V.

V.I have already had an opportunity of telling you that I had been brought up chiefly on detective stories. I therefore thought that there would be but little difficulty in solving the case of Miss Doblana. In a nutshell this case was as follows: She was sure that nobody had called, while her father seemed certain to the contrary. How did he know it? He did not say. The mysterious visitor had left no card, otherwise either Mitzi or Fanny would have found it when they arrived, which was some time before Mr. Doblana's return. Besides, a card generally bears a name, and the horn-player's question to his daughter had been: "Who called upon you during my absence?" which proved that he only knew, or thought he knew, that somebody had called, but did not know who the somebody was.We rang for Fanny. Had Mr. Doblanaasked her anything in connexion with the affair?"Yes," she said, "on the Monday morning he asked me who had called during his absence, and I said: 'Nobody.'"Thereupon Miss Doblana wanted to know, why Fanny had not said the truth, namely, that she did not know."He was very cross," answered the girl, "and I thought that perhaps somebody did call, and thatFräuleindid not wish Mr. Doblana to know.""You have a good opinion of me, Fanny. However, what did he do when you said that nobody had called?""He did not do anything. He swore. He said that I was in the plot, and that we were both deceiving him.""In the circumstances you could have told him that you were absent all the time.""And what would have been the good of it? He would have thought thatFräuleinhad removed me intentionally."I recognized that Fanny had quite a lot of common sense. So did Mitzi, for an extraordinary thing took place: She asked Fanny for advice.—Think of a young Englishlady asking for the advice of a general, or even of a between-maid.Fanny declared that above allFräuleinmust recover her freedom."But how?" cried Mitzi and Iunisono.Fanny looked at us and seemed to pity us for the evident helplessness of our brains."The young gentleman" (that was I), "will go in an hour's time to the opera. The rehearsal will be over, he will by chance meet Mr. Doblana leaving the theatre, and they will walk home together. In the meantimeFräuleinwill have dressed and will go out, and she will, by chance, too, meet the two gentlemen in the street.""But," interfered Mitzi, "he will make a fearful row!""In the street?" said Fanny. "No fear. An Imperial and Royal Member of the Court Chapel will make no row in the street. He will present you to each other, and the young gentleman" (that was, of course, again I), "will enquire intoFräulein'shealth, andFräuleinwill answer that she is now quite well, and she will never more be locked up."What a shame that such brains arewasted on servant girls! And the Editor of theEvening Newswhen he reads this page will say: What luck that a certain Government did not know that Fanny! A special department would have been created for her: she would be appointed President of the Board of Intelligence.Up to this day I wonder how she knew all about Mitzi's journey to Salzburg and about the Giulay wire. Her young mistress when talking to her had given her no details, yet she knew. She knew and even thought it desirable thatFräuleinshould communicate with Mr. Giulay, call upon him and ask him about that telegram."I know," she added, "that it is a month since he last left Vienna, even for half-a-day.""How did you learn this?" asked Mitzi."But," said Fanny with just a flavour of contempt, "I wanted to know. So I made friends with his mother's cook."I was overwhelmed. Fanny was revealing herself as a really superior being. You may therefore believe me that it was almost with reverence that I received her instructions."The young gentleman," she said, "will do well in getting on familiar terms with Mr. Doblana, for we must know what prevents him from being more explicit. If the young gentleman could win his confidence, we might learn what happened in that hour between his return home and his declaration toFräuleinthat somebody must have visited her. Something must have led him to that wrong conclusion. And the young gentleman could find out not only what it was, but also why Mr. Doblana is so vague.""And how am I to win his confidence?"Fanny scratched herself. For the first time she appeared a little perplexed. But the scratching soon helped."I know a way," she declared, "but it will be terrible. The young gentleman must learn to play the horn."Statesmen are merciless.Now, if you are a reader of theEvening Newsyou know that Statesmen have often ideas of a dazzling appearance, but which, all things considered, prove rather unsubstantial. They work all right, yet the results are slight. They seem very clever ideas, but somehow they do not reach themain point of the question. I am sorry to state that Fanny in this respect as in other ways was worthy of her fellow statesmen and that, brilliant as was the appearance of her bits of advice, and workable as they were, they led to no definite result. And so the reader need not fear that the solution of the case of Miss Doblana will be reached before the last chapters.Yet, the outer reconciliation between the horny father and his daughter took place that same day in exactly the same form as Fanny had foreseen it, and Mitzi recovered her liberty. Henceforth she had again the freedom of her movements, and I the pleasure of seeing her unconstrainedly. But that did not bring her one step nearer to the knowledge of what her father was reproaching her with. His was an obstinate silence. She asked him why he suspected her of having received any visitor during his absence, and he answered sternly:"You know, and you had better tell me who it was."And that was all.The next day she went to see Giulay; but she came home greatly disappointed. Heswore on his oath that he had not sent the Salzburg telegram, that he had not left Vienna, and that there had been no splendid opportunity whatever which could have induced him to send that wire."Either Giulay lies," explained I to Mitzi, when she had finished telling me this story, "or this wire is the keystone of the whole mystery.""I am sure," was her answer, "that Giulay not only speaks the truth, but also that he is incapable of telling any lies."Holy Moses! An agent, especially a theatrical one, was here considered trustworthy. Well, perhaps my doubt was unjust—perhaps we had only arrived at that chapter which is commonly entitled: "The Mystery thickens," and without which no detective story would sell."If Giulay speaks the truth," I went on, "then it is obvious that somebody else sent that wire, somebody who was well acquainted with the fact that this particular wire would make you undertake the journey to Salzburg. Who can this person be? What can his aim have been? Why especially to Salzburg?""Do you mean to say that it was my cousin Augusta who sent it?""The suggestion is yours.""It is impossible. Firstly, had she had something particular to tell me, I would have come quite as well if she had called me signing the wire by her own name instead of by Giulay's. And secondly, even in case of her fearing that my father would have objected to my journey to her, and if she had wanted to hide from him the reason of my travelling to Salzburg, she would have been at the station to meet me on my arrival, instead of letting me wait there for a couple of hours, and would have informed me of the truth. But she was genuinely surprised when she saw me, and, pleased as she was to pass a few hours with me, there was not the slightest reason why she should have called me to Salzburg."I did not dare to tell her that to judge from Mr. Doblana's behaviour something serious must have happened, and that in my opinion Augusta von Heidenbrunn was not free from suspicion. People sometimes think very badly of their friends, yet they do not allow others to express these thoughts. So I kept silent on the point.Sagacious Fanny was again consulted."Fräuleinought to write to theHerrLieutenant" (that was Franz von Heidenbrunn's rank). "Men can do more than women in such cases. And ask him to find out who sent that wire. Then we shall know all."Once more the advice seemed good, and Mitzi followed it. The Lieutenant's answer came by return; he would try, and he felt pretty sure that he would succeed. After a week or so, however, there came another letter saying that he had failed. He had found the telegraph office from which the telegram had been dispatched, but the name of the sender was unknown, and the official to whom it had been handed was unable even to remember whether the sender had been a man or a woman. So we were no wiser than before.In the meantime I had followed Fanny's third suggestion, namely, to make friends with my host by taking lessons.M'yes!What the people who lived underneath and above us must have thought of my first trials on the horn I do not know, nor have I any wish to know it. I dare say my trialswere a trial to them.There is a little tune which every Englishman knows, for it serves to call dogs with, when they are on tour in the streets. That tune is the theme which young Siegfried carols rejoicing in the forest; at least, he is supposed to do it; in reality it is the first horn-player placed in the wings of the theatre. The horn there illustrates rapturous vital power. You ought to have heard me and my vital power—or no! no! You are a kind person, you have bought this book, or at least, you have borrowed it from your Circulating Library, anyhow, you are reading it; you are a friend, and there is no reason for my wishing you evil, not even retrospectively. Nobody can in the least imagine what I achieved on the horn. At first I could not utter a sound at all, but then, when I succeeded!... How the dogs of Belsize Park would have been jealous had they heard my barking. And I carolled, not as if I had been young Siegfried, but a young dragon, nay! an old one!That second-hand genius of modern German music (second-hand down to his very name, for the first owner of it was the greatJohann Strauss), well, Richard Strauss once said that if he had been Bizet (which, Heaven be thanked he was not), one would have heard in the last act ofCarmenthe bellowing of the bull counterpointed against the celebrated duo between Carmen and Don José. I do not know whether he ever wrote that part for the bull—but with my real talent I was able after three lessons to play it. I am sorry that Richard did not hear me, it was delightfully terrible.There are strange coincidences. As I sit there, sucking my pencil (my Turkish fountain pen having disappeared) and remembering my first attempts at playing the horn and, later, at writing for it, something strikes my ear. A father (at least a decent one) always recognizes his children, and if I was no great composer, I may at least say that I was a decent one. What I hear is music, played by a military band. And what do they play? What, if it is not my own paraphrase on the "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu"? Yes, there is a military band somewhere in the rear, and what the hornsattack is the theme of "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu" set as Doblana had told me to do it.You ask me, ignorant reader, what that "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu" is. The oldest military march ever composed in these foggy islands of Great Britain, at a time when—at a time—well, earlier than that. It is a Scotch tune, fierce and proud, the right thing to be thought of in our fierce and proud time. I scored an arrangement of it as an entr'acte when I was writing my operaLady Macbeth. But I must not anticipate. How I came to writeLady Macbeth(notMacbeth, as you will notice, butLady Macbeth) that I will tell in due time.For the present I listen and remember. That Scotch march, that weird melody, calls back to my memory all the days of Vienna, all the story which I am busy writing.And while they play, I hum the words Sir Walter Scott wrote of the old tune:Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu,Pibroch o' Donuil,Wake thy wild voice anew,Summon clan Conuil.Come away, come away,Hark to the summons,Come in your war array.Gentles and commons!Come from deep glen and from mountain so rocky,Warpipe and pennon are at Inverlochy.Come ev'ry hill-plaid and true heart that wears one,Come ev'ry steel blade and strong hand that bears one.Leave untended the herdAnd the flock without shelter,The corpse uninterr'dAnd the bride at the altar.Leave the deer, leave the steer.Leave nets and barges,Come in your fighting gear,Broad swords and targes.Come as the winds come, when forests are rended,Come as the waves come, when navies are stranded.Faster come, faster come, faster and faster,Chief, vassal, page and groom, tenant and master!Fast they come, fast they come,See how they gather,Wide wave the eagle plumesBlended with heather.Cast your plaids, draw your blades,Forward each man set,Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu,Knell for the onset!I wonder. How does it happen that they are playing my march here? I do not even remember whether I left the score in Vienna or took it with me.Now they play other music, the overture ofPoet and Peasant, of course, and the waltz from theMerry Widowand other things—allViennese, my God!—as if to make it still harder to me, to think that these days of Vienna, these beautiful days of mirth and sorrow, should be gone for ever, for ever!—And then, then they play the "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu" once more, and then nothing else. Nothing. I dream, I wonder, and an hour passes."Post!"This cry would awaken a dormouse. There are but three things at the front. Long stretches of boredom, short ones of fright, and post.Two of the letters are for me, and the first one is from Dad. Just now I had been wondering at that strange performance of the "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu." Here is the solution of the riddle."My lad,"I quite understand that composing is an impossibility when one is in the firing line, and I regret having worried you. I therefore do not send you the music paper. But I have forwarded a few days ago the parts of your Scottish march to yourregimental bandmaster. You see, I want one of your marches to be played when you are going on towards victory. And as you can't compose another one, it may as well be the "Pibroch." Before I sent the parts I had the music played to me. It was only a band of the Salvation Army, I could not get hold of anything else. We went there to hear it, your mother and I and Bean, who was just staying in London. My word, it was beautiful, and it reminded me of the olden days. If only I could once more hear the whole opera. Mother looked very proud and dignified, Bean wept, but wept like a fountain, and I ... well, I had it performed three times. I gave the bandmaster a cheque for ten guineas. At first he did not want to accept it; he said it had been a pleasure to play such beautiful music, and apologized for the two little mistakes that had been made..."(Happy man! He had heard only two!)"