Tales from Bohemia Part 5

"What, never? Not even just that night--that 17th of February? Try to recall it, Heinrich Spellerberg. You remember she came in late, and--who would think that those soft white fingers had been strong enough?"

"Hush, my friendt! I not touch her! She kill herself--she try to hang and she shoke her neck. No, no, to you I vill not lie! You speak all true! Mein Gott! Vat vill you do?"

The man was on his knees. I thought of the circ.u.mstances, the persons concerned, the high-strung, sensitive lover of music, the coa.r.s.e, derisive, perhaps faithless woman, and I replied quickly:

"What will I do? Nothing to-night. It's none of my business, anyhow.

I'll sleep over it and tell you in the morning."

I left him alone.

In the morning the professor's door stood ajar. I looked in. Man, clothes, violin case, and valise had gone. Whither I have not tried to ascertain.

When the new opera was produced that evening the ---- Theatre orchestra was unexpectedly minus two of its second violins, for Schaaf, half-distracted, was wandering the cold streets in search of his friend.

III. -- ON THE BRIDGE

When I tell you, my only friend, to whom I so rarely write and whom I more rarely see, that my lonely life has not been without love for woman, you will perhaps laugh or doubt.

"What," you will say, "that gaunt old spectre in his attic with his books, his tobacco, and his three flower-pots! He would not know that there is such a word as love, did he not encounter it now and then in his reading."

True, I have divided my days between the books in a rich man's counting-room and those in my attic. True, again, I have never been more than merely pa.s.sable to look at, even in my best days.

Yet I have loved a woman.

During the five years when my elder brother lay in a hospital across the river, where he died, it was my custom to visit him every Sunday.

I enjoyed the afternoon walk to the suburbs, when the air has more of nature in it, especially that portion of the walk which lay upon the bridge. More life than was usual upon the bridge moved there on Sunday.

Then the cars were crowded with people seeking the parks. Many crossed on foot, stopping to look idly down at the dark and sluggish water.

One afternoon, as I stood thus leaning over the parapet, the sound of woman's gentle laugh caused me to turn and ocularly inquire its source.

The woman and a man were approaching. At the side of the woman walked soberly a handsome dog, a collie. There was that in their appearance and manner which plainly told me that here were husband and wife, of the middle cla.s.s, intelligent but poor, out for a stroll. That they were quite devoted to each other was easily discoverable.

The man looked about thirty years of age, was tall, slender, and was neither strong nor handsome, but had an amiable face. He was doubtless a clerk fit to be something better. The woman was perhaps twenty-four. She was not quite beautiful, yet she was more than pretty. She was of good size and figure, and the short plush coat that she wore, and the manner in which she kept her hands thrust in the pockets thereof, gave to her a dauntless air which the quiet and affectionate expression of her face softened.

She was a brunette, her eyes being large and distinctly dark brown, her face having a peculiar complexion which is most quickly affected by any change in health.

The colour of her cheek, the dark rim under her eyes, and the other indefinable signs, indicated some radical ailment. In the quick glance that I had of that pair, while the woman was smiling, a feeling of pity came over me. I have never detected the exact cause of that emotion.

Perhaps in the woman's face I read the trace of past bodily and mental suffering; perhaps a subtle mark that death had already set there.

Neither the woman nor her husband noticed me as they pa.s.sed. The dog regarded me cautiously with the corner of his eye. I probably would never have thought of the three again had I not seen them upon the bridge, under exactly the same circ.u.mstances, on the next Sunday.

So these young and then happy people walked here every Sunday, I thought. This, perhaps, was an event looked forward to throughout the week. The husband, doubtless, was kept a prisoner and slave at his desk from Monday morning until Sat.u.r.day night, with respite only for eating and sleeping. Such cases are common, even with people who can think and have some taste for luxury, and who are not devoid of love for the beautiful.

