Part 5

The happy couple spent their honeymoon in Italy. The high ideals which had once inflamed the young painter's heart, and later had threatened to die out in comfortless annihilation, were destined at last to take shape, and to stand before his enchanted eyes in all their beautiful reality. At last he was able, hand in hand with his beloved, to admire the art treasures of Rome, the Vatican, with its immortal paintings by Raphael, Michael Angelo and Paul Veronese. All that they had long known through copies and engravings were now before them in the original, and filled them with delight.

Eugene availed himself of the permission given to artists three days in the week to make copies in the Vatican galleries. Standing at their easels, Eugene and Lucy painted side by side, as they had once done at the Art School, with unbounded happiness beaming in their eyes. Among the masterpieces which represented the highest ideals of art, Lucy realized more and more with a palpitating heart, the omnipotence of true love.

THE STREET SINGER

A VIENNESE STORY

I.

Winter, hard and merciless as a tax collector, stalked threateningly before the dilapidated doors of Vienna's poor.

Back of the white Tanneries, not far from the magnificently built Franz Josef's bridge, where misery and dire poverty had made their dreary home for many decades, winter seemed harder and colder than elsewhere; for with the poor wretched creatures who dwell near these Tanneries, there is--as everybody knows--but little sympathy.

A sweet-looking girl, hardly fourteen years of age, came shivering with bent head, out of one of the poorest and dirtiest homesteads of the poverty-stricken district.

Her thin, threadbare gingham dress, torn in many places, exposed here and there the trembling little form beneath. Over it she wore an old, shabby-looking plaid shawl--apparently her mother's--which blown back now and again by the unceremonious wind, exposed to view an old violin. She held it as tight as if it were the only earthly treasure she possessed. A ribbon, that had once been blue, held up her knotted hair, and gave her the appearance of a gipsy. And as for her shoes, it would seem that only the upper part had preserved a right to the name; for her stiff-frozen little toes were almost on the ground.

She walked on and on, greatly oppressed, giving no heed to the cruel wind that played havoc with her fluttering curls. Her large black eyes, which held a singular fascination in their sparkling depths, were now filled with burning tears.

She was barely on the threshold of girlhood, but life in its unfathomable savagery, had already thrown its challenging gauntlet in her frightened, childish face. She felt instinctively that poor little outcast as she was, she must not shrink from battle, but struggle on as best she could either with cruel wind and weather or with bitter cold and want.

She had struggled bravely, never minding how fruitless her little efforts seemed. But the one thing to which she had never accustomed herself, and which made a storm of tears rain down her pale face, was the frightful apparition of the hollow-eyed skeleton, hunger--that hunger which now held sway over her sick mother's house.

A heavy, shuddering sigh broke from her lips. The utter need and helplessness of her mother and four smaller sisters, for days deprived of all necessaries of life, even of bread to satisfy their hunger, had driven her from the house, their cries and lamentations still ringing in her ears.

"Poor and friendless, with no one to care for us, and poor, dear mother lying ill," she moaned in a suffocating voice, wiping tears of agony from her white face. "It wrings my heart to see her and the little ones so hungry," she said to herself, sobbing aloud.

Near the Franz Josef's bridge she saw a little tavern. She timidly opened the door and entered, quickly producing the old violin. The instrument was the only bequest of her dear father, who had been a musician, and who had instructed her in this art, detecting at an early age her ardent love of study and thirst for a musical education.

Standing near the open door, she first played an obligato which she executed in masterly fashion, and then commenced to sing an old German song, so touchingly--knowing what was at stake--that the people in the tavern, and many passers-by who stopped in amazement at the door, gazed with wondering eyes at the ragged little dark-eyed girl hardly grown out of her baby shoes; and many of them, moved by deep pity, though poor themselves, tossed one, and some of them two coins into her apron. More they could not afford to give, lest their liberality might eventually expose them to the same plight.

