Читать книгу The First Violin - Fothergill Jessie - Страница 14

“Blute nur, liebes Herz!

Ach, ein Kind das du erzogen,

Das an deiner Brust gesogen,

Drohet den Pfleger zu ermorden

Denn es ist zur Schlange worden.”

“What is it?” I asked below my breath, as it ceased.

He had shaded his face with his hand, but turned to me as I spoke, a certain half-suppressed enthusiasm in his eyes.

“Be thankful for your first introduction to German music,” said he, “and that it was grand old Johann Sebastian Bach whom you heard. That is one of the soprano solos in the Passions-musik—that is music.”

There was more music. A tenor voice was singing a recitative now, and that exquisite accompaniment, with a sort of joyful solemnity, still continued. Every now and then, shrill, high, and clear, penetrated a chorus of boys’ voices. I, outer barbarian that I was, barely knew the name of Bach and his “Matthaus Passion,” so in the pauses my companion told me by snatches what it was about. There was not much of it. After a few solos and recitatives, they tried one or two of the choruses. I sat in silence, feeling a new world breaking in glory around me, till that tremendous chorus came; the organ notes swelled out, the tenor voice sung “Whom will ye that I give unto you?” and the answer came, crashing down in one tremendous clap, “Barrabam!” And such music was in the world, had been sung for years, and I had not heard it. Verily, there may be revelations and things new under the sun every day.

I had forgotten everything outside the cathedral—every person but the one at my side. It was he who roused first, looking at his watch and exclaiming.

“Herrgott! We must go to the station, Fräulein, if we wish to catch the train.”

And yet I did not think he seemed very eager to catch it, as we went through the busy streets in the warmth of the evening, for it was hot, as it sometimes is in pleasant April, before the withering east winds of the “merry month” have come to devastate the land and sweep sickly people off the face of the earth. We went slowly through the moving crowds to the station, into the wartesaal, where he left me while he went to take my ticket. I sat in the same corner of the same sofa as before, and to this day I could enumerate every object in that wartesaal.

It was after seven o’clock. The outside sky was still bright, but it was dusk in the waiting-room and under the shadow of the station. When “Eugen Courvoisier” came in again, I did not see his features so distinctly as lately in the cathedral. Again he sat down beside me, silently this time. I glanced at his face, and a strange, sharp, pungent thrill shot through me. The companion of a few hours—was he only that?

“Are you very tired?” he asked, gently, after a long pause. “I think the train will not be very long now.”

Even as he spoke, clang, clang, went the bell, and for the second time that day I went toward the train for Elberthal. This time no wrong turning, no mistake. Courvoisier put me into an empty compartment, and followed me, said something to a guard who went past, of which I could only distinguish the word allein; but as no one disturbed our privacy, I concluded that German railway guards, like English ones, are mortal.

After debating within myself for some time, I screwed up my courage and began:

“Mr. Courvoisier—your name is Courvoisier, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“Will you please tell me how much money you have spent for me to-day?”

“How much money?” he asked, looking at me with a provoking smile.

The train was rumbling slowly along, the night darkening down. We sat by an open window, and I looked through it at the gray, Dutch-like landscape, the falling dusk, the poplars that seemed sedately marching along with us.

“Why do you want to know how much?” he demanded.

“Because I shall want to pay you, of course, when I get my purse,” said I. “And if you will kindly tell me your address, too—but how much money did you spend?”

He looked at me, seemed about to laugh off the question, and then said:

“I believe it was about three thalers ten groschen, but I am not at all sure. I can not tell till I do my accounts.”

“Oh, dear!” said I.

“Suppose I let you know how much it was,” he went on, with a gravity which forced conviction upon me.

“Perhaps that would be the best,” I agreed. “But I hope you will make out your accounts soon.”

“Oh, very soon. And where shall I send my bill to?”

Feeling as if there were something not quite as it should be in the whole proceeding, I looked very earnestly at him, but could find nothing but the most perfect gravity in his expression. I repeated my address and name slowly and distinctly, as befitted so business-like a transaction, and he wrote them down in a little book.

“And you will not forget,” said I, “to give me your address when you let me know what I owe you.”

“Certainly—when I let you know what you owe me,” he replied, putting the little book into his pocket again.

“I wonder if any one will come to meet me,” I speculated, my mind more at ease in consequence of the business-like demeanor of my companion.

“Possibly,” said he, with an ambiguous half smile, which I did not understand.

“Miss Hallam—the lady I came with—is almost blind. Her maid had to look after her, and I suppose that is why they did not wait for me,” said I.

“It must have been a very strong reason, at any rate,” he said, gravely.

Now the train rolled into the Elberthal station. There were lights, movement, a storm of people all gabbling away in a foreign tongue. I looked out. No face of any one I knew. Courvoisier sprung down and helped me out.

“Now I will put you into a drosky,” said he, leading the way to where they stood outside the station.

“Alléestrasse, thirty-nine,” he said to the man.

“Stop one moment,” cried I, leaning eagerly out. At that moment a tall, dark girl passed us, going slowly toward the gates. She almost paused as she saw us. She was looking at my companion; I did not see her face, and was only conscious of her as coming between me and him, and so anoying me.

“Please let me thank you,” I continued. “You have been so kind, so very kind—”

“O, bitte sehr! It was so kind in you to get lost exactly when and where you did,” said he, smiling. “Adieu, mein Fräulein,” he added, making a sign to the coachman, who drove off.

I saw him no more. “Eugen Courvoisier”—I kept repeating the name to myself, as if I were in the very least danger of forgetting it—“Eugen Courvoisier.” Now that I had parted from him I was quite clear as to my own feelings. I would have given all I was worth—not much, truly—to see him for one moment again.

Along a lighted street with houses on one side, a gleaming shine of water on the other, and trees on both, down a cross-way, then into another street, very wide, and gayly lighted, in the midst of which was an avenue.

We stopped with a rattle before a house door, and I read, by the light of the lamp that hung over it, “39.”