burst of almost July radiance occurred at this time; and one day, Louise expressed a wish to go to the country, in order that, by once more being together for a whole day on end, they might relive in fancy the happy weeks they had spent on the Rochlitzer Berg. It was never her way to urge over-much, which made it hard to refuse her; so it was arranged that they should set off betimes the following Saturday. Maurice had his reward in the cry of pleasure she gave when he wakened her to tell her that it was a fine day. "Get up, dear! It's less than an hour till the train goes." For the first time for weeks, Louise was her impetuous self again. She threw things topsy-turvy in the room. It was he who drew her attention to an unfastened hook, and an unbound ribbon. She only pressed forward. "Make haste!--oh, make haste! We shall be late." An overpowering smell of newly-baked rolls issued from the bakers' shops, and the errand-boys were starting out with their baskets. Women and house-porters were coming out to wash pavements and entrances: the collective life of the town was waking up to another uneventful day; but they two were hastening off to long hours of sunlight and fresh air, unhampered by the passing of time, or by fallacious ideas of duty; were setting out for a new bit of world, to strange meals taken in strange places, reached by white roads, or sequestered wood-paths. In the train, they were crushed between the baskets of the marketwomen, who were journeying from one village to another. These sat with their wizened hands clasped on their high stomachs, or on the handles of their baskets, and stared, like stupid, placid animals, at the strange young foreign couple before them. Partly for the frolic of astonishing them, and also because he was happy at seeing Louise so happy, Maurice kissed her hand; but it was she who astonished them most. When she gave a cry, or used her hands with a sudden, vivid effect, or flashed her white teeth in a smile, every head in the carriage was turned towards her; and when, in addition, she was overtaken by a fit of loquacity, she was well-nigh devoured by eyes. They did not travel as far as they had intended. From the carriage window, she saw a wayside place that took her fancy. "Here, Maurice; let us get out here." Having breakfasted, and left their bags at an inn, they strayed at random along an inviting road lined with apple-trees. When Louise grew tired, they rested in the arbour of a primitive GASTHAUS, and ate their midday meal. Afterwards, in a wood, he spread a rug for her, and she lay in a nest of sun-spots. Only their own voices broke the silence. Then she fell asleep, and, until she opened her eyes again, and called to him in surprise, no sound was to be heard but the sudden, crisp rustling of some bird or insect. When evening fell, they returned to their lodging, ate their supper in the smoky public room--for, outside, mists had risen--and then before them stretched, undisturbed, the long evening and the longer night, to be spent in a strange room, of which they had hitherto not suspected the existence, but which, from now on, would be indissolubly bound up with their other memories. The first day passed in such a manner was as flawless as any they had known in the height of summer--with all the added attractions of closer intimacy. In its course, the shadows lifted from her eyes; and Maurice ceased to remember that he had made a mess of his affairs. But the very next one failed--as far as Louise was concerned--to reach the same level: it was like a flower ever so slightly overblown. The lyric charms that had so pleased her--the dewy freshness of the morning, the solitude, the unbroken sunshine--were frail things, and, snatched with too eager a hand, crumbled beneath the touch. They were not made to stand the wear and tear of repetition. It was also impossible, she found, to live through again days such as they had spent at Rochlitz; time past was past irrevocably, with all that belonged to it. And it was further, a mistake to believe that a more intimate acquaintance meant a keener pleasure; it was just the stimulus of strangeness, the piquancy of feeling one's way, that had made up half the fascination of the summer. With sure instinct, Louise recognised this, even while she exclaimed with delight. And her heart sank: not until this moment had she known how high her hopes had been, how firmly she had pinned her faith upon the revival of passion which these days were to bring to pass. The knowledge that this had been a delusion, was hard to bear. In thought, she was merciless to herself, when, on waking, the second morning, she looked with unexpectant eyes over the day that lay before her. Could nothing satisfy her, she asked herself? Could she not be content for twenty-four hours on end? Was it eternally her lot to come to the end of things, before they had properly begun? It seemed, always, as if she alone must be pressing forward, without rest. Here, on the second of these days of love and sunshine, she saw, with absolute clearness, that neither this nor any other day had anything extraordinary to give her; and sitting silent at dinner, under an arbour of highly-coloured creeper, she was overcome by such a laming discouragement, that she laid her knife and fork down, and could eat no more. Maurice, watching her across the table, believed that she was over-tired, and filled up her glass with wine. But she did not yield without a struggle. And it was not merely rebellion against the defects of her own nature, which prompted her. The prospect of the coming months filled her with dismay. When this last brief spell of pleasure was over, there was nothing left, to which she could look forward. The approaching winter stretched before her like a starless night; she was afraid to let her mind dwell on it. What was she to do?--what was to become of her, when the short dark days came down again, and shut her in? The thought of it almost drove her mad. Desperate with fear, she shut her eyes and went blindly forward, determined to extract every particle of pleasure, or, at least, of oblivion, that the present offered. Under these circumstances, the poor human element in their relations became once again, and more than ever before, the pivot on which their lives turned. Louise aimed deliberately at bringing this about. Further, she did what she had never yet done: she brought to bear on their intercourse all her own hardwon knowledge, and all her arts. She drew from her store of experience those trifling, yet weighty details, which, once she has learned them, a woman never forgets. And, in addition to this, she took advantage of the circumstances in which they found themselves, utilising to the full the stimulus of strange times and places: she fired the excitement that lurked in surreptitious embrace and surrender, under all the dangers of a possible surprise. She was perverse and capricious; she would turn away from him till she reduced him to despair; then to yield suddenly, with a completeness that threatened to undo them both. Her devices were never-ending. Not that they were necessary: for he was helpless in her hands when she assumed the mastery. But she could not afford to omit one of the means to her end, for she had herself to lash as well as him. And so, once more, as at the very beginning, hand grew to be a weight in hand, something alive, electric; and any chance contact might rouse a blast in them. She neither asked nor Showed mercy. Drop by drop, they drained each other of vitality, two sufferers, yet each thirsty for the other's life-blood; for, with this new attitude on her part, an element of cruelty had entered into their love. When, with her hands on his shoulders, her insatiable lips apart, Louise put back her head and looked at him, Maurice was acutely aware of the hostile feeling in her. But he, too, knew what it was; for, when he tried to urge prudence on her, she only laughed at him; and this low, reckless laugh, her savage eyes, and morbid pallor, invariably took from him every jot of concern. They returned to Leipzig towards the middle of the first week, in order not to make their absence too conspicuous. But they had arranged to go away again, on the following Saturday, and, in the present state of things, the few intervening days seemed endless. Louise shut herself up, and would see little of him. The next week, and the next again, were spent in the same fashion. A fine and mild October ran its course. For the fourth journey, towards the end of the month, they had planned to return to Rochlitz. At the last moment, however, Maurice opposed the scheme, and they left the train at Grimma. It was Friday, and a superb autumn day. They put up, not in the town itself, but at an inn about a mile and a half distant from it. This stood on the edge of a wood, was a favourite summer resort, and had lately been enlarged by an additional wing. Now, it was empty of guests save themselves. They occupied a large room in the new part of the building, at the end of a long corridor, which was shut off by a door from the rest of the house. They were utterly alone; there was no need for them even to moderate their voices. In the early morning hours, and on the journey there, Maurice had thought he noticed something unusual about Louise, and, more than once, he had asked her if her head ached. But soon he forgot his solicitude. Next morning, he felt an irresistible inclination to go out: opening the window, he leaned on the sill. A fresh, pleasant breeze was blowing; it bent the tops of the pines, and drove the white clouds smoothly over the sky. He suggested that they should walk to the ruined cloister of Nimbschen; but Louise responded very languidly, and he had to coax and persuade. By the time she was ready to leave the untidy room, the morning was more than half over, and the shifting clouds had balled themselves into masses. Before the two emerged from the wood, an even network of cloud had been drawn over the whole sky; it looked like rain. They walked as usual in silence, little or nothing being left to say, that seemed worth the exertion of speech. Each step cost Louise a visible effort; her arms hung slack at her sides; her very hands felt heavy. The pallor of her face had a greyish tinge in it. Maurice began to regret having hurried her out against her will. They were on a narrow path skirting a wood, when she suddenly expressed a wish for some tall bulrushes that grew beside a stream, some distance below. Maurice went down to the edge of the water and began to cut the rushes. But the ground was marshy, and the finest were beyond his reach. On the path at the top of the bank, Louise stood and followed his movements. She watched his ineffectual efforts to seize the further reeds, saw how they slipped back from between his hands; she watched him take out his knife and open it, endeavour once more to reach those he wanted, and, still unsuccessful, choose a dry spot to sit down on; saw him take off his boots and stockings, then rise and go cautiously out on the soft ground. Ages seemed to pass while she watched him do these trivial things; she felt as if she were gradually turning to stone as she stood. How long he was about it! How deliberately he moved! And she had the odd sensation, too, that she knew beforehand everything he would and would not do, just as if she had experienced it already. His movements were of an impossible circumstantiality, out of all proportion to the trifling service she had asked of him; for, at heart, she cared as little about the rushes as about anything else. But it was an unfortunate habit of his, and one she noticed more and more as time went on, to make much of paltry details, which, properly, should have been dismissed without a second thought. It implied a certain tactlessness, to underline the obvious in this fashion. The very way, for instance, he stretched out his arm, unclasped his knife, leant forward, and then stooped back to lay the cut reeds on the bank. Oh, she was tired!--tired to exasperation!--of his ways and actions--as tired as she was of his words, and of the thousand and one occurrences, daily repeated, that made up their lives. She would have liked to creep away, to hide herself in an utter seclusion; while, instead, it was her lot to assist, hour after hour, at making much of what, in the depths of her soul, did not concern her at all. Nothing, she felt, would ever really concern her again. She gazed fixedly before her, at him, too, but without seeing him, till her sight was blurred; trees and sky, stream and rushes, swam together in a formless maze. And all of a sudden, while she was still blind, there ran through her such an intense feeling of aversion, such a complete satedness with all she had of late felt and known, that she involuntarily took a step backwards, and pressed her palms together, in order to hinder herself from screaming aloud. She could bear it no longer. In a flash, she grasped that she was unable, utterly unable, to face the day that was before her. She knew in advance every word, every look and embrace that it held for her: rather than undergo them afresh, she would throw herself into the water at her feet. Anywhere, anywhere!--only to get away, to be alone, to cover her face and see no more! Her hand went to her throat; her breath refused to come; she shivered so violently that she was afraid she would fall to the ground. Maurice, all unsuspecting, sat with his back to her, and laced his boots. But he was startled into an exclamation, when he climbed the bank and saw the state she was in. "Louise! Good Heavens, what's the matter? Are you ill?" He took her by the arm, and shook her a little, to arrest her attention. "Maurice! ... no!" Her voice was hoarse. "Oh, let me go home!" He repeated the words in amazed alarm. "But what is it, darling? Are you ill? Are you cold?--that you're trembling like this?" "No ... yes. Oh, I want to go home!--back to Leipzig." "Why, of course, if you want to. At once." The rushes lay forgotten on the ground. Without further words, they hastened to the inn. There, Maurice helped her to throw her things into the bag she had not wholly unpacked, and, having paid the bill, led her, with the same feverish haste, through the woods and town to the railway-station. He was full of distressed concern for her, but hardly dared to show it, for, to all his questions, she only shook her head. Walking at his side, she dug her nails into her palms till she felt the blood come, in her effort to conceal and stifle the waves of almost physical repugnance that passed through her, making it impossible for her to bear even the touch of his hand. In the train, she leaned back in the corner, and, shutting her eyes, pretended to be asleep. They took a droschke home; the driver whipped up his horse; the landlady was called in to make the first fire of the season. Louise went to bed at once. She wanted nothing, she said, but to lie still in the darkened room. He should go away; she preferred to be alone. No, she was not ill, only tired, but so tired that she could not keep her eyes open. She needed rest: tomorrow she would be all right again. He should please, please, leave her, and go away. And, turning her face to the wall, she drew the bedclothes over her head. At his wits' end to know what it all meant, Maurice complied. But at home in his room, he could settle to nothing; he trembled at every footstep on the stair. No message came, however, and when he had seen her again that evening, he felt more reassured. "It's nothing--really nothing. I'm only tired ... yes, it was too much. Just let me be, Maurice--till to-morrow." And she shut her eyes again, and kept them shut, till she heard the door close behind him. He was reassured, but still, for the greater part of the night, he lay sleepless. He was always agitated anew by the abrupt way in which Louise passed from mood to mood; but this was something different; he could not understand it. In the morning, however, he saw things in a less tragic light; and, on sitting down to the piano, he experienced almost a sense of satisfaction at the prospect of an undisturbed day's work. Meanwhile Louise shrank, even in memory, from the feverish weeks just past, as she had shrunk that day from his touch. And she struggled to keep her thoughts from dwelling on them. But it was the first time in her life that she felt a like shame and regret; and she could not rid her mind of the haunting images. She knew the reason, too; darkness brought the knowledge. She had believed, had wished to believe, that the failure was her fault, a result of her unstable nature; whereas the whole undertaking had been merely a futile attempt to bolster up the impossible, to stave off the inevitable, to postpone the end. And it had all been in vain. The end! It would come, as surely as day followed night--had perhaps indeed already come; for how else could the nervous aversion be explained, which had seized her that day? What, during the foregoing weeks, she had tried not to hear; what had sounded in her ears like the tone of a sunken bell, was there at last, horrible and deafening. She had ceased to care for him, and ceased, surfeited with abundance, with the same vehement abruptness as she had once begun. The swiftness with which things had swept to a conclusion, had, confessedly, been accelerated by her unhappy temperament; but, however gentle the gradient, the point for which they made would have remained the same. What she was now forced to recognise was, that the whole affair had been no more than an episode; and the fact of its having begun less brutally than others, had not made it a whit better able than these to withstand decay. A bitter sense of humiliation came over her. What was she? Not a week ago--she could count the days on her fingers--the mere touch of his hand on her hair had made her thrill; and now the sole feeling she was conscious of was one of dislike. She looked back over the course of her relations with him, and many things, unclear before, became plain to her. She had gone into the intimacy deliberately, with open eyes, knowing that she cared for him only in a friendly way. She had believed, then, that the gift of herself would mean little to her, while it would secure her a friend and companion. And then, too--she might as well be quite honest with herself--she had nourished a romantic hope that a love which commenced as did this shy, adoring tenderness, would give her something finer and more enduring than she had hitherto known. Wrong, all wrong, from beginning to end! It had been no better than those loves which made no secret of their aim and did not strut about draped in false sentiment. The end of all was one and the same. But besides this, it had come to mean more to her than she had ever dreamt of allowing. You could not play with fire, it seemed, and not be burned. Or, at least, she could not. She was branded with wounds. The fierce demands in her, over which she had no control, had once more reared their heads and got the mastery of her, and of him, too. There had been no chance, beneath their scorching breath, for a pallid delicacy of feeling. It did not cross her mind that she would conceal what she felt from him. Secrecy implied a mental ingenuity, a tiresome care of word and deed. His eyes must be opened; he, too, must learn to say the horrid word "end." How infinitely thankful she had now reason to be that she had not yielded to his persuasions, and married him! No, she had never seriously considered the idea, even at the height of her folly. But then, she was never quite sure of herself; there was always a chance that some blind impulse would spring up in her and overthrow her resolutions. Now, he must suffer, too--and rightly. For, after all, he had also been to blame. If only he had not importuned her so persistently, if only he had let her alone, nothing of this would have happened, and there would be no reason for her to lie and taunt herself. But, in his silent, obstinate way, he had given her no peace; and you could not--she could not!--go on living unmoved, at the side of a person who was crazy with love for you. For two nights, she slept little. On the third, worn out, she fell, soon after midnight, into a deep sleep, from which, the following morning, she wakened refreshed. When Maurice came, about half-past twelve, her eyes followed him with a new curiosity, as he drew up a chair and sat down at her bedside. She wondered what he would say when he knew, and what change would come over his face. But she made no beginning to enlightening him. In his presence, she was seized by an ungovernable desire to be distracted, to be taken out of herself. Also, it was not, she began to grasp, a case of stating a simple fact, in simple words; it meant all the circumstantiality of complicated explanation; it meant a still more murderous tearing up of emotion. And besides this, there was another factor to be reckoned with, and that was the peculiar mood he was in. For, as soon as he entered the room, she felt that he was different from what he had been the day before. She heard the irritation in his voice, as he tried to persuade her to come out to dinner with him. In fancy she saw it all: saw them walking together to the restaurant, at a brisk pace, in order to waste none of his valuable time; saw dinner taken quickly, for the same reason; saw them parting again at the house-door; then herself in the room alone, straying from sofa to window and back again, through the long hours of the long afternoon. A kind of mental nausea seized her at the thought that the old round was to begin afresh. She brought no answer over her lips. And after waiting some time in vain for her to speak, Maurice rose, and, still under the influence of his illhumour, drew up the three blinds, and opened a window. A cold, dusty sunlight poured into the room. Louise gave a cry, and put her hands to her eyes. "The room is so close, and you're so pale," he said in selfexcuse. "Do you know you've been shut up in here for three days now?" "My head aches." "It will never be any better as long as you lie there. Dearest, what is it? WHAT'S the matter with you?" "You're unhappy about something," he went on, a moment later. "What is it? Won't you tell me?" "Nothing," she murmured. She lay and pressed her palms to her eyeballs, so firmly that when she removed them, the room was a blur. Maurice, standing at the window, beat a tattoo on the pane. Then, with his back to her, he began to speak. He blamed himself for what he called the folly of the past weeks. "I gave way when I should have been firm. And this is the result. You have got into a nervous, morbid state. But it's nonsense to think it can go on." For the first time, she was conscious of a somewhat critical attitude on his part; he said "folly" and "nonsense." But she made no comment; she lay and let his words go over her. They had so little import now. All the words that had ever been said could not alter a jot of what she felt--of her intense inward experience. Her protracted silence, her heavy indifference infected him; and for some time the only sound to be heard was that of his fingers drumming on the glass. When he spoke again, he seemed to be concluding an argument with himself; and indeed, on this particular day, Maurice found it hard to detach his thoughts from himself, for any length of time. "It's no use, dear. Things can't go on like this any longer. I've got to buckle down to work again. I've ... I...I haven't told you yet: Schwarz is letting me play the Mendelssohn." She thought she would have to cry aloud; here it was again: the chilling atmosphere of commonplace, which her nerves were expected to live and be well in; the well-worn phrases, the "must this," and "must that," the confident expectation of interest in doings that did not interest her at all. She could not--it would kill her to begin it anew! And, in spite of her efforts at repression, an exclamation forced its way through her lips. At this, Maurice went quickly back to her. "Forgive me ... talking about myself, when you are not well." He knelt down beside the bed, and removed her hands from her face. She did not open her eyes, kept quite still. At this moment, she felt mainly curious: would the strange aversion to his touch return? He was kissing her palms, pressing them to his face. She drew a long, deep sigh: it did not come back. On the contrary, the touch of his hand was pleasant to her. He stroked her cheek, pushed back a loose piece of hair from her forehead; and, as he did this, she was aware of the old sense of well-being. Beneath his hand, irksome thoughts fell away. Backwards and forwards it travelled, as gently as though she were a sick person. And, little by little, so gradually that, at first, she herself was not conscious of them, other wishes came to life in her again. She began to desire more than mere peace. The craving came over her to forget her self-torturings, and to forget them in a dizzy whirl. Reaching up, she put her arms round his neck, and drew him down. He kissed her eyelids. At this she opened her eyes, enveloping him in a look he had learnt to know well. For a second he sustained it: his life was concentrated in the liquid fire of these eyes, in these eager parted lips. She pressed them to his, and he felt a smart, like a bee's sting. With a jerk, he thrust her arms away, and rose to his feet; to keep his balance he was obliged to grasp the back of a chair. Taking out his handkerchief, he pressed it to his lip. "Maurice!" "It's late ... I must go ... I must work, I tell you." He stood staring at the drop of blood on his handkerchief. "Maurice!" He looked round him in a confused way; he was strangely angry, and hasty to no purpose. "Won't you ... then you won't come out with me?" "Maurice!" The word was a cry. "Oh, it's foolish! You don't know what you're doing." He had found his coat, and was putting it on, with unsure hands. "Then, if ... this evening, then! As usual. I'll come as usual." The door shut behind him; a minute later, the street-door banged. At the sound Louise seemed to waken. Starting up in bed, she threw a wild look round the empty room; then, turned on her face, and bit a hole in the linen of the pillow. Maurice worked that afternoon as though his future was conditioned by the number of hours he could practise before evening. Throughout these three days, indeed, his zeal had been unabating. He would never have yielded so calmly to the morbid fashion in which she had cooped herself up, had not the knowledge that his time was his own again, been something of a relief to him. Yes, at first, relief was the word for what he felt. For, after making one good resolution on top of another, he had, when the time came, again been a willing defaulter. He had allowed the chance to slip of making good, by redoubled diligence, his foolish mistake with regard to Schwarz. Now it was too late; though the master had let him have his way in the choice of piece for the coming PRUFUNG, it had mainly been owing to indifference. If only he did not prove unequal to the choice now it was made! For that he was out of the rut of steady work, was clear to him as soon as he put his hands to the piano. But he had never been so forlornly energetic as on this particular afternoon. Yet there was something mechanical, too, about his playing; neither heart nor brain was in it. Mendelssohn's effective roulades ran thoughtlessly from his fingers: in the course of a single day, he had come to feel a deep contempt for the emptiness of these runs and flourishes. He pressed forward, however, hour after hour without a break, as though he were a machine wound up for the purpose. But with the entrance of dusk, his fictitious energy collapsed. He did not even trouble to light the lamp, but, throwing himself on the sofa, covered his eyes with his arm. The twilight induced sensations like itself--vague, formless, intolerable. A sudden recognition of the uselessness of human striving grew up in him, with the rapidity of a fungus. Effort and work, ambition and success, alike led nowhere, were so many blind alleys: ambition ended in smoke; success was a fleeing phantom, which one sought in vain to grasp. To the great mass of mankind, it was more than immaterial whether one of its units toiled or no; not a single soul was benefited by it. Most certainly not the toiler himself. It was only given to a few to achieve anything; the rest might stand aside early in the day. Nothing of their labours would remain, except the scars they themselves bore. He was unhappy; to-night he knew it with a painful clearness. The shock had been too rude. For him, change had to be prepared, to come gradually. Sooner or later, no doubt, he would right himself again; but in the meantime his plight was a sorry one. It was his duty to protect himself against another onslaught of the kind--to protect them both. For there was no blinking the fact: a few more weeks like the foregoing, and they would have been two of the wretchedest creatures on earth. They were miserable enough as it was, he in his, she in her own way. It must never happen again. She, too, had doubtless become sensible of this, in the course of the past three days. But had she? Could he say that? What had she thought?--what had she felt? And he told himself that was just what he would never know. He saw her as she had lain that morning, her arms long and white on the coverlet. He recalled all he had said, and tried to piece things together; an inner meaning seemed to be eluding him. Again, in memory, he heard the half-stifled cry that had drawn him to her side, felt her hands in his, the springy resistance of her hair, the delicate skin of her eyelids. Then, he had not understood the sudden impulse that had made him spring to his feet. But now, as he lay in the dusk, and summed up these things, a new thought, or hardly a thought so much as an intuition, flashed through his mind, instantly to take entire possession of him--just as if it had all along been present, in waiting. Simultaneously, the colour mounted to his face: he refused to harbour such a thought, and put it from him, angry with himself. But it was not to be kept down; it rose again, in an inexplicable way--this suggestion, which was like a slur cast on her. Why, he demanded of himself, should it not have occurred to him before?