Richard Vandermarck Part 4

"Henrietta, at least you shall give us some music, and Mr. Langenau, I am sure you will be good enough to help us; I will send over to the school-room for that flute and those piles of music that I've seen upon a shelf, and you will be charitable enough to play for us."

"I must beg you will not take that trouble."

"Oh, Mr. Langenau, that is selfish now."

Mrs. Hollenbeck did not press the subject then, but made herself thoroughly delightful during tea, and as we rose from the table renewed the request in a low tone to Mr. Langenau: and the result was, a little after eight o'clock he came into the parlor where we sat. A place was made for him at the table around which we were sitting, and Mrs.

Hollenbeck began the process of putting him at his ease. There was no need. The tutor was quite as much at ease as any one, and, in a little while, imperceptibly became the person to whom we were all listening.

Charlotte Benson at last gave up her book, and took her work-box instead. We were no longer moping and dull around the table. And bye and bye Henrietta, much alarmed, was sent to the piano, and her poor little music certainly sounded very meagre when Mr. Langenau touched the keys.

I think he consented to play not to appear rude, but with the firm intention of not being the instrument of our entertainment, and not being made use of out of his own accepted calling. But happily for us, he soon forgot all about us, and played on, absorbed in himself and in his music. We listened breathlessly, the others quite as much engrossed as I, because they all knew much more of music than I did. Suddenly, after playing for a long while, he started from the piano, and came back to the table. He was evidently agitated. Before the others could say a word of thanks or wonder, I cried, in a fear of the cessation of what gave me such intense pleasure,

"Oh, sing something; can't you sing?"

"Yes, I can sing," he said, looking down at me with those dangerous eyes. "Will it give you pleasure if I sing for you?"

He did not wait for an answer, but turned back to the piano.

He had said "if I sing for you," and I knew that for me he was singing.

I do not know what it was for others, but for me, it was the only true music that I had ever heard, the only music that I could have begged might never cease, but flood over all the present and the future, satisfying every sense. Other voices had roused and thrilled, this filled me. I asked no more, and could have died with that sound in my ears.

"Why, Pauline! child! what is it?" cried Mrs. Hollenbeck, as the music ceased and Mr. Langenau. again came back to the circle round the table.

Every one looked: I was choking with sobs.

"Oh, don't, I don't want you to speak to me," I cried, putting away her hand and darting from the room. I was not ashamed of myself, even when I was alone in my room. The powerful magic lasted still, through the silence and darkness, till I was aroused by the voices of the others coming up to bed.

Mrs. Hollenbeck knocked at my door with her bedroom candle in her hand, and, as she stood talking to me, the others strayed in to join her and to satisfy their curiosity.

"You are very sensitive to music, are you not?" said Charlotte Benson, contemplatively. She had tried me on Mompssen, and the "Seven Lamps,"

and found me wanting, and now perhaps hoped to find some other point less faulty.

"I do not know," I said, honestly. "I seem to have been very sensitive to-night."

"But you are not always?" asked Henrietta Palmer. "You do not always cry when people sing?"

"Why, no," I said with great contempt. "But I never heard any one sing like that before."

"He does sing well," said Mrs. Hollenbeck, thoughtfully.

"Immense expression and a fine voice," added Charlotte Benson.

"He has been educated for the stage, you may be sure," said Mary Leighton, with a little spite. "As Miss d'Estree says, I never heard anyone sing like that, out of the chorus of an opera."

"Well, I think," returned Charlotte Benson, "if there were many voices like that in ordinary choruses, one would be glad to dispense with the solos and duets."

"Oh, you would not find his voice so wonderful, if you heard it out of a parlor. It is very well, but it would not fill a concert hall, much less an opera house. No; you may be sure he has been educated for some of those German choruses; you know they are very fine musicians."

"Well, I don't know that it is anything to us what he was educated for,"

said Charlotte Benson, sharply. "He has given us a very delightful evening, and I, for one, am much obliged to him."

"_Et moi aussi"_ murmured Henrietta, wreathing her large beautiful arms about her friend, and the two sauntered away.

