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BY
innocent delight with which you inspire us? And what adds such a gracious charm to this pleasure is the reflection that the whole world is made an equally welcome guest to the inexhaustible feast thus spread out on the green gladsome earth. Spring, in its way, is as great a leveller as death. The poor, the aged, the unhappy are in its sight as worthy to be caressed by the youngest sunbeam, by the most fragrant of breezes, as their more favoured fellow-creatures.
It is to the former, indeed, O Spring, that is reserved
the subtlest enchantment of thy smiles. For the happy
can never experience to the full the healing strength
which resides in thy influence. It is to the lonely,
the weak, the unfortunate, those whom man in his
reckless search after power and pleasure has roughly
thrust from his path, to whom alone is revealed that
ineffable tenderness which thy sunshine manifests to
the sprouting green leaves and the frail flowers of the
youngling year. No; they know not the infinite sweetness
of thy balmy breath, O spring, who have never
arisen out of grief as from the dark vault of a sepulchre,
and, with the dews of anguish yet fresh on their brow,
seen the gleam of the April sun athwart the thaw of
falling tears. With how shy, and tremulous, and fearful
a joy, lest even in the apprehension it fade, do they
humbly acknowledge that even for them a glory yet
shines in the fugitive hours, and a hope is blown from
the peaks of the morning. They and joy then meet
like dear friends who parting in anger have long dwelt
apart and now, at the moment of final reconciliation,
hang back a little with half-averted eyes ere with a
low cry they fall into each other's arms.
Yes! there was no doubt about it, spring had come
at last. Even D----, that most sleepy of South German
towns, shook off its lethargy and became on a sudden
preternaturally alive with light and laughter. For in
upon every street shone and nodded the vine-clad hills,
their aërial azure fading away into that of the sky;
the music of running waters, so long congealed in the
fountains, filled the public place once more with a
murmur, sounding like an accompaniment to the blithe
chatter of girls where they stood leisurely filling their
pitchers with the sparkling water; birds flitted from
roof to roof, chirping and twittering till the very
atmosphere seemed to transform itself into song; and
high above the roofs, higher than any bird's flight, soared
the luminous white clouds whose shadows fled dreamlike
across the surface of the enfolding hills.
It is in the great sunlit market-place, however, that
the life of the town converges; a gay, multicoloured
scene, of which the ancient Minster, with its great
grave masses cowing the sunshine where it falls, forms
the background; in and out among the tapering minor
spires flit grey, pink-eyed pigeons, settling every now
and then on the projections of the quaintly-carved
capitals; while little dæmons, grinning from gargoyles
and window bosses, appear to be making fantastic grimaces
at the crowd eagerly buying and selling below.
Judging from these impressive preparations, whatever
else might move at a sluggish pace in the worthy
citizens' organisms, their digestive apparatus was anything
but sluggish, and almost seemed to have achieved
the desideratum of perpetual motion.
What with the chaffering, chattering, cheapening of
maids, matrons, and market-women, the cackling of geese, grunting of pigs, and crowing of cocks, the rumbling of carts, and the protracted shrillness of infants' cries placed in undignified positions by excited mammas, while engaged in hotly-contested bargains, the confusion of tongues equalled that of a Babel in miniature. The most trifling purchase was seemingly a feat not to be attempted without the exercise of superior tactics. For a cook of the highest grade goes to market with a sense of responsibility but little inferior to that of a general on the eve of a battle. And, after carefully-planned attacks, sham retreats, delicately-executed skirmishes, and final onslaught, how triumphant is the homeward march of the conquering heroine, attended by the cackling, hissing, and squealing of her captured booty!
Instead of so important a personage, however, let us
rather follow the respectable housewife; Frau Lichtenfeld,
who, engaged in voluble talk with her gossip Frau
Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengärtner, makes her way
homewards on this April morning of the year 1846.
After parting from her companion, the first named lady
still proceeds along the Silberstrasse the main thoroughfare
of D----, till she reaches the last house of the
town, standing by itself in a garden some paces back
from the high road, which here assumed quite a rural
character.
It was a spreading house with high grey roof, and
windows on each side of the door; its gay green
shutters, harmonizing with the cream-coloured walls,
were either shut, or fastened back by revolving iron
clamps. At its back stretched a long grassy garden,
left to grow much at its own sweet will, and interspersed with fruit-trees, now covered with buds that seemed on tiptoe to burst into blossom.
Just as the middle-aged woman enters at the front
door, a young girl standing at the end of this garden is
trying with all her might to unlatch the bolt of the
lumbering old garden gate, grown rusty during the long
disuse of winter.
Before she has succeeded, however, in thrusting back
the bolt, a tiny child issues from the house, and darts
at full speed down the garden, its golden confusion of
hair gleaming above the grass like a living sunflower.
"Mina, Mina," it calls out in childish treble, "you
have forgotten the jar for the honey, and mother's just
back from market and coming after you!"
"Mina, Mina, you have forgotten the jar for the
honey!" calls out in harsher tones of remonstrance
Frau Professorinn Lichtenfeld, coming excitedly along
the path, and flourishing the article in question to and
fro. "I declare," she goes on, "little Lulu here,
though she's but three years old, God bless her, will
soon be the more sensible of the two; but then, she's
not 'a Hans gape i' the air!'"
With these words she puts the jar in the girl's
basket, and undoing the gate for her slightly pushes
her forth. She has scarcely shut the gate, however,
before she shouts after the retreating figure: "Whatever
you do, Mina, remember your grandmother's
rheumatic cordial."
Whether Mina heard this exhortation is doubtful,
as in her eagerness to see her grandmother she was
already many steps on her way. Nor did she in any
marked degree relax her speed till, towards noon, she reached a diminutive house situated on the slope of one of the lower of that range of hills which encircled the town.
This cot, standing in its own vineyard, and partly
hidden by a row of enormous beehives, was the home
of Mina's grandmother. Here the happiest hours of
her childhood had been passed, and it seemed but
yesterday she had fancied it to be a half-way house
to heaven. Why, had she not actually once believed
the story that the sunflowers blazing in a row there
were baby suns put out to nurse, till they should be
in a fit condition for their heavenly duties, and taken
it into her head that the swarms of bees were truant
stars who had run away from their celestial tasks to
make love to the flowers of earth?
After several ineffectual raps, the door was at length
opened by a wizened yet hale old woman, whose
shrunken countenance disappeared behind the voluminous
starched frills of a huge mob-cap. At sight of
her favourite grandchild, her still bright eyes blinked
with joy athwart their environment of countless
wrinkles.
"Grandmother," cried Mina, raising her voice to its
highest pitch, "mother and Lulu and all the boys have
sent more love than I found it possible to carry up the
hill. And mother sends you a fresh supply of her cordial
for rheumatism, which is stronger than usual, she says.
Hans and Conrad asked me to bring you this fish which
they caught yesterday." (A perch about the length of
a finger, looking very dead, in a cabbage leaf.) "And
Hans begs you will keep all caterpillars with crimson
spots on a flesh-coloured ground with the leaves they feed on till he can come for them in his holidays; while Conrad entreats you will not forget that it is his turn to climb the big cherry tree. Lulu tore herself from this best beloved of dolls because she says you will find her such good company in bed." (That the doll had lost its hair and one arm possibly enhanced the sacrifice.) "And, let me see--dear me--I have quite forgotten the messages of the other boys," broke off Mina, with her peculiar silvery little laugh; then added, in a sweet, deprecating way, "And I, granny, have brought you nothing--nothing at all."
"You have brought me yourself, little love--by far
the best message and medicine of all," retorted the old
lady, with the sort of expression one has when inhaling
the fragrance of a fresh-gathered bunch of roses. "But
here I stand chattering," she exclaimed, "quite forgetting
that my pet has had a long, fatiguing walk already, and
must be quite tired by this time."
Therewith, the good old dame began bustling about
the room, attended in all her comings and goings by a
dilapidated raven, who although purblind and lame of
one foot, hopped behind her with the grave dignity of a
mute at a funeral. By degrees she now extracted from
a variety of cupboards, deftly hidden in the walls, a
number of delicacies, which, with the help of Mina,
were soon spread out on the snow-white tablecloth.
Grandmother and grandchild sat down cosily to a meal
of brown bread and butter, honey, preserved fruit, and a
big jug brimful of cream (the former chiefly enjoying
it by proxy, one could see); the raven, who formed part
of the company, being treated with respectful awe by
Mina, and regaled now and then with choicest titbits, which he persisted in carrying off and hiding in dark nooks, where he thought himself safe from observation.
When the simple feast was over Mina, from long
habit, drew a footstool close to her grandmother's
brown leather easy-chair, and with her toes curled up
and her chin propped between her hands, said, in a
coaxing voice, "Granny, now tell us all about the
past."
This old, old woman, whose hair was white as with
the snow of eighty winters, had been young once like
herself and been fallen in love with! What an
inexhaustible romance to this young girl, who had only
twice in her life peeped furtively into a real downright
novel! Nothing loth her grandmother began from her
copious stock of experience, industriously plying her
knitting-needles the while, and Mina, listening open-eyed,
said never a word till, abruptly rising from her
seat, she exclaimed that she had outstayed her time.
The old woman now filled Mina's jar with her finest
honey, adding many injunctions to be careful, it being
the last of the kind which she possessed.
She remained standing in the doorway watching the
receding figure of her grandchild till a sunlit April
shower drove her indoors. But Mina, as she danced
rather than walked down the hill, listened with delight
to the patter of the big bright raindrops, with which
the sun, as if in play, pelted the earth, laughing all the
while in the face of the storm; presently the valley, in
which lay the white houses of the town, was spanned
from hill to hill by a mighty rainbow, while under it,
across a ridge on which it dipped, a flock of sheep defiled slowly one by one, thrown off in bright relief from the green, rain-sparkling slope.
The girl's road this time took her through a small
wood, in which the vegetation had just attained that
stage when the trees, some still bare, others just
budding and blossoming, others again already covered
with delicate foliage, resemble more nearly a green
glimmering exhalation which a breath of air may dispel
than an actually enduring growth of earth. This effect
was still further enhanced at present by that hazy
bloom peculiar to afternoons in spring, and which now
seemed to invest the entire scene in some diviner medium
than that of our common atmosphere. No wonder Mina
lingered lovingly at every step she took, for was it not
April within as well as around her, and did she not feel
as though suddenly roused from long unconscious
slumbers to the infinite beauty and mystery of the
world? In the hidden recesses of her heart was a
stir and flutter as if there also sweet, shy things were
gradually unfolding themselves, so that for the first
time she had a dim apprehension of the profound
affinity of nature around and within her.
But this dreamy mood was soon dispelled by childish
glee, when at a curve in the path she came upon a dell
where violets literally seemed to gush from the sod, till
she fancied she heard them whispering in the breeze,
"Please gather us, gather us!" and what could a
kind-hearted damsel do after that but go down on her knees,
pluck them by handfuls, and knot them together in a
big, fragrant bunch?
She had scarcely achieved this to her satisfaction when
her attention was caught by a butterfly which, floating past her, settled on a flower about a stone's-throw off, spreading out its glowing wings as though to challenge her admiration. The young girl stood quite still, scarcely venturing to breathe lest she should startle this etherial creature. Then recollecting how joyfully her brother would welcome so beautiful a specimen to his collection, she softly untied the strings of her broad-brimmed hat, and gliding forward on tiptoe, brought it suddenly down on the flower on which the butterfly had alighted. She was too late, however, for, like a winged flower driven from its stem, the latter hovered for some time in front of her, then settled on the trunk of a tree, but flew off as she approached.
Thus in hot but fruitless pursuit Mina continued to
run on, till she found herself all at once on the brink
of a pool in whose crystalline depths the wood was
mirroring itself like a youthful beauty smiling at
herself in the looking-glass. So magical, indeed, was
the aspect of this canopy of trees, with their soft, ruddy
tassels and bright, almost golden, leaves, and its transfigured
reflection below, that for the moment she forgot
the object of her chase, and when she again looked
round it had vanished!
Hot and breathless as she was, the girl threw herself
on a low green bank shelving down to the water's edge,
and with her roughened curly head pillowed on a cluster
of hyacinths, she soon fell sound asleep. And in her
sleep she dreamed that she was still pursuing the
butterfly she had so ardently longed to capture. Only
that now it was much larger, more mysteriously beautiful,
and that its shifting tints, scintillating with a lustre
as of precious stones, faded ever and anon to a silvery pallor, which flashed as suddenly into renewed brilliancy, and revealed letters, words, and fiery signs covering its broad wings and crossing them in all directions, which as they caught the maiden's eye kindled a still keener desire for its possession. She had a haunting sense, indeed, that the happiness of her own life, nay, that more potent issues, depended on her success in this chase, and on her unriddling the bright but evanescent hieroglyphs which so whetted her curiosity.
But ever as she thought she had seized the prize--behold
it was but idle air, while the luminous wings
now twinkling aloft, afar, shone out fair but inaccessible
as the midnight stars. Nothing daunted, however, she
ran on and on, and as she ran, the fantastic branches
of twilight trees seemed catching at her garments, as
though to hold her back, or lifting lean, tremulous
fingers to warn her from her mad pursuit. Then,
before she was aware, she had strayed into a lovely dell,
white with innumerable lilies, and, poised on the fairest,
with its wonderful wings outspread, behold the butterfly!
She stretched out her hand, heaved a sigh of expectancy,
and almost tremblingly tightened the clasp of her fingers,
but uttered a loud scream on her hand being stung,
finding to her horror that instead of the dainty insect
she had got hold of a big venomous spider. In her
effort to shake it off she awoke with a confused sense
of hearing her own cry echoed by the solitude around.
Who has not experienced the bewildering sensation
of being abruptly awakened from a vivid dream, in
which actual sense impressions have become inwoven
with the fantastic images of the brain till it seems for
the moment almost imposssible to disentangle the two? This was Mina's case. She looked around confusedly, still faintly shivering with her dream, when she beheld the cause of the noise in two boys who were violently battering and pommelling each other on a small grass plot behind her. The roughest and biggest was holding the lesser one by the back of his waistband and administering a perfect battery of blows here, there, and everywhere. But the advantage was not entirely on his side; for the smaller lad had clutched him by his fierce red hair, standing all on end, and as if on fire with the fury of the combat. Moreover, his head being perforce in a depressed condition, he had converted it into a battering-ram, with which he violently assailed his oppressor between the ribs, to the extreme detriment of his wind. So their chances stood pretty even, and cries and blows redoubled with the difficulty of victory. But what puzzled Mina, who was anxiously looking on, was to see a bird fluttering in strange proximity to the heads of the angry boys, and now and again uttering a low, piteous cry instinct with fear and pain. As she approached, however, the reason became clear.
Close to the lads, almost in danger of being crushed
by their heels, lay a nest with five callow heads showing
above the edge. Nothing more soft, more helpless,
more pitiable than those mute, half-open beaks and
half-shut eyes, scarcely weaned as yet from the warm
darkness of the maternal wings. And how deeply the
parent bird felt this utter nakedness of theirs! How she
yearned over them! how fiercely her little heart throbbed
against her side, till it seemed as though every downy
feather vibrated on her body! It was truly a touching sight, this female bird hovering over her young, dimly comprehending their peril; yet how lost on these savage young natures only intent on wresting the spoil from each other!
Mina had come close up to the boys, and was now
entreating them to restore the nest to the place whence
they had taken it. But seeing that her words had no
effect, she hastily fumbled in her pockets for a few
stray coins. As usual, alas! they were bare of any.
While she was turning her pockets inside out, and
littering the grass with a queer assortment of odds and
ends, the lads left off battering each other for a moment
to stare at her, half stupidly and half cunningly. But
one of them crying out, "I found it, 'tis mine, you
rogue;" the other shouted, "I'm the strongest, and
I'll keep it;" and so they fell to more violently than
before.
A brilliant idea now occurred to Mina. She remembered
her jar of honey. Taking it from her basket, all
aglow with her eagerness, she held it out to the boys,
who, nothing loth, snatched it from her dimpled hands.
This scene had not been unobserved, however; and
now from behind one of the tree-trunks a stranger
advanced, and with a faint smile lurking in the corners
of his mouth, threw some silver to the boys, bidding
them run as fast as their legs would let them; which
they did accordingly, honey and all. Then stooping, he
gently lifted the nest from the grass, and watching the
she-bird for a moment, lightly climbed one of the
trees as though used to it, and replaced the nest of
fledglings amidst its sheltering leaves. A naïve little
burst of gladness betokened that the feathered mother rejoiced once more at the possession of her young. Mina, absorbed in the proceeding, had remained immovable. Now, however, as the stranger stood once more before her lifting his hat, with a gentle inclination of his head, she blushed as she returned his salute, and then rapidly walked away.
In her confusion she had dropped her whole treasure
of violets. She did not look back or she would have
seen that some one stooped, and, carefully collecting the
scattered flowers, hid them away in his breast; then,
standing still for a moment, he shaded his eyes from
the beams of the setting sun, as yet scarcely intercepted
by the sparse foliage, and watched the receding figure
as it lightly passed down an avenue of noble old beech
trees. The red sunlight just then glowing on their
trunks touched the girl's loose-flowing curls, transmuting
their brown to reddest gold, so that, as if
encircled by an aureole, she seemed passing down the
porphyry pillars of some hushed cathedral aisle.
Hushed indeed, save for the call of the cuckoo--a faint;
far-off call, wafted as by fragrant gusts from some dim
green valley lying remote on the limits of the sunset.
When the girl had quite disappeared round an angle
in the path, the stranger started as from a trance and
strode hastily down the same avenue, and when he had
passed, shadows as of evening slowly swept over the
silent and solitary wood.
In spite of her disappointment, the good lady was
determined to make her party eclipse those of her
rivals. And to this end she turned a very whirlwind
of a woman. Not that she was ever idle--idleness
being in her eyes well nigh as heinous a crime as theft--but
the steady trade-wind of her activity now blew
a violent gale, so that her children scattered at her
advent like leaves before a high wind.
On the first day, broom in hand, and head swathed
like a mummy, she attacked the dust, her sworn enemy, climbing and ducking with the agility of a wild cat as she routed it from its favourite strongholds--the furniture being huddled on the landing, mostly with its legs sticking in the air.
On the second day, with tucked-up petticoats, she
went about sluicing floor after floor, till, like a female
Neptune, she had brought a flood about the place.
But on the third day dryness was restored again, and
order and symmetry were evoked from chaos.
Then there ensued such a boiling and baking,
whipping of cream, beating of eggs and roasting of
coffee, as filled the children with ravishment.
At last everything was in readiness for the guests.
The floor of the best room had been sufficiently polished
to endanger the necks of the lady visitors on their way
to pay their respects to the lady of the house.
The most conspicuous, if not most beautiful, article
of furniture in the room was the high, white porcelain
stove adorned with brass bands, and supported by way
of ornament what looked like four winged claws of
a beast of prey. Near it, highly polished too, stood a
piece of furniture much in use with great smokers such
as the late Herr Professor Lichtenfeld was in his time,
but forgotten in polite English circles.
In the corner opposite the stove, a walnut étagère
was covered with yellow Bohemian glass, Swiss wood
carvings, and a quite surprising number of florid
birthday cups and saucers with large inscriptions, all
invoking blessings or imploring remembrance.
A red damask sofa with bolster cushions occupied
the space opposite the windows, and dangling near it
was the broad green velvet bell-rope, heavily embroidered with yellow chenille and pearls. The chairs, too, were mostly covered with cushions embroidered in Berlin wool, with a dog, a sheep, or a shepherd invariably represented in the centre.
Curtains partly of red damask, partly of white muslin,
were elaborately festooned into metal holders, which
none but the mistress's own hand ever ventured to
disarrange.
On a side cupboard between the windows ticked a
gilt clock under its glass case, while the works moving
the hands also turned a spiral jet of glass, which issued
like water from a lion's mouth, as well as the grindstone
of a Cupid of similar metal, who was sharpening
an arrow. This clock was always inspected with
wondrous awe by Conrad and Otto on the rare occasions
when they were permitted to enter these sacred
precincts. On either hand of it was placed an alabaster
vase of gaudily-painted wax flowers, likewise under
glass.
Above the sofa two life-size family portraits represented
Herr Professor and Frau Lichtenfeld in the days
of their youth.
The Frau Professorinn, née Elise Duttenhofer,was
depicted with a leathery but high-coloured complexion,
bright brown eyes, and dark brown hair tightly drawn
off the face, à la chinoise, and fastened right on
the top of the head in elaborate puffs, while a spiral
curl, then known by the French word accroche-coeur, was
gummed to each side of her face. Her green satin dress,
with enormous puffs at the sleeves, was made very low,
displaying arms and shoulders that did honour to the
fattening qualities of the national "Mehlspeisen," or flour and milk diet.
The Professor's portrait, hanging on the darker side,
seemed chiefly noticeable for shirt-frill, shirt-collar, and
lank reddish hair. But whoever cared to scrutinize it
closer might have detected, even through the mediocre
execution of a somewhat characterless physiognomy,
an expression of singular earnestness and sweetness,
and in the dreamy blue eyes a sort of inverted gaze as
of a man always looking inwards or backwards.
These oil pictures were not cracked like English
works, but looked in a fine state of preservation, owing
to Frau Lichtenfeld's habit of polishing them once in
three months with a piece of fat bacon and a silk
handkerchief. The gilt frames of poorest pattern had
not, however, profited much by this, the gold being
considerably rubbed off in the process.
Frau Lichtenfeld herself, arrayed in a black silk
gown--got on the christening day of her first-born--sat
bolt upright under her portrait in the crispest of
caps and lilac ribbons; while beside her, in imitation
of her deportment, sat Lulu, with her golden hair
primly oiled and curled. Mina in disgrace, left without
orders to attend, had gladly enough made her escape
from the tittle-tattle which she dreaded.
The large round table in front of the sofa ought to
have groaned--if ever table before the days of
spirit-rapping did groan--under its load of cakes. Here were
"Zuckerbretzeln," "Zwieback," and "Bunt,"
"Mandeltorten," and "Mohrenköpfe," all national delicacies
with untranslatable names.
When the clock struck three the ladies gradually
assembled--gentlemen are of course excluded from these solemn rites. After many complimentary speeches and mutual protestations as to who should take the place of honour on the sofa, they settled down amidst much rustling of skirts. And presently, when they had partaken of the excellent coffee and other good things provided for them, their tongues buzzed busily to the accompaniment of their knitting needles.
"Yes, yes, my dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator,"
answered Frau Lichtenfeld to something said in praise
of Lulu; "the poor child was born after her father's
death, you remember, and takes after our family, of
course. She's quite a comfort already, follows me
about like a mouse, actually helps me to lay the tablecloth,
born little housewife that she is; but the Duttenhofers
always were a practical lot, so different from the
poor Lichtenfelds." (During this discourse Lulu was
giving proof of her practicality by a demure but
continuous consumption of the cakes.) "Yes, I might
say that I did but one unpractical thing in my life--not
that I mean to say that I repented it--repentance is so
unpractical--I'm alluding of course to my marrying
the poor dear Professor, blessed be his memory. And
Mina, you know, takes after her father, more's the pity.
She's always up in the clouds, but now since the Countess
has taken the bel étage, she's more past my
management than ever--not but that her manners are mending,
and high time they should, too."
At the mention of the Countess all the ladies pricked
up their ears, and so keen was their curiosity on this
subject that they not only left off praising their children,
abusing their husbands, and bewailing the degeneracy
of servants, but suffered their knitting to drop in their laps, so that an almost ominous silence succeeded the clatter.
The Frau Professorinn, who enjoyed the importance
of knowing a little, though in truth only a very little,
more than her neighbours on this subject, was not slow
to avail herself of the advantage to the utmost.
"Yes," she continued, fired by the curiosity of her
listeners; "one afternoon, come a month last general
mending-day, when Theresa, who was helping me with
the large basket, was just telling me that the Frau
Geheimräthin Fick had it from her husband that the
Countess--just think of it--was a spy in the pay of the
Czar of Russia, when there came a tap at the door, and
before I had time to say, 'Come in,' in walked----"
"Not the Countess?" exclaimed some of the ladies,
interrogatively.
"The Countess herself," said Frau Lichtenfeld,
casting a triumphant glance around, "looking so grand
and stately, with yards of black velvet sweeping my
floor like a broom, that it quite took my breath away;
and curtsying to me as if I were her Serene Highness
herself. Our Grand Duchess has not near such a
carriage, though she is the niece of the Emperor of all
the Russias!"
"I always thought that she must be some unfortunate
great lady in exile," complacently interposed Frau
Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengärtner, a stout, florid
woman, inclined to take a hopeful view of things.
"Now do tell us, what did you do, my dear Frau
Professorinn?"
"Why, I was so stunned that I forgot even to ask
her to sit down; but the beautiful lady sat down beside me, and said smiling (I never saw any one smile or sit down with such an air), 'Pray,' said she, 'accept my excuses, dear madam, for venturing to intrude thus abruptly upon you, but I have a favour to ask which I hope you will not refuse.'"
"A favour to ask!" echoed three or four of the ladies,
nodding or shaking their heads, as they happened to be
charitably or enviously inclined.
"Yes," continued the Professorinn, eagerly; "she
said she had caught sight of my Mina in the garden,
and that there was something in the child's face she
had taken a fancy to, and would like to paint into a
picture--for it seems, instead of doing embroidery
or crochet, she amuses herself with dabbling in
colours."
"Hm, hm, does she paint?" murmured an acid little
spinster, with snuff-coloured locks and a complexion
like kitchen soap. "I always thought for my part that
she was an impostor."
"Ah, my dear Fräulein von Griesbach, are you not
slightly confounding the justifiable æsthetic
make-believe with morals?" lisped Frau Scherer, in a plaintive
voice.
"You may imagine," continued Frau Lichtenfeld,
ignoring the interlude, "that I could not help feeling
flattered at such a great lady noticing my chit of a girl,
who is well enough to be sure, but no beauty."
"Her hair is against her, no doubt," remarked the
maiden of the straight, dingy locks; "it shines like
copper, and is always in a tangle."
"Well," resumed Mina's mother, bristling somewhat
--for though she was always abusing her daughter, she did not relish any one else doing so--"of course I was only too delighted to have my daughter's portrait taken, and told her that I had myself been painted in my youth by the Grand Duke's own painter, Herr Fridolin, (here the good woman cast an admiring glance at the likeness above her), still I could not help asking her what she saw in the girl. There was Wolf now, the flower of the flock, I should have thought he would have suited her ladyship far better, I said; but the Countess only smiled, shook her head, and repeated it was my girl she wanted. You see she told me she was lonely, had taken a fancy to her, and was quite grateful to me for granting her request. Think of that! There was ever so much I wanted to say and ask her, but before I had time to begin like, she was on her feet, bowing to me again in that stately way, and gone."
"And are you not afraid, honoured Frau Professorinn,"
remarked the maiden lady, "that poor Mina's
head may be turned in finding herself singled out in
this way by someone so much above her in station?"
"With all her faults the girl's not vain," retorted the
mother; "and the Countess often talks to her in French,
you know, which is as good as if we paid for a finishing
school, and will make quite a lady of her, as I say."
"Before taking her for a pattern," said Fräulein von
Griesbach again, "I think it would be advisable to
know why this Countess, young, beautiful, and fabulously
rich, they say, has come 'snowing' into our
midst from the Lord knows where, and lives quasi
hidden in this house (a house, begging your pardon for
saying so, gracious Frau Professorinn, so remote from
the fashionable quarter of the town), and who, instead of showing a natural wish to mingle in the elegant gaieties of the nobility, has positively, I hear, refused access to her presence to some of our leading magnates, and never yet shown herself at our theatre or public promenade."
"Well, well," remarked Frau Obertribunalprocurator,
in a soothing voice, "they do say that the poor Countess
was the wife of a great Polish nobleman, who, on being
sent into exile, went travelling from country to country
with her till they settled down in Alexandria. There,
incredible as it seems, the infatuated man was converted
to the religion of Mohammed; and so thought it a duty
enjoined by his new faith, I am told, to marry at least
three wives besides his own to show what a zealous
convert he was."
"The poor dear Countess!" commiserated some of
the ladies, though they had already believed and listened
to dozens of tales of the most contradictory character
respecting her.
"When the Countess found that all her expostulations
with that shameless renegade, her husband, were
in vain," continued Frau Hopfengärtner, "she left him
secretly (some say she has property of her own; others
that she made off with the better part of his, and serve
him right, too); and so has been in hiding ever since
for fear her rascal of a husband might do her some
mischief, being of a vindictive and desperate character."
"These demagogues and revolutionists always are,"
said Fräulein von Griesbach.
"But, my dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator, I have
it on the best authority," interposed another lady, who
had hitherto been silent, "that this Countess for all her
grand airs was neither more nor less than a singer, who starred it in every capital of Europe, till she married a pseudo-Italian Count, who played the devil with her money at cards, till in self-defence she ran away from him and came here to hide herself."
"Singer, indeed!" burst out the indignant Frau
Lichtenfeld. "As if I did not know a great lady when
I saw one, when my father, the Medicinalrath Duttenhofer,
attended half the great ladies in the land. Why,
our Grand Duchess has not such a bearing as she."
"Still there's a mystery round her," said Fräulein
von Griesbach, with a little spiteful toss of her head.
"Yes, that's it; there's a mystery," said the other
ladies, significantly looking at each other and shaking
their heads. After this the conversation veered round
to the inexhaustible topic of servants and their enormities,
which was suddenly interrupted, however, by
Lulu's loud sobbing.
The child had remained unobserved for some time,
and was standing near the table with one of its little
fists pressed into its eye; and the other holding a large
slice of unfinished cake. On being asked why she was
crying, Lulu presently recovered sufficient breath to
confess her piteous plight: "She couldn't eat any more--not
any more--of all the sweeties there."
"Go, take the cake to your brothers," said Frau
Lichtenfeld; "I hear them coming; the poor boys have
more cause for crying than you, silly child."
And now at a still early hour the ladies began folding
up their knitting and other work, and, curtseying themselves
out with many parting compliments, broke up
the conclave of coffee and scandal.
Mina never quite satisfied herself, however, whether
the greeting were really for her, or for the swallows
who in summer inhabited the storey above, or, in common
parlance, the eaves. But considering the terms of close
intimacy on which they all stood, it would have been
absurd to inquire too jealously as to the object of these
delicate attentions. Did they not share most things in
common, even to a kind of masonic speech, which none
but the initiated could understand?
The room just mentioned was small, like its inhabitant,
but nearly as bright and fresh. Ivy, growing in
plain earthenware jars, had been trained round the walls, which though simply whitewashed were thus tapestried in quite a festive manner. Here and there a space had been cleared of leaves in order to hang a few bookshelves, or to fix brackets on which stood vases always filled with fresh flowers. From the ceiling in the centre hung a flower-vessel in terra cotta, very much like an old Grecian lamp in shape, whence the long tendrils of a creeper fell in graceful festoons.
Against the wall, opposite the window, a narrow
bedstead was placed half-shrouded in white curtains,
and covered by one of those patchwork counterpanes
which are such an eloquent proof of thrift and industry.
A narrow strip of carpet, likewise of patchwork, lay
beside the bed on the plain deal floor. A table, covered
with a faded green cloth, stood by the window; on it
a globe with gold fish which, glowing like burnished
copper, circled unceasingly round it, like an emblem of
time itself.
Nor must we forget a mysterious book, bound in red
morocco with a steel clasp and a lock and key to it,
between whose leaves, had it been opened, would have
been found pressed wild flowers and thoughts like
flowers. Now it was a wreath of forget-me-nots, now
a pale tracery of primroses or flourish of violets, between
which were traced, in a girlish hand, sometimes only a
few words or lines, sometimes a verse or two. What
words? what verses? you ask. Pry who dare into the
secret heart of maidenhood; we shrink from such
profanation! Shut the book. Come away.
Walls, carpets, chairs, and tables, however, do not
alone constitute a room. The inhabitant breathes his
own soul into the inanimate objects and stamps them with his seal. Thus this little chamber seemed to be redolent of virginity, to smell of sweet fancies, to have dainty thoughts stored away amid its plain furniture, as lavender is laid between linen to keep it delicately fragrant.
Mina's duties for the day were over. She had toiled
through the A B C with Lulu, through the grammar
and geography lessons with her dreadfully unruly
younger brothers, who could never be made to remember
the difference between a noun and an adjective; and
invariably struggled through the declensions with the
feverish agitation of flies caught in a spider's web,
hopeless of ever getting out again in safety.
What mischief had they not again been up to this
day? In the middle of a dictation, while carefully
enunciating each syllable of the formidable word,
"Me-so-po-ta-mia," the teacher had been rudely
disturbed, nay, absolutely routed, in her dignified gravity,
by a multitudinous whirr of wings, darkly swarming
about the room like another plague of Egypt. For
Hans, that ringleader in mischief, had opened on the
sly the lid of a capacious box, wherein he had bred a
colony of cockchafers, which, just ready for flight,
rushed into space with a muffled whirr, covering the
walls and curtains, some even--oh, horror!--perhaps
attracted by its brightness, settling on Mina's hair, thus
driving her from the room with arms uplifted, amid
tumultuous uproar and screams and laughter.
Not rarely, indeed, did the lessons terminate in such
a climax of confusion and horror.
But Mina had now fled to her sanctum under the
roof. It was always hushed and quiet there. So hushed that she could hear the little brook hastily lapping among the weeds and grasses as it flowed past the garden; so quiet that the lisping of leaves, that the mere stir of a spray and the intermittent babble of Nature's arrant gossip, the wind, were as distinctly audible as the speech of some familiar friend. At times also, with almost startling distinctness, one heard the distant barking of dogs, the laughter of children at play, or the lowing of cattle trudging home to the stalls.
Curled up on the brown well-worn cushion of the
window sill, her favourite seat, by the way, the girl
overlooked the garden, then the fields extending to
the range of hills that had ever enclosed her horizon,
behind which, as it seemed to her, lay the world, with
all its boundless life and mystery.
A book of poems lay in her lap, but she was not
reading. She was indulging in one of those day-dreams
so dear to girlhood, in which a world, unsubstantial as
the cloudland of an evening sky, is constructed out of
nothing, to the unspeakable delight of the builder thereof.
Suddenly the girl, leaning out of the window, gives
a start and glad exclamation--"The swallows! The
swallows!"
There is a shrill twittering, an ebullition of song, and
a number of swallows dart through the air, or hang in
clusters to the trees above her. Not for long, however.
Ere that eastern cloud, all aglow with the sunset, has
faded, they have taken flight once more, and the black
flash of their wings has subsided behind the hills.
A pair, however, has remained, executing a thousand
graceful evolutions before Mina's eyes. Now they almost brush her cheek with the tip of their pointed wings, vanish, reappear, dive low, razing the grass, then soar aloft, rising higher and higher, till they seem mere specks against the faint hues of the twilight sky. Here they are again, hovering round the old nest, inspecting it now from this side, now from that, twittering in shrill tones, more expressive than any words, of their heartfelt joy at being at home once more in the old familiar place.
It seemed as though they would never have done.
But, then, they had so much to relate to their old
playfellows, Mina and the pear tree--of south lands far
over sea, of palm-trees and pyramids, of tawny stretches
of sand, burnt through, bare of shrub and herb, like a
bone gnawed and licked clean by the hot lips of the
sun; then of home sickness and the long, long voyage;
of the Peak of Teneriffe, that obelisk of the ocean,
where they alit a cloud of wings, and the weaklings
drifted helpless like leaves in a high wind, and were
swept from the precipices, fluttering down, down into
the yawning deep, never to fly any more with the fleet-winged
swarm, fly north to the green land of streams,
to the land of the lime and the slim-leaved willow tree
and steeples numberless; to the land where their nests,
whether clinging close to poor man's thatch, Gothic
roof, or castled wall, were ever hailed as harbingers of
luck.
