Melomaniacs
by James Huneker · English · Gutenberg #29751 · 473,580 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Melomaniacs
Author: James Huneker
Release date: August 22, 2009 [eBook #29751]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MELOMANIACS ***
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Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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| Transcriber's Note: |
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MELOMANIACS
[Illustration]
JAMES HUNEKER
MELOMANIACS
BY
JAMES HUNEKER
Come, let us march against the powers of heaven,
And set black streamers in the firmament,
To signify the slaughter of the Gods.
_Marlowe_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1902
_Copyright, 1902, by_
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
_All rights reserved_
PUBLISHED, FEBRUARY, 1902
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TO
PHILIP HALE
CONTENTS
Page
THE LORD'S PRAYER IN B 1
A SON OF LISZT 11
A CHOPIN OF THE GUTTER 19
THE PIPER OF DREAMS 31
AN EMOTIONAL ACROBAT 63
ISOLDE'S MOTHER 73
THE RIM OF FINER ISSUES 99
AN IBSEN GIRL 118
TANNHÄUSER'S CHOICE 141
THE RED-HEADED PIANO PLAYER 158
BRYNHILD'S IMMOLATION 172
THE QUEST OF THE ELUSIVE 183
AN INVOLUNTARY INSURGENT 196
HUNDING'S WIFE 206
THE CORRIDOR OF TIME 224
AVATAR 240
THE WEGSTAFFES GIVE A MUSICALE 255
THE IRON VIRGIN 268
DUSK OF THE GODS 280
SIEGFRIED'S DEATH 294
INTERMEZZO 307
A SPINNER OF SILENCE 315
THE DISENCHANTED SYMPHONY 324
MUSIC THE CONQUEROR 347
MELOMANIACS
THE LORD'S PRAYER IN B
At the close of the first day they brought Baruch into the great Hall of
the Oblates, sometime called the Hall of the Unexpected. The young man
walked with eyes downcast. Aloft in the vast spaces the swinging domes
of light made more reddish his curly beard, deepened the hollows on
either side of his sweetly pointed nose, and accented the determined
corners of his firmly modelled lips. He was dressed in a simple tunic
and wore no Talith; and as he slowly moved up the wide aisle the Grand
Inquisitor, visibly annoyed by the resemblance, said to his famulus,
"The heretic dares to imitate the Master." He crossed himself and
shuddered.
Mendoza abated not his reserve as he drew near the long table before the
Throne. Like a quarry that is at last hemmed in, the Jew was quickly
surrounded by a half thousand black-robed monks. The silence--sick,
profound, and awful--was punctuated by the low, sullen tapping of a
drum. Its droning sound reminded the prisoner of life-blood dripping
from some single pore; the tone was B, and its insistent, muffled,
funereal blow at rhythmic intervals would in time have worn away rock.
Mendoza felt a prevision of his fate; being a musician he knew of
music's woes and warnings. And he lifted eyes for the first time since
his arrest in a gloomy, star-lit street of Lisbon.
He saw bleached, shaven faces in a half circle; they seemed like skulls
fastened on black dummies--so immobile their expression, so deadly
staring their eyes. The brilliant and festal appearance of the scene
oppressed him and his eyeballs ached. Symphonies of light were massed
over the great high walls; glistening and pendulous, they illuminated
remote ceilings. There was color and taunting gaiety in the decoration;
the lofty panels contained pictures from the classic poets which seemed
profane in so sacred an edifice, and just over the Throne gleamed the
golden tubes of a mighty organ. Then Baruch Mendoza's eyes, half blinded
by the strange glory of the place to which he had been haled,
encountered the joyful and ferocious gaze of the Grand Inquisitor. Again
echoed dolefully the tap of the drum in the key of B, and the prisoner
shuddered.
A voice was heard: "Baruch Mendoza, thou art before the Throne, and one
of the humblest of God's creatures asks thee to renounce thy vile
heresies." Baruch made no answer. The voice again modulated high, its
menace sweetly hidden.
"Baruch Mendoza, dost thou renounce?" The drum counted two taps. Baruch
did not reply. For the third time the voice issued from the lips of the
Grand Inquisitor, as he drew the hood over his face.
"Baruch Mendoza, dog of a Jew, dog of a heretic, believer in no creed,
wilt thou recant the evil words of thy unspeakable book, prostrate
thyself before the altar of the Only God, and ask His forgiveness?
Answer, Baruch Mendoza!"
The man thus interrogated wondered why the Hall of the Oblates was
adorned with laughing Bacchantes, but he responded not. The drum tapped
thrice, and there was a burst of choral music from the death-like monks;
they chaunted the _Dies Iræ_, and the sonorous choir was antiphonally
answered with anxious rectitude from the gallery, while the organ blazed
out its frescoed tones. And Baruch knew that his death-hymn was being
sung.
To him, a despiser of the vesture of things, to him the man with the
spiritual inner eye, whose philosophy was hated and feared because of
its subtle denial of the God in high heaven, to Baruch Mendoza the
universe had seemed empty with an emptiness from which glared no divine
Judge--his own people's Jahveh--no benignant sufferer appeared on the
cross. He saw no future life except in the commingling of his substance
with the elements; and for this contumacious belief, and his timidly
bold expression of it, he had been waylaid and apprehended in the gloomy
star-lit street of Lisbon.
The single tap of the drum warned him; the singing had ceased. And this
bitter idealist, this preacher of the hollowness of the real, wondered
where were the sable trappings of woe, the hideous envisagement of them
that are condemned with mortuary symbols in garbs of painted flame to
the stake, faggot, axe, and headsman. None of these were visible, and
the gentle spirit of the prisoner became ruffled, alarmed. He expected
violence but instead they offered churchly music. Restless, his nerves
fretted, he asked himself the reason. He did not fear death, for he
despised life; he had no earthly ties; his life's philosophy had been
fittingly enunciated; and he knew that even though a terrible death
overtook him his seed had fallen on ripe soil. As he was a descendant
from some older system that denied the will to live, so would he in turn
beget disciples who would be beaten, burned and reviled by the great foe
to liberty--the foe that strangled it before Egypt's theocracy, aye!
before the day of sun-worshippers invoking their round, burning god,
riding naked in the blue. Baruch pondered these things, and had almost
lost his grasp on time and space when something jarred his
consciousness.
It was the tap of the drum, sombre, dull, hollow and threatening; he
shivered as he heard its percussive note, and with a start remembered
that the _Dies Iræ_ had been chaunted in the same key. Once more he
wondered.
A light touch on the shoulder brought him realization. He stood almost
alone; the monks were gliding down the great Hall of the Oblates and
disappearing through a low arched door, the sole opening in the huge
apartment. One remained, a black friar, absolutely hooded.
Baruch followed him. The pair noiselessly traversed the wonderful hall
with its canopies of light, its airy arches, massive groinings and
bewildering blur of color and fragrance; the air was thick and grateful
with incense. Exactly in the middle of the hall there rested on the
floor a black shadow, a curiously shaped shadow. It was a life-sized
crucifix which Baruch had not seen before. To it he was led by the black
friar, who motioned him to the floor; then this unbelieving Jew and
atheist laid himself humbly down, and with outstretched arms awaited his
end.
In few rapid movements the prisoner was chained to the cross; and with a
penetratingly sweet smile the friar gave him a silent blessing, while
Baruch's eyes followed the dazzling tracery on the ceiling, and caught a
glimpse of the golden, gleaming organ tubes above the Throne of
Judgment.
The stillness was so profound that he heard the soft sighs of the
candles, the forest of unnumbered candles; the room was windless. Again
the singular fancy overtook him that the key of B ruled the song of the
lights, and he stirred painfully because certain sounds irritated him,
recalling as a child his vague rage at the Kol Nidrei, which was sung in
the key of B at the synagogue.
He closed his eyes a moment and opened them with fright, for the drum
sounded near his head, though he could not turn to see it. Suddenly he
was encircled by ten monks and chaunting heard. Mendoza noticed the
admirable monotone, the absolute, pitch, and then, with a leap of his
heart, the key color B again; and the mode was major.
The hooded monks sang in Latin the Lord's Prayer. "Our Father," they
solemnly intoned--"Our Father who art in Heaven; hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us
this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil. Amen."
Baruch tried to sleep. The rich voices lulled him into temporary rest;
he seemed to have slept hours. But he knew this was impossible, for the
monks were singing the Lord's Prayer when he awoke. He grew exasperated;
why need they pray over him? Why did they not take him to his damp cell
to rot or to be eaten by vermin? This blaze of light was unendurable; it
penetrated his closed eyelids, painted burning visions on his brain, and
the music--the accursed music--continued. Again the Lord's Prayer was
solemnly intoned, and noticing the freshness of the voices he opened his
eyes, counted ten cowled monks around him; and the key they sang was B,
the mode major.
Another set, Baruch thought, as he remarked the stature of the singers,
and sought oblivion. All that night and all next day he chased sleep,
and the morning of the third day found him with half mad gaze, sleepless
and frantic. When from deadly exhaustion he would half faint into stupor
the hollow, sinister sound of the drum stunned his ears, while rich,
churchly voices of men would intone "Pater noster, qui es in coelis!"
and always in the agonizing key of B.
This tone became a monstrous serpent that plunged its fangs into
Baruch's brain and hissed one implacable tone, the tone B. The drum
roared the same tone; the voices twined about the crucified Jew and beat
back sleep, beat back death itself.
The evening of the fourth day Baruch Mendoza was more pallid than his
robe; his eyes looked like twin stars, they so glittered, and the fire
in them was hardly of this earth. His cheek-bones started through the
skin; beard and hair hung in damp masses about the ghastly face and
head; his lips were parted in a contemptuous grin, and there was a
strained, listening look on the countenance: he was listening for the
key that was slaying him, and he saw it now, saw it in the flesh, a
creeping, crawling, shapeless thing that slowly strangled his life. All
his soul had flown to his ears, all his senses were lodged in the one
sense of hearing, and as he heard again and again the Lord's Prayer in
the key of B the words that compose it separated themselves from the
tone and assumed an individual life. The awful power of the spoken word
assailed him, and "Our Father who art in heaven" became for Baruch a
divine gigantic cannibal, devouring the planets, the stars, the
firmament, the cosmos, as he created them. The heavens were copper, and
there gleamed and glared the glance of an eyeball burning like a sun,
and so threatening that the spirit of the atheist was consumed as a
scroll in the flame. He cried aloud, "If there is a God, let Him come
from on high and save me!" The drum sounded more fiercely, a monk
moistened with water the tortured man's lips, and Baruch groaned when
the cowled choir chaunted, "Pater noster, qui es in coelis!"
"Give us this day our daily bread." He asked himself if he had ever
known hunger and thirst; then other letters of fire came into his brain,
but through the porches of his ears. "And forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive those who trespass against us." Could he, he whispered to
his soul--could he forgive these devils that sang like angels? He almost
shivered in his attempt to smile; and loathing life heard with sardonic
amusement: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!"
"Amen," groaned Baruch Mendoza. Again the drum boomed dolorously, and
monkish voices intoned: "Pater noster, qui es in coelis!"
There was no dawn, no eve in this brassy hell of music. The dripping
monotone of voices, the dreary pelting of the drum never ceased; and the
soul of the unbeliever was worn slowly away. The evening of the seventh
day the Grand Inquisitor, standing at his side, noticed with horror the
resemblance to the Master, and piously crossed himself.
Seeing the end was nigh, for there was thin froth on the shrivelled gums
of the man, the mild-voiced Inquisitor made a sign to the black friar,
and in a moment the music that had never ceased for six days was no
longer heard, though the air continued to hum with the vibrations of the
diabolical tone. The black friar knelt beside the dying one, and drawing
an ivory crucifix from his habit held it to Mendoza's face. Baruch,
aroused by the cessation of the torturing tonality, opened his eyes,
which were as black as blood, saw the symbol of Christianity, and with a
final effort forced from his cracked lips:
"Thou traitor!" As he attempted to blaspheme the sacred image he died,
despairingly invoking Adonai.
Then rolled forth in rich, triumphant tones the music of "Our Father who
art in heaven," while the drum sonorously sounded in the key of B, and
the mode was major.
A SON OF LISZT
It originated in the wicked vanity of Sir William Davenant
himself, who, disdaining his honest but mean descent from
the vintner, had the shameless impiety to deny his father
and reproach the memory of his mother by claiming
consanguinity with Shakespeare.
--REED'S SHAKESPEARE.
Little Holland was very dry.
Little Holland is a shapeless stretch of meadowland pierced by irregular
canals through which sluggishly flows the water at high tide. Odd shaped
houses are scattered about, one so near the river that its garden
overflows in the full of the moon. Dotted around stand conical heaps of
hay gleaned from this union of land and water. It is called Little
Holland, for small schooners sail by under the very nose of your house,
and the hired girl often forgets to serve the salad while flirting with
the skipper of some sloop. But this August night Little Holland was very
dry.
As we stood facing the river I curiously examined my host. His face was
deeply lined by life which had carved a quarter hundred little wrinkles
about his eyes and the corners of his mouth. His eyes were not true.
They shifted too much. His thick, brown hair was thrown off his
forehead in a most exuberantly artistic fashion. His nose jutted well
into the outer world, and I had to confess that his profile was of a
certainty striking. But his full face was disappointing. It was too
narrow; its expression was that of a meagre soul, and his eyes were very
close together. Yet I liked Piloti; he played the piano well, sang with
no little feeling, painted neat water sketches and was a capital host.
A sliced cantaloupe moon, full of yellow radiance, arose as we listened
to the melancholy fall of the water on the muddy flats, and I said to
Piloti, "Come, let us go within; there you will play for me some tiny
questioning Chopin prelude, and forget this dolorous night." ... He had
been staring hard at the moon when I aroused him. "As you will; let us
go indoors by all means, for this moon gives me the spleen." Then we
moved slowly toward the house.
Piloti was a bachelor; an old woman kept house and he always addressed
her in the Hungarian tongue. His wants were simple, but his pride was
Lucifer's. By no means a virtuoso, he had the grand air, the grand
style, and when he sat down to play one involuntarily stopped breathing.
He had a habit of smiting the keyboard, and massive chords, clangorous
harmonies inevitably preluded his performances. I knew some conservatory
girls who easily could outstrip Piloti technically, but there was
something which differentiated his playing from that of other pianists.
Liszt he did very well.
When we came into the shabby drawing-room I noticed a picture of the
Abbé Liszt over the grand piano, and as Piloti took a seat he threw back
his head; and my eyes which had rested a moment on the portrait
involuntarily returned to it, so before I was aware of it I cried out,
"I say, Piloti, do you know that you look like Liszt?" He blushed
deeply, and gave me a most curious glance.
"I have heard it said often," he replied, and he crashed into the
master's B minor Sonata, "The Invitation to Hissing and Stamping," as
Gumprecht has christened it.
Piloti played the interesting work most vigorously. He hissed, he
stamped and shook back his locks in true Lisztian style. He rolled off
the chorale with redundant meaning, and with huge, flamboyant strokes
went through the brilliant octave finale in B major. As he closed, and I
sat still, a sigh near at hand caused me to turn, and then I saw the old
housekeeper, her arms folded, standing in a doorway. The moonlight
biliously smudged her face, and I noticed her staring eyes. Piloti's
attention was attracted by my silence, and when he saw the woman he
uttered a harsh, crackling word. She instantly retired. Turning to me,
with a nervous laugh, he explained:
"The old fool always is affected by moonlight and music."
We strolled out-of-doors, cigarettes in hand, and the rhythmic
swish-swash of the river told that the tide was rising. The dried-up
gullies and canals became silver-streaked with the incoming spray, and
it needed only a windmill to make the scene as Dutch as a Van Der Neer.
Piloti was moody. Something worried him, but as I was not in a very
receptive condition, I forbore questioning him. We walked over the
closely cut grass until the water was reached. He stopped, tossed his
cigarette away:
"I am the unhappiest man alive!" At once I became sympathetic.
He looked at me fiercely: "Do you know who I am? Do you know the stock I
spring from? Will you believe me if I tell you? Can I even trust you?" I
soothed the excited musician and begged him to confide in me. I was his
nearest friend and he must be aware of my feelings. He became quieter at
once; but never shall I forget the look on his face as he reverently
took off his hat.
"I am the son of Franz Liszt, and I thank God for it!"
"Amen!" I fervently responded.
Then he told me his story. His mother was a Hungarian lady, nobly born.
She had been an excellent pianist and studied with Liszt at Weimar and
Buda-Pesth. When Piloti became old enough he was taught the piano, for
which he had aptitude. With his mother he lived the years of his youth
and early manhood in London. She always wore black, and after Liszt's
death Piloti himself went into mourning. His mother sickened and died,
leaving him nothing but sad memories. It sounded very wretched, and I
hastened to console him as best I could. I reminded him of the nobility
of his birth, and that it was greater to be the son of a genius than of
a duke. "Look at Sir William Davenant," I said; "'O rare Sir William
Davenant,' as his contemporaries called him. What an honor to have been
Shakespeare's natural son!" But Piloti shook his head.
"I care little for the legitimacy of my birth; what worries me,
oppresses me, makes me the most miserable man alive, is that I am not a
second Liszt. Why can I not play like my father?"
I endeavored to explain that genius is seldom transmitted, and did not
forget to compliment him on his musical abilities. "You know that you
play Liszt well. That very sonata in B minor, it pleased me much." "But
do I play it like a Friedheim?" he persisted. And I held my peace....
Piloti was downcast and I proposed bed. He assented. It was late; the
foolish-looking young topaz moon had retired; the sky was cloudy, and
the water was rushing over Little Holland. We did not get indoors
without wetting our feet. After drinking a parting glass I shook his
hand heartily, bade him cheer up, and said that study would soon put him
in the parterre of pianists. He looked gloomy, and nodded good-night. I
went to my room. As the water was likely to invade the cellar and even
the ground floor, the bedrooms were all on the second floor. I soon got
to my bed, for I was tired, and the sadness of this strange household,
the moaning of the river, the queer isolated feeling, as if I were alone
far out at sea, all this depressed me, and I actually pulled the covers
over my head like a frightened child during a thunderstorm.
I must have been sleeping some time when voices penetrated the
dream-recesses of my brain. As I gradually emerged from darkened slumber
I became conscious of Piloti's voice. It was pitched a trifle above a
whisper, but I heard every word. He was talking savagely to some one,
and the theme was the old one.
"It has gone far enough. I'm sick of it, I tell you. I will kill myself
in another week. Don't," he said in louder tones and with an
imprecation--"don't tell me not to. You've been doing that for years."
A long silence ensued; a woman's voice answered:
"My son, my son, you break my heart with your sorrow! Study if you would
play like your father, study and be brave, be courageous! All will come
out right. Idle fretting will do no good."
It was the voice of the housekeeper, and she spoke in English. Piloti's
mother! What family secret was I upon the point of discovering? I
shivered as I lay in my bed, but could not have forborne listening
though I should die for it. The voices resumed. They came from the room
immediately back of mine:
"I tell you, mother, I know the worst. I may be the son of a genius, but
I am nevertheless a mediocrity. It is killing me! it is killing me!" and
the voice of this morose monomaniac broke into sobs.
The poor mother cried softly. "If I only had not been Liszt's son,"
Piloti muttered, "then I would not be so wretched, so cursed with
ambitions. Alas! why was I ever told the truth?"
"Oh, my son, my son, forgive!" I heard the noise of one dropping on her
knees. "Oh, my boy, my pride, my hope, forgive me--forgive the innocent
imposture I've practised on you! My son, I never saw Liszt; you are--"
With an oath Piloti started up and asked in heavy, thick speech: "What's
this, what's this, woman? Seek not to deceive me. What do you tell me?
Never saw Liszt! Who, then, was my father? You must speak, if I have to
drag the words from between your teeth."
"O God! O God!" she moaned, "I dare not tell you--it is too shameful--I
never saw Liszt--I heard much of him--I adored him, his music--I was
vain, foolish, doting! I thought, perhaps, you might be a great pianist,
and if you were told that Liszt was your father--your real father." ...
"My real father--who was he? Quick, woman, speak!"
"He was Liszt's favorite piano-tuner," she whispered.
Dull silence reigned, and then I heard some one slowly descending the
stairs. The outer door closed, and I rushed to the window. In the misty
dawn I could see nothing but water. The house was completely hemmed in
by a noiseless sheet of sullen dirty water. Not a soul was in sight, and
almost believing that I had been the victim of a nightmare, I went back
to my bed and fell asleep. I was awakened by loud halloas and rude
poundings at my window. A man was looking in at me: "Hurry up, stranger;
you haven't long to wait. The water is up to the top of the porch. Get
your clothes on and come into my boat!"
It did not take me hours to obey this hint, and I stepped from the
window to the deck of a schooner. The meadows had utterly disappeared.
Nothing but water glistened in the sunlight. When I reached the mainland
I looked back at the house. I could just descry the roof.
Little Holland was very wet.
A CHOPIN OF THE GUTTER
J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal
Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore
Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal
Une miraculeuse aurore;
J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal
Un être qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze,
Terrasser l'énorme Satan;
Mais mon coeur que jamais ne visite l'extase,
Est un théâtre où l'on attend.
Toujours, toujours en vain l'être aux ailes gaze.
--BAUDELAIRE.
They watched him until he turned the corner of the Rue Puteaux and was
lost to them.
He moved slowly, painfully, one leg striking the pavement in
syncopation, for it was sadly crippled by disease. He twisted his thin
head only once as he went along the Batignolles. It seemed to them that
his half face was sneering in the mist. Then the band passed up to the
warmer lights of the Clichy Quarter, where they drank and argued art far
into the night They one and all hated Wagner, adoring Chopin's morbid
music.
