Part 14

“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.

II.

So the little Alice had found a home. All the people in Pickaway expressed their utter surprise at this unexpected generosity of the penurious music-master. He certainly was about the last person in the town from whom such an act might have been anticipated. Indeed, it was little short of an enigma to the place. But their astonishment knew no bounds when, within a few days after he had taken the little girl, he quietly dismissed all his pupils, and steadily refused to give any more lessons to a single soul. Nothing could prevail upon him, no entreaties whatever could persuade him, and he could never be induced to offer the least explanation.

Some of the wealthier ones, unwilling to give him up, had voluntarily proposed to pay double the former price, but even money, which all the village had thought the god of his life, failed to move him from his determination. He was inexorable. Every body wondered what might be the reason. No person could discover any apparent cause why he should so suddenly give up teaching. They inquired about his health. It was very good, he said. Did he expect to leave home? No. He would continue to play the church-organ? Yes, oh, yes; he had no intention of stopping that. So they conjectured until tired of the task, while Franz Erckman paid no attention.

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.

The people at church said, as he had changed, his music, too, had changed; but, as he had grown more wild and feverish in manner, his music had grown more softened and beautiful in style. And once, after he had played a dreamy harmony that held them all entranced, he had come down from the organ-gallery with a fierce fire burning in his eyes, and hands that trembled violently, though they were clasped tight over the little girl in his arms. When they had complimented him he looked bewildered, and spoke in a confused way, as though he could not remember what he had been playing. Now, more convinced than ever were the people that something was evidently wrong with the music-master, and, notwithstanding he had lost nothing in his art, many shook their heads, and whispered that poor Erckman was, beyond a doubt, going crazy.

December had worn almost into Christmas. In every house of the village there were preparations for the approaching holiday. The church, too, was undergoing some mysterious process at the hands of the young people, who went in and out at all hours by the back way, and steadily refused admittance to any one. They had even closed the doors against the organist when he went there one morning to play, but he was easily persuaded to withdraw, as he cared far more for solitude than society.

Franz sat moodily by the fire in his parlor, with the little girl upon a cushion at his feet. They were both naturally silent, and would often sit quietly together for hours. But now, though the musician gazed absently into the grate, and seemed to take no heed of the child, she looked up once or twice into his face, then said, in a timid voice,—

“Father, to-morrow is Christmas.”

Franz had long ago taught her to call him father, and he merely answered mechanically, without taking his eyes from the illuminated coals,—

“Yes.”

“How dark the night is out, and how shrill and bleak the wind blows!” She had risen from her seat and gone to the window. “But to-morrow is Christmas-day, and I know it will be bright then; oh, I am sure it will be bright!”

She stood a moment longer by the casement without speaking, then came back and sat down again, looking almost as ethereal as some spirit, that might vanish any moment forever into the glow of the red firelight.

“You will play something very beautiful to-morrow, will you not, father? You will make the voluntary better than all the service besides? Oh, for such a celebration, it ought to be the most magnificent music in the world, for, think, father, it will be Christmas, the grandest day in all the year! It seems to me I can hardly wait to hear you, I have been looking forward to it so long. But, father, you have not practised any for it, have you?” said the child, looking up suddenly with quick dismay upon her features.

Franz, still without glancing at the little girl, or taking his eyes from the fire, said,—

“No,” but he clasped his hands nervously together.

“Oh, father, you did not forget about it, did you?” she asked eagerly. “I have so often and often thought of it, though I did not say any thing, but it is strange I never once thought about the practising. Oh, you could not have forgotten it, father?”

She was so intensely earnest, it seemed as if her whole soul was in the question, trembling while it awaited the reply.

“No, I have not forgotten it,” said Franz, “It has hardly been out of my mind one moment for many weeks; but I have nothing to play.”

At first, her face had been perfectly radiant; but, when he added the last clause, she got up, put her arms about his neck, and said, with a kind of terror in her voice,—

“Oh, no, no! You will play, father—tell me you will play!”

Franz moved uneasily in his seat.

“And it will be something grand, father. Oh, you will please everybody—I am not afraid of that. Quick, tell me you will play. Father, if you did not—I can not bear to think of it—oh, you will—say you will!”