Yes, all this and much more did Mina hear as she
sat listening to the blithe gossip of the swallows, which
subsided at last with subsiding day, abandoning the
earth to silence and twilight. Like a low prelude, which
by and by will usher in some mellow and perfect piece of music, a vaporous silver light faintly indicated the spot above the hills where the moon would rise anon.
But, hark! What sounds are these? Too aërial
almost to be evoked by human fingers, too full of
harmony for a bird's singing! An illusion, no doubt;
for not a breath of air even ruffles the profound silence
of the night. Mina listens again in amazement.
Surely these indescribably delicate, elf-like sounds are
produced by the strings of a guitar. Impossible!
Whence, wherefore, should come a musician to this
sequestered spot? Shyly wondering, the girl peeps
furtively through the half-open window; all she sees,
however, is the blurred shadow of the blossoming
pear tree on the grass beneath, but dimly lit as yet by
the rising moon.
Still the music swells into fuller, more continuous
melody; and who is this singing with low, seductive
voice--
Low singing through the night I go,
And as the starry beams
Into the mellow moonlight flow,
I'll melt into thy dreams.
Thou'rt like the mellow moon, fair maid,
I like that humble star
Which, by her light enthralled and swayed,
Stands worshipping afar.
The song was ended. Only a few expiring chords
still resounded from the instrument, then its strings
burst into a wild, almost unearthly twanging, at once
exquisite and demoniacal, which, growing fainter,
receded as if through the old garden gate and into the footpath beyond.
Although the moon had gradually risen above the
hills, and was now bleaching the untrimmed grass of
the garden and silvering the milk-white, thick-clustered
blossoms of the pear tree, not a trace of the mysterious
musician was anywhere visible. The exquisite charm
of the music had certainly ravished Mina to such a
degree that her curiosity had been merged in admiration.
She lay quite still, with her face hidden on her arm,
and in her childlike simplicity never thought that
either song or singer could have any connection with
herself. It was like part of the spring to her; as if
the sounds were being exhaled like scent from the
opening flowers. While she thus brooded, striving to
recall the exquisite air to her inner sense once more,
she did not mark a tapping at her door. Presently it
opened, and a tall woman softly entered, and was going
toward Mina, as though with familiar greeting, when
she suddenly stood quite still in an attitude of strained
attention. One could see her distinctly, illuminated
as she was by the level moonlight, which, streaming
through the window into the middle of the room, made
a sort of chequerwork on the boards there. It was
to this light perhaps that the beautiful features owed
some of their abnormal pallor, a pallor still enhanced
by the coal-black hair coiled in heavy plaits round her
head, and by the full-coloured coral of lips which even
the moonshine could not neutralize.
As she stood thus, with uplifted head and a haunting
smile, faint snatches of the wild exquisite air seemed
to be wafted from afar with a sudden gust of wind.
However incoherent the tune, its fantastic cadence seemed strangely to move this lady, for, apparently under its influence, she began slowly swaying herself to and fro, the undulating curves of her beautiful body being instinct with a dreamy voluptuousness, a sleepy grace, echoed, so to speak, by the suppressed glow of her dark eyes and the inaudible melody framed by her moving lips.
Gradually, however, this rhythmic motion seemed
to communicate a passionate impulse to her whole being.
As her gestures became more excited, a black lace scarf
fell from her ivory-white arms and shoulders, and now
advancing, now retreating, she snapped her fingers with
a passionate cry, and glancing over her shoulder, smiled
bewitchingly as though she saw some one there in the
empty air. All at once, however, she uttered a moan,
and bending low, pressed her hand to her ankle, while
a slight shiver passed over her frame. In this attitude
she stood as rigid as a statue, only in the dilated pupils
of her dazzling eyes there was a flicker as of fear, pain,
or yearning ecstasy.
In another instant her limbs, her features, nay, her
very eyebrows, seemed convulsed with emotion, then
with abrupt, violent gesticulations, with quivering lips,
with heaving bosom, with head thrown back in passionate
self-abandonment, chaunting fragments of a wildly
thrilling melody, she threaded the bewildering figures
of an intricate and mysterious dance.
Her long hair, shaken down by the vehemence of her
movements, and black as some raven's plumage, flapped
loosely behind her, while large death's-head moth
swooped on flurried wing above this tall figure fitfully
whirling in and out of the pale moonshine.
All at once the dancer burst into mocking, seemingly
irrepressible laughter. She had caught sight of Mina's
gaze, half amazement, half terror, fixed full upon her:
in the midst of her unaccountable excitement this
seemed to have produced a violent revulsion to mirth
in her.
Mina abruptly roused from her deep absorption,
had, indeed, been breathlessly watching this singular
spectacle. Her sensations were utterly bewildering.
She felt almost like a person labouring under a nightmare,
whose lips refuse to make a sound. Had her
friend gone mad? Or what was it that suddenly
seemed to transform the beautiful woman she admired
so enthusiastically into a weird demoniacal apparition?
What was it that invested the enchantment of her
smile, her eyes, her laughter, with the chill of an
ominous foreboding?
This whole scene, long as it has taken to describe,
lasted scarcely a few minutes. The lady, whatever
might have been the cause of her previous extraordinary
conduct, now moved towards the window with her
habitual languid grace, and placing one hand, sparkling
with many rings, under Mina's chin, said with a slightly
sarcastic intonation in her voice--
"What a child it is, with its little head stuffed full
of fairies, witches, enchantments dire, and such fantastical
fiddle-faddle! Fanciful to the extent of seeing
even in me, inoffensive mortal of flesh and blood that
I am, some hateful sorceress weaving spells by moonlight
to bring ruin on my dearest friends."
She laughed again and said, "Forgive me, but you
are too comic, Mina; indeed, you are!"
So saying she threw one arm lightly round the girl's
shoulders and, leaning far out of the window, gazed
intently across the hushed, moonlit landscape, across whose
grey breadths of light not so much as the shadow of a
moving cloud was to be seen. Long, long she looked,
sometimes faintly humming snatches of the same
fantastic tune. Suddenly she drew in her head again
with an impatient action, and turning to Mina said--
"No wonder you grow fanciful, my child, if you will
sit here by the hour with your head exposed to the
naked glare of this moon; or is there possibly another
attraction here; it's not the man in, but under the
moon, perhaps, that lends charm to solitude?"
She looked keenly at Mina for an instant as if she
would read her through arid through but seeing her
ingenuous face flush up with quick indignation and
surprise, she laughed again lightly as she said--
"I was only teazing you, ma petite; it's much too
good a girl, I know, even to harbour such wicked
thoughts. But by the way, Mina, I could never have
believed that my dancing, which was once upon a time
accounted the most graceful thing in the world, could
have given any one the fright it did you!"
"I am sorry, so sorry," stammered the girl in an
apologetic tone; "it came upon me in such an
unexpected, sudden manner--and then the moonlight, I
think, made you look changed and strange, as if----"
But interrupting herself confusedly, she continued,
"Oh, yes, it was beautiful, too beautiful! and I shall
not be frightened now if you will dance again, dearest
Countess."
"No, no," exclaimed the other, with passionate vehemence,
making an involuntary gesture with her hand, as though to wave back some influence which might once more blindly dominate her senses--"think you I would dance thus for your pleasure, girl? It was that I thought I heard that to which my limbs----No matter, no matter! An illusion, no doubt, caused by this detestable moonlight. Well, well! does it not often haunt me in dreams? But there, Mina, now you are opening your eyes again in that wide, wondering fashion, which is so irritating at times; you should get out of that habit. There are stranger things, let me tell you, in the lives of men and women--for all you look down upon them as commonplace mortals--than in all the fairy tales with which you have crammed your brain, till you can't hear a cat mew but you think there's magic in it. There, I don't mean to scold. I simply came up to see if you could sit to me to-morrow. I wanted to seek you out myself in your loft haunt for once, instead of sending Louise. Come early, for I want to send your portrait to the exhibition at Düsseldorf, you know. Now good-night; don't dream of me as a witch who flies out of window pirouetting on a broomstick."
So saying her visitor lightly kissed Mina on the
cheek, and again tittered ironically. The latter saw
her friend to the door, and profusely apologized for
her inability to light her down the narrow, break-neck
stairs.
Although the day outside was brilliant with that
shrill distinctness of light often peculiar to spring,
within all was subdued to low semitones of colour,
imparting to this room an air of mysterious quietude and
absolute seclusion. A certain liliputian reflection of
the outer world was visible, however, in an antique
mirror, wherein the green fragment of a landscape
receded far into a background tremulous with vernal
gold.
All clamours, and echoes of clamorous hours, seemed
to be for ever excluded from this dim, perfumed chamber, where, in a mellow twilight, a woman was sitting, combing out her long hair, darkly shed about her smooth white shoulders.
Intently absorbed in watching her own reflection in
the looking-glass before her, she did not notice the
girl's entrance till the latter, putting an arm round her,
had saluted her with a kiss; when looking up with a
faintly ironical smile, she tapped Mina on the cheek,
saying--
"So you are no longer afraid of me, little one! Truly
I did not know whether, crediting me, as it seemed, with
the gifts of magic and witchcraft, you did not intend
cutting me in future, for fear I should cast some spell
upon you, more especially as I am painting your
portrait just now."
At the remembrance of the weird, almost baleful
impression which her fascinating friend had produced on
her overwrought fancy on the previous night, Mina
burst into a merry laugh, and then with a sudden
transition from her exuberant gaiety to a certain
impassioned earnestness, she exclaimed fondly, "You
have indeed cast a spell on me, or how account for my
worship of you, Countess? But what could painting
my portrait have to do with the matter?"
"Oh," replied the Countess, carelessly, slowly passing
and repassing a tortoise-shell comb through her
luxuriant black hair, "I was alluding to an Eastern
superstition, according to which the person who paints
your portrait gets a hold for better or worse over your
soul--and mostly for worse," she added under her
breath, with a certain gleam in her eyes. "Therefore,
beware, beware, little one, how you entrust your portrait to my keeping; who knows but the day may come when I shall imperil your soul's happiness to serve mine."
While she was speaking she dexterously twisted her
heavy plaits round a dagger-like hair-skewer at the
back of her head, her movements being somewhat
impeded, however, by her companion, who had impetuously
flung her arms round her neck exclaiming--
"Do you think if there were truth in this superstition
I would not trust myself in effigy in your hands?"
"Well, let's not waste any more time, for I mean to
put the finishing touches to your portrait today," said
the Countess, passing Mina's arm in her own, and leading
her down the corridor into a lofty room, half studio,
half salon, in which the smell of oil paint was disguised
by rich, enervating perfumes.
On the lady's entrance two macaws of peculiarly
brilliant plumage began violently swinging themselves
backwards and forwards in their rings and screaming
vociferously.
Mina always felt herself transported into some
enchanted demesne of the Arabian Nights on entering
this apartment, so gorgeous to her, accustomed as she
was only to the most homely style of living and
furniture.
She was never tired of admiring the costly knick-knacks
and ornaments, not only arranged on cabinets
and stands, but carelessly strewn about in all directions.
Here a delicately tinted Louis Quinze fan was half
buried under a pile of music; there bottles of attar of
roses, worth their weight in gold, costly old laces and
richly embroidered scarfs were mixed up with brushes and coloured chalks, while Indian cashemeres and other Eastern fabrics were flung over sofas, or even on the floor, like common rugs.
What attracted the girl more than anything, however,
were the pictures, chiefly portraits, on the walls, and a
large portfolio filled with sketches of people and places.
She now again turned over these latter while the
Countess was arranging the draperies for a background
to her liking, and getting her palette ready.
Suddenly Mina came upon a sketch which she wondered
at not having noticed before, and which exercised a
kind of fascination over her.
It was a sunny Italian scene such as Leopold Robert
loved to paint. An open space on the Chiaja at Naples,
about the hour of sunset. A young girl of Capri, queenlike
of bearing, but with a tambourine in her hand,
seemingly dancing to the strains of two street musicians
in the midst of a circle of ragged girls children, and
fishermen. Her inimitable grace of motion was dashed
off in few colours by the hand of a master. On the
extreme foreground, leaning against the parapet, a few
scratches of charcoal conveyed the impression of a tall
man, seen in what the French call a profil perdu,
intently gazing, as it seemed, at the beautiful dancing
figure. It was the vivid impression of a scene that
had evidently stamped itself on a great artist's mind,
sunlight and all.
"Oh," cried Mina, impulsively rising and taking
the sketch to her friend's side, "what a wonderful
thing this is! Dear me, as I look at it, it seems to
remind me--why, it is----"
But before she had time to finish what she was going
to say, the Countess had snatched the sketch from the
girl's hand, and tossing it into a corner, said imperiously,
with a sudden flashing of the eyes--
"I wish you would sit still, Mina, and hold your
head in one position, if only for ten minutes, or I shall
once for all throw your portrait in the fire. What a
little plague you are, always rummaging amidst this
old litter of mine!"
Then, as if to make up for her irritable manner, she
chucked the girl caressingly under the chin and said--
"There, pet, just raise your head a trifle more in
that direction; no, more to that side. You can study
my copy of the famous 'Mona Lisa' yonder, while I
try to put in your eyes."
The Countess now painted away with fitful energy.
She put the eyes in; she took a piece of rag and rubbed
them out again. Then she put them in once more of
a different colour. For a while she looked at them,
then she threw down her mallstick, stepped back from
her easel, and said petulantly--
"There's something very perverse about you, Mina.
Do what I will your eyes still get that tragic look in my
picture, though they are sunny enough of themselves."
It must be admitted here that the Countess, though
she had occasional flashes of inspiration, was not what
would be called a good artist. Once she had had the
opportunity of studying under a great master, and she
might perhaps have attained considerable excellence
had it not been for an unaccountable perversity, which
no teaching or remonstrance could break her of. This
was a curious preference for some colours, and an
equally curious aversion to others, which at certain times seemed to grow quite uncontrollable. Thus though she occasionally hit off a very successful likeness, she usually injured it through too lavish use of red or hot pigments in contradistinction to the blue or cold ones.
Nevertheless, she had already exhibited several
portraits and one or two pictures, and at the time we
are writing of she was determined (for reasons of her
own) to make an income by art. She had taken a
good deal of pains with Mina's portrait, therefore, and
had on the whole successfully rendered the softly
rounded outlines of the face and the general character
of the features. While trying to put the finishing
touches to the breezy ripple of her bright chestnut
hair, she said--
"What magnificent hair you have, child! Only
Titian could have done justice to it. Now be honest
for once with me, and tell me how many of the good
youths of this town have paid you compliments on it,
for all your simple looks."
Mina, who had never speculated much on her
personal appearance, was more unconscious of herself
than many a child, and thought the Countess must be
mocking her, her hair having always been a source of
trouble to her.
"The boys often joke me about my hair," she said,
smiling in a deprecating way; "and when mother's out
of temper with me, she says it's part of my general
contrariness; and I think she fancies it has something
to do with poor papa's having been such a great
Sanskrit scholar."
The Countess, bursting into a peal of laughter, cried--"Oh,
Mina, Mina, what an oddity you are! But you'll
learn differently when you get a lover one of these days.
A pretty girl like you is as sure to attract them as a
candle does moths. Nay, there's nothing to look so
shocked about; friendship won't always suffice you, I
prophesy. Now promise me, Mina, when the first
lover makes his appearance that you'll make me your
mother confessor. There's that Lieutenant Knapp;
now, he seems a tidy youth, and from the way he
clatters up the staircase rattling his sword, I should
think his impatience to see a certain----"
"Please, please, don't talk like that," said Mina,
moving restlessly in her chair; "if you will only put
up with me and be my friend, dearest Countess, that is
all I care about."
"Yes, yes," replied the latter, "I do very well for
the present, but suppose I were to put your friendship
to the test."
"Put it to any test you like!" exclaimed Mina,
impetuously jumping up and kissing the Countess, who
was looking at her with her enigmatic smile; "and see
what there is I would not sacrifice, were it possible for
such a one as me to do anything for your happiness."
"Oh, Mina, these are weighty words, but I do
believe you are fond of me and have a faithful heart.
Well," she continued, passing her hand over the girl's
hair; "if I should ever be in trouble, be sure I'll
remember that there is a little friend----"
A rap at the door interrupted the speaker; and the
lady's-maid entered and handed a letter with several
foreign-looking postmarks to her mistress. The latter
took it languidly enough, but on seeing the handwriting uttered an exclamation, and feverishly tore it open. In a moment she had devoured the contents of the letter, and then began perusing it a second time more slowly and carefully. There were only a few lines, indeed, and these seemed written as though each letter had cost the writer a supreme effort. A wild excitement had suddenly taken the place of the lady's habitual languor, and she rapidly paced up and down the long room, while an irrepressible look of triumph flashed for an instant over her features. "He must and shall be mine yet!" she muttered between her teeth.
It was clear she had absolutely forgotten Mina's
presence. She rang the bell with violence, and when
the maid entered, said hurriedly--
"Pack up my things at once, Louise, and send Hector
round to Herr Professor Sontheim to say I must see
him immediately on pressing business: let him also get
everything ready for our departure, as I start for Russia
to-morrow morning."
Louise, like the well-bred maid she was, took the
tidings without any signs of surprise, as though this
was simply one of her mistress's many caprices. As
she was leaving the room the Countess called her back,
saying--
"Wait a minute, I will write a note to Herr Sontheim
myself."
She sat down at her secretaire, dashed off a few lines,
sprinkled them with gold sand, sealed the note and
handed it to the maid, who immediately left the room.
She then for the third time began conning the contents
of the letter, which ran as follow--
"Though I know everything, yet I forgive. My honour
and loyalty protect you from my revenge, had I wished
for any. I love you unchangeably, and all I ask for
the ruin you have wrought is, Come to me before it. is
too late! I am dying, but your secret shall die with
me!"
Having now engraved every word on her memory, the
Countess lit a candle, and holding the letter to the flame,
saw it shrivel up in a moment; she then hurried out
of the room, without a word to Mina, apparently to
give some further directions about her approaching
journey.
The girl on hearing of this sudden journey to Russia
had, indeed, been fairly aghast. To her small-town
notions of a journey, as a thing that must be arranged,
planned, and thought of at least a month beforehand,
such a proceeding was simply incredible.
An then to lose her friend in this abrupt manner!
the only friend she had ever had, and to whom she had
attached herself with all the ardour of a nature which
for the first time finds the shapes of beauty that have
haunted it incorporated in a living form.
What a contrast was there not to the imaginative
Mina between the prim Philistines of D----, with their interminable twaddle, and this noble lady, who, in her eyes, was invested with the double charm of beauty and mystery!
And now the Countess was not only going to leave
her thus suddenly, but while still present in the body
seemed already absent in the spirit.
"Why, pet," said the latter, who for the last minute
or so had been teazing one of her macaws, now sitting
down beside Mina, "what's the matter? One would
think you had the toothache, or is it that you are so
sorry I am going to Russia?"
Mina raised her head, and looking fondly at her, said
with brimming eyes, "To Russia! all that long way,
and so soon! No, no, you cannot be going yet!"
"Yes, yes, child, to Russia! Why if I were going
to the Antipodes you could not look more woebegone.
Cheer up! The world is not such a large place as you
imagine, and people are always knocking up against
their next-door neighbours in the most unlikely places.
We shall meet again; Mina, never fear."
"But you are going far, far away," sighed Mina,
with a droop of the corners of her mouth, as if she
were trying not to cry again. But it was no use trying;
in another minute she was sobbing as though a
terrible misfortune had befallen her. Poor child! to
her it was the first experience of parting from one she
held dear, and fancied that she held still infinitely
dearer; and a first parting is always a foretaste of death.
"Why she is actually crying in earnest, the little
tender-hearted goose!" exclaimed the Countess, taking
her scented pocket-handkerchief and daintily wiping
away the tears that were still rolling down Mina's cheeks. "Now do be good and don't cry any more, or I must ring for Louise to bring me another handkerchief. Besides, crying is bad for the eyes, and yours are too bright to spoil."
This playful tone, instead of cheering Mina, had the
contrary effect; she felt suddenly quite lonely, and miles
upon miles seemed already to intervene between her
friend and herself.
"Now, Mina," said the Countess, getting up and
beginning to collect some of the knick-knacks scattered
about, "come and help me put some of these things
together, like a good child. There," she continued,
taking up a coral necklace with a golden clasp, and
passing it round Mina's lovely cream-white throat,
"keep this in remembrance of me till we meet again."
Mina protested that the trinket was of too great
value for her to accept, and that she did not want anything
to remember her friend by. But if she wished to
make her a present at parting, would she give her that
sketch of the dancing girl that bore such a wonderful
likeness to herself. She did not as yet know the
relative value of the roughest sketch by a master and
trinkets.
The Countess looked annoyed for an instant, then,
shaking her head, said, laughing, "Not so bad an
exchange certainly, Mina; but what you ask is quite
impossible."
Then the girl begged for some little sketch or portrait
of her friend, but that too was denied, the Countess
remarking that she had a dislike to giving away any
likeness of herself.
"But don't look so downcast, my child," she said,
pulling Mina along with her to the other end of the
room, where her easel and colour boxes were, and
jumbling all her painting implements together in her
haste. "You must come and stay with me some day,
either at Paris or St. Petersburg, for I shall be rich
now, very rich, perhaps. Is there anything to astonish
you so much in that, Mina?"
"But you are very, very rich already," said Mina,
to whom her friend had always appeared as revelling
in the wealth of a Croesus.
"Oh, nonsense!" exclaimed the Countess; "I was
getting poorer and poorer, and was going to turn artist
for a living; but all that is changed now," she laughed.
"When I've settled down, you shall come to me, and
we'll introduce you to the world; and a lover, I dare
say, will not be long in making his appearance on the
stage, too. But I'm forgetting this levity is out of
place," she said, as though recalling something to her
mind, and assuming a sudden gravity which her eyes
belied, however.
Mina had not been roused from her sorrow. The
prospect of going to stay with the Countess was
certainly enchanting; but in the last hour she had
gone through an experience painfully startling to her
warm heart.
While the Countess was still busy getting together
some of her property, there was another rap at the
door, and a man of Falstaffian proportions was ushered
in by the maid as Professor Sontheim. He was chiefly
noticeable for one of those powerful Germanic heads
that look, and indeed are, a Cosmos in miniature. His
eyes of an indefinite blue, and the rest of his features were disproportionately small compared to the massive outline of his square-set jaw and lofty forehead, whose vastness was increased by a complete absence of hair, save for a meagre bright red fringe, extending from the temples to the back of the head. A man, however, usually finds a certain consolation for this lack of hair in the reflection that it gives him the appearance, at any rate, of having an abnormally large development of the cerebral organs. "Long hair, short wit," as the proverb has it, was a saying probably invented by a bald-pated person; the belief, no doubt, being a salve to the nakedness of his crown. Leopold Sontheim, with his clothes hanging about him in a loose, random fashion, giving one the uneasy impression that on the slightest provocation they might come tumbling down all of a heap, was got up for this occasion in floods of clean, rumpled linen, of innumerable pleats, which his waistcoat of checked buff, rebellious with starch, always refused to cover. His lavender-coloured pantaloons, of enormous width, were strapped down so as to project them almost over the shiny black tips of his light jean half-boots. A brown tail-coat, ornamented with gilt buttons placed high between the shoulders, flapped about his portly figure, its long tails swaying from side to side as he walked. Necktie he had none, but a velvet collar, a straw hat, and diamond studs; hideous in pattern, but of considerable value, completed a costume which, though creased, fluffy, and ill adapted to his red hair and pink complexion, the owner nevertheless knew to be in the last fashion.
To Mina's astonishment Herr Sontheim seemed quite
at home in the room, though to her knowledge he had never been there before. He was strangely excited, and on first entering seemed not to notice her, but was going straight towards the Countess in a rapid, vehement manner, when she said, glancing round at Mina--
"You must leave us for the present, my child; I
have to consult Herr Sontheim on pressing and
particular business." But seeing Mina's piteous expression,
she added, "If your mother permits it, mind you look
in again this evening, little one; I won't take leave of
you now."
Mina, who could not disguise her vexation at having
her last interview with the Countess interrupted, hardly
nodded to her old friend, who, for his part, seemed
utterly unconscious of her presence or exit.
Scarcely had the door closed when the Countess
motioning him to a chair, said, "I've sent for you
because I must instantly leave for Russia, and there is
no one I would turn to in a difficulty so soon as you,
Herr Sontheim!"
"Impossible! You cannot be cruel enough to leave
us so soon, Countess!" cried the gentleman, in a voice
he vainly tried to render steady.
"I must, indeed!" replied the Countess. "For I
have just received news necessitating my immediate
departure for St. Petersburg. But unprepared as I
was, I must in the course of this day raise a sum of
money not only sufficient to defray the expenses of
so long a journey, but to settle all my outstanding
accounts here, as it is quite uncertain when I may
be able to return. Now what would you advise, my
friend? I have some Brazilian bonds by me that you might sell on this emergency."
Herr Sontheim, instead of having taken the proffered
chair, had been pacing up and down the room in great
agitation. He now stood still in front of the lady,
exclaiming, "Heavens, Countess, you ask the
impossible with the charming peremptoriness of your sex!
Bonds cannot be converted into ready money at a
minute's notice, at least in this dilatory town of ours;
besides, the bank is just about to close. Surely there
is no such urgent haste, dearest lady!" he said, looking
at her entreatingly; "only give me a little time to
collect my thoughts, and everything shall be arranged
to your entire satisfaction."
While he was speaking the Countess had been tapping
the floor impatiently with her elegant Parisian
slipper; she now suddenly raised her eyes to his face,
exclaiming, "Good God! When one's husband is
dying far away in Russia is it a time to speak to me of
delay?"
"Your husband dying!" echoed Herr Sontheim,
taking two or three rapid strides across the room,
while a deep colour suddenly crimsoned his face to the
hair on his temples; then, sitting down close beside the
Countess, he said, lowering his voice, "Command me
in everything, dear lady; all I have, and myself to
boot, are entirely at your service;" and in a still lower
voice he added, "Is it necessary for me to tell you
so?" Then, after a moment's silence, as though the
thought had only just occurred to him, he added,
"So sudden! It must have been a dreadful shock to
your feelings."
The Countess lay back on the sofa covering her face
with her hands. Her bosom was heaving spasmodically,
and one or two broken sobs convulsed her beautiful
frame. Quite beside himself at this sudden outburst of
grief, Leopold Sontheim went down on his knees before
the sufferer. There was no one, luckily for him, to
witness the feat. "I cannot bear to see you suffer!
There is no man living worth one of those tears!" he
cried, in a voice quivering with emotion; and, seizing
hold of one of her hands, he pressed it with the
unconscious force of an athlete.
"Oh, you are hurting me so!" gasped the lady, with
her lips curiously twitching, as though she were trying
to overcome some emotion; and, withdrawing her hand,
she pointed to the deep, red incision of a ring which
the Professor's pressure had left on one of her long,
shapely fingers.
"Oh, pardon, pardon my brutality, dearest lady!"
cried Herr Sontheim with deep contrition, pressing his
lips on the spot indicated.
"You are forgetting my position, sir, and the object
of your visit here," said the Countess, with a certain
irritation of tone, as she motioned him to rise--a feat
which the Professor at length achieved.
"There is no time to lose," she continued; "if you
really wish to help me in this matter, you must do so
at once."
Sontheim sat down, and, slowly passing his hand
across his forehead, as though to clear his ideas, said,
after a moment's cogitation, with quite an altered
manner, and the tone of a man of business--
"As to those Brazilian bonds you mentioned, they
are bad things to negotiate at present. But let's see, what will you want about--you will be posting all the way--it cannot after all cost you more than about nine hundred florins, and if you will permit me to advance you that sum, I shall esteem it a favour you are conferring on me, dearest lady. I may say," he added, joyfully, "that I have from about nine hundred to a thousand florins in savings!"
"I thank you, my friend! But I am sure you will
understand that I cannot think of accepting your
generous offer. And you have such very economical
notions here in Germany," the Countess said, with the
faintest smile. "Nine hundred florins will never do!
Besides, I've just sent Hector to see about buying a
carriage for me, and I must wind up my outstanding
accounts here, as I mentioned before."
"Let's consider for a moment then," said the
Professor, jumping up, and pacing to and fro again.
"Oh, I forgot, there are my diamonds!" cried the
Countess, rising too, and begging Herr Sontheim to
excuse her for a moment.
She left the room, returning, after an interval of a
few minutes, with a large morocco case. Opening it,
she displayed a set of brilliants such as the dazzled
Professor had never yet beheld.
"How much are they worth?" he exclaimed, rather
awe-struck.
The Countess considered, and then said, indifferently,
"I think they were valued at fifty thousand florins by
a jeweller in Paris. I suppose you could sell them
for me?"
"Sell them!" exclaimed Sontheim. "Oh, that were
impious! Besides, they wouldn't give anything like a fair price for them here; if, indeed, you'd find a customer to make an offer for them."
The Countess, who had carelessly taken up a bracelet
and was slipping it on her arm, said, with a slight shrug
of the shoulder, "Instead of smoothing away difficulties,
you do nothing but raise new ones, Herr
Professor."
"Only in your interest, dearest Countess, and because
I would act for the best!" exclaimed Sontheim, deprecatingly.
"But I think I have hit on a plan that I
hope will meet with your approbation. Leave the
diamonds with me, and let me advance you the twelve
hundred florins you may require for immediate use; I
shall manage to raise them somehow; then the moment
I can get away, I will myself take your diamonds to
Frankfort, and negotiate a loan for you with Ladenburg
and Co. I can then settle all your debts here, if you
will kindly leave directions to have the bills sent in
to me, repay myself the trifling sum I shall have the
felicity of lending you, and the rest, if you will favour
me with your address shall be forwarded to you in
draft from the bank at Frankfort, if you approve my
scheme."
"My dear friend, thank you a thousand times for all
the trouble you are taking on my behalf," said the
Countess, rewarding him with one of her most seductive
smiles. "Nothing could be better than the scheme
you propose. When do you think you will be able to
let me have the money? As for the drafts you spoke
of, they had better not be sent on to me till I am sure
of my movements--I will then send my address."
"Let me see," said Sontheim, pulling out a turnip-shaped
silver repeater; "it is now four o'clock; I will
be back with the money at seven. But," he cried, as
though suddenly recollecting the state of the case,
"are you really going to undertake such a long, tedious
journey all by yourself, with only servants? Is it safe?
Ah!" he cried, becoming excited again, and looking at
her with glistening eyes. "Would I were the fortunate
man to be allowed to escort you thither! Is it not
possible?" he added, oblivious of everything else for
the moment.
The Countess shook her head softly, and gave him a
long look from under her half-drooped eyelids. "That,
my friend, is impossible," she said, "under the present
melancholy circumstances;" and she pressed her
handkerchief to her eyes again. "But we are wasting time
here," she continued, in an altered tone; "if you can
procure me this money, do it at once, there's a good
man!"
"I hasten to do your bidding, my lady," cried
Sontheim, raising her hand to his lips. Then, seizing
his hat, hurried to the door, where, turning round once
more, he said, "I will be back without fail at the time
mentioned," and left the house deeply commiserating
the beautiful woman.
The Countess had no sooner heard the street door
close than, rising from the sofa and humming the
popular tune--
she passed into her bedroom, where her maid, busily
Oh qu'il est beau, qu'il est beau, qu'il est beau,
Le Postilion de Lonjumeau,
engaged in packing, was folding up a magnificent ruby-coloured velvet dress, trimmed with Venetian rose point.
"What are you doing, you idiot! Will you never
learn the proper way of folding velvet?" cried the
Countess, in an irate voice, snatching the dress from
the abigail's hand, and giving her such a violent push
that she sent her spinning against a large wardrobe, a
corner of which bruised her shoulder.
When Mina returned, towards eight o'clock, to take
a final leave of the Countess, to her surprise she saw
Herr Sontheim with his hat in his hand, a wild look in
his eyes, and broad red streaks furrowing his brow,
rush past her on the landing without recognizing her.
The Silberburg, in sooth, seemed a
spot purposely created for the celebration of this most
poetic of all festivals. It was a beautiful garden,
planted on a hill, in the centre of which stood a spacious
pavilion, and near it a semicircular stand embowered
in frees, but opening on to a lawn in front, and capable
of affording ample accommodation to the excellent
orchestra, which, on certain grand occasions like the
present, replaced the usual military band. The before-mentioned
grass-plot, smooth as an English lawn,
reached nearly to the hill's edge, but was fenced off by
a screen of lime-trees extending along one side of it.
Beyond these a growth of underwood formed a green
garden wall, not high enough, however, to shut out the
view into a cozy strip of valley, chequered with kitchen gardens and orchards, and threaded here and there with the silver glint of a rivulet. To the north and south of the lawn extended small groves of shrubs and trees which at this season of the year were a perfect labyrinth of intermingled blossom. Here clumps of laburnums showered their vegetable gold over the delicate cloud-like bloom of the lilac trees, there--like some gigantic chandelier on which May has kindled ten thousand tapers--a broad-boughed chestnut tree held its roseate blossoms aloft; while yonder, most poignant scented of flowers, pale jasmine stars gleamed athwart the gloomy green of their foliage.
Yes; the flowers had mustered in full force! It
seemed as though in their hot haste to put in an
appearance at this festival, which they apparently
regarded as given in their honour, some had hardly
given themselves, time to smooth their petals, which
looked as though still tumbled from sleep.
And now that the flowers were there to receive them,
the children likewise appeared on the scene. For
this was pre-eminently a children's festival, and the
enjoyment of the grown-up folk consisted, to a great
extent, in watching that of their little ones. According
to custom, most of the young girls were clad in white,
and a prettier sight could hot well be imagined than
that of children of all ages now gradually assembling
on the lawn which they were to have entirely to themselves
for their games and dances.
Their elders meanwhile were sitting round the
numerous little tables, where the feminine occupants
chiefly consumed coffee and cakes, while their male
relatives solaced themselves with beer and tobacco. The mammas, it need scarcely be said, were fully occupied in admiring their children, and were constantly circulating backwards and forwards between them and their seats. The young ladies, whose turn was to come later in the evening, when there was to be a ball in the pavilion, were now walking about by twos and threes, or standing in groups, chatting and laughing with the young men, few of whom had arrived as yet; others, again, were busily flitting hither and thither amongst the children.
Just as the orchestra struck up one of Strauss's
animating waltzes, two men engaged in eager conversation
issued from a by-path and seated themselves at
one of the tables, so as to command a full view of the
entire festive scene.
"I have hardly yet recovered from the pleasant
surprise of meeting you thus unexpectedly!" ejaculated
one, whose portly proportions were unmistakably those
of Professor Sontheim. "To think that you have
actually been here three whole weeks, and only now
made yourself known to your old comrade! Shame,
shame, Emanuel! But you always were a whimsical,
unaccountable fellow, for all your genius. I bet that,
according to our proverb, you'll only cut your wisdom
teeth at forty, true son of Suabia that you are."
The other laughed, and said, "That's right, Leopold;
I see you have not forgotten your old views respecting
me. I remember how, when we were long-haired
students together, you used to express them to me with
that charming courtesy and candour for which we were
renowned. You, I remember, used to be considered
the sentimental savage of our circle, and we even nicknamed you 'Isegrimm.' But now you have, to all appearance, developed into a full-grown élégant," glancing slightly at the fashionable points of his friend's costume.
"Well, well," rejoined Sontheim, not without
complacency, "from the raw youth to the man of the
world there's room for progress. Life, I begin to find,
is not such a bad invention after all. Once I was as
defenceless as an unfledged chicken, and drew in my
horns at every breath; but now I'm armed like a
porcupine, and able to hold my own against man--and
woman too."
"Then hold your own with the waiter and catch
him as he passes, or our wit may run too dry," the
stranger remarked in bantering tone.
"Now he is here, in what liquor fit for the gods
shall we celebrate this auspicious meeting, Emanuel?"
