Lotta Schmidt, and Other Stories. Anthony Trollope
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out into the streets after their day’s work, to see what friends and what amusement the fortune of the evening might send to them, I should be supposed to be speaking of young women as to whom it would be better that I should be silent; but these girls in Vienna were doing simply that which all their friends would expect and wish them to do. That they should have some amusement to soften the rigours of long days of work was recognised to be necessary; and music, beer, dancing, with the conversation of young men, are thought in Vienna to be the natural amusements of young women, and in Vienna are believed to be innocent.
The Viennese girls are almost always attractive in their appearance, without often coming up to our English ideas of prettiness. Sometimes they do fully come up to our English idea of beauty. They are generally dark, tall, light in figure, with bright eyes, which are however very unlike the bright eyes of Italy, and which constantly remind the traveller that his feet are carrying him eastward in Europe. But perhaps the peculiar characteristic in their faces which most strikes a stranger is a certain look of almost fierce independence, as though they had recognised the necessity, and also acquired the power, of standing alone, and of protecting themselves. I know no young women by whom the assistance of a man’s arm seems to be so seldom required as the young women of Vienna. They almost invariably dress well, generally preferring black, or colours that are very dark; and they wear hats that are, I believe, of Hungarian origin, very graceful in form, but which are peculiarly calculated to add something to that assumed savageness of independence of which I have spoken.
Both the girls who were walking in the Burgplatz were of the kind that I have attempted to describe. Marie Weber was older, and not so tall, and less attractive than her friend; but as her position in life was fixed, and as she was engaged to marry a cutter of diamonds, I will not endeavour to interest the reader specially in her personal appearance. Lotta Schmidt was essentially a Viennese pretty girl of the special Viennese type. She was tall and slender, but still had none of that appearance of feminine weakness which is so common among us with girls who are tall and slim. She walked as though she had plenty both of strength and courage for all purposes of life without the assistance of any extraneous aid. Her hair was jet-black, and very plentiful, and was worn in long curls which were brought round from the back of her head over her shoulders. Her eyes were blue—dark blue—and were clear and deep rather than bright. Her nose was well formed, but somewhat prominent, and made you think at the first glance of the tribes of Israel. But yet no observer of the physiognomy of races would believe for half a moment that Lotta Schmidt was a Jewess. Indeed, the type of form which I am endeavouring to describe is in truth as far removed from the Jewish type as it is from the Italian; and it has no connexion whatever with that which we ordinarily conceive to be the German type. But, overriding everything in her personal appearance, in her form, countenance, and gait, was that singular fierceness of independence, as though she were constantly asserting that she would never submit herself to the inconvenience of feminine softness. And yet Lotta Schmidt was a simple girl, with a girl’s heart, looking forward to find all that she was to have of human happiness in the love of some man, and expecting and hoping to do her duty as a married woman and the mother of a family. Nor would she have been at all coy in saying as much had the subject of her life’s prospects become matter of conversation in any company; no more than one lad would be coy in saying that he hoped to be a doctor, or another in declaring a wish for the army.
When the two girls had walked twice round the hoarding within which stood all those tons of bronze which were intended to represent Prince Eugene, they crossed over the centre of the Burgplatz, passed under the other equestrian statue, and came to the gate leading into the Volksgarten. There, just at the entrance, they were overtaken by a man with a fiddle-case under his arm, who raised his hat to them, and then shook hands with both of them.
“Ladies,” he said, “are you coming in to hear a little music? We will do our best.”
“Herr Crippel always does well,” said Marie Weber. “There is never any doubt when one comes to hear him.”
“Marie, why do you flatter him?” said Lotta.
“I do not say half to his face that you said just now behind his back,” said Marie.
“And what did she say of me behind my back?” said Herr Crippel. He smiled as he asked the question, or attempted to smile, but it was easy to see that he was too much in earnest. He blushed up to his eyes, and there was a slight trembling motion in his hands as he stood with one of them pressed upon the other.
As Marie did not answer at the moment, Lotta replied for her.
“I will tell you what I said behind your back. I said that Herr Crippel had the firmest hand upon a bow, and the surest fingers among the strings, in all Vienna—when his mind was not wool-gathering. Marie, is not that true?”
“I do not remember anything about the wool-gathering,” said Marie.
“I hope I shall not be wool-gathering to-night; but I shall doubtless;—I shall doubtless—for I shall be thinking of your judgment. Shall I get you seats at once? There; you are just before me. You see I am not coward enough to fly from my critics,” and he placed them to sit at a little marble table, not far from the front of the low orchestra in the foremost place in which he would have to take his stand.
“Many thanks, Herr Crippel,” said Lotta. “I will make sure of a third chair, as a friend is coming.”
“Oh, a friend!” said he; and he looked sad, and all his sprightliness was gone.
“Marie’s friend,” said Lotta, laughing. “Do not you know Carl Stobel?”
Then the musician became bright and happy again. “I would have got two more chairs if you would have let me; one for the fraulein’s sake, and one for his own. And I will come down presently, and you shall present me, if you will be so very kind.”
Marie Weber smiled and thanked him, and declared that she should be very proud;—and the leader of the band went up into his place.
“I wish he had not placed us here,” said Lotta.
“And why not?”
“Because Fritz is coming.”
“No!”
“But he is.”
“And why did you not tell me?”
“Because I did not wish to be speaking of him. Of course you understand why I did not tell you. I would rather it should seem that he came of his own account—with Carl. Ha, ha!” Carl Stobel was the diamond-cutter to whom Marie Weber was betrothed. “I should not have told you now—only that I am disarranged by what Herr Crippel has done.”
“Had we not better go—or at least move our seats? We can make any excuse afterwards.”
“No,” said Lotta. “I will not seem to run away from him. I have nothing to be ashamed of. If I choose to keep company with Fritz Planken, that should be nothing to Herr Crippel.”
“But you might have told him.”
“No; I could not tell him. And I am not sure Fritz is coming either. He said he would come with Carl if he had time. Never mind; let us be happy now. If a bad time comes by-and-by, we must make the best of it.”
Then the music began, and, suddenly, as the first note of a fiddle was heard, every voice in the great beer-hall of the Volksgarten became silent. Men sat smoking, with their long beer-glasses before them, and women sat knitting, with their long beer-glasses also before them, but not a word was spoken. The waiters went about with silent feet, but even orders for beer were not given, and money was not received. Herr Crippel did his best, working with his wand as carefully—and I may say as accurately—as a leader in a fashionable opera-house in London or Paris. But every now and then, in the course of the piece, he would place his fiddle to his shoulder and join in the performance. There was hardly one there in the hall, man or woman, boy or girl, who did not know, from personal knowledge and judgment, that Herr Crippel was doing his work very well.
“Excellent, was it not?” said Marie.