The First Violin Part 30

"Friedhelm is a musician, but he is not like thee," he pursued. Eugen reddened; I laughed.

"True as can be, Sigmund," I said.

"'I would I were as honest a man,'" said Eugen, slightly altering "Hamlet;" but as he spoke English I contented myself with shaking my head at him.

"I like Friedel," went on Sigmund. "I love him; he is good. But thou, _mein Vater_--"

"Well?" asked Eugen again.

"I will be like thee," said the boy, vehemently, his eyes filling with tears. "I will. Thou saidst that men who try can do all they will--and I will, I will."

"Why, my child?"

It was a long earnest look that the child gave the man. Eugen had said to me some few days before, and I had fully agreed with him:

"That child's life is one strife after the beautiful in art, and nature, and life--how will he succeed in the search?"

I thought of this--it flashed subtly through my mind as Sigmund gazed at his father with a childish adoration--then, suddenly springing round his neck, said, pa.s.sionately:

"Thou art so beautiful--so beautiful! I must be like thee."

Eugen bit his lip momentarily, saying to me in English:

"I am his G.o.d, you see, Friedel. What will he do when he finds out what a common clay figure it was he worshiped?"

But he had not the heart to banter the child; only held the little clinging figure to his breast; the breast which Sigmund recognized as his heaven.

It was after this that Eugen said to me when we were alone:

"It must come before he thinks less of me than he does now, Friedel."

To these speeches I could never make any answer, and he always had the same singular smile--the same paleness about the lips and unnatural light in the eyes when he spoke so.

He had accomplished one great feat in those three years--he had won over to himself his comrades, and that without, so to speak, actively laying himself out to do so. He had struck us all as something so very different from the rest of us, that, on his arrival and for some time afterward, there lingered some idea that he must be opposed to us. But I very soon, and the rest by gradual degrees, got to recognize that though in, not of us, yet he was no natural enemy of ours; if he made no advances, he never avoided or repulsed any, but on the very contrary, seemed surprised and pleased that any one should take an interest in him. We soon found that he was extremely modest as to his own merits and eager to acknowledge those of other people.

"And," said Karl Linders once, twirling his mustache, and smiling in the consciousness that his own outward presentment was not to be called repulsive, "he can't help his looks; no fellow can."

At the time of which I speak, his popularity was much greater than he knew, or would have believed if he had been told of it.

Only between him and von Francius there remained a constant gulf and a continual coldness. Von Francius never stepped aside to make friends; Eugen most certainly never went out of his way to ingratiate himself with von Francius. Courvoisier had been appointed contrary to the wish of von Francius, which perhaps caused the latter to regard him a little coldly--even more coldly than was usual with him, and he was never enthusiastic about any one or anything, while to Eugen there was absolutely nothing in von Francius which attracted him, save the magnificent power of his musical talent--a power which was as calm and cold as himself.

Max von Francius was a man about whom there were various opinions, expressed and unexpressed; he was a person who never spoke of himself, and who contrived to live a life more isolated and apart than any one I have ever known, considering that he went much into society, and mixed a good deal with the world. In every circle in Elberthal which could by any means be called select, his society was eagerly sought, nor did he refuse it. His days were full of engagements; he was consulted, and his opinion deferred to in a singular manner--singular, because he was no sayer of smooth things, but the very contrary; because he hung upon no patron, submitted to no dictation, was in his way an autocrat. This state of things he had brought about entirely by force of his own will and in utter opposition to precedent, for the former directors had been notoriously under the thumb of certain influential outsiders, who were in reality the directors of the director. It was the universal feeling that though the Herr Direktor was the busiest man, and had the largest circle of acquaintance of any one in Elberthal, yet that he was less really known than many another man of half his importance. His business as musik-direktor took up much of his time; the rest might have been filled to overflowing with private lessons, but von Francius was not a man to make himself cheap; it was a distinction to be taught by him, the more so as the position or circ.u.mstances of a would-be pupil appeared to make not the very smallest impression upon him. Distinguished for hard, practical common sense, a ready sneer at anything high-flown or romantic, discouraging not so much enthusiasm as the outward manifestation of it, which he called melodrama, Max von Francius was the cynosure of all eyes in Elberthal, and bore the scrutiny with glacial indifference.

