The First Violin Part 52

"I am not: but I should have supposed that my unwillingness--if I had been unwilling--would have been an inducement to you to ask me."

"_Herrgott!_ Why?"

"Since you took a vow to be disagreeable to me, and to make me hate you."

A slight flush pa.s.sed rapidly over his face, as he paused for a moment and bit his lips.

"_Mein Fraulein_--that night I was in bitterness of spirit--I hardly knew what I was saying--"

"I will accompany you," I interrupted him, my heart beating. "Only how can I begin unless you play, or tell me what you want to play?"

"True," said he, laughing, and yet not moving from his place beside the piano, upon which he had leaned his elbow, and across which he now looked at me with the self-same kindly, genial glance as that he had cast upon me across the little table at the Koln restaurant. And yet not the self-same glance, but another, which I would not have exchanged for that first one.

If he would but begin to play I felt that I should not mind so much; but when he sat there and looked at me and half smiled, without beginning anything practical, I felt the situation at least trying.

He raised his eyes as the door opened at the other end of the saal.

"Ah, there is Friedhelm," said he, "now he will take seconds."

"Then I will not disturb you any longer."

"On the contrary," said he, laying his hand upon my wrist. (My dream of the morning flashed into my mind.) "It would be better if you remained, then we could have a trio. Friedel, come here! You are just in time.

Fraulein Wedderburn will be good enough to accompany us, and we can try the Fourth Symphony."

"What you call 'Spring'?" inquired Helfen, coming up smilingly. "With all my heart. Where is the score?"

"What you call Spring?" Was it possible that in winter--on a cold and unfriendly day--we were going to have spring, leafy bloom, the desert filled with leaping springs, and blossoming like a rose? Full of wonder, surprise, and a certain excitement at the idea, I sat still and thought of my dream, and the rain beat against the windows, and a draughty wind fluttered the tinselly decorations of last night. The floor was strewed with fragments of garments torn in the crush--paper and silken flowers, here a rosette, there a buckle, a satin bow, a tinsel spangle. Benches and tables were piled about the room, which was half dark; only to westward, through one window, was visible a paler gleam, which might by comparison be called light.

The two young men turned over the music, laughing at something, and chaffing each other. I never in my life saw two such entire friends as these; they seemed to harmonize most perfectly in the midst of their unlikeness to each other.

"Excuse that we kept you waiting, _mein Fraulein_," said Courvoisier, placing some music before me. "This fellow is so slow, and will put everything into order as he uses it."

"Well for you that I am, _mein lieber_," said Helfen, composedly. "If any one had the enterprise to offer a prize to the most extravagant, untidy fellow in Europe, the palm would be yours--by a long way too."

"Friedel binds his music and numbers it," observed Courvoisier. "It is one of the most beautiful and affecting of sights to behold him with scissors, paste-pot, brush and binding. It occurs periodically about four times a year, I think, and moves me almost to tears when I see it."

"_Der edle Ritter_ leaves his music unbound, and borrows mine on every possible occasion when his own property is scattered to the four winds of heaven."

"_Aber! aber!_" cried Eugen. "That is too much! I call Frau Schmidt to witness that all my music is put in one place."

"I never said it wasn't. But you never can find it when you want it, and the confusion is delightfully increased by your constantly rus.h.i.+ng off to buy a new _part.i.tur_ when you can't find the old one; so you have three or four of each."

"This is all to show off what he considers his own good qualities; a certain slow, methodical plodding and a good memory, which are natural gifts, but which he boasts of as if they were acquired virtues. He binds his music because he is a pedant and a prig, and can't help it; a bad fellow to get on with. Now, _mein bester_, for the 'Fruhling.'"

