The First Violin Part 77

Von Francius, before he died, had made a mark not to be erased in the hearts of his musical compatriots. Had he lived--but that is vain!

Still, one feels--one can now but feel--that, as his widow said to me, with matter-of-fact composure:

"He was much more hardly to be spared than such a person as I, Herr Helfen. If I might have died and left him to enrich and gladden the world, I should have felt that I had not made such a mess of everything after all."

Yet she never referred to him as "my poor husband," or by any of those softening terms by which some people approach the name of a dead dear one; all the same we knew quite well that with him life had died for her.

Since his death, she and I had been in frequent communication; she was editing a new edition of his works, for which, after his death, there had been an instant call. It had lately been completed; and the music of our former friend shall, if I mistake not, become, in the best and highest sense of the word, popular music--the people's music. I had been her eager and, she was pleased to say, able a.s.sistant in the work.

We journeyed on together through the winter country, and I glanced at her now and then--at the still, pale face which rose above her English-fas.h.i.+oned sealskin, and wondered how it was that some faces, though never so young and beautiful, have written upon them in unmistakable characters, "The End," as one saw upon her face. Still, we talked about all kinds of matters--musical, private, and public. I asked if she went out at all.

"Only to concerts with the von ----s, who have been friends of mine ever since I went to ----," she replied; and then the train rolled into the station of Lahnburg.

There was a group of faces I knew waiting to meet us.

"Ah! there is my sister Stella," said Adelaide, in a low voice. "How she is altered! And that is May's husband, I suppose. I remember his face now that I see it."

We had been caught sight of. Four people came crowding round us.

Eugen--my eyes fell upon him first--we grasped hands silently. His wife, looking lovelier than ever in her winter furs and feathers. A tall boy in a sealskin cap--my Sigmund--who had been hanging on his father's arm, and whose eyes welcomed me more volubly than his tongue, which was never given to excessive wagging.

May and Frau von Francius went home in a carriage which Sigmund, under the direction of an awful-looking Kutscher, drove.

Stella, Eugen, and I walked to Rothenfels, and they quarreled, as they always did, while I listened and gave an encouraging word to each in turn. Stella Wedderburn was very beautiful; and after spending Christmas at Rothenfels, she was going home to be married. Eugen, May, and Sigmund were going too, for the first time since May's marriage.

Graf Bruno that year had temporarily abdicated his throne, and Eugen had been const.i.tuted host for the season. The guests were his and his wife's; the arrangements were his, and the entertainment fell to his share.

Grafin Hildegarde looked a little amazed at such of her guests, for instance, as Karl Linders. She had got over the first shock of seeing me a regular visitor in the house, and was pleased to draw me aside on this occasion, and inform me that really that young man, Herr Linders, was presentable--quite presentable--and never forgot himself; he had handed her into her carriage yesterday really quite creditably. No doubt it was long friends.h.i.+p with Eugen which had given him that extra polish.

"Indeed, Frau Grafin, he was always like that. It is natural."

"He is very presentable, really--very. But as a friend of Eugen's," and she smiled condescendingly upon me, "he would naturally be so."

In truth, Karl was Karl. "Time had not thinned his flowing locks;" he was as handsome, as impulsive, and as true as ever; had added two babies to his responsibilities, who, with his beloved Frau Gemahlin, had likewise been bidden to this festivity, but had declined to quit the stove and private Christmas-tree of home life. He wore no more short jackets now; his sister Gretchen was engaged to a young doctor, and Karl's head was growing higher--as it deserved--for it had no mean or shady deeds to bow it.

The company then consisted _in toto_ of Graf and Grafin von Rothenfels, who, I must record it, both looked full ten years younger and better since their prodigal was returned to them, of Stella Wedderburn, Frau von Francius, Karl Linders, and Friedhelm Helfen. May, as I said, looked lovelier than ever. It was easy to see that she was the darling of the elder brother and his wife. She was a radiant, bright creature, yet her deepest affections were given to sad people--to her husband, to her sister Adelaide, to Countess Hildegarde.

She and Eugen are well mated. It is true he is not a very cheerful man--his face is melancholy. In his eyes is a shadow which never wholly disappears--lines upon his broad and tranquil brow which are indelible. He has honor and t.i.tles, and a name clean and high before men, but it was not always so. That terrible bringing to reason--that six years' grinding lesson of suffering, self-suppression--ay, self-effacement--have left their marks, a "shadow plain to see," and will never leave him. He is a different man from the outcast who stepped forth into the night with a weird upon him, nor ever looked back till it was dreed out in darkness to its utmost term.

He has tasted of the sorrows--the self-brought sorrows which make merry men into sober ones, the sorrows which test a man and prove his character to be of gold or of dross, and therefore he is grave. Grave too is the son who is more wors.h.i.+ped by both him and his wife than any of their other children. Sigmund von Rothenfels is what outsiders call "a strange, incomprehensible child;" seldom smiles, and has no child friends. His friends are his father and "Mother May"--Mutterchen he calls her; and it is quaint sometimes to see how on an equality the three meet and a.s.sociate. His notions of what is fit for a man to be and do he takes from his father; his ideal woman--I am sure he has one--would, I believe, turn out to be a subtle and impossible compound of May and his aunt Hildegarde.

