The First Violin Part 64

"I am sorry for you," he said in the gentlest of voices, as he happed my shawl more closely around me. "And you are cold too--shivering. My coat must do duty again."

"No, no!" cried I. "Keep it! I won't have it."

"Yes you will, because you can't help it if I make you," he answered as he wrapped it round me.

"Well, please take part of it. At least wrap half of it round you," I implored, "or I shall be miserable."

"Pray don't. No, keep it! It is not like charity--it has not room for many sins at once."

"Do you mean you or me?" I could not help asking.

"Are we not all sinners?"

I knew it would be futile to resist, but I was not happy in the new arrangement, and I touched his coat-sleeve timidly.

"You have quite a thin coat," I remonstrated, "and I have a winter dress, a thick jacket, and a shawl."

"And my coat, _und doch bist du_--oh, pardon! and you are shivering in spite of it," said he, conclusively.

"It is an awful storm, is it not?" I suggested next.

"Was an awful storm, _nicht wahr_? Yes. And how very strange that you and I, of all people, should have met here, of all places. How did you get here?"

"I had been to church."

"So! I had not."

"How did you come here?" I ventured to ask.

"Yes--you may well ask; but first--you have been in England, have you not?"

"Yes, and am going back again."

"Well--I came here yesterday from Berlin. When the war was over--"

"Ah, you were in the war?" I gasped.

"_Naturlich, mein Fraulein._ Where else should I have been?"

"And you fought?"

"Also _naturlich_."

"Where did you fight? At Sedan?"

"At Sedan--yes."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" I whispered to myself. "And were you wounded?" I added aloud.

"A mere trifle. Friedhelm and I had luck to march side by side. I learned to know in spirit and in letter the meaning of _Ich hatt' einen guten Cameraden_."

"You were wounded!" I repeated, unheeding all that discursiveness.

"Where? How? Were you in the hospital?"

"Yes. Oh, it is nothing. Since then I have been learning my true place in the world, for you see, unluckily, I was not killed."

"Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d! How I have wondered! How I have thought--well, how did you come here?"

"I coveted a place in one of those graves, and couldn't have it," he said, bitterly. "It was a little thing to be denied, but fallen men must do without much. I saw boys falling around me, whose mothers and sisters are mourning for them yet."

"Oh, don't."

"Well--Friedel and I are working in Berlin. We shall not stay there long; we are wanderers now! There is no room for us. I have a short holiday, and I came to spend it at Elberthal. This evening I set out, intending to hear the opera--'Der Fliegende Hollander'--very appropriate, wasn't it?"

"Very."

"But the storm burst over the theater just as the performance was about to begin, and removed part of the roof, upon which one of the company came before the curtain and dismissed us with his blessing and the announcement that no play would be played to-night. Thus I was deprived of the unG.o.dly pleasure of watching my old companions wrestle with Wagner's stormy music while I looked on like a gentleman."

"But when you came out of the theater?"

"When I came out of the theater the storm was so magnificent, and was telling me so much that I resolved to come down to its center-point and see Vater Rhein in one of his grandest furies. I strayed upon the bridge of boats; forgot where I was, listened only to the storm: ere I knew what was happening I was adrift and the tempest howling round me--and you, fresh from your devotions to lull it."

"Are you going to stay long in Elberthal?"

"It seems I may not. I am driven away by storms and tempests."

"And me with you," thought I. "Perhaps there is some meaning in this.

Perhaps fate means us to breast other storms together. If so, I am ready--anything--so it be with you."

"There's the moon," said he; "how brilliant, is she not?"

I looked up into the sky wherein she had indeed appeared "like a dying lady, lean and pale," shining cold and drear, but very clearly upon the swollen waters, showing us dim outlines of half-submerged trees, cottages and hedges--showing us that we were in midstream, and that other pieces of wreck were floating down the river with us, hurrying rapidly with the current--showing me, too, in a ghostly whiteness, the face of my companion turned toward me, and his elbow rested on his knee and his chin in his hand, and his loose dark hair was blown back from his broad forehead, his strange, deep eyes were resting upon my face, calmly, openly.

Under that gaze my heart fell. In former days there had been in his face something not unakin to this stormy free night; but now it was changed--how changed!

A year had wrought a terrible alteration. I knew not his past; but I did know that he had long been struggling, and a dread fear seized me that the struggle was growing too hard for him--his spirit was breaking. It was not only that the shadows were broader, deeper, more permanently sealed--there was a down look--a hardness and bitterness which inspired me both with pity and fear.

"Your fate is a perverse one," he remarked, as I did not speak.

"So! Why?"

"It throws you so provokingly into society which must be so unpleasant to you."

"Whose society?"

"Mine, naturally."

"You are much mistaken," said I, composedly.