"But the Fraulein ought to have it explained," expostulated Helfen, laughing. "Every one has not the misfortune to be so well acquainted with you as I am. He has rather insane fancies sometimes," he added, turning to me, "without rhyme or reason that I am aware, and he chooses to a.s.sert that Beethoven's Fourth Symphony, or the chief motive of it, occurred to him on a spring day, when the master was, for a time, quite charmed from his bitter humor, and had, perhaps, some one by his side who put his heart in tune with the spring songs of the birds, the green of the gra.s.s, the scent of the flowers. So he calls it the 'Fruhling Symphonie,' and will persist in playing it as such. I call the idea rather far-fetched, but then that is nothing unusual with him."

"Having said your remarkably stupid say, which Miss Wedderburn has far too much sense to heed in the least, suppose you allow us to begin,"

said Courvoisier, giving the other a push toward his violin.

But we were destined to have yet another coadjutor in the shape of Karl Linders, who at that moment strolled in, and was hailed by his friends with jubilation.

"Come and help! Your 'cello will give just the mellowness that is wanted," said Eugen.

"I must go and get it then," said Karl, looking at me.

Eugen, with an indescribable expression as he intercepted the glance, introduced us to one another. Karl and Friedhelm Helfen went off to another part of the Tonhalle to fetch Karl's violoncello, and we were left alone again.

"Perhaps I ought not to have introduced him. I forgot 'Lohengrin,'" said Eugen.

"You know that you did not," said I, in a low voice.

"No," he answered, almost in the same tone. "It was thinking of that which led me to introduce poor old Karl to you. I thought, perhaps, that you would accept it as a sign--will you?"

"A sign of what?"

"That I feel myself to have been in the wrong throughout--and forgive."

As I sat, amazed and a little awed at this almost literal fulfillment of my dream, the others returned.

Karl contributed the tones of his mellowest of instruments, which he played with a certain pleasant breadth and brightness of coloring, and my dream came ever truer and truer. The symphony was as spring-like as possible. We tried it nearly all through; the hymn-like and yet fairy-like first movement; the second, that song of universal love, joy, and thanksgiving, with Beethoven's masculine hand evident throughout. To the notes there seemed to fall a suns.h.i.+ne into the room, and we could see the fields casting their covering of snow, and withered trees bursting into bloom; brooks swollen with warm rain, birds busy at nest-making; clumps of primroses on velvet leaves, and the subtle scent of violets; youths and maidens with love in their eyes; and even a hint of later warmth, when hedges should be white with hawthorn, and the woodland slopes look, with their sheets of hyacinths, as if some of heaven's blue had been spilled upon earth's gra.s.s.

As the last strong, melodious modulations ceased, Courvoisier pointed to one of the windows.

"Friedhelm, you wretched unbeliever, behold the refutation of your theories. The symphony has brought the sun out."

"For the first time," said Friedhelm, as he turned his earnest young face with its fringe of loose brown hair toward the sneaking sun-ray, which was certainly looking shyly in. "As a rule the very heavens weep at the performance. Don't you remember the last time we tried it, it began to rain instantly?"

"Miss Wedderburn's co-operation must have secured its success then on this occasion," said Eugen, gravely, glancing at me for a moment.

"Hear! hear!" murmured Karl, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his violoncello and smiling furtively.

"Oh, I am afraid I hindered rather than helped," said I, "but it is very beautiful."

"But not like spring, is it?" asked Friedhelm.

"Well, I think it is."

"There! I knew she would declare for me," said Courvoisier, calmly, at which Karl Linders looked up in some astonishment.

"Shall we try this 'Traumerei,' Miss Wedderburn, if you are not too tired?"

I turned willingly to the piano, and we played Schumann's little "Dreams."

"Ah," said Eugen, with a deep sigh (and his face had grown sad), "isn't that the essence of sweetness and poetry? Here's another which is lovely. 'Noch ein Paar,' _nicht wahr?_"

"And it will be 'noch ein Paar' until our fingers drop off," scolded Friedhelm, who seemed, however, very willing to await that consummation.

We went through many of the Kinderscenen and some of the Kreissleriana, and just as we finished a sweet little "Bittendes Kind," the twilight grew almost into darkness, and Courvoisier laid his violin down.

"Miss Wedderburn, thank you a thousand times!"