The First Violin Part 47

Adelaide's lip quivered for a second; her color momentarily faded.

In this kind of light and agreeable badinage the meal pa.s.sed over, and we were followed into the drawing-room by Sir Peter, loudly demanding "'My Pretty Jane'--or May, or whatever it was."

"We are going out," said my lady. "You can have it another time. May can not sing the moment she has finished lunch."

"Hold your tongue, my dear," said Sir Peter; and inspired by an agreeable and playful humor, he patted his wife's shoulder and pinched her ear.

The color fled from her very lips and she stood pale and rigid with a look in her eyes which I interpreted to mean a shuddering recoil, stopped by sheer force of will.

Sir Peter turned with an engaging laugh to me:

"Miss May--bonny May--made me a promise, and she must keep it; or if she doesn't I shall take the usual forfeit. We know what that is. Upon my word, I almost wish she would break her promise."

"I have no wish to break my promise," said I, hastening to the piano, and then and there singing "My Pretty Jane," and one or two others, after which he released us, chuckling at having contrived to keep my lady so long waiting for her drive.

The afternoon's programme was, I confess, not without attraction to me; for I knew that I was pretty, and I had not one of the strong and powerful minds which remained unelated by admiration and undepressed by the absence of it.

We drove to the picture exhibitions, and at both of them had a little crowd attending us. That crowd consisted chiefly of admirers, or professed admirers, of my sister, with von Francius in addition, who dropped in at the first exhibition.

Von Francius did not attend my sister; it was by my side that he remained and it was to me that he talked. He looked on at the men who were around her, but scarcely addressed her himself.

There was a clique of young artists who chose to consider the wealth of Sir Peter Le Marchant as fabulous, and who paid court to his wife from mixed motives; the prevailing one being a hope that she would be smitten by some picture of theirs at a fancy price, and order it to be sent home--as if she ever saw with anything beyond the most superficial outward eye those pictures, and as if it lay in her power to order any one, even the smallest and meanest of them. These ingenuous artists had yet to learn that Sir Peter's picture purchases were formed from his own judgment, through the medium of himself or his secretary, armed with strict injunctions as to price, and upon the most purely practical and business-like principles--not in the least at the caprice of his wife.

We went to the larger gallery last. As we entered it I turned aside with von Francius to look at a picture in a small back room, and when we turned to follow the others, they had all gone forward into the large room; but standing at the door by which we had entered, and looking calmly after us, was Courvoisier.

A shock thrilled me. It was some time since I had seen him; for I had scarcely been at my lodgings for a fortnight, and we had had no haupt-proben lately. I had heard some rumor that important things--or, as Frau Lutzler gracefully expressed it, _was wichtiges_--had taken place between von Francius and the kapelle, and that Courvoisier had taken a leading part in the affair. To-day the greeting between the two men was a cordial if a brief one.

Eugen's eyes scarcely fell upon me; he included me in his bow--that was all. All my little day-dream of growing self-complacency was shattered, scattered; the old feeling of soreness, smallness, wounded pride, and bruised self-esteem came back again. I felt a wild, angry desire to compel some other glance from those eyes than that exasperating one of quiet indifference. I felt it like a lash every time I encountered it.

Its very coolness and absence of emotion stung me and made me quiver.

We and Courvoisier entered the large room at the same time. While Adelaide was languidly making its circuit, von Francius and I sat upon the ottoman in the middle of the room. I watched Eugen, even if he took no notice of me--watched him till every feeling of rest, every hard-won conviction of indifference to him and feeling of regard conquered came tumbling down in ignominious ruins. I knew he had had a fiery trial. His child, for whom I used to watch his adoration with a dull kind of envy, had left him. There was some mystery about it, and much pain. Frau Lutzler had begun to tell me a long story culled from one told her by Frau Schmidt, and I had stopped her, but knew that "Herr Courvoisier was not like the same man any more."

That trouble was visible in firmly marked lines, even now; he looked subdued, older, and his face was thin and worn. Yet never had I noticed so plainly before the bright light of intellect in his eye; the n.o.ble stamp of mind upon his brow. There was more than the grace of a kindly nature in the pleasant curve of the lips--there was thought, power, intellectual strength. I compared him with the young men who were at this moment dangling round my sister. Not one among them could approach him--not merely in stature and breadth and the natural grace and dignity of carriage, but in far better things--in the mind that dominates sense; the will that holds back pa.s.sion with a hand as strong and firm as that of a master over the dog whom he chooses to obey him. This man--I write from knowledge--had the capacity to appreciate and enjoy life--to taste its pleasures--never to excess, but with no ascetic's lips. But the natural prompting--the moral "eat, drink, and be merry," was held back with a ruthless hand, with chain of iron, and biting thong to chastise pitilessly each restive movement. He dreed out his weird most thoroughly, and drank the cup presented to him to the last dregs.

When the weird is very long and hard--when the flavor of the cup is exceeding bitter, this process leaves its effects in the form of sobered mien, gathering wrinkles, and a permanent shadow on the brow, and in the eyes. So it was with him.

