Tarantella A Romance by Mathilde Blind Vol 1
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Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Victorian Women Writers ProjectTarantella, Vol. 1 (1885): a machine-readable transcription Mathilde Blind (1841-1896)

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Tarantella, Vol. 1 by Mathilde Blind 239 p. T. Fisher Unwin. London:

1885.

The copy transcribed is from the British Library.

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2003-Feb-13 Sarah Byun, contribution editor.

finished transcription, and TEI-conformant encoding.

2003-Apr-13 Perry Willett, general editor.

fixed final editing

TARANTELLA A ROMANCE BY MATHILDE BLIND Author of “The Prophecy of Saint Oran,” and “Life of George Eliot” VOL I London T FISHER UNWIN

26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1885

Page [iii] CONTENTS. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. THE JAR OF HONEY. 1 CHAPTER II. A GERMAN COFFEE PARTY. 15 CHAPTER III. MOONLIGHT MYSTERIES. 25 CHAPTER IV. THE COUNTESS STARAJA. 36 CHAPTER V. LEAVE-TAKING. 45 CHAPTER VI. WHITSUNTIDE AT THE SILBERBURG 57

Page iv CHAPTER VII. COMING OUT. 69 CHAPTER VIII. MUSICAL PICTURES. 78 CHAPTER IX. ELFRIDA’S BEQUEST. 86 CHAPTER X. LEOPOLD SONTHEIM’S CONFESSION. 97 CHAPTER XI. SOAP BUBBLES. 110 CHAPTER XII. THE FAIR. 124 CHAPTER XIII. ELEMENTAL MATCH-MAKING. 137 CHAPTER XIV. VENUS VICTRIX. 144 BOOK II. CHAPTER XV. THE DANCE AMIDST THE RUINS. 157 CHAPTER XVI. THE SIRENS’ ROCK. 174 CHAPTER XVII. THE RING. 188

Page v CHAPTER XVIII. SHADOW HUNTING. 199 CHAPTER XIX. A HIT AT LAST. 205 CHAPTER XX. LOST. 213 CHAPTER XXI. FOUND. 220 CHAPTER XXII. FLIGHT. 225

TARANTELLA.

Page 1 BOOK I. CHAPTER I. THE JAR OF HONEY.

IT was the sweetest month of the sweet young year! The month when the earth grows more spacious because the light clouds have soared to such dizzy heights in the infinitely receding blue of heaven. The sun as yet shines with a tempered ardour, almost as if from tenderness for the soft young things too weak to bear the full stress of his beams. Every little wind then wandering under heaven is sweet, like the message of some loved one dwelling afar. Stray sunbeams thrill us with tremors of joy, and in the blithe carol of returning birds the yearning heart finds a happy augury of reunion with its dear departed. O blessed spring days! is there anything on earth comparable to the

Page 2 innocent delight with which you inspire us? And what adds such a gracious charm to this pleasure is the reflection that the whole world is made an equally welcome guest to the inexhaustible feast thus spread out on the green gladsome earth. Spring, in its way, is as great a leveller as death. The poor, the aged, the unhappy are in its sight as worthy to be caressed by the youngest sunbeam, by the most fragrant of breezes, as their more favoured fellow-creatures.

It is to the former, indeed, O Spring, that is reserved the subtlest enchantment of thy smiles. For the happy can never experience to the full the healing strength which resides in thy influence. It is to the lonely, the weak, the unfortunate, those whom man in his reckless search after power and pleasure has roughly thrust from his path, to whom alone is revealed that ineffable tenderness which thy sunshine manifests to the sprouting green leaves and the frail flowers of the youngling year. No; they know not the infinite sweetness of thy balmy breath, O spring, who have never arisen out of grief as from the dark vault of a sepulchre, and, with the dews of anguish yet fresh on their brow, seen the gleam of the April sun athwart the thaw of falling tears. With how shy, and tremulous, and fearful a joy, lest even in the apprehension it fade, do they humbly acknowledge that even for them a glory yet shines in the fugitive hours, and a hope is blown from the peaks of the morning. They and joy then meet like dear friends who parting in anger have long dwelt apart and now, at the moment of final reconciliation, hang back a little with half-averted eyes ere with a low cry they fall into each other’s arms.

Page 3

Yes! there was no doubt about it, spring had come at last. Even D–-, that most sleepy of South German towns, shook off its lethargy and became on a sudden preternaturally alive with light and laughter. For in upon every street shone and nodded the vine-clad hills, their aכrial azure fading away into that of the sky; the music of running waters, so long congealed in the fountains, filled the public place once more with a murmur, sounding like an accompaniment to the blithe chatter of girls where they stood leisurely filling their pitchers with the sparkling water; birds flitted from roof to roof, chirping and twittering till the very atmosphere seemed to transform itself into song; and high above the roofs, higher than any bird’s flight, soared the luminous white clouds whose shadows fled dreamlike across the surface of the enfolding hills.

It is in the great sunlit marketplace, however, that the life of the town converges; a gay, multicoloured scene, of which the ancient Minster, with its great grave masses cowing the sunshine where it falls, forms the background; in and out among the tapering minor spires flit grey, pink-eyed pigeons, settling every now and then on the projections of the quaintly-carved capitals; while little dזmons, grinning from gargoyles and window bosses, appear to be making fantastic grimaces at the crowd eagerly buying and selling below. Judging from these impressive preparations, whatever else might move at a sluggish pace in the worthy citizens’ organisms, their digestive apparatus was anything but sluggish, and almost seemed to have achieved the desideratum of perpetual motion.

What with the chaffering, chattering, cheapening of

Page 4 maids, matrons, and market-women, the cackling of geese, grunting of pigs, and crowing of cocks, the rumbling of carts, and the protracted shrillness of infants’ cries placed in undignified positions by excited mammas, while engaged in hotly-contested bargains, the confusion of tongues equalled that of a Babel in miniature. The most trifling purchase was seemingly a feat not to be attempted without the exercise of superior tactics. For a cook of the highest grade goes to market with a sense of responsibility but little inferior to that of a general on the eve of a battle. And, after carefully-planned attacks, sham retreats, delicately-executed skirmishes, and final onslaught, how triumphant is the homeward march of the conquering heroine, attended by the cackling, hissing, and squealing of her captured booty!

Instead of so important a personage, however, let us rather follow the respectable housewife; Frau Lichtenfeld, who, engaged in voluble talk with her gossip Frau Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengהrtner, makes her way homewards on this April morning of the year 1846. After parting from her companion, the first named lady still proceeds along the Silberstrasse the main thoroughfare of D–-, till she reaches the last house of the town, standing by itself in a garden some paces back from the high road, which here assumed quite a rural character.

It was a spreading house with high grey roof, and windows on each side of the door; its gay green shutters, harmonizing with the cream-coloured walls, were either shut, or fastened back by revolving iron clamps. At its back stretched a long grassy garden,

Page 5 left to grow much at its own sweet will, and interspersed with fruit-trees, now covered with buds that seemed on tiptoe to burst into blossom.

Just as the middle-aged woman enters at the front door, a young girl standing at the end of this garden is trying with all her might to unlatch the bolt of the lumbering old garden gate, grown rusty during the long disuse of winter.

Before she has succeeded, however, in thrusting back the bolt, a tiny child issues from the house, and darts at full speed down the garden, its golden confusion of hair gleaming above the grass like a living sunflower. “Mina, Mina,” it calls out in childish treble, “you have forgotten the jar for the honey, and mother’s just back from market and coming after you!”

“Mina, Mina, you have forgotten the jar for the honey!” calls out in harsher tones of remonstrance Frau Professorinn Lichtenfeld, coming excitedly along the path, and flourishing the article in question to and fro. “I declare,” she goes on, “little Lulu here, though she’s but three years old, God bless her, will soon be the more sensible of the two; but then, she’s not ‘a Hans gape i’ the air!’”

With these words she puts the jar in the girl’s basket, and undoing the gate for her slightly pushes her forth. She has scarcely shut the gate, however, before she shouts after the retreating figure: “Whatever you do, Mina, remember your grandmother’s rheumatic cordial.”

Whether Mina heard this exhortation is doubtful, as in her eagerness to see her grandmother she was already many steps on her way. Nor did she in any

Page 6 marked degree relax her speed till, towards noon, she reached a diminutive house situated on the slope of one of the lower of that range of hills which encircled the town.

This cot, standing in its own vineyard, and partly hidden by a row of enormous beehives, was the home of Mina’s grandmother. Here the happiest hours of her childhood had been passed, and it seemed but yesterday she had fancied it to be a half-way house to heaven. Why, had she not actually once believed the story that the sunflowers blazing in a row there were baby suns put out to nurse, till they should be in a fit condition for their heavenly duties, and taken it into her head that the swarms of bees were truant stars who had run away from their celestial tasks to make love to the flowers of earth?

After several ineffectual raps, the door was at length opened by a wizened yet hale old woman, whose shrunken countenance disappeared behind the voluminous starched frills of a huge mob-cap. At sight of her favourite grandchild, her still bright eyes blinked with joy athwart their environment of countless wrinkles.

“Grandmother,” cried Mina, raising her voice to its highest pitch, “mother and Lulu and all the boys have sent more love than I found it possible to carry up the hill. And mother sends you a fresh supply of her cordial for rheumatism, which is stronger than usual, she says. Hans and Conrad asked me to bring you this fish which they caught yesterday.” (A perch about the length of a finger, looking very dead, in a cabbage leaf.) “And Hans begs you will keep all caterpillars with crimson

Page 7 spots on a flesh-coloured ground with the leaves they feed on till he can come for them in his holidays; while Conrad entreats you will not forget that it is his turn to climb the big cherry tree. Lulu tore herself from this best beloved of dolls because she says you will find her such good company in bed.” (That the doll had lost its hair and one arm possibly enhanced the sacrifice.) “And, let me see—dear me—I have quite forgotten the messages of the other boys,” broke off Mina, with her peculiar silvery little laugh; then added, in a sweet, deprecating way, “And I, granny, have brought you nothing—nothing at all.”

“You have brought me yourself, little love—by far the best message and medicine of all,” retorted the old lady, with the sort of expression one has when inhaling the fragrance of a fresh-gathered bunch of roses. “But here I stand chattering,” she exclaimed, “quite forgetting that my pet has had a long, fatiguing walk already, and must be quite tired by this time.”

Therewith, the good old dame began bustling about the room, attended in all her comings and goings by a dilapidated raven, who although purblind and lame of one foot, hopped behind her with the grave dignity of a mute at a funeral. By degrees she now extracted from a variety of cupboards, deftly hidden in the walls, a number of delicacies, which, with the help of Mina, were soon spread out on the snow-white tablecloth. Grandmother and grandchild sat down cosily to a meal of brown bread and butter, honey, preserved fruit, and a big jug brimful of cream (the former chiefly enjoying it by proxy, one could see); the raven, who formed part of the company, being treated with respectful awe by

Page 8 Mina, and regaled now and then with choicest titbits, which he persisted in carrying off and hiding in dark nooks, where he thought himself safe from observation.

When the simple feast was over Mina, from long habit, drew a footstool close to her grandmother’s brown leather easy-chair, and with her toes curled up and her chin propped between her hands, said, in a coaxing voice, “Granny, now tell us all about the past.”

This old, old woman, whose hair was white as with the snow of eighty winters, had been young once like herself and been fallen in love with! What an inexhaustible romance to this young girl, who had only twice in her life peeped furtively into a real downright novel! Nothing loth her grandmother began from her copious stock of experience, industriously plying her knitting-needles the while, and Mina, listening open-eyed, said never a word till, abruptly rising from her seat, she exclaimed that she had outstayed her time. The old woman now filled Mina’s jar with her finest honey, adding many injunctions to be careful, it being the last of the kind which she possessed.

She remained standing in the doorway watching the receding figure of her grandchild till a sunlit April shower drove her indoors. But Mina, as she danced rather than walked down the hill, listened with delight to the patter of the big bright raindrops, with which the sun, as if in play, pelted the earth, laughing all the while in the face of the storm; presently the valley, in which lay the white houses of the town, was spanned from hill to hill by a mighty rainbow, while under it,

Page 9 across a ridge on which it dipped, a flock of sheep defiled slowly one by one, thrown off in bright relief from the green, rain-sparkling slope.

The girl’s road this time took her through a small wood, in which the vegetation had just attained that stage when the trees, some still bare, others just budding and blossoming, others again already covered with delicate foliage, resemble more nearly a green glimmering exhalation which a breath of air may dispel than an actually enduring growth of earth. This effect was still further enhanced at present by that hazy bloom peculiar to afternoons in spring, and which now seemed to invest the entire scene in some diviner medium than that of our common atmosphere. No wonder Mina lingered lovingly at every step she took, for was it not April within as well as around her, and did she not feel as though suddenly roused from long unconscious slumbers to the infinite beauty and mystery of the world? In the hidden recesses of her heart was a stir and flutter as if there also sweet, shy things were gradually unfolding themselves, so that for the first time she had a dim apprehension of the profound affinity of nature around and within her.

But this dreamy mood was soon dispelled by childish glee, when at a curve in the path she came upon a dell where violets literally seemed to gush from the sod, till she fancied she heard them whispering in the breeze, “Please gather us, gather us!” and what could a kind-hearted damsel do after that but go down on her knees, pluck them by handfuls, and knot them together in a big, fragrant bunch?

She had scarcely achieved this to her satisfaction when

Page 10 her attention was caught by a butterfly which, floating past her, settled on a flower about a stone’s-throw off, spreading out its glowing wings as though to challenge her admiration. The young girl stood quite still, scarcely venturing to breathe lest she should startle this etherial creature. Then recollecting how joyfully her brother would welcome so beautiful a specimen to his collection, she softly untied the strings of her broad-brimmed hat, and gliding forward on tiptoe, brought it suddenly down on the flower on which the butterfly had alighted. She was too late, however, for, like a winged flower driven from its stem, the latter hovered for some time in front of her, then settled on the trunk of a tree, but flew off as she approached.

Thus in hot but fruitless pursuit Mina continued to run on, till she found herself all at once on the brink of a pool in whose crystalline depths the wood was mirroring itself like a youthful beauty smiling at herself in the looking-glass. So magical, indeed, was the aspect of this canopy of trees, with their soft, ruddy tassels and bright, almost golden, leaves, and its transfigured reflection below, that for the moment she forgot the object of her chase, and when she again looked round it had vanished!

Hot and breathless as she was, the girl threw herself on a low green bank shelving down to the water’s edge, and with her roughened curly head pillowed on a cluster of hyacinths, she soon fell sound asleep. And in her sleep she dreamed that she was still pursuing the butterfly she had so ardently longed to capture. Only that now it was much larger, more mysteriously beautiful, and that its shifting tints, scintillating with a lustre

Page 11 as of precious stones, faded ever and anon to a silvery pallor, which flashed as suddenly into renewed brilliancy, and revealed letters, words, and fiery signs covering its broad wings and crossing them in all directions, which as they caught the maiden’s eye kindled a still keener desire for its possession. She had a haunting sense, indeed, that the happiness of her own life, nay, that more potent issues, depended on her success in this chase, and on her unriddling the bright but evanescent hieroglyphs which so whetted her curiosity.

But ever as she thought she had seized the prize—behold it was but idle air, while the luminous wings now twinkling aloft, afar, shone out fair but inaccessible as the midnight stars. Nothing daunted, however, she ran on and on, and as she ran, the fantastic branches of twilight trees seemed catching at her garments, as though to hold her back, or lifting lean, tremulous fingers to warn her from her mad pursuit. Then, before she was aware, she had strayed into a lovely dell, white with innumerable lilies, and, poised on the fairest, with its wonderful wings outspread, behold the butterfly! She stretched out her hand, heaved a sigh of expectancy, and almost tremblingly tightened the clasp of her fingers, but uttered a loud scream on her hand being stung, finding to her horror that instead of the dainty insect she had got hold of a big venomous spider. In her effort to shake it off she awoke with a confused sense of hearing her own cry echoed by the solitude around.

Who has not experienced the bewildering sensation of being abruptly awakened from a vivid dream, in which actual sense impressions have become inwoven with the fantastic images of the brain till it seems for

Page 12 the moment almost imposssible to disentangle the two? This was Mina’s case. She looked around confusedly, still faintly shivering with her dream, when she beheld the cause of the noise in two boys who were violently battering and pommelling each other on a small grass plot behind her. The roughest and biggest was holding the lesser one by the back of his waistband and administering a perfect battery of blows here, there, and everywhere. But the advantage was not entirely on his side; for the smaller lad had clutched him by his fierce red hair, standing all on end, and as if on fire with the fury of the combat. Moreover, his head being perforce in a depressed condition, he had converted it into a battering-ram, with which he violently assailed his oppressor between the ribs, to the extreme detriment of his wind. So their chances stood pretty even, and cries and blows redoubled with the difficulty of victory. But what puzzled Mina, who was anxiously looking on, was to see a bird fluttering in strange proximity to the heads of the angry boys, and now and again uttering a low, piteous cry instinct with fear and pain. As she approached, however, the reason became clear.

Close to the lads, almost in danger of being crushed by their heels, lay a nest with five callow heads showing above the edge. Nothing more soft, more helpless, more pitiable than those mute, half-open beaks and half-shut eyes, scarcely weaned as yet from the warm darkness of the maternal wings. And how deeply the parent bird felt this utter nakedness of theirs! How she yearned over them! how fiercely her little heart throbbed against her side, till it seemed as though every downy

Page 13 feather vibrated on her body! It was truly a touching sight, this female bird hovering over her young, dimly comprehending their peril; yet how lost on these savage young natures only intent on wresting the spoil from each other!

Mina had come close up to the boys, and was now entreating them to restore the nest to the place whence they had taken it. But seeing that her words had no effect, she hastily fumbled in her pockets for a few stray coins. As usual, alas! they were bare of any. While she was turning her pockets inside out, and littering the grass with a queer assortment of odds and ends, the lads left off battering each other for a moment to stare at her, half stupidly and half cunningly. But one of them crying out, “I found it, ‘tis mine, you rogue;” the other shouted, “I’m the strongest, and I’ll keep it;” and so they fell to more violently than before.

A brilliant idea now occurred to Mina. She remembered her jar of honey. Taking it from her basket, all aglow with her eagerness, she held it out to the boys, who, nothing loth, snatched it from her dimpled hands.

This scene had not been unobserved, however; and now from behind one of the tree-trunks a stranger advanced, and with a faint smile lurking in the corners of his mouth, threw some silver to the boys, bidding them run as fast as their legs would let them; which they did accordingly, honey and all. Then stooping, he gently lifted the nest from the grass, and watching the she-bird for a moment, lightly climbed one of the trees as though used to it, and replaced the nest of fledglings amidst its sheltering leaves. A naןve little

Page 14 burst of gladness betokened that the feathered mother rejoiced once more at the possession of her young. Mina, absorbed in the proceeding, had remained immovable. Now, however, as the stranger stood once more before her lifting his hat, with a gentle inclination of his head, she blushed as she returned his salute, and then rapidly walked away.

In her confusion she had dropped her whole treasure of violets. She did not look back or she would have seen that some one stooped, and, carefully collecting the scattered flowers, hid them away in his breast; then, standing still for a moment, he shaded his eyes from the beams of the setting sun, as yet scarcely intercepted by the sparse foliage, and watched the receding figure as it lightly passed down an avenue of noble old beech trees. The red sunlight just then glowing on their trunks touched the girl’s loose-flowing curls, transmuting their brown to reddest gold, so that, as if encircled by an aureole, she seemed passing down the porphyry pillars of some hushed cathedral aisle. Hushed indeed, save for the call of the cuckoo—a faint; far-off call, wafted as by fragrant gusts from some dim green valley lying remote on the limits of the sunset.

When the girl had quite disappeared round an angle in the path, the stranger started as from a trance and strode hastily down the same avenue, and when he had passed, shadows as of evening slowly swept over the silent and solitary wood.

Page 15 CHAPTER II. A GERMAN COFFEE PARTY.

THREE days had elapsed since Mina’s adventure in the wood. But Frau Lichtenfeld had not yet consoled herself for the loss of her honey. When she heard her daughter’s story she was so amazed that she even forgot to scold her. Give away a jar of her finest honey, forsooth, when she was getting up her half-yearly coffee party, and could not make her “honey-cakes” without it; the cakes of all others in which she excelled—it was past comprehension!

In spite of her disappointment, the good lady was determined to make her party eclipse those of her rivals. And to this end she turned a very whirlwind of a woman. Not that she was ever idle—idleness being in her eyes well nigh as heinous a crime as theft—but the steady trade-wind of her activity now blew a violent gale, so that her children scattered at her advent like leaves before a high wind.

On the first day, broom in hand, and head swathed

Page 16 like a mummy, she attacked the dust, her sworn enemy, climbing and ducking with the agility of a wild cat as she routed it from its favourite strongholds—the furniture being huddled on the landing, mostly with its legs sticking in the air.

On the second day, with tucked-up petticoats, she went about sluicing floor after floor, till, like a female Neptune, she had brought a flood about the place.

But on the third day dryness was restored again, and order and symmetry were evoked from chaos.

Then there ensued such a boiling and baking, whipping of cream, beating of eggs and roasting of coffee, as filled the children with ravishment.

At last everything was in readiness for the guests. The floor of the best room had been sufficiently polished to endanger the necks of the lady visitors on their way to pay their respects to the lady of the house.

The most conspicuous, if not most beautiful, article of furniture in the room was the high, white porcelain stove adorned with brass bands, and supported by way of ornament what looked like four winged claws of a beast of prey. Near it, highly polished too, stood a piece of furniture much in use with great smokers such as the late Herr Professor Lichtenfeld was in his time, but forgotten in polite English circles.

In the corner opposite the stove, a walnut יtagטre was covered with yellow Bohemian glass, Swiss wood carvings, and a quite surprising number of florid birthday cups and saucers with large inscriptions, all invoking blessings or imploring remembrance.

A red damask sofa with bolster cushions occupied the space opposite the windows, and dangling near it

Page 17 was the broad green velvet bell-rope, heavily embroidered with yellow chenille and pearls. The chairs, too, were mostly covered with cushions embroidered in Berlin wool, with a dog, a sheep, or a shepherd invariably represented in the centre.

Curtains partly of red damask, partly of white muslin, were elaborately festooned into metal holders, which none but the mistress’s own hand ever ventured to disarrange.

On a side cupboard between the windows ticked a gilt clock under its glass case, while the works moving the hands also turned a spiral jet of glass, which issued like water from a lion’s mouth, as well as the grindstone of a Cupid of similar metal, who was sharpening an arrow. This clock was always inspected with wondrous awe by Conrad and Otto on the rare occasions when they were permitted to enter these sacred precincts. On either hand of it was placed an alabaster vase of gaudily-painted wax flowers, likewise under glass.

Above the sofa two life-size family portraits represented Herr Professor and Frau Lichtenfeld in the days of their youth.

The Frau Professorinn, nיe Elise Duttenhofer,was depicted with a leathery but high-coloured complexion, bright brown eyes, and dark brown hair tightly drawn off the face, א la chinoise, and fastened right on the top of the head in elaborate puffs, while a spiral curl, then known by the French word accroche-coeur, was gummed to each side of her face. Her green satin dress, with enormous puffs at the sleeves, was made very low, displaying arms and shoulders that did honour to the

Page 18 fattening qualities of the national “Mehlspeisen,” or flour and milk diet.

The Professor’s portrait, hanging on the darker side, seemed chiefly noticeable for shirt-frill, shirt-collar, and lank reddish hair. But whoever cared to scrutinize it closer might have detected, even through the mediocre execution of a somewhat characterless physiognomy, an expression of singular earnestness and sweetness, and in the dreamy blue eyes a sort of inverted gaze as of a man always looking inwards or backwards.

These oil pictures were not cracked like English works, but looked in a fine state of preservation, owing to Frau Lichtenfeld’s habit of polishing them once in three months with a piece of fat bacon and a silk handkerchief. The gilt frames of poorest pattern had not, however, profited much by this, the gold being considerably rubbed off in the process.

Frau Lichtenfeld herself, arrayed in a black silk gown—got on the christening day of her first-born—sat bolt upright under her portrait in the crispest of caps and lilac ribbons; while beside her, in imitation of her deportment, sat Lulu, with her golden hair primly oiled and curled. Mina in disgrace, left without orders to attend, had gladly enough made her escape from the tittle-tattle which she dreaded.

The large round table in front of the sofa ought to have groaned—if ever table before the days of spirit-rapping did groan—under its load of cakes. Here were “Zuckerbretzeln,” “Zwieback,” and “Bunt,” “Mandeltorten,” and “Mohrenkצpfe,” all national delicacies with untranslatable names.

When the clock struck three the ladies gradually

Page 19 assembled—gentlemen are of course excluded from these solemn rites. After many complimentary speeches and mutual protestations as to who should take the place of honour on the sofa, they settled down amidst much rustling of skirts. And presently, when they had partaken of the excellent coffee and other good things provided for them, their tongues buzzed busily to the accompaniment of their knitting needles.

“Yes, yes, my dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator,” answered Frau Lichtenfeld to something said in praise of Lulu; “the poor child was born after her father’s death, you remember, and takes after our family, of course. She’s quite a comfort already, follows me about like a mouse, actually helps me to lay the tablecloth, born little housewife that she is; but the Duttenhofers always were a practical lot, so different from the poor Lichtenfelds.” (During this discourse Lulu was giving proof of her practicality by a demure but continuous consumption of the cakes.) “Yes, I might say that I did but one unpractical thing in my life—not that I mean to say that I repented it—repentance is so unpractical—I’m alluding of course to my marrying the poor dear Professor, blessed be his memory. And Mina, you know, takes after her father, more’s the pity. She’s always up in the clouds, but now since the Countess has taken the bel יtage, she’s more past my management than ever—not but that her manners are mending, and high time they should, too.”

At the mention of the Countess all the ladies pricked up their ears, and so keen was their curiosity on this subject that they not only left off praising their children, abusing their husbands, and bewailing the degeneracy

Page 20 of servants, but suffered their knitting to drop in their laps, so that an almost ominous silence succeeded the clatter.

The Frau Professorinn, who enjoyed the importance of knowing a little, though in truth only a very little, more than her neighbours on this subject, was not slow to avail herself of the advantage to the utmost.

“Yes,” she continued, fired by the curiosity of her listeners; “one afternoon, come a month last general mending-day, when Theresa, who was helping me with the large basket, was just telling me that the Frau Geheimrהthin Fick had it from her husband that the Countess—just think of it—was a spy in the pay of the Czar of Russia, when there came a tap at the door, and before I had time to say, ‘Come in,’ in walked–-“

“Not the Countess?” exclaimed some of the ladies, interrogatively.

“The Countess herself,” said Frau Lichtenfeld, casting a triumphant glance around, “looking so grand and stately, with yards of black velvet sweeping my floor like a broom, that it quite took my breath away; and curtsying to me as if I were her Serene Highness herself. Our Grand Duchess has not near such a carriage, though she is the niece of the Emperor of all the Russias!”

“I always thought that she must be some unfortunate great lady in exile,” complacently interposed Frau Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengהrtner, a stout, florid woman, inclined to take a hopeful view of things. “Now do tell us, what did you do, my dear Frau Professorinn?”

“Why, I was so stunned that I forgot even to ask

Page 21 her to sit down; but the beautiful lady sat down beside me, and said smiling (I never saw any one smile or sit down with such an air), ‘Pray,’ said she, ‘accept my excuses, dear madam, for venturing to intrude thus abruptly upon you, but I have a favour to ask which I hope you will not refuse.’”

“A favour to ask!” echoed three or four of the ladies, nodding or shaking their heads, as they happened to be charitably or enviously inclined.

“Yes,” continued the Professorinn, eagerly; “she said she had caught sight of my Mina in the garden, and that there was something in the child’s face she had taken a fancy to, and would like to paint into a picture—for it seems, instead of doing embroidery or crochet, she amuses herself with dabbling in colours.”

“Hm, hm, does she paint?” murmured an acid little spinster, with snuff-coloured locks and a complexion like kitchen soap. “I always thought for my part that she was an impostor.”

“Ah, my dear Frהulein von Griesbach, are you not slightly confounding the justifiable זsthetic make-believe with morals?” lisped Frau Scherer, in a plaintive voice.

“You may imagine,” continued Frau Lichtenfeld, ignoring the interlude, “that I could not help feeling flattered at such a great lady noticing my chit of a girl, who is well enough to be sure, but no beauty.”

“Her hair is against her, no doubt,” remarked the maiden of the straight, dingy locks; “it shines like copper, and is always in a tangle.”

“Well,” resumed Mina’s mother, bristling somewhat

Page 22 —for though she was always abusing her daughter, she did not relish any one else doing so—“of course I was only too delighted to have my daughter’s portrait taken, and told her that I had myself been painted in my youth by the Grand Duke’s own painter, Herr Fridolin, (here the good woman cast an admiring glance at the likeness above her), still I could not help asking her what she saw in the girl. There was Wolf now, the flower of the flock, I should have thought he would have suited her ladyship far better, I said; but the Countess only smiled, shook her head, and repeated it was my girl she wanted. You see she told me she was lonely, had taken a fancy to her, and was quite grateful to me for granting her request. Think of that! There was ever so much I wanted to say and ask her, but before I had time to begin like, she was on her feet, bowing to me again in that stately way, and gone.”

“And are you not afraid, honoured Frau Professorinn,” remarked the maiden lady, “that poor Mina’s head may be turned in finding herself singled out in this way by someone so much above her in station?”

“With all her faults the girl’s not vain,” retorted the mother; “and the Countess often talks to her in French, you know, which is as good as if we paid for a finishing school, and will make quite a lady of her, as I say.”

“Before taking her for a pattern,” said Frהulein von Griesbach again, “I think it would be advisable to know why this Countess, young, beautiful, and fabulously rich, they say, has come ‘snowing’ into our midst from the Lord knows where, and lives quasi hidden in this house (a house, begging your pardon for saying so, gracious Frau Professorinn, so remote from

Page 23 the fashionable quarter of the town), and who, instead of showing a natural wish to mingle in the elegant gaieties of the nobility, has positively, I hear, refused access to her presence to some of our leading magnates, and never yet shown herself at our theatre or public promenade.”

“Well, well,” remarked Frau Obertribunalprocurator, in a soothing voice, “they do say that the poor Countess was the wife of a great Polish nobleman, who, on being sent into exile, went travelling from country to country with her till they settled down in Alexandria. There, incredible as it seems, the infatuated man was converted to the religion of Mohammed; and so thought it a duty enjoined by his new faith, I am told, to marry at least three wives besides his own to show what a zealous convert he was.”

“The poor dear Countess!” commiserated some of the ladies, though they had already believed and listened to dozens of tales of the most contradictory character respecting her.

“When the Countess found that all her expostulations with that shameless renegade, her husband, were in vain,” continued Frau Hopfengהrtner, “she left him secretly (some say she has property of her own; others that she made off with the better part of his, and serve him right, too); and so has been in hiding ever since for fear her rascal of a husband might do her some mischief, being of a vindictive and desperate character.”

“These demagogues and revolutionists always are,” said Frהulein von Griesbach.

“But, my dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator, I have it on the best authority,” interposed another lady, who had hitherto been silent, “that this Countess for all her

Page 24 grand airs was neither more nor less than a singer, who starred it in every capital of Europe, till she married a pseudo-Italian Count, who played the devil with her money at cards, till in self-defence she ran away from him and came here to hide herself.”

“Singer, indeed!” burst out the indignant Frau Lichtenfeld. “As if I did not know a great lady when I saw one, when my father, the Medicinalrath Duttenhofer, attended half the great ladies in the land. Why, our Grand Duchess has not such a bearing as she.”

“Still there’s a mystery round her,” said Frהulein von Griesbach, with a little spiteful toss of her head.

“Yes, that’s it; there’s a mystery,” said the other ladies, significantly looking at each other and shaking their heads. After this the conversation veered round to the inexhaustible topic of servants and their enormities, which was suddenly interrupted, however, by Lulu’s loud sobbing.

The child had remained unobserved for some time, and was standing near the table with one of its little fists pressed into its eye; and the other holding a large slice of unfinished cake. On being asked why she was crying, Lulu presently recovered sufficient breath to confess her piteous plight: “She couldn’t eat any more—not any more—of all the sweeties there.”

“Go, take the cake to your brothers,” said Frau Lichtenfeld; “I hear them coming; the poor boys have more cause for crying than you, silly child.”

And now at a still early hour the ladies began folding up their knitting and other work, and, curtseying themselves out with many parting compliments, broke up the conclave of coffee and scandal.

Page [25] CHAPTER III. MOONLIGHT MYSTERIES.

WHILE on the floor below the ladies were still at their gossip, Mina was ensconced in her own particular sanctum or bower. We say bower, because it was green as any bird’s, and as high too, adjoining the roof in fact, so that the big pear tree at the back gave her an occasional call, tapping at the window if closed, and if open, waving a friendly palm in token of good fellowship.

Mina never quite satisfied herself, however, whether the greeting were really for her, or for the swallows who in summer inhabited the storey above, or, in common parlance, the eaves. But considering the terms of close intimacy on which they all stood, it would have been absurd to inquire too jealously as to the object of these delicate attentions. Did they not share most things in common, even to a kind of masonic speech, which none but the initiated could understand?

The room just mentioned was small, like its inhabitant, but nearly as bright and fresh. Ivy, growing in

Page 26 plain earthenware jars, had been trained round the walls, which though simply whitewashed were thus tapestried in quite a festive manner. Here and there a space had been cleared of leaves in order to hang a few bookshelves, or to fix brackets on which stood vases always filled with fresh flowers. From the ceiling in the centre hung a flower-vessel in terra cotta, very much like an old Grecian lamp in shape, whence the long tendrils of a creeper fell in graceful festoons.

Against the wall, opposite the window, a narrow bedstead was placed half-shrouded in white curtains, and covered by one of those patchwork counterpanes which are such an eloquent proof of thrift and industry. A narrow strip of carpet, likewise of patchwork, lay beside the bed on the plain deal floor. A table, covered with a faded green cloth, stood by the window; on it a globe with gold fish which, glowing like burnished copper, circled unceasingly round it, like an emblem of time itself.

Nor must we forget a mysterious book, bound in red morocco with a steel clasp and a lock and key to it, between whose leaves, had it been opened, would have been found pressed wild flowers and thoughts like flowers. Now it was a wreath of forget-me-nots, now a pale tracery of primroses or flourish of violets, between which were traced, in a girlish hand, sometimes only a few words or lines, sometimes a verse or two. What words? what verses? you ask. Pry who dare into the secret heart of maidenhood; we shrink from such profanation! Shut the book. Come away.

Walls, carpets, chairs, and tables, however, do not alone constitute a room. The inhabitant breathes his

Page 27 own soul into the inanimate objects and stamps them with his seal. Thus this little chamber seemed to be redolent of virginity, to smell of sweet fancies, to have dainty thoughts stored away amid its plain furniture, as lavender is laid between linen to keep it delicately fragrant.

Mina’s duties for the day were over. She had toiled through the A B C with Lulu, through the grammar and geography lessons with her dreadfully unruly younger brothers, who could never be made to remember the difference between a noun and an adjective; and invariably struggled through the declensions with the feverish agitation of flies caught in a spider’s web, hopeless of ever getting out again in safety.

What mischief had they not again been up to this day? In the middle of a dictation, while carefully enunciating each syllable of the formidable word, “Me-so-po-ta-mia,” the teacher had been rudely disturbed, nay, absolutely routed, in her dignified gravity, by a multitudinous whirr of wings, darkly swarming about the room like another plague of Egypt. For Hans, that ringleader in mischief, had opened on the sly the lid of a capacious box, wherein he had bred a colony of cockchafers, which, just ready for flight, rushed into space with a muffled whirr, covering the walls and curtains, some even—oh, horror!—perhaps attracted by its brightness, settling on Mina’s hair, thus driving her from the room with arms uplifted, amid tumultuous uproar and screams and laughter.

Not rarely, indeed, did the lessons terminate in such a climax of confusion and horror.

But Mina had now fled to her sanctum under the

Page 28 roof. It was always hushed and quiet there. So hushed that she could hear the little brook hastily lapping among the weeds and grasses as it flowed past the garden; so quiet that the lisping of leaves, that the mere stir of a spray and the intermittent babble of Nature’s arrant gossip, the wind, were as distinctly audible as the speech of some familiar friend. At times also, with almost startling distinctness, one heard the distant barking of dogs, the laughter of children at play, or the lowing of cattle trudging home to the stalls.