Minkiewicz walked up the lower side of the little street called Puteaux
until he reached a stupid, overgrown building. It was numbered 5, and
was a shabby sort of pension. The Pole painfully hobbled up the
evil-smelling stairway, more crooked than a youth's counterpoint, and on
the floor next to the top halted, breathing heavily. The weather was
oppressive and he had talked too much to the young men at the brasserie.
"Ah, good boys all," he murmured, trying the door; "good lads, but no
talent, no originality. Ah!" The door yielded and Minkiewicz was at
home.
An upright piano, a bed, a shaky washstand and bureau, one feeble chair,
music--pounds of it--filled the chamber lighted by one candle. The old
man threw himself on the bed and sighed drearily. Then he went to the
piano, lifted the lid and ran his fingers over the keyboard. He sighed
again. He sat down on the chair and closed his eyes. He did not sleep,
for he arose in a few moments, took off his coat, and lighted a
cigarette in the flame of the candle. Minkiewicz again placed himself
before the instrument and played, but with silent fingers. He executed
the most intricate passages, yet the wind in the room was soundless. He
sat in his shirt-sleeves, his hat on his head, playing a Chopin concerto
in dumb profile, and the night wore on....
He was awakened in the morning by the entrance of a grimy garçon who
grinned and put on the floor an oblong basket. Minkiewicz stirred
restlessly.
"The absinthe--you have not forgotten it?" he questioned in a weak
voice.
"Ah, no, sir; never, sir, do I forget the green fairy for the great
musician, sir," was the answer, evidently a set one, its polite angles
worn away by daily usance.
The man grasped the proffered glass and swallowed, choking, the
absinthe. It did him good, for he sat up in bed, his greasy, torn
nightgown huddled about him, and with long, claw-like fingers he
uncovered the scanty breakfast. When he had finished it he wiped his
mouth and hands on the counterpane:
"Charge it as usual."
The waiter packed up the dishes, bade a bon jour, and with a mocking
gesture left the room. Minkiewicz always had his breakfasts charged.
At noon he crawled out of bed and dressed at a grave tempo. He wore
always the same shirt, a woollen one, and his wardrobe knew no change.
It was faded, out of fashion by a full half-century, and his only luxury
a silk comforter which he knotted loosely about his neck. He had never
worn a collar since Chopin's death. It was two of the clock when he
stumbled downstairs. At the doorway he met Bernard the hunchback
landlord.
"No money to-day, M. Minkiewicz? Well, I suppose not--terribly hard
times--no money. Will you have a little glass with me?" The musician
went into the dusky dining-room and drank a pony of brandy with the
good-natured Alsatian; then he shambled down the Rue Puteaux into the
Boulevard des Batignolles, and slowly aired himself.
"A great man, M. Minkiewicz; a poet, a pianist, a friend of M.
Chopin--ah! I admire him much, much," explained Bernard to a
neighbor....
It was very wet. But the slop and swish of the rain did not prevent the
brasserie of The Fallen Angels from being filled with noisy drinkers. In
one corner sat Minkiewicz. He was drinking absinthe. About him clustered
five or six good-looking young fellows. The chatter in the room was
terrific, but this group of disciples heard all the master said. He
scarcely spoke above a whisper, yet his voice cut the hot air sharply.
"You ask me, Henri, how well I knew Frédéric. I could ask you in turn
how well did you know your mother? I was with him at Warsaw. I, too,
studied under Elsner. I accompanied him on his first journey to Vienna.
I was at his first concert. I trembled and cried as he played our
first--his first concerto in F minor. I wrote--we wrote the one in E
minor later. I proposed for the hand of Constance Gladowska for
Frédéric, and he screamed when I brought back the answer. Ah! but I did
not tell him that Constance, Constantia, had said, 'Sir Friend, why not
let the little Chopin woo for himself?' and she threw back her head and
smiled into my eyes. I could have killed her for that subtle look. Yes;
I know she married an ordinary merchant. What cared I? I loved Frédéric,
Frédéric only. I never left his side. When it rained, rained as it is
raining to-night, he would tremble, and often beat me with his
spider-like hands, but I didn't mind it, for I was stronger then.
"I went with him to Paris. It was I who secured for him from Prince
Radziwill the invitation to the Rothschild's ball where he won his first
triumph. I made him practise. I bore his horrible humors, his mad,
irritating, capricious temper. I wrote down his music for him. Wrote it
down, did I say? Why, I often composed it for him; yes, I, for he would
sit and moon away at the piano, insanely wasting his ideas, while I
would force him to repeat a phrase, repeat it, polish it, alter it and
so on until the fabric of the composition was complete. Then, how I
would toil, toil, prune and expand his feeble ideas! Mon Dieu! Frédéric
was no reformer by nature, no pathbreaker in art; he was a sickly
fellow, always coughing, always scolding, but he played charmingly. He
had such fingers! and he knew all our national dances. The mazurek, the
mazourk, the polonaise and the krakowiak. Ah! but then he had no blood,
no fire, no muscle, no vitality. He was not a revolutionist. He did not
discover new forms; all he cared for was to mock the Jews with their
majufes, and play sugar-water nocturnes.
"I was the artistic mate to this little Pole who allowed that old
man-woman to deceive him--George Sand, of course. Ah! the old rascal,
how she hated me. She forbade me to enter their hotel in the Cour
d'Orléans, but I did--Chopin would have died without me, the delicate
little vampire! I was his nurse, his mother, his big brother. I fought
his fight with the publishers, with the creditors. I wrote his
polonaises, all--all I tell you--except those sickly things in the keys
of C sharp minor, F minor and B flat minor. Pouf! don't tell me anything
about Chopin. He write a polonaise? He write the scherzi, the ballades,
the études?--you make me enraged. I, I made them all and he will get the
credit for all time, and I am glad of it, for I loved him as a father."
The voice of Minkiewicz became strident as he repeated his old story.
Some of the clients of The Fallen Angels stopped talking for a moment;
it was only that crazy Pole again with his thrice-told tale.
Minkiewicz drank another absinthe.
"And were you then a poet as well as a composer?" timidly asked young
Louis.
"I was the greatest poet Poland ever had. Ask of Chopin's friends, or of
his living pupils. Go ask Georges Mathias, the old professor of the
Conservatoire, if Minkiewicz did not inspire Chopin. Who gave him the
theme for his Revolutionary étude--the one in C minor?" Minkiewicz ran
his left hand with velocity across the table. His disciples followed
those marvellously agile fingers with the eyes of the hypnotic....
"I was with Frédéric at Stuttgart. I first heard the news of the capture
of Warsaw. Pale and with beating heart I ran to the hotel and told him
all. He had an attack of hysteria; then I rushed to the piano and by
chance struck out a phrase. It was in C sharp minor, and was almost
identical with the theme of the C minor study. At once Chopin ceased his
moaning and weeping and came over to the instrument. 'That's very
pretty,' he said, and began making a running bass accompaniment. He was
a born inventor of finger tricks; he took up the theme and gradually we
fashioned the study as it now stands. But it was first written in C
sharp minor. Frédéric suggested that it was too difficult for wealthy
amateurs in that key, and changed it to C minor. More copies would be
sold, he said. But he spoke no more of Warsaw after that. Why? Ah! don't
ask me--the true artist, I suppose. Once that his grief is objectified,
once that his sorrow is translated into tone, the first cause is quite
forgotten,--Art is so selfish, so beautiful, you know!
"I never left Frédéric but once; the odious Sand woman, who smoked a
pipe and swore like a cab driver, smuggled the poor devil away to
Majorca. He came back a sick man; no wonder! You remember the de Musset
episode. The poet's mother even implored the old dragon to take Alfred
to Italy. He, too, was coughing--all her friends coughed except Liszt,
who sneered at her blandishments--and Italy was good for consumptives.
De Musset went away ailing; he returned a mere shadow. What happened?
Ah! I cannot say. Possibly his eyes were opened by the things he
saw--you remember the young Italian physician--I think his name was
Pagello? It was the same with Chopin. Without me he could not thrive.
Sand knew it and hated me. I was the sturdy oak, Frédéric the tender
ivy. I poured out my heart's blood for him, poured it into his music. He
was a mere girl, I tell you--a sensitive, slender, shrinking, peevish
girl, a born prudish spinster, and would shiver if any one looked at
him. Liszt always frightened him and he hated Mendelssohn. He called
Beethoven a sour old Dutchman, and swore that he did not write piano
music. For the man who first brought his name before the public, the
big-hearted German, Robert Schumann--here's to his memory--Chopin had an
intense dislike. He confessed to me that Schumann was no composer, a
talented improviser only. I think he was a bit jealous of the man's
genius. But Freddie loved Mozart, loved his music so madly that it was
my turn to become jealous.
"And fastidious! Bon Dieu! I tell you that he could not drink, and once
Balzac told us a piquant story and Frédéric fainted. I remember well how
Balzac stared and said in that great voice of his: 'Guard well thy
little damsel, my good Minkiewicz, else he may yet be abducted by a
tom-cat,' and then he laughed until the window-panes rattled. What a
brute!...
"I gave my brain to Chopin. When he returned to me from that mad trip to
the Balearic Islands I had not the heart to scold. He was pallid and
even coughed in a whisper. He had no money; Sand was angry with him and
went off to Nohant alone. I had no means, but I took twenty-four little
piano preludes that I had made while Frédéric was away and sold them for
ready money. You know them, all the world knows them. They say now that
he wrote them whilst at Majorca, and tell fables about the rain-drop
prelude in D flat. A pack of lies! I wrote them and at my old piano
without strings, the same that I still have in the Rue Puteaux. But I
sha'n't complain. I love him yet. What was mine was his--is his, even my
music."
The group became uneasy. It was late. The rain had stopped, and through
the open doors of The Fallen Angels could be seen the soft-starred sky,
and melting in the distance were the lights of the Gare Saint-Lazare. It
was close by the Quarter of Europe, and the women who walked the
boulevard darted swift glances into the heated rooms of the brasserie.
Minkiewicz drank another absinthe--his last. There was no more money.
The disciples had spent their all for the master whom they loved as they
hated the name of Wagner. His slanting eyes--the eyes of the
Calmuck--were bloodshot; his face was yellow-white. His long, white hair
hung on his shoulders and there were bubbles about his lips.
"But I often despair. I loved Chopin's reputation too much ever to write
a line of music after his death. Besides who would have believed me?
Which one of you believes in his secret heart of hearts one word I have
spoken to-night? It is difficult to make the world acknowledge that you
are not an idiot; very difficult to shake its belief that Chopin was not
a god. Alas! there are no more gods. You say I am a poet, yet how may a
man be a poet if godless? I know that there is no God, yet I am unhappy
longing after Him. I awake at the dawn and cry for God as children cry
for their mother. Curse reason! curse the knowledge that has made a
mockery of my old faiths! Frédéric died, and dying saw Christ. I look
at the roaring river of azure overhead and see the cruel sky--nothing
more. I tell you, my children, it has killed the poet in me, and it will
kill the gods themselves when comes the crack of doom.
"I dream often of that time--that time John, the poet of Patmos,
foretold in his Revelations: The time when the Sixth Seal was opened.
Alas! when the Son of Man cometh out of the clouds and round about the
throne are the four-winged beasts, what will he see?
"Nothing--nothing, I tell you.
"Unbelief will have killed the very soul of creation itself. And where
once burned the eye of the Cosmos will be naught but a hideous
emptiness.
"Hélas! mes enfants, I could drink one more absinthe; my soul grieves
for my lost faith, my lost music, my lost Frédéric, my lost life." ...
But they went away. It was past the hour of closing and the host was not
in a humor for parleying.
"Ah! the old pig, the old blasphemer!" he said, shaking his head as he
locked the doors.
They watched him until he turned the corner of the Rue Puteaux and was
lost to them.
He moved slowly, painfully, one leg striking the pavement in
syncopation, for it was sadly crippled by disease. He did not twist his
thin head as he went along the Batignolles. Then the band passed once
more up to the warmer lights of the Clichy Quarter and argued art far
into the night.
They one and all hated Wagner, adoring Chopin's magic music.
THE PIPER OF DREAMS
The desert of my soul is peopled with black gods,
Huge blocks of wood;
Brave with gilded horns and shining gems,
The black and silent gods
Tower in the naked desert of my soul.
With eyes of wolves they watch me in the night;
With eyes like moons.
My gods are they; in each the evil grows,
The grandiose evil darkens over each
And each black god, silent
Under the iron skies, dreams
Of his omnipotence--the taciturn black gods!
And my flesh and my brain are underneath their feet;
I am the victim, and I perish
Under the weight of these nocturnal gods
And in the iron winds of their unceasing wrath.
--LINGWOOD EVANS.
I
It was opera night, and the lights burned with an official brilliancy
that challenged the radiance of the Café Monferino across the asphalt.
There, all was decorous gaiety; and the doubles of Pilsner never
vanished from the little round metal tables that overflowed into the
juncture of the streets Gluck and Halévy. Among the brasseries in Paris
this the most desirable to lovers of the Bohemian brew. The cooking,
Neapolitan and Viennese, perhaps explained the presence, one June
evening in the year 1930, of tall, blond, blue-eyed Illowski, the
notorious Russian symphonist. With several admirers he sat sipping bocks
and watched the motley waves of the boulevard wash back strange men and
women--and again women.
Lenyard spoke first. Young and from New England he was studying music in
Paris.
"Master, why don't you compose a music drama?" Illowski, gazing into the
soft blur of light and mist over the Place de l'Opéra, did not answer.
Scheff burst into laughter. The one who had put the question became
angry. "Confound it! What have I said, Mr. Dutchman, that seems so funny
to you?" Illowski put out a long, thin hand,--a veritable flag of truce:
"Children, cease! I have written something better than a music drama. I
told Scheff about it before he left St. Petersburg last spring. Don't be
jealous, Lenyard. There is nothing in the work that warrants
publicity--yet. It is merely a venture into an unfamiliar region,
nothing more. But how useless to write for a public that still listens
to Meyerbeer in the musical catacombs across the street!"
Lenyard's lean, dark features relaxed. He gazed smilingly at the fat and
careless Scheff. Then Illowski arose. It was late, he said, and his
head ached. He had been scoring all day--sufficient reason for early
retirement. The others demurred, though meekly. If their sun set so
early, how could they be expected to pass the night with any degree of
pleasure? The composer saw all this; but he was sensibly selfish, and
buttoning the long frock-coat which hung loosely on his attenuated frame
shook hands with his disciples, called a carriage and drove away.
Lenyard and Scheff stared after him and then faced the situation. There
were many tell-tale porcelain tallies on the table to be settled, and
neither had much money; so the manoeuvring was an agreeable sight for
the cynical waiter. Finally Lenyard, his national pride rising at the
spectacle of the Austrian's penuriousness, paid the entire bill with a
ten-franc piece.
Scheff sank back in his chair and grinningly inquired, "Say, my boy, I
wonder if Illowski has enough money for his coachman when he reaches the
mysterious, old dream-barn he calls home?" Lenyard slowly emptied his
glass: "I don't know, you don't know, and, strictly speaking, we don't
care. But I'd dearly like to see the score of his new work."
Scheff blinked with surprise. He, too, was thinking of the same dread
matter. "What, in God's name, do you mean? Speak out. I've been
frightened long enough. This Illowski is a terrible man, Scheff. Do you
suspect the stories are true, after all--?" Then both men stood up,
shook hands and said: "Neshevna will tell us. She knows." ...
II
Pavel Illowski was a man for whom the visible world had never existed.
Born a Malo-Russ, nursed on Little-Russian legends, a dreamer of soft
dreams until more than a lad, he was given a musical education in
Moscow, the White City--itself a dream of old Alexander Nevsky's days.
Within sight of the Kremlin the slim and delicate youth fed upon the
fatalistic writers of the nineteenth century. He knew Schopenhauer
before he learned to pronounce German correctly; and the works of
Bakounin, Herzen, Kropotkin became part of his cerebral tissue.
Proudhon, Marx, and Ferdinand Lassalle taught him to hate wealth,
property, power; and then he came across an old volume of Nietzsche in
his uncle's library. The bent of the boy's genius was settled. He would
be a composer--had he not, as a bare-headed child, run sobbing after
Tschaïkowsky's coffin almost to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in
1893--but a composer who would mould the destinies of his nation,
perhaps the destinies of all the world, a second Svarog. He early saw
the power--insidious, subtle, dangerous power--that lurked in great art,
saw that the art of the twentieth century, his century, was music. Only
thirteen when the greatest of all musical Russians died, he read
Nietzsche a year later; and these men were the two compelling forces of
his life until the destructive poetry of the mad, red-haired Australian
poet, Lingwood Evans, appeared. Illowski's philosophy of anarchy was now
complete, his belief in a social, æsthetic, ethical regeneration of the
world, fixed. Yet he was no militant reformer; he would bear no
polemical banners, wave no red flags. A composer of music, he endeavored
to impart to his work articulate, emotion-breeding and formidably
dangerous qualities.
Deserting the vague and fugitive experimentings of Berlioz, Wagner,
Liszt and Richard Strauss, Illowski modelled himself upon Tschaïkowsky.
He read everything musical and poetical in type, and his first attempt,
when nearly thirty, was a symphonic setting of a poem by a
half-forgotten English poet, Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark
Tower Came," and the music aroused hostile German criticism. Here is a
young Russian, declared the critics, who ventures beyond Tschaïkowsky
and Strauss in his attempts to make music say something. Was not the
classic Richard Wagner a warning to all who endeavored to wring from
music a message it possessed not? When Wagner saw that Beethoven--Ah,
the sublime Beethoven!--could not do without the aid of the human voice
in his Ninth Symphony, he fashioned his music drama accordingly. With
the co-operation of pantomime, costume, color, lights, scenery, he
invented a new art--patched and tinkered one, said his enemies, who
thought him old-fashioned--and so "Der Ring," "Tristan und Isolde," "Die
Meistersinger" and "Parsifal" were born. True classics in their devotion
to form and freedom from the feverishness of the later men headed by
Richard Strauss--why should any one seek to better them, to supplant
them? Wagner had been the Mozart of his century. Down with the musical
Tartars of the East who spiritually invaded Europe to rob her of peace,
religion, aye, and morals!
Much censure of this kind was aimed at Illowski, who continued calmly.
Admiring Richard Strauss, he saw that the man did not dare enough, that
his effort to paint in tone the poetic heroes of the past century,
himself included, was laudable; but Don Juan, Macbeth, quaint Till
Eulenspiegel, fantastic Don Quixote were, after all, chiefly concerned
with a moribund æstheticism. Illowski best liked the Strauss setting of
"Also Sprach Zarathustra" because it approached his own darling project,
though it neither touched the stars nor reached the earth. Besides, this
music was too complicated. A new art must be evolved, not a synthesis of
the old arts dreamed by Wagner, but an art consisting of music alone: an
art for the twentieth century, a democratic art in which poet and tramp
alike could revel. To the profoundest science must be united a clearness
of exposition that only Raphael has. Even a peasant enjoys Velasquez.
The Greeks fathomed this mystery: all Athens worshipped its marbles, and
Phidias was crowned King of Emotions. Music alone lagged in the race,
music, part speech, part painting, with a surging undertow of passion,
music had been too long in the laboratories of the wise men. To free it
from its Egyptian bondage, to make it the tongue of all life, the
interpreter of the world's desire--Illowski dreamed the dreams of
madmen.
Chopin, who divined this truth, went first to the people, later to
Paris, and thenceforward he became the victim of the artificial.
Beethoven was born too soon in a world grown gray under scholars'
shackles. The symphony, like the Old Man of the Sea, weighed upon his
mighty shoulders; music, he believed, must be formal to be understood.
Illowski, in his many wanderings, pondered these things: saw Berlioz on
the trail, in his efforts to formulate a science of instrumental
timbres; saw Wagner captivated by the glow of the footlights; saw Liszt,
audacious Liszt, led by Wagner, and tribute laid upon his genius by the
Bayreuth man; saw Tschaïkowsky struggling away from the temptations of
the music drama only to succumb to the symphonic poem--a new and vicious
version of that old pitfall, the symphony; saw César Franck, the
Belgian mystic, narrowly graze the truth in some of his chamber music,
and then fall victim to the fascinations of the word; as if the word,
spoken or sung, were other than a clog to the free wings of imaginative
music! Illowski noted the struggles of these dreamers, noted Verdi
swallowed by the maelstrom of the theatre; noted Richard Strauss and his
hesitation at the final leap.
To the few in whom he confided, he admitted that Strauss had been his
forerunner, having upset the notion that music must be beautiful to be
music and seeing the real significance of the characteristic, the ugly.
Had Strauss developed courage or gone to the far East when
young--Illowski would shrug his high shoulders, gnaw his cigarette and
exclaim, "Who knows?"
Tolstoy was right after all, this sage, who under cover of fiction
preached the deadliest doctrines; doctrines that aimed at nothing less
than the disequilibration of existing social conditions. Tolstoy had
inveighed bitterly against all forms of artificial art. If the Moujik
did not understand Beethoven, then all the worse for Beethoven; great
art should have in it Mozart's sunny simplicities, without Mozart's
elaborate technical methods. This Illowski believed. To unite the
intimate soul-searching qualities of Chopin and exclude his alembicated
art; to sweep with torrential puissance the feelings of the common
people, whether Chinese or German, Esquimaux or French; to tell them
things, things found neither in books nor in pictures nor in stone,
neither above the earth nor in the waters below; to liberate them from
the tyranny of laws and beliefs and commandments; to preach the new
dispensation of Lingwood Evans--magnificent, brutal, and
blood-loving--ah! if Illowski could but discover this hidden
philosophers stone, this true Arcana of all wisdom, this emotional lever
of Archimedes, why then the whole world would be his: his power would
depose Pope and Emperor. And again he dreamed the dreams of madmen--his
mother had been nearly related to Dostoïewsky....
