IVVENUS OR VALKYR?
Paul Godard found the ride between Nuremberg and Baireuth discomforting. The hot July breezes that blew into the first-class coupé of the train were almost breath-arresting; and Paul had left Stuttgart that morning in a savage mood. The slowness of the railway service irritated him, the faces of his travelling companions irritated him, and he had shocked an Englishman by remarking early in the afternoon:
“If the old engine doesn’t run any faster than this we had better get out and walk, or—push.”
The other simply peered at the speaker and then resumed Wolzogen’s book on Leading-Motives.
Three Roumanian ladies laughed in oily Eastern accents. They understood English, and the sight of a human being, a strong young man, in a passion about such a little matter as European railroad punctuality struck them as ridiculous. So they laughed again and Paul finally joined in, for he was an American.
He had been rude, but he couldn’t help it; besides, it looked as if they would reach Baireuthtoo late for the opening performance, and his was the laughter of despair.
The youthful pilgrim journeying to Baireuth was born in New York. He had studied music like most young people in his country, and had begun with that camel, that musical beast of all burdens, the piano. This he practised most assiduously at intervals, because he really loved music; but college, lawn-tennis, golfing, dancing, and motor-boating had claims not easily put aside. Naturally, the piano suffered until Paul left college; then for want of something better to do he took lessons from Joseffy and edified that master by his spurts of industry. His club began to encroach on his attention, and again the piano was forgotten. Paul, whose parents were rich, was not a society butterfly, but his training, instincts, and associations forced him to regard a good dinner, a good tailor, and a racing motor-car as necessary to his existence. From his mother he inherited his love of music, and his father, dead many years, had bequeathed him a library; better still, a taste for reading.
An average cultivated American, intensely self-conscious, too self-conscious to show himself at his best, ashamed of his finer emotions, like most of his countrymen, and a trifle spoiled and shallow.
One day Edgar Saltus told Paul he should read Schopenhauer, and he at once ordered the two volumes of The World as Will and Representation.It was not difficult reading, because he had been in Professor Bowne’s class at college and enjoyed the cracking of metaphysical nuts. He began to get side glimpses of Wagner’s philosophy, but despite the wit of the German Diogenes his pessimism repelled him. He could not agree with Saltus’s ingenious defense of pessimism in his two early books, and he looked about for diversion elsewhere. Walter Pater’s silken chords, velvety verbal music, had seduced Paul from the astringencies of Herbert Spencer, and Chopin made moonlight for his soul on morbid nights.
Yet Paul, with his selfish, well-bred, easy life, had encountered no soul-racking convulsions; he had never been in love, therefore he played the nocturnes of Chopin in a very unconvincing manner.
He always declared that Poe was bilious, and this remark gained for him the reputation of wit and scholar among his club associates.
The Calumel Club is not given to velléités of speech....
Then Paul Godard fell into the clutches of Richard Wagner and swallowed much of him.
Chopin seemed tiny, exotic, and feminine compared to the sirocco blasts of the Baireuth master. Paul was not too critical, and, like most Americans, he measured music by its immediate emotional result. The greater the assaultupon the senses, the greater the music. The logic was inescapable.
Friedrich Nietzsche was the next milestone in Paul’s mental journeyings. The attack on Wagner, the attack on the morals that made our state stable, the savage irony, sparkling wit, and brilliant onslaught on all the idols, filled the mind of the young man with joy. He dearly loved a row, and though he recognized Nordau’s borrowed polemical plumage, he liked him because of his cockiness.
So he devoured Nietzsche, reckless of his logical inferences, reckless of the feelings of his poor mother, a most devoted Episcopalian of the High Church variety. Paul always pained her with his sudden somersaults, his amazing change of attitude, and, above all, his heartless contempt for her idols, the Church and good society. Society sufficed her soul hunger, and Paul’s renunciation of Mozart and Donizetti—she simply loved Lucia—his sarcastic flouting of churchgoers and his refusal to range himself, were additional weeds of woe in her mourning life.
There was Edith Vicker; but Paul was such a hopeless case and wouldn’t see that a nice, pretty, rich, moderately intelligent, well-reared young woman was slipping through his fingers. Mrs. Godard often sighed that winter in her sumptuous uptown apartment.