Curled up on the brown well-worn cushion of the window sill, her favourite seat, by the way, the girl overlooked the garden, then the fields extending to the range of hills that had ever enclosed her horizon, behind which, as it seemed to her, lay the world, with all its boundless life and mystery.

A book of poems lay in her lap, but she was not reading. She was indulging in one of those day-dreams so dear to girlhood, in which a world, unsubstantial as the cloudland of an evening sky, is constructed out of nothing, to the unspeakable delight of the builder thereof.

Suddenly the girl, leaning out of the window, gives a start and glad exclamation—“The swallows! The swallows!”

There is a shrill twittering, an ebullition of song, and a number of swallows dart through the air, or hang in clusters to the trees above her. Not for long, however. Ere that eastern cloud, all aglow with the sunset, has faded, they have taken flight once more, and the black flash of their wings has subsided behind the hills.

A pair, however, has remained, executing a thousand

Page 29 graceful evolutions before Mina’s eyes. Now they almost brush her cheek with the tip of their pointed wings, vanish, reappear, dive low, razing the grass, then soar aloft, rising higher and higher, till they seem mere specks against the faint hues of the twilight sky. Here they are again, hovering round the old nest, inspecting it now from this side, now from that, twittering in shrill tones, more expressive than any words, of their heartfelt joy at being at home once more in the old familiar place.

It seemed as though they would never have done. But, then, they had so much to relate to their old playfellows, Mina and the pear tree—of south lands far over sea, of palm-trees and pyramids, of tawny stretches of sand, burnt through, bare of shrub and herb, like a bone gnawed and licked clean by the hot lips of the sun; then of home sickness and the long, long voyage; of the Peak of Teneriffe, that obelisk of the ocean, where they alit a cloud of wings, and the weaklings drifted helpless like leaves in a high wind, and were swept from the precipices, fluttering down, down into the yawning deep, never to fly any more with the fleet-winged swarm, fly north to the green land of streams, to the land of the lime and the slim-leaved willow tree and steeples numberless; to the land where their nests, whether clinging close to poor man’s thatch, Gothic roof, or castled wall, were ever hailed as harbingers of luck.

Yes, all this and much more did Mina hear as she sat listening to the blithe gossip of the swallows, which subsided at last with subsiding day, abandoning the earth to silence and twilight. Like a low prelude, which

Page 30 by and by will usher in some mellow and perfect piece of music, a vaporous silver light faintly indicated the spot above the hills where the moon would rise anon.

But, hark! What sounds are these? Too aכrial almost to be evoked by human fingers, too full of harmony for a bird’s singing! An illusion, no doubt; for not a breath of air even ruffles the profound silence of the night. Mina listens again in amazement. Surely these indescribably delicate, elf-like sounds are produced by the strings of a guitar. Impossible! Whence, wherefore, should come a musician to this sequestered spot? Shyly wondering, the girl peeps furtively through the half-open window; all she sees, however, is the blurred shadow of the blossoming pear tree on the grass beneath, but dimly lit as yet by the rising moon.

Still the music swells into fuller, more continuous melody; and who is this singing with low, seductive voice—

Low singing through the night I go, And as the starry beams Into the mellow moonlight flow, I’ll melt into thy dreams.

Thou’rt like the mellow moon, fair maid, I like that humble star Which, by her light enthralled and swayed, Stands worshipping afar.

The song was ended. Only a few expiring chords still resounded from the instrument, then its strings burst into a wild, almost unearthly twanging, at once exquisite and demoniacal, which, growing fainter,

Page 31 receded as if through the old garden gate and into the footpath beyond.

Although the moon had gradually risen above the hills, and was now bleaching the untrimmed grass of the garden and silvering the milk-white, thick-clustered blossoms of the pear tree, not a trace of the mysterious musician was anywhere visible. The exquisite charm of the music had certainly ravished Mina to such a degree that her curiosity had been merged in admiration.

She lay quite still, with her face hidden on her arm, and in her childlike simplicity never thought that either song or singer could have any connection with herself. It was like part of the spring to her; as if the sounds were being exhaled like scent from the opening flowers. While she thus brooded, striving to recall the exquisite air to her inner sense once more, she did not mark a tapping at her door. Presently it opened, and a tall woman softly entered, and was going toward Mina, as though with familiar greeting, when she suddenly stood quite still in an attitude of strained attention. One could see her distinctly, illuminated as she was by the level moonlight, which, streaming through the window into the middle of the room, made a sort of chequerwork on the boards there. It was to this light perhaps that the beautiful features owed some of their abnormal pallor, a pallor still enhanced by the coal-black hair coiled in heavy plaits round her head, and by the full-coloured coral of lips which even the moonshine could not neutralize.

As she stood thus, with uplifted head and a haunting smile, faint snatches of the wild exquisite air seemed to be wafted from afar with a sudden gust of wind.

Page 32 However incoherent the tune, its fantastic cadence seemed strangely to move this lady, for, apparently under its influence, she began slowly swaying herself to and fro, the undulating curves of her beautiful body being instinct with a dreamy voluptuousness, a sleepy grace, echoed, so to speak, by the suppressed glow of her dark eyes and the inaudible melody framed by her moving lips.

Gradually, however, this rhythmic motion seemed to communicate a passionate impulse to her whole being. As her gestures became more excited, a black lace scarf fell from her ivory-white arms and shoulders, and now advancing, now retreating, she snapped her fingers with a passionate cry, and glancing over her shoulder, smiled bewitchingly as though she saw some one there in the empty air. All at once, however, she uttered a moan, and bending low, pressed her hand to her ankle, while a slight shiver passed over her frame. In this attitude she stood as rigid as a statue, only in the dilated pupils of her dazzling eyes there was a flicker as of fear, pain, or yearning ecstasy.

In another instant her limbs, her features, nay, her very eyebrows, seemed convulsed with emotion, then with abrupt, violent gesticulations, with quivering lips, with heaving bosom, with head thrown back in passionate self-abandonment, chaunting fragments of a wildly thrilling melody, she threaded the bewildering figures of an intricate and mysterious dance.

Her long hair, shaken down by the vehemence of her movements, and black as some raven’s plumage, flapped loosely behind her, while large death’s-head moth swooped on flurried wing above this tall figure fitfully whirling in and out of the pale moonshine.

Page 33

All at once the dancer burst into mocking, seemingly irrepressible laughter. She had caught sight of Mina’s gaze, half amazement, half terror, fixed full upon her: in the midst of her unaccountable excitement this seemed to have produced a violent revulsion to mirth in her.

Mina abruptly roused from her deep absorption, had, indeed, been breathlessly watching this singular spectacle. Her sensations were utterly bewildering. She felt almost like a person labouring under a nightmare, whose lips refuse to make a sound. Had her friend gone mad? Or what was it that suddenly seemed to transform the beautiful woman she admired so enthusiastically into a weird demoniacal apparition? What was it that invested the enchantment of her smile, her eyes, her laughter, with the chill of an ominous foreboding?

This whole scene, long as it has taken to describe, lasted scarcely a few minutes. The lady, whatever might have been the cause of her previous extraordinary conduct, now moved towards the window with her habitual languid grace, and placing one hand, sparkling with many rings, under Mina’s chin, said with a slightly sarcastic intonation in her voice—

“What a child it is, with its little head stuffed full of fairies, witches, enchantments dire, and such fantastical fiddle-faddle! Fanciful to the extent of seeing even in me, inoffensive mortal of flesh and blood that I am, some hateful sorceress weaving spells by moonlight to bring ruin on my dearest friends.”

She laughed again and said, “Forgive me, but you are too comic, Mina; indeed, you are!”

Page 34

So saying she threw one arm lightly round the girl’s shoulders and, leaning far out of the window, gazed intently across the hushed, moonlit landscape, across whose grey breadths of light not so much as the shadow of a moving cloud was to be seen. Long, long she looked, sometimes faintly humming snatches of the same fantastic tune. Suddenly she drew in her head again with an impatient action, and turning to Mina said—

“No wonder you grow fanciful, my child, if you will sit here by the hour with your head exposed to the naked glare of this moon; or is there possibly another attraction here; it’s not the man in, but under the moon, perhaps, that lends charm to solitude?”

She looked keenly at Mina for an instant as if she would read her through arid through but seeing her ingenuous face flush up with quick indignation and surprise, she laughed again lightly as she said—

“I was only teazing you, ma petite; it’s much too good a girl, I know, even to harbour such wicked thoughts. But by the way, Mina, I could never have believed that my dancing, which was once upon a time accounted the most graceful thing in the world, could have given any one the fright it did you!”

“I am sorry, so sorry,” stammered the girl in an apologetic tone; “it came upon me in such an unexpected, sudden manner—and then the moonlight, I think, made you look changed and strange, as if–-” But interrupting herself confusedly, she continued, “Oh, yes, it was beautiful, too beautiful! and I shall not be frightened now if you will dance again, dearest Countess.”

“No, no,” exclaimed the other, with passionate vehemence,

Page 35 making an involuntary gesture with her hand, as though to wave back some influence which might once more blindly dominate her senses—“think you I would dance thus for your pleasure, girl? It was that I thought I heard that to which my limbs–-No matter, no matter! An illusion, no doubt, caused by this detestable moonlight. Well, well! does it not often haunt me in dreams? But there, Mina, now you are opening your eyes again in that wide, wondering fashion, which is so irritating at times; you should get out of that habit. There are stranger things, let me tell you, in the lives of men and women—for all you look down upon them as commonplace mortals—than in all the fairy tales with which you have crammed your brain, till you can’t hear a cat mew but you think there’s magic in it. There, I don’t mean to scold. I simply came up to see if you could sit to me to-morrow. I wanted to seek you out myself in your loft haunt for once, instead of sending Louise. Come early, for I want to send your portrait to the exhibition at D�sseldorf, you know. Now good-night; don’t dream of me as a witch who flies out of window pirouetting on a broomstick.”

So saying her visitor lightly kissed Mina on the cheek, and again tittered ironically. The latter saw her friend to the door, and profusely apologized for her inability to light her down the narrow, break-neck stairs.

Page [36] CHAPTER IV. THE COUNTESS STARAJA.

IT was past one o’clock the next day when Mina, at last dismissed by her mother, came tripping down the staircase, taking two or three steps at a time, and thereby giving such an impetus to her course that she ran some danger of precipitately flying through the glass door opening on the bel יtage. The spruce French lady’s maid told her, as usual, that her mistress was not dressed yet, but Madame would receive her in her bedroom.

Although the day outside was brilliant with that shrill distinctness of light often peculiar to spring, within all was subdued to low semitones of colour, imparting to this room an air of mysterious quietude and absolute seclusion. A certain liliputian reflection of the outer world was visible, however, in an antique mirror, wherein the green fragment of a landscape receded far into a background tremulous with vernal gold.

All clamours, and echoes of clamorous hours, seemed

Page 37 to be for ever excluded from this dim, perfumed chamber, where, in a mellow twilight, a woman was sitting, combing out her long hair, darkly shed about her smooth white shoulders.

Intently absorbed in watching her own reflection in the looking-glass before her, she did not notice the girl’s entrance till the latter, putting an arm round her, had saluted her with a kiss; when looking up with a faintly ironical smile, she tapped Mina on the cheek, saying—

“So you are no longer afraid of me, little one! Truly I did not know whether, crediting me, as it seemed, with the gifts of magic and witchcraft, you did not intend cutting me in future, for fear I should cast some spell upon you, more especially as I am painting your portrait just now.”

At the remembrance of the weird, almost baleful impression which her fascinating friend had produced on her overwrought fancy on the previous night, Mina burst into a merry laugh, and then with a sudden transition from her exuberant gaiety to a certain impassioned earnestness, she exclaimed fondly, “You have indeed cast a spell on me, or how account for my worship of you, Countess? But what could painting my portrait have to do with the matter?”

“Oh,” replied the Countess, carelessly, slowly passing and repassing a tortoise-shell comb through her luxuriant black hair, “I was alluding to an Eastern superstition, according to which the person who paints your portrait gets a hold for better or worse over your soul—and mostly for worse,” she added under her breath, with a certain gleam in her eyes. “Therefore,

Page 38 beware, beware, little one, how you entrust your portrait to my keeping; who knows but the day may come when I shall imperil your soul’s happiness to serve mine.”

While she was speaking she dexterously twisted her heavy plaits round a dagger-like hair-skewer at the back of her head, her movements being somewhat impeded, however, by her companion, who had impetuously flung her arms round her neck exclaiming—

“Do you think if there were truth in this superstition I would not trust myself in effigy in your hands?”

“Well, let’s not waste any more time, for I mean to put the finishing touches to your portrait today,” said the Countess, passing Mina’s arm in her own, and leading her down the corridor into a lofty room, half studio, half salon, in which the smell of oil paint was disguised by rich, enervating perfumes.

On the lady’s entrance two macaws of peculiarly brilliant plumage began violently swinging themselves backwards and forwards in their rings and screaming vociferously.

Mina always felt herself transported into some enchanted demesne of the Arabian Nights on entering this apartment, so gorgeous to her, accustomed as she was only to the most homely style of living and furniture.

She was never tired of admiring the costly knick-knacks and ornaments, not only arranged on cabinets and stands, but carelessly strewn about in all directions. Here a delicately tinted Louis Quinze fan was half buried under a pile of music; there bottles of attar of roses, worth their weight in gold, costly old laces and

Page 39 richly embroidered scarfs were mixed up with brushes and coloured chalks, while Indian cashemeres and other Eastern fabrics were flung over sofas, or even on the floor, like common rugs.

What attracted the girl more than anything, however, were the pictures, chiefly portraits, on the walls, and a large portfolio filled with sketches of people and places. She now again turned over these latter while the Countess was arranging the draperies for a background to her liking, and getting her palette ready. Suddenly Mina came upon a sketch which she wondered at not having noticed before, and which exercised a kind of fascination over her.

It was a sunny Italian scene such as Leopold Robert loved to paint. An open space on the Chiaja at Naples, about the hour of sunset. A young girl of Capri, queenlike of bearing, but with a tambourine in her hand, seemingly dancing to the strains of two street musicians in the midst of a circle of ragged girls children, and fishermen. Her inimitable grace of motion was dashed off in few colours by the hand of a master. On the extreme foreground, leaning against the parapet, a few scratches of charcoal conveyed the impression of a tall man, seen in what the French call a profil perdu, intently gazing, as it seemed, at the beautiful dancing figure. It was the vivid impression of a scene that had evidently stamped itself on a great artist’s mind, sunlight and all.

“Oh,” cried Mina, impulsively rising and taking the sketch to her friend’s side, “what a wonderful thing this is! Dear me, as I look at it, it seems to remind me—why, it is–-“

Page 40

But before she had time to finish what she was going to say, the Countess had snatched the sketch from the girl’s hand, and tossing it into a corner, said imperiously, with a sudden flashing of the eyes—

“I wish you would sit still, Mina, and hold your head in one position, if only for ten minutes, or I shall once for all throw your portrait in the fire. What a little plague you are, always rummaging amidst this old litter of mine!”

Then, as if to make up for her irritable manner, she chucked the girl caressingly under the chin and said—

“There, pet, just raise your head a trifle more in that direction; no, more to that side. You can study my copy of the famous ‘Mona Lisa’ yonder, while I try to put in your eyes.”

The Countess now painted away with fitful energy. She put the eyes in; she took a piece of rag and rubbed them out again. Then she put them in once more of a different colour. For a while she looked at them, then she threw down her mallstick, stepped back from her easel, and said petulantly—

“There’s something very perverse about you, Mina. Do what I will your eyes still get that tragic look in my picture, though they are sunny enough of themselves.”

It must be admitted here that the Countess, though she had occasional flashes of inspiration, was not what would be called a good artist. Once she had had the opportunity of studying under a great master, and she might perhaps have attained considerable excellence had it not been for an unaccountable perversity, which no teaching or remonstrance could break her of. This was a curious preference for some colours, and an

Page 41 equally curious aversion to others, which at certain times seemed to grow quite uncontrollable. Thus though she occasionally hit off a very successful likeness, she usually injured it through too lavish use of red or hot pigments in contradistinction to the blue or cold ones.

Nevertheless, she had already exhibited several portraits and one or two pictures, and at the time we are writing of she was determined (for reasons of her own) to make an income by art. She had taken a good deal of pains with Mina’s portrait, therefore, and had on the whole successfully rendered the softly rounded outlines of the face and the general character of the features. While trying to put the finishing touches to the breezy ripple of her bright chestnut hair, she said—

“What magnificent hair you have, child! Only Titian could have done justice to it. Now be honest for once with me, and tell me how many of the good youths of this town have paid you compliments on it, for all your simple looks.”

Mina, who had never speculated much on her personal appearance, was more unconscious of herself than many a child, and thought the Countess must be mocking her, her hair having always been a source of trouble to her.

“The boys often joke me about my hair,” she said, smiling in a deprecating way; “and when mother’s out of temper with me, she says it’s part of my general contrariness; and I think she fancies it has something to do with poor papa’s having been such a great Sanskrit scholar.”

Page 42

The Countess, bursting into a peal of laughter, cried—“Oh, Mina, Mina, what an oddity you are! But you’ll learn differently when you get a lover one of these days. A pretty girl like you is as sure to attract them as a candle does moths. Nay, there’s nothing to look so shocked about; friendship won’t always suffice you, I prophesy. Now promise me, Mina, when the first lover makes his appearance that you’ll make me your mother confessor. There’s that Lieutenant Knapp; now, he seems a tidy youth, and from the way he clatters up the staircase rattling his sword, I should think his impatience to see a certain–-“

“Please, please, don’t talk like that,” said Mina, moving restlessly in her chair; “if you will only put up with me and be my friend, dearest Countess, that is all I care about.”

“Yes, yes,” replied the latter, “I do very well for the present, but suppose I were to put your friendship to the test.”

“Put it to any test you like!” exclaimed Mina, impetuously jumping up and kissing the Countess, who was looking at her with her enigmatic smile; “and see what there is I would not sacrifice, were it possible for such a one as me to do anything for your happiness.”

“Oh, Mina, these are weighty words, but I do believe you are fond of me and have a faithful heart. Well,” she continued, passing her hand over the girl’s hair; “if I should ever be in trouble, be sure I’ll remember that there is a little friend–-“

A rap at the door interrupted the speaker; and the lady’s-maid entered and handed a letter with several foreign-looking postmarks to her mistress. The latter

Page 43 took it languidly enough, but on seeing the handwriting uttered an exclamation, and feverishly tore it open. In a moment she had devoured the contents of the letter, and then began perusing it a second time more slowly and carefully. There were only a few lines, indeed, and these seemed written as though each letter had cost the writer a supreme effort. A wild excitement had suddenly taken the place of the lady’s habitual languor, and she rapidly paced up and down the long room, while an irrepressible look of triumph flashed for an instant over her features. “He must and shall be mine yet!” she muttered between her teeth.

It was clear she had absolutely forgotten Mina’s presence. She rang the bell with violence, and when the maid entered, said hurriedly—

“Pack up my things at once, Louise, and send Hector round to Herr Professor Sontheim to say I must see him immediately on pressing business: let him also get everything ready for our departure, as I start for Russia to-morrow morning.”

Louise, like the well-bred maid she was, took the tidings without any signs of surprise, as though this was simply one of her mistress’s many caprices. As she was leaving the room the Countess called her back, saying—

“Wait a minute, I will write a note to Herr Sontheim myself.”

She sat down at her secretaire, dashed off a few lines, sprinkled them with gold sand, sealed the note and handed it to the maid, who immediately left the room. She then for the third time began conning the contents of the letter, which ran as follow—

Page 44

“Though I know everything, yet I forgive. My honour and loyalty protect you from my revenge, had I wished for any. I love you unchangeably, and all I ask for the ruin you have wrought is, Come to me before it. is too late! I am dying, but your secret shall die with me!”

Having now engraved every word on her memory, the Countess lit a candle, and holding the letter to the flame, saw it shrivel up in a moment; she then hurried out of the room, without a word to Mina, apparently to give some further directions about her approaching journey.

Page [45] CHAPTER V. LEAVE-TAKING.

SOME time elapsed before the Countess returned. Her face was even paler than its wont, and her eyes glittered more restlessly. When she caught sight of Mina, who for the last hour had been crying like a forlorn child, with her head buried in the cushions of the sofa, she was for the first time reminded of her existence.

The girl on hearing of this sudden journey to Russia had, indeed, been fairly aghast. To her small-town notions of a journey, as a thing that must be arranged, planned, and thought of at least a month beforehand, such a proceeding was simply incredible.

An then to lose her friend in this abrupt manner! the only friend she had ever had, and to whom she had attached herself with all the ardour of a nature which for the first time finds the shapes of beauty that have haunted it incorporated in a living form.

What a contrast was there not to the imaginative

Page 46 Mina between the prim Philistines of D–-, with their interminable twaddle, and this noble lady, who, in her eyes, was invested with the double charm of beauty and mystery!

And now the Countess was not only going to leave her thus suddenly, but while still present in the body seemed already absent in the spirit.

“Why, pet,” said the latter, who for the last minute or so had been teazing one of her macaws, now sitting down beside Mina, “what’s the matter? One would think you had the toothache, or is it that you are so sorry I am going to Russia?”

Mina raised her head, and looking fondly at her, said with brimming eyes, “To Russia! all that long way, and so soon! No, no, you cannot be going yet!”

“Yes, yes, child, to Russia! Why if I were going to the Antipodes you could not look more woebegone. Cheer up! The world is not such a large place as you imagine, and people are always knocking up against their next-door neighbours in the most unlikely places. We shall meet again; Mina, never fear.”

“But you are going far, far away,” sighed Mina, with a droop of the corners of her mouth, as if she were trying not to cry again. But it was no use trying; in another minute she was sobbing as though a terrible misfortune had befallen her. Poor child! to her it was the first experience of parting from one she held dear, and fancied that she held still infinitely dearer; and a first parting is always a foretaste of death.

“Why she is actually crying in earnest, the little tender-hearted goose!” exclaimed the Countess, taking her scented pocket-handkerchief and daintily wiping

Page 47 away the tears that were still rolling down Mina’s cheeks. “Now do be good and don’t cry any more, or I must ring for Louise to bring me another handkerchief. Besides, crying is bad for the eyes, and yours are too bright to spoil.”

This playful tone, instead of cheering Mina, had the contrary effect; she felt suddenly quite lonely, and miles upon miles seemed already to intervene between her friend and herself.

“Now, Mina,” said the Countess, getting up and beginning to collect some of the knick-knacks scattered about, “come and help me put some of these things together, like a good child. There,” she continued, taking up a coral necklace with a golden clasp, and passing it round Mina’s lovely cream-white throat, “keep this in remembrance of me till we meet again.”

Mina protested that the trinket was of too great value for her to accept, and that she did not want anything to remember her friend by. But if she wished to make her a present at parting, would she give her that sketch of the dancing girl that bore such a wonderful likeness to herself. She did not as yet know the relative value of the roughest sketch by a master and trinkets.

The Countess looked annoyed for an instant, then, shaking her head, said, laughing, “Not so bad an exchange certainly, Mina; but what you ask is quite impossible.”

Then the girl begged for some little sketch or portrait of her friend, but that too was denied, the Countess remarking that she had a dislike to giving away any likeness of herself.

Page 48

“But don’t look so downcast, my child,” she said, pulling Mina along with her to the other end of the room, where her easel and colour boxes were, and jumbling all her painting implements together in her haste. “You must come and stay with me some day, either at Paris or St. Petersburg, for I shall be rich now, very rich, perhaps. Is there anything to astonish you so much in that, Mina?”

“But you are very, very rich already,” said Mina, to whom her friend had always appeared as revelling in the wealth of a Croesus.

“Oh, nonsense!” exclaimed the Countess; “I was getting poorer and poorer, and was going to turn artist for a living; but all that is changed now,” she laughed. “When I’ve settled down, you shall come to me, and we’ll introduce you to the world; and a lover, I dare say, will not be long in making his appearance on the stage, too. But I’m forgetting this levity is out of place,” she said, as though recalling something to her mind, and assuming a sudden gravity which her eyes belied, however.

Mina had not been roused from her sorrow. The prospect of going to stay with the Countess was certainly enchanting; but in the last hour she had gone through an experience painfully startling to her warm heart.

While the Countess was still busy getting together some of her property, there was another rap at the door, and a man of Falstaffian proportions was ushered in by the maid as Professor Sontheim. He was chiefly noticeable for one of those powerful Germanic heads that look, and indeed are, a Cosmos in miniature. His

Page 49 eyes of an indefinite blue, and the rest of his features were disproportionately small compared to the massive outline of his square-set jaw and lofty forehead, whose vastness was increased by a complete absence of hair, save for a meagre bright red fringe, extending from the temples to the back of the head. A man, however, usually finds a certain consolation for this lack of hair in the reflection that it gives him the appearance, at any rate, of having an abnormally large development of the cerebral organs. “Long hair, short wit,” as the proverb has it, was a saying probably invented by a bald-pated person; the belief, no doubt, being a salve to the nakedness of his crown. Leopold Sontheim, with his clothes hanging about him in a loose, random fashion, giving one the uneasy impression that on the slightest provocation they might come tumbling down all of a heap, was got up for this occasion in floods of clean, rumpled linen, of innumerable pleats, which his waistcoat of checked buff, rebellious with starch, always refused to cover. His lavender-coloured pantaloons, of enormous width, were strapped down so as to project them almost over the shiny black tips of his light jean half-boots. A brown tail-coat, ornamented with gilt buttons placed high between the shoulders, flapped about his portly figure, its long tails swaying from side to side as he walked. Necktie he had none, but a velvet collar, a straw hat, and diamond studs; hideous in pattern, but of considerable value, completed a costume which, though creased, fluffy, and ill adapted to his red hair and pink complexion, the owner nevertheless knew to be in the last fashion.

To Mina’s astonishment Herr Sontheim seemed quite

Page 50 at home in the room, though to her knowledge he had never been there before. He was strangely excited, and on first entering seemed not to notice her, but was going straight towards the Countess in a rapid, vehement manner, when she said, glancing round at Mina—

“You must leave us for the present, my child; I have to consult Herr Sontheim on pressing and particular business.” But seeing Mina’s piteous expression, she added, “If your mother permits it, mind you look in again this evening, little one; I won’t take leave of you now.”

Mina, who could not disguise her vexation at having her last interview with the Countess interrupted, hardly nodded to her old friend, who, for his part, seemed utterly unconscious of her presence or exit.

Scarcely had the door closed when the Countess motioning him to a chair, said, “I’ve sent for you because I must instantly leave for Russia, and there is no one I would turn to in a difficulty so soon as you, Herr Sontheim!”

“Impossible! You cannot be cruel enough to leave us so soon, Countess!” cried the gentleman, in a voice he vainly tried to render steady.

“I must, indeed!” replied the Countess. “For I have just received news necessitating my immediate departure for St. Petersburg. But unprepared as I was, I must in the course of this day raise a sum of money not only sufficient to defray the expenses of so long a journey, but to settle all my outstanding accounts here, as it is quite uncertain when I may be able to return. Now what would you advise, my

Page 51 friend? I have some Brazilian bonds by me that you might sell on this emergency.”

Herr Sontheim, instead of having taken the proffered chair, had been pacing up and down the room in great agitation. He now stood still in front of the lady, exclaiming, “Heavens, Countess, you ask the impossible with the charming peremptoriness of your sex! Bonds cannot be converted into ready money at a minute’s notice, at least in this dilatory town of ours; besides, the bank is just about to close. Surely there is no such urgent haste, dearest lady!” he said, looking at her entreatingly; “only give me a little time to collect my thoughts, and everything shall be arranged to your entire satisfaction.”

While he was speaking the Countess had been tapping the floor impatiently with her elegant Parisian slipper; she now suddenly raised her eyes to his face, exclaiming, “Good God! When one’s husband is dying far away in Russia is it a time to speak to me of delay?”

“Your husband dying!” echoed Herr Sontheim, taking two or three rapid strides across the room, while a deep colour suddenly crimsoned his face to the hair on his temples; then, sitting down close beside the Countess, he said, lowering his voice, “Command me in everything, dear lady; all I have, and myself to boot, are entirely at your service;” and in a still lower voice he added, “Is it necessary for me to tell you so?” Then, after a moment’s silence, as though the thought had only just occurred to him, he added, “So sudden! It must have been a dreadful shock to your feelings.”

Page 52

The Countess lay back on the sofa covering her face with her hands. Her bosom was heaving spasmodically, and one or two broken sobs convulsed her beautiful frame. Quite beside himself at this sudden outburst of grief, Leopold Sontheim went down on his knees before the sufferer. There was no one, luckily for him, to witness the feat. “I cannot bear to see you suffer! There is no man living worth one of those tears!” he cried, in a voice quivering with emotion; and, seizing hold of one of her hands, he pressed it with the unconscious force of an athlete.

“Oh, you are hurting me so!” gasped the lady, with her lips curiously twitching, as though she were trying to overcome some emotion; and, withdrawing her hand, she pointed to the deep, red incision of a ring which the Professor’s pressure had left on one of her long, shapely fingers.

“Oh, pardon, pardon my brutality, dearest lady!” cried Herr Sontheim with deep contrition, pressing his lips on the spot indicated.

“You are forgetting my position, sir, and the object of your visit here,” said the Countess, with a certain irritation of tone, as she motioned him to rise—a feat which the Professor at length achieved.

“There is no time to lose,” she continued; “if you really wish to help me in this matter, you must do so at once.”

Sontheim sat down, and, slowly passing his hand across his forehead, as though to clear his ideas, said, after a moment’s cogitation, with quite an altered manner, and the tone of a man of business—

“As to those Brazilian bonds you mentioned, they

Page 53 are bad things to negotiate at present. But let’s see, what will you want about—you will be posting all the way—it cannot after all cost you more than about nine hundred florins, and if you will permit me to advance you that sum, I shall esteem it a favour you are conferring on me, dearest lady. I may say,” he added, joyfully, “that I have from about nine hundred to a thousand florins in savings!”

“I thank you, my friend! But I am sure you will understand that I cannot think of accepting your generous offer. And you have such very economical notions here in Germany,” the Countess said, with the faintest smile. “Nine hundred florins will never do! Besides, I’ve just sent Hector to see about buying a carriage for me, and I must wind up my outstanding accounts here, as I mentioned before.”

“Let’s consider for a moment then,” said the Professor, jumping up, and pacing to and fro again.

“Oh, I forgot, there are my diamonds!” cried the Countess, rising too, and begging Herr Sontheim to excuse her for a moment.

She left the room, returning, after an interval of a few minutes, with a large morocco case. Opening it, she displayed a set of brilliants such as the dazzled Professor had never yet beheld.

“How much are they worth?” he exclaimed, rather awe-struck.

The Countess considered, and then said, indifferently, “I think they were valued at fifty thousand florins by a jeweller in Paris. I suppose you could sell them for me?”

“Sell them!” exclaimed Sontheim. “Oh, that were

Page 54 impious! Besides, they wouldn’t give anything like a fair price for them here; if, indeed, you’d find a customer to make an offer for them.”

The Countess, who had carelessly taken up a bracelet and was slipping it on her arm, said, with a slight shrug of the shoulder, “Instead of smoothing away difficulties, you do nothing but raise new ones, Herr Professor.”

“Only in your interest, dearest Countess, and because I would act for the best!” exclaimed Sontheim, deprecatingly. “But I think I have hit on a plan that I hope will meet with your approbation. Leave the diamonds with me, and let me advance you the twelve hundred florins you may require for immediate use; I shall manage to raise them somehow; then the moment I can get away, I will myself take your diamonds to Frankfort, and negotiate a loan for you with Ladenburg and Co. I can then settle all your debts here, if you will kindly leave directions to have the bills sent in to me, repay myself the trifling sum I shall have the felicity of lending you, and the rest, if you will favour me with your address shall be forwarded to you in draft from the bank at Frankfort, if you approve my scheme.”

“My dear friend, thank you a thousand times for all the trouble you are taking on my behalf,” said the Countess, rewarding him with one of her most seductive smiles. “Nothing could be better than the scheme you propose. When do you think you will be able to let me have the money? As for the drafts you spoke of, they had better not be sent on to me till I am sure of my movements—I will then send my address.”

Page 55

“Let me see,” said Sontheim, pulling out a turnip-shaped silver repeater; “it is now four o’clock; I will be back with the money at seven. But,” he cried, as though suddenly recollecting the state of the case, “are you really going to undertake such a long, tedious journey all by yourself, with only servants? Is it safe? Ah!” he cried, becoming excited again, and looking at her with glistening eyes. “Would I were the fortunate man to be allowed to escort you thither! Is it not possible?” he added, oblivious of everything else for the moment.

The Countess shook her head softly, and gave him a long look from under her half-drooped eyelids. “That, my friend, is impossible,” she said, “under the present melancholy circumstances;” and she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes again. “But we are wasting time here,” she continued, in an altered tone; “if you can procure me this money, do it at once, there’s a good man!”

“I hasten to do your bidding, my lady,” cried Sontheim, raising her hand to his lips. Then, seizing his hat, hurried to the door, where, turning round once more, he said, “I will be back without fail at the time mentioned,” and left the house deeply commiserating the beautiful woman.

The Countess had no sooner heard the street door close than, rising from the sofa and humming the popular tune—

Oh qu’il est beau, qu’il est beau, qu’il est beau, Le Postilion de Lonjumeau, she passed into her bedroom, where her maid, busily

Page 56 engaged in packing, was folding up a magnificent ruby-coloured velvet dress, trimmed with Venetian rose point.

“What are you doing, you idiot! Will you never learn the proper way of folding velvet?” cried the Countess, in an irate voice, snatching the dress from the abigail’s hand, and giving her such a violent push that she sent her spinning against a large wardrobe, a corner of which bruised her shoulder.

When Mina returned, towards eight o’clock, to take a final leave of the Countess, to her surprise she saw Herr Sontheim with his hat in his hand, a wild look in his eyes, and broad red streaks furrowing his brow, rush past her on the landing without recognizing her.

Page [57] CHAPTER VI. WHITSUNTIDE AT THE SILBERBURG.

IT was Whitsuntide, and numbers of citizens with their wives and children thronged the streets on their way to the Silberburg, which lay just on the outskirts of the town.

The Silberburg, in sooth, seemed a spot purposely created for the celebration of this most poetic of all festivals. It was a beautiful garden, planted on a hill, in the centre of which stood a spacious pavilion, and near it a semicircular stand embowered in frees, but opening on to a lawn in front, and capable of affording ample accommodation to the excellent orchestra, which, on certain grand occasions like the present, replaced the usual military band. The before-mentioned grass-plot, smooth as an English lawn, reached nearly to the hill’s edge, but was fenced off by a screen of lime-trees extending along one side of it. Beyond these a growth of underwood formed a green garden wall, not high enough, however, to shut out the

Page 58 view into a cozy strip of valley, chequered with kitchen gardens and orchards, and threaded here and there with the silver glint of a rivulet. To the north and south of the lawn extended small groves of shrubs and trees which at this season of the year were a perfect labyrinth of intermingled blossom. Here clumps of laburnums showered their vegetable gold over the delicate cloud-like bloom of the lilac trees, there—like some gigantic chandelier on which May has kindled ten thousand tapers—a broad-boughed chestnut tree held its roseate blossoms aloft; while yonder, most poignant scented of flowers, pale jasmine stars gleamed athwart the gloomy green of their foliage.

Yes; the flowers had mustered in full force! It seemed as though in their hot haste to put in an appearance at this festival, which they apparently regarded as given in their honour, some had hardly given themselves, time to smooth their petals, which looked as though still tumbled from sleep.

And now that the flowers were there to receive them, the children likewise appeared on the scene. For this was pre-eminently a children’s festival, and the enjoyment of the grown-up folk consisted, to a great extent, in watching that of their little ones. According to custom, most of the young girls were clad in white, and a prettier sight could hot well be imagined than that of children of all ages now gradually assembling on the lawn which they were to have entirely to themselves for their games and dances.

Their elders meanwhile were sitting round the numerous little tables, where the feminine occupants chiefly consumed coffee and cakes, while their male

Page 59 relatives solaced themselves with beer and tobacco. The mammas, it need scarcely be said, were fully occupied in admiring their children, and were constantly circulating backwards and forwards between them and their seats. The young ladies, whose turn was to come later in the evening, when there was to be a ball in the pavilion, were now walking about by twos and threes, or standing in groups, chatting and laughing with the young men, few of whom had arrived as yet; others, again, were busily flitting hither and thither amongst the children.

