The First Violin Part 34

Sigmund, with what success I could not tell. Beyond this young fellow, Karl Linders, they had not many visitors. Young men used occasionally to appear with violin-cases in their hands, coming for lessons, probably.

All these things I saw without absolutely watching for them; they made that impression upon me which the most trifling facts connected with a person around whom cling all one's deepest pleasures and deepest pains ever do and must make. I was glad to know them, but at the same time they impressed the loneliness and aloofness of my own life more decidedly upon me.

I remember one small incident which at the time it happened struck home to me. My windows were open; it was an October afternoon, mild and sunny. The yellow light shone with a peaceful warmth upon the afternoon quietness of the street. Suddenly that quietness was broken. The sound of music, the peculiar blatant noise of trumpets smote the air. It came nearer, and with it the measured tramp of feet. I rose and went to look out. A Hussar regiment was pa.s.sing; before them was borne a soldier's coffin; they carried a comrade to his grave. The music they played was the "Funeral March for the Death of a Hero," from the "Sinfonia Eroica."

m.u.f.fled, slow, grand and mournful, it went wailing and throbbing by. The procession pa.s.sed slowly on in the October sunshine, along the Schadowstra.s.se, turning off by the Hofgarten, and so on to the cemetery.

I leaned out of the window and looked after it--forgetting all outside, till just as the last of the procession pa.s.sed by my eyes fell upon Courvoisier going into his house, and who presently entered the room. He was unperceived by Friedhelm and Sigmund, who were looking after the procession. The child's face was earnest, almost solemn--he had not seen his father come up. I saw Helfen's lip caress Sigmund's loose black hair that waved just beneath them.

Then I saw a figure--only a black shadow to my eyes which were dazzled by the sun--come behind them. One hand was laid upon Helfen's shoulder, another turned the child's chin. What a change! Friedhelm's grave face smiled: Sigmund sprung aside, made a leap to his father, who stooped to him, and clasping his arms tight round his neck was raised up in his arms.

They were all satisfied--all smiling--all happy. I turned away. That was a home--that was a meeting of three affections. What more could they want? I shut the window--shut it all out, and myself with it into the cold, feeling my lips quiver. It was very fine, this life of independence and self-support, but it was dreadfully lonely.

The days went on. Adelaide was now Lady Le Marchant. She had written to me again, and warned me once more to be careful what I was about. She had said that she liked her life--at least she said so in her first two or three letters, and then there fell a sudden utter silence about herself, which seemed to me ominous.

Adelaide had always acted upon the a.s.sumption that Sir Peter was a far from strong-minded individual, with a certain hardness and cunning perhaps in relation to money matters, but nothing that a clever wife with a strong enough sense of her own privileges could not overcome.

She said nothing to me about herself. She told me about Rome; who was there; what they did and looked like; what she wore; what compliments were paid to her--that was all.

Stella told me my letters were dull--and I dare say they were--and that there was no use in her writing, because nothing ever happened in Skernford, which was also true. And for Eugen, we were on exactly the same terms--or rather no terms--as before. Opposite neighbors, and as far removed as if we had lived at the antipodes.

My life, as time went on, grew into a kind of fossilized dream, in which I rose up and lay down, practiced so many hours a day, ate and drank and took my lesson, and it seemed as if I had been living so for years, and should continue to live on so to the end of my days--until one morning my eyes would not open again, and for me the world would have come to an end.

CHAPTER XXI.

"And nearer still shall further be, And words shall plague and vex and buffet thee."

It was December, close upon Christmas. Winter at last in real earnest. A black frost. The earth bound in fetters of iron. The land gray; the sky steel; the wind a dagger. The trees, leafless and stark, rattled their shriveled boughs together in that wind.

It met you at corners and froze the words out of your mouth; it whistled a low, fiendish, malignant whistle round the houses; as vicious and little louder than the buzz of a mosquito. It swept, thin, keen and cutting, down the Konigsallee, and blew fine black dust into one's face.

It cut up the skaters upon the pond in the Neue Anlage, which was in the center of the town, and comparatively sheltered; but it was in its glory whistling across the flat fields leading to the great skating-ground of Elberthal in general--the Schwanenspiegel at the Grafenbergerdahl.