... And then he pocketed the cheque all the same. Mother sends you hearty kisses. So do I."Daniel Cooper."Dad! Good Dad! There isn't a Dad like you in all the world.The other letter is from Bean. It is quite short."Dear Pat" (it runs), "I have just heard your beautiful music. I am quite overcome. With such sounds striking our soldiers' ears, how can they march to anything else than Victory? I feel that I must do something, too. My heart drives me forth."The girl you left behind you,"Bean."And Bean, there isn't a Bean like you in all the world, either.I have lost a whole day, remembering and musing. This would have been rather bad if this book were written to an order from a publisher. For one reason or another publishers are always in a hurry. But then they belong to the higher orders of animals. A simpleTommyius subterraneushas plenty of time.Yet perhaps you have not. Therefore I hasten to return to the nice sounds I used to extract out of an unhappy horn. It is intentionally that I used the word "extract," which will remind you of a toothache. So did my blowing the horn. It was pitiful, yet heroic. For, in truth, I had no wish to make a living out of these horny studies. It was all for the sake of the charming Mitzi. Had I but been in possession of her fleshy lips!I notice that this last sentence has a double sense. On the one hand it means that I have thin lips and therefore enjoyed great difficulties in producing any sounds on the horn. But on the other hand that sentence also informs you of my ardent desire to call Mitzi' s red lips my own. I had fallen in love with her from the first day, from the very moment when in the railway carriage I had been attracted by the handsome contours of ... of ... of the reverse of the medal. I had now arrived at that state when the very name Mitzi would strike my brain with a glowing emotion, when I liked to forget all other things and to occupy myself solely with her, remembering theevenness of the outline of her figure, her feminine daintiness, her slim, narrow feet. Yet, I had no experience of women, my feelings were intense, but my thoughts were vague, my love was a formless abstraction, and Mitzi a perceptible fact. In truth, I did not know that I was in love, and some time had to pass before I realized it.In the meantime I used my breath in blowing the horn. Nevertheless I did not gain Mr. Doblana's confidence. His intercourse with his daughter seemed to be restricted to the utmost necessary, and I was unable to find out with what offence he was reproaching her. Still, if I did not learn his secret—for it was evidently a secret—I had occasion to study his character.After about a dozen lessons he allowed that I was hopeless as a horn-player. He strongly advised me to give it up. But having once tasted my money (or, to render unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's, the money of Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., Insurance Brokers, London, E.C.), and having found it savoury and palatable, he decided on having another helping of it."Mr. Cooper," he said—he alwayspronounced my name with a hyphen between the two o's, associating it probably by some mysterious etymology with the origin of Cooperative societies—"Mr. Cooper, you have talent only as a composer; but I am afraid that you will profit very little by the lessons you take with Hammer. He is a genius and, poor devil, I do not grudge him the little money you will let him earn; however, I venture to say that you would benefit more by studying with a more practical man like me. Of course, it could not be the same figure..."Now, as he did not know what I was paying Hammer, these last words could only refer to his own lessons, the famous attempts at teaching me the horn, and this was already twice the cost of Hammer's lessons. But it was true that I improved little with the organist's loose and obscure explanations which, indeed, were more fascinating than serviceable; and I was only too glad to be relieved from the torture I inflicted upon myself and the neighbourhood. Besides, had I not the duty, as it were, of cultivating my friendship with Mr. Doblana?So I accepted, and had Viennese lessonsin the noble art of composition, from a Czech, at London terms. Nor had I to regret my decision, for Mr. Doblana proved a most invaluable teacher. I have already stated that I owe to him all I know, little as it may be.I was not only his pupil, but his apprentice, which is the best, the surest way of learning, for it necessitates a continuous connexion between the master and the disciple.Mr. Doblana was now composing a new ballet calledAladdin, and many pages of this work were scored out by me from his sketches.Now, if the reader will be good enough to peruse again the fourth chapter of this book, he will find that Mitzi had informed me that her father was working on a ballet calledGriseldis, the book of words of which—if I may use the euphemism "book of words"—had been provided by the Archduke Alphons Hector, or theHerr Graf, whichever name you may prefer for this exalted person. The book ofAladdin, too, was signed Joseph Dorff, the Archduke's nom de plume.As I was training myself not only as a composer but also as a detective, I thought that this inconsistency might have its importance, and I submitted it to the joint council of Mitzi and Fanny. Mitzi only abandoned herself to grief. In former days she would have known all about it, while now her father treated her with such indifference! But Fanny declared the incident of no importance: The first ballet "FatherMorgana" had also had another name at the beginning."Yes," said Mitzi, "it was at first calledDaphnis and Chloe.""How is that possible?" asked I. "The two subjects seem absolutely different—as different asGriseldisandAladdin.""Oh!" declared Mitzi lightly, "that does not matter with ballet. The same music can always serve for the most dissimilar objects. When father alteredDaphnis and ChloeintoFata Morganahe said he had only to add some fifths to the bass, and some strange drums and tambourins in order to change his music from occidental to oriental."This seemed to me very deep andprobably true. So the incident was dismissed. Yet I had never been nearer a clue! I ought at least to have noticed that Mr. Doblana was not merely adapting a musical dress from its occidental fashion to an oriental one, but that, musically speaking, he was making up hisballetis personæin real old carpets from Baghdad or some other such place.One evening—he and I used to pass his free evenings together—we went to a tavern called the "Tobacco Pipe," one of those places which a London innkeeper would not fail to denominate "Ye olde...." The whole of the Round Table used to meet there once a month in a nice smoky back-room. It was a large room, which from its dimensions seemed lower than it really was. It was panelled in old dark oak, and on the ceiling heavy black joists were visible. The tables, which no table-cloth adorned, were made of old oak, as were the chairs and the rest of the furniture. Old fashioned oil lamps fixed on the joists succeeded in giving the whole locality a kind of pleasant homeliness, although these oil lamps were lit by electricity. I was told that this room was severalhundred years old, and that the new modern house had been built around it. That room was in great demand by all sorts of societies, and it was not possible for it to be hired by one body oftener than for one evening a month, because decisions in any trade or profession had to be taken at "The Tobacco Pipe" if fashion was to be satisfied.That day the programme of the Round Table was to find some means of defence against the growing invasion of amateurs in the theatrical and especially the musical profession. All the people I knew were there and, of course, many more.Poor Hammer, who was the senior of the company, made the first speech. He began all right, talking of art for art's sake, but soon lost the subject and, before anybody knew how it had happened, was explaining the fundamental difference between mediæval and modern counterpoint. By unanimous consent he was deprived of the power of going on with his speech, and, greatly astonished, sat down.TheHerr Grafsaid, that being himself a sort of an amateur he was defending their cause. He quite understood that hopelesscases should be prevented from producing their work in public, but such rule could not be applied to all. Had not Wagner been called an amateur? The only way out was the creation of a special tribunal for such disputes.An elderly gentleman who stammered told the assembly that if Wagner had been suppressed it would not have been a shame. He was hissed into silence, and Mr. Bischoff declared that such words were Anti-German, that to attack Wagnerism was to attack Germanism, that Wagner's object had been the freeing of opera from its traditional and conventional Franco-Italian forms, and his one law: dramatic fitness.Thereupon another speaker arose. He was a medical man by profession, and his name was Doctor Bernheim. He declared that the subject of Germanism was quite out of place, and that the right way of tackling the question had been indicated by Mr. Hammer.Immediately the old man got up, bowed in an awkward way and offered his snuff box to the Doctor, who went on: Certainly, there were two different classes of artists. Therewas art for art's sake, music which had only that one aim of being beautiful, and in this he included art for technique's sake. The other class was art for the expression of an idea, in his opinion the higher form of art, though he admitted that his opinion mattered very little. Only these two classes of artists counted at all, and it was the public's, not the artist's, duty to decide who could be ranged in the one or the other category, and who was not to be counted in either of them. The struggle against amateurs had to be fought not by the institution of a tribunal, but by the production of work either so skilled or so highly inspired that no amateur could compete.Doctor Bernheim seemed to have won the day when Mr. Doblana chose to take part in the discussion. In his opinion the Doctor had made a mistake by including art for technique's sake into art for art's sake. Technique could be taught, and learning alone had nothing common with art. He, Doblana, knew composers for the brain and composers for the heart; only the latter were artists by the grace of God, the only ones he admitted. The public could not decide whodeserved this qualification. But the one fact, that a composer was capable of inventing new melodies, real melodies, would entitle him to being called an artist.I did not like Doblana's view of the question, yet I would have given anything to spare him the answer.It was Giulay, of all people, Maurus Giulay, who stood up and attacked the horn-player."Everybody," he said, "knows that Mr. Doblana is a good business man. In fact, there is no other musician of such money grubbing habits in the whole town of Vienna. He knows that tunes, little tunes, pay. There is but one excuse for Mr. Doblana's petty point of view: his nationality. He is a Czech, and as such devoid from all sorts of ideals. It is not his fault if he misunderstands the whole question. It is his nationality's!"Doblana had become quite pale."What doyouknow of the question, you Magyar!" he shouted.Instantly there was a terrific outburst of the whole company. Nobody would have suspected it a minute before. Nearly all themembers of the Round Table turned against Doblana, who was supported only by two other Czechs, three or four Italians, and one German: old Hammer. As for theHerr Graf, when I looked for him to see how he was behaving with his partner, I found that he had disappeared.One cannot well imagine how fierce the outburst was. My calm English brain could not understand at all this wild talk, these furious shouts. I was shocked, I must confess, and I felt a little silly. Evidently there was no more possibility of reaching a decision this evening. So with much talk I induced Doblana to leave with me.As it was not very late, I suggested a stroll which would appease my agitated host.The evening was one of those of which we never see an example in our foggy island, an exquisite spring evening, rapturous and passionately wonderful. You know the evil smell which fills most big towns just at that time of the year. Vienna is not so. There is a gust of perfume which gives spring its true significance.As we were walking down first the Boulevard, or Ring, as it is called in Vienna,and then, after having crossed the river, the wide road which leads to the Prater, I imagined what happiness would be mine if a certain fair girl was moving by my side instead of her surly father. On the bridge there stood a lovely flower girl, delayed probably by some little mishap, with a basket full of red roses and white lilies of the valley. I would have bought some for Mitzi... Suppose I now offered a few to the horn-player...!Was it not perfectly ridiculous to lose my sunny youth walking side by side with an old man, still smarting from what he considered an insult, and smarting all the more as there was some truth in what had been said of him?We were hardly speaking and I could think freely of the happenings of this evening which were in a more or less close connexion with what interested me most.Yes, it was quite true that Doblana was a money grubber. And money was the most important question in all his art ... in all his life, I ought to say. He might, in this respect at least, have been an Englishman, a Londoner, a City man.And suddenly I was struck by a thought.Up to now my idea had been that Mr. Doblana suspected his daughter of some love affair. Had I myself not felt something like mistrust?Yet, why did he not say so? Why, if really he was so interested in questions of money, why did he make such a fuss about a love affair?So I jumped to the conclusion that there was in Mr. Doblana's mind no suspicion of any secret amours. What had upset him was certainly something that had to do with his money glutting.We were now in the Prater. Never before had this immense park appeared so beautiful to me. A bench seemed to invite us with open arms to a short visit. And a bench being in that funny German language a female, we accepted. Artists are incorrigible.As soon as we had sat down Mr. Doblana began lamenting."I am in bad luck," he said, "that quarrel this evening ought never to have happened. Somehow I feel that I am surrounded by enemies. There must be a wholegang of them. I have been lured into this discussion, and now I have the whole clique of the Germans against me. You have no idea, Mr. Cooper, what intrigues exist in the theatrical world. They are all jealous because I happen to make a little money out of my ballets. They undermine my whole existence. And I have not only a great many members of the theatrical and musical world against me, but also most of the Court circles. The majority of the Court do not like to see the Archduke Alphons Hector writing ballet books for me. They think he abases himself. They do not know that art never degrades. Of course, he can bear it easily. But I! All my existence depends on it.""Can I not help you?" said I, thinking that there had at last arisen an occasion of capturing that confidence which for weeks I had been striving to win.He remained silent. I have told you already that I had little experience of women. But I must confess that at this moment I noticed that I had still less experience of men. I felt sure that, if I had been with a nice girl—I wish he had been anice girl instead of a morose, old man—I should have known what to say. Indeed, there are not many words necessary. But I could not profit by the moon, nor by that mild night of May, I could not possibly put my arm around his waist and press him to my manly breast....After a long while I said at last:"Can you not trust me, Mr. Doblana?""Trust you? Trust you?" he replied. "I cannot even trust my own daughter, who works with that gang against me! And I should trust you, a stranger? No, no, Mr. Cooper."And laughing bitterly he suggested:"Come, let us go home."We got up and went. I had learned nothing. I was as ignorant as before. But....You will see in the course of this story that you never can confide in females. And a bench is a female in German. This one was as treacherous as all of them. It had made me catch a cold. Or rather ... the cold had caught me.