Christine beamed with happiness. When her song was finished, she quickly took out of her apron her gathered treasure, counting it with shining eyes. Twenty kreutzers--she counted them again and again. Her stiff little fingers could not hold all at once, but her eyes, wet with happy emotion, were fastened on each of them, and her heart leaped within her at the sight. So many she had never before earned.

She folded her hands as if in fervent prayer, and lifted her dark eyes to Heaven in gratitude, thinking of the joy she would bring to her mother and half-starved sisters when she returned home with an apron-full of fresh baked rolls.

"Say,--Miss--won't ye let me carry yer--fiddle?"

The whisper sank into her ear. She turned hastily around, and saw a poorly-dressed shoemaker's apprentice standing near, gazing at her with his large blue eyes. In his hands he held an old pair of shoes.

He stood, quite silent, with enthusiasm for Christine's exquisite singing beaming from every feature. Presently, with a timid grin, he held out the pair of shoes.

"Here, Miss. I ain't got no money, but I'd like badly ter give you them shoes--er--ter show you that I like good singing. Yes, I do, an' ye sing mighty well," he said, looking admiringly at her and getting as red in the face as an over-ripe apple. "I'll surely get a good cuff or two from master for giving them away, but a shoemaker's boy is used to that, and doesn't care a rap if once in a while he takes a good piff, paff, pouff!" With this exclamation of Meyerbeerian bravado, he demonstrated the operatic knowledge of an up-to-date Viennese apprentice.

Christine looked at him with shining eyes. She understood only one thing--that he wanted to give her a pair of shoes, which, in her estimation seemed almost new. She beamed at him so gratefully with her large, dark eyes, that the embarrassed apprentice, who was about two years older than she, felt a hot wave running down his spine. Never had a lovelier face or sweeter eyes smiled so kindly at the bewildered boy.

"They're yourn, an'--ye'd better try 'em on--an' see if they'll fit," he stammered bashfully. This strange, heavenly shyness was a new sensation for the rough apprentice lad. Until this moment he had never known that there existed such an organ as a palpitating heart within his body.

And before Christine knew how, the new shoes were on her feet. Shoes without holes! Goodness! how could it have happened? And without holes!

"I hope I am not dreaming," she murmured to herself, her face aglow.

"Will ye let me go with ye?" asked the simple-hearted boy, his eyes downcast.

"No--not now; but--on Sunday you can come."

"To yer house? My name is Peter," he replied, greatly bewildered, as he could not think--to save his soul--of anything more important than his name.

"Yes, to my house; and then you can go with me and carry the violin," Christine answered with a sweet smile. But suddenly, ashamed of her boldness, she stopped and counted her kreutzers again.

Peter, however, looked at her with such admiration in his big blue eyes, that something like an electric spark shot through her. Such a happy sensation she had never felt; for no one had ever spoken such kind, encouraging words to her. A tinge of red leaped into her pale cheeks; there was a trembling pant in her voice, when, with averted face, she told him the street and number. Tucking her violin under her arm, she ran quickly up the street.

At the nearest bakery she stopped in order to buy the coveted rolls. But Peter, still under the charm of her large, expressive eyes, stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after her and listening to the receding tap-tap of the little shoes on her feet, which he now realized belonged to some one else. He began to dread the expected punishment, which he knew would be meted out, not so much in curtain lectures as in striking actions, and for some time he stood stock still, racking his brain for an excuse to make their singular disappearance plausible. But his natural light-heartedness soon got the better of him. Shrugging his shoulders, and singing "Piff, paff, pouff, brennet sie," he rushed away, ready to meet his inexorable fate.

II.

"Goodness! you haven't eaten anything all day long, and I bet you're feeble," cried Mrs. Langohr, the next-door neighbor of Christine's mother, throwing the door of her miserable two-room apartment wide open, so that all the neighbors should hear, and praise her charitable inclinations. "O, my God, have mercy on them poor little worms! I must go and make a little farina soup for 'em. See, that's what I am getting out of the Bible! Be good to yer neighbor," she said in a loud tone, apparently for the benefit of the poorly-clad and shy-looking women at the windows.