Of what avail the seed-bearing Bach and his fugues--emotional
mathematics, all of them! Of what avail the decorative efforts of tonal
fresco painters, breeders of an hour's pleasure, soon forgotten in the
grave's muddy disdain! Had not the stage lowered music to the position
of a lascivious handmaiden? To the sound of cymbals, it postured for the
weary debauchee. No; music must go back to its origins. The church
fettered it in its service, knowing full well its good and evil. Before
Christianity was, it had been a power in hieratic hands. Ancient
Egyptian priests hypnotized the multitudes with a single silvery sound;
and in the deepest Indian jungles inspired fakirs induced visions by the
clapping of shells. Who knows how the Grand Llama of Thibet decrees the
destinies of millions! Music again, music in some other garb than we now
sense it. Illowski groaned as he attacked this hermetic mystery. He had
all the technique of contemporary art at his beck; but not that unique
tone, the unique form, by which he might become master of the universe
and gain spiritual dominion over mankind. Yet the secret, so fearfully
guarded, had been transmitted through the ages. Certain favored ones
must have known it, men who ruled the rulers of earth. Where could it be
found? "The jealous gods have buried somewhere proofs of the origins of
all things, but upon the shores of what ocean have they rolled the stone
that hides them, O Macareus?" Thus echoed he the fatidical query of the
French poet....
Illowski left Europe. Some said he had gone to Asia, the mother of all
religions, of all corruptions. He had been seen in China, and later
stories were related of his attempts to enter the sacred city, Lhasa. He
disappeared and many composers and critics were not sorry; his was a too
commanding personality: he menaced modern art. Thus far church and state
had not considered his individual existence; he was but one of the
submerged units of Rurik's vast Slavic Empire which now almost traversed
the Eastern hemisphere. So he was forgotten and a minor god arose in his
place--a man who wrote pretty ballets, who declared that the end of
music was to enthrall the senses; and his ballets were danced over
Europe, while Illowski's name faded away....
At the end of ten years he returned to St. Petersburg. Thinner, much
older, his long, spidery arms, almost colorless blond hair and eroded
features gave him the air of a cenobite who had escaped from some
Scandinavian wilderness into life. His Oriental reserve, and evident
dislike of all his former social habits, set the musical world wagging
its head, recalling the latter days of Dostoïewsky. But Illowski was not
mad: he simply awaited his opportunity. It came. The morning after his
first concert he was awakened by fame knocking at his gate, the most
horrible kind of fame. He was not called a madman by the critics, for
his music could never have been the product of a crazy brain--he was
pronounced an arch-enemy to mankind, because he told infamous secrets in
his music, secrets that had lain buried in the shale of a vanished
epoch. And, lest the world grow cold, he drove to its very soul the most
hideous truths. A hypnotist, he conducted his orchestra through
extraordinary and malevolent forests of tone. The audience went into the
night, some sobbing, some beating the air like possessed ones, others
frozen with terror. At the second concert the throngs were so dense that
the authorities interfered. What poison was being disseminated in the
air of a concert hall? What new device of the revolutionists? What
deadly secret did this meagre, dreamy, harmless-looking Russian possess?
The censors were alert. Critics were instructed by the heads of their
journals to drive forth this musical anarchist; but criticism availed
not. A week, and Illowski became the talk of Russia, a month, and Europe
filled with strange rumors about him. Here was a magician who made the
dead speak, the living dumb--what were the limits of his power? What his
ultimate intention? Such a man might be converted into a political force
would he but range himself on the right side of the throne. If not--why,
then there was still Siberia and its weary stretches of snow!
When he reached Moscow rioting began in the streets. Leaving, he went
with his dark-skinned Eastern musicians to the provinces. And the
government trembled. Peasants threw aside spade, forgot vodka and rushed
to his free concerts, given in canvas-covered booths; and the impetus
communicated to this huge, weltering mass of slaving humanity, broke
wave-like upon the remotest borders of the empire. The church became
alarmed. Anti-Christ had been predicted for centuries, and latterly by
the Second Adventists. Was Illowski the one at whose nod principalities
and powers of earth should tremble and fall? Was he the prince of
darkness himself? Was the liberation of the seven seals at hand--that
awful time foretold by the mystic of Patmos? The Metropolitan of the
Greek church did not long hesitate. A hierarchy that became endangered
because a fanatic wielded hypnotic powers, must exert its prerogative.
The aid of the secret police invoked, Illowski was hurried into Austria;
but with him were his men, and he grimly laughed as he sat in a Viennese
café and counted the victories of his first campaign.
"It has begun," he told his first violinist, a stolid fellow with black
blood in his veins.
It had begun. After a concert in Vienna, Illowski was politely bidden to
leave Austria. The unsettled political condition, the disaffection of
Czech and Hungarian, were a few of the reasons given for this summary
retirement. Yet Illowski's orchestra did not play the Rakoczy march! The
clergy heard of his impieties; a report obtained credence that the
Russian composer had written music for the black mass, most blasphemous
of missal travesties. When he was told of this he smiled, for he did not
aim at attacking mere sectarian beliefs; with Bakounin, he swore that
there must be total destruction of all existing institutions,
or--nothing!
He went to Germany believing the countrymen of Nietzsche would receive
with joy this Overman from the East. There was no longer any
Bayreuth--the first performance of "Parsifal" elsewhere had killed the
place and the work. In Munich, the authorities forewarned, Illowski was
arrested as a dangerous character and sent to Trieste. Thence he shipped
to Genoa; and once in Italy, free. On the peninsula his progress was
that of a trailing comet. The feminine madness first manifested itself
there and swept the countryside with epidemic fury. Wherever he played
the dancing mania set in, and the soldiery could not put it down by
force of arms. Nietzsche's dancing philosopher, Zarathustra, was
incarnated in Illowski's compositions. Like the nervous obsessions of
mediæval times, this music set howling, leaping and writhing volatile
Italians, until it began to assume the proportions of a new evangel, an
hysterical hallucination that bade defiance to law, doctors, even the
decencies of life. Terrible stories reached the Vatican, and when it was
related that one of his symphonic pieces delineated Zarathustra's Cave
with its sinister mockery of prelate and king, the hated Quirinal was
approached for assistance, and Illowski vanished from Italy.
In the British Isles, the same wicked tales were told of him. He was
denounced by priest and publican as a subverter of morals. No poet, no
demagogue, had ever so interested the masses. Musicians of academic
training held aloof. What had they in common with this charlatan who
treated the abominable teachings of Walt Whitman symphonically? He could
not be a respectable man, even if he were a sane. And then the
unlettered tiller of the soil, drunken mechanic and gutter drab all
loved his music. What kind of music was it thus to be understood by the
ignorant?
The police thought otherwise. Illowski gathered crowds--that was
sufficient to ban him, not as the church does, with bell, book and
candle, but with stout oaken clubs. Forth he fared, and things came to
such a pass that not a steamer dared convey him or his band to America.
By this time the scientific reviews had taken him up as a sort of public
Illusionist. Disciples of Charcot explained his scores--though not one
had been published--while the neo-moralists gladly denounced him as a
follower of the Master Immoralist, a sublimated emotional expression of
the ethical nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche. Others, more fanciful, saw
in his advent and in his art an attempt to overturn nations, life
itself, through the agency of corrupting beauty and by the arousing of
illimitable desires. Color and music, sweetness and soft luxuries,
declared these modern followers of Ambrose and Chrysostom, were the
agencies of Satan in the undermining of morals. Pulpits thundered. The
press sneered at the new Pied Piper of Hamelin, and poets sang of him.
One Celtic bard named him "Master of the Still Stars and of the Flaming
Door."
For women his music was as the moth's desire. Wherever he went were
women--women and children. Old legends were revived about the ancient
gods. The great Pan was said to be abroad; rustling in the night air set
young folk blushing. An emotional renascence swept like a torrid simoon
over Europe. Those who had not heard, had not seen him, felt,
nevertheless, Illowski's subtle influences in their bosoms. The
fountains of democracy's great deeps were breaking up. Too long had smug
comfort and utilitarianism ruled a world grown weary of debasing
commerce. All things must have an end, even wealth; and to the wretched,
to those in damp mines, to the downcast in exile and in prisons and to
the muck of humanity his name became a beautiful, illuminated symbol.
The charges of impiety were answered: "His music makes us dream." Music
now became ruler of the universe, and the earth hummed tunes; yet
Illowski's maddening music had been heard by few nations.
Humble, poor, asking nothing, always giving, he soon became a nightmare
to the orthodox. He preached no heresies, promised no future rewards,
nor warred he against church or kingdom. He only made music and things
were not as before; some strange angel had passed that way filling men's
souls with joy, beauty and bitterness. Duties, vows, beliefs fell away
like snow in the sun; families, tribes, states grew restless, troops
were called and churches never closed. A wave of belated paganism rolled
over the world; thinkers and steersmen of great political and religious
organizations became genuinely alarmed. So had come the downfall of the
classical world: a simple apparition in a far away Jewish province, and
the Cæsars fell supine--their empires cracked like mirrors! To imprison
Illowski meant danger; to kill him would deify him, for in the blood of
martyrs blossom the seeds of mighty religions. Far better if he go to
Paris--Paris, the cradle and the tomb of illusions. There this restless
demagogue might find his dreams stilled in the scarlet negations and
frivolous philosophies of the town; thus the germ-plasm of a new
religion, of a new race, perhaps of a new world, be drowned in the
drowsy green of a little glass.
Illowski, this Spirit that Denied, this new Mephisto of music, did not
balk his evil wishers.
"Paris, why not? She refused to understand Berlioz, flouted Wagner, and
mocked Rodin's marble egotisms, the ferocious, white stillness of his
Balzac! Perhaps Paris will give me, if not a welcome, at least repose. I
am tired."
To Paris he went and excepting a few cynical paragraphs received no
attention. The Conservatoire, the Académie de Musique did not welcome
officially this gifted son of the Neva; the authorities blandly ignored
him, though the police were instructed that if he attempted to play in
front of churches, address mobs or build barricades, he must be
confined. Paris had no idea of Illowski's real meaning; Paris, even in
the twentieth century, always hears the news of the world last;
besides, she conceives no other conquest save one that has for its
object the several decayed thrones within her gates. Illowski was not
molested and his men, despite their strange garb and complexion, went
about freely. The Russian composer of ballets was just then the mode.
Some clever caricatures appeared of Illowski representing him as a
musical Napoleon, cocked hat, sleek white horse and all. Another gave
him the goat's beard of Brother Jonathan, with the baton of a Yankee
band-master; and then it was assured that the much advertised composer
was a joking American masquerading as a Slav, possibly the vender of
some new religious cure born in the fanatical bake-ovens of Western
America. "Faust" alternated with "Les Huguenots" at the Opéra, Pilsner
beer was on tap at the Café Monferino--why worry over exotic stories
told of this visitor's abnormal musical powers? And little did anyone
surmise that he had just given a symphonic setting to Lingwood Evans's
insurrectionary poem with its ghastly refrain: "I hear the grinding of
the swords, and He shall come--" Thus did Paris unwittingly harbor the
poet, philosopher, composer and pontiff of the new dispensation--Pavel
Illowski. And Lenyard with Scheff was hastening to Auteuil to see
Neshevna, whose other name was never known.
III
Lenyard disliked Neshevna before he saw her; when they met he made no
attempt to conceal his hatred. He again told himself this, as with
Scheff he pursued the gravel path leading to the porter's lodge of
Illowski's house. In Auteuil it overlooked the Seine which flowed a
snake of sunny silver between its green-ribbed banks. Together the pair
entered, mounted a low flight of steps and rang the private bell.
Neshevna opened the door. In the flood of a westering sun the accents of
her fluid Slavic face and her mannish head set upon narrow
shoulders--all the disagreeable qualities of the woman--were exaggerated
by this bath of clear light. Her hard gaze softened when she saw Scheff.
She spoke to him, not noticing the other:
"The master is not at home." Lenyard contradicted her: "He is; the
concierge said so."
"The concierge lies; but come in. I will see."
Following her they reached the music room, which was bare of
instruments, pictures, furniture, all save a tall desk upon which lay a
heap of music paper. Neshevna made a loping dart to the desk--she was
like a wolf in her movements--and threw a handkerchief over it. Lenyard
watched her curiously. Scheff gave one of his good-natured yawns and
then laughed:
"Neshevna, we come to ask!"
"What?" she gravely inquired. There was a lithe alertness in the woman
that puzzled Lenyard. Scheff lounged on the window-sill. "Now, Neshevna,
be a good girl! Don't forget Moscow or your old adorer."
She answered him with sarcastic emphasis: "You fat fool, you and your
clerical friend there, what do you both want spying upon Illowski like
police?" Her voice became shrill as she rapidly uttered these questions,
her green eyes seemed shot with blood. "If you think I'll tell either of
you anything concerning the new music--"
"That's all we are here to learn."
"All? Imbeciles! As if you or your American could understand Illowski
and his message!"
"What message?" Lenyard's grave face was not in the least discomposed by
the Cossack passion of the woman. "What message has Illowski? I've heard
queer stories, and cannot credit them. You are in his confidence. Tell
us, we ask in humility, what message can any man's music have but the
revelation of beauty?"
Lenyard's diplomatic question did not fail of its mark. Neshevna pushed
back her flamboyant gray hair and walked about the room.
"Mummies!" she suddenly cried. "As if beauty will content a new
generation fed on something besides the sweetmeats and pap of your
pretty, meaningless music! Why, man, can't you see that all the arts are
dead--save music? Don't you know that painting, literature, creeds--aye,
and the kingdoms are dying for want of new blood, new ideas? Music alone
is a vital force, an instrument for rescuing the world from its moral
and spiritual decay. Nietzsche was a potent force in the nineteenth
century, but not understood. They condemned him to a living death.
Lingwood Evans, poet, prophet, is now too old to enforce his message--it
is Illowski, Illowski alone who shall be the destructive Messiah of the
new millennial. 'He cometh not to save; not peace, but blood!'"
The fire of fanaticism was in her eyes, in her speech. She grasped
Lenyard by the elbow: "You, you should serve the master. Scheff is too
fond of pleasure to do anything great. He is to give the signal--that's
glory enough for him. But you, discontented American, have the stuff in
you to make a martyr. We need martyrs. You hate me? Good! But you must
worship Illowski. Art gives place to life, and in Illowski's music is
the new life. He will sweep the globe from pole to pole, for all men
understand his tones. Other gods have but prepared the way for him. No
more misery, no more promises unfulfilled by the rulers of body and
soul--only music, music like the air, the tides, the mountains, the
moon, sun, and stars! Your old-fashioned melody and learning, your
school-boy rules of counterpoint--all these Illowski ignores."
Lenyard eagerly interrupted her: "You say that he does away with melody,
themes, harmony--how does he replace them, and how does he treat the
human voice?" Neshevna let his arm fall and went slowly to the tall
desk. She leaned against it, her hand upon her square chin. Scheff still
gazed out upon the lawn where splashed a small, movable fountain. To
Lenyard the air seemed as if charged with electric questionings. His
head throbbed.
"You ask me something I dare not tell. Even Scheff, who knows some
things, dares not tell. If Illowski's discovery--which is based on the
great natural laws of heat, light, gravitation, electricity--if this
discovery were placed in the hands of fools, the world would perish.
Music has been so long the plaything of sensuality, the theatre for idle
men and women, that its real greatness is forgotten. In Illowski's hands
it is a moral force. He comes to destroy that he may rebuild. He
accomplishes it with the raw elements themselves. Remember--'I hear the
grinding of the swords, and He shall come--!'" Neshevna made a nervous
gesture and disappeared through a door near the tall desk covered with
music-paper--the desk whereon Illowski plotted the ruin of civilization.
"Now since you have seen the dread laboratory, don't hang around that
desk; there's nothing there you can understand. The music-paper is
covered with electrical and chemical formulæ, not notes. I've seen them.
Lenyard, let's go back to Paris and dine, like sensible men,--which we
are not." Scheff dragged his friend out of the house, for the other was
in a stupor. Neshevna's words cleaved his very soul. The American, the
puritan in him, swiftly rose to her eloquent exhortation. All life was
corrupt, he had been taught; art was corrupt, a snare, a delusion.
Yet--was all its appalling power, its sensuous grandeur to be wasted in
the service of the world, the flesh, the devil? Lenyard paused. "Oh,
come on, Len. Why do you bother your excitable, sick heart with that
lunatic's prophecies? Illowski is a big man, a very big man; but he is
mad, mad! His theories of the decomposition of tone--he only imitates
the old painter-impressionist of long ago--and his affected
simplicity--why, he is after the big public, that's all. As to your
question about what part the human voice plays in his scheme, I may tell
you now that he doesn't care a farthing for it except as color. He uses
the voice as he would use any instrumental combination, and he mixes his
colors so wonderfully that he sometimes polarizes them--they no longer
have any hue or scent. He should have been a painter not a composer. He
makes panoramas, psychological panoramas, not music."
"You heard them, saw them?"
"Yes," said Scheff, sourly. "Some of the early ones, and I had brain
fever for months afterward."
"Yet," challenged Lenyard, "you deny his powers?"
"I don't know what he has written recently," was the sullen answer, "but
if the newspapers are to be believed, he is crazy. Music all color, no
rhythm, no themes, and then his preaching of Nietzsche--it's all wrong,
all wrong, my boy. Art was made for joy. When it is anything else, it's
a dangerous explosive. Chemically separate certain natural elements and
they rush together with a thunder-clap. That's what Illowski has done.
It isn't art. It's science--the science of dangerous sounds. He
discovered that sound-vibrations rule the universe, that they may be
turned into a musical Roentgen ray. He presents this in a condensed art,
an electric form--"
"But the means, man, the methods, the instruments, the form?" Lenyard's
voice was tense with excitement. The phlegmatic Scheff noticed this and
soothingly said:
"The means? Why, dear boy, he just hypnotizes people, and promises them
bank accounts and angel-wings. That's how he does the trick. Here's the
tramcar. Jump in. I'm dying of thirst. To the Monferino!" ...
* * * * *
Paris laughed when Illowski announced the performance of his new
orchestral drama named "Nietzsche." The newspapers printed columns
about the composer and his strange career. A disused monster music-hall,
near the Moulin Rouge on Montmartre, was to be the scene of the concert
and the place was at once christened "Théâtre du Tarnhelm"--for a story
had leaked out about the ebon darkness in which the Russian's music was
played. This was surpassing the almost forgotten Richard Wagner.
Concerts in the dark must be indeed spirituelle. The wits giggled over
their jokes; and when the kiosks and bare walls were covered by placards
bearing the names of "Illowski--'Nietzsche,'" with a threatening sword
beneath them, the excitement became real. Satirical songs were sung in
the cafés chantants, and several fashionable clerics wove the name of
Illowski into their Sunday preachments. In a week he was popular, two a
mystery, three a necessity. The authorities maintained a dignified
silence--and watched. Politics, Bourbonism, Napoleonism, Boulangerism
ere this had crept in unawares sporting strange disguises. Perhaps
Illowski was a friend of the Vatican, of the Czar; perhaps a
destructive, bomb-throwing Nihilist, for the indomitable revolutionists
still waged war against the law. Might not this music be the signal for
a dangerous uprising of some sort?...
Lenyard was asked to sit in a box with Neshevna that last night. Scheff
refused to join them; he swore that he was tired of music and would
remain in town. The woman smiled as he said this, then she handed him a
letter, made a little motion--"the signal."
It was on the esplanade that Neshevna and Lenyard stood. The young man,
weary with vigils, his face furrowed by curiosity, regarded the city
below them as it lay swimming in the waves of a sinking sun. He saw the
crosses of La Trinité as molten copper, then dusk and dwindle in the
shadows. The twilight seemed to prefigure the fading of the human race.
Neshevna walked with this dreamer to the rear of the theatre--the
theatre of the Tarnhelm, that was to darken all civilization. He asked
for Illowski, but she did not reply; she, too, was steeped in dreams.
And all the streets were thick with men and women tumbling up to the
top.
"We sit in a second-tier box," she presently said. "If you get tired,
or--annoyed, you may go out on the balcony and look down upon the lights
of Paris, though I fear it will be a dark night. There is no moon," she
added, her voice dropping to a mumble....
They sat in a dark box that last night. The auditorium, vast and silent
with the breath-catching silence of thousands, lay below them; but their
eyes were glued upon a rosy light beginning to break over the space
where was the stage. It spread, deepened, until it fairly hummed with
scarlet tones. Gradually emerging from this cruel crimson the image of a
huge sword became visible. Neshevna touched Lenyard's hand.
"The symbol of his power!" she crooned.
Blending with the color of the light a musical tone made itself seen,
heard, felt. Lenyard shuddered. At last, the new dispensation was about
to be revealed, the new gospel preached. It was a single vibratile tone,
and was uttered by a trumpet. Was it a trumpet? It pealed with the peal
of bells shimmering high in heaven. No occidental instrument had ever
such a golden, conquering tone. It was the tone of one who foretold the
coming, and was full of invincible faith and sweetness. Lenyard closed
his eyes. That a single tone could so thrill his nerves he would have
denied. This, then, was the secret. For the first time in the Christian
world, the beauties of tonal timbres were made audible--almost visible;
the quality appealed to the eye, the inner eye. Was not the tinted music
so cunningly merged as to impinge first on the optic nerve? Had the
East, the Hindus and the Chinese, known of this purely material fact for
ages, and guarded it in esoteric silence? Here was music based on
simple, natural sounds, the sounds of birds and air, the subtle sounds
of silk. For centuries Europe had been on the wrong track with its
melodic experimenting, its complex of harmonies. Illowski was indeed
the saviour of music--and Neshevna, her great, green, luminous eyes upon
him, held Lenyard's hand.
