University of Virginia Library

6. VI.

Three years had passed by and still the situation was unchanged. Halfdan still taught music and told fairy stories to the children. He had a good many more pupils now than three years ago, although he had made no effort to solicit patronage, and had never tried to advertise his talent by what he regarded as vulgar and inartistic display. But Mrs. Van Kirk, who had by this time discovered his disinclination to assert himself, had been only the more active; had “talked him up” among her aristocratic friends; had given musical soirées, at which she had coaxed him to play the principal rôle, and had in various other ways exerted herself in his behalf. It was getting to be quite fashionable to admire his quiet, unostentatious style of playing, which was so far removed from the noisy bravado and clap-trap then commonly in vogue.

Even professional musicians began to indorse him, and some, who had discovered that “there was money in him,” made him tempting offers for a public engagement. But, with characteristic modesty, he distrusted their verdict; his sensitive nature shrank from anything which had the appearance of self-assertion or display.

But Edith—ah, if it had not been for Edith he might have found courage to enter at the door of fortune, which was now opened ajar. That fame, if he should gain it, would bring him any nearer to her, was a thought that was alien to so unworldly a temperament as his. And any action that had no bearing upon his relation to her, left him cold—seemed unworthy of the effort. If she had asked him to play in public; if she had required of him to go to the North Pole, or to cut his own throat, I verily believe he would have done it. And at last Edith did ask him to play. She and Olson had plotted together, and from the very friendliest motives agreed to play into each other's hands.

“If you only would consent to play,” said she, in her own persuasive way, one day as they had finished their lesson, “we should all be so happy. Only think how proud we should be of your success, for you know there is nothing you

can't do in the way of music if you really want to.”

“Do you really think so?” exclaimed he, while his eyes suddenly grew large and luminous.

“Indeed I do,” said Edith, emphatically.

“And if—if I played well,” faltered he, “would it really please you?”

“Of course it would,” cried Edith, laughing; “how can you ask such a foolish question?”

“Because I hardly dared to believe it.”

“Now listen to me,” continued the girl, leaning forward in her chair, and beaming all over with kindly officiousness; “now for once you must be rational and do just what I tell you. I shall never like you again if you oppose me in this, for I have set my heart upon it; you must promise beforehand that you will be good and not make any objection. Do you hear?”

When Edith assumed this tone toward him, she might well have made him promise to perform miracles. She was too intent upon her benevolent scheme to heed the possible inferences which he might draw from her sudden display of interest.

“Then you promise?” repeated she, eagerly, as he hesitated to answer.

“Yes, I promise.”

“Now, you must not be surprised; but mamma and I have made arrangements with Mr. S— that you are to appear under his auspices at a concert which is to be given a week from to-night. All our friends are going, and we shall take up all the front seats, and I have already told my gentlemen friends to scatter through the audience, and if they care anything for my favor, they will have to applaud vigorously.”

Halfdan reddened up to his temples, and began to twist his watch-chain nervously.

“You must have small confidence in my ability,” he murmured, “since you resort to precautions like these.”

“But my dear Mr. Birch,” cried Edith, who was quick to discover that she had made a mistake, “it is not kind in you to mistrust me in that way. If a New York audience were as highly cultivated in music as you are, I admit that my precautions would be superfluous. But the papers, you know, will take their tone from the audience, and therefore we must make use of a little innocent artifice to make sure of it. Everything depends upon the success of your first public appearance, and if your friends can

in this way help you to establish the reputation which is nothing but your right, I am sure you ought not to bind their hands by your foolish sensitiveness. You don't know the American way of doing things as well as I do, therefore you must stand by your promise, and leave everything to me.”

It was impossible not to believe that anything Edith chose to do was above reproach. She looked so bewitching in her excited eagerness for his welfare that it would have been inhuman to oppose her. So he meekly succumbed, and began to discuss with her the programme for the concert.

During the next week there was hardly a day that he did not read some startling paragraph in the newspapers about “the celebrated Scandinavian pianist,” whose appearance at S— Hall was looked forward to as the principal event of the coming season. He inwardly rebelled against the well-meant exaggerations; but as he suspected that it was Edith's influence which was in this way asserting itself in his behalf, he set his conscience at rest and remained silent.

