The First Violin Part 42

"But I did not wish to leave Rome. I wished to stay--so we came away, you know."

The suppressed rage and hatred in her tone made me feel uncomfortable. I avoided speaking, but I could not altogether avoid looking at her. Our eyes met, and Adelaide burst into a peal of harsh laughter.

"Oh, your face, May! It is a study! I had a particular objection to coming to Elberthal, therefore Sir Peter instantly experienced a particular desire to come. When you are married you will understand these things. I was almost enjoying myself in Rome; I suppose Sir Peter was afraid that familiarity might bring dislike, or that if we stayed too long I might feel it dull. This is a gay, lively place, I believe--we came here, and for aught I know we are going to stay here."

She laughed again, and I sat aghast. I had been miserable about Adelaide's marriage, but I had very greatly trusted in what she had prognosticated about being able to do what she liked with him. I began now to think that there must have been some miscalculation--that she had mistaken the metal and found it not quite so ductile as she had expected. I knew enough of her to be aware that I was probably the first person to whom she had spoken in such a manner, and that not even to me would she have so spoken unless some strong feeling had prompted her to it. This made me still more uneasy. She held so fast by the fine polish of the outside of the cup and platter. Very likely the world in general supposed that she and Sir Peter were a model couple.

"I am glad you are here," she pursued. "It is a relief to have some one else than Arkwright to speak to."

"Who is Arkwright?"

"Sir Peter's secretary--a very good sort of boy. He knows all about our domestic bliss and other concerns--because he can't help. Sir Peter tells him--"

A hand on the door-handle outside. A pause ere the persons came in, for Sir Peter's voice was audible, giving directions to some one, probably the secretary of whom Adelaide had spoken. She started violently; the color fled from her face; pale dismay painted itself for a moment upon her lips, but only for a moment. In the next she was outwardly herself again. But the hand trembled which pa.s.sed her handkerchief over her lips.

The door was fully opened, and Sir Peter came in.

Yes; that was the same face, the same pent-house of ragged eyebrow over the cold and snaky eye beneath, the same wolfish mouth and permanent hungry smile. But he looked better, stouter, stronger; more cheerful. It seemed as if my lady's society had done him a world of good, and acted as a kind of elixir of life.

I observed Adelaide. As he came in her eyes dropped; her hand closed tightly over the handkerchief she held, crushing it together in her grasp; she held her breath; then, recovered, she faced him.

"Heyday! Whom have we here?" he asked, in a voice which time and a residence in hearing of the language of music had not mollified. "Whom have we here? Your dress-maker, my lady? Have you had to send for a dress-maker already? Ha! what? Your sister? Impossible! Miss May, I am delighted to see you again! Are you very well? You look a little--a--shabby, one might almost say, my dear--a little seedy, hey?"

I had no answer ready for this winning greeting.

"Rather like my lady before she was my lady," he continued, pleasantly, as his eyes roved over the room, over its furniture, over us.

There was power--a horrible kind of strength and vitality in that figure--a crushing impression of his potency to make one miserable, conveyed in the strong, rasping voice. Quite a different Sir Peter from my erstwhile wooer. He was a masculine, strong, planning creature, whose force of will was able to crush that of my sister as easily as her forefinger might crush a troublesome midge. He was not blind or driveling; he could reason, plot, argue, concoct a systematic plan for revenge, and work it out fully and in detail; he was able at once to grasp the broadest bearing and the minute details of a position, and to act upon their intimations with crushing accuracy. He was calm, decided, keen, and all in a certain small, bounded, positive way which made him all the more efficient as a ruling factor in this social sphere, where small, bounded, positive strength, without keen sympathies save in the one direction--self--and without idea of generosity, save with regard to its own merits, pays better than a higher kind of strength--better than the strength of Joan of Arc, or St. Stephen, or Christ.

This was the real Sir Peter, and before the revelation I stood aghast.

And that look in Adelaide's eyes, that tone in her voice, that restrained spring in her movements, would have been rebellion, revolution, but in the act of breaking forth it became--fear. She had been outwitted, most thoroughly and completely. She had got a jailer and a prison. She feared the former, and every tradition of her life bade her remain in the latter.

Sir Peter, pleasantly exhilarated by my confusion and my lady's sullen silence, proceeded with an agreeable smile:

"Are you never coming down-stairs, madame? I have been deprived long enough of the delights of your society. Come down! I want you to read to me."

"I am engaged, as you may see," she answered in a low voice of opposition.

"Then the engagement must be deferred. There is a great deal of reading to do. There is the 'Times' for a week."

"I hate the 'Times,' and I don't understand it."

"So much the more reason why you should learn to do so. In half an hour," said Sir Peter, consulting his watch, "I shall be ready, or say in quarter of an hour."

"Absurd! I can not be ready in quarter of an hour. Where is Mr.

