"Je vous dirais qu' Hassan racheta Namouna* * * * *Qu'on reconnut trop tard cette tête adoréeEt cette douce nuit qu'elle avait espéréeQue pour prix de ses maux le ciel la lui donna.Je vous dirais surtout qu' Hassan dans cette affaireSentit que tôt ou tard la femme avait son tourEt que l'amour de soi ne vaut pas l'autre amour."
"Je vous dirais qu' Hassan racheta Namouna* * * * *Qu'on reconnut trop tard cette tête adoréeEt cette douce nuit qu'elle avait espéréeQue pour prix de ses maux le ciel la lui donna.
Je vous dirais surtout qu' Hassan dans cette affaireSentit que tôt ou tard la femme avait son tourEt que l'amour de soi ne vaut pas l'autre amour."
There you have the whole story. It is but anétat d'âme—a little love scene, simple enough in a way, yet so delicate and so full of colour. It was a matter of“atmosphere,”not of structure, a masterpiece of style rather than of situation; and from its first rehearsal as an opera it was doomed. In truth, these rehearsals were amusing. There was old Avocat—they used to call him Victor—the typicalrégisseurof tradition; a man who could tell of thepremièresof“Pré-aux-Clercs”and“La Dame Blanche,”and, what is more, expected to be asked to tell of them. From his corner in the wings he listened to the music of this“Djamileh,”his face expressive of a pity far too keen for words. But it was a matter of minutes only before his pity turned to rage, and eventually he stumped off to his sanctum, banging his door behind him with a vehemence that augured badly for poor Bizet. As for De Leuven, his co-director: had he not written.“Postillon deLonjumeau”? and was it not the most successful work of Boiledieu's successor? The fact had altered his whole life. Ever after, all he sought in opera was some similarity with Le Postillon. And there was nothing of Adam in this music, still less anything of De Leuven in the poem. That was sufficient for him.“Allons,”said he one day to Gallet, who arrived at rehearsal just as Djamileh was about to sing herlamento:“allons, vous arrivez pour leDe Profundis.”
As for the public, they understood it not at all, this charming miniature.“C'est indigne,”cried one;“c'est odieux,”from another;“c'est très drôle,”said a third.“Quelle cacophonie, quelle audace, c'est se moquer du monde. Voilà, où mène le culte de Wagner à la folie. Ni tonalité, ni mesure, ni rythme; ce n'est plus de la musique,”and the rest. The press itself was no better, no whit more rational. Yet this“Djamileh”was rich in premonition of those very qualities that go to make“Carmen”the immortal work it is. It so glows with true Oriental colour, is so saturate with the true Eastern spirit, as to make us wonder for the moment—as did Mr. Henry James about Théophile Gautier—whether the natural attitude of the man was not to recline in the perfumed dusk of a Turkish divan, puffing a chibouque. Here the tints are stronger, mellower, and more carefully laid on than in“Les Pêcheurs des Perles.”There is, too, all thebizarrerie, as well as all the sensuousness of the East. Yet there is no obliteration of the human element for sake of the picturesque. Wagnerism was the cry raised against it on all sides; yet, if it be anything but Bizet, it is surely Schumann. It was, in effect, all too good for the public—too fine for their vulgar gaze, their indiscriminating comment. And Reyer, farseeing amongst his fellows, spoke truth when he said in theDébats:“I feel sure that if M. Bizet knows that his work has beenappreciated by a small number of musicians—beingcognoscenti—he will be more proud of that fact than he would be of a popular success. 'Djamileh,' whatever be its fortunes, heralds a new epoch in the career of this young master.”
Then came“L'Arlésienne,”as all the world knows, a dismal failure enough. It was to Bizet a true labour of love. From the day that Carvalho came to him proposing that he should adddes mélodramesto this tale of fair Provence, to the day of its production some four months later, he was absorbed in it. The score as it now stands represents about half the music that he wrote. The prelude to the third act of“Carmen,”and the chorus,“Quant aux douaniers,”both belonged originally to“L'Arlésienne,”The rest was blue pencilled at rehearsal. And of all the care he lavished on it, perhaps the finest, certainly the fondest, was given to his orchestra. Every instrument is ministered to with loving care. Luckily for him, fortunately too for us, he knew not then what sort of lot awaited this scrupulous score of his. He knew he wrote for Carvalho—for the Vaudeville; but that was all. And they gave him twenty-five musicians—a couple of flutes and an oboe (this latter to do duty too for the cor-anglais); one clarinet, a couple of bassoons, a saxophone, two horns, a kettle-drum, seven violins, one solitary alto, five celli, two bass, and his choice of one other. The poor fellow chose a piano; but they never saw the irony of it. All credit to his little band, they did their best. But the most that they could do was to cull the tunes from out his score. The consolation that we have is, that, so far as the piece as a piece is concerned, no orchestra in the world could have saved it. It was doomed to failure for all sorts of reasons. Daudet himself goes very near the mark when he says that“it was unreasonable to suppose that in the middle of the boulevard, in that coquettish corner of theChaussée d'Antin,right in the pathway of the fashions, the whims of the hour, the flashing and changing vortex of all Paris, people could be interested in this drama of love taking place in the farmyard in the plain of Camargue, full of the odour of well-plenished granaries and lavender in flower. It was a splendid failure; clothed in the prettiest music possible, with costumes of silk and velvet in the centre of comic opera scenery.”Then he goes on to tell us:“I came away discouraged and sickened, the silly laughter with which the emotional scenes were greeted still ringing in my ears; and without attempting to defend myself in the papers, where on all sides the attack was led against this play, wanting in surprises—this painting in three acts of manners and events of which I alone could appreciate the absolute fidelity. I resolved to write no more plays, and heaped one upon the other all the hostile notices as a rampart around my determination.”