I have already had an opportunity of telling you that I had been brought up chiefly on detective stories. I therefore thought that there would be but little difficulty in solving the case of Miss Doblana. In a nutshell this case was as follows: She was sure that nobody had called, while her father seemed certain to the contrary. How did he know it? He did not say. The mysterious visitor had left no card, otherwise either Mitzi or Fanny would have found it when they arrived, which was some time before Mr. Doblana's return. Besides, a card generally bears a name, and the horn-player's question to his daughter had been: "Who called upon you during my absence?" which proved that he only knew, or thought he knew, that somebody had called, but did not know who the somebody was.

We rang for Fanny. Had Mr. Doblanaasked her anything in connexion with the affair?

"Yes," she said, "on the Monday morning he asked me who had called during his absence, and I said: 'Nobody.'"

Thereupon Miss Doblana wanted to know, why Fanny had not said the truth, namely, that she did not know.

"He was very cross," answered the girl, "and I thought that perhaps somebody did call, and thatFräuleindid not wish Mr. Doblana to know."

"You have a good opinion of me, Fanny. However, what did he do when you said that nobody had called?"

"He did not do anything. He swore. He said that I was in the plot, and that we were both deceiving him."

"In the circumstances you could have told him that you were absent all the time."

"And what would have been the good of it? He would have thought thatFräuleinhad removed me intentionally."

I recognized that Fanny had quite a lot of common sense. So did Mitzi, for an extraordinary thing took place: She asked Fanny for advice.—Think of a young Englishlady asking for the advice of a general, or even of a between-maid.

Fanny declared that above allFräuleinmust recover her freedom.

"But how?" cried Mitzi and Iunisono.

Fanny looked at us and seemed to pity us for the evident helplessness of our brains.

"The young gentleman" (that was I), "will go in an hour's time to the opera. The rehearsal will be over, he will by chance meet Mr. Doblana leaving the theatre, and they will walk home together. In the meantimeFräuleinwill have dressed and will go out, and she will, by chance, too, meet the two gentlemen in the street."

"But," interfered Mitzi, "he will make a fearful row!"

"In the street?" said Fanny. "No fear. An Imperial and Royal Member of the Court Chapel will make no row in the street. He will present you to each other, and the young gentleman" (that was, of course, again I), "will enquire intoFräulein'shealth, andFräuleinwill answer that she is now quite well, and she will never more be locked up."

What a shame that such brains arewasted on servant girls! And the Editor of theEvening Newswhen he reads this page will say: What luck that a certain Government did not know that Fanny! A special department would have been created for her: she would be appointed President of the Board of Intelligence.

Up to this day I wonder how she knew all about Mitzi's journey to Salzburg and about the Giulay wire. Her young mistress when talking to her had given her no details, yet she knew. She knew and even thought it desirable thatFräuleinshould communicate with Mr. Giulay, call upon him and ask him about that telegram.

"I know," she added, "that it is a month since he last left Vienna, even for half-a-day."

"How did you learn this?" asked Mitzi.

"But," said Fanny with just a flavour of contempt, "I wanted to know. So I made friends with his mother's cook."

I was overwhelmed. Fanny was revealing herself as a really superior being. You may therefore believe me that it was almost with reverence that I received her instructions.

"The young gentleman," she said, "will do well in getting on familiar terms with Mr. Doblana, for we must know what prevents him from being more explicit. If the young gentleman could win his confidence, we might learn what happened in that hour between his return home and his declaration toFräuleinthat somebody must have visited her. Something must have led him to that wrong conclusion. And the young gentleman could find out not only what it was, but also why Mr. Doblana is so vague."

"And how am I to win his confidence?"

Fanny scratched herself. For the first time she appeared a little perplexed. But the scratching soon helped.

"I know a way," she declared, "but it will be terrible. The young gentleman must learn to play the horn."

Statesmen are merciless.

Now, if you are a reader of theEvening Newsyou know that Statesmen have often ideas of a dazzling appearance, but which, all things considered, prove rather unsubstantial. They work all right, yet the results are slight. They seem very clever ideas, but somehow they do not reach themain point of the question. I am sorry to state that Fanny in this respect as in other ways was worthy of her fellow statesmen and that, brilliant as was the appearance of her bits of advice, and workable as they were, they led to no definite result. And so the reader need not fear that the solution of the case of Miss Doblana will be reached before the last chapters.

Yet, the outer reconciliation between the horny father and his daughter took place that same day in exactly the same form as Fanny had foreseen it, and Mitzi recovered her liberty. Henceforth she had again the freedom of her movements, and I the pleasure of seeing her unconstrainedly. But that did not bring her one step nearer to the knowledge of what her father was reproaching her with. His was an obstinate silence. She asked him why he suspected her of having received any visitor during his absence, and he answered sternly:

"You know, and you had better tell me who it was."

And that was all.

The next day she went to see Giulay; but she came home greatly disappointed. Heswore on his oath that he had not sent the Salzburg telegram, that he had not left Vienna, and that there had been no splendid opportunity whatever which could have induced him to send that wire.

"Either Giulay lies," explained I to Mitzi, when she had finished telling me this story, "or this wire is the keystone of the whole mystery."

"I am sure," was her answer, "that Giulay not only speaks the truth, but also that he is incapable of telling any lies."

Holy Moses! An agent, especially a theatrical one, was here considered trustworthy. Well, perhaps my doubt was unjust—perhaps we had only arrived at that chapter which is commonly entitled: "The Mystery thickens," and without which no detective story would sell.

"If Giulay speaks the truth," I went on, "then it is obvious that somebody else sent that wire, somebody who was well acquainted with the fact that this particular wire would make you undertake the journey to Salzburg. Who can this person be? What can his aim have been? Why especially to Salzburg?"

"Do you mean to say that it was my cousin Augusta who sent it?"

"The suggestion is yours."

"It is impossible. Firstly, had she had something particular to tell me, I would have come quite as well if she had called me signing the wire by her own name instead of by Giulay's. And secondly, even in case of her fearing that my father would have objected to my journey to her, and if she had wanted to hide from him the reason of my travelling to Salzburg, she would have been at the station to meet me on my arrival, instead of letting me wait there for a couple of hours, and would have informed me of the truth. But she was genuinely surprised when she saw me, and, pleased as she was to pass a few hours with me, there was not the slightest reason why she should have called me to Salzburg."

I did not dare to tell her that to judge from Mr. Doblana's behaviour something serious must have happened, and that in my opinion Augusta von Heidenbrunn was not free from suspicion. People sometimes think very badly of their friends, yet they do not allow others to express these thoughts. So I kept silent on the point.

Sagacious Fanny was again consulted.

"Fräuleinought to write to theHerrLieutenant" (that was Franz von Heidenbrunn's rank). "Men can do more than women in such cases. And ask him to find out who sent that wire. Then we shall know all."

Once more the advice seemed good, and Mitzi followed it. The Lieutenant's answer came by return; he would try, and he felt pretty sure that he would succeed. After a week or so, however, there came another letter saying that he had failed. He had found the telegraph office from which the telegram had been dispatched, but the name of the sender was unknown, and the official to whom it had been handed was unable even to remember whether the sender had been a man or a woman. So we were no wiser than before.

In the meantime I had followed Fanny's third suggestion, namely, to make friends with my host by taking lessons.

M'yes!

What the people who lived underneath and above us must have thought of my first trials on the horn I do not know, nor have I any wish to know it. I dare say my trialswere a trial to them.

There is a little tune which every Englishman knows, for it serves to call dogs with, when they are on tour in the streets. That tune is the theme which young Siegfried carols rejoicing in the forest; at least, he is supposed to do it; in reality it is the first horn-player placed in the wings of the theatre. The horn there illustrates rapturous vital power. You ought to have heard me and my vital power—or no! no! You are a kind person, you have bought this book, or at least, you have borrowed it from your Circulating Library, anyhow, you are reading it; you are a friend, and there is no reason for my wishing you evil, not even retrospectively. Nobody can in the least imagine what I achieved on the horn. At first I could not utter a sound at all, but then, when I succeeded!... How the dogs of Belsize Park would have been jealous had they heard my barking. And I carolled, not as if I had been young Siegfried, but a young dragon, nay! an old one!

That second-hand genius of modern German music (second-hand down to his very name, for the first owner of it was the greatJohann Strauss), well, Richard Strauss once said that if he had been Bizet (which, Heaven be thanked he was not), one would have heard in the last act ofCarmenthe bellowing of the bull counterpointed against the celebrated duo between Carmen and Don José. I do not know whether he ever wrote that part for the bull—but with my real talent I was able after three lessons to play it. I am sorry that Richard did not hear me, it was delightfully terrible.

