The First Violin Part 7

"I think, because you told me. But I will forget it if you wish."

"Oh, no! It is quite true. Perhaps I ought to have married him."

"Ought!" He looked startled.

"Yes. Adelaide--my eldest sister--said so. But it was no use. I was very unhappy, and Miss Hallam, who is Sir Peter's deadly enemy--he is the old gentleman, you know--was very kind to me. She invited me to come with her to Germany, and promised to let me have singing lessons."

"Singing lessons?"

I nodded. "Yes; and then when I know a good deal more about singing, I shall go back again and give lessons. I shall support myself, and then no one will have the right to want to make me marry Sir Peter."

"_Du lieber Himmel!_" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, half to himself. "Are you very musical, then?"

"I can sing," said I. "Only I want some more training."

"And you will go back all alone and try to give lessons?"

"I shall not only try, I shall do it," I corrected him.

"And do you like the prospect?"

"If I can get enough money to live upon, I shall like it very much. It will be better than living at home and being bothered."

"I will tell you what you should do before you begin your career," said he, looking at me with an expression half wondering, half pitying.

"What? If you could tell me anything."

"Preserve your voice, by all means, and get as much instruction as you can; but change all that waving hair, and make it into un.o.bjectionable smooth bands of no particular color. Get a mask to wear over your face, which is too expressive; do something to your eyes to alter their--"

The expression then visible in the said eyes seemed to strike him, for he suddenly stopped, and with a slight laugh, said:

"_Ach, was rede ich fur dummes Zeug!_ Excuse me, _mein Fraulein_."

"But," I interrupted, earnestly, "what do you mean? Do you think my appearance will be a disadvantage to me?"

Scarcely had I said the words than I knew how intensely stupid they were, how very much they must appear as if I were openly and impudently fishing for compliments. How grateful I felt when he answered, with a grave directness, which had nothing but the highest compliment in it--that of crediting me with right motives:

"_Mein Fraulein_, how can I tell? It is only that I knew some one, rather older than you, and very beautiful, who had such a pursuit. Her name was Corona Heidelberger, and her story was a sad one."

"Tell it me," I besought.

"Well, no, I think not. But--sometimes I have a little gift of foresight, and that tells me that you will not become what you at present think. You will be much happier and more fortunate."

"I wonder if it would be nice to be a great operatic singer," I speculated.

"_O, behute!_ don't think of it!" he exclaimed, starting up and moving restlessly. "You do not know--you an opera singer--"

He was interrupted. There suddenly filled the air a sound of deep, heavenly melody, which swept solemnly adown the aisles, and filled with its melodious thunder every corner of the great building. I listened with my face upraised, my lips parted. It was the organ, and presently, after a wonderful melody, which set my heart beating--a melody full of the most witchingly sweet high notes, and a breadth and grandeur of low ones such as only two composers have ever attained to, a voice--a single woman's voice--was upraised. She was invisible, and she sung till the very sunshine seemed turned to melody, and all the world was music--the greatest, most glorious of earthly things.

"Blute nur, liebes Herz!

Ach, ein Kind das du erzogen, Das an deiner Brust gesogen, Drohet den Pfleger zu ermorden Denn es ist zur Schlange worden."

"What is it?" I asked below my breath, as it ceased.

He had shaded his face with his hand, but turned to me as I spoke, a certain half-suppressed enthusiasm in his eyes.

"Be thankful for your first introduction to German music," said he, "and that it was grand old Johann Sebastian Bach whom you heard. That is one of the soprano solos in the _Pa.s.sions-musik_--that is music."

There was more music. A tenor voice was singing a recitative now, and that exquisite accompaniment, with a sort of joyful solemnity, still continued. Every now and then, shrill, high, and clear, penetrated a chorus of boys' voices. I, outer barbarian that I was, barely knew the name of Bach and his "Matthaus Pa.s.sion," so in the pauses my companion told me by s.n.a.t.c.hes what it was about. There was not much of it. After a few solos and recitatives, they tried one or two of the choruses. I sat in silence, feeling a new world breaking in glory around me, till that tremendous chorus came; the organ notes swelled out, the tenor voice sung "Whom will ye that I give unto you?" and the answer came, crashing down in one tremendous clap, "Barrabam!" And such music was in the world, had been sung for years, and I had not heard it. Verily, there may be revelations and things new under the sun every day.

I had forgotten everything outside the cathedral--every person but the one at my side. It was he who roused first, looking at his watch and exclaiming.

"_Herrgott!_ We must go to the station, Fraulein, if we wish to catch the train."

And yet I did not think he seemed very eager to catch it, as we went through the busy streets in the warmth of the evening, for it was hot, as it sometimes is in pleasant April, before the withering east winds of the "merry month" have come to devastate the land and sweep sickly people off the face of the earth. We went slowly through the moving crowds to the station, into the wartesaal, where he left me while he went to take my ticket. I sat in the same corner of the same sofa as before, and to this day I could enumerate every object in that wartesaal.

It was after seven o'clock. The outside sky was still bright, but it was dusk in the waiting-room and under the shadow of the station. When "Eugen Courvoisier" came in again, I did not see his features so distinctly as lately in the cathedral. Again he sat down beside me, silently this time. I glanced at his face, and a strange, sharp, pungent thrill shot through me. The companion of a few hours--was he only that?

"Are you very tired?" he asked, gently, after a long pause. "I think the train will not be very long now."

Even as he spoke, clang, clang, went the bell, and for the second time that day I went toward the train for Elberthal. This time no wrong turning, no mistake. Courvoisier put me into an empty compartment, and followed me, said something to a guard who went past, of which I could only distinguish the word _allein_; but as no one disturbed our privacy, I concluded that German railway guards, like English ones, are mortal.

After debating within myself for some time, I screwed up my courage and began:

"Mr. Courvoisier--your name is Courvoisier, is it not?"

"Yes."

"Will you please tell me how much money you have spent for me to-day?"

"How much money?" he asked, looking at me with a provoking smile.

The train was rumbling slowly along, the night darkening down. We sat by an open window, and I looked through it at the gray, Dutch-like landscape, the falling dusk, the poplars that seemed sedately marching along with us.

"Why do you want to know how much?" he demanded.

"Because I shall want to pay you, of course, when I get my purse," said I. "And if you will kindly tell me your address, too--but how much money did you spend?"

He looked at me, seemed about to laugh off the question, and then said:

"I believe it was about three thalers ten groschen, but I am not at all sure. I can not tell till I do my accounts."

"Oh, dear!" said I.

"Suppose I let you know how much it was," he went on, with a gravity which forced conviction upon me.

"Perhaps that would be the best," I agreed. "But I hope you will make out your accounts soon."