--once, twenty, a hundred times? For the same thing had often happened: times without number, she had striven to keep him at her side. Was its presence to-day a result of his aimless irritation? Or was it because, after holding him at arm's length for three whole days, she had asked, on returning to him, neither affection nor comradeship, only the blind gratification of sense? He did not know. But forgotten hints and trifles--words, acts, looks--which he had never before considered consciously, now recurred to him as damning evidence. With his arm still across his eyes, he lay and let it work in him; let doubts and frightful uncertainties grow up in his brain; suffered the most horrible suffering of all--doubt of the one beloved. He seemed to be looking at things from a new point, seeing them in different proportions--all his own poor hopes and beliefs as well and, while the spasm of distrust lasted, he felt inclined to doubt whether she had ever really cared for him. He even questioned his own feeling for her, seeking to discover whether it, too, had not been based on a mere sensual fancy. He saw them satisfying an instinct, without reason and without nobility. And, by this light, he read a reason for the past months, which made him groan aloud. He rose and paced the room. If what he was thinking of her were true, then it would be better for both their sakes if he never saw her again. But, even while he said this, he knew that he would have to see her, and without loss of time. What he needed was to stand face to face with her, to look into her eyes, which, whatever they might do, had never learned to hide the truth, and there gain the certainty that his imaginings were monstrous--the phantoms of a melancholy October twilight. It was nearly nine o'clock, but there was no light in her room. He pictured her lying in the dark, and was filled with remorse. But he said her name in vain; the room was empty. Lighting the lamp, he saw that the bedclothes had been thrown back over the foot-end of the unmade bed, as though she had only just left it. The landlady said that she had gone out, two hours previously, without leaving any message. All he could do was to sit down and wait; and in the long half-hour that now went by, the black thoughts that had driven him there were forgotten. His only wish was to have her safe beside him again. Towards ten o'clock he heard approaching sounds. A moment later Louise came in. She blinked at the light, and began to unfasten her veil before she was over the threshold. He gave a sigh of relief. "At last! Thank goodness! Where have you been?" "Did you think I was lost? Have you been here long?" "For hours. Where else should I be? But you--where have you been?" Standing before the table, she fumbled with the veil, which she had pulled into a knot. He did not offer to help her; he stood looking at her, and both voice and look were a little stern. "Why did you go out?" She did not look at him. "Oh, just for a breath of air. I felt I ... I HAD to do something." From the moment of her entrance, even before she had spoken, Maurice was aware of that peculiar aloofness in her, which invariably made itself felt when she was engrossed by something in which he had no part. "That's hardly a reason," he said nervously. With the veil stretched between her two hands, she turned her head. "Do you want another? Well, after you left me to-day, I lay and thought and thought ... till I felt I should go mad, if I lay there any longer." "Yes, but all of a sudden, like this! After being in bed for three days ... to go out and ..." "But I have not been ill!" "Go out and wander about the streets, at night." "I didn't mean to be so late," she said, and folded the veil with an exaggerated care. "But I was hindered; I had a little adventure." "What do you mean?" "Oh, nothing much. A man followed me--and I couldn't get rid of him." "Go on, please!" He was astonished at the severity of his own voice. "Oh, don't be so serious, Maurice!" She had folded the veil to a neat square, stuck three hatpins in it, and thrown it with her hat and jacket on the sofa. "No one has tried to murder me," she said, and raised both her hands to her hair. "I was standing before Haase's window--the big jeweller's in the PETERSTRASSE, you know. I've always loved jewellers' windows--especially at night, when they're lighted up. As a child, I thought heaven must be like the glitter of diamonds on blue velvet--the Jasper Sea, you know, and the pearly floor." "Never mind that now!" "Well, I was standing there, looking in, longer perhaps than I knew. I felt that some one was beside me, but I didn't see who it was, till I heard a man's voice say: 'SCHONE SACHEN, FRAULEIN, WAS?' Of course, I took no notice; but I didn't run away, as if I were afraid of him. I went on looking into the window, till he said: 'DARF ICH IHNEN ETWASS KAUFEN?'and more nonsense of the same kind. Then I thought it was time to go. He followed me down the PETERSTRASSE, and when I came to the ROSSPLATZ, he was still behind me. So I determined to lead him a dance. I've been walking about, with him at my heels, for over an hour. In a quiet street where there was no one in sight, he spoke to me again, and refused to go away until I told him where I lived. I pretended to agree, and, on the condition that he didn't follow me any further, I gave him a number in the QUERSTRASSE; and in case he broke his. word, I came home that way. I hope he'll spend a pleasant evening looking for me." She laughed--her fitful, somewhat unreal laugh, which was always displeasing to him. To-night, taken in conjunction with her story, and her unconcerned way of telling it, it jarred on him as never before. "Let me catch him here, and I'll make it impossible for him to insult a woman again!" he cried. "For it is an insult though you don't see it in that light. You laugh as you tell it, as if something amusing had happened to you. You are so strange sometimes.--Tell me, dearest, WHY did you go out? When I asked you, you wouldn't come." "No. Then I wasn't in the mood." Her smile faded. "No. But after dark--and quite alone--then the mood takes you." "But I've done it hundreds of times before. I can take care of myself." "You are never to do it again--do you hear?--Why didn't you give the fellow in charge?" he asked a moment later, in a burst of distrust. Again Louise laughed. "Oh, a German policeman would find that rather funny than otherwise. It's the rule, you know, not the exception. And the same thing has happened to me before. So often that it's literally not worth mentioning. I shouldn't have spoken of it to-night if you hadn't been so persistent. Besides," she added as an afterthought--and, in the face of his grave displeasure, she found herself wilfully exaggerating the levity of her tone--"besides, this wasn't the kind of man one gives in charge. Not the usual commercial-traveller type. A Graf, or Baron, at least." He was as nettled as she had intended him to be. "You talk just as if you had had experience in the class of man.--Do you really think it makes things any better? To my mind, it's a great deal worse.--But the thing is--you don't know how ... You're not to go out alone again at night. I forbid it. This is the first time for weeks; and see what happens! And it's not you may well say it has happened to you before. I don't know what it is, but--The very cab-drivers look at you as they've no business to--as they don't look at other women!" "Well, can I help that?--how men look at me?" she asked indignantly. "Do you wish to say it's my fault? That I do anything to make them?" "No. Though it might be better if you did," he answered gloomily. "The unpleasant thing is, though you do nothing ... that it's there all the same ... something ... I don't know what." "No, I don't think you do, and neither do I. But I do know that you are being very rude to me." As he made no reply, she went on: "You will, however, at least give me credit for knowing how to keep men at a distance, though I can't hinder them from looking at me.--And, for your own comfort, remember in future that I'm not an inexperienced child. There's nothing I don't know." "You needn't throw that up at me." "--I at YOU?" she laughed hotly. "That's surely reversing the order of things, isn't it? It ought to be the other way about." "Unfortunately it isn't." The look he gave her was made up of mingled anger and entreaty; but as she took no notice of it, he turned away, and going to the window, leaned his forehead against the glass. What affected him so disagreeably was not the incident of the man following her, but her light way of regarding it. And as the knowledge of this came home to him, he was impelled to go on speaking. "It's a trifle to make a fuss about, I know," he said. "And I shouldn't give it a second thought, if I could ONLY feel, Louise, that you looked at it as I do ... and felt about it as I do. You seem so indifferent to what it really means--it's almost as if you enjoyed it. Other women are different. They resent such a thing instinctively. While you don't even take offence. And men feel that in you, somehow. That's what makes them look at you and follow you about. That's what attracts them and always has done--far too easily." "You among the rest!" "For God's sake, hold your tongue! You don't know what you're saying." "Oh, I know well enough." She put her hair back from her forehead, and passed her handkerchief over her lips. "Instead of lecturing me in this way, you might be grateful, I think, that I didn't accept the man's offer and go somewhere to supper with him. It's dull enough here. You don't make things very gay for me. To-day, altogether, you are treating me as if I were a criminal." He did not answer; the words "You among the rest!" went on sounding in his ears. Yes, there was truth in them, a horrible truth. Who was he to sit in judgment?--either on her, or on those others who yielded to the attraction that went out from her. Had not he himself been in love with her before he even knew her name. Had he then accused her?--laid the blame at her door? She caught a moth that was fluttering round the lamp, and carried it to the window. When, a moment later, he turned and gave her another unhappy look, she felt a kind of pity for him, forced as he was, by his nature, to work himself into unhappiness over such a trivial matter. "Don't let us say unkind things to each other," she said slowly. "I'm sorry. If I had known it would worry you so much, I shouldn't have said a word about it. That would have been easy." He felt her touch on his arm. As it grew warm and close, he, too, was filled with the wish to be at one with her again--to be lulled into security. He pressed her hand. "Forgive me! To-day I've been bothered--pestered with black thoughts. Or else I shouldn't go on like this." Now she was silent; both stared out into the night. And then a strange thing happened. He began to speak again, and words rose to his lips, of which, a moment before, he had had no idea, but which he now knew for absolute truth. He said: "I don't want to excuse myself; I'm jealous, I admit it. And yet there IS an excuse for me, Louise. For saying such things to you, I mean. To-night I--Have you ever thought, dear, what a difference it would make to us, if you had ... I mean if I knew ... that you had never cared for anyone ... if you had never belonged to anyone but me? That's what I wish now more than anything else in the world. If I could just say to myself: no one but me has ever held her in his arms; and no one ever will. Do you think then, darling, I could speak as I have to-night?" A moment back, he had had no thought of such a thing; now, here it was, expressed, over his lips--another of those strange, inlying truths, which were existent in him, and only waited for a certain moment to come to light. Strangest of all, perhaps, was the manner in which it impressed itself on him. In it seemed to be summed up his trouble of the afternoon, his suspense and irritation of the later hours. It was as if he had suddenly found a formula for them, and, as he stated it, he was dumbfounded by its far-reaching significance. A church-clock pealed a single stroke. "Oh, yes, perhaps," said Louise, in a low voice. She could not rouse herself to a very keen interest in his feelings. "No, not perhaps. Yes--a thousand times yes! Everything would be changed by it. Then I couldn't torment you. And our love would have a certainty such as it can now never have." "But you knew, Maurice! I told you--everything! You said it didn't matter." "And it doesn't, and never shall. But to make it undone, I would cheerfully give years of my life. You're a woman--you can't understand these things--or know what we miss. You mine only--life wouldn't be the same." For a moment she did not answer. Then the same toneless voice came out of the darkness at his side. "But I AM yours only--now. And it's a foolish thing to wish for the impossible." VII. It was, indeed, a preposterous thought to have at this date: no one knew that better than himself. And as long as he was with Louise, he kept it at bay; it was a fatuous thing even to allow himself to think, considering the past, and considering all he knew. But next morning, as he sat with busy fingers, and a vacant mind, it returned. He thrust it angrily away, endeavouring to concentrate his attention on his music open before him. For a time, he believed he had succeeded. Then, the idea was unexpectedly present to him again, and this time more forcibly than before; it came like a sharp, swift stab of remembrance, and forced an exclamation over his lips. Discouraged, he let his hands drop from the keys of the piano; for now he knew that he would probably never be rid of it again. This was always the way with unpleasant thoughts and impressions: if they returned, after he had resolved to have done with them, they were henceforth part and parcel of himself, fixed ideas, against which his will was powerless. In the hope of growing used to the haunting reflection, and to the unhappiness it implied, he thought it through to the end--this strange, unsought knowledge, which had lain unsuspected in him, and now became articulate. Once considered, however, it made many things clear. He could even account to himself now, for the blasphemous suggestions that had plagued him not twenty-four hours ago. If he had then not, all unconsciously, had the feeling that Louise had known too long and too well what love was, to be willing to live without it, such thoughts as those would never have risen in him. In vain he asked himself, why he should only now understand these things. He could find no answer. Throughout the time he had known Louise, he had been better acquainted with her mode of life than anyone else: her past had lain open to him; she had concealed nothing, had been what she called "brutally frank" with him. And he had protested, and honestly believed, that what had preceded their intimacy did not matter to him. Who could foresee that, on a certain day, an idea of this kind would break out in him--like a canker? But this query took him a step further. Was it not deluding himself to say break out? Had not this shadow lurked in their love from the very beginning? Had it not formed an invisible barrier between them? It was possible no, it was true; though he only recognised its truth at the present time. It had existed from the first: something which each of them, in turn, had felt, and vaguely tried to express. It had little or nothing to do with the fact that they had defied convention. That, regrettable though it might be, was beside the mark. The confounding truth was, that, in an emotional crisis of an intensity of the one they had come through, it was imperative to be able to say: our love is unparalleled, unique; or, at least: I am the only possible one; I am yours, you are mine, only. That had not been the case. What he had been forced to tell himself was, that he was not the first. And now he knew that, for some time past, he had been aware that he would always occupy the second place; she was forced to compare him with another, to his disadvantage. And he knew more. For the first time, he allowed his thoughts to rove, unchecked, over her previous life, and he was no longer astonished at the imperfections of the present. To him, the gradual unfolding of their love had been a wonderful revelation; to her, a repetition, and a paler and fainter one, of a tale she already knew by heart. And the knowledge of this awakened a fresh distrust in him. If she had loved that first time, as she had asserted, as he had seen with his own eyes that she did, desperately, abandonedly, how had it been possible for her to change front so quickly, to turn to him and love anew? Was such a thing credible? Was a woman's nature capable of it? And had it not been this constant fear, lest he should never be able to efface the image of his predecessor, which, yesterday, had boldly stalked out as a dread that what had drawn her to him, had not been love at all? But this mood passed. He himself cared too well to doubt, for long, that in her own way she really loved him. What, however, he was obliged to admit was, that what she felt could in no way be counted the equal of his love for her: that had possessed a kind of primeval freshness, which no repetition, however passionately fond, could achieve. And yet, in his mind, there was still room for doubt--eager, willing doubt. It was due to his ignorance. He became aware of this, and, while brooding over these things, he was overmanned by the desire to learn, from her own lips, more about her past, to hear exactly what it had meant to her, in order that he might compare it with her present life, and with her feelings for him. Who could say if, by doing this, he might not drive away what was perhaps a phantom of his own uneasy brain? He resolved to make the endeavour. But he was careful not to let her suspect his intention. First of all, he was full of compunction for his bad temper of the night before; he was also slightly ashamed of what he was going to do; and then, too, he knew that she would resent his prying. What he did must be done with tact. He had no wish to make her unhappy over it. And so, when he saw her again, he did his best to make her forget how disagreeable he had been. But the desire to know remained, became a morbid curiosity. If this were satisfied, he believed it would make things easier for both of them. But he was infinitely cautious. Sometimes, without a word, he took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes, as if to read in them an answer to the questions he was afraid to put--looked right into the depth of her eyes, where the pupils swam in an oval of bluish white, overhung by lids which were finely creased in their folds, and netted with tiny veins. But he said not a word, and the eyes remained unfathomable, as they had always been. Meanwhile, he did what he could to set his life on a solid basis again. But he was unable to arouse in himself a very vital interest in his work; some prompter-nerve in him seemed to have been injured. And often, he was overcome by the feeling that this perpetual preoccupation with music was only a trifling with existence, an excuse for not facing the facts of life. He would sometimes rather have been a labourer, worn out with physical toil. He was much alone, too; when he was not with Louise, he was given over to his own thoughts, and, day by day, fostered by the long, empty hours of practice, these moved more and more steadily in the one direction. The craving for a knowledge of the facts, for certainty in any form--this became a reason for, a plea in extenuation of, what he felt escaping him. Louise did not help him; she assented to what he did without comment, half sorry for him in what seemed to her his wilful blindness, half disdainful. But she, too, made a discovery in these tame, flat days, and this was, that it was one thing to say to herself: it is over and done with, and another to make the assertion a fact. Energy for the effort was lacking in her; for the short, sharp stroke, which with her meant action, was invariably born of intense happiness or unhappiness. Now, as the days went by, she asked herself why she should do it. It was so much easier to let things slide, until something happened of itself, either to make the break, or to fill up the still greater emptiness in her life which a break would cause. And if he were content with what she could give him, well and good; she made no attempt to deceive him. And it seemed to her that he was content, though in a somewhat preoccupied way. But a little later, she acknowledged to herself that this was not the whole truth. There was habit to fight against--habit which could still give her hours of self-forgetfulness--and one could not forgo, all at once, and under no pressing necessity to do so, this means of escape from the cheerlessness of life. But not for long did matters remain at this negative stage. Whereas, until now, the touch of her lips had been sufficient to chase away the shadows, the moment came, when, as he held her in his arms, Maurice was paralysed by the abrupt remembrance: she has known all this before. How was it then? To what degree is she mine, was she his? What fine, ultimate shade of feeling is she keeping back from me?--His ardour was damped; and as Louise also became aware of his sudden coolness, their hands sank apart, and had no strength to join anew. Thus far, he had gone about his probings with skill, questioning her in a roundabout way, trying to learn by means of inference. But after this, he let himself go, and put a barefaced question. The subject once broached, there was no further need of concealment, and he flung tact and prudence to the winds. He could not forget--he was goaded on by--the look she had given him, as the ominous words crossed his lips: it made him conscious once more of the unapproachable nature of that first love of hers. He grew reckless; and while he had hitherto only sought to surprise her and entrap her, he now began to try to worm things out of her, all the time spying on her looks and words, ready to take advantage of the least slip on her part. At first, before she understood what he was aiming at, Louise had been as frank as usual with him--that somewhat barbarous frankness, which took small note of the recipient's feelings. But after he had put a direct question, and followed it up with others, of which she too clearly saw the drift, she drew back, as though she were afraid of him. It was not alone the error of taste he committed, in delving in matters which he had sworn should never concern him; it was his manner of doing it that was so distasteful to her--his hints and inuendoes. She grew very white and still, and looked at him with eyes in which a nascent dislike was visible. He saw it; but it was now too late. Day by day, his preoccupation with the man who had preceded him increased. The thought that continued to harass him was: if she had never known the other, all would now be different. With jealousy, his state of mind had only as yet, in common, a devouring curiosity and a morbid imagination, which allowed him to picture the two of them in situations he would once have blushed to think of. For the one thing that now mattered to him, what he would have given his life to know, and would probably never know, was concerned with the ultimate ratification of love. What had she had for the other that she could not give him?--that she wilfully refrained from giving him? For that she did this, and always had refused him part of herself, was now as plain to him as if it had been branded on her flesh. And the knowledge undermined their lives. If she was gentle and kind, he read into her words pity that she could give him no more; if she were cold and evasive, she was remembering, comparing; if she returned his kisses with her former warmth--well, the thoughts which in this case seized him were the most murderous of all. His mental activity ground him down. But it was not all unhappiness; the beloved eyes and hands, the wilful hair, and pale, sweet mouth, could still stir him; and there came hours of wishless well-being, when his tired brain found rest. As the days went by, however, these grew rarer; it also seemed to him that he paid dearly for them, by being afterwards more miserable, by suffering in a more active way. At times, he knew, he was anything but a pleasant companion. But he was losing the mastery over himself, and often a trifle was sufficient to start him off afresh on the dreary theme. Once, in a fit of hopelessness, he made her what amounted to reproaches for her past. "But you knew!--everythinging!--I told you all," Louise expostulated, and there were tears in her eyes. "I know you did. But Louise"--he hesitated, half contrite in advance, for what he was going to say--"it might have been better if you hadn't told me--everything, I mean. Yes, I believe it's better not to know." She did not reply, as she might have done, that she had forewarned him, afraid of this. She looked away, so that she should not be obliged to see him. Another day, when they were walking in the ROSENTAL, she made him extremely unhappy by disagreeing with him. "If one could just take a sponge and wipe the past out, like figures from a slate!" he said moodily. But, jaded by his persistency, Louise would not admit it. "We should have nothing to remember." "That's just it." "But it belongs to us!" She was roused to protest by the under-meaning in his words. "It's as much a part of ourselves as our thoughts are--or our hands." "One is glad to forget. You would be, Louise? You wouldn't care if your past were gone? Say you wouldn't." But she only threw him a dark side-glance. As, however, he would not rest content, she flung out her hands with an impatient gesture. "How CAN you torment yourself so! If you insist on knowing, well, then, I wouldn't part with an hour of what's gone--not an hour! And you know it." She caught at a few vivid leaves that had remained hanging on a bare branch, and carried them with her. He took one she held out to him, looked at it without seeing it, and threw it away. "Tell me, just this once, something about your life before I knew you. Were you very happy?--or were you unhappy? Do you know, I once heard you say you had never known a moment's happiness?--yes, one summer night long ago, over in the NONNE. How I hoped then it was true! But I don't know. You've never told me anything--of all there must be to tell." "What you may have chanced to hear, by eavesdropping, doesn't concern me now," Louise answered coldly. And then she shut her lips, and would say no more. She was wiser than she had been a week ago: she refused to hand her past over to him in order that he might smirch it with his thoughts. But she could not understand him--understand the motives that made him want to unearth the past. If this were jealousy, it was a kind she did not know--a bloodless, bodiless kind, of which she had had no experience. But it was not jealousy; it was only a craving for certainty in any guise, and the more surely Maurice felt that he would never gain it, the more tenaciously he strove. For certainty, that feeling of utter reliance in the loved one, which sets the heart at rest and leaves the mind free for the affairs of life, was what Louise had never given him; he had always been obliged to fall back on supposition with regard to her, equally at the height of their passion, and in that first and stretch of time, when it was forbidden him to touch her hand. The real truth, the last-reaching truth about her, it would not be his to know. Soul would never be absorbed in soul; not the most passionate embraces could bridge the gulf; to their last kiss, they would remain separate beings, lonely and alone. As this went on, he came to hate the vapidities of the concerto in G major. Mentally to be stretched on a kind of rack, and, at the same time, to be forced to reiterate the empty rhetoric of this music! From this time forward, he could not hear the name of Mendelssohn without a shiver of repugnance. How he wished now, that he had been content with the bare sincerity of Beethoven, who at least said no note more than he had to say. One day, towards the end of November, he was working with even greater distaste than usual. Finally, in exasperation, he flapped the music to, shut the piano, and went out. A stroll along the muddy little railed-in river brought him to the PLEISSENBURG, and from there he crossed the KONIGSPLATZ to the BRUDERSTRASSE. He had not come out with the intention of going to Louise, but, although it was barely four o'clock, the afternoon was drawing in; an interminable evening had to be got through. He had been walking at haphazard, and without relish; now his pace grew brisker. Having reached the house, he sprang nimbly up the stairs, and was about to insert his key in the little door in the wall, when he was arrested by a muffled sound of voices. Louise was talking to some one, and, at the noise he made outside, she raised her voice--purposely, no doubt. He could not hear what was being said, but the second voice was a man's. For a minute he stood, with his key suspended, straining his cars; then, afraid of being caught, he went downstairs again, where he hung about, between stair and street-door, in order that anyone who came down would be forced to pass him. At the end of five minutes, however, his patience was spent: he remembered, too, that the person might be as likely to go up as down. He mounted the stairs again, rang the bell, and had himself admitted by the landlady. He thought she looked significantly at him as, with her usual pantomime of winks and signs, she whispered to him that a gentleman was with Fraulein--EIN SCHONER JUNGER MANN! Maurice pushed her aside, and opened the sitting-room door. Two heads turned at his entrance. On the sofa, beside Louise, sat Herries, the ruddy little student of medicine with whom she had danced so often at the ball. He sat there, smiling and dapper, balancing his hard round hat on his knee, and holding gloves in his hand. Louise looked the more untidy by contrast: as usual, her hair was half uncoiled. Maurice saw this in a flash, saw also the look of annoyance that crossed her face at his unceremonious entry. She raised astonished eyebrows. Then, however, she shook hands with him. "I think you know Mr. Herries." Maurice bowed stiffly across the table; Herries replied in kind, without discommoding himself. "How d'ye do? I believe we've met," he said carelessly. As Maurice made no rejoinder, but remained standing in an uncompromising attitude, Herries turned to Louise again, and went on with what he had been saying. He was talking of England. "I went back to Oxford after that," he continued. "I've diggings there, don't you know? An old chum of mine's a fellow of Magdalen. I was just in time for eights' week. A magnificent walk-over for our fellows. Ever seen the race? No? Oh, I say, that's too bad. You must come over for it, next year." "Mr. Herries only returned from England a few days ago," explained Louise, and again raised warning brows. "Do sit down. There's a chair." "Yes. I was over for the whole summer. Didn't work here at all, in fact," added Herries, once more letting his bright eyes snapshot the young man, who, on sitting down, laid his shabby felt hat in the middle of the table. "But now you intend to stay, I think you said?" Louise threw in at random, after they had waited for Maurice to fill up the pause. "Yes, for the winter semester, anyhow. And I've got to tumble to, with a vengeance. But I mean to have a good time all the same. Even though it's only Leipzig, one can have a jolly enough time." Again there was silence. Louise flushed. "I suppose you're hard at work already?" "Yes. Got started yesterday. Frogs, don't you know?--the effect of a rare poison on frogs." This trivial exchange of words stung Maurice. Herries's manner seemed to him intolerably familiar, lacking in respect; and he kept telling himself, as he listened, that, having returned from England, the fellow's first thought had been of her. He had not opened his lips since entering; he sat staring at them, forgetful of good manners; and, after a little, both began to feel ill at ease. Their eyes met for a moment in this sensation, and Herries cleared his throat. "What did you do with yourself in summer?" he queried, and could not restrain a smile, at the fashion in which the other fellow was giving himself away. "You weren't in England at all, I think you said? We hoped we might meet there, don't you remember? Too bad that I had to go off without saying good-bye." "No, I changed my mind and stayed here. But I shouldn't do it again. It was so hot." "Must have been simply beastly." Maurice jerked his arm; a vase which was standing at his elbow upset, and the water trickled to the floor. Neither offered to help him; he had to stoop and mop it up with his handkerchief. For a few moments longer, the conversation was eked out. Then Herries rose. With her hand in his, he said earnestly: "Now you must be merciful and relent. I shan't give up hope. Any time in the next fortnight is time enough, remember. 'Pon my word, I've dreamt of those waltzes of ours ever since. And the floor at the PRUSSE is still better, don't you know? You won't have the heart not to come." From under her lids, Louise shot a rapid glance at Maurice. He, too, had risen; he was standing stiff, pale, and solemn, visibly waiting only till Herries had gone, to make himself disagreeable. She smiled. "Don't ask me to give an answer to-day. I'll let you know--will that do? A fortnight is such a long time. And then you've forgotten the chief thing. I must see if I have anything to wear." "Oh, I say! ... if that's all! Don't let that bother you. That black thing you had on last time was ripping--awfully jolly, don't you know?" Louise laughed. "Well, perhaps," she said, as she opened the door. "Good business!" responded Herries. He nodded in Maurice's direction, and they went out of the room together. Maurice heard their voices in laughing rejoinder, heard them take leave of each other at the halldoor. After that there was a pause. Louise lingered, before returning, to open a letter that was lying on the hall-table; she also spoke to Fraulein Grunhut. When she did come back, all trace of animation had gone from her face. She busied herself at once with the flowers he had disarranged, and this done, ordered her hair before the hanging glass. Maurice followed her movements with a sarcastic smile. Suddenly she turned and confronted him. "Maurice! ... for Heaven's sake, don't glare at me like that! If you've anything to say, please say it, and be done with it." "You know well enough what I have to say." His voice was husky. "Indeed, I don't." "Well you ought to." "Ought to?--No: there's a limit to everything! Take your hat off that table!--What did you mean by bursting into the room when you heard some one was here? And, as if that weren't enough--to let everybody see how much at home you are--your behaviour--your unbearable want of manners..." She stopped, and pressed her handkerchief to her lips. "I believed you didn't care what people thought," he threw in, morosely defiant. "That's a poor excuse for your rudeness." "Well, at least tell me what that fool wanted here." "Have you no ears? Couldn't you hear that he has just come back from England, and is calling on his friends?" "Do you expect me to believe that?" "Maurice!" "Oh, he has always been after you--since that night. It's only because he wasn't here long enough ... and his manner shows what he thinks of you ... and what he means." "What do YOU mean? Do you wish to say it's my doing that he came here to-day?