The Black Cross | Page 4

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.
"Will you help me--life or death--tonight? Kaya." The rest was a blot. He scanned them again more closely and shook the hair from his eyes.
"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.
"Will you help me--life or death--tonight? Kaya."
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.

[1] My God.
[2] A thousand devils!
CHAPTER II
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,