STUDENT AND SOLDIER.
The sunset-gun had been fired from the ramparts of the fortifications of
Munich and the shadows were thickly descending on the famous old city of
Southern Germany. The evening breeze in this truly March weather came
chill over the plain of stones where Isar flowed darkly, and at the
first puff of it, forcing him to wind his cloak round him, a lonely
wanderer in the low quarter recognized why "the City of Monks" was also
called "the Realm of Rheumatism."
The new town, which he had not yet seen, might justify yet another of
its nicknames, "the German Athens," but here were, in this southern and
unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the
quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated
anterior to the filling up of the town moat in 1791.
The stranger was clearly fond of antiquarian spectacles, for his eye,
though too youthful to belong to a Dryasdust professor, and unshaded by
the almost universal colored spectacles of the learned classes, gloated
on the mansions, once inhabited by the wealthy burghers. They were
irregular in plan and period of erection; the windows had ornamental
frames of great depth, but some were blocked up, which gave the facades
a sinister aspect; the walls had not only ornamental tablets in stucco,
but, in a better light, would have shown rude fresco paintings not
unworthy mediæval Italian dwellings. Many of the fronts resembled the
high poops of the castellated ships of three hundred years ago, and they
cast a shadow on the muddy pavement. As they resembled ships, the slimy
footway seemed the strand where they had been beached by the running out
of the tide.
As the darkness increased, the amateur of architecture became more
solitary in the streets where the peasants in long black coats, their
holiday wear, were hurrying to leave by the gates, and the storekeepers
had renounced any hope of taking more money, in this ward, gloomy,
neglected and remote from the mode, no display of goods was made after
dark. But the man, finding novel effects in the obscurity, continued to
gaze on the rickety houses and bestowed only a transient portion of his
curiosity on the few wayfarers who stolidly trudged past him to cross a
bridge of no importance a little beyond his post.
One or two of the passengers, rather those of the gentler sex than the
rude one, had, however, given attention to the figure which the flowing
cloak did not wholly muffle. With his dark complexion and slender form,
not much in keeping with the thickset and heavy-footed natives, and his
glistening black eyes, he made the corner where he ensconced himself
appear the nook where an Italian or Spanish gallant was waylaying a
rival in love.
Presently there was a change in the lighting of the scene, the gloom had
become trying to his sight. Not only were two lamps lit on the small
bridge, one at each end in the ornate iron scroll work, which Quintin
Matsys would not have disavowed, but, overhead, the sky was reddened by
the reflection of the thousands of gas jets in the north and west; the
gay and spendthrift city was awakening to life and mirth while the
working town was going to bed. This glimmer gave a fresh attraction to
the architectural features, and still longer detained the spectator.
"Superb!" he muttered, in excellent German, without local peculiarity,
as if he had learned it from professors, but there was a slight trace of
an accent not native. "It has even now the effect which Gustavus
Adolphus termed: 'a gilded saddle on a lean jade!'" Then, shivering
again, he added, struck as well by the now completely deserted state of
the ways as by the cold wind: "How bleak and desolate! One could implore
these carved wooden statues to come down and people the odd, interesting
streets!"
He was about to leave the spot, when, as though his wish was gratified,
a strange sound was audible in the narrow and devious passages, between
tottering houses, and those even more squalid in the rear, a commingling
of shuffling and stamping feet, the smiting of heavy sticks on uneven
stones and the dragging of wet rags.
Struck with surprise, if not with apprehension, he shrank back into the
over-jutting porch of an old residence, with sculptured armorial
bearings of some family long ago abased in its pride. Here he peered,
not without anxiety.
By the exact programme carried out in cities by the divisions of its
population, a new contingent were coming from their resting-places to
substitute themselves for the honest toilers on the thoroughfares; each
cellar and attic in the rookeries were exuding the horrible vermin
which shun the wholesome light of day.
The spruce trees, stuck in tubs of sand at a beer-house beyond the
bridge, shuddered as though in disgust at this horde of Hans hastening
to invade the district of hotels, supper-houses and gaming clubs, to beg
or steal the means to survive yet another day.
For ten or fifteen minutes the stranger watched the beggars stream
individually out of the mazes and, to his horror, form like soldiers for
a review, along the street before him, up to the end of the bridge at
one extremity and far along at the other end of the line. Some certainly
spied him, for these wretches could see as lucidly as the felines in the
night--their day from society having reversed their conditions. But,
though these whispered the warning to one another, and he was the object
of scrutiny, no one left his place, and soon as their backs were turned
to him, he had no immediate uneasiness as regarded an attack, or even a
challenge upon his business there.