--Don't you believe me?" she demanded, as he did not answer. "And you in that half-dressed condition!" "Could I dress before him? How abominable you are!" He tried to explain. "Yes. Because ... I hate the sight of the fellow.--You didn't know he was coming, did you, or you wouldn't have seen him?" "Know he was coming!" She wrenched her hands away. "Oh! ..." "Say you didn't!" "Maurice!--Be jealous, if you must! But surely, surely you don't believe----" "Oh, don't ask me what I believe. I only know I won't have that man hanging about. It was by a mere chance to-day that I came round earlier; he might have been here for hours, without my suspecting it. Who knows if you would have told me either?--Would you have told me, Louise?" "Oh, how can you be like this! What is the matter with you?" He put his arms round her, with the old cry. "I can't bear you even to look at another man. For he's in love with you, and has been, ever since you made him crazy by dancing with him as you did." With his hands on her shoulders, he rested his face on her hair. "Promise me you won't see him again." Wearily, Louise disengaged herself. "Oh there's always something fresh to promise. I'm tired of it--of being hedged in, and watched, and never trusted." "Tired of me, you mean." She looked bitterly at him. "There you are again?" "Just this once--to set my mind at rest. Just this once, Louise!--darling!" But she was silent. "Then you'll let him come here again?" "How do I know?--But if I promised what you ask, I should not be able to go with him to the HOTEL DE PRUSSE on the fifteenth." "You mean to go to that dance?" "Why not? Would there be any harm in my going?" "Louise!" "Maurice!" She mocked his tone, and laughed. "Oh, go at once," she broke out the next moment, "and order Grunhut never to let another visitor inside the door. Make me promise never to cross the threshold alone--never to speak to another mortal but yourself! Cut off every pleasure and every chance of pleasure I have; and then you may be, but only may be, content." "You're trying how far you can go with me." "Do you want me to tell you again that dancing is one of the things I love best? Not six months ago you knew and helped me to it yourself." "Yes, THEN," he answered. "Then I could refuse you nothing." She laughed in an unfriendly way. He pressed her hand to his forehead. "You won't be so cruel, I know." "You know more than I do." "Do you realise what it means if you go?" In fancy, he was present, and saw her passed from one pair of arms to another. "I realise nothing--but that I am very unhappy." "Have I no influence over you any more--none at all?" "Can't you come, too, then?--if you are afraid to let me out of your sight?" "I? To see you----" He broke off with wrathful abruptness. "Thanks, I would rather be shot." But at the mingled anger and blankness of her face, he coloured. "Louise, put an end to all this. Marry me--now, at once!" "Marry you? I? No, thank you. We're past that stage, I think.--Besides, are you so simple as to believe it would make any difference?" "Oh, stop tormenting me. Come here!"--and he pulled her to him. From this day forward, the direction of his thoughts was changed. The incident of Herries's visit, her refusal to promise what he asked, and, above all, the matter of the coming ball, with regard to which he could not get certainty from her: these things seemed to open up nightmare depths, to which he could see no bottom. Compared with them, the vague fears which had hitherto troubled him were only shadows, and like shadows faded away. He no longer sought out superfine reasons for their lack of happiness. The past was dead and gone; he could not alter jot or tittle of what had happened; he could only make the best of it. And so he ceased to brood over it, and gave himself up to the present. The future was a black, unknown quantity, but the present was his own. And he would cling to it--for who knew what the future held in store for him? In these days, he began to suspect that it was not in the nature of things for her always to remain satisfied with him; and, ever more daring, the horrid question reared its head: who will come after me? Another blind attraction only needed to seize her, and what, then, would become of constancy and truth? If he had doubted her before, he was now suspicious from a different cause, and in quite a different way. The face of the trim little man who had sat beside her, and smiled at her, was persistently present to him. He did not question her further; but the poison worked the more surely in secret; he never for an instant forgot; and jealousy, now wide awake, had at last a definite object to lay hold of. In his lucid moments, he knew that he was making her life a burden to her. What wonder if she did, ultimately, turn from him? But his evil moods were now beyond command. He began to suspect deceit in her actions as well as in what she said. The idea that this other, this smirking, wax-faced man, might somehow steal her from him, hung over him like a fog, obscuring his vision. It necessitated continued watchfulness on his part. And so he dogged her, mentally, and in fact until his own heart all but broke under the strain. One afternoon they walked to Connewitz. It had rained heavily during the night, and the unpaved roads were inchdeep in mud. The sky was a level sheet of cloud, darker and more forbidding in the east. Their direction was Maurice's choice. Louise would have liked better to keep to the town: for, though the streets, too, were mud-bespattered, there would soon be lights, and the reflection of lights in damp pavements. She yielded, however, without even troubling to express her wish. But just because of the dirt and naked ugliness which met her, at every turn, she was voluble and excited; and an exaggerated hilarity seized her at trifles. Maurice, who had left the house in a more composed frame of mind than usual, gradually relapsed, at her want of restraint, into silence. He suffered under her looseness of tongue and laughter: her sallow, heavy-eyed face was ill-adapted to such moods; below her feverish animation there lurked, he was sure of it, a deadly melancholy. He had always been rendered uneasy by her spurts of gaiety. Now in addition, he asked himself: what has happened to make her like this? Feeling his hostility, Louise grew quieter, and soon she, too, was silent. Having gained his end, Maurice wished to atone for it, and slipping his arm through hers, he took her hand. For a few steps they walked on in this fashion. Then, he received one of those sudden impressions which flash on us from time to time, of having seen or done a certain thing before. For a moment, he could not verify it; then he knew, just in this way, arm in arm, hand in hand, had she come towards him with Schilsky, that very first day. It was no doubt a habit of hers. Like this, too, she would, in all probability, walk with the one who came after. And the picture of Herries, in the place he now occupied, was photographed on his brain. He withdrew his arm, as if hers had burnt him: his mind was off again on its old round. But she, too, had to suffer for it. As he stood back to let her pass before him, on a dry strip of the path, his eye caught a yellow rose she was wearing at her belt. Till now he had seen it without seeing it. "Why are you wearing that rose?" Louise looked down from him to the flower and back again. "Why?--you know I like to wear flowers." "Where did you get it?" She foresaw what he was driving at, and did not reply. "You were wearing a rose like that the first time I saw you. Do you remember?" "How should I remember? It's so long ago." "Where had you got that one from, then?" She repeated the same words. "How should I know now?" "But I know. It was from him--he had given it to you." She raised her shoulders. "Perhaps." "Perhaps? No. For certain." "Well, and if so--was there anything strange in that?" They walked a few paces without speaking. Then he asked: "Who has given you this one?" "Maurice!" There was a note of warning in her voice. He heard it in vain. "Give it to me, Louise." "No--let it be. It will wither soon enough where it is." "Please give it to me," he urged, rendered the more determined by her refusal. "I wish to keep it." "And I mean to have it." To avoid the threatening scene, she took the rose from her belt and gave it to him. He fingered it indecisively for a moment, then threw it over the bridge they were crossing, into the river. It struggled, filled with muddy water, and floated away. In the next breath, however, he asked himself ruefully what he had gained by his action. She had given him the rose, and he had destroyed it; but he would never know how she had come by it, and what it had been to her. He was incensed with himself and with her for the whole length of the SCHLEUSSIGER WEG. Then the inevitable regret for his hastiness followed. He took her limply hanging hand and pressed it. But there was no responsive pressure on her part. Louise looked away from him, beyond the woods, as far as she could see, in the vain hope of there discovering some means of escape. VIII. In descending one evening the broad stair of the Gewandhaus, and forced, by reason of the crowd, to pause on every step, Madeleine overheard the talk of two men behind her, one of whom, it seemed, had all the gossip of the place at his fingertips. From what she caught up greedily, as soon as Maurice's name was mentioned, she learnt a surprising piece of news. "A cat and dog life," was the phrase used by the speaker. As she afterwards picked her way through snow and slush, Madeleine confessed to herself that it was impossible to feel regret at what she had heard. Perhaps, after all, things would come right of themselves. In order to recover from his infatuation, to learn what Louise really was, it had only been necessary for Maurice to be constantly at her side.--Was it not Goethe who said that the way to cure a bad habit was to indulge it? But a few days afterwards, her satisfaction was damped. Late one afternoon she had entered Seyffert's Cafe, to drink a cup of chocolate. At a table parallel with the one she chose, two fellow-students were playing draughts. Madeleine had only been there for a few minutes, when their talk, which went on unrestrainedly between the moves of the game, leapt, with a witticism, to the unlucky pair in whom she was interested. To her astonishment, she now heard Louise's name, coupled with that of another man. "Well, I never!" said the second of the two behind her. "I say it's your move.--That's rough on Guest, isn't it?" Madeleine turned in her chair and faced the man who had spoken. "Excuse me, who is Herries?" she asked without ceremony. In her own room that evening, she pondered long. It was one thing for the two to drift naturally apart; another for Maurice to see himself superseded. If this were true, jealousy, and nothing else, would be at the root of their disunion. Madeleine felt very unwilling to mix herself up in the affair: it would be like plunging two clean hands into dirty water. But then, you never could tell how a man would act in a case like this: the odds were ten to one he did something foolish. And so she wrote to Maurice, making her summons imperative. This failing, she tried to waylay him going to or from his classes; but the only satisfaction she gained, was the knowledge of his irregularity: during the week she waited she did not once come face to face with him. Next, she looked round her for some common friend, and found that he had not an intimate left in all Leipzig. She wrote again, still more plainly, and again he ignored her letter. One Saturday afternoon, she was walking along the crowded streets of the inner town. She had been to the MOTETTE, in the THOMASKIRCHE, and was now on her way home, carrying music from the library. The snow had melted to mud, and sleet was falling. Madeleine had no umbrella; the collar of her cloak was turned up round her ears, and her small felt hat covered her head like an extinguisher. On entering the PETERSTRASSE, she was jostled together with Dove. It was impossible to beat a retreat. Dove seldom hurried. On this day, as on any other, he walked with a somewhat pompous emphasis through slush and stinging rain, holding his umbrella straight aloft over him, as he might have carried a banner. He was shocked to find Madeleine without one, at once took her under his, and loaded himself with her music--all with that air of matter-of-course-ness, which invariably made her keen to decline his aid. Dove was radiant; he prospered as do only the happy few; and his satisfaction with himself, and with the world in general, was somehow expressed even through the medium of his long neck and gently sloping shoulders. He greeted Madeleine with an exaggerated pleasure, accompanying his words by the slow smile which sometimes set her wondering if he were not, perhaps, being inwardly satirical at the expense of other people, fooling them by means of his own foolishness. But, however this might be, the cynical feelings that took her in his presence, mounted once more; she knew his symptoms, and an excess of content was just as distasteful to her as gluttony, or wine-bibbing, or any other self-indulgence. However, she checked the desire to snub him--to snub until she had succeeded in raising that impossible ire, which, she believed, MUST lurk somewhere in Dove--for, as she plodded along at his side, sheltered from the brunt of the weather, it occurred to her that here was some one whom she might tap on the subject of Maurice. She opened fire by congratulating her companion on his recent performance in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG; at the time, even she had been forced to admit it a creditable piece of work. Dove, who privately considered it epochmaking, was outwardly very modest. He could not refrain from letting fall that the old director had afterwards thanked him in person; but, in the next breath, he pointed out a slip he had made in a particular passage of the sonata. It had not, it was true, been observed, he believed, by anyone except Schwarz and himself; still it had caused him considerable annoyance; and he now related how, as far as he could judge, it had come about. The current inquiries concerning the PRUFUNGEN then passed between them. "Poor old Schwarz!" said Madeleine. "We shall be few enough, this year. Tell me, what of Heinz? I haven't seen him for an age." "I regret to say that Krafft is making an uncommon donkey of himself," said Dove. "He had another shocking row with Schwarz last week." "Tch, tch, tch!" said Madeleine. "Heinz is a freak.--And Maurice Guest, what about him?" "I haven't seen him lately." "Indeed? How is that?" "I'm not in the same class with him now. His hour has been changed." "Has it indeed?" said Madeleine thoughtfully. This accounted for her having been unable to meet Maurice. "What's he playing, do you know?" "The G major Mendelssohn, I understand;" and Dove looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "How's he getting on with it?" she queried afresh, in the same indifferent tone. "I really couldn't say. As I mentioned, he's in another class." "Oh, but you must have heard!" said Madeleine. "It's no use putting me off," she added, with determination. "I want to find out about Maurice." "And I fear I can't assist you. All I HAVE chanced to hear--mere rumour, of course--is that ... well, if Guest doesn't pull himself together, he won't play at all.--By the way, what did you think of James the other night, in the LISZTVEREIN?" "Oh, that his octaves were marvellous, of course!" said Madeleine tartly. "But I warn you," she continued, "it's of no use changing the subject, or pretending you don't know. I intend to speak of Maurice." "Then it must be to some one else, Miss Madeleine, not to me."--Dove could never be induced to call her Madeleine, as her other friends did. "And why, pray, are you to be the exception?" "Because, as I've already mentioned, I don't see any more of Guest. He mixes in a different set now.--And as for me, well, my thoughts are occupied with, I trust, more profitable things." "What? You have thoughts, too?" "I hope you don't claim a monopoly of them?" said Dove, and smiled in his imperturbable way. As, however, Madeleine persisted, he grew grave. "It's not a pleasant subject. I should really rather not discuss it, Miss Madeleine." "Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't let us play the prudish or sentimental!" cried Madeleine, in a burst of impatience. "Of course, it isn't pleasant. Do you think I should "--"bother with you," was on her tongue. She checked herself, and substituted--"trouble you about it, if it were? But Maurice was once a friend of ours--you don't deny it, I hope?" she threw in challengingly; for Dove muttered something to himself. "And I want to get at the truth about him. I'm sorrier than I can say, to hear, on all sides, what a fool he's making of himself." Dove was suavely silent. "Of course," continued Madeleine with a sarcastic inflection--"of course, I can't expect you to see it as I do. Men look at these things differently, I know. Possibly if I were a man, I, too, should stand by, with my hands in my pockets, and watch a friend butt his head against a stone wall--thinking it, indeed, rather good fun." She had touched Dove on a tender spot. "I can assure you, Miss Madeleine," he said impressively, as they picked their steps across a dirty road--"I can assure you, you are mistaken. I think just as strictly in matters of this kind as you yourself.--But as to interfering in Guest's ... in his private affairs, well, frankly, I shouldn't care to try it. He was always a curiously reserved fellow." "Reserved--obstinate-pig-headed!--call it what you like," said Madeleine. "But don't imagine I'm asking you to interfere. I only want you to tell me, briefly and simply, what you know about him. And to make it easier for you, I'll begin by telling you what I know.--It's an old story, isn't it, that Maurice once supplanted some one else in a certain young woman's favour? Well, now I hear that he, in turn, is to be laid on the shelf.--Is that true, or isn't it?" "Really, Miss Madeleine!--that's a very blunt way of putting it," said Dove uncomfortably. "Oh, when a friend's at stake, I can't hum and haw," said Madeleine, who could never keep her temper with Dove for long. "I call a spade a spade, and rejoice to do it. What I ask you to tell me is, whether I've been correctly informed or not. Have you, too, heard Louise Dufrayer's name coupled with that of a man called Herries?" But Dove was stubborn. "As far as I'm concerned, Miss Madeleine, the truth is, I've hardly exchanged a word with Guest since spring. Into his ... friendship with Miss Dufrayer, I have never felt it my business to inquire. I believe--from hearsay--that he is much changed. And I feel convinced his PRUFUNG will be poor. Indeed, I'm not sure that he should not be warned off it altogether." "Could that not be laid before him?" "I should not care to undertake it." There was nothing to be done with Dove; Madeleine felt that she was wasting her breath; and they walked across the broad centre of the ROSSPLATZ in silence. "Do you never think," she said, after a time, "how it would simplify life, if we were able to get above it for a bit, and see things without prejudice?--Here's a case now, where a little real fellowship and sympathy might work wonders. But no!--no interference!--that's the chief and only consideration!" It had stopped raining. Dove let down his umbrella, and carried it stiffly, at some distance from him, by reason of its dampness. "Believe me, Miss Madeleine," he said, as he emerged from beneath it. "Believe me, I make all allowance for your feelings, which do you credit. A woman's way of looking at these things is, thank God, humaner than ours. But it's a man's duty not to let his feelings run away with him. I agree with you, that it's a shocking affair. But Guest went into it with his eyes open. And that he could do so--but there was always something a little ... a little peculiar about Guest." "I suppose there was. One can only be thankful, I suppose, that he's more or less of an exception--among his own countrymen, I mean, of course. Englishmen are not, as a rule, given to that kind of thing." "Thank God they're not!" said Dove with emotion. "We'll, our ways part here," said Madeleine, and halted. As she took her music from him, she asked: "By the way, when shall we be at liberty to congratulate you?" It was not at all "by the way" to Dove. However, he only smiled; for he had grown wiser, and no longer wore his heart on his coat-sleeve. "You shall be one of the first to hear, Miss Madeleine, when the news is made public." "Thanks greatly. Good-bye.--Oh, no, stop a moment!" cried Madeleine. It was more than she could bear to see him turn away thus, beaming with self-content. "Stop a moment. You won't mind my telling you, I'm sure, that I've been disappointed with you this afternoon. For I've always thought of you as a saviour in the hour of need, don't you know? One does indulge in these fancy pictures of one's friends--a strong man, helping with tact and example. And here you go, toppling my picture over, without the least remorse.--Well, you know your own business best, I suppose, but it's unkind of you, all the same, to destroy an illusion. One has few enough of them in this world.--Ta-ta!" She laughed satirically, and turned on her heel, regardless of the effect of her words. But Dove was not offended; on the contrary, he felt rather flattered. He did not, of course, care in the least about what Madeleine called her illusions; but the mental portrait she had drawn of him corresponded exactly to that attitude in which he was fondest of contemplating himself. For it could honestly be said that, hitherto, no one had ever applied to him for aid in vain: he was always ready, both with his time and with good advice. And the idea that, in the present instance, he was being untrue to himself, in other words, that he was letting an opportunity slip, ended by upsetting him altogether. Until now, he had not regarded Maurice and Maurice's doings from this point of view. By nature, Dove was opposed to excess of any kind; his was a clean, strong mind, which caused him instinctively to draw back from everything, in morals as in art, that passed a certain limit. Nothing on earth would have persuaded him to discuss his quondam friend's backsliding with Madeleine Wade; he was impregnated with the belief that such matters were unfit for virtuous women's ears, and he applied his conviction indiscriminately. Now, however, the notion of Maurice as a Poor erring sheep, waiting, as it were, to be saved--this idea was of undeniable attractiveness to Dove, and the more he revolved it, the more convinced he grew of its truth. But he had reasons for hesitating. Having valiantly overcome his own disappointments, first in the case of Ephie, then of pretty Susie, he now, in his third suit, was on the brink of success. The object of his present attachment was a Scotch lady, no longer in her first youth, and several years older than himself but of striking appearance, vivacious manners, and, if report spoke true, considerable fortune. Her appearance in Leipzig was due to the sudden burst of energy which often inspires a woman of the Scotch nation when she feels her youth escaping her. Miss MacCallum, who was abroad nominally to acquire the language, was accompanied by her aged father and mother; and it was with these two old people that it behoved Dove to ingratiate himself; for, according to the patriarchal habits of their race, the former still guided and determined their daughter's mode of life, as though she were thirteen instead of thirty. Dove was obliged to be of the utmost circumspection in his behaviour; for the old couple, uprooted violently from their native soil, lived in a mild but constant horror at the iniquity of foreign ways. They held the profession of music to be an unworthy one, and threw up their hands in dismay at the number of young people here complacently devoting themselves to such a frivolous object. It was necessary for Dove to prove to them that a student of music might yet be a man of untarnished principles and blame less honour. And he did not find the task a hard one; the whole bent of his mind was towards sobriety. He frequented the American church with his new friends on Sunday after noon; gave up skating on that day; went with the old gentleman to Motets and Passions; and eschewed the opera. But now, his ambition had been insidiously roused, and day by day it grew stronger. If only the affair with Maurice had not been of so unsavoury a nature! Did he, Dove, become seriously involved, it might be difficult to prove to judges so severe as his future parents-in-law, that he had acted out of pure goodness of heart. For, that he would be embroiled, in other words, that he would have success in his mission, there was no manner of doubt in his mind--a conviction he shared with the generality of mankind: that it is only necessary for an offender's eyes to be opened to the enormity of his wrongdoing, for him to be reasonable and to renounce it. While Dove hesitated thus, torn between his reputation on the one hand, his missionary zeal on the other; while he hesitated, an incident occurred, which acted as a kind of moral fingerpost. In the piano-class, one day, just as Dove was about to leave the room, Schwarz asked him if he were not a friend of Herr Guest's. The latter had been absent now from two lessons in succession. Was he ill? Did no one know what had happened to him? Dove made light of the friendship, but volunteered his services, and was bidden to make inquiries. He went that afternoon. Frau Krause looked a little gruffer than of old; and left him to find his own way to Maurice's room. In accordance with the new state of things, Dove knocked ceremoniously at the door. While his knuckles still touched the wood, it was flung open, and he stood face to face with Maurice. For a moment the latter did not seem to recognise his visitor; he had evidently been expecting some one else. Then he repaired his tardiness, ceased to hold the door, and Dove entered, apologising for his intrusion. "Just a moment. I won't detain you. As you were absent from the class all last week, Schwarz asked to-day if you were ill, and I said I would step round and see." "Very good of you, I'm sure. Sit down," said Maurice. His face changed as he spoke; a look of relief and, at the same time, of disappointment flitted across it. "Thanks. If I am not disturbing you," answered Dove. As he said these words, he threw a glance, the significance of which might have been grasped by a babe, at the piano. It had plainly not been opened that day. Maurice understood. "No, I was not practising," he said. "But I have to go out shortly," and he looked at his watch. "Quite so. Very good. I won't detain you," repeated Dove, and sat down on the proffered chair. "But not practising? My dear fellow, how is that? Are you so far forward already that it isn't necessary? Or is it a fact that you are not feeling up to the mark?" "Oh, I'm all right. I get my work over in the morning." Now he, too, sat down, at the opposite side of the table. Clearing his throat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. He began to see that his errand was not going to be an easy one; where no hint was taken, it was difficult to insert even the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved to use finesse; and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he talked, as if at random, of other things. Maurice tapped the table. He kept his eyes fixed on Dove's face, as though he were drinking in his companion's solemn utterances. In reality, whole minutes passed without his knowing what was said. At Dove's knock, he had been certain that a message had come from Louise--at last. This was the night of the ball; and still she had given him no promise that she would not go. They had parted, the evening before, after a bitter quarrel; and he had left her, vowing that he would not return till she sent for him. He had waited the whole day, in vain, for a sign. What was Dove with his pompous twaddle to him? Every slight sound on the stairs or in the passage meant more. He was listening, listening, without cessation. When he came back to himself, he heard Dove droning on, like a machine that has been wound up and cannot stop. "Now, I hope you won't mind my saying so," were the next words that pierced his brain. "You must not be offended at my telling you; but you are hardly fulfilling the expectations we, your friends, you know, had formed of you. My dear fellow, you really must pull yourself together, or February will find you still unprepared." Maurice went a shade paler; he was clear, now, as to the object of Dove's visit. But he answered in an off-hand way. "Oh, there's time enough yet." "No. That's a mistaken point of view, if I may say so," replied Dove in his blandest manner. "Time requires to be taken by the forelock, you know." "Does it?" Maurice allowed the smile that was expected of him to cross his face. "Most emphatically--And we fellow-students of yours are not the only people who have noticed a certain--what shall I say?--a certain abatement of energy on your part. Schwarz sees it, too--or I am much mistaken." "What?--he, too?" said Maurice, and pretended a mild surprise. For some seconds now he had been mentally debating with himself whether he should not, there and then, show Dove the door. He decided against it. A "Damn your interference!" meant plain-speaking, on both sides; it meant a bandying of words; and more expenditure of strength than he had to spare for Dove. Once more he drew out and consulted his watch. "Unfortunately, yes," said Dove, ignoring the hint. "I assume it, from something he let drop this afternoon. Now, you know, your Mendelssohn ought to have been a brilliant piece of work--yes, the expression is not too strong. And it still must be. My dear Guest, what I came to say to you to-day--one, at any rate, of the reasons that brought me--was, that you must not allow your interest in what you are doing to flag at the eleventh hour." Maurice laughed. "Oh, certainly not! Most awfully good of you to trouble." "No trouble at all," Dove assured him. He flicked some dust from his trouser-knee before he spoke again. "I ... er ... that is, I had some talk the other day with Miss Wade." "Indeed!" replied Maurice, and was now able accurately to gauge the motor origin of Dove's appearance. "How is she? How is Madeleine?" "She was speaking of you, Guest. She would, I think, like to see you." "Yes. I've rather neglected her lately, I'm afraid.