Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 31, October, 1873

"And if he has, whose fault is it?" the girl said warmly. "Who has kept him in idleness but yourself? And now you blame him for it. I wish he had never had any of your money—I wish he were never to have any more of it."

And then Sheila stopped, with a terrible dread falling over her. What had she not said? The pride of her race had carried her so far, and she had given expression to all the tumult of her heart; but had she not betrayed her duty as a wife, and grievously compromised the interests of her husband? And yet the indignation in her bosom was too strong to admit of her retracting those fatal phrases and begging forgiveness. She stood for a moment irresolute, and she knew that the invalid was regarding her curiously, as though she were some wild animal, and not an ordinary resident in Bayswater.

"You are a little mad, but you are a good girl, and I want to be friends with you. You have in you the spirit of a dozen Frank Lavenders."

"You will never make friends with me by speaking ill of my husband," said Sheila with the same proud and indignant look.

"Not when he ill uses you?" "He does not ill use me. What has Mr. Ingram been saying to you?"

The sudden question would certainly have brought about a disclosure if any were to have been made; but Mrs. Lavender assured Sheila that Mr. Ingram had told her nothing, that she had been forming her own conclusions, and that she still doubted that they were right.

"Now sit down and read to me. You will find Marcus Antoninus on the top of those books."

"Frank is in the drawing-room," observed Sheila mildly.

"He can wait," said the old woman sharply.

"Yes, but you cannot expect me to keep him waiting," with a smile which did not conceal her very definite purpose.

"Then ring, and bid him come up. You will soon get rid of those absurd sentiments."

Sheila rang the bell, and sent Mrs. Paterson down for Lavender, but she did not betake herself to Marcus Antoninus. She waited a few minutes, and then her husband made his appearance, whereupon she sat down and left to him the agreeable duty of talking with this toothless old heathen about funerals and lingering death.

"Well, Aunt Lavender, I am sorry to hear you have been ill, but I suppose you are getting all right again, to judge by your looks."

"I am not nearly as ill as you expected."

"I wonder you did not say 'hoped,'" remarked Lavender carelessly. "You are always attributing the most charitable feelings to your fellow-creatures."

"Frank Lavender," said the old lady, who was a little pleased by this bit of flattery, "if you came here to make yourself impertinent and disagreeable, you can go down stairs again. Your wife and I get on very well without you."

"I am glad to hear it," he said: "I suppose you have been telling her what is the matter with you."

"I have not. I don't know. I have had a pain in the head and two fits, and I dare say the next will carry me off. The doctors won't tell me anything about it, so I suppose it is serious."

"Nonsense!" cried Lavender. "Serious! To look at you, one would say you never had been ill in your life."

"Don't tell stories, Frank Lavender. I know I look like a corpse, but I don't mind it, for I avoid the looking-glass and keep the spectacle for my friends. I expect the next fit will kill me."

"I'll tell you what it is, Aunt Lavender: if you would only get up and come with us for a drive in the Park, you would find there was nothing of an invalid about you; and we should take you home to a quiet dinner at Notting Hill, and Sheila would sing to you all the evening, and to-morrow you would receive the doctors in state in your drawing-rooms, and tell them you were going for a month to Malvern."

"Your husband has a fine imagination, my dear," said Mrs. Lavender to Sheila. "It is a pity he puts it to no use. Now I shall let both of you go. Three breathing in this room are too many for the cubic feet of air it contains. Frank, bring over those scales and put them on the table, and send Paterson to me as you go out."

And so they went down stairs and out of the house. Just as they stood on the steps, looking for a hansom, a young lad came forward and shook hands with Lavender, glancing rather nervously at Sheila.

"Well, Mosenberg," said Lavender, "you've come back from Leipsic at last? We got your card when we came home this morning from Brighton. Let me introduce you to my wife."

The boy looked at the beautiful face before him with something of distant wonder and reverence in his regard. Sheila had heard of the lad before—of the Mendelssohn that was to be—and liked his appearance at first sight. He was a rather handsome boy of fourteen or fifteen, of the fair Jew type, with large, dark, expressive eyes, and long, wavy, light-brown hair. He spoke English fluently and well: his slight German accent was, indeed, scarcely so distinct as Sheila's Highland one, the chief peculiarity of his speaking being a preference for short sentences, as if he were afraid to adventure upon elaborate English. He had not addressed a dozen sentences to Sheila before she had begun to have a liking for the lad, perhaps on account of his soft and musical voice, perhaps on account of the respectful and almost wondering admiration that dwelt in his eyes. He spoke to her as if she were some saint, who had but to smile to charm and bewilder the humble worshiper at her shrine.

"I was intending to call upon Mrs. Lavender, madame," he said. "I heard that she was ill. Perhaps you can tell me if she is better."

"She seems to be very well to-day, and in very good spirits," Sheila answered.

"Then I will not go in. Did you propose to take a walk in the Park, madame?"

