The Passing of Spring
I
“WHAT’S the matter, child? Is it because the Miska has had more applause ? But don’t you care. When you are thirtyfive she will be fifty— and forgotten.”
Hilda Bergmann raised her head, — it was adorned with a mediæval coronet, — and saw before her the ample form of the coloratura soprano, resplendent in the clothes of the world. She brushed the teardrops hastily from her darkened lashes.
“Ah, you, Madame Brunzola,” she murmured.
“I am in the Hardmans’ box.” The diva’s tone contained a recognition of her own graciousness. “I came in to congratulate you on ‘Dich theure Halle’ — and find you crying . . . There, there, pull yourself together, child; you won’t be able to sing. Don’t fret about Miska.”
Hilda’s eyes questioned the diva mistily. “Ah, you think I cry that Frau Miska has had already three recalls? But no, madame, she is one great artist; it is good that they applaud. I myself applaud.”
The diva looked at the young German singer curiously, then smiled and gave her a careless little pat on the shoulder. “ It is a good little girl, and the new Elizabeth costume is vastly becoming. I hope the trouble is not serious. ” Then, the professional mind returning to the obvious explanation, she added, “Some day the audience will call for you like that.”
The tears overflowed suddenly in Hilda’s blue eyes. “Ah, madame,” she broke out, “it is that my husband no longer loves me.”
The Brunzola (her rightful name was Brown) stared at the back of Hilda’s blonde wig, which was scarcely less golden than the hair beneath. Too accustomed to foreign unreserve to be appalled at this revelation, her reflection was practical and unembarrassed.
“Nonsense. What makes you think so ?”
“He is to-night again with her in the house.”
“Her” —
“Meeses Gambril.”
“Shocking!” The diva laughed; then, as she caught sight of Hilda’s face, added kindly, “He sat with her, but looked at you, chérie.”
Hilda shook her head. “He is with her four times this week already.”
Brunzola laughed again — such a laugh as is denied to the thin woman. “My dear! She is forty years old and atrociously painted. You are young, pretty, and famous. You talk nonsense.” She administered another vigorous pat upon Hilda’s shoulder. The Brunzola liked Hilda, who was adorably amiable ; and being an exponent of Verdi and Donizetti herself, their ambitions did not conflict. But Hilda only shook her head again with a quiver of the lip, ending with a sudden hiding of her face upon the chair back.
“ It is he that should be jealous of you, not you of him,” declared the diva austerely, almost morally. The diva had had three husbands, and it was to be expected that she should have a firm grasp upon the principles at stake.
Hilda looked puzzled. “Wie?” She questioned the matrimonially sophisticated soprano with her child eyes.
“The jealousy should be all on his side,” the diva explained kindly, with an air of one enlightening a little girl.
“ Jealous ? ” Hilda repeated reflectively. “ Ach, nein, nein, madame, but I am not jealous — only unhappy.”
“Well, then, it is he that should be unhappy. Make him so.” The diva’s tone became disciplinary. Her eye wandered to a huge bunch of white carnations lying upon Hilda’s dressing-table. “Who sent those ? May I look ? ” As Hilda nodded she picked up the card and glanced at it. “ Seems to me you have had carnations in profusion lately. Same man?”
“Meester Harvey Langdon. He is so good to send me white carnations when I sing Elizabeth. He say he like very much the opera, and the music is to him like white carnations.”
The diva laughed again more amply. “You know him, then?”
“I have twice met him at the house of Meeses French.”
“The tall, smooth - shaven, desolatelooking man ? I know him. He is adorable — triste — and so bored! The women are crazy about him. It is a triumph for you. It is your chance — heavensent — carissima.” The Brunzola took facile flight into many tongues.
“ My chance ?” Hilda repeated. She pronounced the word of doubtful meaning as if it contained a z.
The diva gathered her opera cloak about her in the act of departure. “Your chance to make Max jealous, you baby, — jealous of Harvey Langdon.”
Hilda’s drooping shoulders straightened with a sudden dignity. “Madame! ” she exclaimed, “I am a married voman.”
The diva’s eyes remained upon Hilda’s face as she fastened her opera cloak. “ Oh. And Max, then, is not a married man! ”
Hilda flushed under her make-up. She bit her lip, and again the tears rose in her eyes. The diva spoke kindly, if patronizingly:—
“I believe that is the point of view in your country. Liebes Kind, but you are in America ‘now already.’” She mimicked the little German-English phrase almost affectionately. “And in America you should do as the Americans. I must go, and you must dry your eyes. The next act is going to begin. Don’t forget that your face is all streaked.” She looked down at the desolate little figure in its gorgeous draperies, and bending over, regardless of rouge and grease paint, pressed a light kiss upon Hilda’s cheek. “Max adores you, of course, child, and is no end proud of you and all that. But why let him see quite how much you care ? I am serious. . . . So few men can stand it. They are base creatures.”