--But when there's so much to do, you know ..." "It's a pity," said Dove, passing over the last words, and nodding his head sagaciously. "She's a staunch friend of yours, is Miss Madeleine. I think it wouldn't be too much to say, she was feeling a little hurt at your neglect of her." "Really? I had no idea so many people took an interest in me." "That is just where you are mistaken," said Dove warmly. "We all do. And for that very reason, I said to myself, I will be spokesman for the rest: I'll go to him and tell him he must pull through, and do himself credit--and Schwarz, too. We are so few this year, you know." "Yes, poor old man! He has got badly left." "Yes. That was one reason. And then ... but you assure me, don't you, that you will not take what I am going to say amiss?" "Not in the least. It's awfully decent of you. But I'm sorry to say my time's up. And every minute is precious just now--as you know yourself." He rose, and, for the third time, referred to his watch. After an ineffectual attempt to continue, Dove was also forced to rise, with the best part of his message unuttered. And Maurice hurried him, glum and crestfallen, to the door, for fear of the still worse tactlessness of which he might make himself guilty. They groped in silence along the dark lobby. For the sake of parting with a friendly and neutral word, Maurice said, as he opened the door: "By the way, I hear we shall soon have to offer congratulations and good wishes." To his surprise, Dove, who had already crossed the threshold, looked blank, and drew himself up. "Indeed?" he said, and the tone was, for him, quite short. "I ... the fact is ... I've no idea of what you are referring to." On re-entering his room, Maurice went back to the window, and taking up his former attitude, began to beat anew that tattoo on the panes, which had been his chief employment during the day. His eyes were sore with straining at the corner of the street, tired of looking at his watch to see how the time passed. He had steadfastly believed that Louise would yield in this matter, and, at the last, recall him in a burst of impulsive regret. But, as the day crawled by without a word from her, his confident conviction weakened; and, at the same time, his resolve not to go back till she sent for him, failed. He repeated, in memory, some of the bitter things they had said to each other, to see if he had not left himself a loophole of escape; but only with one half of his brain: the other was persistently occupied with the emptiness of the street below. When a clock struck half-past seven, he could bear the suspense no longer: he put on his hat and coat, and went out. He felt tired and unslept, and dragged along as if his body were a weight to him. A fine snow was falling, which froze into icicles on the beards of the passers-by, and on the glistening pavements. The distance had never seemed so long to him; it had also never seemed so short. A faint and foolish hope still refused to be extinguished. But it went out directly he had unlocked the door; and he learned what he had come to learn, without the exchange of a word. The truth met him, that he should have been here hours ago, commanding, imploring; instead of which he had sat at home, nursing a futile and paltry pride. The room was warm, and bright with extra candles. It was also in that state of confusion which accompanied an elaborate toilet on the part of Louise. Fully dressed, she stood before the console-glass, and arranged something in her hair. She did not turn at his entrance, but she raised her eyes and met his in the mirror, without pausing in what she was doing. He looked over her shoulder at her reflected face. The cold steadiness, the open hostility of her look, took his strength away. He sat down on the foot-end of the bed, and put his head in his hands. Minutes passed, and still he remained in this position. For what was the use of his speaking? Her mind was made up; nothing would move her now. Then came the noise of wheels in the street below. Uncovering his eyes, Maurice looked at her again; and, as he did so, his feelings which, until now, had had something of the nature of a personal wound, gave place to others with the rush of a storm. She wore the same sparkling, low-cut dress as on the previous occasion; arms and shoulders were as ruthlessly bared to view. He remembered what he had heard said of her that night, and felt that his powers of endurance were at an end. With a stifled exclamation, he got up from the bed, and going past her, into the half of the room beyond the screen, caught up the first object that came to hand, and threw it to the floor. It was a Dresden-china figure, and broke to pieces. Louise gave a cry, and came running out to see what he had done. "Are you mad? How dare you! ... break my things." She held a candle above her head, and by its light, he saw, in the skin of neck and shoulder, all the lines and folds that were formed by the raising of her arm. He now saw, too, that her hair was dressed in a different way, that her dark eyebrows had been made still darker, and that she was powdered. This discovery had a peculiar effect on him: it rendered it easier for him to say hard things to her; at the same time, it strengthened his determination not to let her go out of the house. Moving aimlessly about the room, he stumbled against a chair, and kicked it from him. "A month ago, if some one had sworn to me that you would treat me as you are doing to-night, I should have laughed in his face," he said at last. Louise had put the candle down, and was standing with her back to him. Taking up a pair of long, black gloves, she began to draw one over her hand. She did not look up at his words, but went on stroking the kid of the glove. "You're only doing it to revenge yourself--I know that! But what have I done, that you should take less thought for my feelings than if I were a dog?" Still she did not speak. "You won't really go, Louise?--you won't have the heart to.--I say you shall not go! It will be the end--the end of everything!--if you leave the house to-night." She pulled her dress from his hand. "You're out of your senses, I think. The end of everything! Because, for once, I choose to have some pleasure on my own account! Any other man would be glad to see the woman he professes to care for, enjoy herself. But you begrudge it to me. You say my pleasures shall only come through you--who have taken to making life a burden to me! Can't you understand that I'm glad to get away from you, and your ill-humours and mean, abominable jealousy. You're not my master. I'm not your slave." She tugged at a recalcitrant glove. "It is absurd," she went on a moment later. "All because I wish to go out alone for once.--But did I even want to? Why, if it means so much to you, couldn't you have bought a ticket and come too? But no! you wouldn't go yourself, and so I was not to go either. It's on a level with all your other behaviour." "I go!" he cried. "To watch you the whole evening in that man's arms!--No, thank you! It's not good enough.--You, with your indecent style of dancing!" She wheeled round, as if the insult had struck her; and for a moment faced him, with open lips. Then she thought better of it: she laughed derisively, with a wanton undertone, in order to hurt him. "You would at least have had me under your own eyes." As she spoke, she nodded to the old woman who opened the door to say that the droschke waited below. A lace scarf was lying on the table; Louise twisted it mechanically round her head, and began to struggle with an evening cloak. Just as she had succeeded in getting it over her shoulders, Maurice took her by the arms and bent her backwards, so that the cloak fell to the floor. "You shall not go!" She stemmed her hands against him, and determinedly, yet with caution, pushed herself free. "My dress--my hair! How dare you!" "What do I care for your dress or your hair? You make me mad!" "And what do I care whether you're mad or not? Take your hands away!" "Louise! ... for God's sake! ... not with that man. At least, not with him. He has said infamous things of you. I never told you--yes, I heard him say--heard him compare you with ... soiled goods he called you.--Louise! Louise!" "Have you any more insults for me?" "No, no more!" He leaned his back against the door. "Only this: if you leave this room to-night, it's the end." She had picked up her cloak again. "The end!" she repeated, and looked contemptuously at him. "I should welcome it, if it were.--But you're wrong. The end, the real end, came long ago. The beginning was the end!--Open that door, and let me out!" He heard her go along the hall, heard the front door shut behind her, and, after a pause, heard the deeper tone of the house door. The droschke drove away. After that, he stood at the window, looking out into the pitch-dark night. Behind him, the landlady set the room in order, and extinguished the additional candles. When she had finished, and shut the door, Maurice faced the empty room. His eyes ranged slowly over it; and he made a vague gesture that signified nothing. A few steps took him to the writing-table, on which her muff was lying. He lifted it up, and a bunch of violets fell into his hand. They brought her before him as nothing else could have done. Beside the bed, he went down on his knees, and drawing her pillow to him, pressed it round his head. The end, the end!--the beginning the end: there was truth in what she had said. Their love had had no stamina in it, no vital power. He was losing her, steadily and surely losing her, powerless to help it--rather it seemed as if some malignant spirit urged him to hasten on the crisis. Their thoughts seemed hopelessly at war.--And yet, how he loved her! He made himself no illusions about her now; he understood just what she was, and what she would always be; the many conflicting impulses of her nature lay bare to him. But he loved her, loved her: all the dead weight of his physical craving for her was on him again, confounding, overmastering. None the less, she had left him; she had no need for him; and the hours would come, oftener and oftener, when she could do without him, when, as now, she voluntarily sought the company of other men. The thought suffocated him; he rose to his feet, and hastened out of the house. A little before one o'clock, he was stationed opposite the sideentrance to the HOTEL DE PRUSSE. He had a long time to wait. As two o'clock approached, small batches of people emerged, at first at intervals, then more and more frequently. Among the last were Herries and Louise. Maurice remained standing in the shadow of some houses, until they had parted from their companions. He heard her voice above all the rest; it rang out clear and resonant, just as on that former occasion when she had drunk freely of champagne. With many final words and false partings, she and Herries separated from the group, and turned to walk down the street. As they did so, Maurice sprang out from his hiding-place, and was suddenly in front of them, blocking their progress. At his unexpected apparition, both started; and when he roughly took hold of her arm, Louise gave a short cry. Herries put out his hand, and smacked Maurice's down. "What are you doing there? Take your hands off this lady, damn you!" he cried in broken German, not recognising Maurice, and believing that he had to deal with an ordinary NACHTSCHWARMER. The savageness with which he was turned on, enlightened him. "Damn you!" retorted Maurice in English. "Take your hands off her yourself I She belongs to me--to me, do you hear?--and I intend to keep her." "You drunken cur!" said Herries. He had instinctively allowed Louise to withdraw her arm; now he stood irresolute, uncertain how she would wish him to act. She had gone very pale; he believed she was afraid. "Isn't there a droschke anywhere?" he said, and looked angrily round. "I really can't see you exposed to this ... this sort of thing, you know." Louise answered hurriedly. "No, no. And please go! I shall be all right. I'm sorry.--I had enjoyed it so much. I will tell you another time, how much. Good night, and thank you. No ... PLEASE!> ... yes, a delightful evening." Her words were almost inaudible. "Delightful indeed!" said Herries with warmth. Then he stood aside, raised his hat, and let them pass. Maurice had his hand on her wrist, and he dragged her after him, over the frozen pavements, far more quickly than she could in comfort go, hampered as she was by snow-boots and by her heavy cloak. But she followed him, allowed herself to be drawn, without protest. She felt strangely will-less. Only sometimes, when the thought of the indignity he had laid upon her came over her anew, did she whisper: "How dare you! ... oh, how dare you!" He did not look at her, or answer her, and all might have gone well, so oddly did this treatment affect her, had he only persisted in it. But the mere contact of her hand softened him towards her; her nearness worked on him as it never failed to do. He was exhausted, too, mentally and physically, and at the thought that, for this night at least, his sufferings were over, he could have shed tears of relief. Slackening his pace, he began to speak, began to excuse and exculpate himself before ever she had blamed him, endeavouring to make her understand something of what he had gone through. In advance, and before she had expressed it, he sought to break down her spirit of animosity. The longer he spoke, the harder she felt herself grow. He was at it again, back at his eternal self-justification. Oh, why, for this one evening at least, could he not have enforced his will, and have made her do what he wished, without explanation! But the one plain, simple way was the only way he never thought of taking. "I hate you and despise you! I shall never forgive you for your behaviour to-night!--never!" And now it was she who pressed forward, to get away from him. He turned the key in the house-door. But before he could open the door, Louise, pushing in front of him, threw it back, entered the house, and, the next moment, the door banged in his face. He had just time to withdraw his hand. He heard her steps on the stair, mounting, growing fainter; he heard the door above open and shut. For a second or two, he stood listening to these sounds. But when it dawned on him that she had shut him out, he pressed both hands against the wood of the heavy door, and tried to shake it open. He even beat his fist against it, and only desisted from this when his knuckles began to smart. Then, on looking down, he saw that the key was still in the lock. He stared at it, stupidly, without understanding. But, yes--it was his own key; he himself had put it in. He took it out again, and holding it in his hand, looked at it, after the fashion of a drunken man, who does not recognise the object he holds. And even while he did this, he burst into a peal of laughter, which made him lean for support against the wall of the house. The noise he made sounded idiotic, sounded mad, in the quiet street; but he was unable to contain himself. She had left him the key--had left the key! Oh, what a fool he was! His laughter died away. He opened the door, noiselessly, as he had learned by practice to do, and as noiselessly entered the vestibule and went up the stairs. IX. Several versions of the contretemps with Herries were afloat immediately. All agreed in one point: Maurice Guest had been in an advanced stage of intoxication. A scuffle was said to have taken place in the deserted street; there had been tears, and prayers, and shrill accusing voices. In the version that reached Madeleine's cars, blows were mentioned. She stood aghast at the disclosures the story made, and at all these implied. Until now, Maurice had at least striven to preserve appearances. If once you became callous enough not to care what people said of you, you wilfully made of yourself a social outcast. That same afternoon, as she was mounting the steps of the Conservatorium, she came face to face with Krafft. They had not met for weeks; and Madeleine remarked this, as they stood together. But she was not thinking very deeply of him or his affairs; and when she asked him if he would go across to her room, and wait for her there, she was following an impulse that had no connection with him. As usual, Krafft had nothing particular to do; and when she returned, half an hour later, she found him lying on her sofa, with his arms under his head, his knees crossed above him. The air of the room was grey with smoke; but, for once, Madeleine set no limit to his cigarettes. Sitting down at the table, she looked meditatively at him. For some moments neither spoke. But as Krafft drew out his case to take another cigarette, a tattered volume of Reclam's UNIVERSAL LIBRARY fell from his pocket, and spread itself on the floor. Madeleine stooped and pieced it together. "What have we here?--ah, your Bible!" she said sarcastically: it was a novel by a modern Danish poet, who died young. "You carry it about with you, I see." "To-day I needed STIMMUNG. But don't say Bible; that's an error of taste. Say 'death-book.' One can study death in it, in all its forms." "To give you STIMMUNG! I can't understand your love for the book, Heinz. It's morbid." "Everything's morbid that the ordinary mortal doesn't wish to be reminded of. Some day--if I don't turn stoker or acrobat beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions--some day I shall write music to it. That would be a melodrama worth making." "Morbid, Heirtz, morbid!" "All women are not of your opinion. I remember once hearing a woman say, had the author still lived, she would have pilgrimaged barefoot to see him." "Oh, I dare say. There are women enough of that kind." "Fools, of course?" "Extravagant; unbalanced. The class of person that suffers from a diseased temperament.--But men can make fools of themselves, too. There are specimens enough here to start a museum with." "Of which you, as NORMALMENSCH, could be showman." Madeleine pushed her chair back towards the head of the sofa, so that she came to sit out of the range of Krafft's eyes. "Talking of fools," she said slowly, "have you seen anything of Maurice Guest lately?" Krafft lowered a spike of ash into the tray. "I have not." "Yes; I heard he had got into a different hour," she said disconnectedly. As, however, Krafft remained impassive, she took the leap. "Is there--can nothing be done for him, Heinz?" Here Krafft did just what she had expected him to do: rose on his elbow, and turned to look at her. But her face was inscrutable. "Explain," he said, dropping back into his former position. "Oh, explain!" she echoed, firing up at once. "I suppose if a fellow-mortal were on his way to the scaffold, you men would still ask for explanations. Listen to me. You're the only man here Maurice was at all friendly with--I shouldn't turn to you, you scoffer, you may be sure of it, if I knew of anyone else. He liked you; and at one time, what you said had a good deal of influence with him. It might still have. Go to him, Heinz, and talk straight to him. Make him think of his future, and of all the other things he has apparently forgotten.--You needn't laugh! You could do it well enough if you chose--if you weren't so hideously cynical.--Oh, don't laugh like that! You're loathsome when you do. And there's nothing natural about it." But Krafft enjoyed himself undisturbed. "Not natural? It ought to be," he said when he could speak again. "Oh, you English, you English!--was there ever a people like you? Don't talk to me of men and women, Mada. Only an Englishwoman would look at the thing as you do. How you would love to reform and straitlace all us unregenerate youths! You've done your best for me--in vain!--and now it's Guest. Mada, you have the Puritan's watery fluid in your veins, and Cain's mark on your brow: the mark of the raceace that carries its Sundays, its--language, its drinks, its dress, and its conventions with it, whereever it goes, and is surprised, and mildly shocked, if these things are not instantly adopted by the poor, purblind foreigner.--You are the missionaries of the world!" "Oh, I've heard all that before. Some day, Heinz, you really must come to England and revise your impressions of us. However, I'm not going to let you shirk the subject. I will tell you this. I know the MILIEU Maurice Guest has sprung from, and I can judge, as you never can, how totally he is unfitting himself to return. The way he's going on--I hear on all sides that he'll never 'make his PRUFUNG,' now, and you yourself know his certificate won't be worth a straw." "There's something fascinating, I admit," Krafft went on, "about a people of such a purely practical genius. And it follows, as a matter of course, that, being the extreme individualists you are, you should question the right of others to their particular mode of existence. For individualism of this type implies a training, a culture, a grand style, which it has taken centuries to attain--WE have still centuries to go, before we get there. If we ever do! For we are the artists among nations--waxen temperaments, formed to take on impressions, to be moulded this way and that, by our age, our epoch. You are the moralists, we are the ..." "The immoralists." "If you like. In your vocabulary, that's a synonym for KUNSTLER." "You make me ill, Heinz!" "KUSS' DIE HAND!" He was silent, following a smoke-ring with his eyes. "Seriously, Mada," he said after a moment--but there was no answering seriousness in his face, which mocked as usual. "Seriously, now, I suppose you wouldn't admit what this DRESSUR, this HOHE SCHULE Guest is going through, might be of service to him in the end?" "No, indeed, I wouldn't," she answered hotly. "You talk as if he were a circus-horse. Think of him now, and think of him as he was when he first came here. A good fellow--wasn't he? And full to the brim of plans and projects--ridiculous enough, some of them--but the great thing is to be able to make plans. As long as a man can do that, he's on the upward grade.--And he had talent, you said so yourself, and unlimited perseverance." "Good God, Madeleine" burst out Krafft. "That you should have been in this place as long as you have, and still remain so immaculate!--Surely you realise that something more than talent and perseverance is necessary? One can have talent as one has a hat ... use it or not as one likes.--I tell you, the mill Guest is going through may be his salvation--artistically." "And morally?" asked Madeleine, not without bitterness. "Must one give thanks then, if one's friend doesn't turn out a genius?" Krafft shrugged his shoulders. "As you take it. The artist has as much to do with morality, as, let us say, your musical festivals have to do with art.--And if his genius isn't strong enough to float him, he goes under, UND DAMIT BASTA! The better for art. There are bunglers enough.--But I'll tell you this," he rose on his elbow again, and spoke more warmly. "Since I've seen what our friend is capable of; how he has allowed himself to be absorbed; since, in short, he has behaved In such a highly un-British way--well, since then, I have some hope of him. He seems open to impression.--And impressions are the only things that matter to the artist." "Oh, don't go on, please! I'm sick to death of the very words art and artist." "Cheer up, Mada! You've nothing of the kind in your blood." He stretched himself and yawned. "Nor has he, either, I believe. A face may deceive. And a clear head, and unlimited perseverance, and intelligence, and ambition--none of these things is enough. The Lord asks more of his chosen." Madeleine clasped her hands behind her head, and tilted back her chair. "So you couldn't interfere, I see? Your artistic conscience would forbid it." "Why don't you do it yourself?" He scrutinised her face, with a sarcastic smile. "Oh, say it out! I know what you think." "And am I not right?" "No, you're not. How I hate the construction you put on things! In your eyes, nothing is pure or disinterested. You can't even imagine to yourself a friendship between a man and a woman. Such a thing isn't known here--in your nation of artists. Your men are too inflammatory, and too self-sufficient, to want their calves fatted for any but the one sacrifice. Girls have their very kitchen-aprons tied on them with an undermeaning. And poor souls, who can blame them for submitting! What a fate is theirs, if they don't manage to catch a man! Gossip and needlework are only slow poison." "Now you're spiteful. But I'll tell YOU something. Such friendships as you speak of are only possible where the woman is old--or ugly--or abnormal, in some way: a man-woman, or a clever woman, or some other freak of nature. Now, our women are, as a rule, sexually healthy. They know what they're here for, too, and are not ashamed of it. Also, they still have their share of physical attraction. While yours--good God! I wonder you manage to keep the breed going!" "Stop, Heinz!" said Madeleine sternly. "You are illogical, and indecent; and you know there's a limit I don't choose to let you pass.--You're wrong, too. You've only to look about you, here, with unbiassed eyes, to see which race the prettiest girls belong to.--But never mind! You only launch out in this way that you may not be obliged to discuss Maurice Guest. I know you. I can read you like a book." "You are not very old ... or ugly ... or abnormal, Mada." She smiled in spite of herself. "And are we not friends, pray?" "Something that way.--But in all you say about Guest, the impersonal note is wanting. You're jealous." "I'm nothing of the sort!--But you'll at least allow me to resent seeing a friend of mine in the claws of this ... this vampire?" Krafft laughed. "Vampire is good!--A poor, distraught--" "Spare your phrases, Heinz. She's bad through and through, and stupid into the bargain." "Lulu stupid? EI, EI, Mada! Your eyes are indeed askew. She has a touch of the other extreme--of genius." "NA!--Well, if this is another of your manifestations of genius, then permit me to hate--no, to loathe it, in all its forms." "GANZ NACH BELIEBEN! It's a privilege of your sex, you know. There never was a woman yet who didn't prefer a good, square talent." "A crack this way, and it's madness; that, and the world says genius. And some people have a peculiar gift for discovering it. Those who set themselves to it can find genius in a flea's jump." "But has it never occurred to you, that the power of loving--that some women have a genius for loving?--No, why do I ask! For if I am a book, you are a poster--a placard." "What a people you are for words! You make phrases about everything. That's a ridiculous thing to say. If every fickle woman--" "Fickle woman! fickle fiddle-sticks!" he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things--DIE HERREN DICHTER--are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats it after them, like sheep." "Well, if you wish me to put it more plainly: if what you say were true, vice would be condoned." "Vice!!" he cried with derision, and sat up and faced her. "Vice!--my dear Mada!--sweet, innocent child! ... No, no. A special talent is needed for that kind of thing; an unlimited capacity for suffering; an entire renunciation of what is commonly called happiness! You hold the good old Philistine opinions. You think, no doubt, of two lovers living together in delirious pleasure, in SAUS UND BRAUS.--Nothing could be falser. A woman only needs to have the higher want in her nature, and the suffering is there, too. She's born gifted with the faculty. And a woman of the type we're speaking of, is as often as not the flower of her kind.--Or becomes it.--For see all she gains on her way: the mere passing from hand to hand; the intense impressionable nature; the process of being moulded--why, even the common prostitute gets a certain manly breadth of mind, such as you other women never arrive at. Each one who comes and goes leaves her something: an experience--a turn of thought--it may be only an intuition--which she has not had before." "And the contamination? The soul?" cried Madeleine; two red spots had come out on her cheeks. "As you understand it, such a woman has no soul, and doesn't need one. All she needs is tact and taste." "You are the eternal scoffer." "I never was more serious in my life.--But let us put it another way. What does a--what does any beautiful woman want with a soul, or brains, or morals, or whatever you choose to call it? Let her give thanks, night and day, that she is what she is: one of the few perfect things on this imperfect earth. Let her care for her beauty, and treasure it, and serve it. Time enough when it is gone, to cultivate the soul--if, indeed, she doesn't bury herself alive, as it's her duty to do, instead of decaying publicly. Mada! do you know a more disgusting, more humiliating sight than the sagging of the skin on a neck that was once like marble?--than a mouth visibly losing its form?--the slender shoulders we have adored, broadening into massivity?--all the fine spiritual delicacy of youth being touched to heaviness?--all the barbarous cruelty, in short, with which, before our eyes, time treats the woman who is no longer young.--No, no! As long as she has her beauty, a woman is under no necessity to bolster up her conscience, or to be reasonable, or to think.--Think? God forbid! There are plain women enough for that. We don't ask our Lady of Milo to be witty for us, or to solve us problems. Believe me, there is more thought, more eloquence, in the corners of a beautiful mouth--the upward look of two dark eyes--than in all women have said or done from Sappho down. Springy colour, light, music, perfume: they are all to be found in the curves of a perfect throat or arm." Madeleine's silence bristled with irony. "And that," he went on, "was where the girl you are blaspheming had such exquisite tact. She knew this. Her instinct taught her what was required of her. She would fall into an attitude, and remain motionless in it, as if she knew the eye must feast its full. Or if she did move, and speak--for she, too, had hours of a desperate garrulity--then one was content, as well. Her vitality was so intense that her whole body spoke when her lips did; she would pass so rapidly from one position to another that you had to shut your eyes for fear that, out of all this multitude, you would not be able to carry one away with you.--If some of her ways of expressing herself in motion could be caught and fixed, a sculptor's fame would be made.--A painter's, if he could reproduce the trick she has of smiling entirely with her eyes and eyebrows.--And then her hands! Mada, I wonder you other women don't weep for envy of them. She has only to raise them, to pass them over her forehead, or to finger at her hair, and the world is hers.--Do you really think a man asks soul of a woman with such eyes and hand as those?--Good God, no! He worships her and adores her. Were is only one place for him, and that's on his knees before her." "Well, really, Heinz!" said Madeleine, and the spots on her cheeks burnt a dull red. "In imagination, do you know, I'm carried just three years backwards? Do you remember that spring evening, when you came rushing in here to me? 'I've seen the most beautiful woman in the world, and I'm drunk with her.' And how I couldn't understand? For I thought her plain, just as I still do.--But then, if I remember aright, your admiration was by no means the platonic, artistic affair it ... hm! ... is now." "It was not.--But now, you understand, Mada, that I think a man makes a good exchange of career, and success, and other such accidents of his material existence, for the right to touch these hands at will. The one thing necessary is, that he be fit for the post. I demand of him that he be a gourmand, a connoisseur in beauty. And it's here, mind you, that I have doubts of our friend.--Is it clear to you?" "As clear as day, thanks. And you may be QUITE sure: of me never applying to you for help again. I shall respect your principles." "And mind you, I don't say Guest may not come out of the affair all right--enriched for the rest of his life." "Very good. And now you may go. I regret that I ever bothered with you." Krafft went across to where Madeleine was standing, put his hands on her two shoulders, and laid his head on his right arm, so that she, who was taller than he was, looked down on the roundnesses of his curly hair. "You're a good fellow, Mada--a good fellow! JA, JA--who knows! If you had had just a little more of the EWIGWEIBLICHE about you!" "Too much honour ... But you don't expect Englishwomen to join your harem, do, you?" "There would have been a certain repose in belonging to a woman of your type. But it's the charm--physical charm--we poor wretches can't do without." "Upon my word, it's almost a declaration!" cried Madeleine, not unnettled. "Take my advice, Heinz. Hie you home, and marry the person you ought to. Take pity on the poor thing's constancy. Unless," she added, a moment later, with a sarcastic laugh, "since you're still so infatuated with Louise, you persuade her to transfer her favours to you. That would solve all difficulties in the most satisfactory way. She would have the variety that seems necessary to her existence; you could lie on your knees before her all day long; and our friend would be restored to sanity. Think it over, Heinz. It's a good idea." "Do you think she'd have me?" he asked, as he shook himself into his coat. "Heaven knows and Heaven only! Where Louise is concerned, nothing's impossible--I've always maintained it." "Well, ta-ta!--You shall have early news, I promise you." Madeleine heard him go down the stair, whistling the ROSE OF SHARON. But he could not have been half-way to the bottom, when he turned and came back. Holding her door ajar, he stuck a laughing face into the room. "Upon my word, Mada, I congratulate you! It's a colossal idea." But Madeleine had had enough of him. "I'm glad it pleases you. Now go, go! You've played the fool here long enough." When he emerged from the house, Krafft had stopped whistling. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his felt hat pulled down over his eyes. At the corner, he was so lost in thought as to be unable to guide his feet: he stood and gazed at the pavement. Still on the same spot, he pushed his hat to the back of his head, and burst into such an eerie peal of laughter that some ladies, who were coming towards him, started back, and, picking up their skirts, went off the pavement, in order to avoid passing him too nearly. The following afternoon, at an hour when Maurice was safely out of the way, Krafft climbed the stair to the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE. The landlady did not know him. Yes, Fraulein was at home, she said; but-- Krafft promptly entered, and himself closed the door. Outside Louise's room, he listened, with bent head. Having satisfied himself, he turned the handle of the door and went in. Louise stood at the window, watching the snow fall. It had snowed uninterruptedly since early morning; out of the leaden sky, flake after flake fluttered down, whirled, spun, and became part of the fallen mass. At the opening of the door, she did not stir; for it would only be Maurice coming back to ask forgiveness; and she was too unspeakably tired to begin all over again. Krafft stood and eyed her, from the crown of her rough head, to the bedraggled tail of the dressing-gown. "GRUSS' GOTT, LULU!" At the sound of his voice, she jumped round with a scream. "You, Heinz! YOU!" The blood suffused her face a purplish red; her voice was shrill with dismay; her eyes hung on the young man as though he were a returning spirit. With an effort, she got the better of her first fright, and took a step towards him. "How DARE you come into this room!" Krafft hung his wet coat over the back of a chair, and wiped his face dry of the melted snow. "No heroics, Lulu!" But she could not contain herself. "Oh, how dare you, It's a mean, dishonourable trick--only you would do it!" "Sit down and listen to what I have to say. It won't take long. And it's to your own advantage, I think, not to make a noise.