Mary Leighton, in general ill-humor, and still remembering the walk of the last evening, desired to fire a parting-shot, and exclaimed, as she went out, "Well, I think it is something to us; I like to have gentlemen about me."

"You need not be uneasy," said Mrs. Hollenbeck, a little stiffly. "I think Mr. Langenau is a gentleman."

But at this moment his step was heard in the hall below, and there was an end put to the conversation.

CHAPTER VI.

MATINAL.

Last night, when some one spoke his name, From my swift blood that went and came A thousand little shafts of flame Were s.h.i.+vered in my narrow frame.

_Tennyson_.

The next morning was brilliant and cool, the earth and heavens s.h.i.+ning after the rain of the past night. I was dressed long, long before breakfast: it would be so tiresome to wait in my room till the bell rang; yet if I went down-stairs, would it not look as if I wanted to see Mr. Langenau again? I need not go to the library, of course, but I could scarcely avoid being seen from the library if I went out. But why suppose that he would be down again so early? It was very improbable, and so, affectionately deceived, I put on a hat and walking-jacket and stole down the stairs. I saw by the clock in the lower hall that it was half an hour earlier than I had come down the morning before; at which I was secretly chagrined, for now there was no danger, _alias_ hope, of seeing Mr. Langenau.

But probably he had forgotten all about the foolish half-hour that had given me so much to think about. I glanced into the library, which was empty, and hurried out of the hall-door, secretly disappointed.

I took the path that led over the hill to the river. It pa.s.sed through the garden, under the long arbors of grapevines, over the hill, and through a grove of maples, ending at the river where the boat-house stood. The brightness of the morning was not lost on me, and before I reached the maple-grove I was buoyant and happy. At the entrance of the grove (which was traversed by several paths, the princ.i.p.al coming up directly from the river) I came suddenly upon the tutor, walking rapidly, with a pair of oars over his shoulder. He started, and for a moment we both stood still and did not speak. I could only think with confusion of my emotion when he sang.

"You are always early," he said, with his slight, very slight, foreign accent, "earlier than yesterday by half an hour," he added, looking at his watch. My heart gave a great bound of pleasure. Then he had not forgotten! How he must have seen all this.

He stood and talked with me for some moments, and then desperately I made a movement to go on. I do not believe, at least I am not sure, that at first he had any intention of going with me. But it was not in human nature to withstand the flattery of such emotion as his presence seemed always to inspire in me; and then, I have no doubt, he had a certain pleasure in talking to me outside of that; and then the morning was so lovely and he had so much of books.

He proposed to show me a walk I had not taken. There was a little hesitation in his manner, but he was rea.s.sured by my look of pleasure, and throwing down the oars under a tree, he turned and walked beside me.

No doubt he said to himself, "America! This paradise of girlhood;--there can be no objection." It was heavenly sweet, that walk--the birds, the sky, the dewiness and freshness of all nature and all life. It seemed the unstained beginning of all things to me.

The woods were wet; we could not go through them, and so we went a longer way, along the river and back by the road.

This time he did not do all the talking, but made me talk, and listened carefully to all I said; and I was so happy, talking was not any effort.

At last he made some allusion to the music of last night; that he was so glad to see that I loved music as I did. "But I don't particularly," I said in confusion, with a great fear of being dishonest, "at least I never thought I did before, and I am so ignorant. I don't want you to think I know anything about it, for you would be disappointed." He was silent, and, I felt sure, because he was already disappointed; in fear of which I went on to say--

"I never heard any one sing like that before; I am very sorry that it gave any one an impression that I had a knowledge of music, when I hadn't. I don't care about it generally, except in church, and I can't understand what made me feel so yesterday."

"Perhaps it is because you were in the mood for it," he said. "It is often so, one time music gives us pleasure, another time it does not."

"That may be so; but your voice, in speaking, even, seems to me different from any other. It is almost as good as music when you speak; only the music fills me with such feelings."

"You must let me sing for you again," he said, rather low, as we walked slowly on.

"Ah; if you only will," I answered, with a deep sigh of satisfaction.