It was about this time that de Sterny began to be restlessly ambitious. His playing changed. He began to take on affectations. He began to pound. This enraptured the masses; the critics pronounced it "a magnificent development," and he himself was disgusted.
An icy crust covered the gutter in the Rue Ravestein, long icicles hung from the arms of the great crucifix, and on the windows of the little green salon the frost painted his chilly flowers; but Annette's hands were always hot now, and her lips burning red. Her walk had grown slow and careless, her movements dreamy and gliding. Her eyes gazed into the distance. Instead of teasing wilfulness, or childlike winningness, she met her lover with apathetic compliance, sometimes with repellent irritation. Then would come hours when she hung upon him passionately, begged him with tears not to be angry with her, and seemed as though she could not show him love and tenderness enough.
He did not ponder very deeply over her strange contradictory nature, but simply forgave her, as a sick child.
One evening, when he and his foster-father were involved in one of their endless talks about music and literature, Annette, who had sat meanwhile, reserved and silent, leaning back in a corner of the stiff horse-hair sofa, suddenly raised her head and listened. Some one knocked at the door: neither Gesa nor Delileo paid any attention.
"Entrez," cried Annette, breathlessly. The door opened. "Do I disturb you?"--said an amiable voice, and Alphonso de Sterny entered.
Several days later, Gesa, returning from his lessons to the Rue Ravestein, remarked, "Strange, Annette, it smells of amber,--has de Sterny been here?"
"He brought us tickets for his next concert," she replied without looking at her lover.
* * * * *
"Dear Friend:--I have something to say to you--come to me to-morrow, if possible.
"Sterny."
Gesa found this note one evening in his apartment. Next morning, when he dutifully presented himself at the Hotel de Flandres, de Sterny received him with the question--"Would you like to earn a great deal of money?"
"How can you doubt it! You know how pressingly I need money. Can it be an opportunity offers for disposing of my 'Inferno,'" cried Gesa.
"Not yet--but something else offers. I received a telegram yesterday. Winansky has broken an arm--Marinski, in consequence, needs a violinist of the first rank and offers ten thousand francs a month and expenses. Would that suit you?" Gesa's head sank. "How long must I remain away?" he murmured.
"Six--eight months. You must decide by tomorrow. Are you afraid of seasickness?" laughed the virtuoso.
"That?--No! but--Well I will ask the little one. Six or eight months--it is long--and so far. She will not have the courage. However, I thank you heartily!"
The servant announced an illustrious amateur and Gesa left.
To his great astonishment Annette exulted and rejoiced when he told her of Marinksi's offer. "I did not know that you were already such a great man in the world," she cried, triumphantly.
"Shall I accept?" asked Gesa, with a trembling voice, tears standing in his eyes. She looked at him amazed. "Would you refuse? Gesa, only think when you come back from America, a rich man!"
He sighed once deeply, then he bent over her, kissed her forehead, and quietly said, "You are right, Annette. I was cowardly!"
He accepted Marinski's offer.
A few days later, a little dinner was served in the Rue Ravestein, which was very elaborate for the surroundings, and at which Gesa left all his favorite dishes untouched, and old Delileo exerted himself to talk very rapidly about the most indifferent things, shook pepper into his marmalade, and finally raised his glass with a trembling hand and gave a toast to Gesa's speedy, happy return. Annette, who up to this time had regarded Gesa's departure with the most frivolous gaiety, became every moment more painfully excited. She ate nothing, said not a word, and looked wretched, pain and terror were in her eyes. When Gesa drew her to him, and kindly stroked her pallid cheeks, she broke into immoderate weeping, clung to him convulsively, and begged him again and again "do not leave me alone--do not leave me alone!"
He made no answer to her unreasonable words, only pitied her most tenderly, called her a thousand sweet names, and said, turning to Delileo, "Try to divert her a little, father--take her sometimes to the theatre, and as soon as pleasant weather comes, take her to the country. And read with her a little,--none of the complicated old trash that we delight in, but something simple, entertaining, to suit a spoiled little girl."
