Chapter VI: Part 6

A freezing blast overturned him, the saints of hell encircled him, as he heard Van Zorn’s grinding sobs:

“Thou hast denied the Devil! Thou hast committed the Supreme Sin! Quickly worship, else be banished forever from the only Paradise!”

Sick, his lips twisting with anguish, Invern had sufficient will to close his eyes and despairingly groan: “Son of Mary, save me!” The apparition crumbled. After a panic plunge he found himself somehow in the wintry street, his forehead wet with fear, his nerves tugging in their sheaths like wild animals leashed, his heart a cinder in a world of smoke....

* * * * *

From Asia Minor, years later, the brothers received a letter signed by Oswald Invern. In it there were misty hints of monastic immurement, and the hopelessness of expiating a certain strange crime, compared with which the sin against the Holy Ghost is but a youthful peccadillo. The Hollin boys giggled in unison.

“What joy!” they exclaimed, “to have invented the Supreme Sin!”

II

BROTHERS-IN-LAW

With the vision of an antique marble façade lingering in his memory he slowly walked up the Avenue, only stopping at Fiftieth Street to turn and as leisurely retrace his route. Vincent Serle was in the middle of his vigorous life, but this day, an early one in April, his forces seemed arrested; like the curling wave which crests before its ultimate recoil and crumble. He attributed his mood to the weather. It was not precisely spring-fever, but a general slackening of physical fibre. He felt almost immoral: he desired respite from toil; he longed for some place where his eyes would not encounter palette or print; and, a versatile man of uncertain purpose, he longed to write a novel, chiefly about himself.

The clock on the church-tower told him that he was farther down-town than he had planned. He had mechanically spoken to passing acquaintances. He had saluted Mrs. Larce, over whose portrait he was laboring, with a vacant regard and flamboyant hat. Then he emerged from his engulfing spleen and hastily ascended Delmonico’s steps. It was his day of disappointments. All the windows in the café were occupied; nothing remained except a large table in the centre of the room, decidedly an unpleasant spot, with people passing and repassing. He hesitated and would have gone away when he remembered that this hour always saw a mob of hungry folk at any establishment. And Benedict, his favorite waiter, whispered to him that he would assiduously attend to monsieur’s wants. The bored painter sank heavily into his chair.

The meal was not an enlivening one. Like most artists educated in Paris, Vincent never took anything save coffee and rolls before one o’clock. He was not an early riser; he deplored morning work, being lazy and indifferent; but he soon discovered that if he were to keep pace with the desperate pace of New York artistic life he dared not waste the first half of the day. Mrs. Larce, for example, insisted upon a ten-o’clock sitting. At that precise hour he wished himself a writer with liberty to work at midnight; then he might indulge in more tobacco, dreams, and later uprisings. In the meantime he was munching his fish without noting its flavor, a fact that Benedict witnessed with disappointed eyes.

He had achieved coffee and cognac and was about to light a black cigar when a man hurried in, and, after gazing at the coveted window-tables, sat himself opposite Serle with a short nod, though hardly looking at him. The match burned Serle’s fingers and he struck a fresh one. Instinctively he stood up, searching the room for another place. The garçon asked if he desired his account. Vincent shook his head and fumingly demanded a newspaper; behind it he swallowed his brandy and puffed his cigar. The fine print melted into a blurred mass before his eyes and his hands trembled. He could feel the beating of blood at his wrists and temple. He did not peep over the paper rampart because of his discomposed features.

“Damn him!” he thought, “I wonder if he knows me yet?”

The newcomer calmly ate his omelette with the air of a man intent upon some problem. He was not so tall, so dark as Serle, but older, wirier and of a type familiar to Fifth Avenue after four o’clock on fine afternoons:--a lawyer, broker, an insurance officer, but never an artist. He did not glance at his table companion until the other had folded his newspaper, and then without a gleam of recognition.

“He doesn’t know me,” reflected Serle; “so much the better, I’ll not go away. I’ll watch him. It will be interesting.”

He sardonically hoped that the absorbed man would choke as he swallowed his chop. Then he smiled at his vindictive temper, smiled bitterly because of his childishness--after all the fellow was not to blame; he had been a mere accomplice of a stronger, a more unprincipled will. Yet, slowly studying the face, he could not call it a foolish one. Its owner showed by his concentrated pose, the stern expression of his mask, that he was not a weakling.

“But,” mused the painter, “I’ve seen men with jaws as if modelled in granite, eyes that imperiously reminded you that they were your master, men whose bearing recalled that of a triumphant gladiator; well, these same individuals, artists, despots, brutes, bankers, were like whipped dogs in the presence of some woman. No. Hector Marden’s outward semblance is not an indication of the real man. We are all consummate actors in our daily lives, none more so than those who have much to conceal.”

Hector Marden--and had he not much to conceal--the beast! Vincent’s clinched fists were drumming on the table. “Come,” he pondered, “I’ll have to cease this baby game or I’ll end by making a scene and consequently an ass of myself.” He stared at Benedict just as Marden raised his finger. The waiter hurried to the table and presented his memoranda to the men. Serle frowned. He was in a nasty humor.

“What’s this, Benedict?” He tendered the embarrassed garçon his slip of paper.

“Pardon, a thousand times pardon, monsieur! I made a mistake.” Marden looked up smiling.

“I fear I have the bill intended for you,” he said, in a conciliating tone.

