The First Violin Part 17

"You must let us part on equal terms," I reiterated. "It is unjust--"

"Yourself closed all possibility of the faintest attempt at further acquaintance, _mein Fraulein_. The matter is at an end."

"Herr Courvoisier, I--"

"At an end," he repeated, calmly, gently, looking at me as he had often looked at me since the night of "Lohengrin," with a glance that baffled and chilled me.

"I wish to apologize--"

"For what?" he inquired, with the faintest possible look of indifferent surprise.

"For my rudeness--my surprise--I--"

"You refer to one evening at the opera. You exercised your privilege, as a lady, of closing an acquaintance which you did not wish to renew. I now exercise mine, as a gentleman, of saying that I choose to abide by that decision, now and always."

I was surprised. Despite my own apologetic frame of mind, I was surprised at his hardness; at the narrowness and ungenerosity which could so determinedly shut the door in the face of an humble penitent like me. He must see how I had repented the stupid slip I had made; he must see how I desired to atone for it. It was not a slip of the kind one would name irreparable, and yet he behaved to me as if I had committed a crime; froze me with looks and words. Was he so self-conscious and so vain that he could not get over that small slight to his self-consequence, committed in haste and confusion by an ignorant girl? Even then, even in that moment I asked myself these questions, my astonishment being almost as great as my pain, for it was the very reverse, the very opposite of what I had pictured to myself. Once let me see him and speak to him, I had said to myself, and it would be all right; every lineament of his face, every tone of his voice, bespoke a frank, generous nature--one that could forgive. Alas! and alas! this was the truth!

He had come to the door; he stood by it now, holding it open, looking at me so courteously, so deferentially, with a manner of one who had been a gentleman and lived with gentlemen all his life, but in a way which at the same time ordered me out as plainly as possible.

I went to the door. I could no longer stand under that chilling glance, nor endure the cool, polished contempt of the manner. I behaved by no means heroically; neither flung my head back, nor muttered any defiance, nor in any way proved myself a person of spirit. All I could do was to look appealingly into his face; to search the bright, steady eyes, without finding in them any hint of softening or relenting.

"Will you not take it, please?" I asked, in a quivering voice and with trembling lips.

"Impossible, _mein Fraulein_," with the same chilly little bow as before.

Struggling to repress my tears, I said no more, but pa.s.sed out, cut to the heart. The door was closed gently behind me. I felt as if it had closed upon a bright belief of my youth. I leaned for a moment against the pa.s.sage wall and pressed my hand against my eyes. From within came the sound of a child's voice, "_Mein vater_," and the soft, deep murmur of Eugen's answer; then I went down-stairs and into the open street.

That hated, hateful three thalers ten groschen were still clasped in my hand. What was I to do with it? Throw it into the Rhine, and wash it away forever? Give it to some one in need? Fling it into the gutter?

Send it him by post? I dismissed that idea for what it was worth. No; I would obey his prohibition. I would keep it--those very coins, and when I felt inclined to be proud and conceited about anything on my own account, or disposed to put down superhuman charms to the account of others, I would go and look at them, and they would preach me eloquent sermons.

As I went into the house, up the stairs to my room, the front door opened again and Anna Sartorius overtook me.

"I thought you had left the probe?" said I, staring at her.

"So I had, _Herzchen_," said she, with her usual ambiguous, mocking laugh; "but I was not compelled to come home, like a good little girl, the moment I came out of the Tonhalle. I have been visiting a friend.

But where have you been, for the probe must have been over for some time? We heard the people go past; indeed, some of them were staying in the house where I was. Did you take a walk in the moonlight?"

"Good-night," said I, too weary and too indifferent even to answer her.

"It must have been a tiring walk; you seem weary, quite _ermudet_," said she, mockingly, and I made no answer.

"A haupt-probe is a dismal thing after all," she called out to me from the top of the stairs.

From my inmost heart I agreed with her.

CHAPTER XIII.

KAFFEEKLATSCH.

"_Phillis._ I want none o' thy friends.h.i.+p!

_Lesbia._ Then take my enmity!"

"When a number of ladies meet together to discuss matters of importance, we call it 'Kaffeeklatsch,'" Courvoisier had said to me on that never-forgotten afternoon of my adventure at Koln.

It was my first kaffeeklatsch which, in a measure, decided my destiny.

Hitherto, that is, up to the end of June, I had not been at any entertainment of this kind. At last there came an invitation to Frau Steinmann and to Anna Sartorius, to a.s.sist at a "coffee" of unusual magnitude, and Frau Steinmann suggested that I should go with them and see what it was like. Nothing loath, I consented.

"Bring some work," said Anna Sartorius to me, "or you will find it _langweilig_--slow, I mean."

"Shall we not have some music?"

"Music, yes, the sweetest of all--that of our own tongues. You shall hear every one's candid opinion of every one else--present company always excepted, and you will see what the state of Elberthal society really is--present company still excepted. By a very strange chance the ladies who meet at a klatsch are always good, pious, virtuous, and, above all, charitable. It is wonderful how well we manage to keep the black sheep out, and have nothing but lambs immaculate."

"Oh, don't!"

"Oh, bah! I know the Elberthal _Klatscherei_. It has picked me to pieces many a time. After you have partaken to-day of its coffee and its cakes, it will pick you to pieces."

"But," said I, arranging the ruffles of my very best frock, which I had been told it was _de rigueur_ to wear, "I thought women never gossiped so much among men."

Fraulein Sartorius laughed loud and long.

"The men! _Du meine Gute!_ Men at a kaffeeklatsch! Show me the one that a man dare even look into, and I'll crown you--and him too--with laurel, and bay, and the wild parsley. A man at a kaffee--_mag Gott es bewahren!_"

"Oh!" said I, half disappointed, and with a very poor, mean sense of dissatisfaction at having put on my pretty new dress for the first time only for the edification of a number of virulent gossips.

"Men!" she reiterated with a harsh laugh as we walked toward the Goldsternstra.s.se, our destination. "Men--no. We despise their company, you see. We only talk about them directly or indirectly from the moment of meeting to that of parting."

"I'm sorry there are no gentlemen," said I, and I was. I felt I looked well.

Arrived at the scene of the kaffee, we were conducted to a bedroom where we laid aside our hats and mantles. I was standing before the gla.s.s, drawing a comb through my upturned hair, and contemplating with irrepressible satisfaction the delicate lavender hue of my dress, when I suddenly saw reflected behind me the dark, harshly cut face of Anna Sartorius. She started slightly; then said, with a laugh which had in it something a little forced:

"We are a contrast, aren't we? Beauty and the Beast, one might almost say. _Na! 's schad't nix._"

I turned away in a little offended pride. Her familiarity annoyed me.

What if she were a thousand times cleverer, wittier, better read than I?

I did not like her. A shade crossed her face.

"Is it that you are thoroughly unamiable?" said she, in a voice which had reproach in it, "or are all English girls so touchy that they receive a compliment upon their good looks as if it were an offense?"

"I wish you would not talk of my 'good looks' as if I were a dog or a horse!" said I, angrily. "I hate to be flattered. I am no beauty, and do not wish to be treated as if I were."

"Do you always hate it?" said she from the window, whither she had turned. "_Ach!_ there goes Herr Courvoisier!"

The name startled me like a sudden report. I made an eager step forward before I had time to recollect myself--then stopped.