Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

Hypnotized as if by another's will, Racah studied so earnestly that he became a public pianist. He had success, but not with the great public. The critics called him cold, objective, a pianist made, not born. But musicians and those with cultured musical palates discerned a certain acid quality in his playing. His gloomy visage, the reflex of a disordered soul, caused Baudelaire to declare that he had added one more shiver to his extensive psychical collection. In Paris the Countess X.--charming, titled soubrette--said, "Have you heard Racah play the piano? He is a damned soul out for a holiday."

In twenty-four hours this mot spread the length of the Boulevard, and all Paris went to see the new pianist....

Success did not brighten the glance of Racah. He became gloomier as he grew older, and a prominent alienist in Paris warned him to travel or else--and he pointed to his forehead, shrugging his very Gallic shoulders. Racah immediately went to the far East....

After a year's wandering up and down strange and curious countries, he came to the chief city of a barbarous province ruled by a man famous for his ferocities and charming culture. A careful education in Paris, grafted upon a nature cruel to the core, produced the most delicately depraved disposition imaginable. This Rajah was given to the paradoxical. He adored Chopin and loved to roast alive tiny birds on dainty golden grills. He would weep after reading de Musset, and a moment later watch with infinite satisfaction the spectacle of two wretched women dancing on heated copper plates. When he heard of Racah's presence in his kingdom he summoned the pianist.

Racah obeyed the Rajah's order. To his surprise he found him a man of pleasing mien and address. He was dressed in clothes of English cut, and possessed a concert piano. Racah bowed to him on entering the great Hall of the Statues.

"Do you play Chopin?"

"No," was the curt reply. The potentate glanced at the pianist, and then dropped his heavy eyelids. Racah had the air of a man bored to death.

"I entreat you"--the Rajah had winning accents--"play me something of Chopin. I adore Chopin."

"Your Highness, I abominate Chopin; I abominate music. I have taken a vow never to play again anything of that vile Polish composer. But I may play for you instead a Brahms sonata. The great one in F minor--"

"Stop a moment! You distinctly refuse to play me a Chopin valse or mazurka?"

"O Villainy!" Racah was thoroughly aroused; "I swear by the beard of your silly prophet that I will not play Chopin, nor touch your piano!"

The Rajah listened with a sweet forbearing smile. Then he clapped his hands twice--thrice. A slave entered. To him the Rajah spoke quietly, with an amused expression, and the man bowed his head. Touching the pianist on the shoulder he said:

"Come with me." Racah followed. The Rajah burst into loud laughter, and going to the piano played the D flat Valse of Chopin in a facile amateurish fashion.

Footsteps were heard; the Rajah stopped and looked up. There was bright frank expectancy in his gaze as he listened.

Then a curtain was thrust aside. Racah staggered in, supported by the attendant. He was white, helpless, fainting, and in his eyes were the shadows of infinite regret.

"Do play some Chopin," exclaimed the Rajah, gaily, as he ran his fingers over the keyboard.

The pianist groaned as the slave plucked at his arms and held them aloft. The Rajah critically viewed the hands from which the fingertips were missing, and then, noting the remorseful anguish in the gaze of the other, he cried:

"Do you know, I really believe you love music despite yourself!"

HUNDING'S WIFE

I

Calcraft was very noisy in his morning humors, and the banging of windows caused his wife to raise a curious voice.

From the breakfast-room she called, "What is the matter with you this morning, Cal? Didn't Wagner agree with you last night? Or was it the--?"

"Yes, it was _that_," replied a surly voice.

"Have you hung your wrists out of the window and given them a good airing?"

"I have." Calcraft laughed rudely.

"Then for goodness' sake hurry in to breakfast, if you are cooled off; the eggs are." Mrs. Calcraft sighed. It was their usual conversation; thus the day began.... Her husband entered the room. Of a thick-set, almost burly figure, Calcraft was an enormously muscular man. His broad shoulders, powerful brow, black, deep-set eyes, inky black hair and beard--the beard worn in Hunding fashion--made up a personality slightly forbidding. The suppleness of his gait, the ready laughter and bright expression of the eye, soon corrected this aversion; the critic was liked, and admired,--after the critical fashion. Good temper and wit in the evening ever are. The recurring matrimonial duel over the morning teacups awoke him for the day's labors; he actually profited from the verbal exercising of Tekla's temper.

"After what you promised!" she inquired in her most reproachful manner. Calcraft smiled. "And your story in the _Watchman_. Now, Cal, aren't you a bit ashamed? We have heard much worse Siegmunds."

"Not much," he grunted, swallowing a huge cup of tea at a draught.

