The First Violin Part 40

Eugen was usually prompt enough in all he did, but he laid aside that letter, and proposed in a subdued tone that we should have breakfast.

Which we had, and still the letter lay unopened. And when breakfast was over he even took up his violin and played runs and shakes and scales--and the air of a drinking song, which sounded grotesque in contrast with the surroundings. This lasted for some time, and yet the letter was not opened. It seemed as if he could not open it. I knew that it was with a desperate effort that he at last took it up, and--went into his room and shut the door.

I was reading--that is, I had a book in my hands, and was stretched out in the full luxury of an unexpected holiday upon the couch; but I could no more have read under the new influence, could no more have helped watching Sigmund, than I could help breathing and feeling.

He, Sigmund, stood still for a moment, looking at the closed door; gazing at it as if he expected it to open, and a loved hand to beckon him within. But it remained pitilessly shut, and the little boy had to accommodate himself as well as he could to a new phase in his mental history--the being excluded--left out in the cold. After making an impulsive step toward the door he turned, plunged his hands into his pockets as if to keep them from attacking the handle of that closed door, and walking to the window, gazed out, silent and motionless. I watched; I was compelled to watch. He was listening with every faculty, every fiber, for the least noise, the faintest movement from the room from which he was shut out. I did not dare to speak to him. I was very miserable myself; and a sense of coming loss and disaster was driven firmly into my mind and fixed there--a heavy prevision of inevitable sorrow and pain overhung my mind. I turned to my book and tried to read.

It was one of the most delightful of romances that I held--no other than "Die Kinder der Welt"--and the scene was that in which Edwin and Toinette make that delightful, irregular Sunday excursion to the Charlottenburg, but I understood none of it. With that pathetic little real figure taking up so much of my consciousness, and every moment more insistently so, I could think of nothing else.

Dead silence from the room within; utter and entire silence, which lasted so long that my misery grew acute, and still that little figure, which was now growing terrible to me, neither spoke nor stirred. I do not know how long by the clock we remained in these relative positions; by my feelings it was a week; by those of Sigmund, I doubt not, a hundred years. But he turned at last, and with a face from which all trace of color had fled walked slowly toward the closed door.

"Sigmund!" I cried, in a loud whisper. "Come here, my child! Stay here, with me."

"I must go in," said he. He did not knock. He opened the door softly, and went in, closing it after him. I know not what pa.s.sed. There was silence as deep as before, after one short, inarticulate murmur. There are some moments in this our life which are at once sacrificial, sacramental, and strong with the virtue of absolution for sins past; moments which are a crucible from which a stained soul may come out white again. Such were these--I know it now--in which father and son were alone together.

After a short silence, during which my book hung unheeded from my hand, I left the house, out of a sort of respect for my two friends. I had nothing particular to do, and so strolled aimlessly about, first into the Hofgarten, where I watched the Rhine, and looked Hollandward along its low, flat sh.o.r.es, to where there was a bend, and beyond the bend, Kaiserswerth. It is now long since I saw the river. Fair are his banks higher up--not at Elberthal would he have struck the stranger as being a stream for which to fight and die; but to me there is no part of his banks so lovely as the poor old Schone Aussicht in the Elberthal Hofgarten, from whence I have watched the sun set flaming over the broad water, and felt my heart beat to the sense of precious possessions in the homely town behind. Then I strolled through the town, and coming down the Konigsallee, beheld some bustle in front of a large, imposing-looking house, which had long been shut up and uninhabited. It had been a venture by a too shortly successful banker. He had built the house, lived in it three months, and finding himself bankrupt, had one morning disposed of himself by cutting his throat. Since then the house had been closed, and had had an ill name, though it was the handsomest building in the most fas.h.i.+onable part of the town, with a grand _porte-cochere_ in front, and a pleasant, enticing kind of bowery garden behind--the house faced the Exerzierplatz, and was on the promenade of Elberthal. A fine chestnut avenue made the street into a pleasant wood, and yet Konigsallee No. 3 always looked deserted and depressing. I paused to watch the workmen who were throwing open the shutters and uncovering the furniture. There were some women-servants busy with brush and duster in the hall, and a splendid barouche was being pushed through the _porte-cochere_ into the back premises; a couple of trim-looking English grooms with four horses followed.

"Is some one coming to live here?" I demanded of a workman, who made answer:

"_Ja wohl!_ A rich English milord has taken the house furnished for six months--Sir Le Marchant, _oder so etwas_. I do not know the name quite correctly. He comes in a few days."

"So!" said I, wondering what attraction Elberthal could offer to a rich English sir or milord, and feeling at the same time a mild glow of curiosity as to him and his circ.u.mstances, for I humbly confess it--I had never seen an authentic milord. Elberthal and Koln were almost the extent of my travels, and I only remembered that at the Niederrheinisches Musikfest last year some one had pointed out to me a decrepit-looking old gentleman, with a bottle-nose and a meaningless eye, as a milord--very, very rich, and exceedingly good. I had sorrowed a little at the time in thinking that he did not personally better grace his circ.u.mstances and character, but until this moment I had never thought of him again.

"That is his secretary," pursued the workman to me, in an under-tone, as he pointed out a young man who was standing in the middle of the hall, note-book in hand. "Herr Arkwright. He is looking after us."