At this time Bizet seems to have come a good deal into contact with Jean Baptiste Faure. They met frequently at the Opéra.“You really must do something more for Bizet,”said the baritone to Louis Gallet.“Put your heads together, you and Blau, and write something that shall bebien pour moi.”“Lorenzaccio,”perhaps the strongest of De Musset's dramatic efforts, first came up. But Faure was not at all in touch with it. The rôle of Brutus—fawning Judas that he is—revolted him. He had no fancy to distort asmenteur à triple étage; so the subject was put by. Then came Bizet one morning with an old issue ofLe Journal pour tousin his pocket.“Here is the very thing for us: 'Le Jeunesse du Cid' of Guilhem de Castro; not, mark you, the Cid of Corneille alone, but the inceptive Cid in all the glory of its pristine colour—the Cid, Don Rodrigue de Bivar, in the words of Sainte-Beuve 'the immortal flower of honour and of love.'”Thescène du mendiantheld Bizet completely. It was tohim simple, touching, and great. It showed Don Rodrigue in a new light. Those—and there were many of them—who had already cast their choice upon this legend, had recognised—but recognised merely—in their hero, the son prepared to sacrifice his love for filial duty, and to yield his life for love. But they had not seen in him the Christian, the true and godly soul, the Good Samaritan that De Castro represents. The scene of Rodrigue with the leper, disdained and done away with by Corneille, with which De Castro too was so reproached, was full of attraction for Bizet. His whole interest centred round it. He was impatient and hungered to get at it; and“Carmen,”on which he was already well at work, was even laid aside the while. Faure, too, had expressed a sound approval and a hearty interest, and this alone meant much. So Bizet once again was full of hope. There follows a long and detailed correspondence on the subject with Gallet, with which I have not space to deal; but it shows up splendidly the extreme nicety of the musician's dramatic sense.
In the summer of 1873“Don Rodrigue”was really finished, and one evening Bizet called his friends to come and listen. Around the piano were Edouard Blau, Louis Gallet, and Jean Faure. Bizet had his score before him—to common gaze a skeleton thing enough, for of“accompaniment”there was but little. But to its creator it was well alive, and he sang—in the poorest possible voice, it is true—the whole thing through from beginning to end. Chorus, soprano, tenor, bass, yea, even the choicer“bits”for orchestra—all came alike to him; all were infused with life from the spirit that created them. It was long past midnight when he ceased, and then they sat and talked till dawn. All were enthusiastic, and in the opinion of Faure (given three years later) this score was more than the equal of“Carmen.”His word is all we have for it, but it carries with it something of conviction.He was no bad judge of a work. Anyway, no sooner had he heard it than he set about securing its speedy production at the Opéra. And he succeeded in so far that it was put down early on the list. But Fate had yet to be reckoned with. She was not thus to be baulked of her prey: she had dogged the footsteps of poor Bizet far too zealously for that; and on the28thOctober (less than a week after he had putfinisto his work), she stepped in. On that day the Opéra was burned down.
As for the score, it was laid aside, and of its ultimate lot we are in ignorance. Inquiry on the part of Gallet seems to have elicited nothing more definite than a courteous letter from M. Ludovic Halévy, to the effect that he was quite free to dispose of the book to another composer.“It was George's favourite,”wrote his brother-in-law,“and he had great hopes for it; but it was not to be.”
Perhaps of all his powers Bizet's greatest was that of recuperation. It would be wrong to say he did not know defeat; he knew it all too well, but he never let it get the better of him. He was never without his irons upon the fire, never without a project to fall back upon. And perhaps it is not too much to say that he had no life outside his art. This too may in truth be told of him: that in all the struggle and the scramble, in all his fight with fortune, it was the sweeter qualities of his nature that came uppermost. His strength of purpose stood on a sound basis—a basis of confidence in, though not arrogance of, his own power. Where he was most handicapped was in carrying on his artistic progresscoram populo. Had it been as gradual as most men's—had it been but the acquiring of an ordinary experience—all might have been well; he would probably have been accorded his niche and would have occupied it. But he progressed by leaps and bounds, and even then his ideal kept steadily miles aheadof his achievement. It was for long a very will-o'-the-wisp for him. Now and again he caught it, and it is at such moments that we have him at his best; but he can be said only to have captured it completely—so far as we are in a position to tell—in“L'Arlésienne”and certain parts of“Carmen.”His faculty of self-criticism was developed in such an extraordinary degree as to baulk him. He loved this Don Rodrigue and thought it was his masterwork, and that too at the time when“Carmen”must have been well forward. We know then that the loss is not a small one.