"Yet you roasted the poor boy as you would never dare roast a singer with any sort of reputation. Hinweg's Siegmund was--"

"Like himself, too thin," said her husband; "fancy a thin Siegmund! Besides, the fellow doesn't know how to sing, and he can't act."

"But his voice; it has all the freshness of youth." ... She left the table, and lounging to the window regarded the streets and sky with a contemptuous expression. Tekla was very tall, rather heavy, though well built, with hair and skin of royal blond. She looked as Scandinavian as her name.

"My dear Tek, you are always discovering genius. You remember that young pianist with a touch like old gold? Or was it smothered onions? I've forgotten which." He grinned as he spilled part of an egg on his beard.

She faced him. "If the critics don't encourage youthful talent, who will? But they never do." Her voice took on flat tones: "I wonder, Cal, that you are not easier as you grow older, for you certainly do not improve with age, yourself. Do you know what time you got in this morning?"

"No, and I don't want to know." The man's demeanor was harsh; there were deep circles under his large eyes; his cheeks were slightly puffed, and, as he opened his newspaper, he looked like one who had not slept.

Tekla sighed again and stirred uneasily about the room. "For heaven's sake, girl, sit down and read--or, something!"

"I don't wonder your nerves are bad this morning," she sweetly responded; "the only wonder is that you can keep up such a wearing pace and do your work so well."

"This isn't such a roast," said Calcraft irrelevantly. He had heard these same remarks every morning for more than ten years. "Last night," he proceeded, "the new tenor--"

"Oh! Cal, please don't read your criticism aloud. I saw it hours ago," she implored,--her slightly protuberant, blue eyes were fixed steadily upon him.

"Why, what time is it?"

"Long past twelve."

"Phew! And I promised to be at the office at midday! Where's my coat, my overshoes! Magda! Magda! Hang that girl, she's always gadding with the elevator boy when I need her." Calcraft bustled about the room, rushed to his bedchamber, to the hall, and reappeared dressed for his trip down-town.

"Cal, I forgot to say that Hinweg called this morning and left his card. Foreigners are so polite in these matters. He left cards for both of us."

"He did, did he?" answered Calcraft grimly. "Well, that won't make him sing Wagner any better in the _Watchman_. And as a matter of politeness--if you will quote the polite ways of foreigners--he should have left cards here before he sang. What name is on his pasteboard? I've heard that his real one is something like Whizzina. He's a Croat, I believe."

She indifferently took some cards from a bronze salver and read aloud: "Adalbert Viznina, Tenor, Royal Opera, Prague."

"So-ho! a Bohemian. Well, it's all the same. Croatia is Czech. Your Mr. Viznina can't sing a little bit. That vile, throaty German tone-production of his--but why in thunder does he call himself Hinweg? Viznina is a far prettier name. Perhaps Viznina is Hinweg in German!"

Tekla shrugged her strong shoulders and gazed outdoors. "What a wretched day, and I have so much to do. Now, Cal, do come home early. We dine at seven. No opera to-night, you know. And come back soon. We never spend a night home alone together. What if this young man should call again?"

"Don't stop him," her husband answered in good-humored accents as he bade her good-by. He was prepared to meet the world now, and in a jolly mood. "Tell your Hinweg or Whizzerina, or whatever his name is, to sing Tristan better to-morrow night than he did Siegmund, or there will be more trouble." He skipped off. She called after him:

"Cal, remember your promise!"

"Not a drop," and the double slamming of the street doors set Tekla humming Hunding's motif in "Die Walküre."

II

Her morning-room was hung with Japanese umbrellas and, despite the warning of friends, peacock-feathers hid from view the walls; this comfortable little boudoir, with its rugs, cozy Turkish corner, and dull sweet odors was originally a hall-bedroom; Tekla's ingenuity and desperate desire for the unconventional had converted the apartment into the prettiest of the Calcraft flat. Here, and here alone, was the imperious critic forbidden pipe or cigar. Cigarettes he abhorred, therefore Tekla allowed her favorites to use them. She became sick if she merely lighted one; so her pet attitude was to loll on a crimson divan and hold a freshly rolled Russian cigarette in her big fingers covered with opals. Her male friends said that she reminded them of a Frankish slave in a harem; she needed nothing more but Turkish-trousers, hoop ear-rings, and the sad, resigned smile of the captive maiden....

It was half-past five in the dark, stormy afternoon when the electric buzzer warned Tekla of visitors. A man was ushered into the drawing-room and Magda, in correct cap and apron, fetched his card to her mistress.

