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