“It’s nothing,” murmured Serle. Both men bowed. The accounts were soon settled and Benedict nervously retreated to the background. But neither one stirred. Vincent, without pausing to analyze his action, offered Marden the newspaper. It was politely refused. Possibly because of the mellowness of the moment, or the ample repose that follows luncheon, Marden was not averse from entering into conversation, one of hazy indirectness, equally suggestive and non-committal. He made a few commonplace remarks about the unseasonable heat, the deplorable twilight of New York’s tower-begirt highways, and soon, against the prompting of his inner spirit, Serle chimed an accordance. They chatted. Benedict discreetly moved nearer. Presently Serle asked his neighbor if he would have a cigar or perhaps a liqueur.

“I don’t mind,” rejoined Marden. “The fact is I feel lazy this afternoon. I had expected to meet a friend here--a client of mine--but I fancy he is off somewhere wondering if New York shall ever boast a decent sky-line. He is an architect and enthusiastic over French Gothic.” Serle’s ears began to burn.

“Architecture in New York? That’s a tall joke. Curiously enough, though, this very morning I was admiring the new library. It has a stunning façade. If I were Emperor of America I’d raze every building within the radius of ten blocks so as to give the building a chance. Only think of the Cathedral without a house near it!”

“You are an artist, evidently,” Marden said without the faintest trace of curiosity in his voice. Serle nodded. Benedict with clasped hands hinted that the two gentlemen might prefer a window. There were empty tables upon which the sun no longer shone, since the formidable walls across the street blocked its rays. The painter shuddered. They would surely be seen by impertinent passers-by. He sent the man away, sharply adding that he would be called when needed. As for Marden, he was languidly drifting on the current of his fancy. Was it pleasant or unpleasant? The watcher could not decide. But he had made up his mind that he would draw Marden up to the danger-line, and if discovered, if discovered? He would at least tell him what he thought of the mean scoundrel who had----

“I’ve noticed,” Marden broke in on Serle’s ugly revery, “that painters seem to have lots of time on their hands. I beg your pardon. You have quite as much reason for advancing a similar remark about a professional man. Here I am lounging as if I had no office or desk loaded with unanswered correspondence. But I assure you I don’t often dissipate this way, and I take it you are of the same opinion regarding yourself.” He paused.

“You spoke of painters loafing. What made you single out that particular profession? I believe it may be called a profession,” Vincent laughed.

“Oh! You said you were a painter----”

“Yes, but you were not thinking of me, I’ll wager. You’ve only seen me half an hour.”

“You’re right; I was not thinking of painters, or of you in general, but of a particular case that came under my personal observation.”

“Yes, yes,” eagerly responded Serle, as he mentally abused the lawyer for his measured, pedantic delivery. “Your story interests.”

Marden glanced at the other’s flaming cheeks and replied, rather abruptly:

“But you haven’t heard it yet. However, it’s not much of a yarn. It happened--several years ago. A lady, a client, came to me for advice. She was married, married, I say, to an artist, a painter--a big, good-for-nothing fellow, who was lazy, who drank, ran after his models and spent her money.” Marden was interrupted.

“Excuse me, you said the lady was rich?”

“Did I?”

“Certainly, spent her money was your last phrase.”

“Oh!--Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have said her money. She had no money. I meant that her husband had money and didn’t spend it on her. A mere slip of the tongue.”

“Good. I’m a regular cross-examiner, you see.”

“True. You might prove a difficult witness in the chair. My friend--my client, informed me that her husband was so lazy that he remained in bed until one or two o’clock in the afternoon; then he would slowly dress and saunter for a walk, and often she did not see him until the next morning.”

“How did he make a living?”

“Oh, I suppose he painted a portrait or two and managed to get on.”

“A portrait or two? That would hardly pay household expenses--that is, unless your friend--I mean your client’s husband, was a Sargent or a Boldini. Then they could have struggled along at the rate of one portrait every year.” Serle laughed so harshly that Marden looked at him wonderingly.

“I see you are acquainted with the artistic temperament, as they call it in the newspapers,” observed the lawyer.

“Not as they call it, but as it is. My dear sir, an artist is not built to put in a ton of coal every day. A man whose brain is delicately adjusted, whose whole soul is in his eyes----”

“When he sees a pretty girl?” The sly tone of Marden angered the painter.

“No, hang it! For a painter there are no pretty, no ugly girls; no pretty, no ugly landscapes; no agreeable, no disagreeable subjects. Only a surface to be transferred to canvas, to be truthfully rendered. And that’s what business men, with their lack of imagination, will never understand.” He spoke hotly.

“I confess I have a lack of imagination when it comes to an appreciation of the artistic temperament.” Marden said this so slyly that Serle at once begged his pardon.

“After all, we are not at Delmonico’s just to thrash out a stale question. Pray go on--your story interests me strangely.”

“It’s not very interesting--that’s all I know. The woman left the man----”

“For another?” calmly interjected Vincent.

“Not at all, not at all--that is, not at the time.” The lawyer fumbled his glass, his expression overcast.

“You know what strange creatures women are. I had the greatest difficulty in persuading my client to make up her mind. She suffered, yet she cared for the fellow----”

Serle impatiently asked: “But you haven’t revealed what the fellow did to her--what his special crime! Didn’t he give her a good home?”

“My dear sir! A good home when he turned night into day! A good home when he seldom put brush to canvas! A good home--why, I thought I told you he was too friendly with his models.”

“His models! A portraitist! Do you mean his sitters? Did he flirt with them? If he did so he was a fool, for he was killing the goose that laid the--No, I’ll not be so impolite. I meant to say he would endanger his reputation.” Marden dryly laughed.

“That’s good--reputation is good. My client informed me, and she is a serious woman, that she never met an artist who could be relied upon. And she knew, for she was one herself.”