"Show him in here, Magda, and Magda"--there were languid intonations in the voice of this vigorous woman--"light that lamp with the green globe."

In the fast disappearing daylight Tekla peeped at herself in a rhomboid crystal mirror, saw her house frock, voluminously becoming, and her golden hair set well over her brow: she believed in the eternal charm of fluffiness. After the lamp was ready the visitor came in. He was a very tall, rather emaciated looking, blond young man, whose springy step and clear eyes belied any hint of ill-health. As he entered, the gaze of the two met in the veiled light of the green-globed lamp, and the fire flickered high on the gas-log hearth. He hesitated with engaging modesty; then Tekla, holding out a hand, moved in a large curved way, to meet him.

"Delighted, I am sure, my dear Herr Viznina, to know you! How good of you to call on such a day, to see a bored woman." He bowed, smiled, showing strong white teeth under his boyish moustache, and sat down on the low seat near her divan.

"Madame," he answered in Slavic-accented English, "I am happy to make your acquaintance and hope to meet your husband, M. Calcraft." She turned her head impatiently. "I only hope that his notice will not discourage you for Tristan to-morrow night. But Mr. Calcraft is really a kind man, even if he seems severe in print. I tell him that he always hangs his fiddle outside the door, as the Irish say, which means, my dear Herr Viznina, that he is kinder abroad than at home." Seeing the slightly bewildered look of her companion she added, "And so you didn't mind his being cross this morning, did you?" The tenor hesitated.

"But he was not cross at all, Madame; I thought him very kind; for my throat was rough--you know what I mean! sick, sore; yes, it was a real sore throat that I had last night." It was her turn to look puzzled.

"Not cross? Mr. Calcraft not severe? Dear me, what do you call it, then?"

"He said I was a great artist," rejoined the other.

Tekla burst into laughter and apologized. "You have read the wrong paper, Herr Viznina, and I am glad you have. And now you must promise to stay and dine with us to-night. No, you sha'n't refuse! We are quite alone and you must know that, as old married folks, we are always delighted to have some one with us. I told Mr. Calcraft only this morning that we should go out to dinner if he came home alone. Don't ask for which paper he writes until you meet him. Nothing in the world could make me tell you." She was all frankness and animation, and her guest told himself that she was of a great charm. They fell into professional talk. She spoke of her husband's talents; how he had played the viola in quartet parties; of his successful lecture, "The Inutility of Wagner," and his preferences in music.

"But if he does not care for Wagner he must be a Brahmsianer." The last word came out with true Viennese unction.

"He now despises Brahms, and thinks that he had nothing to say. Wagner is, for him, a decadent, like Liszt and the rest."

"But the classics, Madame, what does M. Calcraft write of the classics?" demanded the singer.

"That they are all used-up romantics; that every musical dog has his day, and the latest composer is always the best; he voices his generation. We liked Brahms yesterday; to-day we are all for Richard Strauss and the symphonic poem."

"_We?_" A quizzical inflection was in the young man's voice. She stared at him.

"I get into the habit of using the editorial 'we.' I do it for fun; I by no means always agree with my husband. Besides, I often write criticism for Mr. Calcraft when he is away--or lecturing." She paused.

"Then," he exclaimed, and he gazed at her tenderly, "if you like my Tristan you may, perhaps, write a nice little notice. Oh, how lovely that would be!"

The artist in him stirred the strings of her maternal lyre. "Yes, it would be lovely, but Mr. Calcraft is not lecturing to-morrow night, and I hope that--"

The two street doors banged out a half bar of the Hunding rhythm. Calcraft was heard in the hall. A minute later he stood in the door of his wife's retreat; there was a frown upon his brow when he saw her companion, but it vanished as the two men shook hands. Viznina asked him if he spoke German; Magda beckoned to Mrs. Calcraft from the middle of the drawing-room. When Tekla returned, after giving final instructions for dinner, she found critic and tenor in heated argument over Jean de Reszké's interpretation of the elder Siegfried....

The dining-room was a small salon, oak-panelled, and with low ceilings. A few prints of religious subjects, after the early Italian masters, hung on the walls. The buffet was pure renaissance. Comfortable was the room, while the oval table and soft leather chairs were provocative of appetite and conversation.

"Very un-American," remarked the singer, as he ate his crab bisque.

"How many American houses have you been in?" irritably asked Calcraft. Viznina admitted that he was enjoying his début.

"I thought so." Calcraft was now as bland as a May morning, and his eyes sparkled. His wife watched Magda serve the fish and fowl, and her husband insisted upon champagne as the sole wine. The tenor looked surprised, and then amused.

