The First Violin Part 60

"Schiller wrote from his heart," said she, in a low voice.

"Indeed, yes, Adelaide."

"Did you say good-bye to von Francius, May, yesterday?"

"Yes--at least, we said _au revoir_. He wants me to sing for him next winter."

"Was he very down?"

"Yes--very. He--"

A footstep close at hand. A figure pa.s.sed in the uncertain light, dimly discerned us, paused, and glanced at us.

"Max!" exclaimed Adelaide, in a low voice, full of surprise and emotion, and she half started up.

"It is you! That is too wonderful!" said he, pausing.

"You are not yet gone?"

"I have been detained to-day. I leave early to-morrow. I thought I would take at least one turn in the Malkasten garden, which I may perhaps never see or enter again. I did not know you were here."

"We--May and I--thought it so pleasant that we would not go in again to listen to the play."

Von Francius had come under the trees and was now leaning against a ma.s.sive trunk; his slight, tall figure almost lost against it; his arms folded, and an imposing calm upon his pale face, which was just caught by the gleam of a lamp outside the trees.

"Since this accidental meeting has taken place, I may have the privilege of saying adieu to your ladyship."

"Yes--" said Adelaide, in a strange, low, much-moved tone.

I felt uneasy, I was sorry this meeting had taken place. The shock and revulsion of feeling for Adelaide, after she had been securely calculating that von Francius was a hundred miles on his way to ----, was too severe. I could tell from the very _timbre_ of her voice and its faint vibration how agitated she was, and as she seated herself again beside me, I felt that she trembled like a reed.

"It is more happiness than I expected," went on von Francius, and his voice too was agitated. Oh, if he would only say "Farewell," and go!

"Happiness!" echoed Adelaide, in a tone whose wretchedness was too deep for tears.

"Ah! You correct me. Still it is a happiness; there are some kinds of joy which one can not distinguish from griefs, my lady, until one comes to think that one might have been without them, and then one knows their real nature."

She clasped her hands. I saw her bosom rise and fall with long, stormy breaths.

I trembled for both; for Adelaide, whose emotion and anguish were, I saw, mastering her; for von Francius, because if Adelaide failed he must find it almost impossible to repulse her.

"Herr von Francius," said I, in a quick, low voice, making one step toward him, and laying my hand upon his arm, "leave us! If you do love us," I added, in a whisper, "leave us! Adelaide, say good-bye to him--let him go!"

"You are right," said von Francius to me, before Adelaide had time to speak; "you are quite right."

A pause. He stepped up to Adelaide. I dared not interfere. Their eyes met, and his will not to yield produced the same in her, in the shape of a pa.s.sive, voiceless acquiescence in his proceedings. He took her hands, saying:

"My lady, adieu! Heaven send you peace, or death, which brings it, or--whatever is best."

Loosing her hands he turned to me, saying distinctly:

"As you are a woman, and her sister, do not forsake her now."

Then he was gone. She raised her arms and half fell against the trunk of the giant acacia beneath which we had been sitting, face forward, as if drunk with misery.

Von Francius, strong and generous, whose very submission seemed to brace one to meet trouble with a calmer, firmer front, was gone. I raised my eyes, and did not even feel startled, only darkly certain that Adelaide's evil star was high in the heaven of her fate, when I saw, calmly regarding us, Sir Peter Le Marchant.

In another moment he stood beside his wife, smiling, and touched her shoulder; with a low cry she raised her face, shrinking away from him.

She did not seem surprised either, and I do not think people often are surprised at the presence, however sudden and unexpected, of their evil genius. It is good luck which surprises the average human being.

"You give me a cold welcome, my lady," he remarked. "You are so overjoyed to see me, I suppose. Your carriage is waiting outside. I came in it, and Arkwright told me I should find you here. Suppose you come home. We shall be less disturbed there than in these public gardens."

Tone and words all convinced me that he had heard most of what had pa.s.sed, and would oppress her with it hereafter.