Serle’s jaw dropped. “How odd! What did she do?”

“Oh, she painted a little, just enough to make pin-money and to annoy her husband. You see, it was this way. She did not care to take money from a man she loathed.”

“Loathed!”

“I said--loathed. She literally loathed him. She told me so.”

“Why didn’t she leave him sooner? Besides, a few moments ago you said he never offered her money. Now, she loathed him so she wouldn’t take any----”

“Ah! That’s not in my fable,” tartly answered Marden. Again he turned gloomy and tapped nervously on the table.

The afternoon waned. A soft light slipped through the high curtained windows and modulated into glancing semitones over the richly decorated apartment. Several men entered--the vanguard of the five-o’clock brigade of absintheurs. Serle became nervous. What if!--But he determined to take the chance of seeing some imbecile who might salute him by name. He leaned forward on his folded arms and asked with a show of concern:

“And what became of your charming client?”

“My charming--Oh! Why, she married and settled down.”

“At last! Is she happy?”

“How can I tell?” The response betrayed an irritable nuance.

“I didn’t mean to put the question so bluntly. The reason I ask is a simple one. I studied a case not unlike the one you narrated. It is just as sordid and commonplace. My artist, also a painter, had married a pupil whom he taught--as much as she could absorb. She hadn’t much talent; it was the sort you see expressed on fans and bon-bon boxes.

“She might have been all right if her admiring friends had not told her that she had more talent than her husband--really, there wasn’t enough between them both to set the river on fire. However, she devilled him so effectually that he took a separate studio to get away from the sound of her voice and from their home. Like your painter, he turned day into night, but with a difference; he made illustrations for the magazines and newspapers, painted cheap portraits, demeaned himself generally to get money enough to run the house. She enjoyed herself, flirted, went into society of some sort, a cheap compromise between Bohemia and the frayed fringe of Fifth Avenue--you may not know the variety, as you are a member of another profession. It is diverting, this society, because it is as false as the hair on the head of its women. The bohemian side largely consists of bad claret, worse music, and ghastly studio teas; its fashionable side, poverty-stricken grand ladies with tarnished reputations. I’ve seen it all. One of the sights of greater Gotham is this glittering set of fakirs. The woman I speak of was whirled off her feet by the cheap show. She was a fresh, pretty little girl when she came here from a small town up State. Her friends were ambitious fools, she was green--and very vain. So vain! Then her name crept into the newspapers; it’s hard work keeping out of them nowadays. She was called ‘The beautiful Mrs. Somebody, who painted exquisite miniatures of socially prominent ladies’; you know the style of such rot? The horror of it! Rather you don’t, for you have never lived in this particular set----”

“But, I do, I do!” cried Marden. “My client told me something of it.” Serle sneered.

“She didn’t tell you much or you might have asked her whether there wasn’t another side to her case. The girl I am talking about went the pace; and, as an old philosopher on the police force remarks: ‘When a woman is heading for hell, don’t try to stop her; it’s a waste of time.’ Her husband saw it and he did try. Her friends knew it and helped her on her merry way. The painter even sent her to Europe, and with her some of her friends to keep her company, if they couldn’t keep her straight. Well--Paris is worse than poison for such women. She was soon back in New York, leaving behind her a sweet record, many unpaid bills and with a half a dozen fools, picked up, God knows where, at her heels. And then he went away. It was too much. However, being a woman, she won all the sympathy. Her story was believed, not his, and----”

“Singular coincidence. But wasn’t the husband to blame a little?”

“Oh!” said Vincent. “Men are always to blame.”

“Could he have forgiven her?”

“He did better, he forgot her.”

“Did she go to the bad?” sympathetically inquired Marden.

“On the contrary. She married well--a professional man of some sort.” He smiled with good-humored malice.

“And is she--is she--right now? I mean is she happy?”

“She will be happy always, a selfish little soul. You mean is her present husband happy?”

“Yes.” Marden leaned back nonchalantly and his hands, lean-fingered, traversed the corner of the table. To Serle the air became as dense as a vapor-bath. He continued, mercilessly:

“Of course he is happy--her husband. Why shouldn’t he be? He doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what? Really, you set me on edge,” exclaimed Marden. He tried to smile, but his upper lip lifted, displaying white eye-teeth. Vincent lighted a fresh cigar. His arm did not tremble now. Then, swallowing the last of his cold coffee, he continued:

“Her husband doesn’t dream the truth of her life in New York and Paris. She is, as I said, very pretty and can pull the wool over any man’s eyes. She is so interesting, so poetic, you know. She plays that little trick of the abused wife with the artistic temperament; plays it off on all the men she meets, on my friends----”

“Your friends?”

“My friends know her as a capricious vixen, masquerading as a delicate oversoul. I knew her once.” (Serle was cool; he had himself well in hand.) “And she always wins and still plays the game. At this moment she is probably fooling her husband, taking tea with some soft-head. She gets her wealthy male friends----”

“How does she get them? Tell me.” Marden’s voice was subdued. “Does she say to her husband that she must secure orders for miniatures by dining with rich fellows? Doesn’t she----”

“Really, my dear sir, I don’t know everything about this clever lady’s method. You seem quite taken with her story. It is, I pride myself, more exciting than your narrative of the artistic temperament.” Vincent’s intonations were markedly sarcastic. The older man’s face was afire.

“Who the devil----”

Benedict came to the table and placatingly asked:

“Is this Mr. Marden?”

“I’m Mr. Marden. What do you want?”

“Madame, your wife, has just arrived. She is in the large salon with a gentleman, and she desires me to ask you to join her.” The men arose.