"Is there any one in the world, better than he is, papa?" sobbed Annette. The servant entered and announced that the carriage was waiting at the Place Royale, and the porter was there to take Monsieur Gesa's luggage, at the same time clutching his traveling bag and violin case. Gesa looked at the clock. "It is time," said he, quietly, "be reasonable, Annette!"
But she sobbed incessantly, "do not leave me alone," and he was forced to unclasp her dear, soft arms from his neck. He pressed his foster-father's hand in silence, and hastened away. From the street, he heard the sound of a window opening above, and Annette's voice. He stood still, looked back--cried "Auf Wiedersehen!"--and hurried on to the Place Royale.
Before the train puffed off, a slender, blonde man rushed onto the platform. "De Sterny!" cried Gesa, deeply moved.
"Well, well, you expected me I hope. I slipped away from the X's in order to catch you. You understand that I did not want to let you go without wishing you 'bonne chance' for the last time."
The conductor opened the door of the coupé--Gesa entered it.
"Bonne chance! it can't fail you"--cried de Sterny.
Gesa bent out of the coach window. "Thousand thanks for all your kindness," he cried, "and if it is not too tiresome for you,--then to-morrow look in a moment, to see how it is with her."
"I will take her your last greeting," said de Sterny.
The virtuoso beckoned smilingly, while the train steamed away.
Thus, smiling, kind, sympathetic, Gesa lost sight of his friend. Thus he remained in Gesa's memory.
Thanks to a sudden outbreak of yellow fever in the South, Marinski's troupe left America earlier than had been agreed upon.
With salary somewhat diminished by this circumstance, a bundle of bombastic critiques, and some very pretty ornaments from Tiffany's in New York for Annette, Gesa went on board the "Arcadia," in which Marinski's troupe were to sail for old Europe. How he rejoiced for his "little one!" She had looked so badly when he left Brussels, was so inconsolable at parting. He resolved to give her a surprise by his sudden return. What great eyes she would make! Sometimes at night he started from sleep--a cry of joy and her name on his lips.
The whole troupe knew why he was hurrying home. He never grew weary of telling about Annette. About Annette and de Sterny. He was much beloved by all his traveling companions, and they all felt a lively interest in Annette; but of de Sterny they would not hear a word; and an old basso, who had taken Gesa especially to his heart, said warningly--
"Take care! he will play you a trick--he is a villain, monsieur!"
Gesa took the caution very ill, and starting up rebuked the basso severely.
The basso smiled to himself.
Among the female forces of the troupe was a certain Guiseppina D----. Pale, with rich red hair that when she uncoiled it reached to her heels, her enormous black eyes, short nose, and large mouth lent her some likeness to a death's head. Yet, she was not without a certain charm, especially in her smile, and she smiled constantly, as people do whom nothing can any longer rejoice. To her Gesa talked oftenest about his beloved. She listened to him most kindly and sometimes she wept. She was the soprano of the troupe, and lived in the bitterest enmity with the Alto, who was married to the Tenor, immensely jealous, and very proud of her own virtue.
In Paris, when the troupe broke up, the Guiseppina at parting put both arms around Gesa's neck and kissed him. This the virtuous Alto certainly would not have done. But the Guiseppina whispered at the same time,
"The kiss is for thee, with my good wishes, and this"--she gave him a little gold cross--"this is for the bride, with my mother's blessing that clings to it yet. It belonged to my First Communion, and is the only one of my possessions which is worthy a bride of yours."
They all promised to come to his wedding, and at last he had bidden them farewell, and had left Paris for Brussels.
* * * * *
It was in the second half of June and Corpus Christi day. At all the stations groups of girls in white were to be seen. Now and then white-robed processions passed in the distance, and softly as from a spirit choir their Catholic hymns floated to the traveler's ear.
It was late in the afternoon when he arrived in Brussels, sprang into a fiacre, and directed it to the Rue Ravestein. The hack, with all the vexatious phlegm of a Brussels' vehicle, jogged slowly toward its destination.
The moist, heavy sultriness of a northern summer brooded over the town. The air had something oppressive, stifling, like that of a hot room. Above the earth all was motionless, except that in the very topmost branches of the linden trees on the Boulevard there was a light rustling. From the ground steamed the moisture of yesterday's showers; in the sky the clouds were piling up for another thunderstorm, with muttered growl along the horizon. The atmosphere was heavy and sad with the odor of incense, burning wax, candles, and withering flowers, the odor of Corpus Christi Day. Against the walls of the houses still leaned the altars that had been erected, surmounted by shriveled foliage, and dead blossoms. Luxuriant roses, tender heliotrope and modest reseda lay trodden and soiled on the pavement.