--May I smoke?" She obeyed, taking the nearest chair; for she had begun to tremble; her legs shook under her. But when he held out the case of cigarettes to her, she struck it, and the contents were spilled on the floor. "Look here, Lulu," he said, and crossing his legs, put one hand in his pocket, while with the other he made gestures suitable to his words. "I've not come here to-day to rake up old sores. Time has gone over them and healed them, and it's only your--NEBENBEI GESAGT, extremely bad-conscience that makes you afraid of me. I'm not here for myself, but--" "Heinz!" The cry escaped her against her will. "For him? You've come from him!" He removed his cigarette and smiled. "Him? Which? Which of them do you mean?" "Which?" It was another uncontrollable exclamation. Then the expression of almost savage joy that had lighted up her face, died out. "Oh, I know you! ... know you and hate you, Heinz! I've never hated anyone as much as you." "And a woman of your temperament hates uncommonly well.--No, all jokes aside,"--the word cut her; he saw this, and repeated it. "Joking apart, I've come to you to-day, merely to ask if you don't think your present little affair has gone far enough?" She was as composed as he was. "What business is it of yours?" "Oh, none. Except that the poor fool was once my friend." She gave a daring laugh, full of suggestion. But Krafft was not put out by it. "Don't do that again," he said. "It sounds ugly; and you have nothing to do with ugliness, you know. No, I repeat once more: this is not a personal matter." "And you expect me to believe that?" He shrugged his shoulders. It was now she who smiled derisively. "Have you forgotten a certain evening in this room, three years ago?" But he did not flinch. "Upon my word, if you are bold enough to recall that!--However, the reminder was unnecessary. Tell me now: aren't you about done with Guest?" For still a moment, she fought to keep up her show of dignity. Then she broke down. "Heinz!--oh, I don't know! Oh, yes, yes, yes--a thousand times, yes! Oh, I'm so tired--I can't tell you how tired I am--of the very sight of him! I never wanted him, believe me, I didn't! He thrust himself on me. It was not my doing." "Oh, come now! Tell that to some one else." "Yes, I know: you only think the worst of me. But though I was weak, and yielded, anyone would have done the same. He gave me no peace.--But I've been punished out of all proportion to the little bit of happiness it brought me. There's no more miserable creature alive than I am." "What interests me," continued Krafft, in a matter-of-fact tone, "is, how you came to choose so far afield from your particular type. It's well enough represented here." She saw the folly of wasting herself upon him, and gave a deep sigh. Then, however, the same wild change as before came over her face. Stooping, she took his hand and fondled it. "Heinz! Now that you're here, do one thing--only one--for me! Have pity on me! I've gone through so much--been so unhappy. Tell me--there's only one thing I want to know. Where is he? Will he NEVER come back? For you know. You must know. You have seen him." She had sunk to her knees; her head was bent over his hand; she laid her cheek against it. Krafft considered her thoughtfully; his eye dwelt with approval on the broad, slender shoulders, the lithe neck--all the sure grace of the crouching body. "Will you do something for me, Lulu?" "Anything!" "Then let your hair down." He himself drew out the pins and combs that held it, and the black mass fell, and lay in wide, generous waves round face and neck. "That's the idea! Now go on." Louise kissed his hand. "Tell me; you must know." "But is it possible that still interests you?" "Oh, no! My life depends on it, that's all. You are cruel and bad; but still I can speak to you--for months now, I haven't had a soul to speak to. Be kind to me this once, Heinz. I CAN'T go on living without him. I haven't lived since he left me--not an hour!--Oh, you're my last hope!" "You'll have plenty of hopes in your life yet." "In those old days, you hated me, too. But don't bear malice now. There's nothing I won't do for you, if you tell me. I'll never speak to--never even think of you again." "I'm not so long-suffering." "Then you won't tell me?" "I didn't say that." She crushed his hand between hers. "Here's the chance you asked for--to save your friend! Oh, won't you understand?" An inward satisfaction, of which only he himself knew the cause, warmed Krafft through at seeing her prostrate before him. But as he continued to look at her, a thought crossed his mind, and quickly resolved, he laid his cigarette on the table, and put his hands, first on her head, amid the tempting confusion of her hair, which met them like a thick stuff pleasant to the touch, and from there to her shoulders, inclining her towards him. She looked up, and though her eyes were full of tears, her white face was alight in an instant with hope again, as he said: "Would you do something else for me if I told you?" She strained back, so that she might see his face. "Heinz!--what is it?" And then, with a sudden gasp of comprehension: "Oh, if that's all!--I will never see Maurice Guest again." "That's not it." "What is it then?" "Will you listen quietly?" "Yes, yes." She ceased to draw back, let herself be held. But he felt her trembling. He whispered a few words in her ear. Almost simultaneously she jerked her head away, and, turning a dark red, stared incredulously at him. Then she sprang to her feet. "Oh, what a fool I am! To believe, for one instant, there was a human spot in you I could get at!--Take your hands away--take them off me! Because I've had no one to speak to for so long: because I know YOU could understand if you would--Oh, when a woman is down, anyone may hit her." "Gently, gently!--You're too good for such phrases." "I'm no different from other women. It's only you--with your horrible thoughts of me. YOU! Why, you're no more to me than the floor I stand on." "And matters are simplified by that very fact.--I can give you his address, Lulu." "Go away! I may hurt you. I could kill you.--Go away!" "And this," said Krafft, as he put on his coat again, "is how a woman listens quietly. Well, Lulu, think it over. A word at any time will bring me, if you change your mind." One evening, about a week later, Maurice entered Seyffert's Cafe. The heavy snowfall had been succeeded by a period of thaw--of slush and gloom; and, on this particular night, a keen wind had risen, making the streets seem doubly cheerless. It was close on nine o'clock, and Seyffert's was crowded with its usual guests--young people, who had escaped from more or less dingy rooms to the warmth and light of the cafe, where the yellow blinds were drawn against the inclement night. The billiard table in the centre was never free; those players whose turn had not yet come, or was over, stood round it, cigarette or large black cigar in hand, and watched the game. Maurice had difficulty in finding a seat. When he did, it was at a table for two, in a corner. A youth who had already eaten his supper, sat alone there, picking his teeth. Maurice took the opposite chair, and made his evening meal with a languid appetite. At the other side of the room was a large and boisterous party, whose leader was Krafft--Krafit in his most outrageous mood. Every other minute, his sallies evoked roars of laughter. Maurice refrained from glancing in that direction. When, however, his VIS-A-VIS got up and went away, he was startled from his conning of the afternoon paper by seeing Krafft before him. The latter, who carried his beer-mug in his hand, took the vacated scat, nodded and smiled. Maurice was on his guard at once; for it seemed to him that they were being watched by the party Krafft had left. Putting down the newspaper, he wished his friend good-evening. "I've something to say to you," said Krafft without responding, and, having drained his glass, he clapped the lid to attract the waiter's attention. With the over-anxious readiness to oblige, which was becoming one of his most marked traits, and, in reality, cloaked a deathly indifference, Maurice hung up his paper, and sat forward to listen. Crossing his arms on the table, Krafft began to speak, meanwhile fixing his companion with his eye. Maurice was at first too bewildered by what he heard to know to whom the words referred. Then, the colour mounted to his face; the nerves in his temples began to throb; and his hand moved along the edge of the table, in search of something to which it could hold fast.--It was the first time the name of Louise had been mentioned between them--and in what a tone! "Heinz!" he said at last; his voice seemed not to be his own. "How dare you speak of Miss Dufrayer like that!" "PARDON!" said Krafft; his flushed, transparent cheeks were aglow, his limpid eyes shone like stars. "Do you mean Lulu?" Maurice grew pale. "Mind what you're saying!" Krafft took a gulp of beer. "Are you afraid of the truth?--But just one word, and I'm done. You no doubt knew, as every one else did, that Lulu was Schilsky's mistress. What you didn't know, was this;" and now, without the least attempt at palliation, without a single extenuating word, there fell from his lips the quick and witty narration of an episode in which Louise and he had played the chief parts. It was the keynote of their relations to each other: the story, grossly told, of a woman's unsatisfied fancy. Before the pitiless details, not one of which was spared him, were checked off, Maurice understood; half rising from his chair, he struck Krafft a resounding blow in the face. He had intended to hit the mouth, but, his hand remaining fully open, caught on the cheek, and with such force that the delicate skin instantly bore a white imprint of all five fingers. Only the people in their immediate neighbourhood saw what had happened; but these sprang up; a girl gave a nervous cry; and in a minute, the further occupants of the room had gathered round them, the billiard-players with their cues in their hands. Two waiters, napkin on arm, hastened up, and the proprietor came out from an inner room, and rubbed his hands. "MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!" Krafft had jumped to his feet; he was also unable to refrain from putting his hand to his tingling face. Maurice, who was very pale, stood staring, like a person in a trance, at the mark, now deep red, which his hand had left on his friend's cheek. There was a solemn pause; all eyes were fixed on Krafft; and the stillness was only broken by the proprietor's persuasive: "MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!" In half a minute Krafft had collected himself. Turning, he jauntily waved his hand to those pressing up behind; though one side of his face still blazed and burned. "Don't allow yourselves to be disturbed, gentlemen. The incident is closed--for the present, at least. My friend here was carried away by a momentary excitement. Kindly resume your seats, and act as if nothing had happened. I shall call him to account at my own convenience.--But just one moment, please!" The last words were addressed to Maurice. Opening a notebook, Krafft tore out one of the little pages, and, with his customary indolence of movement, wrote something on it. Then he folded it through the middle, and across again, and gave it to Maurice. Maurice took it, because there seemed nothing else for him to do; he also, for the same reason, took his coat and hat, which some one handed to him. He saw nothing of what went on--nothing but the five outspread marks, which had run together so slowly. He had, however, enough presence of mind to do what was evidently expected of him; and, in the hush that still prevailed, he left the cafe. The wind sent a blast in his face. Round the corners of the streets, which it was briskly scavenging, it swept in boisterous gusts, which beat the gas-flames flat as soon as they reared themselves, and made them give a wavering, uncertain light. Not a soul was visible. But in the moment that he stood hesitating outside the brilliancy of the yellow blinds, the hubbub of voices burst forth again. He moved hastily away, and began to walk, to put distance between himself and the place. He did not shrink before the wind-scourged meadows, but fought his way forward, till he reached the woods. There he threw himself face downwards on the first bench he came to. A smell of rotting and decay met his nostrils: as if, from the thousands of leaves, mouldering under the trees on which they had once hung, some invisible hand had set free thousands of odours, there mounted to him, as he lay, all that rich and humid earthiness that belongs to sunless places. And for a time, he was conscious of little else but this morbid fragrance. An open brawl! He had struck a man in the face before a crowd of onlookers, and had as good as been ejected from their midst. From now on, he was an outcast from orderly society, was branded as one who was not wholly responsible for his actions--he, Maurice Guest, who had ever been so chary of committing himself. What made the matter seem still blacker, too, in his own eyes, was the fact of Krafft having once been his intimate, personal friend. Now, he could never even think of him again, without, at the same time, seeing the mark of his hand on Krafft's cheek. If the blow had remained invisible, it might have been more easily forgotten; but he had seen it, as it were, taken shape before him.--Or, had it only been returned, it would have helped to lessen the weight of his present abasement--oh, he would have given all he had to have felt a return blow on his own face! Even the smallest loss of selfcontrol on the part of Krafft would have been enough. But the latter was too proud to give himself away gratuitously: he preferred to take his revenge in the more unconventional fashion of leaving his friend to bear the ignominy alone. Maurice lay stabbing himself with these and similar thoughts. Only little by little did the tumult that had been roused in him abate. Then, and just the more vividly for the break in his memory, the gross words Krafft had said, came back to him. Recalling them, he felt an intense bitterness against Louise. She was the cause of all his sufferings; were it not for her, he might still be leading a quiet, decent life. It was her doing that he was compelled to part, bit by bit, with his selfrespect. Not once, in all the months they had been together, had the smallest good come to him through her. Nothing but misery. Now, he had no further rest where he was. He must go to her, and tax her with it, repeat what Krafft had said, to her very face. She should suffer, too--and the foretasted anguish and pleasure of hot recriminations dulled all other feelings in him. He rose, chilled to the bone from his exposure; one hand, which had hung down over the bench, was wet and sticky from grasping handfuls of dead leaves. It was past eleven o'clock. Louise wakened with a start, and, at the sight of his muddy, dishevelled dress, rose to her elbow. "What is it? What's the matter? Where have you been?" He stood at the foot of the bed, and looked at her. The loose masses of her hair, which had come unplaited, arrested his attention: he had never seemed to know before how brutally black it was. With his eyes fixed on it, he repeated what Krafft had told him. Louise lay with the back of one hand on her forehead, and watched him from under it. When he had finished, she said: "So Heinz has raked up that old story again, has he?" Maurice had expected--yes, what had he expected?--anger, perhaps, or denial, or, it might be, vituperation; only not the almost impartial composure with which she listened to him. For he had not spared her a word. "Is that all you've got to say?" he cried, suffocated with doubt. "Then you ... you admit it?" "Admit it! Maurice! Are you crazy?--to wake me up for this! It happened YEARS ago!" His recoil of disgust was too marked to be ignored. Louise half sat up in bed again, supporting herself on one hand. Her nightgown was not buttoned; he saw to the waist a strip of the white skin beneath, saw, too, how a long black strand of her hair fell in and lay on it. "You won't tell me you didn't know from the first there had been ... something between Heinz and me?" she cried, roused to defend herself.--"And look here, Maurice, as he told you that, it's my turn now. I'll tell you why!" And sitting still more upright, she gave a reason which made him grasp the knob of the bed-post so fiercely that it came away in his hand. He threw it into a corner. "Louise! ... you! to take such words on your tongue! Is there no shame left in you?" His throat was dry and narrow. "Shame! You only mean the need for concealment. Before you had got me, there was no talk of shame." "Do you know what you're saying?" "Oh, that's your eternal cry!" and, suddenly spurred to anger, she rose again. "I know--yes, I know! Do you think I'm a fool? Why must you alone be so innocent! Why should you alone not know that I was only jealous of a single person, and that was Krafft?" Maurice turned away. In the comparative darkness behind the screen, he sat down on the sofa, put his arms on the table, and his head on his arms. He was exhausted, and found he must have slept as he sat; for when he lifted his head again, the hands of the clock had moved forward by several hours. X. One morning towards the end of January, Krafft disappeared from Leipzig, and some days later, the body of Avery Hill was found in a secluded reach of the Pleisse, just below Connewitz. Some workmen, tramping townwards soon after dawn, noticed a strip of light stuff twisted round a snag, which projected slightly above the surface of the water. It proved to be the skirt of her dress, which had been caught and held fast. Ambulance and police were summoned, and the body was recovered and taken to the police-station. The last of his friends to see Krafft was Madeleine, and the number of those interested in his departure, and in Avery's quick suicide, was so large that she several times had to repeat her lively account of the last visit he paid her. He had come in, one afternoon, and settling himself on the sofa, refused to be dislodged. As he was in one of his most ambiguous moods, she left him to himself, and went on with her work. On rising to go, he had stood for a moment with his hands on her shoulders. "Well, Mada, whatever happens, remember I was sorry you wouldn't have me." "Oh, come now, Heinz, you never really asked me!" It was snowing hard that night, a moist, soft snow that melted as it touched the ground, and Krafft borrowed her umbrella. As usual, however, he returned before he could have got half-way down the stairs, to say that he had changed his mind and would not take it. "But you'll get wet through." "I don't want your umbrella, I tell you.--Or have you two?" "No; but I'm not going out.--Oh, well, leave it then. And may you reap a frightful rheumatism!" As he went down, for the second time, he whistled the ROSE OF SHARON: she listened to it grow fainter in the distance: and that was the last she or anyone had heard of Krafft. The following morning, his landlady found a note on her kitchen-table, instructing her to keep his belongings for four weeks. If, by that time, they had not been claimed, she might sell them, and take the money obtained for herself. Only a few personal articles were missing, such as would be necessary for a hurried journey.--Of course, so Madeleine wound up the story, she had never expected Heinz to behave like a normal mortal, and to take leave of his friends in the ordinary way, and she was also grateful to him for not pilfering her umbrella, which was silvertopped. All the same, there was something indecent about his behaviour. It showed how little he had, at heart, cared for any of them. Only a person who thoroughly despised others, would treat them in this way, playing with them up to the last minute, as one plays with dolls or fools. Avery Hill was laid out in a small room adjoining the policestation. It was evening before the business of identification was over. Various members of the American colony had to give evidence, and the services of the consul were called into play, for there were countless difficulties, formalities and ceremonies attached to this death by one's own hand in a foreign country. Before all the technical details were concluded, there were those who thought--and openly said so--that an intending suicide might cast a merciful thought on the survivors. Only Dove made no complaint. He had been one of the first to learn what had happened, and, in the days that followed, he ran to and fro, from one BUREAU to another, receiving signatures, and witnessing them, bearing the whole brunt of surly Saxon officialdom on his own shoulders. Twenty-four hours later, it had been arranged that the body should be buried on the JOHANNISFRIEDHOF, and the consul was advised by cablegram to lay out the money for the funeral. Under the eyes of a police-officer and a young clerk from the consul's office, Madeleine, assisted by Miss Jensen, went through the dead girl's belongings, and packed them together. Miss Jensen kept up, in a low voice, a running commentary on the falsity of men and the foolishness of women. But, at times, her natural kindness of heart asserted itself, to the confusion of her theories. "Poor thing, poor young thing!" she murmured, gazing at a pair of well-patched boots which she held in her hand. "If only she had come to us!--and let us help her!" "Help her?" echoed Madeleine in a testy way; she was one of those who thought that the dead girl might have shown more consideration for her friends, standing, as they did, immediately before their PRUFUNGEN. "Could one help her ever having set eyes on that attractive scoundrel?-- And besides, it's easy enough thinking afterwards, one might have been able to help, to do this and that. It's a mistake. People don't want help; and they don't give you a thank-you for offering it. All they ask is to be let alone, to muddle and bungle their lives as they like." As they walked home together, Miss Jensen returned once more to the subject of Krafft's failings. "I've known many men," she said, "one more credulously vain and stupid than another; for unless a man is engaged in satisfying his brute instincts, he can be twisted round the finger of ANY woman. But Mr. Krafft was the only one I've met, who didn't appear to me to have a single good impulse." The big woman's high-pitched voice grated on Madeleine. "You're quite wrong there," she said more snappily than before. "Heinz had as many good impulses as anyone else. But he had reduced the concealing of them to a fine art. He was never happier than when he had succeeded in giving a totally false impression of himself. Take me for this, for that!--just what I choose. Often it was as if he flung a bone to a dog: there! that's good enough for you. No one knew Heinz: each of us knew a little bit of him, and thought it was all there was to know.--He never showed a good impulse: that is as much as saying that he swarmed with them. And no doubt he would have considered that, with regard to you, he had been entirely successful. You have the idea of him he meant you to have." "He was never her lover," said Louise with a studied carelessness. Maurice, to whom nothing was more offensive than the tone of bravado in which she flaunted subjects of this nature, was stung to retaliation. "How do YOU know?" "Well, if you wish to hear--from his own lips." "Do you mean to say you've spoken to Heinz about things of that kind?--discussed his relations with other women?" "Do you need reminding that I knew Heinz before I had ever heard of you?" He turned away, too dispirited to cross words with her. The events of the past week had closed over his head as two waves Close over a swimmer, cutting off light and air. Since the night on which he had left his whilom friend the mark of his spread fingers as a parting gift, he had ceased to care greatly about anything. Compared with his pessimistic absorption in himself, Avery's suicide and Krafft's departure touched him lightly. For the girl, he had never cared. As soon, though, as he heard that Krafft had disappeared, he turned out his pockets for the scrap of paper Heinz had given him that evening in the cafe. But it threw no light on what had happened. It was merely an address, and, twist it as he would, Maurice could make no more of it than the words: KLOSTERGASSE 12. He resolved to go through the street of that name in the afternoon; but, when the time came, he forgot about it, and it was not till next morning that he carried out his intention. There was, however, nothing to be learned; number twelve was a gunsmith's shop, and at his hesitating inquiry, if anything were known there of a music-student called Krafft, the owner of the shop looked at him as if he were a lunatic, and answered rudely: was the Herr under the impression that the shop was an information BUREAU? Louise was dressed to go out. Pressed as to her destination, she said that she was going to see the body. Maurice sought in vain to dissuade her. "It's a perverse thing to do," he cried. "You didn't care a fig for the girl when she was alive. But now she can't forbid it, you go and stare at her, out of nothing but curiosity." "How do you know whether I cared for her or not?" Louise threw at him: she was tying on her' veil before the glass. "Do you think I tell you everything?--And as for your 'perverse,' it's the same with all I ever do. You have made it your business always to find my wishes absurd." She took up her gloves and, holding them together, hit her muff with them. "In this case, it doesn't concern you in the least. I don't ask you to come. I want to go alone." The more shattered and unsure he grew, the more self-assertive was she. There was an air of bravado in all she did, at this time--as in the matter of her determination to go to the dead-house--and she hurt him, with reckless cruelty, whenever a chance offered. Her pale mouth seemed only to open to say unkind things, and her eyes weighed him with an ironic contempt. To his jarred ears, her very laugh sounded less fine. At moments, she began almost to look ugly to him; but it was a dangerous ugliness, more seductive than her beauty had ever been. Then, he knew that she was not too good for him, nor he for her, nor either of them for the world they lived in. They walked side by side to the mortuary. It was a very cold day, and Louise wore heavy furs, from which her face rose enticingly. The attention she attracted was to Maurice like gall to a wound. There was not much difficulty in gaining admittance to the dead. A small coin changed hands, and a man in uniform opened the door. The post-mortem examination had been held that day, and the body was swathed from head to foot in a white sheet. It lay on a long, projecting shelf, and a ticket was pinned on the wall at its head. On the opposite side of the room, on a similar shelf, was another shrouded figure--the body of a workingman, found that morning on the outskirts of the town, with an empty bottle which had contained carbolic acid by its side. The LEICHENFRAU, the public layer--out of the dead, told them this; it was she, too, who drew back the sheet from Avery's face in order that they might see it. She was a rosy, apple-cheeked woman, and her vivid colouring was thrown into relief by the long black cloak and the close-fitting, black poke-bonnet that she wore. Maurice, for whom the dead as such had no attraction, turned from his contemplation of the stark-stretched figure on the shelf, to watch the living woman. The exuberance of her vitality had something almost insultant in the presence of these two rigid forms, from whose faces the colour had fled for ever. Her eyes were alert like those of a bird; her voice and movements were loud and bustling. In thought he compared her to a carrion-crow. It was this woman's calling to live on the dead; she hastened from house to house to cleanse poor, inanimate bodies, whose dignity had departed from them. He wondered idly whether she gloated over the announcements of fresh deaths, and mentally sped the dying. Did she talk of good seasons and of slack seasons, and look forward to the spread of contagious disease?--Well, at least, she throve on her trade, as a butcher thrives by continually handling meat. Louise had eyes only for the face of the dead girl. She stood gazing at it, with a curious absorption, but without a spark of feeling. The LEICHENFRAU, having finished tying up a basket, crossed the room and joined her. "EINE SCHONE LEICHE!" she said, and nodded, appreciating the fact that a stranger should admire what was partly her own handiwork. It was true; Avery's face looked as though it were modelled in wax. She had not been in the water for more than half an hour, had said the doctor, not long enough to be disfigured in any way. Only her hair remained dank and matted, and, although it was laid straight out over the bolster, it would probably never be quite dry again. No matter, continued the woman; on the morrow would come the barber, a good friend of hers, to dress it for the tomb; he would bring tongs and irons, and other heating-apparatus with him, and, for certain, would make a good job of it, so skilled was he: he had all the latest fashions in hair-dressing at his finger-ends. The face itself was as placid as it had been in life; the lids were firmly closed--no peeping or squinting here--and the lips met and rested on each other round and full. Seen like this, it now became evident that his face was one of those which are, all along, intended for death--intended, that is, to lie waxen and immobile, to show to best advantage. In life, there had been too marked a discrepancy between the extreme warmth of the girl's colouring and the extreme immobility of her expression. Now that the blood had, as it were, been drained away to the last drop, now that temples and nostrils had attained transparency, the fine texture of the skin and the beauty of the curves of lips and chin were visible to every eye. Only one hand, so the LEICHENFRAU babbled on, was convulsively closed, and could not be undone; and, as she spoke, she drew the sheet further down, and displayed the naked arm and hand: the long, fine fingers were clenched, the thumb inside the rest. Otherwise, Avery appeared to sleep, to sleep profoundly, with an intensity such as living sleep never attains to--the very epitome of repose. It seemed as if her eyelids were pressed down by some unseen force; and, in her presence, the feeling gained ground in one, that it was worth enduring much, to arrive at a rest of this kind at last. "JA, JA," said the woman, and rearranged the covering. "It's a pleasure to handle such a pretty corpse. That one there, now,"--with her chin she pointed to the other figure, and made a face of disgust. "EIN EKLIGER KERL! There was nothing to be done with him." "Let me see what he's like," begged Louise. "It's an ugly sight," said the woman. However, she pulled the sheet down, and so far that not only the face, but also a part of the hairy black breast was visible. Louise shuddered, yet the very horror of the thing fascinated her, and she plied the woman with questions about the workings of the agonising poison that had been swallowed. After one hasty glance, Maurice had turned away, and now stood staring out of the high, barred window into a gloomy little courtyard, For him, the air of the room was hard to breathe, owing to the faint, yet unmistakable odour, which even the waxen figure of the girl had begun to exhale; and he marvelled how Louise, who was so sensitive, could endure it. Outside, both drew long breaths of the cold, evening air, and Louise bought a bunch of violets, which she pressed to nose and mouth. "Horrible, horrible!" she said, at the same time raising her shoulders in their heavy cape. "Oh, that man!--I shall never forget his face." "What do you go to such places for? You have only yourself to thank for it." He, too, was aware that a needless and repellent memory had been added to their lives. "Oh, everything's my own fault--I know that. You are never to blame for anything!" "Did I ask you to go there?