The First Violin Part 39

"Why?" I inquired when I had contemplated it, and failed to find it lovely.

"The drawing, the grouping, are admirable, as you must see. The art displayed is wonderful. I find the picture excellent."

"But the subject?" said I.

It was not a large picture, and represented the interior of an artist's atelier. In the foreground a dissipated-looking young man tilted his chair backward as he held his gloves in one hand, and with the other stroked his mustache, while he contemplated a picture standing on an easel before him. The face was hard, worn, _blase_; the features, originally good, and even beautiful, had had all the latent loveliness worn out of them by a wrong, unbeautiful life. He wore a tall hat, very much to one side, as if to accent the fact that the rest of the company, upon whom he had turned his back, certainly did not merit that he should be at the trouble of baring his head to them. And the rest of the company--a girl, a model, seated on a chair upon a raised dais, dressed in a long, flounced white skirt, not of the freshest, some kind of Oriental wrap falling negligently about it--arms, models of shapeliness, folded, and she crouching herself together as if wearied, or contemptuous, or perhaps a little chilly. Upon a divan near her a man--presumably the artist to whom the establishment pertained--stretched at full length, looking up carelessly into her face, a pipe in his mouth, with indifference and--scarcely impertinence--it did not take the trouble to be a fully developed impertinence--in every gesture. This was the picture; faithful to life, significant in its very insignificance, before which von Francius sat, and declared that the drawing, coloring, and grouping were perfect.[B]

[Footnote B: The original is by Charles Herman, of Brussels.]

"The subject?" he echoed, after a pause. "It is only a sc.r.a.p of artist-life."

"Is that artist-life?" said I, shrugging my shoulders. "I do not like it at all; it is common, low, vulgar. There is no romance about it; it only reminds one of stale tobacco and flat champagne."

"You are too particular," said von Francius, after a pause, and with a flavor of some feeling which I did not quite understand tincturing his voice.

For my part, I was looking at the picture and thinking of what Courvoisier had said: "Beauty, impudence, a.s.surance, and an admiring public." That the girl was beautiful--at least, she had the battered remains of a decided beauty; she had impudence certainly, and a.s.surance too, and an admiring public, I supposed, which testified its admiration by lolling on a couch and staring at her, or keeping its hat on and turning its back to her.

"Do you really admire the picture, Herr von Francius?" I inquired.

"Indeed I do. It is so admirably true. That is the kind of life into which I was born, and in which I was for a long time brought up; but I escaped from it."

I looked at him in astonishment. It seemed so extraordinary that that model of reticence should speak to me, above all, about himself.

It struck me for the very first time that no one ever spoke of von Francius as if he had any one belonging to him. Calm, cold, lonely, self-sufficing--and self-sufficing, too, because he must be so, because he had none other to whom to turn--that was his character, and viewing him in that manner I had always judged him. But what might the truth be?

"Were you not happy when you were young?" I asked, on a quick impulse.

"Happy! Who expects to be happy? If I had been simply not miserable, I should have counted my childhood a good one; but--"

He paused a moment, then went on:

"Your great novelist, d.i.c.kens, had a poor, sordid kind of childhood in outward circ.u.mstances. But mine was spiritually sordid--hideous, repulsive. There are some plants which spring from and flourish in mud and slime; they are but a flabby, pestiferous growth, as you may suppose. I was, to begin with, a human specimen of that kind; I was in an atmosphere of moral mud, an intellectual hot-bed. I don't know what there was in me that set me against the life; that I never can tell. It was a sort of h.e.l.l on earth that I was living in. One day something happened--I was twelve years old then--something happened, and it seemed as if all my nature--its good and its evil, its energies and indolence, its pride and humility--all ran together, welded by the furnace of pa.s.sion into one furious, white-hot rage of anger, rebellion. In an instant I had decided my course; in an hour I had acted upon it. I am an odd kind of fellow, I believe. I quitted that scene and have never visited it since. I can not describe to you the anger I then felt, and to which I yielded. Twelve years old I was then. I fought hard for many years; but, _mein Fraulein_"--(he looked at me, and paused a moment)--"that was the first occasion upon which I ever was really angry; it has been the last. I have never felt the sensation of anger since--I mean personal anger. Artistic anger I have known; the anger at bad work, at false interpretations, at charlatanry in art; but I have never been angry with the anger that resents. I tell you this as a curiosity of character. With that brief flash all resentment seemed to evaporate from me--to exhaust itself in one brief, resolute, effective attempt at self-cleansing, self-government."