It had not been alone the fate of the Opéra House that had stood in the way. That institution had in course taken up its quarters at the Salle Ventadour, and once installed there had proceeded with therépertoire. But Bizet's“Rodrigue,”although well backed by Fauré, was pushed aside for others. The three names that it bore were all too impotent; and when a new work was announced, it was“L'Esclave”of Membrée that was seen to grace the bills, and not“Don Rodrigue.”
Poor Bizet, disappointed and sore at heart, vanished to hide himself once more by his beloved Seine. This time it was to Bougival he went.
M. Massenet had recently produced his“Marie Madeleine”and, curiously enough, it had been successful. This seems to have spurred Bizet on to emulation. With his usual happy knack of hitting on a subject, he wrote off to Gallet, requesting him to do a book with Geneviève de Paris—the holy Geneviève of legendary lore—for heroine. And Gallet, accommodating creature that he was, forthwith proceeded to construct his tableaux. Together they went off to Lamoureux and read the synopsis to him. He approved it heartily, and Bizet got to work.“Carmen”was then finished and was undergoing the usual stage of adjournmentsine die. Three times it had been put into rehearsal, only to be withdrawn for apparently no reason, and poor Bizet was wearying of opera and its ways. This sacred work was relief to him. But hardly had he settled down to it when up came“Carmen”once again, this time in good earnest. He was forced to leave“Geneviève”and come to Paris for rehearsals. It was much against his inclination that he did so, for his health was failing fast. For long he had suffered from an abscess which had made his life a burden to him. Nor had his terrible industry been without its effect upon his physique. He did not know it, but he had sacrificed to his work the very things he had worked for. He felt exhausted, enfeebled, shattered. Probably the excitement of rehearsing“Carmen”kept him up the while; but it had its after-effect, and the strain proved all the more disastrous. A profound melancholy, too, had come over him; and do what he would he could not beat it off. A young singer (some aspirant for lyric fame) came one day to sing to him.“Ich grölle nicht”and“Aus der Heimath”were chosen.“Quel chef d'œuvre,”said he,“mais quelle désolation, c'est à vous donner la nostalgie de la mort.”Then he sat down to the piano and played the“Marche Funèbre”of Chopin. That was the frame of mind he was in.
In his gayer moments he would often long for Italy. He had never forgotten the happy days passed there with Guiraud.“I dreamed last night”(he is writing to Guiraud)“that we were all at Naples, installed in a most lovely villa, and living under a government purely artistic. The Senate was made up by Beethoven, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Giorgione,e tutti quanti. The National Guard was no more. In place of it there was a huge orchestra of which Litolff was the conductor. All suffrage was denied to idiots, humbugs, schemers, and ignoramuses—thatis to say, suffrage was cut down to the smallest proportions imaginable. Geneviève was a little too amiable for Goethe, but despite this trifling circumstance the awakening was terribly bitter.”
“Carmen”was produced at last, on the3rdof March in that year (1875). The Habanera—of which, by the way, he wrote for Mme. Galli-Marié no less than thirteen versions before he came across, in an old book, the one we know—the prelude to the second act, the toreador song, and the quintett were encored. The rest fell absolutely flat.
The blow was a terrific one to Bizet. He had dreamed of such a different lot for“Carmen.”Arm in arm with Guiraud he left the theatre, and together they paced the streets of Paris until dawn. Small wonder he felt bitter; and in vain the kindly Guiraud did his best to comfort him. Had not“Don Juan,”he argued, been accorded a reception no whit better when it was produced in Vienna? and had not poor Mozart said“I have written 'Don Juan' for myself and two of my friends”? But he found no consolation in the fact. The press, too, cut him to the quick. This“Carmen,”said they, was immoral,banale; it was all head and no heart; the composer had made up his mind to show how learned he was, with the result that he was only dull and obscure. Then again, the gipsy girl whose liaisons formed the subject of the story was at best an odious creature; the actress's gestures were the very incarnation of vice, there was something licentious even in the tones of her voice; the composer evidently belonged to the school ofcivet sans lièvre; there was no unity of style; it was not dramatic, and could never live; in a word, there was no health in it.
Even Du Locle—who of all men should have supported it—played him false. A minister of the Government wrote personallyto the director for a box for his family. Du Locle replied with an invitation to the rehearsal, adding that he had rather that the minister came himself before he brought his daughters.
Prostrate with it all, poor Bizet returned to Bougival. When forced to give up“Geneviève,”he had written to Gallet:“I shall give the whole of May, June, and July to it.”And now May was already come, and he was in his bed.“Angine colossale,”were the words he sent to Guiraud, who was to have been with him the following Sunday.“Do not come as we arranged; imagine, if you can, a double pedal, A flat, E flat, straight through your head from left to right. This is how I am just now.”
He never wrote more than a few pages of“Geneviève.”He got worse and worse. But even so, the end came all too suddenly, and on the night of the2ndof June he died—died as nearly as possible at the exact moment when Galli-Marié at the Opéra Comique was singing her song of fate in the card scene of the third act of his“Carmen.”The coincidence was true enough. That night it was with difficulty that she sung her song. Her nervousness, from some cause or another, was so great that it was with the utmost effort she pronounced the words:“La carte impitoyable; répétera la mort; encore, toujours la mort.”On finishing the scene, she fainted at the wings. Next morning came the news of Bizet's death. And some friends said—because it was not meet for them to see the body—that the poor fellow had killed himself. Small wonder if it were so!