The sound grew in volume, grew less silken, and more threatening, while
the light faded into mute, misty music like the purring of cats. A
swelling roar assaulted their ears; nameless creeping things seemed to
fill the tone. Yet it was in one tonality; there was no harmony, no
melody. The man's quick ear detected many new, rich timbres, as if made
by strange instruments. He also recognized interior rhythms, the result
of color rather than articulate movement. Then came silence, a silence
that shouted cruelly across the gulfs of blackness, a silence so
profound as to be appalling. Sound, rhythm, silence--the material from
which is fashioned the creative stuff of the universe! Lenyard became
restless; but the grip on his fingers tightened. He felt the oppressive
dread that precedes the flight of a nightmare; the dread that mankind
knows when sunk in shallow, horrid sleep. A low, frightened wail mounted
out of the darkness wherein massed the people. Another tone usurped the
ear, pierced the eyes. It was a blinding beam of tone, higher and more
undulating. His heart harshly ticking like a clock, he viewed, as in a
vision, the march of the nations, the crash of falling theocracies, of
dying dynasties. On a stony platform, vast and crowded, he knelt in
sackcloth and ashes; the heavens thundered over the weeping millions of
Nineveh; and the Lord of Hosts would not be appeased. Stretching to the
clouds were black, basaltic battlements, and above them reared white
terraced palaces, as swans that strain their throats to the sky. The day
of wrath was come. And amid the granitic clashing of the elements,
Lenyard saw the mighty East resolving into dust. Neshevna pressed his
hand.
By the waters of Babylon he wandered, and found himself at the base of a
rude little hill. The shock of the quaking earth, the silent passing of
the sheeted dead, and the rush of affrighted multitudes told him that
another cosmic tragedy was at hand. In a flare of lightning he saw
silhouetted against an angry sky three crosses at the top of the sad
little hill. He reeled away, his heart almost bursting, when Neshevna
grasped him. "You saw the death of the gods!" she hoarsely whispered.
He could not answer, for the music showed him a thunder-blasted shore
fringing a bituminous sea. This sea stirred not, while the air above it
was frozen in salty silence. Faint, thin light came up through the
waters, and Lenyard caught a glimpse in the deeps below of sparkling
pinnacles and bulbous domes of gold; a dead sea rolled over the dead
cities of the bitter plain. He trembled as Neshevna said, with a
grinding sob, "That was the death of life."
Lenyard's sombre soul modulated to another dream--the last. Suffocating
and vague, the stillness waxed and ran over the troubled edges of
eternity. The Plain, gloomy and implacable, was illuminated on its
anonymous horizon by one rift of naked, leering light. Over its
illimitable surface surged and shivered women, white, dazzling,
numberless. As waves that, lap on lap, sweep fiercely across the
sky-line, as bisons that furiously charge upon grassy wastes, "as the
rill that runs from Bulicamé to be portioned out among the sinful
women," these hordes of savage creatures rose and fell in their mad
flight across the Plain. No sudden little river, no harsh accent of
knoll or hill, broke the immeasurable whiteness of bared breast and
ivoried shoulder. It was a white whirl of women, a ferocious vortex of
terrified women. Lenyard saw the petrified fear upon the faces of them
that went into the Pit; and he descried the cruel and looming figure of
Illowski piping to them as they went into the Pit. The maelstrom of
faces turned to their dream-master; faces blanched by regret, sunned by
crime, beaming with sin; faces rusted by vain virtue; wan, weary faces,
and the triumphant regard of those who loved--all gazed at the Piper as
vertiginously they boiled by. The world of women passed at his feet
radiant, guilty, white, glittering and powerless. Lenyard felt the
inertia of sickness seize him when he saw the capital expression upon
these futile faces--the expression of insurgent souls that see for the
last time their conqueror. Not a sign made these mystic brides, not a
sound; and, as in the blazing music they dashed despairingly down the
gulf of time, Lenyard was left with eyes strained, pulses jangled,
lonely and hopeless. He shivered, and his heart halted....
"This is the death of love," shouted Neshevna. But Lenyard heard her
not; nor did he hear the noise of the people beneath--the veritable
booming of primordial gorilla-men. And now a corrosive shaft of tone
rived the building as though its walls had been of gauze and went
hissing towards Paris, in shape a menacing sword. Like the clattering of
tumbrils in narrow, stony streets men and women trampled upon each
other, fleeing from the accursed altar of this arch-priest of
Beelzebub--Illowski. They over-streamed the sides of Montmartre, as ants
washed away by water. And the howling of them was heard by the watchers
in the doomed city below.
Neshevna, her arm clutched by Lenyard's icy fingers, shook him
violently, and tried to release herself. Finding this impossible she
dragged her silent burden out upon the crumpling balcony.
Paris was draped in flaming clouds--the blood-red smoke of mad torches.
Tongues of fire twined about the towers of Notre Dame; where the Opéra
once stood yawned a blackened hole. The air was shocked by fulminate
blasts--the signals of the careless Scheff.
And the woman, her mouth filled with exultant laughter, screamed, "Thou
hast conquered, O Pavel Illowski!"
AN EMOTIONAL ACROBAT
They were tears which he drummed.
--HEINE.
Perhaps you think because I play upon an instrument of percussion I
admire that other percussive machine of wood and wire, the piano, or
consider the tympanum an inferior instrument?
You were never more mistaken, for I despise the piano as a shallow
compromise between the harp, tympani and those Eastern tinkling
instruments of crystal and glass, or dulcimers and cymbalum. It has no
character, no individuality of its own. It is deplorable in conjunction
with an orchestra, for its harsh, hard, unmalleable tone never blends
with other instruments. It is a selfish instrument and it makes selfish
artists of those who devote a lifetime to it.
Bah! I hate you and your pianos. Compare it to the tympani? Never,
never! It is false, insincere, and smirks and simpers if even a silly
school girl sits before it. It takes on the color of any composer's
ideas, and submits like a slave to the whims of any virtuoso. I am
disgusted. Here am I, an old kettle-drummer--as you say in your
barbarous English--poor, unknown, forced to earn a beggarly living by
strumming dance tunes in a variety hall on a hated piano, and often
accompanying singers, acrobats, and all the riffraff of a vaudeville,
where a mist of vulgarity hangs like a dirty pearl cloud over all. I
don't look at my music any more. I know what is wanted. I have rhythmic
talent. I conduct myself, although there is a butter-faced leader waving
a silly stick at us while I sit in my den, half under the stage, and
thrum and think, and blink and thrum.
And what do you suppose I do with my mornings--for I have to rehearse
every afternoon with odious people who splash their draggled lives with
feeble, sick music--? I stay in my attic room and play upon my tympani,
my beloved children. I have three of them, and I play all sorts of
scores, from the wonderful first measures of Beethoven's Fifth, to
Saint-Saëns' Arabian music. Ah! those men understand my instrument. It
is no instrument of percussion to them. It has a soul. It is the heart
of the orchestra. Its rhythmic throb is the pulse of musical life. What
are your strings, your scratching, rasping strings! What signifies the
blare of your brass, or the bilious bleating of your wood-wind! I am the
centre, the life giver. From me the circulation of warm, musical blood
emanates. I stand at the back of the orchestra as high as the
conductor. Ah! he knows it; he looks at me first. How about the Fifth
Symphony? You now sneer no longer. It is I who outline with mystic taps
the framework of the story. Wagner, great, glorious, glowing Wagner!--I
kiss his memory--he appreciated the tympani and their noble mission in
music....
Yes, I am an educated man, but music snared me away from a worldly
career. Music and--a woman; but never mind that part of it. Do you know
Hunding's motif in "Die Walküre"? Ha! ha! I will give it to you. Listen!
Is it not beautiful? The stern, acrid warrior approaches. And Wagner
gave it to me, to the tympani. Am I crazy, am I arrogant, to feel as I
do about my darling dwarf children? Look at their beloved bellies, so
smooth, so elastic, so resonant! A tiny tap and I set vibrating millions
of delicate, ethereal sounds, the timbre of which to my ears has color,
form, substance, nuance, and thrills me even to my old marrow. Is it not
delicious--that warm, velvety, dull percussion? Is it not delicious, I
say? How it shimmers and senses about me! You have heard of drummed
tears? I can make you weep, if I will, with a few melancholy, muffled
strokes. The drum is the epitome of life. Sound is life. The cave-men
bruised stones together and heard the first music.
I know your Herbert Spencer thinks differently, but bah! what does he
know about tympani? Chopin would have been a great tympanist if he had
not wasted his life foolishly at the piano. When he merely drummed with
his fingers on the table, Balzac said, he made music, so exquisitely
sensitive was his touch. Ah me! what a tympanist was lost to the world.
What shading, what delicacy, what sunlight and shadow he would have made
flit across my little darlings on their tripods! No wonder I hate the
piano; and yet, hideous mockery of fate! I play upon an old grand to
earn my bread and wine. I can't play with an orchestra--it is torture
for me. They do not understand me; the big noisy boors do not understand
rhythm or nuance. They play so loud that I cannot be heard, and I will
never stoop to noisy banging. How I hate these orchestral players! How
they scratch and blow like pigs and boasters! When I did play with them
they made fun of my red hair and delicate touch. The leader could not
understand me, and kept on yelling "Forte, Forte." It was in the Fifth
of Beethoven, and I became angry and called out in my poor German (ah! I
hate German, it hurts my teeth): "_Nein, so klopft das Schicksal nicht
an die Pforte._" You remember Beethoven's words!
Well, everybody laughed at me, and I got mad and covered up my
instruments and went home. Jackass! he wanted me to bang out that
wonderful intimation of fate as though it were the milkman knocking at
the door. I am a poet, and play upon the tympani; the conductor and the
orchestra are boors. But I do injustice to one of them. He was an
Alsatian, and spoke bad French. But he was an excellent bassoon player.
He often called on me and we played duets for bassoon and tympani, and
then read Amiel's journal aloud and wept. Oh! he had a sensitive soul,
that bassoon player. He died of the cholera, and now I am alone....
After my failure as an orchestral player I gave a concert in this city,
and played my concerto for seven drums and wood-wind orchestra. The
critics laughed me to distraction. Instead of listening to the
innumerable rhythms and marvellous variety of nuances I offered them,
they mocked my agile behavior and my curiously colored hair. Even my
confrères envied and reviled me. I have genius, so am hated and
despised. Oh, the pity of it all! They couldn't hear the tenderness, the
fairy-like sobbing made by my wrists, but listened with admiration to
the tinkling of a piano, with its hard, unchangeable tone. Oh, the
stupidity of it all!...
But time will have its revenge. I will not stir a finger either. When I
die the world of tone will realize that a great man has passed away,
after a wretched, neglected life. I have composed a symphony, and for
nothing but _Tympani_! Don't smile, because I have explored the most
fantastic regions of rhythm, hitherto undreamed. Tone, timbre,
intensity, rhythm, variety in color, all, all will be in it; and how
much more subtly expressed than by your modern orchestra, with its
blare, blow, bang and scratch. And what great thoughts I have expressed!
I have gone beyond Berlioz, Wagner and Richard Strauss. I have
discovered rhythms, Asiatic in origin, that will plunge you into
midnight woe; rhythms rescued from the Greeks of old, that will drive
you into panting dance; rhythms that will make drunkards of sober men,
warriors of cowards, harlots of angels. I can intoxicate, dazzle, burn,
madden you. Why? Because all music is rhythm. It is the skeleton, the
structure of life, love, the cosmos. God! how I will exult, even if my
skin crackles in hell-fire, when the children of the earth listen to my
Tympani Symphony, and go crazy with its tappings!...
I have led a shiftless, uneventful life, yet I envy no one, for I am the
genius of a new art--but stay a moment! An uneventful life, did I say?
Alas! my life has been one long, desperate effort to forget her, to
forget my love, my wife. My God! I can see her face now, when she
flashed across my sight at a provincial circus. It was in France. I was
a young man drum-mad, and went to the circus to beguile my time, for I
couldn't practise all day. Then I saw her--"Mlle. Léontine, the Aërial
Virtuoso of the Century," the playbills called her. She was fair and
slim, and Heaven had smiled into her eyes.
I am a poet, you see. Her hair was the color of tender wheat and her
feet twinkled star-wise when she walked. She was my first, my only love,
my life, my wife. She loved me, she told me so soon after we became
acquainted, and I believed her; I believe her now, sometimes, when I
strike softly the skins of my dear little drum children. We soon
married. There were no impediments on my side; my parents were dead and
I had a little ready money. I gave it all to her. She took it and bought
diamonds.
"They were so handy in case of hard luck," she said, and smiled. I
smiled, too, and kissed her.
I kissed her very often, and was so desperately in love with her that I
joined the circus and played the drums there; hush! don't tell it to any
one--and the side-drums at that. I would have even played the piano for
her, so frantically did I adore her. I was very proud of my wife, my
Léontine. She did a tremendous act on the trapeze. She swung and made a
flying leap across the tent and caught a bar, and every time I gave a
tap on the big drum just as she grasped the trapeze. Oh! it would have
made your blood shiver to see her slight figure hurtling through space
and landing safely with my rhythmic accompaniment. And how people
cheered, and what crowds flocked to view the spectacle! In some towns
the authorities made us use nets; then the crowds were not nearly so
large. People like risks. The human animal is happy if it smells blood.
Léontine noticed the decreased attendance when the safety nets were
used, and begged the manager to dispense with them.
He often did so, for he loved money as much as she loved fame. She was
perfectly fearless and laughed at my misgivings, so we usually did the
act without nets....
We had reached Rouen in our wanderings through the provinces, and I
mooned about the old town, sauntering through the cathedral, plunged in
a reverie, for I was happy, happy all the time. Léontine was so good, so
amiable, so true. She associated with none of the women of the circus
and with none of the men, except the manager and myself.
The manager reared her; she had been a foundling. She told me this at
the beginning of our intimacy. We often played games of picking out the
handsomest houses and châteaux we passed, pretending that her parents
lived in them. She was very jolly, was my little Léontine, and remained
with me nearly all the time, except when practising her difficult feats;
this she did in company with the manager, who attended to the ropes and
necessary tackling. He was a charming fellow, and very obliging.
One day I was sitting half-asleep in the spring sunshine, with my back
to one of the tents, awaiting Léontine's return. She was, as usual,
rehearsing, and I, composing and dreaming. Suddenly a laugh aroused me,
and I heard a woman's voice:
"But the young idiot never will discover them; he is too blind and too
fond of drumming."
I tuned up my ears. Another woman answered in a regretful tone:
"See what it is to be fascinating like Léontine; she gets all the boy's
money, and has the manager besides. She must earn a pretty penny." ...
I sat perfectly cold and still for several moments, then managed to
wriggle away. I can give you no account of my feelings now, so many
years have passed; besides, I don't think I felt at all. Every day I
became more and more thoughtful, and Léontine and the manager rallied me
on my silence....
At last I made up my mind that it was time to act. We went to Lille and
gave there our usual display. I had not seen Léontine all day, and when
the evening came I sent a message telling her I was not hungry and would
not be home for supper. I could be a hypocrite no longer.
In the evening the regular performance began. I was in a gay humor, and
the men in the orchestra laughed at my wit, saying that I was more like
my old self. My wife's aërial act came last on the bill, being the
event of the show. What a brilliant house we had! I still can smell the
sawdust, the orange peel, see the myriad of faces and hear the crack of
the ring-masters' whips, the cries of the clowns and the crash of the
music....
"She comes, Léontine comes!" shrilled a thousand throats.
Into the ring she dashed on a milk-white horse, and, throwing off her
drapery, stood bowing.
What a graceful figure she had, and how lovely she looked as she
clambered aloft to her giddy perch! Breathlessly every one saw her make
preparations for the flight through the air. The band became silent; all
necks were strained as she swung lightly to and fro in space, increasing
the speed to gain necessary momentum for the final launch.
Off she darted, like a thunderbolt--bang! went my drum--a moment too
soon. The false unaccustomed rhythm shook her nerves and she tumbled
with her face toward me.
There were no nets....
Later I sought the manager. He was in his room, his head thrust beneath
pillows. I tapped him on the shoulder; he shuddered when he saw me.
"'Tis you who should wear black," I said....
ISOLDE'S MOTHER
Kennst du der Mutter Künste nicht?
--TRISTAN UND ISOLDE.
I
"I'd rather see her in her grave than as Isolde!" Mrs. Fridolin tightly
closed her large, soft eyes, adding intensity to a declaration made for
the enlightenment of her companion in a German railway carriage. The
young woman laughed disagreeably.
"I mean what I say, Miss Bredd; and when you know as much about the
profession as I do--when you are an older woman--you will see I am
right. Meg--I should say Margaret--shall never sing Isolde with _my_
permission. Apart from the dreadfully immoral situation, just think of
the costume in the garden scene, that chiton of cheese-cloth! And these
Wagnerites pretend to turn up their nose at 'Faust'! I once told dear,
old M. Gounod, when Meg was in Paris with Parchesi, his music was
positively decent compared--"
The train, which had been travelling at a dangerous pace for Germany,
slackened speed, and the clatter in the compartment ahead caused the
two women to crane their heads out of the window.
"Bayreuth!" cried the younger theatrically, "Bayreuth, the Mecca of the
true Wagnerite." Mrs. Fridolin gazed at her, at the neat American belted
serge suit, the straw sailor hat, the demure mouse colored hair, the
calm, insolent eyes--eyes that bored like a gimlet. "Oh, you love
Wagner?" The girl hesitated, then answered in the broadest burr of the
Middle West, "Well, you see, I haven't heard much of him, except when
the Thomas Orchestra came over to our place from Chicago. So I ain't
going to say whether I like him or not till I hear him. But I've written
lots about the 'Ring'--" "Without hearing it? How very American!"--"And
I'm a warm admirer of your daughter. Madame Fridolina always seemed to
me to be a great Wagner singer. Now _she_ can sing the Liebestod better
than any of the German women--"
"Thank you, my dear; one never goes to Bayreuth for the singing."
"I know that; but as it's my first trip over here I mean to make the
most of it. I am a journalist, you know, and I'll write lots home about
Wagner and Fridolina."
"Thanks again, my dear young lady. I'm sure you will tell the truth.
Margaret was refused the Brünnhilde at the last moment by Madame
Cosima--that's Mrs. Wagner, you know--and she had to content herself
with Fricka in 'Rheingold,' and Gutrune in 'Götterdämmerung,' two odious
parts. But what can she do? The Brünnhilde is Gulbranson. She is a great
favorite in Bayreuth, and has kept her figure, while poor Meg--wait till
you see her!"
The train rounded the curve and, leaving behind the strange looking
theatre, surely a hieratic symbol of Wagner's power, entered the station
full of gabbling, curious people--Bayreuth at last.
II
The atelier was on the ground floor at the end of a German garden full
of angular desolations. It was a large, bare, dusty apartment, the glare
of the August sun tempered by green shades nearly obscuring the big
window facing the north. A young woman sat high on a revolving platform.
She was very fat. As the sculptor fixed her with his slow glance he saw
that her head, a pretty head, was too small for her monstrous bulk; her
profile, pure Greek, the eyes ox-like, the cups full of feeling, with
heavy accents beneath them. Her face, almost slim, had planes eloquent
with surface meanings upon the cheeks and chin, while the mouth, sweet
for a large woman, revealed amiability quite in accord with the
expression of the eyes. These were the glory of her countenance, these
and her resonant black hair. Isolate this head from the shoulders, from
all the gross connotations of the frame, and the trick would be done. So
thought the sculptor, as the problem posed itself clearly; then he saw
her figure and doubted.
"I _am_ hopeless, am I not, Herr Arthmann?" Her voice was so frankly
appealing, so rich in comic intention, that he sat down and laughed. She
eagerly joined in: "And yet my waist is not so large as Mitwindt's. We
always call her Bagpipes. She is absurd. And such a chest--! Why, I'm a
mere child. Anyhow, all Germans like big singers, and all the German
Wagner singers are big women, are they not, Herr Arthmann? There was
Alboni and Parepa-Rosa--I know they were not Wagner singers; but they
were awful all the same--and just look at the Schnorrs, Materna, Rosa
Sucher, poor Klafsky and--"
"My dear young friend," interrupted the sculptor as he took up a pointer
and approached a miniature head in clay which stood upon a stand, "my
dear"--he did not say "friend" the second time--"I remarked nothing
about your figure being too large for the stage. I was trying to get it
into harmony with your magnificent shoulders and antique head. That's
all." His intonation was caressing, the speech of a cultivated man, and
his accent slightly Scandinavian; at times his voice seemed to her as
sweetly staccato as a mandolin. He gazed with all his vibrating artistic
soul into the girl's humid blue eyes; half frightened she looked down at
her pretty, dimpled hands--the hands of a baby despite their
gladiatorial size.
"How you do flatter! All foreigners flatter American girls, don't they?
Now you know you don't think my shoulders magnificent, do you? And my
waist--O! Herr Arthmann, what shall I do with my waist? As Brünnhilde,
I'm all right to move about in loose draperies, but as Fricka, as
Gutrune--Gutrune who falls fainting beside Siegfried's bier! How must I
look on my back? Oh, dear! and I diet, never drink water at meals, walk
half the day and seldom touch a potato. And you know what that means in
Germany! There are times when to see a potato, merely hearing the word
mentioned, brings tears to my eyes. And yet I get no thinner--just look
at me!"