"Americans love champagne, do they not? I never touch it."

"Would you rather have claret or beer?" hastily inquired the host.

"Neither; I must sing Tristan to-morrow."

"You singers are saints on the stage." The critic laughed. "I am old-fashioned enough to believe that good wine or beer will never hurt the throat. Now there was Karl Formes, and Niemann the great tenor--"

Tekla interrupted. "My dear Cal, pray don't get on one of your interminable liquid talks. Herr Viznina does not care to drink, whether he is singing or not. I told him, too, that we always liked a guest at dinner, for we are such old married people."

Calcraft watched the pair facing one another. He was in a disagreeable humor because of his wife's allusion to visitors; he liked to bear the major burden of conversation, even when they were alone. If Tekla began he had to sit still and drink--there was no other alternative. She asked Viznina where he was born, where he had studied, and why he had changed his name. The answers were those of a man in love with his art. Hinweg, he explained, was his mother's name, and assumed because of the anti-Slav prejudice existing in Vienna.

Calcraft broke in. "You say you are Bohemian, Herr Viznina? You are really as Swedish looking as Mrs. Calcraft."

"What a Sieglinde she would make, with her beautiful blond complexion and grand figure," returned the tenor with enthusiasm.

Tekla sighed for the third time that day. She burned to become a Wagner singer. Had she not been a successful elocutionist in Minnesota? How this talented young artist appreciated her gift, intuitively understood her ambition! Calcraft noted that they looked enough alike to be brother and sister; tall, fair and blue-eyed as they were. He laughed at the conceit.

"You are both of the Wölfing tribe," he roared and ordered beer of Magda. "I always drink dark beer after champagne, it settles the effervesence," he argued.

"You can always drink beer, before and after anything, Cal," said his wife in her sarcastic, vibrant voice.

The guest was hopelessly bored, but, being a man of will, he concentrated his attention upon himself and grew more resigned. He did not pretend to understand this rough-spoken critic, with his hatred of Wagner and his contradictory Teutonic tastes. Tekla with eyes full of beaming implications spoke:

"I should tell you, Cal, that Herr Viznina does not know, or else has forgotten, which paper you write for, and I let him guess. He thinks you praised his Siegmund."

"Saturday morning after the Tristan performance he will know for sure," answered the critic sardonically, drinking a stein of Würzburger.

"You rude man! of course he will know, and he will love you afterwards." If Calcraft had been near enough she would have tapped him playfully on the arm.

"Ah! Madame, what would we poor artists do if it were not for the ladies, the kind, sweet American ladies?"

"That's just it," cried Calcraft.

"What an idea, Warrington Calcraft!" Tekla was thoroughly indignant. "Never since I've known you have I attempted to influence you."

"You couldn't," said he.

"No, not even for poor Florence Deliba, who entered into a suicidal marriage after she read your brutal notice of her début."

"And a good thing it was for the operatic stage," chuckled the man.

"If I write the notices of a few minor concerts I always try to follow your notions." She was out of breath and Viznina admired her without reserve.

Calcraft was becoming slow of utterance. "You women are wonders when it comes to criticism." The air darkened. Viznina looked unhappy and Mrs. Calcraft rose: "Come, let us drink our coffee in my den, Herr Viznina, I hate shop talk." She swept out of the room and the tenor, after a dismissal from the drowsy critic, joined her.

"My headstrong husband doesn't care for coffee," she confessed, apologetically. "Sit down where you were before. The soft light is so becoming to you. Do you know that you have an ideal face for Tristan, and this green recalls the forest scene. Now just fancy that I am Isolde and tell me what your thoughts and feelings are in the second act."

Sitting beside her on the couch and watching her long fingers milky-green with opals, Viznina spoke only of himself, with all the meticulous delicacy of a Wagnerian tenor, and was thoroughly happy playing the part of a tame Tristan.

III

Tristan and Isolde were in the middle of their passionate symphony of flesh and spirit, when Tekla was ushered to the regular Calcraft seats in the opera house. Her husband, who had been in the city all day, returned to the house late for dinner, through which meal he dozed. He then fell asleep on a couch. After dressing and waiting wearily until nearly nine o'clock she had a carriage called and went to the opera alone; not forgetting, however, to bid Magda leave a case of imported beer where Mr. Calcraft could find it when he awoke....

Rather flustered, she watched the stage with anxious eyes. Brangaene--an ugly, large person in a terra-cotta cheese-cloth peplum--had already warned the desperate pair beneath the trees that dawn and danger were at hand. But the lovers sang of death and love, and love and death; and their sweet, despairing imagery floated on the oily waves of orchestral passion. The eloquence became burning; Tekla had forgotten her tribulations, Calcraft and time and space, when King Marke entered accompanied by the blustering busybody Melot.