He paused.

"Tell me more, Herr von Francius," I besought. "Do not leave off there.

Afterward?"

"You really care to hear? Afterward I lived through hardships in plenty; but I had effectually severed the whole connection with that which dragged me down. I used all my will to rise. I am not boasting, but simply stating a peculiarity of my temperament when I tell you that what I determine upon I always accomplish. I determined upon rising, and I have risen to what I am. I set it, or something like it, before me as my goal, and I have attained it."

"Well?" I asked, with some eagerness; for I, after all my unfulfilled strivings, had asked myself _Cui bono?_ "And what is the end of it? Are you satisfied?"

"How quickly and how easily you see!" said he, with a smile. "I value the position I have, in a certain way--that is, I see the advantage it gives me, and the influence. But that deep inner happiness, which lies outside of condition and circ.u.mstances--that feeling of the poet in 'Faust'--don't you remember?--

"'I nothing had, and yet enough'--

all that is unknown to me. For I ask myself, _Cui bono?_"

"Like me," I could not help saying.

He added:

"Fraulein May, the nearest feeling I have had to happiness has been the knowing you. Do you know that you are a person who makes joy?"

"No, indeed I did not."

"It is true, though. I should like, if you do not mind--if you can say it truly--to hear from your lips that you look upon me as your friend."

"Indeed, Herr von Francius, I feel you my very best friend, and I would not lose your regard for anything," I was able to a.s.sure him.

And then, as it was growing dark, the woman from the receipt of custom by the door came in and told us that she must close the rooms.

We got up and went out. In the street the lamps were lighted, and the people going up and down.

Von Francius left me at the door of my lodgings.

"Good-evening, _liebes Fraulein_; and thank you for your company this afternoon."

A light burned steadily all evening in the sitting-room of my opposite neighbors; but the shutters were closed. I only saw a thin stream coming through a c.h.i.n.k.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"Es ist bestimmt, in Gottes Rath, Da.s.s man vom Liebsten was man hat Muss scheiden."

Our merry little zauberfest of Christmas-eve was over. Christmas morning came. I remember that morning well--a gray, neutral kind of day, whose monotony outside emphasized the keenness of emotion within.

On that morning the postman came--a rather rare occurrence with us; for, except with notes from pupils, notices of proben, or other official communications, he seldom troubled us.

It was Sigmund who opened the door; it was he who took the letter, and wished the postman "good-morning" in his courteous little way. I dare say that the incident gave an additional pang afterward to the father, if he marked it, and seldom did the smallest act or movement of his child escape him.

"Father, here is a letter," he said, giving it into Eugen's hand.

"Perhaps it is for Friedel; thou art too ready to think that everything appertains to thy father," said Eugen, with a smile, as he took the letter and looked at it; but before he had finished speaking the smile had faded. There remained a whiteness, a blank, a haggardness.

I had caught a glimpse of the letter; it was large, square, ma.s.sive, and there was a seal upon the envelope--a regular letter of fate out of a romance.

Eugen took it into his hand, and for once he made no answer to the caress of his child, who put his arms round his neck and wanted to climb upon his knee. He allowed the action, but pa.s.sively.

"Let me open it!" cried Sigmund. "Let me open thy letter!"

"No, no, child!" said Eugen, in a sharp, pained tone. "Let it alone."

Sigmund looked surprised, and recoiled a little; a shock clouding his eyes. It was all right if his father said no, but a shade presently crossed his young face. His father did not usually speak so; did not usually have that white and pallid look about the eyes--above all, did not look at his son with a look that meant nothing.