--did I?" But she only laughed in reply, through and through hostile to him; and they walked for some distance in silence. "Why are you going this way?" he asked suspiciously, when she turned into a street that led in the opposite direction to that which they should have taken. "I'm not going home. I couldn't sit alone in the dark with that ... that thing before my eyes." "Who asked you to sit alone?--Where are you going?" "I don't know ... where I like." "That's no answer." "And if I don't choose to answer?--I don't want you. I want to be alone. I'm sick of your perpetual bad-temper, and your eternal self-righteousness." He laughed, just as she had done. The sound enraged her. "Oh, the dead at least are at peace!" she cried. "Yes! ... why don't you say it? You wish you were lying there--at peace from me!" "Why should I say what you know so well?" "Go and do it then!--who's hindering you?" "For you?--kill myself for you?" One word gave another; they pressed forward, in the falling dusk, like two distraught creatures, heedless of the notice they attracted, or of who should hear their bitter words. And because their gestures were, to some extent, regulated by the conventions of the street, because they could not face each other with flaming eyes, and throw out hands and arms to emphasise what they said, their words were all the more cruel. Louise made straight for home now; she escaped into the house, banging the door. Maurice strode down the street, in a tumult of resentment, vowing never to return. Avery Hill was buried the following afternoon. Maurice went to the funeral, because, since he had seen the dead girl's body at the mortuary, he had been invaded by a kind of pity for her, lying alone at the mercy of barber and LEICHENFRAU. And so, towards three o'clock, he fought his way against a cutting wind to the JOHANNISFRIEDHOF. A mere handful of people stood round the grave. In addition to the English chaplain, and a couple of diggers, there were present Dove, two Americans, and a young clerk from the consul's office, who was happy to be associated, in any fashion, with the English residents. It was the coldest day of that winter. Over the earth swept a harsh, dry wind, which cut like the blade of a knife, and forced stinging tears from the eyes. This wind had dried the frozen surface of the ground to the impenetrability of iron; loose earth crumbled before it like powder. Grass and shrubs had shrivelled, blighted by its breath; the bare trees were sooty-black against the sky. So intense was the prevailing sensation of icy dryness that it seemed as if the earth would never again know moisture. People's faces grew as wizened as the skins of old apples; throats and lungs were choked by the grey dust, which whirled through the streets, and made breathing an effort. In the outlying cemetery it was still bleaker than in the shelter of the houses. Over this stretch of ground the wind swept as over the surface of a sea. The grave-diggers related the extraordinary difficulty they had had in digging the grave; the earth that had been thrown up lay cracked into huge, frozen lumps. These two men stood in the background while the service was going on, and stamped their feet and beat their hands, encased in monstrous woollen gloves, to keep the blood flowing. The English chaplain, a tall, cadaverous man, with sunken cheeks and a straw-coloured beard, had wound a red and white comforter over his surplice; the five young men pulled down the ear-flaps of their caps, and stood, with high-drawn shoulders, burrowing their hands in their pockets. The chaplain gabbled the few necessary prayers: they were inaudible to his hearers; for the rushing wind carried them straight over his shoulder into space. He was not more than a bare ten minutes over the service. Then the diggers came forward to lower the coffin. Owing to the stiffness of their hands, the ropes slid from their grasp, and the coffin fell forward into the hard yellow grave with a bump. The young men took the obligatory handfuls of earth, and struck the side of the coffin with them as gently as possible. With the last word still on his lips, the chaplain shut his book and fled; and the rest hastily dispersed. Maurice shook off the young clerk, who was murmuring unintelligible words of sympathy, and left the cemetery in the wake of the two Americans, for whom a droschke was in waiting to take them back to the town. "Waal, I'm sort o' relieved that wasn't MY funeral," he heard one of them say. He walked at full speed to restore his famished circulation. When he was in the heart of the town again, he entered a cafe; and there he remained, with his elbows on the little marble table, letting the scene he had just come through pass once more before his mind. There had been something grotesquely indecent about the haste of every one concerned: the chaplain, gabbling like a parrot, out of regard for the safety of his own lungs; the hurry-skurry of the diggers, whose thoughts were no doubt running on the size of their gratuities; the openly expressed satisfaction of the few mourners, when they were free to hurry off again, as in hurry they had arrived. Not one present but had counted the minutes, at the expiry of which the dead girl would be consigned to her appointed hole. What an ending! All the talent, the incipient genius, that had been in her, thrust away with the greatest possible despatch, buried out of sight in the hideously hard, cold earth. Snuffed out like a candle, and with as little ceremony, was all the warm, complex life that had made up this one, throbbing bit of humanity: for what it had been, not a soul alive now cared. And what a night, too, for one's first night underground! Brr!--At the thought of it, he drank another cup of coffee, and a fiery, stirring liqueur. But the sense of depression clung to him, and, as he walked home, he regretted the impulse that had led him to attend the funeral. For all the melancholy of valediction was his. The dead girl was free--and he had a sudden vision of her, as she had lain in the mortuary, with the look of superhuman peace on her face. Over the head of this, he was sarcastic at his own expense. For though she WERE being treated like a piece of lumber, what did it matter to her? Beneath the screening lid, she continued to sleep, tranquil, undisturbed. On the other hand, how absurd it was that he, who had cared little for her in life, should in this wise constitute himself her only mourner! And, mentally and physically, he now jerked himself to rights, and even began to whistle, as he went, in an attempt to seem at harmony with himself. But the tune that rose to his lips was Krafft's song, THE ROSE OF SHARON, and he straightway broke off, in disgust and confusion. In his room, as soon as he had struck a match to light the lamp, he saw that a letter was lying on the table. By the gradual spread of the light, he made out that it bore an Austrian stamp, and directly he took it in his hand, he recognised the writing. Heinz!--it was from Heinz! He tore open the envelope with unsteady fingers; what could Heinz have to write to him about? Instinctively, he connected it in some way with the events of the afternoon. But it was a very brief note, covering hardly a page of the paper. Standing beside the lamp, Maurice held the sheet in the circle of light, and ran his eye over the few lines. He took them in, in a flash, that is to say, he read them automatically; but their sense did not penetrate his brain. He tried again, and still he could not grasp what they meant; still again, and slowly, word by word, till he could have repeated them by heart; but always without getting at their inner meaning. Then, however, and all of a sudden, as if some inner consciousness had understood them, and now gave bodily warning of it; suddenly, his knees began to shake, and he was forced to sit down. Sitting, he continued to stare at the page of writing before him, with contracted pupils. He commenced to read again, and even said the first line or two of the letter aloud, as if that might aid him. But the paper fell from his hand, and he gazed, instead, into the flame of the lamp, right into the inmost flame, till he was blind with it. His head fell forward, and lay on his hands, and on the rustling sheet of paper. "God in Heaven!" He heard himself say it, and was even conscious of the fact that, like every mortal in the throes of a strong emotion, he, too, called on God. A long and profound silence ensued. It went on and on, persisted, was about to become eternal, when it was rudely broken by the sound of a child's cry. He raised his head. The walls swam round him: in spite of the coldness of the night and the fact that the room was unheated, he was clammy with perspiration. The skin of his face, too, had a peculiar, drawn feeling, as if it were a mask that was too tight for it. He shivered. Then his eye fell on the letter lying open on the table. Without a moment's hesitation, without waiting even to put the lamp out, he seized it, and went headlong from the house. But he was strangely unequal to exertion. He felt a craving for stimulant, and entering a wine-shop, drank a couple of cognacs. His strength came back to him; people moved out of his way; he had energy enough to climb the stair, and to go through the business of unlocking the door. At his abrupt entrance, Louise concealed something in a drawer, and turned the key on it. But Maurice was too self-absorbed to heed her action, or consciously to hear her exclamation at his haggard appearance. He shut the door, crossed to where she was standing, and, without speaking, pulled her nearer to the lamp. By its light, he scanned her face with a desperate eagerness. "What is it? What's the matter?" At the sound of her voice, the tension of the past hour relaxed. He let his head fall on her shoulder, and shut his eyes, swaying as she swayed beneath his weight. "Forgive me! ... forgive me!" "You've been drinking, I think." But she held still under his grasp. "Yes, I have. Louise! ... tell me it's a horrible mistake. Help me, you MUST help me!" "How can I help you, if you won't tell me what the matter is?" She believed him to be half drunk, and spoke as to a drunken person, without meaning much. "Yes, yes ... I will. Only give me time." But he postponed beginning. Leaning more heavily on her, he pressed his lips to the stuff of her dress. He would have liked to sleep, just where he was; indeed, he was invaded by the desire to sleep, never again to unclose his eyes. But she grew restless, and tried to draw her shoulder away. Then he looked at her, and a feverish stream of words, half self-recriminative, half in self-defence, burst from his lips. But they had little to do with the matter in hand, and were incomprehensible to her. "It has been a terrible nightmare. And only you can drive it away." As he spoke, he looked, with a sudden suspicion, right into her eyes. But they neither faltered nor grew uneasy. "It will turn out to be nothing, I know," she said coldly. "You're always devising some new way of tormenting me." Her words roused him. Fumbling in his pocket, he drew from it Krafft's letter. "Is that nothing? Read it and tell me. I found it at home on my table." Louise took it with unmoved indifference. But directly she saw whose handwriting it was, her face grew grave and attentive. She looked back from the envelope to him, to see what he was thinking, to learn how much he knew. In spite of his roughness there was a hungry, imploring look in his eyes, an appeal to her to put him out of misery, and in the way he desired. And, as always, before such a look, her own face hardened. "Read it! What he dares to write to me!" Slowly, as if it were impossible for her to hurry, she drew the sheet from the crumpled envelope and smoothed it out. As she did so, she half turned away. But not so far that he could not see the dark, disfiguring blood stain her neck and blotch her cheek--even her ear grew crimson. She read deliberately, lingering over each word, but the instant she had finished, she crushed the paper to a ball, and threw it to the other end of the room. "The scoundrel!" she cried. "Oh, the scoundrel!" Clenching her two hands, she pressed them to her face. Maurice did not say a word; he hardly dared to draw breath, for fear some sign of her guilt might escape him. Leaning against the table, he marked each tell-tale quiver of lip or eyelid. "The blackguard!" she cried again, shaken by rage. "If I had him here, I'd strangle him with my own hands!" He gloated over her anger. "Yes," he said in a low voice. "I, too ... could kill him." There was a pause, in which each followed out a possible means of revenge. "Now you see," he said. "When I got home--when I found that--I thought I should go mad." Reminded thus, of his share in the matter, Louise turned her head, and considered him. Her face was tense. "Forgive me!" said Maurice, and held out his hands to her. She gave him another look of the same kind. "I forgive YOU. What for?" "Because ... since I got it, I've been thinking vile things." "Oh, that!" She moved away, and gave a curt laugh, which met him like a stab. But she had no consideration for him: she had only room in her mind for Krafft's treachery. "I could kill him," she said again. "Don't.... Leave me alone!"--this to Maurice, who was trying to take her hand. "Don't touch me!" "Not touch you!--why not?" In an instant his softness passed over into suspicion: it was like a dry pile that had waited for the match. "I not touch you?" he repeated. "Do you want to make me believe that what he says there is true?" "Believe what you like." "But that's just what I won't do. Turn here! Look me in the face! Now tell me it's a lie." She struggled to free her hands. "You hurt me, Maurice! Let me go!" "Be careful!--or I shall hurt you more than this. Now answer me!" "You!--with your ridiculous heroics! Be careful yourself!" His grip of her grew tighter. "For your precious peace of mind then--that you may not be kept in suspense: what Heinz says there is--true!" He did not at once grasp what she meant. He stood staring stupidly at her, still clutching her hands. With a determined effort, Louise wrenched them away. "Don't you hear what I say? It's true--all true--every word of it!" At the cruel repetition, he went pale, and after that, seemed to go on growing paler, until his face was like a sheet of paper. A horrible silence ensued; neither dared to let go of the other's eyes. "My God!" he said at last. "My God!" He sat down at the table, and buried his face in his arms. Louise did not move; she stood waiting, her hands, which were red and sore, pressed against her sides. And as minutes passed, and he did not stir, she began in a vacant way to count the ticks of the clock. If he did not speak soon, did not go on with what had to come, and get it over, she would be forced to scream. A scream was mounting in her throat. "When was it? ... How? ... Why?" She made no answer. He straightened himself, holding on to the table. "And if that letter hadn't come, you wouldn't have told me?" Again she did not reply. He sprang to his feet, interpreting her inability to bring forth a sound as mere contemptuous defiance. "WHY did you tell me? Did I need to know?" he cried, loudly, and, in the confines of the room, his voice had the force of a shout. As she still remained dumb, he leaned across the table and actually shouted at her. "Any more?--are there any more? He won't have been the only one. Tell me, I say! Good God! Don't you hear me?" The arteries in his temples were beating like two separate hearts. As nothing he said would make her open her lips, he snatched up her hands again, and dragged her a few steps forward--this, to prove to himself that he had at least bodily power over her. "How dare you stand there and say it's true! You brazen, shameless----!" She thought he was going to strike her, and moved her head quickly to one side. The movement did not escape him; he was amazed at it, and horrified by it. "You're afraid of me, are you? You expect to be beaten, when you make a confession of that sort?" And as she kept her head bent, in suspense, he shouted: "Very well, you shall have something to be afraid of ... you--!" and lifting his hand, he struck her a blow on the shoulder. It was given with force, and she sank to the floor, where she lay in a heap, screening her face with her arm. The first taste of his greater strength was like the flavour of blood to a beast of prey. In her mind, she might defy him, physically he was her master; and he struck her, again and again. But he did not wring any sound from her. She lay face downwards, and let the blows fall. When his first onslaught of rage had spent itself, a glimmering of reason returned to him. He staggered to his feet, and looked down with horror at the prostrate figure. "My God, what am I doing?--what have I done?" A sudden fear swept through him that he had killed her. But now, for the first time, she spoke. "It's true!" he heard her say. At these words, the desire actually to kill her was so overwhelming that he moved precipitately away, and, in order not to see her, pressed his smarting hand to his eyes. But in the greater clearness of thought this shutting off of externals brought with it, the ultimate meaning of what she had done was revealed to him; he saw red through his closed lids, and, going back to her, he struck her anew. The knowledge that, under her dressing-gown, she had nothing on but a thin nightgown, gave him pleasure; he felt each of the blows fall full and hard on her firm flesh. From time to time, she turned her face to cry: "It's true ... it is true!" deliberately inciting him to continue. But the moment came when his arm sank powerless to his side, when, if his life had depended on it, he could not have struck another blow. With difficulty, he rose to his feet; and such was the apathy that came over him, that it was all he could do to drag himself to the sofa. Once there, he leaned back and closed his eyes. For half an hour or more, neither of them stirred. Then, when she understood that he had done, that he was not coming back to her, Louise pulled herself into a sitting position, and from there to her feet. She could hardly stand; her head swam; not an inch of her body but ached and stung. Her exaltation had left her now; she began to feel sick, and, going over to the bed, she fell heavily upon it. Maurice heard her movements; but so incapable did he feel of further effort that lie remained sitting, with his eyes shut. A new sound roused him: she was shivering, and with such violence that the bedstead was shaken. After a crucial struggle with himself, he rose, and crossed the room. She was lying outside the bedclothes. He pulled off an eider-down quilt, and spread it over her. As he did this, his arms were round her, all the beloved body was in his grasp. When he had finished, he did not remove them, but, kneeling down beside the bed, pressed his face to the quilt, and to the warm body below. And so the night wore away. XI. Throughout February, and the greater part of March, the HAUPTPRUFUNGEN were held in the Conservatorium: twice a week, from six to eight o'clock in the evening, the concert hall was crammed with an eager crowd. To these concerts, the outside public was admitted, the critics were invited, and the performances received notices in the newspapers; in short, the outgoing student was, for the first time, treated like a real debutant. Concerted music was accompanied by the full orchestra; the large gallery that ran round the hall was opened up; and the girls, whose eager faces hung over its edge, were more brightly decked than usual, in ribbons and laces. Some of those who stepped down the platform seemed thoroughly to relish their first taste of publicity; others, on the contrary, were awkward and abashed, and did not venture to notice the encouragement that greeted their entrance. There were players as composed as the most hardened virtuosi; others, again, who were overcome by stage-fright to such an extent that they barely escaped a total fiasco. The success of the year was Dove, in his performance of Chopin's Concerto in E minor. Dove's unshakable self-possession was here of immense value to him. Not a note was missed, not a turn slurred; the runs and brilliant passage-work of the concerto left his fingers like showers of pearls; his touch had the necessary delicacy, and, in addition to this, his reading was quite a revelation to his friends in the matter of TEMPERAMENT. It is true that Schwarz prohibited any undignified display of the emotional side of Chopin; the interpretation had to be on classical lines; but even the most determined opponents of Schwarz's method were forced to acknowledge that Dove made no mean show of the poetic contents of the music. The master himself, in his imperturbable way--he chose to act as if, all along, he had had this surprise for people up his sleeve--the master was in transports. His stern face wore an almost genial expression; he smiled, and talked loudly, and, when the performance was over, hurried to and fro, full of importance, shaking hands and accepting congratulations, with a fine shade of reserve. Dove's fellow-pupils were enraptured for Schwarz's sake; for, undeniably, the master's numbers this year were poor, compared with those of other teachers. It behoved the remainder to make the most of this isolated triumph; they did so, and were entertained by Schwarz at a special dinner, where many healths were drunk. Those who had "made their PRUFUNG," as the phrase ran, were, as a rule, glad to leave Leipzig when the ordeal was behind them. But Dove, who, on the day following his performance, when his name was to be read in the newspapers accompanied by various epithets of praise, had proposed and been accepted, and was this time returning to England a solemnly engaged man--Dove waited a week for his fiancee and her family, who had not been prepared for so sudden a move. He was the man of the hour. As a response to the flattering notices, he had called on all his critics, and been received by several; and he could hardly walk a street-length, without running the gauntlet of some belated congratulation. Schwarz had spoken seriously to him about prosecuting his studies for a further year, with the not impossible prospect of a performance in the Gewandhaus at the end of it; but Dove had laid before his master the reasons why this could not be: he was no longer a free man; there were now other wishes to be consulted in addition to his own. Besides, if the truth must be told, Dove had higher aims, and these led him imperatively back to England. Madeleine was ready to leave a couple of days after her last performance. Her plans for the future were fixed and sure. She had long ago given up making adventurous schemes for storming America: that had merely been her contribution to the romance of the place. Now she was hastening away to spend the month of March in Paris; she was not due at the school to which she was returning till the end of April; and, in Paris, she intended to take a brief course of finishing lessons, to rub off what she called "German thoroughness." She, too, had made a highly successful exit, though without creating a furore like Dove. Since all she did was well done, it was not possible for her to be a surprise to anyone. And finally, the rush she had lived in for weeks past, was over, the last afternoon had come, and, in its course, she went to the railway station to make arrangements about her luggage. On her way home, she entered Klemm's music-shop, where she stood, for a considerable time, taking leave of one and another. When she emerged again, the town had assumed that spectral look, which, towards evening, made the quaint old gabled streets so attractive. For the first time, Madeleine felt something akin to regret at having to leave. She had enjoyed, and made the most of, her years of study; but she was now quite ready to advance, curious to attack the future, and to dominate that also. Still, the dusk on the familiar streets inclined her to feel sentimental. "This time tomorrow, I'll be hundreds of miles away," she said to herself, "and probably shall never see the old place again." As she walked, she looked back upon her residence there--already somewhat in the light of a remembrance--weighing what it had been worth to her. Part of it was intimately associated with Maurice Guest, and thus she recalled him, too. Of late he had passed out of her life; she had been too busy to think of him. Now, however, that she was at the end of this period, the fancy seized her to see him again; and she took a resolution which had, perhaps, been dormant in her for some time. "I don't see why I shouldn't," she reasoned. "No one will know. And even if they do, I'm leaving, and it won't matter." And so she pulled her hat further over her face, and brisked up her steps in the direction of the BRAUSTRASSE--a street which she disliked, and never entered if she could avoid it. If he had lived in a better neighbourhood, things might have gone better with him, she mused; for Madeleine was a staunch believer in the influence of surroundings, and could not, for instance, understand a person who lived in dirt and disorder having any but a dirty or disorderly mind. She went from door to door, scanning the numbers, with her head poked a little forward and to one side, like a bird's. As she ascended the stair, she raised her skirts, and her nostrils twitched displeased. Frau Krause held the door open by an inch, and looked at Madeleine with distrust. "No, he's not," she replied. "And what's more, I couldn't say, if you were to pay me, when he will be." But Madeleine was not to be daunted by the arrogance of any landlady alive. "Why? Is he so irregular?" she asked. She had placed her foot in the opening of the door, and now, by a skilful movement, inserted herself bodily into the passage. Frau Krause, baffled, could do no more than mumble a: "Well, if you like to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over the threshold, drying her hands on her apron. "Are you a friend of his, may I ask?" she inquired. "Why? What do you want to know for? Do you think I'd be here if I weren't?" said Madeleine, looking her up and down. "Why I want to know?" repeated Frau Krause, and tossed her head. "Why, because I think if Herr Guest has any friends left, they ought to know how he's going on--that's why, Fraulein!" "How going on?" queried Madeleine with undisturbed coolness, and looked round her for a chair. Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause said behind her hand: "It's my opinion there's a woman in the case." "You don't need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret," answered Madeleine drily. "There is a woman, and there she sits, as you no doubt very well know." As she spoke, she pointed to a photograph of Louise, which stood on the lid of the piano. "I thought as much," exclaimed the landlady. "I thought as much. And a bad, bold face it is, too." "Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is he in debt to you?" Madeleine continued her interrogatory. "Well, I can't just say that," replied the woman, with what seemed a spice of regret. "He's paid up pretty regular till now--though of course one never knows how long he'll keep on doing it. But it goes against my heart to see a young man, who might be one's own son, acting as he does. When he first came here, there wasn't a decenter young man anywhere than Herr Guest--if I had a complaint, it was that he was too much of a steady-goer. I used to tell him he ought to take more heed for his health, not to mention the ears of the people that had to live with him. He sat at that piano there all the blessed day. And now there isn't a lazier, more cantankerous fellow in the place. You can't please him anyhow. He never gives you a civil word. He doesn't work, he doesn't cat, and he's getting so thin that his clothes just hang on him." "Is he drinking?" interrupted Madeleine in the same matter-of-fact way, with her eye on the main points of probable offence. "Well, I can't just say that," answered Frau Krause. "Not but what it mightn't be better if he was. It's the ones as don't drink who are the hard ones to get on with, in my experience. Young gentlemen who like their liquor, are of the goodnatured, easy-going sort. Now I once had a young fellow here----" "But I don't see in the least what you've got to complain of!" said Madeleine. "He pays you for the room, and you no doubt have free use of it.--A very good bargain!" She sat back and stared about her, while Frau Krause, recognising that she had met her match in this sharp-tongued young lady, curbed her temper, and launched out into the history of a former lodger. It was a dingy room, long and narrow, with a single window. Against the door that led into an adjoining room, stood a high-backed, uninviting sofa, with a table in front of it. Between this and the window was the writing-bureau, a flat, man-high piece of furniture, with drawers and pigeon-holes, and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes. Against the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards the door, on both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the iron stove. Everything was of an extreme shabbiness: the stuffing was showing through holes in the sofa, the strips of carpet were worn threadbare. A couple of photographs and a few books were ranged in line on the bureau--that was all that had been done towards giving the place a homely air. It was like a room that had never properly been lived in. While Madeleine sat thinking this, the sound of a key was heard in the front door, and Frau. Krause, interrupted in her story, had just time to tap Madeleine on the arm, exclaim: "Here he is!" and dart out of the room. Not so promptly, however, but what Maurice saw where she came from. Madeleine heard them bandying words in the passage. The door of the room was flung open, and Maurice, entering hotly, threw his hat on the table. He did not perceive his visitor till it was too late. "Madeleine! You here!" he exclaimed in surprise and embarrassment. "I beg your pardon. I didn't see you," and he made haste to recover his hat. "Yes, don't faint, it's I, Maurice.--But what's the matter? Why are you so angry with the person? Does she pry on you?" "Pry!" he echoed, and his colour deepened. "Pry's not the word for it. She ransacks everything I have. I never come home but what I find she has overhauled something, though I've forbidden her to enter the room." "Why don't you--or rather, why didn't you move? It's not much of a place, I'm sure." "Move?" he repeated, in the same tone as before, and, as he spoke, he looked incredulously at Madeleine. He had hung his coat and hat on a peg, and now came forward to the table. "Move?" he said once again, and prolonged the word as though the channel of thought it opened up was new to him. "Good gracious, yes!--If one's not satisfied with one's rooms, one moves, that's all. There's nothing strange about it." He murmured that the idea had never occurred to him, and was about to draw up a chair, when his eye caught a letter that was lying on the lowered flap of the bureau. In patent agitation, and without excusing himself, he seized it and tore it open. Madeleine saw his face darken. He read the letter through twice, from beginning to end, then tore it into a dozen pieces and scattered them on the shelf. "No bad news, I hope?" He turned his face to her; it was still contracted. "That depends on how you look at it, Madeleine," he said, and laughed in an unpleasant manner. After this, he seemed to forget her again; he stood staring at the scraps of paper with a frown. For some minutes, she waited. Then she saw herself forced to recall him to the fact of her presence. "Could you spare me a little attention now?" she asked. At her words, he jumped, and, with evident confusion, brought his wandering thoughts home. "I can't sit here for ever you know," she added. "I beg your pardon." He came up to the table, and took the chair he had previously had his hand on. "The fact is I--Can I do anything for you, Madeleine?" "For me? Oh, dear, no!--You are surprised to find me here, no doubt! But as I'm leaving to-morrow morning, I thought I'd run up and say good-bye to you--that's all. A case of Mohammed and the mountain, you see." "Leaving? To-morrow?" "Yes.--Goodness, there's nothing wonderful in that, is there? Most people do leave some time or other, you know." His reply was inaudible. "It was very good of you to look me up," he threw in as an afterthought. Madeleine, watching him, with a thin, sarcastic smile on her lips, had chanced to let her eyes stray to his hands, which he had laid on the table, and she continued to fix them, fascinated in spite of herself by the uncared-for condition of the nails. These were bitten, and broken, and dirty. Maurice, becoming aware of her intent gaze, looked down to see what it was at, hastily withdrew his hands and hid them in his pockets. "This is the first time I've been in your den, you know," she said abruptly. "Really, Maurice, you might have done better. I don't know how you've managed to put up with it so long." "My dear Madeleine, do you think I could afford to live in a palace?" "A palace?