"O, holy Father in Heaven! Just look here," she screamed, amazed when Christine suddenly appeared with twenty hot rolls in her apron, showing them triumphantly to the neighbors. And rushing into the apartment, she, with a gladdened heart, distributed them among the starving children.

The feeble mother with eyes full of tears, glancing thankfully toward Heaven, listened to Christine's wonderful story about the shoes and the twenty kreutzers. It seemed incredible. So much happiness in one day! And Christine's beautiful smile seemed to fill the squalid room with radiance when she thought of Sunday and the expected arrival of the shoemaker's bashful boy.

Her happiness increased day by day; for every Sunday Peter punctually arrived, always bringing some unusual delicacies with him, and accepting gladly Christine's consent to carry the violin. In fact, he carried it with such dignity and pride, that, standing behind her, it often happened that he bowed his acknowledgment to the audience at the end of each morceau, quite as if he were her partner and one of the performing artists. Then he would take his old cap and gather the contributions, always returning them faithfully to Christine. Every piece of wood that he could deftly worm out of his mistress' household, he carried to Mrs. Miller, Christine's mother, to warm the chilled little limbs of her starving children.

His mistress, the shoemaker's wife, often wondered that the cooked potatoes disappeared from the dinner table as suddenly as if the earth had swallowed them up. She certainly could not imagine that they invariably disappeared into Peter's side-pockets although his occasional grimaces and the red spots on his sensitive skin bore open testimony.

"Now, now, goodness! what's the matter with you, rascal?" the surprised mistress would cry, viewing amazedly his distorted face. And one day, in spite of his Spartan heroism, Peter could not stand it any longer.

"I am sick--stomach-ache--" he stammered, vainly trying to compose himself, and even forcing a sickly smile to his pale lips.

"You grown-up earthworm, you! The idea of having stomach-ache every day at this time!" she responded angrily, adding a few choice words out of her voluminous vocabulary. But being not bad at heart, sympathy soon gained the upper hand, and she said in a milder tone, giving him a small coin with a gesture indicative of large liberality--"Here, you stupid nuisance, you! Go and get a penny's worth of English bitters."

Peter did not require a second command to leave the room. He took the hint and the penny and went straight to Christine's house. But once outside, and in respectable distance from his mistress' observing eyes, he quickly removed the red-hot potatoes from his pant's pockets.

Peter had always been accustomed to save the tips that he received from his master's patrons when he carried home their shoes--chiefly for Sunday nights, that he might enjoy a seat in the last gallery at the theatre. And my! hadn't he been proud and happy when sitting there in his best well-worn suit, and hearing those wonderful songs, "Belle Helene," in Offenbach's toneful operetta, and others which he could not get out of his head for months.

Sometimes, if he had any money left, he would indulge in such luxuries as a half herring and a glass of Pilsner, being a great gourmand. But since he had come to know Christine, everything seemed to have changed. He no longer went to the theatre, but saved all his tips, and went about as if a secret were hidden in his breast.

"Oh, Mrs. Langohr," cried Christine's mother, one cold morning to her next-door neighbor. "Don't laugh, for it is true. Peter has bought a dress for Christine, a winter dress, just imagine!"

Mrs. Langohr held up her hands in amazement. But it was really true. Peter had bought Christine, with his savings, a warm dress, at a second-hand store. Christine was beside herself with joy; she had never known in these days what it was to have a warm rag on her back, and her gratitude welled up and overflowed in her sparkling eyes.

As Christmas-time gradually approached, Mrs. Miller, feeling much better in health, commenced to perform her household duties. But Christine's earnings from her singing and violin diminished as the holidays drew near, and the simple little income seemed about to vanish altogether. Even Peter's pour-boire money threatened to cease, causing him restless nights and much down-heartedness. This discouraging condition of things took all his former desire for playing pranks out of the formerly gay-spirited shoemaker's boy.

And when pious processions of tired pilgrims passed through the streets of Vienna, singing and praying on their way to church, he no longer played any of his old mischievous tricks on them, but took off his hat devoutly, and marched along, praying with folded hands and wet eyes.