Nietzsche revealed new intellectual vistas for Paul and he actually became serious. Thenotion of regarding one’s own personality as a possible work of art to be labored upon and polished to perfection’s point, set him thinking hard. What had he done with his life? What wasted opportunities! He deserted his club and began piano-playing again, and when reproached by his friends for his fickleness he excused himself by quoting Nietzsche; a thinker, as well as a snake, must shed his skin once a year, else death. He also was ready with Emerson’s phrase about fools being consistent, and felt altogether very fine, and superior to his fellow-beings. Nietzsche feeds the flame of one’s vanity, and Paul was sure that he belonged to the quintessential band of elect souls that is making for the Uebermensch—the Superman!
He really was a nice, boyish lad, and he could never pass a pretty girl—whether a countess or a chambermaid—without making soft eyes at her. Paul was popular; and so the Roumanian ladies laughed at him admiringly. Paul had left his mother in Paris, the heat was too trying for travel, and he was close to Baireuth on this torrid summer day, one Sunday afternoon in July.
Yet another hour before him, he turned his critical attention to the laughing trio. One was a princess. She told Paul so, and spoke of the sultry diversions of Bucharest. The second was a fat singer, who startled the Englishman by inquiring if there wasn’t a good coloratura part in Parsifal. If there were, she intended askingFrau Cosima Wagner to let her sing it; but if there wasn’t, she supposed she would have to be content with the Forest Bird; even Melba had been a Waldvogel, why couldn’t she be one also?
Her sparkling eyes and mountain of flesh amused Paul exceedingly. He knew Heinrich Conried very well, and he told the singer that when Parsifal was sung next season at the Metropolitan Opera House he would speak to the impresario and get her the part of Kundry. It was for a lark-like voice, such as the lady said she possessed, and full of Bellinian fioritura.
As he gravely related these fables he was conscious of the penetrating gaze of the third woman. She was tall, frail-looking, with a dark skin, hair black and glossy, and she had the most melancholy eyes in the world. Paul returned her glance with discretion. His eyes were Irish blue-gray and full of the devil at times, and they could be very sympathetic and melting when he willed. The two young people examined each other with that calm regard which, as Schopenhauer declares, mars or makes the destiny of a new generation. But metaphysics and the biology of the sexes bothered not at all the youth and maiden. Paul admired the classic regularity of her nose and forehead, and wondered why her face seemed familiar. Her mouth was large, irregular, perverse. It suggested Marie Bashkirtseff’s, and it was just as yearning and dissatisfied. Despite their sadness,fun lurked in the corners of her eyes, and he knew that she enjoyed his harmless hoax.
Then they both burst out laughing, and the princess said in a surprised voice:
“Helena, why do you laugh with the young American gentleman?”
She also mentioned a family name that caused the New Yorker to stare. What, was this girl with the determined chin and brows the identical one who almost set Russia quarrelling with another nation and upset the peace of Roumania? Yes, it was, and Paul no longer puzzled over her face. It had been common property of the photographers and newspaper illustrators a few years ago, and as he mentally indexed its features he almost said aloud that her curious beauty had never been even faintly reproduced.
His imagination was stirred; Roumania had always seemed so remote, and here was he, Paul Godard, a plain American citizen, face to face with the heroine of one of those mysterious Eastern intrigues in which kings, crowns, queens, and ladies-in-waiting were all delightfully mixed up. So he chatted with Helena about Wagner and Degeneracy, and discovered that she was an admirer of Ludwig of Bavaria, Nietzsche, Guy de Maupassant, Poe, Schumann, Chopin, Marie Bashkirtseff, and all the rest of the sick-brained people born during the sick-brained nineteenth century. She, too, had written a book, which was soon to appear. It was full of the Weltschmerz of Schopenhauer and the boldupspringing individualism of Nietzsche. She had odd theories concerning the Ring of the Nibelungs, and had read Browning’s Sordello. She told Paul that she found but one stumbling-block in Wagner. How, she asked gravely, with a slight blush—how could Parsifal become Lohengrin’s father?