"Let's have Johannisberger," said the one addressed,
"for so joyful a meeting can only be drunk to in the
most precious of wines."
"I have no objection to make;" replied the other,
slightly raising his eyebrows. "But, now that I think
of it," he added, with a comically pensive expression,
"the good old adage recommends wine after beer, but
deprecates beer after wine. Yes, yes! it's never wise
to neglect these saws. Waiter! some bottles of Bairish
beer and a bottle of Johannisberger."
Characteristic of the two men was the beverage each
had selected; indeed, broadly speaking, all Germans
might be classified as either beer-imbibers or wine-imbibers,
and such a classification might well take
the place of ethnographical or political subdivisions.
Thus no greater contrast could have been found than
these two friends, who seemed to have met after a long
lapse of years. One huge of bulk, ruddy of face, and
"puffed up" with health, as it were; the other tall and
thin of person, slightly hollow-chested, and seeming
rather to be borne along than to walk, with eyes of
chameleon tints, and long, strong hair that always
seemed to have a storm in it. The same character
was expressed in the hands, with their knotted veins,
never for an instant still; they might have served as
models for some saint's or martyr's, so expressive of
spiritual energy were the long, pale fingers.
"After all, 'on revient toujours à ses premiers
amours!'" the latter abruptly exclaimed, as with a
mixture of humour and pathos he looked at the scene
before him. "What innocence, freshness, simplicity
reigns here, Leopold! What artless joy in young and
old! Look at those children there, crowned as of old
with moss and flowers, and dancing in a ring! And
those sturdy, broad-cheeked youngsters defiling in
procession two and two, bearing branches of birch and oak
and elder. Just look at those blooming girls all in
white, their long tresses plaited with ribbons, carrying
wild strawberries and cream and milk rolls to feed
those little ones there. It makes my mouth water, I
swear. Wouldn't I like to be that small urchin
yonder whom the tall girl is feeding so daintily with
her own beautiful fingers, for fear, I suppose, of his
daubing himself all over with the juice of her fruit."
While thus talking with a certain whimsical tone in
his voice, the stranger every now and then cast a quick,
searching look from end to end of the garden; and
suddenly, after one of those rapid glances, he said to his friend, "Leopold, do you ever think of Elfrida now?"
The latter, who, though giving an occasional
approving glance at the scene around him, had been
more engaged in he demolition of an enormous black
raddish, now drew the knife, with which he had
helped himself to a piece of Swiss cheese, from between
his lips, and said, with lugubrious mock gravity--
"I also was born in Arcadia, therefore it's hardly fair
to remind me of how you supplanted me. But, to be
serious, tell me about your life, Emanuel--your works,
your plans for the future, whence you come thus
abruptly, where you are going to from here. Why, you
have not even vouchsafed to tell me your reason for
stealing upon us thus incognito, for all the world like
Zeus when engaged in the pursuit of some fair mortal
maid! Come, I'm not to be blinded; confess, therefore,
confess as you were wont, old fellow. And
console yourself in advance, my son, with the reflection
that, the more heinous your sins, the more soothing
will it be to receive absolution for them. Ah," he
continued, stroking his portly double chin, "I really
possess the chief requisites of a father confessor.
Begin; I listen."
Emanuel laughed impatiently, and, shrugging his
shoulders, said, "Do you not see, Leopold, that I
shrank from the idea of the fuss that would be made?
My life turns perpetually in a dazzling, deafening
circle. I eat, drink, work, talk, even sleep in a fever.
Ah, you here in Arcadia know nothing of the incessant
wear and excitement of life in great cities."
"Arcadia!" grunted the Professor, parenthetically.
"I see you have forgotten our coffee parties and
carnivals."
"It may seem unkind, Leopold," the other continued,
"that I even avoided you on my first arrival; but you
will understand me when I tell you that I needed--I
might almost say, for the sake of my reason, absolutely
needed--this short spell of complete solitude."
Leopold Sontheim took his friend's emaciated hand
in his own broad fleshy one, and gave it a strong but
silent grip.
"Yes," continued Emanuel, softly, "I will tell you
some day, when we have greater privacy, for what more
particular reason I craved with an exceeding craving
for silence, obscurity, peace. After an absence of well-nigh
twenty years I was suddenly seized with a burning
desire to revisit once more the scenes and places of my
childhood.
"It was in Paris, in a crowded concert-room, when
this wish seized me. Suddenly, as in the vividness of
a dream, the hills, the woods, the vineyards of my
native town rose beckoningly before me; I heard the
swallow call me, and the stork, and the passionate sob
of the nightingale wailed from afar: 'Why tarriest thou
so long?' How describe the kind of pang I endured!
A hot, stinging sense of remorse enveloping my whole
past, a fierce thirst to plunge back into memories in
which my tired senses might be refreshed as in a bath.
'Home, home!' it cried in me. And that same evening
I settled my affairs as well as I could, took the
post-cabriolet to Strasburg, and then came on here, on one
of those beautiful spring mornings when everything in
the world seems to be born again except the poor human heart.
"As I walked through the dear, drowsy streets of my
native town; as I saw the blue hills nodding in on every
street, I seemed to myself like a ghost revisiting the
scenes of his former existence.
"I did not dare look at my father's house in the
daytime--the house whence I had fled, which I had been
forbidden to re-enter; and, before I could return and
heal the bitter breach, he, whose creed had barred heart
and home against me, had passed away suddenly, without
word or sign. Only in the quiet moonlight, when
I could venture near unseen, did I dare pace to and fro
on the pavement in front of it.
"The same old elm trees still rustled in the night air
as when I stood a child at my mother's knee, repeating
some hymn to her, or looking over the pictures of the
old family Bible; but the familiar faces had vanished
for ever!
"I could not bear it. I hurried away, Do you guess
the spot I re-visited next? The wood, the wood, of
course, Leopold. I went up the well-known hill, and
the delicate scent of the new-blown vines smote my
nerves with a pang of mingled pleasure and pain.
"But in the lapse of years, probably also owing to my
excitement, I had forgotten the way, and went now to
the right, now to the left, sniffing the air like a dog who
has lost his master's trail.
"At last, however, I came upon a landmark--the
little house commonly known as the Raven's hut, where
the grandmother of Elfrida used to live. There it was
with the bees humming about the blossoms, strangely
unaltered, yet, no doubt, long ago vacated by that kindly old dame who once moved so briskly about amongst her bee-hives, followed by the child and the old raven!
"Suddenly, however, I came to a dead stand. Who
was that propping up a young plant against the wall?
stooping painfully at her task? a lame raven limping
stiffly at her side? Was it possible the beautiful child
had been dead and buried so long, and that these two
aged ones had remained unchanged, untouched by time
and death!
"With my heart beating violently, and trembling like
a thief who dreads detection, I begged her to show me
the nearest way to the Engelswald. There was no fear,
however, of her recognizing me. The years had changed
me out of all semblance to the favoured boy she was
wont to entrust with Elfrida's care.
"She looked up at me with just the face I knew, and,
pointing down, said, 'Keep straight along this path till
you come to a brook further down, then turn to the
left; following its course it will take you straight to a
pool which is the finest bit of the wood. It is well
worth a stranger's while to visit.' The raven had
limped up to me, and, cocking his head in such a fashion
that his sound eye gazed straight up at me, his look of
unfathomable sagacity seemed darkly to hint that it
was labour lost to try and come over him.
"I strode on rapidly; I felt as if I had seen a ghost.
"'Here I am at last,' cried I, catching sight of the
water glimmering through the grey trunks of the beech
trees.
"As I looked down into that still, deep pool, across
whose surface the cloud-shadows drifted so languidly, there rose upon my soul, pathetic as the moon at midday, the memory of my first love. The present was annihilated. I was a boy once more. My heart beat high with the first ecstatic thrill of hope and love.
"'Here,' I cried, 'are the trees which I climbed to get
the birds' nests in order to show her the speckled eggs
so warmly and tenderly pressed each to each. Yonder
is the thicket where I gathered whortleberries and
hazelnuts! On the brink of this pool Elfrida used to
sit, dabbling her rosy feet in the water, and with
innocent coquetry watching the reflection of her beautiful
face therein.'
"'Oh, beautiful face! never has thy image left my
heart, image of my first love; would to heaven thou
hadst been my last also. To die so young! Never to
wait till I came back to lay fame and wealth and love
at your feet as I had sworn I would. To die and leave
me behind in a world where no one was ever again so
intimately twined with my heart-strings!'
"Restlessly I paced the narrow woodland paths, and
a pang of ineffable yearning seized me for the child that
was dead, had been dead and buried long, long years
ago. Then--as all that lay between that first pure love
and the present swept in one bitter wave of remembrance
through my memory--I flung myself on the
ground in a passion of sorrow, crying out, 'Elfrida,
come back, oh, come back to me!'
"The sound of voices, the rustle of a dress, recalled
me to my senses. Loth to meet anything in human
shape just then, I slid behind a clump of trees.
"'Good God! was I mad or dreaming? Was this
Elfrida come to life again at my call? the dead child re-risen, with the violets and daisies growing on her grave?'
"I stared blankly at the apparition; I passed my hand
over my eyes, only thinking her one more spectral form
come to haunt me on the paths we had trodden together
in bygone years.
"But no! this was no dead child come to life again;
neither was it a spirit of wood and water, though the
hem of its dress was wet as a naiad's, and its hands
were, at that moment, stretched out in fond protection
over beasts and birds like a beneficent fairy's. And
yet, when it lifted its eyes to me, those eyes shining as
with morning dew, I felt inexpressibly bewildered and
amazed. Those eyes, with the wide, unconscious gaze,
so distinct in my mind from all others, were the eyes of
Elfrida.
"I had hard work not to say to her, 'So you have
come at last, my child! Come, when I called on you
in utter weariness of heart. Do not leave me again.
Stay, oh stay!'
"Nothing could have been more familiar than her
presence. I had great ado not to take her in my arms.
But before I had time to recover my presence of mind,
before I had time to do anything but take off my hat
and bow like a fool, she went her way, and the sun
seemed to follow her."
"Why, it all ends in smoke, like 'the shooting at
Hornberg,'" grunted Professor Sontheim. "I expected
some grand coup de théâtre at the last, worthy of the
consummate artist. Take my word for it, your fairy
nymph or spectre was in sober truth nothing but a
little goose of a girl, who most likely had stolen to the wood on the sly that she might wash her face in maydew, which our silly maids hereabouts credit not only with unlimited curative qualities for removing freckles, sunburn, &c., but with an occult power of making them beautiful for ever. But you waved your wand of magic before her, and straightway she was transformed into a divinity."
"Let's have a bowl of maitrank, Leopold," said
Emanuel, with a faint ironical smile. "Perhaps after
a sufficient number of fragrant draughts you also will
see fairies in all the fair ones about us."
"Maitrank, capital! I will go at once and see after
the ingredients myself." And the Professor went
towards the pavilion with as much haste as his bulky
stature admitted.
He had scarcely left his seat, however, than Emanuel,
who had again restlessly glanced about him, gave a
start, and then for a moment or two evidently subsided
into brooding oblivion of everything around. Suddenly,
as if an idea had struck him, he left his seat with a
vivacity peculiar to him, and strode to the stand where
the musicians, after their vigorous efforts, had ceased
playing for awhile. Unobserved, he made his way to
the leader of the first violins and whispered something
in his ear. The man almost bounded from his chair,
but at a word from the stranger assumed an air of
unconcern, and in another moment had quietly yielded
him up his seat and violin.
The coming event had cast its all-engrossing shadow
across the good widow's thoughts for at least a month
beforehand; and she might often have been seen in deep
consultation with the seamstress, the maid of all work
and her neighbourly gossips, Frau Obertribunalprocurator
Hopfengärtner and Frau Scherer.
These two latter ladies had been summoned one
afternoon by the anxious mother to discuss and critically
weigh in the balance the respective merits of
pink, white, and azure. It was a knotty point, and so
the ladies found it over their cups of afternoon coffee.
We must remark, however, by way of parenthesis, that
the occasion had not seemed to warrant the Frau Professorinn in having fresh coffee made for her guests, who were consequently now imbibing a rather indifferent-looking beverage, which, carefully saved at breakfast time, had since then been put to warm in the oven.
"If I were you. I should decide in favour of pink,"
said the Frau Obertribunalprocurator, emphatically;
"pink is a sweet pretty colour, and, to my thinking,
always so becoming to dark eyes such as your Mina's."
"'Jugendzeit, Rosenzeit,' as the poet has it," lisped
Frau Scherer, who, under the impression of its imparting
a certain elegance, habitually garnished her discourse
with stray verses, proverbs, and pickings from
her brother's talk. Such sentences, however, had
frequently as little connection with her own words as
the bits of parsley have with the cold mutton they are
supposed to adorn.
"Yes, yes," murmured Frau Lichtenfeld, pensively;
"a great deal is to be said in favour of pink, a very
great deal. Now that I think of it, it was pink, so it
was, that I wore at my first ball." And she complacently
smoothed out the folds of her apron and gave a
knowing smile, which implied more plainly than her
words could: "Ah, what conquests I could tell of,
what triumphs, friends; and all owing to that pink
dress, and those roses of genuine Parisian make. That
was the time, dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator, you
remember my telling you, that the Chevalier von Tor
said to me, in a burst of enthusiasm, 'Ah, beautiful
Fräulein had I met such an enchanting vision of
youth and beauty in days when I might have--ah--summoned
up the courage--yes, the courage of aspi-
ring--ah--I should not be a lonely old bachelor--ah--but--
"What do you say to blue, now?" remorselessly
broke in the Frau Obertribunalprocurator, interrupting
these tender reminiscences which she knew from a
hundred previous experiences would meander on for at
least half an hour if not turned, into other channels by
a sudden diversion.
"Blue's heaven's own hue so tender and true!"
exclaimed Frau Scherer, enthusiastically. "How heavenly
sweet the maiden will look attired in a sky-blue robe!"
Therese, the seamstress, who, perched on a high step
in the window, was deftly turning Frau Lichtenfeld's
old-fashioned grey brocade that had been on duty these
twenty years, now leaned forward to join in the conversation.
She did half the dressmaking in the town, and
was quite a character in her way. Not only was she
considered a kind of genius for the skill with which her
nimble fingers turned old dresses into new, and appealed
to in the last resort as to all matters of taste and
fashion; but her knowledge as to what was, had been,
and would be worn by every lady, whether of high or
low degree, amounted to the miraculous.
"Begging your pardon, gracious ladies," she said,
while stitching away as fast as ever; "and if I may be
permitted to tender my humble opinion, I should say
white--white--nothing but white is the colour for a girl
to wear on first coming out. There's the daughter, now,
of the Frau Baronin, Fräulein von Berlichingen. She
came out this winter, you know, and of course you have
all heard how much she was admired. The sweet
young lady won't let any one but 'my Therese,' as she
calls me, make her dresses, even those she goes to court in. Well, I made her a plain white gown of the finest 'Donna Maria gauze;' nothing but that, honoured Frau Professorinn."
This argument did not fail of the powerful impression
it was intended to create.
"White, the colour of innocence!" exclaimed Frau
Scherer, with enthusiasm, "the garb of the lamb
and----" She stopped cudgelling her unwilling brains
to think of something else that should be equally
appropriate, when Therese came to her rescue by
adding--" and of the gänseblümchen" (the little
goose-flower, as daisies ace called in South Germany).
"Yes," she continued, "the gracious Fräulein Agnes
von Berlichingen wore her dress trimmed with daisies;
and a wreath of the same flowers in her hair."
"Oh, our Mina will look like an angel of light!" cried
Frau Scherer, ecstatically, casting her eyes to the ceiling--for
such was her wont.
"The girl will do well enough," said the Frau
Professorinn; but added, with a sigh drawn from the depths
of her maternal bosom, "Alas, she, is as careless of dress
as a tomboy, and I foresee already what a sight she will
be when, all rags and tatters, she comes home in the
evening. Well, Therese, I think we have settled this
point so far. You shall make us a dress the exact
counterpart of Fräulein von Berlichingen's, only it must
be of mulled muslin instead of gauze--a poor widow
like me with six children left on her hands, you know,
Therese, can't go spending money like a Frau Baronin,
for all that she is, or once was, the ninth daughter of
Medicinalrath Duttenhofer, and could hold up her head
with the best of them; and so, as I was saying, my daughter must not be a disgrace to him, in spite of her taking after her poor father's family; and she can't be got to understand, though I may talk myself hoarse to make her; and as to the daisies, Therese, we can get those for nothing in our garden; she's for ever lugging flowers into the house as I tell her--but it'll come in useful for once,--they won't be so genteel, I know, as the sweet artificial flowers at Madame Borrel's; but we must cut the coat according to the cloth, you know."
After having arrived at this important decision the
ladies set out in a body to purchase twelve yards of
muslin at Kübel's, the chief draper and haberdasher in
the Lange Strasse.
The eventful day had come at last, and, like a sheep
led to the slaughter, Mina yielded herself up with
passive resignation into her mother's hands. She had
been looking forward with wondering eagerness to this
day, but the rites of the toilet appeared to her to detract
considerably from the pleasures to come, and under her
mother's vigorous handling she lost all sense but that
of present discomfort. Besides the maternal hands,
two other pairs were busy about her person. At last,
being judged sufficiently prepared, the cloudy fabric,
white as a snowdrift, with touches of pale pink here and
there, was carefully passed over the girl's curly head by
the adroit fingers of Therese.
Frau Lichtenfeld stood a little to the right watching
the progressive effect of the toilet with knitted brows,
compressed lips, and occasional h'ms and ha's. She
looked on with that air of superior critical acumen,
only rarely lapsing into admiration, which would not
have misbecome a dramatic critic on whose sealed lips trembles the verdict to make or mar a first appearance.
Quite the reverse was the feeling with which Sabina,
the maid of all work, whose mouth, stuck full of pins,
presented the appearance of a pincushion, gazed on the
same spectacle.
"Don't stand there like a graven image, child!"
remonstrated Frau Lichtenfeld. "How can I or
Therese judge of the fit if you stand with your limbs
stiffer than broomsticks? One would suppose from
your doleful air that you were expecting to undergo an
operation instead of being dressed for a ball. In my
young days we girls looked more alive on such an
occasion."
Therese, by way of averting the lecture that she saw
impending over her favourite, now exclaimed--
"Doesn't the dress suit her to perfection, Frau
Professorin?"
And she eyed her handiwork with proud content.
"Sabina, you may call the children now," said Mina's
mother, sitting down in a chair to test a moment from her
labours, and blandly eyeing her daughter much as she
would have done a specially successful Mandeltorte, for
the confection of which she had acquired just celebrity.
On the cessation of the manipulations Mina was bid
to take a look at herself in the glass. She did so, but
grew hot and abashed, and turned quickly away. She so
rarely looked at herself thus consciously that she shrank
from the inspection with instinctive shamefacedness.
Suddenly the door opened with a bang, and the boys
tore in with Lulu at their heels. For a moment the
latter gazed in astonishment, not unmingled with fear,
at the figure in the white cloud; then, scuttling across the room to her mother, she buried her head in the stiff folds of her gown, only now and then peeping shyly round out of the corner of one blue eye. The boys meanwhile stood in a row, staring open-mouthed, with their thumbs in their mouths, at the sister, whom they hardly recognized in her present transformation from chrysalis to butterfly.
"Is it the fairy Magelone?" whispered Conrad, a
boy of about seven, just now deep in fairy lore.
"Perhaps it's Christkindchen," replied Otto,
tentatively, but was instantly crushed by Conrad's scornful
exclamation--
"Did you ever hear of Christkindchen coming at
Whitsuntide?"
"What's Therese been doing to her eyes, mamma,
that they shine so?" lisped Lulu, under her breath.
"You little goosey," said Conrad, who had now
recovered from his surprise; "Therese doesn't polish
sister's eyes as you did your doll's yesterday when you
had pushed one of them in; it's the Silberburg she is
thinking of."
Lulu tittered and took another shy peep, without
changing her position, however; and Otto and Conrad,
now sufficiently emboldened, made a rush forward in
order to convince themselves, apparently, by such tests
as pinching, &c., that this beautiful creature and their
sister were one and the same person.
They were warned off in time, however, by their
mother, who, in her sternest, most impressive tones,
now shouted, "Hands off, or I lay on the rod!"
Everybody seemed ready at last. The Frau
Professorinn surveyed her brood with an approving glance, while putting on her long, knitted black silk mittens, which she considered of a finer effect by night than the new-fangled white kid gloves, besides--as she remarked confidentially to whoever she could get for a listener--having the wear of half a dozen of the latter.
But just as they were starting it appeared that
Wolfgang, her favourite, was missing.
"Where is he? Who has seen him?" she asked,
with an ominous ring in her voice, implying that they
were one and all responsible for his disappearance.
"I got him ready more than an hour ago," she
continued, with waxing wrath, "and bade him be sure and
not rumple his hair again."
So instead of starting as it was high time they did,
the whole family had to begin hunting for Wolf. They
searched high and low, in the house and out of it, but
could nowhere come upon any trace of the culprit.
Under these aggravating circumstances what wonder
that the Frau Professorinn's temper, after the manner
of a weathercock, from due south should be veering
round in a threateningly north-eastern direction. It
was not good just then to dare to face the biting current
of her speech. Every one in turn was more or less
accused of being the cause or the accomplice of Wolf's
mysterious disappearance.
After long searching Hans shouted from the gloomiest
depths of the coal-hole, "Here he is, mother; I've got
him safe!"
The Frau Professorinn immediately hastened to the
rescue, and between them they dragged the recalcitrant
Wolf to the light of day.
Ah, what a sight here met the horrified mother's
eyes! Black, black from head to foot, her sooty son
scowled defiance at his captors. After one or two
spasmodic attempts, however, to recover his liberty, he
submitted with the dignity of a savage chief to the
melancholy fate awaiting him.
"Behold, the king of the Blackamoors led into
captivity!" cried the irrepressible Hans as, whooping and
shouting, he followed his brothers in the steps of the
runaway.
But poor Hans, instead of being rewarded for having
effected the capture of the deserter, was grimly told to
hold his tongue on peril of being shut up in the coal-hole
himself.
For the second time that day the miserable Wolf
had to undergo the ordeal by soap and water. But
when at last he emerged from that detested operation,
he looked--but for a little shininess about the cheeks
and nose--as handsome a boy as could well gladden
a mother's eyes. He was, however, at the age when
the idea of having to encounter a lot of young ladies
fevered his blood, and caused the tips of his ears to
burn as the approach of cannons might. And he often
told Hans, who was his confidant when they were not
at daggers drawn, that he would far rather face an
angry bull, or even his mother on washing-day, than
those girls that did nothing but giggle and whisper
together in corners, and made a fellow beside himself
with anger and dislike. As it seemed impossible to
escape a second time, he submitted with the stoicism
of a philosopher.
Thus the Lichtenfelds were under weigh at length.
No one probably had noticed this substitution; and
even when the new musician began playing a solo, a
variation on a pathetic old Volkslied; hardly any one
listened with the attention necessary to discern that
this indeed was the performance of a master hand.
The fact was, that although every South German is
more or less born with the singing soul, yet such a
tumult of joyous excitement filled the place that it was
well-nigh impossible to give ear to the music, even had
the people been desirous of doing so.
Indeed, the performance on this occasion bore a
strong resemblance to that of a London drawing-room
in the season, as its function apparently consisted in
promoting a clatter of talking and laughter. The little folk, it is true, had been having a good many dances, to the accompaniment, as they fondly deluded themselves, of music. This was a fiction, however. Between dancers and fiddlers reigned absolute divorce; and a merry wag of a boy, with his hand behind his ear, kept rushing to and fro between the two, in order to let each of the parties know what the other was about just then.
Nevertheless, one man, probably a musician, pricked
up his ears at the very first notes, and, pushing close
up to the stand, remained leaning against the woodwork
with folded arms, now fixing his eyes on the violinist,
now half shutting them, then softly nodding his head
or again shaking it, with the air of a person divided
between approval and amazement. Before long others
among the crowd, either musicians themselves or
connoisseurs of music, began to gather in knots round the
orchestra, and, while listening eagerly, to occasionally
exchange looks and whispers of astonishment.
Gradually the spell began to work on the whole
crowd of these South German holiday-makers.
Little by little the groups that had been desultorily
strolling through the devious paths and alleys of the
garden thronged to the centre, pressing towards the
neighbourhood of the orchestra. Little by little men
left off jingling their glasses, women and girls forgot
their chatter, and waiters ceased hurrying to and fro.
At last the very children desisted from their games, and
stood or lay on the grass nestling together by twos and
threes, the smallest of them with their flaxen heads
lying in their sisters' laps, and fresh bare legs and arms
looking like ruddy fruit scattered about the grass.
The crowd, which had grown denser and denser,
pressed quite to the garden's edge in a semicircle,
while the fortunate possessors of chairs and benches sat
closely together on each side of the green, the latter, by
common consent, being left in possession of the children.
Nothing exalts the heart more than seeing a mass
of people thus swayed by one common emotion. We
then consciously realize the solidarity of those human
units, each of which, bent on its individual desires,
aims, and passions, seems often so indifferent, alas!
even so antagonistic, to its fellows.
Once, however, let the vital impulse of some mastermind
go forth like an invisible presence among a
multitude consisting of many mixed, nay, incongruous
elements; let them feel the electric thrill of that occult
demoniac force we call genius--that instant one and
all are called out of, beyond themselves, that instant
they are liberated from the dull, cold obstruction of
self, are made partakers of intellectual beauty, are
made inheritors of spiritual force; merged, confounded,
absorbed in one universal element of delight, worship,
beatitude.
Such divine power of fusion abides, above all, in
music; and beneath its irresistible influence, here, in
that promiscuous throng, all hearts--whatever the
throb of their individual sorrow, joy, hope, despair,
love, or ambition--yearned, heaved, and inclined
beneath the sway of that melodious compulsion, as we
see the countless leaves of a forest, or blades of meadow
grass, bending as with one individual will beneath the
breath of summer winds.
And here forsooth--here in this garden laughing all
over with the flowers of May--there stood one who suddenly, with the witchcraft of his playing, startled the dullest, kindled the coldest, roused the saddest, to life and enthusiasm.
What had come to the musician, though? What
change had been wrought in his countenance since he
woke those ineffable lengthening sounds of yearning
from the shivering strings?
He stood there like some wizard, consumed with the
energy he emits, who with his bow constrains to his
bidding the illimitable host of sounds.
But how render in words what only the ear can
appraise and transmit?
There are minds, however, which have the faculty
of translating sounds into colours and visible shapes
of delight, to whom the theme of sonata or symphony
assumes the outline and proportion of objects clearly
projected on the inner vision. This quality, which has
since been developed into a new art manifestation by
the great musicians of the present, was clearly
discernible in the wondrous tone-poem, which, in a series
of musical pictures, gave, as it were, an allegory of love.
Love, in its twofold nature, swaying man's destinies
for good or evil, now uplifting his soul in a passion of
aspiration, now hurling him down disillusioned and
despairing, to be finally guided through labyrinthine
error to ideal attainment.
It began with a sort of barcarolle movement in
allegretto, illustrative of dipping oars and of singing mouths,
where a boat, gliding across the reflection of the mystical
white face of the moon that yearned to the sunset,
approached the lake-washed stairs of a marble palace.
And as the boat drew near and nearer, a youth on
the topmost flight saw a beautiful woman at the prow,
crowned with roses and waving a red rose-bough in her
hand; and the hue and fragrance of the roses was
reflected and multiplied a thousandfold in the sky, in
the water, in the features of the woman glowing like a
celestial rose.
She held her rose-bough out to the youth whose step
rang clear, as bounding down the marble stairs, he
leaped into the boat.
Back across the lake glided the boat, and from afar
was borne a sound of singing--the voice of one singing
the quest of the deathless rose of love.
Is this a sound of tears, or of falling rain that now, in
tremulous adagio measure, seems splashing through the
moonless night? the weeping of one that sorroweth,
or but the wailing of winds through the wet, shaken
boughs?
Hissing and shuddering, the rushes stoop to the
water-stoop round the stranded boat with its riven sails,
stoop round the forsaken youth whose tears mingle
with the driving rain, with the drifting petals of the
roses.
"Why weepest thou?" cried one, hurrying towards
him, flushed and panting in the van of a jubilant throng.
"What, the storm has ravished thy roses! Come!
I will lead thee to bowers where fresh ones are blowing,
which now, even now that thou tarriest here, wait but
thy gathering. Fool! if thou wouldst have eternal
roses, bid death pilot thee to the stars."
To what shrill, rapid, passionate pulsations do those
stricken minor chords respond? Now piercing with
strange discords, now liquidly dissolving in voluptuous
languishment.
Then, returning to the major key (allegro), a troop of
revellers rush tumultuously through the bountiful
summer-world now as on fire with roses.
Hither and thither they sway; some with rhythmically
flying feet lead the entrammelled youth through
labyrinths of scented gloom; some lure him to fields
of somnolent poppies clouding the sense with sleep;
some pelt him with roses, a red rain of incessant
maddening roses.
A strident clangorous chord like an ear-piercing cry
harshly jarring the noon--the revellers fly asunder,
abandoning the youth--pierced and stricken to death
with the cruel thorns of the silken roses.
Low, faint, and unearthly, without rhythmic subdivisions,
in sounds almost too thin for mortal ear, the
muted violin seems to exhale itself with the departing
spirit, while interspersed fitful staccato notes follow one
by one like receding life-blood, slowly ebbing, dying
away.
A silence as of suspended breathing pervaded the
listening crowd on the momentary cessation of the
music. They forgot to applaud; they instinctively
shrank from breaking the charm of those divinest
sounds.
But what had come to Mina? What made her heart
throb with an emotion almost painful in its intensity?
It so happened that she sat right in front, facing the musician, and he, this ruler of the realm of sound, this despot at whose command the multitude wept, rejoiced, exulted, despaired, was the same--she knew it instinctively--whose music had floated in through her open window, once and again, these nights of spring! Hitherto it had been an unbodied voice, insinuating itself with the unforbidden moonlight into her chamber; now it was more incomprehensible still!
But the pause was brief: the musician's sense of
completeness was not yet satisfied.
Once more the key changed, the movement quickened,
and from the foregoing expiring sounds burst into an
allegro vivacissimo. Dizzily whizzed the bow, waking
from the inexhaustible strings a myriad quivering
scintillations of sound through which the dominant motive
of final victory, that had from time to time reappeared
through the whole fantasia, finally culminated in one
supreme melody as the mystic rose of heaven appeared
to love's martyred pilgrim above the perishing roses of
earth.
It was over. The people applauded, shouted, laughed,
yelled with delight. Again and again the thunder of
acclamations burst forth as though it could have no
ending. When at last the unknown musician was
suffered to come down the steps, the holiday-makers
began looking at each other in astonishment, and asking
each other eagerly who this wonderful violinist
could be; and when it became generally known that
he was their own fellow-townsman come back amongst
them, the man with whose fame all Europe had rung, their enthusiasm knew no bounds.
One young fellow in his transport forced his way to
his side, threw himself on his knees, and covered his
hands with kisses; girls rifled the garden of its flowers
to scatter them at his feet; mothers snatched up their
children that they might see him the better and clap
their little hands; stolid, matter-of-fact citizens seemed
unusually excited--all crowding round him with kindled,
admiring looks and words, till at last he grew weary of
their enthusiasm. For he glanced restlessly about him
as though he were seeking an outlet by which to slip
away from the crowd, or else a face that was not
amongst it.
Her mother and some of the children found her out
at last. They came strolling towards her with Professor
Sontheim and Frau Scherer. Emanuel had succeeded
in regaining his friend at last, and was introduced by
the latter to his widowed sister. After pouring a torrent
of voluble rapture in his ear she hurried after Frau
Lichtenfeld, who had just begun scolding her daughter
for skulking away into a corner by herself.
Emanuel was saying, half wearily, "Let's get away
from here; I'm tired out," when, abruptly seizing his
friend's arm, he asked, "Who's your sister talking to
just now?" and, pulling him forward, he went on eagerly, "I should like to be introduced to your sister's friend, now at once."
"Why, Emanuel," cried the other, hesitating,
"introduce you to her! What attraction could that good
woman possess for you? Be warned in time, my
friend; for her tongue is a mill-wheel--once you get
caught in its course your wits may be mangled in the
process."
"Never mind," said Emanuel, impatiently, "I wish
to be introduced. She's the sort of woman I like; she
will not pester me with a lot of nonsensical cant about
music. These simple, unpretending sort of women
repose one as much as quiet fields with sheep and
cows do."
"Repose!" repeated the Professor: "I wish you
joy of the repose you will get! But come along; of
course I will introduce you with pleasure, considering
she was the wife of my best friend; but why you should
wish it, when just now you refused to let me present
you to Fräulein von Berlichingen, our beauty, who was
dying to know you--is--well----"
"Oh, I didn't come here to see your beauties and
listen to their gushing talk; I have plenty of that
elsewhere--more than plenty; let me have a little
simplicity, a little nature," said Emanuel.
They had reached the ladies by this time, and
Sontheim presented him to Frau Lichtenfeld, who had not
yet done lecturing Mina for not being a bit like other
girls--not at all amiable--who, instead of showing
some pleasure and gratitude for the pretty music they
had been having--and all for nothing, too, as she
ob-
served in parenthesis, had slunk away as though she simply hated it. The worthy lady had got thus far in her discourse when she was not a little startled and flattered by Sontheim's coming up to her and introducing his famous friend, while Mina shrank still farther into the shadow of the lime trees.
"What an unlooked-for honour," exclaimed Frau
Lichtenfeld, "for one so unworthy! Ah, you have
given us a treat such as we never had before. And
Lulu, the dear pet, never felt sleepy all the time you
played (and it was a good long time too, and I don't
think the boys were fretting to be at their games, though
they are sad fellows at sitting still); and then of her
own self she wanted to give you some flowers; but
here now, my eldest girl, I have just been scolding her,
sir. I think she is the only one--I do think the only
one of us--who did not seem to enjoy your pretty
fiddling. I really think, as I was just telling her, that
she must have been asleep the greater part of the
time, for she had her eyes shut fast--I saw her; and as
soon as she could, she went off from everybody--so
churlish, I say, so strange not to be fond of music. I
know I have heard once--or stop, was it my dear
departed--heaven rest his soul--read it me? Yes, to be
sure, the year Mina had the measles, and I was obliged
to sit up at night--yes, poor man, Mina was his
favourite; he quite behaved like a sensible creature that
time, nor once confused the medicine bottles; for there
was Wolf, too, laid up with a sprain which had to be
rubbed with opodeldoc night and morning. Dear, dear,
what a terrible boy he was to be laid up (but then he
always had such high spirits)--takes after our family,
the Duttenhofers, you see, and so does Lulu here, she's quite a comfort already to me; but as I was saying--ah! to be sure, the Professor read to me while I was sitting up from a book called Shakespeare--Shakespeare, Mina, wasn't it? but of course you were too young then to understand. Well, I could almost take my oath upon it that somebody or other in that book said only wicked people didn't care for music. Not that I mean that my eldest is wicked, sir; no, no, but so odd at times" (she said this, dropping her voice a little, in a loud aside to her bewildered listener), "just like her blessed papa, in fact, God rest his soul. Ah well, we are as God made us, I suppose, so we must be content. Come here, child, though you don't deserve it, yet you shall be able to tell your friends that you've been introduced to this great man too. Well, well, this is an unlooked-for honour----Ah! how do you do, my dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator? What fine music, wasn't it? I shall sit down here with my knitting; the boys will want to have a good run after sitting still so long. Oh! what's Wolf doing to Lulu? he will have her rolling down the hill in another moment! Dear, dear; there they go! Oh, how kind of you, dear Professor, to go and see after them! Do bring Lulu back. Wolf is a good lad, but too rough for the child. I'd better come with you, though."
Thus everybody dispersed for the moment, so that
after this peculiar introduction Emanuel was left standing
alone with Mina. She seemed well-nigh as silent
as her mother was loquacious.
