In Midsummer Days and Other Tales | Page 8

blamed when one is innocent.
Conductor Crossberg, who could not bear to see people crying, said no
more, but in the evening he bought a new rose, one which had only just
been cut, and, of course, was not wired, for his wife had always had an
objection to wired flowers.
And then he went to bed and fell asleep. And again he fancied in his
sleep that the wall-paper was on fire, and that his pillow was very hot;
but he went on sleeping.
On the following morning, when he came into the sitting-room, to say
his morning prayers before the little altar--alas! there lay his rose, all
the pink petals scattered by the side of the stem. He was just stretching
out his hand to touch the bell, when he saw the photograph of his
beloved, half rolled up, lying by the side of the champagne glass.
Louisa could not have done that!
"She, who was my all, my conscience and my muse," he thought in his
childlike mind, "she is dissatisfied and angry with me; what have I
done?"
Well, when he put this question to his conscience, he found, as usual,

more than one little fault, and he resolved to eradicate his faults,
gradually, of course.
Then he had the portrait framed and a glass shade put over the rose,
hoping that now things would be all right, but secretly fearing that they
would not.
After that he went on a week's journey; he returned home late at night
and went straight to bed. He woke up once, imagining that the hanging
lamp was burning.
When he entered the sitting-room late on the following morning, it was
downright hot there, and everything looked frightfully shabby. The
blinds were faded; the cover on the piano had lost its bright colours; the
bound volumes of music looked as if they were deformed; the oil in the
hanging-lame had evaporated and hung in a trembling drop under the
ornament, where the flies used to dance; the water in the water-bottle
was warm.
But the saddest thing of all was that her portrait, too, was faded, as
faded as autumn leaves. He was very unhappy, and whenever he was
very unhappy he went to the piano, or took up his violin, as the case
might be . ...
This time he sat down at the piano, with a vague notion of playing the
sonata in E minor, Grieg's, of course, which had been her favourite, and
was the best and finest, in his opinion, after Beethoven's sonata in D
minor; not because E comes after D, but because it was so.
But the piano was very refractory to-day. It was out of tune, and made
all sorts of difficulties, so that he began to believe that his eyes and
fingers were in a bad temper. But it was not their fault. The piano, quite
simply, was out of tune, although a very clever tuner had only just
tuned it. It was like a piano bewitched, enchanted.
He seized his violin; he had to tune it, of course. But when he wanted
to tighten the E string, the screw refused to work. It had dried up; and
when the conductor tried to use force, the string snapped with a sharp

sound, and rolled itself up like a dried eel-skin.
It was bewitched!
But the fact that her photograph had faded was really the worst blow,
and therefore he threw a veil over the altar.
In doing this, he threw a veil over all that was most beautiful in his life;
and he became depressed, began to mope, and stopped going out in the
evening.
It would be Midsummer soon. The nights were shorter than the days,
but since the Venetian blinds kept his bedroom dark, the conductor did
not notice it.
At last, one night--it was Midsummer night--he awoke, because the
clock in the sitting-room struck thirteen. There was something uncanny
about this, firstly, because thirteen is an unlucky number, and secondly,
because no well-behaved clock can strike thirteen. He did not fall
asleep again, but he lay in his bed, listening. There was a peculiar
ticking noise in the sitting-room, and then a loud bang, as if a piece of
furniture had cracked. Directly afterwards he heard stealthy footsteps,
and then the clock began to strike again; and it struck and struck, fifty
times--a hundred times. It really was uncanny!
And now a luminous tuft shot into his bedroom and threw a figure on
the wall, a strange figure, something like a fylfot, and it came from the
sitting-room. There was a light, then, in the sitting-room? But who had
lit it? And there was a tinkling of glasses, just as if guests were there;
champagne glasses of cut-crystal; but not a