Read CHAPTER XVI of The Black Cross , free online book, by Olive M. Briggs, on ReadCentral.com.

“Fraeulein, Fraeulein open the door! There is a gentleman here who would speak with you! Fraeulein!”

The blows redoubled on the stout oak, growing louder and more persistent. “Fraeulein! It is very strange, Herr Kapellmeister. I saw her go in with my own eyes, some two hours back, and she has not come out, for I was below in the mill with my pipe and my beer, sitting in the very doorway itself, and no flutter of petticoats passed me, or I should have heard.”

The old miller rubbed his wizen cheeks and smoothed the wisps of hair on his chin, nervously as a young man does his mustache.

“Na !” said the Kapellmeister. “It is late and she may be asleep. I came after rehearsal and it must be nine, or past. Knock louder!”

The miller struck the oak again with his fist, calling out; and then they both listened. “There is no light through the key-hole,” said the miller, peeping, “only the moon-rays which lie on the floor, and when I hark with my hand to my ear, I hear no sound but the water splashing.”

The Kapellmeister paced the narrow corridor impatiently. “Donnerwetter!” he exclaimed, “The matter is important, or I shouldn’t have come. I must have an answer to-night. Try the door, and if it is unlocked, open it and shout. You have a voice like a saw; it would raise the dead.”

The miller put his hand to the latch and it yielded: “Fraeulein !” The garret was in shadow, and across the floor lay the moonbeams glittering; the casement was open, and the geraniums were outlined dark against the sky, their colour dimmed.

“There is something in the window!” said the miller, peering; and the door opened wider. “There is something black across the sill; it is lying over the geraniums and crushing them, and it looks like a woman! Jesus Maria!”

He took a step forward, staring: “It is the Fraeulein, and she is ”

“Get out of the way, you fool!” cried the Kapellmeister sharply, and he pushed the man back and strode forward: “The child has fainted! She lies here with her head on her arms, and her cheek is white as the moon itself.”

He lifted her gently and put his arm under her shoulders, supporting her: “Get some Kirsch at once,” he cried to the miller, “Stop gaping, man! She’s not dead I tell you her heart flutters and the pulse in her wrist is throbbing!” He slipped his hand in his pocket, and tossed the miller a gulden. “Now run,” he said, “run as if the devil were after you. The Rathskeller is only a square away! Brandy and food food, do you hear?”

The old man caught the gulden greedily between his fingers, and examined it for a moment, weighing it. “I will go,” he mumbled, “certainly I will go. Kirsch you say, sir, and bread perhaps?”

“Be off, you fool!”

The Kapellmeister watched the door grimly as it shut behind the miller, and then he glanced about the garret. “Poor,” he said, “Humph! A place for a beggar!” His eyes roved from the pallet in the corner to the pitcher and the basin, the clothes on the pegs, the cobwebs hanging, the geraniums crushed on the sill.

Then he lifted the girl’s head and held it between his hands, looking down at her face, supporting her in his arms. The lashes lay heavy on her cheeks and the tendrils of hair, curly and golden, lay on her neck and her forehead. Her throat was bare; it was white and full. The Kapellmeister held her gently and a film came over his eyes as he gazed:

“How young she is!” he murmured, “like some beautiful boy. Her chin is firm there is will power there. Her brows are intelligent; her whole personality is one of feeling and temperament. It is a face in a thousand. What is her name, her history? How has she suffered? Why is she alone? There are lines of pain about the mouth the eyes!”

He raised her suddenly in his arms and started to his feet; and as he did so, she opened her lids slowly and gazed at him. “Velasco ” she murmured.

Her voice was low and feeble, and the Kapellmeister bent his head lower: “What is it, child?” he said, “I can’t hear you. In a moment you will have some brandy in your throat and that will rouse you. I will carry you now to that pallet over yonder, a poor place, no doubt, and hard as a board.”

He strode across the floor and laid the girl gently on the bed, smoothing the pillow, and covering her lightly with the blanket. Kaya opened her eyes again, and put out her hands as if seeking someone.

“I was falling,” she said, “Why did you bring me back?”

The Kapellmeister sat down by the edge of the bed and began to whistle softly; he whistled a theme once, and then he repeated it a semi-tone higher. “I suspected as much,” he said, “Was it because you had no money?”

Kaya turned her face away.

“Were you starving? Tschut! You needn’t answer. Your eyes show it. I might have seen for myself this morning, if I had not been in a temper with the chorus, and my mind absorbed in other matters. Be still now, here is the miller the dotard!”