Paul said he didn’t know. It must have occurred long after his experiences with Kundry and the Flower Girls, and perhaps it was a sort of——
“Oh, no, M. Godard!” she quickly answered. “Not that. The swan died, you know; besides, Parsifal was always a Pure Fool.” Paul suggested that it might have been another of the same name but of a different family. And then the conversation went to pieces, for the soprano called out:
“Voilà! Baireuth, the Wagner theatre!” and they all craned their necks to catch the first glimpse of that mystic edifice built on the hill, the new musical Pantheon, the newSt.Peter’s of the Bewitched Ones.
And the Englishman continued to calmly read about the Loki-motif as the train slowly steamed into Baireuth.
Paul found comfortable lodgings in the Lisztstrasse and his new friends went to the Hotel Sonne. At half-past four he was up on the hill looking at the world, and as immaculately dressedas if he stood in the bow window of the Calumel Club, ogling Fifth Avenue girls. He was only vaguely interested in the approaching performance, and his pulses did not quicken when Donner’s motif told the gabbling, eager throng that the great Trilogy was about to unfold its fables of water, wood, and wind. He took his seat unconcernedly, and then the house became black and from space welled up those elemental sounds, not merely music, but the sighing, droning swish of waters. The Rhine calmly, majestically stole over Paul’s senses, he forgot New York, and when the curtains parted he was with the Rhine Daughters, with Alberich, and his heart seemed to stop beating. All sense of identity vanished at a wave of Wagner’s magic wand, and not being a music-critic, his ego was absorbed as by the shining mirror in the hand of a hypnotist. This, then, was Wagner, a Wagner who attacked simultaneously all the senses, vanquished the strongest brain, smothered, bruised, and smashed it; wept, sang, surged, roared, sighed in it; searched and ravished your soul until it was put to flight, routed, vanquished, and brought bleeding and captive to the feet of the master.
The eye was promise-crammed, the ears sealed with bliss, and Paulfeltthe wet of the waters. He panted as Alberich scaled the slimy steeps, and the curves, described by the three swimming mermaids, filled him with the joy of the dance.
The rape of the Rhinegold, the hoarse shoutof laughter from Alberich’s love-forsworn lips, and the terrified cries of the three watchers were to Paul as real as Wall Street.
Walhall didn’t bore him, and he began at last to catch faint clues of the meaning of the mighty epic. He went to the underworld, and saw the snake, the ring, and the tarnhelm; he heard the anvil chorus—so different from Verdi’s!—he saw the giants quarrelling over their booty, and the rainbow seemed to bridge the way to another, brighter world. As the Walhall march died in Paul’s ears he found himself in the open air, and he thought it all over as he slowly went with the crowd down the hill, that new Mount of Olives trod by the feet of musical martyrs. He had a programme, but he was too confused, too overcome by the clangor of his brain-particles, to read it. He was not dreaming, nor yet was he awake; he was Wagnerized. The first attack is not always fatal, but it is always severe, even to the point of pain. Paul Godard had become a Wagnerite, and his Nietzsche and Schopenhauer skins melted from him as melts the snow in sunshine.
Striking through his many exalted moods was the consciousness of having recognized one of the Rhine Daughters. It was the contralto, an Eastern girl from Maine. Rue Towne was her odd name, and she had been once a pupil of a New England vocal school, but she had lived that down, and after the usual hard, interesting struggle abroad she had reached Baireuth.Paul remembered her well. A blonde girl, eyes indescribably gray, with dark lashes, a face full of interesting accents, a rhythmic chin and cheek-bones that told of resolution. Her figure was lovely, and Paul resolved to call on her the very next day.
He soon discovered Rue’s address; Baireuth is small and full of information for the curious. Paul on Monday morning went to the Alexanderstrasse, where she resided, only to find her at a rehearsal of Die Walküre. He was rather put out, as he was accustomed to accomplish what he wanted without much exertion. He then bethought him of Helena, the Roumanian beauty, and he warmed at the recollection of a glance he had received the afternoon previous. That, and the hand pressure, had been unmistakable. So he went to the Sonne Hotel and sent up his card. The three ladies were at breakfast. Would Mr. Godard call in an hour?