As Gesa alighted at the Place Royale a woman in a battered hat, gaudily be-ribboned, and a red shawl, stooped down after some of the faded flowers. She was one of those who hide themselves when the Corpus Christi procession passes by. She lived in the Rue Ravestein, and Gesa knew her. Always pitiful, he took a twenty-france piece from his pocket and gave it to her. She glanced up, looked at him sharply and suddenly turned away her painted face.
He entered the Rue Ravestein. Sickening miasmas rose from the drain; a cloud of midges hovered in the air;--the crucified Saviour looked down more sadly than ever.
Familiar things greeted his eyes as he passed: the lean hyena-like dogs wagged their tails, and some of them came and shoved cold moist noses into his hand.
"No one is at home!" cried the woman who sold vegetables in the shop on the ground floor of Delileo's dwelling. "No one. Neither the old gentleman, nor the young lady."
"Have they gone on a journey?" asked Gesa, blankly.
"No, I think not. Unless I am mistaken the young lady has gone to church. Perhaps monsieur will find her yet in St. Gudule."
Gesa was already hastening down the street toward the Cathedral. Behind him little groups collected. The gossips of Rue Ravestein laughed.
On an irregular square, from which numberless streets and alleys spread themselves out like rays, rises the Cathedral of St. Gudule. Light and transparent in architecture, bearing herself proudly--the church towers above the city where the ghosts of Horn and Egmont walk. Her walls are blackened as if they wore mourning for the crimes which men have committed here in God's name; and through her cool aisles sighs the mouldy breath of a vault. Gesa entered. It was dusky within; thick shadows covered the feet of the brown, worm-eaten benches. Only a few people still remained. In vain the violinist looked around for his bride. A couple of old women he saw: a child in a blue apron, stretching on tiptoe to reach the holy water, two beggars near the door--that was all. No priest was at the altar: service was over.
The child had tripped away: the old woman had hobbled off; for the last time Gesa's eye searched the church, then he went on to the high altar and kneeled down to say a prayer. In spite of the fantastic pantheism in which Delileo had brought him up, Gesa had always retained a strong leaning toward Catholic devotion. Suddenly he heard a sound,--a sigh. In the deepest shadow, almost at his feet, crouched a dark form. A tender trouble overcame him.
"Annette!" he whispered--"Annette!"
She rose up out of the shadow. She stared at him, gave a short cry, and clung shuddering to a pillar.
"Annette! What ails you!" he cried, shocked, almost angry. "Are you afraid of me?"
She shook her head. Was it the dusk that made her look so ashen pale?
"You come so suddenly, and I am ill;" she said.
"Ill, poor heart! Then truly I must have appeared to you like a ghost. And I wanted to enjoy your surprise! Foolish egotist that I am! Forgive me!" Thus he stammered, and forgetting where he was would have drawn her to him. She motioned him from her. "Not here!" she cried. Looking around at the sacred walls, with an intense gaze--"Not here!" Leaning on his arm she passed out of the church door.
The air was moist and sultry, clouds hung low, a swallow fluttered anxiously across the square. In comparison with the dusky gloom of the church it was still quite light here. Gesa raised questioning, longing eyes to the face of his beloved. It was deathly pale, the cheek thinner, the eyes larger, the lips darker than formerly; little lines about the mouth and nose, melancholy shadows around the eyes idealized its heretofore purely material beauty.
"I had quite forgotten how charming thou art," he murmured, in a voice stifled with passion. She smiled at him, a wild strange smile, in which she grew still more beautiful, and the shadows around her eyes deepened.
It suddenly seemed to him that she reminded him of some one, of something, but he searched his soul in vain. It could not be of the pale Malmaison roses whose tender heads drooped, on the pavement,--or,--no,--and yet--yes,--a little,--Annette reminded him of Guiseppina!
