"My beautiful "cello is wasted in that food hole," said Poons to Von Barwig in German, then he laughed and told him a funny story that he had read that day in the _Fliegende Blatter_. He did his best to make the old man laugh with him, but Von Barwig only smiled sadly. He did not speak; his heart was too heavy.
"It won"t last long! You see, it won"t last long!" said Pinac, again trying to comfort him. "Come, boys, we go upstairs and play. We play for you, Anton, eh?"
Von Barwig made no reply. The men looked at each other significantly and tried to cheer him up by striking up a song and marching around the room; but they saw that the iron had entered deep, deep into his soul, and that he was thoroughly disheartened.
"Come! We go and play; perhaps that will arouse him," whispered Pinac to the others. And they marched out of the room singing the refrain of one of the student glees that Von Barwig had taught them.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Beverly brings Helene a wedding gift.]
Von Barwig sat there quite still for a long time. His thoughts were formless. In a chaotic way he realised that he had played the game of life and had lost; he seemed to feel instinctively that the end had come. He had the Museum to go to, that could supply his daily needs, but he was tired, oh, so tired of the struggle. There was nothing to look forward to--nothing, nothing. He arose with a deep, deep sigh.
"I am tired," he said to himself, "tired out completely. I am like an old broken-down violin that can no longer emit a sound. My heart is gone; there is no sounding post; I am finished. I have been finished a long time, only I did not know it." He arose slowly from his chair and took his pipe off the mantelpiece. As he slowly filled it his eyes lighted on a wooden baton that lay on the mantelpiece. He took it up and looked at it. It was the baton with which he conducted his last symphony. He smiled and shook his head. "I am through; thoroughly and completely through," and he broke the conductor"s wand in pieces and threw them into the fire. "That finishes me!" he said. "I am snapped; broken in little bits. I did not ask to live, but now,--now, I ask to die! To die, that is all I ask, to die." He took out the little miniature of his wife and looked at it long and tenderly. "Elene, Elene! My wife, where are you? If you knew what I go through you would come to me! Give me the sign I wait for so long, that I may find you."
He listened, but no answer came; then a new thought came to him.
"I go back home, home; for here I am a stranger; they do not know me.
The way is long, so long--" and then he started, for he heard the strains of the second movement of his symphony which was being played in the room above. It brought him back to himself, and he listened--listened as one who hears a voice from the dead. It seemed to him that the requiem of all his hopes was being played. He was still looking at the picture of his wife when Jenny entered. She had come to fetch the lamp, to fill it with oil. The short winter afternoon was drawing to a close and the dusk was deepening into darkness. The red rays of the setting sun came in through the window and as it bathed him in its crimson glow it made a sort of a halo around the old man"s head. Jenny gazed at him for a long time and was surprised that he did not speak; but Von Barwig was not conscious of her presence. She looked at him more closely and saw the tears in his eyes; then she came over to him and nestled closely by his side. In a moment her woman"s instinct divined his need of sympathy and her heart went out to him.
"Don"t look like that," she pleaded, "I can"t bear to see it! I"ve always known that something troubled you, that you"ve something to bear that you"ve kept back from us. Tell me, tell me! Don"t keep it to yourself, it"s eating your heart out. You know I love you; don"t--don"t keep it back," and she placed her arm around his neck and wept as if her heart would break. Her action brought Von Barwig to himself and he patted her gently on the back. "Why, Jenny, my little Jenny! Yes, I know you love me, and I--I tell you. Yes, Jenny, I tell you----"
Jenny nestled closer to him; it was a sorrowful moment for the old man, and he needed some one to lead him into the light. Slowly, slowly, but surely the young girl led him out of his mental chaos. His heart had been perilously near the breaking point, but he could think more calmly now.
"I--when--I came over to this country I--I looked for some one that I never found. I have--no luck, Jenny, no luck," he said in a broken voice, "and I bring no luck to others." He paused and then went on: "I stay here no longer, Jenny. I go back; it"s better! Yes, I go back to my own country."
"Oh, no, don"t go back!" pleaded the girl.
"Yes, I go; I must go," the old man said.
She clung tightly to him now, as if she would not let him go. He smiled at her but shook his head. "It is better," he said gravely, "far better. I cannot trust myself here alone; it is too much alone!
I love you all, but I am alone. There is an aching void which must be filled. I cannot trust myself alone any longer."
