The First Violin Part 69

He knocked and was bidden _herein!_ but not going in, told some one inside that he recommended to his charge a young lady staying with the countess, and who was desirous of seeing the collection.

"Pray, _mein Fraulein_, come in!" said a voice. Herr Nahrath left me, and I, lifting the curtain and pushing open the half-closed door, found myself in an octagonal room, confronted by the quaintest figure I had ever seen. An old man whose long gray hair, long white beard, and long black robe made him look like a wizard or astrologer of some mediaeval romance, was smiling at me and bidding me welcome to his domain. He was the librarian and general custodian of the musical treasures of Schloss Rothenfels, and his name was Brunken. He loved his place and his treasures with a jealous love, and would talk of favorite instruments as if they had been dear children, and of great composers as if they were G.o.ds.

All around the room were large shelves filled with music--and over each division stood a name--such mighty names as Scarlatti, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, Haydn--all the giants, and apparently all the pygmies too, were there. It was a complete library of music, and though I have seen many since, I have never beheld any which in the least approached this in richness or completeness. Rare old ma.n.u.script scores; priceless editions of half-forgotten music; the literature of the productions of half-forgotten composers; Eastern music, Western music, and music of all ages; it was an idealized collection--a musician's paradise, only less so than that to which he now led me, from amid the piled-up scores and the gleaming busts of those mighty men, who here at least were honored with never-failing reverence.

He took me into a second room, or rather hall, of great size, height, and dimensions, a museum of musical instruments. It would take far too long to do it justice in description; indeed, on that first brief investigation I could only form a dim general idea of the richness of its treasures. What histories--what centuries of story were there piled up! Musical instruments of every imaginable form and shape, and in every stage of development. Odd-looking pre-historic bone embryo instruments from different parts of France. Strange old things from Nineveh, and India, and Peru, instruments from tombs and pyramids, and ancient ruined temples in tropic groves--things whose very nature and handling is a mystery and a dispute--tuned to strange scales which produce strange melodies, and carry us back into other worlds. On them, perhaps, has the swarthy Ninevan, or slight Hindoo, or some

"Dusky youth with painted plumage gay"

performed as he apostrophized his mistress's eyebrow. On that queer-looking thing which may be a fiddle or not--which may have had a bow or not--a slightly clad slave made music while his master the rayah played chess with his favorite wife. They are all dead and gone now, and their jewels are worn by others, and the memory of them has vanished from off the earth; and these, their musical instruments, repose in a quiet corner amid the rough hills and oak woods and under the cloudy skies of the land of music--Deutschland.

Down through the changing scale, through the whole range of cymbal and spinet, "flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music," stand literally before me, and a strange revelation it is. Is it the same faculty which produces that grand piano of Bechstein's, and that clarion organ of Silbermann's, and that African drum dressed out with skulls, that war-trumpet hung with tiger's teeth? After this nothing is wonderful! Strange, unearthly looking Chinese frames of sonorous stones or modulated bells; huge drums, painted and carved, and set up on stands six feet from the ground; quaint instruments from the palaces of Aztec Incas, down to pianos by Broadwood, Collard & Collard, and Bechstein.

There were trophies of Streichinstrumente and Blaseinstrumente. I was allowed to gaze upon two real Stradivarius fiddles. I might see the development by evolution, and the survival of the fittest in violin, 'cello, contraba.s.s, alto, beside countless others whose very names have perished with the time that produced them, and the fingers which played them--ingenious guesses, clever misses--the tragedy of harmony as well as its "Io Paean!"

There were wind instruments, quaint old double flutes from Italy; pipes, single, double, treble, from ages much further back; harps--a.s.syrian, Greek, and Roman; instruments of percussion, guitars, and zithers in every form and kind; a dulcimer--I took it up and thought of Coleridge's "damsel with a dulcimer;" and a grand organ, as well as many incipient organs, and the quaint little things of that nature from China, j.a.pan, and Siam.

I stood and gazed in wonder and amazement.

"Surely the present Graf has not collected all these instruments!" said I.

"Oh, no, _mein Fraulein_; they have been acc.u.mulating for centuries.

They tell strange tales of what the Sturms will do for music."

With which he proceeded to tell me certain narratives of certain instruments in the collection, in which he evidently firmly believed, including one relating to a quaint old violin for which he said a certain Graf von Rothenfels called "Max der Tolle," or the Mad Count Max, had sold his soul.