Six Drawings
By Aubrey Beardsley
I. II. III.
The Comedy-Ballet of Marionnettes, as performed by the troupe of the Théâtre-Impossible, posed in three drawings
IV.Garçons de Café
V. The Slippers of Cinderella
For you must have all heard of the Princess Cinderella with her slim feet and shining slippers. She was beloved by Prince ——, who married her, but she died soon afterwards, poisoned (according to Dr. Gerschovius) by her elder sister Arabella, with powdered glass. It was ground I suspect from those very slippers she danced in at the famous ball. For the slippers of Cinderella have never been found since. They are not at Cluny.
Hector Sandus
VI. Portrait of Madame Réjane
Illustration: Marionnettes 1
Illustration: Marionnettes 2
Illustration: Marionnettes 3
Illustration: Garcons de Cafe
Illustration: Slippers of Cinderella
Illustration: Madame Rejane
By John Davidson
I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw,And set the blooming world a-work for me,Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—On the handle of a skeleton gold key.I cut mine on leek, which I eat it every week:I'm a clerk at thirty bob, as you can see.But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss;There's no such thing as being starred and crossed;It's just the power of some to be a boss,And the bally power of others to be bossed:I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur!Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost!For like a mole I journey in the dark,A-travelling along the undergroundFrom my Pillar'd Halls and broad suburban ParkTo come the daily dull official round;And home again at night with my pipe all alightA-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.And it's often very cold and very wet;And my missis stitches towels for a hunks;And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let—Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.And we cough, the wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.But you'll never hearherdo a growl, or whine,For she's made of flint and roses very odd;And I've got to cut my meaning rather fineOr I'd blubber, forI'mmade of greens and sod:So p'rhaps we are in hell for all that I can tell,And lost and damned and served up hot to God.I ain't blaspheming, Mr. Silvertongue;I'm saying things a bit beyond your art:Of all the rummy starts you ever sprungThirty bob a week's the rummiest start!With your science and your books and your the'ries about spooks,Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?I didn't mean your pocket, Mr.; no!I mean that having children and a wifeWith thirty bob on which to come and goIsn't dancing to the tabor and the fife;When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven, it makes you think,And notice curious items about life!I step into my heart and there I meetA god-almighty devil singing small,Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,And squelch the passers flat against the wall;If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,He would take it, ask for more, and eat it all.And I meet a sort of simpleton beside—The kind that life is always giving beans;With thirty bob a week to keep a brideHe fell in love and married in his teens;At thirty bob he stuck, but he knows it isn't luck;He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.And the god-almighty devil and the foolThat meet me in the High Street on the strike,When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,Are my good and evil angels if you like;And both of them together in every kind of weatherRide me like a double-seated“bike.”That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled;But I have a high old hot un in my mind,A most engrugious notion of the worldThat leaves your lightning 'rithmetic behind:I give it at a glance when I say "There ain't no chance,Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind."And it's this way that I make it out to be:No fathers, mothers, countries, climates—none!—Not Adam was responsible for me;Nor society, nor systems, nary one!A little sleeping seed, I woke—I did indeed—A million years before the blooming sun.I woke because I thought the time had come;Beyond my will there was no other cause:And everywhere I found myself at homeBecause I chose to be the thing I was;And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape,I always went according to the laws.Iwas the love that chose my mother out;Ijoined two lives and from the union burst;My weakness and my strength without a doubtAre mine alone for ever from the first.It's just the very same with a difference in the nameAs“Thy will be done.”You say it if you durst!They say it daily up and down the landAs easy as you take a drink, it's true;But the difficultest go to understand,And the difficultest job a man can do,Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,And feel that that's the proper thing for you.It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;It's walking on a string across a gulfWith millstones fore-and-aft about your neck:But the thing is daily done by many and many a one....And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw,And set the blooming world a-work for me,Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—On the handle of a skeleton gold key.I cut mine on leek, which I eat it every week:I'm a clerk at thirty bob, as you can see.
But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss;There's no such thing as being starred and crossed;It's just the power of some to be a boss,And the bally power of others to be bossed:I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur!Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost!
For like a mole I journey in the dark,A-travelling along the undergroundFrom my Pillar'd Halls and broad suburban ParkTo come the daily dull official round;And home again at night with my pipe all alightA-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.
And it's often very cold and very wet;And my missis stitches towels for a hunks;And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let—Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.And we cough, the wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.
But you'll never hearherdo a growl, or whine,For she's made of flint and roses very odd;And I've got to cut my meaning rather fineOr I'd blubber, forI'mmade of greens and sod:So p'rhaps we are in hell for all that I can tell,And lost and damned and served up hot to God.
I ain't blaspheming, Mr. Silvertongue;I'm saying things a bit beyond your art:Of all the rummy starts you ever sprungThirty bob a week's the rummiest start!With your science and your books and your the'ries about spooks,Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?
I didn't mean your pocket, Mr.; no!I mean that having children and a wifeWith thirty bob on which to come and goIsn't dancing to the tabor and the fife;When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven, it makes you think,And notice curious items about life!
I step into my heart and there I meetA god-almighty devil singing small,Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,And squelch the passers flat against the wall;If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,He would take it, ask for more, and eat it all.
