The Boy

I

IT was as sudden, that transportation to other scenes, to other days, — sudden as a sea-change; yet gentle, too, without the disconcerting chill that a sea-change brings. Could it be something about the boy that had set old chords vibrating?

Little more than a boy he seemed, standing there so slim, so straight, against the wide-spreading background of musicians, — so quietly withdrawn into himself, while the great orchestra played the opening bars of the new concerto; his, the boy’s, concerto. The violin drooped so lightly at his side; it made her think, fantastically enough, of a bronzed oak-leaf, clinging to its stem — as if a sudden gust might yet shake it loose. And in the preluding strains of the orchestra, she seemed to hear again the rustling autumn leaves at her feet, as she and another trod the forest aisles in early spring.

For in Germany the forest has aisles, diverging plainly from any given spot, in long shimmering vistas. These end sometimes in a point of light, there where the forest gives upon the open. But oftener they are lost in the black of the distance. That was what she had liked best to see; for then they seemed unending. She had always been impatient of limitations, and so she had become entangled in them. All her life had been a network of limitations. She knew that now, though she had been rather slow at making the discovery.

Curious, she mused, how last year’s leaves used to linger, rustling, in those forest aisles, far into the spring. She wondered how that was here in America. City-bred, she could not recall having visited the woods so early in the season as all that, excepting there at Schönheim. It was Ludwig Meyer who had been her guide the first time; an April day it was, the sun near its setting. He had found that the Fräulein Miss, as the countryside called her, had no scruples about taking a solitary ramble with a young man, and he in his turn had been only too ready to avail himself of her innocent latitude.

The forest spread itself over a broad shoulder of hill, whence one looked down upon the old gray walled town, its huddling roofs, its massive, uncouth Schloss, its hoary church-tower. In sun and shade it lay there, this picturesque survival of antiquity, encircled by the winding Fulda, save to the south, where the gardens of the townspeople, nestling in neighborly proximity close outside the walls, showed a roof of fruit trees, refreshingly green in contrast to the bare brown of ploughed fields that lined the valley on every hand. Only on the hills round about was grass to be seen, kept in discreet bounds by browsing cattle and nibbling sheep. Her companion used to tell her about the shepherds, their primitive customs, their homely lore, gleaned face to face with Nature at her homeliest. All this and more, oh, far more, he used to tell her, as they trod the rustling leaves, — ‘Dead Leaves in Spring.’ That was the title of one of his poems. She remembered his repeating it to her that first day in the woods, musingly, hesitatingly, as if he were composing it then and there. She found afterwards that he was apt to be like that, musing, hesitating. Only under strong emotion did he become dynamic; and moments of strong emotion were rare with him.

She wondered whether it was the name on the programme that had set her fancy pacing those forest aisles that lose themselves in the distance, — quite as her memories of Schönheim were wont to do. Why, every tenth man in Germany was a Meyer. And yet, if not the name, what could it be? Certainly not the face, dark, smoothshaven, clean-cut. There was nothing in that to remind her of her Meyer, Ludwig Meyer. At the sudden intrusion of the personal pronoun a slow flush made itself felt — not seen. She was not given to blushing — visibly, at least. She had always had self-control, in small matters and great. That was why she was to-day a New England spinster, sentimentalizing over the past, here, in this brilliant auditorium, and not a German Hausfrau, ministering to husband and children — no, grandchildren. It would have been grandchildren by now. Thirty years are reckoned to a generation, and for thirty years those shadows in the forest had been deepening. Well, what of it? What had the forest aisles of Germany to do with her, Helen Bolles, firmly rooted in her own environment, playing her part in it handsomely, efficiently, always to some excellent purpose? She had no overweening pride in herself, but she very well knew that she was a useful member of society. Had not those thirty years, every one of them, gone to prove how right she had been when she broke loose from that homely, heart-searching glamour, — the glamour of Schönheim, the glamour of Ludwig Meyer? In what had it consisted, she wondered, and how long could it have endured, supposing that in her untried girlhood she had committed herself to it for all time?

