Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 195, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1915 — A MOONLIGHT IDYL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A MOONLIGHT IDYL

By MILDRED CAROLINE GOODRIDGE.

Hans Breitung, fat, slow to move, a first-class musician but a better gourmand, seated himself at the stem of the excursion steamer Dryad with a grunt of satisfaction. He was glad to rest and to be away from the noisy clatter of band music—martial, rag time and sentimental. Hans was the violinist of the excursion boat band. At the picnic grounds he and his fellow musician had discoursed varied melodious strains at intervals all day long. Now returning after dark, the celebrants were too tired out to dance, the instruments were packed away, and, his cherished violin in his lap, he settled himself to take a nap after the arduous exertion of the day. Alas for poor Hans! The camp stool he sat in bad not been made to sustain the weight of two hundred and forty pounds avoirdupois. The rail against which it rested was flexible. The stool collapsed, Hans was thrown under the rail, he rolled — Splash! The water choked him and prevented ap. immediate outcry. That part of the boat where he had sought seclusion was deserted and dark. He went under Ihe surface to come up with the boat lights fading fast and far. Ach! the Instrument —my Cremona! was his first thought and he shot out a hand to seize and stay his drifting violin case. Its floating qualities might have helped sustain him. His feet assisted. He was too clumsily built for an expert swimmer, yet he managed to keep afloat. Then hope shone in his eyes. The bright moonlight showed land not fifty feet distant. But not the mainland. As Hans, panting, dripping, well-nigh exhausted, struggled up a sandy incline, a sudden shock assailed him. “Ach!” he gasped, “I remember now —the haunted island!” He stood spellbound, an eerie chill overspreading him. On the way down the lake a fellow musician had told him a weird story of the little island.

It was called haunted. Years agone, the story ran, a young musician and a virtuoso in the refined arts, had lived in the select summer resort over the mainland. He was a genius, he had money, he was an idolized pet of society, but all soul and sentiment. He had loved the fairest of the fair among the aristocratic coterie. The end was disappointment and heartbreak. She had wedded another. The stricken lover had immediately abandoned the social world. He had purchased the lonely isle. He had become a recluße. Hans recalled warning signs, forbidding trespassers, scattered over the little body of land. He had been told that the exiled lover was rarely seen. Perhaps he was dead now. At all events, old settlers on the mainland spoke gruesomely of the desolate island. So Hans wondered, in his superstitious way, if he had not jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Finally he summoned up the courage to advance farther to where the beach melted into the green sward. He tripped over what seemed to be a taut string set low in the grass— Bang! With a resonant yell Hans dropped his violin and ran. He dashed wildly through a nest of underbrush. He was out of breath, frightened and weak. He got into the middle of a prickly copse. The wiry thorns held him a prisoner. He sank with a crash to the ground and declined to keep up the fight. Had Hans gone a hundred feet farther, he would have come to a clearing and in its center he would have discovered a neat rustic hut. Through its doorway, as the spring gun went off, a ’ human form passed. The explosion warned of intruders. The hermit of Lone Isle set forth to investigate. He was a thin, pale young man, but his eyes, burning like two animated coals of fire, told of vast pent up emotion. His restless probing glance roved everywhere as he strode on. At last he came to the beach. He halted as he to the violin case aban-

doned by Hans in his mad flight. Hs picked it up, observed that it dripped water and opened it In the clear moonlight a strangelysubdued expression crossed the clasalo face of the recluse. “Five years,” he murmured in a hushed but intense tone —“live years I" Ah! what did they not comprise of anguish and sorrow and heartbreak? Hike one in a trance he stood, dreamily, reverentially regarding the first violin he had seen since he had dashed his own favorite Stradivarius to atoms in * mad fit of fury. Music! How foreign had it become to that music-loving soul! He recalled the effort of Mb life, a love cadenza, composed only for the woman he loved. He recalled that last night of their meeting, just such a night as this, when he had rowed her out into the lake and had played for her ears only his great composition.

Memory seemed to leave him. And most involuntarily he carried the violin to a moss-covered rock, seated himself, wiped the wet and damp from the instrument, and, his bosom heaving, his eyes Jjlinded 'with tears, drew the bow across the strings. His heart cadenza 1 Ah, he could never forget it! Like a sob it began, its mellow tones growing into solace and then the wild passionate longing of triumph and love. He was absorbed, his soul seemed telling his sad story to the mystic spirits of the night. So lost was he in his weird occupation, that he did not notice a small boat rowed by a woman, another woman seated at its stern, approach the spot The latter was dressed in deep mourning. Was it coincidence or destiny that had brought this being upon that fateful night, widowed only a short time since, to the scene of her early girlhood, to revive sad memories, while they floated along? Was she thinking of Adrian Hope? Aye, and of the cruel persistency of her selfish father, who for the sake of wealth had forced her to wed .a man she despised! And now that music—the love cadenza! It seemed to wrench her heartstrings. The frail boat floated ashore. She sprang out, sobbing, in tears. “Adrian —it is I, Roselle!” A new form came stumbling along towards the spot as those two stood facing one another, and explanation and pleadings for forgiveness poured brokenly from the'lipß of the woman at whom the recluse stood gazing as though she were a wraith from the unknown.

The woman in the boat sat spellbound. The man coming down the beach, Hans Breitung, heard all, marveled at it all, and then comprehended all. As the two so long separated drew nearer and nearer until their arms entwined, Hans Breitung reached out and took up his precious violin. He was wet, he was cold, but his heart was warm, and sterling, and true. “Ach!” he whispered, “softly it is like a play on the stage. It is love and happiness in the moonlight—-it is romance-cadenza, so —” He drew the bow softly, and there stole forth upon the ambient air, soft and liquid as a vesper’s echo, the mellow notes of a wedding fantasie. (Copyright, 1915, by W. G. Chapman.)

He Was Glad to Rest and to Be Away From the Noisy Clatter.