THE SECOND MEETING.
IT had at first been intended to give the _tableaux vivants_, or as
they call them in Germany, _lebende Bilder_, in the small hall of the
pretty little _Malkasten_, or artists’ club; but so numerous had been
the applications for places, that it was decided instead to have them
in a larger room belonging to the building where all the concerts were
held—the public _Tonhalle_. This proved quite successful, and every
seat was taken a week beforehand.
It was a very pretty sight: all Elberthal was there; assembled, too,
in good time, and everyone talking, laughing, moving about with
a freedom, an ease, and an absence of ceremony peculiar to German
entertainments of the kind.
Sara Ford and Avice went with the Wilhelmis, who, being important
persons in the affair, had naturally secured a number of the uppermost
seats. Sara’s parts were in the second and fourth pictures. She
accordingly had to go and dress for her part of Thusnelda while the
first picture was being given. She left Avice, seated between Luise
Wilhelmi and her mother, and therefore safely chaperoned. Luise was in
a state of wild excitement, which indeed was her chronic condition.
She was a very sprightly, pretty brunette, fond of brilliant colours,
and given to attiring herself in a somewhat stagey manner. On this
occasion she was strikingly but becomingly dressed in hues of amber and
pomegranate, with many slits and slashes, tags and ends and furbelows.
Nothing would induce her to yield to her father’s requests that she
would dress with a noble and classic simplicity, or to her lover’s
representations that white muslin and blue ribbon and a generally
inexpensive shepherdess style of thing would become her wonderfully
well. Fräulein Luise loved silk and satin, rich fabrics and bright
jewels, and so long as anyone could be found to provide her with them,
she would wear them. Avice Wellfield, beside her, looked like an
inhabitant of another world. It was the first time she had been out
anywhere since her father’s death; and her plain black frock and white
_crêpe_ ruffles at neck and wrists formed a pointed contrast to Luise’s
flashing colours and glittering rings and chains and bangles. Avice had
plaited her hair up into a coronet, which gave her an older, staider
look. The girl was fulfilling, more and more every day, Sara’s prophecy
to her brother, that she would one day be beautiful. Her new life,
happier despite its poverty than the old one, had called forth that
beauty, while the intellect, which had formerly been repressed and was
now in every way encouraged to develop itself, gave dignity and depth
to the mere outward loveliness of hue and feature and moulding. She
sat quite still, watching with enchantment what was to her an entirely
new scene. It was her first entertainment of the kind; and she enjoyed
it with a zest only known in such long-deferred pleasures. Luise was
jumping up and sitting down twenty times in five minutes, teasing her
father to know how Max would ‘do,’ and if he was nervous—if it would be
better for her not to look at him too hard, at which Avice suppressed a
smile, and Wilhelmi, with his rollicking Jovine laugh, cried:
‘Look at him as hard as you can stare, little simpleton. Do you think
he will turn his head to look at you? It would ruin the whole artistic
effect of the picture, and to-night it is Art who will be paramount
before even you.’
At which she pouted, and the orchestra suddenly struck up most
eloquent music; delicious to hear, and unseen singers accompanied them.
It was a portion of Liszt’s _Entfesselter Prometheus_ that they played
and sang, a chorus of grape-gatherers, and the melody was exquisitely
sweet, and was dying gently away as the curtain rose upon a magic
scene—a ‘midday rest in the grape-harvest.’ The picture thus copied was
a celebrated one. A background of vine-covered, autumn-tinted Italian
hills, and in the foreground a richly picturesque group of men and
maidens, women and children, in every attitude of beauty and grace
that could be imagined. In the very centre stood a splendidly handsome
woman, dark, tall, and amply formed, in an Italian peasant’s dress; her
arms were thrown upwards as she shook a tambourine and looked behind
her to a youth who raised a spray of deeply tinted vine-leaves to bind
them in her abundant strong black hair. The others were variously
occupied; some in watching this principal couple and in jesting aside
about them. One child was industriously devouring grapes; two lads were
half wrestling with one another; a couple of girls were whispering with
their lovers. The music still played soft strains, and the _Chor der
Winzner_ died into silence, while every figure stood out with a mellow
distinctness, breathing and living, yet still—still and motionless, as
the painted figures on the canvas themselves.
Twice the beautiful picture was shown, amidst applause and delight.
Then ensued the first interval, during which comments were freely
exchanged, and much laughter and gossip about the various performers
went on.