He went round the room, looking at a picture here and there with the eye of a connoisseur--then pausing before the one which von Francius had brought me to look at on Christmas-day, Courvoisier, folding his arms, stood before it and surveyed it, straightly, and without moving a muscle; coolly, criticisingly and very fastidiously. The _blase_-looking individual in the foreground received, I saw, a share of his attention--the artist, too, in the background; the model, with the white dress, oriental fan, bare arms, and half-bored, half-cynic look. He looked at them all long--attentively--then turned away; the only token of approval or disapproval which he vouchsafed being a slight smile and a slight shrug, both so very slight as to be almost imperceptible. Then he pa.s.sed on--glanced at some other pictures--at my sister, on whom his eyes dwelt for a moment as if he thought that she at least made a very beautiful picture; then out of the room.

"Do you know him?" said von Francius, quite softly, to me.

I started violently. I had utterly forgotten that he was at my side, and I know not what tales my face had been telling. I turned to find the dark and impenetrable eyes of von Francius fixed on me.

"A little," I said.

"Then you know a generous, high-minded man--a man who has made me feel ashamed of myself--and a man to whom I made an apology the other day with pleasure."

My heart warmed. This praise of Eugen by a man whom I admired so devotedly as I did Max von Francius seemed to put me right with myself and the world.

Soon afterward we left the exhibition, and while the others went away it appeared somehow by the merest casualty that von Francius was asked to drive back with us and have afternoon tea, _englischerweise_--which he did, after a moment's hesitation.

After tea he left for an orchestra probe to the next Sat.u.r.day's concert; but with an _auf wiedersehen_, for the probe will not last long, and we shall meet again at the opera and later at the Malkasten Ball.

I enjoyed going to the theater. I knew my dress was pretty. I knew that I looked nice, and that people would look at me, and that I, too, should have my share of admiration and compliments as a _schone Englanderin_.

We were twenty minutes late--naturally. All the people in the place stare at us and whisper about us, partly because we have a conspicuous place--the proscenium loge to the right of the stage, partly because we are in full toilet--an almost unprecedented circ.u.mstance in that homely theater--partly, I suppose, because Adelaide is supremely beautiful.

Mr. Arkwright was already with us. Von Francius joined us after the first act, and remained until the end. Almost the only words he exchanged with Adelaide were:

"Have you seen this opera before, Lady Le Marchant?"

"No; never."

It was Auber's merry little opera, "Des Teufels Antheil." The play was played. Von Francius was beside me. Whenever I looked down I saw Eugen, with the same calm, placid indifference upon his face; and again I felt the old sensation of soreness, shame, and humiliation. I feel wrought up to a great pitch of nervous excitement when we leave the theater and drive to the Malkasten, where there is more music--dance music, and where the ball is at its height. And in a few moments I find myself whirling down the room in the arms of von Francius, to the music of "Mein schonster Tag in Baden," and wishing very earnestly that the heart-sickness I feel would make me ill or faint, or anything that would send me home to quietness and--him. But it does not have the desired effect. I am in a fever; I am all too vividly conscious, and people tell me how well I am looking, and that rosy cheeks become me better than pale ones.

They are merry parties, these dances at the Malkasten, in the quaintly decorated saal of the artists' club-house. There is a certain license in the dress. Velvet coats, and coats, too, in many colors, green and prune and claret, vying with black, are not tabooed. There are various uniforms of hussars, infantry, and uhlans, and some of the women, too, are dressed in a certain fantastically picturesque style to please their artist brothers or _fiances_.

The dancing gets faster, and the festivities are kept up late. Songs are sung which perhaps would not be heard in a quiet drawing-room; a little acting is done with them. Music is played, and von Francius, in a vagrant mood, sits down and improvises a fitful, stormy kind of fantasia, which in itself and in his playing puts me much in mind of the weird performances of the Abbate Liszt.

I at least hear another note than of yore, another touch. The soul that it wanted seems gradually creeping into it. He tells a strange story upon the quivering keys--it is becoming tragic, sad, pathetic. He says hastily to me and in an under-tone: "Fraulein May, this is a thought of one of your own poets:

"'How sad, and mad, and bad it was, And yet how it was sweet.'"

I am almost in tears, and every face is affording ill.u.s.trations for "The Expressions of the Emotions in Men and Women," when it suddenly breaks off with a loud, Ha! ha! ha! which sounds as if it came from a human voice, and jars upon me, and then he breaks into a waltz, pushing the astonished musicians aside, and telling the company to dance while he pipes.

A mad dance to a mad tune. He plays and plays on, ever faster, and ever a wilder measure, with strange eerie clanging chords in it which are not like dance notes, until Adelaide prepares to go, and then he suddenly ceases, springs up, and comes with us to our carriage. Adelaide looks white and worn.

Again at the carriage door, "a pair of words" pa.s.ses between them.

"Milady is tired?" from him, in a courteous tone, as his dark eyes dwell upon her face.

"Thanks, Herr Direktor, I am generally tired," from her, with a slight smile, as she folds her shawl across her breast with one hand, and extends the other to him.

"Milady, adieu."

"Adieu, Herr von Francius."

The ball is over, and I think we have all had enough of it.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE CARNIVAL BALL.

"Aren't you coming to the ball, Eugen?"