Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/37

Rh Max only laughed. "There's no ground for your fears, Eugenia, Heinrich is all right. I have made inquiry and know how he stands. He has money and friends, and will make Adele a good husband. Gad, I hate to lose her, though!"

Oh, if I had only urged that I did not recoil from his standing, or his money, or his friends, but from the man himself.

It was the afternoon before the wedding day. Heinrich was to make one short call. Adele and I were making some last arrangements for the morrow when my maid announced a caller. Thinking it was Herr Heinrich, we went down together. A tall, flaxen-haired woman, superbly dressed, stood in the middle of the room. She scarcely observed me, but looked intently at Adele. My mind flew back to that night in Tacoma, at the hotel. This very woman had been peering intently at Heinrich and Adele from the shadow of the portiere. What could she be here for?

"Young ladies," she began, and I noted the look of distress in her handsome face, "pardon my intrusion. I know not if I come as a curse or a blessing to you," turning to Adele.

"Once, years ago, child, for your sweetheart I gave all the light of my life. My heart breaks for you, but I must speak. I am his wife."

Instantly Adele was by the stranger's side, her hand on the woman's shoulder, and peering into her face, she said: "Madame, speak—is this the truth? You are a stranger. What papers have you? I may not believe your words—and yet—" and Adele walked slowly to the other end of the room.

"My marriage certificate," began the other woman, but Adele returned to her side.

"Tell me all you will," she said.

"My poor girl! I would have spared you this, but for your own sake I may not keep silent. I was born in Vienna. My mother was an American who had come to that city to have her voice trained. My father was her teacher. They married. In a year I came. About the same time my mother had a friend die and leave a young babe. My parents adopted him and my mother nursed us both. My father discovered that we both had voices, and trained us for years, until he died. We were nineteen then, and against the wishes of my mother we married. We dreamed of opera. We would sing together over the whole world. But in a year my mother had died and my baby was born. My father had left us with nothing. Heinrich was young, too young to teach, but he sung parts in the opera, and every Sunday he was paid to sing in church. It was slow work and he made barely enough to keep us. One day, when we had struggled through another year, Otto came home in great haste. He had engaged to go at once with a troupe to Berlin to sing. He kissed us goodbye, and—after that I never saw him or heard from him again till that night you and he sang in the Tacoma theater. I heard of him in every center of music. His success in opera had been great, but no greater than I had prayed for when we two should go out together. But I must find something to do. I put my baby with friends. I sang in church, and unimportant parts in opera at first, as Otto had done. Soon I was given other parts. I was better paid. I studied all the time, and when a troupe was organized to tour America I was given one of the best parts. That was seven years ago. It seems longer. Since then I, too, have sung in every great center of music in the world. I returned to America just before I heard you. I am prosperous. My boy is being educated in this country, and I am no longer afraid of being left alone. My future is certain. But Heinrich. Ah, child, if you love him, if he seems to be all you have in life, then know he was all that to his child-wife. When he left us to starve, I yet loved him and believed he had gone to make a fortune, and always that he would come back to us. I worked and hoped and watched and waited and longed for him. Then when I knew, because he did not come to us when he prospered, that he never would come, my heart closed up to