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

Dir bebt die Brust,
Dir schlägt dies Herz,
Du meine Lust!
O du, mein Schmerz!
Nur an den Winden, den Sternen der Höh,
Muss ich verkünden mein süsses Weh!—

as though his heart were breaking? When he had finished he paused for a moment or two before leaving the piano, and then he came over to where Sheila sat. She fancied there was a strange look on his face, as of one who had been really experiencing the wild emotions of which he sang; but he said, in his ordinary careful way of speaking, "Madame, I am sorry I cannot translate the words for you into English. They are too simple; and they have, what is common in many German songs, a mingling of the pleasure and the sadness of being in love that would not read natural perhaps in English. When he says to her that she is his greatest delight and also his greatest grief, it is quite right in the German, but not in the English."

"But where have you learned all these things?" she said to him, talking to him as if he were a mere child, and looking without fear into his handsome boyish face and fine eyes. "Sit down and tell me. That is the song of some one whose sweetheart is far away, you said. But you sang it as if you yourself had some sweetheart far away."

"So I have, madame," he said, seriously: "when I sing the song, I think of her then, so that I almost cry for her."

"And who is she?" said Sheila gently. "Is she very far away?"

"I do not know," said the lad absently. "I do not know who she is. Sometimes I think she is a beautiful woman away at St. Petersburg, singing in the opera-house there. Or I think she has sailed away in a ship from me."

"But you do not sing about any particular person?" said Sheila, with an innocent wonder appearing in her eyes.

"Oh no, not at all," said the boy; and then he added, with some suddenness, "Do you think, madame, any fine songs like that, or any fine words that go to the heart of people, are written about any one person? Oh no! The man has a great desire in him to say something beautiful or sad, and he says it—not to one person, but to all the world; and all the world takes it from him as a gift. Sometimes, yes, he will think of one woman, or he will dedicate the music to her, or he will compose it for her wedding, but the feeling in his heart is greater than any that he has for her. Can you believe, madame, that Mendelssohn wrote the Hochzeitm—the Wedding March—for any one wedding? No. It was all the marriage joy of all the world he put into his music, and every one knows that. And you hear it at this wedding, at that wedding, but you know it belongs to something far away and more beautiful than the marriage of any one bride with her sweetheart. And if you will pardon me, madame, for speaking about myself, it is about some one I I never knew, who is far more beautiful and precious to me than any one I ever knew, that I try to think when I sing these sad songs, and then I think of her far away, and not likely ever to see me again."

"But some day you will find that you have met her in real life," Sheila said. "And you will find her far more beautiful and kind to you than anything you dreamed about; and you will try to write your best music to give to her. And then, if you should be unhappy, you will find how much worse is the real unhappiness about one you love than the sentiment of a song you can lay aside at any moment."

The lad looked at her. "What can you know about unhappiness, madame?" he said with a frank and gentle simplicity that she liked.

"I?" said Sheila. "When people get married and begin to experience the cares of the world, they must expect to be unhappy sometimes."

"But not you," he said with some touch of protest in his voice, as if it were impossible the world should deal harshly with so young and beautiful and tender a creature. "You can have nothing but enjoyment around you. Every one must try to please you. You need only condescend to speak to people, and they are grateful to you for a great favor. Perhaps, madame, you think I am impertinent?"

He stopped and blushed, while Sheila, herself with a little touch of color, answered him that she hoped he would always speak to her quite frankly, and then suggested that he might sing once more for her.

"Very well," he said as he sat down to the piano: "this is not any more a sad song. It is about a young lady who will not let her sweetheart kiss her, except on conditions. You shall hear the conditions, and what he says."

Sheila began to wonder whether this innocent-eyed lad had been imposing on her. The song was acted as well as sung. It consisted chiefly of a dialogue between the two lovers; and the boy, with a wonderful ease and grace and skill, mimicked the shy coquetries of the girl, her fits of petulance and dictation, and the pathetic remonstrances of her companion, his humble entreaties and his final sullenness, which is only conquered by her sudden and ample consent. "What a rare faculty of artistic representation this precocious boy must have," she thought, "if he really exhibits all those moods and whims and tricks of manner without having himself been in the position of the despairing and imploring lover!"

"You were not thinking of the beautiful lady in St. Petersburg when you were singing just now," Sheila said on his coming back to her.

"Oh no," he said carelessly: "that is nothing. You have not to imagine anything. These people, you see them on every stage in the comedies and farces."

"But that might happen in actual life," said Sheila, still not quite sure about him. "Do you know that many people would think you must have yourself been teased in that way, or you could not imitate it so naturally?"