There are strange coincidences. As I sit there, sucking my pencil (my Turkish fountain pen having disappeared) and remembering my first attempts at playing the horn and, later, at writing for it, something strikes my ear. A father (at least a decent one) always recognizes his children, and if I was no great composer, I may at least say that I was a decent one. What I hear is music, played by a military band. And what do they play? What, if it is not my own paraphrase on the "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu"? Yes, there is a military band somewhere in the rear, and what the hornsattack is the theme of "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu" set as Doblana had told me to do it.

You ask me, ignorant reader, what that "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu" is. The oldest military march ever composed in these foggy islands of Great Britain, at a time when—at a time—well, earlier than that. It is a Scotch tune, fierce and proud, the right thing to be thought of in our fierce and proud time. I scored an arrangement of it as an entr'acte when I was writing my operaLady Macbeth. But I must not anticipate. How I came to writeLady Macbeth(notMacbeth, as you will notice, butLady Macbeth) that I will tell in due time.

For the present I listen and remember. That Scotch march, that weird melody, calls back to my memory all the days of Vienna, all the story which I am busy writing.

And while they play, I hum the words Sir Walter Scott wrote of the old tune:

Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu,Pibroch o' Donuil,Wake thy wild voice anew,Summon clan Conuil.Come away, come away,Hark to the summons,Come in your war array.Gentles and commons!

Come from deep glen and from mountain so rocky,Warpipe and pennon are at Inverlochy.Come ev'ry hill-plaid and true heart that wears one,Come ev'ry steel blade and strong hand that bears one.

Leave untended the herdAnd the flock without shelter,The corpse uninterr'dAnd the bride at the altar.Leave the deer, leave the steer.Leave nets and barges,Come in your fighting gear,Broad swords and targes.

Come as the winds come, when forests are rended,Come as the waves come, when navies are stranded.Faster come, faster come, faster and faster,Chief, vassal, page and groom, tenant and master!

Fast they come, fast they come,See how they gather,Wide wave the eagle plumesBlended with heather.Cast your plaids, draw your blades,Forward each man set,Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu,Knell for the onset!

I wonder. How does it happen that they are playing my march here? I do not even remember whether I left the score in Vienna or took it with me.

Now they play other music, the overture ofPoet and Peasant, of course, and the waltz from theMerry Widowand other things—allViennese, my God!—as if to make it still harder to me, to think that these days of Vienna, these beautiful days of mirth and sorrow, should be gone for ever, for ever!—And then, then they play the "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu" once more, and then nothing else. Nothing. I dream, I wonder, and an hour passes.

"Post!"

This cry would awaken a dormouse. There are but three things at the front. Long stretches of boredom, short ones of fright, and post.

Two of the letters are for me, and the first one is from Dad. Just now I had been wondering at that strange performance of the "Pibroch o' Donuil Dhu." Here is the solution of the riddle.

"My lad,

"I quite understand that composing is an impossibility when one is in the firing line, and I regret having worried you. I therefore do not send you the music paper. But I have forwarded a few days ago the parts of your Scottish march to yourregimental bandmaster. You see, I want one of your marches to be played when you are going on towards victory. And as you can't compose another one, it may as well be the "Pibroch." Before I sent the parts I had the music played to me. It was only a band of the Salvation Army, I could not get hold of anything else. We went there to hear it, your mother and I and Bean, who was just staying in London. My word, it was beautiful, and it reminded me of the olden days. If only I could once more hear the whole opera. Mother looked very proud and dignified, Bean wept, but wept like a fountain, and I ... well, I had it performed three times. I gave the bandmaster a cheque for ten guineas. At first he did not want to accept it; he said it had been a pleasure to play such beautiful music, and apologized for the two little mistakes that had been made..."

(Happy man! He had heard only two!)

"... And then he pocketed the cheque all the same. Mother sends you hearty kisses. So do I.

"Daniel Cooper."

Dad! Good Dad! There isn't a Dad like you in all the world.

The other letter is from Bean. It is quite short.

"Dear Pat" (it runs), "I have just heard your beautiful music. I am quite overcome. With such sounds striking our soldiers' ears, how can they march to anything else than Victory? I feel that I must do something, too. My heart drives me forth.

"The girl you left behind you,

"Bean."

And Bean, there isn't a Bean like you in all the world, either.

I have lost a whole day, remembering and musing. This would have been rather bad if this book were written to an order from a publisher. For one reason or another publishers are always in a hurry. But then they belong to the higher orders of animals. A simpleTommyius subterraneushas plenty of time.

Yet perhaps you have not. Therefore I hasten to return to the nice sounds I used to extract out of an unhappy horn. It is intentionally that I used the word "extract," which will remind you of a toothache. So did my blowing the horn. It was pitiful, yet heroic. For, in truth, I had no wish to make a living out of these horny studies. It was all for the sake of the charming Mitzi. Had I but been in possession of her fleshy lips!

I notice that this last sentence has a double sense. On the one hand it means that I have thin lips and therefore enjoyed great difficulties in producing any sounds on the horn. But on the other hand that sentence also informs you of my ardent desire to call Mitzi' s red lips my own. I had fallen in love with her from the first day, from the very moment when in the railway carriage I had been attracted by the handsome contours of ... of ... of the reverse of the medal. I had now arrived at that state when the very name Mitzi would strike my brain with a glowing emotion, when I liked to forget all other things and to occupy myself solely with her, remembering theevenness of the outline of her figure, her feminine daintiness, her slim, narrow feet. Yet, I had no experience of women, my feelings were intense, but my thoughts were vague, my love was a formless abstraction, and Mitzi a perceptible fact. In truth, I did not know that I was in love, and some time had to pass before I realized it.

In the meantime I used my breath in blowing the horn. Nevertheless I did not gain Mr. Doblana's confidence. His intercourse with his daughter seemed to be restricted to the utmost necessary, and I was unable to find out with what offence he was reproaching her. Still, if I did not learn his secret—for it was evidently a secret—I had occasion to study his character.

After about a dozen lessons he allowed that I was hopeless as a horn-player. He strongly advised me to give it up. But having once tasted my money (or, to render unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's, the money of Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., Insurance Brokers, London, E.C.), and having found it savoury and palatable, he decided on having another helping of it.

"Mr. Cooper," he said—he alwayspronounced my name with a hyphen between the two o's, associating it probably by some mysterious etymology with the origin of Cooperative societies—"Mr. Cooper, you have talent only as a composer; but I am afraid that you will profit very little by the lessons you take with Hammer. He is a genius and, poor devil, I do not grudge him the little money you will let him earn; however, I venture to say that you would benefit more by studying with a more practical man like me. Of course, it could not be the same figure..."

Now, as he did not know what I was paying Hammer, these last words could only refer to his own lessons, the famous attempts at teaching me the horn, and this was already twice the cost of Hammer's lessons. But it was true that I improved little with the organist's loose and obscure explanations which, indeed, were more fascinating than serviceable; and I was only too glad to be relieved from the torture I inflicted upon myself and the neighbourhood. Besides, had I not the duty, as it were, of cultivating my friendship with Mr. Doblana?

So I accepted, and had Viennese lessonsin the noble art of composition, from a Czech, at London terms. Nor had I to regret my decision, for Mr. Doblana proved a most invaluable teacher. I have already stated that I owe to him all I know, little as it may be.

I was not only his pupil, but his apprentice, which is the best, the surest way of learning, for it necessitates a continuous connexion between the master and the disciple.

Mr. Doblana was now composing a new ballet calledAladdin, and many pages of this work were scored out by me from his sketches.

Now, if the reader will be good enough to peruse again the fourth chapter of this book, he will find that Mitzi had informed me that her father was working on a ballet calledGriseldis, the book of words of which—if I may use the euphemism "book of words"—had been provided by the Archduke Alphons Hector, or theHerr Graf, whichever name you may prefer for this exalted person. The book ofAladdin, too, was signed Joseph Dorff, the Archduke's nom de plume.

As I was training myself not only as a composer but also as a detective, I thought that this inconsistency might have its importance, and I submitted it to the joint council of Mitzi and Fanny. Mitzi only abandoned herself to grief. In former days she would have known all about it, while now her father treated her with such indifference! But Fanny declared the incident of no importance: The first ballet "FatherMorgana" had also had another name at the beginning.

"Yes," said Mitzi, "it was at first calledDaphnis and Chloe."

"How is that possible?" asked I. "The two subjects seem absolutely different—as different asGriseldisandAladdin."

"Oh!" declared Mitzi lightly, "that does not matter with ballet. The same music can always serve for the most dissimilar objects. When father alteredDaphnis and ChloeintoFata Morganahe said he had only to add some fifths to the bass, and some strange drums and tambourins in order to change his music from occidental to oriental."

This seemed to me very deep andprobably true. So the incident was dismissed. Yet I had never been nearer a clue! I ought at least to have noticed that Mr. Doblana was not merely adapting a musical dress from its occidental fashion to an oriental one, but that, musically speaking, he was making up hisballetis personæin real old carpets from Baghdad or some other such place.

One evening—he and I used to pass his free evenings together—we went to a tavern called the "Tobacco Pipe," one of those places which a London innkeeper would not fail to denominate "Ye olde...." The whole of the Round Table used to meet there once a month in a nice smoky back-room. It was a large room, which from its dimensions seemed lower than it really was. It was panelled in old dark oak, and on the ceiling heavy black joists were visible. The tables, which no table-cloth adorned, were made of old oak, as were the chairs and the rest of the furniture. Old fashioned oil lamps fixed on the joists succeeded in giving the whole locality a kind of pleasant homeliness, although these oil lamps were lit by electricity. I was told that this room was severalhundred years old, and that the new modern house had been built around it. That room was in great demand by all sorts of societies, and it was not possible for it to be hired by one body oftener than for one evening a month, because decisions in any trade or profession had to be taken at "The Tobacco Pipe" if fashion was to be satisfied.

That day the programme of the Round Table was to find some means of defence against the growing invasion of amateurs in the theatrical and especially the musical profession. All the people I knew were there and, of course, many more.

Poor Hammer, who was the senior of the company, made the first speech. He began all right, talking of art for art's sake, but soon lost the subject and, before anybody knew how it had happened, was explaining the fundamental difference between mediæval and modern counterpoint. By unanimous consent he was deprived of the power of going on with his speech, and, greatly astonished, sat down.

TheHerr Grafsaid, that being himself a sort of an amateur he was defending their cause. He quite understood that hopelesscases should be prevented from producing their work in public, but such rule could not be applied to all. Had not Wagner been called an amateur? The only way out was the creation of a special tribunal for such disputes.

An elderly gentleman who stammered told the assembly that if Wagner had been suppressed it would not have been a shame. He was hissed into silence, and Mr. Bischoff declared that such words were Anti-German, that to attack Wagnerism was to attack Germanism, that Wagner's object had been the freeing of opera from its traditional and conventional Franco-Italian forms, and his one law: dramatic fitness.

Thereupon another speaker arose. He was a medical man by profession, and his name was Doctor Bernheim. He declared that the subject of Germanism was quite out of place, and that the right way of tackling the question had been indicated by Mr. Hammer.