‘It must be fearfully difficult,’ remarked Avice, in an almost
awestruck tone. ‘How could she go on holding the tambourine for so long
without its making even one tiny tinkle?’
‘Wait till the next,’ said Wilhelmi, who appeared to have pinned his
hopes on the _Hermannsschlacht_ picture. ‘Luise, pray that thy Max may
not lose his heart to the Princess of Germania.’
Luise laughed a heart-whole laugh. The frantic devotion of her huge
lover to his tyrannical little bride was too well-known for her to feel
any qualms of jealousy.
Just then the band began to play a solemn battle march, through
which might be heard, like an undercurrent, the clashing of martial
instruments, and the angry mutter of war. Then slowly the curtain
rose. Expectation grew so intense, that even applause was hushed, and
only a murmur went through the assembly, when at last the picture was
fully displayed before them. The picture which was copied gave the very
spirit of the poet’s dream, as he pictured that ancient chieftain and
his princess, and the living picture was an idealisation of the painted
one.
They appeared to be seated beneath a mighty spreading oak—a primeval
monarch of the forest. The trunk of the tree was at the extreme
left. Above, its foliage overhead spread over almost the entire
scene. Stretching away to the right from Hermann and Thusnelda,
appeared a soft, grassy sward, fallen leaves, and forest flowers. In
the background, almost in the centre, burnt a steady, reddish light,
while to the right a high-flaming cresset cast fitful gleams upon
the centre-point of interest—Hermann, Prince of the Cherusker, and
Thusnelda, his wife.
The warrior, in the armour and dress of his tribe, was reclined upon
the ground, half raised on one elbow; his short coat of mail, and
small-pointed helmet, with the crest a-top, his long yellow hair and
moustache, wild and fearless blue eyes; the massive and almost savage
grace and power of the whole figure were splendid. A half-smile, at
once grim and bitter, curved his lips as he looked up into Thusnelda’s
face, and with one great hand lifts up a heavy lock of the waving,
golden-brown hair which sweeps over her shoulders, and touches the
ground, confined above by a gorgeous diadem of gold and precious
stones, the one which she has previously told him ‘thou brought’st me
of late from Rome;’ the diadem which Ventidius had arranged for her,
with what intent has she not just heard from Hermann?
Sara Ford, as Thusnelda, is also seated upon the ground at the foot
of the tree, clad in a loose, flowing white dress of some fine soft
web. Leaning a little over towards the warrior, she rests her weight
upon her left hand, and appears to question him with amazement and
indignation. The music stopped, and behind the scenes some one read a
portion of that magnificent scene—a scene such as perhaps no one but
Heinrich von Kleist could have written quite in that way.
The unseen readers recited, or read, with dramatic effect.
THUSNELDA.
I think thou dream’st, thou rav’st.
Who is’t will shear _my_ head?
HERMANN.
Who? Pooh! Quintilius Varus and the Romans,
With whom I just have sealed a firm alliance.
THUSNELDA.
The Romans! How?
HERMANN.
Yea, what the devil think’st thou?
And yet the Roman ladies really must,
When they adorn themselves, have decent hair.
THUSNELDA.
Have then the Roman women none at all?
HERMANN.
None, I say, save what’s black—all black and stiff, like witches;
Not fair, and dry, and golden, like this of thine.
The voices ceased, and at this point the applause burst out in a
storm. Avice passed her hand over her eyes, starting violently at
being thus dragged back to the every-day world. So life-like had been
the scene, one seemed to be transported to those strange, far-back
primitive days—the days before that dim and distant _Hermannsschlacht_,
about which historiographers are even yet not agreed. But far more
wonderful to Avice was the way in which her friend had, as it were,
transformed herself from the collected, well-bred, sophisticated young
lady of to-day, into an ancient Teuton chieftainess, a primal Germanic
mother, in whose beautiful face there were not wanting passion and
fierceness—whoso reads the rest of the play may learn the pitiless
brutal vengeance which Thusnelda wreaked upon Ventidius—not wanting
her elements of ‘the tiger and the ape.’ And yet how grand she was—how
majestic! And how tameless looked this Teuton princess! It was not fear
that troubled her—she felt no fear—but anger, and boundless haughty
astonishment. The Roman women, forsooth! What was she to them, or they
to her? She felt as if she could crush a dozen of them with one blow of
her ample hand.
This picture was shown twice. Wilhelmi rubbed his hands in rapture.
