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.”