NOVEL

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 379, 13 August 1903, Page 2

NOVEL

BaS n «iij ie i»t»dt whisper from sweet girlish lips, as the, door a narrow apace to admit a golden f. person" jiddressed looked up; she --Jtaa kneeling m, tbetbare boards of a classroom in Pension Mitzenius, -arranging books in the lower shelves. lit was the gßifiinfi ff /«r n rn« J ,n.T.™ T strong, she hergpali- looked sMrcely more than a schoolsaid; 'I wish you luck —Oh, steady, don't suffocate me.' rti owner of * the golden head, M whirling is, feU upon LuejrjKith animand the eayjwbjpan at the ■C books seemed for a moment threatened with annihilation. ggS, * Ijuck Ftiha prof anationi Ohj Lucy, my and good-bye"! .Sow Bhall I §?; «rer bear it t "ISet me go, Lucy, I shall be K. lite.' But Lucy held faet the girl's chubby I left hand in her small lithe fingers, and separating Hebe's third finger—- ' Where is it? J she demanded, quizzically. ' Don't—upstairs let me go.' cried Hebe blushing hotly as she wrenched herself free. , i •11 always leave it behind when Igo for my lesson/ she added petulantly, * I can't play with a ring on.' 'Poor Lord Hope castle/ said Miss Strong.'' Hebe gave a defiant toss. -.. . * Poor Lord Hopecastle has no say in my doings yet, thank goodness.' 'No say? The man you are engaged toP Well/well!' ' Ecgagementa have been broken,' said Hebe, and with: that dark utterance she fled. ' Lucy Strong-remained sitting on the dusty floor, lest in thought. He reverie ] appeared not disagreeable; for bow and again' she 'looked up and smiled —al peculiar smile, as though fancy threw • pleasing scenes upon the bare distempered ' class-room walL 'She meant nothing,' said the little ' English governess to her own soul, scorn(ally, * still 'many a true word" spoken in • jest!' Engagements Lave been broken.' Then ebe turned to her books. - .Pension Mitzenins had broken up for the summer holidays, the girls and two of the resident teachers had left that morning, and besides the Principal and her domestics, there remained in No. 20, SandstrssEt—great barrack of a house, — only the English governess, who by request had stayed a day to put things straight, and one English girl, Hebe Carpenter. This young lady having entered upon that mysterious phase known to parents and schoolmistresses as ' finished,' was to take advantage of Miss Strong's escort on the joarney to England. Heto, hurrying to her last violin lesson, creßsed over to the gravelled path, skirting the grand-ducal garden wall—on the school side, the trottoir, like the road was inhospitably flint-paved—snd walked in the mottled shade of tho horse-chestnuts which lined the way.. The warm air bore upon it the scents of suamer from the flowering shrubs in the Palace gardens, where bees hummed and hovered; but the chestnut trees down the road hung tfaeir leaves limply in the late July sun, except when fitfully a hot breeze stirred them, and the gravel ftit gritty underfoot. Every one who met or passed the girl looked at her and looked again, men and women slikt", if from different points of interest and with varying measure of approval. Fresh and fair as an early summer morning, with dewy languorous eyes, and sweet red lips melting easily iato ■miles, Hebe might owe her name to prophetic instinct. In her own style she was an almost faultless beauty, a being dcubtlicis nearer earth than heaven—of the kind men pet and worship and fight over—and marry. Hebe suffered from no misconception of the notice she attracted; nor usually biting her lip not to emila at men's involuntary eye-homage—did she miss a jot of it. But to-day—oh sad to-day; if she met admiring glances, or heard murmured comments from uider military moustaches as their owsen, padded regulation squareness, strode by with jingling spurs and swords clanking at their sides, she saw and heard unseeing, it different ' The last time,' she was thinking as she crossed the dreary Adolfs-platz, where a beetle-browed TJhter-OfSsier was' barking commands to his awkward Equad: ' the last time,' as she west up the stone steps of No. 7 in the Marien-gasae. To the unbiassed the appears merely a street of the decent deadlydully G.rman type—to Hebe it was the threshold of her Promised Land. She entered Ne. 7, a habitation bidding standing defiance to the first and last laws of aeatheticism, and paused at a door halfway down a narrow drab-distempered pusage. Paused, vain'y enough, to still the tnumping cf her heart. Thrn in desperation she knocked. ' Come in.' The response was brief and berth almost as the Unter-Offlzier'B drill commaodr. ' Not t < Hebe.' Pausing an instant withihy flutteted smile, she opened the dtor.j;