‘Splendid!’ he cried, ‘worth coming miles to see. Didn’t she do it
grandly?—didn’t she look every inch the Teuton queen?’
‘Max might have given me one look!’ said Luise; ‘he _knew_ I was in the
very front row. I shall scold him about it.’
‘Foolish baby! I forbid thee to do anything of the kind. Where would
the picture have been if he had been ludicrously rolling his eyes about
in search of thee? And why should he look for thee? Was not Thusnelda
his lawful consort?’ said her father, delighted to torment her if
possible.
Luise was about to make some malicious retort, when an official came
and whispered something to Wilhelmi, who, with an exclamation of
pleased surprise—a ‘_Nun, das freut mich!_’—rose, and made his way
towards the bottom of the crowded room.
The third picture was soon put on the stage. It was a ‘Village
Funeral,’ and was excellently well done, but it lacked the poetry and
excitement of the last scene. The curtain went down, and still the
Professor did not return. Sara remained behind the scenes; she took a
part in the next picture—the part of a lady of high degree, on whose
‘Yes’ or ‘No’ her lover of low degree waits anxiously. There was a long
interval, full of noise and talking and laughing. When the curtain rose
again, Wilhelmi had still not returned; and Luise, who was never happy
without him at such a scene, muttered discontentedly, ‘_Wo bleibt denn
der Papa?_’
This picture—this _Ja, oder Nein_—had an interest, apart from its style
and subject, in the fact that it was the last one finished by the
artist who had died.
A long, old-fashioned, richly-furnished room was displayed, and,
standing in the midst of the grandeur, plainly dressed, proud and
upright, a young man in the costume of the present-day. He was
handsome, and had a fine, open, resolute face. The expression of
earnest, attentive, eager waiting, not degenerating into anxiety or
servility, was admirable. Nothing showed that he was nervous—he
had not taken the trouble to get himself up in visiting costume.
It appeared that he had been walking: his shoes were dusty and
travel-soiled, his dress a rather shabby grey suit, hands gloveless,
wrists cuffless, nothing either costly or fashionable about him;
and yet, one of nature’s gentlemen. His white straw-hat lies on a
table beside him. He has been speaking, you see, probably strongly,
earnestly, and ardently, and now he waits the answer. The young lady
who stands before him, in a highly fashionable costume of the present
day, as rich and costly as his is poor and worn, holds a fan in one
hand, and with the other seems to be half closing it. The attitude is
one of reflection, of pausing; the eyes are downcast. Will she say
‘Yes,’ or ‘No’?
Beautiful groups of vine-reapers, primæval forests, and historical
legends have their charms, no doubt; but a yet more potent spell is
excited when the poetry is touched which underlies this present-day
life of ours—when romance is manifest, clothed in a grey tweed suit
and a fashionable afternoon costume. He is unabashed by her wealth and
splendour. Will she resent his audacity, or accept it? In the painting
there was a sweet mystery: none could say, from looking at it, what
course would be taken by that fair lady. Sara Ford was perhaps thinking
of some past scene. There was the shadow of an expression upon her face
which caused a murmur:
‘After all, she will say yes.’
It was at this juncture—just when the interest was deepest, when necks
were being craned forward, and whispers exchanged—comments upon him
and her: ‘How well Ludwig does it!’—‘Of course she will say yes!’—‘How
_wild_ Amalia Waldschmidt would be if she saw Ludwig now!’ and so
on, that Professor Wilhelmi, accompanied by another man, returned to
his seat. There was an empty chair next to Avice Wellfield, and the
stranger took it, and fixed his eyes upon the _lebendes Bild_ on the
stage. Suddenly the face of the lady became no more like the face of a
picture. It changed—it was certainly a living face. Most distinctly her
eyes moved, her expression altered; some persons said afterwards that
she had started, but that may be a libel. What is quite certain is,
that the expression of the face did change, and that the gentleman who
had come in with Professor Wilhelmi turned to Avice Wellfield with a
smile, and remarked in a low voice:
‘Miss Ford has recognised me, and is so surprised to see me that she
has moved.’
‘Do you know Miss Ford?’ asked Avice, not moving her eyes from the
picture.
‘Yes,’ replied Rudolf Falkenberg. ‘I met her a month or two ago at
Ems—Nassau, rather, at the Countess of Trockenau’s.’