He did. Her figure was gigantic. She weighed much over two hundred
pounds, though the mighty trussing to which she subjected herself, and a
discreet manner of dressing made her seem smaller. Arthmann was
critical, and did not disguise the impossibility of the task. He had
determined on a head and bust, something heroic after the manner of a
sturdy Brünnhilde. The preparations were made, the skeleton, framework
of lead pipe for the clay, with crossbar for shoulders and wooden
"butterflies" in position. On the floor were water-buckets, wet cloths
and a vast amount of wet clay--clay to catch the fleshly exterior, clay
to imprison the soul--perhaps, of Fridolina. But nothing had been done
except a tiny wax model, a likeness full of spirit, slightly encouraging
to the perplexed artist. The girl was beautiful; eyes, hair, teeth,
coloring--all enticed him as man. As sculptor the shapeless, hopeless
figure was a thing for sack-like garments, not for candid clay or the
illuminating commentary of marble. She drew a silk shawl closer about
her bare shoulders.
"And Isolde--what shall I do? Frau Cosima says that I may sing it two
summers from now; but then she promised me Brünnhilde two years ago
after I had successfully sung Elsa. I know every note of 'Tristan,' for
I've had over a thousand piano rehearsals, and Herr Siegfried and Caspar
Dennett both say that in time it will be my great rôle." "Who was it you
mentioned besides the Prince Imperial?"--they always call Siegfried
Wagner the Prince Imperial or the Heir Apparent in Bayreuth--"Mr.
Dennett. He is the celebrated young American conductor--the only
American that ever conducted in Bayreuth. You saw him the other night at
Sammett's garden. Don't you remember the smooth faced, very good-looking
young man?--you ought to model him. He was with Siegfried when he spoke
to me." "And you say that he admires your Isolde?" persisted Arthmann,
pulling at his short reddish beard. "Why, of course! Didn't he play the
piano accompaniments?" "Was his wife always with you?" "Now, Herr
Arthmann, you are a regular gossipy German. Certainly she wasn't. We in
America don't need chaperons like your Ibsen women--are you really
Norwegian or Polish? Is your name, Wenceslaus, Bohemian or Polish?
Besides, here I am alone in your studio in Bayreuth, the most
scandal-mongering town I ever heard of. My mother would object very much
to this sort of thing, and I'm sure we are very proper." "Oh, very,"
replied the sculptor; "when do you expect your mother? To-morrow, is it
not?"
The girl nodded. Tired of talking, she watched with cool nervousness the
movements of the young man; watched his graceful figure, admirable
poses; his long, brown fingers smoothing and puttering in the clay; his
sharply etched profile, so melancholy, insincere. "And this Dennett?" he
resumed. She opened her little mouth. "Please don't yawn, Fridolina," he
begged. "I wasn't yawning, only trying to laugh. Dennett is on your
mind. He seems to worry you. Don't be jealous--Wenceslaus; he is an
awful flirt and once frightened me to death by chasing me around the
dressing-room at the opera till I was out of breath and black and blue
from pushing the chairs and tables in his way. And what do you suppose
he gave as an excuse? Why, he just said he was exercising me to reduce
my figure, and hadn't the remotest notion of kissing me. Oh, no, he
hadn't, had he?" She pealed with laughter, her companion regarding her
with tense lips. "No one but a Yankee girl would have thought of telling
such a story." "Why, is it improper?" She was all anxiety. "No, not
improper, but heartless, simply heartless. You have never loved,
Margaret Fridolina," he said, harshly. "Call me Meg, Wenceslaus, but not
when mamma is present," was her simple answer. He threw down his wooden
modelling spatula.
"Oh, this is too much," he angrily exclaimed: "you tell me of men who
chase you"--"a man Wenceslaus," she corrected him earnestly--"you tell
me all this and you know I love you; without your love I shall throw up
sculpture and go to sea as a sailor. Meg, Meg, have you no heart?" "Why,
you little boy, what have I said to offend you? Why are you so cynical
when I know you to be so sentimental?" Her voice was arch, an intimate
voice with liquid inflections. He began pacing the chilly floor of the
studio.
"Let us be frank. I've only known you two months, since the day we
accidentally met, leaving Paris for Bayreuth. You have written your
mother nothing of our engagement--well, provisional engagement, if you
will--and you insist on sticking to the operatic stage. I loathe it, and
I confess to you that I am sick with jealousy when I see you near that
lanky, ill-favored German tenor Burgmann." "What, poor, big me!" she
interjected, in teasing accents. "Yes, you, Fridolina. I can quite
sympathize with what you tell me of your mother's dislike for the rôle
of Isolde. You are not temperamentally suited to it; it is horrible to
think of you in that second act." "How horrible? My figure, you mean?"
"Yes, your figure, too, would be absurd." He was brutal now. "And you
haven't the passion to make anything of the music. You've never loved,
never will, passionately--" "But I'll sing Isolde all the same," she
cried. "Not with my permission." "Then without you and your permission."
She hastily arose and was about to step down from her pedestal when the
door opened.
"Mother! Why, mamma, you said you weren't coming until Sunday." Mrs.
Fridolin could not see very well in the heavy shadows after the blinding
sunlight without. "What are you doing here, Margaret, and of all things
alone up there on a throne! Is this a rehearsal for the opera?" "I'm not
alone, mother. This is Wenceslaus--Mr. Wenceslaus Arthmann, the
sculptor, mamma, and he is doing me in clay. Look at it; isn't it sweet?
Mr. Arthmann, this is my mother--and who is the young lady, mamma?"
"Oh, I forgot. I was so confused and put out not finding you at the
station I drove at once to Villa Wahnfried--" "Villa Wahnfried!" echoed
two voices in dismayed unison. "Yes, to Frau Cosima, and she directed me
here." "She directed you here?" "Yes, why shouldn't she? Is there
anything wrong in that?" asked the stately, high-nosed lady with the
gray pompadour, beginning to peer about suspiciously. "Oh, no, mamma,
but how did Frau Cosima know that I was here?" "I don't know, child,"
was the testy answer. "Come, get down and let me introduce you to my
charming travelling friend, Miss Bredd." "Miss Saïs Bredd," put in the
Western girl; "I was named Saïs after my father visited Egypt, but my
friends call me Louie."--"And Miss Bredd, this is Mister--" "Arthmann,
madame," said the sculptor. They all shook hands after the singer had
released her mother from a huge, cavernous hug. "But Meg, Meg, where is
your chaperon?" Fridolina looked at the young man: "Why, mamma, it was
the _Hausfrau_ who let you in, of course." Miss Bredd smiled cynically.
III
Up the Via Dolorosa toiled a Sunday mob from many nations. The long,
nebulous avenue, framed on either side by dull trees, was dusty with
the heels of the faithful ones; and the murmur of voices in divers
tongues recalled the cluttering sea on a misty beach. Never swerving,
without haste or rest, went the intrepid band of melomaniacs speaking of
the singers, the weather and prices until the summit was reached. There
the first division broke ranks and charged upon the caravansary which
still stood the attacks of thirsty multitudes after two decades. Lucky
ones grasped Schoppen of beer and Rhine wine hemmed in by an army of
expectant throats, for the time was at hand when would sound Donner's
motive from the balcony: music made by brass instruments warning the
elect that "Rheingold" was about to unfold its lovely fable of water,
wood and wind.
Mrs. Fridolin went to the theatre and longed with mother's eyes for the
curtains to part and discover Fricka. She took her seat unconcernedly;
she was not an admirer of Wagner, educated as she had been in the florid
garden of Italian song. The darkness at first oppressed her. When from
mystic space welled those elemental sounds, not mere music, but the
sighing, droning, rhythmic swish of the waters, this woman knew that
something strange and terrible was about to enter into her
consciousness. The river Rhine calmly, majestically stole over her
senses; she forgot Bellini, Donizetti, even Gounod and soon she was with
the Rhine Daughters, with Alberich.... Her heart seemed to stop. All
sense of identity vanished at a wave of Wagner's wand, as is absorbed
the _ego_ by the shining mirror of the hypnotist. This, then, was the
real Wagner--a Wagner who attacked simultaneously the senses, vanquished
the strongest brain; a Wagner who wept, wooed, sang and surged, ravished
the soul until it was brought lacerated and captive to the feet of the
victorious master magician. The eye was promise-crammed, the ears sealed
with bliss, and she felt the wet of the waters. She breathed hard as
Alberich scaled the slimy steeps; and the curves described by the three
swimming mermaids filled her with the joy of the dance, the free
ecstatic movements of free things in the waves. The filching of the
Rheingold, the hoarse shout of laughter from Alberich's love-foresworn
lips, and the terrified cries of the luckless watchers were as real as
life. Walhall did not confuse her, for now she caught clues to the
meaning of the mighty epic. Wotan and Fricka--ah, Meg did not look so
stout, and how lovely her voice sounded!--Loki, mischief-making,
diplomatic Loki; the giants, Fafner and Fasolt; Freia, and foolish,
maimed, malicious Mime--these were not mere papier-maché, but
fascinating deities. She saw the gnomes' underworld, saw the ring, the
snake and the tarnhelm; she heard the Nibelungs' anvil chorus--so
different from Verdi's--saw the giants quarrelling over their booty;
and the sonorous rainbow seemed to bridge the way to a fairer land. As
the Walhall march died in her ears she found herself outside on the
dusky, picturesque esplanade and forgot all about Meg, remembering her
only as Fricka. With the others she slowly trod the path that had been
pressed by the feet of art's martyrs. Mrs. Fridolin then gave tongue to
her whirring brain:
"Oh! the magic of it all," she gasped.
"I'm afraid I rather agree with Nordau, Mrs. Fridolin--the whole affair
reminds me of a tank-drama I once saw in Chicago." It was the cool voice
of Miss Bredd that sounded in the hot, humming lane punctuated by vague,
tall trees....
Mrs. Fridolin and her party went to Sammett's for dinner that evening.
This garden, once Angermann's and made famous by Wagner, is still a
magnet. The Americans listened calmly to furious disputes, in a
half-dozen tongues, over the performance to the crashing of dishes and
the huddling of glasses always full, always empty. Arthmann ordered the
entire menu, knowing well that it would reach them after much delay in
the inevitable guise of veal and potatoes. The women were in no hurry,
but the sculptor was. He drummed on the table, he made angry faces at
his neighbors--contented looking Germans who whistled themes from
"Rheingold"--and when Herr Sammett saluted his guests with a crazy
trombone and crazier perversion of the Donner motive, Arthmann jumped up
and excused himself. The two hours and a half in the theatre had made
him nervous, restless, and he went away saying that he would be back
presently. Mrs. Fridolin was annoyed. It did not seem proper for three
ladies to remain unaccompanied in a public garden, even if that garden
was in Bayreuth. Suppose some of her New York friends should happen
by!... "I wonder where he has gone? I don't admire your new friend,
Margaret. He seems very careless," she grumbled.
"Wenceslaus!"--Mrs. Fridolin looked narrowly at her daughter--"Mr.
Arthmann, then, will be back soon. Like all sculptors he hates to be
cooped up long." "I guess he's gone to get a drink at the bar,"
suggested the practical Miss Bredd. "How did you like my Fricka--oh,
here's Mr. Dennett--Caspar, Caspar come over here, here!" The big girl
stood up in elephantine eagerness, and a jaunty, handsome young man,
with a shaven face and an important chin, slowly made his way through
the press of people to the Fridolin table. It was Caspar Dennett, the
conductor. After a formal presentation to the tall, thin Mrs. Fridolin,
the young American musician settled himself for a talk and began by
asking how they liked his conducting. He had been praised by the Prince
Imperial himself--praise sufficient for any self-doubting soul! Thank
heaven, _he_ had no doubt of his vocation! It was Miss Bredd who
answered him:
"I enjoyed your conducting immensely, Mr. Dennett, simply because I
couldn't see you work those long arms of yours.... I wrote lots about
you when you visited the West with your band. I never cared for your
Wagner readings." He stared at her reproachfully and she stared in
return. Then he murmured, "I'm really very sorry I didn't please you,
Miss Bredd. I didn't know that you were a newspaper woman." "Journalist,
if you please!" "I beg your pardon, journalist. I'm so sorry that Mrs.
Dennett is visiting relations in England. She would have been delighted
to call on you;"--Miss Bredd's expression became disagreeable--"and now,
Mrs. Fridolin, what do you think of your daughter, your daughter Fricka
Fridolina, as we call her? Won't she be a superb Isolde some day?" "I
hope not, Mr. Dennett," austerely replied the mother. Margaret grasped
his hands gratefully, crying aloud, "You dear! Isn't he a dear, mamma?
Only think of your daughter as Isolde. Ah! there comes the deserter. You
thoughtless man!"
The sculptor bowed stiffly when presented, and the two men sat on either
side of Miss Fridolin, far away from each other.
"Mr. Arthmann," fluted the singer--she was all dignity now--"Mr. Dennett
thinks I'm quite ready for Isolde." "You said that to me this
afternoon," he answered in a rude manner. The conductor glanced at him
and then at Margaret. She was blushing. "What I meant," said Dennett,
quickly turning the stream his way, "What I meant was that Miss
Fridolina knows the score, and being temperamentally suited to the
rôle--" "Temperamentally," sneered Arthmann. "Yes, that's what I said,"
snapped the other man, who had become surprisingly pugnacious--Fridolina
was pressing his foot with heavy approval--"temperamentally." "You know
Caspar"--the brows of the mother and sculptor were thunderous--"you know
that Mr. Arthmann is a very clever sculptor, and is a great reader of
faces and character. Now he says, that I have no dramatic talent, no
temperament, and ought to--" "Get married," boomed in Arthmann with his
most Norwegian accent. The bomb exploded. "I'd rather see her"--"in her
grave, Mrs. Fridolin"--"Oh, you wicked, sarcastic Louie Bredd. No, not
in her grave, but even as Isolde. Yes, I admit that I am converted to
Wagnerism. Wagner's music is better for some singers than marriage.
Prima donnas have no business to be married. If their husbands are not
wholly worthless--and there are few exceptions--they are apt to be
ninnies and spongers on their wives' salaries." Then she related the
story of Wilski, who was a Miss Willies from Rochester. She married a
novelist, a young man with the brightest possible prospects imaginable.
What happened? He never wrote a story after his marriage in which he
didn't make his wife the heroine, so much so that all the magazine
editors and publishers refused his stuff, sending it back with the
polite comment, Too much Wilski!
"That's nothing," interrupted Louie. "She ought to have been happy with
such a worshipping husband. I know of a great singer, the greatest
singer alive--Frutto"--they all groaned--"the _greatest_, I say. Well,
she married a lazy French count. Not once, but a hundred times she has
returned home after a concert only to find her husband playing cards
with her maid. She raised a row, but what was the use? She told me that
she'd rather have him at home with the servant playing poker than at the
opera where he was once seen to bet on the cards turned up by Calvé in
the third act of 'Carmen.' I've written the thing for my paper and I
mean to turn it into a short story some day." Every one had tales to
relate of the meanness, rapacity, dissipation and extravagance of the
prima donna's husband from Adelina Patti to Mitwindt, the German singer
who regularly committed her husband to jail at the beginning of her
season, only releasing him when September came, for then her money was
earned and banked.
"But what has this to do with me?" peevishly asked Fridolina, who was
tired and sleepy. "If ever I marry it must be a man who will let me sing
Isolde. Most foreign husbands hide their wives away like a dog its
bone." She beamed on Wenceslaus. "Then you will never marry a foreign
husband," returned the sculptor, irritably.
IV
"You must know, Mr. Arthmann, that my girl is a spoilt child, as
innocent as a baby, and has everything to learn about the ways of the
world. Remember, too, that I first posed her voice, taught her all she
knew of her art before she went to Parchesi. What you ask--taking into
consideration that we, that _I_, hardly know you--is rather premature,
is it not?" They were walking in the cool morning down the green alleys
of the Hofgarten, where the sculptor had asked Mrs. Fridolin for her
daughter. He was mortified as he pushed his crisp beard from side to
side. He felt that he had been far from proposing marriage to this large
young woman's mother; something must have driven him to such a crazy
action. Was it Caspar Dennett and his classic profile that had angered
him into the confession? Nonsense! The conductor was a married man with
a family. Despite her easy, unaffected manner, Margaret Fridolin was no
fool; she ever observed the ultimate proprieties, and being dangerously
unromantic would be the last woman in the world to throw herself away.
But this foolish mania about Isolde. What of that? It was absurd to
consider such a thing.... Her mother would never tolerate the attempt--
"Don't you think my judgment in this matter is just, Mr. Arthmann?" Mrs.
Fridolin was blandly observing him. He asked her pardon for his
inattention; he had been dreaming of a possible happiness! She was very
amiable. "And you know, of course, that Margaret has prospects"--he did
not, and was all ears--"if she will only leave the operatic stage. Her
career will be a brilliant one despite her figure, Mr. Arthmann; but
there is a more brilliant social career awaiting her if she follows her
uncle's advice and marries. My brother is a rich man, and my daughter
may be his heiress. Never as a singer--Job is prejudiced against the
stage--and never if she marries a foreigner." "But I shall become a
citizen of the United States, madame." "Where were you born?" "Bergen;
my mother was from Warsaw," he moodily replied. "It might as well be
Asia Minor. We are a stubborn family, sir, from the hills of New
Hampshire. We never give in. Come, let us go back to the Hotel Sonne,
and do you forget this foolish dream. Margaret may never leave the
stage, but I'm certain that she will never marry _you_." She smiled at
him, the thousand little wrinkles in her face making a sort of
reticulated map from which stared two large, blue eyes--Margaret's eyes,
grown wiser and colder.... "Now after that news I'll marry her if I have
to run away with her!"--resolved the sculptor when he reached his bleak
claustral atelier, and studied the model of her head. And how to keep
that man Dennett from spoiling the broth, he wondered....
In the afternoon Arthmann wrote Margaret a letter. "Margaret, my darling
Margaret, what is the matter? Have I offended you by asking your mother
for you? Why did you not see me this morning? The atelier is wintry
without you--the cold clay, corpse-like, is waiting to revive in your
presence. Oh! how lovely is the garden, how sad my soul! I sit and think
of Verlaine's 'It rains in my heart as it rains in the town.' Why won't
you see me? You are mine--you swore it. My sweet girl, whose heart is as
fragrant as new-mown hay"--the artist pondered well this comparison
before he put it on paper; it evoked visions of hay bales. "Darling, you
must see me to-morrow. To the studio you must come. You know that we
have planned to go to America in October. Only think, sweetheart, what
joy then! The sky is aflame with love. We walk slowly under the few
soft, autumn, prairie stars; your hand is in mine, we are married! You
see I am a poet for your sake. I beg for a reply hot from your heart.
Wenceslaus." ...
He despatched this declaration containing several minor inaccuracies. It
was late when he received a reply. "All right, Wenceslaus. But have I
_now_ the temperament to sing Isolde?" It was unsigned. Arthmann cursed
in a tongue that sounded singularly like pure English.
V
That night, much against his desire, he dressed and went to a reception
at the Villa Wahnfried. As this worker in silent clay disliked musical
people, the buzz and fuss made him miserable. He did not meet Fridolina,
though he saw Miss Bredd arm-in-arm with Cosima, Queen Regent of
Bayreuth. The American girl was eloquently exposing her theories of how
Wagner should be sung and Arthmann, disgusted, moved away. He only
remembered Caspar Dennett when in the street. That gentleman was not
present either; and as the unhappy lover walked down the moonlit
Lisztstrasse he fancied he recognized the couple he sought. Could it be!
He rushed after the pair to be mocked by the slamming of a gate, he knew
not on what lonely street....
The next afternoon the duel began. Fridolina did not return for a
sitting as he had hoped; instead came an invitation for a drive to the
Hermitage. It was Mrs. Fridolin who sent it. Strange! Arthmann was
surprised at this renewal of friendly ties after his gentle dismissal in
the Hofgarten. But he dressed in his most effective clothes and, shining
with hope, reached the Hotel Sonne; two open carriages stood before its
arched doorway. Presently the others came downstairs and the day became
gray for the sculptor. Caspar Dennett, looking like a trim Antinous with
a fashionable tailor, smiled upon all, especially Miss Bredd. Mrs.
Fridolin alone did not seem at ease. She was very friendly with
Arthmann, but would not allow him in her carriage. "No," she protested,
"you two men must keep Margaret company. I'll ride with my bright little
Louie and listen to her anti-Wagner blasphemies." She spoke as if she
had fought under the Wagner banner from the beginning.
Margaret sat alone on the back seat. Although she grimaced at her
mother's suggestion, she was in high spirits, exploding over every
trivial incident of the journey. Arthmann, as he faced her, told himself
that he had never seen her so giggling and commonplace, so unlike an
artist, so bourgeois, so fat. He noticed, too, that her lovely eyes
expanded with the same expression, whether art or eating was mentioned.
He hardly uttered a word, for the others discussed "Tristan und Isolde"
until he hated Wagner's name. She was through with her work at Bayreuth
and Frau Cosima had promised her Isolde--positively. She meant to
undergo a severe _Kur_ at Marienbad and then return to the United
States. Mr. Grau had also promised her Isolde; while Jean de
Reszké--dear, wonderful Jean vowed that he would sing Tristan to no
other Isolde during his American tournée! So it was settled. All she
needed was her mother's consent--and that would not be a difficult
matter to compass. Had she not always wheedled the mater into her
schemes, even when Uncle Job opposed her? She would never marry,
never--anyhow not until she had sung Isolde--and then only a
Wagner-loving husband.
