The First Violin Part 41

I a.s.sented.

"Then you consent to take my word that it must be so, without more."

"Indeed, Eugen, I wish for no more."

He looked at me. "If I were to tell you," said he, suddenly, and an impulsive light beamed in his eyes. A look of relief--it was nothing else--of hope, crossed his face. Then he sunk again into his former att.i.tude--as if tired and wearied with some hard battle; exhausted, or what we more expressively call _niedergeschlagen_.

"Now something more," he went on; and I saw the frown of desperation that gathered upon his brow. He went on quickly, as if otherwise he could not say what had to be said: "When he goes from me, he goes to learn to become a stranger to me. I promise not to see him, nor write to him, nor in any way communicate with him, or influence him. We part--utterly and entirely."

"Eugen! Impossible! _Herrgott!_ Impossible!" cried I, coming to a stop, and looking incredulously at him. That I did not believe. "Impossible!"

I repeated, beneath my breath.

"By faith men can move mountains," he retorted.

This, then, was the flavoring which made the cup so intolerable.

"You say that that is and must be wrong under all circ.u.mstances," said Eugen, eying me steadily.

I paused. I could almost have found it in my heart to say, "Yes, I do."

But my faith in and love for this man had grown with me; as a daily prayer grows part of one's thoughts, so was my confidence in him part of my mind. He looked as if he were appealing to me to say that it must be wrong, and so give him some excuse to push it aside. But I could not.

After wavering for a moment, I answered:

"No. I am sure you have sufficient reasons."

"I have. G.o.d knows I have."

In the silence that ensued my mind was busy. Eugen Courvoisier was not a religious man, as the popular meaning of religious runs. He did not say of his misfortune, "It is G.o.d's will," nor did he add, "and therefore sweet to me." He said nothing of whose will it was; but I felt that had that cause been a living thing--had it been a man, for instance, he would have gripped it and fastened to it until it lay dead and impotent, and he could set his heel upon it.

But it was no strong, living, tangible thing. It was a breathless abstraction--a something existing in the minds of men, and which they call "Right!" and being that--not an outside law which an officer of the law could enforce upon him; being that abstraction, he obeyed it.

As for saying that because it was right he liked it, or felt any consolation from the knowledge--he never once pretended to any such thing; but, true to his character of Child of the World, hated it with a hatred as strong as his love for the creature which it deprived him of. Only--he did it. He is not alone in such circ.u.mstances. Others have obeyed and will again obey this invisible law in circ.u.mstances as anguis.h.i.+ng as those in which he stood, will steel their hearts to hardness while every fiber cries out, "Relent!" or will, like him, writhe under the lash, shake their chained hands at Heaven, and--submit.

"One more question, Eugen. When?"

"Soon."

"A year would seem soon to any of us three."

"In a very short time. It may be in weeks; it may be in days. Now, Friedhelm, have a little pity and don't probe any further."

But I had no need to ask any more questions. The dreary evening pa.s.sed somehow over, and bed-time came, and the morrow dawned.

For us three it brought the knowledge that for an indefinite time retrospective happiness must play the part of sun on our mental horizon.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"My Lady's Glory."

"Konigsallee, No. 3," wrote Adelaide to me, "is the house which has been taken for us. We shall be there on Tuesday evening."

I accepted this communication in my own sense, and did not go to meet Adelaide, nor visit her that evening, but wrote a card, saying I would come on the following morning. I had seen the house which had been taken for Sir Peter and Lady Le Marchant--a large, gloomy-looking house, with a tragedy attached to it, which had stood empty ever since I had come to Elberthal.