He continued to gaze intently at the living picture, while Miss Ford
on her part soon had her features and expression entirely under her
own control again. She posed admirably for the remainder of the scene,
and for the repetition of it which was stormily demanded. The shade of
expression on the lady’s face was of the very slightest; but it was
enough for the audience to be all of one mind as to what it meant, and
‘She will have him’ was the universal verdict.
At last the curtain finally fell upon this picture, and with it ended
Sara’s share in the performance. The two last ‘_Bilder_’ were also
admirably done, but they did not excite the interest which had been
called out by the last. One was a scene from Schiller’s _Wallenstein_,
and the other from Goethe’s _Egmont_.
In the bustle of the interval ensuing between the two last pictures,
Sara came into the room with Wilhelmi, who had been behind the scenes
to fetch her away. Everyone was standing up, and almost everyone in
animated conversation, so that Miss Ford gained her place almost
unobserved.
Not altogether unnoticed, though, for before anyone else could speak,
Falkenberg had held out his hand with a smile, saying:
‘Thus we meet again, Miss Ford.’
‘Not exactly “thus,”’ said Sara, laughing. ‘I saw you suddenly, and was
so surprised that I am afraid I moved, or laughed, or something. The
impulse to bow to you, and say “How do you do?” below the breath, as
one does, was almost irresistible.’
‘I ought to have remained in the background where I was, and from
whence I saw you in Thusnelda. I would not have disturbed _that_ for
the world.’
‘And that reminds me,’ here observed Fräulein Wilhelmi in a plaintive
voice, ‘Miss Ford, where is my poor Max?’
‘Behind the scenes, dressing for Egmont,’ replied Sara, laughing.
‘I shall never consent to this sort of thing again,’ said Luise. ‘Or
if I do, I shall take a part as well. Did you only come to-day, Herr
Falkenberg, or did papa know that you intended to visit us?’
‘No; I only decided yesterday to come, and I only arrived by the
evening train from Frankfort. I went to your house, and found where you
all were, and came here.’
‘Of course you are staying with us, as usual?’ observed Luise.
‘Your father has kindly asked me to do so,’ he replied, smiling.
Sara, watching his face, felt an indescribable satisfaction in it,
and as if an old friend, and one who could be trusted, had suddenly
been present. Those were the same honest, critical brown eyes which
had looked kindly upon her, as they sat and spoke of friendship in
the little _Ruheplatz_ beneath the cathedral walls at Lahnburg. As
for Falkenberg, after the first words of greeting, he scarcely spoke
to Sara, but allowed himself to be monopolised by Luise, who, true to
her nature, had flirted with him, or tried to do so, since she was two
years old. Though he did not speak much to Sara, his eyes wandered now
and then towards her with an inquiring, considerate expression. She
was very quiet, but looked marvellously handsome, in her black velvet
gown and pearl necklace. Excitement, pleasure, high, strong emotion,
never made her talkative, but they brought a soft glow to her dark grey
eyes, which beautified her wonderfully. To-night the pleasure had been
very great, the excitement very strong, and she looked proportionately
splendid.
Here the curtain went up for the last picture, and when that was over,
came the crush to get out of the hall.
‘Look here, _mein Bester_!’ observed Wilhelmi to Herr Falkenberg. ‘My
womenkind will be more than enough for me. Will you take Miss Ford and
Miss Wellfield under your charge, and see them home?’
‘With pleasure,’ was the reply; and with an exchange of hasty
good-nights, the Wilhelmis were carried forward in the crowd, while
Falkenberg and the two English girls made their way slowly after them.
Seated in their _Droschke_, and driving towards the Jägerstrasse,
Falkenberg said:
‘May I call at your atelier soon, Miss Ford, as I am staying here? I
dare say I shall be at the Wilhelmis’ for some little time.’
‘I shall be very glad if you will,’ responded Sara; ‘though,’ she
added, after a pause, ‘I am afraid there is not much for you to see.’
‘To-morrow afternoon,’ he suggested, ‘or will you be too tired?’
‘I shall not be tired at all. Pray come, and have coffee with me, if
you care to remain.’
‘Thank you. I shall not fail,’ he answered, as the cab stopped, and he
handed them out.
‘We all owe you a debt of thanks, _mein Fräulein_, for acting as you
did to-night,’ he said, as he shook hands with her.
‘I am glad you were pleased, and I hope the affair will bring some
money to poor little Frau Goldmark. Then, till to-morrow, Herr
Falkenberg.’
‘Till to-morrow. _Gute nacht, meine Damen._’
[Illustration]