The First Violin Part 5

"German is sometimes not unlike English."

"It is like nothing to me, except a great mystery."

"_Billet_, is 'ticket,'" said he persuasively.

"Oh, is it?" said I, with a gleam of hope. "Perhaps I could remember that. _Billet_," I repeated reflectively.

"Bil_let_," he amended; "not _Bil_lit."

"Bill-yet--Bill-_yet_," I repeated.

"And 'to Elberthal' may be said in one word, 'Elberthal.' '_Ein Billet--Elberthal--erster Cla.s.se._'"

"_Ein Bill-yet_," I repeated, automatically, for my thoughts were dwelling more upon the charming quandary in which I found myself than upon his half-good-natured half-mocking instructions: "_Ein Bill-yet, firste--erste_--it is of no use. I can't say it. But"--here a brilliant idea struck me--"if you could write it out for me on a paper, and then I could give it to the man: he would surely know what it meant."

"A very interesting idea, but a _viva voce_ interview is so much better."

"I wonder how long it takes to walk to Elberthal!" I suggested darkly.

"Oh, a mere trifle of a walk. You might do it in four or five hours, I dare say."

I bit my lips, trying not to cry.

"Perhaps we might make some other arrangement," he remarked. "I am going to Elberthal too."

"You! Thank Heaven!" was my first remark. Then as a doubt came over me: "Then why--why--"

Here I stuck fast, unable to ask why he had said so many tormenting things to me, pretended to teach me German phrases, and so on. The words would not come out. Meanwhile he, without apparently feeling it necessary to explain himself upon these points, went on:

"Yes. I have been at a probe" (not having the faintest idea as to what a probe might be, and not liking to ask, I held my peace and bowed a.s.sentingly). He went on, "And I was delayed a little. I had intended to go by the train you have lost, so if you are not afraid to trust yourself to my care we can travel together."

"You--you are very kind."

"Then you are not afraid?"

"I--oh, no! I should like it very much. I mean I am sure it would be very nice."

Feeling that my social powers were as yet in a very undeveloped condition, I subsided into silence, as he went on:

"I hope your friends will not be very uneasy?"

"Oh, dear no!" I a.s.sured him, with a pious conviction that I was speaking the truth.

"We shall arrive at Elberthal about half past eight."

I scarcely heard. I had plunged my hand into my pocket, and found--a hideous conviction crossed my mind--I had no money! I had until this moment totally forgotten having given my purse to Merrick to keep; and she, as pioneer of the party, naturally had all our tickets under her charge. My heart almost stopped beating. It was unheard of, horrible, this possibility of falling into the power of a total, utter stranger--a foreigner--a--Heaven only knew what! Engrossed with this painful and distressing problem, I sat silent, and with eyes gloomily cast down.

"One thing is certain," he remarked. "We do not want to spend three hours and a half in the station. I want some dinner. A four hours' probe is apt to make one a little hungry. Come, we will go and have something to eat."

The idea had evidently come to him as a species of inspiration, and he openly rejoiced in it.

"I am not hungry," said I; but I was, very. I knew it now that the idea "dinner" had made itself conspicuous in my consciousness.

"Perhaps you think not; but you are, all the same," he said. "Come with me, Fraulein. You have put yourself into my hands; you must do what I tell you."

I followed him mechanically out of the station and down the street, and I tried to realize that instead of being with Miss Hallam and Merrick, my natural and respectable protectors, safely and conventionally plodding the slow way in the slow continental train to the slow continental town, I was parading about the streets of Koln with a man of whose very existence I had half an hour ago been ignorant; I was dependent, too, upon him, and him alone, for my safe arrival at Elberthal. And I followed him unquestioningly, now and then telling myself, by way of feeble consolation, that he was a gentleman--he certainly was a gentleman--and wishing now and then, or trying to wish, with my usual proper feeling, that it had been some nice old lady with whom I had fallen in: it would have made the whole adventure blameless, and, comparatively speaking, agreeable.

We went along a street and came to a hotel, a large building, into which my conductor walked, spoke to a waiter, and we were shown into the restaurant, full of round tables, and containing some half dozen parties of people. I followed with stony resignation. It was the severest trial of all, this coming to a hotel alone with a gentleman in broad daylight.