Arkwright?"

"What is Mr. Arkwright to you, my dear? You may be sure that Mr.

Arkwright's time is not being wasted. If his mamma knew what he was doing she would be quite satisfied--oh, quite. In quarter of an hour."

He was leaving the room, but paused at the door, with a suspicious look.

"Miss May, it is a pity for you to go away. It will do you good to see your sister, I am sure. Pray spend the day with us. Now, my lady, waste no more time."

With that he finally departed. Adelaide's face was white, but she did not address me. She rang for her maid.

"Dress my hair, Toinette, and do it as quickly as possible. Is my dress ready?" was all she said.

"_Mais oui, madame._"

"Quick!" she repeated. "You have only quarter of an hour."

Despite the suppressed cries, expostulations, and announcements that it was impossible, Adelaide was dressed in quarter of an hour.

"You will stay, May?" said she; and I knew it was only the presence of Toinette which restrained her from urgently imploring me to stay.

I remained, though not all day; only until it was time to go and have my lesson from von Francius. During my stay, however, I had ample opportunity to observe how things were.

Sir Peter appeared to have lighted upon a congenial occupation somewhat late in life, or perhaps previous practice had made him an adept in it.

His time was fully occupied in carrying out a series of experiments upon his wife's pride, with a view to humble and bring it to the ground. If he did not fully succeed in that, he succeeded in making her hate him as scarcely ever was man hated before.

They had now been married some two or three months, and had forsworn all semblance of a pretense at unity or concord. She thwarted him as much as she could, and defied him as far as she dared. He played round and round his victim, springing upon her at last, with some look, or word, or hint, or smile, which meant something--I know not what--that cowed her.

Oh, it was a pleasant household!--a cheerful, amiable scene of connubial love, in which this fair woman of two-and-twenty found herself, with every prospect of its continuing for an indefinite number of years; for the Le Marchants were a long-lived family, and Sir Peter ailed nothing.

CHAPTER XXV.

"Wenn Menschen aus einander gehen, So sagen sie, Auf Wiedersehen!

Auf Wiedersehen!"

Eugen had said, "Very soon--it may be weeks, it may be days," and had begged me not to inquire further into the matter. Seeing his anguish, I had refrained; but when two or three days had pa.s.sed, and nothing was done or said, I began to hope that the parting might not be deferred even a few weeks; for I believe the father suffered, and with him the child, enough each day to wipe out years of transgression.

It was impossible to hide from Sigmund that some great grief threatened, or had already descended upon his father, and therefore upon him. The child's sympathy with the man's nature, with every mood and feeling--I had almost said his intuitive understanding of his father's very thoughts, was too keen and intense to be hoodwinked or turned aside. He did not behave like other children, of course--_versteht sich_, as Eugen said to me with a dreary smile. He did not hang about his father's neck, imploring to hear what was the matter; he did not weep or wail, or make complaints. After that first moment of uncontrollable pain and anxiety, when he had gone into the room whose door was closed upon him, and in which Eugen had not told him all that was coming, he displayed no violent emotion; but he did what was to Eugen and me much more heart-breaking--brooded silently; grew every day wanner and thinner, and spent long intervals in watching his father, with eyes which nothing could divert and nothing deceive. If Eugen tried to be cheerful, to put on a little gayety of demeanor which he did not feel in his heart, Sigmund made no answer to it, but continued to look with the same solemn, large and mournful gaze.

His father's grief was eating into his own young heart. He asked not what it was; but both Eugen and I knew that in time, if it went on long enough, he would die of it. The picture, "Innocence Dying of Blood-stain," which Hawthorne has suggested to us, may have its prototypes and counterparts in unsuspected places. Here was one. Nor did Sigmund, as some others, children both of larger and smaller growth, might have done, turn to me and ask me to tell him the meaning of the sad change which had crept silently and darkly into our lives. He outspartaned the Spartan in many ways. His father had not chosen to tell him; he would die rather than ask the meaning of the silence.

One night--when some three days had pa.s.sed since the letter had come--as Eugen and I sat alone, it struck me that I heard a weary turning over in the little bed in the next room, and a stifled sob coming distinctly to my ears. I lifted my head. Eugen had heard too; he was looking, with an expression of pain and indecision, toward the door. With a vast effort--the greatest my regard for him had yet made--I took it upon myself, laid my hand on his arm, and coercing him again into the chair from which he had half risen, whispered:

"I will tell him. You can not. _Nicht wahr?_"

A look was the only, but a very sufficient answer.

I went into the inner room and closed the door. A dim whiteness of moonlight struggled through the shutters, and very, very faintly showed me the outline of the child who was dear to me. Stooping down beside him, I asked if he were awake.

"_Ja, ich wache_," he replied, in a patient, resigned kind of small voice.