Just as the orchestra struck up one of Strauss’s animating waltzes, two men engaged in eager conversation issued from a by-path and seated themselves at one of the tables, so as to command a full view of the entire festive scene.

“I have hardly yet recovered from the pleasant surprise of meeting you thus unexpectedly!” ejaculated one, whose portly proportions were unmistakably those of Professor Sontheim. “To think that you have actually been here three whole weeks, and only now made yourself known to your old comrade! Shame, shame, Emanuel! But you always were a whimsical, unaccountable fellow, for all your genius. I bet that, according to our proverb, you’ll only cut your wisdom teeth at forty, true son of Suabia that you are.”

The other laughed, and said, “That’s right, Leopold; I see you have not forgotten your old views respecting me. I remember how, when we were long-haired students together, you used to express them to me with that charming courtesy and candour for which we were renowned. You, I remember, used to be considered

Page 60 the sentimental savage of our circle, and we even nicknamed you ‘Isegrimm.’ But now you have, to all appearance, developed into a full-grown יlיgant,” glancing slightly at the fashionable points of his friend’s costume.

“Well, well,” rejoined Sontheim, not without complacency, “from the raw youth to the man of the world there’s room for progress. Life, I begin to find, is not such a bad invention after all. Once I was as defenceless as an unfledged chicken, and drew in my horns at every breath; but now I’m armed like a porcupine, and able to hold my own against man—and woman too.”

“Then hold your own with the waiter and catch him as he passes, or our wit may run too dry,” the stranger remarked in bantering tone.

“Now he is here, in what liquor fit for the gods shall we celebrate this auspicious meeting, Emanuel?”

“Let’s have Johannisberger,” said the one addressed, “for so joyful a meeting can only be drunk to in the most precious of wines.”

“I have no objection to make;” replied the other, slightly raising his eyebrows. “But, now that I think of it,” he added, with a comically pensive expression, “the good old adage recommends wine after beer, but deprecates beer after wine. Yes, yes! it’s never wise to neglect these saws. Waiter! some bottles of Bairish beer and a bottle of Johannisberger.”

Characteristic of the two men was the beverage each had selected; indeed, broadly speaking, all Germans might be classified as either beer-imbibers or wine-imbibers, and such a classification might well take the place of ethnographical or political subdivisions.

Page 61

Thus no greater contrast could have been found than these two friends, who seemed to have met after a long lapse of years. One huge of bulk, ruddy of face, and “puffed up” with health, as it were; the other tall and thin of person, slightly hollow-chested, and seeming rather to be borne along than to walk, with eyes of chameleon tints, and long, strong hair that always seemed to have a storm in it. The same character was expressed in the hands, with their knotted veins, never for an instant still; they might have served as models for some saint’s or martyr’s, so expressive of spiritual energy were the long, pale fingers.

“After all, ‘on revient toujours א ses premiers amours!’” the latter abruptly exclaimed, as with a mixture of humour and pathos he looked at the scene before him. “What innocence, freshness, simplicity reigns here, Leopold! What artless joy in young and old! Look at those children there, crowned as of old with moss and flowers, and dancing in a ring! And those sturdy, broad-cheeked youngsters defiling in procession two and two, bearing branches of birch and oak and elder. Just look at those blooming girls all in white, their long tresses plaited with ribbons, carrying wild strawberries and cream and milk rolls to feed those little ones there. It makes my mouth water, I swear. Wouldn’t I like to be that small urchin yonder whom the tall girl is feeding so daintily with her own beautiful fingers, for fear, I suppose, of his daubing himself all over with the juice of her fruit.”

While thus talking with a certain whimsical tone in his voice, the stranger every now and then cast a quick, searching look from end to end of the garden; and

Page 62 suddenly, after one of those rapid glances, he said to his friend, “Leopold, do you ever think of Elfrida now?”

The latter, who, though giving an occasional approving glance at the scene around him, had been more engaged in he demolition of an enormous black raddish, now drew the knife, with which he had helped himself to a piece of Swiss cheese, from between his lips, and said, with lugubrious mock gravity—

“I also was born in Arcadia, therefore it’s hardly fair to remind me of how you supplanted me. But, to be serious, tell me about your life, Emanuel—your works, your plans for the future, whence you come thus abruptly, where you are going to from here. Why, you have not even vouchsafed to tell me your reason for stealing upon us thus incognito, for all the world like Zeus when engaged in the pursuit of some fair mortal maid! Come, I’m not to be blinded; confess, therefore, confess as you were wont, old fellow. And console yourself in advance, my son, with the reflection that, the more heinous your sins, the more soothing will it be to receive absolution for them. Ah,” he continued, stroking his portly double chin, “I really possess the chief requisites of a father confessor. Begin; I listen.”

Emanuel laughed impatiently, and, shrugging his shoulders, said, “Do you not see, Leopold, that I shrank from the idea of the fuss that would be made? My life turns perpetually in a dazzling, deafening circle. I eat, drink, work, talk, even sleep in a fever. Ah, you here in Arcadia know nothing of the incessant wear and excitement of life in great cities.”

Page 63

“Arcadia!” grunted the Professor, parenthetically. “I see you have forgotten our coffee parties and carnivals.”

“It may seem unkind, Leopold,” the other continued, “that I even avoided you on my first arrival; but you will understand me when I tell you that I needed—I might almost say, for the sake of my reason, absolutely needed—this short spell of complete solitude.”

Leopold Sontheim took his friend’s emaciated hand in his own broad fleshy one, and gave it a strong but silent grip.

“Yes,” continued Emanuel, softly, “I will tell you some day, when we have greater privacy, for what more particular reason I craved with an exceeding craving for silence, obscurity, peace. After an absence of well-nigh twenty years I was suddenly seized with a burning desire to revisit once more the scenes and places of my childhood.

“It was in Paris, in a crowded concert-room, when this wish seized me. Suddenly, as in the vividness of a dream, the hills, the woods, the vineyards of my native town rose beckoningly before me; I heard the swallow call me, and the stork, and the passionate sob of the nightingale wailed from afar: ‘Why tarriest thou so long?’ How describe the kind of pang I endured! A hot, stinging sense of remorse enveloping my whole past, a fierce thirst to plunge back into memories in which my tired senses might be refreshed as in a bath. ‘Home, home!’ it cried in me. And that same evening I settled my affairs as well as I could, took the post-cabriolet to Strasburg, and then came on here, on one of those beautiful spring mornings when everything in

Page 64 the world seems to be born again except the poor human heart.

“As I walked through the dear, drowsy streets of my native town; as I saw the blue hills nodding in on every street, I seemed to myself like a ghost revisiting the scenes of his former existence.

“I did not dare look at my father’s house in the daytime—the house whence I had fled, which I had been forbidden to re-enter; and, before I could return and heal the bitter breach, he, whose creed had barred heart and home against me, had passed away suddenly, without word or sign. Only in the quiet moonlight, when I could venture near unseen, did I dare pace to and fro on the pavement in front of it.

“The same old elm trees still rustled in the night air as when I stood a child at my mother’s knee, repeating some hymn to her, or looking over the pictures of the old family Bible; but the familiar faces had vanished for ever!

“I could not bear it. I hurried away, Do you guess the spot I revisited next? The wood, the wood, of course, Leopold. I went up the well-known hill, and the delicate scent of the new-blown vines smote my nerves with a pang of mingled pleasure and pain.

“But in the lapse of years, probably also owing to my excitement, I had forgotten the way, and went now to the right, now to the left, sniffing the air like a dog who has lost his master’s trail.

“At last, however, I came upon a landmark—the little house commonly known as the Raven’s hut, where the grandmother of Elfrida used to live. There it was with the bees humming about the blossoms, strangely

Page 65 unaltered, yet, no doubt, long ago vacated by that kindly old dame who once moved so briskly about amongst her beehives, followed by the child and the old raven!

“Suddenly, however, I came to a dead stand. Who was that propping up a young plant against the wall? stooping painfully at her task? a lame raven limping stiffly at her side? Was it possible the beautiful child had been dead and buried so long, and that these two aged ones had remained unchanged, untouched by time and death!

“With my heart beating violently, and trembling like a thief who dreads detection, I begged her to show me the nearest way to the Engelswald. There was no fear, however, of her recognizing me. The years had changed me out of all semblance to the favoured boy she was wont to entrust with Elfrida’s care.

“She looked up at me with just the face I knew, and, pointing down, said, ‘Keep straight along this path till you come to a brook further down, then turn to the left; following its course it will take you straight to a pool which is the finest bit of the wood. It is well worth a stranger’s while to visit.’ The raven had limped up to me, and, cocking his head in such a fashion that his sound eye gazed straight up at me, his look of unfathomable sagacity seemed darkly to hint that it was labour lost to try and come over him.

“I strode on rapidly; I felt as if I had seen a ghost.

“‘Here I am at last,’ cried I, catching sight of the water glimmering through the grey trunks of the beech trees.

“As I looked down into that still, deep pool, across

Page 66 whose surface the cloud-shadows drifted so languidly, there rose upon my soul, pathetic as the moon at midday, the memory of my first love. The present was annihilated. I was a boy once more. My heart beat high with the first ecstatic thrill of hope and love.

“‘Here,’ I cried, ‘are the trees which I climbed to get the birds’ nests in order to show her the speckled eggs so warmly and tenderly pressed each to each. Yonder is the thicket where I gathered whortleberries and hazelnuts! On the brink of this pool Elfrida used to sit, dabbling her rosy feet in the water, and with innocent coquetry watching the reflection of her beautiful face therein.’

“‘Oh, beautiful face! never has thy image left my heart, image of my first love; would to heaven thou hadst been my last also. To die so young! Never to wait till I came back to lay fame and wealth and love at your feet as I had sworn I would. To die and leave me behind in a world where no one was ever again so intimately twined with my heart-strings!’

“Restlessly I paced the narrow woodland paths, and a pang of ineffable yearning seized me for the child that was dead, had been dead and buried long, long years ago. Then—as all that lay between that first pure love and the present swept in one bitter wave of remembrance through my memory—I flung myself on the ground in a passion of sorrow, crying out, ‘Elfrida, come back, oh, come back to me!’

“The sound of voices, the rustle of a dress, recalled me to my senses. Loth to meet anything in human shape just then, I slid behind a clump of trees.

“‘Good God! was I mad or dreaming? Was this

Page 67 Elfrida come to life again at my call? the dead child re-risen, with the violets and daisies growing on her grave?’

“I stared blankly at the apparition; I passed my hand over my eyes, only thinking her one more spectral form come to haunt me on the paths we had trodden together in bygone years.

“But no! this was no dead child come to life again; neither was it a spirit of wood and water, though the hem of its dress was wet as a naiad’s, and its hands were, at that moment, stretched out in fond protection over beasts and birds like a beneficent fairy’s. And yet, when it lifted its eyes to me, those eyes shining as with morning dew, I felt inexpressibly bewildered and amazed. Those eyes, with the wide, unconscious gaze, so distinct in my mind from all others, were the eyes of Elfrida.

“I had hard work not to say to her, ‘So you have come at last, my child! Come, when I called on you in utter weariness of heart. Do not leave me again. Stay, oh stay!’

“Nothing could have been more familiar than her presence. I had great ado not to take her in my arms. But before I had time to recover my presence of mind, before I had time to do anything but take off my hat and bow like a fool, she went her way, and the sun seemed to follow her.”

“Why, it all ends in smoke, like ‘the shooting at Hornberg,’” grunted Professor Sontheim. “I expected some grand coup de thיגtre at the last, worthy of the consummate artist. Take my word for it, your fairy nymph or spectre was in sober truth nothing but a

Page 68 little goose of a girl, who most likely had stolen to the wood on the sly that she might wash her face in maydew, which our silly maids hereabouts credit not only with unlimited curative qualities for removing freckles, sunburn, &c., but with an occult power of making them beautiful for ever. But you waved your wand of magic before her, and straightway she was transformed into a divinity.”

“Let’s have a bowl of maitrank, Leopold,” said Emanuel, with a faint ironical smile. “Perhaps after a sufficient number of fragrant draughts you also will see fairies in all the fair ones about us.”

“Maitrank, capital! I will go at once and see after the ingredients myself.” And the Professor went towards the pavilion with as much haste as his bulky stature admitted.

He had scarcely left his seat, however, than Emanuel, who had again restlessly glanced about him, gave a start, and then for a moment or two evidently subsided into brooding oblivion of everything around. Suddenly, as if an idea had struck him, he left his seat with a vivacity peculiar to him, and strode to the stand where the musicians, after their vigorous efforts, had ceased playing for awhile. Unobserved, he made his way to the leader of the first violins and whispered something in his ear. The man almost bounded from his chair, but at a word from the stranger assumed an air of unconcern, and in another moment had quietly yielded him up his seat and violin.

Page [69] CHAPTER VII. COMING OUT.

THE festival at the Silberburg was a more than commonly important one to the Lichtenfeld family; for it was to be the occasion of Mina’s introduction to society; an event equally thrilling to maidens, be they denizens of “Krהhwinkel” or Belgravia.

The coming event had cast its all-engrossing shadow across the good widow’s thoughts for at least a month beforehand; and she might often have been seen in deep consultation with the seamstress, the maid of all work and her neighbourly gossips, Frau Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengהrtner and Frau Scherer.

These two latter ladies had been summoned one afternoon by the anxious mother to discuss and critically weigh in the balance the respective merits of pink, white, and azure. It was a knotty point, and so the ladies found it over their cups of afternoon coffee. We must remark, however, by way of parenthesis, that

Page 70 the occasion had not seemed to warrant the Frau Professorinn in having fresh coffee made for her guests, who were consequently now imbibing a rather indifferent-looking beverage, which, carefully saved at breakfast time, had since then been put to warm in the oven.

“If I were you. I should decide in favour of pink,” said the Frau Obertribunalprocurator, emphatically; “pink is a sweet pretty colour, and, to my thinking, always so becoming to dark eyes such as your Mina’s.”

“‘Jugendzeit, Rosenzeit,’ as the poet has it,” lisped Frau Scherer, who, under the impression of its imparting a certain elegance, habitually garnished her discourse with stray verses, proverbs, and pickings from her brother’s talk. Such sentences, however, had frequently as little connection with her own words as the bits of parsley have with the cold mutton they are supposed to adorn.

“Yes, yes,” murmured Frau Lichtenfeld, pensively; “a great deal is to be said in favour of pink, a very great deal. Now that I think of it, it was pink, so it was, that I wore at my first ball.” And she complacently smoothed out the folds of her apron and gave a knowing smile, which implied more plainly than her words could: “Ah, what conquests I could tell of, what triumphs, friends; and all owing to that pink dress, and those roses of genuine Parisian make. That was the time, dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator, you remember my telling you, that the Chevalier von Tor said to me, in a burst of enthusiasm, ‘Ah, beautiful Frהulein had I met such an enchanting vision of youth and beauty in days when I might have—ah—summoned up the courage—yes, the courage of aspi-Page 71 ring—ah—I should not be a lonely old bachelor—ah—but—

“What do you say to blue, now?” remorselessly broke in the Frau Obertribunalprocurator, interrupting these tender reminiscences which she knew from a hundred previous experiences would meander on for at least half an hour if not turned, into other channels by a sudden diversion.

“Blue’s heaven’s own hue so tender and true!” exclaimed Frau Scherer, enthusiastically. “How heavenly sweet the maiden will look attired in a sky-blue robe!”

Therese, the seamstress, who, perched on a high step in the window, was deftly turning Frau Lichtenfeld’s old-fashioned grey brocade that had been on duty these twenty years, now leaned forward to join in the conversation. She did half the dressmaking in the town, and was quite a character in her way. Not only was she considered a kind of genius for the skill with which her nimble fingers turned old dresses into new, and appealed to in the last resort as to all matters of taste and fashion; but her knowledge as to what was, had been, and would be worn by every lady, whether of high or low degree, amounted to the miraculous.

“Begging your pardon, gracious ladies,” she said, while stitching away as fast as ever; “and if I may be permitted to tender my humble opinion, I should say white—white—nothing but white is the colour for a girl to wear on first coming out. There’s the daughter, now, of the Frau Baronin, Frהulein von Berlichingen. She came out this winter, you know, and of course you have all heard how much she was admired. The sweet young lady won’t let any one but ‘my Therese,’ as she

Page 72 calls me, make her dresses, even those she goes to court in. Well, I made her a plain white gown of the finest ‘Donna Maria gauze;’ nothing but that, honoured Frau Professorinn.”

This argument did not fail of the powerful impression it was intended to create.

“White, the colour of innocence!” exclaimed Frau Scherer, with enthusiasm, “the garb of the lamb and–-” She stopped cudgelling her unwilling brains to think of something else that should be equally appropriate, when Therese came to her rescue by adding—” and of the gהnsebl�mchen” (the little goose-flower, as daisies ace called in South Germany). “Yes,” she continued, “the gracious Frהulein Agnes von Berlichingen wore her dress trimmed with daisies; and a wreath of the same flowers in her hair.”

“Oh, our Mina will look like an angel of light!” cried Frau Scherer, ecstatically, casting her eyes to the ceiling—for such was her wont.

“The girl will do well enough,” said the Frau Professorinn; but added, with a sigh drawn from the depths of her maternal bosom, “Alas, she, is as careless of dress as a tomboy, and I foresee already what a sight she will be when, all rags and tatters, she comes home in the evening. Well, Therese, I think we have settled this point so far. You shall make us a dress the exact counterpart of Frהulein von Berlichingen’s, only it must be of mulled muslin instead of gauze—a poor widow like me with six children left on her hands, you know, Therese, can’t go spending money like a Frau Baronin, for all that she is, or once was, the ninth daughter of Medicinalrath Duttenhofer, and could hold up her head

Page 73 with the best of them; and so, as I was saying, my daughter must not be a disgrace to him, in spite of her taking after her poor father’s family; and she can’t be got to understand, though I may talk myself hoarse to make her; and as to the daisies, Therese, we can get those for nothing in our garden; she’s for ever lugging flowers into the house as I tell her—but it’ll come in useful for once,—they won’t be so genteel, I know, as the sweet artificial flowers at Madame Borrel’s; but we must cut the coat according to the cloth, you know.”

After having arrived at this important decision the ladies set out in a body to purchase twelve yards of muslin at K�bel’s, the chief draper and haberdasher in the Lange Strasse.

The eventful day had come at last, and, like a sheep led to the slaughter, Mina yielded herself up with passive resignation into her mother’s hands. She had been looking forward with wondering eagerness to this day, but the rites of the toilet appeared to her to detract considerably from the pleasures to come, and under her mother’s vigorous handling she lost all sense but that of present discomfort. Besides the maternal hands, two other pairs were busy about her person. At last, being judged sufficiently prepared, the cloudy fabric, white as a snowdrift, with touches of pale pink here and there, was carefully passed over the girl’s curly head by the adroit fingers of Therese.

Frau Lichtenfeld stood a little to the right watching the progressive effect of the toilet with knitted brows, compressed lips, and occasional h’ms and ha’s. She looked on with that air of superior critical acumen, only rarely lapsing into admiration, which would not

Page 74 have misbecome a dramatic critic on whose sealed lips trembles the verdict to make or mar a first appearance.

Quite the reverse was the feeling with which Sabina, the maid of all work, whose mouth, stuck full of pins, presented the appearance of a pincushion, gazed on the same spectacle.

“Don’t stand there like a graven image, child!” remonstrated Frau Lichtenfeld. “How can I or Therese judge of the fit if you stand with your limbs stiffer than broomsticks? One would suppose from your doleful air that you were expecting to undergo an operation instead of being dressed for a ball. In my young days we girls looked more alive on such an occasion.”

Therese, by way of averting the lecture that she saw impending over her favourite, now exclaimed—

“Doesn’t the dress suit her to perfection, Frau Professorin?”

And she eyed her handiwork with proud content.

“Sabina, you may call the children now,” said Mina’s mother, sitting down in a chair to test a moment from her labours, and blandly eyeing her daughter much as she would have done a specially successful Mandeltorte, for the confection of which she had acquired just celebrity.

On the cessation of the manipulations Mina was bid to take a look at herself in the glass. She did so, but grew hot and abashed, and turned quickly away. She so rarely looked at herself thus consciously that she shrank from the inspection with instinctive shamefacedness.

Suddenly the door opened with a bang, and the boys tore in with Lulu at their heels. For a moment the latter gazed in astonishment, not unmingled with fear,

Page 75 at the figure in the white cloud; then, scuttling across the room to her mother, she buried her head in the stiff folds of her gown, only now and then peeping shyly round out of the corner of one blue eye. The boys meanwhile stood in a row, staring open-mouthed, with their thumbs in their mouths, at the sister, whom they hardly recognized in her present transformation from chrysalis to butterfly.

“Is it the fairy Magelone?” whispered Conrad, a boy of about seven, just now deep in fairy lore.

“Perhaps it’s Christkindchen,” replied Otto, tentatively, but was instantly crushed by Conrad’s scornful exclamation—

“Did you ever hear of Christkindchen coming at Whitsuntide?”

“What’s Therese been doing to her eyes, mamma, that they shine so?” lisped Lulu, under her breath.

“You little goosey,” said Conrad, who had now recovered from his surprise; “Therese doesn’t polish sister’s eyes as you did your doll’s yesterday when you had pushed one of them in; it’s the Silberburg she is thinking of.”

Lulu tittered and took another shy peep, without changing her position, however; and Otto and Conrad, now sufficiently emboldened, made a rush forward in order to convince themselves, apparently, by such tests as pinching, &c., that this beautiful creature and their sister were one and the same person.

They were warned off in time, however, by their mother, who, in her sternest, most impressive tones, now shouted, “Hands off, or I lay on the rod!”

Everybody seemed ready at last. The Frau

Page 76 Professorinn surveyed her brood with an approving glance, while putting on her long, knitted black silk mittens, which she considered of a finer effect by night than the new-fangled white kid gloves, besides—as she remarked confidentially to whoever she could get for a listener—having the wear of half a dozen of the latter.

But just as they were starting it appeared that Wolfgang, her favourite, was missing.

“Where is he? Who has seen him?” she asked, with an ominous ring in her voice, implying that they were one and all responsible for his disappearance. “I got him ready more than an hour ago,” she continued, with waxing wrath, “and bade him be sure and not rumple his hair again.”

So instead of starting as it was high time they did, the whole family had to begin hunting for Wolf. They searched high and low, in the house and out of it, but could nowhere come upon any trace of the culprit.

Under these aggravating circumstances what wonder that the Frau Professorinn’s temper, after the manner of a weathercock, from due south should be veering round in a threateningly north-eastern direction. It was not good just then to dare to face the biting current of her speech. Every one in turn was more or less accused of being the cause or the accomplice of Wolf’s mysterious disappearance.

After long searching Hans shouted from the gloomiest depths of the coal-hole, “Here he is, mother; I’ve got him safe!”

The Frau Professorinn immediately hastened to the rescue, and between them they dragged the recalcitrant Wolf to the light of day.

Page 77

Ah, what a sight here met the horrified mother’s eyes! Black, black from head to foot, her sooty son scowled defiance at his captors. After one or two spasmodic attempts, however, to recover his liberty, he submitted with the dignity of a savage chief to the melancholy fate awaiting him.

“Behold, the king of the Blackamoors led into captivity!” cried the irrepressible Hans as, whooping and shouting, he followed his brothers in the steps of the runaway.

But poor Hans, instead of being rewarded for having effected the capture of the deserter, was grimly told to hold his tongue on peril of being shut up in the coal-hole himself.

For the second time that day the miserable Wolf had to undergo the ordeal by soap and water. But when at last he emerged from that detested operation, he looked—but for a little shininess about the cheeks and nose—as handsome a boy as could well gladden a mother’s eyes. He was, however, at the age when the idea of having to encounter a lot of young ladies fevered his blood, and caused the tips of his ears to burn as the approach of cannons might. And he often told Hans, who was his confidant when they were not at daggers drawn, that he would far rather face an angry bull, or even his mother on washing-day, than those girls that did nothing but giggle and whisper together in corners, and made a fellow beside himself with anger and dislike. As it seemed impossible to escape a second time, he submitted with the stoicism of a philosopher.

Thus the Lichtenfelds were under weigh at length.

Page [78] CHAPTER VIII. MUSICAL PICTURES.

IT might have been a few minutes after the Lichtenfelds’ arrival, in the thick of the merry-making, that the stranger, whom the Professor had addressed as Emanuel, had taken the seat and instrument of the first violinist.

No one probably had noticed this substitution; and even when the new musician began playing a solo, a variation on a pathetic old Volkslied; hardly any one listened with the attention necessary to discern that this indeed was the performance of a master hand.

The fact was, that although every South German is more or less born with the singing soul, yet such a tumult of joyous excitement filled the place that it was well-nigh impossible to give ear to the music, even had the people been desirous of doing so.

Indeed, the performance on this occasion bore a strong resemblance to that of a London drawing-room in the season, as its function apparently consisted in

Page 79 promoting a clatter of talking and laughter. The little folk, it is true, had been having a good many dances, to the accompaniment, as they fondly deluded themselves, of music. This was a fiction, however. Between dancers and fiddlers reigned absolute divorce; and a merry wag of a boy, with his hand behind his ear, kept rushing to and fro between the two, in order to let each of the parties know what the other was about just then.

Nevertheless, one man, probably a musician, pricked up his ears at the very first notes, and, pushing close up to the stand, remained leaning against the woodwork with folded arms, now fixing his eyes on the violinist, now half shutting them, then softly nodding his head or again shaking it, with the air of a person divided between approval and amazement. Before long others among the crowd, either musicians themselves or connoisseurs of music, began to gather in knots round the orchestra, and, while listening eagerly, to occasionally exchange looks and whispers of astonishment.

Gradually the spell began to work on the whole crowd of these South German holiday-makers.

Little by little the groups that had been desultorily strolling through the devious paths and alleys of the garden thronged to the centre, pressing towards the neighbourhood of the orchestra. Little by little men left off jingling their glasses, women and girls forgot their chatter, and waiters ceased hurrying to and fro. At last the very children desisted from their games, and stood or lay on the grass nestling together by twos and threes, the smallest of them with their flaxen heads lying in their sisters’ laps, and fresh bare legs and arms looking like ruddy fruit scattered about the grass.

Page 80

The crowd, which had grown denser and denser, pressed quite to the garden’s edge in a semicircle, while the fortunate possessors of chairs and benches sat closely together on each side of the green, the latter, by common consent, being left in possession of the children.

Nothing exalts the heart more than seeing a mass of people thus swayed by one common emotion. We then consciously realize the solidarity of those human units, each of which, bent on its individual desires, aims, and passions, seems often so indifferent, alas! even so antagonistic, to its fellows.

Once, however, let the vital impulse of some mastermind go forth like an invisible presence among a multitude consisting of many mixed, nay, incongruous elements; let them feel the electric thrill of that occult demoniac force we call genius—that instant one and all are called out of, beyond themselves, that instant they are liberated from the dull, cold obstruction of self, are made partakers of intellectual beauty, are made inheritors of spiritual force; merged, confounded, absorbed in one universal element of delight, worship, beatitude.

Such divine power of fusion abides, above all, in music; and beneath its irresistible influence, here, in that promiscuous throng, all hearts—whatever the throb of their individual sorrow, joy, hope, despair, love, or ambition—yearned, heaved, and inclined beneath the sway of that melodious compulsion, as we see the countless leaves of a forest, or blades of meadow grass, bending as with one individual will beneath the breath of summer winds.

And here forsooth—here in this garden laughing all

Page 81 over with the flowers of May—there stood one who suddenly, with the witchcraft of his playing, startled the dullest, kindled the coldest, roused the saddest, to life and enthusiasm.

What had come to the musician, though? What change had been wrought in his countenance since he woke those ineffable lengthening sounds of yearning from the shivering strings?

He stood there like some wizard, consumed with the energy he emits, who with his bow constrains to his bidding the illimitable host of sounds.

But how render in words what only the ear can appraise and transmit?

There are minds, however, which have the faculty of translating sounds into colours and visible shapes of delight, to whom the theme of sonata or symphony assumes the outline and proportion of objects clearly projected on the inner vision. This quality, which has since been developed into a new art manifestation by the great musicians of the present, was clearly discernible in the wondrous tone-poem, which, in a series of musical pictures, gave, as it were, an allegory of love. Love, in its twofold nature, swaying man’s destinies for good or evil, now uplifting his soul in a passion of aspiration, now hurling him down disillusioned and despairing, to be finally guided through labyrinthine error to ideal attainment.

It began with a sort of barcarolle movement in allegretto, illustrative of dipping oars and of singing mouths, where a boat, gliding across the reflection of the mystical white face of the moon that yearned to the sunset, approached the lake-washed stairs of a marble palace.

Page 82

And as the boat drew near and nearer, a youth on the topmost flight saw a beautiful woman at the prow, crowned with roses and waving a red rose-bough in her hand; and the hue and fragrance of the roses was reflected and multiplied a thousandfold in the sky, in the water, in the features of the woman glowing like a celestial rose.

She held her rose-bough out to the youth whose step rang clear, as bounding down the marble stairs, he leaped into the boat.

Back across the lake glided the boat, and from afar was borne a sound of singing—the voice of one singing the quest of the deathless rose of love.

Is this a sound of tears, or of falling rain that now, in tremulous adagio measure, seems splashing through the moonless night? the weeping of one that sorroweth, or but the wailing of winds through the wet, shaken boughs?

Hissing and shuddering, the rushes stoop to the water-stoop round the stranded boat with its riven sails, stoop round the forsaken youth whose tears mingle with the driving rain, with the drifting petals of the roses.

“Why weepest thou?” cried one, hurrying towards him, flushed and panting in the van of a jubilant throng.

“What, the storm has ravished thy roses! Come! I will lead thee to bowers where fresh ones are blowing, which now, even now that thou tarriest here, wait but thy gathering. Fool! if thou wouldst have eternal roses, bid death pilot thee to the stars.”

Page 83

To what shrill, rapid, passionate pulsations do those stricken minor chords respond? Now piercing with strange discords, now liquidly dissolving in voluptuous languishment.

Then, returning to the major key (allegro), a troop of revellers rush tumultuously through the bountiful summer-world now as on fire with roses.

Hither and thither they sway; some with rhythmically flying feet lead the entrammelled youth through labyrinths of scented gloom; some lure him to fields of somnolent poppies clouding the sense with sleep; some pelt him with roses, a red rain of incessant maddening roses.

A strident clangorous chord like an ear-piercing cry harshly jarring the noon—the revellers fly asunder, abandoning the youth—pierced and stricken to death with the cruel thorns of the silken roses.

Low, faint, and unearthly, without rhythmic subdivisions, in sounds almost too thin for mortal ear, the muted violin seems to exhale itself with the departing spirit, while interspersed fitful staccato notes follow one by one like receding life-blood, slowly ebbing, dying away.

A silence as of suspended breathing pervaded the listening crowd on the momentary cessation of the music. They forgot to applaud; they instinctively shrank from breaking the charm of those divinest sounds.

But what had come to Mina? What made her heart throb with an emotion almost painful in its intensity?

Page 84 It so happened that she sat right in front, facing the musician, and he, this ruler of the realm of sound, this despot at whose command the multitude wept, rejoiced, exulted, despaired, was the same—she knew it instinctively—whose music had floated in through her open window, once and again, these nights of spring! Hitherto it had been an unbodied voice, insinuating itself with the unforbidden moonlight into her chamber; now it was more incomprehensible still!

But the pause was brief: the musician’s sense of completeness was not yet satisfied.

Once more the key changed, the movement quickened, and from the foregoing expiring sounds burst into an allegro vivacissimo. Dizzily whizzed the bow, waking from the inexhaustible strings a myriad quivering scintillations of sound through which the dominant motive of final victory, that had from time to time reappeared through the whole fantasia, finally culminated in one supreme melody as the mystic rose of heaven appeared to love’s martyred pilgrim above the perishing roses of earth.

It was over. The people applauded, shouted, laughed, yelled with delight. Again and again the thunder of acclamations burst forth as though it could have no ending. When at last the unknown musician was suffered to come down the steps, the holiday-makers began looking at each other in astonishment, and asking each other eagerly who this wonderful violinist could be; and when it became generally known that he was their own fellow-townsman come back amongst

Page 85 them, the man with whose fame all Europe had rung, their enthusiasm knew no bounds.

One young fellow in his transport forced his way to his side, threw himself on his knees, and covered his hands with kisses; girls rifled the garden of its flowers to scatter them at his feet; mothers snatched up their children that they might see him the better and clap their little hands; stolid, matter-of-fact citizens seemed unusually excited—all crowding round him with kindled, admiring looks and words, till at last he grew weary of their enthusiasm. For he glanced restlessly about him as though he were seeking an outlet by which to slip away from the crowd, or else a face that was not amongst it.

Page [86] CHAPTER IX. ELFRIDA’S BEQUEST.

WHERE was Mina all this while? She had gone off by herself, stolen to the shadiest, farthest corner of the garden where it sloped down to the valley; and then as she pressed her hot cheeks against the hedge, large tears, hotter than her cheeks, forced their way through her closed eyelids. She knew not why she wept, but still wept on.

Her mother and some of the children found her out at last. They came strolling towards her with Professor Sontheim and Frau Scherer. Emanuel had succeeded in regaining his friend at last, and was introduced by the latter to his widowed sister. After pouring a torrent of voluble rapture in his ear she hurried after Frau Lichtenfeld, who had just begun scolding her daughter for skulking away into a corner by herself.

Emanuel was saying, half wearily, “Let’s get away from here; I’m tired out,” when, abruptly seizing his friend’s arm, he asked, “Who’s your sister talking to

Page 87 just now?” and, pulling him forward, he went on eagerly, “I should like to be introduced to your sister’s friend, now at once.”

“Why, Emanuel,” cried the other, hesitating, “introduce you to her! What attraction could that good woman possess for you? Be warned in time, my friend; for her tongue is a mill-wheel—once you get caught in its course your wits may be mangled in the process.”

“Never mind,” said Emanuel, impatiently, “I wish to be introduced. She’s the sort of woman I like; she will not pester me with a lot of nonsensical cant about music. These simple, unpretending sort of women repose one as much as quiet fields with sheep and cows do.”

“Repose!” repeated the Professor: “I wish you joy of the repose you will get! But come along; of course I will introduce you with pleasure, considering she was the wife of my best friend; but why you should wish it, when just now you refused to let me present you to Frהulein von Berlichingen, our beauty, who was dying to know you—is—well–-“

“Oh, I didn’t come here to see your beauties and listen to their gushing talk; I have plenty of that elsewhere—more than plenty; let me have a little simplicity, a little nature,” said Emanuel.

They had reached the ladies by this time, and Sontheim presented him to Frau Lichtenfeld, who had not yet done lecturing Mina for not being a bit like other girls—not at all amiable—who, instead of showing some pleasure and gratitude for the pretty music they had been having—and all for nothing, too, as she ob-Page 88 served in parenthesis, had slunk away as though she simply hated it. The worthy lady had got thus far in her discourse when she was not a little startled and flattered by Sontheim’s coming up to her and introducing his famous friend, while Mina shrank still farther into the shadow of the lime trees.

“What an unlooked-for honour,” exclaimed Frau Lichtenfeld, “for one so unworthy! Ah, you have given us a treat such as we never had before. And Lulu, the dear pet, never felt sleepy all the time you played (and it was a good long time too, and I don’t think the boys were fretting to be at their games, though they are sad fellows at sitting still); and then of her own self she wanted to give you some flowers; but here now, my eldest girl, I have just been scolding her, sir. I think she is the only one—I do think the only one of us—who did not seem to enjoy your pretty fiddling. I really think, as I was just telling her, that she must have been asleep the greater part of the time, for she had her eyes shut fast—I saw her; and as soon as she could, she went off from everybody—so churlish, I say, so strange not to be fond of music. I know I have heard once—or stop, was it my dear departed—heaven rest his soul—read it me? Yes, to be sure, the year Mina had the measles, and I was obliged to sit up at night—yes, poor man, Mina was his favourite; he quite behaved like a sensible creature that time, nor once confused the medicine bottles; for there was Wolf, too, laid up with a sprain which had to be rubbed with opodeldoc night and morning. Dear, dear, what a terrible boy he was to be laid up (but then he always had such high spirits)—takes after our family,

Page 89 the Duttenhofers, you see, and so does Lulu here, she’s quite a comfort already to me; but as I was saying—ah! to be sure, the Professor read to me while I was sitting up from a book called Shakespeare—Shakespeare, Mina, wasn’t it? but of course you were too young then to understand. Well, I could almost take my oath upon it that somebody or other in that book said only wicked people didn’t care for music. Not that I mean that my eldest is wicked, sir; no, no, but so odd at times” (she said this, dropping her voice a little, in a loud aside to her bewildered listener), “just like her blessed papa, in fact, God rest his soul. Ah well, we are as God made us, I suppose, so we must be content. Come here, child, though you don’t deserve it, yet you shall be able to tell your friends that you’ve been introduced to this great man too. Well, well, this is an unlooked-for honour–-Ah! how do you do, my dear Frau Obertribunalprocurator? What fine music, wasn’t it? I shall sit down here with my knitting; the boys will want to have a good run after sitting still so long. Oh! what’s Wolf doing to Lulu? he will have her rolling down the hill in another moment! Dear, dear; there they go! Oh, how kind of you, dear Professor, to go and see after them! Do bring Lulu back. Wolf is a good lad, but too rough for the child. I’d better come with you, though.”