I PUBLISHED Bf SPECIAL wi wmm, I

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COPYSIQHT A tall man of. stern, jalmbst /haggard, countenance, in creased shabby elothes came forward, violin in hand. 'Good day, Praulein.* 'Good day, Herr Bruchfeld.' The sweet pink lips parted in a smile, shy and a little tremulous. 'And how goes it with the exercises tof^K Ba . d u^JV?*? o '. * iTin ßT :W« violin to Heb3 to hold while he tunesTfiers; •Oh I don't know,* said the girl; «I expect you will say not welh' . V .She was posing violin as though to : pwyuw sk-and- plucking softly ; -itf tie strings-artless blind that she might lay her dimpled chin upon the spot where his had rested. 'Weil,' said her master, 'and what have we to-day ?' - He placed Kreutzer's exercise&upon the . muauj stand, and exchanging violins gave attention as Hebe, nervously enough, began to play. ~ Bruchfeld'a lessons were commonly accounted something of an ordeal. Frequent interruptions, demands to have a passage ten times, twenty times repeated; muttered ejaculations or comments, mercifully often unintelligible, but too manifestly not of flattering import; occasional practical expositions of faulty intonation or phrasing.; For. the rest, folded and a silent grim observance whicb missed nothing—these were the sum of Bruchfeld s method. Nme-tenths of his pupils, of both sexss, or botb; in the remaining tenth he inspired a devotion unreasoned as absolute, fJruchfeid was in some sort a. disappointed mam he only just missed being a genius, hadjdnly just missed several pnzeß in life's lottery. Stall, he had missed them. Promotion had passed him by;' Kapellmeisterships had eluded him and fallen to inferiors; and now, verging on forty, Bruchfeld was" nothing more than leader in the orchestra of the Lan^weilenburg | Opera House, soloist at purely locai con-tTJertarr-alhdiorthe rest, he was a teacher i ofthe v3nlin>«nd hated the bondage. ~~ , Ha» k#ew- r : himself made for better I things, gnd hi| blindly in a chaos of arpeggieß came to a~ sudden halt, and, putting down her violin, gave a little gro:m.' . / . : .. . ..; ..,# \ .* baj * It's a horrid exercise,' she pouted; ■ I can't do it.'. ~; f < •Ah, ahi a- little; slower—take your time/said her master, leniently. .\ : Hebe, setting her small -white. teeth ' made another start. But? she broke down at the second line: : ' I—l shall never do it,' she said with a queer little sobbing laugh. The man's stern face .relaxed—transient gleam in'a storm-dark sky. r 'lt is hard, 1 he conceded, 'but what worth doing'is no* ? Try'once'more.' Hebe made a last vain effort, feverishly frantically. •But what is the matter to-day ?' said Bruchfeld at last. • " I don't kaow,' she stammered with a Bhrill laugh. Tnen, all in a moment she had burst into violent sobbing. Bruchfeld regarded her with distressed amazement; and then took from her her violin and bow. 'What is the matter,' he repeated «Tell me—what is it V \ Hebe struggled to speak, ' It—is - because I am going away.' ' And is that really the distress P' Bruchfeld asked gently; 'is it because you are sorry to say good-bye ?' But Hebe only sobbed. The violinist stared moodily before him. ' Ach !' he cried at last, • so iafc einmal das Leben—so is life all through 1 Infinite pains, meagre success, a little laughter-; many tear?, the meeting of friends, orly that they shall part. That is life for meat of aa.' * Ach Gott!' he burst out tempestuously; ' farewell, it is an ugly word.' A world of bitterness was in his voice, and in the fix-ed gaze of his melancholy eyes. ' Bat for you,' he went on presently' ■for you, dear young lady, it will be otherwise; for you lite only begins, and ycu are beautiful. You will have a husband, little children, who love you—' 'Don't; oh, don't,' cried Hebe, with nands to her burning face. 'Listen,' he said, laying down her instrument and taking his; ' listen, I will play you something.' He looked at the girl a moment with far-off melancholy eyes, and then away. His poised bow descending drew but crashing chords, followed by a string of harmonics so clear that each note seemed star-like to hang in space. A pause. Then ho glided into a melcdy, yearning and passionate yet with only suoh pasrion as" may be without pain—swelling onward through tremulous joy to fulness of human ecstacy. More chords, noble and full and joyous, like a wedding march, then again the star-like harmonics. ' So,' said Bruchfeld, ♦ that is your life; now hear mine.' Low and eeri* from under the master's fingers a dirge crept out into the room. Slurred chromatic passages, wailing octaveu, subtlest combinations of infinite melancholy—tho outpouring of a soul'b desolation, hopeless, complete. Hebe roso with a gesture of imploring. ' Don't,' she cried. ' I cannot boar it.' Bruchfeld looked down at the brimming

Una eyea, and laughing tMa& laugh laid down kii vioUihfv v> *> ? ' Ach was !' he crijks .«did it vex *j&j dear child? It was nothing—but w# will no more of it.' %£\ §8 Heba had turnadMawa#?Sand trembling fingerfrcjfcgan Jft&it by Bfo violin. «npugh, to help her: ho pupil had known him to do such a thing before. 'Ana bo,' he said quite low, 'it is really, good-bye P Ah, well. Pate will have it so. Give the crabbed Professor now and then a thought. ¥es ?' ~ *, fier lay: in%isV-Bhe Lap--00. 'wordaf Suddenly," %Ife*i passibnateV moveiaent, she stooped and kissed Bruchfeld's hand—then hurried, blindly, from, the room. > i U * lls> IXJ V> Lenohen, the violiniat's factotum, com--1 in g in at the moment rrora-herma*keti&gf« and narrowly escaping collision in the corridor, had an j arm about her neck, and sweet lips pressed to her brown 'Good-bye, don't quite forgej; me, Lencben,' was whispered in her ear, .and something forced into her work-worn • palm.- p«g _ vg i •»——