The Kapellmeister went over to the door, and took from the old man a small flask and a newspaper wrapping some rolls. “So,” he said grimly, “Now go, and keep the rest of the gulden for yourself. No thanks! Pischt be off! Go back to your doorway and finish your beer, do you hear me? I will look after the Fraeulein; she is conscious now, and I have business with her.” He motioned the old man back from the door and closed it behind him; then he returned to the pallet. “I’m not much of a nurse,” he said, “You will have to put up with some awkwardness, child; but there raise your head a little, so and lean on my shoulder! Now drink!”

Kaya swallowed a few drops of the brandy. “That is enough,” she said faintly.

“No. Drink!”

He held the glass to her lips, and she obeyed him, for his hands were strong and his eyes compelled her. Then he broke the roll, and dipped it into the brandy, and fed her piece by piece. When she tried to resist him, he said “Eat, child eat! Do as I tell you eat!” and held it to her mouth until she yielded.

She thought of Velasco and how he had fed her in the studio, and the pulse in her wrist beat quicker. When she had finished the roll, he put down the glass and the newspaper, and she felt his eyes searching hers, keen and sharp, two daggers, as if they would pierce through her secret.

“Don’t speak,” he said curtly, “Listen to me and answer my questions: Why were you discouraged? I told you this morning you would hear from me; why didn’t you wait?”

The tears rose slowly into Kaya’s eyes, and she hid her face in the pillow.

“You didn’t believe me,” said the Kapellmeister, “but you see I was better than my word I have come myself. Why do you suppose I have come?”

She lay silent.

“If I hadn’t come,” he said grimly, “You would be lying in that pool yonder, by now, broken to pieces against the wheel; and I should have sought for my bird in vain.” He saw how the pillow rose and fell with her breath, and how she listened.

“I wanted a bird for my Siegfried on Saturday,” he went on, “Some one to sit far aloft in the flies and sing, as you sang this morning, high and pure, in the middle of the tone. Helmanoff has trained you well, child, you take the notes as if nature herself had been your teacher. Neumann is gone; she screeches like an owl! Elle a son congé!” He continued to look at the pillow and the gold curls spread across it.

“Will you come and be my bird, child? I suppose you can’t act as yet; but up in the flies you will be hidden, and only your prototype will flutter across the stage on its wires. When I heard you this morning, I said to myself: ‘Ha my bird at last! Siegfried’s bird!’”

He laughed softly, and bent over and stroked the curls: “I came to-night because the Neumann went off in a huff. She made a scene at rehearsal, or rather I did. I told her to go and darn stockings for a living, and she seemed to resent it!” He paused for a moment. “Saturday is only day after to-morrow and we have no bird!”

The girl lay motionless, and the Kapellmeister went on stroking her curls. “If you sing, you will be paid, you know!” he said, “and then you need not try to kill the poor bird for lack of a crumb. Why didn’t you tell me this morning, little one?”

Kaya raised her head feebly and gazed at him: “My voice is gone!” she said, “My voice is gone!”

“Bah!” said the Kapellmeister, “With a throat like that! It is only beginning to come. The Lehmann’s voice was as yours in her youth, light at first and colorature; and it grew! Mein Gott, how it grew and deepened, and swelled, and soared! Get strong, child, and your voice will ripen like fruit in the sun.”

He stooped over the pillow and looked into her eyes: “Come, child,” he said, “Will you be my bird? Promise me! You won’t think of that again I can trust you? If I leave you now ”

Kaya put out her hands and clung to him suddenly, clasping his arm with her fingers. “I won’t,” she said, “I will live, and study, and do my best and some day you think I shall be a singer? Oh, tell me truly! That is just what Helmanoff said, but when I asked them to hear me I went to so many, so many! they were always engaged, or ” She caught her breath a little, stumbling over the words: “You think so truly?”

“I think so truly,” said the Kapellmeister, “You must come to see me at the Opera-House to-morrow and rehearse your part, and I will teach you. You shall have your honorarium to-night in advance; and you must eat and grow strong.”

“I will,” said Kaya.

There was a new resolve in her tone, fresh hope, and she put her hand to her throat instinctively, as if to imprison the voice inside and keep it from escaping.

“Has the miller gone?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Ritter, “He is gone and the door is closed; we are alone.”

“Then put your head lower,” whispered the girl, “and I will tell you. Perhaps, when you know!”

“Go on,” said the Kapellmeister, “I am here, child, close to you, and no one shall hurt you. Don’t tremble.”