"I! Oh no, madame," he said seriously: "I should not act that way if I were in love with a woman. If I found her a comedy-actress, liking to make her amusement out of our relations, I should say to her, 'Good-evening, mademoiselle: we have both made a little mistake.'"

"But you might be so much in love with her that you could not leave her without being very miserable."

"I might be very much in love with her, yes; but I would rather go away and be miserable than be humiliated by such a girl. Why do you smile, madame? Do you think I am vain, or that I am too young to know anything about that? Perhaps both are true, but one cannot help thinking."

"Well," said Sheila, with a grandly maternal air of sympathy and interest, "you must always remember this—that you have something more important to attend to than merely looking out for a beautiful sweetheart. That is the fancy of a foolish girl. You have your profession, and you must become great and famous in that; and then some day, when you meet this beautiful woman and ask her to be your wife, she will be bound to do that, and you will confer honor on her as well as secure happiness to yourself. Now, if you were to fall in love with some coquettish girl like her you were singing about, you would have no more ambition to become famous, you would lose all interest in everything except her, and she would be able to make you miserable by a single word. When you have made a name for yourself, and got a good many more years, you will be better able to bear anything that happens to you in your love or in your marriage."

"You are very kind to take so much trouble," said young Mosenberg, looking up with big, grateful eyes. "Perhaps, madame, if you are not very busy during the day, you will let me call in sometimes, and if there is no one here I will tell you about what I am doing, and play for you or sing for you, if you please."

"In the afternoons I am always free," she said.

"Do you never go out?" he asked.

"Not often. My husband is at his studio most of the day."

The boy looked at her, hesitated for a moment, and then, with a sudden rush of color to his face, "You should not stay so much in the house. Will you sometimes go for a little walk with me, madame, to Kensington Gardens, if you are not busy in the afternoon?"

"Oh, certainly," said Sheila, without a moment's embarrassment. "Do you live near them?"

"No: I live in Sloane street, but the underground railway brings me here in a very short time."

That mention of Sloane street gave a twinge to Sheila's heart. Ought she to have been so ready to accept offers of new friendship just as her old friend had been banished from her?

"In Sloane street? Do you know Mr. Ingram?"

"Oh yes, very well. Do you?"

"He is one of my oldest friends," said Sheila bravely: she would not acknowledge that their intimacy was a thing of the past.

"He is a very good friend to me—I know that," said young Mosenberg, with a laugh. "He hired a piano merely because I used to go into his rooms at night; and now he makes me play over all my most difficult music when I go in, and he sits and smokes a pipe and pretends to like it. I do not think he does, but I have got to do it all the same; and then afterward I sing for him some songs that I know he likes. Madame, I think I can surprise you."

He went suddenly to the piano and began to sing, in a very quiet way,

Oh soft be thy slumbers by Tigh-na-linne's waters:
Thy late-wake was sung by MacDiarmid's fair daughters;
But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping
Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where thou'rt sleeping.

It was the lament of the young girl whose lover had been separated from her by false reports, and who died before he could get back to Lochaber when the deception was discovered. And the wild, sad air that the girl is supposed to sing seemed so strange with those new chords that this boy-musician gave it that Sheila sat and listened to it as though it were the sound of the seas about Borva coming to her with a new voice and finding her altered and a stranger.

"I know nearly all of those Highland songs that Mr. Ingram has got," said the lad.

"I did not know he had any," Sheila said.

"Sometimes he tries to sing one himself," said the boy with a smile, "but he does not sing very well, and he gets vexed with himself in fun, and flings things about the room. But you will sing some of those songs, madame, and let me hear how they are sung in the North?"

"Some time," said Sheila. "I would rather listen just now to all you can tell me about Mr. Ingram—he is such a very old friend of mine, and I do not know how he lives."

The lad speedily discovered that there was at least one way of keeping his new and beautiful friend profoundly interested; and indeed he went on talking until Lavender came into the room in evening dress. It was eleven o'clock, and young Mosenberg started up with a thousand apologies and hopes that he had not detained Mrs. Lavender. No, Mrs. Lavender was not going out: her husband was going round for an hour to a ball that Mrs. Kavanagh was giving, but she preferred to stay at home.

"May I call upon you to-morrow afternoon, madame?" said the boy as he was leaving.

"I shall be very glad if you will," Sheila answered.

And as he went along the pavement young Mosenberg observed to his companion that Mrs. Lavender did not seem to have gone out much, and that it was very good of her to have promised to go with him occasionally into Kensington Gardens.

"Oh, has she?" said Lavender.