"Blessed Virgin--be good to her--I pray to thee--but not for myself--no; only for Christine--she lives under the white Tanneries--only for her I pray!"

III.

A chilling north wind whistled through the deserted streets of the Austrian metropolis, and the snow, towering mountain high, driven by the gale, whirled blindingly around the muffled, shivering pedestrians, hastening hurriedly to their respective homes.

The Franzenering, where the Viennese aristocrats are accustomed to meet in the afternoon hours, to drink tea, consume little cakes and indulge in gay conversations, today was totally empty. No one, it seemed, had ventured to brave the storm, in spite of the attractive display in the show-windows of elegantly designed gowns and hats. And these same show windows were certainly remarkable, for all adornments dear to the feminine heart, wonderful achievements of unusual millinery effects, dazzled the eyes of both young and old.

Christine, holding her violin with stiffened little fingers, stood pale and trembling before one of the most magnificent windows, speechless with wonder, gazing as if in a trance at this modern splendor of feminine attire, the like of which she had never conceived even in her wildest, most fantastic dreams.

Her heart contracted painfully. She thought of her mother and little sisters, freezing, half-starved, hopelessly expectant of Christmas, and her glorious eyes blurred with tears, as she remembered that she, as the bread-winner of the family, was not able to buy them anything for Christmas, not even bread enough to satisfy their hunger. For the first time in her life, she could not think of God and Heaven without bitterness for it seemed that he had indeed forsaken her and her family.

"O God, I thought I was doing my best," she stammered with burning tears running down her blanched face. "What have we done, that we of all others, should die of hunger?" The future stretched before her inner vision, a weary blank, lit by no ray of hope. Convulsively, she clutched the old violin, and wandered away, farther and farther into the raging storm, drifting wherever the wind blew, without aim and without purpose or hope.

The north wind in its increasing fury, commenced to batter tin roofs, chimney-tops, blinds, awnings, flag-poles, as if a giant hand were at work, while odds and ends of debris fell crashing into the streets to bury themselves in the drifts. Those unfortunates who were compelled to brave the elements, fought their way onward like wild beasts, cursing, shouting and screaming aloud.

Half-frozen, nearly blinded by the storm and the hail that cut her delicate face like a knife, Christine suddenly found herself before the open portal of a palatial house. Driven by a momentary impulse for shelter from the cold, penetrating blast, she entered. At once a ray of hope illumined her desolate face. Now, if she were to try once more, and sing for these rich people, warm and comfortable behind those windows!

Quickly she withdrew her violin from its battered case, and began in quivering tones to sing the Lorelei her father had taught her, before anyone was aware of her presence. The wonderful tones of her high soprano rang through the stately mansion, vibrating clear and penetrating all the rooms.

"Here, here, the impertinence!" cried the irritated porter, jumping out of his porter's lodge, pale with anger, and pointing to a sign conspicuously hanging in the entrance of the spacious porte-cochere. "How dare you, mean little baggage, you! Can't you see that beggers and organ-grinders are not allowed to enter here? Heh! screaming at the top of her voice in such weather! Get out! get out! quick! march!" His tone was sneering, and his lips curled contemptuously as he waved his hand disdainfully for her to leave the courtyard.

Greatly frightened and trembling in all her frozen little limbs, Christine was about to obey, and covered her violin, timidly looking at the porter's ugly red face, when suddenly a window on the first floor was flung open. The elegant form of a middle-aged man, with gold-rimmed eye-glasses, leaning out of the window, gave the porter so imperious a command to withdraw at once, that the startled man, hardly daring to lift his eyes to this illustrious personage, retired with many a bob and scrape to his porter's lodge.

Christine, greatly encouraged by this incident, and anxious to use the opportunity, began to sing anew; for she thought that if she won the favor of the man at the window, it must surely mean help for her sorely-tried family. So she sang the Lorelei again--sang overpoweringly those lovely, mystic notes--"Das hat mit threm singen die Lorelei gethan."

