“I can’t speak, I can’t tell him,” answered Veronika, “it has taken away all power of speech.” But she gave me a glance, allowed her eyes to stay with mine for a long moment. A fire had been smoldering in my breast from the first; at these words, at this glance, it burst into flame. A great light inundated my soul. I felt the arteries tingling to my very finger tips. I started tuning up, to hide my emotion. Then we played the march from Raff’s Lenore.
I am afraid my agitation marred the effect of Raffs diamatic composition. At any rate, the plaudits were faint when I had done. After a breathing spell Mr. Tikulski told Veronika to sing. She played her own accompaniment while I stood by to turn.
It would be useless for me to try to qualify her singing. Whatever critical faculty I had was stricken dumb. I can only say that she sang a song in French (an old, old romance, till then unfamiliar to me; so old that the composer’s name has been forgotten) in a splendid contralto voice, and that it seemed as if she was playing upon the inmost tissue of my life, so keenly I felt each note. I quite forgot to turn the page at the proper place, and Veronika had to prompt me. It was a little thing, and yet I remember as vividly as if from yesterday the nod of the head and the inflection with which she said, “Turn, please.”
“‘Le temps fait passer l’amour,’.rdquo; repeated Mr. Tikulski: it was the last line of the song. “Veronika, bring some wine. Le vin fait passer le temps,” and he chuckled at his joke. Another small thing that I remember vividly is how Tikulski, as she left the room, posed his forefinger upon his Adam’s-apple and said, “She carries a ‘cello here.”
He went on to this effect:—Veronika, as I already knew, was his niece. He also was a violinist: more than that, he was a composer, though as yet unpublished. With the self-conceit too characteristic of musical people, he told me how he was engaged upon “an epoch-making symphony”—had been engaged upon it for the last dozen years, would be engaged upon it for the dozen years to come. Then the world should have it, and he, not having lived in vain, would die content. Veronika was now one-and-twenty. During her childhood he had played in an orchestra and arranged dance-music and done other hackwork to earn money for her maintenance and education. She had received the best musical training, instrumental and vocal, that could be had in New York. Now he had turned the tables. Now he did nothing but compose—reserved all his time and strength for his masterpiece. Veronika had become the breadwinner. She taught on an average seven hours a day. She sang regularly in church and synagogue, and at concerts and musicals whenever she got a chance.—Veronika reentered the room bearing cakes and wine. She sat down near to us, and I forgot every thing in the contemplation of her beautiful, sad, strange face. Her eyes were bottomless. Far, far in their liquid depths the spirit shone like a star. All the history of Israel was in her glance.
Every touch of constraint had vanished from her bearing. She spoke with me as with one whom she knew well. I could scarcely believe that only an hour ago we had been ignorant of each other’s existence. We discussed music and found that our tastes were in accord. We compared notes on teaching and exchanged anecdotes about our respective pupils. She said among other things that more than half the money she earned her uncle sent to Germany for the relief of his widowed sister and her offspring, who were extremely poor! Her every syllable clove my heart like an arrow. I grew hot with indignation to think of this frail, delicate maiden slaving her life away in order that her relations might fatten in idleness and her fanatic of an uncle work at his impossible symphony. My fists clenched convulsively as I fancied her exposed to the ups and downs, the hardships, the humiliations, of a music-teacher’s career. I took no pains to regulate my manner: and, if she had possessed the least trace of sophistication, she would have guessed that I loved her from every modulation of my voice. Love her I did. I had already loved her for an eternity—from the moment my eyes had first encountered hers in the moonlight by the terrace.—But it was getting late. It would not do for me to wear my welcome out.
“Nay, stay,” interposed Mr. Tikulski, “you have not heard me play yet.”
“Oh, yes, you must hear my uncle play,” said Veronika. “The Adagio of Handel? she asked of him.
“No, child,” he answered, with a tinge of impatience, “the minuet—from my own symphony,” aiming the last words at me.
Veronika returned to the piano. They began.