"And the temperament, the missing link--how about that?" asked Arthmann
sourly; he imagined that Dennett was exchanging secret signals with her.
She bubbled over with wrath. "Temperament! I have temperament enough
despite my size. If I haven't any I know where to find it. There is no
sacrifice I'd not make to get it. Art for art is my theory. First art
and then--the other things." She shrugged her massive shoulders in high
bad humor. Arthmann gloomily reflected that Dennett's phrases at the
Sammett Garden were being echoed. Mrs. Fridolin continually urged her
driver to keep his carriage abreast of the other. It made the party more
sociable, she declared, although to the sculptor it seemed as if she
wished to watch Margaret closely. She had never seemed so suspicious.
They reached the Hermitage.
Going home a fine rain set in; the hoods of the carriage were raised,
and the excursion ended flatly. At the hotel, Arthmann did not attempt
to go in. Mrs. Fridolin said she had a headache, Miss Bredd must write
articles about Villa Wahnfried, while Dennett disappeared with Margaret.
The drizzle turned into a downpour, and the artist, savage with the
world and himself, sought a neighboring café and drank till dawn....
He called at the hotel the following afternoon. The ladies had gone
away. How gone away? The portier could not tell. Enraged as he saw his
rich dream vanishing, Arthmann moved about the streets with lagging,
desperate steps. He returned to the hotel several times during the
afternoon--at no time was he very far from it--but the window-blinds
were always drawn in the Fridolin apartment and he began to despair. It
was near sunset when his _Hausfrau_, the disappearing chaperon, ran to
him red-faced. A letter for Herr Arthmann! It was from her: "I've gone
in search of that temperament. _Auf Wiedersehen._ Isolde." Nothing more.
In puzzled fury he went back to the hotel. Yes, Madame Fridolin and the
young lady were now at home. He went to the second landing and without
knocking pushed open the door. It was a house storm-riven. Trunks
bulged, though only half-packed, their contents straggling over the
sides. The beds were not made, and a strong odor of valerian and camphor
flooded the air. On a couch lay Mrs. Fridolin, her face covered with a
handkerchief, while near hovered Miss Bredd in her most brilliant and
oracular attitude. She was speaking too loudly as he entered: "There is
no use of worrying yourself sick about Meg, Mrs. Fridolin. She's gone
for a time--that's all. When she finds out what an idiotically useless
sacrifice she has made for art and is a failure as Isolde--she can no
more sing the part than a sick cat--she will run home to her mammy quick
enough."
"Oh, this terrible artistic temperament!" groaned the mother
apologetically. The girl made a cautious movement and waved Arthmann out
of the room. Into the hall she followed, soft-footed, but resolute. He
was gaunt with chagrin. "Where is she?"--he began, but was sternly
checked:
"If you had only flattered her more, and married her before her mother
arrived, this thing wouldn't have happened."
"What thing?" he thundered.
"There! don't be an ox and make a stupid noise," she admonished. "Why,
Meg--she is so dead set on getting that artistic temperament, that
artistic thrill you raved about, that she has eloped."
"Eloped!" he feebly repeated, and sat down on a trunk in the hallway. To
her keen, unbiassed vision Arthmann seemed more shocked than sorrowful.
Then, returning to Isolde's mother, she was not surprised to find her up
and in capital humor, studying the railway guide.
"He believes the fib--just as Dennett did!" Miss Bredd exclaimed,
triumphantly; and for the first time that day Mrs. Fridolin smiled.
THE RIM OF FINER ISSUES
I
There seemed to be a fitting dispensation in the marriage of Arthur
Vibert and Ellenora Bishop. She was a plain looking girl of
twenty-four--even her enemies admitted her plainness--but she had
brains; and the absence of money was more than compensated by her love
for literature. It had been settled by her friends that she would do
wonderful things when she had her way. Therefore her union with Arthur
Vibert was voted "singularly auspicious." He had just returned from
Germany after winning much notice by his talent for composition. What
could be more natural than the marriage of these two gifted persons?
Miss Bishop had published some things--rhapsodic prose-poems, weak in
syntax but strong in the quality miscalled imagination. Her pen name was
George Bishop: following the example of the three Georges so dear to the
believer in sexless literature--George Sand, George Eliot and George
Egerton. She greatly admired the latter.
Ellenora was a large young woman of more brawn than tissue; she had
style and decision, though little amiability. Ugly she was; yet, after
the bloom of her ugliness wore off, you admired perforce the full
iron-colored eyes alive with power, and wondered why nature in dowering
her with a big brain had not made for her a more refined mouth. The
upper part of her face was often illuminated; the lower narrowly escaped
coarseness; and a head of rusty red hair gave a total impression of
strenuous brilliancy, of keen abiding vitality. A self-willed New York
girl who had never undergone the chastening influence of discipline or
rigorously ordered study--she averred that it would attenuate the
individuality of her style; avowedly despising the classics, she was a
modern of moderns in her tastes.
She had nerves rather than heart, but did not approve of revealing her
vagaries in diary form. Adoring Guy de Maupassant, she heartily disliked
Marie Bashkirtseff. The Frenchman's almost Greek-like fashion of
regarding life in profile, his etching of its silver-tipped angles, made
an irresistible appeal to her; and she vainly endeavored to catch his
crisp, restrained style, his masterly sense of form. In the secrecy of
her study she read Ouida and asked herself why this woman had not gone
farther, and won first honors in the race. Her favorite heroines were
Ibsen's Nora, Rebecca and Hedda. Then, bitten by the emancipation craze,
she was fast developing into one of the "shrieking sisterhood" when
Arthur Vibert came from Berlin.
A Frenchman has said that the moment a woman occupies her thoughts with
a man, art ceases for her. The night Ellenora Bishop met the young
pianist in my atelier, I saw that she was interested. Arthur came to me
with letters from several German critics. I liked the slender, blue-eyed
young fellow who was not a day over twenty-one. His was a true American
type tempered by Continental culture. Oval-faced, fair-haired, of a
rather dreamy disposition and with a certain austerity of manner, he was
the fastidious puritan--a puritan expanded by artistic influences.
Strangely enough he had temperament, and set to music Heine and
Verlaine. A genuine talent, I felt assured, and congratulated myself on
my new discovery; I was fond of finding lions, and my Sunday evenings
were seldom without some specimen that roared, if somewhat gently, yet
audibly enough, for my visitors. When Arthur Vibert was introduced to
Ellenora Bishop, I recognized the immediate impact of the girl's brusque
personality upon his sensitized nature.
She was a devoted admirer of Wagner, and that was bond enough to set
reverberating other chords of sympathy in the pair. I do not assert in
cold blood that the girl deliberately set herself to charm the
boyish-looking composer, but there was certainly a basking allurement
in her gaze when her eyes brushed his. With her complicated personality
he could not cope--that was only too evident; and so I watched the
little comedy with considerable interest, and not without misgiving.
Arthur fell in love without hesitation, and though Ellenora felt
desperately superior to him--you saw that--she could not escape the
bright, immediate response of his face. The implicated interest of her
bearing--though she never lost her head--his unconcealed adoration, soon
brought the affair to the altar--or rather to a civil ceremony, for the
bride was an agnostic, priding herself on her abstention from
established religious forms.
Her clear, rather dry nature had always been a source of study to me.
What could she have in common with the romantic and decidedly shy youth?
She was older, more experienced--plain girls have experiences as well as
favored ones--and she was not fond of matrimony with poverty as an
obbligato. Arthur had prospects of pupils, his compositions sold at a
respectable rate, but the couple had little money to spare;
nevertheless, people argued their marriage a capital idea--from such a
union of rich talents surely something must result. Look at the
Brownings, the Shelleys, the Schumanns, not to mention George Eliot and
her man Lewes!
They were married. I was best man, and realized what a menstruum is
music--what curious trafficking it causes, what opposites it
intertwines. And the overture being finished the real curtain arose, as
it does on all who mate....
I did not see much of the Viberts that winter. I cared not at all for
society and they had moved to Harlem; so I lost two stars of my studio
receptions. But I occasionally heard they were getting on famously.
Arthur was composing a piano concerto, and Ellenora engaged upon a
novel--a novel, I was told, that would lay bare to its rotten roots the
social fabric; and knowing the girl's inherent fund of bitter cleverness
I awaited the new-born polemic with gentle impatience. I hoped, however,
like the foolish inexperienced old bachelor I am, that her feminine
asperity would be tempered by the suavities of married life.
One afternoon late in March Arthur Vibert dropped in as I was putting
the finishing touches on my portrait of Mrs. Beacon. He looked weary and
his eyes were heavily circled.
"Hello, my boy! and how is your wife, and how is that wonderful concerto
we've all been hearing about?"
He shrugged his shoulders and asked for a cigarette.
"Shall I play you some bits of it?" he queried in a gloomy way. I was
all eagerness, and presently he was absently preluding at my piano.
There was little vigor in his touch, and I recalled his rambling wits by
crying, "The concerto, let's have it!"
Arthur pulled himself together and began. He was very modern in musical
matters and I liked the dynamic power of his opening. The first subject
was more massive than musical and was built on the architectonics of
Liszt and Tschaïkowsky. There was blood in the idea, plenty of nervous
fibre, and I dropped my brushes and palette as the unfolding of the work
began with a logical severity and a sense of form unusual in so young a
mind.
This first movement interested me; I almost conjured up the rich
instrumentation and when it ended I was warm in my congratulations.
Arthur moodily wiped his brow and looked indifferent.
"And now for the second movement. My boy, you always had a marked gift
for the lyrical. Give us your romanza--the romanza, I should say, born
of your good lady!"
He answered me shortly: "There is no romance, I've substituted for it a
scherzo. You know that's what Saint-Saëns and all the fellows are doing
nowadays, Scharwenka too."
I fancied that there was a shade of eager anxiety in his explanation,
but I said nothing and listened.
The scherzo--or what is called the scherzo since Beethoven and
Schumann--was too heavy, inelastic in its tread, to dispel the
blue-devils. It was conspicuous for its absence of upspringing delicacy,
light, arch merriment. It was the sad, bitter joking of a man upon whose
soul life has graven pain and remorse, and before the trio was reached I
found myself watching the young composer's face. I knew that, like all
modern music students, he had absorbed in Germany some of that
scholastic pessimism we encounter in the Brahms music, but I had hoped
that a mere fashion of the day would not poison the springs of this
fresh personality.
Yet here I was confronted with a painful confession that life had
brought the lad more than its quantum of spiritual and physical
hardship; he was telling me all this in his music, for his was too
subjective a talent to ape the artificial, grand, objective manner.
Without waiting for comment he plunged into his last movement which
proved to be a series of ingenious variations--a prolonged
passacaglia--in which the grace and dexterity of his melodic invention,
contrapuntal skill and symmetrical sense were gratifyingly present.
I was in no flattering vein when I told him he had made a big jump in
his work.
"But, Arthur, why so much in the Brahms manner? Has your wife turned
your love of Shelley to Browning worship?" I jestingly concluded.
"My wife, if she wishes, can turn Shelley into slush," he answered
bitterly. This shocked me. I felt like putting questions, but how could
I? Had I not been one of the many who advised the fellow to marry
Ellenora Bishop? Had we not all fancied that in her strength was his
security, his hope for future artistic triumphs?
He went on as his fingers snatched at fugitive harmonic experimentings:
"It's not all right up town. I wish that you would run up some night.
You've not seen Ellenora for months, and perhaps you could induce her to
put the brake on." I was puzzled. Putting the brake on a woman is always
a risky experiment, especially if she happens to be wedded. Besides,
what did he mean?
"I mean," he replied to my tentative look of inquiry, "that Ellenora is
going down-hill with her artistic theories of literature, and I mean
that she has made our house a devilish unpleasant place to live in."
I hastily promised to call in a few days, and after seeing him to the
door, and bidding him cheer up, I returned to the portrait of Mrs.
Beacon, and felt savage at the noisiness of color and monotony of tonal
values in the picture.
"Good Lord, why will artists marry?" I irritably asked of my subject in
the frame. Her sleek Knickerbocker smile further angered me, and I went
to my club and drank coffee until long after midnight.
II
If, as her friends asserted, Ellenora Vibert's ugliness had softened I
did not notice it. She was one of those few women in the world that
marriage had not improved. Her eyes were colder, more secret; her jaw
crueller, her lips wider and harder at the edges. She welcomed me with
distinguished loftiness, and I soon felt the unpleasant key in which the
household tune was being played. It was amiable enough, this flat near
Mount Morris Park in Harlem. The Viberts had taste, and their music-room
was charming in its reticent scheme of decoration--a Steinway grand
piano, a low crowded book-case with a Rodin cast, a superb mezzotint of
Leonardo's Mona Lisa after Calmatta, revealing the admirable poise of
sweetly folded hands--surely the most wonderful hands ever
painted--while the polished floor, comforting couches and open fireplace
proclaimed this apartment as the composition of refined people.
I am alive to the harmonies of domestic interiors, and I sensed the
dissonance in the lives of these two.
Soon we three warmed the cold air of restraint and fell to discussing
life, art, literature, friends, and even ourselves. I could not withhold
my admiration for Ellenora's cleverness. She was transposed to a coarser
key, and there was a suggestion of the overblown in her figure; but her
tongue was sharp, and she wore the air of a woman who was mistress of
her mansion. Presently Arthur relapsed into silence, lounged and smoked
in the corner, while Mrs. Vibert expounded her ideas of literary form,
and finally confessed that she had given up the notion of a novel.
"You see, the novel is overdone to-day. The short story ended with de
Maupassant. The only hope we have, we few who take our art seriously, is
to compress the short story within a page and distil into it the vivid
impression of a moment, a lifetime, an eternity." She looked
intellectually triumphant. I interposed a mild objection.
"This form, my dear lady, is it a fitting vehicle for so much weight of
expression? I admire, as do you, the sonnet, but I can never be brought
to believe that Milton could have compressed 'Paradise Lost' within a
sonnet."
"Then all the worse for Milton," she tartly replied. "Look at the Chopin
prelude. Will you contradict me if I say that in one prelude this
composer crowds the experience of a lifetime? When he expands his idea
into the sonata form how diffuse, how garrulous he becomes!"
I ventured to remark that Chopin had no special talent for the sonata
form.
"The sonata form is dead," the lady asserted. "Am I not right, Arthur?"
"Yes, my dear," came from Arthur. I fully understood his depression.
"No," she continued, magnificently, "it is this blind adherence to older
forms that crushes all originality to-day. There is Arthur with his
sonata form--as if Wagner did not create his own form!"
"But I am no Wagner," interrupted her husband.
"Indeed, you are not," said Mrs. Vibert rather viciously. "If you were
we wouldn't be in Harlem. You men to-day lack the initiative. The way
must be shown you by woman; yes, by poor, crushed woman--woman who has
no originality according to your Schopenhauer; woman whose sensations,
not being of coarse enough fibre to be measured by the rude
emotion-weighing machine of Lombroso, are therefore adjudged of less
delicacy than man's. What fools your scientific men be!"
Mrs. Vibert was a bit pedantic, but she could talk to the point when
aroused.
"You discredit the idea of compressing an epic into a sonnet, a sonata
into a prelude; well, I've attempted something of the sort, and even if
you laugh I'll stick to my argument. I've attempted to tell the
biological history of the cosmos in a single page.... I begin with the
unicellular protozoa and finally reach humanity; and to give it dramatic
interest I trace a germ-cell from eternity until the now, and you shall
hear its history this moment." She stopped for breath, and I wondered if
Mrs. Somerville or George Eliot had ever talked in this astounding
fashion. I was certain that she must have read Iamblichus and Porphyry.
Arthur on his couch groaned.
"Mock if you please," Ellenora's strong face flushed, "but women will
yet touch the rim of finer issues. Paul Goddard, who is a critic I
respect, told me I had struck the right note of modernity in my prose
poem." I winced at the "note of modernity," and could not help seeing
the color mount to Arthur's brow when the man's name was mentioned.
"And pray who is Mr. Paul Goddard?" I asked while Mrs. Vibert was absent
in search of her manuscript. Arthur replied indifferently, "Oh, a rich
young man who went to Bayreuth last summer and poses as a Wagnerite ever
since! He also plays the piano!"
Arthur's tone was sarcastic; he did not like Paul Goddard and his
critical attentions to his wife. The poor lad looked so disheartened, so
crushed by the rigid intellectual atmosphere about him, that I put no
further question and was glad when Mrs. Vibert returned with her prose
poem.
She read it to us and it was called
FRUSTRATE
O the misty plaint of the Unconceived! O crystal
incuriousness of the monad! The faint swarming toward the
light and the rending of the sphere of hope, frustrate,
inutile. I am the seed called Life; I am he, I am she. We
walk, swim, totter, and blend. Through the ages I lay in the
vast basin of Time; I am called by Fate into the Now. On
pulsing terraces, under a moon blood-red, I dreamed of the
mighty confluence. About me were my kinsfolk. Full of dumb
pain we pleasured our centuries with anticipation; we
watched as we gamed away the hours. From Asiatic plateaus we
swept to Nilotic slime. We roamed in primeval forests, vast
and arboreally sublime, or sported with the behemoth and
listened to the serpent's sinuous irony; we chattered with
the sacred apes and mouthed at the moon; and in the Long Ago
wore the carapace and danced forthright figures on
coprolitic sands--sands stretching into the bosom of the
earth, sands woven of windy reaches hemming the sun.... We
lay with the grains of corn in Egyptian granaries, and saw
them fructify under the smile of the sphinx; we buzzed in
the ambient atmosphere, gaudy dragon-flies or whirling motes
in full cry chased by humming-birds. Then from some cold
crag we launched with wings of fire-breathing pestilence and
fell fathoms under sea to war with lizard-fish and narwhal.
For us the supreme surrender, the joy of the expected....
With cynical glance we saw the Buddha give way to other
gods. We watched protoplasmically the birth of planets and
the confusion of creation. We saw hornéd monsters become
gentle ruminants, and heard the scream of the pterodactyl on
the tree-tops dwindle to child's laughter. We heard, we saw,
we felt, we knew. Yet hoped we on; every monad has his
day.... One by one the billions disintegrated and floated
into formal life. And we watched and waited. Our evolution
had been the latest delayed; until heartsick with longing
many of my brethren wished for annihilation....
At last I was alone, save one. The time of my fruition was
not afar. O! for the moment when I should realize my
dreams.... I saw this last one swept away, swept down the
vistas toward life, the thunderous surge singing in her
ears. O! that my time would come. At last, after vague
alarms, I was summoned....
The hour had struck; eternity was left behind, eternity
loomed ahead, implacable, furrowed with Time's scars. I
hastened to the only one in the Cosmos. I tarried not as I
ran in the race. Moments were precious; a second meant æons;
and crashing into the light--Alas! I was too late.... Of
what avail my travail, my countless, cruel preparations? O
Chance! O Fate! I am one of the silent multitude of the
Frustrate....
When she had finished reading this strange study in evolution she
awaited criticism, but with the air of an armed warrior.
"Really, Mrs. Vibert, I am overwhelmed," I managed to stammer. "Only
the most delicate symbolism may dare to express such a theme." I felt
that this was very vague--but what could I say?
She regarded me sternly. Arthur, catching what I had uttered at random,
burst in:
"There, Ellenora, I am sure he is right! You leave nothing to the
imagination. Now a subtile veiled idealism--" He was not allowed to
finish.
"Veiled idealism indeed!" she angrily cried. "You composers dare to say
all manner of wickedness in your music, but it is idealized by tone,
isn't it? What else is music but a sort of sensuous algebra? Or a vast
shadow-picture of the emotions?... Why can't language have the same
privilege? Why must it be bridled because the world speaks it?"
"Just because of that reason, dear madame," I soothingly said; "because
reticence is art's brightest crown; because Zola never gives us a real
human document and Flaubert does; and the difference is a difference of
method. Flaubert is magnificently naked, but his nakedness implicates
nothing that is--"
"As usual you men enter the zone of silence when a woman's work is
mentioned. I did not attempt a monument in the frozen manner of your
Flaubert. Mr. Goddard believes--" There was a crash of music from the
piano as Arthur endeavored to change the conversation. His wife's fine
indifference was tantalizing, also instructive.
"Mr. Goddard believes with Nietzsche that individualism is the only
salvation of the race. My husband, Mr. Vibert, believes in altruism,
self-sacrifice and all the old-fashioned flummery of outworn creeds."
"I wonder if Mr. Vibert has heard of Nietzsche's 'Thou goest to women?
Remember thy whip'?" I meekly questioned. Ellenora looked at her husband
and shrugged her shoulders; then picking up her manuscript she left the
room with the tread of a soldier, laughing all the while.
"An exasperating girl!" I mused, as Vibert, after some graceful
swallow-like flights on the keyboard, finally played that most
dolorously delicious of Chopin's nocturnes, the one in C sharp minor.
That night in my studio I did not rejoice over my bachelorhood, for I
felt genuinely sad at the absence of agreeable modulations in the
married life of my two friends.
I thought about the thing for the next month, with the conclusion that
people had to work out their own salvation, and resolved not to visit
the Viberts again. It was too painful an experience; and yet I could see
that Vibert cared for his wife in a weak sort of a way. But she was too
overpowering for him and her robust, intellectual nature needed
Nietzsche's whip--a stronger, more passionate will than her own. It was
simply a case of mismating, and no good would result from the union.
Later I felt as if I had been selfish and priggish, and resolved to
visit the home in Harlem and try to arrange matters. I am not sure
whether it was curiosity rather than a laudable benevolence that
prompted this resolve. However, one hot afternoon in May, Arthur Vibert
entered my room and throwing himself in an easy-chair gave me the news.
