At the foot of the hill stood a low, old-fashioned frame house, with a
picket-fence round the yard, which ran down to a small stream that
sometimes flowed along slowly, and sometimes with a great rush, and
sometimes slept tranquilly beneath a sheeting of ice. Nearly a mile off,
smooth and level, with pleasant streets, and a church whose spire shone
in the sunlight long after the evening shade had crept over the ground,
was the village of Pickaway, the gem of Paint Valley.
From there, two days in every week, to the quaint old-fashioned house at
the foot of the hill, the children wended their way with music folios,
coming loiteringly in Summer over the narrow foot-path where the wild
columbine grew by the creek, but in Winter walking hurriedly over the
frozen turnpike, swinging their arms, blowing their fingers, and
sometimes doing battle bravely with the snow.
Here Franz Erckman lived in the plainest manner, with only his piano and
his cottage-organ for companions. Wife and children he had none, nor any
relative, nor any domestic pet. There was never a dog, or cat, or even
so much as a chicken, to be seen about the premises. One servant he
kept, to be sure, but she, a cross old woman, never opened her mouth for
the purpose of speech more than a dozen times in a year, and then it was
only upon some unusual provocation, as when the scholars broke a
pitcher, or muddied her floor, when she would give utterance to some
incoherent but disagreeable ejaculation.
Franz Erckman had lived in this way for nearly twenty years, and was
just as bluff in manner, and just as reserved in disposition, as when he
had first come there, an unknown young foreigner, without friends, or
acquaintances, or money, and commenced in a modest way giving
music-lessons to a few pupils at first, to many after a time.
When the new church was built, and a new organ with great gilded pipes
put in, his services were engaged, as well they might, for no other
person in the whole village could have made any thing whatever out of
all those stops, and pedals, and keys.
Now that Pickaway had grown to be quite a town, with a very respectable
hotel, many tourists came down in the summer season from the city to
rusticate for a week or two, and they always heard the organist with
astonishment. Inquiries about him were so often repeated by these
cultivated strangers, that Pickaway had finally grown to feel proud of
its musician, and it became as natural to them to show off Franz Erckman
as it did to call attention to the beautiful scenery. It would have been
hard to have overlooked either, for a more picturesque landscape could
rarely have been found.
However, all this praise and adulation had apparently made little effect
upon the village music-master, who had been again and again invited to
come up for one season to the city by these friendly tourists. They held
out to him the allurements of the orchestras and operas, and told
wonderful tales of the superb voices of the great _prime donne_. It was
all in vain. He always thanked them for their proffered hospitality, but
never accepted it, and lived along, seemingly content enough to teach
the village children, and play the church-organ. Only his one servant
knew how at night, and sometimes all night through, he tried
ineffectually to satisfy his great craving for music, and how, not until
the pale light of morning was visible in the east, would he shut his
cottage-organ. And when he turned from it there was always a strange
expression of despair upon his features.
The people of the town said he was penurious, for he invariably exacted
the tuition of each scholar in advance, and if at the appointed time it
was not forthcoming, he quietly dismissed the pupil without a word, and
there were no more lessons given until the quarter had been paid.
However, they grew to know him so well that every body fell into the
habit, in his case at least, of being punctual.
So, working steadily year after year, as he had done, with almost no
expenses of living, Pickaway thought he must have laid by quite a
fortune, and when the Widow Massey, poverty-stricken though she was,
made up her mind to send her little daughter—her only child—the poor,
weak, crippled little Alice, who went every Sunday to the church, and
listened with such deep delight to the strains of the great organ—when
the Widow Massey made up her mind to send her daughter to the
music-master, and give her this one pleasure, that it might brighten
somewhat the life so early blighted, all the people thought he would
surely take the child for nothing. But he did not—he took the money, the
full amount; and, if the people made sarcastic remarks about his
penuriousness, _they_ never offered to pay for the little girl. And the
mother never thought of asking a favor from any one. Though she earned
by hard labor scarcely enough to keep them, still for the last year she
had had this thought at heart, and quietly saved a little at a time,
until finally the long-coveted sum was in her possession; and gladly she
went and gave it to the music-master, who put it down at the bottom of
his vest-pocket, and told her to send the little girl twice a week. And
twice a week the little girl went.