Up to the fas.h.i.+onable Konigsallee, under the naked chestnut avenue, and past the great long Caserne and Exerzierplatz--a way on which I did not as a rule intrude my ancient and poverty-stricken garments, I went on the morning after Adelaide's arrival. Lady Le Marchant had not yet left her room, but if I were Miss Wedderburn I was to be taken to her immediately. Then I was taken upstairs, and had time to remark upon the contrast between my sister's surroundings and my own, before I was delivered over to a lady's-maid--French in nationality--who opened a door and announced me as Mlle. Veddairebairne. I had a rapid, dim impression that it was quite the chamber of a _grande dame_, in the midst of which stood my lady herself, having slowly risen as I came in.

"At last you have condescended to come," said the old proud, curt voice.

"How are you, Adelaide?" said I, originally, feeling that any display of emotion would be unwelcome and inappropriate, and moreover, feeling any desire to indulge in the same suddenly evaporate.

She took my hand loosely, gave me a little chilly kiss on the cheek, and then held me off at arms'-length to look at me.

I did not speak. I could think of nothing agreeable to say. The only words that rose to my lips were, "How very ill you look!" and I wisely concluded not to say them. She was very beautiful, and looked prouder and more imperious than ever. But she was changed. I could not tell what it was. I could find no name for the subtle alteration; ere long I knew only too well what it was. Then, I only knew that she was different from what she had been, and different in a way that aroused tenfold all my vague forebodings.

She was wasted too--had gone, for her, quite thin; and the repressed restlessness of her eyes made a disagreeable impression upon me. Was she perhaps wasted with pa.s.sion and wicked thoughts? She looked as if it would not have taken much to bring the smoldering fire into a blaze of full fury--as if fire and not blood ran in her veins.

She was in a loose silk dressing-gown, which fell in long folds about her stately figure. Her thick black hair was twisted into a knot about her head. She was surrounded on all sides with rich and costly things.

All the old severe simplicity of style had vanished--it seemed as if she had gratified every pa.s.sing fantastic wish or whim of her restless, reckless spirit, and the result was a curious medley of the ugly, grotesque, ludicrous and beautiful--a feverish dream of Cleopatra-like luxury, in the midst of which she stood, as beautiful and sinuous as a serpent, and looking as if she could be, upon occasion, as poisonous as the same.

She looked me over from head to foot with piercing eyes, and then said half scornfully, half enviously:

"How well a stagnant life seems to suit some people! Now you--you are immensely improved--unspeakably improved. You have grown into a pretty woman--more than a pretty woman. I shouldn't have thought a few months could make such an alteration in any one."

Her words struck me as a kind of satire upon herself.

"I might say the same to you," said I, constrainedly. "I think you are very much altered."

Indeed I felt strangely ill at ease with the beautiful creature who, I kept trying to convince myself, was my sister Adelaide, but who seemed further apart from me than ever. But the old sense of fascination which she had been wont to exercise over me returned again in all or in more than its primitive strength.

"I want to talk to you," said she, forcing me into a deep easy-chair. "I have millions of things to ask you. Take off your hat and mantle. You must stay all day. Heavens! how shabby you are! I never saw anything so worn out--and yet your dress suits you, and you look nice in it." (She sighed deeply.) "Nothing suits me now. Formerly I looked well in everything. I should have looked well in rags, and people would have turned to look after me. Now, whatever I put on makes me look hideous."

"Nonsense!"

"It does--And I am glad of it," she added, closing her lips as if she closed in some bitter joy.

"I wish you would tell me why you have come here," I inquired, innocently. "I was so astonished. It was the last place I should have thought of your coming to."

"Naturally. But you see Sir Peter adores me so that he hastens to gratify my smallest wish. I expressed a desire one day to see you, and two days afterward we were _en route_. He said I should have my wish.

Sisterly love was a beautiful thing, and he felt it his duty to encourage it."

I looked at her, and could not decide whether she were in jest or earnest. If she were in jest, it was but a sorry kind of joke--if in earnest, she chose a disagreeably flippant manner of expressing herself.

"Sir Peter has great faith in annoying and thwarting me," she went on.

"He has been looking better and more cheerful ever since we left Rome."

"But Adelaide--if you wished to leave Rome--"