And I meet a sort of simpleton beside—The kind that life is always giving beans;With thirty bob a week to keep a brideHe fell in love and married in his teens;At thirty bob he stuck, but he knows it isn't luck;He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.
And the god-almighty devil and the foolThat meet me in the High Street on the strike,When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,Are my good and evil angels if you like;And both of them together in every kind of weatherRide me like a double-seated“bike.”
That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled;But I have a high old hot un in my mind,A most engrugious notion of the worldThat leaves your lightning 'rithmetic behind:I give it at a glance when I say "There ain't no chance,Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind."
And it's this way that I make it out to be:No fathers, mothers, countries, climates—none!—Not Adam was responsible for me;Nor society, nor systems, nary one!A little sleeping seed, I woke—I did indeed—A million years before the blooming sun.
I woke because I thought the time had come;Beyond my will there was no other cause:And everywhere I found myself at homeBecause I chose to be the thing I was;And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape,I always went according to the laws.
Iwas the love that chose my mother out;Ijoined two lives and from the union burst;My weakness and my strength without a doubtAre mine alone for ever from the first.It's just the very same with a difference in the nameAs“Thy will be done.”You say it if you durst!
They say it daily up and down the landAs easy as you take a drink, it's true;But the difficultest go to understand,And the difficultest job a man can do,Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,And feel that that's the proper thing for you.
It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;It's walking on a string across a gulfWith millstones fore-and-aft about your neck:But the thing is daily done by many and many a one....And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
By Henry Harland
It has been an episode like a German sentence, with its predicate at the end. Trifling incidents occurred at haphazard, as it seemed, and I never guessed they were by way of making sense. Then, this morning, somewhat of the suddenest, came the verb and the full stop.
Yesterday I should have said there was nothing to tell; to-day there is too much. The announcement of his death has caused me to review our relations, with the result of discovering my own part to have been that of an accessory before the fact. I did not kill him (though, even there, I'm not sure I didn't lend a hand), but I might have saved his life. It is certain that he made me signals of distress—faint, shy, tentative, but unmistakable—and that I pretended not to understand: just barely dipped my colours, and kept my course. Oh, if I had dreamed that his distress was extreme—that he was on the point of foundering and going down! However, that doesn't exonerate me: I ought to have turned aside to find out. It was a case of criminal negligence. That he, poor man, probably never blamed me, only adds to the burden on my conscience. He had got past blaming people, I dare say, and doubtless merely lumped me with the rest—with the sum-total of things that made life unsupportable. Yet, for a moment, whenwe first met, his face showed a distinct glimmering of hope; so perhaps there was a distinct disappointment. He must have had so many disappointments, before it came to—what it came to; but it wouldn't have come to that if he had got hardened to them. Possibly they had lost their outlines, and merged into one dull general disappointment that was too hard to bear. I wonder whether the Priest and the Levite were smitten with remorse after they had passed on. Unfortunately, in this instance, no Good Samaritan followed.
The bottom of our longtable d'hôtewas held by a Frenchman, a Normand, a giant, but a pallid and rather flabby giant, whose name, if he had another than Monsieur, I never heard. He professed to be a painter, used to sketch birds and profiles on the back of his menu-card between the courses, wore shamelessly the multi-coloured rosette of a foreign order in his buttonhole, and talked with a good deal of physiognomy. I had the corner seat at his right, and was flanked in turn by Miss Etta J. Hicks, a bouncing young person from Chicago, beyond whom, like rabbits in a company of foxes, cowered Mr. and Mrs. Jordan P. Hicks, two broken-spirited American parents. At Monsieur's left, and facing me, sat Colonel Escott, very red and cheerful; then a young man who called the Colonel Cornel, and came from Dublin, proclaiming himself a barr'ster, and giving his name as Flarty, though on his card it was written Flaherty; and then Sir Richard Maistre. After him, a diminishing perspective of busy diners—for purposes of conversation, so far as we were concerned, inhabitants of the Fourth Dimension.
Of our immediate constellation Sir Richard Maistre was the only member on whom the eye was tempted to linger. The others were obvious—simple equations, soluble“in the head.”But he called for slate and pencil, offered materials for doubt and speculation,though it would not have been easy to tell wherein they lay. What displayed itself to a cursory inspection was quite unremarkable: simply a decent-looking young Englishman, of medium stature, with square-cut plain features, reddish-brown hair, grey eyes, and clothes and manners of the usual pattern. Yet, showing through this ordinary surface, there was something cryptic. For me, at any rate, it required a constant effort not to stare at him. I felt it from the beginning, and I felt it till the end: a teasing curiosity, a sort of magnetism that drew my eyes in his direction. I was always on my guard to resist it, and that was really the inception of my neglect of him. From I don't know what stupid motive of pride, I was anxious that he shouldn't discern the interest he had excited in me; so I paid less ostensible attention to him than to the others, who excited none at all. I tried to appear unconscious of him as a detached personality, to treat him as merely a part of the group as a whole. Then I improved such occasions as presented themselves to steal glances at him, to study himà la dérobée—groping after the quality, whatever it was, that made him a puzzle—seeking to formulate, to classify him.