We sometimes speculate as to what he will turn out. Perhaps the musical genius which his father will not bring before the world in himself may one day astonish that world in Sigmund. It is certain that his very life seems bound up in the art, and in that house and that circle it must be a very Caliban, or something yet lower, which could resist the influence.

One day May, Eugen, Karl, and I, repaired to the music-room and played together the Fourth Symphonie and some of Schumann's "Kinderscenen," but May began to cry before it was over, and the rest of us had thoughts that did lie too deep for tears--thoughts of that far-back afternoon of Carnival Monday, and how we "made a suns.h.i.+ne in a shady place"--of all that came before--and after.

Between me and Eugen there has never come a cloud, nor the faintest shadow of one. Built upon days pa.s.sed together in storm and suns.h.i.+ne, weal and woe, good report and evil report, our union stands upon a firm foundation of that nether rock of friends.h.i.+p, perfect trust, perfect faith, love stronger than death, which makes a peace in our hearts, a mighty influence in our lives which very truly "pa.s.seth understanding."

THE END.

THE CRIMINAL WITNESS.

In the spring of '48, I was called to Jackson to attend court, having been engaged to defend a young man who had been accused of robbing the mail. I had a long conference with my client, and he acknowledged to me that on the night when the mail was robbed he had been with a party of dissipated companions over to Topham, and that on returning, they met the mail-carrier on horseback coming from Jackson. Some of his companions were very drunk, and they proposed to stop the carrier and overhaul his bag. The roads were very muddy at the time, and the coach could not run. My client a.s.sured me that he not only had no hand in robbing the mail, but that he tried to dissuade his companions from doing so. But they would not listen to him. One of them slipped up behind the carrier, and knocked him from his horse. Then they bound and blindfolded him, and having tied him to a tree, they took his mail-bag, and made off into a neighboring field, where they overhauled it, finding some five hundred dollars in money in the various letters. He went with them, but in no way did he have any hand in the crime. Those who did do it had fled, and, as the carrier had recognized him as in the party, he had been arrested.

The mail-bag had been found, as well as the letters. Those letters from which money had been taken, were kept, by order of the officers, and duplicates sent to the various persons, to whom they were directed, announcing the particulars. These letters had been given me for examination, and I had then returned them to the prosecuting attorney.

I got through with my private preliminaries about noon, and as the case would not come up before the next day, I went into the court in the afternoon, to see what was going on. The first case which came up was one of theft, and the prisoner was a young girl, not more than seventeen years of age, named Elizabeth Madworth. She was very pretty, and bore that mild, innocent look, which we seldom find in a culprit.

The complaint against her set forth that she had stolen one hundred dollars from a Mrs. Naseby; and as the case went on, I found that this Mrs. Naseby was her mistress, she (Mrs. N.) being a wealthy widow, living in the town. The poor girl declared her innocence in the wildest terms, and called on G.o.d to witness that she would rather die than steal. But circ.u.mstances were hard against her. A hundred dollars, in bank notes had been stolen from her mistress's room, and she was the only one who had access there.

At this juncture, while the mistress was upon the witness stand, a young man came and caught me by the arm.

"They tell me you are a good lawyer?" he whispered.

"I am a lawyer," I answered.

"Then--oh!--save her! You can certainly do it, for she is innocent."

"Has she no counsel?" I asked.

"None that's good for anything--n.o.body that'll do anything for her. Oh, save her, and I'll pay you all I've got. I can't pay you much, but I can raise something."

I reflected for a moment. I cast my eyes toward the prisoner, and she was at that moment looking at me. She caught my eye, and the volume of humble, prayerful entreaty I read in those large, tearful orbs, resolved me in a moment. I arose and went to the girl, and asked her if she wished me to defend her. She said yes. Then I informed the court that I was ready to enter into the case, and I was admitted at once.

I asked for a moment's cessation, that I might speak with my client. I went and sat down by her side, and asked her to state candidly the whole case. She told me she had lived with Mrs. Naseby nearly two years, and that during all that time she had never had any trouble before. About two weeks ago, she said, her mistress lost a hundred dollars.

"She missed it from her drawer," the girl told me, "and she asked me about it, but I knew nothing of it. The next thing I knew, Nancy Luther told Mrs. Naseby that she saw me take the money from her drawer--that she watched me through the keyhole. Then they went to my trunk, and they found twenty-five dollars of the missing money there. But, oh, sir, I never took it--and somebody else put that money there!"

I then asked her if she suspected any one.

"I don't know," she said, "who could have done it but Nancy. She has never liked me, because she thought I was treated better than she was.

She is the cook, and I was the chamber-maid."

She pointed Nancy Luther out to me. She was a stout, bold-faced girl, somewhere about five-and-twenty years old, with a low forehead, small gray eyes, a pug nose and thick lips.

"Oh, sir, can you help me?" my client asked, in a fearful whisper.

"Nancy Luther, did you say that girl's name was?" I asked, for a new light had broken in upon me.

"Yes, sir."

"Is there any other girl of that name about here?"

"No, sir."

"Then rest easy. I'll try hard to save you."

I left the courtroom, and went to the prosecuting attorney and asked him for the letters I had handed him--the ones that had been stolen from the mail-bag. He gave them to me, and, having selected one, I returned the rest, and told him I would see that he had the one I kept before night.