--absurd! You probably pay sixteen or seventeen marks for this hole. Well, I could have found you any number of better places for the same money--if you had come to me." "You're very kind. But it has done me well enough." "So it appears." Sitting back, she looked round her, in the hope of picking up some neutral subject. "Are those your people?" she asked, and nodded at the photograph of a family-group, which stood on the top shelf of the bureau. "Three boys, are you not? You are like your mother," and she stared, with unfeigned curiosity, at the provincial figures, dressed out in their best coats and silks, and in heavy gold jewellery. "Good God, Madeleine!" Maurice burst out at this, his loosely kept patience escaping him. "You didn't come here, I suppose, to remark on my family?" "Well, I can't congratulate you on an improvement in your manners, since I saw you last." "I am not aware of having changed." "As well for you, perhaps. However, I'll tell you about myself, if it interests you." She turned her cool, judicial gaze on him again; and now she set before him her projects for the future. But though he kept his eyes fastened on her face, she saw that he was not listening to what she said, or, at most, that he only half heard it; for, when she ceased to speak, he did not notice her silence. She waited, curious to see what would come next, and presently he echoed, in his vague way: "Paris, did you say?--Really?" "Yes--Paris: the capital of France.--I said that, and a good deal more, which I don't think you heard.--And now I won't take up your precious time any longer.--You've nothing new to tell me, I suppose? You still intend staying on here, and fighting out the problem of existence? Well, when you have starved satisfactorily in a garret, I hope some one will let me know. I'll come over for the funeral." She rose, and began to button her jacket. "And England has absolutely no chance? English music must continue to languish, without hope of reform?" "How can you remember such rot! I was a terrible fool when I talked like that." "I liked you better as a fool than I do now, with your acquired wisdom. And I won't go from here without offering you congratulations, hearty congratulations, on the muddle you've made of things." "That's entirely my own affair." "You may be thankful it is! Do you think anyone else would want the responsibility of it?" She went out without a further word. But on the landing at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, she stood irresolute. She felt annoyed with herself that she had allowed an unfriendly tone to dominate their brief interview. This was probably the last time she would see him; the last chance she would have of telling him just what she thought of him. And viewed in that light, it seemed ridiculous to let any artificial delicacy of feeling stand in her way. She blew her nose vigorously, and, not being used to indecision, turned as she did so, and began to ascend the stairs again. Brushing past Frau Krause, she reopened, without knocking, the door of Maurice's room. He had moved the lamp from the table to the bureau, and at her entrance was bending over something that lay there, so engrossed that he did not at once raise his head. "Good gracious! What are you doing?" escaped her involuntarily. At this, he spun round, and, leaning back against the writingtable, tried to screen it from her eyes. She regretted her impulsive curiosity, and did not press him. "Yes, it's me again," she said with determination. "And I suppose you'll want to accuse me of prying, too, like that female outside.--Look here: it's ludicrous for us who have been friends so long to part in this fashion. And I, for one, don't intend to do it. There's something I want to say before I go--you may be angry and offended if you like; I don't care"--for he frowned forbiddingly. "I'm no denser than other people; and I know just as well as every one else the wretched mess you've got yourself into--one would have to be blind and deaf, indeed, not to know.--Now, look here, Maurice! You once said to me, you may remember, that if you had a sister you'd like her to be something like me. Will you look on me as that sister for a little, and let me give you some sound advice? I told you I was going to Paris, and that I had a clear month there. Well, now, throw your things together and come with me. You haven't had a decent holiday since you've been here. You need freshening up.--Or if not Paris--Paris isn't a necessity--we'll go down by Munich and the Brenner to Italy, and I'll be cicerone. I'll act as banker, too, and you can regard it as a loan in the meantime, and pay me back when you're richer.--Now what do you say? Doesn't the plan tempt you?" "What I say?" he echoed, and looked round him a little helplessly. "Why, Madeleine ... It seems you are determined to run off with me. Once it was America, and now it's Italy or Paris." "Come, say you'll consent, or at least consider it." "My dear Madeleine! You're all that is good and kind. But you know you're only talking nonsense." She did not answer him at once. "The thing is this," she said with some hesitation. "I wasn't quite honest in what I said to you a few minutes ago. I have the uncomfortable feeling that I am to a certain degree responsible, even to blame, for much of ... what has happened here. And it isn't a pleasant feeling, Maurice." "My dear girl!" he said again. "If it's any consolation to you to know it, I owe you the biggest debt of my life." "Then you decline my proposal, do you?" "You're the same good friend you always were. But you're making a mountain out of a molehill. What's all this fuss about? Merely because I haven't chosen to work my fingers to the bone, and wear my nerves to tatters over that old farce of a PRUFUNG. As for my choosing to stay here, instead of going home like the rest of you--well, that's a matter of taste, too. Some people--like our friend Dove--want affluence, and a fixed position in the provinces. Frankly, I don't. I'd rather scrape along here, as best I can. That's the whole matter in a nutshell, and it's nothing to make a to-do about. For though you think I'm a fool, and can't help telling me so--that, too, is a matter of opinion." "Well, I don't intend to apologise for myself at this date, be sure of that! And now I'll go. For if you're resolved to hold me at arm's length, there's nothing more to be said.--No, stop a minute, though. Here's my address in England. If ever you should return to join us benighted ignorants, you might let me know. Or if you find you can't get on here--I mean if it's quite impossible--I have money, you know ... and should be glad--at a proper percentage, of course," she added ironically. "That's hardly likely to happen." She laid the card on the table. "You never can tell.--Well, good-bye, then, and in spite of your obstinacy, I'll perhaps be able to do you a good turn yet, Maurice Guest." As soon as he heard the front door close, he returned to his occupation of piecing together the bits of the letter. Ever since he had torn it up--throughout her visit--his brain had been struggling to recall its exact contents, and without success; for, owing to Madeleine's presence, he had read it hastily. Otherwise, what he had done to-day did not differ from his usual method of proceeding. This was not the first horrible unsigned letter he had received, and he could never prevail on himself to throw them in the fire, unopened. He read them through, two or three times, then, angered by their contents and by his own weakness, tore them to fragments. But the hints and aspersions they contained, remained imprinted on his mind. In this case, Madeleine's distracting appearance had enfeebled his memory, and he worked long and patiently until the sheet lay fitted together again before him. When he knew its contents by heart, he struck some matches, and watched the pieces curl and blacken. Then he left the house. Her room was in darkness. He stretched himself on the sofa to wait for her return. The words of the letter danced like a writing of fire before him; he lay there and re-read them; but without anger. What they stated might be true, also it might not; he would never know. For these letters, which he was ashamed of himself for opening, and still more for remembering, had not been mentioned between them, but were added to that category of things they now tacitly agreed to avoid. In his heart, he knew that he cherished the present state of uncertainty; it was a twilight state, without crudities or sharp outlines; and it was still possible to drift and dream in it. Whereas if another terrible certainty, like the last, descended on him, he would be forced to marshal his energies, and to suffer afresh. It was better not to know. As long as definite knowledge failed him, he could give her the benefit of the doubt. And whether what the letters affirmed was true or not, hours came when she still belonged wholly to him. Whatever happened on her absences from him, as soon as the four walls of the room shut them in again, she was his; and each time she returned, a burning gratitude for the reprieve filled him anew. But there was also another reason why he did not breathe a word to her of his suspicions, and that was the slow dread that was laming him--the dread of her contempt. She made no further attempt to drape it; and he had learned to writhe before it, to cringe and go softly. Weeks had passed now, since the night on which he had made his last stand against her weeks of increasing torture. Just at first, incredible as it had seemed, his horrible treatment of her had brought about a slackening of the tension between them. The worst that could happen had happened, and he had survived it: he had not put an end either to himself or to her. On the contrary, he had accepted the fact--as he now saw that he would accept every fact concerning her, whether for good or evil. And matters having reached this point, a kind of lull ensued: for a few days they had even caught a glimpse again of the old happiness. But the pause was short-lived: it was like the ripples caused by a stone thrown into water, which continue just so long as the impetus lasts. Louise had been a little awed by his greater strength, when she had lain cowering on the ground before him. But not many days elapsed before her eyes were wide open with incredulous amazement. When she understood, as she soon did, that her shameless admission, and still more, his punishment of her for it, was not to be followed up by any new development; that, in place of subduing her mentally as well, he was going to be content to live on as they had been doing; that, in fact, he had already dropped back into the old state of things, before she was well aware of what was happening: then her passing mood of submission swept over into her old flamboyant contempt for him. The fact of his having beaten her became a weapon in her hands; and she used it unsparingly. To her taunts, he had no answer to make. For, the madness once passed, he could not conceive how he had been capable of such a thing; in his sane moments of dejection and self-distrust, he could not have raised his hand against her, though his life were at stake. He had never been able to drag from her a single one of the reasons that had led to her mad betrayal of him. On this point she was inflexible. In the course of that long night which he had spent on his knees by her bed, he had persecuted her to disclose her motive. But he might as well have spoken to the wind; his questioning elicited no reply.. Again and again, he had upbraided her: "But you didn't care for Heinz! He was nothing to you!" and she neither assented nor gainsaid him. Once, however, she had broken in on him: "You believed bad of me long before there was any to believe. Now you have something to go on!" And still again, when the sluggish dawn was creeping in, she had suddenly turned her head: "But now you can go away. You're free to leave me. Nothing binds you to a woman like me--who can't be content with one man." Dizzy with fatigue, he had answered: "No--if you think that--if you did it just to be rid of me--you're mistaken!" From this night on, they had never reverted to the subject again--which is not to say that his brain did not work furiously at it; the search for a clue, for the hidden motive, was now his eternal occupation. But to her he was silent, sheerly from the dread of again receiving the answer: take me as I am, or leave me! In hours such as the present, or in the agony of sleepless nights, these thoughts rent his brain. The question was such an involved one, and he never seemed to come any nearer a solution of it. Sometimes, he was actually tempted to believe what her words implied: that it had been wilfully done, with a view to getting rid of him. But against this, his reason protested; for, if the letter from Krafft had not arrived, he would have known nothing. He did not believe she would have told him--would there, indeed, have been any need for her to do so? Nothing was changed between them; she lived at his side, just as before; and Krafft was out of the way.--At other times, though, he asked himself if he were not a fool to be surprised at what had occurred. Had not all roads led here? Had he not, as she most truly said, for long harboured the unworthiest suspicions of her?--suspicions which were tantamount to an admission on his part that his love was no longer enough for her. To have done this, and afterwards to behave as if she had been guilty of an unpardonable crime, was illogical and unjust.--And yet again, there came moments when, in a barbarous clearness of vision, he seemed to get nearest to the truth. Under certain circumstances, so he now told himself, he would gladly and straightway have forgiven her. If she had been drawn, irresistibly, to another, by one of those sudden outbursts of passion before which she was incapable of remaining steadfast; if she had been attracted, like this, more than half unwilling, wholly humiliated, penitent in advance, yet powerless--then, oh then, how willingly he would have made allowance for her weakness! But Krafft, of all people!--Krafft, of whom she had spoken to him with derisive contempt!--this cold and calculated deception of him with some one who made not the least appeal to her!--Cold and calculated, did he say? No, far from it! What COULD it have been but the sensual caprice of a moment?--but a fleeting, manlike desire for the piquancy of change? These and similar thoughts ran their whirling circles behind his closed eyes, as he lay in the waning twilight of the March evening, which still struggled with the light of the lamp. But they were hard pressed by the contents of the letter: on this night he foresaw that his fixed idea threatened to divide up into two branches--and he did not know whether to be glad or to regret it. But he admitted to himself that one of these days he would be forced to take measures for preserving his sanity, by somehow dragging the truth from her; better still, by following her on one of her evening absences, to discover for himself where she went, and whether what the anonymous writer asserted was true. If he could only have controlled his brain! The perpetually repeated circles it drove in--if these could once have been brought to a stop, all the rest of him infinitely preferred not to know. Meanwhile, the shadows deepened, and his subconsciousness never ceased to listen, with an intentness which no whirligigs of thought could distract, for the sound of her step in the passage. When, at length, some short time after darkness had set in, he heard her at the door, he drew a long, sighing breath of relief, as if--though this was unavowed even to himself--he had been afraid he might listen in vain. And, as always, when the suspense was over, and she was under the same roof with him again, he was freed from so intolerable a weight that he was ready to endure whatever she might choose to put upon him, and for his part to make no demands. Louise entered languidly; and so skilled had he grown at interpreting her moods that he knew from her very walk which of them she was in. He looked surreptitiously at her, and saw that she was wan and tired. It had been a mild, enervating day; her hair was blown rough about her face. He watched her before the mirror take off hat and veil, with slow, yet impatient fingers; watched her hands in her hair, which she did not trouble to rearrange, but only smoothed back on either side. She had not, even in entering, cast a glance at him, and, recognising the rasped state of her nerves, he had the intent to be cautious. But his resolutions, however good, were not long proof against her over-emphasised neglect of his 'presence. Her wilful preoccupation with herself, and with inanimate objects, exasperated him. Everything was of more worth to her than he was' and she delighted to show it. "Haven't you a word for me? Don't you see I'm here?" he asked at length. Even now she did not look towards him as she answered: "Of course, I see you. But shall I speak next to the furniture of the room?" "So!--That's what I am, is it?--A piece of your furniture!" "Yes.--No, worse. Furniture is silent." She was changing her walking-dress for the dressing-gown. This done, she dabbed powder on her face out of a small oval glass pot--a habit of hers to which he had never grown accustomed. "Stop putting that stuff on your face! You know I hate it." Her only answer was to dab anew, and so thickly that the powder was strewn over the front of her dress and the floor. The clothes she had taken off were flung on a chair; as she brushed past them, they fell to the ground. She did not stoop to pick them up, but pushed them out of the way with her foot. Sitting down in the rocking-chair, she closed her eyes, and spread her arms out along the arms of the chair. He could not see her from where he lay, but she was within reach of him, and, after a brief, unhappy silence, he put out his hand and drew the chair towards him, urging it forward, inch by inch, until it was beside the sofa. Then he pulled her head down, so that it also lay on the cushion, and he could feel her hair against his. "How you hate me!" he said in a low voice, and as though he were speaking to himself. Laying her hand on his forehead, he made of it a screen for his eyes. "Who could have foreseen this!" he said again, in the same toneless way. Louise lay still, and did not speak. "Why do you stay with me?" he went on, looking out from under her hand. "I often ask myself that. For you're free to come and go as you choose." Her eyes opened at this, though he did not see it. "And I choose to stay here! How often am I to tell you that? Why do you come back on it to-night? I'm tired--tired." "I know you are. I saw it as soon as you came in. It's been a tiring day, and you probably ... walked too far." With a jerk, she drew her hand out of his, and sat upright in her chair. Something, a mere tone, the slight pause, in his apparently harmless words, incensed her. "Too far, did I?--Oh, to-night at least, be honest! Why don't you ask me straight out where I have been?--and what I have done? Can't you, for once, be man enough to put an open question?" "Nothing was further from my mind than to make implications. It's you who're so suspicious. Just as if you had a bad conscience--something really to conceal." "Take care!--or I shall tell you--where I've been! And you might regret it." "No. For God's sake!--no more confessions!" She laughed, and lay back. But a moment later, she cried out: "Why don't you go away yourself? You know I loathe the sight of you; and yet you stick on here like like a leech. Go away, oh, why can't you go away!" "To-day, I might have taken you at your word." At the mention of Madeleine's name, she pricked up her ears. "Oho!" she said, when lie had finished his story. "So Madeleine pays you visits, does she?--the sainted Madeleine! You have her there, and me here.--A pretty state of things!" "Hold your tongue! I'm not in the mood to-night to stand your gibes." "But I'm in the mood to make them. And how is one to help it when one hears that that ineffable creature is no better than she ought to be?" "Hold your tongue!" he cried again. "How dare you speak like that of the girl who has been such a good friend to me!" "Friend!" she echoed. "What fools men are! She's in love with you, that's all, and always has been. But you were never man enough to know what it was she wanted--your friend!" "Ah, you----!" The nervous strain of the afternoon reached its climax. "You! Yes!--that's you all over! In your eyes nothing is good or pure. And you make everything you touch dirty. You're not fit to take a decent woman's name on your lips!" She sprang up from her chair. "And that's my thanks!--for all I've done--all I've sacrificed for you! I'm not fit to take a decent woman's name on my lips! For shame, for shame! For who has made me what I am but you! Oh, what a fool I was, ever to let you cross this door! You!--a man who is content with other men's leavings!" "It was the worst day's work you ever did in your life. Everything bad has come from that.--Why couldn't you have held back, and refused me? We might still have been decent, happy creatures, if you hadn't let your vile nature get the better of you. You wouldn't marry me--no, no! You prefer to take your pleasure in other ways.--A man at any cost, Madeleine said once, and God knows, I believe it was true!" She struck him in the face. "Oh, you miserable scoundrel! You!--who never looked at me but with the one thought in your head! Oh, it's too much! Never, never while I live I would rather die first.--shall you ever touch me again!" She continued to weep, long after he had left her. Still crying, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, her body shaken by her sobs, she moved blindly about the room, opening drawers and cupboards, and heaping up their contents on the bed. There was a limit to everything; she could bear her life with him no longer; and, with nerveless fingers, she strove to collect and pack her belongings, preparatory to going away. XII. Easter fell early, and the Ninth Symphony had been performed in the Gewandhaus before March was fairly out. Now, both Conservatorium and Gewandhaus were closed, and the familiar haunts were empty. Hitherto, Maurice had made shift to preserve appearances: at intervals, not too conspicuously far apart, he had gone backwards and forwards to his classes, keeping his head above water with a minimum of work. Now, however, there was no further need for deceiving people. Most of those who had been his fellow-students had left Leipzig; he could not put his finger on a single person remaining with whom he had had a nearer acquaintance. No one was left to comment on what he did and how he lived. And this knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense of propriety. He ceased to face the trouble that care for his person implied, just as he gave up raising the lid of the piano and making a needless pretence of work. Openly now, he took up his abode in the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he spent the long, idle days stretched on the sofa, rolling cigarettes--in far greater numbers than he could smoke, and vacantly, yet with a kind of gusto, as if his fingers, so long accustomed to violent exercise, had a relish for the task. He was seldom free from headache; an iron ring, which it was impossible to loosen, bound his forehead. His disinclination to speech grew upon him, too; not only had he no thoughts that it was worth breaking the silence to express; the effort demanded by the forming of words was too great for him. His feeling of indifference-stupefying indifference--grew so strong that sometimes he felt it beyond his strength consciously to take in the shape of the objects about the room. The days were eventless. He lay and watched her movements, which were spiritless and hurried, by turns, but now seldom marked by the gracious impulsiveness that had made up so large a part of her charm. He was content to live from hour to hour at her side; for that this was his last respite, he well knew. And the further the month advanced, the more tenaciously he clung. The one thought which now had force to rouse him was, that the day would come on which he would see her face for the last time. The fact that she had given herself to another, while yet belonging to him, ceased to affect him displeasurably, as did also his fixed idea that she was, at the present moment, deceiving him anew. His sole obsession was now a fear of the inevitable end. And it was this fear which, at rare intervals, broke the taciturn dejection in which he was sunk, by giving rise to appalling fits of violence. But after a scene of this kind, he would half suffocate her with remorse. And this, perhaps, worked destruction most surely of all: the knowledge that, despite the ungovernable aversion she felt for him, she could still tolerate his endearments. Not once, as long as they had been together, had she refused to be caressed. But the impossibility of the life they were leading broke over Louise at times, with the shock of an ice-cold wave. "If you have any feeling left in you--if you have ever cared for me in the least--go away now!" she wept. "Go to the ends of the earth--only leave me!" He was giddy with headache that day. "To whom? Who is it you want now?" One afternoon as he lay there, the landlady came in with a telegram for him, which she said had been brought round by one of Frau Krause's children--she tossed it on the table, as she spoke, to express the contempt she felt for him. Several minutes elapsed before he put out his hand for it, and then he did so, because it required less energy to open it than to leave it unopened. When he had read it, he gave a short laugh, and threw it back on the table. Louise, who was in the other part of the room, came out, half-dressed, to see what the matter was. She, tool laughed at its contents in her insolent way, and, on passing the writing-table, pulled open the drawer where she kept her money. "There's enough for two. And you're no prouder in this, I suppose, than in anything else." The peremptory summons home, and the announcement that no further allowance would be remitted, was not a surprise to him; he had known all along that, sooner or later, he would be thrown on his own resources. It had happened a little earlier than he had expected--that was all. A week had still to run till the end of the month.--That night, however, when Louise was out, he meditated, in a desultory fashion, over the likely and unlikely occupations to which he could turn his hand. A few days later, she came home one evening in a different mood: for once, no cruel words crossed her lips. They sat side by side on the sofa; and of such stuff was happiness now made that he was content. Chancing to look up, he was dismayed to see that her eyes were full of tears, which, as he watched, ran over and down her cheeks. He slid to his knees, and laid his head in her lap. She fell asleep early; for, no matter what happened, how uneventful or how tragically exciting her day was, her faculty for sleep remained unchanged. It was a brilliant night; in the sky was a great, round, yellow moon, and the room was lit up by it. The blind of the window facing the bed had not been lowered; and a square patch of light fell across the bed. He turned and looked at her, lying in it. Her face was towards him; one arm was flung up above her head; the hand lay with the palm exposed. Something in the look of the face, blanched by the unreal light, made him recall the first time he had seen it, and the impression it had then left on his mind. While she played in Schwarz's room, she had turned and looked at him, and it had seemed to him then, that some occult force had gone out from the face, and struck home in him. And it had never lessened. Strange, that so small a thing, hardly bigger than one's two closed fists, should be able to exert such an influence over one! For this face it was--the pale oval, in the dark setting, the exotic colouring, the heavy-lidded eyes--which held him; it was this face which drew him surely back with a vital nostalgia--a homesickness for the sight of her and the touch of her--if he were too long absent. It had not been any coincidence of temperament or sympathies--by rights, all the rights of their different natures, they had not belonged together--any more than it had been a mere blind uprush of sensual desire. And just as his feelings for her had had nothing to do with reason, or with the practical conduct of his life so they had outlasted tenderness, faithfulness, respect. What ever it was that held him, it lay deeper than these conventional ideas of virtue. The power her face had over him was undiminished, though he now found it neither beautiful nor good; though he knew the true meaning of each deeply graven line.--This then was love?--this morbid possession by a woman's face. He laid his arm across his tired eyes, and, without waiting to consider the question he had propounded, commenced to follow out a new train of thought. No doubt, for each individual, there existed in one other mortal some physical detail which he or she could find only in this particular person. It might be the veriest trifle. Some found it, it seemed, in the colour of an eye; some in the modulations of a voice, the curve of a lip, the shape of a hand, the lines of a body in motion. Whatever it chanced to be, it was, in most cases, an insignificant characteristic, which, for others, simply did not exist, but which, to the one affected by it, made instant appeal, and just to that corner of the soul which had hitherto suffered aimlessly for the want of it--a suffering which nothing but this intonation, this particular smile, could allay. He himself had long since learnt what it was, about her face, that made a like appeal to him. It was her eyes. Not their size, or their dark brilliancy, but the manner of their setting: the spacious lid that fell from the high, wavy eyebrow, first sloping deeply inwards, then curving out again, over the eyeball; this, and the clean sweep of the broad, white lid, which, when lowered, gave the face an infantine look--a look of marble. He knew it was this; for, on the strength of a mere hinted resemblance, he had been unable to take his eyes off the face of another woman; the likeness in this detail had met his gaze with a kind of shock. But what a meaningless thing was life, when the way a lid drooped, or an eyebrow grew on a forehead, could make such havoc of your nerves! And more especially when, in the brain or soul that lay behind, no spiritual trait answered to the physical.--Well, that was for others to puzzle over, not for him. The strong man tore himself away while there was still time, or saved himself in an engrossing pursuit. He, having had neither strength nor saving occupation, had bartered all he had, and knowingly, for the beauty of this face. And as long as it existed for him, his home was beside it. He turned restlessly. Disturbed in her dreams, Louise flung over on her other side. "Eugen!" she murmured. "Save me!--Here I am! Oh, don't you see me?" He shook her by the arm. "Wake up!" She was startled and angry. "Won't you even let me sleep?" "Keep your dreams to yourself then!" There was a savage hatred in her look. "Oh, if I only could! ... if only my hands were strong enough!