Her hand, which she had left to him passively in the beginning, nestled now more tenderly on his arm. When they would have turned their steps toward the Rue Ravestein, she held him back.
"What if we should make a detour," she whispered, "take me to the park, to all your favorite places, will you?"
"My heart! My treasure!" he murmured, drunk with the rapture of her presence.
An odor of withering flowers impregnated the air, mixed with the faint breath of fresh acacia blossoms. They entered the park. It was as if dead. Through the dark crowns of the trees there passed, from time to time, something like a shudder of fear.
"And you are really ill, Annette?" he asked.
"Yes," and her voice sounded hollow, like a suppressed cry of anguish: then she burst out passionately, "Why did you leave me alone!"
"You sent me away yourself," he replied, half playfully, "and then I had to go."
"That is true," she said, simply.
They were silent. It grew darker. All at once she stood still. "Here was a mire last autumn and you used to carry me over. Do you remember?"
He nodded smiling. They went a few steps further. The white reflection of the evening light played over the water of a reservoir.
"And here you told me about Nice and the Angers Bay."
Again he smiled, and they went on. They came to a statue. "There you gave me a villa in Bordighera. Have you forgotten how we built air castles?" said the girl.
The shuddering in the tree tops grew stronger.
She bent back her head and gazed up at her lover as if in a dream. "No one sees us," she whispered. "Kiss me!"
He kissed her long and passionately. "Again!" she whispered, so softly that her voice sounded like the rustling of the leaves.
He kissed her again, murmuring, "I never knew how fair life was until to-day!"
A long sobbing sigh passed through the trees. "Come home, or the thunderstorm will overtake us," she said--her voice had suddenly grown harsh. They turned back.
"I will not expect you to wear it, but you must keep it sacred, as a relic. It was the best thing she possessed," said Gesa to Annette, when he gave her Guiseppina's cross.
He had told the girl about the pale singer and the touching manner in which she had offered her gift. Annette had kissed the cross on the threshold of the house, when she stood to take leave of him. "My father will not be home before midnight"--she whispered "farewell"--whereupon at first he looked most longingly in her face, and then yielding to her decision, said quietly--"To-morrow." And now he sat in his old attic room, opposite, and mused the evening through. His veins throbbed with a happiness that was painfully sweet. Never had Annette appeared to him so enchantingly beautiful, never had she met him with such heart-winning gentleness. The memory of her tender smile, of her great dark eyes softened his heart like a caress.
But she was ill. A cold shudder broke his warm dream. She was very ill.
A fearful anxiety overcame him. The heavy, sultry air of the coming tempest brooded without, and from the street below rose an odor of filth and decay.
He looked across at Annette's window; it was open. A delicate head appeared there, listening. Against the wall in the pale moonlight a dainty silhouette was thrown.
"Annette!" cried Gesa, across the sleeping street.
Through the dusk he saw her smile.
"Good-night!" she breathed, laid both hands on her lips and sent him one kiss. Then she disappeared. A heavy silence settled down on the Rue Ravestein.
Dizzy and drunk with happiness, that smile in his heart, Gesa von Zuylen laid himself down and fell asleep.
It was not yet five o'clock in the morning when a mysterious stir in the little street awoke him. Excited voices and hasty steps sounding confusedly together. Was it fire? The confusion increased. Something had happened. He hurried on his clothes and went down. The air was raw. In the lustreless morning light there was a pale, reddish shimmer. The sparrows on the roofs twittered over loud. Under Delileo's window stood a few people; untidy women rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, some men in blouses, on their way to work. Like a little flock of vultures, with greedy eyes and outstretched heads, they jostled one another.
The woman of the green grocer shop was speaking. Her face expressed pride at having assisted at some awful event Gesa heard her say:
"I tell you they have just sent my boy to the apothecary. But it's too late--much too late!"
"Has Monsieur Delileo had a stroke?" cried Gesa, breathlessly.
"Mon-sieur De-lileo?" repeated the women. A few of them turned away.
"Annette!" he reeled. "What! What!"
Half beside himself he rushed up the stairs, and burst open the door of his promised bride's chamber. He knew the room well. It was the same which years ago he had occupied with his mother. Only now it was more daintily furnished.