Thus everybody dispersed for the moment, so that after this peculiar introduction Emanuel was left standing alone with Mina. She seemed well-nigh as silent as her mother was loquacious.

But Emanuel, who was at last able to address her, said smiling, “I am sure you cannot hate music; or do

Page 90 you think it compares so unfavourably to the little music-makers of the woods that you are so fond of? And are you aware, by the by, that you have never yet thanked me for coming to the rescue of your protיgיes?”

Mina flushed at the sudden question. “Oh,” she cried, partly forgetting the shyness that lay so heavily on her, “it was kind to put back the nest! I was so glad the poor birds were saved. Thank you, now.”

“Would you like to have news of them?” inquired Emanuel.

Mina for all answer looked up with a quick, inquiring glance.

“Oh, I never do things by halves,” he said; “having rescued them from death, you know, I felt bound to watch over them from time to time. It was pretty to see them trying their wings, flying farther and farther from the nest, till they returned no more one fine day. I dare say they were engaged in building nests of their own. It was not quite for their sakes, I own, that I sought out the spot where I saw you that day in the wood—a spot endeared to me before you were born, I dare say. But how came you there by yourself, and so far from your home?”

“I had been to grandmother’s,” said Mina.

“Ah!” he cried, “your name is Lichtenfeld! Is it your grandmother that lives on the hill above the wood?”

“Oh yes, she has a cottage there, and keeps lots of bees. Everybody knows grandmother’s bees for miles and miles round the town.”

“Once,” said Emanuel, with a peculiarly yearning expression, looking far away across the valley, “once I

Page 91 had a little playfellow that I loved very fondly. Her grandmother lived in a cottage on the hillside too, and when I went away to make my fortune I promised my playfellow that I would come back for her one day, and take her into the great world; but when I had been gone—I forget how long—they told me that she was dead. Her name was–-“

“Elfrida,” cried Mina, who for some time had been looking at him intently—“Elfrida; and it was I, I who was the cause of her death!”

“You!” cried Emanuel, in blank amazement. “You! How is it possible?”

“Alas! I have sad cause to remember her, though I was such a little child. In my recollection of her it seems as though she had been something too fair to have ever lived amongst us like one of ourselves; she is something bright, shining far off among my earliest memories, like a star at the bottom of our long avenue.

“One day, I and another little girl went to the wood bilberrying, and Elfrida came to take care of us. But she had a long, foreign-looking letter in her hand–-“

“Ah!” ejaculated Emanuel, “a letter!”

“This letter, I remember, she unfolded again that day for the hundredth time, and began reading it, and I hated the letter, for I knew that then there was no hope that day of getting Elfrida to tell me one of her stories that were like none any one else ever told. So I went away pouting, and there by the pool that you know saw such a flower as I had never seen the like of; and then I called to mind a certain tale Elfrida had told me, of how there is a flower which blow once in a hundred years, and is never seen at other times by any

Page 92 man. But,” she said, as though suddenly recollecting, “this is too childish to tell you, only you won’t understand–-“

“Go on, go on,” Emanuel said, eagerly, “and what came of this blue flower? for blue it must have been!”

Mina, not without astonishment, said, “Indeed it was blue, but how do you know?”

“Oh, because it was the fabled flower of romance that chose to reveal itself to you, that’s all. There are few eyes so favoured in this world, I can tell you; but I am not astonished. What did you do when it showed itself? I want to hear all about it from one who can give me such authentic information.”

Though not quite apprehending his meaning, Mina was too much at home in fairy-land to be exactly perplexed, so she went on to say how her cousin Elfrida had told her that whoever plucked this wonderful flower had only to dig up the earth, Where the root was, to come upon a great treasure of gold and precious stones; “and then,” said Mina, “I thought how rich I would make Elfrida, and how rich she would make–-” Here she seemed suddenly, recalled to the present by a half-stifled exclamation on her hearer’s part, and colouring up to the roots of her hair, said, in an apologetic tone, “I only mention it because it made me quite wild all at once to pluck this flower, which grew so close to the water’s edge that it might have been floating on it, and in my eagerness I lost my footing and fell in.”

“What! you fell into the water?” cried Emanuel. “They ought to have taken better care of you than that!”

“Oh no, no,” said Mina, “please don’t say that.

Page 93 Elfrida took such care always; but you see she was reading that letter.”

“Ah!” sighed Emanuel, under his breath, “yes, I had forgotten. I was at the bottom of all the mischief. And to think that it might have been your–-” He seemed to shrink from the idea with a shudder, and only said, “At all events you were saved!”

“Yes,” said Mina, “my screams brought Elfrida to the pool; and when she saw what had happened she jumped in after me. It was not too deep for her to keep her foothold at the side, and so, by clinging to the stump of a tree with one hand, she just managed, after several unsuccessful attempts, to clutch hold of my dress and drag me on to the shelving bank. I was quite insensible when she got me out; and how she could ever have managed to carry me in her arms up-hill all the way to grandmother’s—which was the nearest house, but still a long way, you know—none of us could ever understand. As soon as she had put me in grandmother’s arms she fainted clean away. The other little girl had been so frightened, thinking I was dead, that she had run straight away home. And Elfrida never was herself after this; they said she, had taken a chill, but she grew more and more beautiful, and only a little thinner and whiter, day by day, till it seemed as though she were made of melting snow; and she never could bear me out of her sight then, and begged them to let me stay with grandmother a little time—till—till–-” Mina caught her breath for a moment—” and she had my hand in hers that morning she lay dying, and said to me quite low, so low it seemed a ghost speaking, ‘Emanuel! who will welcome Emanuel now, when he comes home?’”

Page 94

“And will you welcome me?” he asked, with exceeding gentleness, and his eyes had a strange watery look.

“Oh, yes,” said Mina, simply; “Elfrida would have wished it.”

“And is your name Elfrida, too?” he asked. “You are so like her, but like as a red rose is like a white one.”

“No, my name is Mina,” she answered.

“Mina,” he repeated slowly, as though there were some secret enchantment in articulating each separate letter of the name. “Mina, I have come home at last.”

And as he spoke was it the pink sunset flush, which made the earth just than appear like a glorified place, that also lit up his pale, habitually sombre features, imparting to them a look of beaming peace and beatitude?

“Are you all here at last?” cried Frau Lichtenfeld, coming up hot and out of breath, with the sobbing Lulu holding on to a corner of her shawl. “There, don’t cry, don’t cry; it won’t bring your red shoes back if you go on crying till doomsday. Oh!” shaking her fist at the recalcitrant Hans, who was being dragged along by Professor Sontheim, “you scapegrace, you ne’er-do-weel, you wild goose, you plague of my life, you devil’s imp, you—‘tiger’s brat’—you—say what you’ve done with them, or I’ll shake you to within an inch of your life; speak when you are spoken to, can’t you?”

“Hans,” said Sontheim, with a gravity the had much ado to maintain, “Hans, my boy, do not grieve your mother more by your obstinacy.”

But Hans’s lips were locked as in a vice, and he looked doggedly to the ground.

Page 95

“Oh!” said Lulu, gaspingly, between her sobs, “they were playing pitch and toss with them, down there, mother—and one fell into the water, and Hans took t’other–-” Here Hans scowled ominous warning at her, “and Hans took t’other–-“

“Yes, and he said,” broke in Conrad, “‘that it would fetch back the other one; and don’t let them part company anyhow,’ he said, and flung in Lulu’s other shoe.”

“Lulu’s other shoe,” assented Otto, divided in his sympathies between Hans and Lulu, but always sticking to everything that Conrad said.

“My pretty shoes that grandmother gave me,” sobbed out Lulu, with renewed energy.

“There, don’t cry, my pretty; she shall have another pair, she shall. But however are you to get home without shoes, and the dew falling at this hour, and Wolf gone off with his friends, and you such a heavy girl for your old mother to carry?”

“Oh,” said Mina, “let me carry her; I’m sure I could;” and she was bending down to lift the child in her arms, when Frau Lichtenfeld cried—

“Will you never get any sense, Mina, or take thought for any one? What, after all the pains I’ve taken with you, and the money it’s cost, and Therese in the house too, crush a bran new dress by carrying a brat all the way home! Ah, it’s hard on me, but I knew how it would be all along; I said so to the Frau Obertribunalprocurator, and to the good Frau Scherer, I said–-“

Emanuel, who had remained somewhat in the background watching the proceedings with considerable amusement, here stepped forward, and said with his most winning smile, to the indescribable astonishment

Page 96 of his friend Sontheim, “If you will let me carry your child, dear Madam, you will be conferring a favour.”

“You carry Lulu, sir!” cried Frau Lichtenfeld, overwhelmed at the bare notion. “Oh, impossible! Too kind of you to mention it; fancy that, now! If only Frהulein von Griesbach were here—she thinks my children not well-behaved—that would settle her, I should think, that would! But here we are discussing all this time, and yet the poor children must be put to bed; though a nice time I shall have of it, as I have to return presently with Mina in time for the ball. Lulu, do cease that whimpering; Otto, don’t cling to my skirts.”

Emanuel, without asking further leave, simply lifted the astonished Lulu off the ground, and sitting her on his left shoulder, passed her right arm round his neck, and held her fast by it. Then, turning to Frau Lichtenfeld, who was talking so fast that her sentences simply came tumbling one over another without stops of any kind, he said, smiling, “Pray let me have my way, for I always do have it. I have so often seen men and women carrying children in this way in Italy, that I am quite an adept at it. Isn’t it a picturesque fashion, Sontheim?”

Sontheim, who had been looking on with a puzzled air, said, rather emphatically, “It’s not the fashion here, at any rate, for us to be carrying children through the streets; well, I hope you’ll enjoy your walk. I must be off now on some pressing business. Good-bye!”

“Good-bye,” said Emanuel; and then, turning his face up to Lulu, asked, “Are you comfortable, my child? Yes! then en avant children all!” And he strode on with Frau Lichtenfeld interminably discoursing to him on one side, and the blushing Mina silent on the other.

Page [97] CHAPTER X. LEOPOLD SONTHEIM’S CONFESSION.

IT was very early yet, barely five o’clock, but Leopold Sontheim was already up and stirring, for from the back-yard of his dwelling you could hear the powerful strokes of his mallet, as he was hewing the unwieldy logs of wood into smaller pieces available for kitchen use. No wonder therefore that, absorbed in his work, he did not catch a quick, impatient drumming at his study. window, which, increasing in loudness, at last merged into a regular tune. After the interval of a few minutes the window, which was only on the latch, was pushed inwards, and the impatient drummer vaulted into the room, and thence passed through the passage into the yard, where he suddenly saluted the hard-working Sontheim with a sounding slap on the shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” exclaimed the latter, looking up. “Oh, it’s you, old fellow; I’m right glad to see

Page 98 you!” and he cordially extended his disengaged hand, while with the other he continued to direct several more blows on his iron wedge with all the zeal of an amateur.

“What a Jack-of-all-trades you are!” remarked Emanuel, looking on. “Not satisfied with being a professor of jurisprudence, an authority on Aristophanes, a skilled translator from some half a dozen languages, you must needs turn hewer of wood and drawer of water also!”

“The wood’s very well, but where’s the water?” asked Sontheim, grimly.

“Why, trickling down your nose in a little rivulet, to be sure,” said Emanuel, making a grimace. “But come, put down that appalling implement; one would think I was an inopportune guest at this fashionable hour.”

“Well, well,” replied Sontheim, putting down his mallet, and wiping the perspiration from his heated face, “laugh away, my son; but this is my way, you see, of keeping down the flesh and: the devil; besides, one wants something of the kind for the muscles and sinews to come into play as well as the brain fibres; and here in Germany, with our eternal stooping over books, we are all in danger of growing as limp as rags, and as shortsighted as owls. But come in where you can sit down somewhere;” and he led the way into the house. “Here’s a seat for you,” he added, eagerly sweeping a lot of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and time-yellowed manuscripts from the shabby old sofa, and clearing just enough space for his friend to sit down upon; then, slipping a somewhat tattered dressing-gown

Page 99 over his shirt-sleeves, he filled himself a pipe and offered one to his friend. The latter, who had flung himself on the sofa, and was leaning back as if quite wearied out, declined, saying that he never smoked.

“But dear me!” exclaimed Sontheim, after looking more attentively at his visitor, “instead of the briskness of an early bird, you have the air of a dissipated night-bird with its feathers all awry! Why, what on earth have you been up to now? Look at your boots all sopping wet, for all the world as if you had jumped over a hedge into a duck-pond, running away from some farmer’s wife’s husband!”

“My boots have as little polish on them as your remarks,” said Emanuel, shrugging his shoulders; “but farmers’ wives have no attraction for me. The fact is, I’ve been half over the country to-night.”

“Why, you must be famishing, my boy!” cried Sontheim, jumping up. “How stupid of me not to have thought of it before!” and he went to the door calling loudly, “Pauline, Pauline!”

After what appeared a considerable interval, a lady’s head with meagre hair in curl-paper became visible through the half-open door. “Come in!” she said, in a whispered consultation with her brother, which might have been heard at the other end of the room; “that’s like your want of consideration for one’s feelings. How can I show myself before the ‘Friseurin’ has been, and before such a very genteel-looking gentleman, too? I’ll see what we can dish up at this unseasonable hour, and cook shall bring it in as soon as ever it can be got ready.”

Page 100

“Beat up a dozen of eggs or so,” whispered Sontheim after the retreating figure.

“Well now, Emanuel, let’s hear all about your adventure,” said the Professor sitting down, and following with his eyes the wreaths of smoke that went dwindling away into ever thinner circles above his head.

“Oh,” said Emanuel laughing, “I leave adventures and farmers’ wives to you. Sorry I can’t gratify your curiosity, but I only rambled abroad because I had a sleepless fit on me, and when I heard the watchman call—‘Past twelve of the clock, and a fine starlight night,’ I donned my cloak, stole down the stairs and out into the open, where the sky was alive with stars. I walked over the hills some eight miles or so, and got into a dale on the further side that I didn’t remember having seen in my youth. There was a mill there by the side of a stream, and some scattered farms with orchards about them; resting in an apple-tree, I had the most delicious reverie, and one or two themes came into my head that I mean to work up by and by. Indeed I’ve made quite a good business of this night escapade.”

“At any rate you won’t tell me more than you choose, I see, but I hear the welcome clatter of cups and spoons,” said Sontheim, as the door opened and a slatternly maid brought in a tray, and without much ado banged it down on the table and disappeared again. Sontheim poured his friend out a large cup of cafי au lait, which the latter emptied at a drain, and then began vigorously tugging away at the scrambled eggs and smoked ham, declaring he had not tasted anything so delicious for a long time, and finishing off with some milk rolls hot from the oven.

Page 101

“By the way,” remarked Sontheim, who had sat benignly watching the other, and filling his cup or plate as it was emptied—“I thought you seemed rather taken with my little god-daughter, Mina, yesterday. What could you have to say to the chit?”

“Oh, your god-daughter, is she!” said Emanuel, shortly. “How comes she to be that?”

“Why you see,” answered Sontheim, “her father and I were great chums. He was one of the best fellows that ever lived, and one of the most learned, and taught me Sanskrit, to boot ;but I never knew any one less fitted to grapple with the realities of life than him, poor man. How he ever came to be married is one of those mysteries of human nature that defy explanation. Had Elise, indeed, been a crabbed Sanskrit manuscript, I could have understood his falling in love with her. But no doubt our omniscient Shakspeare is right in making the women folk take most of the lovemaking on themselves; and my poor professor was just the man to fall a helpless prey to the first she who should take it into her head to bring a fellow under petticoat government. And if ever a man had to bow his neck ‘under his wife’s slipper,’ it was poor Heinrich Lichtenfeld. I remember one day,” he continued laughing, “he ought to have been on his way to give a Greek lesson to some rich, stupid ass of a fellow, but had clean forgotten about it, and was poring over some obscure passage in the Mahabharata, when his wife, broom in hand, suddenly popped her head in at the door, and seeing her husband placidly sitting there in dressing-gown and slippers, waved her broom in the air, and flying at him, screamed—

Page 102

“Are you to be for ever at play, when there are five hungry mouths to be fed, leaving alone your wedded wife and the servant. We shall come to beg in the street, yet,’ she lamented, the while poor Heinrich looked helplessly at her with his pale, glassy-blue eyes, as she helped him on with his coat, and pushed his hat on the back of his head. ‘There, go and give your lesson, if you have any pity on your poor starving children,’ she ended, leading the bewildered man to the street-door, and pushing him out as though he were blind.”

Emanuel looked very much amused at the description of Mina’s father, and remarked—“Well, after all, there’s something to be said on the wife’s side, too; a married man must keep the pot boiling somehow. But is the family as badly off as all that?” he added, more seriously.

“Oh, not now,” replied Sontheim. “During the Professor’s lifetime the wolf was with difficulty kept from the door, and one must in justice admit, that if any one in the world could have succeeded in making the two ends meet, it was the Frau Professorinn. But on her husband’s death, his ill-luck seemed to die with him, and the good widow soon afterwards came into a very tidy little fortune, which, with her habits of thrift and industry, she makes go twice as far as any one else could. Even as regards my poor friend’s unrequited labours, curiously enough his dissertation on ‘The supposititious conjoined authorship of the Valmikisloka, and the Ramayana,’ has been recognised as one of the most valuable contributions to our knowledge on the subject. The best of it is that Lichtenfeld never considered himself unfortunate as another man would

Page 103 have done, but was so devoted to his studies that he never looked to get any reward beyond the pleasure he derived from them; in fact, his wife was not so far out when she considered he was always at play.”

“You quite rouse one’s interest in the luckless Sanskrit Professor,” said Emanuel; “such an abnormal specimen of humanity is not to be met with out of the fatherland. Has he been dead long?”

“Let me see,” answered Sontheim, “he died nearly four years ago, the youngest child was born shortly after her father’s death. The only one who at all reminds me of the good man, my god-child, Mina.”

“What, Frהulein Mina? You must be joking, my good fellow,” said Emanuel, smiling; “what resemblance can there be between the abstracted book-worm you describe, and this sunshiny child of nature that seems thrilling with life as a bird does?”

“Oh, that’s how you see her,” said Sontheim, casting a shrewd glance at his friend. “The resemblance lies deeper down than that, and would escape the notice of any but an intimate friend. I am very fond of the little one, and feel almost bound to watch over her in a way. But I confess,” he added, carelessly, “she doesn’t strike me as the sort of girl men are apt to fall in love with, there’s not enough of the woman about her, she’d be the better for a spice of coquet, in fact!”

“Dear me, Sontheim,” said Emanuel, somewhat ironically, “I didn’t know that amongst your multifarious studies you included that of the fair sex.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Sontheim, with a fatuous expression, “when one has had the good fortune to fall in with all that’s fascinating, alluring and supremely

Page 104 beautiful in womanhood it makes one critical of the rest of the sex, no doubt!”

“Dear me!” said Emanuel, in a bantering tone, “you arouse my curiosity, you do. Can it be that this phoenix amongst women hides her charms in this town of yours? And is she visible to eyes other than your favoured ones, Leopold?”

“Jeer on if you like, my boy,” said Sontheim, not at all put down by his friend’s manner. “You’d sing to a different tune did you see her I’m bragging of. I tell you she is a goddess, Emanuel!” he cried energetically, getting up in his excitement, and pacing up and down the room; “a goddess even you would bow the knee to, had you but the privilege of knowing her. Such a walk, such a figure, such grace in every motion, and oh, Emanuel, such a subtle, bewildering, intoxicating way of smiling at you, to drive a man out of his senses! Give me such a woman, and to win her love but for a day and a night a man might gladly give his life, I say.”

“Why, I declare, head over heels in love, and ‘mad as a herring’!” said Emanuel. “Come tell us all about it, as no doubt you are dying to, and perhaps, as I’ve some experience in these delicate matters, I can be of use to you. First of all, who is this smiling divinity, Leopold?”

“Oh!” said Sontheim, mysteriously, “she’s a very great lady; here’s the proof, so don’t think I’m raving;” and he went to a wooden chest standing in a corner of the room, and doing duty for several pieces of furniture in one. Having unlocked it he took out a morocco case, then producing a small gold key, which he wore

Page 105 on a black silk cord next to his heart, he unlocked this also, and, to his friend’s astonishment, revealed a complete set of the most effulgent diamonds, brooch, earrings, necklace, bracelets, and all. They seemed to emit light of their own as they flashed on the sordid surroundings of the professorial abode.

Emanuel took the necklace, and holding the stones to the light, eyed them critically, then said, “You’re right; they’re splendid indeed, and of the purest water. Many such sets have I seen, flashing round me on fair shoulders, in the capitals where I’ve played. The lady to whom these belong is, or has been, very rich, no doubt about it!” His words apparently recalled some painful memory or other, judging from the contraction of his brows and the slight start he gave, as again looking at the jewels, he said, with a certain forced levity of manner: “By the way, you have not told me the name of your charmer yet. Although one of the divinities, she is not Venus Anonyma, I suppose?”

“Though you neither deserve to know her name nor anything else about this most beautiful of women, still I will have pity on your benighted condition, and condescend to illumine your darkness a little. You must know,” said Sontheim, emphatically rubbing his hands, “that she is none of your trumpery German nobility, with inordinate pretensions and nothing to back them with, but a real, great Countess, and no mistake!”

“A Countess?” said Emanuel, with a certain feverish impatience in his tone, tapping the floor with his boot; “why in the devil’s name can’t you tell one her name, then?”

Page 106

Sontheim, whose own excitement prevented his noticing that of his friend, said, “What’s in a name, old fellow? What can it signify to you what she’s called? However, there’s no mystery about it, if you must know, she’s the Countess Staraja.”

Emanuel, drawing a deep breath, sounding suspiciously like a breath of relief, handed the brilliants back to the Professor, and said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye: “But you’ve not told me how those valuable stones came in your possession, Leopold; you have not turned pawnbroker in addition to your other avocations, have you? Besides, goddesses are above pecuniary embarassments, I suppose?”

“Oh, for shame!” cried Sontheim, “you unbelieving Thomas, you! tremble lest she reveal herself some day to you in her godhead. I won’t keep you on the rack of expectation any longer, however, and may as well tell you,” he continued, with an air of vast importance, carefully putting the diamonds back in their case, which he locked, “that I am this very day going to Frankfort, either to Ladenburg’s bank or Goldschmidt’s to raise 50,000 florins on these jewels.”

“Then she’s after all only like one of us prosaic creatures, and has outrun her account at the banker’s,” said Emanuel, with a mock-heroic expression. “Ah, why did you raise an illusion but to destroy it again, Leopold?”

“I assure you it’s not at all a thing to joke about,” said Sontheim; “the fact is that this heavenly creature—so I concluded from some casual allusions of hers—had had serious differences with her lord, a crabbed, jealous old brute, no doubt, and so preferred eschewing

Page 107 his company for a time, living in the meanwhile, mind you, in a retirement strict enough for a nun.”

“Where gods are in question miracles are sure to follow!” put in Emanuel.

“Well, you see,” continued Sontheim, throwing himself well back, and expanding his chest, “by some tremendous piece of good luck the Countess Staraja comes to me with a letter of recommendation from her man of business (who once passed a few days in this town), so I have the felicity of rendering her some trifling service. I also flatter myself” (here he managed to infuse an extraordinary amount of knowingness into his small blue eyes) “that I succeeded in whiling away some of the leisure moments of this glorious woman—well, let’s not dwell on that—when one day she sends for me in distress and perplexity—think of it!—her husband is dying, and she says she must instantly start for Russia.”

“For Russia!” exclaimed Emanuel, giving his friend a quick look.

“Yes; didn’t I tell you that she was a Russian Countess?” asked the Professor.

“Never mind,” said Emanuel, who had recovered from his momentary uneasiness of manner; “go on with your story.”

“Well, fancy the delight of being of some use to the beautiful Countess!” cried Sontheim. “Not prepared for the emergency, she wants ready money of course; asks me to sell these diamonds for her in the course of a few hours (like all women she has no conception of business, you see), and when I explain that that is impossible in a small town like ours, she consents to

Page 108 accept the money from me, and leaves these stones to raise money upon, so that I may recoup myself and pay all her outstanding debts with. If I am not mistaken she was not insensible to my devoted exertions in her cause. After all,” he went on, excitedly, his face gradually getting as red as his hair, “the qualities women most value in men are energy and manliness and–-” he broke off suddenly, and turning abruptly to Emanuel said, with a world of meaning in his look and tone—“She may be a widow now.”

“And have you heard from her lately?” asked Emanuel.

A certain confusion might have been detected in the Professor’s manner as bending over the table he said, in a rather less elated tone than hitherto:

“No, I cannot say that I have.”

“Well, you cannot expect a goddess to observe the ordinary rules of politeness,” said Emanuel, rather sardonically; “but, my dear Leopold, I am more concerned than I–-“

But before he had time to finish the door opened, and the lady of whom he had caught a cursory view at an earlier hour now entered boldly in the consciousness of carefully adjusted curls and a gaudy Scotch plaid dress. Smirking and curtsying to Emanuel, and apologising for her intrusion, she asked her brother, with a certain querulousness of tone, whether he still had the intention of starting for Frankfort at one o’clock, for that in that case she must know how long he intended remaining, on account of the clothes that he’d want to take with him.

“Men of learning,” she said, looking at Emanuel

Page 109 with a killing smile, “always treat these sublunary details with scorn, and yet no one is more put out than they if everything does not go as smoothly as on wheels.”

“Very true, dear Madam,” said Emanuel, with a courteous inclination of the head. “I have no doubt this big fellow here gives you no end of trouble to keep in order.”

“Ah! no one knows what it is keeping house for a great scholar like that, dear sir,” said Frau Scherer, casting her eyes up to the ceiling in an interestingly plaintive manner.

“Well, well, you may abuse me another time to our friend, Pauline; but come along now and let’s attend to the packing. You won’t mind amusing yourself with my books till I come back, will you, Emanuel? and we’ll walk to the stage coach together. By the way, here’s an interesting treatise by a man who thinks he has found a key to the unity of language, that you may like to look at,” cried Sontheim, eagerly fishing out a thin, mean-looking pamphlet from under a pile of books.

“No, no; I’ll none of your etymologies or philologies; they are the worst of bogies to me. Here’s something will suit me better,” said Emanuel, seizing upon a translation of Hafiz which had just been published, as the others left the room.

Page [110] CHAPTER XI. SOAP BUBBLES.

Sun, sun shine! Ride over the Rhine! Ride over the house of gold, There sit three spinsters old. The first she spins a silken thread; The second winds the reel of death; The third hies to the spring water, And finds a little golden daughter.

WITH this old nursery ditty grandmother, one warm afternoon in June, sang Lulu to sleep; while in the darkened room a large fly, drowsily buzzing, went knocking now against the window, and now against the ceiling as if tipsy with heat. A sunbeam slanting through a hole in the shutter, and alive with countless luminous motes, fell across the room just behind the woman’s head.

Outside, the lavish sunlight lay fostering the grapevines and the plot of garden edged off from the vineyard by a border of lemon thyme and raspberry bushes.

Page 111

There, growing in unpruned luxuriance, were all sorts of delicious flowers—sweetwilliam with its deep-hued, copious clusters; rough-leaved borage, larkspur, and the tall aromatic spikes of the lavender; spotted dragon’s mouth, and white and purple poppies, whose drowsy fumes they say, even lull the usually hard-worked bees to sleep.

The noontide with its vibrating atmosphere lay over the simmering earth. A brooding stillness pervaded all things, only the bees glanced restlessly from flower to flower, and from one spot behind the hut came now and then explosions of laughter, or the sound of voices raised in mirth or anger.

For there, sitting astride on one of the boughs of the cherry-tree, Hans was gathering the fruit, and his brother Conrad, standing underneath, caught it and filled a large basket which they were to take to their mother. If one or the other ate more cherries than seemed his fair share there was a general protest, and whenever Conrad, with the dexterity of long practice, cleverly caught one of them between his lips as it fell, the children uttered a joyful shout. For they had all come to spend the day with their grandmother, it being the Frau Professorinn’s half-yearly washing day, on which they were invariably packed off to granny’s under the escort of their eldest sister.

Mina, who had herself been watching the gathering of the cherries with childish eagerness, suddenly remembered with dismay that she had promised her mother not to let Otto eat too many of them, as he had been ailing the last few days. And he must already have devoured at least a peck!

Page 112

Yet how prevent his eating any more! If she could only divert his attention to some new interest. At last she hit upon a device. She went into the house and came back presently with a basin, water, soap, and a clay pipe. Lulu, who had woke up, followed her, with the cheek on which she had been lying much redder than the other.

Mina established herself in the garden, and Lulu clapping her hands ran to the back calling: “Otto, Otto, Mina’s blowing bubbles!” The little fellow looked reluctantly at the cherries, then rushed round to the front, while the other boys, pocketing as many as they could, followed more leisurely.

If there was one thing their souls delighted in more than another it was soap-bubbles, especially as they were forbidden to blow them at home, Frau Lichtenfeld considering it a messy and extravagant amusement. “You use quite enough soap in scrubbing and washing,” she averred, “leaving alone wasting it in baubles.”

So the children gathered round their sister with their mouths unnaturally red, and of mask-like dimensions, and their fingers stained as a dyer’s. Finding they could positively not manage any more cherries just now, they contented themselves in using the remaining clusters as earrings.

With breathless interest they watched Mina, who was an expert in the art of blowing bubbles. All tried their hands at it in turn, but she had the knack of producing the largest, and then a dexterous shake sent them floating right up in the air. Whenever an unusually magnificent one, iridescent with the hues of the

Page 113 rainbow, drifted glistering in the sunlight awhile, and alighting in its descent, was shivered in the calix of a flower, or spluttered on one of their eagerly-lifted noses, they screamed with delight.

Grandmother, too, was looking on, standing under her doorway knitting, and benignly watching their happy faces.

As her eyes followed those airy resplendent bubbles floating so buoyantly in the summer air, her thoughts went drifting, drifting far away to her own childhood, that was like an old, dimly-remembered legend, and yet a thing of yesterday too.

For childhood and old age have much in common; theirs is the illimitable outlook, theirs the infinitely receding horizon. Standing aside from the strenuous, enthralling struggle, where in the noonday glare men and women are jostling and trampling each other in the thoroughfares of life, they gaze dreamily into a far beyond—future or past, what matter—essentially identical as these are.

From the old woman’s ken the present had disappeared like a dream one awakes from with a sigh and a start.

Behold, she was a child again, a nimble, sportive child, running lightly to and fro, blowing her bubbles fast, her bright but evanescent bubbles of life.

She was a maiden too, bright-eyed and elastic of step, and her heart beat again in that strange, tumultuous fashion as sitting sewing by the window, she caught the sound of a certain step on the pavement, and lifting her eyes demurely, met the eyes of somebody, who raising his hat passed slowly, oh! so very slowly.

Page 114 Those were days bright as the soap-bubbles, and as fleeting too, alas!

And once more she was a young mother with children clinging round her, the little helpless hands of children whose touch felt sweeter than aught else on earth; and her whole frame thrilled again as the soft lisp, and broken, cooing tones of infancy came borne to her ear.

And that, too, was as a bursting bubble, that young sad-eyed woman, lying weak and wan on her pillows, spasmodically clasping the breathing atom in her arms, as though it could delay her being swept away by the tide of death.

And a second time all her motherhood yearned in her, and went out to her child’s child, sweet to her widowed heart as a violet sprouting amidst fallen autumnal leaves. Sweet Elfrida, sweetest child of her old age; she sees her now with her soft, star-like eyes, and dreamy smile, coming home from school with a crown of field-flowers on her head, the little sweetheart had gathered for her. And she hears the coaxing, musical voice calling—“Granny dear, I’ve brought Emanuel to have bread and honey with me, because he’s in disgrace at home.” And there also is the boy carrying her girl’s satchel, crushing his cap into a ball in his bashfulness, and whistling as though he didn’t care a bit—not he!

Ah! was it yesterday or a lifetime since?

A grey shadow was projected on the garden plot, and a tall, thin, striking-looking man stood for an instant, looking at the merry group with a beaming countenance, then strode rapidly through the little garden, and

Page 115 stretching out both his hands to the old woman, said with a certain heartfelt intonation in his voice—“You remember Emanuel, don’t you, little mother?”

The old woman stared at him intently, her features worked convulsively. She suddenly leant her trembling head against the man’s shoulder and wept, sobbing out: “Then it was you!”

The stranger, gently soothing and supporting the old lady, led her into the house, where she tottered into her easy chair. Mina, who had been looking on sympathetically, flung her arms round her grandmother’s neck, and called her by a thousand names of endearment. When the latter had regained her composure, Mina, raising herself from her stooping posture, encountered Emanuel’s eyes, who said, bowing to her—

“What an unexpected pleasure to find you here, Frהulein; and yet unexpected is not the word either. It seems as if I had been here with you before, and everything had been just so, even to the very words I am saying now. Does it seem strange to you?” he asked, in a low voice.

Mina, who had seemed on the point of answering something impulsively, suddenly changed colour, and instead of speaking bent again over her grandmother.

“Forgive me, children,” said the old lady, drying her eyes and attempting a smile. “We old people move and have our being in the past, and when ‘tis brought before us sudden like that, it quite takes our breath away. Dear heart alive!” she cried, looking scrutinizingly at Emanuel, and nodding and shaking her head by turns, “and is this my little Emanuel, my bonny lad that was? Ah, Emanuel,” she went on, taking

Page 116 his long bony hand in hers, “they tell me you have become a great musician, and that you can move people this way or that, just as it pleases you; but what have they done to you, my boy? you look that thin and tired it makes my heart ache to see you.”

Emanuel had flung himself on the floor by the old lady, and as she looked at him with tender concern, he kissed the withered hand that still held his own—she was the nearest approach to a mother he had left.

“Give me my spectacles, Mina; I must look at the boy more closely,” she said, suddenly.

“I am not so young as I once was, little mother,” remarked Emanuel, smiling, “and the passing years are not so considerate to all of us,” looking at her admiringly; “but when one lives in a little earthly Paradise one may well defy the passing years. Ah, ‘tis well to be here!” he sighed; “and here’s old Mugin, too, I declare, looking more wise and weird than of yore,” and as in his schoolboy days, he began teazing that dignified bird, who seemed to resent the unwonted familiarity with disgust.

“Susan,” called out the old lady to her servant, “make us some coffee directly; very strong, mind. That will refresh the boy,” she added, in an aside; “he looks as if they didn’t half feed himself enough; and Mina, my pet, go and get us the cherries they have gathered, I know he is very fond of them.” Then she gave a little start, and cried, “I beg your pardon, Emanuel; I was quite forgetting that you are not a boy now, and that we have really nothing to offer that’s fit for a great gentleman like you to eat.”

“Let me still be a boy with you,” he said, stroking

Page 117 the old woman’s hand, “and see if I can’t eat cherries against the best of them.”

Mina, who had taken an earthenware dish from one of the cupboards, now left the room; and she had scarcely done so before Emanuel said, “Little mother, how like, how very like she is—you know who I’m thinking of?”

“Yes, more like than I could wish,” she answered, with a nervous shake of her head. “Old age breeds more care than need be, perhaps; but it makes me fear sometimes–-“

Mina’s return, however, at this moment put a stop to her sentence.

They all gathered round the table now, and the coffee, cream, and appetising bread and butter, not forgetting the cherries, were done justice to by the musician. In this homely circle he regained the inexhaustible spirits of his youth; and among the children seemed, indeed, to have become a child again.