“It was quite a pleasant afternoon, was it not?” In his most charming manner Serle put out his hand and Marden took it, grudgingly, his shrewd face surly, his little eyes suspiciously fastened on the smiling countenance of his companion. Then he followed the obsequious garçon, and Serle went into the street, first looking after the pair. He discerned Marden at a table on the Fifth Avenue side; with him was a fresh-colored, graceful woman, in elaborate afternoon toilette; a big, overdressed man sat beside her.

Once in a taxi Vincent Serle gave the order to cross over to Madison Avenue.

“I’ll not risk passing that window,” he muttered. “It was a mean trick, but it served the meddling fool right. I wonder which one of us lied the more? And I never saw Amy look so bewitching!”

III

GRINDSTONES

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard;
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.”

--_Oscar Wilde._

It was nearly nine o’clock in the evening when the young ladies entered the fashionable boarding-house drawing-room. Madame Recamier’s, on the upper West Side, was large enough to defy the heated spell; yet the group seemed languid on this tepid night in June, fluttered fans and were not disposed to chatter. No one had called. Miss Anstruther, a brilliant brunette, cried out:

“Oh, my kingdom for a man!” Mild laughter was heard. The girl went to the grand piano and said: “What shall it be?”

“No Chopin,” exclaimed Miss Beeslay.

“Do play a Chopin nocturne. Why, it’s the very night for nocturnes. There’s thunder in the air,” protested Miss Pickett.

“Listen to Anne. Isn’t she poetic--” By this time the young women were quite animated. Tea served, Madame Recamier sent down word by the black page to ask Miss Anstruther for a little music. The dark girl pouted, yawned, and finally began the nocturne in F minor. Before she had played two bars the door-bell rang, and its echoes were not stilled before a silvery gong sounded somewhere in the rear. The drawing-room was instantly deserted.

Presently the page brought in two young men, both in evening dress.

“We should like to see Miss Anstruther and Miss Pickett,” said the delicate-looking fellow. “Say that Mr. Harold and a friend are here.” The page departed. Mr. Harold and his companion paced the long apartment in a curious mood.

“Tea! They don’t drink tea, do they?” asked the other man, a tall blond, who wore his hair like a pianist.

“I’m afraid that’s all we’ll get, Alfred; unless Madame Recamier comes down-stairs or else is magnetized by your playing. She keeps a mighty particular boarding-house.”

“For God’s sake, Ned, don’t ask me to touch a piano. I’ve only come with you because you’ve raved about this dark girl and her playing. There they are!” Two came in; introductions followed, and the conversation soon became lively.

“We drink tea,” said Anne Pickett, “because Madame Recamier believes it is good for the complexion.”

“You have a hygiene like a young misses’ school, haven’t you?” said Ned, while Harold, fascinated by the rather gloomy beauty of Miss Anstruther, watched closely and encouraged her talk. She had a square jaw; her cheek-bones were prominent. She was not pretty. The charm of her face--it was more compelling than charming--lay in her eyes and mouth. Brown, with a hazel nuance, the eyes emitted a light like a cat’s in the dark. Her mouth was a contradiction of the jaw. The lips were full and indicated a rich, generous nature, but the mask was one of a Madonna--a Madonna who had forsaken heaven for earth. Harold found her extremely interesting.

“Of course, you are musical?” he asked.

“Yes; I studied at Stuttgart, and have regretted it all my life. I can never get rid of the technical stiffness.”

“Play for me,” he begged. But playing was not to the girl’s disposition. Sultry was the night, and a few faint flashes of heat-lightning near the horizon told of a storm to come. Anne Pickett was laughing very loudly at her companion’s remarks and did not appear to notice the pair. Several times, at the other end of the long drawing-room, eyes peeped in, and once the black page put his head in the door and coughed discreetly.

It seemed a dull hour at Madame Recamier’s.

Suddenly Harold placed his hand on Miss Anstruther’s and said: “Come to the piano,” and, as one hypnotized, she went with him. He lifted the fall-board, put back the lid, glanced carelessly at the maker’s name, and fixed the seat for the young woman. Anne Pickett was watching him from the other side of the room.

“Who’s your friend? He acts like a piano man. There were three here last night.”

“H’sh!” said Ned, as the pianist struck a firm chord in C-sharp minor and then raced through the Fantaisie-Impromptu. The man beside her listened and watched rather cynically as her strong fingers unlaced the involved figures of the music. That he knew the work was evident. When she had finished he congratulated her on her touch, observing: “What a pity you don’t cultivate your rhythms!” She started.

“You are a musician, then?” Before he could answer, the page came in and whispered in her ear: “Madame Recamier wants to know if the gentlemen will have some wine.”

Miss Anstruther blushed, got up from the piano and walked toward the window. Harold followed her, and Miss Pickett called out: “Ned, we can have some champagne; old Mumsey says so.”

When Harold reached the girl she was leaning out of the window regarding the western sky. Darkness was swallowing up the summer stars: he put his hand on her shoulder, for she was weeping silently, hopelessly.

“How can you stand it?” he murmured, and the ring in his voice caused the girl to turn about and face him, her eyes blurred but full of resentment.

“Don’t pity me--don’t pity me; whatever you feel, don’t pity me,” she said in a low, choked voice.

“My dear Miss Anstruther, let me understand you. I admire you, but I don’t see why I should pity you.” Harold was puzzled.

“Anne, he doesn’t know; Harold doesn’t know,” cried Miss Anstruther, and Anne laughed, when a sharp flash of lightning almost caused the page to drop the tray with the bottles and glasses.