That was in the Summer. She was pale, and thin, and delicate, and the
scholars all wondered how she would get there through the snow in the
Winter. But before the bleak winds had blown one rude blast, the little
Alice had a worse trouble. The Widow Massey suddenly fell ill and died,
commending her beloved child to the care only of the great Guardian
above.
It was a terrible stroke, and the people all wondered what would become
of the helpless daughter, who was too feeble to do any kind of work for
a means of subsistence, and every person thought it strange that
somebody else did not come to her relief.
It was very sad. The poor little creature seemed fairly racked with
grief, and had sat by the side of her dead mother day and night. On the
afternoon of the funeral they tried in vain to take her away, until
Franz Erckman came, and the people in surprise saw him lift her up in
his arms without a struggle, and quietly carry her out of the house.
They saw him, still with her arms clasped tight about his neck, crossing
the green pastures, strike the narrow foot-path by the creek, and
disappear as the path turned behind the heavy foliage that was brilliant
in the scarlet dyes of October.
It was not one of the days upon which he gave lessons. There was only
the ripple of water over the stones and the rustle of leaves that
occasionally blew down from the trees, to break the profound quiet of
the place as he passed through his gate. Not one word had been spoken,
and still in perfect silence he carried the frail little being, that he
could feel trembling from head to foot—he carried her across the broad
veranda and into the pleasant parlor—not the room that the scholars
used, but where his cottage-organ stood. Then he drew the sofa up beside
the instrument and laid her down upon it.
Her fingers unclasped with a convulsive movement, and Franz turned his
face away, for the child had not uttered a sound. Her eyes, dry and
unnaturally bright, wore a startled look, a mute, beseeching expression,
like the eyes of a wounded animal, and the pallor of her countenance,
that had a wild grief branded upon it, was almost as ghastly in hue as
death. It was suffering terrible to behold, and the hands of the strong
man trembled as he opened the mahogany case of his organ.
There was a moment’s silence; then music, soft and sorrowful, floated
out on the air gently, almost timidly; so very mournful, that the
strain, beautiful though it was, seemed to have in it a human cry of
pain. It was a language that could appeal to the heart when word or lip
failed.
The child’s whole frame shook beneath the heavy sobs that swelled up in
her throat, and the great grief had opened its flood-gates. Hour after
hour he played untiringly, while the violence of the storm spent itself.
The music, at first sorrowful, hurt, had cried out in its pain; then it
grew into a measure so yearning, it seemed the very genius of sympathy.
Making an intense appeal, it swelled into a great passion, which
gradually became exhausted by its own intense vehemence, until about the
going down of the sun it died. And the child slept.
The wild storm of anguish was over. Upon the face, the thin, pale face
of the little girl in her slumber, there shone an expression of such
absolute rest that Franz, with a sudden movement, bent down his head and
listened. Had she passed with the music to the land where there are
strains that swell into a _gloria_ never ending? He held his breath. Was
this the reflection of that peace eternal, that rest which endureth
forever? A sob quivered for a moment on her features, and escaped from
the lips of the sleeper. No, no, for sorrow showed its painful presence.
She was not dead, and, at the sigh, sad though it was to see, the man
arose with a smothered exclamation of relief.
The quiet day was drawing to its close. Within the room the shadows were
already thickening; without, long lines of mist festooned the hills in
plumes of royal purple, and the red haze of Indian-summer had gathered
into broad streamers that unfurled their splendor across the tranquil
sky. The floating twilight hung over the wide and level pastures. Down
by the creek the scarlet sage still showed its coral fringe, and
sometimes the woodbine, close by the house, waved its painted leaves.
Far off in the filmy vale the group of maples that had stood crowned
with a golden glory now shrouded themselves in black; and beyond, like a
long stretch of desolate shore, the great gloom lifted up its chilly
banks.