In a positive aura of virtue the diva removed her imposing presence from the dressing-room.
II
Hilda Bergmann was surprisingly young— “impossibly young,” some one had said — for an opera singer. Superficially of a fair, wholesome German prettiness, a strain of Slav blood had given a stronger accent of modeling to her face, a touch of the unusual about the drawing of the eyes that seemed to explain the flash of inspiration, the warm communicative temperament in her operatic interpretations. “The eyes of a child, the mouth of a woman, and the voice of an angel,” — so Harvey Langdon had described her. Harvey had developed an enthusiasm for Hilda, an enthusiasm artistic, not personal,in spite of the fact that he had met her. In his experience of women Harvey had been what his friends’ wives called “unfortunate.” At the psychological moment he had met the wrong woman. He had come out of the experience, which had extended over a period of years, with a deep and incurable cynicism. As an æsthete he admired women: as a man he despised them. Outwardly deferential, and epigrammatically flattering upon provocation, inwardly he was amused or contemptuous. Women whose perceptions penetrated beneath this smooth surface disliked and avoided him. Others felt that they had produced an impression. He had not “gone to the devil.” His life was not wrecked by the unhappy affair which might, perhaps, have interfered with his work if material good fortune had not removed from his life the necessity to struggle, but he had lost in humanity. If it had not been for his sensitiveness to sound and color, and his love of outdoors, he would have been desperately bored. As it was, he was merely disillusioned and spiritually aged.
One morning, walking briskly through the park, the flash of a smile, gold hair, and ermine crossed his reverie and became a consciousness of Hilda Bergmann clasping by the hand a small and sturdy boy clad in white corduroy. He stopped, she hesitated, smiling, and he discovered anew an enchanting dimple in the act of vanishing, and felt that he must detain it at any cost.
“We take one long walk, the kleine Max und I,” she explained.
He looked down at her, hat in hand, conscious of an unaccountable impulse. “ It is over then, — the long walk ? ”
“Nein, it is but just now begun.”
“Will you let me go with you?” The words came out directly, bluntly, like a boy’s, not at all in the elaborate fashion of Harvey Langdon.
“It would give us much pleasure,” she returned with the careful courtesy of a well-bred child. Hilda knew that American customs were different from German ones, and did not question the propriety of his suggestion.
He looked down at the child who was a miniature reproduction of herself. “ This is your little boy ? I did not know you had a child.”
“ Ach, yes, yes! ” Her tone marveled at his strange oversight. She looked down at the child with an expression that gave Harvey an odd new sensation. “This is my son Max,” she said softly. “Max, you vill shek hands with Meester Langdon.” As the child with downcast eyes laid a shy mitten in Harvey’s gloved palm, she explained proudly, “You see — he understand. Oh, he speak already very well English. The children learn more easier, I think,” she decided gravely. “For me it is altogether difficult. I am afraid I am much stupid.”
They started to walk on, the child between them. A surprise at the little transaction suddenly overcame Harvey.
“It is awfully good of you to let me go with you,” he said with something of a return to his usual manner.
“Ach, nein, nein!” she contradicted him cordially yet with a certain reserve. “It is much pleasure. I like not to valk alone. In Germany we do not so, but Max — my husband say in America is different. At first always he go with me, but now he say I know the vay I can go alone. He say I must get used to go alone for every time he cannot go with me.”
He met her clear eyes in silence.
“My husband he is more Englisher than I. He is long time in Englisher college. He speak like English. He know all the English vay.” As Harvey did not answer she went on: —
“ In Germany I could not valk so with you.”
“No, but it is different here,” he told her. Then, looking down into her eyes, added in a lower tone, “I am glad we are in America.”
She looked off across the snowy mounds of the park reflectively. “I also am glad,” she said, but she spoke doubtfully, as if assuring herself. “ And here one can make much money.” She smiled deliciously.
Harvey felt a twinge of disappointment; he had been thinking what an unworldly look was in her eyes. The next moment he laughed, “ You, also, like the American dollars, Madame Bergmann.”
“I have a father and mother both seek, und many young brother und sister. They have been very poor. I have not long made money. They need much money. I am glad to make for them. For that reason I stay and because Max vish it. But sometimes I have Heimweh, — I cannot help” — her voice wavered. She went on again immediately: “In Germany is different. There,is more Gemüthlichkeit.” She looked up at him with an unconscious appeal of blue eyes.