It grew hot; the wine was nicely iced, so the four young people drank and were greatly refreshed. Madame Recamier was justly proud of her cellar. Anne pledged Ned, and Harold touched glasses with Miss Anstruther, while the first thunder boomed in the windows, and the other boarders out in the back conservatory shivered and thirsted.

Harold went to the piano. He felt wrought up in a singular manner. The electricity in the atmosphere, the spell of the dark woman’s sad eyes, her harsh reproof and her undoubted musical temperament acted on him like a whiplash. He called the page and rambled over the keyboard. Miss Anstruther sat near the pianist. Soon the vague modulations resolved into a definite shape, and the march from the Fantaisie in F minor was heard. It took form, it leaped into rhythmical life, and when the rolling arpeggios were reached, a crash over the house caused Miss Pickett to scream, and then the page entered with a tray.

Harold stopped playing. Miss Anstruther, her low, broad brow dark with resentment, said something to the boy, who showed his gums and grinned. “It’s de wine, missy,” he said, and went out on ostentatious tiptoe. The group in the conservatory watched the comedy in the drawing-room with unrelaxed interest, though little Miss Belt declared the thunder made her so nervous that she was going to bed. Madame Recamier rang the gong twice, and a few minutes later a smell of cooking mounted from the area kitchen. Harold started afresh. The storm without modulated clamorously into the distance, and orange-colored lightning played in at the window as he reached the big theme of the bass. It was that wonderful melody in F minor which Beethoven might have been proud to pen, and was followed by the exquisite group of double notes, so fragrant, so tender, so uplifting, that Anne Pickett forgot her wine; and the other girl, her eyes blazing, her cheek-bones etched against the skin, sat and knotted her fingers and followed with dazed attention the dance of the atoms in her brain. She saw Harold watching her as she went to school; Harold peeping in at the lodge of her college; Harold waiting to waylay her when she left her father’s house, and she saw Harold that terrible night! He had reached the meditation in B and her pulses slackened. After the crash of the storm, after the breathless rush of octaves, Miss Anstruther felt a stillness that did not come often into her life. The other pair were sitting very close, and the storm was growling a diminuendo in the east. Already a pungent and refreshing smell of earth that had been rained upon floated into the apartment, and Harold, his eyes fixed on hers, was rushing away with her soul on the broad torrent of Chopin’s magic music. She was enthralled, she was hurt; her heart stuck against her ribs and it pained her to breathe. When the last harp-like figure had flattened her to the very wall, she sank back in her chair and closed her eyes.

“Ho, Margery, wake up; your wine’s getting warm!” cried lively Anne Pickett as she sipped her glass, and Ned rang the bell for the page. Harold sat self-absorbed, his hands resting on the ivory keys. He divined that he had won the soul of the woman who sat near him, and he wondered. He looked at her face, a strong face, in repose with a few hard lines about the eyes and mouth. He gazed so earnestly that she opened her eyes, and catching his regard, blushed--blushed ever so lightly. But he saw it and wondered again. More wine came, but Miss Anstruther refused and so did Harold. By this time the other pair were jolly. Ned called out:

“Harold, play something lively. Wake up the bones, old man! Your girl isn’t getting gay.” Harold looked at her, and she walked slowly toward the conservatory. Miss Pickett, crazy Anne, as they called her, went to the piano and dashed into a lively galop. Ned drank another glass of wine and began to dance from the end of the room to the piano.

“Come on, let’s have a good racket!” he yelled, as the piano rattled off in rag-time while Miss Anstruther and Harold sat on near the conservatory. The whispering increased behind them, but the girl did not hear it. The music unlocked her heart, and her commonplace surroundings faded. If she had but met a man like him that other time! She realized his innate purity, his nobility of nature. Little wonder that his playing aroused her, made live anew the old pantomime of her life. She unconsciously placed in the foreground of her history the figure of the man beside her, yet she had never before seen him. It was wonderful, this spiritual rebirth. Only that morning she told the girls at breakfast she could never love again--she hated men and their ways. “They are animals, the best of them!” and Madame Recamier laughed the loudest.

Harold left her, took another glass of wine, and seeing Miss Pickett light a cigarette, asked permission to do the same.

“Can’t I bring you another glass of wine?” Harold tenderly asked. The gang of girls in the conservatory nudged one another and stared with burning eyes at Miss Anstruther through the lattice. She gently shook her head, and again he saw her blush. She did not stir. He began the luscious nocturne in B--the Tuberose Nocturne, and Madame Recamier’s gong sounded. The page entered and said:

“No more piano playing to-night. Madame wants to sleep.”

Miss Anstruther started so angrily that there was a titter behind the lattice. But she did not notice it; her whole soul was bent on watching Harold. He spoke to Ned, and Miss Pickett’s jarring laugh was heard.

Then he went over to her, and, sitting down beside her, leaned and touched her face with his finger. The girl grew white and she felt her heart beat. At the next word, the old, tired, cold look came back, and she faced him as she had first received him.

Then suddenly the laughter behind the lattice grew noisy. Anne Pickett screamed out:

“Another of Margery’s dreams shattered!”

Ned laughed and rang for more wine.

As they came down the steps the next morning Harold said to Ned:

“My boy, there are worse crimes than murdering a woman.”

“Oh, let’s get a cocktail,” croaked Ned.

IV

VENUS OR VALKYR?

Paul Godard found the ride between Nuremberg and Baireuth discomforting. The hot July breezes that blew into the first-class coupé of the train were almost breath-arresting; and Paul had left Stuttgart that morning in a savage mood. The slowness of the railway service irritated him, the faces of his travelling companions irritated him, and he had shocked an Englishman by remarking early in the afternoon:

“If the old engine doesn’t run any faster than this we had better get out and walk, or--push.”