Paul cursed his luck and walked to Wahnfried, wondering if he was to be bored during his stay. The reaction from the exalted condition after Rhinegold had set in. Paul was not a beer-drinker, so he could not avail himself of the consolations offered by Gambrinus, the Drowsy Deity of Germany. He had taken a pint of bad champagne and some tough chicken and slept badly. His cigar, too, was abominable, and he felt absolutely disillusioned as he paced the historic garden of Wahnfried. The true Wagnerite is always in heaven or hades.There is no middle-distance in his picture of life and art. At Wagner’s grave Paul felt a return of the thrill, but it passed away at the barking of a boarhound. He went slowly toward the hotel and was in such a perverse mood that he avoided it and turned into the Ludwigstrasse. Then he met some one.
A girl passed him, gave him a shy, half-startled glance, hesitated, and spoke to him. It was Rue Towne.
“Mr. Godard, I found your card a moment ago. I am very glad to see you. How did you like Rhinegold?”
Paul was standing in the street, the girl looking down into his eyes; he made a conventional answer, their hands touched, and they went down the street together.
That afternoon Paul received a pretty note from the Roumanian. She wrote of her sorrow at his not having called again, and asked him to join them during the first entr’acte of Die Walküre. He tossed the note away, for his brain was filled with the vision of a girl in a straight-brimmed straw hat, a girl with a voice like a wooing clarinet and eyes that were dewy with desire. Paul was hard hit, and, as one nail drives out another, the blonde woman supplanted the brunette in his easily stirred imagination.
The first act of Die Walküre did not lay the fair ghost in his brain; he went out on the esplanade and encountered the three Roumanians. Helena detached herself and came to him with thatgracious gait and proud lift of head and throat that gave her a touch of royalty. She reproached him with her magnetic gaze, and soon the pair were strolling in the leafy lanes about the theatre.
Paul had never met a woman who mentally tantalized him as did Helena. She had a manner of half uttering a sentence, of putting a nuance into her question that interested while it irritated him. Artistic people are mutually attracted, and there was a savor in the personality of this distinguished girl that was infinitely enticing to his cultivated taste and at the same time slightly enigmatic. Without effort they glided into confidences, and the Sword-motive sounding for the second act found them old friends. Youth is not the time for halting compromise.
Lilli Lehmann’s art took Paul out of himself, and the beauty and vigor of the act stirred him again. But he could not recapture the first fine, careless rapture of the night before. To the nerves, virginal of Wagner, that thrill comes once only.
In the long intermission Paul found Helena and took her to the crowded café across the road to get something to eat and drink. It was a quarter after seven, and Wagner wears on the stomach. Even a poetical Roumanian girl has earthly appetites. So they drank champagne and ate pasties of goose liver, and confessions were many. Nothing establishes a strong bondof sympathy like the hunger and thirst of two healthy young humans. Paul seemed to have forgotten Rue and the splendour of her hair and complexion. He was rapidly losing his head in the subtle blandishments of the Eastern woman. He saw that she was a coquette, but her seriousness, her fierceness, that broke through the shell of silky manners, gave him a glimpse of a woman worth winning, and he was just gambler enough, American enough to dare. When he left her he carried away a look that was an unequivocal challenge.
Paul’s brain was on fire during the Ride of the Valkyries, and hardly realized that it was Hans Richter’s masterly reading. The stage failed to interest him until he discovered Rue in Valkyrean garb, and then he watched with his soul in his eyes. Her profile, so charming in its irregularity; her freedom of pose, her heroic action filled him with admiration. By the light from the stage he read her name, Fräulein Rue Towne, and she was the last in the list of the Valkyries. He watched with indifferent gaze the close of the act, and mentally voted the Paris version of the Magic-Fire scene far superior to Baireuth’s.
He went toward the Hotel Sonne, as he had promised to sup with Helena, and wondered how he could see Rue that night. The American girl seemed something infinitely sweet, healthy, sun-swept in nature compared with her Slavic rival.
“By Jove,” said Paul aloud, “it’s a case ofrouge et noir, and I’m in for it and no mistake.” Paul was fond of polyphony.
After supper he suggested to Helena the Sammet Garden. The artists always flocked there and it might prove interesting. Although a chaperon was a necessity, Helena persuaded the princess that she could go out just once in the American fashion. It would be so novel. Paul pleaded and, of course, won. The young people hardly spoke as they went down the dark street to the garden. The air was full of electricity. A touch, a glance, and a storm would be precipitated. So they reached the garden and found a seat near enough the house to be tortured by Herr Sammet’s crazy trombone. At the same table was a black-bearded little man dressed in white flannels.