But Emanuel, who was at last able to address her,
said smiling, "I am sure you cannot hate music; or do
you think it compares so unfavourably to the little music-makers of the woods that you are so fond of? And are you aware, by the by, that you have never yet thanked me for coming to the rescue of your protégées?"
Mina flushed at the sudden question. "Oh," she
cried, partly forgetting the shyness that lay so heavily
on her, "it was kind to put back the nest! I was so
glad the poor birds were saved. Thank you, now."
"Would you like to have news of them?" inquired
Emanuel.
Mina for all answer looked up with a quick, inquiring
glance.
"Oh, I never do things by halves," he said; "having
rescued them from death, you know, I felt bound to
watch over them from time to time. It was pretty to
see them trying their wings, flying farther and farther
from the nest, till they returned no more one fine day.
I dare say they were engaged in building nests of their
own. It was not quite for their sakes, I own, that I
sought out the spot where I saw you that day in the
wood--a spot endeared to me before you were born, I
dare say. But how came you there by yourself, and so
far from your home?"
"I had been to grandmother's," said Mina.
"Ah!" he cried, "your name is Lichtenfeld! Is it
your grandmother that lives on the hill above the
wood?"
"Oh yes, she has a cottage there, and keeps lots of
bees. Everybody knows grandmother's bees for miles
and miles round the town."
"Once," said Emanuel, with a peculiarly yearning
expression, looking far away across the valley, "once I
had a little playfellow that I loved very fondly. Her grandmother lived in a cottage on the hill-side too, and when I went away to make my fortune I promised my playfellow that I would come back for her one day, and take her into the great world; but when I had been gone--I forget how long--they told me that she was dead. Her name was----"
"Elfrida," cried Mina, who for some time had been
looking at him intently--"Elfrida; and it was I, I who
was the cause of her death!"
"You!" cried Emanuel, in blank amazement.
"You! How is it possible?"
"Alas! I have sad cause to remember her, though I
was such a little child. In my recollection of her it
seems as though she had been something too fair to
have ever lived amongst us like one of ourselves; she is
something bright, shining far off among my earliest
memories, like a star at the bottom of our long avenue.
"One day, I and another little girl went to the wood
bilberrying, and Elfrida came to take care of us. But
she had a long, foreign-looking letter in her hand----"
"Ah!" ejaculated Emanuel, "a letter!"
"This letter, I remember, she unfolded again that
day for the hundredth time, and began reading it, and I
hated the letter, for I knew that then there was no hope
that day of getting Elfrida to tell me one of her stories
that were like none any one else ever told. So I went
away pouting, and there by the pool that you know
saw such a flower as I had never seen the like of; and
then I called to mind a certain tale Elfrida had told
me, of how there is a flower which blow once in a
hundred years, and is never seen at other times by any
man. But," she said, as though suddenly recollecting, "this is too childish to tell you, only you won't understand----"
"Go on, go on," Emanuel said, eagerly, "and what
came of this blue flower? for blue it must have been!"
Mina, not without astonishment, said, "Indeed it
was blue, but how do you know?"
"Oh, because it was the fabled flower of romance
that chose to reveal itself to you, that's all. There are
few eyes so favoured in this world, I can tell you; but I
am not astonished. What did you do when it showed
itself? I want to hear all about it from one who can
give me such authentic information."
Though not quite apprehending his meaning, Mina
was too much at home in fairy-land to be exactly
perplexed, so she went on to say how her cousin Elfrida
had told her that whoever plucked this wonderful flower
had only to dig up the earth, Where the root was, to come
upon a great treasure of gold and precious stones; "and
then," said Mina, "I thought how rich I would make
Elfrida, and how rich she would make----" Here she
seemed suddenly, recalled to the present by a
half-stifled exclamation on her hearer's part, and colouring
up to the roots of her hair, said, in an apologetic tone,
"I only mention it because it made me quite wild all
at once to pluck this flower, which grew so close to the
water's edge that it might have been floating on it, and
in my eagerness I lost my footing and fell in."
"What! you fell into the water?" cried Emanuel.
"They ought to have taken better care of you than
that!"
"Oh no, no," said Mina, "please don't say that.
Elfrida took such care always; but you see she was reading that letter."
"Ah!" sighed Emanuel, under his breath, "yes, I
had forgotten. I was at the bottom of all the mischief.
And to think that it might have been your----" He
seemed to shrink from the idea with a shudder, and
only said, "At all events you were saved!"
"Yes," said Mina, "my screams brought Elfrida to
the pool; and when she saw what had happened she
jumped in after me. It was not too deep for her to keep
her foothold at the side, and so, by clinging to the stump
of a tree with one hand, she just managed, after several
unsuccessful attempts, to clutch hold of my dress and
drag me on to the shelving bank. I was quite insensible
when she got me out; and how she could ever have
managed to carry me in her arms up-hill all the way to
grandmother's--which was the nearest house, but still
a long way, you know--none of us could ever
understand. As soon as she had put me in grandmother's
arms she fainted clean away. The other little girl had
been so frightened, thinking I was dead, that she had
run straight away home. And Elfrida never was herself
after this; they said she, had taken a chill, but she grew
more and more beautiful, and only a little thinner and
whiter, day by day, till it seemed as though she were
made of melting snow; and she never could bear me
out of her sight then, and begged them to let me stay
with grandmother a little time--till--till----" Mina
caught her breath for a moment--" and she had my
hand in hers that morning she lay dying, and said to
me quite low, so low it seemed a ghost speaking,
'Emanuel! who will welcome Emanuel now, when he
comes home?'"
"And will you welcome me?" he asked, with exceeding
gentleness, and his eyes had a strange watery look.
"Oh, yes," said Mina, simply; "Elfrida would have
wished it."
"And is your name Elfrida, too?" he asked. "You
are so like her, but like as a red rose is like a white
one."
"No, my name is Mina," she answered.
"Mina," he repeated slowly, as though there were
some secret enchantment in articulating each separate
letter of the name. "Mina, I have come home at last."
And as he spoke was it the pink sunset flush, which
made the earth just than appear like a glorified place,
that also lit up his pale, habitually sombre features,
imparting to them a look of beaming peace and beatitude?
"Are you all here at last?" cried Frau Lichtenfeld,
coming up hot and out of breath, with the sobbing Lulu
holding on to a corner of her shawl. "There, don't
cry, don't cry; it won't bring your red shoes back if you
go on crying till doomsday. Oh!" shaking her fist at
the recalcitrant Hans, who was being dragged along
by Professor Sontheim, "you scapegrace, you ne'er-do-weel,
you wild goose, you plague of my life, you devil's
imp, you--'tiger's brat'--you--say what you've done
with them, or I'll shake you to within an inch of your
life; speak when you are spoken to, can't you?"
"Hans," said Sontheim, with a gravity the had much
ado to maintain, "Hans, my boy, do not grieve your
mother more by your obstinacy."
But Hans's lips were locked as in a vice, and he looked
doggedly to the ground.
"Oh!" said Lulu, gaspingly, between her sobs, "they
were playing pitch and toss with them, down there,
mother--and one fell into the water, and Hans took
t'other----" Here Hans scowled ominous warning at
her, "and Hans took t'other----"
"Yes, and he said," broke in Conrad, "'that it would
fetch back the other one; and don't let them part company
anyhow,' he said, and flung in Lulu's other shoe."
"Lulu's other shoe," assented Otto, divided in his
sympathies between Hans and Lulu, but always sticking
to everything that Conrad said.
"My pretty shoes that grandmother gave me," sobbed
out Lulu, with renewed energy.
"There, don't cry, my pretty; she shall have another
pair, she shall. But however are you to get home without
shoes, and the dew falling at this hour, and Wolf
gone off with his friends, and you such a heavy girl for
your old mother to carry?"
"Oh," said Mina, "let me carry her; I'm sure I
could;" and she was bending down to lift the child in
her arms, when Frau Lichtenfeld cried--
"Will you never get any sense, Mina, or take thought
for any one? What, after all the pains I've taken with
you, and the money it's cost, and Therese in the house
too, crush a bran new dress by carrying a brat all the
way home! Ah, it's hard on me, but I knew how it
would be all along; I said so to the Frau Obertribunalprocurator,
and to the good Frau Scherer, I said----"
Emanuel, who had remained somewhat in the background
watching the proceedings with considerable
amusement, here stepped forward, and said with his
most winning smile, to the indescribable astonishment
of his friend Sontheim, "If you will let me carry your child, dear Madam, you will be conferring a favour."
"You carry Lulu, sir!" cried Frau Lichtenfeld,
overwhelmed at the bare notion. "Oh, impossible! Too
kind of you to mention it; fancy that, now! If only
Fräulein von Griesbach were here--she thinks my
children not well-behaved--that would settle her, I
should think, that would! But here we are discussing
all this time, and yet the poor children must be put to
bed; though a nice time I shall have of it, as I have to
return presently with Mina in time for the ball. Lulu, do
cease that whimpering; Otto, don't cling to my skirts."
Emanuel, without asking further leave, simply lifted
the astonished Lulu off the ground, and sitting her on
his left shoulder, passed her right arm round his neck,
and held her fast by it. Then, turning to Frau Lichtenfeld,
who was talking so fast that her sentences simply
came tumbling one over another without stops of any
kind, he said, smiling, "Pray let me have my way, for
I always do have it. I have so often seen men and
women carrying children in this way in Italy, that I am
quite an adept at it. Isn't it a picturesque fashion,
Sontheim?"
Sontheim, who had been looking on with a puzzled
air, said, rather emphatically, "It's not the fashion here,
at any rate, for us to be carrying children through the
streets; well, I hope you'll enjoy your walk. I must be
off now on some pressing business. Good-bye!"
"Good-bye," said Emanuel; and then, turning his
face up to Lulu, asked, "Are you comfortable, my child?
Yes! then en avant children all!" And he strode on
with Frau Lichtenfeld interminably discoursing to him
on one side, and the blushing Mina silent on the other.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed the latter, looking
up. "Oh, it's you, old fellow; I'm right glad to see
you!" and he cordially extended his disengaged hand, while with the other he continued to direct several more blows on his iron wedge with all the zeal of an amateur.
"What a Jack-of-all-trades you are!" remarked
Emanuel, looking on. "Not satisfied with being a
professor of jurisprudence, an authority on Aristophanes,
a skilled translator from some half a dozen languages,
you must needs turn hewer of wood and drawer of
water also!"
"The wood's very well, but where's the water?"
asked Sontheim, grimly.
"Why, trickling down your nose in a little rivulet,
to be sure," said Emanuel, making a grimace. "But
come, put down that appalling implement; one would
think I was an inopportune guest at this fashionable
hour."
"Well, well," replied Sontheim, putting down his
mallet, and wiping the perspiration from his heated
face, "laugh away, my son; but this is my way, you see,
of keeping down the flesh and: the devil; besides, one
wants something of the kind for the muscles and
sinews to come into play as well as the brain fibres;
and here in Germany, with our eternal stooping over
books, we are all in danger of growing as limp as rags,
and as shortsighted as owls. But come in where you
can sit down somewhere;" and he led the way into the
house. "Here's a seat for you," he added, eagerly
sweeping a lot of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and
time-yellowed manuscripts from the shabby old sofa,
and clearing just enough space for his friend to sit
down upon; then, slipping a somewhat tattered dressing-gown
over his shirt-sleeves, he filled himself a pipe and offered one to his friend. The latter, who had flung himself on the sofa, and was leaning back as if quite wearied out, declined, saying that he never smoked.
"But dear me!" exclaimed Sontheim, after looking
more attentively at his visitor, "instead of the briskness
of an early bird, you have the air of a dissipated
night-bird with its feathers all awry! Why, what on
earth have you been up to now? Look at your boots
all sopping wet, for all the world as if you had jumped
over a hedge into a duck-pond, running away from some
farmer's wife's husband!"
"My boots have as little polish on them as your
remarks," said Emanuel, shrugging his shoulders; "but
farmers' wives have no attraction for me. The fact is,
I've been half over the country to-night."
"Why, you must be famishing, my boy!" cried
Sontheim, jumping up. "How stupid of me not to
have thought of it before!" and he went to the door
calling loudly, "Pauline, Pauline!"
After what appeared a considerable interval, a lady's
head with meagre hair in curl-paper became visible
through the half-open door. "Come in!" she said, in
a whispered consultation with her brother, which might
have been heard at the other end of the room; "that's
like your want of consideration for one's feelings. How
can I show myself before the 'Friseurin' has been, and
before such a very genteel-looking gentleman, too?
I'll see what we can dish up at this unseasonable hour,
and cook shall bring it in as soon as ever it can be got
ready."
"Beat up a dozen of eggs or so," whispered Sontheim
after the retreating figure.
"Well now, Emanuel, let's hear all about your
adventure," said the Professor sitting down, and
following with his eyes the wreaths of smoke that went
dwindling away into ever thinner circles above his head.
"Oh," said Emanuel laughing, "I leave adventures
and farmers' wives to you. Sorry I can't gratify your
curiosity, but I only rambled abroad because I had a
sleepless fit on me, and when I heard the watchman
call--'Past twelve of the clock, and a fine starlight
night,' I donned my cloak, stole down the stairs and
out into the open, where the sky was alive with stars.
I walked over the hills some eight miles or so, and got
into a dale on the further side that I didn't remember
having seen in my youth. There was a mill there by
the side of a stream, and some scattered farms with
orchards about them; resting in an apple-tree, I had the
most delicious reverie, and one or two themes came into
my head that I mean to work up by and by. Indeed
I've made quite a good business of this night escapade."
"At any rate you won't tell me more than you
choose, I see, but I hear the welcome clatter of cups
and spoons," said Sontheim, as the door opened and a
slatternly maid brought in a tray, and without much
ado banged it down on the table and disappeared again.
Sontheim poured his friend out a large cup of café au
lait, which the latter emptied at a drain, and then began
vigorously tugging away at the scrambled eggs and
smoked ham, declaring he had not tasted anything so
delicious for a long time, and finishing off with some
milk rolls hot from the oven.
"By the way," remarked Sontheim, who had sat
benignly watching the other, and filling his cup or plate
as it was emptied--"I thought you seemed rather taken
with my little god-daughter, Mina, yesterday. What
could you have to say to the chit?"
"Oh, your god-daughter, is she!" said Emanuel,
shortly. "How comes she to be that?"
"Why you see," answered Sontheim, "her father
and I were great chums. He was one of the best
fellows that ever lived, and one of the most learned,
and taught me Sanskrit, to boot ;but I never knew
any one less fitted to grapple with the realities of life
than him, poor man. How he ever came to be married
is one of those mysteries of human nature that defy
explanation. Had Elise, indeed, been a crabbed Sanskrit
manuscript, I could have understood his falling in love
with her. But no doubt our omniscient Shakspeare is
right in making the women folk take most of the
lovemaking on themselves; and my poor professor was just
the man to fall a helpless prey to the first she who
should take it into her head to bring a fellow under
petticoat government. And if ever a man had to bow
his neck 'under his wife's slipper,' it was poor Heinrich
Lichtenfeld. I remember one day," he continued
laughing, "he ought to have been on his way to give a
Greek lesson to some rich, stupid ass of a fellow, but
had clean forgotten about it, and was poring over some
obscure passage in the Mahabharata, when his wife,
broom in hand, suddenly popped her head in at the
door, and seeing her husband placidly sitting there in
dressing-gown and slippers, waved her broom in the
air, and flying at him, screamed--
"Are you to be for ever at play, when there are five
hungry mouths to be fed, leaving alone your wedded
wife and the servant. We shall come to beg in the street,
yet,' she lamented, the while poor Heinrich looked
helplessly at her with his pale, glassy-blue eyes, as she
helped him on with his coat, and pushed his hat on the
back of his head. 'There, go and give your lesson, if
you have any pity on your poor starving children,' she
ended, leading the bewildered man to the street-door,
and pushing him out as though he were blind."
Emanuel looked very much amused at the description
of Mina's father, and remarked--"Well, after all, there's
something to be said on the wife's side, too; a married
man must keep the pot boiling somehow. But is the
family as badly off as all that?" he added, more
seriously.
"Oh, not now," replied Sontheim. "During the
Professor's lifetime the wolf was with difficulty kept
from the door, and one must in justice admit, that if
any one in the world could have succeeded in making
the two ends meet, it was the Frau Professorinn. But
on her husband's death, his ill-luck seemed to die with
him, and the good widow soon afterwards came into a
very tidy little fortune, which, with her habits of thrift
and industry, she makes go twice as far as any one else
could. Even as regards my poor friend's unrequited
labours, curiously enough his dissertation on 'The
supposititious conjoined authorship of the Valmikisloka,
and the Ramayana,' has been recognised as one of
the most valuable contributions to our knowledge on
the subject. The best of it is that Lichtenfeld never
considered himself unfortunate as another man would
have done, but was so devoted to his studies that he never looked to get any reward beyond the pleasure he derived from them; in fact, his wife was not so far out when she considered he was always at play."
"You quite rouse one's interest in the luckless
Sanskrit Professor," said Emanuel; "such an abnormal
specimen of humanity is not to be met with out of the
fatherland. Has he been dead long?"
"Let me see," answered Sontheim, "he died nearly
four years ago, the youngest child was born shortly
after her father's death. The only one who at all
reminds me of the good man, my god-child, Mina."
"What, Fräulein Mina? You must be joking, my
good fellow," said Emanuel, smiling; "what resemblance
can there be between the abstracted book-worm
you describe, and this sunshiny child of nature that
seems thrilling with life as a bird does?"
"Oh, that's how you see her," said Sontheim, casting
a shrewd glance at his friend. "The resemblance lies
deeper down than that, and would escape the notice of
any but an intimate friend. I am very fond of the
little one, and feel almost bound to watch over her in
a way. But I confess," he added, carelessly, "she
doesn't strike me as the sort of girl men are apt to fall
in love with, there's not enough of the woman about
her, she'd be the better for a spice of coquet, in fact!"
"Dear me, Sontheim," said Emanuel, somewhat
ironically, "I didn't know that amongst your multifarious
studies you included that of the fair sex."
"Oh!" exclaimed Sontheim, with a fatuous
expression, "when one has had the good fortune to fall
in with all that's fascinating, alluring and supremely
beautiful in womanhood it makes one critical of the rest of the sex, no doubt!"
"Dear me!" said Emanuel, in a bantering tone,
"you arouse my curiosity, you do. Can it be that this
phoenix amongst women hides her charms in this town
of yours? And is she visible to eyes other than your
favoured ones, Leopold?"
"Jeer on if you like, my boy," said Sontheim, not at
all put down by his friend's manner. "You'd sing to a
different tune did you see her I'm bragging of. I tell
you she is a goddess, Emanuel!" he cried energetically,
getting up in his excitement, and pacing up and down
the room; "a goddess even you would bow the knee
to, had you but the privilege of knowing her. Such a
walk, such a figure, such grace in every motion, and
oh, Emanuel, such a subtle, bewildering, intoxicating
way of smiling at you, to drive a man out of his senses!
Give me such a woman, and to win her love but for a
day and a night a man might gladly give his life, I
say."
"Why, I declare, head over heels in love, and 'mad
as a herring'!" said Emanuel. "Come tell us all
about it, as no doubt you are dying to, and perhaps, as
I've some experience in these delicate matters, I can
be of use to you. First of all, who is this smiling
divinity, Leopold?"
"Oh!" said Sontheim, mysteriously, "she's a very
great lady; here's the proof, so don't think I'm raving;"
and he went to a wooden chest standing in a corner of
the room, and doing duty for several pieces of furniture
in one. Having unlocked it he took out a morocco
case, then producing a small gold key, which he wore
on a black silk cord next to his heart, he unlocked this also, and, to his friend's astonishment, revealed a complete set of the most effulgent diamonds, brooch, earrings, necklace, bracelets, and all. They seemed to emit light of their own as they flashed on the sordid surroundings of the professorial abode.
Emanuel took the necklace, and holding the stones
to the light, eyed them critically, then said, "You're
right; they're splendid indeed, and of the purest water.
Many such sets have I seen, flashing round me on fair
shoulders, in the capitals where I've played. The lady
to whom these belong is, or has been, very rich, no
doubt about it!" His words apparently recalled some
painful memory or other, judging from the contraction
of his brows and the slight start he gave, as again looking
at the jewels, he said, with a certain forced levity
of manner: "By the way, you have not told me the
name of your charmer yet. Although one of the
divinities, she is not Venus Anonyma, I suppose?"
"Though you neither deserve to know her name nor
anything else about this most beautiful of women, still
I will have pity on your benighted condition, and
condescend to illumine your darkness a little. You
must know," said Sontheim, emphatically rubbing his
hands, "that she is none of your trumpery German
nobility, with inordinate pretensions and nothing to
back them with, but a real, great Countess, and no
mistake!"
"A Countess?" said Emanuel, with a certain feverish
impatience in his tone, tapping the floor with his boot;
"why in the devil's name can't you tell one her name,
then?"
Sontheim, whose own excitement prevented his
noticing that of his friend, said, "What's in a name,
old fellow? What can it signify to you what she's
called? However, there's no mystery about it, if you
must know, she's the Countess Staraja."
Emanuel, drawing a deep breath, sounding suspiciously
like a breath of relief, handed the brilliants
back to the Professor, and said, with a mischievous
twinkle in his eye: "But you've not told me how those
valuable stones came in your possession, Leopold;
you have not turned pawnbroker in addition to your
other avocations, have you? Besides, goddesses are
above pecuniary embarassments, I suppose?"
"Oh, for shame!" cried Sontheim, "you unbelieving
Thomas, you! tremble lest she reveal herself some day
to you in her godhead. I won't keep you on the rack
of expectation any longer, however, and may as well
tell you," he continued, with an air of vast importance,
carefully putting the diamonds back in their case,
which he locked, "that I am this very day going to
Frankfort, either to Ladenburg's bank or Goldschmidt's
to raise 50,000 florins on these jewels."
"Then she's after all only like one of us prosaic
creatures, and has outrun her account at the banker's,"
said Emanuel, with a mock-heroic expression. "Ah,
why did you raise an illusion but to destroy it again,
Leopold?"
"I assure you it's not at all a thing to joke about,"
said Sontheim; "the fact is that this heavenly creature--so
I concluded from some casual allusions of hers--had
had serious differences with her lord, a crabbed,
jealous old brute, no doubt, and so preferred eschewing
his company for a time, living in the meanwhile, mind you, in a retirement strict enough for a nun."
"Where gods are in question miracles are sure to
follow!" put in Emanuel.
"Well, you see," continued Sontheim, throwing
himself well back, and expanding his chest, "by some
tremendous piece of good luck the Countess Staraja
comes to me with a letter of recommendation from her
man of business (who once passed a few days in this
town), so I have the felicity of rendering her some
trifling service. I also flatter myself" (here he managed
to infuse an extraordinary amount of knowingness into
his small blue eyes) "that I succeeded in whiling away
some of the leisure moments of this glorious woman--well,
let's not dwell on that--when one day she sends
for me in distress and perplexity--think of it!--her
husband is dying, and she says she must instantly
start for Russia."
"For Russia!" exclaimed Emanuel, giving his friend
a quick look.
"Yes; didn't I tell you that she was a Russian
Countess?" asked the Professor.
"Never mind," said Emanuel, who had recovered
from his momentary uneasiness of manner; "go on
with your story."
"Well, fancy the delight of being of some use to the
beautiful Countess!" cried Sontheim. "Not prepared
for the emergency, she wants ready money of course;
asks me to sell these diamonds for her in the course of
a few hours (like all women she has no conception of
business, you see), and when I explain that that is
impossible in a small town like ours, she consents to
accept the money from me, and leaves these stones to raise money upon, so that I may recoup myself and pay all her outstanding debts with. If I am not mistaken she was not insensible to my devoted exertions in her cause. After all," he went on, excitedly, his face gradually getting as red as his hair, "the qualities women most value in men are energy and manliness and----" he broke off suddenly, and turning abruptly to Emanuel said, with a world of meaning in his look and tone--"She may be a widow now."
"And have you heard from her lately?" asked
Emanuel.
A certain confusion might have been detected in the
Professor's manner as bending over the table he said,
in a rather less elated tone than hitherto:
"No, I cannot say that I have."
"Well, you cannot expect a goddess to observe the
ordinary rules of politeness," said Emanuel, rather
sardonically; "but, my dear Leopold, I am more concerned
than I----"
But before he had time to finish the door opened,
and the lady of whom he had caught a cursory view at
an earlier hour now entered boldly in the consciousness
of carefully adjusted curls and a gaudy Scotch plaid
dress. Smirking and curtsying to Emanuel, and
apologising for her intrusion, she asked her brother,
with a certain querulousness of tone, whether he still
had the intention of starting for Frankfort at one
o'clock, for that in that case she must know how long
he intended remaining, on account of the clothes that
he'd want to take with him.
"Men of learning," she said, looking at Emanuel
with a killing smile, "always treat these sublunary details with scorn, and yet no one is more put out than they if everything does not go as smoothly as on wheels."
"Very true, dear Madam," said Emanuel, with a
courteous inclination of the head. "I have no doubt
this big fellow here gives you no end of trouble to keep
in order."
"Ah! no one knows what it is keeping house for a
great scholar like that, dear sir," said Frau Scherer,
casting her eyes up to the ceiling in an interestingly
plaintive manner.
"Well, well, you may abuse me another time to our
friend, Pauline; but come along now and let's attend
to the packing. You won't mind amusing yourself with
my books till I come back, will you, Emanuel? and
we'll walk to the stage coach together. By the way,
here's an interesting treatise by a man who thinks he
has found a key to the unity of language, that you may
like to look at," cried Sontheim, eagerly fishing out a
thin, mean-looking pamphlet from under a pile of books.
"No, no; I'll none of your etymologies or
philologies; they are the worst of bogies to me. Here's
something will suit me better," said Emanuel, seizing
upon a translation of Hafiz which had just been
published, as the others left the room.
Sun, sun shine!
Ride over the Rhine!
Ride over the house of gold,
There sit three spinsters old.
The first she spins a silken thread;
The second winds the reel of death;
The third hies to the spring water,
And finds a little golden daughter.
Outside, the lavish sunlight lay fostering the grapevines
and the plot of garden edged off from the vineyard
by a border of lemon thyme and raspberry bushes.
There, growing in unpruned luxuriance, were all sorts
of delicious flowers--sweetwilliam with its deep-hued,
copious clusters; rough-leaved borage, larkspur, and
the tall aromatic spikes of the lavender; spotted
dragon's mouth, and white and purple poppies, whose
drowsy fumes they say, even lull the usually
hard-worked bees to sleep.
The noontide with its vibrating atmosphere lay over
the simmering earth. A brooding stillness pervaded
all things, only the bees glanced restlessly from flower
to flower, and from one spot behind the hut came
now and then explosions of laughter, or the sound of
voices raised in mirth or anger.
For there, sitting astride on one of the boughs of
the cherry-tree, Hans was gathering the fruit, and his
brother Conrad, standing underneath, caught it and
filled a large basket which they were to take to their
mother. If one or the other ate more cherries than
seemed his fair share there was a general protest, and
whenever Conrad, with the dexterity of long practice,
cleverly caught one of them between his lips as it fell,
the children uttered a joyful shout. For they had all
come to spend the day with their grandmother, it being
the Frau Professorinn's half-yearly washing day, on
which they were invariably packed off to granny's
under the escort of their eldest sister.
Mina, who had herself been watching the gathering
of the cherries with childish eagerness, suddenly
remembered with dismay that she had promised her
mother not to let Otto eat too many of them, as he
had been ailing the last few days. And he must already
have devoured at least a peck!
Yet how prevent his eating any more! If she could
only divert his attention to some new interest. At last
she hit upon a device. She went into the house and
came back presently with a basin, water, soap, and a
clay pipe. Lulu, who had woke up, followed her, with
the cheek on which she had been lying much redder
than the other.
Mina established herself in the garden, and Lulu
clapping her hands ran to the back calling: "Otto,
Otto, Mina's blowing bubbles!" The little fellow
looked reluctantly at the cherries, then rushed round to
the front, while the other boys, pocketing as many as
they could, followed more leisurely.
If there was one thing their souls delighted in more
than another it was soap-bubbles, especially as they
were forbidden to blow them at home, Frau Lichtenfeld
considering it a messy and extravagant amusement.
"You use quite enough soap in scrubbing and
washing," she averred, "leaving alone wasting it in
baubles."
So the children gathered round their sister with their
mouths unnaturally red, and of mask-like dimensions,
and their fingers stained as a dyer's. Finding they
could positively not manage any more cherries just
now, they contented themselves in using the remaining
clusters as ear-rings.
With breathless interest they watched Mina, who
was an expert in the art of blowing bubbles. All tried
their hands at it in turn, but she had the knack of
producing the largest, and then a dexterous shake sent
them floating right up in the air. Whenever an
unusually magnificent one, iridescent with the hues of the
rainbow, drifted glistering in the sunlight awhile, and alighting in its descent, was shivered in the calix of a flower, or spluttered on one of their eagerly-lifted noses, they screamed with delight.
Grandmother, too, was looking on, standing under
her doorway knitting, and benignly watching their
happy faces.
As her eyes followed those airy resplendent bubbles
floating so buoyantly in the summer air, her thoughts
went drifting, drifting far away to her own childhood,
that was like an old, dimly-remembered legend, and
yet a thing of yesterday too.
For childhood and old age have much in common;
theirs is the illimitable outlook, theirs the infinitely
receding horizon. Standing aside from the strenuous,
enthralling struggle, where in the noonday glare men
and women are jostling and trampling each other in
the thoroughfares of life, they gaze dreamily into a far
beyond--future or past, what matter--essentially
identical as these are.
From the old woman's ken the present had
disappeared like a dream one awakes from with a sigh and
a start.
Behold, she was a child again, a nimble, sportive
child, running lightly to and fro, blowing her bubbles
fast, her bright but evanescent bubbles of life.
She was a maiden too, bright-eyed and elastic of
step, and her heart beat again in that strange, tumultuous
fashion as sitting sewing by the window, she caught
the sound of a certain step on the pavement, and lifting
her eyes demurely, met the eyes of somebody, who
raising his hat passed slowly, oh! so very slowly.
Those were days bright as the soap-bubbles, and as fleeting too, alas!
And once more she was a young mother with children
clinging round her, the little helpless hands of children
whose touch felt sweeter than aught else on earth; and
her whole frame thrilled again as the soft lisp, and
broken, cooing tones of infancy came borne to her ear.
And that, too, was as a bursting bubble, that young
sad-eyed woman, lying weak and wan on her pillows,
spasmodically clasping the breathing atom in her arms,
as though it could delay her being swept away by the
tide of death.
And a second time all her motherhood yearned in her,
and went out to her child's child, sweet to her widowed
heart as a violet sprouting amidst fallen autumnal
leaves. Sweet Elfrida, sweetest child of her old age;
she sees her now with her soft, star-like eyes, and
dreamy smile, coming home from school with a crown
of field-flowers on her head, the little sweetheart had
gathered for her. And she hears the coaxing, musical
voice calling--"Granny dear, I've brought Emanuel to
have bread and honey with me, because he's in disgrace
at home." And there also is the boy carrying her
girl's satchel, crushing his cap into a ball in his bashfulness,
and whistling as though he didn't care a bit--not
he!
Ah! was it yesterday or a lifetime since?
A grey shadow was projected on the garden plot, and
a tall, thin, striking-looking man stood for an instant,
looking at the merry group with a beaming countenance,
then strode rapidly through the little garden, and
stretching out both his hands to the old woman, said with a certain heartfelt intonation in his voice--"You remember Emanuel, don't you, little mother?"
The old woman stared at him intently, her features
worked convulsively. She suddenly leant her trembling
head against the man's shoulder and wept, sobbing
out: "Then it was you!"
The stranger, gently soothing and supporting the old
lady, led her into the house, where she tottered into
her easy chair. Mina, who had been looking on
sympathetically, flung her arms round her grandmother's
neck, and called her by a thousand names of endearment.
When the latter had regained her composure,
Mina, raising herself from her stooping posture, encountered
Emanuel's eyes, who said, bowing to her--
"What an unexpected pleasure to find you here,
Fräulein; and yet unexpected is not the word either.
It seems as if I had been here with you before, and
everything had been just so, even to the very words I
am saying now. Does it seem strange to you?" he
asked, in a low voice.
Mina, who had seemed on the point of answering
something impulsively, suddenly changed colour, and
instead of speaking bent again over her grandmother.
"Forgive me, children," said the old lady, drying
her eyes and attempting a smile. "We old people
move and have our being in the past, and when 'tis
brought before us sudden like that, it quite takes our
breath away. Dear heart alive!" she cried, looking
scrutinizingly at Emanuel, and nodding and shaking
her head by turns, "and is this my little Emanuel, my
bonny lad that was? Ah, Emanuel," she went on, taking
his long bony hand in hers, "they tell me you have become a great musician, and that you can move people this way or that, just as it pleases you; but what have they done to you, my boy? you look that thin and tired it makes my heart ache to see you."
Emanuel had flung himself on the floor by the old
lady, and as she looked at him with tender concern, he
kissed the withered hand that still held his own--she
was the nearest approach to a mother he had left.
"Give me my spectacles, Mina; I must look at the
boy more closely," she said, suddenly.
"I am not so young as I once was, little mother,"
remarked Emanuel, smiling, "and the passing years
are not so considerate to all of us," looking at her
admiringly; "but when one lives in a little earthly
Paradise one may well defy the passing years. Ah, 'tis well
to be here!" he sighed; "and here's old Mugin, too, I
declare, looking more wise and weird than of yore," and
as in his schoolboy days, he began teazing that dignified
bird, who seemed to resent the unwonted familiarity
with disgust.
"Susan," called out the old lady to her servant,
"make us some coffee directly; very strong, mind.
That will refresh the boy," she added, in an aside; "he
looks as if they didn't half feed himself enough; and
Mina, my pet, go and get us the cherries they have
gathered, I know he is very fond of them." Then she
gave a little start, and cried, "I beg your pardon,
Emanuel; I was quite forgetting that you are not a
boy now, and that we have really nothing to offer that's
fit for a great gentleman like you to eat."
"Let me still be a boy with you," he said, stroking
the old woman's hand, "and see if I can't eat cherries against the best of them."
Mina, who had taken an earthenware dish from one
of the cupboards, now left the room; and she had
scarcely done so before Emanuel said, "Little mother,
how like, how very like she is--you know who I'm
thinking of?"
"Yes, more like than I could wish," she answered,
with a nervous shake of her head. "Old age breeds
more care than need be, perhaps; but it makes me fear
sometimes----"
Mina's return, however, at this moment put a stop
to her sentence.
They all gathered round the table now, and the
coffee, cream, and appetising bread and butter, not
forgetting the cherries, were done justice to by the
musician. In this homely circle he regained the
inexhaustible spirits of his youth; and among the children
seemed, indeed, to have become a child again.
Presently they all adjourned to the garden, Emanuel
exclaiming, "And here are the identical old bee-hives,
too, just the same as ever--only that they have multiplied
according to the Biblical command;" and he
watched the bees at their work with lively curiosity,
old Frau Lichtenfeld leaning on his arm.
"Why, little mother," he said, "to judge from the
marvellous activity of these small creatures, and the
incessant flux and reflux of life, there's as much business
doing as in some of the streets of London or Paris,
only that they manage their musical accompaniment
better here. How much honey would one of these
communities manage to make per day, on an average?"
"Well, that's according to the time of year, and the
condition they're in, you see," replied Frau Lichtenfeld.