The other simply peered at the speaker and then resumed Wolzogen’s book on Leading-Motives.

Three Roumanian ladies laughed in oily Eastern accents. They understood English, and the sight of a human being, a strong young man, in a passion about such a little matter as European railroad punctuality struck them as ridiculous. So they laughed again and Paul finally joined in, for he was an American.

He had been rude, but he couldn’t help it; besides, it looked as if they would reach Baireuth too late for the opening performance, and his was the laughter of despair.

The youthful pilgrim journeying to Baireuth was born in New York. He had studied music like most young people in his country, and had begun with that camel, that musical beast of all burdens, the piano. This he practised most assiduously at intervals, because he really loved music; but college, lawn-tennis, golfing, dancing, and motor-boating had claims not easily put aside. Naturally, the piano suffered until Paul left college; then for want of something better to do he took lessons from Joseffy and edified that master by his spurts of industry. His club began to encroach on his attention, and again the piano was forgotten. Paul, whose parents were rich, was not a society butterfly, but his training, instincts, and associations forced him to regard a good dinner, a good tailor, and a racing motor-car as necessary to his existence. From his mother he inherited his love of music, and his father, dead many years, had bequeathed him a library; better still, a taste for reading.

An average cultivated American, intensely self-conscious, too self-conscious to show himself at his best, ashamed of his finer emotions, like most of his countrymen, and a trifle spoiled and shallow.

One day Edgar Saltus told Paul he should read Schopenhauer, and he at once ordered the two volumes of The World as Will and Representation. It was not difficult reading, because he had been in Professor Bowne’s class at college and enjoyed the cracking of metaphysical nuts. He began to get side glimpses of Wagner’s philosophy, but despite the wit of the German Diogenes his pessimism repelled him. He could not agree with Saltus’s ingenious defense of pessimism in his two early books, and he looked about for diversion elsewhere. Walter Pater’s silken chords, velvety verbal music, had seduced Paul from the astringencies of Herbert Spencer, and Chopin made moonlight for his soul on morbid nights.

Yet Paul, with his selfish, well-bred, easy life, had encountered no soul-racking convulsions; he had never been in love, therefore he played the nocturnes of Chopin in a very unconvincing manner.

He always declared that Poe was bilious, and this remark gained for him the reputation of wit and scholar among his club associates.

The Calumel Club is not given to velléités of speech....

II

Then Paul Godard fell into the clutches of Richard Wagner and swallowed much of him.

Chopin seemed tiny, exotic, and feminine compared to the sirocco blasts of the Baireuth master. Paul was not too critical, and, like most Americans, he measured music by its immediate emotional result. The greater the assault upon the senses, the greater the music. The logic was inescapable.

Friedrich Nietzsche was the next milestone in Paul’s mental journeyings. The attack on Wagner, the attack on the morals that made our state stable, the savage irony, sparkling wit, and brilliant onslaught on all the idols, filled the mind of the young man with joy. He dearly loved a row, and though he recognized Nordau’s borrowed polemical plumage, he liked him because of his cockiness.

So he devoured Nietzsche, reckless of his logical inferences, reckless of the feelings of his poor mother, a most devoted Episcopalian of the High Church variety. Paul always pained her with his sudden somersaults, his amazing change of attitude, and, above all, his heartless contempt for her idols, the Church and good society. Society sufficed her soul hunger, and Paul’s renunciation of Mozart and Donizetti--she simply loved Lucia--his sarcastic flouting of churchgoers and his refusal to range himself, were additional weeds of woe in her mourning life.

There was Edith Vicker; but Paul was such a hopeless case and wouldn’t see that a nice, pretty, rich, moderately intelligent, well-reared young woman was slipping through his fingers. Mrs. Godard often sighed that winter in her sumptuous uptown apartment.

Nietzsche revealed new intellectual vistas for Paul and he actually became serious. The notion of regarding one’s own personality as a possible work of art to be labored upon and polished to perfection’s point, set him thinking hard. What had he done with his life? What wasted opportunities! He deserted his club and began piano-playing again, and when reproached by his friends for his fickleness he excused himself by quoting Nietzsche; a thinker, as well as a snake, must shed his skin once a year, else death. He also was ready with Emerson’s phrase about fools being consistent, and felt altogether very fine, and superior to his fellow-beings. Nietzsche feeds the flame of one’s vanity, and Paul was sure that he belonged to the quintessential band of elect souls that is making for the Uebermensch--the Superman!

He really was a nice, boyish lad, and he could never pass a pretty girl--whether a countess or a chambermaid--without making soft eyes at her. Paul was popular; and so the Roumanian ladies laughed at him admiringly. Paul had left his mother in Paris, the heat was too trying for travel, and he was close to Baireuth on this torrid summer day, one Sunday afternoon in July.

Yet another hour before him, he turned his critical attention to the laughing trio. One was a princess. She told Paul so, and spoke of the sultry diversions of Bucharest. The second was a fat singer, who startled the Englishman by inquiring if there wasn’t a good coloratura part in Parsifal. If there were, she intended asking Frau Cosima Wagner to let her sing it; but if there wasn’t, she supposed she would have to be content with the Forest Bird; even Melba had been a Waldvogel, why couldn’t she be one also?

Her sparkling eyes and mountain of flesh amused Paul exceedingly. He knew Heinrich Conried very well, and he told the singer that when Parsifal was sung next season at the Metropolitan Opera House he would speak to the impresario and get her the part of Kundry. It was for a lark-like voice, such as the lady said she possessed, and full of Bellinian fioritura.