Already, at the end of my first dinner, he had singled himself out and left an impression. I went into the smoking-room, and began to wonder, over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, who he was. I had not heard his voice; he hadn't talked much, and his few observations had been murmured into the ears of his next neighbours. All the same, he had left an impression, and I found myself wondering who he was, the young man with the square-cut features and the reddish-brown hair. I have said that his features were square-cut and plain, but they were small and carefully finished, and as far as possible from being common. And his grey eyes, though not conspicuous for size or beauty, had a character, an expression. Theysaidsomething, something Icouldn't perfectly translate, something shrewd, humorous, even perhaps a little caustic, and yet sad; not violently, not rebelliously sad (I should never have dreamed that it was a sadness which would drive him to desperate remedies), but rather resignedly, submissively sad, as if he had made up his mind to put the best face on a sorry business. This was carried out by a certain abruptness, a slight lack of suavity, in his movements, in his manner of turning his head, of using his hands. It hinted a degree of determination which, in the circumstances, seemed superfluous. He had unfolded his napkin and attacked his dinner with an air of resolution, like a man with a task before him, who mutters,“Well, it's got to be done, and I'll do it.”At a hazard, he was two- or three-and-thirty, but below his neck he looked older. He was dressed like everybody, but his costume had, somehow, an effect of soberness beyond his years. It was decidedly not smart, and smartness was the dominant note at the Hôtel d'Angleterre.
I was still more or less vaguely ruminating him, in a corner of the smoking-room, on that first evening, when I became aware that he was standing near me. As I looked up, our eyes met, and for the fraction of a second fixed each other. It was barely the fraction of a second, but it was time enough for the transmission of a message. I knew as certainly as if he had said so that he wanted to speak, to break the ice, to scrape an acquaintance; I knew that he had approached me and was loitering in my neighbourhood for that specific purpose. Idon'tknow, I have studied the psychology of the moment in vain to understand, why I felt a perverse impulse to put him off. I was interested in him, I was curious about him; and there he stood, testifying that the interest was reciprocal, ready to make the advances, only waiting for a glance or a motion of encouragement; and I deliberately secludedmyself behind my coffee-cup and my cigarette smoke. I suppose it was the working of some obscure mannish vanity—of what in a woman would have defined itself as coyness and coquetry. If he wanted to speak—well, let him speak; I wouldn't help him. I could realise the processes ofhismind even more clearly than those of my own—his desire, his hesitancy. He was too timid to leap the barriers; I must open a gate for him. He hovered near me for a minute longer, and then drifted away. I felt his disappointment, his spiritual shrug of the shoulders; and I perceived rather suddenly that I was disappointed myself. I must have been hoping all along that he would speakquand même, and now I was moved to run after him, to call him back. That, however, would imply aconsciousness of guilt, an admission that my attitude had been intentional; so I kept my seat, making a mental rendezvous with him for the morrow.
Between my Irishvis-à-visFlaherty and myself there existed no such strain. He presently sauntered up to me, and dropped into conversation as easily as if we had been old friends.
“Well, and are you here for your health or your entertainment?”he began.“But I don't need to ask that of a man who's drinking black coffee and smoking tobacco at this hour of the night. I'm the only invalid at our end of the table, and I'm no better than an amateur meself. It's a barrister's throat I have—I caught it waiting for briefs in me chambers at Doblin.”
We chatted together for a half-hour or so, and before we parted he had given me a good deal of general information—about the town, the natives, the visitors, the sands, the golf-links, the hunting, and, with the rest, about our neighbours at table.
“Did ye notice the pink-faced bald little man at me right? That's Cornel Escott, C.B., retired. He takes a sea-bath every morning, to live up to the letters; and faith, it's an act ofheroism, no less, in weather the like of this. Three weeks have I been here, and but wan day of sunshine, and the mercury never above fifty. The other fellow, him at me left, is what you'd be slow to suspect by the look of him, I'll go bail; and that's a bar'net, Sir Richard Maistre, with a place in Hampshire, and ten thousand a year if he's a penny. The young lady beside yourself rejoices in the euphonious name of Hicks, and trains her Popper and Mommer behind her like slaves in a Roman triumph. They're Americans, if you must have the truth, though I oughtn't to tell it on them, for I'm an Irishman myself, and its not for the pot to be bearing tales of the kettle. However, their tongues bewray them; so I've violated no confidence.”
The knowledge that my young man was a baronet with a place in Hampshire somewhat disenchanted me. A baronet with a place in Hampshire left too little to the imagination. The description seemed to curtail his potentialities, to prescribe his orbit, to connote turnip-fields, house-parties, and a whole system of British commonplace. Yet, when, the next day at luncheon, I again had him before me in the flesh, my interest revived. Its lapse had been due to an association of ideas which I now recognised as unscientific. A baronet with twenty places in Hampshire would remain at the end of them all a human being; and no human being could be finished off in a formula of half a dozen words. Sir Richard Maistre, anyhow, couldn't be. He was enigmatic, and his effect upon me was enigmatic too. Why did I feel that tantalising inclination to stare at him, coupled with that reluctance frankly to engage in talk with him? Why did he attack his luncheon with that appearance of grim resolution? For a minute, after he had taken his seat, he eyed his knife, fork, and napkin, as a labourer might a load that he had to lift, measuring the difficulties he must cope with; then he gave his head aresolute nod, and set to work. To-day, as yesterday, he said very little, murmured an occasional remark into the ear of Flaherty, accompanying it usually with a sudden short smile: but he listened to everything, and did so with apparent appreciation.
