LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 281, 6 May 1875, Page 4

LITERATURE.

NOTES FEOM A GERMAN BAND. BY MARY CECIL HAY, AUTHOR OF “OLD Middleton’s money,” etc. ( Continued.) Through one of the lower windows of the house before us we saw a little girl sitting alone in the firelight; and when we had played one tune, the house door was opened, and the pretty child, looking as warm and bright as if it was midsummer day, ran from the house straight up to Fritz, and put a sixpence into his hand, passing Karlschen’s, which was held out by force of habit to receive it. We all noticed this, a little surprised and a little amused too. She gave it with a smile straight into the lad’s face, then raced back daintily over the snow; and a few minutes afterwards we saw her again, sitting upon the rug alone in the firelight. Hardly once did the wistful eyes of little Fritz wander from her as she sat there so still, in the glow of warmth and light. When that tune was finished I intended to turn, but at that moment, in a sudden unexpected manner, Peter’s trombone broke into a lively rendering of the ‘ Last Rose of Summer,’ and we all'scramblod in as quickly as we could, and as correctly as we might. Heiner, who no doubt felt he had been taken at a disadvantage, closed his lips in silence on his reed. With my cornet at my mouth, I turned to Peter for a solution of his haste, and then I saw it all explained. At a little gate among the shrubs —so near that we could plainly see them even in the gloom — two people stood quite still listening to us ; a young girl on one side the path, her dress warm and bright against the snowy leaves, a bunch of glistening holly in her hand, and a pair of lustrous eyes fixed upon us. Beside her a gentleman stood against the little gate, gazing steadfastly into her face, with a look which made me feel pretty sure that, just before this, he had told her a story, and had been answered in words which floated back to him upon the music he heard, just as perhaps his story floated back to her. Presently, in our pause, they came forward together, and the gentleman—l fancied he didn’t belong to the house, and that she flifl—put two half-crowns into my hand. The young lady stood and spoke to us for a little bit about the cold and and the music, then gave us a smile and a ‘ Good night, ’ and passed on ; and the smile made her face just like the face of the little girl who had given her sixpence to Fritz. We were very adly off just then, so I don’t say that the smile was worth as much to us as the five shillings, but I think it was received quite as gratefully. ‘ Another tune,’ I whispered, as the two walked on to the house, ‘“Spring, gentle Spring”!’ cried Behr, quite excitedly. At the same moment Fritz whispered eagerly, ‘Des Deutschen Vaterland,’ please, Leader. P’raps they love it.’ ‘ Sart on, ’ put in Peter, in a tone of un questionable authority. * Du, dti, leigst mir in Herzen .’ And remembering the tender episode of Marguerite, we acknowledged Peter’s right to dictate in this instance. * A pleasant change in our day’s experience,’ observed Behr, as we put up our instruments; and he closed the snowy gate quite gently. ‘ I hope to see this house again some day.’ Quite cheerfully now we hurried on to the first inn we found. Two or three miles the walk must have been ; but we thought nothing of it, choosing our supper as we went, and getting more and more extravagant and imposible in our notions, until we were pulled up at the third or fourth course of Peter’s banquet. When, a few hours later on, I looked in upon the tired lads in their dot of a bed, I found Fritz still wide awake. ‘ I’m think of the little lady who ran out to me in the snowy garden,’ he said, looking up into my face with big bright eyes. ’ _ ‘ But you’ve seen many little ladies,’ I answered coolly, just to quiet him, * and they needn’t keep you awake. You’ll see many more too, just as pretty.’ ‘I saw her in the snow,’he whispered softly, ‘ and I saw her in the firelight, and I was thinking I should like to see her just once again—in the sunshine. Just once again, Leader ; do you think I shall ?’ * Of course you’ll see her again, and in the sunshine too.’ I said it just to soothe him, and didn’t mind at all about its probability. Chapter ll— Summer. _ It was perfectly startling in its effect, that rose in Peter’s button-hole; not that it was different in itself from other roses, the effect lay in its arrangement. It was entirely surrounded by full-grown and glossy leaves, each one of which was at its point pinned back to Peter’s coat, so that_ the rose bloomed in the centre of a vivid radius, which extended over the greater part of the little trombonist’s chest, and formed what he himself termed a striking decoration. But he was not the only one who boasted a flower in his coat, for before we started Fritz had begged two small white pinks, and as proudly as if it meant a whole new suit, he had carefully • pinned one into his little brother’s coat, and one in his own. ‘Karl doesn’t look a bit shabby now, does he, Leader?’ he asked me, surveying him with a protecting admiration which was unspeakably touching in the child. Shabby! The word could not attach'to any of us after the elaborate care we had expended in preparing for this expedition. Shabby! when Bohr’s neck was rasped by the stiffness of his clean collar—rather fringed at the edges, but then the edges didn’t show much; and Heiner’s straight locks glistened so unctuously in the sun; and spruce little Peter, stepping warily in the dust, stopped every few minutes to flick his handkerchief over some part of his attire. We had an engagement, you see—a very grand engagement for us—and our walk must needs be a cheerful one, though it was long and sultry. We were to play all afternoon on the hill where the picnic was to be held, then go down to the .house of the gentleman who gave the party, and play there during the supper and a dance. The nearest way to the hill had been pointed out to us, and we were very glad to leave the dusty road at last, and turn into the woods. What a relief this shadow was, after the burning sun rays ! It was a wonderful wood, reminding us a little of the beauty and the awful solitude of our own forests. Karlschen was tired now, and lingered at my side; even Fritz, who scarcely ever owned to being tired, and who had been scampering in the bracken like a young stag, lagged presently, and walked sedately among us, As we went on, we began to

