The First Violin Part 46

She did wish to go to the ball, but she knew that it was as likely as not that if she displayed any such desire he would prevent it. Despite her curt reply she foresaw impending the occurrence which she most of anything disliked--a conversation with Sir Peter. He placed himself in our midst, and requested to look at the pictures. In silence I handed him the book. I never could force myself to smile when he was there, nor overcome a certain restraint of demeanor which rather pleased and flattered him than otherwise. He glanced sharply round in the silence which followed his joining our company, and turning over the ill.u.s.trations, said:

"I thought I heard some noise when I came in. Don't let me interrupt the conversation."

But the conversation was more than interrupted; it was dead--the life frozen out of it by his very appearance.

"When is the carnival, and when does this piece of tomfoolery come off?"

he inquired, with winning grace of diction.

"The carnival begins this year on the 26th of February. The ball is on the 27th," said I, confining myself to facts and figures.

"And how do you get there? By paying?"

"Well, you have to pay--yes. But you must get your tickets from some member of the Malkasten Club. It is the artists' ball, and they arrange it all."

"H'm! Ha! And as what do you think of going, Adelaide?" he inquired, turning with suddenness toward her.

"I tell you I had not thought of going--nor thought anything about it.

Herr von Francius sent us the pictures, and we were looking over them.

That is all."

Sir Peter turned over the pages and looked at the commonplace costumes therein suggested--Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Picardy Peasant, Maria Stuart, a Snow Queen, and all the rest of them.

"Well, I don't see anything here that I would wear if I were a woman,"

he said, as he closed the book. "February, did you say?"

"Yes," said I, as no one else spoke.

"Well, it is the middle of January now. You had better be looking out for something; but don't let it be anything in those books. Let the beggarly daubers see how English women do these things."

"Do you intend me to understand that you wish us to go to the ball?"

inquired Adelaide, in an icy kind of voice.

"Yes, I do," almost shouted Sir Peter. Adelaide could, despite the whip and rein with which he held her, exasperate and irritate him--by no means more thoroughly than by pretending that she did not understand his grandiloquent allusions, and the vague grandness of the commands which he sometimes gave. "I mean you to go, and your little sister here, and Arkwright too. I don't know about myself. Now, I am going to ride.

Good-morning."

As Sir Peter went out, von Francius came in. Sir Peter greeted him with a grin and exaggerated expressions of affability at which von Francius looked silently scornful. Sir Peter added:

"Those two ladies are puzzled to know what they shall wear at the Carnival Ball. Perhaps you can give them your a.s.sistance."

Then he went away. It was as if a half-muzzled wolf had left the room.

Von Francius had come to give me my lesson, which was now generally taken at my sister's house and in her presence, and after which von Francius usually remained some half hour or so in conversation with one or both of us. He had become an _intime_ of the house. I was glad of this, and that without him nothing seemed complete, no party rounded, scarcely an evening finished.

When he was not with us in the evening, we were somewhere where he was; either at a concert or a probe, or at the theater or opera, or one of the fashionable lectures which were then in season.

It could hardly be said that von Francius was a more frequent visitor than some other men at the house, but from the first his att.i.tude with regard to Adelaide had been different. Some of those other men were, or professed to be, desperately in love with the beautiful English woman; there was always a half gallantry in their behavior, a homage which might not be very earnest, but which was homage all the same, to a beautiful woman. With von Francius it had never been thus, but there had been a gravity and depth about their intercourse which pleased me. I had never had the least apprehension with regard to those other people; she might amuse herself with them; it would only be amus.e.m.e.nt, and some contempt.

But von Francius was a man of another mettle. It had struck me almost from the first that there might be some danger, and I was unfeignedly thankful to see that as time went on and his visits grew more and more frequent and the intimacy deeper, not a look, not a sign occurred to hint that it ever was or would be more than acquaintance, liking, appreciation, friendship, in successive stages. Von Francius had never from the first treated her as an ordinary person, but with a kind of tacit understanding that something not to be spoken of lay behind all she did and said, with the consciousness that the skeleton in Adelaide's cupboard was more ghastly to look upon than most people's secret specters, and that it persisted, with an intrusiveness and want of breeding peculiar to guests of that caliber, in thrusting its society upon her at all kinds of inconvenient times.

I enjoyed these music lessons, I must confess. Von Francius had begun to teach me music now, as well as singing. By this time I had resigned myself to the conviction that such talent as I might have lay in my voice, not my fingers, and accepted it as part of the conditions which ordain that in every human life shall be something _manque_, something incomplete.