Immediately the old man got up, bowed in an awkward way and offered his snuff box to the Doctor, who went on: Certainly, there were two different classes of artists. Therewas art for art's sake, music which had only that one aim of being beautiful, and in this he included art for technique's sake. The other class was art for the expression of an idea, in his opinion the higher form of art, though he admitted that his opinion mattered very little. Only these two classes of artists counted at all, and it was the public's, not the artist's, duty to decide who could be ranged in the one or the other category, and who was not to be counted in either of them. The struggle against amateurs had to be fought not by the institution of a tribunal, but by the production of work either so skilled or so highly inspired that no amateur could compete.

Doctor Bernheim seemed to have won the day when Mr. Doblana chose to take part in the discussion. In his opinion the Doctor had made a mistake by including art for technique's sake into art for art's sake. Technique could be taught, and learning alone had nothing common with art. He, Doblana, knew composers for the brain and composers for the heart; only the latter were artists by the grace of God, the only ones he admitted. The public could not decide whodeserved this qualification. But the one fact, that a composer was capable of inventing new melodies, real melodies, would entitle him to being called an artist.

I did not like Doblana's view of the question, yet I would have given anything to spare him the answer.

It was Giulay, of all people, Maurus Giulay, who stood up and attacked the horn-player.

"Everybody," he said, "knows that Mr. Doblana is a good business man. In fact, there is no other musician of such money grubbing habits in the whole town of Vienna. He knows that tunes, little tunes, pay. There is but one excuse for Mr. Doblana's petty point of view: his nationality. He is a Czech, and as such devoid from all sorts of ideals. It is not his fault if he misunderstands the whole question. It is his nationality's!"

Doblana had become quite pale.

"What doyouknow of the question, you Magyar!" he shouted.

Instantly there was a terrific outburst of the whole company. Nobody would have suspected it a minute before. Nearly all themembers of the Round Table turned against Doblana, who was supported only by two other Czechs, three or four Italians, and one German: old Hammer. As for theHerr Graf, when I looked for him to see how he was behaving with his partner, I found that he had disappeared.

One cannot well imagine how fierce the outburst was. My calm English brain could not understand at all this wild talk, these furious shouts. I was shocked, I must confess, and I felt a little silly. Evidently there was no more possibility of reaching a decision this evening. So with much talk I induced Doblana to leave with me.

As it was not very late, I suggested a stroll which would appease my agitated host.

The evening was one of those of which we never see an example in our foggy island, an exquisite spring evening, rapturous and passionately wonderful. You know the evil smell which fills most big towns just at that time of the year. Vienna is not so. There is a gust of perfume which gives spring its true significance.

As we were walking down first the Boulevard, or Ring, as it is called in Vienna,and then, after having crossed the river, the wide road which leads to the Prater, I imagined what happiness would be mine if a certain fair girl was moving by my side instead of her surly father. On the bridge there stood a lovely flower girl, delayed probably by some little mishap, with a basket full of red roses and white lilies of the valley. I would have bought some for Mitzi... Suppose I now offered a few to the horn-player...!

Was it not perfectly ridiculous to lose my sunny youth walking side by side with an old man, still smarting from what he considered an insult, and smarting all the more as there was some truth in what had been said of him?

We were hardly speaking and I could think freely of the happenings of this evening which were in a more or less close connexion with what interested me most.

Yes, it was quite true that Doblana was a money grubber. And money was the most important question in all his art ... in all his life, I ought to say. He might, in this respect at least, have been an Englishman, a Londoner, a City man.

And suddenly I was struck by a thought.

Up to now my idea had been that Mr. Doblana suspected his daughter of some love affair. Had I myself not felt something like mistrust?

Yet, why did he not say so? Why, if really he was so interested in questions of money, why did he make such a fuss about a love affair?

So I jumped to the conclusion that there was in Mr. Doblana's mind no suspicion of any secret amours. What had upset him was certainly something that had to do with his money glutting.

We were now in the Prater. Never before had this immense park appeared so beautiful to me. A bench seemed to invite us with open arms to a short visit. And a bench being in that funny German language a female, we accepted. Artists are incorrigible.

As soon as we had sat down Mr. Doblana began lamenting.

"I am in bad luck," he said, "that quarrel this evening ought never to have happened. Somehow I feel that I am surrounded by enemies. There must be a wholegang of them. I have been lured into this discussion, and now I have the whole clique of the Germans against me. You have no idea, Mr. Cooper, what intrigues exist in the theatrical world. They are all jealous because I happen to make a little money out of my ballets. They undermine my whole existence. And I have not only a great many members of the theatrical and musical world against me, but also most of the Court circles. The majority of the Court do not like to see the Archduke Alphons Hector writing ballet books for me. They think he abases himself. They do not know that art never degrades. Of course, he can bear it easily. But I! All my existence depends on it."

"Can I not help you?" said I, thinking that there had at last arisen an occasion of capturing that confidence which for weeks I had been striving to win.

He remained silent. I have told you already that I had little experience of women. But I must confess that at this moment I noticed that I had still less experience of men. I felt sure that, if I had been with a nice girl—I wish he had been anice girl instead of a morose, old man—I should have known what to say. Indeed, there are not many words necessary. But I could not profit by the moon, nor by that mild night of May, I could not possibly put my arm around his waist and press him to my manly breast....

After a long while I said at last:

"Can you not trust me, Mr. Doblana?"

"Trust you? Trust you?" he replied. "I cannot even trust my own daughter, who works with that gang against me! And I should trust you, a stranger? No, no, Mr. Cooper."

And laughing bitterly he suggested:

"Come, let us go home."

We got up and went. I had learned nothing. I was as ignorant as before. But....

You will see in the course of this story that you never can confide in females. And a bench is a female in German. This one was as treacherous as all of them. It had made me catch a cold. Or rather ... the cold had caught me.