II

Well, well, how far the mind could travel in a few short minutes! Very many minutes it could not have been, for the preluding of the orchestra still continued, still the violin hung in the boy’s fight hold, — and the boy was slim and straight.

His name was Fritz, it appeared. Naturally, a Fritz would be straight and slim. Ludwig had not been like that. Rather heavy was his build, and low; indeed, he was hardly taller than she was herself, — a good height for a woman, not for a man, — and he did not carry himself well. Mere girl though she was, she had been quick to recognize in him the type of man who would never force an issue, would never emerge from his native environment. That, too, despite the touch of genius that came and went so tantalizingly. What an unforgettable voice he had, what importunate eyes! Eyes that could burn and melt, entreat and — renounce. The import unity was never long sustained. In truth he was a master-hand at renunciation; he could put as much ardor into that as other men squandered upon a bootless insistency.

No, Ludwig Meyer would never so far dominate circumstance as to emerge — to assert himself. The little town in Hessen Cassel that was his birthplace would be his dwelling-place to the end. A quaint little town, intensely romantic to the Helen Bolles of thirty years ago, listening to Ludwig Meyer’s tales of its chivalrous past. A little stronghold it had been for the honest burghers who had built and manned its watchtowers, and held it inviolate against the robber-barons who infested hill and plain; a real city of refuge to the merchant caravans, fleeing thither for shelter.

She had loved the plucky little stronghold, when once she knew why it was that the houses were so huddled together, the streets hardly more than cobbled alley-ways. She came at last to love everything about it, — the squawking geese that went waddling past the house every morning on their way to the succulent pasturage of the river-banks; the old ferryman who poled one across for a groschen to the railway station when there was no time to go round by the ancient bridge, built hundreds of years before railroads were dreamed of.

Dearly too had she loved the little pair of German Fräuleins, who housed her and petted her, taught her German, and thought her the most wonderful young thing in the world. Their house stood on the main thoroughfare, lighted at night by a clumsy mediæval lantern, that hung suspended across the middle of the street directly under her window. This ponderous contrivance was lowered each evening on its clanking chains to within reach of the watchman’s hand, then hoisted aloft again, where it swung in the wind, casting more shadows than light upon the cobblestones. And the watchman, his deep guttural, harsh as those clanking chains! How safe one used to feel, snugly stowed away in one’s German feather-bed, when one heard him admonishing the good burghers, in rude, immemorial sing-song, to ‘have a care of fire and candle-light, that no harm befall the town to-night.’ Sometimes, even now, when she was wakened in the small hours by rushing, shrieking automobiles, carrying belated revelers home, her mind would recur to the faithful watchman, and she would be aware of a quite irrational longing for the stillness which used to fall when, with the pious injunction, ‘And now praise God the Lord,’ he would go shuffling off, his heavy step echoing fainter and fainter in the distance.

The peace, the stillness of Schönheim! There had been years when she had hardly thought of it at all, unless it were idly to speculate as to who might remain among the living, now that the dear little Fräuleins had, one after the other, adventured the long journey, and there was no one left to chronicle the primitive doings of the little community. She smiled inwardly at thought of the delicacy with which they had always refrained from any mention of Ludwig Meyer’s name; a smile which went a bit awry as her mind just grazed the squeamishness which had deterred her from herself making any inquiries about him. Of one thing she had no doubt: that if still among the living, he would surely be there, writing his inspired lyrics, or, when deeply moved, setting his lyrics to music.

There was one tune that he had made expressly for her, the Fräulein Miss. A persistent little tune, that went singing away in one’s head all day. And the worst of it was that it somehow made you want to cry. It had taken her quite a long time to forget it. Perhaps she might not have succeeded in doing so at all if he had let her hear the words which he said it was written for. But he always refused. ‘No, mein Fräulein,’ he would say, ‘you are not ready to hear t hose words. When you are, they will be your words, too, and so you will have the right to them. But not now, not now.’ And he would give her one of those looks of his which drew and repelled her, until there had been nothing for it but to turn right about face and go, — go without ever having made those mysterious words her own. How her family had exulted over her when, in July, she had written them that after all perhaps they had better pick her upon their way to Switzerland. They had known from the beginning that she could never stand six months’ grind at German in that stuffy little hole.