The most memorable moments with me have been those in which pain and pleasure, yearning and satisfaction, knowledge and seeking, have been so exquisitely and so intangibly blended, in listening to some deep sonata, some stately and pathetic old _ciacconna_ or gavotte, some concerto or symphony; the thing nearest heaven is to sit apart with closed eyes while the orchestra or the individual performer interprets for one the mystic poetry, or the dramatic fire, or the subtle cobweb refinements of some instrumental poem.

I would rather have composed a certain little "Traumerei" of Schumann's or a "Barcarole" of Rubinstein's, or a sonata of Schubert's than have won all the laurels of Grisi, all the glory of Malibran and Jenny Lind.

But it was not to be. I told myself so, and yet I tried so hard in my halting, bungling way to worship the G.o.ddess of my idolatry, that my master had to restrain me.

"Stop!" said he this morning, when I had been weakly endeavoring to render a _ciacconna_ from a suite of Lachner's, which had moved me to thoughts too deep for tears at the last symphonie concert. "Stop, Fraulein May! Duty first; your voice before your fingers."

"Let me try once again!" I implored.

He shut up the music and took it from the desk.

"_Entbehren sollst du; sollst entbehren!_" said he, dryly.

I took my lesson and then practiced shakes for an hour, while he talked to Adelaide; and then, she being summoned to visitors, he went away.

Later I found Adelaide in the midst of a lot of visitors--Herr Hauptmann This, Herr Lieutenant That, Herr Maler The Other, Herr Concertmeister So-and-So--for von Francius was not the only musician who followed in her train. But there I am wrong. He did not follow in her train; he might stand aside and watch the others who did; but following was not in his line.

There were ladies there too--gay young women, who rallied round Lady Le Marchant as around a master spirit in the art of _Zeitvertreib_.

This levee lasted till the bell rang for lunch, when we went into the dining-room, and found Sir Peter and his secretary, young Arkwright, already seated. He--Arkwright--was a good-natured, tender-hearted lad, devoted to Adelaide. I do not think he was very happy or very well satisfied with his place, but from his salary he half supported a mother and sister, and so was fain to "grin and bear it."

Sir Peter was always exceedingly affectionate to me. I hated to be in the same room with him, and while I detested him, was also conscious of an unheroic fear of him. For Adelaide's sake I was as attentive to him as I could make myself, in order to free her a little from his surveillance, for poor Adelaide Wedderburn, with her few pounds of annual pocket-money, and her proud, restless, ambitious spirit, had been a free, contented woman in comparison with Lady Le Marchant.

On the day in question he was particularly amiable, called me "my dear"

every time he spoke to me, and complimented me upon my good looks, telling me I was growing monstrous handsome--ay, devilish handsome, by Gad! far outstripping my lady, who had gone off dreadfully in her good looks, hadn't she, Arkwright?

Poor Arkwright, tingling with a scorching blush, and ready to sink through the floor with confusion, stammered out that he had never thought of venturing to remark upon my Lady Le Marchant's looks.

"What a lie, Arkwright! You know you watch her as if she was the apple of your eye," chuckled Sir Peter, smiling round upon the company with his cold, glittering eyes. "What are you blushing so for, my pretty May? Isn't there a song something about my pretty May, my dearest May, eh?"

"My pretty Jane, I suppose you mean," said I, n.o.bly taking his attention upon myself, while Adelaide sat motionless and white as marble, and Arkwright cooled down somewhat from his state of shame and anguish at being called upon to decide which of us eclipsed the other in good looks.

"Pretty Jane! Whoever heard of a pretty Jane?" said Sir Peter. "If it isn't May, it ought to be. At any rate, there was a Charming May."

"The month--not a person."

"Pretty Jane, indeed! You must sing me that after lunch, and then we can see whether the song was pretty or not, my dear, eh?"

"Certainly, Sir Peter, if you like."

"Yes, I do like. My lady here seems to have lost her voice lately. I can't imagine the reason. I am sure she has everything to make her sing for joy; have you not, my dear?"

"Everything, and more than everything," replies my lady, laconically.

"And she has a strong sense of duty, too; loves those whom she ought to love, and despises those whom she ought to despise. She always has done, from her infancy up to the time when she loved me and despised public opinion for my sake."

The last remark was uttered in tones of deeper malignity, while the eyes began to glare, and the under lip to droop, and the sharp eye-teeth, which lent such a very emphatic point to all Sir Peter's smiles, sneers, and facial movements in general, gleamed.