"Oh, these tiresome husbands!" she thought, and not listening to the noble music of the deceived man, she presently slipped into the lobby. The place was deserted, and as she paced up and down, she recollected with pleasure the boyish-looking Tristan. How handsome he was! and how his voice, husky in "Die Walküre," now rang out thrillingly! There!--she heard it again, muffled indeed by the thick doors, but pure, free, full of youthful fire. What a Tristan! And he had looked at her the night before with the same ardor! A pity it was, that she, Tekla Calcraft, born Tekla Björnsen, had not studied for the opera; had not sung Sieglinde to his Siegmund; was not singing at this moment with such a Tristan in the place of that fat Malska, old enough to be his mother! and instead of being the wife of an indifferent man who-- ...

The act was over, the applause noisy. People began to press out through the swinging doors, and Tekla, not caring to be caught alone, walked around to the stage entrance. She met the Director, who made much of her and took her through the archway presided over by a hoarse-voiced keeper.

In his dressing-room Tristan welcomed her with outstretched hands.

"You are so good," and then quickly pointed to his throat.

"And you were superb," she responded unaffectedly.

"Your husband, is he here?" he asked, forgetting his throat.

"He is not here yet; he is detained down-town."

"But he will write the critique?" inquired Viznina with startled eyes. Tekla did not at first answer him.

"I don't know," she replied thickly. He seized her hands.

"Oh, you will like my third act! I am there at my best," he declared with all the muted vanity of a modest man. She was slightly disappointed.

"I like everything you do," she slowly admitted. Viznina kissed her wrists. She regarded him with maternal eyes.

As Tekla mounted the stairs her mind was made up. Fatigued as she was by the exciting events of the past twenty-four hours, she reached the press-room in a buoyant mood. It was smoky with the cigars and cigarettes of a half dozen men who invented ideas, pleasant and otherwise, about the opera, for the morning papers. Mrs. Calcraft was greeted with warmth; like her husband she was a favorite, though an old man grumbled out something about women abusing their privilege. Jetsam, one of her devoted body-guard, gave her a seat, pen and paper, and told her to go ahead; there were plenty of messenger boys in waiting. It was not the first time Tekla had been in the press-room, the room of the dreaded critical chain-gang, as Cal had named it. All asked after Calcraft.

"He has gone to the Symphony Concert," replied Tekla unblushingly, and young Jetsam winked his thin eyes at the rest. Feeling encouraged at this he persisted:

"I thought Gardner was 'doing' the concert for Cal?"

"Oh! you know Cal!" she put a pen in her mouth, "he hates Wagner; perhaps he thinks Mr. Gardner needs company once in a while."

"Perhaps he does," gravely soliloquized Jetsam.

"How many performances of Tristan does this make, Mr. Jetsam?"

"I'm sure I don't know--I am never much on statistics."

When she was told the correct number the scratching of pens went on and the smoke grew denser. Messenger after messenger was dismissed with precious critical freightage, and soon Tekla had finished, envious eyes watching her all the while. Every man there wished that his wife were as clever and helpful as Mrs. Calcraft.

Driving home she forgot all about the shabby cab having memories only for the garden scene, its musical enchantments. The spell of them lay thick upon her as she was undressed by Magda. When the lights were out, she asked Magda if Mr. Calcraft still slept.

"No, ma'am; after drinking the beer he went out."

"Oh! he went out after all, did he?" responded Tekla in a sleepy voice and immediately passed into happy dreams....

It was sullen afternoon when she stood in her room regarding with instant joy a large bunch of roses. Calcraft came in without slamming the doors as usual. She turned a shining face to him. He looked factitiously fresh, with a Turkish bath freshness, his linen was spotless, and in his hand he held a newspaper.

"That was a fine, dark potion you brewed for me last night, Sieglinde!" he mournfully began. "No wonder your Tristan sang so well in the _Watchman_ this morning!" The youthful candors of her Swedish blue eyes with their tinted lashes evoked his sulky admiration.

"I knew, Cal, that you would do the young man justice for his magnificent performance," she replied, her cheeks beginning to echo the hues of the roses she held; her fingers had just closed over an angular bit of paper buried in the heart of the flowers....

For answer, Calcraft ironically hummed the Pity motif from "Die Walküre" and went out of the house, the doors closing gently after him to the familiar rhythm of that sadly duped warrior, Hunding.