Old Delileo sat on the edge of the little bed, and gazed in tearless despair at something which the white curtains hid.
"Father!" cried Gesa.
Then the old man rose trembling in every limb, passed his hand across his brow--his poor yellow face working....
"Have pity!" he said in a broken voice, "Have pity, she has repented, she is dead!"
Gesa tore back the curtains. There on the white pillow, waxen pale, but beautiful as ever, the parting smile upon her lips, lay Annette.
She had put on the blue dress in which he had first seen her, fourteen months ago--Guiseppina's little cross lay on her breast.
* * * * *
There is a suffering so painful that no hand is tender enough to touch it, and so deep that no heart is brave enough to fathom it. Dumbly we sink the head, as before something sacred.
Never could he reproach her, lying there before him, clad in the blue dress, of which every fold, so dear to him, cried "Forgive! Not to our desecrated love do I appeal, but to our sweet caressing friendship,--forgive the sister what the bride has done!" How could he reproach her, with her parting kiss still on his lips?
She had drawn off her betrothal ring, and laid it on the coverlet enclosed in a folded letter, where in her large, unskilled, childish hand, she had written the words: "To my dear, dear brother Gesa. God bless him a thousand times!"
He placed the ring again on her finger, and kissed her cold hand.
The fearful mystery which separates us from our dead is so incomprehensible that we never realize our loss in all its fulness while the beloved form yet lies before us. Involuntarily we feel as if the dead knew of every little service we render--and this thought hovers around us as a comfort. The whole bitterness of our anguish is first felt when we have buried our happiness, and life with its sterile uses and requirements reenters, and commands: "What have you to do longer dallying with death? I will have my right!"
And so with Gesa, the bitterest pang of all overcame him when, returning home with his foster-father from the churchyard where they had laid the poor "little one" to rest, he found the old green salon all in order. Annette's favorite trifles removed, and the table laid for--two.
They sat down opposite one another, the old journalist and the young musician. Neither ate; Gesa was dumb. Delileo stroked his hand from time to time and murmured, "My poor boy, my poor boy!"
Suddenly Gesa raised his eyes to the old man's face. "Who was it, father?" he asked in a hollow voice.
The "droewige Herr" dropped his eyes.
"I--I do not know"--he stammered.
"Father!" cried Gesa, starting up.
"Nay, I knew nothing. She never confided in me. Very lately I had a suspicion, a fear"--the old father grew more and more distressed.
"You must have remarked it, if Annette was interested in any one?" cried Gesa, anger in his eyes and shame on his cheeks.
"Ah! she fell under the spell of a demon"--the father stopped, and shut his lips tightly together, and said no more.
One day followed another in monotonous sadness. The "droewige Herr" went to his daily work: Gesa sat in the green salon and brooded. He said nothing of any more engagement, nothing of going on any more journeys. He dreaded every meeting with acquaintances, with all to whom he had talked of his happiness. There was one single human being for whom he longed, and that was de Sterny. De Sterny had such a rare, almost feminine art of understanding and sympathizing! And then, he would not be surprised like the others--he had foretold it all!
Gesa learned de Sterny's whereabouts. The virtuoso was in England. Gesa wrote him a simple, heartfelt letter, in which he confided to his friend the sudden death of Annette, and ended with the words "Let me know when you are to be in Paris. I will remove there, in order to work near you. Intercourse with you is the only thing in the world that could afford me any comfort now."
To this letter he received no answer. He removed to Delileo's and occupied Annette's chamber.
One day, as he sat at the poor girl's little desk, and searched a drawer for an envelope, he found wedged in a crack the half of a torn note. He knew the writing. "... wild with bliss. At one o'clock in the Rue de la Montague
Thy S."
The violinist read this note twice, then he looked around with a dull, stupefied gaze, stretched his arms on high as those do who are shot through the heart, and sank senseless to the floor.
* * * * *
A lingering nervous fever broke his constitution, and destroyed the little energy he had still possessed. When he began to creep about his chamber, a weary convalescent, with thinned hair, he sought at once for pen and ink. Every day he wrote a letter to de Sterny, and tore it in pieces. When Delileo, who had nursed him through the sickness like a mother, begged him not to excite himself, he only answered, "I must have it off my heart!" and wrote a fresh letter,--but never sent any.