As he finished this last he was called away, and excusing himself, left me. I was alone in this voiceless temple of so many wonderful sounds. I looked round, and a feeling of awe and weirdness crept over me. My eyes would not leave that shabby old fiddle, concerning whose demoniac origin I had just heard such a cheerful little anecdote. Every one of those countless instruments was capable of harmony and discord--had some time been used; pressed, touched, sc.r.a.ped, beaten or blown into by hands or mouths long since crumbled to dust. What tales had been told! what songs sung, and in what languages; what laughs laughed, tears shed, vows spoken, kisses exchanged, over some of those silent pieces of wood, bra.s.s, ivory, and catgut! The feelings of all the histories that surrounded me had something eerie in it.

I stayed until I began to feel nervous, and was thinking of going away when sounds from a third room drew my attention. Some one in there began to play the violin, and to play it with no ordinary delicacy of manipulation. There was something exquisitely finished, refined, and delicate about the performance; it lacked the bold splendor and originality of Eugen's playing, but it was so lovely as to bring tears to my eyes, and, moreover, the air was my favorite "Traumerei."

Something in those sounds, too, was familiar to me. With a sudden beating of the heart, a sudden eagerness, I stepped hastily forward, pushed back the dividing curtain, and entered the room whence proceeded those sounds.

In the middle of the room, which was bare and empty, but which had large windows looking across the melancholy plateau, and to the terrible figure of the runner at the end of the avenue--stood a boy--a child with a violin. He was dressed richly, in velvet and silk; he was grown--the slender delicacy of his form was set off by the fine clothing that rich men's children wear; his beautiful waving black hair was somewhat more closely cut, but the melancholy yet richly colored young face that turned toward me--the deep and yearning eyes, the large, solemn gaze, the premature gravity, were all his--it was Sigmund, Courvoisier's boy.

For a moment we both stood motionless--hardly breathing; then he flung his violin down, sprung forward with a low sound of intense joy, exclaiming:

"_Das Fraulein_, _das Fraulein_, from home!" and stood before me trembling from head to foot.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the child to my heart (he looked so much older and sadder), and covered him with kisses.

He submitted--nay, more, he put his arms about my neck and laid his face upon my shoulder, and presently, as if he had choked down some silent emotion, looked up at me with large, imploring, sad eyes, and asked:

"Have you seen my father?"

"Sigmund, I saw him the day before yesterday."

"You saw him--you spoke to him, perhaps?"

"Yes. I spoke long with him."

"What did he look like?"

"As he always does--brave, and true, and n.o.ble."

"_Nicht wahr?_" said the boy, with flashing eyes. "I know how he looks, just. I am waiting till I am grown up, that I may go to him again."

"Do you like me, Sigmund?"

"Yes; very much."

"Do you think you could love me? Would you trust me to love those you love?"

"Do you mean him?" he asked point-blank, and looked at me somewhat startled.

"Yes."

"I--don't--know."

"I mean, to take care of him, and try to make him happy till you come to him again, and then we will all be together."

He looked doubtful still.

"What I mean, Sigmund, is that your father and I are going to be married; but we shall never be quite happy until you are with us."

He stood still, taking it in, and I waited in much anxiety. I was certain that if I had time and opportunity I could win him; but I feared the result of this sudden announcement and separation. He might only see that his father--his supreme idol--could turn for comfort to another, while he would not know how I loved him and longed to make his grave young life happy for him. I put my arm round his shoulder, and kneeling down beside him, said:

"You must say you are glad, Sigmund, or you will make me very unhappy. I want you to love me as well as him. Look at me and tell me you will trust me till we are all together, for I am sure we shall be together some day."

He still hesitated some little time, but at last said, with the sedateness peculiar to him, as of one who overcame a struggle and made a sacrifice:

"If he has decided it so it must be right, you know; but--but--you won't let him forget me, will you?"

The child's nature overcame that which had been, as it were, supplanted and grafted upon it. The lip quivered, the dark eyes filled with tears.

Poor little lonely child! desolate and sad in the midst of all the grandeur! My heart yearned to him.

"Forget you, Sigmund? Your father never forgets, he can not!"

"I wish I was grown up," was all he said.

Then it occurred to me to wonder how he got there, and in what relation he stood to these people.

"Do you live here, Sigmund?"

"Yes."

"What relation are you to the Herr Graf?"

"Graf von Rothenfels is my uncle."

"And are they kind to you?" I asked, in a hasty whisper, for his intense gravity and sadness oppressed me. I trembled to think of having to tell his father in what state I had found him.