THE CORRIDOR OF TIME

Ah! to see behind me no longer on the Lake of Eternity the
implacable Wake of Time.--EPHRAÏM MIKAËL.

When Cintras was twenty he planned an appeal to eternity. He knew "Émaux et Camées" as pious folk their Bible; he felt that naught endured but art. So he became a pagan, and sought for firmness and delicacy in the texture, while aiming to fill his verse with the fire of Swinburne, the subtlety of Rossetti and the great, clear day-flame of Gautier. A well-nigh impossible ideal; yet he cherished it for twice ten years, and at forty had forsworn poetry for prose....

Then he read the masters of that "other harmony of prose" until he dreamed of long, sweeping phrases, drumming with melody, cadences like the humming of slow, uplifting walls of water tumbling on sullen strands. He knew Sir Thomas Browne, and repeated with unction: "Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methusaleh, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spacious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests; what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relicks." ... He wondered if Milton, De Quincey, Walter Pater or even Jeremy Taylor had made such sustained music. He marvelled at the lofty structures of old seventeenth century prose-men, and compared them with the chippy staccato of the modern perky style, its smug smartness, its eternal chattering gallop. He absorbed the quiet prose of Addison and Steele and swore it tasted like dry sherry. Swift, he found brilliantly hard, often mannered; and he loved Dr. Goldsmith, so bland, loquacious, welcoming. In Fielding's sentences he heard the clatter of oaths; and when bored by the pulpy magnificence of Pater's harmonies went back to Bunyan with his stern, straightforward way. For Macaulay and his multitudinous prose, Cintras conceived a special abhorrence, but could quote for you with unfailing diction Sir William Temple's "Use of Poetry and Music," and its sweet coda: "When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child that must be played with and humored to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."

Cintras had become enamoured with the English language, and emptied it into his eyes from Chaucer to Stevenson. He most affected Charles Lamb and Laurence Sterne; he also loved the Bible for its canorous prose, and on hot afternoons as the boys lolled about his room, he thundered forth bits of Job and the Psalms. Cintras was greatly beloved by the gang, though it was generally conceded that he had as yet done nothing. This is the way Berkeley put it, down at Chérierre's, where they often met to say obvious things in American-French....

"You see boys, if Cintras had the stuff in him he would have turned out something by this time. He's a bad poet--what, haven't you ever read any of his verse?--and now he's gone daft on artistic prose. Artistic rubbish! Who the devil cares for chiselled prose nowadays? In the days when link-boys and sedan chairs helped home a jag they had the time to speak good English. But now! Good Lord! With typewriters cutting your phrases into angular fragments, with the very soil at your heels saturated with slang, what hope in an age of hurry has a fellow to think of the cadence? I honestly believe Stevenson was having fun when he wrote that essay of his on the technical elements of style. It's a puzzle picture and no more to be deciphered than a Bach fugue."

"When Bill Berkeley gets the flow on, he's worse than Cintras with his variable vowels. Say, Bill, I think you're jealous of old Pop Cintras." It was Sammy Hodson, a newspaper man, who spoke, and as he wrote on space he was usually the cashier of the crowd....

Chérierre's is on University Place, and the spot where the artistic set--Berkeley, Hodson, Pauch, the sculptor, and Cintras--happened to be hanging about just then. The musician of the circle was a tall thin young man named Merville. It was said that he had written a symphony; and one night they all got drunk when the last movement was finished, though not a soul had heard a note. Every one believed Merville would do big things some day.

Cintras entered. He was hopelessly uninteresting looking and wore a beard. Berkeley swore that if he shaved he would be sent to prison; but Cintras pleaded economy, a delicate throat, also the fact that his nose was stubby. But set him to talking about the beauties of English prose, and his eyes blazed with a green fire. The conversation turned on good things to drink; wine at twenty-five cents a litre was ordered, and the chatter began....

"It seems to me, Berkeley," Cintras spoke, "that you modern fellows are too much devoted to the color scheme. I remember when I was a boy, Gautier set us crazy in Paris with his color sense. His pages glowed with all the pigments of the palette; he vied with the jeweller in introducing precious stones of the most ravishing brilliancy within the walls of his paragraph; I sickened of all this splendor, this Ruskin word-painting, and went in for cool grays, took up Baudelaire and finally reached Verlaine, whose music is the echo of music heard in misty mediæval parks while the peacock dragging by with its twilight tail, utters shrill commentary on such moonshine. After that I reached Chopin and found him too dangerous, too treacherous, too condensed, the art too filled out; and so I finally landed in the arms of Wagner, and I've been there ever since."