Presently they all adjourned to the garden, Emanuel exclaiming, “And here are the identical old beehives, too, just the same as ever—only that they have multiplied according to the Biblical command;” and he watched the bees at their work with lively curiosity, old Frau Lichtenfeld leaning on his arm.

“Why, little mother,” he said, “to judge from the marvellous activity of these small creatures, and the incessant flux and reflux of life, there’s as much business doing as in some of the streets of London or Paris, only that they manage their musical accompaniment better here. How much honey would one of these communities manage to make per day, on an average?”

Page 118

“Well, that’s according to the time of year, and the condition they’re in, you see,” replied Frau Lichtenfeld. “Sometimes we’ve what’s called a ‘hunch-back’ brood, and there’s next to no honey to be got from them; then, again, if the queen should be taken sick, the whole state is thrown into disorder, and wasps, moths, and thieves of that sort, break through the gates and do no end of damage. But as a rule, bless them, they are far more hard-working and orderly in their proceedings than most of us. But if you really care to know, Emanuel, I’ll tell you how much honey each hive makes a day; for I weigh them myself every evening, and put down on my slate how many pounds’ worth of honey has been added by each during the day. Ah,” she said, fumbling at her side where she usually carried a little slate tied round her waist; “let’s see, Mina dear, didn’t I leave it on the table at the back, where I was shelling the peas in the morning?”

“Yes, granny; I’ll go and fetch it directly,” said Mina, running off.

“Oh, granny, will you weigh the bees now, while we’re here?” cried Conrad and Otto, with sparkling eyes.

“No, no, let me weigh them,” cried Hans. “I’ll do it tip-top, just see whether I won’t.”

“No, me, me,” cried Lulu’s childish voice, impatiently pulling her grandmother’s skirts to enforce her request.

“Why, children, they might sting you as like as not; they don’t know you as well as me, you see, who watch over and care for them as if they were little children almost; and they’re very grateful when you show them kindness, more so than many a Christian, bless you.

Page 119 But what’s that?” she said, lowering her head and listening for an instant. “Why, surely the hive must be going to swarm a day sooner than I expected—dear, dear, I must go and get the basket from the house, and my bee-cap and gloves. Out of their way, children!” she cried, seizing Lulu and pushing the others back into the doorway; “Keep quiet here, you’ll see them directly. Stay where you are, Hans, they are dreadfully excited now and I wouldn’t guarantee that they mightn’t sting you if you got in their way.”

She had scarcely finished speaking before there was a rushing noise of wings, and many thousand bees, as though propelled by some invisible force, precipitated themselves from the narrow aperture in the space of a few minutes.

“Herr Jesu! O Lord, have mercy upon us!” gasped the old woman, in a voice almost inarticulate with terror, clutching hold of Emanuel and trembling from head to foot as she leaned forward with straining eyes.

For just then, Mina, turning quickly round an angle in the path, was suddenly enveloped by the tumultous host. On her hair, on her cheeks, on her delicate sloping shoulders, protected by nothing more solid than a thin cambric chemisette, they settled by hundreds; while thousands more, hovering round, hid her in a winged, murmuring cloud. Dumb with horror the girl stood rooted to the spot. Indeed, she had sufficient presence of mind to remember that her only chance of safety was to remain as quiescent under the circumstances as a tree or a flower.

Emanuel had no sooner realised what had happened than he was going to dash forward at all risks, but felt

Page 120 his arm spasmodically clutched by the terrified old woman, who whispered in a quavering voice—

“Be quiet, for God’s sake! If you irritate them now they may sting her to death as sure as I live!”

But Emanuel, wrenching himself almost roughly from her grasp, said hoarsely—

“Let me be, I know them of old,” and darted forward before she had time to answer or remonstrate.

In a moment he had reached the spot where the girl stood with the bees surging round her in palpitating multitudes; walking unmoved through the formidable swarm, he said—

“Trust me,” in a low voice, as he looked at Mina with infinite solicitude.

There was no need for the injunction, indeed. The moment he had approached Mina, her painful apprehension was replaced by a sense of security. Emanuel, watching the bees for an instant, suddenly put his hand in her hair, and with his dexterous fingers extracted one of the bees from amidst its luxuriant wavy mass. He had not been mistaken—it was the queen he captured and now carried back to the old hive. No sooner had he done so than all her subjects, as though they had but one soul between them, wheeled round, and leaving Mina perfectly unhurt, rushed with incredible haste into the basket after their queen.

“My child! my child!” gasped the grandmother, examining Mina all over with her trembling hands, and kissing her and sobbing over her. “You’re safe, quite safe! Not one of them has stung her, not one, God bless them! Oh,” she cried, pressing the girl to her heart, “I am a faithless old woman. I ought to

Page 121 have had more confidence in my bees. You showed you knew them better than I did, Emanuel; but I was quite beside myself at the moment; ah, Emanuel,” she continued; but on looking round found he had left her side.

For Emanuel had no sooner seen that the girl was unharmed than he walked rapidly down the garden path, and once or twice an irrepressible shudder seemed to pass over him. On hearing himself called he joined the others in the room, looking very white and like one who has recovered his self-control with an effort.

“I thank you from my heart, Emanuel. Next to the Lord I owe the child’s safety to you,” cried Frau Lichtenfeld, holding out her hand to him.

“Oh, I don’t think she was in any danger, little mother,” said Emanuel, lightly; “the creatures’ instinct told them that she is a protectress of their kind, indeed I think they clung to her for pure love, only we were too obtuse to understand their peculiar way of manifesting it. You alone showed some kind of trust,” said Emanuel, softly, bringing Mina a chair and sitting down beside her; “would you always be so trustful, I wonder?”

“Why should I not,” said Mina, looking straight at him for a moment with her sweet frank eyes, but immediately dropping them again.

“Trust comes easy to the pure in heart,” Emanuel murmured, half inaudibly, while an expression of sorrow swept over his features, which though lasting but an instant unconsciously disturbed Mina.

“If I had reflected a little,” he said, after a moment’s abstraction and as if making an effort over himself, “I

Page 122 should not have been so disturbed when I saw the swarm surrounding you; neither bird, beast, nor insect would ever hurt a hair of your head, I am certain.”

“Do you mean because I love them so?” asked Mina, in perfect seriousness.

“Well, yes,” said Emanuel, smiling, “and because you are such a child of nature that all her beneficent powers must watch over you.”

“It is true I have never been stung or bitten by anything, not even by the gnats that torment the others so much—only once,” she said, in a ruminating manner, and then with a brightening look, “the very day you rescued that nest for me. I had a dream—oh, you can’t think what a vivid dream it was: I was chasing the most wonderful butterfly, and when I thought I had caught it, it changed to a horrible monstrous spider, which stung me quite real like—oh, what is the matter?”

For Emanuel, who had at first listened to her with evident delight, suddenly showed signs of inexplicable agitation, and seizing her hand pressed it violently, exclaiming, “And you too, my child; you too?”

Mina’s query, and her startled, bewildered look, recalled the musician to his senses; he let go her hand abruptly, as though it burned him, and said with a forced laugh, “I beg your pardon, Frהulein; I had quite forgotten that you were only telling me a dream, and that in the fatherland here there are no–-” (he apparently checked the word that was trembling on his tongue) “snakes or poisonous spiders to speak of.”

“Well, Mimchen,” said her grandmother, who had only just succeeded in pacifying Lulu’s sobs and cries, coming up and laying her hand on Mina’s head, “have

Page 123 you quite recovered from your fright? Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No, granny,” said Mina, with a certain preoccupation in her manner, which, however, escaped her grandmother’s notice; “but do sit down and rest yourself in your chair, now. It is you who must be frightened. I had no time for it.”

“I remember your bees since I can remember anything. What made you first think of keeping them?” asked Emanuel.

“It was my husband who was so fond of them—they helped to ruin him, in fact; but when he died broken-hearted, I found them a livelihood. It’s a long story, and some day maybe I’ll tell it you.”

Page [124] CHAPTER XII. THE FAIR.

A FORTNIGHT or so had elapsed since Emanuel and Mina had accidentally met at the Raven’s hut. Since then a tall, elegant-looking man might sometimes have been seen bending his steps to the last house of the town, to the astonishment and secret envy of some of Frau Lichtenfeld’s neighbours.

One of these, more particularly, kept a sharp lookout on all the incomings and outgoings of the Lichtenfelds. This was Frהulein von Griesbach, who lived only a stone’s throw off, and passed the better part of her time sitting on the high step by the window, scrutinizing the passers-by and bewailing the degeneracy of the times. The better to make her observations she had a looking-glass fastened on either hand outside her window, which enabled her to see all that was going on up and down the street. From her all-seeing eye no poor servant wench could hope to hide

Page 125 her stolen interview with the soldiers; it would be no exaggeration to say that she was privy to every incipient love-affair in the street, and sometimes prognosticated a rising passion before the parties concerned knew of it themselves.

In the lady’s formal drawing-room some of her intimates were assembled one afternoon at the hour of coffee, an occasion on which she felt it incumbent on herself to impart to them, out of “sincerest” regard for that poor widow Lichtenfeld, what she couldn’t help seeing—much as she might wish to shut her eyes to it. She only hoped that that dear, sensible Herr Sontheim, as Mina’s godfather, would put a stop to these proceedings before things had gone too far.

“In fact,” she said, turning to Frau Scherer, who was stooping over some fine white embroidery, “I am inclined to think that it would be acting the part of a true friend to give your brother a hint in this matter.”

“Dear, dear,” sighed Frau Scherer, bending still lower over her work, “you don’t know my brother as well as I do, Frהulein von Griesbach, or you would know what a firebrand he is if there’s what he rudely calls any scandalmongering going on. Besides, girls shouldn’t be forward, and throw themselves in the way of people, you know, or they must take the consequences.”

“That’s very true, very true indeed,” said Frהulein von Griesbach, snapping off her thread. “Everybody knows what these great artists and musicians are. ‘In each new place, a nice new face!’ is their motto no less than the soldiers’. And this Herr Sturm, to be sure, looks a regular lady-killer. Only to see him taking off his hat is enough. Now, if that enigmatical Countess,

Page 126 —what d’ye call her—who came and went who knows where, had still been at their house, one could understand there being an attraction for such as he! Artists always pair-off with these sort of adventuresses, you know. But what he can see in that Lichtenfeld girl quite passes my comprehension.”

“Well, well,” interposed Frau Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengהrtner, in a soothing tone, “the girl has been getting prettier and prettier of late, there’s no denying that; and what a bloom she has!”

“Oh, she’s passable enough,” said Frau Scherer, “and all very well for such a man as Lieutenant Knapp to run after; he’s getting more hopelessly in love with her than ever, they say.”

“The more fool he!” said Frהulein von Griesbach, severely, “for she won’t have anything to say to the deserving young man; though what she is to give herself such airs for, I don’t know, for one.”

“No, no, there you wrong the girl; you do indeed, dear Frהulein von Griesbach,” put in Frau Hopfengהrtner, hastily gulping down a piece of rather stale cake; “nothing is farther from poor Mina’s nature than airs of any sort—she’s too little of that, if anything. But she’s not like other girls of her age exactly. Her mother tells me she’ll spend hours lying on her back in the garden, staring up at the sky; and then talk in the oddest way about things she’s seen in the clouds.”

“Ah, her father always looked a queer, dazed sort of creature, in spite of his learning; and her grandfather was a bankrupt, you remember,” said Frהulein von Griesbach, with an ominous shake of the head. “These things run in families, you know.”

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“Do you think,” said Frau Scherer, looking round as if to ascertain that there were no eavesdroppers, and lowering her voice almost to a whisper, “do you think that the girl may be writing poetry in secret?”

“Heaven forbid!” cried the Frau Obertribunalprocurator, emphatically; “that would be too hard on our poor dear Frau Professorinn, after all the trouble she’s gone through already. There’s no marrying a girl of that sort, you know; and with a family of six, too.”

“Well, I can’t help thinking no good will come of that girl and her ways,” remarked Frהulein von Griesbach, by way of a clincher.

Meanwhile the subject of these remarks, happily unconscious of what a moral stumbling-block she was to many of her female acquaintances, was on her way to M�hlbach, a small market-town about seven miles from D–-. For, as Frau Lichtenfeld used to put it—“If the girl’s fit for nothing else, she can at least go on errands; and she’s that fond of the open air, it’s a pity she’s a respectable burgher’s child and not a beggar’s brat, made to sell brooms in the street.”

At any rate, Frau Lichtenfeld had this day despatched her daughter on a strictly private and confidential errand, the nature of which she kept a profound secret from even her two closest bosom-friends; yet the good widow, so far from being ashamed, might have been proud to let the whole town know what she so carefully concealed.

The fact was that the Professorinn—who rose at cockcrow—after putting her house in apple-pie order, still found herself with plenty of time left on her hands, which she made use of by turning an honest penny on

Page 128 the sly. And the way she set about it was as follows. It used to be the fashion at one time, amongst well-to-do farmers and people of that class, to wear gaudily embroidered braces for their Sunday best; and this sort of work was perhaps better paid than any, as there was a steady demand for it in all the outlying country towns and villages. Now Frau Lichtenfeld’s soul would have revolted from having any mercantile dealings with the shopkeepers of her native town. Was she not the daughter of the late Medicinalrath Duttenhofer, a man looked up to by the best connected families of the town!

No, it should never be said, if she could help it, that a degenerate offspring of the great Duttenhofer was actually reduced to the point of selling her own handiwork; besides, what Would such ladies as the Frau Obertribunalprocurator Hopfengהrtner, and the thrice nobly connected Frהulein von Griesbach, have whispered of her behind her back had they suspected her of such vulgar propensities?

She had therefore hit upon a plan which had hitherto answered her purpose admirably.

Twice a year a large fair was held at M�hlbach, to which the farmers and peasants came flocking from all parts of the surrounding country. Thither she herself, under pretence that you could buy all kinds of earthenware so much better and cheaper there, had resorted with her finely-worked braces, ever since the death of her husband some three years ago.

There was one particular booth amongst others noticeable for these attractive articles of male apparel, and the man with whom she was in the habit of transacting

Page 129 her business came from a great distance and was not likely therefore to divulge the nature of her dealings with him.

But this year Frau Lichtenfeld, to her exceeding regret, was prevented from going there in person, because Lulu, who had surreptitiously possessed herself of a cold pancake, was laid up with a severe fit of indigestion, which developed into nettle-rash, and she was much too anxious to leave the pet and nestling of the family. She determined at last, being much in want of money, on sending Mina, who had several times accompanied her on these expeditions.

“Now mind you don’t go gadding out of your way after flowers and such trash,” said Frau Lichtenfeld, on the landing, putting the neatly-tied parcel into a bag which also contained her daughter’s dinner. “It’s not likely you’ll meet any one if you take the road through the Schlossgarten and pine-wood. I’ve always found it most quiet along there; but if you should by ill-luck meet any of our friends by the way, for goodness’ sake, girl, don’t you let the cat out of the bag, if you value your old mother’s peace of mind and the respected name of your maternal grandfather. And don’t you be wool-gathering when shrewd old Stein chinks the twenty hard, bright gulden down on the counter—that’s about what it’ll be, I reckon; he’s close with his money, but he knows what’s what when he sees such neat, fine work as mine is. And here’s my purse to put the money in; stow it away in that pocket, it’ll be safe there; and if you are careful and do as I tell you I’ll lay out some of the money on a new dress for you—your muslins are all getting washed out again because you will stain

Page 130 them so pottering about in that garden, and never think of smoothing out the skirt before sitting down. Well, well, it’s hard work preaching to deaf ears, and there are none so deaf as those that won’t hear; but I hope for once you’ll have your wits about you and attend to what I am telling you. Now it’s high time you were off, instead of standing there saying, ‘Yes, yes.’ My goodness, look alive, girl, and remember that you have five miles of road before you!” said the Professorinn, by way of adieu to Mina, who thereupon hurried down the stairs with irreproachable speed.

It was close upon noon when Mina reached M�hlbach. Booths and stalls of all kinds lined each side of the usually solitary streets, and through the grey clouds of dust crowds of people, whose appearance seemed more fitted for the Italian Opera than sober nature, were pressing and hustling each other eagerly where wares of the most varied and nondescript character were displayed for sale.

The costume of many of the peasant women, whose I chief aim seemed to have been the attainment of an abnormal width and bulkiness of development about the hips, would have reminded those who are old enough to remember of the extinct race of the “Buy-a-brooms.” They wore short, copiously pleated woollen skirts; large aprons of varied colours and materials, some snowy white, others of gaudily flowered prints; bodices of crimson cloth, laced with silver across an embroidered stomacher, the chemise being showily puffed at the sleeves and covered at the shoulders with a cloth pelerine, fastened with green ribbons under the arms; clock-embroidered hose encased their strong legs and

Page 131 ankles, and their feet were shod in thick-soled blue cloth shoes tipped with leather. Under the coquettish little caps, turban-shaped or phrygian, which, adorned with black silk streamers, were slightly tilted on one side, their straight, heavy flaxen hair was tightly drawn backwards; and this rainbow-hued costume was further completed by a profusion of peasant jewellery, consisting for the most part of garnets and silver.

The dress of the male peasants was no less conspicuous. Some wore short jackets resplendent with metal buttons; others, long, loose coats, slit up behind; while their scarlet waistcoats, hanging open, displayed richly embroidered braces (such as Mina’s mother was in the habit of working), strapped across the chest, seemingly as much the pride of the men as the many coloured ribbons were of the women. Leather breeches embroidered at the seams, black stockings, stout buckled shoes, and low-crowned felt hats, made up the rest of their attire.

Mina had some difficulty in making her way through this motley throng; and at one point the people were so densely packed that she had perforce to come to a standstill. The attraction proved to be a kind of cheap-jack, and the man who was displaying his miscellaneous articles one by one happened at that moment to be flourishing a woman’s bright-coloured neck-handkerchief before the eyes of the spectators, bawling at the top of his voice—

“Here’s a bargain, lads! Genuine, and no mistake—pure silk—all the colours of the rainbow—warranted fast—stand all the wear and tear in the world! Lasses dying to have it, I see! A fine young fellow shall have

Page 132 it for thirty gulden—there, I can’t say fairer than that!” and looking round encouragingly he struck the wooden stand a tremendous blow with his fist.

Some of the onlookers here burst into a loud horse-laugh, but not the faintest attempt at bidding for the prize was made by any of them. Not in the least discouraged, the huckster cried, “Twenty-four gulden!” and he struck another ringing blow. “Twenty gulden! Twelve gulden! Eight gulden! Six gulden! Four gulden!”

More and more scornful grew his glances as his prices went diminuendo—diminuendo; and with half a dozen crashing oaths he came down to “Three gulden and seven groschen, and not a kreuzer taken off! What, isn’t there ne’er a sweetheart amongst the lot of you? Fie girls! what niggards have you for lovers! Weddings’ll be scarce this year, and yet the corn’s promising and the vines are loaded.”

There was a deal of giggling at this, and a whispering, and a consulting, and a nodding, and one gawky young fellow cast sheep’s eyes at the gaudy trifle, but looked down again immediately as though he might forthwith be entrapped into buying it. His glances had not escaped the salesman, who immediately swooped down on him like a hawk on its prey, crying—

“Bravo! bravo! you’re the only decent fellow of the lot; and I wish you a true lass, and a faithful and a fair—and there she is too, by jingo! Well, I’m just letting you have it dirt cheap, all for love of the bonny black eyes there!” and with a knowing wink he dexterously flung the handkerchief right on the nose of the yokel.

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Thereat there was a universal titter. The neck-handkerchief was next inspected, first on this side, then on that, held up to the light, pulled and rubbed, and tested between finger and thumb; and at last, after a long consultation, the bargain was concluded, and the man went through exactly the same performance with another piece of goods.

Some of the peasants were moving on now, so that Mina was at last at liberty to pursue her way down the narrow thoroughfare, lined on either hand with stalls, where clocks from the Black Forest, Bohemian glass, Tyrolese gloves, Nuremberg toys, Bas’ler Leckerle, peasants’ almanacks, pictures of saints and rosaries, and pots and pans of every imaginable shape, material, and colour, brass, tin, copper, wood, earthenware, and what not, with many other goods, were displayed to the best possible advantage.

In order to reach her destination Mina had to cross a little triangular square, where the grass sprouting between the irregular paving-stones testified sufficiently to its habitual quietness, but which at this moment resounded with the deafening noise of gongs, drums, trumpets, and other, equally melodious instruments, while two large booths divided the public with their rival attractions.

On one side of the square the King of the Niggers was depicted on a garish curtain, in the blackest of skins and whitest of teeth, taming the lion of the desert, while his queen, a lady with an enormous cloud of hair and a suspiciously white complexion, testified to her savage genuineness by swallowing a live fish tail foremost; the public being informed that this rare sight

Page 134 might be seen in the flesh for the small sum of one groschen.

In front of the opposition booth the superlative tightrope dancer Landrinette was at that moment exhibiting herself in somewhat dingy tights and spangles, beating a big drum with one hand while with the other she clashed the cymbals, at the same time notifying to an admiring, open-mouthed crowd that if they would only walk in they might not only see her own thrilling performances in mid-air, but also have the satisfaction of beholding a man-eater or one of the anthropophagi, who for his past sins had his head cut off every half-hour to the sound of trumpets, and carried round, like St. John’s, for the inspection of spectators, in a charger full of blood.

Mina might have felt tempted to enter one of these booths—as she still had a lively recollection of her childish pleasure in tightrope dancing—but for the solemn nature of the duties she was entrusted with; as it was she contented herself by lingering for what appeared to her but a few instants in front of the stand where Landrinette was contorting her lithe body into the most extraordinary of attitudes.

Lost in admiration of such agility, Mina did not see that she was closely watched by two characters widely different in appearance and social rank. One was a young lieutenant in a tightly fitting military tail-coat, with brilliantly white epaulets, his face being extremely red, as though the tightness of his stock had forced the greater part of blood in his body up into it. This was Lieutenant Knapp, who, on duty at the guard-house of the fair, had been following the unconscious

Page 135 Mina since her first appearance there, and was now engaged in alternately contemplating her lovely face, and scanning the suspicious movements of her second observer.

This was a shock-headed youth, who had been edging more and more closely to Mina’s bag, when suddenly by a dexterous movement he ripped it open without undoing the strings hanging on her arm, and was making off with Frau Lichtenfeld’s precious parcel when a vigorous cuff from the vigilant lieutenant sent him spinning ten paces off in one direction while the parcel fell down in the other.

The enamoured young man felt Mina’s charms far too much to pursue the young rogue, but seizing on the prize he restored it, not without a certain gleam of triumph, to the bewildered young lady. All unconscious of the disaster that had threatened her, she almost fancied that the active lieutenant had been exhibiting a graceful tour of legerdemain for her private delectation.

Mina blushed with surprise, the lieutenant blushed with pleasure, and the fragmentary explanation which followed was tinged with zeal on the one side, and polite embarrassment on the other.

How long this state of things might have lasted it is difficult to say; for Mina, with her uncommenced negotiations weighing on her conscience, was longing to be off, but did not know in her diffidence how to cut short the stammering lieutenant’s speeches, when the striking of a clock reminded him that the guard had to be relieved, and so with bows interspersed with protestations he reluctantly betook himself to his military duties, to her infinite relief.

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Mina, now hugging the recovered parcel tightly in her arms, looked no more to right or to left of her, but with praiseworthy resolution bent her steps to the brace-merchant’s booth. That worthy, when he knew whose errand she came upon, did not suffer his attention to be distracted by her clear brown eyes and glowing cheeks; but, deftly undoing the parcel, reserved his admiration for the brilliant hues which the mother’s fingers had wrought there. After carefully inspecting each separate article, and snapping the braces more than once with a sort of triumphant experiment in test of their stability, he reluctantly balanced each bright coin between his thumb and forefinger, and counted twenty gulden into Mina’s small hand.

Page [137] CHAPTER XIII. ELEMENTAL MATCH-MAKING.

HAVING satisfactorily concluded her business, Mina set out for home. It was a broilingly hot day, but luckily for her her way lay through the outskirts of a pine-forest extending to the neglected old Grand Ducal Palace gardens. The glare of sunlight, permeating air and sky, only slanted like golden rain through the sombre woof of pines in whose tops not a breeze was stirring. The stillness was so profound that you could hear that faint undertone and susurration which, like the heart-beat of Nature herself only becomes audible when all other sounds are in abeyance.

In this complete solitude Mina had no sense of fear. She felt like a child sheltered in her father’s house. Her heart was overflowing with devotion and a love of this beautiful world such as she had never yet experienced.

As she was leisurely walking along over the smooth

Page 138 pine-needles, her ear detected the crisp sound of footsteps some distance off. Presently she caught sight of a man’s tall figure through the stems of the trees. Then she started, and a vivid blush suffused her countenance. At the same moment the man, who had been leisurely going along with his head bent, looked up, and, quickening his pace, raised his hat. An expression of joy impossible to conceal lit up his eyes at this unexpected meeting.

“Who would have thought of meeting you here, of all places!” cried Emanuel, impulsively, stretching out both his hands to the girl in his surprise, and retaining hers for a moment as he stood looking at her downcast face. “But why should I be surprised, after all? you seem native to the woods; and sometimes I fancy—forgive me for the thought,” he added, gaily, “that you must be an elf’s child, and that your good mother must have been cheated of her own.”

Mina laughed softly, and stammered that her mother, when angry with her, had often said she must be a changeling by rights. “But I don’t know what people mean,” she said, opening her eyes to their widest; “is there then anything wrong or strange in being fond of the hills and woods? How can one be otherwise? As far back as I can remember I have heard voices when the trees go nodding their heads together, and have even tried to make out what they are saying. Sometimes, do you know, I have fancied that each kind of tree has a language of its own, in which it talks with his fellows. The most wonderful tongue is that of the pines here, and perhaps they are chaunting—what my poor father used to tell me of—old-world secrets of fallen gods.”

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“Oh,” said Emanuel, softly, “I have heard what a great scholar your father was; and so absorbed in his studies, they say, that he had neither eyes nor ears for what was passing around him. But he used to tell you something of his thoughts and speculations, did he? Why, what a mere child you must have been, though, at the time.”

“Oh, I liked nothing so well as stealing into father’s study, and getting him to tell me all sorts of wonderful things from the books he was poring over; and he was never cross or impatient at my interrupting him, but would let me climb on his knees, or sit beside him on the piled-up books, and tell me of a people that lived thousands of years ago, far away in the East, a race of shepherds who had no book but the heavens, but used to read strange things in the clouds and stars. Oh, I wish–-” she exclaimed, and stopped suddenly, getting very red.

“What do you wish? Tell me! I should wish nothing so much just now as to fulfil yours!” said Emanuel, with a smile.

“But you will think my wish too childish and impossible, I fear,” said Mina, blushing more than before. “I should have liked to have been one of that people, and kept the flocks, and watched the clouds ever coming and going in the sky.”

“I entirely retract my wish,” cried Emanuel, with much emphasis, “and thank my stars that you came to life in my time, and are walking with me here at this very moment. Don’t you think there’s something to be said for this age too? and you know the sky and the clouds and their ever-varying aspects are still the

Page 140 same those Aryan herdsmen saw; from which they evolved that marvellous tissue of gods and demons which, in one shape or another, have ruled the world ever since. But tell me, how would you like to go into great towns, where you would see even less of the sky and sunlight than you do here in old Germany; and yet make acquaintance with a thousand fresh emotions of life and art?”

“I have often thought of that, too,” answered Mina; “and sometimes when I sit by my window in the dusk, from where I see the hills against the sky, I begin picturing to myself what sort of a world there is behind them, till I feel as though something mysterious were calling on me to rise and go straight across them, on and on till I came to some such place as I have read of in books, where there ate spires and steeples rising as plentifully as our trees here; and cathedrals, through which the music goes rushing and sweeping like a tempest; and palaces full of pictures; and gardens, where there are all manner of outlandish animals, brought from the desert and the northpole, and from God knows where. I have only once seen a real live lion and tiger, and that was long ago at the fair; but,” she added, heaving a childlike sigh, “what chance is there of my leaving this neighbourhood ever?”

“Oh, you have chances enough,” said Emanuel, with a peculiar smile; “but this quiet, old-world life here has a charm of its own, I confess. Only after what you must remember of your father, I am afraid you hardly find the people as poetic as the neighbourhood, do you?”

“The people are very kind, if they would only leave

Page 141 me alone, but I never begin thinking of things but they fancy that I am a kilkrop, or something dreadful of that sort, I believe.”

Emanuel laughed like a boy, but said nothing.

The trees were rustling overhead, each in their own language as Mina would have it. They walked on in silence for some time. The musician felt that there were a hundred things he would have liked to have asked her about, had their short acquaintance really warranted the intimacy he felt. He would have liked to have asked her how she could tolerate the dull monotony of her mother’s household; but how could he? He would have liked to have asked if she ever felt any impulse to run away as he had done at her age, but this was out of the question. He would have liked to have pressed her hands and looked deeply into her eyes, and have said, “You are the sweetest girl that I ever met in my life, and I should like to–-” but he only walked on in silence. Once or twice he looked round at her countenance lingeringly and gently, as though it suddenly occurred to him that at least that right remained to him, seeing that she gazed obstinately in front of her. But he was vastly mistaken if he thought she did not see him, for the human eye very distinctly takes in a large circumference round the mere point of vision; and Mina, though in a sort of dream, saw most clearly every motion of his face and hands. Indeed, she seemed in a delicious trance, in which everything else except an unwonted sense of pleasure was obliterated; and for aught she knew she might have been floating along the ground instead of stepping beside him. His silence seemed to her quite

Page 142 natural, and her own did not embarrass her. In point of fact, time had ceased existing for her; she did not think of her mother, she did not think of the hour, and least of all did she think of herself.

In this frame of mind they had left the wood behind them, and entered the palace garden itself. The ground here broke into gentle declivities and fairy-knolls; all sorts of trees, many not indigenous to the soil, grew here in disordered order, and bushy-tailed squirrels, usually left in undisturbed possession of this green solitude, darted up the stems at the unwonted sound of footsteps, their beaded eyes curiously glinting here and there through the foliage.

All at once Emanuel was roused from his meditations by something thumping on his hat. He looked up inquiringly, and said in astonishment—

“How dark it has grown! It cannot surely be late!”

Even while he was speaking there was again a heavy thump, thump, on the ground, and there came a deep rumbling noise, not unlike the rolling of huge blocks or boulders down a rocky hillside.

“Why, I am afraid we are in for a thunderstorm,” cried Emanuel, looking anxiously at Mina in her thin muslin dress. “We must hurry on as fast as we can, and get under shelter if possible before it bursts upon us.”

Mina had looked up too; her eyes sparkled with a child’s enjoyment.

“Oh, I am so fond of a downright good thunderstorm!” she exclaimed. “I have never seen one out here before.”

“But we have no umbrellas, no wraps, nothing—we

Page 143 must make for the nearest shelter, if there is anything of the sort near, as fast as we can,” said Emanuel.

“Oh, the pavilion’s not far off now,” Mina replied; “if we turn down here we shall reach it in a few minutes.”

Emanuel hurried along at such a pace that his companion had to fall into a little trot to keep up with him.

Big, heavy drops splashed at intervals through the slightly shivering trees, and the moment they fell the parched, thirsty earth, split by great gaps, had completely absorbed them. Now and then one fell on Mina, but she only laughed, though Emanuel seemed deeply concerned. It was oppressively sultry, and save for that occasional shiver of the leaves there was not a sound stirring; an unnatural darkness gathered overhead, so that the blurred lurid outlines of the clouds were but confusedly visible through the black and motionless tree-tops. They were rushing along in silence when a sheet of livid flame lit up the darkness, and flashing along the ground seemed to dart past their very feet. Emanuel, seizing hold of the girl’s hand, instinctively stretched out his arm above her head, as though to protect her against all the embattled forces of nature, as he tore her along with him.

Flash upon flash followed the first with bewildering rapidity; clap upon clap of thunder succeeded instantaneously; then there was a wild soughing of the wind through the trees, and the very sluices of heaven seemed opening as the rain came crashing like a cataract from the clouds.

Page [144] CHAPTER XIV. VENUS VICTRIX.

“THERE’S the pavilion”, cried Mina, as they came all at once upon a lonely little house that stood all by itself amongst the trees.

It was one of those summer-houses so much in vogue with the licentious German princes in the latter half of the eighteenth century; lying half-hidden in the wood-like park, but yet in close communication with the Grand Ducal Palace, to which an old linden avenue led straight in opposite direction to that from which Emanuel and Mina were approaching it.

Springing up the steps and saying that the door was locked, Mina beckoned to a hidden side-entrance, which opened smoothly enough on her pressing a secret spring. Even in the minute it took to effect their entrance they had both got a thorough soaking.

“You are dreadfully wet; I am afraid you will get ill!” cried Emanuel, rushing wildly about the room in

Page 145 which they now found themselves, looking for something or other with which to cover or dry her; such things, however, had long since vanished with the vanished owners. So he eagerly whipped his silk handkerchief from his pocket, and began flicking the rain from her hair and dress and thinly-clad shoulders, with as much care as though she were one of the Dresden shepherdesses that still kept their place on the cabinets with ormolu corner-pieces, and he might break her in the process. He was even going to divest himself of his coat next in order to put it over her, only that she protested so strongly he had to desist.

“This is nothing, nothing indeed!” cried Mina, reassuringly, giving herself a shake like a duckling, and looking as though getting wet were the most pleasing sensation in the world—as indeed it was the most becoming thing in existence, thought Emanuel. But he did not quite give vent to his feelings; glancing round the octagonal room he only said—

“What a dear, charming old place you have suddenly raised to shelter us from the storm! I have long suspected you of being something of a fairy, but now I am sure of it!” and he threw himself on the parqueted floor at Mina’s feet, looking up at the ceiling with its cupids and nymphs א la Boucher, who, if sunken in tone and tarnished, were probably less offensive in colour than in all the garish rawness of their pristine blues and pinks.

Mina laughed softly as she answered—

“Oh, it’s only the old park-keeper who in this case plays the part of good fairy. Once he used to frighten us children dreadfully if ever we dared to pluck flowers

Page 146 off the grass in front of the palace, by telling us that bears and tigers and wolves were shut up in this lonely house here, and that we should be locked up along with them if we were disobedient. But nothing could ever keep me from the flowers; and so once the keeper, with his bushy eyebrows and long red nose, took me in his arms and said he would take me to the bears, and then my terror became so strong that I couldn’t even scream, but fell back with all my senses clean gone.”

“Wicked, wicked monster!” muttered Emanuel, clenching his fist.

“No, he wasn’t wicked,” said Mina, gently; “only he didn’t know, I suppose, how dreadful a thing fear is. He was so sorry for what he had done afterwards, and told me there were no wild beasts there—how silly I must have been to think there were!—only little angels with wings. So at last he got me to go and peep in with him, and then he and I became great friends, and he showed me how I might let myself in here whenever I wished if I would keep it a strict secret; for he told me how our Grand Duke, because of something in a will, had ordered everything to be left exactly as it was in his grandfather’s time. So I used to come here on a summer holiday and read fairy-tales, while the other children were romping in the park outside. Oh!” she cried, “I must show you the story of the ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ embroidered in the most beautiful colours, over there;” and she tripped across the room, and drawing out one of the once gorgeous draperies or portiטres, displayed its needlework.

Emanuel, who had slowly risen to his feet, was following her every look and motion with a certain

Page 147 brooding intensity of expression. All this tarnished splendour around them seemed to act as a foil to that slim, girlish figure, in the green muslin gown and cape with the fluttering ribbons; to that face with the virginal lips and the delicate rose-red bloom, and to those ethereal eyes, that seemed to swim like stars in some divinely limpid ether of their own; in a word, to that immaculate youth of body and soul. It seemed to Emanuel that, in looking at her, the freshness and dew of his own youth was coming back to him once more. He was wishing in his heart that the thunder and lightning would continue indefinitely to flash and roar overhead; that the rain would still go on falling through the wet, shaken boughs of the trees. But he was in truth all the time struggling hard with the strong, well-nigh overpowering emotion, which threatened every moment to overflow its bounds. So all at once, to hide what he felt, he began drawing the gayest, most animated picture of the fine gentlemen with bag-wigs, and the noble ladies in ruffles and farthingales, who had once upon a time lounged and laughed and flirted and fanned themselves on this pale, rose-coloured furniture, with its sumptuous curves and gorgeous marquetry work.