Many times from the window in his parlor Franz Erckman had watched the
divine pageant of night ascend the valley in all the pomp and grandeur
of its magnificence, in all the solemn majesty of its silence, in all
the ineffable depths of its sadness. Many times in his loneliness he had
seen it pass, when a vision of the fair Rhineland would come back to his
heart. Many times through its profound solitude he had looked out with
yearning eyes, with listening ears, striving to comprehend its sublime
mystery. Many times he had turned to it with a soul oppressed by despair
reaching toward the Infinite. For, though the people did not know it,
beneath the rough exterior of this reserved German dwelt a love of the
beautiful—a love so passionate sometimes, it seemed crushing his very
spirit that he could not give it utterance in his music. Then it was
that often he would rise from his organ in bitter disappointment, and go
out with his trouble to seek consolation from the night—the night
forever wan with her own unspoken sorrow.
But he stood watching the face of the sleeper, paying no heed to the
gathering shade. He stooped and arranged the cushions about the fragile
form with the gentle touch of a woman, while upon his features there
rested an expression more beautiful than they could ever borrow from the
softened light of the evening.
“She would have died,” he said to himself. “But for the music, I believe
she would have died! The chords of the organ spoke to her when all
earthly words failed. She, at least, can understand the language I have
been striving to learn.”
Frail little creature! She appeared, indeed, like a spirit of some other
world. Her every nerve had vibrated in sympathy, and Franz could hardly
help thinking, as he looked at her, that, soundless to human ears, there
played about her ceaseless strains of melody. Music seemed to be the
vitality that gave her life, the only nourishment that fed her soul.
When she first came to him for instruction, he quickly discovered that
she possessed not the least power of execution, and then had taken no
special notice of her further. Wrapped up in his art, teaching the
children had never been a pleasure to him. He compelled himself to
endure it as a means of subsistence.
The great object for which he worked was once to secure means enough to
keep penury always from his door, and then give himself up unreservedly
to this art which he loved better than his life. So he took no
particular interest in any of his scholars, and it was only when he saw
how eagerly the little Alice drank in every sound, that gradually he
began to observe the child more narrowly. As he had at first seen, she
possessed no power of execution whatever. She could not even learn to
read the notes, and she would probably never be able to play a single
bar correctly. But he had noticed how keenly alive she was to harmony,
how peculiarly sensitive to discord. It seemed as though her lessons
were a constant pain. Yet she came eagerly, and often lingered when they
were finished.
He had found her once, late in the day, when he had been playing
dreamily to himself, sitting on the veranda near the window of his
parlor, listening with a rapt attention, wholly unconscious of any thing
but his music. Since that, when she came to take her lesson, he had
always played for her, carelessly at first, but after a time with
greater interest, until gradually he had given up altogether any effort
to instruct her, and in its place each day played for her the oratorios
and symphonies of the great composers. Then he had changed from the
piano to his organ, and he had grown to wait nearly as anxiously for the
hour to come round as the little girl herself.
By degrees the visits of the child became to him almost indispensable.
He seemed to feel always a strange inspiration come upon him in her
presence. Why, he did not know; but it was then that sometimes the wild
tumult, the infinite longings of his soul struggled into expression.
But, when the child went, he would find himself again dejected, and
wholly unable even to recall the strains which seemed to have died at
the very moment of their birth.
Franz stood, still watching her motionless form. The sobs, quivering
through her sleep, had one by one exhausted themselves, and left her
face strangely peaceful to look upon.
“She is mine,” he muttered. “I will never part with her. She is my
spirit of sound!”
Suddenly he heard the grating noise of footsteps on the graveled walk.
Turning quickly, he drew the curtain over the window to shield the
sleeper from the damp night-air. Then he went softly out and closed the
door after him, wrapped once more in his severe reserve, and with the
old stern expression upon his features. His brows knit themselves into a
frown, and his lips curled for a moment with a smile of contempt when he
recognized the figure coming into the hall.
“Ha! Erckman, good-evening,” said the man, in a loud and boisterous
tone, which seemed to dissipate all the serenity of the night in its
pompous swell.
“Good-evening.”
