The First Violin Part 45

"To be sure! Most appropriate music! I feel as if I could write a Pa.s.sion Music myself just now."

We had but to cross the road from our dwelling to the concert-room. As we entered the corridor two ladies also stepped into it from a very grand carriage. They were accompanied by a young man, who stood a little to one side to let them pa.s.s; and as they came up and we came up, von Francius came up too.

One of the ladies was May Wedderburn, who was dressed in black, and looked exquisitely lovely to my eyes, and, I felt, to some others, with her warm auburn hair in shining coils upon her head. The other was a woman in whose pale, magnificent face I traced some likeness to our fair singer, but she was different; colder, grander, more severe. It so happened that the ladies barred the way as we arrived, and we had to stand by for a few moments as von Francius shook hands with Miss Wedderburn, and asked her smilingly if she were in good voice.

She answered in the prettiest broken German I ever heard, and then turned to the lady, saying:

"Adelaide, may I introduce Herr von Francius--Lady Le Marchant."

A stately bow from the lady--a deep reverence, with a momentary glance of an admiration warmer than I had ever seen in his eyes, on the part of von Francius--a glance which was instantly suppressed to one of conventional inexpressiveness. I was pleased and interested with this little peep at a rank which I had never seen, and could have stood watching them for a long time; the splendid beauty and the great pride of bearing of the English lady were a revelation to me, and opened quite a large, unknown world before my mental eyes. Romances and poems, and men dying of love, or killing each other for it, no longer seemed ridiculous; for a smile or a warmer glance from that icily beautiful face must be something not to forget.

It was Eugen who pushed forward, with a frown on his brow, and less than his usual courtesy. I saw his eyes and Miss Wedderburn's meet; I saw the sudden flush that ran over her fair face; the stern composure of his. He would own nothing; but I was strangely mistaken if he could say that it was merely because he had nothing to own.

The concert was a success, so far as Miss Wedderburn went. If von Francius had allowed repet.i.tions, one song at least would have been encored. As it was, she was a success. And von Francius spent his time in the pauses with her and her sister; in a grave, sedate way he and the English lady seemed to "get on."

The concert was over. The next thing that was of any importance to us occurred shortly afterward. Von Francius had long been somewhat unpopular with his men, and at silent enmity with Eugen, who was, on the contrary, a universal favorite. There came a crisis, and the men sent a deputation to Eugen to say that if he would accept the post of leader they would strike, and refuse to accept any other than he.

This was an opportunity for distinguishing himself. He declined the honor; his words were few; he said something about how kind we had all been to him, "from the time when I arrived; when Friedhelm Helfen, here, took me in, gave me every help and a.s.sistance in his power, and showed how appropriate his name was;[C] and so began a friendship which, please Heaven, shall last till death divides us, and perhaps go on afterward."

He ended by saying some words which made a deep impression upon me.

After saying that he might possibly leave Elberthal, he added: "Lastly, I can not be your leader because I never intend to be any one's leader--more than I am now," he added, with a faint smile. "A kind of deputy, you know. I am not fit to be a leader. I have no gift in that line--"

[Footnote C: _Helfen_--to help.]

"_Doch!_" from half a dozen around.

"None whatever. I intend to remain in my present condition--no lower if I can help it, but certainly no higher. I have good reasons for knowing it to be my duty to do so."

And then he urged them so strongly to stand by Herr von Francius that we were quite astonished. He told them that von Francius would some time rank with Schumann, Raff, or Rubinstein, and that the men who rejected him now would then be pointed out as ignorant and prejudiced.

And amid the silence that ensued, he began to direct us--we had a probe to Liszt's "Prometheus," I remember.

He had won the day for von Francius, and von Francius, getting to hear of it, came one day to see him and frankly apologized for his prejudice in the past, and asked Eugen for his friendship in the future. Eugen's answer puzzled me.

"I am glad, you know, that I honor your genius, and wish you well," said he, "and your offer of friendship honors me. Suppose I say I accept it--until you see cause to withdraw it."

"You are putting rather a remote contingency to the front," said von Francius.

"Perhaps--perhaps not," said Eugen, with a singular smile. "At least I am glad to have had this token of your sense of generosity. We are on different paths, and my friends are not on the same level as yours--"

"Excuse me; every true artist must be a friend of every other true artist. We recognize no division of rank or possession."

Eugen bowed, still smiling ambiguously, nor could von Francius prevail upon him to say anything nearer or more certain. They parted, and long afterward I learned the truth, and knew the bitterness which must have been in Eugen's heart; the shame, the gloom; the downcast sorrow, as he refused indirectly but decidedly the thing he would have liked so well--to shake the hand of a man high in position and honorable in name--look him in the face and say, "I accept your friendship--nor need you be ashamed of wearing mine openly."

He refused the advance; he refused that and every other opening for advancement. The man seemed to have a horror of advancement, or of coming in any way forward. He rejected even certain offers which were made that he should perform some solos at different concerts in Elberthal and the neighborhood. I once urged him to become rich and have Sigmund back again. He said: "If I had all the wealth in Germany, it would divide us further still."

I have said nothing about the blank which Sigmund's absence made in our lives, simply because it was too great a blank to describe. Day after day we felt it, and it grew keener, and the wound smarted more sharply.

One can not work all day long, and in our leisure hours we learned to know only too well that he was gone--and gone indeed. That which remained to us was the "Resignation," the "miserable a.s.sistant" which poor Beethoven indicated with such a bitter smile. We took it to us as inmate and _Hausfreund_, and made what we could of it.

CHAPTER XXVII

"So runs the world away."