The late scene had apparently stunned her. After the first recoil she said, scarcely audibly, "I am ready," and moved. He offered her his arm; she took it, turning to me and saying, "Come, May!"

"Excuse me," observed Sir Peter, "you are better alone. I am sorry I can not second your invitation to my charming sister-in-law. I do not think you fit for any society--even hers."

"I can not leave my sister, Sir Peter; she is not fit to be left," I found voice to say.

"She is not 'left,' as you say, my dear. She has her husband. She has me," said he.

Some few further words pa.s.sed. I do not chronicle them. Sir Peter was as firm as a rock--that I was helpless before him is a matter of course. I saw my sister handed into her carriage; I saw Sir Peter follow her--the carriage drive away. I was left alone, half mad with terror at the idea of her state, to go home to my lodgings.

Sir Peter had heard the words of von Francius to me; "do not forsake her now," and had given himself the satisfaction of setting them aside as if they had been so much waste paper. Von Francius was, as I well knew, trying to derive comfort in this very moment from the fact that I at least was with her; I who loved them both, and would have laid down my life for them. Well, let him have the comfort! In the midst of my sorrow I rejoiced that he did not know the worst, and would not be likely to imagine for himself a terror grimmer than any feeling I had yet known.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

"Some say, 'A queen discrowned,' and some call it 'Woman's shame.'

Others name it 'A false step,' or 'Social suicide,' just as it happens to strike their minds, or such understanding as they may be blessed with. In these days one rarely hears seriously mentioned such unruly words as 'Love,' or 'Wretchedness,' or 'Despair,' which may nevertheless be important factors in bringing about that result which stands out to the light of day for public inspection."

The three days which I pa.s.sed alone and in suspense were very terrible ones to me. I felt myself physically as well as mentally ill, and it was in vain that I tried to learn anything of or from Adelaide, and I waited in a kind of breathless eagerness for the end of it all, for I knew as well as if some one had shouted it aloud from the house-tops that that farewell in the Malkasten garden was not the end.

Early one morning, when the birds were singing and the sunshine streaming into the room, Frau Lutzler came into the room and put a letter into my hand, which she said a messenger had left. I took it, and paused a moment before I opened it. I was unwilling to face what I knew was coming--and yet, how otherwise could the whole story have ended?

"DEAR MAY,--You, like me, have been suffering during these three days. I have been trying--yes, I have tried to believe I could bear this life, but it is too horrible. Isn't it possible that sometimes it may be right to do wrong? It is of no use telling you what has pa.s.sed, but it is enough. I believe I am only putting the crowning point to my husband's revenge when I leave him. He will be glad--he does not mind the disgrace for himself; and he can get another wife, as good as I, when he wants one. When you read this, or not long afterward, I shall be with Max von Francius. I wrote to him--I asked him to save me, and he said, 'Come!' It is not because I want to go, but I must go somewhere. I have made a great mess of my life. I believe everybody does make a mess of it who tries to arrange things for himself. Remember that, May.

"I wonder if we shall ever meet again. Not likely, when you are married to some respectable, conventional man, who will shield you from contamination with such as I. I must not write more or I shall write nonsense. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye! What will be the end of me? Think of me sometimes, and try not to think too hardly.

Listen to your heart--not to what people say. Good-bye again!

"ADELAIDE."

I received this stroke without groan or cry, tear or shiver. It struck home to me. The heavens were riven asunder--a flash came from them, descended upon my head, and left me desolate. I stood, I know not how long, stock-still in the place where I had read that letter. In novels I had read of such things; they had had little meaning for me. In real life I had only heard them mentioned dimly and distantly, and here I was face to face with the awful thing, and so far from being able to deal out hearty, untempered condemnation, I found that the words of Adelaide's letter came to me like throes of a real heart. Bald, dry, disjointed sentences on the outside; without feeling they might seem, but to me they were the breathless exclamations of a soul in supreme torture and peril. My sister! with what a pa.s.sion of love my heart went out to her. Think of you, Adelaide, and think of you not too hardly? Oh, why did not you trust me more?