Our proceedings were opened by Miss Hicks, who asked Colonel Escott,“Well, Colonel, have you had your bath this morning?”
The Colonel chuckled, and answered,“Oh, yes—yes, yes—couldn't forego my bath, you know—couldn't possibly forego my bath.”
“And what was the temperature of the water?”she continued.
“Fifty-two—fifty-two—three degrees warmer than the air—three degrees,”responded the Colonel, still chuckling, as if the whole affair had been extremely funny.
“And you, Mr. Flaherty, I suppose you've been to Bayonne?”
“No, I've broken me habit, and not left the hotel.”
Subsequent experience taught me that these were conventional modes by which the conversation was launched every day, like the preliminary moves in chess. We had another ritual for dinner: Miss Hicks then inquired if the Colonel had taken his ride, and Flaherty played his game of golf. The next inevitable step was common to both meals. Colonel Escott would pour himself a glass of thevin ordinaire, a jug of which was set by every plate, and holding it up to the light, exclaim with simulated gusto,“Ah! Fine old wine! Remarkably full rich flavour!”At this pleasantry we would all gently laugh; and the word was free.
Sir Richard, as I have said, appeared to be an attentive and appreciative listener, not above smiling at our mildest sallies; but watching him out of the corner of an eye, I noticed that my own observations seemed to strike him with peculiar force—which led me to talkathim. Why not to him, with him? The interestwas reciprocal; he would have liked a dialogue; he would have welcomed a chance to commence one; and I could at any instant have given him such a chance. I talkedathim, it is true; but I talkedwithFlaherty or Miss Hicks, ortothe company at large. Of his separate identity he had no reason to believe me conscious. From a mixture of motives, in which I'm not sure that a certain heathenish enjoyment of his embarrassment didn't count for something, I was determined that if he wanted to know me he must come the whole distance; I wouldn't meet him halfway. Of course I had no idea that it could be a matter of the faintest real importance to the man. I judgedhisfeelings by my own; and though I was interested in him, I shall have conveyed an altogether exaggerated notion of my interest if you fancy it kept me awake at night. How was I to guess that his case was more serious—that he was not simply desirous of a little amusing talk, but starving, starving for a little human sympathy, a little brotherly love and comradeship?—that he was in an abnormally sensitive condition of mind, where mere negative unresponsiveness could hurt him like a slight or a rebuff?
In the course of the week I ran over to Pau, to pass a day with the Winchfields, who had a villa there. When I came back I brought with me all that they (who knew everybody) could tell about Sir Richard Maistre. He was intelligent and amiable, but the shyest of shy men. He avoided general society, frightened away perhaps by the British Mamma, and spent a good part of each year abroad, wandering rather listlessly from town to town. Though young and rich, he was neither fast nor ambitious: the Members' entrance to the House of Commons, the stage-doors of the music halls, were equally without glamour for him; and if he was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant, he had become so through the tacit operation of his stake in the country. Hehad chambers inSt.James's Street, was a member of the Travellers Club, and played the violin—for an amateur rather well. His brother, Mortimer Maistre, was in diplomacy—at Rio Janeiro or somewhere. His sister had married an Australian, and lived in Melbourne.
At the Hôtel d'Angleterre I found his shyness was mistaken for indifference. He was civil to everybody, but intimate with none. He attached himself to no party, paired off with no individuals. He sought nobody. On the other hand, the persons who went out of their way to seek him, came back, as they felt, repulsed. He had been polite but languid. These, however, were not the sort of persons he would be likely to care for. There prevailed a general conception of him as cold, unsociable. He certainly walked about a good deal alone—you met him on the sands, on the cliffs, in the stiff little streets, rambling aimlessly, seldom with a companion. But to me it was patent that he played the solitary from necessity, not from choice—from the necessity of his temperament. A companion was precisely that which above all things his heart coveted; only he didn't know how to set about annexing one. If he sought nobody, it was because he didn't know how. This was a part of what his eyes said; they bespoke his desire, his perplexity, his lack of nerve. Of the people who put themselves out to seek him, there was Miss Hicks; there were a family from Leeds, named Bunn, a father, mother, son, and two redoubtable daughters, who drank champagne with every meal, dressed in the height of fashion, said their say at the tops of their voices, and were understood to be auctioneers; a family from Bayswater named Krausskopf. I was among those whom he had marked as men he would like to fraternise with. As often as our paths crossed, his eyes told me that he longed to stop and speak, and continue the promenade abreast. I was under thecontrol of a demon of mischief; I took a malicious pleasure in eluding and baffling him—in passing on with a nod. It had become a kind of game; I was curious to see whether he would ever develop sufficient hardihood to take the bull by the horns. After all, from a conventional point of view, my conduct was quite justifiable. I always meant to do better by him next time, and then I always deferred it to the next. But from a conventional point of view my conduct was quite unassailable. I said this to myself when I had momentary qualms of conscience. Now, rather late in the day, it strikes me that the conventional point of view should have been re-adjusted to the special case. I should have allowed for his personal equation.