If it had been the first time they had ever met, Franz could not have
spoken with colder formality as he showed his guest into the piano-room.
Mr. Cory claimed to be the richest man in Pickaway, and very likely it
was true. He owned hundreds of green and fertile acres, with cattle
sleek and fat. He was ruling elder in the church, and his wife bought
all her bonnets and flounces in the city, and they had built the finest
house in the whole of Paint Valley. Indeed, nothing was done without his
presence, and every one, from the minister to the sexton, received his
advice, which he distributed far more liberally than he did his money.
So it was that Franz had mentally guessed the object of his visit the
instant he recognized him in the hall.
“Fine weather, this.”
The organist made no more audible reply to the remark than a
half-uttered grunt, as he struck a match down the corner of the
mantelpiece, and lighted the lamp. Mr. Cory sat uneasily on the hard,
hair-cloth chair, dimly conscious of some obstruction in the usually
smooth channel of his discourse.
“Sad affair of the Widow Massey.”
“Yes.”
He looked about the room for a moment, as though expecting to discover
the presence of some third person, then repeated,—
“Sad affair! sad affair! We are all liable to sudden death, and she
ought to have been saving up, in case of such an event. She left nothing
to provide for the child at all. Nothing at all. The furniture will
barely bring enough to pay for her funeral expenses.”
Franz had sat down mechanically on the music-stool, and rested one hand
on the keyboard of the piano. Just as the conversation had reached this
point, he suddenly took his hand away, with a nervous movement that
sounded three or four discordant bass-notes of the instrument as he did
so, and Mr. Cory for the second time found himself laboring under an
ill-defined sense of discomfort, something wholly unusual. But, seeing
his host showed no symptoms of breaking the silence, after a slight
cough, he went on,—
“We have been talking this afternoon as to what is going to be done with
the child. You’ve got her here, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, one can’t do a great deal in this way, but you know it is such a
sad case, and the child can’t do any work about a house, and my wife is
so interested in her she thinks she’ll take the little girl—What did you
say?”
“Nothing.”
“I beg your pardon, I thought you spoke. My wife is so interested in her
she thinks she’ll take the little girl and send her for a year to the
industrial school in the city, where she can learn to do fine sewing and
embroidery. That will give her a chance to earn her living, and we can
take up a collection in church to defray the expense.”
“‘Fine sewing and embroidery’—_fine suffering and death_!” said Franz,
suddenly letting loose his pent-up wrath. “Mr. Cory, would you kill the
child? She is frailer than a flower, a sickly little thing, and
crippled. One month’s stooping over a needle would put her in the grave.
I thought for a moment, but an hour ago, that she was dead.” As he spoke
the last word he left his seat, and, taking up the lamp, said,—“Come
with me, and step lightly.”
Utterly taken aback at the sudden outburst of the music-master, Mr. Cory
followed him across the hall, saw him open the door of the opposite
room, and motion him to enter. Then he said, in a quiet voice, while he
shaded the lamp carefully with his hand, so that its rays did not fall
directly upon the face of the child,—
“Look at her.”
The man stepped forward, but almost immediately drew back, with a
shiver, from the sleeper, whose repose so strangely resembled death. She
lay upon the sofa, with her hands folded across her breast, as when she
had at first fallen into slumber.
Franz stood intently regarding her, when suddenly his guest, coming up
close to him, said, with his rough voice dropped into a frightened
whisper, and his eyes looking quickly about the room,—
“Where does it come from?”
“What?” asked Franz, startled by his singular manner.
“Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The music.”
“Music!” exclaimed Franz, dropping his voice also to a whisper, and
involuntarily suspending his breath for a moment—“no, I hear no music.”
“It did not seem like the piano or organ. It must have been the wind in
the trees outside, but it sounded just like a strain of music. We had
better go, or we may waken her,” said Mr. Cory, as he turned to the
door, and drew one hand across his forehead, where the perspiration had
collected in drops, although the evening was cold and the air chilly.
Franz followed him out, springing the latch gently with his hand as it
caught, and they both went back to the piano-room. Here Mr. Cory seemed
to recover somewhat of his usual composure.