Brilliant, witty, gay, he overbrimmed with quaint conceits and fancies, and, giving the rein to his imagination, flashed out story after story, as only a man of genius could. For the delectation of this little unsophisticated girl, he exerted the fascinations of his intellect as he had but rarely done in the drawing-rooms of the wealthy and the great.

Mina simply listened, drifting along in an enchanted

Page 148 region. The present moment filled her so completely, that she had literally forgotten all that lay outside of it. Nothing was lost upon her; intuitively she seized the most delicate allusion, the most fleeting play of the fancy, till Emanuel could almost have been astonished to see how fine were the perceptions of this most delicately organised creature that was a mystery to itself as yet.

As they were loitering about, now looking out at the storm, whose violence seemed to be abating, now sauntering through the rooms, Emanuel made belief that at some turning or corner they would come upon the dukes or marchionesses, or fair maidens, who had once used this retreat, looking as faded and tarnished as the pavilion itself. But instead of this they only met themselves at every turn in the magnificent mirrors—which brought them face to face with their doubles like the lovers in the legend. In these unexpected encounters they caught glimpses of each other which made either feel more conscious of their position; and Mina all at once, after such an encounter, became disturbed and embarrassed, and her movements grew scared, like a frightened bird’s almost, as, going to the window and looking out, she said: “I don’t think the storm is so bad now—the thunder doesn’t follow the lightning nearly as fast as it did. I ought to be going,” and she was moving towards the door.

But Emanuel seized her hand, and said almost peremptorily—“Going! in this pouring rain and in these gossamer clothes! Do you think I would let you, to catch your death of cold?” then he added, with a sort of soft reproach—“Going, indeed!”

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For a moment he kept her hand in his, and his eyes met hers with a long, long, yearning look, that pierced to her very heart’s core; it was only for a moment, but in that moment there was eternity.

What had come to Mina? She would have escaped, fled, hidden herself out of sight, had it been possible; but how could she?

She went to the window again, ostensibly to see how the weather was—but she saw nothing; only her heart was beating so that she was glad the heavy, full-leaved trees were swaying and tossing about in the wind and rain, or she feared that its beating might have been heard all through the room.

Emanuel made no attempt to approach her. When she went to the casement, he took a quick step forward as though to follow her, then in his sudden way veered round in the opposite direction, and said in a loud voice—

“Why, there’s a spinet too! I must have a try at the instrument! I wonder what sort of tone it has?”

And opening the instrument he began running his long elastic fingers over the disused keys; under his vivifying touch they emitted thin, faint, almost ghostly sounds.

“Not so bad, not so bad!” he murmured, as, after playing one or two bars at random, he glided into a low, silvery, rippling sort of melody, that mingled softly with the monotonous splashing of the rain on the roof. But as he went on playing he seemed to be abandoning himself more and more to the music, which gradually swelled and deepened in scope, till on that old spinet it rang out, in its passionate intensity, like the articulate cry of a soul, as it once might have responded to the fingers of Sebastian Bach.

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Mina still stood motionless by the window. Strange thrills swept over her frame, like the shivering eddies that crisp the surface of an unfathomed lake. It seemed as though each note of this music were tugging at her heart-strings, drawing her as with strong cords towards the player, whose eyes waxed and darkened and glowed as he occasionally broke into snatches of song, while his body, like the trees in the wind outside, went swaying to and fro in the current of sound.

All at once the girl started as though she had been surprised in some crime. She thought she had heard him calling her by name through the music. She felt as though she must call aloud on his name, but her lips were tightly compressed all the time, and her fingers interlaced convulsively.

Emanuel jumped up just then, passed his hands through his hair, and left the spinet as suddenly as he had gone to it.

Mina, without looking round at him, said: “The rain has nearly left off now. I must go, indeed I must.”

“Very well,” Emanuel answered, shortly. His voice sounded almost harsh to Mina; she wondered whether he could be angry with her.

They left the pavilion, and went down the steps in silence. How cool and sweet the air now was! How fragrant the smell of the brown earth!

The rain had ceased. Everywhere around, above and beneath, there was a glisten and shiver and sparkle where the drops of wet, hanging on leaves and flowers and blades of grass, flashed back the evening sunshine as from a myriad diminutive mirrors.

Shrill piping sounds and long mellow flutings were

Page 151 blown with the whiffs of air through the foliage, and all sorts of dainty, gauzy-winged creatures, and gossamer flies and shiny beetles, buzzed and quivered and whirred through the clear air, revelling to the utmost in their fugitive day of life.

At the far end of the long linden avenue, down which the pair now walked in silent absorption, the long row of windows of the forsaken-looking rococo palace blazed red in the sunset. But the silence of these two was of a vastly different character. Mina was looking straight before her, down a vista melting from splendour to splendour into glories unspeakable, glories and splendours seeming but some outward visible token of something transcendently divine, which was filling her soul even to overflowing.

Emanuel, on the other hand, with his head drooped seemed hardly conscious of where he was nor whither he was going, but from his expression one might almost have fancied that the storm had left the earth only to rage in his own breast with unabated violence.

“Oh, that’s a nightingale!” sighed Mina, in a low, dreamy voice, more as if she were thinking aloud than giving utterance to her thought, at the same time putting her finger to her lip with a charming gesture.

At the sound of her voice Emanuel raised his head, looking about him like one just awakened. There was a strange, almost savage gleam in his hollow eyes as they furtively glanced past Mina, but then there came into them a dim, misty light as of unshed tears, and he muttered something between his teeth. It sounded like Byron’s—

No more, no more, oh, never more on me The freshness of the heart shall fall in dew.

Page 152

Mina gave one quick, shy, puzzled glance upward, but it seemed easier somehow to look into the blazing lights yonder than to meet his eyes.

“Why, here she is incarnate, the very goddess herself!” cried Emanuel, as though in answer to some train of thought, of his own, abruptly standing still before a statue of Venus Victrix, that with some antiques, casts, and modern originals (all of them statues of Venus, however), was placed round a pond, of which the waterworks, with their much damaged Tritons, had long ago ceased playing. Three white swans went slowly circling over its surface.

“We have lost the way, then, for good and all, and strayed into Venus’s land,” said Emanuel, in a tone between jest and earnest, after gazing at that statue of the goddess where she is represented as holding an apple in her right hand, and raising it to the height of her shoulder in token of triumph. “Well,” he continued, “it is useless to resist when she, with all the powers of nature at her back; conspires against one. I herewith yield myself up as her prisoner!”

So saying, he turned, in his energetic way, towards a tall hedge or thicket of roses, nearly enclosing the pond and the statues, and with his penknife began cutting quite a bunch of ruby, crimson and pink, cream-coloured and maroon roses, most fresh and fragrant after the rain.

“Oh, please,” cried the terrified Mina, interposing, “you mustn’t gather those; what would the Grand Duke say? The keeper will be furious!”

“There, there, don’t frighten yourself!” said Emanuel tenderly, pressing the bunch into her hands and her

Page 153 hands between his. “There are powers that I dread more than the Grand Duke or even the red-nosed keeper, awful though he be! Perhaps if you were to cast those roses as a peace-offering at the feet of that Venus there, who knows–-Go! I am a superstitious creature; perhaps the roses offered by those pure hands will soften that inexorable marble heart of hers. Ah, you stare at me, my child! You think I am going out of my mind perhaps. Perhaps I am! perhaps I am!”

He spoke vehemently, and almost pushed Mina in the direction of that Venus before mentioned, who, faintly glowing in the warm sunset tones, stood out in her immortal beauty from the background of dark green leaves and mingled red roses.

The girl hardly knew what to make of it. She held the roses in her slightly trembling hand, looking perplexed and half frightened; she had never yet seen so strange an expression in the musician’s face—so strange that it made her shiver in spite of the warmth.

All at once she felt his breath thrill through her hair; the roses dropped from her hands at the feet of the image of Venus. “Surely you cannot be frightened of me?” he whispered.

For an answer she looked full at him for once, with her large, clear, candid eyes, revealing what was a secret to herself as yet.

Emanuel, seizing both her hands in his, and drawing her a little towards him, cried, as though the words were being wrung from him by some overmastering force—

“Mina, Mina, I lo–-“

“Halloo!” shouted a well-known voice, in unfeigned

Page 154 astonishment; and the shout ended in a significant whistle as the two started apart.

Emanuel’s face wore an expression of profound annoyance, nay, anger, as Sontheim, ostensibly speaking to Mina, but looking at him, said, “Why, Mina, my girl, what brings you here at this late hour of the day?” In another instant, however, he had regained that perfect self-possession which under no circumstances long forsakes the man of the world.

“Why, Leopold, old fellow, glad you have come back from Frankfort at last!” he said gaily, linking his arm in that of his friend; “what a time you’ve been gone!”

“Much may happen in a fortnight, certainly,” said the other in an absent, constrained manner, stealing a look at Mina, who, thus unexpectedly startled, as a tide of irresistible emotion was upheaving her whole being felt unutterably helpless, speechless, and yet, in spite of all, more unutterably happy still.

“I met Frהulein Lichtenfeld accidentally in the wood,” said Emanuel, addressing Sontheim, “and, being overtaken by a thunderstorm, I thought it my duty to look after her.”

“Look after her!” repeated Sontheim, mechanically, with none of his usual hearty joviality of manner.

“Well, now you are here to escort Frהulein Lichtenfeld home, I must be off,” said the musician, “as I have to keep an engagement.”

They had reached the end of the avenue by this time. Emanuel turned to Mina and bade her good-bye, holding her hand in a lingering pressure; then nodding to Sontheim, went off at a swinging pace.

Page [155] BOOK II.

Page [156]

Page [157] BOOK II. CHAPTER XV. THE DANCE AMIDST THE RUINS.

LEOPOLD SONTHEIM had been more painfully disturbed by his unexpected meeting with Emanuel and Mina than he could well account for. Trifles that he had hitherto disregarded recurred to his mind with new significance. He remembered the gossip retailed to him by his sister on his return home, and her friends’ tittle-tattle which he had several times laughed to scorn. Certain scandalous rumours that had reached him in Frankfort now assumed a more serious meaning; and he pondered, not without annoyance, on the congratulations which an acquaintance of his had offered him on his god-child’s supposed engagement to the great virtuoso.

“At any rate I’ll do my duty by Lichtenfeld’s little girl,” exclaimed the energetic Professor the next morning, on rising at a still earlier hour than usual. After

Page 158 a hasty toilet he sallied forth, determined to seek his friend, who he knew would not be able to escape him, as he should find him safely in bed.

In bed Emanuel was, and fast asleep, when the Professor entered; but he started up with an oath on the latter laying his hand gently, as he supposed, on his uncovered arm.

“In God’s name what has happened?” he muttered, staring at Sontheim. “Has anything–-” then he abruptly stopped, seemed to recollect himself, and sat straight up in bed.

Sontheim, not at all flurried, drew an easy-chair to the bedside, filled his pipe afresh, and said, with great nonchalance, that as he had wanted to have a few serious words with him, he had taken this opportune moment for calling on him. Then, without beating about the bush, he plunged straight into his subject, and after reminding Emanuel of their conversation about his dear old comrade Lichtenfeld, besought him by their friendship not to injure his innocent daughter’s reputation; as he could scarcely fail to do if, as he supposed, he had no serious intentions, and was yet seen walking with her alone in such a small neighbourhood.

Emanuel, who had at first uttered one or two exclamations with a certain angry impatience, said all at once, with infinite tenderness in his voice, “Injure the child! I would as soon think of hurting–-but perhaps you are right,” he muttered, after a moment’s abstracted silence. “I may be to blame for allowing myself to drift on in delicious unconsciousness of consequences. But,” he said, turning on his side, away from Sontheim, “I am not prepared to discuss this subject

Page 159 with you just now. My position, I own, is not a little difficult and perplexing; but if you like I will tell you the story of my life, so that you may the better judge of my actions, and be able to tender your advice, which I stand much in need of.”

Sontheim, after expressing the utmost readiness to hear Emanuel’s story, thanked him for having tolerated his interference in so delicate a matter; and it was arranged that the latter should rejoin his friend in the evening, when they would make a night of it.

In accordance with this promise the musician was now seated in Sontheim’s garden, in the magnificent June weather, between nine and ten o’clock in the evening. The only light they got was partly from the just risen moon on one side, partly from an oil-lamp in the kitchen, which, through a window, threw enough light on the arbour table to render the Professor’s beer and tobacco faintly visible. In spite of the sultriness of the night, Sontheim had made himself tolerably comfortable in his old dressing-gown and slippers, and reclining in a garden arm-chair, was puffing away at his pipe.

Emanuel’s feelings were of such a kind as entirely to neutralize in him any sensations of heat, cold, or physical discomfort whatever. With his hands tightly linked round the right knee, that crossed the other, he was straining forward with eager glance into his friend’s eyes, lit up by the lamp, as though the latter could have looked into his own, although, from the gloom enshrouding him, only an occasional glitter of them was apparent as glimpses of moonlight penetrated the dense foliage.

“I dare say,” Emanuel began, “you will remember

Page 160 from letters how hard were my early struggles after I had run away from home to follow the irresistible bent of my nature. For my father, as you know, worthy Lutheran pastor that he was, thought a musician not much better than those strolling mountebanks that used to play in the streets and then came begging to the door. ‘Lumpengesindel’ he dubbed them indiscriminately, in stentorian tones, who wasted God’s precious time by making a row!—quite forgetting in his ire that one of the chief occupations in the kingdom of heaven is to consist in the singing of ‘hallelujahs.’

“Well, I will not weary you by detailing the vicissitudes I endured. For owing to the incalculable disadvantage of not coming of a musical stock, nor of having been thoroughly trained at a sufficiently tender age, it cost me incredible efforts and incessant labour to make headway in my profession.

“How I got a living at all, or refrained from hanging myself in my garret, to this day I cannot explain!

“I was in several towns, and played in several orchestras with more or less blundering persistency, till by hook or by crook I had worked my way to Rome, and had got admitted to the Academy there. From that time, I believe, letters and news from me, good or bad, ceased.

“I believe at that time, when things went well, I used to earn about five hundred francs a year by music lessons. I had a few friends, who thought me poetic but mad, and a very few patrons, who would have liked me better if I had been better dressed. Sometimes I know I would owe a meal to the French painter Raoul Leroux, who, some years older than myself, had already begun

Page 161 attracting the eyes of picture buyers by his ‘Fisher of Capri’ picture.

“I as yet had caught the ear of no one, and one day, in a despairing mood, had taken myself off to the gardens of Tivoli and flung myself down on the grass in utter hopelessness. In this position I suddenly heard Raoul shouting, ‘There he is! There he is, Frederic! Morose as usual, of course.—We are off to Naples, Emanuel! Come along with us.’

“‘To Naples!’ I echoed grimly. ‘Do you want to mock me? Don’t you know that at this moment I don’t possess a single baiocco—nay, less than nothing, as I have lots of debts!’ and I ground my teeth.

“Raoul and Frederic only laughed, saying, ‘What of that! As if we had not enough for all three of us. Come along, old fellow; shake off that moody melancholy that gives you the air of gaunt sea-eagle!’ And each seizing me by one arm they dragged me along with them.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘to confess the truth, you have saved e from a dilemma. For the rich English spinster, whom you may have heard me mention, has gone to live at Naples for a time; and as the lessons I give her form the better part of my income, I was deliberating how to follow in the present state of my finances.’

“‘Ah well,’ laughed Raoul, ‘now we can understand the cause of your despair, and the antics you were cutting on the grass like Don Quixote for his Dulcinea. It was the Mees Anglaise’s red corkscrew curls and blue spectacles that you were pining after.’

“Once at Naples, the partiality of my English patroness procured me some pupils, and, therefore, after

Page 162 the departure of Raoul and Frederic I determined to remain. After I had been there about eight months I was so worn out with hard work and constant disappointments, that one day, finding I had a good deal of time on my hands, I jumped into a fisherman’s boat and let him take me to Capri.

“I and my violin, which in those days never left me, were put on shore after paying the small fare that was bargained for, and I found myself ascending the rocky path that leads to the little inn near the Villa of Tiberius.

“‘And what next?’ was the question I put to myself as I made my way to the latter. My prospects seemed gloomier than ever. In this frame of mind I found myself amidst the world-renowned ruins of Tiberius, that, not unlike certain women, might be said to look as beautiful as they are ill-famed.

“Sounds of human mirth and laughter from somewhere among them were borne from time to time to the desolate spot I had reached. It was a Festa day, and a number of young people were apparently enjoying their games and dances, to judge by the shouts and laughter which woke echoes of ghostly mirth in the vaults and galleries—that looked as though they had lain dumb under the pressure of centuries.

“There was I know not what of weird contrast between this gaping ruin, with its fragments confusedly scattered about like the bleaching bones of some antediluvian monster, and the clear youthful ring of those joyous voices.

“I had sat down on some fragment of wall directly overhanging the sea. In my present mood it afforded me a singular kind of pleasure to take up stones or

Page 163 pieces of marble, and throw them down the precipice. From time to time I could hear them striking against the sharp projections of the rocks as they leaped down the giddy height. Should I let my violin follow in their wake?

“I was in a mood of savage despair; a mood in which my heart turned at bay on what I had best loved. Hither it had led me, this art I had worshipped! After years of patient toil, after sacrificing to it hearth and home, and the security of a settled profession, I was not a tittle further advanced than at the commencement of my career. For requital of my devoted service starvation stared me in the face. My miserable subsistence was barely earned by giving lessons to females, young and old, who, while inflicting prolonged tortures on their victim, still exacted the tribute of smiles and compliments.

“Weakened and ill, I shuddered to think of returning and bowing my neck once more to that detested yoke.

“‘No! I’ll never go back to that!’ I cried, jumping up. ‘I’ll sooner earn a precarious livelihood by turning fisherman in this island! Any labour will be preferable to that daily renewing torture.’ I seized my violin in a desperate clutch, and feverishly leant over the wall, where I could hear the dirge-like boom of the breakers in the hollow caves.

“Only he who is familiar with the violin, knows the love one may bear it—a love keen as that felt for some frail human creature of exquisitely delicate mould. Caressingly I passed my fingers over its ever-responsive strings, thinking, feeling rather, that I could endure no hand to handle it save mine!

Page 164

“No! rather than that it should belong to another, its strings should for ever render up the ghost of music in one prolonged wail, as it plunged shivering from this fearful height.

“For the last time, I thought, my fingers erred over its familiar chords. A thrill of horrid exultation possessed me, such as the fell Tiberius may have experienced when he bade his men hurl the shrinking form of a soft-limbed favourite from this precipice.

“Possibly my shaken nerves were affected by the hideous memories clinging to these unhallowed ruins; possibly also by the oppressive heat of the day.

“Sea and sky, indeed, looked in harmony with unnatural sensations; as though some dread burst of passion were gathering intensity under their apparently sluggish calm.

“Though the sky overhead was of a sultry blue, yet above the coast-line of Naples, standing out with preternatural distinctness, uncouth, livid clouds straggled chaotically to the upper sky, here and there reaching lank, shadowy films, like gigantic arms, far into the zenith.

Flocks of sea-birds were uneasily flying landwards; screaming, they wheeled round the sphinx-like rocks, and disappeared by degrees in their red clefts and fissures.

“All at once I was startled in my fitful, half-mechanical playing, by a piercing scream; this was almost immediately followed by a confused noise of sobs and cries, and a running of people to and fro, which seemed, however, to be approaching nearer. I was just going

Page 165 to hurry to the spot whence the noise proceeded, when some dozen of girls came rushing towards me.

“But before I had time to inquire into the cause of their excitement, or to observe them more closely, a grey-haired woman, with a pale, terror-stricken face, seized hold of my hand, crying—

“‘The Madonna be praised, he has a violin! Hasten, hasten! Follow us or she will die!’

“And then the girls, beckoning and gesticulating, laid hold of my arm, my coat, my hand, some pulling, some pushing me along, all jabbering and crying together, and repeating more and more urgently the only words that I could make out—‘Musica! Musica!’

“But while I stared at them in blank amazement, thinking they must all have lost their wits together, I was unconsciously being dragged and pushed along till we came to a kind of ruined marble staircase, down which they hurried me into something still resembling a spacious chamber; for though the wild fig-tree and cactus pushed their fantastic branches through gaps in the walls, these stood partly upright as yet, discovering in places the dull red glow of weather-stained wall-paintings.

“The floor too was better preserved than any I had seen; though cracked and in part overrun by ivy, it showed portions of the original white and black tesselated work.

“On this floor, with her head pillowed on a shattered capital, lay a prostrate figure without life or motion, and with limbs rigidly extended as in death.

“The old woman, throwing herself on her knees before this lifeless figure, loosened the handkerchief round

Page 166 her neck, and then, as though to feel whether life yet lingered, she put her hand on the heart of the unconscious girl, when, suddenly jumping up again, she ran to me panting—

“‘Oh, sir, good sir, play, play for the love of the Madonna!’ And the others all echoed as with one voice, ‘Musica! Musica!’

“‘Is this a time to make music?’ cried I, in angry bewilderment. ‘The girl seems dying or dead. Run quick for a doctor—or stay; if you will tell me where he lives I will go myself and bring him hither with all speed.’

“For all answer the grey-haired woman, who was evidently the girl’s mother, fell at my feet, and clasping my knees, she cried in a voice broken by sobs, ‘Oh, good sir, kind sir, my girl has been bitten by the tarantula! Nothing in the world can save her but you, if with your playing you can make her rise up and dance!’

“Then darting back once more to the girl, who lay as motionless as before, she screamed in shrill despair, ‘She’s getting as cold as ice; the death-damps will be on her if you will not play for my darling.’

“And all the girls, pointing as with one accord to my violin, chimed in once again, crying more peremptorily than before, ‘Musica! Musica!’

“There was no arguing with these terror-stricken, imploring creatures, so I took the instrument that had been doomed to destruction to call the seemingly dead to life with it.

“What possessed me then I know not: but never before or since did the music thus waken within the strings of its own demoniacal will and leap responsive to my fingers.

Page 167

“Perhaps the charm lay in the devout belief which the listeners had in the efficacy of my playing. They say your fool would cease to be one if nobody believed in his folly.

“Well, I played, beginning with an andante, at the very first notes of which the seemingly lifeless girl rose to her feet as if by enchantment, and stood there, taller by the head than the ordinary Capri girls, her companions, who were breathlessly watching her. So still she stood, that with her shut eyes and face of unearthly pallor she might have been taken for a statue, till, as I slightly quickened the tempo, a convulsive tremor passed through her rigid, exquisitely moulded limbs, and then with measured gestures of inexpressible grace she began slowly swaying herself to and fro. Softly her eyes unclosed now, and mistily as yet their gaze dwelt upon me. There was intoxication in their fixed stare, and almost involuntarily I struck into an impassioned allegro.

“No sooner had the tempo changed than a spirit of new life seemingly entered the girl’s frame. A smile, transforming her features, wavered over her countenance, kindling fitful lightnings of returning consciousness in her dark mysterious eyes. Looking about her with an expression of wide-eyed surprise, she eagerly drank in the sounds of the violin; her graceful movements became more and more violent, till she whirled in ever-widening circles round about the roofless palace chamber, athwart which flurried bats swirled noiselessly through the gathering twilight. Hither and thither she glided, no sooner completing the circle in one direction than, snapping her fingers with a passionate cry, she wheeled

Page 168 round in an opposite course, sometimes clapping her hands together and catching up snatches of my own melody, sometimes waving aloft or pressing to her bosom the red kerchief or mucadore she had worn knotted in her hair, which, now unloosened, twined about her ivory-like neck and shoulders in a serpentine coil.

“Fear, love, anguish, and pleasure, seemed alternately to possess her mobile countenance. Her face indicated violent transitions of passion; her hands appeared as if struggling after articulate expression of their own; her limbs were contorted with emotion: in short, every nerve and fibre in her body seemed to translate the music into movement.

“As I looked on a demon seemed to enter my brain and fingers, hurrying me into a bacchanalian frenzy of sound; and the faster I played the more furiously her dizzily-gliding feet flashed hither and thither in a bewildering, still-renewing maze, so that from her to me and me to her an electric impulse of rhythmical movement perpetually vibrated to and fro.

“Ever and anon the semicircle of eagerly-watching girls, sympathetically thrilled by the spectacle, clapped their hands, shouting for joy, and, balancing themselves on tiptoe, joined in the headlong dance. And as they glided to and fro, the wild roses and ivy and long tendrils of the vine flaunting it on the crumbling walls seemed to wave in unison and dance round the dancing girls.

“As I went on playing the never-ending, still beginning tune, night overtook us, and we should have been in profound obscurity but for continuous brilliant flashes of lightning shooting up from the horizon like the

Page 169 gleaming lances hurled as from the vanguard of an army of Titans.

“In the absorbing interest, however, with which we watched the deliriously whirling figure, unconscious of aught but the music, we took but little note of the lightning. Sometimes, when from some black turreted thunder-cloud a triple-pronged dart came hissing and crackling to the earth as though launched by the very hand of Jove, I saw thirteen hands suddenly lifted, thirteen fingers instinctively flying from brow to breast making the sign of the cross, and heard thirteen voices mutter as one, ‘Nel nome del Padre e del Figlio e dello Spirito Santo.’

“But the ecstatic dancer paused not nor rested in her incredible exertions; the excited girls alternately told their beads, and then joined in the dance again; while the grey-haired mother, kneeling on the marble pediment of what might have been the fragment of a temple of Bacchus, lifted her hands in prayer to a little shrine of the Madonna, placed there, strangely enough, amidst the relics of paganism.

“All of a sudden, however, a horrific blaze, emitted from a huge focus of intolerable light, set the whole heavens aflame; As from a fresh-created baleful sun, blue and livid and golden-coloured lightnings were shivered from it on all sides; dull, however, in comparison to the central ball, which, bursting instantaneously, bathed the sky, earth, and air in one insufferable glare of phosphorescent light. The deadly blue flame lit up everything with a livid brightness unknown today.

“Walls and faded wall-paintings, limbs of decapitated

Page 170 goddesses gleaming white through the grass and rioting weeds, tottering columns, arches and vaults, and deserted galleries receding in endless perspective, leaped out lifelike on a background of night and storm.

“With piercing shrieks the horrified maidens scattered and fled to the remotest corner of the ruin, where they fell prone on their faces quivering in a heap. In a voice strangled by fear the kneeling mother called for protection on the Virgin and all the saints! The violin dropped from my nerveless grasp, and at the self-same moment the beautiful dancer, like one struck by a bullet, tottered and dropped to the ground, where she lay without sense or motion.

“At that instant a clap of thunder so awful, so heaven-rending, rattled overhead, so roared and banged and clattered among the clouds, that I thought the shadowy ruin, tottering and rocking with the shock, would come crashing about us and bury us under its remains.

“But as the thunder rolled on farther and farther, seemingly rebounding from cloud to cloud, I recovered my self-possession, and in mortal fear rushed to the side of the prostrate girl. I was trembling all over like a coward as I bent down to examine her. Had the lightning struck her when she fell so abruptly to the ground? Had life for ever forsaken that magnificent form, those divinest limbs? Would those heavy eyelashes never again be raised from those dazzling eyes? Breathlessly I moved aside the dusky hair covering her like a pall. Breathlessly I placed my hand on her heart; a strange shiver and spark quivered through it to my heart. Yet she was chill as

Page 171 ice and motionless as a stone. ‘She is dead, she is dead’ I moaned; and the pang for one I had never known exceeded everything I had felt in my life.

“‘You mistake, Signor,’ some one said close beside me; and on looking up I saw the mother intently gazing down on her senseless child. ‘My Tolla is not hurt,’ she cried; ‘she only fell when you left off playing the tarantella; she will arise as soon as you go on.’

“Pointing to the lightning still flickering and darting overhead, I cried, ‘But you are risking your lives for some fantastic whim, some wild superstition of yours. You are mad to brave such a storm! You expose your child to undoubted peril that you may ward off some illusory evil. Let me bear her to the inn, and follow me thither.’ And I was going to lift the senseless form in my arms when the woman sternly prevented me.

“In vain I argued, pleaded, reasoned with her. She only shook her head and cried piteously, ‘Give her music, more music, for the love of the dear Madonna!’ And the girls, who by this time had plucked up courage and gathered round us, echoed again as with one voice, ‘Musica! Musica!’

“What was I to do? I could not drag them away by force, and certainly, for aught I knew, she might have been in equal danger from the poison or the storm wherever we were. As for peril to myself I cared not. I was in a devil of a mood, and all the pent-up, bitter passion of my soul seemed to find a vent and safety-valve in that stupendous commotion of the elements.

“So I searched for my instrument on the ground, and now noticed, to my astonishment, that although the storm had swept away from us, the whole ruin was

Page 172 nevertheless brightly illuminated. On looking up I saw the topmost branches of a solitary stone-pine one dazzle of flames. Rising straight on high from a gap in the wall which its roots had shattered, it looked a colossal chandelier on which the lightning had kindled a thousand tapers. There was not a breath of air, not a drop of rain, so that the flames burned clear and steady as under cover of a mighty dome.

“By this brilliant light, in which every object from a human form to a marble acanthus leaf cast sharp-edged shadows, I soon discovered my violin on a tangle of flowering clematis, and began tuning its strings.

“No sooner had I struck into the same lively, impassioned tune, than the strange being rose again as by magic, and, slowly opening her intoxicating eyes, began swaying herself to and fro with the same graceful gestures and movements that I had already observed.

“Thus I played all through the night, long after the rear-guard of the thunderstorm had disappeared below the opposite horizon whence it first arose—played indefatigably on and on like a man possessed, and still, by the torch of the burning pine, I saw the beautiful mזnad-like figure whirling to and fro with miraculous endurance. Now and then; through the deep silence, I heard a scarred pine-bough come crackling to the earth; now and then I heard the lowing of the stabled cattle in some distant part of the ruin; once and again, smiting like a cry, I heard one string snapping after another under my pitiless hands.

“Still I played on, though a misty quiver of sparks was dancing about my eyes, till the fallow-tinted dawn gleamed faintly in the east.

Page 173

“At last, at last, a change stole over the form and features of the indefatigable dancer. Her companions, overcome with fatigue,had long ago sunk to the ground, where, with their little ruffled heads resting on any bit of marble, they lay sleeping calmly like little children. Only the mother still watched and prayed for her child, the unnatural tension of whose nerves and muscles now seemed visibly to relax; for the mad light of exaltation in her eyes veiled itself in softness, her feet moved more and more slowly, and her arms, which had heretofore been in constant motion, drooped languidly to her side. I, too, relaxed in my tempo, and the thrilling, vivacious tune melted away in a dying strain.

“At the expiring notes, when I had but one string left, her tired eyes closed as in gentlest sleep, a smile hovered about her lips, her head sank heavily forward on her bosom, and she would have fallen had not her mother received the swooning form into her outstretched arms.

“At the same moment my last string snapped, a swarming darkness clouded my sight, the violin fell from my wet, burning hands, and I reeled back, faint and dizzy, when I felt soft arms embracing me, and somebody sobbed and laughed, ‘You have saved her, Maכstro; praise be to God and all His saints in heaven! May the Madonna bless you for ever and ever–-‘

“I heard no more, but fell into a death-like swoon.”

Page [174] CHAPTER XVI. THE SIRENS’ ROCK.

LEOPOLD SONTHEIM, who had sat listening to his friend with the deepest interest, said, as he shifted his position and refilled his pipe, “What you tell me seems to surpass the bounds of probability. Of course I have vaguely heard of the superstition concerning the bite of the tarantula, but could never have believed that it still had such a hold on the people, or produced effects such as you have been describing.”

“Yes, I know that the strange facts that I have been, and shall still have to relate to you, may at the present date sound incredible; and, indeed, modern enlightenment has driven these curious manifestations into remote places of the Neapolitan kingdom. They are nevertheless true, and were witnessed by friends of mine who happened to be present on different occasions. The explanation given me by a clever young physician concerning the singular spectacle in which I had been

Page 175 made to act the prominent part I have described, I will leave till later—if, indeed, you are interested to hear more about what is called tarantismo.

Let me hear, by all means, what rational explanation or scientific theory there is concerning the phenomena you have described,” cried Sontheim; “but at present I am on the tenter-hooks of expectation to know what became of the dancer among the ruins.”

“When I again came to consciousness,” said the musician, resuming his narrative, “I was lying in bed, and for some time I remained quite still, trying to piece together, as I thought, the fragments of the most astounding dream I had ever dreamed. A heavy inexplicable languor possessed my senses; I burned as with fever, and my pulse hammered against my temples. I thought, with a shiver, that the fever I had once had in Naples had come back, and thus accounted for what seemed mere delirious wanderings. And with a terrible sinking of the heart I asked myself what was to become of me if I should be laid up with the fever, far from all friends, with no money, in this corner of the world. Well, if it came to the worst, they could but send me to their asylum, and perchance turn me to some account by making me play the fiddle for the delectation of blind soldiers.

“I was perishing with thirst; so I raised myself up in bed in order to ring the bell, but found on moving that every joint of my body ached, and that my wrists in particular were stiff and numb with pain.

“As I was pondering on this strange fact, the door opened, and my hostess entered carrying a tray. Looking at me with an odd mixture of curiosity and awe, she

Page 176 inquired after my health with more than the habitual Italian courtesy; and without waiting for my reply said sympathetically, ‘Oh, Madonna mia, but the Signor looks pale and ill after the miracle he performed last night.’ And she held a cool slice of melon to my lips in quite a motherly fashion.

“The miracle I had worked last night! It had not been a dream then! And as her words dispelled the drowsy heaviness that still obscured my brain, the whole fantastic scene flashed again with startling vividness before my mind’s eye. As I lay back on the pillow to collect my thoughts, my kind hostess, thinking I had fainted, rubbed my temples with vinegar, which considerably invigorated me.

“I now began eagerly questioning her, but instead of answering me she insisted on my taking some of the food she had brought. While I did so she drew a chair close to the bedside, in which she comfortably settled herself with some needlework, prepared evidently to answer any questions or spin any yarn to my heart’s desire.

“My first inquiries of course concerned the beautiful, mysterious creature, whose eyes, on shutting mine, I saw as plainly before me as we see the spectrum of the sun after daring to look too long at its blinding light.

“Who was she? Was she alive and well? Did she, indeed, believe that my fiddling had saved her life? What were her parents? How came she by this dancing mania? Had she really been bitten by the tarantula? And did the bite of this spider ever imperil life, or produce the astonishing effects I had seen?

“My hostess took up my last question first, and

Page 177 assured me, in perfect good faith, that although certain persons of an unbelieving and suspicious turn of mind might ridicule the fear of those venomous insects, their bite, if not often fatal, was yet frequently the cause of serious disorders, as she could prove to me by facts within her own experience, disorders only averted if the unfortunate tarantati were set dancing without intermission to the tune of some tarantella that took their fancy until they were overcome by resistless lassitude.

“Some people, she fancied, were more easily put in peril by the bite of the tarantula than others. It would take a good many tarantulas, she thought, to send her into convulsions. But with Antonella Mansi it was quite another affair. There was not a girl in all the island to whom the sting of this spider would have been so fatal.

“‘Ah!’ I cried; ‘how is that?’

“She was just going to answer me when, being loudly called for, she had to hurry away, leaving me with my unslaked curiosity. Nor was there any chance at present of otherwise satisfying the same by getting up and finding out things for myself, for I was so stiff and exhausted that every movement gave me pain; and I soon fell fast asleep again, and actually never woke till the next morning, when, feeling thoroughly restored, I hastened to dress and leave my room.

“My one idea was to see again, under altered conditions, the heroine of the nocturnal dance. After having made inquiries of my hostess as to her whereabouts, I picked my way to the little mountain town of Ana-Capri, to which the ascent consists in an infinite number of steep steps roughly hewn in the rock itself.

Page 178

“When I had got about half-way up I overtook some girls walking in front of me, carrying heavy baskets on their heads, and singing a tune that was known to me a strangely familiar tune. In another instant it flashed upon my recollection that this was the very tarantella I had myself composed in a kind of inspired trance. Warbled by those fresh, bird-like voices, it struck me with immense admiration; and why not, pray, simply because it happened to be by myself?

“As I overtook these Capri girls, stepping so buoyantly under their burdens, they looked at me curiously from under their sombre eyebrows, then with a start of recognition blushed, curtsied, and eyed me with childlike awe.

“Turning to one of the girls who looked a little less shy than the others, I begged her to direct me to the house where Antonella Mansi lived. So we all climbed the remaining steps together, but I could get nothing out of her or any of the others about the strange being who so perplexed and fascinated me. To all my questions their only answer was a shake of the head, or evasive exclamation which left me more bewildered than before.