VI.We have had a few days very hard fighting. It was shocking. War may be a necessary occupation, but it is scarcely a respectable one. A gentleman ought to be gentle, above all. When I enlisted I thought there would be much sport. There is very little. I also thought that it would be soothing for my sorrow. But I am still mortified, though you probably do not believe me when I assert it. And I have the feeling that after the war everything will be changed and that there will be quite another world, yet that it will not be any better. Still, I am one sheep in a herd, and I have to do as the other sheep do, namely, follow the lead of our bellwethers, although I am sure that sheep are not born murderers.And least we ought to have waited for Sergeant Young's recovery. He cheers usup. He believes in it. And he fights for something: for his commission. We have felt very lonely without him. Fancy, feeling lonely in a battle.So, having a few days' rest and having been ordered to the rear, a couple of miles or so from the firing line, we decide, three of us, Cotton, Pringle, and I, to call upon Charles Young. Right we were to do so, for he is as stimulating as a pick-me-up."Hallo!" he cries, as soon as he sees us, and his bandage all over the nose gives him an American accent, "that's nice of you two to call.""Two?" asks Cotton astonished, and tries to count the three of us. "I think we are more.""What's the use of thinking?" replies the Sergeant, "thinking is the drawback of all learned men. You are two.""We are three.""In theory perhaps. But your theory fights in vain against facts. I'm as sure that you are two, as I am sure of getting my commission.""How is that?" ask the three of us (for we are three in spite of his denial)."Well, the surgeon who has arranged my nose, a very clever chap by the way, promised me to use his influence with the first general who would be wounded. That can't lastverylong, can it?""I don't want to undeceive you," points out Cotton, "but you had better tell me why we are two and not three. If it's true I will believe in the coming of your commission.""Right!" says Charlie. "Patrick Cooper is one P.C., and Pringle Cotton gives another P.C., therefore the three of you are two P.C.'s. It's as clear as a chemical formula.""There is something in that," answers Guncotton seriously."Otherwise your brain is not affected?" inquires Pringle, full of anxiety."I am not sure," answers the Sergeant, and assumes as mysterious an air as his bandage permits. "I guess," (this in his most American nasal pronounciation), "that there is something the matter with my brain. Tell me, when the other day I tried to be lighter than air and flew up, only to show that I was heavier than air and fell on my nose, how long was I ... Hun-conscious?""Three minutes," says Cotton."Four," I correct."Five," asserts Pringle."Is that all?" asks Charlie pensively. "I should have thought that it was hours from the vision I had. Vision or dream, as you may call it.""Oh!" says Cotton, "that need not disturb you in the least. The great rapidity of dream thought has often been proved, for instance, by an experience of Lord Holland, who fell asleep when listening to his secretary reading to him, had a long dream, and yet awoke in time to hear the end of the very sentence which had lulled him to sleep and of which he remembered the beginning.""To judge from the length of that sentence," observes Pringle, "it must have been a German book the secretary was reading.""In my opinion," goes on Cotton, "the rapidity of dream thought depends on the kind of food one had last, on the amount of its several chemical constituents. Suppose you had some Methyl alcohol, CH3.HO....""Bosh!" interrupts the disrespectful Pringle, and turns to the Sergeant. "Tell us your vision.""Well it was thus:"We were at a certain place, which had a certain name, which for fear of the Censor I cannot call by its real denomination, but which our boys called Mince from the amount of Germans which for many days had been chopped there into mince-meat. And remember, our men had done it this time without the help of St. George and his Agincourt Bowmen. There were thousands of dead Germans lying in front of our lines, and the enemy sent up still more men and still more guns; but the men were shattered by us and the guns battered into scrap iron."At last, when evening came, the thunder calmed down. If we had wanted we could have broken through, but we had no orders to advance. I suppose that our General wanted Mince to become more worthy still of its title."Now, you remember how the Angels of Mons had knocked over ever so many Germans. In Germany, a country ruled by scientific principles, they thought at first that we had employed an unknown gas of poisonous nature. But theEvening News, and in particular Mr. ArthurMachen, gave the secret away. And then the Germans knew all about it."Well, to come back to that dreadful day of Mince; night had fallen and I was dozing, when I saw suddenly two men in a red uniform, with black tippets and with a red feather on their red cap. The one had a crooked moustache and the other a very high collar."'Father,' said the latter, 'this business does not seem to go exactly as we had calculated. What are we going to do?'"'Little Silly,' answered the one with the crooked moustache, 'I have lost some of my prestige, but I still know what costume to put on and on what occasion. If the English have called to their help the Angels of Mons, we will answer with a new frightfulness. You see our costumes. Understand that we are going to call the Devils of Mince.'"'Somefrightfulness!!' said little Silly acquiescently."'Hither Beelzebub! Hither! Dear devil, quick to our aid!' cried the one with the crooked moustache."At once I heard a great voice:"'Here I am, Monseigneur, Allhighest Superdevil, here I am, Satan!'"And a little man with sharp eyes and a big walking stick, but otherwise dressed like the two others in red and black, appeared. I need not give you a further description, as you may read it in Macaulay's essay on Frederick the Great."The one with the crooked moustache said at once:"'Great Grandfather, I have called you to succour us. Come now and aid us.'"Thereupon Beelzebub-Frederick answered:"'Sonny, thou art the Superdevil, and although I was a greater general than thou ever wilt be, I do not dare to give thee advice, especially as I have none to give.'"The Allhighest Superdevil shrugged his Imperial shoulders and called again:"'Hither, Mephistopheles! Hither! Come and grant us good deliverance.'"And another devil appeared, an insignificant looking one. But he answered:"'Monseigneur, as true as my name on earth was Treitschke, I am good only at writing about frightfulness; but I am not a practical devil.'"Again the Superdevil called:"'Hither, Asmodeus! Hither! Sweet devil, high chevalier, defend us!'"This time there came a very big one, bulky and fat, unable to hide all his baldness under his red feathered cap."'Monseigneur,' he said sweetly, 'I would willingly have concocted a new Ems telegram for you; but when you ascended your Satanic throne your first move was to send me to hell, where I am still dwelling. Bismarck refuses to help you!'"The Allhighest Superdevil called many more—with no result however. Nietzsche's excuse was that he had become mad. Moltke declared that, having been a silent man during all his earthly life, he did not want to talk now that he was living in hell. And thus each of them had an excuse."At last little Silly whispered something in the ear of his Satanic Majesty."'This time you are right, my boy,' replied the one with the crooked moustache, 'receive my Imperial thanks. I will give you a supplementary Iron Cross of real gold, if there is any left. May our old God bless you.'"Then, once more, he cried:"'Well then, sweet devil, Messire, Wicked one, Hostile one, Strong one, thou real Tempter, quick, quick to our aid!'"Deep bells began to ring, and yet another devil appeared. He was very small with a big head and wore a sailor's beard under his chin. He had no red-feathered cap on his head like the other devils, but a soft velvet toque."'You have not treated me as I deserved,' he said solemnly. 'I had made so much fuss about my works that four-fifths of the world mistook me for a real composer. You have made of my sublime music dramas a means of propaganda, of Pan-German propaganda. And you have done worse. You have accepted that rubbish by Richard Strauss as equal to my own immortal work. Some call him Richard the Second, and some Strauss the Second; Second he may be, but never First. And you have abandoned my poor family when you refused to prolong the Copyright of my works, my poor wife who had been so heroically unfaithful to her husband for my sake, my poor son who in spite of my undeniablepaternity has not the slightest musical talent. And further, you have allowed myParsifalto be played everywhere, against my wish, and so revealed to the world its real value. Still, I will help you and show you at once the strength of myParsifaland the real frightfulness, the one, the only one which will frighten the English.'"Four young knights of Hell approached him carrying a glass jar. It was not filled with blood as you may believe, not with the holy blood of the Grail, but with the purest strawberry jam."'Uncover the jam!' said Wagner, acting the last scene ofParsifaland not noticing that the glass jar was not covered. He began to pray; little round rubies seemed to shine in the jam. And all the devils cried:"'Oh marvel! Marvel of the highest frightfulness!'"Then, as inParsifalthe white dove, a black crow this time descended and remained soaring above Wagner's head, who exclaimed triumphantly:"'Hurrah! Hurrah! Monseigneur! Allthe strawberry jam of England is changed into plum jam—plum jam with stones to prove what it is!'"I fainted. Then somebody threw water on my face, and I woke again.""You must have had too much bacon for breakfast," says Cotton, "to judge from the rapidity of your dream. The chemical composition...""Rubbish!" interrupts Pringle, "but you will remember, Sergeant, that we were talking ofParsifaljust before the action began."And I add:"Sergeant, I have every respect for you, but I must say, you have given your Wagner-Devil one of my favourite ideas to talk on, and I put it to you that you have stolen it from me.""Don't use strong language.""All right, Sergeant, but that cackle about Richard II. and Strauss II. is my intellectual copyright."When I was a tiny boy, the mater used to tell me the story of a shepherd who came,with his thousand sheep, to a bridge so narrow that only one sheep at a time could cross the brook which it spanned. "And now, little Pat," she would say, "you must wait until all the thousand sheep have passed, and in the meantime you may go and play with your ball."Now, Mr. Reader, you believe yourself mighty clever because you think: Ha, ha! That's the trick he has employed, and while he told us Charlie Young's dream yarn, he may himself have got rid of his cold. Well, you are mistaken. It is not a trick, and the intermezzo of the preceding pages has its importance. Nor will you be spared to undergo the story of my cold, and the only thing I can do for you is to wish you that it may not prove contagious.It was a bad cold.Now, a cold where you merely weep and sneeze and sniff and blow your nose which by degrees becomes somewhat like a burning Zeppelin—by the way, if you never have seen a burning Zeppelin, I take this opportunity to inform you that it is, of course, like the splendid, brilliant, luminous, glaring nose of one who has such a cold—such a cold maybecalleda bad cold, but itisnot. It is a coryza. It is a cold in the head, an unimportant part of the human body when the point in question is a cold. With such a cold you are only more or less ridiculous.But when you begin coughing and spitting, and when high fever sets in, when you think that you would not like to die yet, especially from pneumonia, and when your Mr. Doblana recognizes with real regret that he must interrupt the lessons and will be unable to charge you for the time lost; when the doctor must be called, and when after a fortnight you begin to recover but still feel weaker than a child, then you have a bad cold, one of these perfidious colds you catch in May.However, if you possess one of those sunny natures such as I pride myself of having, if you know how to find roses among thorns, if you can remember that old Jew who used to say whenever he could: "Gamsoo l'towvo," which means: "This too leads to the best"—you see, being on the classical side I was taught Hebrew in the Special Class and never forgot that sentence—then, m'dear, you will only rememberthat this bad cold was very nice, inasmuch as it brought you nearer to your beloved Mitzi. You will ever recollect that sweet contact which will have made of your nasty illness a time of continuous joy.I felt as if I had only begun to live since I was ill, and I was sure that she also experienced for the first time a great, primitive emotion, and that to her nothing else was worth thinking of. She was taking care of me and seemed made quite glorious by this obligation imposed on her. And yet we did not speak, we were awed, all words seemed futile.The medical man who attended to me was Doctor Bernheim, the same whose acquaintance I had made at the Tobacco Pipe. He was a very intelligent fellow, and we sympathized as much as such a thing is possible between two individuals of thirty years' difference of age. He was a man interested in politics as well as in art, and, what is more remarkable, he was nevertheless a good doctor.One day I told him how thoroughly incomprehensible the quarrel between Doblana and the other members of theRound Table had seemed to me. This was the beginning of a series of conversations, during which Doctor Bernheim first explained me the complicated question of Austrian nationalities, the struggle between the different races.There was, above all, the continual strife for superiority between the Western (Austrian) and the Eastern (Hungarian) half of the Monarchy. Then there were in both parts internal contests, for neither was the population of Austria entirely German, nor that of Hungary entirely Magyar. In both halves of the country a large percentage of Slavs was to be found, among which the rising Czech people, both intellectual and industrial, could not be neglected. Of late years German influence had become observable, and there was now in Austria a distinct Pan-Germanic tendency. A tacit understanding existed between the German and Hungarian population, whose purpose was the suppression of all Czech aspirations.Then there was a Polish question, the Galician Poles demanding to be united with the Russian and German Poles into one Kingdom,—an Italian question, Trieste andGorizia as well as the Trentino wishing to be incorporated into Italy,—a Rumanian, a Ruthenian, a Serbian question.Nor was that all. A violent Anti-Semitic movement had been originated by the clerical party, which was jealous of the ever brisk business capacity of the numerous Jews—of which the Doctor himself was one.In one word, there was everywhere contrariety and quarrelling, dissension and discord.Mitzi, who sometimes was present at our discussions, was very intransigent. She had an inborn hatred for all what was German and Hungarian, although German was her mother tongue. In her heart she was a Czech. Of modern music she loved only Italian, French, and Czech, but she loathed the modern Germans for their utter lack of feeling. On this point as on so many others there was complete agreement between her and me. I had myself observed that the unrivalled reputation of Vienna asthemusical citypar excellencewas upheld above all by Italian and Slav musicians. The Germans, although they made much ado about themselves, played aninferior, if a not altogether, secondary part.I suppose I had a good time. Most people know the course of events, when by degrees an agreement of affections is changed into ... tenderness. So I dare say you can do without my description.But one day something happened. It was quite an insignificant incident, yet it is one which I cannot forget. Simply it was that Mitzi sang to me. It was the fourth or fifth day since I had been allowed to leave my bed. I had never heard her except for a few exercises.Her voice is not a very strong one, but there was never one as warm nor as expressive. It went at once into my heart, as Mitzi herself that day went into my life. What she sang mattered little, short folksongs, I believe, quite simple, yet her voice has that incomparable faculty of changing all what she sings into purest gold, as Midas did to all he touched.Yes, it was rather an insignificant, little incident. Nor was there any revolution in me. No, but an evolution began. Slowly, vaguely, feelings came to me. Feelings, not thoughts. They were all inside my breastand—my word—they did hurt. Mitzi had with her singing struck a chord of gold, which was vibrating in my heart."FräuleinMitzi," said I, for I had not yet learned to call her by her name alone; "if you will help me a little, and encourage me, I will write an opera for you. There is something exceedingly tender and impressive in your voice, something childlike.... I am sure you will inspire me, you will be my Muse."Possibly you imagine that she was flattered, or at least pleased. Nothing of the sort, my dear. She just looked doubtful. She ought to have begun at once with the encouragement business I had suggested. A little phrase as, for instance, "That would be nice!" would not have cost her much. Any English girl would have said it. True, it would not have meant much, either, and she wasn't an English girl. Yet—I owe you some frankness, don't I?—I was somewhat disappointed. If I am not greatly mistaken, she turned up her nose a little when she said:"Are you sure you will be able to write an opera?""For you,FräuleinMitzi, I will be able to do anything!"Indeed, such was my feeling. Yes, her very indifference was encouraging me. Such is man when he is in love. Her apathy made me suffer, and my wretchedness only stimulated me. Sure, I would show her of what I was capable. Her insensibility only augmented my emotion."I don't like your calling my voice childish, and if you compose something for me it will have to be heroic.""I never said that you had a childish voice.""You did.""I did not. I said 'childlike.'""There is no great difference."Thus our quarrelling began. And I may well say that the same hour which saw the birth of my love also germinated the origin of its end.Ladies have many uses for their tongue. Amongst other things, they sting with it. And therefore we love them.However, important as this may be, surely it does not interest you, to whom my philosophy is of no use. So I return to my story.I went to Mr. Bischoff as soon as my health was a little restored. I wanted to write a music drama onMacbethas he had suggested. Should he not be willing to write a libretto on the basis of those wonderful ideas he had exposed to me? I was sure that I would succeed in making with his aid a real masterpiece.If you consider with what an important personality I had chosen to deal, you will not be surprised when hearing that it was not "on the basis of those wonderful ideas he had exposed to me" that Mr. Bischoff agreed to write the said libretto. He wanted the basis to be more ... substantial. I need therefore hardly tell you what the next step was. And, still considering that Mr. Bischoff was the first Viennese actor, and had refused offers for mere translations from a London firm at ten shillings a thousand words, you will easily imagine which figure I asked Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., to put on his next cheque. But I tore my letter immediately into pieces and wrote another, asking for £50 more, I could as well bleed my poor dad of £300 as of £250, couldn't I? And the supplement would enable me to show myintense gratitude to my charming nurse, and even to show it more than once.I deeply regret to announce that Miss Doblana exhibited a much greater satisfaction when I offered her a beautiful fan of white ostrich feathers than when I had opened to her the perspective of my opera. She was really winsome as she thanked me, oh! so winsome. Yet, to-day, after years, I think that it was very foolish of me to make her such a gift. Most men will share this opinion, although most girls will judge it otherwise. As for Mitzi, I fear that she foresaw more gifts and decided there and then to take my opera into the bargain.Anyhow, that fan was bought (but not paid for) and offered to the lady of my heart before the cheque arrived from London. And then something very awkward occurred. Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., sent me a cheque for £300, not payable to me but to Mr. Bischoff. I am sure this mischievous move was caused by mother. For while father's letter was nice and gentle as ever, and while he stated being sure that with such a librettist I would achieve something remarkable, mother wrote that in her idea it wasnonsense to attempt an opera before having well learned how to write one; and there was something between the lines that read as if she was smelling a rat.Now, what was I going to do with my cheque for £300? I could not well go to Mr. Bischoff and ask him for change, for if I knew little of women and even less of men, I knew already a lot of the third sex, viz.: the artists. There was no probability of his being able to give me change for £50, and, candidly, I did not trust any artist sufficiently, especially not Mr. Bischoff whom I scarcely knew, to let him have the cheque as it was, and wait for the £50 change until he had cleared it. I felt like a schoolboy, comfortless and wretched, and as usual: silly.For three days I went about absolutely miserable with my big cheque in my pocket. My state of mind could not escape Mr. Hammer who, finding a few bad mistakes in a fugue of mine, declared that this and the rest of my behaviour proved clearly that I was in love, an accident that had befallen him in former years every six weeks, so that he had a sufficient experience to pass judgmenton other people. Now, if even Hammer saw my uneasiness, you will understand that it was soon noticed by Mr. Doblana who, although a musician too, was far more a human being. He inquired. He insisted. For one of the results of being so human was a certain degree of curiosity."It must have something to do with your opera," he asserted at last. "How far have you got with it?""Oh!" said I, "I have not begun yet.""Then," cried he, "why do you make such a face as if you had lost your score?"I am sure that, when I heard this question, I looked at him in the most idiotic fashion you may imagine. And I must have looked at him for a long time, say, twenty seconds, which is much longer than most people think. Two ideas had flashed up through my brain, (or whatever you may call it).The second—which was probably the result of the excitement caused by the first one—the second was to return the £300 cheque to my father, and to ask him for several smaller cheques which I could hand Mr. Bischoff in proportion to the work done,a proceeding which certainly would please the mater, for it proved me to be an earnest chap.Yes. And the first idea?I simply discovered the mystery which Mr. Doblana was hiding:He had lost the score of his balletGriseldis, which he had been composing beforeAladdin.