Lavender inwardly laughed at the magnificent audacity of the lad, and, seeing that Sheila hesitated, humored him by saying, "Well, we were thinking of calling on one or two people before going home to dinner. But I haven't seen you for a long time, Mosenberg, and I want you to tell me how you succeeded at the Conservatoire. If you like to walk with us for a bit, we can give you something to eat at seven."

"That would be very pleasant for me," said the boy, blushing somewhat, "if it does not incommode you, madame."

"Oh no: I hope you will come," said Sheila most heartily; and so they set out for a walk through Kensington Gardens northward.

Precious little did Lavender learn about Leipsic during that walk. The boy devoted himself wholly to Sheila. He had heard frequently of her, and he knew of her coming from the wild and romantic Hebrides; and he began to tell her of all the experiments that composers had made in representing the sound of seas and storms and winds howling through caverns washed by the waves. Lavender liked music well enough, and could himself play and sing a little, but this enthusiasm rather bored him. He wanted to know if the yellow wine was still as cool and clear as ever down in the twilight of Auerbach's cellar, what burlesques had lately been played at the theatre, and whether such and such a beer-garden was still to the fore; whereas he heard only analyses of overtures, and descriptions of the uses of particular musical instruments, and a wild rhapsody about moonlit seas, the sweetness of French horns, the King of Thule, and a dozen other matters.

"Mosenberg," he said, "before you go calling on people you ought to visit an English tailor. People will think you belong to a German band."

"I have been to a tailor," said the lad with a frank laugh. "My parents, madame, wish me to be quite English: that is why I am sent to live in London, while they are in Frankfort. I stay with some very good friends of mine, who are very musical, and they are not annoyed by my practicing, as other people would be."

"I hope you will sing something to us this evening," said Sheila.

"I will sing and play for you all the evening," he said lightly, "until you are tired. But you must tell me when you are tired, for who can tell how much music will be enough? Sometimes two or three songs are more than enough to make people wish you away."

"You need have no fear of tiring me," said Sheila. "But when you are tired I will sing for you."

"Yes, of course you sing, madame," he said, casting down his eyes: "I knew that when I saw you."

Sheila had got a sweetheart, and Lavender saw it and smiled good-naturedly. The awe and reverence with which this lad regarded the beautiful woman beside him were something new and odd in Kensington Gardens. Yet it was the way of those boys. He had himself had his imaginative fits of worship, in which some very ordinary young woman, who ate a good breakfast and spent an hour and a half in arranging her hair before going out, was regarded as some beautiful goddess fresh risen from the sea or descended from the clouds. Young Mosenberg was just at the proper age for these foolish dreams. He would sing songs to Sheila, and reveal to her in that way a passion of which he dared not otherwise speak. He would compose pieces of music for her, and dedicate them to her, and spend half his quarterly allowance in having them printed. He would grow to consider him, Lavender, a heartless brute, and cherish dark notions of poisoning him, but for the pain it might cause to her.

"I don't remember whether you smoke, Mosenberg," Lavender said after dinner.

"Yes—a cigarette sometimes," said the lad; "but if Mrs. Lavender is going away perhaps she will let me go into the drawing-room with her. There is that sonata of Muzio Clementi, madame, which I will try to remember for you if you please."

"All right," said Lavender: "you'll find me in the next room on the left when you get tired of your music and want a cigar. I think you used to beat me at chess, didn't you?"

"I do not know. We will try once more to-night."

Then Sheila and he went into the drawing-room by themselves, and while she took a seat near the brightly-lit fire-place, he opened the piano at once and sat down. He turned up his cuffs, he took a look at the pedals, he threw back his head, shaking his long brown hair; and then, with a crash like thunder, his two hands struck the keys. He had forgotten all about that sonata: it was a fantasia of his own, based on the airs in Der Freischütz, that he played; and as he played Sheila's poor little piano suffered somewhat. Never before had it been so battered about, and she wished the small chamber were a great hall, to temper the voluminous noise of this opening passage. But presently the music softened. The white, lithe fingers ran lightly over the keys, so that the notes seemed to ripple out like the prattling of a stream, and then again some stately and majestic air or some joyous burst of song would break upon this light accompaniment, and lead up to another roar and rumble of noise. It was a very fine performance, doubtless, but what Sheila remarked most was the enthusiasm of the lad. She was to see more of that.

"Now," he said, "that is nothing. It is to get one's fingers accustomed to the keys you play anything that is loud and rapid. But if you please, madame, shall I sing you something?"

"Yes, do," said Sheila.

"I will sing for you a little German song which I believe Jenny Lind used to sing, but I never heard her sing. You know German?"

"Very little indeed."

"This is only the cry of some one who is far away about his sweetheart. It is very simple, both in the words and the music."

And he began to sing, in a voice so rich, so tender and expressive that Sheila sat amazed and bewildered to hear him. Where had this boy caught such a trick of passion, or was it really a trick that threw into his voice all the pathos of a strong man's love and grief? He had a powerful baritone, of unusual compass and rare sweetness; but it was not the finely-trained art of his singing, but the passionate abandonment of it, that thrilled Sheila, and indeed brought tears to her eyes. How had this mere lad learned all the yearning and despair of love, that he sang,