"Will you sing?"
The theater season closed with that evening on which "Lohengrin" was
performed. I ran no risk of meeting Courvoisier face to face again in
that alarming, sudden manner. But the subject had assumed diseased
proportions in my mind. I found myself confronted with him yet, and week
after week. My business in Elberthal was music--to learn as much music
and hear as much music as I could: wherever there was music there was
also Eugen Courvoisier--naturally. There was only one _städtische
Kapelle_ in Elberthal. Once a week at least--each Saturday--I saw him,
and he saw me at the unfailing instrumental concert to which every one
in the house went, and to absent myself from which would instantly set
every one wondering what could be my motive for it. My usual companions
were Clara Steinmann, Vincent, the Englishman, and often Frau Steinmann
herself. Anna Sartorius and some other girl students of art usually
brought sketch-books, and were far too much occupied in making studies
or caricatures of the audience to pay much attention to the music. The
audience were, however, hardened; they were used to it. Anna and her
friends were not alone in the practice. There were a dozen or more
artists or _soi-disant_ artists busily engaged with their sketch-books.
The concert-room offered a rich field to them. One could at least be
sure of one thing--that they were not taking off the persons at whom
they looked most intently. There must be quite a gallery hidden away in
some old sketch-books--of portraits or wicked caricatures of the
audience that frequented the concerts of the Instrumental Musik Verein.
I wonder where they all are? Who has them? What has become of the
light-hearted sketchers? I often recall those homely Saturday evening
concerts; the long, shabby saal with its faded out-of-date decorations;
its rows of small tables with the well-known groups around them; the
mixed and motley audience. How easy, after a little while, to pick out
the English, by their look of complacent pleasure at the delightful ease
and unceremoniousness of the whole affair; their gladness at finding a
public entertainment where one's clothes were not obliged to be selected
with a view to outshining those of every one else in the room; the
students shrouded in a mystery, secret and impenetrable, of tobacco
smoke. The spruce-looking school-boys from the Gymnasium and Realschule,
the old captains and generals, the Fräulein their daughters, the
_gnädigen Frauen_ their wives; dressed in the disastrous plaids, checks,
and stripes, which somehow none but German women ever got hold of.
Shades of Le Follet! What costumes there were on young and old for an
observing eye! What bonnets, what boots, what stupendously daring
accumulation of colors and styles and periods of dress crammed and piled
on the person of one substantial Frau Generalin, or Doctorin or
Professorin! The low orchestra--the tall, slight, yet commanding figure
of von Francius on the estrade; his dark face with its indescribable
mixture of pride, impenetrability and insouciance; the musicians behind
him--every face of them well known to the audience as those of the
audience to them: it was not a mere "concert," which in England is
another word for so much expense and so much vanity--it was a gathering
of friends. We knew the music in which the Kapelle was most at home; we
knew their strong points and their weak ones; the passage in the
Pastoral Symphony where the second violins were a little weak; that
overture where the blaseninstrumente came out so well--the symphonies
one heard--the divine wealth of undying art and beauty! Those days are
past: despite what I suffered in them they had their joys for me. Yes; I
suffered at those concerts. I must ever see the one face which for me
blotted out all others in the room, and endure the silent contempt which
I believed I saw upon it. Probably it was my own feeling of inward
self-contempt which made me believe I saw that expression there. His
face had for me a miserable, basilisk-like attraction. When I was there
he was there, I must look at him and endure the silent, smiling disdain
which I at least believed he bestowed upon me. How did he contrive to do
it? How often our eyes met, and every time it happened he looked me full
in the face, and never would give me the faintest gleam of recognition!
It was as though I looked at two diamonds, which returned my stare
unwinkingly and unseeingly. I managed to make myself thoroughly
miserable--pale and thin with anxiety and self-reproach I let this man,
and the speculation concerning him, take up my whole thoughts, and I
kept silence, because I dreaded so intensely lest any question should
bring out the truth. I smiled drearily when I thought that there
certainly was no danger of any one but Miss Hallam ever knowing it, for
the only person who could have betrayed me chose now, of deliberate
purpose, to cut me as completely as I had once cut him.
As if to show very decidedly that he did intend to cut me, I met him one
day, not in the street, but in the house, on the stairs. He sprung up
the steps, two at a time, came to a momentary pause on the landing, and
looked at me. No look of surprise, none of recognition. He raised his
hat; that was nothing; in ordinary politeness he would have done it had
he never seen me in his life before. The same cold, bright, hard glance
fell upon me, keen as an eagle's, and as devoid of every gentle
influence as the same.
I silently held out my hand.
He looked at it for a moment, then with a grave coolness which chilled
me to the soul, murmured something about "not having the honor," bowed
slightly, and stepping forward, walked into Vincent's room.
I was going to the room in which my piano stood, where I had my music
lessons, for they had told me that Herr von Francius was waiting. I
looked at him as I went into the room. How different he was from that
other man; darker, more secret, more scornful-looking, with not less
power, but so much less benevolence.
