Read Ebook: World of the Hunter by Marlowe Stephen

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Ebook has 441 lines and 16473 words, and 9 pages

"Without you," interrupted the other, "eh, what--you? T?syacha chert?i! What do you mean?"

The master of the black sleigh stood up suddenly and threw back his cloak with a haughty gesture. He was in uniform and his breast glittered with orders. His cap fell back from his face, and his eyes, small and black and crossed, his beaked nose, his grey upturned mustache, showed distinctly in the moonlight. The face was known to every Russian, young and old, rich and poor--the Grand-Duke Stepan.

The youth made a low obeisance; then he tossed the hair away from his brows and laughed: "True, your highness," he said with mock humility, "I should have said--'until we both get there,' of course. Your pardon, sire."

The Duke leaned forward: "Stop--!" he exclaimed, "Your face--certainly somewhere I have seen it--Wait!"

The driver of the tro?ka reined in the panting horses three abreast. They pawed the snow, still prancing a little and trembling, their bits flecked with foam. The youth saluted with one hand carelessly, while with the other he grasped the dark, oblong object that was not a bomb.

"Au revoir, your Grace," he cried, "You have seen me before and you will see me again, to-night, if this arm of mine recovers--" He laughed:--"I am Velasco."

As he spoke the horses leaped forward and the tro?ka, darting across the moonlight of the Square, disappeared into the shadows behind the Mari?nski.

The Duke gazed after it petrified: "Velasco!" he said, "And I all but twisted his wrist!--Ye gods!

"Go on, Pierre, go on!"

The Theatre was superbly lighted, crowded from the pit to the gallery, from the orchestra chairs to the Bel-Etage with the cream of St. Petersburg aristocracy.

It was like a vast garden of colour.

The brilliant uniforms of the officers mingled with the more delicate hues of ecru and rose, sky-blue and palest heliotrope of the loggias. Fans waved here and there over the house, fluttering, flashing like myriads of butterfly wings. The stage was filled with the black and white of the orchestra and the musicians sat waiting, the conductor gnawing his long mustache in an agony of doubt and bewilderment.

Gradually a hush stole over the House. The fans waved less regularly; the uniforms and the more delicate hues whispered together, glancing first at a box on the first tier, which was still empty, and then at the stage door and back again.

Where was the Grand-Duke Stepan, and where was the star, the idol, the young god, who was to charm their hearts with his four strings?--for whom they had paid fifteen roubles, twenty--twenty-five until there wasn't a seat left, not even standing room; only the crimson-curtained Imperial Loggia in the centre, solitary, significant.

The time passed; the minutes dragged slowly.

Suddenly the curtains moved. An usher appeared and placed a chair. Another moment of silence; then a tall, grey-haired, military figure stepped to the front of the loggia and bowed to right and to left; his eyes, small and black and crossed, glancing haughtily over the throng. "At last!"--The applause was mechanical, in strict accordance with etiquette, but there was a relieved note in it and the thousands of straining eyes leaped back to the stage, eager and watchful.

All at once a small door in the wings opened slightly and a slim boyish figure strode across the boards, a mane of dark hair falling over his brows.

"Velasco!" A roar went up from the House--"Velasco! Ah--h--viva--Velas--co!"

Instantly, with a tap of his baton, the conductor motioned for silence, and then, with the first downward beat, the orchestra began the introduction to the concerto.

The young Violinist stood languidly, his Stradivarius tucked under his arm, the bow held in a slim and graceful hand. His dark eyes roamed over the brilliant spectacle before him, from tier to tier, from top to bottom. He had seen it all before many times; but never so beautiful, so vast an audience, such a glory of colour, such closeness of attention. Raising his violin, with a strange, dreamy swaying of his young body, Velasco drew the bow over the quivering strings in the first solo passage of the Vieuxtemps.

The tones rose and fell above the volume of the orchestra. The depth of them, the sweetness seemed to penetrate to the uttermost corner. A curious tenseness came over the listening audience. Not a soul stirred. The Grand-Duke sat motionless with his head in his hands. The strings vibrated to each individual heart-beat; the bow sighed over them, and with the last note a murmur and then a roar went up.

Velasco stirred slightly, dropped his bow and bowed, without raising his eyes. Then, hardly waiting for the applause to subside, the second movement began, slow and passionate. The notes became fuller and more sensuous. The hush deepened. The silence grew more intense; a strain of listening, a fixed eagerness of watching.