"Look here, Cintras, you're prose-mad and you've landed nowhere." Berkeley lighted one of Hodson's cigarettes. "When a new, big fellow comes along you follow him until you find out how he does the trick and then you get bored. Don't you remember the day you rushed into my studio and yelled, 'Newman is the only man who wrote prose in the nineteenth century,' and then persisted in spouting long sentences from the 'Apologia'? First it was Arnold, then it was Edmund Burke." "It will always be Burke," interrupted Cintras. "Then it was Maurice de Guérin, and I suppose it will be Flaubert forever and ever." They all laughed.

"Yes, Billy, it will always be Gustave Flaubert, and I worship him more and more every day. It took him forty years to write four books and three stories, and, as Henry James says, he deliberately planned masterpieces."

Hodson broke in: "You literary men make me tired. Why, if I turned out copy at the rate of Slobsbert--what's his name?--I'd starve. What's all the fuss about, anyhow? Write natural English and any one will understand you"--"Ah, natural English, that's what one man writes in a generation," sighed Cintras. "And when you want something great," continued the young man, "why, read a good 'thriller' about the great Cemetery Syndicate, and how it robbed the dead for gold fillings in teeth. The author just slings it out--and such words!"

"Yes, with a whitewash brush." Berkeley scowled.

"Why," pursued Hodson, unmoved, "why don't you get married, Cintras, and work for your living? Then you'll have to write syndicate stuff and that will knock the nonsense out of you. Or, fall in love and be miserable like me." Hodson paused to drink.

"O triste, triste était mon âme,
À cause, à cause d'une femme."

"That's Verlaine; Hoddy, my boy, when you grow up, quit newspapering and become cultured, you may appreciate its meaning and beauty."

"When I am cultured I'll be a night city editor; that's my ideal," said the youth, stoutly.

"Let's go over to Merville's room and make him play Chopin," suggested Pauch, the sculptor, who seldom spoke, but could eat more than four men.... They drank their coffee and went across into Twelfth street, and at the top of the house they found the musician's room. It was large, but poorly fitted out. An old square-piano, a stove, a bed, three chairs, a big lounge and a washstand completed the catalogue. Merville made them comfortable and sat down to the piano. Its tone, as his fingers crept over the keys, was of faded richness and there were reverberations of lost splendors in the bass. Merville started with a Chopin nocturne, but Hodson hurt the cat as it brushed against him, and the noise displeased the pianist. He stopped.

"I don't feel like Chopin, it's too early in the day. Chopin should be heard only in the early evening or after midnight. I'll give you some Brahms instead. Brahms suits the afternoon, this gray, dull day." All were too lazy to reply and the pianist began, with hesitating touch, an Intermezzo in A minor. It sounded like music heard in a dream, a dream anterior to this existence. It seemed as if life, tired of the external blaze of the sun, sought for the secret of hidden spaces; searched for the message in the sinuous murmuring shell. It was an art of an art, the penumbra of an art. Its faint outlines melted into one's soul and refused to be turned away. The recollection of other music seemed gross after this curiously introspective, this almost whorl-like, music. It was the return to the invertebrate, the shadow of a shadow, and the hearts of Merville's guests were downcast and purified....

When he had finished, Cintras asked: "If that is Brahms, why then he has solved the secret of the age's end. He has written the song of humanity absorbed in the slime of a dying planet."

"Very morbid, very perverse in rhythms, I should say," broke in Berkeley; they all shivered. Merville arose, his face glum and drawn, and brought whiskey and glasses.

Cintras was the first to speak:

"Hodson, you are a very young fellow and I wish to give you good advice. Yours to me was better than you supposed. Now don't you ever bother with art, music or artistic prose. Just marry a nice girl who goes to comic operas. You stick to her and avoid Balzac. He is too strong meat for you--" "Yes, but he's great; I read him!" "And no more understand him than you do Chopin. Because he is great he is readable, but his secret is the secret of the sphinx; it may only be unravelled by a few strong souls. So go your road and be happy in your plush way, read your historical hog-wash, and believe me when I swear that the most miserable men are those who have caught a glimpse of the eternal beauty of art, who pursue her ideal face, who have the vision but not the voice. I once wrote a little prose poem about this desire of beauty; I will see if I can remember it for you."

"Go ahead, old man; I'll stand anything to-day," sang out Hodson.