I was _distrait_, and sung exceedingly ill. We had been going through
the solo soprano parts of the "Paradise Lost." I believe I sung vilely
that morning. I was not thinking of Eva's sin and the serpent, but of
other things, which, despite the story related in the Book of Genesis,
touched me more nearly. Several times already had he made me sing
through Eva's stammering answer to her God's question:
"Ah, Lord!... The Serpent!
The beautiful, glittering Serpent,
With his beautiful, glittering words,
He, Lord, did lead astray
The weak Woman!"
"Bah!" exclaimed von Francius, when I had sung it some three or four
times, each time worse, each time more distractedly. He flung the music
upon the floor, and his eyes flashed, startling me from my uneasy
thoughts back to the present. He was looking at me with a dark cloud
upon his face. I stared, stooped meekly, and picked up the music.
"Fräulein, what are you dreaming about?" he asked, impatiently. "You are
not singing Eva's shame and dawning terror as she feels herself undone.
You are singing--and badly, too--a mere sentimental song, such as any
school-girl might stumble through. I am ashamed of you."
"I--I," stammered I, crimsoning, and ashamed for myself too.
"You were thinking of something else," he said, his brow clearing a
little. "_Na!_ it comes so sometimes. Something has happened to distract
your attention. The amiable Miss Hallam has been a little _more_ amiable
than usual."
"No."
"Well, well. _'S ist mir egal._ But now, as you have wasted half an hour
in vanity and vexation, will you be good enough to let your thoughts
return here to me and to your duty? or else--I must go, and leave the
lesson till you are in the right voice again."
"I am all right--try me," said I, my pride rising in arms as I thought
of Courvoisier's behavior a short time ago.
"Very well. Now. You are Eva, please remember, the first woman, and you
have gone wrong. Think of who is questioning you, and--"
"Oh, yes, yes, I know. Please begin."
He began the accompaniment, and I sung for the fifth time Eva's
scattered notes of shame and excuse.
"Brava!" said he, when I had finished, and I was the more startled as he
had never before given me the faintest sign of approval, but had found
such constant fault with me that I usually had a fit of weeping after my
lesson; weeping with rage and disappointment at my own shortcomings.
"At last you know what it means," said he. "I always told you your forte
was dramatic singing."
"Dramatic! But this is an oratorio."
"It may be called an oratorio, but it is a drama all the same. What more
dramatic, for instance, than what you have just sung, and all that goes
before? Now suppose we go on. I will take Adam."
Having given myself up to the music, I sung my best with earnestness.
When we had finished von Francius closed the book, looked at me, and
said:
"Will you sing the 'Eva' music at the concert?"
"I?"
He bowed silently, and still kept his eyes fixed upon my face, as if to
say, "Refuse if you dare."
"I--I'm afraid I should make such a mess of it," I murmured at last.
"Why any more than to-day?"
"Oh! but all the people!" said I, expostulating; "it is so different."
He gave a little laugh of some amusement.
"How odd! and yet how like you!" said he. "Do you suppose that the
people who will be at the concert will be half as much alive to your
defects as I am? If you can sing before me, surely you can sing before
so many rows of--"
"Cabbages? I wish I could think they were."
"Nonsense! What would be the use, where the pleasure, in singing to
cabbages? I mean simply inhabitants of Elberthal. What can there be so
formidable about them?"
I murmured something.
"Well, will you do it?"
"I am sure I should break down," said I, trying to find some sign of
relenting in his eyes. I discovered none. He was not waiting to hear
whether I said "yes" or "no," he was waiting until I said "yes."
"If you did," he replied, with a friendly smile, "I should never teach
you another note."
"Why not?"
"Because you would be a coward, and not worth teaching."
"But Miss Hallam?"
"Leave her to me."
I still hesitated.
"It is the _premier pas qui coûte_," said he, keeping a friendly but
determined gaze upon my undecided face.
"I want to accustom you to appearing in public," he added. "By degrees,
you know. There is nothing unusual in Germany for one in your position
to sing in such a concert."
"I was not thinking of that; but that it is impossible that I can sing
well enough--"
"You sing well enough for my purpose. You will be amazed to find what an
impetus to your studies, and what a filip to your industry will be given
by once singing before a number of other people. And then, on the
stage--"
"But I am not going on the stage."
"I think you are. At least, if you do otherwise you will do wrong. You
have gifts which are in themselves a responsibility."
"I--gifts--what gifts?" I asked, incredulously. "I am as stupid as a
donkey. My sisters always said so, and sisters are sure to know; you may
trust them for that."
"Then you will take the soprano solos?"
"Do you think I can?"
"I don't think you can; I say you must. I will call upon Miss Hallam
this afternoon. And the _gage_--fee--what you call it?--is fifty
thalers."
"What!" I cried, my whole attitude changing to one of greedy
expectation. "Shall I be paid?"
"Why, _natürlich_," said he, turning over sheets of music, and averting
his face to hide a smile.
"Oh! then I will sing."
"Good! Only please to remember that it is my concert, and I am
responsible for the soloists; and pray think rather more about the
beautiful glittering serpent than about the beautiful glittering
thalers."
"I can think about both," was my unholy, time-serving reply.
Fifty thalers. Untold gold!