Unfinished Portraits Part 11

"As you like." He held out a hand. "Good night, my friend," he said cordially. "You are a strange man."

The grotesque, sensitive face opposite him quivered. The big lips trembled a little as they opened.

"I am _not_ a strange man," said Schubert vehemently. "That music--it was--the devil!"

The count laughed again lightly. He held out his hand.

"Good night," he said.

IV

A soft haze hung over Zelitz. The moonlight, filtering through it, touched the paths and shrubs with shifting radiance and lifted them out of shadow. Under the big trees the darkness lay black, but in the open s.p.a.ces it had given way to a gray, elusive whiteness that came and went like a still breathing of the quiet night.

A young girl, coming down one of the winding paths, paused a moment in the open s.p.a.ce to listen. The hand that held her trailing, shimmering skirts away from the gravel was strong and supple, and the face thrown back to the moonlight wore a tense, earnest look; but the dark eyes in their curving lids were like a child's eyes. They seemed to laugh subtly. It may have been that the moonlight shifted across them.

A young man, standing in the shadow of the trees, smiled to himself as he watched her. He stepped from beneath the trees and crossed the open s.p.a.ce between them.

The girl watched him come without surprise.

"It is a beautiful night, Herr Schubert," she said quietly as he stood beside her.

"A wonderful night, my lady," he answered softly.

She looked down at him.

"Why are you not in the castle, playing?" she demanded archly.

"The night called me," he said.

She half turned away.

He started forward.

"Do not go," he breathed.

She paused, looking at him doubtfully.

"I came to walk," she said. She moved away a few steps and paused again, looking back over her shoulder. "You can come----"

He sprang to her side, and they paced on in silence.

She glanced at him from under her lids.

His big face wore a radiant, absent-minded look. The full lips moved softly.

"What are you thinking of?" she said swiftly.

He flushed and came back to her.

"Only a little song; it runs in my head."

"Hum it to me," she commanded.

He flushed again and stammered:

"Nein, nein; it is not yet born."

Her eyes were on the shifting light.

"Will you play it to me when it is done?" she asked softly.

"You know that I will."

She waited a moment.

"You have never dedicated a song to me," she said slowly. "There are the four to my father--but he is the count; and the one last year for Marie--why to Marie?--and one for them all. But not one least little song for me!" The words had dropped under her breath. Her dark eyes were veiled. No one could say whether they laughed now.

He looked up with a swift, brusque gesture.

"They are all yours; you know it." The low voice rebuked her gently.

"For six years they are yours--all that I have done." The face was turned toward her. It was filled with pleading and a kind of gentle beauty, clumsy and sweet.

She did not look at it.

"There is one that I should like to hear," she said musingly. "You played it once, years ago, on a comb. I have not heard it since." She laughed sweetly.

Schubert smiled. The hurt look stole from his eyes.

"You will hear it--my 'Erlkonig'?" he demanded.

She nodded.

"I will play it to you when I come back," he said contentedly.

She stopped short in the path.

"When you come back!" The subtle eyes were wide. They were not laughing.

"Ja, I shall----"

"Where are you going?"

He rubbed his great nose in the moonlight.

"Nein, I know not. I know I must go----"