Probably the good citizens were not ignorant that this meeting of the
vagrants took place each evening, for not only were all store-doors
closed hermetically, but the upper windows no longer emitted a
scintillation of lamplight. The spy by accident concluded that he would
raise his voice for help all in vain as far as the tradesmen were
concerned. But he was brave, and he let increasing curiosity enchain him
continuously.
From time out of mind the sage in velvet has serenely contemplated
Diogenes in his tub; not that our philosopher seemed the treasurer of an
Alexander!
Ranged at length in a long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the
aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have
given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs,
the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a
cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and
imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob
were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on. The wind
brought the whistle of the railway locomotives and the clanking of a
steam-dredger in the river, like a giant toiling in massive chains.
For this platoon of vice and misery, crime and disorder, laziness and
rapine, the stranger confidently expected to see a commander appear
whose flashing, fearless eye, and upright, powerful frame, would account
for the awe in which all were held.
What was his amazement, therefore, to perceive--while a tremor of
emotion thrilled the line and announced the commander whom all
awaited--a bent-up, scarcely human-shaped form, hardly to be
acknowledged a woman's. It was enveloped in a heavily furred pelisse
fitted for a man.
This singular object appeared up the trap of a cellarway, much like the
opening of a sewer, on the opposite side of the street. She proceeded to
review the vagabonds and put questions and issue orders to each, which
were received like mandates from Cæsar by his legions. The voice was
fine and shrill, the movements betokened vigor, but the whole impression
was that the female captain-general of the beggars of Munich was far
from young.
In the obscurity, and keeping in the background as he did, it was not
possible for the stranger to scan her features; besides, they were
veiled by the long hair of a Polish hunter's cap, with earflaps and a
drooping foxtail, worn as the pompon but half-loosened in time. The
eyes that inspected the file of vagrants, shone with undiminished force,
and when they fell on the burliest and most impudent, these became quiet
and submissive. In a word, the cohort of beggary yielded utter
subserviency to this remarkable leader.
Questions and answers were uttered in a thieve's jargon which were
sealed letters to the eavesdropper, but it seemed to him that they all
addressed her as _Baboushka_! This struck him as more odd from its being
a Slavonic title, meaning "grandmother." Was it possible that he had
before him one of those prolific centenarians, truly a mother of the
tribe, a gypsy queen to whom allegiance went undisputed and who rules
the subterranean strata of society with fewer revolts against them than
their sister rulers know, who sit on thrones in the fierce white light?
In any case, he was given no leisure for deciding the question, for an
active urchin had whispered a word of caution which led the feminine
general to direct a piercing glance toward him, and hasten to conclude
her arrangements. The line broke up into little groups, though most of
the men went singly, and all tramped over the little foot-bridge, which
swung under the unusual mass.
Left alone, the vagrants' queen, placing her yellow and skinny hand on a
weapon, perhaps, among her rags, resolutely moved toward the spy. He
expected to be interrogated, for an attack was unlikely from a lone old
woman; but he grasped his cane firmly.
Luckily, a noise of steps at the other end of the street checked the
hag; she thrust back out of sight what had momentarily gleamed like the
steel of a knife or brass of a pistol-barrel; listened again and stared;
then, muttering what was probably no prayer for the stranger's welfare,
she crossed the street with amazing rapidity. The student, hearing a
heavy military tread at the mouth of the street, expected to see her
vanish down her burrow, but, to his astonishment, she proceeded toward
the new-comer.
"The Schutzmaun," muttered he, as there loomed into sight a decidedly
soldier-like man in a long cloak, thrown back to show the scarlet
lining, and dragging a clanking sabre.
Relying on her good angel, apparently, the witch boldly passed him, and
it seemed to the watcher that a sign of understanding was rapidly
exchanged between them. Baboushka seemed to enjoin caution for the
stranger hooked up his trailing sabre, wrapped his cloak around him and
came on less noisily. Certainly the old hag did not beg of him, but
hastened to leave the street.
If the new-comer had been the night guardian coming on duty, the student
might have lost any misgiving about the vagrants or their ruler; but he
was not sure that in him was a friend.
This was an officer, not a gendarme or military policeman. Cloak and
uniform were dark blue and fine. He bore himself with the swagger of a
personage of no inconsiderable rank, and also of some degree in the
nobility. Tall, burly, overbearing, the stranger took a dislike to him
from this one glance, and would have hesitated to appeal to him for
assistance had he felt in danger.
But the beggars had flocked into the rich quarter, and their
chieftainess vanished. He allowed the military gentleman to pass, and
was not sorry to see him cross the bridge with a steady, haughty step,
which made his heel ring on each plank. But, on reaching the farther
end, to the surprise of the watcher, his carriage immediately altered;
his step became cautious and, like the other whom he had not noticed, he
skulked in a doorway. He might have been thought a visitor there, but,
at the next moment, his red whiskers reappeared between the turned-up
collar of his mantle as he showed his head under the cornice of oak.
