A German Pompadour. Hon. Marie Hay
was lying on the table and the edge of the plate, then shutting the window she went out, closing and re-locking the door behind her.
On the following morning Wilhelmine woke early, and she was dressed when her mother came to the door and bade her descend and help with the housework. All traces of the unwonted tenderness in the old woman's face had vanished. She had, apparently, forgotten the circumstances of the previous day, or at any rate she made no allusion thereto, though her daughter fancied she watched her narrowly. When the morning's work was ended Wilhelmine returned to her chamber to dress for the church service. She was brushing her hair, when she heard a knock at the house door, followed by Frau von Grävenitz's shrill tones as she conversed in the corridor with some person. Then she heard her mother mounting the stairs and calling 'Wilhelmine!' in flustered tones. The girl hastened to the door of her room and stood on the landing waiting to hear the cause of her mother's summons.
'Your precious Monsieur Gabriel has gone off to Schwerin, it seems,' she said, eyeing Wilhelmine sharply. 'He has sent a message, saying that he prays you take his place at the organ this morning. He says he has urgent business at Schwerin, though what it can be I am sure I do not know! However, I suppose you will play the organ this morning, and I hope you will make your Monsieur Gabriel pay you in good silver coin for your trouble.' Wilhelmine's lip curled contemptuously. 'We have never paid him a groschen for teaching me to play this same organ, mother,' she said. 'Of course I shall play this morning, but I shall persuade Anna to come to the organ-loft with me,' she added, as a vision flashed across her of Pastor Müller, and a possible pursuit down the dark winding stair-way after the congregation had left the church. She dressed quickly, and wrapping her cloak round her went out into the crisp frosty morning air to fetch Anna. When she came to the dreary house in the Stiftstrasse where the deformed girl lived, she was annoyed to find that her friend had already started for church. It was Anna's habit to go to the cathedral before the appointed hour for the church service. She loved to sit in the dim aisle, watching the sunlight creeping through the ancient stained glass windows, while she waited for the first tone of the organ.
Wilhelmine considered for a moment. It was ridiculous to fear Müller; he would not dare to molest her in the precincts of the church; yet she hated to pass the sacristy door alone, for he could follow her, unseen from the rest of the building. She threw back her head with a defiant movement: was she becoming fearful, timid? Was this a frame of mind in which to face the adventurous life at a court? She turned away impatiently, and went swiftly down the Stiftstrasse to the market-place. The Rathaus clock rang out, and Wilhelmine realised that there was no time to be lost if she were to play the voluntary to the sound of which the worshippers were accustomed to take their places. She hastened across the market-place, down the Klosterstrasse and through the graveyard, where the old stone slabs on the graves were, for the most part, hidden beneath the frost-bound snow which glittered in the sun, though here and there an upright tombstone showed like a discoloured, jagged tooth in the midst of a white pall. She hurried on and entered the side door near the sacristy. As she lifted the latch of the entrance to the dark stair leading up to the organ-loft she heard a movement behind her, and, turning, she saw Müller's face peer at her from the sacristy. She paid no heed, and springing quickly up the steps gained the small platform, where the happiest hours of her life had been spent with the old musician. She peered down into the well-like space beneath the organ, where the bellows-blower laboured, pumping in the air for the pipes. He was at his post patiently waiting for the signal to commence his work. Wilhelmine signed to him to begin, and having assured herself that all was in order, she glanced at the sheets of manuscript music. She found that Monsieur Gabriel had appointed hymns and canticles for the day, and she noticed that he had chosen the easiest and simplest, for though her skill almost equalled his own, he had evidently wished to spare her difficulty and trouble. She seated herself upon the high bench before the organ, arranging her skirts so that they should not balk her pedalling. At first she played softly—a wailing melody of her own devising; then, as though she gathered strength and assurance in her music, the chords boomed out, rich and deep, rolling down the church like the relentless waves of some elementary force. She played on and on, not hearing through the music the sound of the shuffling feet of the entering worshippers. It was with a feeling of alarm that she became aware of rows of honest burghers seated stolidly in their accustomed places. Pastor Müller was kneeling in the pulpit waiting for the music to cease ere he began the preliminary prayer. She softened the chords, till they faded and ceased entirely, then taking up a book of canticles, she studied the melodies and read their words, for she felt she could not listen to Müller's rasping voice exhorting his flock to holiness and purity of living.
The harsh tones fell unheeded on her ear for some time. A sudden cessation thereof roused her to attention, and she craned her neck over the side of the panelled wainscot which ran round the organ-loft. She saw the congregation attentively waiting for the pastor to give out the text of his sermon. Müller stood in the pulpit; an open Bible lay on the ledge beneath one of his strong, coarse hands; the other hand grasped the pulpit edge, and Wilhelmine could see his knuckles whitening with the force of his grip. His face was ashy, and the deep-set eyes moved incessantly; he was evidently in a state of that violent excitement which sometimes seized him when he preached, and which gave him a fervid emotional eloquence.
'For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you.' He read his text in a husky, raucous voice, and through the assemblage passed a wave of astonishment. This was surely no verse for a Sunday before Christmas; it was more fitted for a Lenten discourse! But Pastor Müller's sermons were the only theatrical performances given at Güstrow, and the citizens revelled in the often startlingly emotional character of his exhortations; so that day they settled down as usual to listen to his sermon with pleasurable curiosity.
'Brethren,' he began, 'O miserable sinners, who lightly look towards the season of Christ's birth as a time of rejoicing and merry-making, forgetting the load of iniquity which weighs you down—I call to you to pause! Tremble, ye righteous! Quake in fearful terror, ye wrong-doers! All joy is evil, and all things of the flesh accursed. Mourn, ye women! Cry out and weep, ye little children! for by lust ye were begot. Yea, sin walks abroad, and corruption liveth in the hearts of men. Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Repent, I command you, and scourge yourselves, for though it is true that the Lord Christ came into the world to save sinners, still the security you have made unto yourselves is a vain thing. Without repentance you cannot share in the benefit of the birth of Christ. Prepare for Christmas by much searching of heart and renunciation of the joys of the flesh, not by seeking fresh pleasures and carousing. For truly the grass withereth and the flower thereof passeth away!' He stood tense, one arm outstretched; he was moved by his own incoherent eloquence. The congregation listened spellbound; indeed, the man was an orator, and the very unexpectedness of his strange violence held his listeners enthralled. After a pause, during which the silence became nearly intolerable, he continued his oration. His language had a Biblical flavour, and the passion of his utterance seemed like holy inspiration. Wilhelmine listened unmoved; she knew that the man laboured under an excitement of being, which had little or nothing to do with religious sincerity. It was merely his physical fury, dammed back from a more natural channel, which had caused this exaltation of mind. She watched him with a mocking smile as he poured forth a torrent of vehement words—denunciations of all things joyful, exhortations to repentance, and thunders of prospective vengeance on sin. Even to her the sermon seemed a masterpiece of eloquence, and the artistic feeling in her rejoiced in the vigorous phrases and fervid declamation, though her whole being revolted against the hypocrite and fanatic who spoke, and she despised the crude bigotry of the actual matter of the peroration.
His words came ever faster and in ever growing violence, till with consummate skill he made another sudden pause; then, sinking his voice to a tone of grave warning, he ejaculated solemnly: 'O my brethren, men of the reformed faith, hearken unto me! Here, before the Face of God Almighty, I denounce the hellish instigators of all this abominable lust, the frail instruments of temptations—Women! These are the scourges of the world! accursed by reason of their vanity! condemned everlastingly by reason of their carnal desire and of their perpetual contamination of the pure heart of man!'
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