"She's left me, old man, she's gone off with Paul Goddard." ...
I came dangerously near swearing.
"Oh, it's no use of your trying to say consoling things. She's gone for
good. I was never strong enough to hold her, and so it's come to this
disgraceful smash."
I looked eagerly at Arthur to discover over-mastering sorrow; there was
little. Indeed he looked relieved; his life for nearly a year must have
been a trial and yet I mentally confessed to some disappointment at his
want of deep feeling. I saw that he was chagrined, angry, but not really
heart-hurt. Lucky chap! he was only twenty-two and had all his life
before him. I asked for explanations.
"Oh, Ellenora always said that I never understood her; that I never
could help her to reach the rim of finer issues. I suppose this fellow
Goddard will. At least she thinks so, else she wouldn't have left me.
She said no family could stand two prima-donnas at the same time: as if
I ever posed, or pretended to be as brilliant as she! No, she stifled
me, and I feel now as if I might compose that romanza for my concerto."
I consoled the young pianist; told him that this blow was intended as a
lesson in self-control; that he must not be downcast, but turn to his
music as a consolation; and a whole string of such platitudes. When he
left me I asked myself if Ellenora was not right, after all. Could she
have reached that visionary rim of finer issues--of which she always
prated--with this man, talented though he was, yet a slender reed shaken
by the wind of her will? Besides, his chin was too small.
He could not master her nature. Would she be happy with Paul Goddard,
that bright-winged butterfly of æstheticism? I doubted it. Perhaps the
feminine, receptive composer was intended to be her saving complement in
life. Perhaps she unconsciously cared for Arthur Vibert; and arguing the
question as dispassionately as I could my eyes fell upon "Thus Spake
Zarathustra," and opening the fat unwieldy volume I read:
"Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the
dreams of an ardent woman?"
"Pooh!" I sneered. "Nietzsche was a rank woman-hater;" then I began my
work on Mrs. Beacon's portrait, the fashionable Mrs. Beacon, and tried
to forget all about the finer issues and the satisfied sterility of its
ideals.
AN IBSEN GIRL
I
As Ellenora Vibert quietly descended the stairs of the apartment house
in Harlem where she had lived with her husband until this hot morning in
May, she wondered at her courage. She was taking a tremendous step, and
one that she hoped would not be a backward one. She was leaving Arthur
Vibert after a brief year of marriage for another man. Yet her pulse
fluttered not, and before she reached the open doorway a mocking humor
possessed her.
Her active brain pictured herself in the person of Ibsen's Nora Helmer.
But Nora left children behind, and deserted them in hot blood; no woman
could be cold after such a night in the Doll's House--the champagne, the
tarantella, the letter and the scene with Torvald! No, she was not quite
Nora Helmer; and Paul, her young husband, was hardly a Scandinavian
bureaucrat. When Ellenora faced the cutting sunshine and saw Mount
Morris Park, green and sweet, she stopped and pressed a hand to her hip.
It was a characteristic pose, and the first inspiration of the soft air
gave her peace and hardihood.
"I've been penned behind the bars too long," she thought. Arthur's
selfish, artistic absorption in his musical work and needless
indifference to the development of her own gifts must count no longer.
She was free, and she meant to remain so as long as she lived.
Then she went to the elevated railroad and entered a down-town train,
left it at Cortlandt Street, reached the Pennsylvania depot before
midday, and in the waiting-room met Paul Goddard. A few minutes later
they were on the Philadelphia train. The second chapter of Ellenora
Vibert's life began--and most happily.
II
Paul Goddard, after he had returned from Bayreuth, gave his musical
friends much pain by his indifference to old tastes. His mother, Mrs.
Goddard of Madison Square, was not needlessly alarmed. She told her
friends that Paul always had been a butterfly, sipping at many pretty
arts. She included among these fine arts, girls. Paul's devotion to golf
and a certain rich young woman gave her fine maternal satisfaction. "He
stays away from that odious Bohemian crowd, and as long as he does that
I am satisfied. Paul is too much of a gentleman to make a good
musician."
During the winter she saw little of her son. His bachelor dinners were
pronounced models, but the musical mob he let alone. "Paul must be going
in for something stunning," they said at his club, and when he took off
his moustache there was a protest.
The young man was not pervious to ridicule. He had found something new
and as he was fond of experimenting and put his soul into all he did,
was generally rewarded for his earnestness. He met Mrs. Arthur Vibert at
the reception of a portrait-painter, and her type being new to him,
resolved to study it.
Presently he went to the art galleries with the lady, and to all the
piano recitals he could bid her. He called several times and admired her
husband greatly; but she snubbed this admiration and he consoled himself
by admiring instead the intellect of the wife.
"I suppose," she confided to him one February afternoon at Sherry's, "I
suppose you think I am not a proper wife because I don't sit home at his
feet and worship my young genius?"
Paul looked at her strong, ugly face and deep iron-colored eyes, and
smiled ironically.
"You don't go in for that sort of thing, I suppose. If you did love him
would you acknowledge it to any one, even to yourself--or to me?"
Ellenora flushed slightly and put down her glass.
"My dear man, when you know me better you won't ask such a question. I
always say what I mean."
"And I don't." They fell to fugitive thinking.
"What poet wrote 'the bright disorder of the stars is solved by music'?"
"I never read modern verse."
"Yes, but this is not as modern as that cornet-virtuoso Kipling, or as
ancient as Tennyson, if you must know."
"What has it to do with you? You are all that I am interested in--at the
present." Paul smiled.
"Don't flatter me, Mr. Goddard. I hate it. It's a cheap trick of the
enemy. Flatter a woman, tell her that she is unlike her sex, repeat to
her your wonderment at her masculine intellect, and see how meekly she
lowers her standard and becomes your bondslave."
"Hello! you have been through the mill," said Paul, brightly. "If I
thought that it would do any good, be of any use, I would mentally plump
on my knees and say to you that Ellenora Vibert is unlike any woman I
ever met." Ellenora half rose from the table, looking sarcastically at
him.
"My dear Mr. Goddard, don't make fun. You have hurt me more than I dare
tell you. I fancied that you were a friend, the true sort." She was all
steel and glitter now. Paul openly admired her.
"Mrs. Vibert, I beg your pardon. Please forget what I said. I do enjoy
your companionship, and you know I am not a lady-killer. Tell me that
you forgive me, and we will talk about that lovely line you quoted
from--?"
"Coventry Patmore, a dead poet. He it was that spoke of Wagner as a
musical impostor, and of the grinning woman in every canvas of Leonardo
da Vinci. I enjoy his 'Angel in the House' so much, because it shows me
the sort of a woman I am not and the sort of a woman we modern women are
trying to outlive.... Yes, 'the bright disorder of the stars is solved
by music,' he sings; and I remember reading somewhere in Henry James
that music is a solvent. But it's false--false in my case. Mr. Vibert
is, as you know, a talented young man. Well, his music bores me. He is
said to have genius, yet his music never sounds as if it had any fire in
it; it is as cold as salt. Why should I be solved by his music?"
Ellenora upset her glass and laughed. Paul joined in at a respectful
pace. The woman was beyond him. He gave her a long glance and she
returned it, but not ardently; only curiosity was in her insistent gaze.
"Ah! Youth is an alley ambuscaded by stars," he proclaimed. The phrase
had cost him midnight labor.
"Don't try to be epigrammatic," she retorted, "it doesn't suit your
mental complexion. I'll be glad, then, when my youth has passed. It's a
time of turmoil during which one can't really think clearly. Give me
cool old age."
"And the future?"
"I leave that to the licensed victuallers of eternity." Paul experienced
a thrill. The woman's audacity was boundless. Did she believe in
anything?...
"I wonder why your husband does not give you the love he puts into his
music."
"He has not suffered enough yet. You know what George Moore says about
the 'sadness of life being the joy of art!' ... Besides, Arthur is only
half a man if he can't give it to both. Where is your masculine
objectivity, then?" she retorted.
"Lord, what a woman! 'Masculine objectivity,' and I suppose 'feminine
subjectivity' too. I never met such a blue-stocking. Do you remember how
John Ruskin abused those odious terms 'objective' and 'subjective'?"
Paul asked.
"I can't read Ruskin. He is all landscape decoration; besides, he
believes in the biblical attitude of woman. Put a woman on the
mantelpiece and call her luscious, poetic names and then see how soon
she'll hop down when another man simply cries 'I love you.' If a man
wishes to spoil a woman successfully let him idealize her."
"Poor Ruskin! There are some men in this world too fine for women." Paul
sighed, and slily watched Ellenora as she cracked almonds with her
strong white fingers.
"Fine fiddlesticks!" she ejaculated. "Don't get sentimental, Mr.
Goddard, or else I'll think you have a heart. You are trying to flirt
with me. I know you are. Take me away from this place and let us walk,
walk! Heavens! I'd like to walk to the Battery and smell the sea!"
Paul discreetly stopped, and the pair started up Fifth Avenue. The day
was a brave one; the sky was stuffed with plumy clouds and the rich
colors of a reverberating sunset. The two healthy beings sniffed the
crisp air, talked of themselves as only selfish young people can, and at
Fifty-ninth street, Ellenora becoming tired, waited for a cross-town
car--she expected some people at her house in the evening, and must be
home early. Paul was bidden, but declined; then without savor of
affection they said good-by.
The man went slowly down the avenue thinking: "Of all the women I've
met, this is the most perverse, heartless, daring." He recalled his
Bayreuth experiences, and analyzed Ellenora. Her supple, robust figure
attracted his senses; her face was interesting; she had brains, uncommon
brains. What would she become? Not a poet, not a novelist. Perhaps a
literary critic, like Sainte-Beuve with shining Monday morning reviews.
Perhaps--yes, perhaps a critic, a writer of bizarre prose-poems; she
has personal style, she is herself, and no one else.
"That's it," said Paul, half aloud; "she has style, and I admire style
above everything." He resolved on meeting Ellenora as often as he
could....
The following month he saw much of Arthur Vibert's wife, and found
himself a fool in her strong grasp. The girl had such baffling contrasts
of character, such slippery moods, such abundant fantasy that the young
man--volatility itself--lost his footing, his fine sense of honor and
made love to this sphinx of the ink-pot, was mocked and flouted but
never entirely driven from her presence. More than any other woman,
Ellenora enjoyed the conquest of man. She mastered Paul as she had
mastered Arthur, easily; but there was more of the man of the world,
more of the animal in the amateur, and the silkiness of her husband, at
first an amusement, finally angered her.
Vibert knew that his wife saw Paul much too often for his own
edification, but only protested once, and so feebly that she laughed at
him.
"Arthur," she said, taking him by his slender shoulders, "why don't you
come home some night in a jealous rage and beat me? Perhaps then I might
love you. As it is, Mr. Goddard only amuses me; besides, I read him my
new stories, otherwise I don't care an iota for him."
He lifted his eyebrows, went to the piano and played the last movement
of his new concerto, played it with all the fire he could master, his
face white, muscles angry, a timid man transformed.
"Why don't you beat me instead of the piano, dear?" she cried out
mockingly; "some women, they say, can be subdued in that fashion." He
rushed from the room....
April was closing when Vibert, summoned to Washington, gave a piano
recital there, and Ellenora went down-town to dinner with Goddard. She
was looking well, her spring hat and new gown were very becoming. As
they sat at Martin's eating strawberries, Paul approved of her
exceedingly. He had been drinking, and the burgundy and champagne at
dinner made him reckless.
"See here, Ellenora Vibert, where is all this going to end? I'm not a
bad fellow, but I swear I'm only human, and if you are leading me on to
make a worse ass of myself than usual, why, then, I quit."
She regarded him coolly. "It will end when I choose and where I choose.
It is my own affair, Paul, and if you feel cowardly qualms, go home like
a good boy to your mamma and tell her what a naughty woman I am."
He sobered at once and reaching across the narrow dining-table took her
wrist in both of his hands and forced her to listen.
"You disdainful woman! I'll not be mastered by you any longer--"
"That means," interrupted Ellenora coolly, "do as you wish, and not as I
please."
Paul, his vanity wounded, asked the waiter for his reckoning. His
patience was worn away.
"Paul, don't be silly," she cried, her eyes sparkling. "Now order a
carriage and we'll take a ride in the park and talk the matter over.
I'm afraid the fool's fever is in your blood; the open air may do it
good. Oh! the eternal nonsense of youth. Call a carriage, Paul!--April
Paul!" ...
III
Life in Philadelphia runs on oiled wheels. After the huge clatter of New
York, there is something mellow and human about the drowsy hum of
Chestnut Street, the genteel reaches of Walnut, and the neat frontage of
Spruce Street. Ellenora, so quick to notice her surroundings, was at
first bored, then amused, at last lulled by the intimate life of her new
home. She had never been abroad, but declared that London,
out-of-the-way London, must be something like this. The fine, disdainful
air of Locust Street, the curiously constrained attitude of the brick
houses on the side streets--as if deferentially listening to the
back-view remarks of their statelier neighbors, the brown-stone
fronts--all these things she amused herself telling Paul, playfully
begging him not to confront her with the oft-quoted pathetic fallacy of
Ruskin. Hadn't Dickens, she asked, discerned human expression in
door-knockers, and on the faces of lean, lonely, twilight-haunted
warehouses?
She was gay for the first time in her restless dissatisfied life. By
some strange alchemy she and Paul were able to precipitate and blend the
sum total of their content, and the summer was passed in peace. At first
they went to a hotel, but fearing the publicity, rented under an assumed
name a suite in the second storey of a pretty little house near South
Rittenhouse Square. Here in the cheerful morning-room Ellenora wrote,
and Paul smoked or trifled at the keyboard. They were perfectly
self-possessed as to the situation. When tired of the bond it should be
severed. This young woman and this young man had no illusion about
love--the word did not enter into their life scheme. Theirs was a pact
which depended for continuance entirely upon its agreeable quality. And
there was nothing cynical in all this; rather the ready acceptance of
the tie's fallibility mingled with a little curiosity how the affair
would turn out.
It was not yet November when Paul stopped in the middle of a Chopin
mazurka:
"Ellenora, have you heard from Vibert?"
She looked up from the writing-desk.
"How could I? He doesn't know where we are."
"And I fancy he doesn't care." Paul whistled a lively lilt. His manner
seemed offensive. She flushed and scowled. He moved about the room still
whistling and made much noise. Ellenora regarded him intently.
"Getting bored, Paul? Better go to New York and your club," she amiably
suggested.
"If you don't care," and straightway he began making preparations for
the journey. In a quarter of an hour he was ready, and with joy upon his
handsome face kissed Ellenora fervently and went away to the Broad
Street station. Then she did something surprising. She threw herself
upon a couch and wept until she was hysterical.
"I'm a nice sort of a fool, after all," she reflected, as she wiped her
face with a cool handkerchief and proceeded to let her hair down for a
good, comfortable brushing. "I'm a fool, a fool, to cry about this vain,
selfish fellow. Paul has no heart. Poor little Arthur! If he had been
more of a man, less of a conceited boy. Yet conceit may fetch him
through, after all. Dear me, I wonder what the poor boy did when he got
the news."
Ellenora laughed riotously. The silliness of the situation burned her
sense of the incongruous. There she stood opposite the mirror with her
tears hardly dry, and yet she was thinking of the man she had deserted!
It was absurd after all, this hurly-burly of men and women. Then she
began to wonder when Paul would return. The day seemed very long; in the
evening she walked in Rittenhouse Square and watched Trinity Church
until its brown façade faded in the dusk. She expected Paul back at
midnight, and sat up reading. She didn't love him, she told herself, but
felt lonely and wished he would come. To be sure, she recalled with her
morbidly keen memory that Howells had said: "There is no happy life for
woman--the advantage that the world offers her is her choice in
self-sacrifice." At two hours past the usual time, she went to bed and
slept uneasily until dawn, when she reached out her hand and awoke with
a start....
The next night he came back slightly the worse for a pleasant time. He
was too tired to answer questions. In the morning he told her that
Vibert announced a concert in Carnegie Hall, the programme made up of
his own compositions.
"His own compositions?" Ellenora indignantly queried. "He has nothing
but the piano concerto, an overture he wrote in Germany, and some
songs." She was very much disturbed. Paul noticed it and teased her.
"Oh, yes, he has; read this:"
"Mr. Arthur Vibert, a talented young composer, pupil of Saint-Saëns and
Brahms, will give an instrumental concert at Carnegie Hall, November
10th, the programme of which will be devoted entirely to his own
compositions. Mr. Vibert, who is an excellent pianist, will play his new
piano concerto; a group of his charming songs will be heard; an
overture, one of his first works, and a new symphonic poem will comprise
this unusually interesting musical scheme. Mr. Vibert will have the
valuable assistance of Herr Anton Seidl and his famous orchestra."
"I will go to New York and hear that symphonic poem." She spoke in her
most aggressive manner.
"Well, why not?" replied Paul flippantly. "Only you will see a lot of
people you know, and would that be pleasant?"
"You needn't go to the concert, you can meet me afterward, and we'll go
home together."
Paul yawned, and went out for his afternoon stroll.... Ellenora passed
the intervening days in a flame of expectancy. She conjectured all sorts
of reasons for the concert. Why should Arthur give it so early in the
season? Where did he get the money for the orchestra? Perhaps that old,
stupid, busybody, portrait-painting friend of his had advanced it. But
when did he compose the symphonic poem? He had said absolutely nothing
about it to her; and she was surprised, irritated, a little proud that
he had finished something of symphonic proportions. She knew Arthur too
well to suppose that he would offer a metropolitan audience scamped
workmanship. Anyhow, she would go over even if she had to face an army
of questioning friends.
Vibert! How singularly that name looked now. It was a prettier, more
compact name than Goddard. But of course she wasn't Mrs. Goddard, she
was Mrs. Vibert, and would be until her husband saw fit to divorce her.
Would he do that soon? Then she walked about furiously, drank tea, and
groaned--she was ennuied beyond description....
Paul had the habit of going to New York every other week, and she raised
no objection as his frivolous manner was very trying during sultry days;
when he was away she could abandon herself to her day-dreams without
fear of interruption. She thought hard, and her strong head often was
puzzled by the cloud of contradictory witnesses her memory raised. But
she cried no more at his absence....
It was quite gaily that she took her seat beside him in the drawing-room
car of the train and impatiently awaited the first sight of the salt
meadows before Jersey City is reached.
"Ah! the sea," she cried enthusiastically, and Paul smiled indulgently.
"You are lyrical, after all, Ellenora," he remarked in his most critical
manner. "Presently you will be calling aloud 'Thalatta, Thalatta!' like
some dithyrambic Greek of old."
"Smell the ocean, Paul," urged Ellenora, who looked years younger and
almost handsome. Paul's comment was not original but it was sound: "You
are a born New York girl and no mistake." He took her to luncheon when
they reached the city and in the afternoon she went to a few old
familiar shops, felt buoyant, and told herself that she would never
consent to live in Philadelphia, as inelastic as brass. Alone she had a
hasty dinner at the hotel--Paul had gone to dine with his mother--and
noted in the paper that there was no postponement of the Vibert concert.
The evening was cool and clear, and with a singular sensation of
lightness in her head she went up to the hall in a noisy Broadway
car....
Her heart beat so violently that she feared she was about to be ill;
intense excitement warned her she must be calmer. All this fever and
tremor were new to her, their novelty alarmed and interested her.
Accustomed since childhood to time the very pulse-beats of her soul,
this analytical woman was astounded when she felt forces at work within
her--forces that seemed beyond control of her strong will. She did not
dare to sit downstairs, so secured a seat in the top gallery, meeting
none of Arthur's musical acquaintances. She eagerly read the programme.
How odd "Vibert" seemed on it! She almost expected to see her own name
follow her husband's. Arthur Vibert and Ellenora, his wife, will play
his own--their own--concerto for piano and orchestra!
She laughed at her conceit, but her laugh sounded so thin and miserable
that she was frightened....
Again she looked at the programme. After the concerto overture
"Adonaïs"--Vibert loved Shelley and Keats--came the piano concerto, a
group of songs--the singer's name an unfamiliar one--and finally the
symphonic poem. The symphonic poem! What did she see, or were her eyes
blurred?
"Symphonic Poem 'The Zone of the Shadow'. For explanatory text see the
other side." Sick and trembling she turned the page and read "The
Argument of this Symphonic Poem is by Ellenora Vibert."
THE ZONE OF THE SHADOW
To the harsh sacrificial tones of curious shells wrought
from conch let us worship our blazing parent planet! We
stripe our bodies with ochre and woad, lamenting the decline
of our god under the rim of the horizon. O! sweet lost days
when we danced in the sun and drank his sudden rays. O!
dread hour of the Shadow, the Shadow whose silent wings
drape the world in gray, the Shadow that sleeps. Our souls
slink behind our shields; our women and children hide in the
caves; the time is near, and night is our day. Softly, with
feet of moss, the Shadow stalks out of the South. The
brilliant eye of the Sun is blotted over, and with a
remorseless mantle of mist the silvery cusp of the new moon
is enfolded. Follow fast the stars, the little brethren of
the sky; and like a huge bolster of fog the Shadow scales
the ramparts of the dawn. We are lost in the blur of doom,
and the long sleep of the missing months is heavy upon our
eyelids. We rail not at the coward Sun-God who fled fearing
the Shadow, but creep noiselessly to the caves. Our shields
are cast aside, unloosed are our stone hatchets, and the
fire lags low on the hearth. Without, the Shadow has
swallowed the earth; the cry of our hounds stilled as by the
hand of snow. The Shadow rolls into our caves; our brain is
benumbed by its caresses; it closes the porches of the ear,
and gently strikes down our warring members. Supine, routed
we rest; and above all, above the universe, is the silence
of the Shadow.