For what motive had the officer and nobleman stooped to skulking and
prying. One alone would amply exonerate the son of Mars--devotion to
Venus. And the architectural student, not fearing to pass the soldier in
his excusable ambush for a sweetheart, since his route over the bridge
into the new city, and not wishful to spoil the lover's sport, since he
was of the age to sympathize, prepared to leave his nook.
But it was fated that continual impediments were to be thrown in his
path on this eventful night. He had hardly taken two steps out of his
covert, which kept him hidden from the officer but revealed him to any
one approaching in the street, before a third individual of singular
mien caught his view and transfixed him with a thrill so sharp, poignant
and profound that a stroke of lightning would not have more dreadfully
affected him.
And yet, it was a woman--young by her step, light and quick as the
antelope's, graceful by her movements, charming by her outlines which a
poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the
mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one
hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she
held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be an infant's coffin.
Her dark and brilliant eyes had descried him from the distance, but, in
an instant recognizing that he was neither one of the usual nocturnal
denizens nor another sort of whom she need entertain dread, she came on
apace.
Indeed, he was far from resembling the vagrants. He was clad without any
attention to the toilette, after the manner of the German student, who
likes to affront the Pharisee but without overmuch eccentricity. Under
the voluminous cloak, warranted by the chilly wind, a tight-fitting
tunic of dark green cloth, caught in by a broad buff leather belt with
the clasp of a University, admirably defined the shapeliness of a slight
but manly form. His hair, black as the raven's wing, was worn long and
came curling down on his shoulders; his complexion was dark but clear.
But the whole appearance was of a marvel in physical excellencies; a
physiologist would have pointed to him as a model and result of the
combination of all desirable traits in both his progenitors. His
attitude, checked in the advance, denoted this perfection. The young
woman, set at ease by her glances and that peace which true symmetry
inspires, continued her way, averting her head with calculation, but he
felt sure that she was not offended.
He could laugh at the mistake he had made for, at this close encounter,
he perceived that what in the tragic mood originated by the review of
beggars in the shades of night, he had taken to be a child's casket, was
a violin-case. The girl--she was perhaps but sixteen--had the artist's
eye, black, fiery, deep and winning, while haughty for the vulgar
worshiper; her hair was treated in a fantastic fashion as unlike that of
the staid German maiden as its hue of black was the opposite of the
traditional flaxen. Even in the feeble street-lamplight, she appeared,
with her finely chiseled features of an Oriental type, handsome enough
to melt an anchorite, and in the beholder a flood of passion gushed up
and expanded his heart--devoid of such a mastering emotion before. He
believed this was love! Perhaps it was love--real, true, indubitable
love--but there is a mock-love with so much to advance in its favor that
it has won many a battle where the genuine feeling has fought long in
vain.
Sharing some shock not unlike his own in extent and sharpness, the girl
with the violin-case had paused just perceptibly in an unconscious
attitude which kept in the lamplight her bust, tightly encased in a
faded but elegant Genoa brocade jacket, with copper lace ornamentation,
coming down upon a promising curve, clothed in a similarly theatrical
skirt of flowered satin and China silk braid. On her wrists were
bracelets and on her ungloved hands many rings, with stones rather too
large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an
hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the
student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a
performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region,
bordering the fashionable one.
He almost regretted this conclusion, for the girl's forehead was so
high, her eyes so lofty and her delicate mouth so impressed with a proud
and energetical curl that no ambition would seem beyond the flight of
one thus beautiful and high-spirited.
Whatever the revolution she had exercised over him, he dared not avow
it, such respect did she inspire, and on her recovering from her
fleeting emotion, he let her resume her way without a word to detain
her.
She had not reached the first plank of the bridge before he suddenly
remembered the officer, like himself, in ambush; and in the same manner
as love--if that were love--had clutched his heart with the swiftness of
an eagle seizing its quarry, another sentiment, as fierce and
overpowering, jealousy, stung him to the quick.
As he glanced--but he had not taken his eyes off her, not even to look
if the military officer were still at his post--she had swept her
worsted wrapper round to set her foot on the first board of the bridge;
and he caught a glimpse, delightful and bewildering, of a foot, long but
slim and delicately modeled, and of a faultless ankle, in a vermilion
silk stocking and low-cut cordovan leather slipper--as theatrical as the
rest of her attire. Something innately aesthetical in the student, which
made him adore the exquisitely wrought, impelled him now to be the
slave--the devotee--the worshiper of this masterpiece of Nature.
Perhaps she stood in need of a defender?