The evening of the concert came at last, and, as the papers stated the next morning, “the

large hall was crowded to its utmost capacity with a select and highly appreciative audience.” Edith must have played her part of the performance skillfully, for as he walked out upon the stage, he was welcomed with an enthusiastic burst of applause, as if he had been a world-renowned artist. At Edith's suggestion, her two favorite nocturnes had been placed first upon the programme; then followed one of those ballads of Chopin, whose rhythmic din and rush sweep onward, beleaguering the ear like eager, melodious hosts, charging in thickening ranks and columns, beating impetuous retreats, and again uniting with one grand emotion the wide-spreading army of sound for the final victory. Besides these, there was one of Liszt's “Rhapsodies Hongroises,” an impromptu by Schubert, and several orchestral pieces; but the greater part of the programme was devoted to Chopin, because Halfdan, with his great, hopeless passion laboring in his breast, felt that he could interpret Chopin better than he could any other composer. He carried his audience by storm. As he retired to the dressing-room, after having finished the last piece, his friends, among whom Edith and Mrs. Van Kirk were the most conspicuous, thronged about him, showering their praises and congratulations upon him. They insisted with much friendly urging upon taking him home in their carriage; Clara kissed him, Mrs. Van Kirk introduced him to her lady acquaintances as “our friend, Mr. Birch,” and Edith held his hand so long in hers that he came near losing his presence of mind and telling her then and there that he loved her. As his eyes rested on her, they became suddenly suffused with tears, and a vast bewildering happiness vibrated through his frame. At last he tore himself away and wandered aimlessly through the long, lonely streets. Why could he not tell Edith that he loved her? Was there any disgrace in loving? This heavenly passion which so suddenly had transfused his being, and year by year deadened the substance of his old self, creating in its stead something new and wild and strange which he never could know, but still held infinitely dear —had it been sent to him merely as a scourge to test his capacity for suffering?

Once, while he was a child, his mother had told him that somewhere in this wide world there lived a maiden whom God had created for him, and for him alone, and when he should see her, he should love her, and his life should

thenceforth be all for her. It had hardly occurred to him, then, to question whether she would love him in return, it had appeared so very natural that she should. Now he had found this maiden, and she had been very kind to him; but her kindness had been little better than cruelty, because he had demanded something more than kindness. And still he had never told her of his love. He must tell her even this very night while the moon rode high in the heavens and all the small differences between human beings seemed lost in the vast starlit stillness. He knew well that by the relentless glare of the daylight his own insignificance would be cruelly conspicuous in the presence of her splendor; his scruples would revive, and his courage fade.

The night was clear and still. A clock struck eleven in some church tower near by. The Van Kirk mansion rose tall and stately in the moonlight, flinging a dense mass of shadow across the street. Up in the third story he saw two windows lighted; the curtains were drawn, but the blinds were not closed. All the rest of the house was dark. He raised his voice and sang a Swedish serenade which seemed in perfect concord with his own mood. His clear tenor

rose through the silence of the night, and a feeble echo flung it back from the mansion opposite:3

The curtain was drawn aside, the window cautiously raised, and the outline of Edith's beautiful head appeared dark and distinct against the light within. She instantly recognized him.

“You must go away, Mr. Birch,” came her voice in an anxious whisper out of the shadow. “Pray go away. You will wake up the people.”

Her words were audible enough, but they failed to convey any meaning to his excited mind. Once more his voice floated upward to her opened window:

“And I yearn to reach thy dwelling,

Yearn to rise from earth's fierce turmoil;

Sweetest star upward to thee,

Yearn to rise, bright star to thee.”

“Dear Mr. Birch,” she whispered once more in tones of distress. “Pray do go away. Or

perhaps,” she interrupted herself “—wait one moment and I will come down.”

Presently the front door was noiselessly opened, and Edith's tall, lithe form, dressed in a white flowing dress, and with her blonde hair rolling loosely over her shoulders, appeared for an instant, and then again vanished. With one leap Halfdan sprang up the stairs and pushed through the half-opened door. Edith closed the door behind him, then with rapid steps led the way to the back parlor where the moon broke feebly through the bars of the closed shutters.

“Now Mr. Birch,” she said, seating herself upon a lounge, “you may explain to me what this unaccountable behavior of yours means. I should hardly think I had deserved to be treated in this way by you.”

Halfdan was utterly bewildered; a nervous fit of trembling ran through him, and he endeavored in vain to speak. He had been prepared for passionate reproaches, but this calm severity chilled him through, and he could only gasp and tremble, but could utter no word in his defense.

“I suppose you are aware,” continued Edith, in the same imperturbable manner, “that if I

had not interrupted you, the policeman would have heard you, and you would have been arrested for street disturbance. Then to-morrow we should have seen it in all the newspapers, and I should have been the laughing-stock of the whole town.”

No, surely he had never thought of it in that light; the idea struck him as entirely new. There was a long pause. A cock crowed with a drowsy remoteness in some neighboring yard, and the little clock on the mantel-piece ticked on patiently in the moonlit dusk.

“If you have nothing to say,” resumed Edith, while the stern indifference in her voice perceptibly relaxed, “then I will bid you good-night.”