I caught sight of a reflection in a mirror of a tall, pale girl, with heavy, tumbled auburn hair, a brown hat which suited her, and a severely simple traveling-dress. I did not realize until I had gone past that it was my own reflection which I had seen.

"Suppose we sit here," said he, going to a table in a comparatively secluded window recess, partially overhung with curtains.

"How very kind and considerate of him!" thought I.

"Would you rather have wine or coffee, Fraulein?"

Pulled up from the impulse to satisfy my really keen hunger by the recollection of my "lack of gold," I answered hastily.

"Nothing, thank you--really nothing."

"_O doch!_ You must have something," said he, smiling. "I will order something. Don't trouble about it."

"Don't order anything for me," said I, my cheeks burning. "I shall not eat anything."

"If you do not eat, you will be ill. Remember, we do not get to Elberthal before eight," said he. "Is it perhaps disagreeable to you to eat in the saal? If you like we can have a private room."

"It is not that at all," I replied; and seeing that he looked surprised, I blurted out the truth. "I have no money. I gave my purse to Miss Hallam's maid to keep and she has taken it with her."

With a laugh, in which, infectious though it was, I was too wretched to join:

"Is that all? Kellner!" cried he.

An obsequious waiter came up, smiled sweetly and meaningly at us, received some orders from my companion, and disappeared.

He seated himself beside me at the little round table.

"He will bring something at once," said he, smiling.

I sat still. I was not happy, and yet I could not feel all the unhappiness which I considered appropriate to the circ.u.mstances.

My companion took up a "Kolnische Zeitung," and glanced over the advertis.e.m.e.nts, while I looked a little stealthily at him, and for the first time took in more exactly what he was like, and grew more puzzled with him each moment. As he leaned upon the table, one slight, long, brown hand propping his head, and half lost in the thick, fine brown hair which waved in large, ample waves over his head, there was an indescribable grace, ease, and negligent beauty in the att.i.tude. Move as he would, let him a.s.sume any possible or impossible att.i.tude, there was still in the same grace, half careless, yet very dignified in the position he took.

All his lines were lines of beauty, but beauty which had power and much masculine strength; nowhere did it degenerate into flaccidity, nowhere lose strength in grace. His hair was long, and I wondered at it. My small experience in our delightful home and village circle had not acquainted me with that flowing style; the young men of my acquaintance cropped their hair close to the scalp, and called it the modern style of hair-dressing. It had always looked to me more like hair-undressing.

This hair fell in a heavy wave over his forehead, and he had the habit, common to people whose hair does so, of lifting his head suddenly and shaking back the offending lock. His forehead was broad, open, pleasant, yet grave. Eyes, as I had seen, very dark, and with lashes and brows which enhanced the contrast to a complexion at once fair and pale.

A light mustache, curving almost straight across the face, gave a smiling expression to lips which were otherwise grave, calm, almost sad.

In fact, looking nearer, I thought he did look sad; and though when he looked at me his eyes were so piercing, yet in repose they had a certain distant, abstracted expression not far removed from absolute mournfulness. Broad-shouldered, long-armed, with a physique in every respect splendid, he was yet very distinctly removed from the mere handsome animal which I believe enjoys a distinguished popularity in the latter-day romance.

Now, as his eyes were cast upon the paper, I perceived lines upon his forehead, signs about the mouth and eyes telling of a firm, not to say imperious, disposition; a certain curve of the lips, and of the full, yet delicate nostril, told of pride both strong and high. He was older than I had thought, his face sparer; there were certain hollows in the cheeks, two lines between the eyebrows, a sharpness, or rather somewhat worn appearance of the features, which told of a mental life, keen and consuming. Altogether, an older, more intellectual, more imposing face than I had at first thought; less that of a young and handsome man, more that of a thinker and student. Lastly, a cool ease, deliberation, and leisureliness about all he said and did, hinted at his being a person in authority, accustomed to give orders and see them obeyed without question. I decided that he was, in our graceful home phrase, "master in his own house."