--! I'd kill you!" "You've done your best." "Yes. And I'm glad! Remember that, afterwards. I was glad!" It had been a radiant April morning of breeze and sunshine, but towards midday, clouds gathered, and the sunlight was constantly intercepted. Maurice had had occasion to fetch something from his lodgings and was on his way back. The streets were thronged with people: business men, shop-assistants and students, returning to work from the restaurants in which they had dined. At a corner of the ZEITZERSTRASSE, a hand-cart had been overturned, and a crowd had gathered; for, no matter how busy people were, they had time to gape and stare; and they were now as eager as children to observe this incident, in the development of which a stout policeman was wordily authoritative. Maurice found that he had loitered with the rest, to watch the gathering up of the spilt wares, and to hear the ensuing altercation between hawker and policeman. On turning to walk on again, his eye was caught and held by the tall figure of a man who was going in the same direction as he, but at a brisk pace, and several yards in front of him. This person must have passed the group round the cart. Now, intervening heads and shoulders divided them, obstructing Maurice's view; still, signs were not wanting in him that his subliminal consciousness was beginning to recognise the man who walked ahead. There was something oddly familiar in the gait, in the droop of the shoulders, the nervous movement of the head, the aimless motion of the dangling hands and arms--briefly, in all the loosely hung body. And, besides this, the broad-brimmed felt hat ... Good God! He stiffened, with a sudden start, and, in an instant, his entire attention was concentrated in an effort to see the colour of the hair under the hat. Was it red? He tried to strike out in lengthier steps, but the legs of the man in front were longer, and his own unruly. After a moment's indecision, however, he mastered them, and then, so afraid was he of the other passing out of sight, that he all but ran, and kept this pace up till he was close behind the man he followed. There he fell into a walk again, but a weak and difficult walk, for his heart was leaping in his chest. He had not been mistaken. The person close before him, so close that he could almost have touched him, was no other than Schilsky--the Schilsky of old, with the insolent, short-sighted eyes, and the loose, easy walk. Maurice followed him--followed warily and yet unreflectingly--right down the long, populous street. Sometimes blindly, too, for, when the street and all it contained swam before him, he was obliged to shut his eyes. People looked with attention at him; he caught a glimpse of himself in a barber's mirror, and saw that his face had turned a greenish white. His mind was set on one point. Arrived at the corner where the street ran out into the KONIGSPLATZ, which turning would Schilsky take? Would he go to the right, where lay the BRUDERSTRASSE, or would he take the lower street to the left? Until this question was answered, it was impossible to decide what should be done next. But first, there came a lengthy pause: Schilsky entered a musicshop, and remained inside, leaning over the counter, for a quarter of an hour. Finally, however, the corner was reached. He appeared to hesitate: for a moment it seemed as if he were going straight on, which would mean fresh uncertainty. Then, with a sudden outward fling of the hands, he went off to the left, in the direction of the Gewandhaus. Maurice did not follow him any further. He stood and watched, until he could no longer see the swaying head. After that he had a kind of collapse. He leaned up against the wall of a house, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Passers by believed him to be drunk, and were either amused, or horrified, or saddened. He discovered, in truth, that his legs were shaking as if with an ague, and, stumbling into a neighbouring wine-shop, he drank brandy--not enough to stupefy him, only to give back to his legs their missing strength. To postpone her knowing! To hinder her from knowing at any cost!--his blurred thoughts got no further than this. He covered the ground at a mad pace, clinging fast to the belief that he would find her, as he had left her, in bed. But his first glimpse of her turned him cold. She was standing before the glass, dressed to go out. This in itself was bad enough. Worse, far worse, was it that she had put on, to-day, one of the light, thin dresses she had worn the previous spring, and never since. It was impossible to see her tricked out in this fashion, and doubt her knowledge of the damning fact. He held it for proved that she was dressed to leave him; and the sight of her, refreshed and rejuvenated, gave the last thrust to his tottering sense. He demanded with such savageness the meaning of her adornment, that the indignant amazement with which she turned on him was real, and not feigned. "Take off that dress! You shan't go out of the house in it!--Take it off!" He raved, threatened, implored, always with icy fingers at his heart. He knew that she knew; he would have taken his oath on it; and he only had room in his brain for one thought: to prevent her knowing. His rage spent itself on the light, flowery dress. As nothing he said moved her, he set his foot on the skirt, and tore it down from the waist. She struck at him for this, then took another from the wardrobe--a still lighter and gaudier one. They had never yet gone through an hour such as that which followed. At its expiry, clothes and furniture lay strewn about the room. When Louise saw that he was not to be shaken off, that, wherever she went on this day, he would go, too, she gave up any plan she might have had, and followed where he led. This was, as swiftly as possible, by the outlying road to the Connewitz woods. If he could but once get her there, they would be safe from surprise. Once out there, in solitude, among the screening trees, something, he did not yet know what, but something would--must--happen. He dragged her relentlessly along. But until they got there! His eyes grew stiff and giddy with looking before him, behind him, on all sides. And never had she seemed to move so slowly; never had she stared so brazenly about her, as on this afternoon. With every step they took, certainty burned higher in him; the thin, fixed smile that disfigured her lips said: do your worst; do all you can; nothing will save you! He did not draw a full breath till they were far out on the SCHLEUSSIGER WEG. Then he dropped her arm, and wiped his face. The road was heavy with mud, from rains of the preceding day. Louise, dragging at his side, was careless of it, and let her long skirt trail behind her. He called her attention to it, furiously, and this was the first time he had spoken since leaving the house. But she did not even look down: she picked out a part of the road that was still dirtier, where her feet sank and stuck. They crossed the bridge, and joined the wood-path. On one of the first seats they came to, Louise sank exhausted. Filled with the idea of getting her into the heart of the woods, he was ahead of her, urging the pace; and he had taken a further step or two before he saw that she had remained behind. He was forced to return. "What are you sitting there for?" He turned on her, with difficulty resisting the impulse to strike her full in her contemptuous white face. She laughed--her terrible laugh, which made the very nerves twitch in his finger-tips. "Why does one usually sit down?" "ONE?--You're not one! You're you!" Now he wished hundreds of listeners were in their neighbourhood, that the fierceness of his voice might carry to them. "And you're a madman!" "Yes, treat me like the dirt under your feet! But you can't deceive me.--Do you think I don't know why you're stopping here?" She looked away from him, without replying. "Do you think I don't know why you've decked yourself out like this?" "For God's sake stop harping on my dress!" "Why you've bedizened yourself? ... why you were going out? ... why you've spied and gaped eternally from one side of the street to the other?" As she only continued to look away, the desire seized him to say something so incisive that the implacability of her face would have to change, no matter to what. "I'll tell you then!" he shouted, and struck the palm of one hand with the back of the other, so that the bones in both bit and stung. "I'll tell you. You're waiting here ... waiting, I say! But you'll wait to no purpose! For you've reckoned without me." "Oh, very well, then, if it pleases you, I'm waiting! But you can at least say for what? For you perhaps?--for you to regain your senses?" "Stop your damned sneering! Will you tell me you don't know who's--don't know he's here?" Still she continued to overlook him. "He?--who?--what?" She flung the little words at him like stones. Yet, in the second that elapsed before his reply, a faint presentiment widened her eyes. "You've got the audacity to ask that?" Flinging himself down on the seat, he put his hands in his pockets, and stretched out his legs. "Who but your precious Schilsky!--the man who knew how you ought to be treated ... who gave you what you deserved!" His first feeling was one of relief: the truth was out; there was an end to the torture of the past hour. But after this one flash of sensation, he ceased to consider himself. At his words Louise turned so white that he thought she was going to faint. She raised her hand to her throat, and held it there. She tried to say something, and could not utter a sound. Her voice had left her. She turned her head and looked at him, in a strange, apprehensive way, with the eyes of a trapped animal. "Eugen!--Eugen is here?" she said at last. "Here?--Do you know what you're saying?" Now that her voice had come, it was a little thin whisper, like the voice of a sick person. She pushed hat and hair, both suddenly become an intolerable weight, back from her forehead. Still he was not warned. "Will you swear to me you didn't know?" "I know? I swear?" Her voice was still a mere echo of itself. But now she rose, and standing at the end of the seat furthest from him, held on to the back of it. "I know?" she repeated, as if to herself. Then she drew a long breath, which quivered through her, and, with it, voice and emotion and the power of expression returned. "I know?" she cried with a startling loudness. "Good God, you fool, do you think I'd be here with you, if I had known?--if I had known!" A foreboding of what he had done came to Maurice. "Take care!--take care what you say!" She burst into a peal of hysterical laughter, which echoed through the woods. "Take care!" he said again, and trembled. "Of what?--of you, perhaps? YOU!" "I may kill you yet." "Oh, such as you don't kill!" She lowered her veil, and stooped for her gloves. He looked up at her swift movement. There was a blueness round his lips. "What are you going to do?" She laughed. "You're ... you're going to him! Louise!--you are NOT going to him?" "Oh, you poor, crazy fool, what made you tell me?" "Stay here!" He caught her by the sleeve. But she shook his hand off as though it were a poisonous insect. "For God's sake, think what you're doing! Have a little mercy on me!" "Have you ever had mercy on me?" She took a few, quick steps away from the seat, then with an equally impulsive resolve, came back and confronted him. "You talk to me of mercy?--you!--when nothing I could wish you would be bad enough for you?--Oh, I never thought it would be possible to hate anyone as I hate you--you mean-souled, despicable dummy of a man!--Why couldn't you have let me alone? I didn't care that much for you--not THAT much! But you came, with your pretence of friendship, and your flattery, and your sympathy--it was all lies, every word of it! Do you think what has happened to us would ever have happened if you'd been a different kind of man?--But you have never had a clean thought of me--never! Do you suppose I haven't known what you were thinking and believing about me in these last weeks?--those nights when I waited night after night to see a light come back in his windows? Yes, and I let you believe it; I wanted you to; I was glad you did--glad to see you suffer. I wish you were dead!--Do you see that river? Go and throw yourself into it. I'll stand here and watch you sink, and laugh when I see you drowning.--Oh, I hate you--hate you! I shall hate you to my last hour!" She spat on the ground at his feet. Before he could raise his head, she was gone. He made an involuntary, but wholly uncertain, movement to follow her, did not, however, carry it out, and sank back into his former attitude. His cold hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders drawn up; and his face, drained of its blood, was like the face of an old man. He had made no attempt to defend himself, had sat mute, letting her vindictive words go over him, inwardly admitting their truth. Now he closed his eyes, and kept them shut, until the thudding of his heart grew less forcible. When he looked up again, his gaze met the muddy, sluggish water, into which she had dared him to throw himself. But he did not even recall her taunt. He merely sat and stared at the river, amazed at the way in which it had, as it were, detached itself from other objects. All at once it had acquired a life of its own, and it was difficult to believe that it had ever been an integral part of the landscape. He remained sitting till the mists were breast-high. But even when, after more than one start--for his legs were stiff and numbed--he rose to go home, he did not realise what had happened to him. He was only aware that night had fallen, and that it would be better to get back in the direction of the town. The twinkling street-lamps did more than anything towards rousing him. But they also made him long, with a sudden vehemence, for some warm, brightly lighted interior, where it would be possible to forget the night--haunted river. He sought out an obscure cafe, and entering, called for brandy. On this night, he was under no necessity to limit himself; and he sat, glowering at the table, and emptying his glass, until he had died a temporary, and charitable, death. The delicious sensation of sipping the brandy was his chief remembrance of these hours; but, also, like far-off, incorporate happenings, he was conscious, as the night deepened, of women's shrill and lively voices, and of the pressure of a woman's arms. XIII. He wakened, the next morning, to strange surroundings. Half opening his eyes, he saw a strip of drab wall-paper, besprinkled with crude pink roses, and the black and gilt frame of an oblong mirror. He shut them again immediately, preferring to believe that he was still dreaming. Somewhere in the back of his head, a machine was working, with slow, steady throbs, which made his body vibrate as a screw does a steamer. He lay enduring it, and trying to sleep again, to its accompaniment. But just as he was on the point of dozing off, a noise in the room startled him, and made him wide awake. He was not alone. Something had fallen to the floor, and a voice exclaimed impatiently. Peering through his lids, he looked out beyond the will which had first chained his attention. His eyes fell on the back of a woman, who was sitting in front of one of the windows, doing her hair. In her hand she held a pair of curlingtongs, and, before her, on the foot-end of the sofa, a hand-glass was propped up. Her hair was thick and blond. She wore a black silk chemise, which had slipped low on her plump shoulders; a shabby striped petticoat was bound round her waist, and her naked feet were thrust into down-trodden, felt shoes. Maurice lay still, in order that she should not suspect his being awake. For a few minutes, there was silence; then he was forced to sneeze, and at the sound the woman muttered something, and came to the side of the bed. A curl was imprisoned between the blades of the tongs, which she continued to hold aloft, in front of her forehead. "NA, KLEINER! ... had your sleep out?" she asked in a raucous voice. As Maurice did not reply, but closed his eyes again, blinded by the sunshine that poured into the room, she laughed, and made a sound like that with which one urges on a horse. "Don't feel up to much this morning ... eh? HERRJE, KLEINER, but you were tight!" and, at some remembrance of the preceding night, she chuckled to herself. "And now, I bet you, you feel as if you'd never be able to lift your head again. Just wait a jiffy! I'll get you something that'll revive you." She waddled to the door and he heard her call: "JOHANN, EINEN SCHNAPS!" Feet shuffled in the passage; she handed Maurice a glass of brandy. "There you are!--that'll pull you together. Swallow it down," she said, as he hesitated. "You'll feel another man after it.--And now I'll do what I wouldn't do for every one--make you a coffee to wash down the nasty physic." She laughed loudly at her own joke, and laid the curlingtongs aside. He watched her move about the room in search of spirit-lamp and coffee-mill. Beneath the drooping black chemise, her loose breasts swayed. "Not that I've much time," she went on, as she ground the coffee. "It's gone a quarter to twelve already, and I like fresh air. I don't miss a minute of it.--So up you get! Here, dowse your head in this water." Leaning against the table, Maurice drank the cup of black coffee, and considered his companion. No longer young, she was as coarsely haggard as are the generality of women of her class, scanned by cruel daylight. And while she could never have been numbered among the handsome ones of her profession, there was yet a certain kindliness in the smallish blue eyes, and in her jocose manner of treating him. She, too, eyed him as he drank. "SAG''MAL KLEINER--will you come again?" she broke the silence. "What's your name?" he asked evasively, and put the cup down on the table. "Oh ... just ask for Luise," she said. On her tongue, the name had three long-drawn syllables, and there was a v before the i. She was nettled by his laugh. "What's wrong with it?" she asked. "GEH', KLEINER, SEI NETT!--won't you come again?" "Perhaps." "Well, ask for Luise, if you do. That's enough." He turned to put on his coat. As he did so, a disagreeable thought crossed his mind; he coloured, and ran his hand through his pockets. "I've no money." "What?--rooked, are you? Well, it wasn't here, then. I'm an honest girl, I am!" She came over to him, not exactly suspicious, still with a slight diminution of friendliness in eyes and tone; and, as, if there were room for a mistake on his part, herself went through the likely pockets in turn. "Not a heller!" Her sharp little eyes travelled over him. "That'd do." She laid her hand on his scarf-pin. He took it out and gave it to her. She stood on tip-toe, for she was dumpy, put her arms round his neck, and gave him a hearty kiss. "DU GEFALLST MIR!" she said. "I like you. Kiss me, too, can't you?" He looked down on the plump, ungainly figure, and, without feeling either satisfaction or repugnance, stooped and kissed the befringed forehead. "ADIEU, KLEINER! Come again." "ADIEU, LUISE!" He was eyed--he felt it--from various rooms, the doors of which stood ajar. The front door was wide open, and he left it so. He descended the stairs with a sagging step. Half-way down, he stopped short. He had spoken the truth when he said that he was without money; every pfennig he possessed, had been in his pocket the night before. Under these circumstances, he could undertake nothing. But, even while he thought it, his hand sought his watch, which he carried chainless in a pocket of his vest. It was there, and as his fingers closed on it, he proceeded on his way. The day had again set in brilliantly; the shadows on roads and pavements had real depth, and the outlines of the houses were hard against a cloudless sky. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground; for the crudeness of the light made them ache. His feet bore him along the road they knew better than any other. And until he had been in the BRUDERSTRASSE, he could not decide what was to come next. He dragged along, with bowed head, and the distance seemed unending. Even when he had turned the corner and was in the street itself, he kept his head down, and only when he was opposite the house, did he throw a quick glance upwards. His heart gave a terrifying leap, then ceased to beat: when it began again, it was at a mad gallop, which prevented him drawing breath. All three windows stood wide open; the white window-curtains hung out over the sills, and flapped languidly in the breeze. He crossed the road with small steps, like a convalescent. He pushed back the heavy house-door, and entered the vestibule, which was cold and shadowy. Step by step, he climbed to the first landing. The door of the flat was shut, but the little door in the wall stood ajar, and he could see right into the room. He leaned against the banisters, where the shadow was deepest. Inside the room that had been his world, two charwomen rubbed and scoured, talking as they worked in strident tones. The heavy furniture had been pulled into the middle of the floor, and shrouded in white coverings; chairs were laid on the bed, with their legs in the air. There was no trace of anything that had belonged to Louise; all familiar objects had vanished. It was a strange, unnatural scene: he felt as one might feel who, by means of some mysterious agency, found it possible to be present at his own burial, while he was still alive. One of the women began to beat the sofa; under cover of the blows, which reverberated through the house, he slunk away. But he did not get far: when he was recalled to himself by a new noise in one of the upper storeys, he found that he was standing on the bottom step of the stairs, holding fast to the round gilt ball that surmounted the last post of the banisters. He moved from there to the warmth of the house-door, and, for some time before going out, stood sunning himself, a forlorn figure, with eyes that blinked at the light. He felt very cold, and weak to the point of faintness. This sensation reminded him that he had had no solid food since noon the day before. His first business was obviously to eat a meal. Fighting a growing dizziness, he trudged into the town, and, having pawned his watch, went to a restaurant, and forced himself to swallow the meal that was set before him--though there were moments when it seemed incredible that it was actually he who plied knife and fork. He would have been glad to linger for a time, after eating, but the restaurant was crowded, and the waiter openly impatient for him to be gone. As he rose, he saw the man flicking the crumbs off the cloth, and setting the table anew; some one was waiting to take his place. When he emerged again into the thronged and slightly dusty streets, his previous strong impression of the unreality of things was upon him again. Now, however, it seemed as though some submerged consciousness were at work in him. For, though he was not aware of having reviewed his position, or of having cast a plan of action, he knew at once what was to be done; and, as before, his feet bore him, without bidding, where he had to go. He retraced his steps, and half-way down the KLOSTERGASSE, entered a gunsmith's shop. The owner, an elderly man in a velvet cap and gold-rimmed spectacles, looked at him over the tops of these, then said curtly, he could not oblige him. What was more, he came out after him, and, standing in the shop-door, watched him go down the street. At his refusal, Maurice had hurriedly withdrawn: now, as he went, he wa's troubled by the fact that the man's face was vaguely familiar to him. For the length of a street-block, he endeavoured to recollect where he had seen the face before. And suddenly he knew: it was this very shop he had once been in to inquire after Krafft, and this was the same man who had then been so uncivil to him. But as soon as he remembered, the knowledge ceased to interest him. Rendered cautious by his first experience, he went to another neighbourhood, and having sought for some time, found a smaller shop, in a side street. He had ready this time the fiction of a friend and a commission. But a woman regretted wordily that her husband had just stepped out; he would no doubt be back again immediately; if the Herr would take a chair and wait a little?-- But the thought of waiting made him turn on his heel. Finally, at his third attempt, a young lad gave him what he desired, without demur; and, after he had known a quick fear lest he should not have sufficient money for the purchase, the matter was satisfactorily settled. On returning to his room, he found a letter lying on the table. He pounced upon it with a desperate hope. But it was only the monthly bill for the hire of the piano. In entering, he had made some noise, and Frau Krause was in the room before he knew it. She was primed for an angry scene. But he made short work of her complaints and accusations. "To-morrow! I'll have time for all that to-morrow." He turned the key in the door, and sitting down before the writing-table, commenced to go through drawers and pigeonholes. It had not been a habit of his to keep letters; but nevertheless a certain number had accumulated, and these he was averse to let fall into the hands of strangers. He performed his work coolly, with a pedantic thoroughness. He had no sympathy with those people, who, doing what he was about to do, left ragged ends behind them. His mind had always inclined to law and order. And so, having written a note authorising Frau Krause to keep his books and clothes, in place of the outstanding rent, he put a match to the fire which was laid in the stove, and, on his knees before it, burnt all such personal trifles as had value for himself alone. He postponed, to the last, even handling the small packet made up of the letters he had had from Louise. Then their turn came, too. Kneeling before the stovedoor, he dropped them, one by one, into the flames. The last to burn was the first he had received--a mere hastily scrawled line, a twisted note, which opened as it blackened. I MUST SPEAK TO YOU. WILL YOU COME TO ME THIS EVENING? As he watched it shrivel, he had a vivid recollection of that long past day. He remembered how he had tried to shave, and how he had dressed himself in his best, only to fling back again into his working-clothes, annoyed with himself for even harbouring the thought. Yes; but that had always been his way: he had expended consideration and delicacy where none was necessary; he had seen her only as he wished to see her.--After this, the photographs. They were harder to burn; he was forced to tear them across, in two, three pieces. Even then, the flames licked slowly; he watched them creep up--over her dress, her hands, her face. Afternoon had turned to evening. When, at length, everything was in order, he lay down on the sofa to wait for it to grow quite dark. But almost at once, as if his back had been eased of a load, he fell asleep. When he opened his eyes again, the lamp had burned low, and filled the room with a poisonous vapour. It was two o'clock. This was the time to go. But a boisterous wind had risen, and was blustering round the house. He said to himself that he would wait still a little longer, to see if it did not subside. In waiting, he slept again, heavily, as he had not done for many a night, and when he wakened next, a clock was striking four. He rose at once, and with his boots in his hand, crept out of the house. Day was breaking; as he walked, a thin streak of grey in the east widened with extreme rapidity, and became a bank of pale grey light. He met an army of street-sweepers, indistinguishably male and female, returning from their work, their long brooms over their shoulders. It had rained a little, and the pavements were damp and shining. The wind had dropped to a mere morning breeze, which met him at street-corners. Before his mind's eye rose a vision of the coming day. He saw one of those early spring days of illimitable blue highness and white, woofy clouds, which stand stationary where the earth meets the sky; the brightness of the sun makes the roads seem whiter and the grass greener, bringing out new tints and colours in everything it touches. Over it all would run this light, swift wind, bending the buds, and even, towards afternoon, throwing up a fine white dust.--And it was to the thought of the dust that his mind clung most tenaciously, as to some homely and familiar thing which he would never see again. He had made straight for the well-known seat with the bosky background. Arrived at it, he went a few steps aside, into an open space among the undergrowth, which was now generously sprinkled with buds. The leaves that had fallen during the previous autumn made a carpet under his feet. Somewhere, in the distance, a band was playing: a body of soldiers was being marched out to exercise. He opened the case he was carrying, and laid it on the seat. He was not conscious of feeling afraid; if he had a fear, it was only lest, in his inexperience, he should do what he had to do, clumsily. In loosening the clothes at his neck, however, he perceived that his hand was shaking, and this made him aware that his heart also was beating unevenly. He stood and fumbled with his collar-stud, which he could not unfasten at once, and, while he was busied thus, the mists that blinded him fell away. He ceased, abruptly, to be the mere automaton that had moved and acted, without will of its own, for the past four-and-twenty hours. Standing there, with his fingers at his neck, he was pierced by a sudden lucid perception of what had happened. An intolerable spasm of remembrance gripped him. With a rush of bitterness, which was undiluted agony, all the shame and suffering of the past months swept over him once more, concentrated in a last supreme moment. And, as though this were not enough, while he still wrenched at his neck, tearing his shirt-collar in his desperation, her face rose before him--but not the face he had known and loved. He saw it as he had seen it for the last time, disfigured by hatred of him, horribly vindictive, as it had been when she spat on the ground at his feet. This vision gave him an unlooked-for jerk of courage. Without allowing himself another second in which to reason or reflect, he caught up the revolver from the seat, and pressed the cold little nozzle to his chest. Simultaneously he received a sharp blow, and heard the crack of a report--but far away ... in the distance. He was on his back, without knowing how he had got there; straight overhead waved the bare branches of a tree; behind them, a grey morning cloud was sailing. For still the fraction of a second, he heard the familiar melody, to which the soldiers marched; and the branch swayed ... swayed ... Then, as suddenly as the flame of a candle is puffed out by the wind, his life went from him. His right hand twitched, made as if to open, closed again, and stiffened round the iron of the handle. His jaw fell, and, like an inner lid, a glazed film rose over his eyes, which for hours afterwards continued to stare, with an expression of horror and amaze, at the naked branches of the tree. * * * * * One midday, a couple of years later, a number of those who had formed the audience at one of the last rehearsals of the season, were gathered round the back entrance to the Gewandhaus. It was a fresh spring day, gusty and sunny by turns: sometimes, there came a puff of wind that drove every one's hand to his hat; at others, the broad square basked in an almost motionless sunshine. The small crowd lingered in order to see, at close quarters, the violinist who had played there that morning. Only a few of those present had known Schilsky personally; but one and all were curious to catch a glimpse of the quondam Leipzig student, who, it was whispered, would soon return to the town to take up a leading position in the orchestra. Schilsky was now KONZERTMEISTER in a large South German town; but it was rather as a composer that his name had begun to burn on people's tongues. His new symphonic poem, UBER DIE LETZTEN DINGE, had drawn down on his head that mixture of extravagant laudation and abusive derision which constitutes fame. "Take a look at his wife, if she's there," said one American to another, who was standing beside him. "She studied here same time he did, and is said to have been very handsome. An English chap shot himself on her account." "You don't say!" drawled his companion. "It's a queer thing, how common suicide's getting to be. You can't pick up a noospaper, nowadays, without finding some fool or other has blown his brains out." "Look out!--here they come." Behind the thick glass doors, Schilsky became visible. He was talking volubly to a Jewish-looking stranger in a fur-lined coat. His hat was pushed far back on his forehead; his face was flushed with elation; and, consciously unconscious of the waiting crowd, he gesticulated as he walked, throwing out the palms of his loosely dangling hands, and emphasising his words with restless movements of the head. He was respectfully greeted by those who had known him. A minute or two later came Louise. At her side was a pianist with whom Schilsky had given a concert earlier in the week--a shabbily dressed young man, with a world of enthusiasm in his candid blue eyes. He, too, was talking with animation. But Louise had no attention for anyone but her husband. "Well, not my taste ... I must confess," laughed the man who had been severe on suicide. "Fine eyes, if you like--but give me something fresher." She was wearing a long cloak. The door, in swinging to, caught an end of this, and hindered her progress. Both she and her companion stooped to free it; their hands met; and the bystanders saw the young man colour darkly over face and neck. The others had got into one of the droschkes that waited in line beside the building. The dark stranger put an impatient head out of the window. The two behind quickened their steps; the young man helped Louise in, mounted himself, and slammed the door. The driver gathered up the reins, cracked his whip, and the big-bodied droschke went swerving round the corner, clattering gutturally on the cobbled stone pavement. The group of loiterers at the door dispersed.