We have had a few days very hard fighting. It was shocking. War may be a necessary occupation, but it is scarcely a respectable one. A gentleman ought to be gentle, above all. When I enlisted I thought there would be much sport. There is very little. I also thought that it would be soothing for my sorrow. But I am still mortified, though you probably do not believe me when I assert it. And I have the feeling that after the war everything will be changed and that there will be quite another world, yet that it will not be any better. Still, I am one sheep in a herd, and I have to do as the other sheep do, namely, follow the lead of our bellwethers, although I am sure that sheep are not born murderers.

And least we ought to have waited for Sergeant Young's recovery. He cheers usup. He believes in it. And he fights for something: for his commission. We have felt very lonely without him. Fancy, feeling lonely in a battle.

So, having a few days' rest and having been ordered to the rear, a couple of miles or so from the firing line, we decide, three of us, Cotton, Pringle, and I, to call upon Charles Young. Right we were to do so, for he is as stimulating as a pick-me-up.

"Hallo!" he cries, as soon as he sees us, and his bandage all over the nose gives him an American accent, "that's nice of you two to call."

"Two?" asks Cotton astonished, and tries to count the three of us. "I think we are more."

"What's the use of thinking?" replies the Sergeant, "thinking is the drawback of all learned men. You are two."

"We are three."

"In theory perhaps. But your theory fights in vain against facts. I'm as sure that you are two, as I am sure of getting my commission."

"How is that?" ask the three of us (for we are three in spite of his denial).

"Well, the surgeon who has arranged my nose, a very clever chap by the way, promised me to use his influence with the first general who would be wounded. That can't lastverylong, can it?"

"I don't want to undeceive you," points out Cotton, "but you had better tell me why we are two and not three. If it's true I will believe in the coming of your commission."

"Right!" says Charlie. "Patrick Cooper is one P.C., and Pringle Cotton gives another P.C., therefore the three of you are two P.C.'s. It's as clear as a chemical formula."

"There is something in that," answers Guncotton seriously.

"Otherwise your brain is not affected?" inquires Pringle, full of anxiety.

"I am not sure," answers the Sergeant, and assumes as mysterious an air as his bandage permits. "I guess," (this in his most American nasal pronounciation), "that there is something the matter with my brain. Tell me, when the other day I tried to be lighter than air and flew up, only to show that I was heavier than air and fell on my nose, how long was I ... Hun-conscious?"

"Three minutes," says Cotton.

"Four," I correct.

"Five," asserts Pringle.

"Is that all?" asks Charlie pensively. "I should have thought that it was hours from the vision I had. Vision or dream, as you may call it."

"Oh!" says Cotton, "that need not disturb you in the least. The great rapidity of dream thought has often been proved, for instance, by an experience of Lord Holland, who fell asleep when listening to his secretary reading to him, had a long dream, and yet awoke in time to hear the end of the very sentence which had lulled him to sleep and of which he remembered the beginning."

"To judge from the length of that sentence," observes Pringle, "it must have been a German book the secretary was reading."

"In my opinion," goes on Cotton, "the rapidity of dream thought depends on the kind of food one had last, on the amount of its several chemical constituents. Suppose you had some Methyl alcohol, CH3.HO...."

"Bosh!" interrupts the disrespectful Pringle, and turns to the Sergeant. "Tell us your vision."

"Well it was thus:

"We were at a certain place, which had a certain name, which for fear of the Censor I cannot call by its real denomination, but which our boys called Mince from the amount of Germans which for many days had been chopped there into mince-meat. And remember, our men had done it this time without the help of St. George and his Agincourt Bowmen. There were thousands of dead Germans lying in front of our lines, and the enemy sent up still more men and still more guns; but the men were shattered by us and the guns battered into scrap iron.

"At last, when evening came, the thunder calmed down. If we had wanted we could have broken through, but we had no orders to advance. I suppose that our General wanted Mince to become more worthy still of its title.

"Now, you remember how the Angels of Mons had knocked over ever so many Germans. In Germany, a country ruled by scientific principles, they thought at first that we had employed an unknown gas of poisonous nature. But theEvening News, and in particular Mr. ArthurMachen, gave the secret away. And then the Germans knew all about it.

"Well, to come back to that dreadful day of Mince; night had fallen and I was dozing, when I saw suddenly two men in a red uniform, with black tippets and with a red feather on their red cap. The one had a crooked moustache and the other a very high collar.

"'Father,' said the latter, 'this business does not seem to go exactly as we had calculated. What are we going to do?'

"'Little Silly,' answered the one with the crooked moustache, 'I have lost some of my prestige, but I still know what costume to put on and on what occasion. If the English have called to their help the Angels of Mons, we will answer with a new frightfulness. You see our costumes. Understand that we are going to call the Devils of Mince.'

"'Somefrightfulness!!' said little Silly acquiescently.

"'Hither Beelzebub! Hither! Dear devil, quick to our aid!' cried the one with the crooked moustache.

"At once I heard a great voice:

"'Here I am, Monseigneur, Allhighest Superdevil, here I am, Satan!'

"And a little man with sharp eyes and a big walking stick, but otherwise dressed like the two others in red and black, appeared. I need not give you a further description, as you may read it in Macaulay's essay on Frederick the Great.

"The one with the crooked moustache said at once:

"'Great Grandfather, I have called you to succour us. Come now and aid us.'

"Thereupon Beelzebub-Frederick answered:

"'Sonny, thou art the Superdevil, and although I was a greater general than thou ever wilt be, I do not dare to give thee advice, especially as I have none to give.'

"The Allhighest Superdevil shrugged his Imperial shoulders and called again:

"'Hither, Mephistopheles! Hither! Come and grant us good deliverance.'

"And another devil appeared, an insignificant looking one. But he answered:

"'Monseigneur, as true as my name on earth was Treitschke, I am good only at writing about frightfulness; but I am not a practical devil.'

"Again the Superdevil called:

"'Hither, Asmodeus! Hither! Sweet devil, high chevalier, defend us!'

"This time there came a very big one, bulky and fat, unable to hide all his baldness under his red feathered cap.

"'Monseigneur,' he said sweetly, 'I would willingly have concocted a new Ems telegram for you; but when you ascended your Satanic throne your first move was to send me to hell, where I am still dwelling. Bismarck refuses to help you!'

"The Allhighest Superdevil called many more—with no result however. Nietzsche's excuse was that he had become mad. Moltke declared that, having been a silent man during all his earthly life, he did not want to talk now that he was living in hell. And thus each of them had an excuse.

"At last little Silly whispered something in the ear of his Satanic Majesty.

"'This time you are right, my boy,' replied the one with the crooked moustache, 'receive my Imperial thanks. I will give you a supplementary Iron Cross of real gold, if there is any left. May our old God bless you.'

"Then, once more, he cried:

"'Well then, sweet devil, Messire, Wicked one, Hostile one, Strong one, thou real Tempter, quick, quick to our aid!'

"Deep bells began to ring, and yet another devil appeared. He was very small with a big head and wore a sailor's beard under his chin. He had no red-feathered cap on his head like the other devils, but a soft velvet toque.

"'You have not treated me as I deserved,' he said solemnly. 'I had made so much fuss about my works that four-fifths of the world mistook me for a real composer. You have made of my sublime music dramas a means of propaganda, of Pan-German propaganda. And you have done worse. You have accepted that rubbish by Richard Strauss as equal to my own immortal work. Some call him Richard the Second, and some Strauss the Second; Second he may be, but never First. And you have abandoned my poor family when you refused to prolong the Copyright of my works, my poor wife who had been so heroically unfaithful to her husband for my sake, my poor son who in spite of my undeniablepaternity has not the slightest musical talent. And further, you have allowed myParsifalto be played everywhere, against my wish, and so revealed to the world its real value. Still, I will help you and show you at once the strength of myParsifaland the real frightfulness, the one, the only one which will frighten the English.'

"Four young knights of Hell approached him carrying a glass jar. It was not filled with blood as you may believe, not with the holy blood of the Grail, but with the purest strawberry jam.

"'Uncover the jam!' said Wagner, acting the last scene ofParsifaland not noticing that the glass jar was not covered. He began to pray; little round rubies seemed to shine in the jam. And all the devils cried:

"'Oh marvel! Marvel of the highest frightfulness!'

"Then, as inParsifalthe white dove, a black crow this time descended and remained soaring above Wagner's head, who exclaimed triumphantly:

"'Hurrah! Hurrah! Monseigneur! Allthe strawberry jam of England is changed into plum jam—plum jam with stones to prove what it is!'