The sight of happiness which exists despite the cruelty of fate and man, and which is temporarily unconscious of its own liabilities to interruption and extinction, invariably fills me with sadness, and the sadness which arose at the contemplation of these two beings begat in me a strange sympathy for an interest in them.

On Sundays thereafter I would go early to the bridge and wait until they pa.s.sed, for it proved that this was their habitual Sunday walk.

Sometimes they would pause and join those who gazed down at the black river. I would, now and again, resume my journey toward the hospital while they thus stood, and I would look back from a distance. The bridge would then appear to me an abrupt ascent, rising to the dense city, and their figures would stand out clearly against the background.

It became a matter of care to me to observe each Sunday whether the health of either had varied during the previous week. The husband, always pale and slight, showed little change and that infrequently.

But the fluctuations of the woman as indicated by complexion, gait, expression and otherwise, were numerous and p.r.o.nounced. Often she looked brighter and more robust than on the preceding Sunday. Her face would be then rounded out, and the dark crescents beneath her eyes would be less marked. Then I found myself elated.

But on the next Sunday the cheeks had receded slightly, the healthy l.u.s.tre of the eyes had given way to an ominous glow, the warning of death had returned. Then my heart would sink, and, sighing, I would murmur inaudibly:

"This is one of the bad Sundays."

There came a time when every Sunday was a bad one.

What made me love this woman? Simply the unmistakable completeness and constancy of her devotion to her husband,--the absorption of the woman in the wife. Had the strange ways of chance ever made known to her my feelings, and had she swerved from that devotion even to render me back love for love, then my own adoration for her would surely have departed.

Yes, I loved her,--if to fill one's life with thoughts of a woman, if in fancy to see her face by day and night, if to have the will to die for her or to bear pain for her, if those and many more things mean love.

My richest joy was to see her content with her husband, and the darkest woe of my life was to antic.i.p.ate the termination of their happiness.

So the Sundays pa.s.sed. One afternoon I waited until almost dusk, yet the couple did not appear.

For seven Sundays in succession I did not meet them upon their wonted walk.

On the eighth Sunday I saw the dog first, then the man. The latter was looking over the railing. The woman was not with him. Apprehensively I sought with my eyes his face. Much grief and loneliness were depicted there.

Was he or I the greater mourner? I wondered.

I suppose two years pa.s.sed after that day ere I again beheld the widower--whose name I did not and probably never shall know--upon the bridge. The dog was not with him this time. It was a fine, sunny afternoon in May. Grief was no longer in his face. By his side was a very pretty, animated, rosy little woman whom I had never seen before.

They walked close to each other, and she looked with the utmost tenderness into his face. She evidently was not yet entirely accustomed to the wedding-ring which I observed on her finger.

I think that tears came to my eyes at this sight. Those great brown eyes, the plush sack, the lovely face that had borne the impress of sorrow so speedily, had felt death--those might never have existed, so soon had they been forgotten by the one being in the world for whom that face had worn the aspect of a perfect love.

Yet one upon whom those eyes never rested has remembered. And surely the memory of her is mine to wed, since he, whose right was to cherish it, has allowed himself to be divorced from it in so brief a time.

The memory of her is with me always, fills my soul, beautifies my life, makes green and radiant this existence which all who know me think cold, bleak, empty, repellent.

You will not laugh, then, my friend, when I tell you that love is not to me a thing unknown.

So runs a part of the last letter to my father that the old bookkeeper ever wrote.

IV. -- THE TRIUMPH OF MOGLEY

[Footnote: Courtesy of _Lippincott's Magazine_.Copyright, 1892, by J.B.

Lippincott Company.]

Mr. Mogley was an actor of what he termed the "old school." He railed against the prevalence of travelling theatrical troupes, and when he att.i.tudinized in the barroom, his left elbow upon the bra.s.s rail, his right hand encircling a gla.s.s of foaming beer, he often clamoured for a return of the system of permanently located dramatic companies, and sighed at the departure of the "palmy days."