“We think you the most perfect Marguerite and Elsa we have ever seen or heard. Is all that nothing to you ? Are we just American barbarians?”
“Ach nein, nein!” she protested, terribly shocked at his suggestion. She was afraid she had hurt his feelings,— a thought intolerable to her. “Yes, yes, it make me much glad that the Americans like me, — altogether glad. They are so kind to me. I like, oh very much, to sing for them.”
“We have never before had a young Marguerite. But you are not Marguerite, after all, Madame Bergmann, but Gretchen,—the Gretchen of Goethe. Is it because you are so really young ? We are so pathetically old, most of us.”
At this moment the kleine Max seemed to make some soft and unobtrusive complaint in German. Hilda consulted with him. She turned to Harvey with profound and embarrassed apology. “It is that a button upon his foot is too tidt. Here is one seat. I beg pardon that we delay you, Meester Langdon.” She started to lift the child upon the bench, but Harvey intercepted her, and, having deposited the child, bent down himself to institute investigations as to the offensive button. He found his inquiries met with timid but exact responses, and felt a curious pleasure in the operation.
Hilda was regarding Harvey with grave calculation. “But you are not so old, Meester Langdon,” she said suddenly.
He smiled as he struggled with the awkwardness of unaccustomed fingers over a stiff gaiter button upon the relaxed foot of the child. “Very, very old, Madame Bergmann, tragically old; so old that I cannot remember ever having been young.”
“ So!” she exclaimed in distress. “ It is you mean that you feel so very old ? But why ?”
“Perhaps because no one has ever loved me.” Strangely enough his words did not sound sentimental to him. He looked up at Hilda to see surprise and consternation upon her face.
“ Geehrter Herr, surely that is not possible!”
“You flatter me.”
“You make fun?” She watched him anxiously.
He smiled. “I am entirely serious.”
Her glance went to her boy, who was watching the operation upon his footgear with attentive interest. “Your mother has loved you, geehrter Herr,” she said under her breath. . . . “ Or you lose her, perhaps, when you are Kindlein like Max?”
He shook his head. “My mother did not love me — gnädige Dame.”
“Meester Langdon! All mothers love their children!”
He smiled, yet felt a little pang of remorse that he should have thrust the ugly thing before her innocent eyes. “ My mother was different.”
“Ach! But it is terrible!”
“My mother did not love my father” —
He rose to his feet, the button being satisfactorily accounted for. “ I am afraid we were not a very loving family.”
“Ach, it is sad!” Suddenly she bent down and caught the child up in her arms and kissed him passionately. As she let the boy slip gently to his feet with one arm still about him, she put out her hand to Harvey, who felt a longing, curiously strong, to detain it.
“I am so sorry,” she said. And he felt in some way all the sweetness of her singing voice in the simple words. Afterwards the emotion of the moment seemed incomprehensible to him. At the time the man of words was dumb with that uncomfortable stirring about his heart.
He turned to little Max. “The button is all right now, I think? Will Max let me take his hand also?”
Max looked up at his mother, who smiled, and catching the reflection of her smile, transferred it shyly to Harvey as he proffered the mitten with a whispered, “Darj ich?”
“Ach, du unartiges Kind!” cried his mother in despair. “Du musst auf Englisch immer sprechen. He forget himself,” she apologized to Harvey.
Harvey received the mittened morsel in a timid clasp. “It is a way we men have. I forget myself, too, gnädige Dame. ”
She smiled sweetly and vaguely, feeling that she had not quite caught his meaning.
When he bade her good-by at her own door he asked her: “Do you walk in the park often ? ”
“Every morning, when I have not rehearsal.”
“Then may I go again some time when the Herr Baron is unable to go with you ?”
Her smile included the child before it passed to him. “It will give us much pleasure.”
Upstairs she found Max senior in a cloud of smoke and a wilderness of newspapers. Dismissing the child with a kiss she went over to her husband.
“We have met in the park Meester Harvey Langdon,Max und I, und he valk with us.” Max liked her to talk English.
He glanced up at her through a fog of smoke. “The man who sent you the carnations ?”
“Yes.”
Max made no further comment. She looked at him doubtfully. “What you read, Max?” she asked timidly.
“The criticisms of last night’s performance. They are mad about Miska — these critics. It is hysteria — not criticism.”
Hilda gazed into the fire thoughtfully. “They say not too much it seem to me. I am glad for her. It is good to feel after one has worked that one has given pleasure.”