The Grafenberg was a low chain of what, for want of a better name, may be called hills, lying to the north of Elberthal. The country all around this unfortunate apology for a range of hills was, if possible, flatter than ever. The Grafenbergerdahl was, properly, no "dale" at all, but a broad plain of meadows, with the railway cutting them at one point, then diverging and running on under the Grafenberg.

One vast meadow which lay, if possible, a trifle lower than the rest, was flooded regularly by the autumn rains, but not deeply. It was frozen over now, and formed a model skating place, and so, apparently, thought the townspeople, for they came out, singly or in bodies, and from nine in the morning till dusk the place was crowded, and the merry music of the iron on the ice ceased not for a second.

I discovered this place of resort by accident one day when I was taking a const.i.tutional, and found myself upon the borders of the great frozen mere covered with skaters. I stood looking at them, and my blood warmed at the sight. If there were one thing--one accomplishment upon which I prided myself, it was this very one--skating.

In a drawing-room I might feel awkward--confused among clever people, bashful among accomplished ones; shy about music and painting, diffident as to my voice, and deprecatory in spirit as to the etiquette to be observed at a dinner-party. Give me my skates and put me on a sheet of ice, and I was at home.

As I paused and watched the skaters, it struck me that there was no reason at all why I should deny myself that seasonable enjoyment. I had my skates, and the mere was large enough to hold me as well as the others--indeed, I saw in the distance great tracts of virgin ice to which no skater seemed yet to have reached.

I went home, and on the following afternoon carried out my resolution; though it was after three o'clock before I could set out.

A long, bleak way. First up the merry Jagerhofstra.s.se, then through the Malkasten garden, up a narrow lane, then out upon the open, bleak road, with that bitter wind going ping-ping at one's ears and upon one's cheek. Through a big gate-way, and a court-yard pertaining to an orphan asylum--along a lane bordered with apple-trees, through a rustic arch, and, hurrah! the field was before me--not so thickly covered as yesterday, for it was getting late, and the Elberthalers did not seem to understand the joy of careering over the black ice by moonlight, in the night wind. It was, however, as yet far from dark, and the moon was rising in silver yonder, in a sky of a pale but clear blue.

I quickly put on my skates--stumbled to the edge, and set off. I took a few turns, circling among the people--then, seeing several turn to look at me, I fixed my eyes upon a distant clump of reeds rising from the ice, and resolved to make it my goal. I could only just see it, even with my long-sighted eyes, but struck out for it bravely. Past group after group of the skaters who turned to look at my scarlet shawl as it flashed past. I glanced at them and skimmed smoothly on, till I came to the outside circle where there was a skater all alone, his hands thrust deep into his great-coat pockets, the collar of the same turned high about his ears, and the inevitable little gray cloth _Studentenhut_ crowning the luxuriance of waving dark hair. He was gliding round in complicated figures and circles, doing the outside edge for his own solitary gratification, so far as I could see; active, graceful, and muscular, with practiced ease and a.s.sured strength in every limb. It needed no second glance on my part to a.s.sure me who he was--even if the dark bright eyes had not been caught by the flash of my cloak, and gravely raised for a moment as I flew by. I dashed on, breasting the wind. To reach the bunch of reeds seemed more than ever desirable now. I would make it my sole companion until it was time to go away. At least he had seen me, and I was safe from any _contretemps_--he would avoid me as strenuously as I avoided him. But the first fresh l.u.s.t after pleasure was gone. Just one moment's glance into a face had had the power to alter everything so much. I skated on, as fast, as surely as ever, but,

"A joy has taken flight."

The pleasant sensation of solitude, which I could so easily have felt among a thousand people had he not been counted among them, was gone.

The roll of my skates upon the ice had lost its music for me; the wind felt colder--I sadder. At least I thought so. Should I go away again now that this disturbing element had appeared upon the scene? No, no, no, said something eagerly within me, and I bit my lip, and choked back a kind of sob of disgust as I realized that despite my gloomy reflections my heart was beating a high, rapid march of--joy! as I skimmed, all alone, far away from the crowd, among the dismal withered reeds, and round the little islets of stiffened gra.s.s and rushes which were frozen upright in their places.

The daylight faded, and the moon rose. The people were going away. The distant buzz of laughter had grown silent. I could dimly discern some few groups, but very few, still left, and one or two solitary figures.