Yes, there had been years when she had not thought like this of Schönheim, its quaintness, its stillness. But of late, perhaps because of the increasing roar and racket of the present, or perhaps because, at fifty, evening and bedtime do not seem quite so far away as they do at twenty, she was becoming liable to a certain mood of wistful reminiscence that was curiously beguiling.

What was that poem of Ludwig Meyer’s that he had sent her after she came away. ‘Lethe’ was the title. So like Ludwig to console himself with writing a poem, instead of really doing something about it! Did she wish that he had done this apocryphal something? And what would have been the upshot of so uncharacteristic a proceeding? Well, in the first place, it would not have been Ludwig Meyer; so where was the good of speculating?

The last two lines of the little poem had haunted her, in a queer, poignant way until, in sheer self-defense, she had put the thing into English, and so rendered it innocuous. The original had long since slipped her memory, but somehow the translation had stayed by her; no doubt because she herself had made it. A person does not forget her own children, — if she is lucky enough to have any. This was the way the poem ended: —

Those were the lines she had once found so disquieting. They did not. seem so now; quite the contrary in fact. It must have been the German of them that lent them their appeal. And it was the German of Ludwig Meyer that had drawn her and repelled her. They were so intimately sympathetic, yet so hopelessly at odds.

He was not only German, but kleinstädtisch — little - townish — as well. His views about women, for one thing, though never over-emphasized, were as mediæval as the old church that had stood there since Charlemagne’s day, its women, of a Sunday, herded together in the body of it, its men enthroned in the galleries. How those men’s voices used to roar out the hymns, reverberating from wall to wall, pounding down upon the defenseless tympanum, until one came to feel that to be a woman, here in Germany at any rate, was to be a sort of anvil for Fate to do its pounding on.

Yes, it was the German of Ludwig Meyer that had drawn her and repelled her, rendering her, nevertheless, perversely unsusceptible to any other appeal. And so it was, — she had come to admit the truth at last, — so it was that she had never married; that her children were all, so to say, translations — children of other people, who loved her because she was kind to them and they were grateful, or flattered, or in need of something that she could give, and not because they were her own and could not help themselves.

III

She had not taken her eyes off the young violinist, though she had quite forgotten him. Now, of a sudden, she noticed him again. How short the time must have been that she had spent on her impromptu travels! The boy had not shifted his position; still the violin hung, mute, detachable, in the drooping hand, and still the orchestra held the field. But now, shadows were deepening in the bass-viols, deepening to a portent, the listener might feel, only that the great body of the strings was gathering a rhythmic force and urgency that dominated all the rest. One hardly heeded the wood-winds, rising from time to time, light of wing, keen of flight, yet tending none could say whither, till, at a stroke, the big brasses entered, with their clear, indisputable affirmative. Whereupon, all that surging sound resolved itself into a great chalice of luminous, vibrant tone, to receive the wine of the composer’s ultimate vintage.

The soloist had lifted his violin, the clean-cut chin resting upon it, the bowhand poised above. And then — the luminous, vibrant chalice was filled.

It seemed to Helen Bolles that she had never heard the single voice, even of a violin, so permeate, so vivify, a great orchestra,—heightening, subduing, yet never overtopping it to the detriment of its plastic substance, its essential harmony, formed of a thousand pulsing modulations.

She had forgotten Schönheim, she had forgotten that identity of name she had been speculating upon; she was listening, as all that great audience was listening, with a mind single to the supreme experience of the moment. For a supreme experience it was, to every music-lover there.

The first movement had gone its triumphant way, the great chalice glowing, expanding, vibrating, to the keen elixir of the master-instrument, — an elixir piercing now to the depths of it, now glancing in prismatic colors, across its face, now brimming its furthest edge, until, when the flood was at its height, the radiant element freed itself and, soaring, as it were, on one golden note, was lost in the empyrean. Then once more the shadows deepened in the great basses, even as night descends upon the sea; the clamor of the brasses was hushed, the wood-winds ceased their fretting, and, with one last, heaving breath of the darkening waters, silence fell.