"Sometimes we've what's called a 'hunch-back' brood,
and there's next to no honey to be got from them; then,
again, if the queen should be taken sick, the whole
state is thrown into disorder, and wasps, moths, and
thieves of that sort, break through the gates and do no
end of damage. But as a rule, bless them, they are far
more hard-working and orderly in their proceedings
than most of us. But if you really care to know,
Emanuel, I'll tell you how much honey each hive makes
a day; for I weigh them myself every evening, and put
down on my slate how many pounds' worth of honey
has been added by each during the day. Ah," she said,
fumbling at her side where she usually carried a little
slate tied round her waist; "let's see, Mina dear, didn't
I leave it on the table at the back, where I was shelling
the peas in the morning?"
"Yes, granny; I'll go and fetch it directly," said
Mina, running off.
"Oh, granny, will you weigh the bees now, while
we're here?" cried Conrad and Otto, with sparkling
eyes.
"No, no, let me weigh them," cried Hans. "I'll
do it tip-top, just see whether I won't."
"No, me, me," cried Lulu's childish voice, impatiently
pulling her grandmother's skirts to enforce her request.
"Why, children, they might sting you as like as not;
they don't know you as well as me, you see, who watch
over and care for them as if they were little children
almost; and they're very grateful when you show them
kindness, more so than many a Christian, bless you.
But what's that?" she said, lowering her head and listening for an instant. "Why, surely the hive must be going to swarm a day sooner than I expected--dear, dear, I must go and get the basket from the house, and my bee-cap and gloves. Out of their way, children!" she cried, seizing Lulu and pushing the others back into the doorway; "Keep quiet here, you'll see them directly. Stay where you are, Hans, they are dreadfully excited now and I wouldn't guarantee that they mightn't sting you if you got in their way."
She had scarcely finished speaking before there was
a rushing noise of wings, and many thousand bees, as
though propelled by some invisible force, precipitated
themselves from the narrow aperture in the space of a
few minutes.
"Herr Jesu! O Lord, have mercy upon us!" gasped
the old woman, in a voice almost inarticulate with
terror, clutching hold of Emanuel and trembling from
head to foot as she leaned forward with straining eyes.
For just then, Mina, turning quickly round an angle
in the path, was suddenly enveloped by the tumultous
host. On her hair, on her cheeks, on her delicate
sloping shoulders, protected by nothing more solid than
a thin cambric chemisette, they settled by hundreds;
while thousands more, hovering round, hid her in a
winged, murmuring cloud. Dumb with horror the girl
stood rooted to the spot. Indeed, she had sufficient
presence of mind to remember that her only chance of
safety was to remain as quiescent under the
circumstances as a tree or a flower.
Emanuel had no sooner realised what had happened
than he was going to dash forward at all risks, but felt
his arm spasmodically clutched by the terrified old woman, who whispered in a quavering voice--
"Be quiet, for God's sake! If you irritate them
now they may sting her to death as sure as I live!"
But Emanuel, wrenching himself almost roughly
from her grasp, said hoarsely--
"Let me be, I know them of old," and darted forward
before she had time to answer or remonstrate.
In a moment he had reached the spot where the girl
stood with the bees surging round her in palpitating
multitudes; walking unmoved through the formidable
swarm, he said--
"Trust me," in a low voice, as he looked at Mina
with infinite solicitude.
There was no need for the injunction, indeed. The
moment he had approached Mina, her painful apprehension
was replaced by a sense of security. Emanuel,
watching the bees for an instant, suddenly put his hand
in her hair, and with his dexterous fingers extracted one
of the bees from amidst its luxuriant wavy mass. He
had not been mistaken--it was the queen he captured
and now carried back to the old hive. No sooner had
he done so than all her subjects, as though they had
but one soul between them, wheeled round, and leaving
Mina perfectly unhurt, rushed with incredible haste
into the basket after their queen.
"My child! my child!" gasped the grandmother,
examining Mina all over with her trembling hands,
and kissing her and sobbing over her. "You're safe,
quite safe! Not one of them has stung her, not one,
God bless them! Oh," she cried, pressing the girl to
her heart, "I am a faithless old woman. I ought to
have had more confidence in my bees. You showed you knew them better than I did, Emanuel; but I was quite beside myself at the moment; ah, Emanuel," she continued; but on looking round found he had left her side.
For Emanuel had no sooner seen that the girl was
unharmed than he walked rapidly down the garden
path, and once or twice an irrepressible shudder seemed
to pass over him. On hearing himself called he joined
the others in the room, looking very white and like one
who has recovered his self-control with an effort.
"I thank you from my heart, Emanuel. Next to
the Lord I owe the child's safety to you," cried Frau
Lichtenfeld, holding out her hand to him.
"Oh, I don't think she was in any danger, little
mother," said Emanuel, lightly; "the creatures' instinct
told them that she is a protectress of their kind, indeed
I think they clung to her for pure love, only we were
too obtuse to understand their peculiar way of
manifesting it. You alone showed some kind of trust," said
Emanuel, softly, bringing Mina a chair and sitting down
beside her; "would you always be so trustful, I
wonder?"
"Why should I not," said Mina, looking straight at
him for a moment with her sweet frank eyes, but
immediately dropping them again.
"Trust comes easy to the pure in heart," Emanuel
murmured, half inaudibly, while an expression of sorrow
swept over his features, which though lasting but an
instant unconsciously disturbed Mina.
"If I had reflected a little," he said, after a moment's
abstraction and as if making an effort over himself, "I
should not have been so disturbed when I saw the swarm surrounding you; neither bird, beast, nor insect would ever hurt a hair of your head, I am certain."
"Do you mean because I love them so?" asked
Mina, in perfect seriousness.
"Well, yes," said Emanuel, smiling, "and because
you are such a child of nature that all her beneficent
powers must watch over you."
"It is true I have never been stung or bitten by
anything, not even by the gnats that torment the others
so much--only once," she said, in a ruminating manner,
and then with a brightening look, "the very day you
rescued that nest for me. I had a dream--oh, you
can't think what a vivid dream it was: I was chasing
the most wonderful butterfly, and when I thought I
had caught it, it changed to a horrible monstrous spider,
which stung me quite real like--oh, what is the matter?"
For Emanuel, who had at first listened to her with
evident delight, suddenly showed signs of inexplicable
agitation, and seizing her hand pressed it violently,
exclaiming, "And you too, my child; you too?"
Mina's query, and her startled, bewildered look,
recalled the musician to his senses; he let go her hand
abruptly, as though it burned him, and said with a
forced laugh, "I beg your pardon, Fräulein; I had
quite forgotten that you were only telling me a dream,
and that in the fatherland here there are no----" (he
apparently checked the word that was trembling on his
tongue) "snakes or poisonous spiders to speak of."
"Well, Mimchen," said her grandmother, who had
only just succeeded in pacifying Lulu's sobs and cries,
coming up and laying her hand on Mina's head, "have
you quite recovered from your fright? Is there anything I can do for you?"
"No, granny," said Mina, with a certain preoccupation
in her manner, which, however, escaped her
grandmother's notice; "but do sit down and rest yourself
in your chair, now. It is you who must be frightened.
I had no time for it."
"I remember your bees since I can remember
anything. What made you first think of keeping them?"
asked Emanuel.
"It was my husband who was so fond of them--they
helped to ruin him, in fact; but when he died broken-hearted,
I found them a livelihood. It's a long story,
and some day maybe I'll tell it you."
One of these, more particularly, kept a sharp lookout
on all the incomings and outgoings of the Lichtenfelds.
This was Fräulein von Griesbach, who lived
only a stone's throw off, and passed the better part of
her time sitting on the high step by the window,
scrutinizing the passers-by and bewailing the degeneracy
of the times. The better to make her observations
she had a looking-glass fastened on either hand
outside her window, which enabled her to see all that
was going on up and down the street. From her all-seeing
eye no poor servant wench could hope to hide
her stolen interview with the soldiers; it would be no exaggeration to say that she was privy to every incipient love-affair in the street, and sometimes prognosticated a rising passion before the parties concerned knew of it themselves.
In the lady's formal drawing-room some of her intimates
were assembled one afternoon at the hour of
coffee, an occasion on which she felt it incumbent on
herself to impart to them, out of "sincerest" regard for
that poor widow Lichtenfeld, what she couldn't help
seeing--much as she might wish to shut her eyes to it.
She only hoped that that dear, sensible Herr Sontheim,
as Mina's godfather, would put a stop to these proceedings
before things had gone too far.
"In fact," she said, turning to Frau Scherer, who
was stooping over some fine white embroidery, "I am
inclined to think that it would be acting the part of a
true friend to give your brother a hint in this matter."
"Dear, dear," sighed Frau Scherer, bending still
lower over her work, "you don't know my brother as
well as I do, Fräulein von Griesbach, or you would
know what a firebrand he is if there's what he rudely
calls any scandalmongering going on. Besides, girls
shouldn't be forward, and throw themselves in the way of
people, you know, or they must take the consequences."
"That's very true, very true indeed," said Fräulein
von Griesbach, snapping off her thread. "Everybody
knows what these great artists and musicians are.
'In each new place, a nice new face!' is their motto
no less than the soldiers'. And this Herr Sturm, to be
sure, looks a regular lady-killer. Only to see him taking
off his hat is enough. Now, if that enigmatical Countess,
--what d'ye call her--who came and went who knows where, had still been at their house, one could understand there being an attraction for such as he! Artists always pair-off with these sort of adventuresses, you know. But what he can see in that Lichtenfeld girl quite passes my comprehension."
"Well, well," interposed Frau Obertribunalprocurator
Hopfengärtner, in a soothing tone, "the girl
has been getting prettier and prettier of late, there's no
denying that; and what a bloom she has!"
"Oh, she's passable enough," said Frau Scherer,
"and all very well for such a man as Lieutenant Knapp
to run after; he's getting more hopelessly in love with
her than ever, they say."
"The more fool he!" said Fräulein von Griesbach,
severely, "for she won't have anything to say to the
deserving young man; though what she is to give
herself such airs for, I don't know, for one."
"No, no, there you wrong the girl; you do indeed,
dear Fräulein von Griesbach," put in Frau Hopfengärtner,
hastily gulping down a piece of rather stale
cake; "nothing is farther from poor Mina's nature than
airs of any sort--she's too little of that, if anything.
But she's not like other girls of her age exactly. Her
mother tells me she'll spend hours lying on her back in
the garden, staring up at the sky; and then talk in the
oddest way about things she's seen in the clouds."
"Ah, her father always looked a queer, dazed sort of
creature, in spite of his learning; and her grandfather
was a bankrupt, you remember," said Fräulein von
Griesbach, with an ominous shake of the head. "These
things run in families, you know."
"Do you think," said Frau Scherer, looking round
as if to ascertain that there were no eavesdroppers, and
lowering her voice almost to a whisper, "do you think
that the girl may be writing poetry in secret?"
"Heaven forbid!" cried the Frau Obertribunalprocurator,
emphatically; "that would be too hard on our
poor dear Frau Professorinn, after all the trouble she's
gone through already. There's no marrying a girl of that
sort, you know; and with a family of six, too."
"Well, I can't help thinking no good will come of
that girl and her ways," remarked Fräulein von Griesbach,
by way of a clincher.
Meanwhile the subject of these remarks, happily
unconscious of what a moral stumbling-block she was
to many of her female acquaintances, was on her way
to Mühlbach, a small market-town about seven miles
from D----. For, as Frau Lichtenfeld used to put it--"If
the girl's fit for nothing else, she can at least go
on errands; and she's that fond of the open air, it's
a pity she's a respectable burgher's child and not a
beggar's brat, made to sell brooms in the street."
At any rate, Frau Lichtenfeld had this day despatched
her daughter on a strictly private and confidential
errand, the nature of which she kept a profound secret
from even her two closest bosom-friends; yet the good
widow, so far from being ashamed, might have been
proud to let the whole town know what she so carefully
concealed.
The fact was that the Professorinn--who rose at
cockcrow--after putting her house in apple-pie order, still
found herself with plenty of time left on her hands,
which she made use of by turning an honest penny on
the sly. And the way she set about it was as follows. It used to be the fashion at one time, amongst well-to-do farmers and people of that class, to wear gaudily embroidered braces for their Sunday best; and this sort of work was perhaps better paid than any, as there was a steady demand for it in all the outlying country towns and villages. Now Frau Lichtenfeld's soul would have revolted from having any mercantile dealings with the shopkeepers of her native town. Was she not the daughter of the late Medicinalrath Duttenhofer, a man looked up to by the best connected families of the town!
No, it should never be said, if she could help it, that
a degenerate offspring of the great Duttenhofer was
actually reduced to the point of selling her own handiwork;
besides, what Would such ladies as the Frau
Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengärtner, and the thrice
nobly connected Fräulein von Griesbach, have whispered
of her behind her back had they suspected her of such
vulgar propensities?
She had therefore hit upon a plan which had hitherto
answered her purpose admirably.
Twice a year a large fair was held at Mühlbach, to
which the farmers and peasants came flocking from all
parts of the surrounding country. Thither she herself,
under pretence that you could buy all kinds of earthenware
so much better and cheaper there, had resorted
with her finely-worked braces, ever since the death of
her husband some three years ago.
There was one particular booth amongst others
noticeable for these attractive articles of male apparel,
and the man with whom she was in the habit of transacting
her business came from a great distance and was not likely therefore to divulge the nature of her dealings with him.
But this year Frau Lichtenfeld, to her exceeding
regret, was prevented from going there in person,
because Lulu, who had surreptitiously possessed herself
of a cold pancake, was laid up with a severe fit of
indigestion, which developed into nettle-rash, and she was
much too anxious to leave the pet and nestling of the
family. She determined at last, being much in want
of money, on sending Mina, who had several times
accompanied her on these expeditions.
"Now mind you don't go gadding out of your way
after flowers and such trash," said Frau Lichtenfeld, on
the landing, putting the neatly-tied parcel into a bag
which also contained her daughter's dinner. "It's not
likely you'll meet any one if you take the road through
the Schlossgarten and pine-wood. I've always found it
most quiet along there; but if you should by ill-luck
meet any of our friends by the way, for goodness' sake,
girl, don't you let the cat out of the bag, if you value
your old mother's peace of mind and the respected
name of your maternal grandfather. And don't you
be wool-gathering when shrewd old Stein chinks the
twenty hard, bright gulden down on the counter--that's
about what it'll be, I reckon; he's close with his money,
but he knows what's what when he sees such neat, fine
work as mine is. And here's my purse to put the money
in; stow it away in that pocket, it'll be safe there;
and if you are careful and do as I tell you I'll lay out
some of the money on a new dress for you--your muslins
are all getting washed out again because you will stain
them so pottering about in that garden, and never think of smoothing out the skirt before sitting down. Well, well, it's hard work preaching to deaf ears, and there are none so deaf as those that won't hear; but I hope for once you'll have your wits about you and attend to what I am telling you. Now it's high time you were off, instead of standing there saying, 'Yes, yes.' My goodness, look alive, girl, and remember that you have five miles of road before you!" said the Professorinn, by way of adieu to Mina, who thereupon hurried down the stairs with irreproachable speed.
It was close upon noon when Mina reached Mühlbach.
Booths and stalls of all kinds lined each side of
the usually solitary streets, and through the grey clouds
of dust crowds of people, whose appearance seemed
more fitted for the Italian Opera than sober nature,
were pressing and hustling each other eagerly where
wares of the most varied and nondescript character
were displayed for sale.
The costume of many of the peasant women, whose
I chief aim seemed to have been the attainment of an
abnormal width and bulkiness of development about the
hips, would have reminded those who are old enough
to remember of the extinct race of the "Buy-a-brooms."
They wore short, copiously pleated woollen skirts; large
aprons of varied colours and materials, some snowy
white, others of gaudily flowered prints; bodices of
crimson cloth, laced with silver across an embroidered
stomacher, the chemise being showily puffed at the
sleeves and covered at the shoulders with a cloth
pelerine, fastened with green ribbons under the arms;
clock-embroidered hose encased their strong legs and
ankles, and their feet were shod in thick-soled blue cloth shoes tipped with leather. Under the coquettish little caps, turban-shaped or phrygian, which, adorned with black silk streamers, were slightly tilted on one side, their straight, heavy flaxen hair was tightly drawn backwards; and this rainbow-hued costume was further completed by a profusion of peasant jewellery, consisting for the most part of garnets and silver.
The dress of the male peasants was no less
conspicuous. Some wore short jackets resplendent with
metal buttons; others, long, loose coats, slit up behind;
while their scarlet waistcoats, hanging open, displayed
richly embroidered braces (such as Mina's mother was
in the habit of working), strapped across the chest,
seemingly as much the pride of the men as the many
coloured ribbons were of the women. Leather breeches
embroidered at the seams, black stockings, stout buckled
shoes, and low-crowned felt hats, made up the rest of
their attire.
Mina had some difficulty in making her way through
this motley throng; and at one point the people were
so densely packed that she had perforce to come to
a standstill. The attraction proved to be a kind of
cheap-jack, and the man who was displaying his
miscellaneous articles one by one happened at that moment
to be flourishing a woman's bright-coloured neck-handkerchief
before the eyes of the spectators, bawling at
the top of his voice--
"Here's a bargain, lads! Genuine, and no mistake--pure
silk--all the colours of the rainbow--warranted
fast--stand all the wear and tear in the world! Lasses
dying to have it, I see! A fine young fellow shall have
it for thirty gulden--there, I can't say fairer than that!" and looking round encouragingly he struck the wooden stand a tremendous blow with his fist.
Some of the onlookers here burst into a loud horse-laugh,
but not the faintest attempt at bidding for the
prize was made by any of them. Not in the least
discouraged, the huckster cried, "Twenty-four gulden!"
and he struck another ringing blow. "Twenty gulden!
Twelve gulden! Eight gulden! Six gulden! Four
gulden!"
More and more scornful grew his glances as his
prices went diminuendo--diminuendo; and with half a
dozen crashing oaths he came down to "Three gulden
and seven groschen, and not a kreuzer taken off! What,
isn't there ne'er a sweetheart amongst the lot of you?
Fie girls! what niggards have you for lovers!
Weddings'll be scarce this year, and yet the corn's promising
and the vines are loaded."
There was a deal of giggling at this, and a whispering,
and a consulting, and a nodding, and one gawky
young fellow cast sheep's eyes at the gaudy trifle, but
looked down again immediately as though he might
forthwith be entrapped into buying it. His glances
had not escaped the salesman, who immediately
swooped down on him like a hawk on its prey, crying--
"Bravo! bravo! you're the only decent fellow of
the lot; and I wish you a true lass, and a faithful and a
fair--and there she is too, by jingo! Well, I'm just
letting you have it dirt cheap, all for love of the bonny
black eyes there!" and with a knowing wink he dexterously
flung the handkerchief right on the nose of the
yokel.
Thereat there was a universal titter. The
neck-handkerchief was next inspected, first on this side, then
on that, held up to the light, pulled and rubbed, and
tested between finger and thumb; and at last, after a
long consultation, the bargain was concluded, and the
man went through exactly the same performance with
another piece of goods.
Some of the peasants were moving on now, so that
Mina was at last at liberty to pursue her way down the
narrow thoroughfare, lined on either hand with stalls,
where clocks from the Black Forest, Bohemian glass,
Tyrolese gloves, Nuremberg toys, Bas'ler Leckerle,
peasants' almanacks, pictures of saints and rosaries,
and pots and pans of every imaginable shape, material,
and colour, brass, tin, copper, wood, earthenware, and
what not, with many other goods, were displayed to the
best possible advantage.
In order to reach her destination Mina had to cross
a little triangular square, where the grass sprouting
between the irregular paving-stones testified sufficiently
to its habitual quietness, but which at this moment
resounded with the deafening noise of gongs, drums,
trumpets, and other, equally melodious instruments,
while two large booths divided the public with their
rival attractions.
On one side of the square the King of the Niggers
was depicted on a garish curtain, in the blackest of skins
and whitest of teeth, taming the lion of the desert,
while his queen, a lady with an enormous cloud of hair
and a suspiciously white complexion, testified to her
savage genuineness by swallowing a live fish tail foremost;
the public being informed that this rare sight
might be seen in the flesh for the small sum of one groschen.
In front of the opposition booth the superlative tightrope
dancer Landrinette was at that moment exhibiting
herself in somewhat dingy tights and spangles, beating
a big drum with one hand while with the other she
clashed the cymbals, at the same time notifying to an
admiring, open-mouthed crowd that if they would only
walk in they might not only see her own thrilling
performances in mid-air, but also have the satisfaction of
beholding a man-eater or one of the anthropophagi,
who for his past sins had his head cut off every half-hour
to the sound of trumpets, and carried round, like
St. John's, for the inspection of spectators, in a charger
full of blood.
Mina might have felt tempted to enter one of these
booths--as she still had a lively recollection of her
childish pleasure in tight-rope dancing--but for the
solemn nature of the duties she was entrusted with;
as it was she contented herself by lingering for what
appeared to her but a few instants in front of the stand
where Landrinette was contorting her lithe body into
the most extraordinary of attitudes.
Lost in admiration of such agility, Mina did not see
that she was closely watched by two characters widely
different in appearance and social rank. One was a
young lieutenant in a tightly fitting military tail-coat,
with brilliantly white epaulets, his face being
extremely red, as though the tightness of his stock had
forced the greater part of blood in his body up into
it. This was Lieutenant Knapp, who, on duty at the
guard-house of the fair, had been following the unconscious
Mina since her first appearance there, and was now engaged in alternately contemplating her lovely face, and scanning the suspicious movements of her second observer.
This was a shock-headed youth, who had been edging
more and more closely to Mina's bag, when suddenly
by a dexterous movement he ripped it open without
undoing the strings hanging on her arm, and was
making off with Frau Lichtenfeld's precious parcel
when a vigorous cuff from the vigilant lieutenant sent
him spinning ten paces off in one direction while the
parcel fell down in the other.
The enamoured young man felt Mina's charms far
too much to pursue the young rogue, but seizing on the
prize he restored it, not without a certain gleam of
triumph, to the bewildered young lady. All unconscious
of the disaster that had threatened her, she almost
fancied that the active lieutenant had been exhibiting a
graceful tour of legerdemain for her private delectation.
Mina blushed with surprise, the lieutenant blushed
with pleasure, and the fragmentary explanation which
followed was tinged with zeal on the one side, and
polite embarrassment on the other.
How long this state of things might have lasted it
is difficult to say; for Mina, with her uncommenced
negotiations weighing on her conscience, was longing
to be off, but did not know in her diffidence how to cut
short the stammering lieutenant's speeches, when the
striking of a clock reminded him that the guard had to
be relieved, and so with bows interspersed with
protestations he reluctantly betook himself to his military
duties, to her infinite relief.
Mina, now hugging the recovered parcel tightly in her
arms, looked no more to right or to left of her, but with
praiseworthy resolution bent her steps to the
brace-merchant's booth. That worthy, when he knew whose
errand she came upon, did not suffer his attention to be
distracted by her clear brown eyes and glowing cheeks;
but, deftly undoing the parcel, reserved his admiration
for the brilliant hues which the mother's fingers had
wrought there. After carefully inspecting each separate
article, and snapping the braces more than once with a
sort of triumphant experiment in test of their stability,
he reluctantly balanced each bright coin between his
thumb and forefinger, and counted twenty gulden into
Mina's small hand.
In this complete solitude Mina had no sense of fear.
She felt like a child sheltered in her father's house.
Her heart was overflowing with devotion and a love
of this beautiful world such as she had never yet
experienced.
As she was leisurely walking along over the smooth
pine-needles, her ear detected the crisp sound of footsteps some distance off. Presently she caught sight of a man's tall figure through the stems of the trees. Then she started, and a vivid blush suffused her countenance. At the same moment the man, who had been leisurely going along with his head bent, looked up, and, quickening his pace, raised his hat. An expression of joy impossible to conceal lit up his eyes at this unexpected meeting.
"Who would have thought of meeting you here, of
all places!" cried Emanuel, impulsively, stretching out
both his hands to the girl in his surprise, and retaining
hers for a moment as he stood looking at her downcast
face. "But why should I be surprised, after all? you
seem native to the woods; and sometimes I fancy--forgive
me for the thought," he added, gaily, "that you
must be an elf's child, and that your good mother must
have been cheated of her own."
Mina laughed softly, and stammered that her mother,
when angry with her, had often said she must be a
changeling by rights. "But I don't know what people
mean," she said, opening her eyes to their widest; "is
there then anything wrong or strange in being fond of
the hills and woods? How can one be otherwise? As far
back as I can remember I have heard voices when the
trees go nodding their heads together, and have even
tried to make out what they are saying. Sometimes,
do you know, I have fancied that each kind of tree has
a language of its own, in which it talks with his fellows.
The most wonderful tongue is that of the pines here,
and perhaps they are chaunting--what my poor father
used to tell me of--old-world secrets of fallen gods."
"Oh," said Emanuel, softly, "I have heard what a
great scholar your father was; and so absorbed in his
studies, they say, that he had neither eyes nor ears for
what was passing around him. But he used to tell you
something of his thoughts and speculations, did he?
Why, what a mere child you must have been, though,
at the time."
"Oh, I liked nothing so well as stealing into father's
study, and getting him to tell me all sorts of wonderful
things from the books he was poring over; and he was
never cross or impatient at my interrupting him, but
would let me climb on his knees, or sit beside him on
the piled-up books, and tell me of a people that lived
thousands of years ago, far away in the East, a race of
shepherds who had no book but the heavens, but used
to read strange things in the clouds and stars. Oh, I
wish----" she exclaimed, and stopped suddenly, getting
very red.
"What do you wish? Tell me! I should wish
nothing so much just now as to fulfil yours!" said
Emanuel, with a smile.
"But you will think my wish too childish and
impossible, I fear," said Mina, blushing more than before.
"I should have liked to have been one of that people,
and kept the flocks, and watched the clouds ever coming
and going in the sky."
"I entirely retract my wish," cried Emanuel, with
much emphasis, "and thank my stars that you came
to life in my time, and are walking with me here at
this very moment. Don't you think there's something
to be said for this age too? and you know the sky and
the clouds and their ever-varying aspects are still the
same those Aryan herdsmen saw; from which they evolved that marvellous tissue of gods and demons which, in one shape or another, have ruled the world ever since. But tell me, how would you like to go into great towns, where you would see even less of the sky and sunlight than you do here in old Germany; and yet make acquaintance with a thousand fresh emotions of life and art?"
"I have often thought of that, too," answered Mina;
"and sometimes when I sit by my window in the
dusk, from where I see the hills against the sky, I begin
picturing to myself what sort of a world there is behind
them, till I feel as though something mysterious were
calling on me to rise and go straight across them, on
and on till I came to some such place as I have read of
in books, where there ate spires and steeples rising as
plentifully as our trees here; and cathedrals, through
which the music goes rushing and sweeping like a
tempest; and palaces full of pictures; and gardens,
where there are all manner of outlandish animals,
brought from the desert and the northpole, and from
God knows where. I have only once seen a real live
lion and tiger, and that was long ago at the fair; but,"
she added, heaving a childlike sigh, "what chance is
there of my leaving this neighbourhood ever?"
"Oh, you have chances enough," said Emanuel, with
a peculiar smile; "but this quiet, old-world life here
has a charm of its own, I confess. Only after what
you must remember of your father, I am afraid you
hardly find the people as poetic as the neighbourhood,
do you?"
"The people are very kind, if they would only leave
me alone, but I never begin thinking of things but they fancy that I am a kilkrop, or something dreadful of that sort, I believe."
Emanuel laughed like a boy, but said nothing.
The trees were rustling overhead, each in their own
language as Mina would have it. They walked on in
silence for some time. The musician felt that there
were a hundred things he would have liked to have
asked her about, had their short acquaintance really
warranted the intimacy he felt. He would have liked
to have asked her how she could tolerate the dull
monotony of her mother's household; but how could
he? He would have liked to have asked if she ever
felt any impulse to run away as he had done at her age,
but this was out of the question. He would have liked
to have pressed her hands and looked deeply into her
eyes, and have said, "You are the sweetest girl that I
ever met in my life, and I should like to----" but he
only walked on in silence. Once or twice he looked
round at her countenance lingeringly and gently, as
though it suddenly occurred to him that at least that
right remained to him, seeing that she gazed obstinately
in front of her. But he was vastly mistaken if he
thought she did not see him, for the human eye very
distinctly takes in a large circumference round the
mere point of vision; and Mina, though in a sort of
dream, saw most clearly every motion of his face and
hands. Indeed, she seemed in a delicious trance, in
which everything else except an unwonted sense of
pleasure was obliterated; and for aught she knew she
might have been floating along the ground instead of
stepping beside him. His silence seemed to her quite
natural, and her own did not embarrass her. In point of fact, time had ceased existing for her; she did not think of her mother, she did not think of the hour, and least of all did she think of herself.
In this frame of mind they had left the wood behind
them, and entered the palace garden itself. The ground
here broke into gentle declivities and fairy-knolls; all
sorts of trees, many not indigenous to the soil, grew
here in disordered order, and bushy-tailed squirrels,
usually left in undisturbed possession of this green
solitude, darted up the stems at the unwonted sound
of footsteps, their beaded eyes curiously glinting here
and there through the foliage.
All at once Emanuel was roused from his meditations
by something thumping on his hat. He looked up
inquiringly, and said in astonishment--
"How dark it has grown! It cannot surely be late!"
Even while he was speaking there was again a heavy
thump, thump, on the ground, and there came a deep
rumbling noise, not unlike the rolling of huge blocks
or boulders down a rocky hill-side.
"Why, I am afraid we are in for a thunderstorm,"
cried Emanuel, looking anxiously at Mina in her thin
muslin dress. "We must hurry on as fast as we can,
and get under shelter if possible before it bursts upon
us."
Mina had looked up too; her eyes sparkled with a
child's enjoyment.
"Oh, I am so fond of a downright good thunderstorm!"
she exclaimed. "I have never seen one out
here before."
"But we have no umbrellas, no wraps, nothing--we
must make for the nearest shelter, if there is anything of the sort near, as fast as we can," said Emanuel.
"Oh, the pavilion's not far off now," Mina replied;
"if we turn down here we shall reach it in a few
minutes."
Emanuel hurried along at such a pace that his
companion had to fall into a little trot to keep up with
him.
Big, heavy drops splashed at intervals through the
slightly shivering trees, and the moment they fell the
parched, thirsty earth, split by great gaps, had
completely absorbed them. Now and then one fell on
Mina, but she only laughed, though Emanuel seemed
deeply concerned. It was oppressively sultry, and
save for that occasional shiver of the leaves there was
not a sound stirring; an unnatural darkness gathered
overhead, so that the blurred lurid outlines of the clouds
were but confusedly visible through the black and
motionless tree-tops. They were rushing along in
silence when a sheet of livid flame lit up the darkness,
and flashing along the ground seemed to dart past their
very feet. Emanuel, seizing hold of the girl's hand,
instinctively stretched out his arm above her head, as
though to protect her against all the embattled forces
of nature, as he tore her along with him.
Flash upon flash followed the first with bewildering
rapidity; clap upon clap of thunder succeeded instantaneously;
then there was a wild soughing of the wind
through the trees, and the very sluices of heaven
seemed opening as the rain came crashing like a
cataract from the clouds.
It was one of those summer-houses
so much in vogue with the licentious
German princes in the latter half of the eighteenth
century; lying half-hidden in the wood-like park, but
yet in close communication with the Grand Ducal
Palace, to which an old linden avenue led straight in
opposite direction to that from which Emanuel and
Mina were approaching it.
Springing up the steps and saying that the door was
locked, Mina beckoned to a hidden side-entrance, which
opened smoothly enough on her pressing a secret spring.
Even in the minute it took to effect their entrance they
had both got a thorough soaking.
"You are dreadfully wet; I am afraid you will get
ill!" cried Emanuel, rushing wildly about the room in
which they now found themselves, looking for something or other with which to cover or dry her; such things, however, had long since vanished with the vanished owners. So he eagerly whipped his silk handkerchief from his pocket, and began flicking the rain from her hair and dress and thinly-clad shoulders, with as much care as though she were one of the Dresden shepherdesses that still kept their place on the cabinets with ormolu corner-pieces, and he might break her in the process. He was even going to divest himself of his coat next in order to put it over her, only that she protested so strongly he had to desist.
"This is nothing, nothing indeed!" cried Mina,
reassuringly, giving herself a shake like a duckling, and
looking as though getting wet were the most pleasing
sensation in the world--as indeed it was the most
becoming thing in existence, thought Emanuel. But
he did not quite give vent to his feelings; glancing
round the octagonal room he only said--
"What a dear, charming old place you have suddenly
raised to shelter us from the storm! I have long
suspected you of being something of a fairy, but now I
am sure of it!" and he threw himself on the parqueted
floor at Mina's feet, looking up at the ceiling with its
cupids and nymphs à la Boucher, who, if sunken in tone
and tarnished, were probably less offensive in colour
than in all the garish rawness of their pristine blues
and pinks.
Mina laughed softly as she answered--
"Oh, it's only the old park-keeper who in this case
plays the part of good fairy. Once he used to frighten
us children dreadfully if ever we dared to pluck flowers
off the grass in front of the palace, by telling us that bears and tigers and wolves were shut up in this lonely house here, and that we should be locked up along with them if we were disobedient. But nothing could ever keep me from the flowers; and so once the keeper, with his bushy eyebrows and long red nose, took me in his arms and said he would take me to the bears, and then my terror became so strong that I couldn't even scream, but fell back with all my senses clean gone."
"Wicked, wicked monster!" muttered Emanuel,
clenching his fist.
"No, he wasn't wicked," said Mina, gently; "only
he didn't know, I suppose, how dreadful a thing fear is.
He was so sorry for what he had done afterwards, and
told me there were no wild beasts there--how silly I
must have been to think there were!--only little angels
with wings. So at last he got me to go and peep in
with him, and then he and I became great friends, and
he showed me how I might let myself in here whenever
I wished if I would keep it a strict secret; for he told me
how our Grand Duke, because of something in a will,
had ordered everything to be left exactly as it was in
his grandfather's time. So I used to come here on a
summer holiday and read fairy-tales, while the other
children were romping in the park outside. Oh!" she
cried, "I must show you the story of the 'Sleeping
Beauty,' embroidered in the most beautiful colours, over
there;" and she tripped across the room, and drawing
out one of the once gorgeous draperies or portières,
displayed its needlework.
Emanuel, who had slowly risen to his feet, was
following her every look and motion with a certain
brooding intensity of expression. All this tarnished splendour around them seemed to act as a foil to that slim, girlish figure, in the green muslin gown and cape with the fluttering ribbons; to that face with the virginal lips and the delicate rose-red bloom, and to those ethereal eyes, that seemed to swim like stars in some divinely limpid ether of their own; in a word, to that immaculate youth of body and soul. It seemed to Emanuel that, in looking at her, the freshness and dew of his own youth was coming back to him once more. He was wishing in his heart that the thunder and lightning would continue indefinitely to flash and roar overhead; that the rain would still go on falling through the wet, shaken boughs of the trees. But he was in truth all the time struggling hard with the strong, well-nigh overpowering emotion, which threatened every moment to overflow its bounds. So all at once, to hide what he felt, he began drawing the gayest, most animated picture of the fine gentlemen with bag-wigs, and the noble ladies in ruffles and farthingales, who had once upon a time lounged and laughed and flirted and fanned themselves on this pale, rose-coloured furniture, with its sumptuous curves and gorgeous marquetry work.
Brilliant, witty, gay, he overbrimmed with quaint
conceits and fancies, and, giving the rein to his imagination,
flashed out story after story, as only a man of
genius could. For the delectation of this little
unsophisticated girl, he exerted the fascinations of his
intellect as he had but rarely done in the drawing-rooms
of the wealthy and the great.
Mina simply listened, drifting along in an enchanted
region. The present moment filled her so completely, that she had literally forgotten all that lay outside of it. Nothing was lost upon her; intuitively she seized the most delicate allusion, the most fleeting play of the fancy, till Emanuel could almost have been astonished to see how fine were the perceptions of this most delicately organised creature that was a mystery to itself as yet.