Even my preternatural eagerness could not discern who they were! The darkness, the long walk home, the probe at seven, which I should be too tired to attend, all had quite slipped from my mind; it was possible that among those figures which I still dimly saw, was yet remaining that of Courvoisier, and surely there was no harm in my staying here.

I struck out in another direction, and flew on in the keen air; the frosty moon shedding a weird light upon the black ice; I saw the railway lines, polished, gleaming too in the light; the belt of dark firs to my right; the red sand soil frozen hard and silvered over with frost. Flat and tame, but still beautiful. I felt a kind of rejoicing in it; I felt it home. I was probably the first person who had been there since the freezing of the mere, thought I, and that idea was soon converted to a certainty in my mind, for in a second my rapid career was interrupted.

At the furthest point from help or human presence the ice gave way with a crash, and I shrieked aloud at the shock of the bitter water. Oh, how cold it was! how piercing, frightful, numbing! It was not deep--scarcely above my knees, but the difficulty was how to get out. Put my hand where I would the ice gave way. I could only plunge in the icy water, feeling the sodden gra.s.s under my feet. What sort of things might there not be in that water? A cold shudder, worse than any ice, shot through me at the idea of newts and rats and water-serpents, absurd though it was. I screamed again in desperation, and tried to haul myself out by catching at the rushes. They were rotten with the frost and gave way in my hand.

I made a frantic effort at the ice again; stumbled and fell on my knees in the water. I was wet all over now, and I gasped. My limbs ached agonizingly with the cold. I should be, if not drowned, yet benumbed, frozen to death here alone in the great mere, among the frozen reeds and under the steely sky.

I was pausing, standing still, and rapidly becoming almost too benumbed to think or hold myself up, when I heard the sound of skates and the weird measure of the "Lenore March" again. I held my breath; I desired intensely to call out, shriek aloud for help, but I could not. Not a word would come.

"I did hear some one," he muttered, and then in the moonlight he came skating past, saw me, and stopped.

"_Sie_, Fraulein!" he began, quickly, and then altering his tone. "The ice has broken. Let me help you."

"Don't come too near; the ice is very thin--it doesn't hold at all," I chattered, scarcely able to get the words out.

"You are cold?" he asked, and smiled. I felt the smile cruel; and realized that I probably looked rather ludicrous.

"Cold!" I repeated, with an irrepressible short sob.

He knelt down upon the ice at about a yard's distance from me.

"Here it is strong," said he, holding out his arms. "Lean this way, _mein Fraulein_, and I will lift you out."

"Oh, no! You will certainly fall in yourself."

"Do as I tell you," he said, imperatively, and I obeyed, leaning a little forward. He took me round the waist, lifted me quietly out of the water, and placed me upon the ice at a discreet distance from the hole in which I had been stuck, then rose himself, apparently undisturbed by the effort.

Miserable, degraded object that I felt! My clothes clinging round me; icy cold, shivering from head to foot; so aching with cold that I could no longer stand. As he opened his mouth to say something about its being "happily accomplished," I sunk upon my knees at his feet. My strength had deserted me; I could no longer support myself.

"Frozen!" he remarked to himself, as he stooped and half raised me. "I see what must be done. Let me take off your skates--_sonst geht's nicht_."

I sat down upon the ice, half hysterical, partly from the sense of the degrading, ludicrous plight I was in, partly from intense yet painful delight at being thus once more with him, seeing some recognition in his eyes again, and hearing some cordiality in his voice.

He unfastened my skates deftly and quickly, slung them over his arm, and helped me up again. I essayed feebly to walk, but my limbs were numb with cold. I could not put one foot before the other, but could only cling to his arm in silence.

"So!" said he, with a little laugh. "We are all alone here! A fine time for a moonlight skating."

"Ah! yes," said I, wearily, "but I can't move."

"You need not," said he. "I am going to carry you away in spite of yourself, like a popular preacher."

He put his arm round my waist and bade me hold fast to his shoulder. I obeyed, and directly found myself carried along in a swift, delightful movement, which seemed to my drowsy, deadened senses, quick as the nimble air, smooth as a swallow's flight. He was a consummate master in the art of skating--that was evident. A strong, unfailing arm held me fast. I felt no sense of danger, no fear lest he should fall or stumble; no such idea entered my head.