“After a toilsome ascent, which, although it nearly left me out of breath, in no wise affected my pretty guides, we reached a platform from which there was a magnificent view of Capri and the still, dreamlike expanse of the far blue sea. But, impatient to reach my goal, I only cast a hasty glance at the prospect, as I hurried along through a scene that could not otherwise have failed to arrest my attention.

“Presently, when we entered Ana-Capri, my timid

Page 179 companions, after showing me the way, left me to myself in this most quaint, most idyllic of towns. Coming as I did out of the burning sunshine, I can recall even now the feeling of balmy coolness which the thickets of olive and myrtetus and bay and the large-leafed fig-tree, diffused through the air. Through these and other flowering and fruit-bearing trees and shrubs I saw small Moorish-looking houses, on whose flat white roofs there were women and girls singing to the clatter of their busy looms; others sat plaiting straw, or spinning yellow silk, before their doors in the shadow of the vine-covered pergola.

“It was a spot beautiful enough to have been the birthplace of her I was in quest of.

“At the other end of the little town, in which I had not as yet seen a single man, I found the house of Signora Mansi. A vine-covered archway formed by a series of columns brought me to the door.

“As my knocking met with no response I entered unbidden, but the sudden change from daylight to the gloom of the low, dark chamber made it impossible at first to distinguish one object from another. I looked about me in vain for her whose life I was supposed to have saved. But as my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, I noticed that some one was kneeling in a corner before a shrine of the Madonna with a dim lamp burning before it; but so absorbed in prayer that my entrance had been unheeded.

“On my coughing the suppliant looked round and rose hastily. It was Antonella’s mother. Her sorrowful, careworn face, in which there yet lingered traces of beauty, was lit up with an expression of devout gratitude

Page 180 as she came towards me, hardly able to find words in her emotion. She would have sought me out before, she said, to thank me for a service which she could never in this life hope to repay—but for which she would day and night entreat the Madonna to help me—had not her daughter’s peculiar state taken up all her time and attention.

“‘And how is your daughter now?’ I cried; ‘has she not yet recovered from the effects of the spider’s bite? or is she still suffering from the consequences of her extraordinary exertions of the other night?’

“‘Ah, Dio mio!’ sighed the mother, shaking her head. ‘My poor girl, Signor, is not as she should be. I know not what ails her, but she is strange, wayward, full of caprices, and nothing will induce her to settle to her spindle or loom again. Then she has lost her high spirits, and looks so dull, sad, and melancholy, that it makes my heart ache to see her. I thought at first, to be sure, that it was all right; for she slept like a baby after that dance, and in the evening woke up quite gay and lively, and would go for a while and sit chatting on the top of the stairs with the other girls.

“‘But when she came back I noticed that she looked listless and dispirited, and all through the night she wept and sobbed and wrung her hands; and do what I would I could not get my unhappy child to tell me what ailed her, but she stared mutely before her just as if she had lost her speech. So I left her a little in the morning, thinking that maybe she might be better alone, and went to my loom. For we poor people, Signor, must still be busy whatever our burdens—and mine have been heavy; and just when I was taking

Page 181 comfort in the thought that the poor child might have gone to sleep, if there was not a heavy bumping as of some piece of furniture that had fallen, and when I rushed in there was my Tolla tossing and writhing about on the floor, with her beautiful face distorted and her eyes quite wild.

“‘I could not think what to do, and sent Bice for our hermit in my fright. But, Signor, would you believe it, when the holy man entered and knelt down to pray the good St. Anthony, she looked at him with horror and was quite beside herself. And as the good, patient man went on praying for her soul, in spite of her unbecoming behaviour, she screamed and then fell into convulsions, till I had to ask him to go, begging pardon for my most unhappy child.’

“I had listened to all this with deep commiseration, but was burning to know what had become of Antonella at present, and asked eagerly whether I could not perhaps do something to ease her sufferings. But I heard then that she had again seemed much better this morning, and that nothing would satisfy her but going to look for coral on the little Marina, which had always been a favourite pursuit of hers. Her mother had not liked to deny her anything, yet was in hourly apprehension of some harm befalling her child.

“‘I will go and look after her myself,’ I cried, rising eagerly; ‘perhaps in some way or other I may again exercise a beneficial effect on her.’

“‘But I fear we are trespassing too heavily on your kindness,’ said the anxious mother, with tears in her eyes. ‘Yet if you would be so truly good, it would be a load off my mind, Signor. Perhaps it will settle her

Page 182 spirits again if you reason with her. Bice shall show you the way;’ and she stepped down the archway, calling the girl across the road. Almost immediately my guide of the morning came running towards us, and readily agreed to accompany me.

“‘But you must not go without having tasted a morsel of anything,’ cried the kindly woman, mindful of others even in this engrossing anxiety. Eager to get off as I was, I had yet to submit, in order not to hurt her feelings, while she cut me some figs growing on a prickly cactus-tree, which I promised to eat on the way.

“What a scramble that was down the rugged track, zig-zagging along the side of a castle-crowned hill, which brought us to a lonely strand, apparently blocked off from the rest of the world by a semicircle of rude, precipitous cliffs, and only open to the illimitable sea. Black, ill-looking rocks, strewn about confusedly, littered the beach and stretched some way into the sea, where they formed a half-submerged peninsula crouching amidst the rippling flash of the languishing waves.

“Never was desolation more magical. On either side of this shore yawned mysterious caverns greedily sucking in the sea, and full of little sibilant noises as of stifled laughter.

“‘There she sits by the Madonna, on the rock of Sirens!’ my companion whispered in an awe-struck tone, softly plucking me by the sleeve. I looked eagerly up and down and round about the deserted little beach, but all the signs of human life I saw were two fishermen’s huts, so rough and rude that I had confounded

Page 183 them with the boulders amidst which they were placed. ‘Oh, look right up there, Signor!’ whispered the girl, pointing on high.

“Good heavens! On a crag too steep and slippery to afford foothold to a goat, it seemed, I saw a solitary figure, bathed in sunlight, intently gazing seawards. It turned me sick and giddy as I looked.

“But my guide, picking her way like a young she-goat over the slippery stones, led me round to the foot of the crag, and there pointed out what appeared the least break-neck track to its dizzy top. She then bade me farewell, as she had to get back to her work, and thought, besides, that in Tolla’s present strange mood it might be safest for me to accost her alone.

“In any ordinary mood I know I could never have climbed up that slippery pathless rock, steeply overhanging the sea. But under the present circumstances I desperately clambered and stumbled along, sometimes ignominiously getting along on all fours, sometimes clutching hold of the coarse tufts of grass growing here and there from some crevice. When at last I reached a ridge some yards from the summit, where there was a firm hold for the feet; I had to stop and take breath for a moment. Partly hidden myself behind a projection in the rock, I now beheld in the light of day a face and figure only seen as yet by the livid storm-light.

“My God, how beautiful she was! with a mysterious, strange beauty, more startling even when thus seen, with the pure pale contours of her profile outlined against the deep blue air, as she sat there holding some gorgeous cactus-flower, scarce redder than her lips, which she was pulling to pieces, so that the shredded

Page 184 petals were strewn about her dark blue petticoat. She seemed to find a sort of enjoyment in blowing bits of them on the air, where they went fluttering like the bloodied feathers of little dead birds and then dropped into the sea. In her blue-black hair, braided closely at the back of the head, she also wore red flowers—oleander blossoms and roses of a dull crimson; and round her neck rows upon rows of coral, hanging low over the red faded handkerchief, crossed over her bosom and tied behind the waist.

“At a glance I had taken all this in which it takes so long to describe, and a few hasty, desperate strides now brought me to the top; in another instant I stood at her side.

“On seeing me thus unexpectedly before her, the girl, oddly enough, looked neither surprised nor startled, only her face, hardly less pale now than when I had first seen it, was suffused by an intense burning blush, that disappeared as swiftly as it came, and left her still whiter than before. She looked up at me and smiled. No, not smiled; only her eyes emitted a bewildering flash of light that for the moment transfigured the melancholy of her countenance.

“Then she half rose, and bending towards me with a lowly grace, said in a low, muffled voice: ‘It is you, Maכstro. They tell me you have saved my life.’ Then letting the stripped cactus stalk drop from her hand, she muttered, with a droop of the heavy lashes, ‘Why, why did you save it?’ And she turned and looked towards the sea with a hungry wistfulness in her eyes it frightened me to see.

“Rather taken aback by her strange manner I sat

Page 185 down beside her, and expressed my surprise at her feeling no fear thus perched on the very edge of a precipice overhanging the boiling surf. For all answer she burst into a peal of shrill, wild laughter, in weird contrast with the previous dejection of her mien and attitude. At that instant a dim sense of repulsion passed like a shadow across my consciousness, but disappeared as quickly before the light of her triumphant beauty.

“‘Fear!’ she repeated, in the same muffled tones, springing to her feet at a bound, and half leaning over the giddy verge with a look of exultation which sent a thrill of horror through my every nerve.

“‘You must be mad!’ I cried, seizing her by the hand and roughly pulling her back. ‘How dare you thus play fast and loose with your life—if not for your sake, for your mother’s? Do you forget that even now she is watching, and trembling, and praying for you? Have you no love, no pity on her?’

“I spoke quite angrily, tightly clasping her hand, which lay cold and unresisting in my own.

“My words had a most powerful effect on her. The dare-devil expression that had for a moment gleamed in her eyes died out immediately, and for all answer tears gathered in her eyes, like a chidden child’s, and rolled down her oval cheeks.

“Where is the man that can withstand a woman’s tears? And if there is such a creature, why degrade him to the rank of the brutes! My anger melted into something more than pity at the sight of this magnificent creature seemingly possessed by some subtle ill, perhaps by some recondite malady of the nerves, for which I of all others ought to feel sympathy.

Page 186

“That shrinking, as from something alien that I had obscurely felt was utterly obliterated on seeing those tears; and, drawing closer to her, I could not help addressing her by some soft, endearing phrases.

“On hearing me speak to her thus tenderly, a smile parted her lips, curved like Cupid’s bow, and disclosed her little milk-white teeth; and wiping away the tears still glistening on her long lashes, she looked at me with her moist siren-like eyes. The perilous sweetness of that look threatened to upset my equanimity for good and all. I felt an irresistible desire to kiss that soft, alluring mouth. But then she had been entrusted to my care; I had made myself responsible for her safety. She was so young, so ignorant! I was surely in honour bound to protect her from the harm I might myself inflict, and I resolutely tried to master my rising passion. Therefore, as a man borne along a rapid current clutches at the frailest reed to stem his headlong course, so I, swept away against my better reason by a tumultuous emotion, was anxious to snatch at the first harmless topic in order to divert the rush of dangerous feelings threatening to carry us—who knows whither?

“Having noticed, as she lifted her hand to her face, a ring of singular effulgence on one of her fingers, I again took her hand in my own, and asked her how she had come by so rare a trinket. The hoop, it is true, was only of silver, but set in it was a fire-opal, flaming as only this stone will when subjected to the sun’s rays.

“The question seemed less harmless, however, than I had imagined in my ignorance.

“A riddling change came over the ever-shifting

Page 187 countenance. The pupils of her dark eyes dilated as though she were looking at some fearful object invisible to any one but herself; then, without a word, she rose to her full height, and pointing to the little shore below, said in a choked voice, ‘Come, come, you shall know how I came by this ring,’ and with firm, unerring step she led the way down the precipitous track.

“In my relief to get her so easily away from her break-neck haunt, I followed her as best I could to the shore.”

Page [188] CHAPTER XVII. THE RING.

“IN silence we reached the little Marina, and in silence still Antonella, with her erect and queenlike carriage, walked on in front of me, over the black, uneven stones. The beach was less deserted than when I had first seen it. On a small strip of silver sand sat a fisherman; mending his nets, while a woman was hanging out linen to dry in the sun.

“Presently we came to the mouth of a cave, so situated in an angle of the rock that it would have escaped my attention had not my beautiful companion led the way into it.

“On entering, its dark gloom struck me with a chill sensation, hot with the sun as I was. It was a lofty cavern, full of sinuosities, and the walls, glistening with moisture, were stained in places by dull red blotches not unlike congealed blood. What unknown

Page 189 crimes might not the sea have perpetrated here on the helpless bodies of shipwrecked men!

“Slipping occasionally over the large sea-spiders and other jelly-like marine creatures, I followed Antonella to the side of the cavern, where a natural projection in the rock served us for a bench to sit down upon. All this time her features worked with suppressed excitement, and I noticed that her hand was trembling as pointing to the dim-lit interior, she said, in a scared voice, ‘There he lay—there!’

“It was a strange, terrible tale that was then brokenly unfolded to me by those coral lips—a tale interrupted by sighs and shudders; while I, sitting there, burned to comfort the narrator with kisses, had I dared.

“It was Antonella’s habit, it seems, to resort to this lonely beach in search of the coral she loved, and she had thus come by the magnificent necklace round her throat.

“Well, one morning of the preceding autumn, after a violent storm had ravaged their olive and fig trees, she had gone there very early, as she knew the sea would often throw up great pieces of it at such times.

“On reaching the shelving beach nearly opposite the cave, she came upon the smashed portion of a fishing-boat; and presently, having entered it—for she had on previous occasions often found coral there—she saw, in the spot she had indicated, a young man lying prostrate, and seemingly in a dying condition.

“Her first impulse was to succour him in some way, but when she tried to raise his head he cried out with pain, and begged her not to touch him, for he had been crushed by the boat; and turning his glazed eyes pite-

Page 190 ously upon her he begged her to fetch a priest, and yet when she was running off he convulsively clutched hold of her skirt, and seemed imploring her not to abandon him in this state.

“A dreadful predicament this for a young girl to be in. At last, in her helpless terror, she could do nothing but scream out wildly, and her screams luckily reached a fisherman, who was just then apparently gathering together the waifs and strays of the wrecked boat. He was soon at her side, and in the excitement of the moment, without preparing her in any way for the shock, told her it was her father’s felucca lying outside.

“Her father and her brother were coral fishers, constantly cruising about these seas as far as the African coast; and when Antonella was thus suddenly apprised of the fate that had probably overtaken them, she fell almost fainting, on the floor of the cavern beside the dying man.

“He, apparently, had been attending to what was going on, for, with a groan of pain, he slightly moved his head, and looking at the girl with a sudden flaring up of life in his eyes; asked, ‘Are you Tolla—Tolla Mansi?’

“The fisherman replied in the affirmative; but the sufferer, recalled to his situation, again called out for a priest, that he might be shriven of his sins; and the former, comprehending the paramount importance of the request, hurried off in search of one without further delay.

“Presently Antonella, somewhat recovered, raised herself on her elbow, when she found the eyes of the stranger fixed upon her with a look of mute appeal and

Page 191 entreaty. With another groan he slightly raised his hand, making a sign to her to approach more closely.

“‘You are Tolla?’ he then said, faintly, when her ear almost touched his livid lips. ‘I am Tonino, from Girgenti in Sicily—I came to marry you—your brother described to me your–-ah! you are more beautiful than he said—here, take this,’ he moaned, pointing to a ring on his finger. ‘It was to be your—a talisman–-‘

“His voice failed him entirely here, and while feebly trying to take the ring off, a spasm of agony contracted his limbs; some internal rupture had taken place, and before the fisherman returned with a Capuchin friar, the Sicilian youth had expired.

“When some restoratives had been administered to Antonella, she was at last able to tell the fragmentary story she had heard to the Capuchin friar, who was a hermit held in great awe by the islanders. The ring, she explained, when they were about to remove the body, had been bequeathed her by the expiring man with his last breath.

“The hermit, however, exhorted her to dedicate it to the service of the Madonna del Carmine, saying that the ring off a dead man’s finger was sure to bring her ill-luck. But seeing that she had set her heart upon it he reluctantly did as she bade him, although the friar still persisted that nothing but misfortune could come of it.

“Antonella, having told me all this with quivering lips and evident deep emotion, suddenly asked naively, with an extraordinary change of manner, as though quite relieved by her narrative—

“‘But what do you say, Maכstro? Do you think danger can spring from a thing so beautiful?’

Page 192

“Inquiringly she raised to mine dark eyes whose fire outshone that of the precious stone. As she looked at me thus, I felt like one who drains to intoxication the wine pledged him by an enchantress.

“‘Oh, my child,’ I said, smiling, ‘the more beautiful a thing is, the greater sometimes is its peril to the beholder as well as the wearer.’

“In her insular simplicity she did not take my meaning at once, but looked at me with a puzzled air which gave an infantine charm to her ever-varying countenance.

“Young though she was, only sixteen, her feminine instincts interpreted my meaning to her, for the wickedest smile hovered for just a moment, not so much on her parted lips as in her deep, dark eyes.

“Now that smile of Antonella’s overthrew the last remains of prudence and forethought still left to me by her tragic narrative.

“I never saw any other human being with a smile like hers, haunting one like an unsolved riddle; arch as a child’s, yet full of unconscious devilry. Did she know, I wonder—did she guess even then its irresistible witchery?

“All this time she was shifting the ring round and round her finger, and then said, looking down—

“‘If there is danger in the ring–-‘ and then she stopped again. ‘Oh, Maכstro,’ she went on, in an embarrassed, broken sort of way—‘Oh, Maכstro, I wished—that is to say, I hoped—three days I sat watching for you on the stairs at Ana-Capri—they say you have saved my life—and—and—and I am not ungrateful, but I have nothing—nothing at all but this beautiful ring’—

Page 193 then with a rapid movement she drew it from her finger, and, pressing it into my hand, whispered—‘only if it should bring you peril I would not–-‘

“Colouring slightly, she trembled and hesitated; and I was no longer master of myself when I saw the quivering of her lips. Transported by a sudden fit of passion I clasped the girl in my arms, and covered her mouth and blinded her beautiful eyes with my kisses.

“What had I done? Where would this end?—were the questions that would obtrude themselves on my feverish exultation, when Antonella, having freed herself at last from my embrace, retreated some paces with a scared, strange look on her face.

“Afraid to encounter her eyes, I suddenly turned away, when, uttering a startled exclamation, I looked before me in amazement. Were we in the realm of gnomes and dwarfs—for what but a gnome was that misshapen little object crouching in a dim angle of the opposite wall? My scared exclamation, however, seemed to have attracted the attention of this uncanny-looking creature. For, suddenly rising from its stooping posture, it came limping towards us, and I gradually discovered it to be an old man, whose diminutive stature, club-foot, and white beard might easily give rise to such a delusion by the weird, tawny half-light.

“On seeing him draw near, Antonella came close to me again, and said in a frightened whisper: ‘The hermit of Santa Maria del Soccorso. Oh, I fear him!’

“Now, indeed, I saw, by the dark brown cowl and large peaked hood hanging down behind, that he was a squalid Capuchin friar, with a kind of wallet slung over his shoulder, in which seemed to be deposited all manner

Page 194 of live creeping things, from a curious wriggling movement going on in the wet pendent ends.

“This extraordinary creature stooped all at once and picked up the ring, which it would seem I had dropped in my excitement. He then pressed it into my hand with a gleam of strange malignancy in his rat-like eyes; and while a hideous smile disclosed a couple of yellow, tusk-like teeth, he congratulated Antonella on her recovery—thanks, as he said, first to the Madonna, and next to the Maכstro himself, whose name was in everybody’s mouth at Capri.

“I noticed that a furtive leer lit up his countenance as he eyed my companion, while cringingly expressing a hope that I would take the ring, which he supposed the maiden had offered me with a becoming sense of gratitude. ‘Antonella, Antonella,’ he said, in a thin, grating voice, shaking his head warningly, ‘beware of the devil who is weaving snares for you! Mind me, the only cure and safeguard for a virgin against a recurrence of the attack is to dedicate herself to the service of the Madonna!’

“The cunning look with which he emphasized his words not only convinced me that he had seen all, but that he himself coveted the beautiful creature I had for a moment held in my arms.

“The natural impulse which is in man prompted me to knock him down for his impertinence. But then he was such a deformed little horror of a fellow! Could I bear him ill-will for not being blind to those triumphant charms! So I said, looking at him rather carelessly, ‘Young girls, we know, are timid enough to start at their own shadows; but should we drive them half distracted with imaginary fears?’

Page 195

“The friar gave me the benefit of another malignant glance, suggestive of the evil eye; then mumbling something in his beard about the ‘Ave Maria,’ he limped off with as much haste as he could. But at the mouth of the cavern he suddenly turned his big head round, and again said warningly, ‘Beware, Antonella, beware!’

“The girl looked greatly relieved when he had fairly gone; but I was recalled again to the perilous sweetness of my position. I was shocked at having suffered myself to be thus carried away by my feelings; for had she not been left in my charge, so to speak, by her mother, who regarded me, however mistakenly, as her saviour. Shame upon me if I betrayed the trust of those poor people, whose only pride was their unstained honesty!

“I determined, therefore, to hide my feelings from Antonella—and to make her think of my conduct in the least serious light—resolved as I was to avoid ever being left alone with her in the future. For what but disgrace could our intercourse bring to her? However desperately I might be in love with her, marrying any one was at present out of the question for me. I had trouble enough to earn a miserable subsistence, and, besides, my art claimed me utterly. So I would secure myself against further temptation by flying from Capri and its dread siren!

“While taking this resolution, Antonella and I were walking silently towards the entrance of the cavern. There I stopped for a minute, and taking her hand in mine, while I tried to look as unconcerned as I could, said, lingeringly slipping the ring back on her finger—

“‘Antonella, if indeed I have saved your life as they

Page 196 say, you have repaid me with something far more precious than your ring, and in future you must always consider me as your debtor. But let us go now, for I fear we have been tarrying here overlong, and your poor mother will be quite frightened.’

“Antonella made no reply as we left the cave, and the expression of her eyes was difficult to understand. In order to divert her own thoughts as well as my own, I kept asking the name of every rock and promontory as we scrambled over the uneven stones.

“It was impossible, indeed, however strong one’s preoccupation might be, to remain quite insensible to the glow and glory of that sea and sky on issuing from the twilight cavern. The aspect of nature had undergone a transfiguration.

“Though we ourselves were in the shadow which the great rocks were casting over the shore and far across the sea, all the more striking was the contrast with the brightness of the heavens above us, where transparent zones of intense rose-colour, through which the hyacinthine sky was faintly discernible, radiated up to the zenith like the glowing streamers of an Aurora Borealis. In the shadow where we stood everything was tinged with this ruddy glow; but in the far distance sky and sea gleamed with the tints of Antonella’s opal.

“On our right, facing the orb of the setting sun, two inaccessible rocks rising straight out of the sea (that Antonella called the Faraglione) were smitten by his red level rays, while the waves breaking at their base, and some sea-falcons hovering above them, were steeped in the same dyes; but their towering peaks, ravaged

Page 197 and weather-stained, loomed mystical in the brightness above and beneath them.

“This ineffable spectacle for a moment completely absorbed me. Then turning to Antonella, who, scarcely heeding the scene, was biting one of her coral rows, I said—

“‘What pleasure you must feel in simply living in this delicious climate, where beauty is as your daily food. Better a peasant here than a prince in our dismal latitudes!’

“She looked at me dubiously, and shook her head, saying under her breath: ‘I am tired of it—tired of it all but the sea. I should like to go across the water to where the great cities are, they tell me—Rome and Firenze, with crowds of men and women—who wear silk gowns on week-days—and horses and carriages.’

“‘Oh, Antonella,’ I said, shaking my head playfully, ‘go where you may you will not match this for beauty. See there, how the moon comes creeping up little by little over that rock, as if she were afraid she might melt away like a waxen image if exposed to the glow of this sunset.’

“And with praiseworthy resolution I turned my eyes away from hers, and pointed up to the sky, which was visibly growing darker every instant. But as she made no remark I looked round again, when to my utter amazement I found her gone from my side.

“I waited a moment, then called her more and more loudly, but there was no answer save a ghostly repetition of Antonella’s name from the caverns which honeycombed the cliffs.

“Remembering the girl’s peculiarly excitable

Page 198 temperament and unaccountable moods, I grew thoroughly uneasy on seeing no sigh of her anywhere. I retraced my steps and re-entered the cavern where I had so lately been kissing her. After shouting and peering about in its chill, forbidding interior, I came out again, and sought for her behind every boulder, now casting long sharp shadows in the moonlight.

“At last I caught sight of two fishermen just pushing a small boat out to sea. Hurrying up to them, I asked whether they had seen a girl anywhere about; but they only shook their heads as they quickly leaped in after it. I knew not what to do, but, full of fear, hurried in the direction of the Sirens’ Rock, and cast one apprehensive glance at its summit, which stood out ominously distinct in the pale luminosity.

“Thank heaven she was not there! Divided between fear and the hope that she might have gone home on the sudden, I plodded my way as best I could up the ill-defined track of the rocky hillside.”

Page [199] CHAPTER XVIII. SHADOW HUNTING.

“WHAT a tantalizing witch of a woman!” cried Sontheim rising from his chair. “She will lead you a pretty dance, my poor friend, to quite another tune, I see. But then, how could you so far forget what is due to fair ladies as to see aught to admire in heaven or earth but the eyes of your charmer? My mind misgives me but you’ll have to pay for that leze-majesty to sovereign beauty. Women, you know, whatever they may pretend, care nothing about scenery; and if they have the courage of their sex they are frank enough to show it. I like your Antonella all the better for making off when you began bothering her with all that cant about landscape. That reminds me of a charming young lady I had once the pleasure to come across in company with her friends on the top of Drachenfels. They were one and all outvying each other in raptures about the Rhine, and Rolandseck, and the Siebengebirge, and only my Hebe-eyed

Page 200 eyed damsel said never a word. So I asked what she thought of this celebrated scene. ‘This is nothing for ladies,’ she said, pouting, and turning up the little white tip of her nose. I was so charmed with this truly feminine answer that I left Rhine and ruins to the others, and spent the rest of the day in learning how much greater is the effect of dimples on the human heart than that of castle-crowned hills, vine-covered slopes, rushing rivers, and all the rest of it.

“But, dear me, there goes twelve o’clock! I should have thought it would have got a little cooler by now. What you can be made of, Emanuel, I don’t know: to go on talking, talking, and never get thirsty in such heat as this is simply abnormal; my earthy nature requires that I should now go and replenish the beer-jug, and the lamp, I think, also wants seeing to.”

After a few minutes Sontheim returned with fresh supplies, and after taking a long, hearty draught he said—

“Go on! What had become of the offended beauty? Had she gone to offer up an Aye Maria and pour forth her griefs into the Madonna’s ear?”

“You will hear in good time, my friend,” Emanuel answered. “At any rate I thought of nothing but Antonella, yearning and yet dreading to meet her again, as I expected to catch sight of her tall figure at every turn in the road, behind every projecting rock or clump of flowering broom.

“While I was making up my mind to leave Capri on the morrow morning, as the only safe course under the circumstances, I hoped, with delightful inconsistency, that fate or chance would defeat my purpose by then

Page 201 and there throwing Antonella in my path again. And, strange to say, the more firmly I was resolved not to go and see the girl the fiercer grew my longing to look, if only once more, on the dark splendour of her eyes.

“Every now and then I started violently, and then rushed after some dimly seen object, which in the mocking moonlight seemed to recall something of her form and motion, and my lips involuntarily called out, ‘Antonella, Antonella!’

“Thus, before I knew how, I had completely lost my way in a labyrinth of moonlit vineyards. Having not the faintest idea which way to turn, I threw myself on the ground at last, resigned to lie there till some passerby in the early morning should put me in the right road. Utterly tired out, I was on the point of falling asleep, when a stir and rustle of leaves at a little distance caught my attention. Looking about me drowsily I caught sight, not without certain internal qualms, of the deformed little old friar, whose big head and long white beard were strangely eerie in this moonshine.

“He did not appear to see or hear me approach, for he was muttering what sounded like an incantation, as he plucked up by the roots an insignificant-looking herb pearled with dew. After watching him for an instant to no purpose, I made bold to interrupt his incantations by asking him my way.

“On hearing himself thus unexpectedly addressed, the friar jerked his huge head about, but instead of expressing surprise at seeing me there at such an hour, peered furtively about him, and then said, ‘And what have you done with the maiden, Maכstro?’

Page 202

“I should have liked to have kicked the creature for the satanic leer with which he accompanied his question; and, not wishing to own to her sudden disappearance, said she had gone home to her mother’s after he had left, and that wandering about by myself I had lost my way in trying to get back to the Osteria.

“‘Our road lies in the same direction, in that case, Signor,’ said the Capuchin friar; ‘for my cell stands on the height above the ruins of Timberio, and I’ll take you to where your path branches off from mine.’

“While we were jogging along through a maze of marble fragments, he told me a gruesome story of a girl who had been similarly bitten by a tarantula in these ruins. At least, he explained, the Capri folk had laid the blame of her subsequent evil ways on this fact.

“I made little doubt that the crafty hermit had invented this tale by way of a scarecrow to fright the bird from the too-alluring grain; and he might have saved himself the pains, I thought. At any rate, I was very glad to be rid of him when he parted from me, after impressing upon me that I could not possibly miss the inn if only I walked in a straight line towards the light which was discernible in front of me.

“While hurrying towards it, I debated with myself whether I should still go to Ana-Capri to find out whether Antonella was in safety; but I shrank from the consequences of such a step on recollecting, not without violent agitation, to what a pass my solicitude had brought me.

“I was abruptly roused from my preoccupation by a low cry; and, on looking up to see whence the sound had proceeded, I was shocked to find that, another

Page 203 step forward, and I must infallibly have tumbled down a narrow dark fissure, seemingly ending in the sea. I, and not my violin, might thus have gone reeling to destruction like one of Timberio’s favourites. It was the cry that had saved me. Like a woman’s voice it was, but must have been the Aziola’s; and I firmly believe that the villainous hermit, inflamed with impotent jealousy, had wished to send me to my destruction. I now retraced my steps with great caution, and, striking into a side-path, regained my inn without further adventure.

“Too excited for sleep, I seized my instrument, and after a few crisp bars I began trying over the tarantella which had come to me in so extraordinary a fashion. As I was gradually striking into the weird trills recurring at intervals throughout this tune, I suddenly caught sight of what looked like a woman’s twirling, beautifully outlined shadow thrown across the window-curtain. This time there could be no doubt about it. My heart gave a bound, as, flinging the half-closed window, which was on the ground-floor, wide open, I leapt from the sill.

“Surely a woman’s flitting shadow, seen on a wall, glided out of sight as I did so! I rushed wildly in the direction in which it had disappeared, till I found myself on the very verge of the dizzy rock called ‘Salto di Tiberio.’

“There I stood still and looked about me. No one was anywhere in sight; not a sound broke the stillness save the fretting of the sea far below. A horror seized me of this delusive shadow mocking and taunting me. I ran back to the inn as fast as I had left it, and there

Page 204 flung myself on the bed, where I lay tossing about in uneasy slumbers till the break of day.

“I then rose, put my few things together, and began debating with myself whether I should bid Antonella good-bye before going. Passion pleaded it would be acting like a heartless brute if I left without seeing for myself what had become of her; prudence suggested that I might easily make inquiries through my good-natured hostess, and that my object in leaving the place would probably be defeated if I risked seeing her again.

“While still undecided what to do, I nevertheless mechanically walked on towards the rock-hewn stairs of Ana-Capri. I had already mounted a considerable number of steps when I saw Bice coming towards me with a basket on her head. She made me a pretty curtsy, and offered me a spray of basil. I began questioning her about Antonella with ill-concealed eagerness, and heard, to my inexpressible relief, that she was at home with her mother, and in the gayest of spirits.

“I took my decision on the instant. Giving Bice a few coins, which these simple girls always accept thankfully for their flowers, I told her that circumstances obliged me to leave Capri quite unexpectedly; would she therefore bid Signora Mansi and Antonella good-bye for me, and give the latter this trifle as a keepsake from me. For happening to have by me an antique Roman cameo brooch, I gave it the girl, who looked quite taken aback, and, waving a hasty good-bye, hurried desperately down to the shore at Capri, so as to leave myself no time to alter my mind again.”

Page [205] CHAPTER XIX. A HIT AT LAST.

WHEN I got back to Naples, I felt strangely out of place in the bustling, noisy town. I seemed to come from another world, to have strayed into past centuries in which things most wild, curious, and fantastic were received as common and everyday matters. Entirely engrossed by my tarantella, which in a measure seemed to connect me still with the beauteous creature that had been its inspiration, I went back to my garret in the dilapidated old palace that was let out in cheap lodgings. There I began noting down and elaborating the score of the Apulian Dance such as it had fashioned itself anew in my brain. For three weeks I never left my room, trying over ever fresh combinations of the tune that seemed to possess rather than be composed by me; now playing, now noting down, now adding a fresh bar, now playing over again with still growing passion the music that as by enchantment still brought Antonella

Page 206 before me in all her matchless grace of form and motion. She was the inspiration of my theme! I felt all at once as the deaf and dumb might feel when their tongue is loosened, and sweet speech flows in on their inner sense with ineffable harmony. Sweet sounds, ravishing melodies, haunted the air about me like heavenly messengers. I was in a continual transport; I had at last found the fit organ for the spirit that moved within me.

“Ah, such days do not often come to one! And if they did, they would soon consume to ashes the flesh and blood that cannot withstand their fiery ecstasy. But for many long years they will reverberate through a man’s inmost soul, and quicken all his best work—dare I say with immortality?

“In those days I took my food by snatches (such food as the man of all work used to place once a day on the rickety table); I slept by snatches, scarcely taking time to undress—indeed I was scarcely conscious of the needs of the body. During that time I jotted down numbers of motives which I worked out in later compositions.

“One day, when in the very fever of composition, I was not a little annoyed and astonished by hearing a knock at my door, for I had scrupulously avoided letting any one know of my return. The person who entered, puffing and panting with the flight of steps he had mounted, was an utter stranger, and I could hardly refrain from saluting him with an oath. I fear I glared with anything but friendly eyes at the little, fat, self-important personage with a hot, smirking face, and little dabs of eyes blinking perpetually, perhaps

Page 207 to prevent one from finding out how shrewd they were.

“Not at all abashed by my questionable welcome, the intruder looked calmly all over the miserable room, with its litter of scored music, books, boots, stray shirts, and slices of dry bread, rubbing his two pudgy hands with an air of satisfaction at once puzzling and irritating; until, growing impatient, I asked curtly to what I owed the honour of the gentleman’s visit.

“Instead of answering me at once (and looking, if anything, rather pleased at my rudeness), he coolly took up the sheet of music I had flung down at his entrance, and scrutinizing it with half-shut eyes, said inquiringly—

“‘Ah, ah! a tarantella, I see! Of your own composing, perhaps? Curious! because tarantellas happen to be my hobby. I have quite a collection of all our national dances, and shall be happy to show them you some day. Will you think me very impertinent if I ask you as a favour to let me hear a few bars of it on the violin there?’

“So saying, he took out a gaudily painted snuff-box, and, on my refusing the detestable stuff, helped himself liberally, with an air of being quite at home most exasperating to me. Who on earth could he be? What the devil did he want with me? Was he a creditor from Rome, perhaps, who had tracked me to my den?

“‘But, sir, I presume that the errand on which you came was hardly to ask me to play you a tarantella! Perhaps you will excuse my curiosity,’ I answered, with covert irony, for I now began suspecting that the man had come to play off some practical joke on me.

Page 208

“‘Just so, just so,’ said the stranger, still eyeing me with imperturbable good-humour; ‘by your leave I will sit down, for your domicile is just a little high up—just a little, for legs not quite so young as they were once. I fear you may think that I have been taking too great a liberty, my dear young man. I may as well tell you at once’—taking out a large card and handing it to me—‘that I am Antonino Occhio d’Argento, the secretary of the Musical Society at Naples.’

“Why couldn’t the fool say so at once, I thought, as I bowed with considerably more politeness, wondering what was coming next.

“‘Well, I must tell you my little story connectedly. It was on Thursday, I think, that Mercato, the violoncellist, and myself, were going along the quay of Santa Lucia, when my attention was arrested by hearing some fishermen singing a tarantella I did not remember ever having heard, and which struck me by its originality and the fire of its movements. Now, you must know, my dear young man, that I am as keen after a tune of this kind as a greyhound after a hare. So I went up to one of the men and asked what he was singing there. “A tarantella ecco, Signor!” “Yes, fool, I know that well enough; but whose tarantella is it? Where did you get hold of it? This is not one of our old popular tunes!” “Ah, that I can’t say,” the idiot answered, grinning from ear to ear. “But at least you can tell me how you came by it,” I persisted. “You did not invent it yourself, did you now, my friend?”