As they were loitering about, now looking out at the
storm, whose violence seemed to be abating, now
sauntering through the rooms, Emanuel made belief
that at some turning or corner they would come upon
the dukes or marchionesses, or fair maidens, who had
once used this retreat, looking as faded and tarnished
as the pavilion itself. But instead of this they only
met themselves at every turn in the magnificent mirrors--which
brought them face to face with their doubles
like the lovers in the legend. In these unexpected
encounters they caught glimpses of each other which
made either feel more conscious of their position; and
Mina all at once, after such an encounter, became
disturbed and embarrassed, and her movements grew
scared, like a frightened bird's almost, as, going to the
window and looking out, she said: "I don't think the
storm is so bad now--the thunder doesn't follow the
lightning nearly as fast as it did. I ought to be going,"
and she was moving towards the door.
But Emanuel seized her hand, and said almost
peremptorily--"Going! in this pouring rain and in
these gossamer clothes! Do you think I would let
you, to catch your death of cold?" then he added, with
a sort of soft reproach--"Going, indeed!"
For a moment he kept her hand in his, and his eyes
met hers with a long, long, yearning look, that pierced
to her very heart's core; it was only for a moment, but
in that moment there was eternity.
What had come to Mina? She would have escaped,
fled, hidden herself out of sight, had it been possible;
but how could she?
She went to the window again, ostensibly to see how
the weather was--but she saw nothing; only her heart
was beating so that she was glad the heavy, full-leaved
trees were swaying and tossing about in the wind and
rain, or she feared that its beating might have been
heard all through the room.
Emanuel made no attempt to approach her. When
she went to the casement, he took a quick step forward
as though to follow her, then in his sudden way veered
round in the opposite direction, and said in a loud voice--
"Why, there's a spinet too! I must have a try at
the instrument! I wonder what sort of tone it has?"
And opening the instrument he began running his long
elastic fingers over the disused keys; under his vivifying
touch they emitted thin, faint, almost ghostly sounds.
"Not so bad, not so bad!" he murmured, as, after
playing one or two bars at random, he glided into a
low, silvery, rippling sort of melody, that mingled softly
with the monotonous splashing of the rain on the roof.
But as he went on playing he seemed to be abandoning
himself more and more to the music, which gradually
swelled and deepened in scope, till on that old spinet it
rang out, in its passionate intensity, like the articulate
cry of a soul, as it once might have responded to the
fingers of Sebastian Bach.
Mina still stood motionless by the window. Strange
thrills swept over her frame, like the shivering eddies
that crisp the surface of an unfathomed lake. It
seemed as though each note of this music were tugging
at her heart-strings, drawing her as with strong cords
towards the player, whose eyes waxed and darkened
and glowed as he occasionally broke into snatches of
song, while his body, like the trees in the wind outside,
went swaying to and fro in the current of sound.
All at once the girl started as though she had been
surprised in some crime. She thought she had heard
him calling her by name through the music. She felt
as though she must call aloud on his name, but her
lips were tightly compressed all the time, and her
fingers interlaced convulsively.
Emanuel jumped up just then, passed his hands
through his hair, and left the spinet as suddenly as he
had gone to it.
Mina, without looking round at him, said: "The
rain has nearly left off now. I must go, indeed I must."
"Very well," Emanuel answered, shortly. His voice
sounded almost harsh to Mina; she wondered whether
he could be angry with her.
They left the pavilion, and went down the steps in
silence. How cool and sweet the air now was! How
fragrant the smell of the brown earth!
The rain had ceased. Everywhere around, above
and beneath, there was a glisten and shiver and sparkle
where the drops of wet, hanging on leaves and flowers
and blades of grass, flashed back the evening sunshine
as from a myriad diminutive mirrors.
Shrill piping sounds and long mellow flutings were
blown with the whiffs of air through the foliage, and all sorts of dainty, gauzy-winged creatures, and gossamer flies and shiny beetles, buzzed and quivered and whirred through the clear air, revelling to the utmost in their fugitive day of life.
At the far end of the long linden avenue, down which
the pair now walked in silent absorption, the long row
of windows of the forsaken-looking rococo palace blazed
red in the sunset. But the silence of these two was of
a vastly different character. Mina was looking straight
before her, down a vista melting from splendour to
splendour into glories unspeakable, glories and splendours
seeming but some outward visible token of
something transcendently divine, which was filling her
soul even to overflowing.
Emanuel, on the other hand, with his head drooped
seemed hardly conscious of where he was nor whither
he was going, but from his expression one might almost
have fancied that the storm had left the earth only to
rage in his own breast with unabated violence.
"Oh, that's a nightingale!" sighed Mina, in a low,
dreamy voice, more as if she were thinking aloud than
giving utterance to her thought, at the same time
putting her finger to her lip with a charming gesture.
At the sound of her voice Emanuel raised his head,
looking about him like one just awakened. There was
a strange, almost savage gleam in his hollow eyes as
they furtively glanced past Mina, but then there came
into them a dim, misty light as of unshed tears, and
he muttered something between his teeth. It sounded
like Byron's--
No more, no more, oh, never more on me
The freshness of the heart shall fall in dew.
Mina gave one quick, shy, puzzled glance upward,
but it seemed easier somehow to look into the blazing
lights yonder than to meet his eyes.
"Why, here she is incarnate, the very goddess
herself!" cried Emanuel, as though in answer to some
train of thought, of his own, abruptly standing still
before a statue of Venus Victrix, that with some
antiques, casts, and modern originals (all of them
statues of Venus, however), was placed round a pond,
of which the waterworks, with their much damaged
Tritons, had long ago ceased playing. Three white
swans went slowly circling over its surface.
"We have lost the way, then, for good and all, and
strayed into Venus's land," said Emanuel, in a tone
between jest and earnest, after gazing at that statue
of the goddess where she is represented as holding an
apple in her right hand, and raising it to the height of
her shoulder in token of triumph. "Well," he
continued, "it is useless to resist when she, with all the
powers of nature at her back; conspires against one.
I herewith yield myself up as her prisoner!"
So saying, he turned, in his energetic way, towards a
tall hedge or thicket of roses, nearly enclosing the pond
and the statues, and with his penknife began cutting
quite a bunch of ruby, crimson and pink, cream-coloured
and maroon roses, most fresh and fragrant after the
rain.
"Oh, please," cried the terrified Mina, interposing,
"you mustn't gather those; what would the Grand
Duke say? The keeper will be furious!"
"There, there, don't frighten yourself!" said Emanuel
tenderly, pressing the bunch into her hands and her
hands between his. "There are powers that I dread more than the Grand Duke or even the red-nosed keeper, awful though he be! Perhaps if you were to cast those roses as a peace-offering at the feet of that Venus there, who knows----Go! I am a superstitious creature; perhaps the roses offered by those pure hands will soften that inexorable marble heart of hers. Ah, you stare at me, my child! You think I am going out of my mind perhaps. Perhaps I am! perhaps I am!"
He spoke vehemently, and almost pushed Mina in the
direction of that Venus before mentioned, who, faintly
glowing in the warm sunset tones, stood out in her
immortal beauty from the background of dark green
leaves and mingled red roses.
The girl hardly knew what to make of it. She held
the roses in her slightly trembling hand, looking
perplexed and half frightened; she had never yet seen so
strange an expression in the musician's face--so strange
that it made her shiver in spite of the warmth.
All at once she felt his breath thrill through her hair;
the roses dropped from her hands at the feet of the
image of Venus. "Surely you cannot be frightened of
me?" he whispered.
For an answer she looked full at him for once, with
her large, clear, candid eyes, revealing what was a
secret to herself as yet.
Emanuel, seizing both her hands in his, and drawing
her a little towards him, cried, as though the words
were being wrung from him by some overmastering
force--
"Mina, Mina, I lo----"
"Halloo!" shouted a well-known voice, in unfeigned
astonishment; and the shout ended in a significant whistle as the two started apart.
Emanuel's face wore an expression of profound annoyance,
nay, anger, as Sontheim, ostensibly speaking to
Mina, but looking at him, said, "Why, Mina, my girl,
what brings you here at this late hour of the day?"
In another instant, however, he had regained that
perfect self-possession which under no circumstances
long forsakes the man of the world.
"Why, Leopold, old fellow, glad you have come back
from Frankfort at last!" he said gaily, linking his arm
in that of his friend; "what a time you've been gone!"
"Much may happen in a fortnight, certainly," said
the other in an absent, constrained manner, stealing a
look at Mina, who, thus unexpectedly startled, as a tide
of irresistible emotion was upheaving her whole being
felt unutterably helpless, speechless, and yet, in spite of
all, more unutterably happy still.
"I met Fräulein Lichtenfeld accidentally in the
wood," said Emanuel, addressing Sontheim, "and,
being overtaken by a thunderstorm, I thought it my
duty to look after her."
"Look after her!" repeated Sontheim, mechanically,
with none of his usual hearty joviality of manner.
"Well, now you are here to escort Fräulein Lichtenfeld
home, I must be off," said the musician, "as I
have to keep an engagement."
They had reached the end of the avenue by this
time. Emanuel turned to Mina and bade her good-bye,
holding her hand in a lingering pressure; then nodding
to Sontheim, went off at a swinging pace.
"At any rate I'll do my duty by Lichtenfeld's little
girl," exclaimed the energetic Professor the next morning,
on rising at a still earlier hour than usual. After
a hasty toilet he sallied forth, determined to seek his friend, who he knew would not be able to escape him, as he should find him safely in bed.
In bed Emanuel was, and fast asleep, when the
Professor entered; but he started up with an oath on the
latter laying his hand gently, as he supposed, on his
uncovered arm.
"In God's name what has happened?" he muttered,
staring at Sontheim. "Has anything----" then he
abruptly stopped, seemed to recollect himself, and sat
straight up in bed.
Sontheim, not at all flurried, drew an easy-chair to
the bedside, filled his pipe afresh, and said, with great
nonchalance, that as he had wanted to have a few
serious words with him, he had taken this opportune
moment for calling on him. Then, without beating
about the bush, he plunged straight into his subject,
and after reminding Emanuel of their conversation
about his dear old comrade Lichtenfeld, besought him
by their friendship not to injure his innocent daughter's
reputation; as he could scarcely fail to do if, as he
supposed, he had no serious intentions, and was yet seen
walking with her alone in such a small neighbourhood.
Emanuel, who had at first uttered one or two exclamations
with a certain angry impatience, said all at
once, with infinite tenderness in his voice, "Injure the
child! I would as soon think of hurting----but perhaps
you are right," he muttered, after a moment's
abstracted silence. "I may be to blame for allowing
myself to drift on in delicious unconsciousness of
consequences. But," he said, turning on his side, away from
Sontheim, "I am not prepared to discuss this subject
with you just now. My position, I own, is not a little difficult and perplexing; but if you like I will tell you the story of my life, so that you may the better judge of my actions, and be able to tender your advice, which I stand much in need of."
Sontheim, after expressing the utmost readiness to
hear Emanuel's story, thanked him for having tolerated
his interference in so delicate a matter; and it was
arranged that the latter should rejoin his friend in the
evening, when they would make a night of it.
In accordance with this promise the musician was
now seated in Sontheim's garden, in the magnificent
June weather, between nine and ten o'clock in the
evening. The only light they got was partly from the
just risen moon on one side, partly from an oil-lamp in
the kitchen, which, through a window, threw enough
light on the arbour table to render the Professor's beer
and tobacco faintly visible. In spite of the sultriness
of the night, Sontheim had made himself tolerably
comfortable in his old dressing-gown and slippers, and
reclining in a garden arm-chair, was puffing away at his
pipe.
Emanuel's feelings were of such a kind as entirely to
neutralize in him any sensations of heat, cold, or
physical discomfort whatever. With his hands tightly
linked round the right knee, that crossed the other, he
was straining forward with eager glance into his friend's
eyes, lit up by the lamp, as though the latter could have
looked into his own, although, from the gloom enshrouding
him, only an occasional glitter of them was apparent
as glimpses of moonlight penetrated the dense foliage.
"I dare say," Emanuel began, "you will remember
from letters how hard were my early struggles after I had run away from home to follow the irresistible bent of my nature. For my father, as you know, worthy Lutheran pastor that he was, thought a musician not much better than those strolling mountebanks that used to play in the streets and then came begging to the door. 'Lumpengesindel' he dubbed them indiscriminately, in stentorian tones, who wasted God's precious time by making a row!--quite forgetting in his ire that one of the chief occupations in the kingdom of heaven is to consist in the singing of 'hallelujahs.'
"Well, I will not weary you by detailing the vicissitudes
I endured. For owing to the incalculable disadvantage
of not coming of a musical stock, nor of having
been thoroughly trained at a sufficiently tender age, it
cost me incredible efforts and incessant labour to make
headway in my profession.
"How I got a living at all, or refrained from hanging
myself in my garret, to this day I cannot explain!
"I was in several towns, and played in several
orchestras with more or less blundering persistency, till
by hook or by crook I had worked my way to Rome,
and had got admitted to the Academy there. From
that time, I believe, letters and news from me, good or
bad, ceased.
"I believe at that time, when things went well, I
used to earn about five hundred francs a year by music
lessons. I had a few friends, who thought me poetic but
mad, and a very few patrons, who would have liked me
better if I had been better dressed. Sometimes I know I
would owe a meal to the French painter Raoul Leroux,
who, some years older than myself, had already begun
attracting the eyes of picture buyers by his 'Fisher of Capri' picture.
"I as yet had caught the ear of no one, and one day,
in a despairing mood, had taken myself off to the
gardens of Tivoli and flung myself down on the grass
in utter hopelessness. In this position I suddenly
heard Raoul shouting, 'There he is! There he is,
Frederic! Morose as usual, of course.--We are off to
Naples, Emanuel! Come along with us.'
"'To Naples!' I echoed grimly. 'Do you want to
mock me? Don't you know that at this moment I don't
possess a single baiocco--nay, less than nothing, as I
have lots of debts!' and I ground my teeth.
"Raoul and Frederic only laughed, saying, 'What of
that! As if we had not enough for all three of us.
Come along, old fellow; shake off that moody melancholy
that gives you the air of gaunt sea-eagle!'
And each seizing me by one arm they dragged me along
with them.
"'Well,' I said, 'to confess the truth, you have saved
e from a dilemma. For the rich English spinster,
whom you may have heard me mention, has gone to
live at Naples for a time; and as the lessons I give her
form the better part of my income, I was deliberating
how to follow in the present state of my finances.'
"'Ah well,' laughed Raoul, 'now we can understand
the cause of your despair, and the antics you were
cutting on the grass like Don Quixote for his Dulcinea.
It was the Mees Anglaise's red corkscrew curls and blue
spectacles that you were pining after.'
"Once at Naples, the partiality of my English
patroness procured me some pupils, and, therefore, after
the departure of Raoul and Frederic I determined to remain. After I had been there about eight months I was so worn out with hard work and constant disappointments, that one day, finding I had a good deal of time on my hands, I jumped into a fisherman's boat and let him take me to Capri.
"I and my violin, which in those days never left me,
were put on shore after paying the small fare that was
bargained for, and I found myself ascending the rocky
path that leads to the little inn near the Villa of Tiberius.
"'And what next?' was the question I put to myself
as I made my way to the latter. My prospects seemed
gloomier than ever. In this frame of mind I found
myself amidst the world-renowned ruins of Tiberius,
that, not unlike certain women, might be said to look as
beautiful as they are ill-famed.
"Sounds of human mirth and laughter from somewhere
among them were borne from time to time to the
desolate spot I had reached. It was a Festa day, and
a number of young people were apparently enjoying
their games and dances, to judge by the shouts and
laughter which woke echoes of ghostly mirth in the
vaults and galleries--that looked as though they had
lain dumb under the pressure of centuries.
"There was I know not what of weird contrast between
this gaping ruin, with its fragments confusedly scattered
about like the bleaching bones of some antediluvian
monster, and the clear youthful ring of those joyous
voices.
"I had sat down on some fragment of wall directly
overhanging the sea. In my present mood it afforded
me a singular kind of pleasure to take up stones or
pieces of marble, and throw them down the precipice. From time to time I could hear them striking against the sharp projections of the rocks as they leaped down the giddy height. Should I let my violin follow in their wake?
"I was in a mood of savage despair; a mood in which
my heart turned at bay on what I had best loved.
Hither it had led me, this art I had worshipped!
After years of patient toil, after sacrificing to it hearth
and home, and the security of a settled profession, I
was not a tittle further advanced than at the commencement
of my career. For requital of my devoted service
starvation stared me in the face. My miserable
subsistence was barely earned by giving lessons to females,
young and old, who, while inflicting prolonged tortures
on their victim, still exacted the tribute of smiles and
compliments.
"Weakened and ill, I shuddered to think of returning
and bowing my neck once more to that detested yoke.
"'No! I'll never go back to that!' I cried, jumping
up. 'I'll sooner earn a precarious livelihood by turning
fisherman in this island! Any labour will be preferable
to that daily renewing torture.' I seized my
violin in a desperate clutch, and feverishly leant over
the wall, where I could hear the dirge-like boom of the
breakers in the hollow caves.
"Only he who is familiar with the violin, knows the
love one may bear it--a love keen as that felt for
some frail human creature of exquisitely delicate mould.
Caressingly I passed my fingers over its ever-responsive
strings, thinking, feeling rather, that I could endure
no hand to handle it save mine!
"No! rather than that it should belong to another, its
strings should for ever render up the ghost of music in
one prolonged wail, as it plunged shivering from this
fearful height.
"For the last time, I thought, my fingers erred
over its familiar chords. A thrill of horrid exultation
possessed me, such as the fell Tiberius may have
experienced when he bade his men hurl the shrinking
form of a soft-limbed favourite from this precipice.
"Possibly my shaken nerves were affected by the
hideous memories clinging to these unhallowed ruins;
possibly also by the oppressive heat of the day.
"Sea and sky, indeed, looked in harmony with
unnatural sensations; as though some dread burst of
passion were gathering intensity under their apparently
sluggish calm.
"Though the sky overhead was of a sultry blue, yet
above the coast-line of Naples, standing out with
preternatural distinctness, uncouth, livid clouds straggled
chaotically to the upper sky, here and there reaching
lank, shadowy films, like gigantic arms, far into the
zenith.
Flocks of sea-birds were uneasily flying landwards;
screaming, they wheeled round the sphinx-like rocks,
and disappeared by degrees in their red clefts and
fissures.
"All at once I was startled in my fitful, half-mechanical
playing, by a piercing scream; this was almost
immediately followed by a confused noise of sobs and
cries, and a running of people to and fro, which seemed,
however, to be approaching nearer. I was just going
to hurry to the spot whence the noise proceeded, when some dozen of girls came rushing towards me.
"But before I had time to inquire into the cause of
their excitement, or to observe them more closely, a
grey-haired woman, with a pale, terror-stricken face,
seized hold of my hand, crying--
"'The Madonna be praised, he has a violin! Hasten,
hasten! Follow us or she will die!'
"And then the girls, beckoning and gesticulating, laid
hold of my arm, my coat, my hand, some pulling, some
pushing me along, all jabbering and crying together,
and repeating more and more urgently the only words
that I could make out--'Musica! Musica!'
"But while I stared at them in blank amazement,
thinking they must all have lost their wits together,
I was unconsciously being dragged and pushed along
till we came to a kind of ruined marble staircase, down
which they hurried me into something still resembling
a spacious chamber; for though the wild fig-tree and
cactus pushed their fantastic branches through gaps in
the walls, these stood partly upright as yet, discovering
in places the dull red glow of weather-stained
wall-paintings.
"The floor too was better preserved than any I had
seen; though cracked and in part overrun by ivy, it
showed portions of the original white and black
tesselated work.
"On this floor, with her head pillowed on a shattered
capital, lay a prostrate figure without life or motion,
and with limbs rigidly extended as in death.
"The old woman, throwing herself on her knees before
this lifeless figure, loosened the handkerchief round
her neck, and then, as though to feel whether life yet lingered, she put her hand on the heart of the unconscious girl, when, suddenly jumping up again, she ran to me panting--
"'Oh, sir, good sir, play, play for the love of the
Madonna!' And the others all echoed as with one
voice, 'Musica! Musica!'
"'Is this a time to make music?' cried I, in angry
bewilderment. 'The girl seems dying or dead. Run
quick for a doctor--or stay; if you will tell me where he
lives I will go myself and bring him hither with all speed.'
"For all answer the grey-haired woman, who was
evidently the girl's mother, fell at my feet, and clasping
my knees, she cried in a voice broken by sobs, 'Oh, good
sir, kind sir, my girl has been bitten by the tarantula!
Nothing in the world can save her but you, if with
your playing you can make her rise up and dance!'
"Then darting back once more to the girl, who lay as
motionless as before, she screamed in shrill despair,
'She's getting as cold as ice; the death-damps will
be on her if you will not play for my darling.'
"And all the girls, pointing as with one accord to my
violin, chimed in once again, crying more peremptorily
than before, 'Musica! Musica!'
"There was no arguing with these terror-stricken,
imploring creatures, so I took the instrument that had
been doomed to destruction to call the seemingly dead
to life with it.
"What possessed me then I know not: but never
before or since did the music thus waken within the
strings of its own demoniacal will and leap responsive
to my fingers.
"Perhaps the charm lay in the devout belief which the
listeners had in the efficacy of my playing. They say
your fool would cease to be one if nobody believed in
his folly.
"Well, I played, beginning with an andante, at the
very first notes of which the seemingly lifeless girl rose
to her feet as if by enchantment, and stood there, taller
by the head than the ordinary Capri girls, her
companions, who were breathlessly watching her. So still
she stood, that with her shut eyes and face of unearthly
pallor she might have been taken for a statue, till,
as I slightly quickened the tempo, a convulsive tremor
passed through her rigid, exquisitely moulded limbs,
and then with measured gestures of inexpressible grace
she began slowly swaying herself to and fro. Softly
her eyes unclosed now, and mistily as yet their gaze
dwelt upon me. There was intoxication in their fixed
stare, and almost involuntarily I struck into an
impassioned allegro.
"No sooner had the tempo changed than a spirit of
new life seemingly entered the girl's frame. A smile,
transforming her features, wavered over her countenance,
kindling fitful lightnings of returning consciousness in
her dark mysterious eyes. Looking about her with an
expression of wide-eyed surprise, she eagerly drank in
the sounds of the violin; her graceful movements
became more and more violent, till she whirled in
ever-widening circles round about the roofless palace chamber,
athwart which flurried bats swirled noiselessly through
the gathering twilight. Hither and thither she glided,
no sooner completing the circle in one direction than,
snapping her fingers with a passionate cry, she wheeled
round in an opposite course, sometimes clapping her hands together and catching up snatches of my own melody, sometimes waving aloft or pressing to her bosom the red kerchief or mucadore she had worn knotted in her hair, which, now unloosened, twined about her ivory-like neck and shoulders in a serpentine coil.
"Fear, love, anguish, and pleasure, seemed alternately
to possess her mobile countenance. Her face indicated
violent transitions of passion; her hands appeared as
if struggling after articulate expression of their own;
her limbs were contorted with emotion: in short, every
nerve and fibre in her body seemed to translate the
music into movement.
"As I looked on a demon seemed to enter my brain
and fingers, hurrying me into a bacchanalian frenzy of
sound; and the faster I played the more furiously her
dizzily-gliding feet flashed hither and thither in a
bewildering, still-renewing maze, so that from her to me
and me to her an electric impulse of rhythmical movement
perpetually vibrated to and fro.
"Ever and anon the semicircle of eagerly-watching
girls, sympathetically thrilled by the spectacle, clapped
their hands, shouting for joy, and, balancing themselves
on tiptoe, joined in the headlong dance. And as they
glided to and fro, the wild roses and ivy and long tendrils
of the vine flaunting it on the crumbling walls seemed
to wave in unison and dance round the dancing girls.
"As I went on playing the never-ending, still beginning
tune, night overtook us, and we should have been in
profound obscurity but for continuous brilliant flashes
of lightning shooting up from the horizon like the
gleaming lances hurled as from the vanguard of an army of Titans.
"In the absorbing interest, however, with which we
watched the deliriously whirling figure, unconscious of
aught but the music, we took but little note of the
lightning. Sometimes, when from some black turreted
thunder-cloud a triple-pronged dart came hissing and
crackling to the earth as though launched by the very
hand of Jove, I saw thirteen hands suddenly lifted,
thirteen fingers instinctively flying from brow to breast
making the sign of the cross, and heard thirteen voices
mutter as one, 'Nel nome del Padre e del Figlio e
dello Spirito Santo.'
"But the ecstatic dancer paused not nor rested in her
incredible exertions; the excited girls alternately told
their beads, and then joined in the dance again; while
the grey-haired mother, kneeling on the marble pediment
of what might have been the fragment of a temple of
Bacchus, lifted her hands in prayer to a little shrine of
the Madonna, placed there, strangely enough, amidst the
relics of paganism.
"All of a sudden, however, a horrific blaze, emitted
from a huge focus of intolerable light, set the whole
heavens aflame; As from a fresh-created baleful sun,
blue and livid and golden-coloured lightnings were
shivered from it on all sides; dull, however, in
comparison to the central ball, which, bursting instantaneously,
bathed the sky, earth, and air in one insufferable
glare of phosphorescent light. The deadly blue flame
lit up everything with a livid brightness unknown
today.
"Walls and faded wall-paintings, limbs of decapitated
goddesses gleaming white through the grass and rioting weeds, tottering columns, arches and vaults, and deserted galleries receding in endless perspective, leaped out lifelike on a background of night and storm.
"With piercing shrieks the horrified maidens scattered
and fled to the remotest corner of the ruin, where they
fell prone on their faces quivering in a heap. In a
voice strangled by fear the kneeling mother called for
protection on the Virgin and all the saints! The violin
dropped from my nerveless grasp, and at the self-same
moment the beautiful dancer, like one struck by a
bullet, tottered and dropped to the ground, where she
lay without sense or motion.
"At that instant a clap of thunder so awful, so heaven-rending,
rattled overhead, so roared and banged and
clattered among the clouds, that I thought the
shadowy ruin, tottering and rocking with the shock,
would come crashing about us and bury us under its
remains.
"But as the thunder rolled on farther and farther,
seemingly rebounding from cloud to cloud, I recovered
my self-possession, and in mortal fear rushed to the
side of the prostrate girl. I was trembling all over
like a coward as I bent down to examine her. Had
the lightning struck her when she fell so abruptly
to the ground? Had life for ever forsaken that
magnificent form, those divinest limbs? Would those
heavy eyelashes never again be raised from those
dazzling eyes? Breathlessly I moved aside the dusky
hair covering her like a pall. Breathlessly I placed
my hand on her heart; a strange shiver and spark
quivered through it to my heart. Yet she was chill as
ice and motionless as a stone. 'She is dead, she is dead' I moaned; and the pang for one I had never known exceeded everything I had felt in my life.
"'You mistake, Signor,' some one said close beside
me; and on looking up I saw the mother intently gazing
down on her senseless child. 'My Tolla is not hurt,'
she cried; 'she only fell when you left off playing the
tarantella; she will arise as soon as you go on.'
"Pointing to the lightning still flickering and darting
overhead, I cried, 'But you are risking your lives for
some fantastic whim, some wild superstition of yours.
You are mad to brave such a storm! You expose your
child to undoubted peril that you may ward off some
illusory evil. Let me bear her to the inn, and follow
me thither.' And I was going to lift the senseless form
in my arms when the woman sternly prevented me.
"In vain I argued, pleaded, reasoned with her. She
only shook her head and cried piteously, 'Give her
music, more music, for the love of the dear Madonna!'
And the girls, who by this time had plucked up courage
and gathered round us, echoed again as with one voice,
'Musica! Musica!'
"What was I to do? I could not drag them away by
force, and certainly, for aught I knew, she might have
been in equal danger from the poison or the storm
wherever we were. As for peril to myself I cared not.
I was in a devil of a mood, and all the pent-up, bitter
passion of my soul seemed to find a vent and safety-valve
in that stupendous commotion of the elements.
"So I searched for my instrument on the ground,
and now noticed, to my astonishment, that although the
storm had swept away from us, the whole ruin was
nevertheless brightly illuminated. On looking up I saw the topmost branches of a solitary stone-pine one dazzle of flames. Rising straight on high from a gap in the wall which its roots had shattered, it looked a colossal chandelier on which the lightning had kindled a thousand tapers. There was not a breath of air, not a drop of rain, so that the flames burned clear and steady as under cover of a mighty dome.
"By this brilliant light, in which every object from a
human form to a marble acanthus leaf cast sharp-edged
shadows, I soon discovered my violin on a tangle of
flowering clematis, and began tuning its strings.
"No sooner had I struck into the same lively,
impassioned tune, than the strange being rose again as by
magic, and, slowly opening her intoxicating eyes, began
swaying herself to and fro with the same graceful
gestures and movements that I had already observed.
"Thus I played all through the night, long after the
rear-guard of the thunder-storm had disappeared below
the opposite horizon whence it first arose--played
indefatigably on and on like a man possessed, and still, by
the torch of the burning pine, I saw the beautiful
mænad-like figure whirling to and fro with miraculous
endurance. Now and then; through the deep silence,
I heard a scarred pine-bough come crackling to the
earth; now and then I heard the lowing of the stabled
cattle in some distant part of the ruin; once and again,
smiting like a cry, I heard one string snapping after
another under my pitiless hands.
"Still I played on, though a misty quiver of sparks
was dancing about my eyes, till the fallow-tinted dawn
gleamed faintly in the east.
"At last, at last, a change stole over the form and
features of the indefatigable dancer. Her companions,
overcome with fatigue,had long ago sunk to the ground,
where, with their little ruffled heads resting on any bit
of marble, they lay sleeping calmly like little children.
Only the mother still watched and prayed for her child,
the unnatural tension of whose nerves and muscles now
seemed visibly to relax; for the mad light of exaltation
in her eyes veiled itself in softness, her feet moved more
and more slowly, and her arms, which had heretofore
been in constant motion, drooped languidly to her side.
I, too, relaxed in my tempo, and the thrilling, vivacious
tune melted away in a dying strain.
"At the expiring notes, when I had but one string
left, her tired eyes closed as in gentlest sleep, a smile
hovered about her lips, her head sank heavily forward
on her bosom, and she would have fallen had not her
mother received the swooning form into her
outstretched arms.
"At the same moment my last string snapped, a
swarming darkness clouded my sight, the violin fell
from my wet, burning hands, and I reeled back, faint
and dizzy, when I felt soft arms embracing me, and
somebody sobbed and laughed, 'You have saved her,
Maëstro; praise be to God and all His saints in heaven!
May the Madonna bless you for ever and ever----'
"I heard no more, but fell into a death-like swoon."
"Yes, I know that the strange facts that I have been,
and shall still have to relate to you, may at the present
date sound incredible; and, indeed, modern enlightenment
has driven these curious manifestations into
remote places of the Neapolitan kingdom. They are
nevertheless true, and were witnessed by friends of
mine who happened to be present on different occasions.
The explanation given me by a clever young physician
concerning the singular spectacle in which I had been
made to act the prominent part I have described, I will leave till later--if, indeed, you are interested to hear more about what is called tarantismo.
Let me hear, by all means, what rational explanation
or scientific theory there is concerning the phenomena
you have described," cried Sontheim; "but at
present I am on the tenter-hooks of expectation to
know what became of the dancer among the ruins."
"When I again came to consciousness," said the
musician, resuming his narrative, "I was lying in bed,
and for some time I remained quite still, trying to piece
together, as I thought, the fragments of the most
astounding dream I had ever dreamed. A heavy
inexplicable languor possessed my senses; I burned as with
fever, and my pulse hammered against my temples. I
thought, with a shiver, that the fever I had once had in
Naples had come back, and thus accounted for what
seemed mere delirious wanderings. And with a terrible
sinking of the heart I asked myself what was to become
of me if I should be laid up with the fever, far from all
friends, with no money, in this corner of the world.
Well, if it came to the worst, they could but send me
to their asylum, and perchance turn me to some account
by making me play the fiddle for the delectation of blind
soldiers.
"I was perishing with thirst; so I raised myself up
in bed in order to ring the bell, but found on moving
that every joint of my body ached, and that my wrists
in particular were stiff and numb with pain.
"As I was pondering on this strange fact, the door
opened, and my hostess entered carrying a tray. Looking
at me with an odd mixture of curiosity and awe, she
inquired after my health with more than the habitual Italian courtesy; and without waiting for my reply said sympathetically, 'Oh, Madonna mia, but the Signor looks pale and ill after the miracle he performed last night.' And she held a cool slice of melon to my lips in quite a motherly fashion.
"The miracle I had worked last night! It had not
been a dream then! And as her words dispelled the
drowsy heaviness that still obscured my brain, the whole
fantastic scene flashed again with startling vividness
before my mind's eye. As I lay back on the pillow to
collect my thoughts, my kind hostess, thinking I had
fainted, rubbed my temples with vinegar, which
considerably invigorated me.
"I now began eagerly questioning her, but instead of
answering me she insisted on my taking some of the
food she had brought. While I did so she drew a chair
close to the bed-side, in which she comfortably settled
herself with some needlework, prepared evidently to
answer any questions or spin any yarn to my heart's
desire.
"My first inquiries of course concerned the beautiful,
mysterious creature, whose eyes, on shutting mine, I
saw as plainly before me as we see the spectrum of the
sun after daring to look too long at its blinding light.
"Who was she? Was she alive and well? Did
she, indeed, believe that my fiddling had saved her life?
What were her parents? How came she by this
dancing mania? Had she really been bitten by the
tarantula? And did the bite of this spider ever imperil
life, or produce the astonishing effects I had seen?
"My hostess took up my last question first, and
assured me, in perfect good faith, that although certain persons of an unbelieving and suspicious turn of mind might ridicule the fear of those venomous insects, their bite, if not often fatal, was yet frequently the cause of serious disorders, as she could prove to me by facts within her own experience, disorders only averted if the unfortunate tarantati were set dancing without intermission to the tune of some tarantella that took their fancy until they were overcome by resistless lassitude.
"Some people, she fancied, were more easily put in
peril by the bite of the tarantula than others. It would
take a good many tarantulas, she thought, to send her
into convulsions. But with Antonella Mansi it was
quite another affair. There was not a girl in all the
island to whom the sting of this spider would have been
so fatal.
"'Ah!' I cried; 'how is that?'
"She was just going to answer me when, being loudly
called for, she had to hurry away, leaving me with my
unslaked curiosity. Nor was there any chance at
present of otherwise satisfying the same by getting up
and finding out things for myself, for I was so stiff
and exhausted that every movement gave me pain; and
I soon fell fast asleep again, and actually never woke
till the next morning, when, feeling thoroughly restored,
I hastened to dress and leave my room.
"My one idea was to see again, under altered
conditions, the heroine of the nocturnal dance. After
having made inquiries of my hostess as to her whereabouts,
I picked my way to the little mountain town of
Ana-Capri, to which the ascent consists in an infinite
number of steep steps roughly hewn in the rock itself.
"When I had got about half-way up I overtook some
girls walking in front of me, carrying heavy baskets on
their heads, and singing a tune that was known to me
a strangely familiar tune. In another instant it flashed
upon my recollection that this was the very tarantella
I had myself composed in a kind of inspired trance.
Warbled by those fresh, bird-like voices, it struck me
with immense admiration; and why not, pray, simply
because it happened to be by myself?
"As I overtook these Capri girls, stepping so buoyantly
under their burdens, they looked at me curiously
from under their sombre eyebrows, then with a start of
recognition blushed, curtsied, and eyed me with
childlike awe.
"Turning to one of the girls who looked a little less
shy than the others, I begged her to direct me to the
house where Antonella Mansi lived. So we all climbed
the remaining steps together, but I could get nothing
out of her or any of the others about the strange being
who so perplexed and fascinated me. To all my
questions their only answer was a shake of the head, or
evasive exclamation which left me more bewildered
than before.