"I fainted. Then somebody threw water on my face, and I woke again."

"You must have had too much bacon for breakfast," says Cotton, "to judge from the rapidity of your dream. The chemical composition..."

"Rubbish!" interrupts Pringle, "but you will remember, Sergeant, that we were talking ofParsifaljust before the action began."

And I add:

"Sergeant, I have every respect for you, but I must say, you have given your Wagner-Devil one of my favourite ideas to talk on, and I put it to you that you have stolen it from me."

"Don't use strong language."

"All right, Sergeant, but that cackle about Richard II. and Strauss II. is my intellectual copyright."

When I was a tiny boy, the mater used to tell me the story of a shepherd who came,with his thousand sheep, to a bridge so narrow that only one sheep at a time could cross the brook which it spanned. "And now, little Pat," she would say, "you must wait until all the thousand sheep have passed, and in the meantime you may go and play with your ball."

Now, Mr. Reader, you believe yourself mighty clever because you think: Ha, ha! That's the trick he has employed, and while he told us Charlie Young's dream yarn, he may himself have got rid of his cold. Well, you are mistaken. It is not a trick, and the intermezzo of the preceding pages has its importance. Nor will you be spared to undergo the story of my cold, and the only thing I can do for you is to wish you that it may not prove contagious.

It was a bad cold.

Now, a cold where you merely weep and sneeze and sniff and blow your nose which by degrees becomes somewhat like a burning Zeppelin—by the way, if you never have seen a burning Zeppelin, I take this opportunity to inform you that it is, of course, like the splendid, brilliant, luminous, glaring nose of one who has such a cold—such a cold maybecalleda bad cold, but itisnot. It is a coryza. It is a cold in the head, an unimportant part of the human body when the point in question is a cold. With such a cold you are only more or less ridiculous.

But when you begin coughing and spitting, and when high fever sets in, when you think that you would not like to die yet, especially from pneumonia, and when your Mr. Doblana recognizes with real regret that he must interrupt the lessons and will be unable to charge you for the time lost; when the doctor must be called, and when after a fortnight you begin to recover but still feel weaker than a child, then you have a bad cold, one of these perfidious colds you catch in May.

However, if you possess one of those sunny natures such as I pride myself of having, if you know how to find roses among thorns, if you can remember that old Jew who used to say whenever he could: "Gamsoo l'towvo," which means: "This too leads to the best"—you see, being on the classical side I was taught Hebrew in the Special Class and never forgot that sentence—then, m'dear, you will only rememberthat this bad cold was very nice, inasmuch as it brought you nearer to your beloved Mitzi. You will ever recollect that sweet contact which will have made of your nasty illness a time of continuous joy.

I felt as if I had only begun to live since I was ill, and I was sure that she also experienced for the first time a great, primitive emotion, and that to her nothing else was worth thinking of. She was taking care of me and seemed made quite glorious by this obligation imposed on her. And yet we did not speak, we were awed, all words seemed futile.

The medical man who attended to me was Doctor Bernheim, the same whose acquaintance I had made at the Tobacco Pipe. He was a very intelligent fellow, and we sympathized as much as such a thing is possible between two individuals of thirty years' difference of age. He was a man interested in politics as well as in art, and, what is more remarkable, he was nevertheless a good doctor.

One day I told him how thoroughly incomprehensible the quarrel between Doblana and the other members of theRound Table had seemed to me. This was the beginning of a series of conversations, during which Doctor Bernheim first explained me the complicated question of Austrian nationalities, the struggle between the different races.

There was, above all, the continual strife for superiority between the Western (Austrian) and the Eastern (Hungarian) half of the Monarchy. Then there were in both parts internal contests, for neither was the population of Austria entirely German, nor that of Hungary entirely Magyar. In both halves of the country a large percentage of Slavs was to be found, among which the rising Czech people, both intellectual and industrial, could not be neglected. Of late years German influence had become observable, and there was now in Austria a distinct Pan-Germanic tendency. A tacit understanding existed between the German and Hungarian population, whose purpose was the suppression of all Czech aspirations.

Then there was a Polish question, the Galician Poles demanding to be united with the Russian and German Poles into one Kingdom,—an Italian question, Trieste andGorizia as well as the Trentino wishing to be incorporated into Italy,—a Rumanian, a Ruthenian, a Serbian question.

Nor was that all. A violent Anti-Semitic movement had been originated by the clerical party, which was jealous of the ever brisk business capacity of the numerous Jews—of which the Doctor himself was one.

In one word, there was everywhere contrariety and quarrelling, dissension and discord.

Mitzi, who sometimes was present at our discussions, was very intransigent. She had an inborn hatred for all what was German and Hungarian, although German was her mother tongue. In her heart she was a Czech. Of modern music she loved only Italian, French, and Czech, but she loathed the modern Germans for their utter lack of feeling. On this point as on so many others there was complete agreement between her and me. I had myself observed that the unrivalled reputation of Vienna asthemusical citypar excellencewas upheld above all by Italian and Slav musicians. The Germans, although they made much ado about themselves, played aninferior, if a not altogether, secondary part.

I suppose I had a good time. Most people know the course of events, when by degrees an agreement of affections is changed into ... tenderness. So I dare say you can do without my description.

But one day something happened. It was quite an insignificant incident, yet it is one which I cannot forget. Simply it was that Mitzi sang to me. It was the fourth or fifth day since I had been allowed to leave my bed. I had never heard her except for a few exercises.

Her voice is not a very strong one, but there was never one as warm nor as expressive. It went at once into my heart, as Mitzi herself that day went into my life. What she sang mattered little, short folksongs, I believe, quite simple, yet her voice has that incomparable faculty of changing all what she sings into purest gold, as Midas did to all he touched.

Yes, it was rather an insignificant, little incident. Nor was there any revolution in me. No, but an evolution began. Slowly, vaguely, feelings came to me. Feelings, not thoughts. They were all inside my breastand—my word—they did hurt. Mitzi had with her singing struck a chord of gold, which was vibrating in my heart.

"FräuleinMitzi," said I, for I had not yet learned to call her by her name alone; "if you will help me a little, and encourage me, I will write an opera for you. There is something exceedingly tender and impressive in your voice, something childlike.... I am sure you will inspire me, you will be my Muse."

Possibly you imagine that she was flattered, or at least pleased. Nothing of the sort, my dear. She just looked doubtful. She ought to have begun at once with the encouragement business I had suggested. A little phrase as, for instance, "That would be nice!" would not have cost her much. Any English girl would have said it. True, it would not have meant much, either, and she wasn't an English girl. Yet—I owe you some frankness, don't I?—I was somewhat disappointed. If I am not greatly mistaken, she turned up her nose a little when she said:

"Are you sure you will be able to write an opera?"

"For you,FräuleinMitzi, I will be able to do anything!"

Indeed, such was my feeling. Yes, her very indifference was encouraging me. Such is man when he is in love. Her apathy made me suffer, and my wretchedness only stimulated me. Sure, I would show her of what I was capable. Her insensibility only augmented my emotion.

"I don't like your calling my voice childish, and if you compose something for me it will have to be heroic."

"I never said that you had a childish voice."

"You did."

"I did not. I said 'childlike.'"

"There is no great difference."

Thus our quarrelling began. And I may well say that the same hour which saw the birth of my love also germinated the origin of its end.

Ladies have many uses for their tongue. Amongst other things, they sting with it. And therefore we love them.

However, important as this may be, surely it does not interest you, to whom my philosophy is of no use. So I return to my story.

I went to Mr. Bischoff as soon as my health was a little restored. I wanted to write a music drama onMacbethas he had suggested. Should he not be willing to write a libretto on the basis of those wonderful ideas he had exposed to me? I was sure that I would succeed in making with his aid a real masterpiece.

If you consider with what an important personality I had chosen to deal, you will not be surprised when hearing that it was not "on the basis of those wonderful ideas he had exposed to me" that Mr. Bischoff agreed to write the said libretto. He wanted the basis to be more ... substantial. I need therefore hardly tell you what the next step was. And, still considering that Mr. Bischoff was the first Viennese actor, and had refused offers for mere translations from a London firm at ten shillings a thousand words, you will easily imagine which figure I asked Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., to put on his next cheque. But I tore my letter immediately into pieces and wrote another, asking for £50 more, I could as well bleed my poor dad of £300 as of £250, couldn't I? And the supplement would enable me to show myintense gratitude to my charming nurse, and even to show it more than once.

I deeply regret to announce that Miss Doblana exhibited a much greater satisfaction when I offered her a beautiful fan of white ostrich feathers than when I had opened to her the perspective of my opera. She was really winsome as she thanked me, oh! so winsome. Yet, to-day, after years, I think that it was very foolish of me to make her such a gift. Most men will share this opinion, although most girls will judge it otherwise. As for Mitzi, I fear that she foresaw more gifts and decided there and then to take my opera into the bargain.

Anyhow, that fan was bought (but not paid for) and offered to the lady of my heart before the cheque arrived from London. And then something very awkward occurred. Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., sent me a cheque for £300, not payable to me but to Mr. Bischoff. I am sure this mischievous move was caused by mother. For while father's letter was nice and gentle as ever, and while he stated being sure that with such a librettist I would achieve something remarkable, mother wrote that in her idea it wasnonsense to attempt an opera before having well learned how to write one; and there was something between the lines that read as if she was smelling a rat.

Now, what was I going to do with my cheque for £300? I could not well go to Mr. Bischoff and ask him for change, for if I knew little of women and even less of men, I knew already a lot of the third sex, viz.: the artists. There was no probability of his being able to give me change for £50, and, candidly, I did not trust any artist sufficiently, especially not Mr. Bischoff whom I scarcely knew, to let him have the cheque as it was, and wait for the £50 change until he had cleared it. I felt like a schoolboy, comfortless and wretched, and as usual: silly.

For three days I went about absolutely miserable with my big cheque in my pocket. My state of mind could not escape Mr. Hammer who, finding a few bad mistakes in a fugue of mine, declared that this and the rest of my behaviour proved clearly that I was in love, an accident that had befallen him in former years every six weeks, so that he had a sufficient experience to pass judgmenton other people. Now, if even Hammer saw my uneasiness, you will understand that it was soon noticed by Mr. Doblana who, although a musician too, was far more a human being. He inquired. He insisted. For one of the results of being so human was a certain degree of curiosity.

"It must have something to do with your opera," he asserted at last. "How far have you got with it?"

"Oh!" said I, "I have not begun yet."

"Then," cried he, "why do you make such a face as if you had lost your score?"

I am sure that, when I heard this question, I looked at him in the most idiotic fashion you may imagine. And I must have looked at him for a long time, say, twenty seconds, which is much longer than most people think. Two ideas had flashed up through my brain, (or whatever you may call it).

The second—which was probably the result of the excitement caused by the first one—the second was to return the £300 cheque to my father, and to ask him for several smaller cheques which I could hand Mr. Bischoff in proportion to the work done,a proceeding which certainly would please the mater, for it proved me to be an earnest chap.

Yes. And the first idea?

I simply discovered the mystery which Mr. Doblana was hiding:

He had lost the score of his balletGriseldis, which he had been composing beforeAladdin.

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