The First Violin Part 8

"Oh, very soon. And where shall I send my bill to?"

Feeling as if there were something not quite as it should be in the whole proceeding, I looked very earnestly at him, but could find nothing but the most perfect gravity in his expression. I repeated my address and name slowly and distinctly, as befitted so business-like a transaction, and he wrote them down in a little book.

"And you will not forget," said I, "to give me your address when you let me know what I owe you."

"Certainly--when I let you know what you owe me," he replied, putting the little book into his pocket again.

"I wonder if any one will come to meet me," I speculated, my mind more at ease in consequence of the business-like demeanor of my companion.

"Possibly," said he, with an ambiguous half smile, which I did not understand.

"Miss Hallam--the lady I came with--is almost blind. Her maid had to look after her, and I suppose that is why they did not wait for me,"

said I.

"It must have been a very strong reason, at any rate," he said, gravely.

Now the train rolled into the Elberthal station. There were lights, movement, a storm of people all gabbling away in a foreign tongue. I looked out. No face of any one I knew. Courvoisier sprung down and helped me out.

"Now I will put you into a drosky," said he, leading the way to where they stood outside the station.

"Alleestra.s.se, thirty-nine," he said to the man.

"Stop one moment," cried I, leaning eagerly out. At that moment a tall, dark girl pa.s.sed us, going slowly toward the gates. She almost paused as she saw us. She was looking at my companion; I did not see her face, and was only conscious of her as coming between me and him, and so annoying me.

"Please let me thank you," I continued. "You have been so kind, so very kind--"

"_O, bitte sehr!_ It was so kind in you to get lost exactly when and where you did," said he, smiling. "_Adieu, mein Fraulein_," he added, making a sign to the coachman, who drove off.

I saw him no more. "Eugen Courvoisier"--I kept repeating the name to myself, as if I were in the very least danger of forgetting it--"Eugen Courvoisier." Now that I had parted from him I was quite clear as to my own feelings. I would have given all I was worth--not much, truly--to see him for one moment again.

Along a lighted street with houses on one side, a gleaming s.h.i.+ne of water on the other, and trees on both, down a cross-way, then into another street, very wide, and gayly lighted, in the midst of which was an avenue.

We stopped with a rattle before a house door, and I read, by the light of the lamp that hung over it, "39."

CHAPTER VII.

ANNA SARTORIUS.

I was expected. That was very evident. An excited-looking _Dienstmadchen_ opened the door, and on seeing me, greeted me as if I had been an old friend. I was presently rescued by Merrick, also looking agitated.

"Ho, Miss Wedderburn, at last you are here! How Miss Hallam has worried, to be sure."

"I could not help it, I'm very sorry," said I, following her upstairs--up a great many flights of stairs, as it seemed to me, till she ushered me into a sitting-room where I found Miss Hallam.

"Thank Heaven, child! you are here at last. I was beginning to think that if you did not come by this train, I must send some one to Koln to look after you."

"By this train!" I repeated, blankly. "Miss Hallam--what--do you mean?

There has been no other train."

"Two; there was one at four and one at six. I can not tell you how uneasy I have been at your non-appearance."

"Then--then--" I stammered, growing hot all over. "Oh, how horrible!"

"What is horrible?" she demanded. "And you must be starving. Merrick, go and see about something to eat for Miss Wedderburn. Now," she added, as her maid left the room, "tell me what you have been doing."

I told her everything, concealing nothing.

"Most annoying!" she remarked. "A gentleman, you say. My dear child, no gentleman would have done anything of the kind. I am very sorry for it all."

"Miss Hallam," I implored, almost in tears, "please do not tell any one what has happened to me. I will never be such a fool again. I know now--and you may trust me. But do not let any one know how--stupid I have been. I told you I was stupid--I told you several times. I am sure you must remember."

"Oh, yes, I remember. We will say no more about it."

"And the gray shawl," said I.

"Merrick had it."

I lifted my hands and shrugged my shoulders. "Just my luck," I murmured, resignedly, as Merrick came in with a tray.

Miss Hallam, I noticed, continued to regard me now and then as I ate with but small appet.i.te. I was too excited by what had pa.s.sed, and by what I had just heard, to be hungry. I thought it kind, merciful, humane in her to promise to keep my secret and not expose my ignorance and stupidity to strangers.

"It is evident," she remarked, "that you must at once begin to learn German, and then if you do get lost at a railway station again, you will be able to ask your way."

Merrick shook her head with an inexpressibly bitter smile.

"I'd defy any one to learn this 'ere language, ma'am. They call an accident a _Ungluck_; if any one could tell me what that means, I'd thank them, that's all."

"Don't express your opinions, Merrick, unless you wish to seem deficient in understanding; but go and see that Miss Wedderburn has everything she wants--or rather everything that can be got--in her room.

She is tired, and shall go to bed."

I was only too glad to comply with this mandate, but it was long ere I slept. I kept hearing the organ in the cathedral, and that voice of the invisible singer--seeing the face beside me, and hearing the words, "Then you have decided that I am to be trusted?"

"And he was deceiving me all the time!" I thought, mournfully.

I breakfasted by myself the following morning, in a room called the speisesaal. I found I was late. When I came into the room, about nine o'clock, there was no one but myself to be seen. There was a long table with a white cloth upon it, and rows of the thickest cups and saucers it had ever been my fate to see, with distinct evidences that the chief part of the company had already breakfasted. Baskets full of _Brodchen_ and pots of b.u.t.ter, a long India-rubber pipe coming from the gas to light a theemaschine--lots of cane-bottomed chairs, an open piano, two cages with canaries in them; the kettle gently simmering above the gas-flame; for the rest, silence and solitude.

I sat down, having found a clean cup and plate, and glanced timidly at the theemaschine, not daring to cope with its mysteries, until my doubts were relieved by the entrance of a young person with a trim little figure, a coquettishly cut and elaborately braided ap.r.o.n, and a white frilled morgenhaube upon her hair, surmounting her round, heavenward-aspiring visage.

"_Guten morgen, Fraulein_," she said, as she marched up to the darkly mysterious theemaschine and began deftly to prepare coffee for me, and to push the Brodchen toward me. She began to talk to me in broken English, which was very pretty, and while I ate and drank, she industriously sc.r.a.ped little white roots at the same table. She told me she was Clara, the niece of Frau Steinmann, and that she was very glad to see me, but was very sorry I had had so long to wait in Koln yesterday. She liked my dress, and was it _echt Englisch_--also, how much did it cost?

She was a cheery little person, and I liked her. She seemed to like me too, and repeatedly said she was glad I had come. She liked dancing she said. Did I? And she had lately danced at a ball with some one who danced so well--_aber_, quite indescribably well. His name was Karl Linders, and he was, _ach!_ really a remarkable person. A bright blush, and a little sigh accompanied the remark. Our eyes met, and from that moment Clara and I were very good friends.

I went upstairs again, and found that Miss Hallam proposed, during the forenoon, to go and find the Eye Hospital, where she was to see the oculist, and arrange for him to visit her, and shortly after eleven we set out.

The street that I had so dimly seen the night before, showed itself by daylight to be a fair, broad way. Down the middle, after the pleasant fas.h.i.+on of continental towns, was a broad walk, planted with two double rows of lindens, and on either side this lindenallee was the carriage road, private houses, shops, exhibitions, boarding-houses. In the middle, exactly opposite our dwelling, was the New Theater, just drawing to the close of its first season. I looked at it without thinking much about it. I had never been in a theater in my life, and the name was but a name to me.