"After a toilsome ascent, which, although it nearly
left me out of breath, in no wise affected my pretty
guides, we reached a platform from which there was
a magnificent view of Capri and the still, dream-like
expanse of the far blue sea. But, impatient to reach
my goal, I only cast a hasty glance at the prospect,
as I hurried along through a scene that could not otherwise
have failed to arrest my attention.
"Presently, when we entered Ana-Capri, my timid
companions, after showing me the way, left me to myself in this most quaint, most idyllic of towns. Coming as I did out of the burning sunshine, I can recall even now the feeling of balmy coolness which the thickets of olive and myrtetus and bay and the large-leafed fig-tree, diffused through the air. Through these and other flowering and fruit-bearing trees and shrubs I saw small Moorish-looking houses, on whose flat white roofs there were women and girls singing to the clatter of their busy looms; others sat plaiting straw, or spinning yellow silk, before their doors in the shadow of the vine-covered pergola.
"It was a spot beautiful enough to have been the
birthplace of her I was in quest of.
"At the other end of the little town, in which I had
not as yet seen a single man, I found the house of
Signora Mansi. A vine-covered archway formed by a
series of columns brought me to the door.
"As my knocking met with no response I entered
unbidden, but the sudden change from daylight to the
gloom of the low, dark chamber made it impossible at
first to distinguish one object from another. I looked
about me in vain for her whose life I was supposed to
have saved. But as my eyes became more accustomed
to the darkness, I noticed that some one was kneeling
in a corner before a shrine of the Madonna with a dim
lamp burning before it; but so absorbed in prayer that
my entrance had been unheeded.
"On my coughing the suppliant looked round and
rose hastily. It was Antonella's mother. Her sorrowful,
careworn face, in which there yet lingered traces of
beauty, was lit up with an expression of devout gratitude
as she came towards me, hardly able to find words in her emotion. She would have sought me out before, she said, to thank me for a service which she could never in this life hope to repay--but for which she would day and night entreat the Madonna to help me--had not her daughter's peculiar state taken up all her time and attention.
"'And how is your daughter now?' I cried; 'has
she not yet recovered from the effects of the spider's
bite? or is she still suffering from the consequences of
her extraordinary exertions of the other night?'
"'Ah, Dio mio!' sighed the mother, shaking her
head. 'My poor girl, Signor, is not as she should be.
I know not what ails her, but she is strange, wayward,
full of caprices, and nothing will induce her to settle to
her spindle or loom again. Then she has lost her high
spirits, and looks so dull, sad, and melancholy, that
it makes my heart ache to see her. I thought at first,
to be sure, that it was all right; for she slept like a
baby after that dance, and in the evening woke up quite
gay and lively, and would go for a while and sit chatting
on the top of the stairs with the other girls.
"'But when she came back I noticed that she looked
listless and dispirited, and all through the night she
wept and sobbed and wrung her hands; and do what I
would I could not get my unhappy child to tell me
what ailed her, but she stared mutely before her just as
if she had lost her speech. So I left her a little in the
morning, thinking that maybe she might be better
alone, and went to my loom. For we poor people,
Signor, must still be busy whatever our burdens--and
mine have been heavy; and just when I was taking
comfort in the thought that the poor child might have gone to sleep, if there was not a heavy bumping as of some piece of furniture that had fallen, and when I rushed in there was my Tolla tossing and writhing about on the floor, with her beautiful face distorted and her eyes quite wild.
"'I could not think what to do, and sent Bice for our
hermit in my fright. But, Signor, would you believe it,
when the holy man entered and knelt down to pray the
good St. Anthony, she looked at him with horror and
was quite beside herself. And as the good, patient man
went on praying for her soul, in spite of her unbecoming
behaviour, she screamed and then fell into convulsions,
till I had to ask him to go, begging pardon for my most
unhappy child.'
"I had listened to all this with deep commiseration,
but was burning to know what had become of Antonella
at present, and asked eagerly whether I could not
perhaps do something to ease her sufferings. But I
heard then that she had again seemed much better this
morning, and that nothing would satisfy her but going
to look for coral on the little Marina, which had always
been a favourite pursuit of hers. Her mother had not
liked to deny her anything, yet was in hourly apprehension
of some harm befalling her child.
"'I will go and look after her myself,' I cried,
rising eagerly; 'perhaps in some way or other I may
again exercise a beneficial effect on her.'
"'But I fear we are trespassing too heavily on your
kindness,' said the anxious mother, with tears in her
eyes. 'Yet if you would be so truly good, it would be
a load off my mind, Signor. Perhaps it will settle her
spirits again if you reason with her. Bice shall show you the way;' and she stepped down the archway, calling the girl across the road. Almost immediately my guide of the morning came running towards us, and readily agreed to accompany me.
"'But you must not go without having tasted a
morsel of anything,' cried the kindly woman, mindful
of others even in this engrossing anxiety. Eager to
get off as I was, I had yet to submit, in order not to
hurt her feelings, while she cut me some figs growing
on a prickly cactus-tree, which I promised to eat on
the way.
"What a scramble that was down the rugged track,
zig-zagging along the side of a castle-crowned hill,
which brought us to a lonely strand, apparently blocked
off from the rest of the world by a semicircle of rude,
precipitous cliffs, and only open to the illimitable sea.
Black, ill-looking rocks, strewn about confusedly,
littered the beach and stretched some way into the
sea, where they formed a half-submerged peninsula
crouching amidst the rippling flash of the languishing
waves.
"Never was desolation more magical. On either side
of this shore yawned mysterious caverns greedily
sucking in the sea, and full of little sibilant noises as
of stifled laughter.
"'There she sits by the Madonna, on the rock of
Sirens!' my companion whispered in an awe-struck
tone, softly plucking me by the sleeve. I looked eagerly
up and down and round about the deserted little beach,
but all the signs of human life I saw were two fishermen's
huts, so rough and rude that I had confounded
them with the boulders amidst which they were placed. 'Oh, look right up there, Signor!' whispered the girl, pointing on high.
"Good heavens! On a crag too steep and slippery to
afford foothold to a goat, it seemed, I saw a solitary
figure, bathed in sunlight, intently gazing seawards. It
turned me sick and giddy as I looked.
"But my guide, picking her way like a young she-goat
over the slippery stones, led me round to the foot of the
crag, and there pointed out what appeared the least
break-neck track to its dizzy top. She then bade me
farewell, as she had to get back to her work, and
thought, besides, that in Tolla's present strange mood
it might be safest for me to accost her alone.
"In any ordinary mood I know I could never have
climbed up that slippery pathless rock, steeply
overhanging the sea. But under the present circumstances
I desperately clambered and stumbled along, sometimes
ignominiously getting along on all fours, sometimes
clutching hold of the coarse tufts of grass growing here
and there from some crevice. When at last I reached
a ridge some yards from the summit, where there was
a firm hold for the feet; I had to stop and take breath
for a moment. Partly hidden myself behind a projection
in the rock, I now beheld in the light of day a face and
figure only seen as yet by the livid storm-light.
"My God, how beautiful she was! with a mysterious,
strange beauty, more startling even when thus
seen, with the pure pale contours of her profile outlined
against the deep blue air, as she sat there holding some
gorgeous cactus-flower, scarce redder than her lips,
which she was pulling to pieces, so that the shredded
petals were strewn about her dark blue petticoat. She seemed to find a sort of enjoyment in blowing bits of them on the air, where they went fluttering like the bloodied feathers of little dead birds and then dropped into the sea. In her blue-black hair, braided closely at the back of the head, she also wore red flowers--oleander blossoms and roses of a dull crimson; and round her neck rows upon rows of coral, hanging low over the red faded handkerchief, crossed over her bosom and tied behind the waist.
"At a glance I had taken all this in which it takes
so long to describe, and a few hasty, desperate strides
now brought me to the top; in another instant I stood
at her side.
"On seeing me thus unexpectedly before her, the girl,
oddly enough, looked neither surprised nor startled,
only her face, hardly less pale now than when I had
first seen it, was suffused by an intense burning blush,
that disappeared as swiftly as it came, and left her still
whiter than before. She looked up at me and smiled.
No, not smiled; only her eyes emitted a bewildering
flash of light that for the moment transfigured the
melancholy of her countenance.
"Then she half rose, and bending towards me with
a lowly grace, said in a low, muffled voice: 'It is you,
Maëstro. They tell me you have saved my life.' Then
letting the stripped cactus stalk drop from her hand,
she muttered, with a droop of the heavy lashes, 'Why,
why did you save it?' And she turned and looked
towards the sea with a hungry wistfulness in her eyes
it frightened me to see.
"Rather taken aback by her strange manner I sat
down beside her, and expressed my surprise at her feeling no fear thus perched on the very edge of a precipice overhanging the boiling surf. For all answer she burst into a peal of shrill, wild laughter, in weird contrast with the previous dejection of her mien and attitude. At that instant a dim sense of repulsion passed like a shadow across my consciousness, but disappeared as quickly before the light of her triumphant beauty.
"'Fear!' she repeated, in the same muffled tones,
springing to her feet at a bound, and half leaning over
the giddy verge with a look of exultation which sent a
thrill of horror through my every nerve.
"'You must be mad!' I cried, seizing her by the
hand and roughly pulling her back. 'How dare you thus
play fast and loose with your life--if not for your sake,
for your mother's? Do you forget that even now she
is watching, and trembling, and praying for you? Have
you no love, no pity on her?'
"I spoke quite angrily, tightly clasping her hand,
which lay cold and unresisting in my own.
"My words had a most powerful effect on her. The
dare-devil expression that had for a moment gleamed
in her eyes died out immediately, and for all answer
tears gathered in her eyes, like a chidden child's, and
rolled down her oval cheeks.
"Where is the man that can withstand a woman's
tears? And if there is such a creature, why degrade him
to the rank of the brutes! My anger melted into something
more than pity at the sight of this magnificent
creature seemingly possessed by some subtle ill, perhaps
by some recondite malady of the nerves, for which I of
all others ought to feel sympathy.
"That shrinking, as from something alien that I had
obscurely felt was utterly obliterated on seeing those
tears; and, drawing closer to her, I could not help
addressing her by some soft, endearing phrases.
"On hearing me speak to her thus tenderly, a smile
parted her lips, curved like Cupid's bow, and disclosed
her little milk-white teeth; and wiping away the tears
still glistening on her long lashes, she looked at me with
her moist siren-like eyes. The perilous sweetness of
that look threatened to upset my equanimity for good
and all. I felt an irresistible desire to kiss that soft,
alluring mouth. But then she had been entrusted to
my care; I had made myself responsible for her safety.
She was so young, so ignorant! I was surely in honour
bound to protect her from the harm I might myself
inflict, and I resolutely tried to master my rising passion.
Therefore, as a man borne along a rapid current
clutches at the frailest reed to stem his headlong course,
so I, swept away against my better reason by a tumultuous
emotion, was anxious to snatch at the first harmless
topic in order to divert the rush of dangerous feelings
threatening to carry us--who knows whither?
"Having noticed, as she lifted her hand to her face,
a ring of singular effulgence on one of her fingers, I
again took her hand in my own, and asked her how
she had come by so rare a trinket. The hoop, it is
true, was only of silver, but set in it was a fire-opal,
flaming as only this stone will when subjected to the
sun's rays.
"The question seemed less harmless, however, than I
had imagined in my ignorance.
"A riddling change came over the ever-shifting
countenance. The pupils of her dark eyes dilated as though she were looking at some fearful object invisible to any one but herself; then, without a word, she rose to her full height, and pointing to the little shore below, said in a choked voice, 'Come, come, you shall know how I came by this ring,' and with firm, unerring step she led the way down the precipitous track.
"In my relief to get her so easily away from her
break-neck haunt, I followed her as best I could to the
shore."
"Presently we came to the mouth of a cave, so
situated in an angle of the rock that it would have
escaped my attention had not my beautiful companion
led the way into it.
"On entering, its dark gloom struck me with a chill
sensation, hot with the sun as I was. It was a lofty
cavern, full of sinuosities, and the walls, glistening
with moisture, were stained in places by dull red
blotches not unlike congealed blood. What unknown
crimes might not the sea have perpetrated here on the helpless bodies of shipwrecked men!
"Slipping occasionally over the large sea-spiders and
other jelly-like marine creatures, I followed Antonella
to the side of the cavern, where a natural projection in
the rock served us for a bench to sit down upon. All
this time her features worked with suppressed excitement,
and I noticed that her hand was trembling as
pointing to the dim-lit interior, she said, in a scared
voice, 'There he lay--there!'
"It was a strange, terrible tale that was then brokenly
unfolded to me by those coral lips--a tale interrupted
by sighs and shudders; while I, sitting there, burned
to comfort the narrator with kisses, had I dared.
"It was Antonella's habit, it seems, to resort to this
lonely beach in search of the coral she loved, and she
had thus come by the magnificent necklace round her
throat.
"Well, one morning of the preceding autumn, after
a violent storm had ravaged their olive and fig trees,
she had gone there very early, as she knew the sea
would often throw up great pieces of it at such times.
"On reaching the shelving beach nearly opposite the
cave, she came upon the smashed portion of a fishing-boat;
and presently, having entered it--for she had on
previous occasions often found coral there--she saw, in
the spot she had indicated, a young man lying prostrate,
and seemingly in a dying condition.
"Her first impulse was to succour him in some way,
but when she tried to raise his head he cried out with
pain, and begged her not to touch him, for he had been
crushed by the boat; and turning his glazed eyes pite-
ously upon her he begged her to fetch a priest, and yet when she was running off he convulsively clutched hold of her skirt, and seemed imploring her not to abandon him in this state.
"A dreadful predicament this for a young girl to be
in. At last, in her helpless terror, she could do nothing
but scream out wildly, and her screams luckily reached
a fisherman, who was just then apparently gathering
together the waifs and strays of the wrecked boat. He
was soon at her side, and in the excitement of the
moment, without preparing her in any way for the shock,
told her it was her father's felucca lying outside.
"Her father and her brother were coral fishers,
constantly cruising about these seas as far as the African
coast; and when Antonella was thus suddenly apprised
of the fate that had probably overtaken them, she fell
almost fainting, on the floor of the cavern beside the
dying man.
"He, apparently, had been attending to what was
going on, for, with a groan of pain, he slightly moved
his head, and looking at the girl with a sudden flaring
up of life in his eyes; asked, 'Are you Tolla--Tolla
Mansi?'
"The fisherman replied in the affirmative; but the
sufferer, recalled to his situation, again called out for a
priest, that he might be shriven of his sins; and the
former, comprehending the paramount importance of the
request, hurried off in search of one without further
delay.
"Presently Antonella, somewhat recovered, raised
herself on her elbow, when she found the eyes of the
stranger fixed upon her with a look of mute appeal and
entreaty. With another groan he slightly raised his hand, making a sign to her to approach more closely.
"'You are Tolla?' he then said, faintly, when her
ear almost touched his livid lips. 'I am Tonino, from
Girgenti in Sicily--I came to marry you--your brother
described to me your----ah! you are more beautiful
than he said--here, take this,' he moaned, pointing to
a ring on his finger. 'It was to be your--a talisman----'
"His voice failed him entirely here, and while feebly
trying to take the ring off, a spasm of agony contracted
his limbs; some internal rupture had taken place, and
before the fisherman returned with a Capuchin friar,
the Sicilian youth had expired.
"When some restoratives had been administered to
Antonella, she was at last able to tell the fragmentary
story she had heard to the Capuchin friar, who was a
hermit held in great awe by the islanders. The ring,
she explained, when they were about to remove the
body, had been bequeathed her by the expiring man
with his last breath.
"The hermit, however, exhorted her to dedicate it to
the service of the Madonna del Carmine, saying that
the ring off a dead man's finger was sure to bring her
ill-luck. But seeing that she had set her heart upon it
he reluctantly did as she bade him, although the friar
still persisted that nothing but misfortune could come of it.
"Antonella, having told me all this with quivering
lips and evident deep emotion, suddenly asked naively,
with an extraordinary change of manner, as though
quite relieved by her narrative--
"'But what do you say, Maëstro? Do you think
danger can spring from a thing so beautiful?'
"Inquiringly she raised to mine dark eyes whose fire
outshone that of the precious stone. As she looked at
me thus, I felt like one who drains to intoxication the
wine pledged him by an enchantress.
"'Oh, my child,' I said, smiling, 'the more beautiful
a thing is, the greater sometimes is its peril to the
beholder as well as the wearer.'
"In her insular simplicity she did not take my meaning
at once, but looked at me with a puzzled air which
gave an infantine charm to her ever-varying
countenance.
"Young though she was, only sixteen, her feminine
instincts interpreted my meaning to her, for the wickedest
smile hovered for just a moment, not so much on
her parted lips as in her deep, dark eyes.
"Now that smile of Antonella's overthrew the last
remains of prudence and forethought still left to me
by her tragic narrative.
"I never saw any other human being with a smile
like hers, haunting one like an unsolved riddle; arch
as a child's, yet full of unconscious devilry. Did she
know, I wonder--did she guess even then its irresistible
witchery?
"All this time she was shifting the ring round and
round her finger, and then said, looking down--
"'If there is danger in the ring----' and then she
stopped again. 'Oh, Maëstro,' she went on, in an
embarrassed, broken sort of way--'Oh, Maëstro, I wished--that
is to say, I hoped--three days I sat watching
for you on the stairs at Ana-Capri--they say you have
saved my life--and--and--and I am not ungrateful, but
I have nothing--nothing at all but this beautiful ring'--
then with a rapid movement she drew it from her finger, and, pressing it into my hand, whispered--'only if it should bring you peril I would not----'
"Colouring slightly, she trembled and hesitated; and
I was no longer master of myself when I saw the
quivering of her lips. Transported by a sudden fit of
passion I clasped the girl in my arms, and covered her
mouth and blinded her beautiful eyes with my kisses.
"What had I done? Where would this end?--were
the questions that would obtrude themselves on my
feverish exultation, when Antonella, having freed herself
at last from my embrace, retreated some paces with a
scared, strange look on her face.
"Afraid to encounter her eyes, I suddenly turned
away, when, uttering a startled exclamation, I looked
before me in amazement. Were we in the realm of
gnomes and dwarfs--for what but a gnome was that
misshapen little object crouching in a dim angle of
the opposite wall? My scared exclamation, however,
seemed to have attracted the attention of this uncanny-looking
creature. For, suddenly rising from its stooping
posture, it came limping towards us, and I gradually
discovered it to be an old man, whose diminutive stature,
club-foot, and white beard might easily give rise to such
a delusion by the weird, tawny half-light.
"On seeing him draw near, Antonella came close
to me again, and said in a frightened whisper: 'The
hermit of Santa Maria del Soccorso. Oh, I fear him!'
"Now, indeed, I saw, by the dark brown cowl and
large peaked hood hanging down behind, that he was a
squalid Capuchin friar, with a kind of wallet slung over
his shoulder, in which seemed to be deposited all manner
of live creeping things, from a curious wriggling movement going on in the wet pendent ends.
"This extraordinary creature stooped all at once
and picked up the ring, which it would seem I had
dropped in my excitement. He then pressed it into
my hand with a gleam of strange malignancy in his
rat-like eyes; and while a hideous smile disclosed a
couple of yellow, tusk-like teeth, he congratulated
Antonella on her recovery--thanks, as he said, first to
the Madonna, and next to the Maëstro himself, whose
name was in everybody's mouth at Capri.
"I noticed that a furtive leer lit up his countenance
as he eyed my companion, while cringingly expressing
a hope that I would take the ring, which he supposed
the maiden had offered me with a becoming sense of
gratitude. 'Antonella, Antonella,' he said, in a thin,
grating voice, shaking his head warningly, 'beware of
the devil who is weaving snares for you! Mind me,
the only cure and safeguard for a virgin against a
recurrence of the attack is to dedicate herself to the
service of the Madonna!'
"The cunning look with which he emphasized his
words not only convinced me that he had seen all, but
that he himself coveted the beautiful creature I had for
a moment held in my arms.
"The natural impulse which is in man prompted me
to knock him down for his impertinence. But then he
was such a deformed little horror of a fellow! Could
I bear him ill-will for not being blind to those triumphant
charms! So I said, looking at him rather carelessly,
'Young girls, we know, are timid enough to start
at their own shadows; but should we drive them half
distracted with imaginary fears?'
"The friar gave me the benefit of another malignant
glance, suggestive of the evil eye; then mumbling something
in his beard about the 'Ave Maria,' he limped off
with as much haste as he could. But at the mouth of
the cavern he suddenly turned his big head round, and
again said warningly, 'Beware, Antonella, beware!'
"The girl looked greatly relieved when he had fairly
gone; but I was recalled again to the perilous sweetness
of my position. I was shocked at having suffered
myself to be thus carried away by my feelings; for
had she not been left in my charge, so to speak, by her
mother, who regarded me, however mistakenly, as her
saviour. Shame upon me if I betrayed the trust of
those poor people, whose only pride was their unstained
honesty!
"I determined, therefore, to hide my feelings from
Antonella--and to make her think of my conduct in the
least serious light--resolved as I was to avoid ever being
left alone with her in the future. For what but disgrace
could our intercourse bring to her? However desperately
I might be in love with her, marrying any one
was at present out of the question for me. I had
trouble enough to earn a miserable subsistence, and,
besides, my art claimed me utterly. So I would secure
myself against further temptation by flying from Capri
and its dread siren!
"While taking this resolution, Antonella and I were
walking silently towards the entrance of the cavern.
There I stopped for a minute, and taking her hand in
mine, while I tried to look as unconcerned as I could,
said, lingeringly slipping the ring back on her finger--
"'Antonella, if indeed I have saved your life as they
say, you have repaid me with something far more precious than your ring, and in future you must always consider me as your debtor. But let us go now, for I fear we have been tarrying here overlong, and your poor mother will be quite frightened.'
"Antonella made no reply as we left the cave, and the
expression of her eyes was difficult to understand. In
order to divert her own thoughts as well as my own, I
kept asking the name of every rock and promontory as
we scrambled over the uneven stones.
"It was impossible, indeed, however strong one's
preoccupation might be, to remain quite insensible to
the glow and glory of that sea and sky on issuing from
the twilight cavern. The aspect of nature had undergone
a transfiguration.
"Though we ourselves were in the shadow which
the great rocks were casting over the shore and far
across the sea, all the more striking was the contrast
with the brightness of the heavens above us, where
transparent zones of intense rose-colour, through which
the hyacinthine sky was faintly discernible, radiated up
to the zenith like the glowing streamers of an Aurora
Borealis. In the shadow where we stood everything
was tinged with this ruddy glow; but in the far
distance sky and sea gleamed with the tints of Antonella's
opal.
"On our right, facing the orb of the setting sun, two
inaccessible rocks rising straight out of the sea (that
Antonella called the Faraglione) were smitten by his
red level rays, while the waves breaking at their base,
and some sea-falcons hovering above them, were steeped
in the same dyes; but their towering peaks, ravaged
and weather-stained, loomed mystical in the brightness above and beneath them.
"This ineffable spectacle for a moment completely
absorbed me. Then turning to Antonella, who, scarcely
heeding the scene, was biting one of her coral rows, I
said--
"'What pleasure you must feel in simply living in
this delicious climate, where beauty is as your daily
food. Better a peasant here than a prince in our
dismal latitudes!'
"She looked at me dubiously, and shook her head,
saying under her breath: 'I am tired of it--tired of it
all but the sea. I should like to go across the water
to where the great cities are, they tell me--Rome and
Firenze, with crowds of men and women--who wear
silk gowns on week-days--and horses and carriages.'
"'Oh, Antonella,' I said, shaking my head playfully,
'go where you may you will not match this for
beauty. See there, how the moon comes creeping up
little by little over that rock, as if she were afraid she
might melt away like a waxen image if exposed to the
glow of this sunset.'
"And with praiseworthy resolution I turned my eyes
away from hers, and pointed up to the sky, which was
visibly growing darker every instant. But as she made
no remark I looked round again, when to my utter
amazement I found her gone from my side.
"I waited a moment, then called her more and more
loudly, but there was no answer save a ghostly repetition
of Antonella's name from the caverns which honeycombed
the cliffs.
"Remembering the girl's peculiarly excitable
temperament and unaccountable moods, I grew thoroughly uneasy on seeing no sigh of her anywhere. I retraced my steps and re-entered the cavern where I had so lately been kissing her. After shouting and peering about in its chill, forbidding interior, I came out again, and sought for her behind every boulder, now casting long sharp shadows in the moonlight.
"At last I caught sight of two fishermen just pushing
a small boat out to sea. Hurrying up to them, I asked
whether they had seen a girl anywhere about; but they
only shook their heads as they quickly leaped in after
it. I knew not what to do, but, full of fear, hurried in
the direction of the Sirens' Rock, and cast one apprehensive
glance at its summit, which stood out ominously
distinct in the pale luminosity.
"Thank heaven she was not there! Divided between
fear and the hope that she might have gone home on
the sudden, I plodded my way as best I could up the
ill-defined track of the rocky hillside."
eyed damsel said never a word. So I asked what she thought of this celebrated scene. 'This is nothing for ladies,' she said, pouting, and turning up the little white tip of her nose. I was so charmed with this truly feminine answer that I left Rhine and ruins to the others, and spent the rest of the day in learning how much greater is the effect of dimples on the human heart than that of castle-crowned hills, vine-covered slopes, rushing rivers, and all the rest of it.
"But, dear me, there goes twelve o'clock! I should
have thought it would have got a little cooler by now.
What you can be made of, Emanuel, I don't know:
to go on talking, talking, and never get thirsty in such
heat as this is simply abnormal; my earthy nature
requires that I should now go and replenish the beer-jug,
and the lamp, I think, also wants seeing to."
After a few minutes Sontheim returned with fresh
supplies, and after taking a long, hearty draught he
said--
"Go on! What had become of the offended beauty?
Had she gone to offer up an Aye Maria and pour forth
her griefs into the Madonna's ear?"
"You will hear in good time, my friend," Emanuel
answered. "At any rate I thought of nothing but
Antonella, yearning and yet dreading to meet her again,
as I expected to catch sight of her tall figure at every
turn in the road, behind every projecting rock or clump
of flowering broom.
"While I was making up my mind to leave Capri
on the morrow morning, as the only safe course under
the circumstances, I hoped, with delightful inconsistency,
that fate or chance would defeat my purpose by then
and there throwing Antonella in my path again. And, strange to say, the more firmly I was resolved not to go and see the girl the fiercer grew my longing to look, if only once more, on the dark splendour of her eyes.
"Every now and then I started violently, and then
rushed after some dimly seen object, which in the
mocking moonlight seemed to recall something of her
form and motion, and my lips involuntarily called out,
'Antonella, Antonella!'
"Thus, before I knew how, I had completely lost my
way in a labyrinth of moonlit vineyards. Having not
the faintest idea which way to turn, I threw myself on
the ground at last, resigned to lie there till some passerby
in the early morning should put me in the right
road. Utterly tired out, I was on the point of falling
asleep, when a stir and rustle of leaves at a little
distance caught my attention. Looking about me
drowsily I caught sight, not without certain internal
qualms, of the deformed little old friar, whose big head
and long white beard were strangely eerie in this moonshine.
"He did not appear to see or hear me approach, for
he was muttering what sounded like an incantation, as
he plucked up by the roots an insignificant-looking herb
pearled with dew. After watching him for an instant to
no purpose, I made bold to interrupt his incantations
by asking him my way.
"On hearing himself thus unexpectedly addressed,
the friar jerked his huge head about, but instead of
expressing surprise at seeing me there at such an hour,
peered furtively about him, and then said, 'And what
have you done with the maiden, Maëstro?'
"I should have liked to have kicked the creature for
the satanic leer with which he accompanied his question;
and, not wishing to own to her sudden disappearance,
said she had gone home to her mother's after he had
left, and that wandering about by myself I had lost my
way in trying to get back to the Osteria.
"'Our road lies in the same direction, in that case,
Signor,' said the Capuchin friar; 'for my cell stands
on the height above the ruins of Timberio, and I'll take
you to where your path branches off from mine.'
"While we were jogging along through a maze of
marble fragments, he told me a gruesome story of a girl
who had been similarly bitten by a tarantula in these
ruins. At least, he explained, the Capri folk had laid
the blame of her subsequent evil ways on this fact.
"I made little doubt that the crafty hermit had
invented this tale by way of a scarecrow to fright the
bird from the too-alluring grain; and he might have
saved himself the pains, I thought. At any rate, I was
very glad to be rid of him when he parted from me,
after impressing upon me that I could not possibly
miss the inn if only I walked in a straight line towards
the light which was discernible in front of me.
"While hurrying towards it, I debated with myself
whether I should still go to Ana-Capri to find out
whether Antonella was in safety; but I shrank from
the consequences of such a step on recollecting, not
without violent agitation, to what a pass my solicitude
had brought me.
"I was abruptly roused from my preoccupation by a
low cry; and, on looking up to see whence the sound
had proceeded, I was shocked to find that, another
step forward, and I must infallibly have tumbled down a narrow dark fissure, seemingly ending in the sea. I, and not my violin, might thus have gone reeling to destruction like one of Timberio's favourites. It was the cry that had saved me. Like a woman's voice it was, but must have been the Aziola's; and I firmly believe that the villainous hermit, inflamed with impotent jealousy, had wished to send me to my destruction. I now retraced my steps with great caution, and, striking into a side-path, regained my inn without further adventure.
"Too excited for sleep, I seized my instrument, and
after a few crisp bars I began trying over the tarantella
which had come to me in so extraordinary a
fashion. As I was gradually striking into the weird
trills recurring at intervals throughout this tune, I
suddenly caught sight of what looked like a woman's
twirling, beautifully outlined shadow thrown across the
window-curtain. This time there could be no doubt
about it. My heart gave a bound, as, flinging the
half-closed window, which was on the ground-floor, wide
open, I leapt from the sill.
"Surely a woman's flitting shadow, seen on a wall,
glided out of sight as I did so! I rushed wildly in the
direction in which it had disappeared, till I found myself
on the very verge of the dizzy rock called 'Salto
di Tiberio.'
"There I stood still and looked about me. No one
was anywhere in sight; not a sound broke the stillness
save the fretting of the sea far below. A horror seized
me of this delusive shadow mocking and taunting me.
I ran back to the inn as fast as I had left it, and there
flung myself on the bed, where I lay tossing about in uneasy slumbers till the break of day.
"I then rose, put my few things together, and began
debating with myself whether I should bid Antonella
good-bye before going. Passion pleaded it would be
acting like a heartless brute if I left without seeing for
myself what had become of her; prudence suggested
that I might easily make inquiries through my good-natured
hostess, and that my object in leaving the
place would probably be defeated if I risked seeing her
again.
"While still undecided what to do, I nevertheless
mechanically walked on towards the rock-hewn stairs
of Ana-Capri. I had already mounted a considerable
number of steps when I saw Bice coming towards me
with a basket on her head. She made me a pretty
curtsy, and offered me a spray of basil. I began
questioning her about Antonella with ill-concealed eagerness,
and heard, to my inexpressible relief, that she was at
home with her mother, and in the gayest of spirits.
"I took my decision on the instant. Giving Bice
a few coins, which these simple girls always accept
thankfully for their flowers, I told her that circumstances
obliged me to leave Capri quite unexpectedly;
would she therefore bid Signora Mansi and Antonella
good-bye for me, and give the latter this trifle as a
keepsake from me. For happening to have by me an
antique Roman cameo brooch, I gave it the girl,
who looked quite taken aback, and, waving a hasty
good-bye, hurried desperately down to the shore at
Capri, so as to leave myself no time to alter my mind
again."
before me in all her matchless grace of form and motion. She was the inspiration of my theme! I felt all at once as the deaf and dumb might feel when their tongue is loosened, and sweet speech flows in on their inner sense with ineffable harmony. Sweet sounds, ravishing melodies, haunted the air about me like heavenly messengers. I was in a continual transport; I had at last found the fit organ for the spirit that moved within me.
"Ah, such days do not often come to one! And if
they did, they would soon consume to ashes the flesh
and blood that cannot withstand their fiery ecstasy.
But for many long years they will reverberate through
a man's inmost soul, and quicken all his best work--dare
I say with immortality?
"In those days I took my food by snatches (such food
as the man of all work used to place once a day on the
rickety table); I slept by snatches, scarcely taking
time to undress--indeed I was scarcely conscious of
the needs of the body. During that time I jotted
down numbers of motives which I worked out in later
compositions.
"One day, when in the very fever of composition,
I was not a little annoyed and astonished by hearing
a knock at my door, for I had scrupulously avoided
letting any one know of my return. The person who
entered, puffing and panting with the flight of steps he
had mounted, was an utter stranger, and I could hardly
refrain from saluting him with an oath. I fear I glared
with anything but friendly eyes at the little, fat,
self-important personage with a hot, smirking face, and
little dabs of eyes blinking perpetually, perhaps
to prevent one from finding out how shrewd they were.
"Not at all abashed by my questionable welcome,
the intruder looked calmly all over the miserable room,
with its litter of scored music, books, boots, stray shirts,
and slices of dry bread, rubbing his two pudgy hands
with an air of satisfaction at once puzzling and irritating;
until, growing impatient, I asked curtly to what I owed
the honour of the gentleman's visit.
"Instead of answering me at once (and looking, if
anything, rather pleased at my rudeness), he coolly
took up the sheet of music I had flung down at his
entrance, and scrutinizing it with half-shut eyes, said
inquiringly--
"'Ah, ah! a tarantella, I see! Of your own composing,
perhaps? Curious! because tarantellas happen
to be my hobby. I have quite a collection of all our
national dances, and shall be happy to show them you
some day. Will you think me very impertinent if I
ask you as a favour to let me hear a few bars of it on
the violin there?'
"So saying, he took out a gaudily painted snuff-box,
and, on my refusing the detestable stuff, helped himself
liberally, with an air of being quite at home most
exasperating to me. Who on earth could he be? What
the devil did he want with me? Was he a creditor
from Rome, perhaps, who had tracked me to my den?
"'But, sir, I presume that the errand on which you
came was hardly to ask me to play you a tarantella!
Perhaps you will excuse my curiosity,' I answered,
with covert irony, for I now began suspecting that the
man had come to play off some practical joke on me.
"'Just so, just so,' said the stranger, still eyeing me
with imperturbable good-humour; 'by your leave I will
sit down, for your domicile is just a little high up--just
a little, for legs not quite so young as they were once.
I fear you may think that I have been taking too great
a liberty, my dear young man. I may as well tell you
at once'--taking out a large card and handing it to
me--'that I am Antonino Occhio d'Argento, the
secretary of the Musical Society at Naples.'
"Why couldn't the fool say so at once, I thought, as
I bowed with considerably more politeness, wondering
what was coming next.
"'Well, I must tell you my little story connectedly.
It was on Thursday, I think, that Mercato, the violoncellist,
and myself, were going along the quay of Santa
Lucia, when my attention was arrested by hearing
some fishermen singing a tarantella I did not remember
ever having heard, and which struck me by its originality
and the fire of its movements. Now, you must
know, my dear young man, that I am as keen after a
tune of this kind as a greyhound after a hare. So I
went up to one of the men and asked what he was singing
there. "A tarantella ecco, Signor!" "Yes, fool,
I know that well enough; but whose tarantella is it?
Where did you get hold of it? This is not one of our
old popular tunes!" "Ah, that I can't say," the idiot
answered, grinning from ear to ear. "But at least you
can tell me how you came by it," I persisted. "You
did not invent it yourself, did you now, my friend?"
"'The fellow scratched his head, and looked down at
his bare toes as if they might refresh his memory. At
last, when I must have waited several minutes, he cried
gleefully: "I have it, Signor! Some of us, maybe a week ago, rowed a party of milordi Inglese to Capri, and on the Marina, by our Lady, the fishermen were all humming this tune; and when we went into the town, why there were all the pretty Capri girls singing it at their work; and when we came to the marketplace, why if two men were not playing it on the guitar and mandolin to the blind soldiers sitting on the benches in the sunshine. So the tune got hold of us and stuck by us since that day, most likely, Signor."