There was an instant’s pause, long enough for the violinist to lift his instrument, testing a string. Then the storm broke, — a storm of handclapping that would have kindled a musician of the Latin race to flame. But the quiet Teuton stood there, gravely regarding the commotion he had evoked, gravely inclining his head, but not oftener than courtesy demanded, evidently waiting his chance to test that doubtful string. He was like a wary mariner, heedful only of sheet and rudder, deaf to the waves thundering at his prow.

And now he was playing again, and to the merest accompaniment of the orchestra, an accompaniment so simple, in its first phrasings, that it might have been written for the piano. A new quality had crept into his tone: dramatic before, it was now pure lyric. Helen Bolles felt a stirring of premonition, deepening throughout the opening strains of the movement. So subtle, so pervasive, was this sense of something imminent, that when, at last, the old familiar tune blossomed, as on a magic stem, she was conscious of no surprise. She had known all along what was coming, — she had known what was to be the flower of this strange, dreamlike experience.

Curiously enough, the haunting melody, so familiar to her, yet so incredibly remote, no longer touched the vein of reminiscence. Her thoughts did not again recur to Schönheim; hardly was she reminded of Ludwig Meyer. It was the content of the music itself that held her fast, the meaning, the true meaning, of the song, the words of which had been denied her because she could not make them her own. But now she perceived that no words were needed; only the interpretation that resides in beautiful harmony, whether of music, or of life itself.

The simple melody was caught up and carried forward in flowing modulations, interwoven, infiltrated, with many a gleaming light and melting shadow, yet never losing that primal simplicity which makes of the true lyric a thing for all men, for all time. And still, throughout the singular revealment of her mood, she was conscious mainly of a new clearness of vision, harmonizing, tranquilizing, lifting her quite out of and beyond herself. She perceived that the little song as Ludwig Meyer had conceived it, had been personal, limited, — that in the hands of this wonderful boy it had become universal.

So complete was her self-enfranchisement that, when the adagio was past, — the echoes of the little song quite blown out, as it were, in vehement gusts of applause, — she found herself listening to the final movement with a mind as wholly given over to that as if no haunting lyric had ever searched her soul. Her joy in its splendid rhythms, its ringing cadences, was as spontaneous as had been her joy in the great snow-peaks of Switzerland whither she had once fled, to find in those mighty presences appeasement and new life.

And yet, when the concerto was over, it was neither the exaltation of the great, finale, nor the still revealment of the adagio, that filled her mind. For, as Fritz Meyer stood bowing before the wildly applauding audience, recalled again and again, — as he stood there, his violin drooping like a last year’s oak-leaf at his side (for he had not left it behind as is the wont of your virtuoso), — her one concern was lest that bronze oak-leaf, that had all the voices of the forest in its keeping, should detach itself from his loose hold and fall, shattered and crumbling, at his feet.

Then, presently, the tumult having spent itself, and the audience settling back to relax over the Freischütz overture, she found herself still keyed to an unwonted receptivity until, of a sudden, and quite unaccountably, her attention swerved, diverted by a trivial recollection of the past. She caught herself thinking of the little Landrath’s daughter at Schönheim, of the fervor with which she would stand up and sing the pious Agatha’s song: ‘Leise, leise, fromme Weise,’ — a fervor so disproportioned to her capacities that it used to be quite pathetically droll. Queer little round-faced, round-eyed person, a little rosebud thing, that always had the air of waiting to be picked and set in a glass of water. The splendid playing of the orchestra to-day was like a merciless light cast upon the incapacities of the devout little songstress.

Indeed, so superb had been the rendering of that final number, that the impression of it was really uppermost in her mind as she rose at last and left her seat. Insomuch that when, as she passed out with the throng, a man she knew—a man whom she had once come rather near marrying — remarked upon the sensational triumph of the evening, she heard herself answering, ‘Yes, indeed, it was extraordinary. But, did you ever hear the Freischütz played like that?’