“It is the Sâr Peladan; I know him by his musk,” said Helena discontentedly, and they changed their seats.
“What a decadent you are!” said Godard laughingly.
“Yes. I believe sometimes I can think with my nose, my smelling sense is so keen. I can almost divine approaching enemies. Who is that girl staring at you so hard, M. Godard, a very pretty blonde; she looks like an American? No, not near the house—there, over there!” Helena reminded Paul of a cat that lifts a threateningfurry back when she scents a hostile dog.
“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “It must be Rue. That settles me for good.” It was Rue, and she had never looked lovelier. The slight bruise under her eyes betokened emotional exhaustion. She was dressed in white, and the simplicity of her gown and its charming fit made the German women plainer. Paul’s heart knocked against his ribs as he returned her constrained bow. He saw that she had quietly and earnestly examined Helena, and as the eyes of the women met antagonism kindled. But the American girl was mistress of herself. She began to talk to the group of artists about her, while Helena sulked and glowered at Paul’s too openly expressed admiration.
“You admire your own countrywomen, do you not, M. Godard?” she asked, and the inflection in her voice was cruelly sarcastic. Before Paul could answer she touched his arm softly and said:
“If you can’t look at me when I talk to you, why, you may take me home.”
Paul at once begged her pardon, called for his reckoning and they prepared to leave the garden. He did not again salute Rue Towne, for she was talking earnestly to an ugly old fat man with a grey beard and a Wagnerian forehead half a foot high. But from the tail of his eye he saw that she was fully conscious of his departure. Scarlet spots came into her face, andas Paul walked down the garden steps he felt as if two eyes burned into his back. Then he did what other desperate men have done under similar circumstances. He made violent love to Helena, and it relieved the pain of his heart. But the girl was capricious, and only by dint of magnificent lying did he finally force her hand into his. They were now walking toward the Hofgarten, down a deserted street. The many bells of Baireuth told them that it was a quarter past eleven, and the moon rode tenderly in the blue. It was a night made for soft vows and kisses, and as Paul walked he thought of Rue; Helena fell to dreaming of the prince in her native Roumania who had played the weakling to her strong woman’s heart, and thus the pair reached the hotel, and after a brief parley at its door said good night and parted.
O blessed love, that can at least console two hearts glowing for the absent!
Paul awoke next morning with what the hardheaded Germans call a moral headache. He had a bad taste in his conscience, and he decided to call as soon as possible on Rue. It was nearly eleven before he got to her house. As she had no rehearsal for Siegfried, she received him. He thought that she was distant, but he talked fast and earnestly, and soon the ice began to thaw. Paul felt happy. Helena appealed to his decadent taste, but Rue was as the perfume of the morning. He told her so, and explained at great length and with considerableingenuity how he came in the company of a lone young woman. Her two chaperons—Paul fancied two sounded more imposing—had gone by mistake to the garden of the Sonne Hotel; that is why he left so soon with the lady, who was only a recent acquaintance.
He felt Rue’s eyes on him as he wove this roundelay, and, feeling hot about the neck and a little fearful of his ability to keep up the strain much longer, he suddenly grasped the girl, crying out, and most sincerely:
“O Rue! why do we waste time talking about a woman I never cared for and never expect to see again. I love you, I love you, my darling! Kiss me just once and tell me you care a little for me.”
As he fell upon her she was taken off her guard, and the inevitable happened. She kissed Paul and he placed a big ring on her finger, and left the house an hour later an engaged and also a much be-perjured man. He was happy until he thought of Helena.
That evening when Siegfried was finished Paul walked arm and arm with Rue down the hill to Sammet’s. As they entered they brushed against three ladies, and Paul said aloud: “Oh, Lord!”
The next day Rue had to go to a rehearsal for the Rhine Daughters in Die Götterdämmerung, and Paul was whistling the Spring Song from Die Walküre in his room when a knock at his door brought the news that a lady wished tosee him. He wondered who the lady was, and, as the parlor of the house had been turned into a bedroom, he put on his hat and went into the hall, to be confronted by Helena, shamefaced but resolute.