Suddenly, in the midst, the Violinist raised his head from his instrument, drawing the bow with a slow, downward, caressing pressure over the E string. His eyes, half veiled and dreamy, looked straight across the House into a loggia next to the Imperial Box, impelled thereto by some force outside of his own consciousness.

A girl with an exquisite flower-like face was leaning over the crimson rail, her gaze on his, fixed and intent. The gold of her hair glistened in the light. Her lips were parted, the bosom of her dress rising and falling; her small hands clasped.

Velasco gazed steadily for a moment; then he dropped his head again, and swaying slightly played on.

The bow seemed fairly to rend the strings. He toyed with the difficulties; his scales, his arpeggios were as a flash, a ripple of notes tumbling over one another, each one a pearl. His lion's mane caressed the violin; his cheek pressed it like a living thing, closely, passionately, and it answered like a creature possessed.

As the strings vibrated to the last dying note, the beauty of it, the virtuosity, the abandon, drove the House mad with enthusiasm. They rose to him; they shouted his name eagerly, impetuously.

"Velasco! Viva!--Velasco! Bravo--bravissimo!"

Over the packed Theatre the handkerchiefs waved like a myriad of white banners. The bravos redoubled. The women tore the flowers from their girdles to fling on the stage; they lay piled on the white boards about him, broken and sweet, their perfume filling the air.

The young Violinist bowed, his hand on his heart, smiled and bowed again. He went out by the little door, and then came back and bowed and bowed.

The House rose as one man.

"Velasco! Velas--co!" It was deafening.

Suddenly out of the uproar, out of the crowd and the din, from someone, from somewhere, a bunch of violets fell at his feet. He raised them to his lips with a smile. "Viva--Velas--co--o!" The clapping redoubled.

About the stems of the violets, twined and intertwined again, was a twist of paper. His eyes fell for an instant on the blotted words and then the stage door closed behind him. They were few and almost illegible.

"Velasco! Velasco--Viva!"

When the young Violinist came forward for the third time, his dark eyes flashed to the eyes of the girl like steel to a magnet. They seemed to plead, to wrestle with him.

Did her lips move; was it a signal? Her hands seemed to beckon him. He bowed low to the loggia, like one in a trance, once, twice, their eyes still together. And then, suddenly, he wrenched himself away remembering the House, the shouting, cheering, waving House.

"Ah--h Velasco--o!"

Lifting his violin he began to play again slowly, dreamily, hardly knowing how or why, a weird, chanting Polish improvisation like a love song, a song without words. His eyes opened and closed again. Always that gaze, pleading, wrestling, that flower-like face, those clasped hands beckoning.

Who was she--Kaya? His heart beat and throbbed; he was suffocating. With a last wild and passionate note Velasco tore the bow from the strings; it was as though the earth had opened and swallowed him up; he was gone.

My God.

A thousand devils!

In one of the poorer quarters of St. Petersburg there is a street on a back canal, and over the street an arch. To the right of the arch is a flight of steps, ancient and worm-eaten, difficult of climbing by day by reason of a hole here, a worn place there, and the perilous tilting of the boards; at night well nigh impassable without a lantern. The steps wind and end in a tenement, once a palace, spanning the water.

It was midnight.

A cloud had come over the moon, light and fleecy at first, but gradually growing blacker and spreading until finally it hung like a huge drop-curtain screening the stars.

The street lay in darkness. From a window in the top of the arch a single light was visible, pale and flickering as the ray from a candle; otherwise the grey bulk of the building seemed lost in the shadows, lifeless and silent.

Suddenly the light went out.

"Hist--st!" As if at a signal something moved on the staircase, creeping forward, and then from the shadow of the tenement, from under the archway, emerged other shadows, moving slowly like wraiths, hesitating, stopping, losing themselves in the general blackness, and then stirring again; shadows within shadows creeping.

Presently a door at the top of the steps opened and shut. Every time it opened, a shadow passed through and another crept forward. No word was spoken, no sound; not a step creaked, not a board stirred. It was a procession of ghosts.

Behind the door was a long stone passage, narrow and dark like a cave. The shadows felt the walls with their hands softly, gropingly, but the hands were silent like the feet. Except for a hurried breathing in the darkness the passage seemed empty.

Beyond were more steps leading down, and another passage, and then a second door locked and barred. Before this door the shadows halted, huddled together. "Hist--st!" Instantly the floor under them began to quiver and drop, inch by inch, foot by foot, down a well of continued blackness. The minutes passed. They still dropped lower and lower, so low that they were now below the level of the canal; down, down into the very foundations of the tenement, once a palace. All of a sudden the darkness ceased.

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