Max glanced at his wife, laid down his paper, and rose to his feet.
“You are too contented to get on in this country, Hilda. Be contented and you will be happy, but you won’t make a hit.”
She stood watching him as he walked across the room, then her eyes went to the square of sky framed in the window. “Yes, I am happy,” she repeated wistfully, almost entreatingly.
Max walked over to the window, obscuring the square of sky with his broad shoulders, and stood there drumming upon the sill with a discontented expression upon his handsome face.
III
The walk in the park occurred again — not altogether by accident on Harvey’s part; and after that he called for her several times by arrangement. About this time the life of the little Max became suddenly crowded with incident; donkey rides were of frequent occurrence ; marvelous toys and forbidden sweets arrived at his door, and last, but not least, a pair of white mice. Sometimes Harvey dropped in at teatime. His relation with Hilda was simple and natural, as impersonal, almost, as his relation with her child. He would no sooner have disturbed her exquisite unconsciousness than he would have told little Max that the fairy stories his mother told him were not true.
One afternoon — the day after a performance of Tannhäuser— he called at teatime, and it happened that he spoke of her interpretation of Elizabeth, — for, rather oddly, her public life was scarcely ever mentioned between them.
“You make Elizabeth human,” he said. “A woman loving a man as she finds him, good and evil, blindly, illogically.”
Hilda sat looking into the fire. It was only a dreary little gas log, but the leaping flame made a rim of light about her fair head and threw a soft glow upon her thoughtful face. She seemed to breathe an atmosphere of home. He stared at her forgetfully, questioning her thoughts. She looked up.
“It is so a woman loves always, is it not ? She loves man as he is altogether — good and evil. It is not that she does not see faults.”
He was surprised. “ I had thought you would believe the man you loved to be faultless.”
“ Ach, nein, nein ! ” She shook her head slowly with a little indulgent laugh for his ignorance. “No man is so—faultless, und no woman. It is only when too young we think so. We have all some fault.” Her observation was made with such an air of profound philosophic discovery that Harvey found himself feeling that some new light was being shed upon the sad, old world-worn puzzle of human relations.
“A fault is a weakness, nicht wahr ? And for weakness one loves more the weak one as a mother love her child. And if sometimes that weakness hurt her, she only love more for that reason. It is strange.”
She looked up. As their eyes met he saw Hilda all at once as a woman, and something in that revelation hurt him mysteriously.
“ What is it ? ” she asked quickly. “ You are unhappy.”
“No, I was only thinking.”
“What you were thinking?”
“I think I was wishing that — some woman could have loved me like that.” She did not answer immediately. He glanced at her with a little smile and met the grave sympathy of her eyes. For a moment he looked in silence, then suddenly stood up. “I forget time with you, gnädige Dame.”
She rose also, protesting, “Don’t go. For soon Max will be here und we vill all have yet another cup of tea together. ”
He shook his head. “I have an engagement. I am late already.”
She put out her hand. He bent down and kissed it lightly. “As if we were in Germany,” he said.
On the stairs he met Max, who saluted him stiffly, unsmilingly, a greeting somehow aggressively German.
IV
A few days after that she sang at an afternoon concert which he attended. Standing alone on the great platform, in a pale gray gown that was almost white, she looked gravely, sweetly young, and she sang Wagner’s “ Traüme” with the mature passion that was so unexpectedly a part of her music — that, in spite of her childishness, he had come to feel was also a part of herself.
After the concert was over he felt irresistibly drawn to her house; but at the very steps he turned away and walked instead in the park, long and late. Once, at a bend in the road, he came suddenly face to face with a man and woman driving; they had bowed and passed before he realized that it was Max von Stahlschmidt and Mrs. Gambril. On the way home he stopped at a florist’s shop and ordered a box of red carnations sent to Hilda. It was the first time he had sent her anything but white flowers.
One day, a week or two after the concert, he went to see her late in the afternoon. Again he found her alone.
“Some one tell me you are gone away,” she said as she greeted him.
“And did you think I would go away without saying good-by? I have been very busy.”
“Ah yes, I understand. I am glad that you are not gone. Max und I valk always alone. My husband is now also more busy.”
Harvey walked over to the window. “It is beautiful now outdoors. The air is full of spring. We must walk once more in the park together, just once more” —
“You go away ?” she asked in alarm.
He looked down at her curiously. “I am afraid I must.”
“I am sorry,” she said softly. “We vill miss you, Max und I. You are so good to him. I think it is for you he love America.”