Her entreaty had fairly grown into wild desperation. Every fiber of her frame quivered as she clung to him. Alarmed at her singular agitation, he took her up on his knee, and said, hurriedly,—

“Yes, yes; I will play. Do not be troubled about it; I will play.”

“Oh, I am so glad! I knew you would, and it will be grand, I am sure, for to-morrow is Christmas!”

Her face was radiant with pleasure; but so extreme had been her excitement that nearly an hour later, when Margery came to take her upstairs, she still trembled.

Franz, left alone, paced the floor of his room up and down, sometimes stopping to look moodily into the fire. He had had this thing long upon his mind. Feeling the divine power of genius within him, he was not willing to play over again what generations had played over a hundred times before him. Yet he tried unavailingly to improvise. Once or twice, when playing, with the little Alice beside him, he had suddenly entranced even himself; but as soon as he undertook to reproduce the notes, either upon paper or upon the organ, he discovered them gone from his memory, and himself utterly powerless. It had only been latterly that he felt hampered in this way; yet he was conscious, notwithstanding, that his music at the same time had undergone a vast improvement. But he struggled against this one fault vainly. He had been determined to work out a new composition for this great occasion; and now, upon the very verge of Christmas-day, after all his unceasing anxiety, he found himself without a single idea—wholly unprepared. In his disappointment, he had almost been ready to absent himself altogether from the church; but the sudden appeal of the little girl had compelled him to give up this cowardly refuge, of which in a better mood he would have been ashamed.

The child had not prophesied incorrectly. Under cover of night, the clouds marshaled themselves into gray battalions, which fled precipitately before the lances of the morning, that in resplendent array, column upon column, mounted the eastern sky; and Christmas—this day forever sacred to the world in its grand memories—dawned with the blaze of victorious colors.

Bathed in sunlight, the crystal valley wreathed itself with brilliant jewels; the sparkling trees held up their embossed arches of frosted silver; and from the glittering hill-sides cold flakes of fire burned in diamond hues almost blinding to the eye—for a slight fall of snow during the night had spread itself over the land, and covered it as with a mantle of transfiguration.

The bell in the tower had long been ringing out its invitation to worship, before Franz, carrying the little Alice on his arm, left the house. A singular eagerness rested on the face of the child, whose usually pale cheeks were now colored with a crimson flush that deepened almost to scarlet in the center. She held quietly to Franz, sometimes looking at him for a moment, then turning her eyes again toward the village.

Though she said no word, it seemed as if she could hardly wait until they reached the church, but that her impatient spirit would break its bounds and fly. But Franz walked with a slow, unwilling step. A fierce despair appeared to be consuming him. His disappointment was made keener when he saw the wild expectation with which the little Alice looked forward to his music, and her confident belief that it would be far grander than any thing he had ever done before.

The villagers, by groups, in twos, in threes, with happy faces, coming from far and near, poured into the church. Paying no heed to any one as he passed, Franz entered by the side door, and went immediately up into the organ-gallery. With glad eyes, the little Alice saw the church in its festival decorations. Beautiful wreaths of cedar coiled themselves around the great pillars, and crept in waving lines over altar, arch, and casement, their unfading green sometimes flecked with amber, sometimes dyed in violet light, as the rays of the sun caught the tints from the windows of stained glass. Resting against the center of the chancel rail, a magnificent cross of hot house flowers loaded the air with the perfumes of summer—an incense more pure and holy than the incense of myrrh; and on either side sprays of English ivy, in long and twining branches, displayed their wax-like leaves.

The last vibrations of the bell died away. The congregation chanted its anthem; the minister read the Christmas service; and the first strains of the organ-voluntary, after the close of the litany, sounded through the church. The little Alice, with a throbbing pulse, crept close to Franz as he played; but it was only the familiar music, that the world already knew by heart, and had heard a thousand times before. Poor Franz, warring against himself, had been driven back to the composition of others, though he knew he possessed within him a power that should have created, that should have raised him above all written measure. But now even his execution was a dead, mechanical labor.

A swift expression of keen disappointment fell upon the child’s face. She looked up at him, with a gesture, slight but strangely appealing, and with eyes filled by a sorrowful reproach—such a look as one might wear in the last moment, whose most cherished friend had suddenly turned and dealt him a death-blow.