CHAPTER XVIII.

FRIEDHELM'S STORY.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Music, JOACHIM, RAFF. _Op._ 177.]

"Make yourself quite easy, Herr Concertmeister. No child that was left to my charge was ever known to come to harm."

Thus Frau Schmidt to Eugen, as she stood with dubious smile and folded arms in our parlor, and harangued him, while he and I stood, violin-cases in our hands, in a great hurry, and anxious to be off.

"You are very kind, Frau Schmidt, I hope he will not trouble you."

"He is a well-behaved child, and not nearly so disagreeable and bad to do with as most. And at what time will you be back?"

"That is uncertain. It just depends upon the length of the probe."

"Ha! It is all the same. I am going out for a little excursion this afternoon, to the Grafenberg, and I shall take the boy with me."

"Oh, thank you," said Eugen; "that will be very kind. He wants some fresh air, and I've had no time to take him out. You are very kind."

"Trust to me, Herr Concertmeister--trust to me," said she, with the usual imperial wave of her hand, as she at last moved aside from the door-way which she had blocked up and allowed us to pa.s.s out. A last wave of the hand from Eugen to Sigmund, and then we hurried away to the station. We were bound for Cologne, where that year the Lower Rhine Musikfest was to be held. It was then somewhat past the middle of April, and the fest came off at Whitsuntide, in the middle of May. We, among others, were engaged to strengthen the Cologne orchestra for the occasion, and we were bidden this morning to the first probe.

We just caught our train, seeing one or two faces of comrades we knew, and in an hour were in Koln.

"The Tower of Babel," and Raff's Fifth Symphonie, that called "Lenore,"

were the subjects we had been summoned to practice. They, together with Beethoven's "Choral Fantasia" and some solos were to come off on the third evening of the fest.

The probe lasted a long time; it was three o'clock when we left the concert-hall, after five hours' hard work.

"Come along, Eugen," cried I, "we have just time to catch the three-ten, but only just."

"Don't wait for me," he answered, with an absent look. "I don't think I shall come by it. Look after yourself, Friedel, and _auf wiedersehen_!"

I was scarcely surprised, for I had seen that the music had deeply moved him, and I can understand the wish of any man to be alone with the remembrance or continuance of such emotions. Accordingly I took my way to the station, and there met one or two of my Elberthal comrades, who had been on the same errand as myself, and, like me, were returning home.

Lively remarks upon the probable features of the coming fest, and the circulation of any amount of loose and hazy gossip respecting composers and soloists followed, and we all went to our usual restauration and dined together. There was an opera that night to which we had probe that afternoon, and I scarcely had time to rush home and give a look at Sigmund before it was time to go again to the theater.

Eugen's place remained empty. For the first time since he had come into the orchestra he was absent from his post, and I wondered what could have kept him.

Taking my way home, very tired, with fragments of airs from "Czar und Zimmermann," in which I had just been playing, the "March" from "Lenore," and sc.r.a.ps of choruses and airs from the "Thurm zu Babel," all ringing in my head in a confused jumble, I sprung up the stairs (up which I used to plod so wearily and so spiritlessly), and went into the sitting-room. Darkness! After I had stood still and gazed about for a time, my eyes grew accustomed to the obscurity. I perceived that a dim gray light still stole in at the open window, and that some one reposing in an easy-chair was faintly shadowed out against it.

"Is that you, Friedhelm?" asked Eugen's voice.

"_Lieber Himmel!_ Are you there? What are you doing in the dark?"

"Light the lamp, my Friedel! Dreams belong to darkness, and facts to light. Sometimes I wish light and facts had never been invented."

I found the lamp and lighted it, carried it up to him, and stood before him, contemplating him curiously. He lay back in our one easy-chair, his hands clasped behind his head, his legs outstretched. He had been idle for the first time, I think, since I had known him. He had been sitting in the dark, not even pretending to do anything.

"There are things new under the sun," said I, in mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and amaze. "Absent from your post, to the alarm and surprise of all who know you, here I find you mooning in the darkness, and when I illuminate you, you smile up at me in a somewhat imbecile manner, and say nothing. What may it portend?"