One day he said to himself that it did not become him to write, that he must demand satisfaction from de Sterny face to face. But before that could happen he must recover his health. From that time he wrote no more. He lived his brooding life, idle, and melancholy. His grief was mingled with a burning shame. He constantly feared that he should meet some one who would ask him about his bride, or his friend. At the thought the blood rushed into his cheek, and even when he was quite alone he turned his face to the wall. He trembled in every limb, a wild rage possessed him when he thought of the betrayer. Then--then he remembered the thousand kindnesses to which the virtuoso had accustomed him, his amiability, the cordial tone of his voice. He pressed his hands to his temples and groaned.
He could not understand.
And the days went by, and he did not seek de Sterny. A wild fear of men mastered him. By day he almost never left Delileo's dwelling, but, as his health improved, he gradually accustomed himself to go out at night. He was still young. He felt a vehement desire to deaden the power of feeling. In the midst of the wildest orgies, he sat pale and dumb, with fixed expressionless face. This joyless dissipation he soon gave up, but his wound still craved relief--and slowly, gradually, he gave himself to drink. Music he neglected altogether. Every note awoke a memory. If he had been obliged to earn his bread by his profession, he would probably not have gone so utterly to ruin, but the money which he had brought back from America permitted him to live.
When old Delileo, whom it cut to the heart to see his dear one's hopeless suffering, and his splendid talents so sadly wasted, asked him questions in regard to the future, Gesa answered, "I will work again, but leave me alone now for a while--it is too hard yet." And his fear of mankind more and more sought concealment in Rue Ravestein. In all large cities there are alleys like the Rue Ravestein. Paris has many of them. A man flies thither when he has suffered a fiasco, or a great sorrow, hides himself there from the derision of enemies and the pity of friends ... pity which at the best seems to him but a sentimental form of contempt! He has no intention of passing his whole life in that unwholesome obscurity, he will only give his wounds time to heal. Meanwhile he forges many plans in this voluntary exile; and dreams how he will go back to the world sometime and retrieve all by a grand success. The dreams never see fulfilment. For such streets are graves, and whoever after long years seeks to flee from that solitude, wanders among men like a risen corpse. Superannuated ideas surround and cling to him like the mouldy air of the sepulchre. He speaks a dead language.
"The 'satan' is one of the most beautiful of modern musical compositions," announces theIndépendence Belge. "The 'satan' contains numbers of classic beauty," confess the artists. "Have you heard? The 'satan' is a tremendous success!" says the fashionable world to itself. "Satan's" renown penetrates even as far as the Rue Ravestein, and reaches the ear of a starving fiddler there.
Although Delileo has long been dead Gesa still lives in the old house. The remains of his little savings went during his foster-father's long and weary last illness. Now Gesa supports life as best he can. A dozen years ago every one was comparing him to Paganini; now he is counted among the most obscure members of the "Monnaie" orchestra. Benumbed in melancholy indolence, given over to drink, he feels nevertheless from time to time the longing for creative effort. But something always comes between him and his purpose.
When he hears of the approaching performance, under de Sterny's personal direction, he is shaken with a sudden wild rage.
How dare de Sterny venture on coming to Brussels, in face of the chance that they may meet?
Then he mutters bitterly. "He thinks I am dead. He says to himself, 'If Gesa von Zuylen were still alive the world would have heard of him!'" A fearful pang harrows his very soul. Not the death of his bride, not the treachery of his friend had inflicted a pang like that. The spectre of his great, degraded talent stands suddenly before him.
He has weighed de Sterny's powers of composition. He remembers with triumphant contempt the "transcriptions" and "fantasias" of former times. He recalls the pianist's painful labors over the little "Countess-ballet," until in the full swing of their friendship Gesa took the thing in hand and finished it for him. And now?Couldde Sterny have developed into a composer of any importance? He examines his violin part with feverish curiosity, but it contains more rests than notes.
The day of the second rehearsal arrived. Gesa had intended to report himself ill again, but a feeling of breathless anxiety that he could not explain urged him to the music hall. This time it was not the friend of Rossini and the piano teacher alone who had come to hear the rehearsal. The foremost dilettante of Brussels crowded around the stage, all the musical ladies in society sat together in the front rows of the parquet. There was a fever of curiosity and expectation. At the same time that sort of opposition made itself felt which attends upon all novelties that have been immoderately praised.