My cousin Wilford came to Biarritz about this time, stopping for a week, on his way home from a tour in Spain. I couldn't find a room for him at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, so he put up at a rival hostelry over the way; but he dined with me on the evening of his arrival, a place being made for him between mine and Monsieur's. He hadn't been at the table five minutes before the rumour went abroad who he was—somebody had recognised him. Then those who were within reach of his voice listened with all their ears—Colonel Escott, Flaherty, Maistre, and Miss Hicks, of course, who even called him by name:“Oh, Mr. Wilford.”“Now, Mr. Wilford,”&c.After dinner, in the smoking-room, a cluster of people hung round us; men with whom I had no acquaintance came merrily up and asked to be introduced. Colonel Escott and Flaherty joined us. At the outskirts of the group I beheld Sir Richard Maistre. His eyes (without his realising it perhaps) begged me to invite him, to present him, and I affected not to understand! This is one of the little things I find hardest to forgive myself. My whole behaviour towards the young man is now a subject of self-reproach:if it had been different, who knows that the tragedy of yesterday would ever have happened? If I had answered his timid overtures, walked with him, talked with him, cultivated his friendship, given him mine, established a kindly human relation with him, I can't help feeling that he might not have got to such a desperate pass, that I might have cheered him, helped him, saved him. I feel it especially when I think of Wilford. His eyes attested so much; he would have enjoyed meeting him so keenly. No doubt he was already fond of the man, had loved him through his books, like so many others. If I had introduced him? If we had taken him with us the next morning, on our excursion to Cambo? Included him occasionally in our smokes and parleys?
Wilford left for England without dining again at the Hôtel d'Angleterre. We were busy“doing”the country, and never chanced to be at Biarritz at the dinner-hour. During that week I scarcely saw Sir Richard Maistre.
Another little circumstance that rankles especially now would have been ridiculous, except for the way things have ended. It isn't easy to tell—it was so petty, and I am so ashamed. Colonel Escott had been abusing London, describing it as the least beautiful of the capitals of Europe, comparing it unfavourably to Paris, Vienna, andSt.Petersburg. I took up the cudgels in its defence, mentioned its atmosphere, its tone; Paris, Vienna,St.Petersburg were lyric, London was epic; and so forth and so forth. Then, shifting from the æsthetic to the utilitarian, I argued that of all great towns it was the healthiest, its death-rate was lowest. Sir Richard Maistre had followed my dissertation attentively, and with a countenance that signified approval; and when, with my reference to the death-rate, I paused, he suddenly burned his ships. He looked me full in the eye, and said,“Thirty-seven, I believe?”His heightened colour, a nervousmovement of the lip, betrayed the effort it had cost him; but at last he haddoneit—screwed his courage to the sticking-place, and spoken. And I—I can never forget it—I grow hot when I think of it—but I was possessed by a devil. His eyes hung on my face, awaiting my response, pleading for a cue.“Go on,”they urged.“I have taken the first, the difficult step—make the next smoother for me.”And I—I answered lackadaisically, with just a casual glance at him,“I don't know the figures,”and absorbed myself in my viands.
Two or three days later his place was filled by a stranger, and Flaherty told me that he had left for the Riviera.
All this happened last March at Biarritz. I never saw him again till three weeks ago. It was one of those frightfully hot afternoons in July; I had come out of my club, and was walking upSt.James's Street, towards Piccadilly; he was moving in an opposite sense; and thus we approached each other. He didn't see me, however, till we had drawn rather near to a conjunction: then he gave a little start of recognition, his eyes brightened, his pace slackened, his right hand prepared to advance itself—and I bowed slightly, and pursued my way! Don't ask why I did it. It is enough to confess it, without having to explain it. I glanced backwards, by and by, over my shoulder. He was standing where I had met him, half turned round, and looking after me. But when he saw that I was observing him, he hastily shifted about, and continued his descent of the street.
That was only three weeks ago. Only three weeks ago I still had it in my power to act. I am sure—I don't know why I am sure, but Iamsure—that I could have deterred him. For all that one can gather from the brief note he left behind, it seems he had no special, definite motive; he had met with no losses, got into no scrape; he was simply tired and sick of life and of himself.“I have no friends,”he wrote.“Nobody will care. People don't like me; people avoid me. I have wondered why; I have tried to watch myself, and discover; I have tried to be decent. I suppose it must be that I emit a repellent fluid; I suppose I am a 'bad sort.'”He had a morbid notion that people didn't like him, that people avoided him! Oh, to be sure, there were the Bunns and the Krausskopfs and their ilk, plentiful enough: but he understood what it was that attractedthem. Other people, the peoplehecould have liked, kept their distance—were civil, indeed, but reserved. He wanted bread, and they gave him a stone. It never struck him, I suppose, that they attributed the reserve to him. But I—I knew that his reserve was only an effect of his shyness; I knew that he wanted bread: and that knowledge constituted my moral responsibility. I didn't know that his need was extreme; but I have tried in vain to absolve myself with the reflection. I ought to have made inquiries. When I think of that afternoon inSt.James's Street—only three weeks ago—I feel like an assassin. The vision of him, as he stopped and looked after me—I can't banish it. Why didn't some good spirit move me to turn back and overtake him?
It is so hard for the mind to reconcile itself to the irretrievable. I can't shake off a sense that there is something to be done. I can't realise that it is too late.
By Dollie Radford