“‘The fellow scratched his head, and looked down at his bare toes as if they might refresh his memory. At last, when I must have waited several minutes, he cried

Page 209 gleefully: “I have it, Signor! Some of us, maybe a week ago, rowed a party of milordi Inglese to Capri, and on the Marina, by our Lady, the fishermen were all humming this tune; and when we went into the town, why there were all the pretty Capri girls singing it at their work; and when we came to the marketplace, why if two men were not playing it on the guitar and mandolin to the blind soldiers sitting on the benches in the sunshine. So the tune got hold of us and stuck by us since that day, most likely, Signor.”

“‘I will say for our people, my dear young man, that they are the most musical nation in the world. They have an unerring ear for what’s got real melody, and are often better judges than we connoisseurs. And the way they’ll catch up a new tune one from another is astonishing; they’ll do it as easily as a child catches the measles!’

“‘Well, my dear young friend, now we come to my next point, for on the following day, when I was taking my cup of coffee as usual in front of the Hotel of the Tre Couronne, and jotting down a few memoranda concerning our next concert, my attention was caught by some one close behind now whistling, now singing, this identical tarantella that I had been so taken with on the previous day. This person seemed to know it more intimately, however, and hummed a greater number of variations.

“‘On shifting my position a little, I saw two young men playing dominoes at the next table. The one who was whistling was a very hairy young man, with a keen, lively face, and when he stopped to puff away at his cigarette, I did not scruple to ask him if he would have

Page 210 the goodness to tell me whose the air was I had just heard him sing. “Corpo di Bacco,” he said, flinging the end of his cigar away; “I pray every day that whosesoever it is may go to the devil with all speed.” “Why so?” I said; “if it is not impertinent to ask.” “Why so?” he cried, jumping up and coming to my side. “Why so? Because I have the misfortune of occupying the room next to his, whoever he may be; because he is fairly driving me out of my senses with his maddening music! Because he gives me no peace by day or night; because in bed, at meals, at my easel, I am pursued, haunted, persecuted, assailed, bewitched by that demoniacal tune. By Jove! I expect to see myself in a lunatic asylum ere long, for I’ve got it regularly on the brain; and in my own despite I am forced to sing that devil’s tarantella myself now.” “But,” I asked; laughing at the man’s whimsical manner, “why need you listen to it if you hate it so?” “Why?” he cried, “why? Do you think if I were not a poor soul of a painter, whom his landlord won’t suffer to budge before he has paid his rent, I would have stayed for a moment in that purgatory of incessant sound.” “But tell me who is this indefatigable musician,” I said at last, eagerly. “Who, indeed!” echoed the stranger, in a mysterious whisper. “No man hath ever seen him with his bodily eyes, I believe; and I misdoubt his corporeality for my own part. Flesh could never stand it! There is some secret, some black secret, behind it all, I’ll be sworn.” “Well, I’ll fathom it,” was my answer, “if you give me his or your address, as you are neighbours. A man who composes a tarantella that haunts one like that

Page 211 a genius, whatever else he may be into the bargain.”

“‘So I got the address, and took the liberty of coming straight here, you see; and I hope you will oblige me by playing this tarantella which I have taken so much trouble to unearth, and which I presume, my dear young friend, to be your own.’

“Not without a beating heart had I listened to Occhio d’Argento’s diffuse narrative. That first spontaneous response of a phlegmatic or apathetic outside world to the call within one, is a never-to-be-forgotten sensation. Without further preamble I took my violin and played the piece, in its complete form as now noted down by me.

“While I was playing the little fat secretary jumped up from his chair, and whistling snatches of the tune, he repeatedly danced and capered across the room, flinging up his hands, snapping his fingers, and puffing and screaming, till he wabbled all over with the exertion. At last, wiping his glistening face, he sank into a chair, panting, ‘Eh! Bravo, bravissimo! Che bella, che divina tarantella!’

“When I had done, Occhio d’Argento rushed up to me, and enclosing me within the circumference of his arms, almost stifled me with bear-like hugs, as imprinting moist kisses on both my cheeks he shouted, ‘Splendid! Magnificent! A tarantella to rouse the dead on doomsday with!’

“To cut the matter short, he engaged me there and then to play at a concert that was to be given the ensuing week by the Musical Society of Naples.

“At that concert I won my first laurels. I was

Page 212 enthusiastically encored. I scarcely met with marks of more universal admiration than those which now burst upon me when at the height of my celebrity. All Naples caught up the melody, and I heard snatches of it sung at the corner of every street.

“I had made a hit at last, and fortune began holding out some of her dazzling rewards to me.”

Page [213] CHAPTER XX. LOST.

“HAD I forgotten Antonella by this time? Had the excitement of my first success banished her image? On the contrary, much as I had striven I could not get the witch out of my head. The rebound from despondency to brightest hope seemed to have fanned the fire of my passion into new intensity. Her eyes haunted me at all hours of the day, in every dream of the night.

“One night, when the time of my departure for Rome had been definitively settled for the day after the morrow, as I had been engaged for a series of concerts there, I awoke with such a craving to look once more on Antonella that I felt sick and fevered with my longing.

“‘Confound all prudence,’ I cried, ‘I can stand this no longer; I must see her once, only once more, come of it what will!’ and jumping out of bed, I dressed,

Page 214 packed, and settled my few affairs so far, to shorten the time and leave my hands free.

“The day would never dawn, seemingly; yet dawn at last it did, to my relief, and as soon as there was the smallest chance of finding a boatman astir I hurried to the beach.

“How quiet were the streets as yet, usually so noisy and crowded; nothing stirring abroad but the goatherds and their flocks. Here and there they stopped before the houses, and were milked into the cans which the sleepy maid-servants brought to the door. The sight was suggestive. I went up to one man and begged him to let me have a draught of milk, after which, feeling much refreshed, I went on my way.

“A good many fishermen were already on the beach, so that I had no difficulty in getting a boat. The sky wore a subdued: aspect; out at sea rose Capri, and my heart beat fast as I looked at its mystic outline, with its deep and solemn steel colour cut clearly against the light grey sky. In my excitement I began imagining that the melancholy look of the island was a presage of evil to the girl who dwelt there.

“I had plenty of time to indulge my fancies, for it was ten o’clock when at last we reached the island. I hurried on through Capri, scarcely looking to right or left, though people saluted me here and there.

“I soon reached the rocky stairs leading to Ana-Capri, and climbed the five hundred and sixty steps more quickly than I should have thought possible. ‘This very day I shall see her again, face to face’—beyond that I could think of nothing; sufficient for the day was the joy thereof. On reaching the platform of

Page 215 the mountain at last, I was forced to stand still for a moment to allay the beating of my heart; for after all I must not betray my feelings to the whole village if I wished just to see her once more—that once more being the utmost I could hope for, or expect, at the time.

“On entering the quiet, idyllic little place again, full of women’s song and rattling looms, I felt an inordinate wish to call out loud, ‘Antonella, Antonella!’ which no doubt would have gathered all the women and girls of the mountain-town around me. But I had still sufficient sense to repress my wish. Instead of rushing on as I had done, I now dawdled, less perhaps through prudent simulation of indifference, than from the inexplicable feeling that impels one to defer the goal when it seems in sight.

“Slowly as I walked, however, I could not be for ever on the way, and so, as if unawares, found myself with my head swimming round, in front of the little white house. There was no sign of any one stirring about the place, so I walked in through the open door. In the same dark chamber, kneeling before the same dimly-lit shrine, Antonella’s mother was absorbed in prayer, as when I had, before come upon her unexpectedly.

“On my cheerfully calling her by name with a greeting she started violently, and then rose; or rather tottered to her feet. As she came forward to welcome me, I noticed that she looked aged by many years, and her eyes were red and swollen with weeping. She tried to say something about the pleasure of seeing me, but broke down in the middle, and the tears began rolling down her withered cheeks instead.

Page 216

“‘What is it?’ I cried, seizing her hand with a sudden sickening feeling. ‘Good God, what has happened—tell me, quick, quick!’

“The unhappy woman seemed bewildered by my vehemence, in spite of her grief, and looked almost blankly at me; so I had impatiently to repeat my query, adding—‘Where is your daughter? Is it well with her?’ with a trembling in my voice that I could not control.

“Signora Mansi, who had by this time recovered a little composure, repeated my words in a stifled, questioning manner, absently passing one hand over another—‘Is it well with her! Ah, is it not well with my poor child!’

“The sad resignation in her tone, her inexplicable manner, drove me almost frantic. All sorts of misfortune that could possibly have happened to Antonella since I had left darted through my brain at once, with an agony of fear and self-reproach. I tingled all over with some dread anticipation, and with futile rage I upbraided myself for I scarce knew what.

“The poor woman, without much heeding me, went on muttering—more to the image of the Virgin and Child than addressing me—‘Yes, the dear Madonna has taken five of them, five that I nursed and suckled at the breast—three at sea, one with the fever, and the smallest of all in the cradle; and now the last, she wants the last! O light of my life, why has thou left me lonely in my old age?’

“I could bear this suspense no longer. In my wild excitement I fear I grasped her hand roughly enough, as I asked harshly, ‘Why do you torture me thus?

Page 217 Tell me the worst, if worse there is! What has become of her? Speak, speak, I entreat you!’

“Signora Mansi, thus urgently recalled to the fact of my presence, which she had quite forgotten I believe, fixed her eyes all at once with piercing intentness on mine as though she would read my very soul; and then dropping into a chair and covering her face with her hands, she sobbed—‘Sanctimissa Madre! Is it possible! Ah, had my unhappy child but known, perchance she would not have gone—but I am blaspheming in my grief.’

“‘Gone where, where?’ I cried, in my impatience striding up and down the narrow room, and striking my hand against the lintel of the door; ‘for the hundredth time I ask you—where is she? ‘But in my despair of getting any answer, I now flung open the hack door that looked on the terraces of the pillared and vine-trellised garden, and called at the top of my voice—‘Antonella! Antonella!’

“At the sound of her daughter’s name, the poor mother uttered a piteous moan, and coming towards me, flung her arms round my neck and sobbed—‘Too late; she cannot hear, oh she cannot hear you now!’ Then letting me go again, and laying her hand on my arm, she said with an inflection that chilled me: ‘You will never see her again, my poor young man; she has gone for ever, left me for ever, to enter the Convent St. Maria del Soccorsa at Naples, and take the vows there.’

“I gave a cry, such a cry as a wild beast may utter, and sank down as though somebody had given me a blow on the head; but in an instant I was up again,

Page 218 and seizing the scared, sobbing woman by the shoulders, I hissed in her ear, ‘I will get at her! I will see her again, though all the bolts and bars of the church should enclose her!’

“Frightened at the blasphemy of my language, the poor mother sank on her knees again and muttered an Ave, interspersed with sobs and tears; while I, grasping my head with my hands, was trying to realize the position and collect my thoughts. But I could not think! I was all on fire with thwarted longing, for in these latter hours the strength of my passion had grown in proportion to the insuperable obstacles against which it lashed itself almost into madness.

“All at once I felt my hands softly kissed, and stroked and fondled. Antonella’s mother was standing before me, and in a voice as if she were speaking to a little child, she said, ‘Be comforted, be comforted, my son. Jesu hath lived, and hath died for us, and should we not give up our children if it be God’s will?’

“For a moment the pathos of that sorrowing mother’s voice made me forget my own grief and rage; her thin face, to which a great sorrow lent its dignity, might have been that of a Mater Dolorosa itself. I could only look at, not answer her, as with an infinitely touching gesture she threw out her empty hands and cried: ‘Ah, but the Madonna may be wroth with me if I am too loth—she who gave her own bambino for us sinners. And yet she was the last that was left—the last; they were all taken from me, all the little ones to whom I had given suck, all the pretty ones that I dandled on my arms, all the babes that I sang to sleep, singing, “Nonna, Nonna, my sweet son, oh, Nonna!” She was the

Page 219 last, the joy of my old eyes: for one the Holy Madonna took to herself out of the cradle, the little Lilla made of violets and jasmine buds; and one died of the fever; and three went down at sea; and she was all that was left—my last little one, my child, the warmth of my old age, and she has gone from me too. Madonna—but I must not murmur; it is God’s will, and I shall follow soon, soon now.’ Here she sat down on a low stool, with one hand on each knee, and said ever so gently, looking up into my face: ‘Tolla, my Tolla, the most beautiful child of the islands, they said! I seem to see her no higher than that’—and she held out her hand—‘coming up the garden walk there. Ah, you loved her too, my son—but it’s all for the best, no doubt,’ and here she covered her face with her hands and wept.

“Had I been less preoccupied with my selfish passion, I must have been touched even to tears by the depth of this woman’s uncomplaining sorrow; and more, I must have been struck by the heartlessness of the girl who could forsake this widowed mother and afflict her with the living entombment of her last remaining child. But there was no room for such thoughts in me then.

“Feeling as though every moment might for ever seal Antonella’s fate, I started up, pressed her mother’s hands hard in my own, and cried, ‘You must, you shall see your Tolla again!’ then before she could reply or remonstrate, I had rushed out of the house.”

Page [220] CHAPTER XXI. FOUND.

“A THOUSAND mad schemes for liberating Antonella from the living grave in which she was going to bury herself crossed my mind on my way back to Naples. It was almost evening when at last I again leaped ashore.

“What was I to do? Now for the first time I began fully to realize what a difficult, nay, impossible undertaking it would be, in those days of police and passports, to penetrate the walls of a convent and make off with nun or novice.

“Whilst I was meditating a reconnaissance of the situation of the convent, some one suddenly slapped me on the shoulder and called out in cheery tones: ‘Why, by all that’s good, it’s you in the body at last! Where have you been delving, old mole? I have been hunting for you all over Naples in vain, burning as I was to congratulate you on your success! We are all so proud! We always sniffed the demon in

Page 221 you, of course!—Why, confound it, what’s up now? you look more moody than ever, and as if you wished me at Jericho! Are you composing a sonata to “Melencolia?”’

“In truth, though I really liked Raoul immensely, and knew him for a good fellow, I was thoroughly put out at meeting him at this inopportune moment. I stammered some lame reply, and any one but he would have seen that there was something up, and left me to my own devices. Not so Raoul. With garrulous pleasantry he linked his arm within mine and dragged me along with him, pouring the while into my unwilling ears a string of congratulations, news of Roman friends, the last new scandal about Cardinal F., and only interrupting himself to stare hard after every pretty girl that passed. Luckily I was not called upon to reply, as certainly I did not listen.

“In this manner, scarcely conscious where I was going, we had proceeded some little way along the quay of Santa Lucia, which at this hour was swarming with life and motion like a very ant-hill. My friend suddenly left my side as abruptly as he had come upon me, but I was hardly aware of it, and was leaning, lost in thought, over the parapet of the quay. I believe it must have been a gloriously beautiful evening. Absently I was looking at the bay, at the reflected lights that dyed the sea as with rose-bloom, not consciously noticing anything, only in my mind’s eye conjuring up a gloomy prison-like pile in which a captive girl would beat out her life as a bird does against the bars of its cage.

“I was just starting off I scarcely knew whither,

Page 222 when Raoul, hopping and humming, and rolling a cigarette between his fingers and thumb, came excitedly back to my side, and gave me a shake, saying: ‘Wake up, Emanuel, and don’t stop there like one of the wooden posts! What has come over you again? Do look at those two ragged girls dancing there with castanets to the sound of that blind old man’s mandolin.’

“Yes, it was my own tarantella that I heard for the thousandth time! I was getting quite sick and tired of it by this. As usual in Naples, all sorts of people gradually joined in the dance. Well-dressed and handsome maidens, ragged girls, nursemaids—who calmly deposited their charges in other women’s arms—were capering away to my friend’s intense enjoyment. For my own part, I was just starting off in an opposite direction when Raoul, plucking me by the sleeve, exclaimed excitedly: ‘Superb! magnificent! I never saw such a walk, such a figure, such an action of the arms and hands! No Greek statue ever showed nobler proportions, more exquisitely moulded limbs! Why she is actually going to dance! What a godsend!’ At those rapid exclamations, more vehement than usual, I could do no less than stop and turn round again, not so much from curiosity as to please Raoul.

“But, good God, the shock it gave me! I gasped out some incoherent exclamation, and almost staggered against the wall in my surprise. Was it Antonella—Antonella in the flesh? Antonella not shut up in cold, dark, convent walls, but dancing my tarantella under the sweet sky of Naples, in all the supremacy of her matchless grace!

“Rooted to the spot I stood and stared at her; and

Page 223 all the time Raoul kept up a running commentary of words, and jerked out such broken sentences as—‘Isn’t she glorious? What modulated grace in all her motions! This girl ought to do nothing but dance! She is rhythm embodied in flesh! She has actually inspired that old man, for his instrument squeaks less than heretofore; and all the other dancers have stopped still to look at her!

“‘There, what a theme for you to work out, Emanuel! What a model for me to paint from. She must be got at any cost, at any cost!’ and he was darting off again, when for all answer I turned sharp upon him, and clutching hold of his arm till he winced again, said between my teeth: ‘Don’t joke about her! She’s the girl I’m madly in love with! If you only knew the danger she’s in at this very moment! Ah! she must be out of her senses, I fear. Those soldiers there looking on, if they guessed who she was, would clap her in prison. But we must save her—you must help me to save her, Raoul.’

“Raoul, at first quite dumbfoundered, soon regained his natural vivacity, and rubbing his arm exclaimed—‘Heavens! have you poisoned the Santo Padre between you? I’ll help you; but first tell us all about it! Now I observe her more closely she looks as though the dagger in her hair wasn’t merely for ornament.’

“For all answer I beckoned him to follow me, and noiselessly strode up to where Antonella was by this time dancing and twirling, the centre of an enraptured crowd. Elbowing my way through it, I placed myself in such manner that my eyes were fully fixed on hers. Antonella for one instant stared at me wildly; then, as

Page 224 though under the influence of a potent spell, she became suddenly motionless as a statue. At an almost imperceptible sign from me she plunged into the crowd, which thereupon immediately dispersed, and along with it we three slipped away unperceived in the sudden darkening of the Italian twilight.”

Page [225] CHAPTER XXII. FLIGHT.

“KEEPING tight hold of Antonella’s hand, I talked in a low voice to Raoul as we hurried through the noisy by-streets of Naples, till we came to a standstill in front of a good-sized milliner’s shop.

“The Frenchman whispering, ‘Then we will meet as agreed upon, at the Porta Capuana at nine precisely,’ darted off round the corner, while the girl and I entered the premises.

“Antonella fell back a step, as going to the counter I said to the shop-woman, ‘Madam, I want to know whether you can oblige us immediately with every requisite of an English lady’s travelling costume—gown, scarf, bonnet, &c.?’

“Seeing the dubious, rather suspicious expression on the woman’s face, I hastened to add, ‘I’ll pay you handsomely for the order, my good woman;’ and knowing the weakness of the sex for anything in the shape of a love-affair, added, lowering my voice to a

Page 226 confidential tone, ‘You will be helping two lovers in distress.’

“The woman’s face quite brightened at this, and looking slyly round at my companion who had shrunk behind me, said, ‘Bי, bי, you want a regular lady’s dress, do you?’ and she disappeared into a back room, apparently to consult with some invisible adviser as to what she had in stock:

“While she was gone Antonella came close up to me, whispering, not without awe: ‘Am I to have a dress to sweep the ground, like a real lady?’

“Before I could answer her naive query the shop-woman returned with various articles of attire slung across her arm.

“‘I have no ready-made dress whatever to fit your lady,’ she said, looking admiringly at Antonella’s tall, beautifully-made figure. ‘All I can offer as a makeshift is this black silk skirt made to order for a damigella Inglese; the bodice would not fit you, but then you can keep on your own under this black silk mantle. Here’s also a real shawl Inglese for travelling, if you would like it. But will Madam step this way, and try on what we have got?’

“So Antonella departed with the milliner, and after what seemed to my impatience an incredibly long time, reappeared in sweeping garments, a transformed character. She seemed mightily pleased with the result, only the poke bonnet did not meet with her approval. In spite of the peril of her situation, she actually urged on the shopkeeper to send to a neighbouring establishment for some other specimens, as she seemed childishly desirous of getting one as like as

Page 227 possible to a certain Miladi who had fired her imagination at Capri with a leghorn of portentous dimensions.

“Almost in despair I looked on as Antonella tried on bonnet after bonnet, by turns looking at the glass and me; and finally she would have chosen the largest and most conspicuous, but that, half beside myself, I peremptorily bade her take the one I selected for her. Then I hastily threw down the sum agreed upon, in my haste giving the woman, I believe, a napoleon too much. She obsequiously wished us good luck, as I hurried off with Antonella on my arm, who kept tripping over her unwonted length of skirt, which in our haste had been merely slipped over her other things.

“‘What have you been about, to make you so much behind the time?’ cried Raoul, rushing forward to meet us on our reaching the appointed spot; ‘but he stopped in astonishment as though he hardly knew my companion again, and with a respectful obeisance said, ‘The carriage has been waiting these twenty minutes.’

“‘Oh, it was all Antonella’s bonnet,’ said I, as, lifting her into the carriage, we jumped in after her, and the postilion cracking his whip, we rattled along the road to Rome.

“‘We might all be in peril of finding ourselves at the Castle of St. Angelo, were it not for my foresight,’ said Raoul, in French, for fear of frightening Antonella, and triumphantly waving a passport in my face. ‘Mind, at the next Dogana you are Captain Jones and his spouse—that worthy Britannic officer having lent it to me in his horror of papacy. What do you say to that for an idea? but in repayment I stipulate that none but I shall paint her!’

Page 228

“While Raoul thus rattled on, I tried to make Antonella as comfortable as I could for the long night-journey, partly with the plaid shawl, and partly with some of the things that Raoul had been careful to fetch for me from my lodging.

“I think she began now first to realize her strange position, for the whirl and excitement of the last few hours had scarcely admitted of reflection.

“She sat very much back in her corner of the carriage, and though by the uncertain light of the lamp the expression of her face escaped me, I could see the nervous clasping and unclasping of her hands, while her irregular breathing, broken now and then by a spasmodic sigh, filled me with concern. But I thought it better to leave her to herself a little, partly that she might have time to calm herself, and partly that a thousand conflicting considerations were jostling themselves in my brain.

“Certainly it was a startling predicament to be in! Here was I, almost against my will, carrying off the daughter of poor but honest people, whose chief pride consisted in their good name. Should I bring shame and dishonour on the grey hairs of that sorrowful mother, whose grief was as yet untainted by disgrace? And yet such a marriage—to a man on the threshold of his career—might be ruinous in its consequences!

“Raoul here raising his voice, roused me from my preoccupation by remarking again in French: ‘I don’t know whether you are aware, my friend, that I am positively dying of curiosity! Here have I done everything a mortal can to help you elope with the most paintable girl in Italy, and yet you haven’t deigned to

Page 229 give me a word of explanation as to who she is, what mischief she’s been up to, or what you are to do with her! If I’m to be of any further use, it would seem at least expedient to give me some hints concerning the latter, even though, as to the former, I may be willing to believe her one of the sirens themselves that you have netted off the coast of Capri.’

“I felt the justice of this interpellation. Antonella had been so quiet that I might have thought her asleep for some time, but for the feeble light that showed me her eyes gazing fixedly in front of her. I put my hand gently on her arm, and said: ‘Antonella, this is Raoul, my dearest friend, almost my brother; without him we should not now be escaping as we are—he ought to know all. I went back to Capri to see you. I saw your poor mother this morning. Was it indeed only this morning—it seems ever so long ago!’ I exclaimed, in amazement. ‘Well, I saw your mother, who told me, weeping, you had gone into a convent.’

“Here Antonella drooped her head lower, and gave, I thought, a slight sort of shiver, but it was too dark to notice more.

“‘What on earth made you think of turning nun?’ I asked, not without a smile; for now that the danger seemed receding, the idea of my bacchantic dancer transformed into a saint was too incongruous. She drew her arm away at my question; she seemed to shrink more within herself.

“While I was speaking to Antonella, my friend, with the instincts of a gentleman, had let down the sash and was leaning out of the window, humming softly to himself the while.

Page 230

“All this time we had been bumping and tearing along at the rate of seven miles an hour, the landscape, with its hills, plains, and trees, shifting past us, as we saw it revealed by snatches when the moon, floating out of the grey, misty clouds, shone out triumphantly at intervals. Now, however, the scarecrow Neapolitan post-horses, reeking and panting with their exertions, came to a dead stop in front of a forlorn-looking post-house. Our postilion jumped from his saddle, and after several kicks, knocks, and Neapolitan oaths, on his part, at the closed door of the post-house, a surly man with a lantern came stumbling down the steps, two savage, starved-looking dogs barking furiously at his heels. Three horses, with a man leading the foremost, came slowly clattering down a steep incline from their stable, and the three men now began an apparently interminable process of unharnessing the old and harnessing the fresh horses, which consisted chiefly of a succession of loud slaps, kicks, and objurgations.

“Raoul, who heard my muttered exclamations of impatience, shouted ‘God damn!’ every now and then to keep up my character of English captain among the men; and, as before, I promised the postilion double drink-money, and went on shouting, ‘Avanti, Avanti!’ to hasten their movements generally.

“At last the new horses were put in harness, the new postilion leaped into his saddle, and with a great deal of jolting and creaking, and swearing at the horses, we got under weigh, and began rolling along the grey, dusty high-road again.

“All this time Antonella, who had drawn her green gauze veil over her face, sat perfectly still in her corner.

Page 231 I could not help thinking of a child that had broken something or done something wrong. It was difficult to surmise what was passing in her mind, torn as she was from her accustomed surroundings, and whirled thus along to an unknown destiny. Indeed I felt for her, and should have probably felt more, were it not that I was in such constant apprehension of the gendarmes overtaking us. I knew very well that I had nothing to fear for myself, but the thought of her being dragged back to the convent was too terrible. Rather than that, it seemed to me that I ought to kill her and myself too.

“When once we were fairly started on the road, I again turned to Antonella, and said very gently, ‘I would not for the world trouble you with questions on a subject that may be distressing to you; but in case of pursuit—if, as I suppose, you have indeed escaped from a convent–-‘

“A look of mingled fear and triumph flashed from her eyes in her dark corner, where the dim reflections from the moonlight had become more perceptible to me, as she exclaimed excitedly: ‘I did run away from it! I will tell you everything.’ But then her courage seemed to fail her again, and she said, in a piteous, awe-stricken whisper, ‘I have been very, very wicked! The Madonna must be very angry with me!’

“Had it not been for Raoul, who had thrown himself back in a listening attitude, I must have strained her to my heart, and soothed with kisses the distress of this bewitching sinner. But as it was I contented myself with taking her hand in mine and passionately pressing it, as I said—

Page 232

“‘Well, confess yourself to me, Antonella, and let me see if I cannot give you absolution. First of all, what made you think of going into a nunnery?’

“She withdrew her hand abruptly, and putting it up to her brow as though she were trying to recollect, said, after a moment’s pause, in an absent manner, ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ (Fool that I had been to ask! At that instant the whole truth flashed upon me. For love of me this magnificent creature had been going to renounce all the joys of life. I forgot where I had found her. The discovery of her love for me swept every other consideration from my mind, and then and there I resolved on marrying her, come of it what would.)

“‘I won’t ask you any more questions, my—my–-‘ I stopped myself abruptly, remembering my friend’s presence. ‘You shall tell me everything in your own way; and if you will only confide in me, all will come right in the end, Antonella!’

“‘Ah, Maestro!’ she said, with sudden impetuosity, ‘you have saved me once from the tarantula’s poison: will you save me now again from the narrow cell and the nun’s punishment? But this is how it happened. Do you remember, Maכstro, that evening on L’unghia Marina, when I left you?’

“‘When you left me,’ I cried, ‘for the sheer pleasure of tormenting me, I suppose, you wicked witch!’

“Antonella for the first time broke into a glad, musical laugh, which at once gained the laughter-loving Raoul’s heart, and which I could not help joining too, as, shaking my finger at her, I said, ‘Yes, you left me in the flesh to drive me half crazy with your shadow, I believe.’

Page 233

“Antonella fetched rather a long breath as she answered, ”Twas I you saw, Maכstro. The tarantella had got into my head again!’

“‘How strange!’ muttered Raoul interrogatively, in French. ‘What does she mean? Is she a little mad, eh?’

“‘It is strange, indeed,’ I replied, ‘but I will tell you all about it another time;’ and turning to the girl, ‘But why did you fly from me then in that wild way? Could I not have helped you as I had done before?’

“But she again said in an impatient, almost angry, tone, ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ then she hurried on with great volubility—

“‘The next day the hermit came to my mother, and was talking to her in whispers, during which their eyes were frequently turned on me, and I could hear him repeating the word “Caverna,” and that “the devil caught such maidens,” and “let her dedicate herself to––.” And my mother kept weeping till I grew wroth with them both. Upon which in came Bice with your brooch; and I don’t know how, by and by I felt the strange fit, of which you had cured me, returning, and I screamed out, and remember nothing more. Then the neighbours were around me, saying to my mother. “What will you do with her? The musician is gone now, who might have helped her. The holy man is right, let her take the veil.”

“While I heard what they were saying, I could not open my eyes nor speak to them, and a great horror came over me, for I could neither scream nor make any sign. So I vowed myself to the Madonna’s service if I got healed; and then I sat straight up in my bed and cried, “I am ready. I will go!”

Page 234

“‘My mother seized me in her arms and cried over me; but I did not seem to feel anything—I only remembered my vow.

“‘The hermit, whom I had always feared, said: “There is no time like the present. Return thanks to the blessed Mary. Let her go; I charge myself with her.”

“‘So the friar presently took me to Naples; and oh, I did like to see the streets so full of people. But when he took me through the gate of the Convent of St. Maria del Soccorsa, with the gloomy walls around, and introduced me to the abbess, I was frightened, and began to repent of my vow. In a few days the friar returned to confess me, as he had arranged with the abbess, and then in a strange way he began asking whether–-‘

“She stopped abruptly with quivering lips, and coloured, just as if in the excitement of her narration she had forgotten to whom she was talking, and had been suddenly recalled to it by what she was going to say.

“‘He asked you what, Antonella?’ I said angrily, much regretting that I had not thrashed the wretch to within an inch of his life when I had him in my power.

“‘Oh, nothing, nothing, Maכstro,’ she said in a frightened voice; ‘what passes in confession, you know, is a great crime to repeat.’ And then she continued very quickly, as though fearing further interrogation on my part, ‘Thus I was a novice, and there was a great deal of praying early and late, and much weary work to do; and it was dreary between the high, dark walls, and only once I could escape to the bell-tower and get a peep at the merry streets. And then, oh! it was very

Page 235 wicked of me,’ she sobbed, covering her face with her hands, ‘I got to hate the abbess, and the sisters, and most of all the friar who had brought me to this, for I knew I must now go to hell for hating my vow to the Virgin.’

“‘Poverina,’ muttered Raoul, sympathetically.

“‘No, no, no, Antonella!’ cried I, pressing her hand, ‘you did quite right in hating the friar: it was your good angel that bade you fly from that miserable little fiend—you will think so too, when I tell you that he did his best to put an end to me!’

“‘Oh, Maכstro!’ she exclaimed, instinctively seizing hold of my arm, but letting it go again with a troubled air.

“I then explained to her and Raoul how I had nearly—thanks to the friar—fallen down a precipice, but for an owlet’s cry.

“To my astonishment Antonella began laughing immoderately at this, and only after gradually quieting down could she at last explain that she herself had been the owl, having however conjectured in a highly flattering way to myself that it was Falernian wine which had nearly been the death of me.

“Well, to cut a long story short, the beautiful Antonella found conventual discipline most distasteful to her; indeed I much suspected that the deformed friar had given her a further strong cause of offence. At any rate she fell into a terrible melancholy, which again ended in her going off into one of those curious trances having all the similitude of death. She remained so long, however, in this particular fit, owing perhaps to the entire absence of dance music in that

Page 236 holy community, that she was really supposed to be dead.

“She actually woke up one night in a damp, dark vault, stretched on a bier between four lighted candles, and two snoring, snuffy old nuns.

“No doubt the poor girl was horrified, but her daring did not forsake her, and she there and then made up her mind to escape at all risks. So the beautiful creature, sliding down from the board, actually marched in her shroud, barefooted, through the chill corridors of the crypt. Once above ground, she easily found her way to the room where her contadina’s dress had been deposited. This she deliberately flung over the wall, and then with equal celerity she proceeded to the porter’s room, where she began to unhook the key hanging above his pallet. In spite of her great precaution, however, he opened his eyes and stared at her. But evidently taking her for a ghost, he remained motionless, I suppose from terror, and she let herself out unhindered. She was just going to tell me what madness had possessed her to go curveting about in her precarious position, when she was abruptly interrupted by our carriage suddenly coming to a full stop. The moon was still high in the heavens, from which the clouds had cleared off, as we were creaking and jolting up the very steep main street of a place whose name I have forgotten, but which for lugubriousness of aspect might have outdone any of the wretched hamlets with high-sounding names that Southern Italy boasts of. To judge of it by this light, it might have been a collection of banditti’s haunts recently sacked by the Papal gendarmerie. Half the large pale tiles that should

Page 237 have been on the roofs lay smashed in the thoroughfare beneath. Eight or ten most villainous-looking men, with faces partly overshadowed by their huge felt hats—who had been leaning with their backs against a white wall, apparently in expectation of some casualty—surrounded us in a minute, screaming out, ‘Scendete, scendete, Signori!’

“Said Raoul: ‘Now we are making our own subjects! Here’s a picture for me, and a new Fra Diavolo for you! Blest if these vagabonds are not going to carry us off. This is retribution with a vengeance, and the spoilers spoiled.’

“I confess that I did not myself see the comic side of it as Raoul did; the idea of Antonella captured by these ruffians was too intolerable. They were more clamorous than ever, ominously staring in at us and vociferating in their unknown patois, though we saw no weapons. To put a good face upon it I leaped out amongst them, saying: ‘What do you want? Why do you stop us?’ Half a dozen hands now pointed in explanation to the near hind-wheel, and the postilion appeared to be in consultation with a man who was evidently a blacksmith. Any anxiety which we had entertained on the score of brigands, was now changed into dismal impatience, but there was no help for it. A lever prop was inserted under the axle, the defective wheel taken off, and a dozen dark hands bore it to the blacksmith’s shed. I had my strong suspicions that the innkeeper of Naples who supplied the vehicle, and these suspicious-looking characters, were in league together. But bribery and bullying seemed equally unavailing. Something was wrong with the nave, or

Page 238 the tire, or the felly of the wheel—I am sure I don’t know which; certainly it had creaked enough before these pleasant villagers arrested us. The blacksmith set to at blowing up his fire, and the Fra Diavolesque villagers continued to vociferate in their dialect. Antonella kept quiet in her corner. Raoul and I walked up and down impatiently between the carriage and the smithy; he at times whispering to me, ‘Give a good “God damn!” or two now you are near them.’ So every time our walk brought us back to the group of vagabonds I ejaculated ‘God damn!’ as we nervously looked down the moonlit street scanning the distant misty road for signs of pursuit; when suddenly, clattering from the opposite direction, the horses of three real papal gendarmes came in sight.

“Raoul squeezed my arm, and I thought for the moment it was all up with us. They drew rein in front of the blacksmith’s for an instant. I heard the word ‘Milordi’ uttered; they then came towards us and asked us for our passports. Raoul felt in his pocket; I haughtily gave them a scudo and a ‘God damn!’ and wishing us a prosperous journey, they clattered off again in the direction from whence we had come.

“I breathed once more, and approaching the smithy again, inquired authoritatively of the blacksmith when he would have done. To little purpose, however, as for a full hour afterwards he went on hammering at his bits of iron. Every minute we expected to see the gendarmes return with others from Naples. The peaceful night, however, was undisturbed except for the ringing of the anvil, and the jabber and occasional laughter of the wild-looking villagers. At length, to

Page 239 our inexpressible relief, the wheel, upborne by the same dark hands, emerged from out the recesses of the Cyclopean smithy, whose furnace every now and then glowed like a demon’s eye as the bellows intensified it, bringing out in lurid lines the sinister countenances otherwise overshadowed by their broad brims. The blacksmith’s claim of a napoleon for his hour’s hammering was discharged. Numerous small coins appeased the clamours of the grinning peasants, and with a tremendous cracking of whip we recommenced our flight with renewed vigour.”

THE END OF VOL. I.

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