"When does the _Englander_ come?"

"In a few days, with his servants and milady, and milady's maid and dogs and bags and everything. And she--milady--is to have those rooms"--he pointed overhead, and grinned--"those where Banquier Klein was found with his throat cut. _He!_"

He laughed, and began to sing l.u.s.tily, "In Berlin, sagt' er."

After giving one more short survey to the house, and wondering why the apartments of a suicide should be a.s.signed to a young and beautiful woman (for I instinctively judged her to be young and beautiful), I went on my way, and my thoughts soon returned to Eugen and Sigmund, and that trouble which I felt was hanging inevitably over us.

Eugen was, that evening, in a mood of utter, cool aloofness. His trouble did not appear to be one that he could confide--at present, at least. He took up his violin and discoursed most eloquent music, in the dark, to which music Sigmund and I listened. Sigmund sat upon my knee, and Eugen went on playing--improvising, or rather speaking the thoughts which were uppermost in his heart. It was wild, strange, melancholy, sometimes sweet, but ever with a ringing note of woe so piercing as to stab, recurring perpetually--such a note as comes throbbing to life now and then in the "Sonate Pathetique," or in Raff's Fifth Symphony.

Eugen always went to Sigmund after he had gone to bed, and talked to him or listened to him. I do not know if he taught him something like a prayer at such times, or spoke to him of supernatural things, or upon what they discoursed. I only know that it was an interchange of soul, and that usually he came away from it looking glad. But to-night, after remaining longer than usual, he returned with a face more haggard than I had seen it yet.

He sat down opposite me at the table, and there was silence, with an ever-deepening, sympathetic pain on my part. At last I raised my eyes to his face; one elbow rested upon the table, and his head leaned upon his hand. The lamp-light fell full upon his face, and there was that in it which would let me be silent no longer, any more than one could see a comrade bleeding to death, and not try to stanch the wound. I stepped up to him and laid my hand upon his shoulder. He looked up drearily, unrecognizingly, unsmilingly at me.

"Eugen, what hast thou?"

"_La mort dans l'ame_," he answered, quoting from a poem which we had both been reading.

"And what has caused it?"

"Must you know, friend?" he asked. "If I did not need to tell it, I should be very glad."

"I must know it, or--or leave you to it!" said I, choking back some emotion. "I can not pa.s.s another day like this."

"And I had no right to let you spend such a day as this," he answered.

"Forgive me once again, Friedel--you who have forgiven so much and so often."

"Well," said I, "let us have the worst, Eugen. It is something about--"

I glanced toward the door, on the other side of which Sigmund was sleeping.

His face became set, as if of stone. One word, and one alone, after a short pause, pa.s.sed his lips--"_Ja!_"

I breathed again. It was so then.

"I told you, Friedel, that I should have to leave him?"

The words dropped out one by one from his lips, distinct, short, steady.

"Yes."

"That was bad, very bad. The worst, I thought, that could befall; but it seems that my imagination was limited."

"Eugen, what is it?"

"I shall not have to leave him. I shall have to send him away from me."

As if with the utterance of the words, the very core and fiber of resolution melted away and vanished, and the broken spirit turned writhing and shuddering from the phantom that extended its arms for the sacrifice, he flung his arms upon the table; his shoulders heaved. I heard two suppressed, choked-down sobs--the sobs of a strong man--strong alike in body and mind; strongest of all in the heart and spirit and purpose to love and cherish.

"_La mort dans l'ame_," indeed! He could have chosen no fitter expression.

"Send him away!" I echoed, beneath my breath.

"Send my child away from me--as if I--did not--want him," said Courvoisier, slowly, and in a voice made low and halting with anguish, as he lifted his gaze, dim with the desperate pain of coming parting, and looked me in the face.

I had begun in an aimless manner to pace the room, my heart on fire, my brain reaching wildly after some escape from the fetters of circ.u.mstance, invisible but iron strong, relentless as cramps and glaives of tempered steel. I knew no reason, of course. I knew no outward circ.u.mstances of my friend's life or destiny. I did not wish to learn any. I did know that since he said it was so it must be so.

Sigmund must be sent away! He--we--must be left alone; two poor men, with the brightness gone from our lives.

The scene does not let me rightly describe it. It was an anguish allied in its intensity to that of Gethsemane. Let me relate it as briefly as I can.

I made no spoken a.s.surance of sympathy. I winced almost at the idea of speaking to him. I knew then that we may contemplate, or believe we contemplate, some coming catastrophe for years, believing that so the suffering, when it finally falls, will be lessened. This is a delusion.

Let the blow rather come short, sharp, and without forewarning; preparation heightens the agony.

"Friedel," said he at last, "you do not ask why must this be."

"I do not need to ask why. I know that it must be, or you would not do it."

"I would tell you if I could--if I might."

"For Heaven's sake, don't suppose that I wish to pry--" I began. He interrupted me.

"You will make me laugh in spite of myself," said he. "You wish to pry!

Now, let me see how much more I can tell you. You perhaps think it wrong, in an abstract light, for a father to send his young son away from him. That is because you do not know what I do. If you did, you would say, as I do, that it must be so--I never saw it till now. That letter was a revelation. It is now all as clear as suns.h.i.+ne."