"'I will say for our people, my dear young man, that
they are the most musical nation in the world. They
have an unerring ear for what's got real melody, and
are often better judges than we connoisseurs. And the
way they'll catch up a new tune one from another is
astonishing; they'll do it as easily as a child catches
the measles!'
"'Well, my dear young friend, now we come to my
next point, for on the following day, when I was taking
my cup of coffee as usual in front of the Hotel of the
Tre Couronne, and jotting down a few memoranda
concerning our next concert, my attention was caught
by some one close behind now whistling, now singing,
this identical tarantella that I had been so taken with
on the previous day. This person seemed to know it
more intimately, however, and hummed a greater
number of variations.
"'On shifting my position a little, I saw two young
men playing dominoes at the next table. The one who
was whistling was a very hairy young man, with a keen,
lively face, and when he stopped to puff away at his
cigarette, I did not scruple to ask him if he would have
the goodness to tell me whose the air was I had just heard him sing. "Corpo di Bacco," he said, flinging the end of his cigar away; "I pray every day that whosesoever it is may go to the devil with all speed." "Why so?" I said; "if it is not impertinent to ask." "Why so?" he cried, jumping up and coming to my side. "Why so? Because I have the misfortune of occupying the room next to his, whoever he may be; because he is fairly driving me out of my senses with his maddening music! Because he gives me no peace by day or night; because in bed, at meals, at my easel, I am pursued, haunted, persecuted, assailed, bewitched by that demoniacal tune. By Jove! I expect to see myself in a lunatic asylum ere long, for I've got it regularly on the brain; and in my own despite I am forced to sing that devil's tarantella myself now." "But," I asked; laughing at the man's whimsical manner, "why need you listen to it if you hate it so?" "Why?" he cried, "why? Do you think if I were not a poor soul of a painter, whom his landlord won't suffer to budge before he has paid his rent, I would have stayed for a moment in that purgatory of incessant sound." "But tell me who is this indefatigable musician," I said at last, eagerly. "Who, indeed!" echoed the stranger, in a mysterious whisper. "No man hath ever seen him with his bodily eyes, I believe; and I misdoubt his corporeality for my own part. Flesh could never stand it! There is some secret, some black secret, behind it all, I'll be sworn." "Well, I'll fathom it," was my answer, "if you give me his or your address, as you are neighbours. A man who composes a tarantella that haunts one like that
a genius, whatever else he may be into the bargain."
"'So I got the address, and took the liberty of
coming straight here, you see; and I hope you will
oblige me by playing this tarantella which I have
taken so much trouble to unearth, and which I
presume, my dear young friend, to be your own.'
"Not without a beating heart had I listened to
Occhio d'Argento's diffuse narrative. That first
spontaneous response of a phlegmatic or apathetic outside
world to the call within one, is a never-to-be-forgotten
sensation. Without further preamble I took my violin
and played the piece, in its complete form as now
noted down by me.
"While I was playing the little fat secretary jumped
up from his chair, and whistling snatches of the tune,
he repeatedly danced and capered across the room,
flinging up his hands, snapping his fingers, and puffing
and screaming, till he wabbled all over with the exertion.
At last, wiping his glistening face, he sank into
a chair, panting, 'Eh! Bravo, bravissimo! Che bella,
che divina tarantella!'
"When I had done, Occhio d'Argento rushed up to
me, and enclosing me within the circumference of his
arms, almost stifled me with bear-like hugs, as
imprinting moist kisses on both my cheeks he shouted,
'Splendid! Magnificent! A tarantella to rouse the
dead on doomsday with!'
"To cut the matter short, he engaged me there and
then to play at a concert that was to be given the
ensuing week by the Musical Society of Naples.
"At that concert I won my first laurels. I was
enthusiastically encored. I scarcely met with marks of more universal admiration than those which now burst upon me when at the height of my celebrity. All Naples caught up the melody, and I heard snatches of it sung at the corner of every street.
"I had made a hit at last, and fortune began holding
out some of her dazzling rewards to me."
"One night, when the time of my departure for
Rome had been definitively settled for the day after the
morrow, as I had been engaged for a series of concerts
there, I awoke with such a craving to look once more
on Antonella that I felt sick and fevered with my
longing.
"'Confound all prudence,' I cried, 'I can stand this
no longer; I must see her once, only once more, come
of it what will!' and jumping out of bed, I dressed,
packed, and settled my few affairs so far, to shorten the time and leave my hands free.
"The day would never dawn, seemingly; yet dawn at
last it did, to my relief, and as soon as there was the
smallest chance of finding a boatman astir I hurried to
the beach.
"How quiet were the streets as yet, usually so noisy
and crowded; nothing stirring abroad but the goatherds
and their flocks. Here and there they stopped
before the houses, and were milked into the cans which
the sleepy maid-servants brought to the door. The
sight was suggestive. I went up to one man and
begged him to let me have a draught of milk, after
which, feeling much refreshed, I went on my way.
"A good many fishermen were already on the beach,
so that I had no difficulty in getting a boat. The sky
wore a subdued: aspect; out at sea rose Capri, and my
heart beat fast as I looked at its mystic outline, with
its deep and solemn steel colour cut clearly against the
light grey sky. In my excitement I began imagining
that the melancholy look of the island was a presage of
evil to the girl who dwelt there.
"I had plenty of time to indulge my fancies, for it
was ten o'clock when at last we reached the island. I
hurried on through Capri, scarcely looking to right or
left, though people saluted me here and there.
"I soon reached the rocky stairs leading to
Ana-Capri, and climbed the five hundred and sixty steps
more quickly than I should have thought possible.
'This very day I shall see her again, face to face'--beyond
that I could think of nothing; sufficient for the
day was the joy thereof. On reaching the platform of
the mountain at last, I was forced to stand still for a moment to allay the beating of my heart; for after all I must not betray my feelings to the whole village if I wished just to see her once more--that once more being the utmost I could hope for, or expect, at the time.
"On entering the quiet, idyllic little place again, full
of women's song and rattling looms, I felt an inordinate
wish to call out loud, 'Antonella, Antonella!'
which no doubt would have gathered all the women
and girls of the mountain-town around me. But I had
still sufficient sense to repress my wish. Instead of
rushing on as I had done, I now dawdled, less perhaps
through prudent simulation of indifference, than from
the inexplicable feeling that impels one to defer the
goal when it seems in sight.
"Slowly as I walked, however, I could not be for
ever on the way, and so, as if unawares, found myself
with my head swimming round, in front of the little
white house. There was no sign of any one stirring
about the place, so I walked in through the open door.
In the same dark chamber, kneeling before the same
dimly-lit shrine, Antonella's mother was absorbed in
prayer, as when I had, before come upon her
unexpectedly.
"On my cheerfully calling her by name with a
greeting she started violently, and then rose; or rather
tottered to her feet. As she came forward to welcome
me, I noticed that she looked aged by many years, and
her eyes were red and swollen with weeping. She
tried to say something about the pleasure of seeing me,
but broke down in the middle, and the tears began
rolling down her withered cheeks instead.
"'What is it?' I cried, seizing her hand with a
sudden sickening feeling. 'Good God, what has
happened--tell me, quick, quick!'
"The unhappy woman seemed bewildered by my
vehemence, in spite of her grief, and looked almost
blankly at me; so I had impatiently to repeat my
query, adding--'Where is your daughter? Is it well
with her?' with a trembling in my voice that I could
not control.
"Signora Mansi, who had by this time recovered a
little composure, repeated my words in a stifled,
questioning manner, absently passing one hand over
another--'Is it well with her! Ah, is it not well with
my poor child!'
"The sad resignation in her tone, her inexplicable
manner, drove me almost frantic. All sorts of
misfortune that could possibly have happened to Antonella
since I had left darted through my brain at once, with
an agony of fear and self-reproach. I tingled all over
with some dread anticipation, and with futile rage I
upbraided myself for I scarce knew what.
"The poor woman, without much heeding me, went
on muttering--more to the image of the Virgin and
Child than addressing me--'Yes, the dear Madonna
has taken five of them, five that I nursed and suckled
at the breast--three at sea, one with the fever, and
the smallest of all in the cradle; and now the last,
she wants the last! O light of my life, why has
thou left me lonely in my old age?'
"I could bear this suspense no longer. In my wild
excitement I fear I grasped her hand roughly enough,
as I asked harshly, 'Why do you torture me thus?
Tell me the worst, if worse there is! What has become of her? Speak, speak, I entreat you!'
"Signora Mansi, thus urgently recalled to the fact of
my presence, which she had quite forgotten I believe,
fixed her eyes all at once with piercing intentness on
mine as though she would read my very soul; and then
dropping into a chair and covering her face with
her hands, she sobbed--'Sanctimissa Madre! Is it
possible! Ah, had my unhappy child but known,
perchance she would not have gone--but I am
blaspheming in my grief.'
"'Gone where, where?' I cried, in my impatience
striding up and down the narrow room, and striking
my hand against the lintel of the door; 'for the
hundredth time I ask you--where is she? 'But in
my despair of getting any answer, I now flung open
the hack door that looked on the terraces of the
pillared and vine-trellised garden, and called at the
top of my voice--'Antonella! Antonella!'
"At the sound of her daughter's name, the poor
mother uttered a piteous moan, and coming towards
me, flung her arms round my neck and sobbed--'Too
late; she cannot hear, oh she cannot hear
you now!' Then letting me go again, and laying her
hand on my arm, she said with an inflection that chilled
me: 'You will never see her again, my poor young
man; she has gone for ever, left me for ever, to enter
the Convent St. Maria del Soccorsa at Naples, and
take the vows there.'
"I gave a cry, such a cry as a wild beast may utter,
and sank down as though somebody had given me a
blow on the head; but in an instant I was up again,
and seizing the scared, sobbing woman by the shoulders, I hissed in her ear, 'I will get at her! I will see her again, though all the bolts and bars of the church should enclose her!'
"Frightened at the blasphemy of my language, the
poor mother sank on her knees again and muttered an
Ave, interspersed with sobs and tears; while I, grasping
my head with my hands, was trying to realize the
position and collect my thoughts. But I could not
think! I was all on fire with thwarted longing, for
in these latter hours the strength of my passion had
grown in proportion to the insuperable obstacles against
which it lashed itself almost into madness.
"All at once I felt my hands softly kissed, and stroked
and fondled. Antonella's mother was standing before
me, and in a voice as if she were speaking to a little
child, she said, 'Be comforted, be comforted, my son.
Jesu hath lived, and hath died for us, and should we
not give up our children if it be God's will?'
"For a moment the pathos of that sorrowing mother's
voice made me forget my own grief and rage; her thin
face, to which a great sorrow lent its dignity, might have
been that of a Mater Dolorosa itself. I could only look
at, not answer her, as with an infinitely touching gesture
she threw out her empty hands and cried: 'Ah, but
the Madonna may be wroth with me if I am too loth--she
who gave her own bambino for us sinners. And yet
she was the last that was left--the last; they were all
taken from me, all the little ones to whom I had given
suck, all the pretty ones that I dandled on my arms,
all the babes that I sang to sleep, singing, "Nonna,
Nonna, my sweet son, oh, Nonna!" She was the
last, the joy of my old eyes: for one the Holy Madonna took to herself out of the cradle, the little Lilla made of violets and jasmine buds; and one died of the fever; and three went down at sea; and she was all that was left--my last little one, my child, the warmth of my old age, and she has gone from me too. Madonna--but I must not murmur; it is God's will, and I shall follow soon, soon now.' Here she sat down on a low stool, with one hand on each knee, and said ever so gently, looking up into my face: 'Tolla, my Tolla, the most beautiful child of the islands, they said! I seem to see her no higher than that'--and she held out her hand--'coming up the garden walk there. Ah, you loved her too, my son--but it's all for the best, no doubt,' and here she covered her face with her hands and wept.
"Had I been less preoccupied with my selfish passion,
I must have been touched even to tears by the depth
of this woman's uncomplaining sorrow; and more, I
must have been struck by the heartlessness of the girl
who could forsake this widowed mother and afflict her
with the living entombment of her last remaining child.
But there was no room for such thoughts in me then.
"Feeling as though every moment might for ever seal
Antonella's fate, I started up, pressed her mother's
hands hard in my own, and cried, 'You must, you
shall see your Tolla again!' then before she could
reply or remonstrate, I had rushed out of the house."
"What was I to do? Now for the first time I began
fully to realize what a difficult, nay, impossible undertaking
it would be, in those days of police and passports,
to penetrate the walls of a convent and make off with
nun or novice.
"Whilst I was meditating a reconnaissance of the
situation of the convent, some one suddenly slapped
me on the shoulder and called out in cheery tones:
'Why, by all that's good, it's you in the body at
last! Where have you been delving, old mole? I
have been hunting for you all over Naples in vain,
burning as I was to congratulate you on your success!
We are all so proud! We always sniffed the demon in
you, of course!--Why, confound it, what's up now? you look more moody than ever, and as if you wished me at Jericho! Are you composing a sonata to "Melencolia?"'
"In truth, though I really liked Raoul immensely,
and knew him for a good fellow, I was thoroughly put
out at meeting him at this inopportune moment. I
stammered some lame reply, and any one but he would
have seen that there was something up, and left me
to my own devices. Not so Raoul. With garrulous
pleasantry he linked his arm within mine and dragged
me along with him, pouring the while into my unwilling
ears a string of congratulations, news of Roman friends,
the last new scandal about Cardinal F., and only
interrupting himself to stare hard after every pretty girl
that passed. Luckily I was not called upon to reply,
as certainly I did not listen.
"In this manner, scarcely conscious where I was
going, we had proceeded some little way along the
quay of Santa Lucia, which at this hour was swarming
with life and motion like a very ant-hill. My friend
suddenly left my side as abruptly as he had come upon
me, but I was hardly aware of it, and was leaning, lost
in thought, over the parapet of the quay. I believe it
must have been a gloriously beautiful evening. Absently
I was looking at the bay, at the reflected lights that
dyed the sea as with rose-bloom, not consciously
noticing anything, only in my mind's eye conjuring up
a gloomy prison-like pile in which a captive girl would
beat out her life as a bird does against the bars of
its cage.
"I was just starting off I scarcely knew whither,
when Raoul, hopping and humming, and rolling a cigarette between his fingers and thumb, came excitedly back to my side, and gave me a shake, saying: 'Wake up, Emanuel, and don't stop there like one of the wooden posts! What has come over you again? Do look at those two ragged girls dancing there with castanets to the sound of that blind old man's mandolin.'
"Yes, it was my own tarantella that I heard for the
thousandth time! I was getting quite sick and tired
of it by this. As usual in Naples, all sorts of people
gradually joined in the dance. Well-dressed and
handsome maidens, ragged girls, nursemaids--who
calmly deposited their charges in other women's arms--were
capering away to my friend's intense enjoyment.
For my own part, I was just starting off in an opposite
direction when Raoul, plucking me by the sleeve,
exclaimed excitedly: 'Superb! magnificent! I never
saw such a walk, such a figure, such an action of the
arms and hands! No Greek statue ever showed nobler
proportions, more exquisitely moulded limbs! Why
she is actually going to dance! What a godsend!'
At those rapid exclamations, more vehement than
usual, I could do no less than stop and turn round
again, not so much from curiosity as to please Raoul.
"But, good God, the shock it gave me! I gasped
out some incoherent exclamation, and almost staggered
against the wall in my surprise. Was it Antonella--Antonella
in the flesh? Antonella not shut up in cold,
dark, convent walls, but dancing my tarantella under
the sweet sky of Naples, in all the supremacy of her
matchless grace!
"Rooted to the spot I stood and stared at her; and
all the time Raoul kept up a running commentary of words, and jerked out such broken sentences as--'Isn't she glorious? What modulated grace in all her motions! This girl ought to do nothing but dance! She is rhythm embodied in flesh! She has actually inspired that old man, for his instrument squeaks less than heretofore; and all the other dancers have stopped still to look at her!
"'There, what a theme for you to work out,
Emanuel! What a model for me to paint from. She
must be got at any cost, at any cost!' and he was
darting off again, when for all answer I turned sharp
upon him, and clutching hold of his arm till he winced
again, said between my teeth: 'Don't joke about her!
She's the girl I'm madly in love with! If you only
knew the danger she's in at this very moment! Ah!
she must be out of her senses, I fear. Those soldiers
there looking on, if they guessed who she was, would
clap her in prison. But we must save her--you must
help me to save her, Raoul.'
"Raoul, at first quite dumbfoundered, soon regained
his natural vivacity, and rubbing his arm exclaimed--'Heavens!
have you poisoned the Santo Padre between
you? I'll help you; but first tell us all about it! Now
I observe her more closely she looks as though the
dagger in her hair wasn't merely for ornament.'
"For all answer I beckoned him to follow me, and
noiselessly strode up to where Antonella was by this
time dancing and twirling, the centre of an enraptured
crowd. Elbowing my way through it, I placed myself
in such manner that my eyes were fully fixed on hers.
Antonella for one instant stared at me wildly; then, as
though under the influence of a potent spell, she became suddenly motionless as a statue. At an almost imperceptible sign from me she plunged into the crowd, which thereupon immediately dispersed, and along with it we three slipped away unperceived in the sudden darkening of the Italian twilight."
"The Frenchman whispering, 'Then
we will meet as agreed upon, at the Porta Capuana at
nine precisely,' darted off round the corner, while the
girl and I entered the premises.
"Antonella fell back a step, as going to the counter
I said to the shop-woman, 'Madam, I want to know
whether you can oblige us immediately with every
requisite of an English lady's travelling costume--gown,
scarf, bonnet, &c.?'
"Seeing the dubious, rather suspicious expression
on the woman's face, I hastened to add, 'I'll pay you
handsomely for the order, my good woman;' and
knowing the weakness of the sex for anything in the
shape of a love-affair, added, lowering my voice to a
confidential tone, 'You will be helping two lovers in distress.'
"The woman's face quite brightened at this, and
looking slyly round at my companion who had shrunk
behind me, said, 'Bé, bé, you want a regular lady's
dress, do you?' and she disappeared into a back room,
apparently to consult with some invisible adviser as to
what she had in stock:
"While she was gone Antonella came close up to
me, whispering, not without awe: 'Am I to have a
dress to sweep the ground, like a real lady?'
"Before I could answer her naive query the
shop-woman returned with various articles of attire slung
across her arm.
"'I have no ready-made dress whatever to fit your
lady,' she said, looking admiringly at Antonella's tall,
beautifully-made figure. 'All I can offer as a makeshift
is this black silk skirt made to order for a damigella
Inglese; the bodice would not fit you, but then you
can keep on your own under this black silk mantle.
Here's also a real shawl Inglese for travelling, if you
would like it. But will Madam step this way, and try
on what we have got?'
"So Antonella departed with the milliner, and after
what seemed to my impatience an incredibly long
time, reappeared in sweeping garments, a transformed
character. She seemed mightily pleased with the
result, only the poke bonnet did not meet with her
approval. In spite of the peril of her situation, she
actually urged on the shopkeeper to send to a neighbouring
establishment for some other specimens, as she
seemed childishly desirous of getting one as like as
possible to a certain Miladi who had fired her imagination at Capri with a leghorn of portentous dimensions.
"Almost in despair I looked on as Antonella tried
on bonnet after bonnet, by turns looking at the glass
and me; and finally she would have chosen the largest
and most conspicuous, but that, half beside myself, I
peremptorily bade her take the one I selected for her.
Then I hastily threw down the sum agreed upon, in my
haste giving the woman, I believe, a napoleon too
much. She obsequiously wished us good luck, as I
hurried off with Antonella on my arm, who kept tripping
over her unwonted length of skirt, which in our haste
had been merely slipped over her other things.
"'What have you been about, to make you so much
behind the time?' cried Raoul, rushing forward to
meet us on our reaching the appointed spot; 'but he
stopped in astonishment as though he hardly knew my
companion again, and with a respectful obeisance said,
'The carriage has been waiting these twenty minutes.'
"'Oh, it was all Antonella's bonnet,' said I, as,
lifting her into the carriage, we jumped in after her, and
the postilion cracking his whip, we rattled along the
road to Rome.
"'We might all be in peril of finding ourselves at
the Castle of St. Angelo, were it not for my foresight,'
said Raoul, in French, for fear of frightening Antonella,
and triumphantly waving a passport in my face.
'Mind, at the next Dogana you are Captain Jones and
his spouse--that worthy Britannic officer having lent it
to me in his horror of papacy. What do you say to
that for an idea? but in repayment I stipulate that
none but I shall paint her!'
"While Raoul thus rattled on, I tried to make Antonella
as comfortable as I could for the long night-journey,
partly with the plaid shawl, and partly with
some of the things that Raoul had been careful to fetch
for me from my lodging.
"I think she began now first to realize her strange
position, for the whirl and excitement of the last few
hours had scarcely admitted of reflection.
"She sat very much back in her corner of the
carriage, and though by the uncertain light of the lamp
the expression of her face escaped me, I could see the
nervous clasping and unclasping of her hands, while
her irregular breathing, broken now and then by a
spasmodic sigh, filled me with concern. But I thought
it better to leave her to herself a little, partly that she
might have time to calm herself, and partly that a
thousand conflicting considerations were jostling themselves
in my brain.
"Certainly it was a startling predicament to be in!
Here was I, almost against my will, carrying off the
daughter of poor but honest people, whose chief pride
consisted in their good name. Should I bring shame
and dishonour on the grey hairs of that sorrowful
mother, whose grief was as yet untainted by disgrace?
And yet such a marriage--to a man on the threshold of
his career--might be ruinous in its consequences!
"Raoul here raising his voice, roused me from my
preoccupation by remarking again in French: 'I don't
know whether you are aware, my friend, that I am
positively dying of curiosity! Here have I done everything
a mortal can to help you elope with the most
paintable girl in Italy, and yet you haven't deigned to
give me a word of explanation as to who she is, what mischief she's been up to, or what you are to do with her! If I'm to be of any further use, it would seem at least expedient to give me some hints concerning the latter, even though, as to the former, I may be willing to believe her one of the sirens themselves that you have netted off the coast of Capri.'
"I felt the justice of this interpellation. Antonella
had been so quiet that I might have thought her asleep
for some time, but for the feeble light that showed me
her eyes gazing fixedly in front of her. I put my hand
gently on her arm, and said: 'Antonella, this is Raoul,
my dearest friend, almost my brother; without him we
should not now be escaping as we are--he ought to
know all. I went back to Capri to see you. I saw
your poor mother this morning. Was it indeed only
this morning--it seems ever so long ago!' I exclaimed,
in amazement. 'Well, I saw your mother, who told
me, weeping, you had gone into a convent.'
"Here Antonella drooped her head lower, and gave,
I thought, a slight sort of shiver, but it was too dark
to notice more.
"'What on earth made you think of turning nun?'
I asked, not without a smile; for now that the danger
seemed receding, the idea of my bacchantic dancer
transformed into a saint was too incongruous. She
drew her arm away at my question; she seemed to
shrink more within herself.
"While I was speaking to Antonella, my friend,
with the instincts of a gentleman, had let down the
sash and was leaning out of the window, humming
softly to himself the while.
"All this time we had been bumping and tearing
along at the rate of seven miles an hour, the landscape,
with its hills, plains, and trees, shifting past us, as we
saw it revealed by snatches when the moon, floating
out of the grey, misty clouds, shone out triumphantly at
intervals. Now, however, the scarecrow Neapolitan
post-horses, reeking and panting with their exertions,
came to a dead stop in front of a forlorn-looking
post-house. Our postilion jumped from his saddle, and
after several kicks, knocks, and Neapolitan oaths, on
his part, at the closed door of the post-house, a surly
man with a lantern came stumbling down the steps,
two savage, starved-looking dogs barking furiously at
his heels. Three horses, with a man leading the foremost,
came slowly clattering down a steep incline from
their stable, and the three men now began an apparently
interminable process of unharnessing the old
and harnessing the fresh horses, which consisted chiefly
of a succession of loud slaps, kicks, and objurgations.
"Raoul, who heard my muttered exclamations of
impatience, shouted 'God damn!' every now and then
to keep up my character of English captain among the
men; and, as before, I promised the postilion double
drink-money, and went on shouting, 'Avanti, Avanti!'
to hasten their movements generally.
"At last the new horses were put in harness, the new
postilion leaped into his saddle, and with a great deal of
jolting and creaking, and swearing at the horses, we
got under weigh, and began rolling along the grey, dusty
high-road again.
"All this time Antonella, who had drawn her green
gauze veil over her face, sat perfectly still in her corner.
I could not help thinking of a child that had broken something or done something wrong. It was difficult to surmise what was passing in her mind, torn as she was from her accustomed surroundings, and whirled thus along to an unknown destiny. Indeed I felt for her, and should have probably felt more, were it not that I was in such constant apprehension of the gendarmes overtaking us. I knew very well that I had nothing to fear for myself, but the thought of her being dragged back to the convent was too terrible. Rather than that, it seemed to me that I ought to kill her and myself too.
"When once we were fairly started on the road, I
again turned to Antonella, and said very gently, 'I
would not for the world trouble you with questions on
a subject that may be distressing to you; but in case
of pursuit--if, as I suppose, you have indeed escaped
from a convent----'
"A look of mingled fear and triumph flashed from her
eyes in her dark corner, where the dim reflections from
the moonlight had become more perceptible to me, as
she exclaimed excitedly: 'I did run away from it! I
will tell you everything.' But then her courage seemed
to fail her again, and she said, in a piteous, awe-stricken
whisper, 'I have been very, very wicked! The Madonna
must be very angry with me!'
"Had it not been for Raoul, who had thrown himself
back in a listening attitude, I must have strained her to
my heart, and soothed with kisses the distress of this
bewitching sinner. But as it was I contented myself
with taking her hand in mine and passionately pressing
it, as I said--
"'Well, confess yourself to me, Antonella, and let me
see if I cannot give you absolution. First of all, what
made you think of going into a nunnery?'
"She withdrew her hand abruptly, and putting it up to
her brow as though she were trying to recollect, said,
after a moment's pause, in an absent manner, 'I don't
know! I don't know!' (Fool that I had been to ask!
At that instant the whole truth flashed upon me. For
love of me this magnificent creature had been going
to renounce all the joys of life. I forgot where I had
found her. The discovery of her love for me swept
every other consideration from my mind, and then and
there I resolved on marrying her, come of it what would.)
"'I won't ask you any more questions, my--my----'
I stopped myself abruptly, remembering my friend's
presence. 'You shall tell me everything in your own
way; and if you will only confide in me, all will come
right in the end, Antonella!'
"'Ah, Maestro!' she said, with sudden impetuosity,
'you have saved me once from the tarantula's poison:
will you save me now again from the narrow cell and
the nun's punishment? But this is how it happened.
Do you remember, Maëstro, that evening on L'unghia
Marina, when I left you?'
"'When you left me,' I cried, 'for the sheer pleasure
of tormenting me, I suppose, you wicked witch!'
"Antonella for the first time broke into a glad, musical
laugh, which at once gained the laughter-loving Raoul's
heart, and which I could not help joining too, as,
shaking my finger at her, I said, 'Yes, you left me in
the flesh to drive me half crazy with your shadow,
I believe.'
"Antonella fetched rather a long breath as she
answered, ''Twas I you saw, Maëstro. The tarantella
had got into my head again!'
"'How strange!' muttered Raoul interrogatively, in
French. 'What does she mean? Is she a little mad, eh?'
"'It is strange, indeed,' I replied, 'but I will tell
you all about it another time;' and turning to the girl,
'But why did you fly from me then in that wild way?
Could I not have helped you as I had done before?'
"But she again said in an impatient, almost angry,
tone, 'I don't know! I don't know!' then she hurried
on with great volubility--
"'The next day the hermit came to my mother, and
was talking to her in whispers, during which their eyes
were frequently turned on me, and I could hear him
repeating the word "Caverna," and that "the devil
caught such maidens," and "let her dedicate herself
to------." And my mother kept weeping till I grew
wroth with them both. Upon which in came Bice with
your brooch; and I don't know how, by and by I felt
the strange fit, of which you had cured me, returning,
and I screamed out, and remember nothing more. Then
the neighbours were around me, saying to my mother.
"What will you do with her? The musician is gone
now, who might have helped her. The holy man is
right, let her take the veil."
"While I heard what they were saying, I could not
open my eyes nor speak to them, and a great horror
came over me, for I could neither scream nor make any
sign. So I vowed myself to the Madonna's service if I
got healed; and then I sat straight up in my bed and
cried, "I am ready. I will go!"
"'My mother seized me in her arms and cried over
me; but I did not seem to feel anything--I only
remembered my vow.
"'The hermit, whom I had always feared, said:
"There is no time like the present. Return thanks to
the blessed Mary. Let her go; I charge myself with
her."
"'So the friar presently took me to Naples; and oh, I
did like to see the streets so full of people. But when he
took me through the gate of the Convent of St. Maria
del Soccorsa, with the gloomy walls around, and introduced
me to the abbess, I was frightened, and began to
repent of my vow. In a few days the friar returned to
confess me, as he had arranged with the abbess, and
then in a strange way he began asking whether----'
"She stopped abruptly with quivering lips, and
coloured, just as if in the excitement of her narration
she had forgotten to whom she was talking, and had
been suddenly recalled to it by what she was going to
say.
"'He asked you what, Antonella?' I said angrily,
much regretting that I had not thrashed the wretch to
within an inch of his life when I had him in my power.
"'Oh, nothing, nothing, Maëstro,' she said in a
frightened voice; 'what passes in confession, you know,
is a great crime to repeat.' And then she continued
very quickly, as though fearing further interrogation on
my part, 'Thus I was a novice, and there was a great
deal of praying early and late, and much weary work
to do; and it was dreary between the high, dark walls,
and only once I could escape to the bell-tower and get
a peep at the merry streets. And then, oh! it was very
wicked of me,' she sobbed, covering her face with her hands, 'I got to hate the abbess, and the sisters, and most of all the friar who had brought me to this, for I knew I must now go to hell for hating my vow to the Virgin.'
"'Poverina,' muttered Raoul, sympathetically.
"'No, no, no, Antonella!' cried I, pressing her
hand, 'you did quite right in hating the friar: it was
your good angel that bade you fly from that miserable
little fiend--you will think so too, when I tell you that
he did his best to put an end to me!'
"'Oh, Maëstro!' she exclaimed, instinctively seizing
hold of my arm, but letting it go again with a troubled
air.
"I then explained to her and Raoul how I had
nearly--thanks to the friar--fallen down a precipice,
but for an owlet's cry.
"To my astonishment Antonella began laughing
immoderately at this, and only after gradually quieting
down could she at last explain that she herself had
been the owl, having however conjectured in a highly
flattering way to myself that it was Falernian wine
which had nearly been the death of me.
"Well, to cut a long story short, the beautiful
Antonella found conventual discipline most distasteful
to her; indeed I much suspected that the deformed
friar had given her a further strong cause of offence.
At any rate she fell into a terrible melancholy, which
again ended in her going off into one of those curious
trances having all the similitude of death. She
remained so long, however, in this particular fit, owing
perhaps to the entire absence of dance music in that
holy community, that she was really supposed to be dead.
"She actually woke up one night in a damp, dark
vault, stretched on a bier between four lighted candles,
and two snoring, snuffy old nuns.
"No doubt the poor girl was horrified, but her daring
did not forsake her, and she there and then made up
her mind to escape at all risks. So the beautiful
creature, sliding down from the board, actually marched
in her shroud, barefooted, through the chill corridors
of the crypt. Once above ground, she easily found her
way to the room where her contadina's dress had been
deposited. This she deliberately flung over the wall,
and then with equal celerity she proceeded to the
porter's room, where she began to unhook the key
hanging above his pallet. In spite of her great
precaution, however, he opened his eyes and stared at her.
But evidently taking her for a ghost, he remained
motionless, I suppose from terror, and she let herself
out unhindered. She was just going to tell me what
madness had possessed her to go curveting about in her
precarious position, when she was abruptly interrupted
by our carriage suddenly coming to a full stop. The
moon was still high in the heavens, from which the
clouds had cleared off, as we were creaking and jolting
up the very steep main street of a place whose name
I have forgotten, but which for lugubriousness of aspect
might have outdone any of the wretched hamlets with
high-sounding names that Southern Italy boasts of. To
judge of it by this light, it might have been a collection
of banditti's haunts recently sacked by the Papal
gendarmerie. Half the large pale tiles that should
have been on the roofs lay smashed in the thoroughfare beneath. Eight or ten most villainous-looking men, with faces partly overshadowed by their huge felt hats--who had been leaning with their backs against a white wall, apparently in expectation of some casualty--surrounded us in a minute, screaming out, 'Scendete, scendete, Signori!'
"Said Raoul: 'Now we are making our own subjects!
Here's a picture for me, and a new Fra Diavolo for
you! Blest if these vagabonds are not going to carry
us off. This is retribution with a vengeance, and the
spoilers spoiled.'
"I confess that I did not myself see the comic side of
it as Raoul did; the idea of Antonella captured by
these ruffians was too intolerable. They were more
clamorous than ever, ominously staring in at us and
vociferating in their unknown patois, though we saw no
weapons. To put a good face upon it I leaped out
amongst them, saying: 'What do you want? Why
do you stop us?' Half a dozen hands now pointed
in explanation to the near hind-wheel, and the postilion
appeared to be in consultation with a man who was
evidently a blacksmith. Any anxiety which we had
entertained on the score of brigands, was now changed
into dismal impatience, but there was no help for it.
A lever prop was inserted under the axle, the defective
wheel taken off, and a dozen dark hands bore it to the
blacksmith's shed. I had my strong suspicions that
the innkeeper of Naples who supplied the vehicle, and
these suspicious-looking characters, were in league
together. But bribery and bullying seemed equally
unavailing. Something was wrong with the nave, or
the tire, or the felly of the wheel--I am sure I don't know which; certainly it had creaked enough before these pleasant villagers arrested us. The blacksmith set to at blowing up his fire, and the Fra Diavolesque villagers continued to vociferate in their dialect. Antonella kept quiet in her corner. Raoul and I walked up and down impatiently between the carriage and the smithy; he at times whispering to me, 'Give a good "God damn!" or two now you are near them.' So every time our walk brought us back to the group of vagabonds I ejaculated 'God damn!' as we nervously looked down the moonlit street scanning the distant misty road for signs of pursuit; when suddenly, clattering from the opposite direction, the horses of three real papal gendarmes came in sight.
"Raoul squeezed my arm, and I thought for the
moment it was all up with us. They drew rein in front
of the blacksmith's for an instant. I heard the word
'Milordi' uttered; they then came towards us and
asked us for our passports. Raoul felt in his pocket;
I haughtily gave them a scudo and a 'God damn!'
and wishing us a prosperous journey, they clattered
off again in the direction from whence we had come.
"I breathed once more, and approaching the smithy
again, inquired authoritatively of the blacksmith when
he would have done. To little purpose, however, as for
a full hour afterwards he went on hammering at his
bits of iron. Every minute we expected to see the
gendarmes return with others from Naples. The
peaceful night, however, was undisturbed except for the
ringing of the anvil, and the jabber and occasional
laughter of the wild-looking villagers. At length, to
our inexpressible relief, the wheel, upborne by the same dark hands, emerged from out the recesses of the Cyclopean smithy, whose furnace every now and then glowed like a demon's eye as the bellows intensified it, bringing out in lurid lines the sinister countenances otherwise overshadowed by their broad brims. The blacksmith's claim of a napoleon for his hour's hammering was discharged. Numerous small coins appeased the clamours of the grinning peasants, and with a tremendous cracking of whip we recommenced our flight with renewed vigour."
THE END OF VOL. I.