IV

As she descended the steps outside, now unaccompanied,—for the man she might have married had a wife and daughter of his own to look after, — she found that all the world was talking of the new concerto. She did not herself join in the chorus; in such selfevident encomiums she seemed to have no part. As speedily as might be, she disengaged herself from the crowd, making her way toward a point, a block distant, where her chauffeur had orders to await her. Suddenly, close before her, she espied the figure of the young violinist, — the boy, as she had called him from the first, — standing, violin-case in hand, on the curbstone, about to cross the street. His head was thrown back, much as Ludwig Meyer’s used to be when he took to mental star-gazing. So he had stayed to hear the concert out, just as his father would have done. His father? Why had she thought that? The song had no doubt been common property for years. The composer of to-day had simply used it, as he might have used a folk-song, as he might have used this song, had his name happened to be any other name than Meyer.

She had stayed her step, in obedience to a half-formulated purpose, and at that instant she saw the young stargazer step off the curb, directly across the path of a motor-car, — her own car, as it chanced, coming to meet her half way. It was moving at very moderate speed; there was really not the slightest danger. But an officious fool must needs seize the boy by the arm, and jerk him backward. The boy was safe, as he had been all along, but, at the unexpected onslaught, the violin-case was flung from his hand, straight into the middle of the thronging roadway. Without a moment’s hesitation Helen Bolles leaped forward and, with a swift, rather daring movement, rescued the instrument almost from under the feet of a pair of prancing horses. A little flurry of excitement stirred the lookerson, but it had all happened too quickly for active intervention.

As she regained the sidewalk, Fritz Meyer was at her side.

‘Ah, madame,’ he stammered, breathless with emotion. ‘How can I say, in my bad English? How can I t’ank you?’

‘And I,’ she rejoined, with one of her rare and very beautiful smiles. ‘How can I thank you — in my bad German — for your wonderful music?’

She had not at her first words been aware that she was speaking German. It was the flash in the boy’s face that reminded her, and already her halfformulated purpose had taken shape. With a word of dismissal to her chauffeur, she turned again to the young musician.

‘I wonder if you would be so kind as to escort me home?’she queried. ‘It is not very far. ’

‘ Oh, madame! ’ came eagerly. ‘ May I? Dare I?’

‘It is such a fine evening for walking, and there are things I want to speak about.’

As they fell into step — ‘Please, gracious lady,’ he begged, ‘do not praise my playing.’

‘Nor your composition?’ she asked, endeavoring, meanwhile, to adjust her mind to the elaborate courtesy-title, the like of which had never afflicted her girlish ears of long ago.

‘No, nor my composition.’

‘Because you are modest?’

‘No, gracious lady. Because it is such a beautiful evening, and because, if it were not for you, I should have no eyes for its beauty. I should be mourning my violin.’

The fall of the voice upon these words was Ludwig Meyer’s own. But she did not find it in the least disconcerting. It all seemed so natural, so inevitable — as things always seem in a dream. She would hardly have marveled, had she found the city pavements strewn with fallen leaves.

They had escaped the crowd, by a way she knew; a quiet side street uninfested by trolley-car or shrieking motor. Although it was mid-December, the evening was only cool autumnal. There were stars, but no moon.

‘You don’t mind my kidnapping you?’ she asked, no whit surprised at the ease with which the German phrase came to her, after all these years. ‘You see, I am quite old enough to be your mother.’

‘My mother! But, gracious lady, never! I am twenty-five years of age!’

‘Ah,’ with mock gravity. ‘That would make your mother quite an old woman, would n’t it?’

‘Oh, yes. She would be nearly fifty if she were living. Think of it! Nearly half a century!’ And he added, wistfully, ‘She was so little and so young. I don’t think it was meant that she should grow old.’

‘And your father? Were you named for him?’

‘No. I was named for my grandfather. He was Landrath at Schönheim, where we lived. He was tall, like me, and dark, and I think he was proud, too, and looked down on us. But he was no such man as my father, plain Ludwig Meyer. Everything I have, I owe my father; my bit of talent, my love of the beautiful, even the best thing in my concerto, the little air in the adagio that makes the tears come. Did you notice that, gracious lady?’

He was looking into her face, and she smiled her answer.

‘So that was your father’s, the little air that makes the tears come? And your father? Is he living?’