"Arthur has had his revenge," she murmured, and of a sudden went sick;
the house was black about her as she almost swooned.... The old pride
kept her up, and she looked about the thinly filled galleries; the
concert commenced; she listened indifferently to the overture. When
Vibert came on the stage and bowed, she noticed that he seemed rather
worn but he was active and played with more power and brilliancy than
she ever before recalled. He was very masterful, and that was a new note
in his music. And when the songs came, he led out a pretty, slim girl,
and with evident satisfaction accompanied her at the piano. The three
songs were charming. She remembered them. But who was this soprano?
Arthur was evidently interested in her; the orchestra watched the pair
sympathetically.
So the elopement had not killed him! Indeed he seemed to have thriven
artistically since her desertion! Ellenora sat in the black gulf called
despair, devoured by vain regrets. Was it the man or his music she
regretted? At last the Symphonic Poem! The strong Gothic head of Anton
Seidl was seen, and the music began....
The natural bent of Arthur for the mystic, the supernatural, was
understood by his wife. Here was frosty music, dazzling music, in which
the spangled North, with its iridescent auroras, its snow-driven
soundless seas and its arctic cold, were imagined by this woman. She
quickly discerned the Sun theme and the theme of the Shadow, and
alternately blushed and wept at the wonderfully sympathetic tonal
transposition of her idea. That this slight thing should have trapped
his fantasy surprised her. After she had written it, it had seemed
remote, all too white, a "Symphonie en Blanc Majeur"--as Théophile
Gautier would have called it--besides devoid of human interest. But
Arthur had interwoven a human strand of melody, a scarlet skein of
emotion, primal withal, yet an attempt to catch the under emotions of
the ice-bound Esquimaux surprised in their zone of silence by the sleep
of the Shadow, the long night of their dreary winter. And the composer
had succeeded surprisingly well. What boreal epic had he read into
Ellenora's little prose poem, the only thing of hers that he had ever
pretended to admire! She was amazed, stunned. She wondered how all this
emotional richness could have been tapped. Had she left him too soon, or
had her departure developed some richer artistic vein? She tortured her
brain and heart. After a big tonal climax followed by the lugubrious
monologue of a bassoon the work closed.
There was much applause, and she saw her husband come out again and
again bowing. Finally he appeared with the young singer. Ellenora left
the hall and feebly felt her way to the street. As she expected, Paul
was not in sight, so she called a carriage, and getting into it she saw
Arthur drive by with his pretty soprano.
IV
How she reached the train and Philadelphia she hardly remembered. She
was miserably sick at soul, miserably mortified. Her foolish air-castles
vanished, and in their stead she saw the brutal reality. She had
deserted a young genius for a fashionable dilettante. In time she might
have learned to care for Arthur--but how was she to know this? He was
so backward, such a colorless companion!... She almost disliked the man
who had taken her away from him; yet six months ago Ellenora would have
resented the notion that a mere man could have led her. Besides there
was another woman in the muddle now!... In her disgust she longed for
her own zone of silence. In her heart she called Ibsen and Nora Helmer
delusive guides; her chief intellectual staff had failed her and she
began to see Torvald Helmer's troubles in a different light. Perhaps
when Nora reached the street that terrible night, she thought of her
children--perhaps Helmer was watching her from the Doll's House
window--perhaps--perhaps Arthur--then she remembered the young singer
and bitterness filled her mouth....
When Paul came back, twenty-four hours later, she turned a disagreeable
regard upon him.
"Why didn't you stay away longer?" she demanded inconsistently.
"My dear girl, I searched for you at Carnegie Hall that night, but I
suppose I must have come too late; so yesterday I went yachting and had
a jolly time."
Ellenora fell to reproaching Paul violently for his cruel neglect.
Didn't he know that she was ailing and needed him? He answered
maliciously: "I fancied that your trip might upset your nerves. I am
really beginning to believe you care more for your young composer than
you do for me. Ellenora Vibert, sentimentalist!--what a joke."
He smiled at his wit....
"Leave me, leave me, and don't come here again!... I have a right to
care for any man I please."
"Ah! Ibsen encore," said Paul, tauntingly.
"No, not Ibsen," she replied in a weak voice, "only a free woman--free
even to admire the man whose name I bear," she added, her temper sinking
to a sheer monotone.
"Free?" he sarcastically echoed. The shock of their voices filled the
room. Paul angrily stared out of the window at the thin trees in dusty
Rittenhouse Square, wondering when the woman would stop her tiresome
reproaches. Ellenora's violent agitation affected her; and the man, his
selfish sensibilities aroused by the most unheroic sight in the world,
slowly descended the staircase, grumbling as he put on his hat....
* * * * *
Too cerebral to endure the philandering Paul, Ellenora Vibert is still
in Philadelphia. She has little hope that her husband will ever make any
sign.... After a time her restless mind and need of money drove her into
journalism. To-day she successfully edits the Woman's Page of a Sunday
newspaper, and her reading of an essay on Ibsen's Heroines before the
Twenty-first Century Club was declared a positive achievement. Ellenora,
who dislikes Nietzsche more than ever, calls herself Mrs. Bishop. Her
pen name is now Nora Helmer.
TANNHÄUSER'S CHOICE
I
"And you say they met him this afternoon?" ... "Yes, met him in broad
daylight coming from the house of that odious woman." "Well, I never
would have believed it!" "That accounts for his mysterious absence from
the clubs and drawing-rooms. Henry Tannhäuser is not the style of man to
miss London in the season, unless there is a big attraction elsewhere."
... The air was heavy with flowers, and in the windows opening on the
balcony were thronged smartly dressed folk; it was May and the weather
warm. The Landgrave's musicale had been anticipated eagerly by all
music-lovers in town; Wartburg, the large house on the hill, hardly
could hold the invited....
The evening was young when Mrs. Minne, charming and a widow, stood with
her pretty nun-like face inclined to the tall, black Mr. Biterolf, the
basso of the opera. She had been sonnetted until her perfectly arched
eyebrows were famous. Her air of well-bred and conventual calm never had
been known to desert her; and her high, light, colorless soprano had
something in it of the sexless timbre of the boy chorister. With her
blond hair pressed meekly to her shapely head she was the delight and
despair of poets, painters and musicians, for she turned an impassable
cheek to their pleadings. Mrs. Minne would never remarry; and it was her
large income that made water the mouth of the impecunious artistic
tribe....
Just now she seemed interested in Karl Biterolf, but even his vanity did
not lead him to hope. They resumed their conversation, while about them
the crush became greater, and the lights burned more brilliantly. In the
whirl of chatter and conventional compliment stood Elizabeth Landgrave,
the niece of the host, receiving her uncle's guests. Mrs. Minne regarded
her, a sweet, unpleasant smile playing about her thinly carved lips.
"Yet the men rave over her, Mr. Biterolf. Is it not so? What chance has
a passée woman with such a pure, delicate slip of a girl? And she sings
so well. I wonder if she intends going on the stage?" Her companion
leaned over and whispered something.
"No, no, I'll never believe it. What? Henry Tannhäuser in love with that
girl! Jamais, jamais!"
"But I tell you it's so, and her refusal sent him after--well, that
other one." Biterolf looked wise.
"You mean to tell me that he could forget her for an old woman? Stop, I
know you are going to say that the Holda is as fascinating as Diana of
Poitiers and has a trick of making boys, young enough to be her
grandsons, fall madly in love with her. I know all that is said in her
favor. No one knows who she is, where she came from, or her age. She's
fifty if she's a day, and she makes up in the morning." Mrs. Minne
paused for breath. Both women moved in the inner musical set of
fashionable London and both captained rival camps. Mrs. Minne was voted
a saint and Mrs. Holda a sinner--a fascinating one.... There was a
little feeling in the widow's usually placid voice when she again
questioned Biterolf.
"I always fancied that Eschenbach, that man with the baritone voice, son
of the rich brewer--you know him of course?--I always fancied that he
was making up to our pretty young innocent over yonder."
Biterolf gazed in amusement at his companion. Her veiled, sarcastic tone
was not lost on him; he felt that he had to measure his words with this
lily-like creature.
"Oh, yes; Wolfram Eschenbach? Certainly, I know him. He sings very well
for an amateur. I believe he is to sing this evening. Let us go out on
the balcony; it's very warm." "I intend remaining here, for I shall not
miss a trick in the game to-night and if, as you say, that silly
Tannhäuser was seen leaving the Holda's house this afternoon--" "Yes,
with young Walter Vogelweide, and they were quarrelling--" "Drinking, I
suppose?" "No; Henry was very much depressed, and when Eschenbach asked
him where he had been so long--" "What a fool question for a man in love
with Elizabeth Landgrave," interposed Mrs. Minne, tartly. "Henry
answered that he didn't know, and he wished he were in the Thames." "And
a good place for him, say I." The lady put up her lorgnon and bowed
amiably to Miss Landgrave, who was talking eagerly to her uncle....
The elder Landgrave was as fond of hunting as of music, and sedulously
fostered the cultivation of his niece's voice. As she stood beside him,
her slender figure was almost as tall as his. Her eyes were large in the
cup and they went violet in the sunlight; at night they seemed
lustrously black. She was in virginal white this evening, and her
delicately modelled head was turned toward the door. Her uncle spoke
slowly to her.
"He promised to come." Elizabeth flushed. "Whether he does or not, I
shall sing; besides, his rudeness is unbearable. Uncle, dear, what can I
say to a man who goes away for a month without vouchsafing me a word of
excuse?"
Her uncle coughed insinuatingly in his beard. He was a widower.
"Hadn't we better begin, uncle? Go out on the balcony and stop that
noisy gypsy band. I hate Hungarian music." ... She carried herself with
dignity, and Mr. Landgrave admired the pretty curves of her face and
wondered what would happen when her careless lover arrived. Soon the
crowd drifted in from the balcony and the great music-room, its solemn
oak walls and ceilings blazing with light, was jammed. Near the
concert-grand gathered a group of music makers, in which Wolfram
Eschenbach's golden beard and melancholy eyes were at once singled out
by sentimental damsels. He had long been the by-word of match-making
mammas because of his devotion to a hopeless cause. Elizabeth Landgrave
admired his good qualities, but her heart was held by that rake,
_vaurien_ and man about town, dashing Harry Tannhäuser; and as Wolfram
bent over Miss Landgrave her uncle could not help regretting that girls
were so obstinate.
A crashing of chords announced that the hour had arrived. After the
"Tannhäuser" overture, Elizabeth Landgrave arose to sing. Instantly
there was a stillness. She looked very fair in her clinging gown, and as
her powerful, well modulated soprano uttered the invocation to the
Wartburg "Dich, teure Halle, grüss ich wieder," the thrill of excitement
was intensified by the appearance of Henry Tannhäuser in the doorway at
the lower end of the room. If Elizabeth saw him her voice did not reveal
emotion, and she gave, with rhetorical emphasis, "Froh grüss ich dich,
geliebter Raum."
"He looks pretty well knocked out, doesn't he?" whispered Biterolf to
Mrs. Minne. She curled her lip. She had long set her heart on
Tannhäuser, but since he preferred to sing the praises of Mrs. Holda,
she slaked her feelings by cutting up his character in slices and
serving them to her friends with a saintly smile.
"Poor old Harry," went on Biterolf in his clumsy fashion. "Your poor old
Harry had better keep away from his Venus," snapped the other; "he looks
as if he'd been going the pace too fast." Every one looked curiously at
the popular tenor. He stood the inspection very well, though his
clean-shaven face was slightly haggard, his eyes sunken and bloodshot.
But he was such good style, as the women remarked, and his bearing, as
ever, gallant.
Elizabeth ended with "Sei mir gegrüsst," and there was a volley of
handclapping. Tannhäuser made his way to the piano. His attitude was
anything but penitent; the girl did not stir a muscle. He shook hands.
Then he complimented her singing. She bowed her head stiffly. Tannhäuser
smiled ironically.
"I suppose I ought to do the conventional operatic thing," he
murmured--"cry aloud, 'Let me kneel forever here.'" She regarded him
coldly. "You might find it rather embarrassing before this crowd. Do you
ever sing any more?" He was slightly confused. "Let us sing the duo in
the second act; you know it," she curtly said, "and stop the mob's
gaping. Mrs. Minne over there is straining her eyes out." "She cannot
say that I ever sang her praises," laughed Tannhäuser, and as he faced
the audience with Elizabeth there was a hum which modulated clamorously
into noisy applause.
The pair began "Gepriesen sei die Stunde, gepriesen sei die Macht," and
Mr. Landgrave looked on gloomily as the voices melted in lyric ecstasy.
Henry's voice was heroic, like himself, and his friend Wolfram felt a
glow when its thrilling top tones rang out so pure, so clear. What a
voice, what a man! If he would only take care of himself, he thought and
looked at Elizabeth's spiritual face wondering if she knew--if she knew
of the other woman who was making Henry forget his better self!
The duo ceased and congratulations were heaped upon the singers....
"How do you manage to keep it up, old man?" asked Biterolf while Mrs.
Minne engaged Elizabeth.
Tannhäuser smiled. "You old grim wolf, Biterolf, you cling to the notion
that a singer must lead the life of an anchorite to preserve his voice.
I enjoy life. I am not a monk, but a tenor--" "Yes, but not a
professional one!" "No; therefore I'm happy. If I had to sing to order,
I'd jump into the river." "That's what you said this afternoon," replied
Biterolf, knowingly.
Henry's face grew dark. "You've said nothing, have you? That's a good
fellow. I assure you, Karl, I'm in the very devil of a fix. I've got rid
of Holda, but no one can tell how long. She's a terror." "Why don't you
travel?" "I have, I swear I have, but she has a trick of finding where
my luggage goes and then turns up at Pau or Paris as if I expected her.
She's a witch! That's what she is."
"She is Venus," said Biterolf moodily. "Aha! you've been hard hit, too?
I believe she does come from the Hollow Hill. Her cavern must be full of
dead men's bones, trophies of her conquests. I think I've escaped this
time." Tannhäuser's face grew radiant. "Don't be too sure, she may turn
up here to-night." "Good Lord, man, she's not invited, I hope." "I don't
know why not--she goes with the best people. Take a tip from me, Harry.
Don't waste any more time with her for Eschenbach may cut you out. He's
very fond of Elizabeth, and you'd better cut short that duet over there
now; Mrs. Minne is not fond of you." "Nonsense!" said Tannhäuser, but he
lounged over toward the two women and his big frame was noted by all the
girls in the room.
Tannhäuser had a very taking way with him. His eyes were sky-blue and
his hair old gold. He was a terrific sportsman and when not making love
was singing. From his Teutonic ancestry he had inherited a taste for
music which desultory study in a German university town, combined with a
musical ear, had improved. He had been told by managers that if he would
work hard he could make a sensation, but Henry was lazy and Henry was
rich, so he sang, shot big game and flirted his years away. Then he met
Mrs. Holda, of Berg Street, Piccadilly.
The women were not looking at each other with loving eyes when he drew
near. Elizabeth turned to him, her face aglow: "Let us walk a bit before
Mr. Eschenbach sings." Her manner was almost seductive. Mrs. Minne
sneered slightly and waved her fan condescendingly at the two as they
moved slowly up the room. "There go the biggest pair of fools in all
Christendom," she remarked to Biterolf; "why, she will believe
everything he tells her. She wouldn't listen to my advice." Biterolf
shook his head. When Tannhäuser and Elizabeth returned both looked
supremely happy.
"That woman has actually been abusing you, Harry." He pressed her arm
reassuringly. Wolfram Eschenbach began to sing "Blick' ich umher in
diesem edlen Kreise," and once more silence fell upon the bored crowd.
Sympathy was in his tones and he sang tenderly, lovingly. Elizabeth
listened unmoved. She now had eyes for Tannhäuser only, and she laughed
aloud when he proposed to follow Wolfram with a solo.
"Do," she said enthusiastically, "it will stir them all up." Although
this number was not down on the program, Tannhäuser was welcomed as he
went to the piano. Wolfram seemed uneasy and once looked fixedly at
Elizabeth. Then he walked out on the balcony as if seeking some one, and
Mrs. Minne nudged her stolid neighbor. "Mark my words, there's trouble
brewing," she declared.
By this time Tannhäuser was in his best form. He seemed to have regained
all his usual elasticity, for Berg Street, with its depressing memories,
had completely vanished. He expanded his chest and sang, his victorious
blue eyes fastened on Elizabeth. He sang the song of Venus, "Dir, Göttin
der Liebe," and all the old passion came into his voice; when he uttered
"Zieht in den Berg der Venus ein" he was transported, his surroundings
melted and once more he was gazing at the glorious woman, his Venus, his
Holda. The audience was completely shaken out of its fashionable
immobility, and "superb," "bravo," "magnificent," "encore," "bis," were
heard on all sides. Elizabeth alone remained mute. Her skin was the
pallor of ivory, and into her glance came the look of a lovely fawn run
down by the hounds.
"He'd better pack his traps and make a pilgrimage to Rome," remarked
Mrs. Minne with malice in her secular eyes as Tannhäuser strode to the
balcony. Wolfram, looking anxious, went to Elizabeth and led her to her
uncle; then the supper signal sounded and the buzz and struggle became
tremendous.
Mrs. Minne disappeared. Ten minutes later she was at Miss Landgrave's
side, and presently the pair left the table, slowly forced a passage
through the mob of hungry and thirsty humans and reached the balcony.
The night was rich with May odors, but the place seemed deserted.
Plucking at the girl's sleeve, her companion pointed to a couple that
stood looking into the garden, the arm of the man passed about the waist
of the woman. Even in the starlight Elizabeth recognized the exquisite
head and turned to leave; the woman with her was bent on seeing the
game. In sharp staccato she said, "What a relief after that hot
supper-room!" and the others turned. Elizabeth did not pause a moment.
She went to Tannhäuser's companion and said:
"My dear Mrs. Holda, where have you been hiding to-night? I fear you
missed the music and I fear now you will miss the supper; do let us go
in." ...
Five minutes later Mrs. Holda left with Tannhäuser in her brougham,
telling the coachman to drive to Berg Street.
II
The drawing-room was delicious that May afternoon--the next after the
musicale at Landgrave's. Henry was indolently disposed, and on a broad
divan, heaped with Persian pillows, he stretched his big limbs like a
guardsman in a Ouida novel. The dark woman near watched him closely, and
as he seemed inclined to silence she did not force the conversation.
"Shall we drive, Venus?" he nonchalantly asked. "Just as you please. We
may meet your saint with the insipid eyes in the park." "Good heavens!"
he testily answered, "why do you forever drag in that girl's name? She's
nothing to me." Mrs. Holda went to the window and he lazily noticed her
perfect figure, her raven hair and black eyes. She was a stunner after
all, and didn't look a day over twenty-eight. How did she manage to
preserve the illusion of youth? She turned to him, and he saw the
contour of a face Oriental, with eyes that allured and a mouth that
invited. A desirable but dangerous woman, and he fell to thinking of the
other, of her air of girlhood, her innocence of poise, her calm of
breeding that nothing disturbed. Like a good pose in the saddle, nothing
could ever unseat the equanimity of Elizabeth. Mrs. Holda grew
distasteful for the moment and her voice sounded metallic.
"When you cease your perverse mooning, Harry Tannhäuser, when you make
up your mind once and for all which woman you intend to choose, when you
decide between Elizabeth Landgrave and Venus Holda, I shall be most
happy. As it is now I am"--Just then two cards were handed her by a
footman, and after looking at them she laughed a mellow laugh.
Tannhäuser sat up and asked her the news.
"I laugh because the situation is so funny," she said; "here are your
two friends come to visit you and perhaps attempt your rescue from the
Venusberg. Oh! for a Wagner now! What appropriate music he could set to
this situation." She gave him the cards, and to his consternation he
read the names of Elizabeth Landgrave and Wolfram Eschenbach. He started
up in savage humor and was for going to the reception room. Quite calmly
Mrs. Holda bade him stay where he was.
"They did not ask for you, Harry, dear; stay here and be a good boy, and
I'll tell you all about it when they've gone." Her laughter was
resilient as she descended the staircase, but to the young man it seemed
sinister. He felt that hope had abandoned him when he entered the Berg
Street house, and now Elizabeth's presence, instead of relieving his
dull remorse, increased it. She was under the same roof with him, yet he
could not go to her....
Tannhäuser paced the parquetry almost hidden by Bokhara rugs, trying to
forget the girl. Stopping before an elaborate ebony and gold lectern, he
found a volume in vellum, opened and in it he read: "Livre des grandes
Merveilles d'amour, escript en Latin et en françoys par Maistre Antoine
Gaget 1530." "Has love its marvels?" pondered the disquieted young man.
Turning over the title-page he came upon these words in sweet old
English:
"Then lamented he weeping: Alas, most unhappy and accursed sinner that I
am, in that I shall never see the clemency and mercy of my God. Now will
I go forth and hide myself within Mount Horsel, imploring my sweet lady
Venus for favor and loving mercy, for willingly would I be forever
condemned to hell for her love. Here endeth all my deeds of arms and my
sweet singing. Alas, that my lady's face and her eyes were too
beautiful, and that in an unfortunate moment I saw them. Then went he
forth sighing and returned to her, and dwelt sadly in the presence of
his lady, filled with a surpassing love. And afterwards it came to pass
that one day the pope saw many red and white flowers and leaf-buds
spring forth from his bastions, and all without bloomed anew. So that he
feared greatly, and being much moved thereby was filled with great pity
for the chevalier who had gone forth hopeless like unto a man forever
damned and miserable. And st
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