style="font-size:15px;"> "The last quartette-night," he said. "But never mind. It will be an adorable finishing-up. And we will play extra beautiful for the Signorina. I will make my violoncello sing superb. The others – they shall be nowhere!"
The door opened once more, and a stately-looking German came in carrying his violin case. He had bushy hair and a fierce moustache.
"Guten Abend, Signor," he said. "Guten Abend. It is sehr kalt to-night. Meine Finger – "
Then suddenly he saw Katharine, and Signor Luigi was only just in time to prevent the violin case from falling to the ground.
"Lieber Himmel!" he cried. "I do see my distinguished pupil."
"Distinguished for my ignorance and impatience, Herr Edelhart, wasn't it?" said Katharine, greeting him.
"And for wunderbar charm," added the German fervently. "Ah, I have had no one so distinguished for that. The others have had a little talent or none – generally none – and no charm. But Fräulein's wunderbar charm – it could not be described – only felt. Ah, and how himmlisch that you are come back. My violin shall sing her very best to-night. She shall inspire herself to welcome Fräulein. The others shall be nowhere! They – "
Then the door opened again, and a dark little man, obviously of French persuasion, came into the room looking rather dreamy and preoccupied; but when he saw Katharine he returned to real life, and his face broke out into a radiant smile.
"Mon Dieu!" he cried. "Mademoiselle have returned to us. Ah, le climat detestable of England have become a beautiful, French printemps. The fogs is gone. My dead hearts is alive. And Mademoiselle have made the miracle."
"You see that you have come back to faithful admirers, Kath," Ronald said, laughing.
"I see that I have come back to faithful flatterers," Katharine answered, as she stood in their midst laughing and shaking hands with them repeatedly. "But it is all delightful, and I feel years younger at being amongst my old friends. How many years have we known each other? Isn't it ten?"
"Ten years, five months," said Herr Edelhart, accurately.
"Onze, onze," said Monsieur Gervais.
"Always, always!" cried the Italian, waving his arms about in dismissal of time, and then dancing a sort of war-dance round the room.
"Ah, ha, we have not been so gay since the Signorina was cruel enough to leave us," he cried. "Tra, la, la, tra, la, la!"
"Look here, Luigi, we must manage to behave ourselves somehow," said Ronald, catching hold of the little Italian. "For there is a stranger coming to-night, and he will think we are all mad."
"A stranger," they cried, "and on our last night?"
"Oh, hang it all," said Ronald, laughing, "it can't be our last night."
"Bravo, bravissimo!" they cried.
And Herr Edelhart whispered to Katharine:
"Fräulein has come home, and 'brother' is coming back to his senses."
"Who is the stranger?" Katharine asked. "And how dare he intrude on us at such a moment?"
"Poor fellow, he wouldn't willingly intrude on any one," Ronald answered. "But I asked him in myself. He was a neighbour of ours in Surrey during the summer. And I met him several times. He lost his wife under very tragic circumstances, and he is a sad man. We must not let our gaiety jar on him."
The door opened, and Professor Thornton was announced.
"Light of mine eyeballs," whispered Luigi, "he does not look gay, does he?"
"Mon Dieu!" whispered Gervais. "He belong to the country of fogs. He give me the sore-throats at once."
Katharine had risen to receive Clifford Thornton, and when he saw her he said gravely:
"But, surely I know you?"
"And I know you, surely," she answered, almost as gravely; and for a moment they stood looking at each other in silence, surrounded by the four musicians, each waiting with his instrument in his hands.
"Where have you met?" Ronald asked, turning first to Clifford and then to Katharine. "On your travels?"
"I do not know," they said together, and they still stood motionless, arrested of body and spirit.
"Well, now for the quartette," said the musicians, and they resined their bows and tuned up. It was their habit to go into raptures over their respective instruments; so that sighs of content, and mysterious expressions of admiration, were soon filling the air. Signor Luigi bending over his violoncello, kept crying out:
"Ah, per Bacco, what for a treasure! Light of mine eyeballs – light of mine eyeballs – maccaroni of my native land, what for a beautiful treasure!"
They laughed as they always did laugh over the merry little Italian, and were just settling down to Beethoven's Rasomoffsky Quartette, when Signor Luigi remembered the Pomeranian.
"Ah, ha," he said, "the adorable dog will howl – he must go – he or I must go. We will depart him prestissimo. He will come very, very near and mock us. I know him, the rogue! Ah, Signor Professor, many thanks, no use you trying to do it. It needs a grand genius like myself to depart that amiable animal."
"And now I think we are safe," he said when he had expelled the reluctant white Pomeranian and shut the door.
Then the voices and laughter were hushed, Herr Edelhart gave the sign, and the quartette began, led off by the low notes of the violoncello. Clifford Thornton and Katharine, sitting in different corners of the room, lost themselves in the wonderful regions which music, with a single wave of her magic wand, opens to every one desirous of entering.
"Behold my kingdom," she whispers, "wander unharmed in all directions – you will find the paths for yourselves – "
Clifford Thornton, with the war of conflicting emotions in his heart, entered and found the path of peace.
Katharine entered too, and trod unconsciously the path of noble discontent with self and circumstance.
"Ah, how one rests," thought the man.
"Ah, what an aimless, lonely life I've been leading," thought the woman. "No use to myself or any one – " The sounds died away, and the listeners came back from their distant wanderings. Katharine looked up and met the grave glance of the stranger.
He seemed to be asking her:
"Where did we meet, you and I?"
And her silent answer was:
"I cannot tell you, but I have known you always."
Two or three times during the next quartette, of Brahms, she was impelled to look in his direction, and saw him sitting alone at the other end of the room, in an isolation of frigid reserve, staring straight at her as over a vast, with that strange expression of inquiry on his thin drawn face. She was curiously stirred, curiously uneasy too. She was almost glad when the quartette was over and he rose to go.
He went up to the players and thanked them. Then he turned to Katharine.
"Good-bye," he said, and a ghost of a smile, which he