“And you, liebe Dame, you are sorry for yourself — just a little bit — and not altogether because of little Max ? ”
“You know I also am sorry. But for you I am often lonely. I do not enjoy much the parties, but I like much to valk so in the park with you.”
Their eyes met. Her hand lay near his upon the window-sill. He covered it with his own; it was an almost involuntary action. His eyes remained upon hers, his breath began to come quickly. Her color rose. In a second her lashes drooped, but in that second he had seen — what was it ? he scarcely knew — something that quivered like light in her eyes, and for an instant the world swam around him. Then he felt her hand withdrawn gently from under his.
“It becomes dark, Meester Langdon. I ring for the light.”
They stood in silence by the fire waiting for the maid to answer the bell. When she came she brought some cards to Hilda. “Tell them to come up,” Hilda directed. Before the guests arrived Harvey took his leave.
But the next afternoon he called again. The servant told him he might go up. He knew that it was a mistake, but took advantage of it, fearing obscurely that she might refuse to see him this time. In the hall the sound of her singing came to him. He walked slowly and noiselessly toward the sound. He stopped at the open door, and saw her sitting in the firelight with her boy in her arms, singing a soft little bedtime song — like any other mother. The voice that had thrilled thousands, that had stirred the depths in even his unresponsive being, brought to him now, mysteriously, intimately, the sacred revelation of motherhood. He stood in silence. A mist came over his eyes. When the little song stopped he turned and slipped softly away, knowing that he had seen a divine thing.
At the head of the stairs — their usual meeting - place — he encountered Max. He would have passed with a silent recognition, but Von Stahlschmidt stopped him.
“You are good enough to come often, Mr. Langdon, but it is a pleasure I seldom have to see you. We pass always on the way.”
Harvey, looking in the man’s face, saw it white and strained. “ It is a great privilege to be allowed to come, Herr Baron. I assure you I appreciate it.” He moved to pass on, but Von Stahlschmidt pushed in front of him and stood before the flight of stairs. Hilda had begun to sing again, more softly than before. The child must be dropping asleep. Harvey looked up to find Von Stahlschmidt regarding him steadily.
“You appreciate also, it seems, the privilege to meet her and walk with her in the park many times — to see her alone, is it not ? I ask that you explain to me your acquaintance with my wife” —
A black look came into Harvey’s eyes; then he looked into the man’s face and saw how he was suffering.
“You do not answer. I demand that you answer” —
Hilda’s voice, softly singing, filled the silence. For a moment Harvey breathed hard, then he laid his hand on the German’s arm and drew him back to the open door. “Look at her,” he said in a low voice, not to reach her. “That is your answer.”
Hilda had stopped singing and had risen from her chair, her sleepy boy in her arms, her face bent over him. Her husband made an inarticulate sound and turned toward Harvey. The eyes of the two men met. Then Von Stahlschmidt caught the other man’s hand and wrung it till his muscles trembled. Hilda turned toward the doorway peering into the darkness.
“Max,” she called softly.
With a cry that was almost a sob he was in the middle of the room beside her. She held the child up to him with a smile. “Kiss little Max good-night,” Harvey heard her say in German. With a wordless exclamation the man caught his wife and child in his arms.
It was some minutes later that he remembered Harvey. “ Oh, I forgot — Mr. Langdon is out in the hall.” He went to the door and called Harvey’s name, but Harvey was not there.
V
The next morning a box of white carnations came for Hilda and with them a note.
Gnädige Dame, — I am more sorry than I can say to leave without saying good-by, but it cannot be otherwise. You are a woman, and perhaps you will understand. Will you accept the lifelong gratitude of a man to whom you have given back the most precious thing in life, — his faith in woman ? Even more, for out of your own abundance you have given him — although so late — that youth of which he once thought the gods had defrauded him.
I hope we may meet again some day — somewhere, and so I shall not say farewell but Auf Wiedersehen, or — as we mean in my language when we say good-by — God be with you.
Faithfully yours, HARVEY LANGDON.
The letter dropped from Hilda’s hand and her eyes grew thoughtful.
“What is it, Liebchen?” asked Max. She passed him the letter without comment. He read it in silence, but at the end he looked up at her curiously.
“You like him, Hilda?”
“Oh yes, very much I like him.”
“You are sorry he is gone” —
“ I am sorry, lieber Max. He vas so good to me when I vas lonely.” She put out an apologetic hand. “I vas so foolish to be lonely sometimes when you vere so much busy. I think, lieber Max, he is very kind and good.”
A change that she did not understand passed over Max’s face as he came swiftly toward her and took her in his arms.
“ You are very good, Herzchen, — too good. I love you.”