“Do you see my hands?” said the girl, “Look at them. They are stained with blood stained with Ah, you draw away!”

“Go on,” said Ritter, “You drew away yourself, child. What do you mean? What could you do with a hand like that, a rose leaf? Ha!” He laughed and clasped it with his own to give her courage: “Go on.”

“You are not Russian,” said the girl, “so you can’t understand. When one is not Russian to be an anarchist, to kill that is terrible, unpardonable! But with us My father is Mezkarpin,” she whispered, “You have heard of him yes? The great General, the friend of the Tsar! And I am the Countess Kaya, his his daughter!”

Her voice broke, and she was silent for a moment, leaning against the pillow. Then she went on:

“There is a society,” she whispered, “in St. Petersburg. It is called ‘The Black Cross’; and whosoever is a member of that order must obey the will of the order; and when they pass judgment, the sentence must be fulfilled. They are just and fair. When a man, an official, has sinned only once, they pass him by; but when he has committed crime after crime, they take up his case and deliberate together, and he is judged and condemned. Sometimes it is the sentence of death, and then ” she hesitated, “and then we draw lots. The lot fell to me.”

She shut her eyes, and as the Kapellmeister watched her face, he saw that it was convulsed in agony, and the boyish look was gone.

“He was warned,” she whispered, “three times he was warned, according to rule, and I I killed him.” The lines deepened in her face, and she half rose, leaning on her elbow, staring straight ahead of her as though at a vision, her lips moving:

In the name of the Black Cross I do now pledge myself an instrument in the service of Justice and Retribution. On whomsoever the choice of Fate shall fall, I vow the sentence of death shall be fulfilled, by mine own hands if needs be, without weakness, or hesitation, or mercy; and if by any untoward chance this hand should fall, I swear I swear, before the third night shall have passed, to die instead to die instead.

She struggled up on the bed, kneeling.

“I killed him!” she cried in a whisper, “I killed him! I see him lying on the floor there on his face! There there! Look! With his arms outstretched and the blood in a pool!”

She was leaning forward over the edge of the bed, staring with her eyes dilated, pointing into the shadows and shuddering:

“Don’t you see him there?”

The Kapellmeister was white and his hands shook. He took her strongly by the shoulders. “Lie down,” he said, “You are dreaming. There is nothing there. Look me in the eyes! I tell you there is nothing there, and your hands are not stained. Lie down.”

Kaya gazed at him for a moment in bewilderment: “Where am I?” she said, passing her hand over her eyes. “Who are you? I thought you were Why no, I must have been dreaming as you say.”

“The hunger has made you delirious,” said the Kapellmeister: “Look me in the eyes as I tell you, and I will smooth away those lines from your forehead. Sleep now sleep!”

The girl sank reluctantly back on the pillows and the Kapellmeister sat beside her, his gaze fixed on hers with a strained attention, unblinking. He was passing his hand over her forehead slowly and lightly, scarcely touching her: “Sleep ” he said, “Sleep.”

Her lids wavered and drooped slowly, and she sighed and stirred against the pillows, turning on her side.

“Sleep ” he said.

The garret was still, and only the moonbeams danced on the floor. The doves in the eaves slept with their heads tucked under their wings, and the spiders were motionless in the midst of the webs; only the water was splashing below.

The Kapellmeister watched the girl on the pallet. He sat leaning back with his arms folded, his head in the shadow, and his face was grim. “She will sleep now,” he said to himself, “sleep until I wake her. She is young and strong, and there is no harm done; but she has had some fearful shock, and it has shaken her like a slender birch struck by a storm. I will send my old Marta, and she will look after her poor little bird!”

Kaya lay on her side with her face half turned to the pillow; her cheek was flushed and her breath came gently through the arch of her lips. Her curls were like a halo about her, and her right hand lay on the blanket limp, small and white with the fingers relaxed.

“I am getting to be an old man,” said the Kapellmeister to himself, “and my heart is seared; but if I had a daughter, and she looked like that I would throw over the Tsar and all his kingdom. The great Juggernaut of Autocracy has gone over her, and her wings are bruised. It is only her voice that can save her now.”

He rose to his feet slowly, and in the dim light of the moon his hair was silvered, and he seemed weary and worn. He stood by the pallet, looking down at the slim, still figure for a moment; and his hand stole out and touched a strand of her hair. Then he covered her gently. “Sleep,” he said, “Sleep!” And he turned and went out, closing the door.