A soft haze hung over Zelitz. The moonlight, filtering through it,
touched the paths and shrubs with shifting radiance and lifted them out
of shadow. Under the big trees the darkness lay black, but in the open
spaces it had given way to a gray, elusive whiteness that came and went
like a still breathing of the quiet night.
A young girl, coming down one of the winding paths, paused a moment in
the open space to listen. The hand that held her trailing, shimmering
skirts away from the gravel was strong and supple, and the face thrown
back to the moonlight wore a tense, earnest look; but the dark eyes in
their curving lids were like a child's eyes. They seemed to laugh
subtly. It may have been that the moonlight shifted across them.
A young man, standing in the shadow of the trees, smiled to himself as
he watched her. He stepped from beneath the trees and crossed the open
space between them.
The girl watched him come without surprise.
"It is a beautiful night, Herr Schubert," she said quietly as he stood
beside her.
"A wonderful night, my lady," he answered softly.
She looked down at him.
"Why are you not in the castle, playing?" she demanded archly.
"The night called me," he said.
She half turned away.
He started forward.
"Do not go," he breathed.
She paused, looking at him doubtfully.
"I came to walk," she said. She moved away a few steps and paused again,
looking back over her shoulder. "You can come----"
He sprang to her side, and they paced on in silence.
She glanced at him from under her lids.
His big face wore a radiant, absent-minded look. The full lips moved
softly.
"What are you thinking of?" she said swiftly.
He flushed and came back to her.
"Only a little song; it runs in my head."
"Hum it to me," she commanded.
He flushed again and stammered:
"Nein, nein; it is not yet born."
Her eyes were on the shifting light.
"Will you play it to me when it is done?" she asked softly.
"You know that I will."
She waited a moment.
"You have never dedicated a song to me," she said slowly. "There are
the four to my father--but he is the count; and the one last year for
Marie--why to Marie?--and one for them all. But not one least little
song for me!" The words had dropped under her breath. Her dark eyes were
veiled. No one could say whether they laughed now.
He looked up with a swift, brusque gesture.
"They are all yours; you know it." The low voice rebuked her gently.
"For six years they are yours--all that I have done." The face was
turned toward her. It was filled with pleading and a kind of gentle
beauty, clumsy and sweet.
She did not look at it.
"There is one that I should like to hear," she said musingly. "You
played it once, years ago, on a comb. I have not heard it since." She
laughed sweetly.
Schubert smiled. The hurt look stole from his eyes.
"You will hear it--my 'Erlkoenig'?" he demanded.
She nodded.
"I will play it to you when I come back," he said contentedly.
She stopped short in the path.
"When you come back!" The subtle eyes were wide. They were not laughing.
"Ja, I shall----"
"Where are you going?"
He rubbed his great nose in the moonlight.
"Nein, I know not. I know I must go----"
She stopped him impatiently.
"You will not go!" she said. He turned his eyes and looked at her. After
a moment her own fell. "Why will you go?" she asked.
The face with its dumb look was turned toward her.
"That little song--it calls me," he said softly. "When it is done I will
come back again--to you."
She smiled under the lids.
"That little song--is it for me?" she asked sweetly.
"Ja, for you." He looked pleadingly at the downcast face. "The song--it
is very sweet; it teases me."
The lids quivered.
"It comes to me so close, so close!" He was silent, a rapt look of
listening in his face. It broke with a swift sigh. "Ach! it is gone!"
She glanced at him swiftly.
"I thought the songs came quickly."
He shook his head.
"The others, yes; but not this one. It is not like the others. It is so
sweet and gentle--far away--and pure like the snow.... It calls me--"
He broke off, gazing earnestly at the beautiful, high-bred face, with
its downcast eyes.
"Nein! I cannot speak it," he said softly. "But the song it will speak
it for me--when I come."
She lifted her head, and held out her hand with a gesture half shy and
very sweet.
The moonlight veiled her. "I shall wait," she said gently--"for the
song."
He held the slender hand for a moment in his own; then it was laid
lightly against his lips, and turning, he had disappeared among the
shadows.
V
"Hallo, Franz! Hallo--there!"
Two young men, walking rapidly along the low hedge that shuts in the Zum
Biersack from the highway, lifted heated faces and glanced toward the
enclosure, where a youth seated at one of the tables had half risen from
his place, and was gesticulating with the open book in his hand to
vacant seats beside him.
"It is Tieze," said Schubert, with a smile. "Come in."
His companion nodded. The next instant a swift waiter had served them,
and three round, smiling faces surveyed one another above the foaming
mugs.
"Ach!" said Tieze, looking more critically at the shorter man, "but you
have grown thin, my friend. You are not so great."
Schubert smiled complacently. He glanced down at his rotund figure.
"Nein, I am little," he assented affably.
His companions broke into a roar of laughter.
"Drink her down, Franz! drink her down!" said Tieze, lifting the heavy
stein.
Schubert wiped the foam from his lips.
"Ja, that is good!" He drew a deep sigh.
He reached out his hand for the open volume that lay by his companion's
hand. It was given over in silence, and he dipped into it as he sipped
the beer, smiling and scowling and humming softly. Now and then he
lifted his head and listened. His eyes looked across the noisy garden
into space.
His companions ignored him. They laughed and chatted and sang. Other
young men joined the group, and the talk grew loud. It was the Sunday
festival of Warseck.
Schubert smiled absently across the babel.
"A pencil--quick!" he said in a low tone to Tieze. His hand holding the
open book trembled, and the big eyes glowed with fire.
Tieze fumbled in his pockets and shook his head.
Schubert glared at the careless group.
"A pencil, I tell you!" he said fiercely.
There was a moment's lull. Nobody laughed. Some one thrust a stub of
pencil across the table. A fat young man sitting at Schubert's side
seized it and, drawing a few music-bars on the back of a programme,
pushed it on to him.
"Ach!" said Schubert, with a grateful sigh, "Goot--goot!" In another
moment he was lost.
The talk grew louder. Hurried waiters rushed back and forth behind his
chair with foaming mugs and slices of black bread, and gray and brown.
Fiddles squeaked, and skittle-players shouted. Now and then the noise
broke off and changed to the national air, which the band across the
garden played loudly. But through it all Schubert's big head wagged
absently, and his short-sighted eyes glared at the barred lines and
flying pencil.
Suddenly he raised his head with a snort. His spectacles flew to his
forehead, and his round face smiled genially at the laughing group.
"Done?" asked the fat young man with a smile. He reached out his hand
for the scrawled page.
Schubert drew it jealously back.
"Nein," he said quickly.
Tieze, who had come around the table, stood behind them, scanning the
barred lines and the scattered shower of notes. He raised a quick hand
to the group about the table.
"Gott im Himmel!" he said excitedly. "Listen, you dunderheads!"
Silence fell on the group. Every glance was turned to him. He hummed
softly a few bars of sweetest melody--under the garden's din.... The
notes stopped in a choking gasp, Schubert's hand on his throat.
"Stop that!" he said hoarsely. The paper had been thrust loosely into
his coat pocket. His face worked fiercely.
Tieze drew back, half laughing, half alarmed.
"Franz! Franz!" he said.
The other brushed his hand across his forehead and drew a deep breath.
"Ja," he said slowly, "I might have killed you."
Tieze nodded. A look of curiosity held his face.
"It is schoen!" he said softly. "Schoen!"
Schubert turned abruptly.
"It is not for you.... For years I search that song, over mountains, in
the storm, in the sunshine; but it has never come--till here." His eye
swept the crowded place. "Now I have it"--he patted the rough coat
pocket--"now I have it, I go away."