Konigsallee, No. 3, could scarcely be called a happy establishment. I saw much of its inner life, and what I saw made me feel mortally sad--envy, hatred, and malice; no hour of satisfaction; my sister's bitter laughs and sneers and jibes at men and things; Sir Peter's calm consciousness of his power, and his no less calm, crushing, unvarying manner of wielding it--of silently and horribly making it felt.

Adelaide's very nature appeared to have changed. From a lofty indifference to most things, to sorrow and joy, to the hopes, fears, and feelings of others, she had become eager, earnest, pa.s.sionate, resenting ill-usage, strenuously desiring her own way, deeply angry when she could not get it. To say that Sir Peter's influence upon her was merely productive of a negative dislike would be ridiculous. It was productive of an intense, active hatred, a hatred which would gladly, if it could, have vented itself in deeds. That being impossible, it showed itself in a haughty, unbroken indifference of demeanor which it seemed to be Sir Peter's present aim in some way to break down, for not only did she hate him--he hated her.

She used to the utmost what liberty she had. She was not a woman to talk of regret for what she had done, or to own that she had miscalculated her game. Her life was a great failure, and that failure had been brought home to her mind in a mercilessly short s.p.a.ce of time; but of what use to bewail it? She was not yet conquered. The bitterness of spirit which she carried about with her took the form of a scoffing pessimism. A hard laugh at the things which made other people shake their heads and uplift their hands; a ready scoff at all tenderness; a sneer at anything which could by any stretch of imagination be called good; a determined running up of what was hard, sordid, and worldly, and a persistent and utter skepticism as to the existence of the reverse of those things; such was now the yea, yea, and nay, nay, of her communication.

To a certain extent she had what she had sold herself for; outside pomp and show in plenty--carriages, horses, servants, jewels, and clothes.

Sir Peter liked, to use his own expression, "to see my lady blaze away"--only she must blaze away in his fashion, not hers. He declared he did not know how long he might remain in Elberthal; spoke vaguely of "business at home," about which he was waiting to hear, and said that until he heard the news he wanted, he could not move from the place he was in. He was in excellent spirits at seeing his wife chafing under the confinement to a place she detested, and appeared to find life sweet.

Meanwhile she, using her liberty, as I said, to the utmost extent, had soon plunged into the midst of the fastest set in Elberthal.

There was a fast set there as there was a musical set, an artistic set, a religious set, a free-thinking set; for though it was not so large or so rich as many dull, wealthy towns in England, it presented from its mixed inhabitants various phases of society.

This set into which Adelaide had thrown herself was the fast one; a coterie of officers, artists, the richer merchants and bankers, medical men, literati, and the young (and sometimes old) wives, sisters and daughters of the same; many of them priding themselves upon not being natives of Elberthal, but coming from larger and gayer towns--Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and others.

They led a gay enough life among themselves--a life of theater, concert, and opera-going, of dances, private at home, public at the Malkasten or Artists' Club, flirtations, marriages, engagements, disappointments, the usual dreary and monotonous round. They considered themselves the only society worthy the name in Elberthal, and whoever was not of their set was _niemand_.

I was partly dragged, partly I went to a certain extent of my own will, into this vortex. I felt myself to have earned a larger experience now of life and life's realities. I questioned when I should once have discreetly inclined the head and held my peace. I had a mind to examine this clique and the characters of some of its units, and see in what it was superior to some other acquaintances (in an humbler sphere) with whom my lot had been cast. As time went on I found the points of superiority to decrease--those of inferiority rapidly to increase.

I troubled myself little about them and their opinions. My joys and griefs, hopes and fears, lay so entirely outside their circle that I scarce noticed whether they noticed me or not. I felt and behaved coldly toward them! to the women because their voices never had the ring of genuine liking in speaking to me; to the men because I found them as a rule shallow, ignorant, and pretentious; repellent to me, as I dare say I, with my inability to understand them, was to them. I saw most men and things through a distorting gla.s.s; that of contrast, conscious or unconscious, with Courvoisier.

My musician, I reasoned, wrongly or rightly, had three times their wit, three times their good looks, manners and information, and many times three times their common sense, as well as a juster appreciation of his own merits; besides which, my musician was not a person whose acquaintance and esteem were to be had for the asking--or even for a great deal more than the asking, while it seemed that these young gentleman gave their society to any one who could live in a certain style and talk a certain _argot_, and their esteem to every one who could give them often enough the savory meat that their souls loved, and the wine of a certain quality which made glad their hearts, and rendered them of a cheerful countenance.

But my chief reason for mixing with people who were certainly as a rule utterly distasteful and repugnant to me, was because I could not bear to leave Adelaide alone. I pitied her in her lonely and alienated misery; and I knew that it was some small solace to her to have me with her.

The tale of one day will give an approximate idea of most of the days I spent with her. I was at the time staying with her. Our hours were late.

Breakfast was not over till ten, that is by Adelaide and myself. Sir Peter was an exceedingly active person, both in mind and body, who saw after the management of his affairs in England in the minutest manner that absence would allow. Toward half past eleven he strolled into the room in which we were sitting, and asked what we were doing.

"Looking over costumes," said I, as Adelaide made no answer, and I raised my eyes from some colored ill.u.s.trations.

"Costumes--what kind of costumes?"

"Costumes for the maskenball," I answered, taking refuge in brevity of reply.

"Oh!" He paused. Then, turning suddenly to Adelaide:

"And what is this entertainment, my lady?"

"The Carnival Ball," said she, almost inaudibly, between her closed lips, as she shut the book of ill.u.s.trations, pushed it away from her, and leaned back in her chair.

"And you think you would like to go to the Carnival Ball, hey?"

"No, I do not," said she, as she stroked her lap-dog with a long, white hand on which glittered many rings, and steadily avoided looking at him.