“Come out into the street,” he begged, for in her implacable eyes he read signs of the approaching storm.
They silently descended to a lower étage. Then she turned and faced him:
“So you didn’t come to me this morning,” she said. Roumania excited was a stirring spectacle, nevertheless Paul wished that he was up the Hudson playing golf.
He endeavored to placate her. Helena, angered at her loss of dignity in condescending to call on this man, reproached him bitterly, and it seemed to him that she was about to sing the picturesque songs of hate which Carmen Sylva has made known to us, when they reached the street. Then her rage vanished in a moment.
“You conceited man, and you really took me in solemn earnest! I fancied the Americans had a sense of humor. Pooh! You’re not a man to love more than a moment, anyhow,” and she went on her way laughing mockingly, leaving Paul shamefaced, angered, his self-love all bruised and his senses aroused, for Helena wrathful was more beautiful than Helena amiable.
He was so distressed in mind that he only sat through one act of Die Götterdämmerung; hisWagner madness seemed to have evaporated. He hovered around the back of the theatre, and caught a glimpse of Rue getting in a carriage with the same fat old German—her singing-teacher, he fancied.
Although it was late, he called at her house. She had not yet arrived, the maid told him. He mooned about disconsolately until one o’clock, keeping at a safe distance from the Hotel Sonne. Then he wearily went to bed and dreamed that the Nornes were chasing him down Fifth Avenue.
The next morning he called again on Rue. She sent down word that she was tired. He called again in the afternoon; she was not at home. In the evening, feeling as if he were going mad, he was told that she had gone out and would not be back until late. He hung around the house in a hungry-dog fashion, smiling bitterly at times and beginning to doubt even his own intentions. But no Rue.
He went home at last, and in a rage of love and jealousy he sat down and wrote to Rue this letter:
“Rue, my Rue, darling, what is the matter? Have I offended you? Why did you not see me to-day, to-night? Oh, how lonely was the street, how sad my heart! I thought of Verlaine’s ‘It rains in my heart as it rains in the town.’ Why don’t you see me? You are mine; you swore it. My sweet girl, whose heart is as fragrant as new-mown hay! Darling, you mustsee me to-morrow—to-day—for I am writing to you in the early, early morning. You know that you promised to come to me next year in America. Only think, sweetheart, what joy then! The sky is aflame with love. We walk slowly under few soft spring stars, and your hand is in mine, and that night, that night your heart will sob on my breast, my lovely woman, and your heart will fiercely beat as we both slip over the hills to heaven. Rue, you will make me a poet. Only tell me, I beg of you, the hour when I may see you.”
Then Paul threw himself on the bed, but not to sleep. It was daybreak, and the Teutonic chanticleer of the dawn had lusty lungs, and it was almost time for coffee. He dressed in feverish haste, went out of doors, secured a messenger and despatched the letter. He walked up and down the Lisztstrasse for twenty minutes, and his emotion was so great at the sight of the boy returning, a letter in hand, that he retreated into the doorway and awaited the news. It was brief. He read this in Rue’s firm handwriting:
“Your friend Helena has told me all. Here is your ring.”
There was no signature.
Then Paul did what most cowards do. He went to the other woman. The storm in his soul might be allayed, and he could have the pleasure of showing Rue that she was not necessary to him. Of course the jealousy of Helena had spoiled his game; for he really had meantto be sincere with Rue, so he told himself in the inward, eloquent manner which paves hell with composite intentions. It was all clear to him. Helena loved him, else why did she tell Rue of his double-dealing? It gave him a glowing feeling again in his distracted bosom, and as he walked into the Hotel Sonne he said between clutched teeth:
“Black wins!”
He was met by a polite portier, who told him that his friends had left on the early train for Vienna. But there was a letter!
Heart-sick and with trembling hands he tore open the envelope.
“Did you really think I loved an American when I can have a Roumanian? Better console your singer.”
No signature.
“When does the next train leave for Paris?” asked Paul of the polite portier.
There is a rumor in society that Paul Godard is engaged to Edith Vicker. He never goes to a Wagner music-drama, and is passionately addicted to cabaret dancing.
Americans are versatile.