"Il parait que c'est epatant"--said the Count de Sylva, a gentleman who was resting from the fatigues of a laborious diplomatic career, and employed all the time not absorbed by his social duties in studying the violincello. "Epatant," he repeated, walking up to the ladies, "I must confess I do not esteem de Sterny's talent for composition so very highly."
"Nor I either, most decidedly," growled the friend of Rossini. "How he ever contrived to write the 'Satan,' I cannot understand. But that it is a masterpiece is not to be denied. These melodies!--they tyrannize over me! they creep into every nerve, they creep into the blood! Spectres walk abroad in this music!"
"It is true that great powers require time to ripen," observed Prince L----, "wonderful children seldom come to anything. You may perhaps remember such a case, ladies--the little gypsy whom de Sterny brought to us one evening."
"Hm--a little hunch back in a braided jacket?" asked a lady.
"No--no--that was another--this was a handsome youth from the Rue Ravestein."
None of the ladies remembered. "What of him?" they asked.
"Nothing remarkable. I only cited him apropos of wonder children. Never have I heard finer improvisation than his and what has come of it?" At this moment there was a slight stir, de Sterny stepped upon the platform. They clapped applause, they bowed before him, they pressed his hands.
He stood at the conductor's desk and let his eye run over his musical forces--they were all there. Suddenly he turned pale, the baton sank at his side, he longed to flee, the eyes of his aristocratic friends were shining all around him; he rapped on the desk, and the bombastic introduction to "Satan" sounded through the hall.
There was disappointed shrugging of shoulders in the audience. Gesa von Zuylen's mouth showed deep mocking corners. Slowly, painfully, but with increasing confidence he raised his eyes to the director's face, the face that had once been to him as the countenance of a god. He smiled bitterly.
And now the Alto is singing her first song. The audience rouses up as if from an electric shock--and listens amazed, but none listens with such intentness as Gesa von Zuylen.
A strange, strange feeling trembles through him, the feeling of warm young delight, of joyful intoxication with which he wrote that song. Indignation had no chance to be heard, so mighty is the bliss of hearing his own work. It is as if some one had given him back his lost soul. The applause grows louder and louder. As if in a dream he plays on, sometimes he shrinks when some blatant interlude of de Sterny's disfigures his own composition.
"Now comes the most beautiful of all," they whisper in the audience, "the duet of the Outcasts."
In mournful lament are heard the exile's voices, softly, lightly floating, the violin's Angel song mingles with theirs, above, around them, whispering memories of joys forever lost.
Gesa listens--listens--his bow stops, he sees the little green chamber, the smiling friend at the old spinet, and beside him the lovely maiden, her hands clasped in one another, her delicate head slightly bent toward the shoulder, as if it were grown too heavy. "Nessun maggior dolore," he murmurs. The whole audience shouts. The orchestra applauds standing--the amateurs crowd round the stage. But there!--what is this? Panting, breathless, foam on his lips, rage in his eyes, the violinist presses forward through the ranks of the orchestra, up to the director.
"Wretch! Murderer!" he shrieks and strikes him with his bow across the face, then sinks unconscious to the floor. De Sterny passes a hand across his brow, and while the violinist is being carried out, he turns to the capelmeister, who is hurrying up and says with that practiced presence of mind which teaches a man of the world heroism on the scaffold.
"A sudden attack of delirium tremens. You really might have taken pains to spare me such a painful scene!"
The rehearsal proceeded. Gesa was taken home. As soon as he recovered consciousness he sought in all the closets and chests for the original score of his "Inferno" of which he had lent a copy to de Sterny. He never found the manuscript. All he discovered were the disconnected parts of his unfinished opera.
Between the Boulevard exterieur, "Boulevard des Crimes" as the popular voice has named it, and the Buttes Montmartre, stretches a quarter of Paris which is behind the Rue Ravestein in remoteness from the world, but far surpasses it in wretchedness. No mournful redeemer here stretches out his crucified arms to mankind, as if he would say: "I would have warmed you all in my bosom, but you have nailed my hands fast!"
