However, as the days grew into weeks, and the weeks into months, all the village saw that a change had come over the organist. He was less communicative than formerly, and more severely reserved.
From the borders of the creek the fringe of scarlet flowers had vanished. The myriad leaves had lost their rainbowed glory, and dropped, one after another, in russet tatters to the ground. The woodbine had thrown off its vermilion raiment, and now stretched up unclothed its weird and snake-like arms. The group of maples had laid down its golden crown; the hills, too, had cast aside their tiara of brilliant emerald. The Summer and Fall, in all their emblazoned splendor, had passed by, and the gorgeous livery of Autumn faded to the grizzled hues of Winter.
Up the tawny valley a bleak December wind swept, making a cheerless rattle among the naked trees, and the creek slumbered quietly beneath its covering of ice; but this time no children came over the frozen turnpike to the house at the foot of the hill. More secluded than ever it seemed. Before the bitter winds had risen, in the pleasant November days, Franz had often rambled through the woods, carrying the little Alice, when she felt tired, in his arms. But, as the air grew chill, they staid almost wholly within the house. After that Franz rarely left it except when his duties as organist called him to the church, and then he invariably took the little girl with him, wrapped carefully in a heavy cloak.
The people noticed that he was never seen any where without the child. If the weather proved bad on the Sabbath, or on the days when he went sometimes during the week to play, he still carried her with him, but an additional fur mantle was thrown around her for protection. She had never grown stronger; but, since that first night, when the organist had broken down the great barrier of grief that was closing up like a strong wall about her heart, they were seldom separated in her waking hours.
During all this time Franz had changed so strangely that the village gossips said one would hardly have known him for the same person. To be sure, he had always been silent and reserved, but now he had become absolutely inapproachable. His manner, which was naturally abrupt, was often now wild and feverish. His face, too, had grown thin, his cheeks hollow, his whole figure gaunt. His eyes, brilliant but sunken, had assumed a singular expression of unrest, a perpetually searching look, as if forever striving to see the invisible, and it began finally to be whispered about among the people that the church-organist was not quite right in his head. They noticed, besides, that he would never allow the child to be enticed out of his sight. The ladies often tried to pet her, but she shrank invariably from every one except Franz, to whom she clung as if he were the one prop that sustained her life.
So the time had worn away at the musician’s home. Margery, respectful as ever in her manner, assiduously waited upon the little girl, who received all her attentions gratefully, and never voluntarily made a single demand. But there had passed a change over the old servant also. From her usually quiet ways she had become restless, as if there might be something upon her mind that rendered her constantly uneasy, or from which she was ineffectually trying to free herself. If she were sour or cross in disposition, as all the scholars used to tell, she had never shown it to the little orphan. She watched the child with a strange devotion. She would follow her about the house at a distance, and, if the little girl for a time sat down upon the veranda, Margery, too, farther off, would sit there with her sewing, or embrace that opportunity to trim the woodbine, and once or twice she had even found an excuse to intrude herself for a moment in the parlor.
Every evening, when she put the little girl to bed, Margery, with a strange, expectant look upon her face, would linger about the room long after her charge had fallen into a peaceful sleep. Then, when she had retired, often in the very middle of the night, she would suddenly waken from a sound slumber, spring out of bed, and, before she was thoroughly conscious, discover herself standing beside the child, with her head bent down in a listening position, and every nerve strained to catch the slightest sound. Immediately she would rundown stairs into the music-rooms, only to find them both deserted and the instruments closed. With a white countenance she would return, pause once more in the child’s room, and then lie down again, saying to herself, for the hundredth time,—
“It must be mere fancy. I have been dreaming.”
There was no element of superstition in Margery, but this incident would recur over and over, night after night, until she began to ask herself if, before she had reached sixty years, she was already losing her mind, and this the first fancy of a disordered imagination. It was strange, she told herself, that she should dream the same thing so often, and every time it should be so vivid, for she heard a strain of music as distinctly as she ever heard a sound in her life, though it was not like the piano, organ, or, indeed, any instrument. And, though vivid, it was so evanescent it made her doubt the veracity of her senses. Then, too, it never came from down stairs, or out-of-doors, but always seemed apparently to emanate from the bedside of the little child, though, as soon as she had stooped to listen, it was gone, and the reign of silence again left supreme. Once or twice, even during the day, when standing beside the little Alice, Margery had heard, or thought she heard, a sudden waft of this soft melody sweep by her, but so fleeting that it was gone before she could catch her breath to listen, or be sure it was not simply all her own imagination.
So, with this constantly upon her mind, Margery had grown restless, and found herself continually watching the little girl. She was not insensible either of the great change that had, by some means or other, been wrought in her master since the child had come into the house. She, as well as the people, had noticed that he would never, if possible, allow her out of his sight. He never played a night now by himself as he had been used to doing for years. After the child went to bed the instruments were always closed, for he never put his hand upon the keyboard unless she were present. And, even when he had her beside him, he did not seem happy.