She did not understand him, nor did she inquire of him his meaning.
She only clung to him, as if determined not to lose him.
"When you are married, Jenny," he went on, "I shall not be here. But keep well to the house, love your husband, stay at home. Don"t search here, there, everywhere for excitement! The real happiness for the mother is always in the home; always, always! One imprudent step and the mother"s happiness goes, and the father"s, too," he added pathetically.
"Whose picture is that?" asked Jenny, as she caught sight of the miniature in Von Barwig"s hand.
"The mother, my wife;" he said in a low, sad voice.
"Ah!" and Jenny looked closely at the picture.
"The mother who loved not the home, and from that"s come all the sorrow! She loved not the home." Von Barwig"s words came quickly now, and were interspersed with dry, inarticulate sobs. "The mother of my little girl, for whose memory I love you. Ah, keep to the home, Jenny, for G.o.d"s sake! Always the home!"
Jenny nodded. "Where are they?" she asked, pointing to the portrait.
"Ah, where are they?" he almost sobbed. "For sixteen years I have not seen my own flesh and blood! He, my friend who did this to me, robbed me of them, and took them far, far away from me. I mustn"t say more!"
Jenny understood; she no longer looked tenderly at the portrait. She pointed to it almost in horror. "She was not a good woman?"
Von Barwig was shocked. Here was the verdict of the world, through the mouth of a child. He had never thought of his wife as bad.
"She was a good woman; not bad, not bad! No, no, Jenny! I thought of nothing but my art, of music, of fame, fortune. One night, the night of the big concert, when I came home she had gone and she had taken with her my little Helene. It was the night that symphony was played.
Listen, you hear, you hear? It"s the second movement. It was a wonderful success, but ah, Jenny, that night I won the world"s applause, but I lost my own soul!"
The strains of the music came through the open door. Jenny looked at him. He was listening eagerly now. In the red glow of the late afternoon sun his eyes sparkled with unnatural excitement.
"It takes me home," he said, and then he looked at the picture. "Not bad; oh, no, Jenny; she is not bad!"
Jenny shook her head. She hated the woman from that moment.
"She is bad," she thought, "or how could she have done it?" But she did not speak, and the old man went on:
"I am not angry! No, mein Gott, no! I only want my little girl.
Anything to have her back, my baby, my little baby girl, gone these sixteen years! My little baby!"
"Yes, but she wouldn"t be a baby now," broke in Jenny.
Von Barwig, about to speak, stopped suddenly. "Of course not; I never thought of that!" Then he shook his head violently.
"I cannot think of her as anything but a baby!"
"Yes, but she"d be a grown-up young lady," insisted Jenny.
"How old was she when you--when she--when you left her."
"Three years and two months," said Von Barwig softly.
"Then she"d be nineteen," said Jenny, "just my age; big, grown-up young lady."
"She is my little baby," repeated Von Barwig plaintively. "I can see her now so plainly; always playing with her little doll--the doll with one eye out. That was the doll she loved, Jenny; the doll she had when I last saw her."
The old man was calm now. The idea that the girl was a grown-up young woman, although obvious enough, changed his train of thought. For the moment it took his attention from the immediate cause of his unhappiness, and brought his imagination into play.
"A grown-up young lady!" he mused. "Yes, of course! But I can"t see her as grown up; I can"t see her, Jenny. I can only remember her as a wee tot walking around with her one-eyed doll; the eye she kicked out!
I remember that so well."
In spite of his misery, the old man laughed aloud as he recalled the circ.u.mstance that led up to the loss of the eye. The consternation in the face of the child as she handed him the piece of broken eye had made him laugh; and he laughed now hysterically as he recalled the incident. Jenny seeing him laugh, laughed too.
"Thank G.o.d he can still laugh," she thought.
"Ah, well!" he went on, drawing a deep breath. "They are gone, and I--look no more. My search is over, Jenny, over and done. But I go back; I see once more my Leipsic. There they know me! Here I am an outcast, a beggar."
Jenny could only shake her head and look at him helplessly. She realised that any effort she might make to influence him to change his plans would be useless; and more and more did she hate the woman who had been the cause of all his misery, the woman whose portrait he looked at so lovingly.
"A beggar," Von Barwig repeated to himself. "Yes, that"s it! I can fall no lower, I give up!"
The fortune of the broken-spirited, broken-hearted old man was now at its lowest ebb; and he gave up the fight. There was a long silence.