As he gravely related these fables he was conscious of the penetrating gaze of the third woman. She was tall, frail-looking, with a dark skin, hair black and glossy, and she had the most melancholy eyes in the world. Paul returned her glance with discretion. His eyes were Irish blue-gray and full of the devil at times, and they could be very sympathetic and melting when he willed. The two young people examined each other with that calm regard which, as Schopenhauer declares, mars or makes the destiny of a new generation. But metaphysics and the biology of the sexes bothered not at all the youth and maiden. Paul admired the classic regularity of her nose and forehead, and wondered why her face seemed familiar. Her mouth was large, irregular, perverse. It suggested Marie Bashkirtseff’s, and it was just as yearning and dissatisfied. Despite their sadness, fun lurked in the corners of her eyes, and he knew that she enjoyed his harmless hoax.

Then they both burst out laughing, and the princess said in a surprised voice:

“Helena, why do you laugh with the young American gentleman?”

She also mentioned a family name that caused the New Yorker to stare. What, was this girl with the determined chin and brows the identical one who almost set Russia quarrelling with another nation and upset the peace of Roumania? Yes, it was, and Paul no longer puzzled over her face. It had been common property of the photographers and newspaper illustrators a few years ago, and as he mentally indexed its features he almost said aloud that her curious beauty had never been even faintly reproduced.

His imagination was stirred; Roumania had always seemed so remote, and here was he, Paul Godard, a plain American citizen, face to face with the heroine of one of those mysterious Eastern intrigues in which kings, crowns, queens, and ladies-in-waiting were all delightfully mixed up. So he chatted with Helena about Wagner and Degeneracy, and discovered that she was an admirer of Ludwig of Bavaria, Nietzsche, Guy de Maupassant, Poe, Schumann, Chopin, Marie Bashkirtseff, and all the rest of the sick-brained people born during the sick-brained nineteenth century. She, too, had written a book, which was soon to appear. It was full of the Weltschmerz of Schopenhauer and the bold upspringing individualism of Nietzsche. She had odd theories concerning the Ring of the Nibelungs, and had read Browning’s Sordello. She told Paul that she found but one stumbling-block in Wagner. How, she asked gravely, with a slight blush--how could Parsifal become Lohengrin’s father?

Paul said he didn’t know. It must have occurred long after his experiences with Kundry and the Flower Girls, and perhaps it was a sort of----

“Oh, no, M. Godard!” she quickly answered. “Not that. The swan died, you know; besides, Parsifal was always a Pure Fool.” Paul suggested that it might have been another of the same name but of a different family. And then the conversation went to pieces, for the soprano called out:

“Voilà! Baireuth, the Wagner theatre!” and they all craned their necks to catch the first glimpse of that mystic edifice built on the hill, the new musical Pantheon, the new St. Peter’s of the Bewitched Ones.

And the Englishman continued to calmly read about the Loki-motif as the train slowly steamed into Baireuth.

III

Paul found comfortable lodgings in the Lisztstrasse and his new friends went to the Hotel Sonne. At half-past four he was up on the hill looking at the world, and as immaculately dressed as if he stood in the bow window of the Calumel Club, ogling Fifth Avenue girls. He was only vaguely interested in the approaching performance, and his pulses did not quicken when Donner’s motif told the gabbling, eager throng that the great Trilogy was about to unfold its fables of water, wood, and wind. He took his seat unconcernedly, and then the house became black and from space welled up those elemental sounds, not merely music, but the sighing, droning swish of waters. The Rhine calmly, majestically stole over Paul’s senses, he forgot New York, and when the curtains parted he was with the Rhine Daughters, with Alberich, and his heart seemed to stop beating. All sense of identity vanished at a wave of Wagner’s magic wand, and not being a music-critic, his ego was absorbed as by the shining mirror in the hand of a hypnotist. This, then, was Wagner, a Wagner who attacked simultaneously all the senses, vanquished the strongest brain, smothered, bruised, and smashed it; wept, sang, surged, roared, sighed in it; searched and ravished your soul until it was put to flight, routed, vanquished, and brought bleeding and captive to the feet of the master.

The eye was promise-crammed, the ears sealed with bliss, and Paul _felt_ the wet of the waters. He panted as Alberich scaled the slimy steeps, and the curves, described by the three swimming mermaids, filled him with the joy of the dance.

The rape of the Rhinegold, the hoarse shout of laughter from Alberich’s love-forsworn lips, and the terrified cries of the three watchers were to Paul as real as Wall Street.

Walhall didn’t bore him, and he began at last to catch faint clues of the meaning of the mighty epic. He went to the underworld, and saw the snake, the ring, and the tarnhelm; he heard the anvil chorus--so different from Verdi’s!--he saw the giants quarrelling over their booty, and the rainbow seemed to bridge the way to another, brighter world. As the Walhall march died in Paul’s ears he found himself in the open air, and he thought it all over as he slowly went with the crowd down the hill, that new Mount of Olives trod by the feet of musical martyrs. He had a programme, but he was too confused, too overcome by the clangor of his brain-particles, to read it. He was not dreaming, nor yet was he awake; he was Wagnerized. The first attack is not always fatal, but it is always severe, even to the point of pain. Paul Godard had become a Wagnerite, and his Nietzsche and Schopenhauer skins melted from him as melts the snow in sunshine.