recall the wild weird legends of our native forests. We did it partly to shorten the way, and partly because such memories came easily to us in this scene, and we only laughed to see the rapt faces of the lads as they listened. Story after story we told, of travellers lost or robbed or murdered in the forests, and of the gnomes and sprites and fairies which haunt them. Presently Heiner, who had evidently been ransacking his brain for the dolefullest thing he could remember, told us of a forest he knew, so vast and silent and dim, and where the solitude was so solemn and terrible, that those who lost their w r ay there at once committed suicide, unable to endure the awful loneliness and stillness ; and how, in consequence of this, their unquiet and unhappy spirits haunted it always. ‘ Committed suicide !’ exclaimed Peter. ‘Mein G-ott, that’s about the last thing I should do in such a case. ’ ‘ It was about the last thing they did, too. ‘ The shortest way of getting out of the wood,’ explained Heiner coolly. ‘ And 7 can tell you I wouldn’t be there after dark for a thousand thalers,’ ‘ Suicides !’ echoed Fritz, raising his wondering eyes to Heiner. * What are they ?’ We were fools enough to help Olarry in his dreary explanation, and then we laughed at the sudden scream little Karl gave when a pheasant started unexpectedly from the covert before us. ‘ Were you—frightened ?’ asked Fritz, looking with a smile into his little brother’s face; but I noticed that his own had whitened too, and I was not sorry to leave the wood and begin the ascent of the hill, though Behr’s breath grew short with the weight of his ’cello and his own ponderous person. ‘ May I carry it a bit, Behr ?’ asked Fritz, whose step was as light upon the hillside as in the wood below. I laughed at tde notion, but Cello condescended no reply. It was not till we’d been some time in our places that we had time or opportunity to look about us among the gay party assembled on the hill. It is but seldom that in our wandering lives we meet again' faces that we know or recognise, but almost in that first minute I recognised one of the faces here, the sweetest and the prettiest of all; the face of the young lady who, on that bitter winter evening.six months before had stood in the snow to listen to us. When I saw and recognised her I looked round at once for the gentleman who had been with her on that night. It was a good while before I saw him at all, and then I noticed how far away from her he kept; and through all the time I watched him I could see that he never once glanced in her direction; while beside her hovered a short dark gentleman, a good bit older, and as different from him as cloud from sunshine. Of course I didn’t see it all at once, I had the whole day to make my observations: but I did notice this—the short dark gentleman hardly left her at all, hardly allowed her to talk to any one else, and kept, in a way, sole possession of her. Yet I never saw him look at rest in her presence. He was suspicious, I think, and fidgety. And she? Well, the eyes that had been that night so bright and lustrous in the snow were sad and unsatisfied now in the brilliant sunshine. And the other gentleman—the one to whom we owed that winter night’s rest and refreshment ? ( To be continued,')