She arose, and with a grand sweep of her drapery, moved toward the door.

“Miss Edith,” cried he, stretching his hands despairingly after her, “you must not leave me.”

She paused, tossed her hair back with her hands, and gazed at him over her shoulder. He threw himself on his knees, seized the hem of her dress, and pressed it to his lips. It was a gesture of such inexpressible humility that even a stone would have relented.

“Do not be foolish, Mr. Birch,” she said, trying

to pull her dress away from him. “Get up, and if you have anything rational to say to me, I will stay and listen.”

“Yes, yes,” he whispered, hoarsely, “I shall be rational. Only do not leave me.”

She again sank down wearily upon the lounge, and looked at him in expectant silence.

“Miss Edith,” pleaded he in the same hoarse, passionate undertone, “have pity on me, and do not despise me. I love you—oh—if you would but allow me to die for you, I should be the happiest of men.”

Again he shuddered, and stood long gazing at her with a mute, pitiful appeal. A tear stole into Edith's eye and trickled down over her cheek.

“Ah, Mr. Birch,” she murmured, while a sigh shook her bosom, “I am sorry—very sorry that this misfortune has happened to you. You have deserved a better fate than to love me—to love a woman who can never give you anything in return for what you give her.”

“Never?” he repeated mournfully, “never?”

“No, never! You have been a good friend to me, and as such I value you highly, and I had hoped that you would always remain so. But I see that it cannot be. It will perhaps be best

for you henceforth not to see me, at least not until—pardon the expression—you have out-lived this generous folly. And now, you know, you will need me no more. You have made a splendid reputation, and if you choose to avail yourself of it, your fortune is already made. I shall always rejoice to hear of your success, and —and if you should ever need a friend, you must come to no one but me. I know that these are feeble words, Mr. Birch, and if they seem cold to you, you must pardon me. I can say nothing more.”

They were indeed feeble words, although most cordially spoken. He tried to weigh them, to measure their meaning, but his mind was as if benumbed, and utterly incapable of thought. He walked across the floor, perhaps only to do something, not feeling where he trod, but still with an absurd sensation that he was taking immoderately long steps. Then he stopped abruptly, wrung his hands, and gazed at Edith. And suddenly, like a flash in a vacuum, the thought shot through his brain that he had seen this very scene somewhere—in a dream, in a remote childhood, in a previous existence, he did not know when or where. It seemed strangely familiar, and in the next instant strangely meaningless

and unreal. The walls, the floor— everything began to move, to whirl about him; he struck his hands against his forehead, and sank down into a damask-covered easy-chair. With a faint cry of alarm, Edith sprang up, seized a bottle of cologne which happened to be within reach, and knelt down at his side. She put her arm around his neck, and raised his head.

“Mr. Birch, dear Mr. Birch,” she cried, in a frightened whisper, “for God's sake come to yourself! O God, what have I done?”

She blew the eau-de-cologne into his face, and, as he languidly opened his eyes, he felt the touch of her warm hand upon his cheeks and his forehead.

“Thank heaven! he is better,” she murmured, still continuing to bathe his temples. “How do you feel now, Mr. Birch?” she added, in a tone of anxious inquiry.

“Thank you, it was an unpardonable weakness,” he muttered, without changing his attitude. “Do not trouble yourself about me. I shall soon be well.”

It was so sweet to be conscious of her gentle ministry, that it required a great effort, an effort of conscience, to rouse him once more, as his strength returned.

“Had you not better stay?” she asked, as he rose to put on his overcoat. “I will call one of the servants and have him show you a room. We will say to-morrow morning that you were taken ill, and nobody will wonder.”

“No, no,” he responded, energetically. “I am perfectly strong now.” But he still had to lean on a chair, and his face was deathly pale.

“Farewell, Miss Edith,” he said; and a tender sadness trembled in his voice. “Farewell. We shall—probably—never meet again.”

“Do not speak so,” she answered, seizing his hand. “You will try to forget this, and you will still be great and happy. And when fortune shall again smile upon you, and—and— you will be content to be my friend, then we shall see each other as before.”

“No, no,” he broke forth, with a sudden hoarseness. “It will never be.”

He walked toward the door with the motions of one who feels death in his limbs; then stopped once more and his eyes lingered with inexpressible sadness on the wonderful, beloved form which stood dimly outlined before him in the twilight. Then Edith's measure of misery, too, seemed full. With the divine heedlessness which belongs to her sex, she rushed up toward

him, and remembering only that he was weak and unhappy, and that he suffered for her sake, she took his face between her hands and kissed him. He was too generous a man to misinterpret the act; so he whispered but once more: “Farewell,” and hastened away.