Striking through his many exalted moods was the consciousness of having recognized one of the Rhine Daughters. It was the contralto, an Eastern girl from Maine. Rue Towne was her odd name, and she had been once a pupil of a New England vocal school, but she had lived that down, and after the usual hard, interesting struggle abroad she had reached Baireuth. Paul remembered her well. A blonde girl, eyes indescribably gray, with dark lashes, a face full of interesting accents, a rhythmic chin and cheek-bones that told of resolution. Her figure was lovely, and Paul resolved to call on her the very next day.

He soon discovered Rue’s address; Baireuth is small and full of information for the curious. Paul on Monday morning went to the Alexanderstrasse, where she resided, only to find her at a rehearsal of Die Walküre. He was rather put out, as he was accustomed to accomplish what he wanted without much exertion. He then bethought him of Helena, the Roumanian beauty, and he warmed at the recollection of a glance he had received the afternoon previous. That, and the hand pressure, had been unmistakable. So he went to the Sonne Hotel and sent up his card. The three ladies were at breakfast. Would Mr. Godard call in an hour?

Paul cursed his luck and walked to Wahnfried, wondering if he was to be bored during his stay. The reaction from the exalted condition after Rhinegold had set in. Paul was not a beer-drinker, so he could not avail himself of the consolations offered by Gambrinus, the Drowsy Deity of Germany. He had taken a pint of bad champagne and some tough chicken and slept badly. His cigar, too, was abominable, and he felt absolutely disillusioned as he paced the historic garden of Wahnfried. The true Wagnerite is always in heaven or hades. There is no middle-distance in his picture of life and art. At Wagner’s grave Paul felt a return of the thrill, but it passed away at the barking of a boarhound. He went slowly toward the hotel and was in such a perverse mood that he avoided it and turned into the Ludwigstrasse. Then he met some one.

A girl passed him, gave him a shy, half-startled glance, hesitated, and spoke to him. It was Rue Towne.

“Mr. Godard, I found your card a moment ago. I am very glad to see you. How did you like Rhinegold?”

Paul was standing in the street, the girl looking down into his eyes; he made a conventional answer, their hands touched, and they went down the street together.

That afternoon Paul received a pretty note from the Roumanian. She wrote of her sorrow at his not having called again, and asked him to join them during the first entr’acte of Die Walküre. He tossed the note away, for his brain was filled with the vision of a girl in a straight-brimmed straw hat, a girl with a voice like a wooing clarinet and eyes that were dewy with desire. Paul was hard hit, and, as one nail drives out another, the blonde woman supplanted the brunette in his easily stirred imagination.

The first act of Die Walküre did not lay the fair ghost in his brain; he went out on the esplanade and encountered the three Roumanians. Helena detached herself and came to him with that gracious gait and proud lift of head and throat that gave her a touch of royalty. She reproached him with her magnetic gaze, and soon the pair were strolling in the leafy lanes about the theatre.

Paul had never met a woman who mentally tantalized him as did Helena. She had a manner of half uttering a sentence, of putting a nuance into her question that interested while it irritated him. Artistic people are mutually attracted, and there was a savor in the personality of this distinguished girl that was infinitely enticing to his cultivated taste and at the same time slightly enigmatic. Without effort they glided into confidences, and the Sword-motive sounding for the second act found them old friends. Youth is not the time for halting compromise.

Lilli Lehmann’s art took Paul out of himself, and the beauty and vigor of the act stirred him again. But he could not recapture the first fine, careless rapture of the night before. To the nerves, virginal of Wagner, that thrill comes once only.

In the long intermission Paul found Helena and took her to the crowded café across the road to get something to eat and drink. It was a quarter after seven, and Wagner wears on the stomach. Even a poetical Roumanian girl has earthly appetites. So they drank champagne and ate pasties of goose liver, and confessions were many. Nothing establishes a strong bond of sympathy like the hunger and thirst of two healthy young humans. Paul seemed to have forgotten Rue and the splendour of her hair and complexion. He was rapidly losing his head in the subtle blandishments of the Eastern woman. He saw that she was a coquette, but her seriousness, her fierceness, that broke through the shell of silky manners, gave him a glimpse of a woman worth winning, and he was just gambler enough, American enough to dare. When he left her he carried away a look that was an unequivocal challenge.

Paul’s brain was on fire during the Ride of the Valkyries, and hardly realized that it was Hans Richter’s masterly reading. The stage failed to interest him until he discovered Rue in Valkyrean garb, and then he watched with his soul in his eyes. Her profile, so charming in its irregularity; her freedom of pose, her heroic action filled him with admiration. By the light from the stage he read her name, Fräulein Rue Towne, and she was the last in the list of the Valkyries. He watched with indifferent gaze the close of the act, and mentally voted the Paris version of the Magic-Fire scene far superior to Baireuth’s.

He went toward the Hotel Sonne, as he had promised to sup with Helena, and wondered how he could see Rue that night. The American girl seemed something infinitely sweet, healthy, sun-swept in nature compared with her Slavic rival.

“By Jove,” said Paul aloud, “it’s a case of rouge et noir, and I’m in for it and no mistake.” Paul was fond of polyphony.

IV

After supper he suggested to Helena the Sammet Garden. The artists always flocked there and it might prove interesting. Although a chaperon was a necessity, Helena persuaded the princess that she could go out just once in the American fashion. It would be so novel. Paul pleaded and, of course, won. The young people hardly spoke as they went down the dark street to the garden. The air was full of electricity. A touch, a glance, and a storm would be precipitated. So they reached the garden and found a seat near enough the house to be tortured by Herr Sammet’s crazy trombone. At the same table was a black-bearded little man dressed in white flannels.

“It is the Sâr Peladan; I know him by his musk,” said Helena discontentedly, and they changed their seats.

“What a decadent you are!” said Godard laughingly.