No colored church windows glimmer changefully here, amidst misery and depravity. The old Montmartre church is broken up,--they are building on the new one!
In a temporary wooden tower on the Buttes Montmartre, hangs a shrill bell that sounds like the bell of a railroad or a factory, and at certain hours of the day, it tinkles a little despairing Catholicism down into the empty republican clatter below.
One junk shop crowds another here, and wooden booths full of second-hand rubbish and guarded mostly by poodle dogs stand in the wind.
One thing is especially noticeable in the Faubourg Montmartre. Every article one buys there is handed to him wrapped in old drawings, old manuscripts, or old copied music. On everything lies the mould and dust of defunct artist existences, and the debris of fallen air castles. The countless miserable lodgings swarm with young artists who never will accomplish anything, with old ones who never have accomplished anything. Against a background of impudent vice and grumbling poverty are drawn the relaxed figures of enthusiasts weary into death.
In his "petits poems en prose," Bandelaire described three people sinking from fatigue, yet without revolting against their burdens, carrying on their backs three enormous, grinning chimeras, whose claws are fastened in their patient shoulders. Every artist in the Faubourg Montmartre bears his chimera. His burden holds him upright; when that disappears he disappears with it. Whole troops of pretentious non-geniuses are to be met there, but also here and there among these eccentric jack fools, a really great, although long ruined artist nature making its last attempt to live and writing its name with trembling hand in the dust. There they dream, and peer across to the Boulevard, the high road of fortune, listening and waiting, with the vigor-and reason-devouring hope of the gambler.
* * * * *
One morning a man climbed up to the humblest lodging of Rue de Steinkerque in the Faubourg Montmartre; Gesa von Zuylen. He had come to Paris partly to escape from the Rue Ravestein, and partly because Paris is supposed to be the California of artists.
A tenor, whom he met on the railroad gave him the address of this lodging; he said it was a place where a man could work.
And Gesa wanted to work! He had a thousand francs in his pocket, the price of an Amati, once presented him by a distinguished patron. The violin was thrown away at a thousand francs. But what of that? He needed money and would have sold the blood from his veins to compass this sojourn in Paris.
He still heard the thundering tribute of applause paid to his work, and saw de Sterny's complacent bows. His clenched nails dug into the palms, but he forced himself back to calmness. He would work, he must work, that he might tear away his stolen royal mantle from the shoulders of the traitor! Surely for every genuine talent the hour of triumph strikes at least once in a life time, and he, he was no man of talent, he was a genius! How freely he breathed after that first day after his arrival in Paris. His new acquaintance, the tenor, had asked him "if he would like to take a walk to the real Boulevard." He meant the Boulevard between the New Opera House and the Madeleine. But Gesa shrank from the bustle and confusion--and while the tenor, with the haste of a newly-arrived provincial hurried off into the heart of Paris, Gesa crept slowly up the hill of Montmartre. There was a shabby public garden on the top, with newly set forlorn vegetation, a slippery flight of wooden steps led up to it. Lean, badly nurtured children, not in the least resembling the elves in the Champs Elysées and the Park Monceau, tumbled about in the crowded walks. Behind the garden was some waste land where grass covered with chalky dust stretches up to the doors of some miserable little huts. Paris seemed far away.
He seated himself on a bench. Shrill children's voices, in whose strident tones could already be heard the curse of the factory hand, and the coarse laugh of the paissarde surrounded him. He was deadly tired. In other times he had not even noticed the little journey from Brussels to Paris. His head sank on his breast. He dreamed that he was walking under the sleepy rustling trees of the park in Brussels, Annette Delileo was on his arm. The blue sky mirrored itself in an enormous pool, whereon some red poppy leaves were floating, and he told Annette how that "he was a genius, and was going to do something great."
He felt the tender nestling of her warm young form against him. Suddenly he started up. Little cold fingers touched his, a small girl in a white cap and large blue apron stood beside him, and said--"Monsieur, they are closing the garden."
The Angelus was tinkling through the air as Gesa descended. Damp odors pervaded the slippery hill; great ragged streaks of fog settled slowly down on the wretchedness of Montmartre.