The superb sound burst forth from the little shivering form, rocked here and there by the raging storm, and seemed to breathe the longings and distress of a pure childish soul. This piteous appeal for help through the medium of Listz's greatest legendary love-song, was not without effect.

"Superb--a phenomenon--a star!" murmured the man at the window in amazement. He leaned out into the storm, gazing intently at the young singer, for he was no less a personage than Duke Hohenlohe, the greatest musical critic and enthusiast in all Vienna. He withdrew from the window, closing it with a snap.

Christine was speechless with joy, and her dark, glowing eyes flashed in excited bewilderment when a richly liveried butler came down the stairs into the courtyard, handing her five gulden and demanding her address. She stood there--her face flushed with wonder, and her childish lips parted as if hearing the magic music of another world. Cyclones of wind, thundering waves of ice and snow were forgotten. Hope had entered her heart, and with the five gulden clasped tightly to her breast, she made her way out of the courtyard, past the porter's lodge into the street. She hurried along as best she could, her heart singing a holy song of gratitude, and her lips smiling at the thought of the happiness she was bringing to those at home. The last part of the way she ran and burst into the room where the family were huddled over a few half dead coals, like a childish almoner of plenty, stammering out her tale.

"It must have been the Lord holy, Jesus Christ, who had mercy on me and my children," cried the invalid mother, trembling with excitement, and folding her thin hands devoutly. "O Lord," she continued, "most mighty and most merciful Saviour of all the widows and orphans, accept the lowly thanks of a poor invalid." She looked up to Heaven with a gladdened heart as she saw her children happy, and for once, well-fed.

But Christine sat in a corner of the poorly furnished room as if in a dream. A vague, confused remembrance of all that had happened in the courtyard filled her with bewilderment. The only thing she really saw plainly was the joyous faces around her, the result of her gift--the five gulden she had received.

IV.

The whole neighborhood was in an uproar. A score of tongues were wagging, ears were cocked to hear the news, and gesticulations and cries were everywhere. Even the invalids of the white Tanneries with their ridiculous looking caps, stretched their shaky heads out of the windows in order to listen to the great news related by Mrs. Langohr, the wandering gossip-monger of this poverty-stricken district.

"A real Count has heard her on Christmas Eve, you say?"

"A Count! Naw! Something higher up, smarty," snapped the gossip-monger, raising her voice to a shrill pitch and throwing herself into the proper attitude of importance. "It was a Duke if you want to know it. Yes, he heard her, and yesterday sent his carriage for her."

"His carriage!" echoed the crowd, and fell back amazed, unwilling to trust their own ears.

"With four white horses attached to it," added Mrs. Langohr with a triumphant laugh. "A girl from our suburb, imagine!"

"Hump! that's a greater miracle than the stories of the returning Pilgrims from Rome," sniffed an old, wrinkled woman, shaking her ludicrously shaped head with a certain vehemence and "soit disant" dignity which eminently befitted one enjoying the reputation of the female Socrates of the suburb.

The nightcaps at the windows commenced to shake visibly, and a heated argument of possible reasons for this exciting event followed.

"What will he do with her?" asked the female Socrates with solemnity, wiping each wrinkle separately with a dubious-looking red handkerchief, a sign that she intended to cross-examine everybody rigidly.

"What he--the Duke will do? He will make a great singer out of her, smarty," sneered the next-door neighbor, disappearing quickly indoors, to the great disappointment of the neighbors who had gathered for the purpose of hearing the great news at first hand with all the details.

"A great singer?" asked the shaky nightcaps at the windows, with dubious smiles, ignorant of what had gone before, and looking in blank amazement at each other. "Who--who is he?"

But so it had actually happened.

Christine had attracted first the attention, then the interest of Duke Hohenlohe, and had been placed in the Vienna Conservatory of Music. Here, as a protege of one of its principal patrons, she was being carefully instructed by the most prominent singing teachers of the institution, and making extraordinary progress.