“Well, Erckman, she does look thin and delicate-like, but sewing won’t
hurt her, not a bit. She’ll be better when she’s got something to do.
She can’t exist on air, and she can’t live in idleness. She has got
nothing, and it’s the only way I know of she can make her living. She
must do work of some kind for support.”
Before Franz’s eyes there floated visions of broad and fertile acres, of
fine cattle, of fine clothes, of fine houses, but “she must do work of
some kind for support,” so he said nothing, while the church-elder
continued,—
“There is James Maxwell going to the city to-morrow, and my wife said we
had better send her to the school by him.”
“Send her—, Mr. Cory,” said the organist, with a suppressed fierceness
in his voice, “You saw how frail she is, how she looks as if, even now,
the shadow of death might be upon her. You know how, from her birth, she
has been crippled. I tell you one month in that school among strangers
would kill her. Are there not strong arms enough in the world, is there
not wealth enough already, that this unfortunate one, this perpetually
enfeebled child, must wear out her brief span of life in a painful
struggle to gain a little food?”
“We are not, sir, expected to keep the ‘unfortunate one,’ as you call
her,” blustered Mr. Cory, fairly purple with indignant astonishment.
“What do you mean, sir? We are not under obligations to do any thing
whatever for the girl. She should be thankful we interested ourselves in
her behalf,” he said, partially choking with rage. “We will do this for
her, but that is all. She is nothing to us.”
“I had no intention of dictating,” said the organist, politely, who had
quieted down as quickly as he had roused up. “You are right, sir, she is
nothing to you, and you need not trouble yourself about the matter
further. I will see that the child is provided for.”
Then Mr. Cory looked at Franz as if he thought he had not heard aright,
or that the music-master might be departing from his senses.
“I repeat, I will see that the child is provided for, and you need not
trouble yourself in regard to her further.”
“Very well, sir, very well!” exclaimed the elder, rising, almost
speechless with surprise. But when he reached the piazza he said,—“Then
it is understood that I am not responsible in the case?”
“It is understood.”
Franz had had no intention of parting with the child. He would not have
given her up had Mr. Cory offered all his grassy meadows. He watched him
as he walked down the graveled path and disappeared in the darkness.
“Charity!” he muttered. “Shut him out, O Night—hide him from view! Wrap
your impenetrable mantle about him, that it may shield him from the eye
of God and man!”
The German stood for a moment looking out into the limitless gloom,
which screened alike the evil and the good, then he turned again into
the house.
He went back, through the dining-room where his supper was spread
untouched upon the table, to the kitchen, where Margery sat warming
herself by the dying embers in the stove. The old servant was used to
his irregular ways, and often saw his meals go untasted without a
remark. But it was rarely the master ever intruded upon her premises,
and she rose up as he came in, with an expression of surprise upon her
quiet face.
“Margery,” he said, “fix up the bedroom next to yours, then come down to
me in the parlor.”
The old woman heard him without a question, though never before could
she remember when the guest-chamber had been used, or a visitor staid
overnight at the house.
When she had obeyed his instructions she presented herself at the
parlor-door. There was no lamp in the room, only a narrow strip of light
fell upon the floor from across the hall, but it did not penetrate the
heavy shadow, and Margery, with a half-uttered apology upon her lips,
drew back. At the sound of the woman’s steps, Franz came out of the
gloom.
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
“What is the matter?”
“I did not know you was playin’, or I would have waited,” said the
servant, respectfully, who had learned long ago never under any
circumstances to interrupt her master at his practice.
“I was not playing.”
“Warn’t it you, sir? It was so dark I could not see.”
“Me? no; nor any body else. No one was playing.”
“Why, I thought I heard—but it must have been the wind,” said Margery,
glancing across her shoulder to the vacant piano-stool. “I thought I
heard music just as I opened the door.—The room is ready, sir.” Franz
bent over the sofa and raised the sleeping form in his arms. Turning to
Margery, he said,—
“She is light. Here, carry her up and put her to bed. Don’t waken her if
you can help it, and go to her once or twice in the night to see that
she sleeps, for she is not well.”