‘ He died a year ago. His last bequest to me, — he had hardly anything else to leave, — was the permission to use the little song in my concerto. Before that, no one but me had heard it since the time, many, many years ago, he said, when it was first written.’

‘No one at all?’

‘He said, no one but me.’

They walked some paces in silence. They had come out now on the avenue, whose broad spaces made nothing of passing vehicles. Even the noise of them had room to dissipate itself.

Presently — ‘Was it written to words, the little tune?’

‘Yes, to his own words, I think.’

‘You know the words?’

She had spoken as under compulsion, and with a sharp, protesting catch of the breath. But there was nothing to fear; she might have known that there was nothing to fear. For —

‘No,’ came the reply. ‘He said no one knew them. That he himself knew them because he had lived them. After that I could not ask for them, could I, gracious lady?’ And again he looked her in the face.

It was the old look, the old appeal of voice and glance, that had once wrought such trouble in her young blood. To-night it was the boyishness of it all that chiefly touched her, and as she answered, ‘No, of course you could not,’ she was thinking how this youth, this mere stripling, whom, for all his amazing genius, she had been regarding as a boy, was scarcely younger than had been the man, whose influence, repudiated though it was long years ago, had really, in a sense, shaped her life.

The avenue was almost deserted. It was the pause between the concertgoers and the theatre folk. They had walked half a block without speaking. Then: ‘Tell me about your brothers and sisters.’ The question was but a stop-gap; of that she was well aware. And indeed what mattered all the rest, since here beside her walked the heirapparent?

‘I have none,’ he was saying. ‘I was the first. My mother died when I was born.’ His voice, Ludwig Meyer’s voice, was very wistful, very tender.

They had reached the steps of her sightly house, facing southward on the avenue; the house of which she had been sole mistress now these twenty years.

‘You will come in for a moment?’ she begged. ‘You will let me give you some refreshment, after your great evening ?’

He pulled out his watch.

‘Alas, no, gracious lady. I must return to my hotel. My train leaves at midnight. ’

Well, that was as it should be. It kept the whole, dreamlike experience in solution, as it were. She shrank from any materialization of it.

‘And where do you go next?’

As if that were of any importance! But one gets the trick of talking.

‘I don’t quite know,’ he deprecated. ‘It is all so strange to me, this big country. But my manager knows. He says we do not reach San Francisco until late in the spring. It is a queer life for a Schönheimer.’ Then, with a little shrug of regret, that none but a Teuton could have given, ‘I would far rather have come in; though I have already had my refreshment, gracious lady.’

She was standing now on the single broad, low step before her own door. In a moment he would be gone.

‘Shall you like the queer life?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes, I shall like it. Every place is home to me, while I have my violin — that the gracious lady saved for me.’

At the word, he swept his hat from his head, with a very foreign gesture, and, bending above her outstretched hand, lifted it to his lips.

Touched by the boyishness of the act, — for there was no trace of gallantry in voice or manner, — she leaned forward and, resting her disengaged hand upon the bent head, ‘I do that for your mother,’ she said, very gently.

He looked up, with eyes that melted and glistened in the half-shadow.

‘The poor little mother! You pity her too?’

‘No,’ she murmured, more gently still. ‘I do not pity her. I think — I almost think — I envy her.’

And now she was standing at her open door, listening to the receding footsteps of the boy, — Ludwig Meyer’s boy, whose mother that was to be had sung her little song with so much more of feeling than of art. Till, presently, the light step was lost, not, as had been the old watchman’s shuffling tread, in the echoing distance, but in the hum of an approaching automobile, —swept away as it were, in the headlong spirit of the age. She had no wish to recall him. He had gone on his beautiful mission to the world, the world of to-day, than which no world was ever more in need of the gospel of divine harmonies.

And she? Why, how right everything was, to be sure. How right it had been from the beginning. She could almost hear the watchman’s call, echoing in the distance: ‘And now praise God the Lord.’ And, as she stood once more on her own hearthstone, looking down into the glowing embers, where so much of warmth and cheer still dwelt, a very beautiful smile lit the brooding face. For she knew that, at last, after all these years, she too had made her peace with memory.