"Here it is:" and Cintras recited his legend of

THE RECURRING STAIRCASE

I first saw her on the Recurring Staircase. I had turned
sharply the angle of the hall and placed my foot upon the
bottom step and then I saw her. She was motionless; her back
I saw, and O! the grace of her neck and the glory of her
arrested attitude. I feared to move, but some portent,
silent, inflexibly eloquent, haled me to the staircase. That
was years ago. I called to her, strange calls, beautiful
sounding names; I besought her to bend her head, to make
some sign to my signals of urgency; but her glance was
aloft, where, illumined by the scarlet music of a setting
sun, I saw in a rich, heavy mullioned embrazure,
multi-colored glass shot through with drunken despairing
daylight. Again I prayed my Lady of the Recurring Staircase
to give me hope by a single dropped glance. At last I
conjured her in Love's fatal name, and she moved
languorously up the steep slope of stairs. As if the spell
had been thwarted, I followed the melodious adagio of her
footsteps. That was many years ago. She never mounted to the
heavy mullioned embrazure with the multi-colored glass shot
through with drunken, despairing daylight. I never touched
the hand of the Lady of the Recurring Staircase; for the
stairs were endless and I stood ever upon the bottom step;
and the others below slipped into eternity; and all this was
many years ago. I never have seen the glorious glance of My
Lady on the Recurring Staircase.

They all applauded, Hodson violently. "I say, old chap, what would you have gained by overtaking the lady?" Cintras sniffed; Berkeley laughingly remarked that the staircase reminded him of the sort you see at a harvest with a horse on the treadmill.

"Don't, fellows!" begged Merville. "Cintras is giving one ideas to-day for a symphonic poem. Go on, Cintras, with more, but in a different vein. Something in the classical style."

"I can't do that," responded Cintras, trying not to look flattered, "but I will show you my soul when overtaken by doubt." "Cintras, your soul, like Huysmans's, is a cork one." They were aghast, for Hodson the uncultured one had spoken.

"And where, Hoddy, my brave lad, did you ever in the world hear of Huysmans?" he was asked. "I read that; I thought it fitted Cintras. His soul is like a cork ball that is always rebounding from one idea to another." "Bravo! you will be the literary, not the night city editor, before you die, Hoddy." ... Then Cintras read another prose-poem which he had named

THE MIRROR OF UNFAITH

I looked into my mirror the next morning. With scared cry I
again looked into my mirror. With brutish, trembling fingers
I tried to cleanse the mist from my eyes, and once more I
looked into my mirror, scraped its surface tenderly, but it
availed not. There was no reflection of my features in its
polished depths; naught but vacancy, steely and profound.
There is no God, I had proclaimed; no God in high heaven, no
God with the world, no spirit ever moved upon the vasty
waters, no spirit ever travailed in the womb of time and
conceived the cosmos. There is no God and man is not made in
his image; eternity is an eyeless socket--a socket that
never beheld the burning splendors of the Deity. There is no
God, O my God! And my cries are futile, for have I not gazed
into my mirror, gazed with clear ironic frantic gaze and
missed my own image! There is no God; yet has my denial been
heard in blackest Eblis, and has it not reverberated unto
the very edges of Time? There is no God, and from that
moment my face was blotted out. I may never see it in the
moving waters, in mirrors, in the burnished hearts of
things, or in the liquid eyes of woman. I denied God. I
mocked His omnipotence. I dared him to mortal combat, and my
mirror tells me there is no Me, no image of the man called
by my name. I denied God and God denies me!

"If I were in such a mental condition," Hodson eagerly commented, "I'd call a doctor or join the Salvation Army." "Why haven't you written more short stories?" inquired Merville. "Because I've never had the time," Cintras sadly answered. "Once I tried to condense what novelists usually spread over hundreds of pages, and say it in a couple of paragraphs. Every word must illuminate the past, in every sentence may be found the sequel."

"Cintras, I vow your case is hopeless. You are a regular cherry-stone carver. Here you've shown us the skeletons of two stories and yet given none of them flesh enough to live upon." "Berkeley you belong to a past full of novelistic monsters. You are the three volume man with the happy ending tacked on willy-nilly. It is the tact of omission--" "Hang your art-for-art theories. I'll make more money than Cintras ever did when I publish my "Art of Anonymous Letter Writing!" cut in Hodson. Cintras calmly continued, "Here is my title and see if you can follow me."

INELUCTABLE

The light waned as with tense fingers he turned the round,
bevelled-edge screw of the lamp. Darkness, immitigable,
profound, and soft, must soon succeed yellow radiance. To
face this gloom, to live in it and breathe of it, set his
heart harshly beating. Yet he slowly turned with tense
fingers the bevelled-edge screw of the lamp. He would
presently be forced to a criticism of the day, that day,
which must brilliantly flame when night closed upon him. As
in the vivid agony endured between two bell-strokes of a
clock, he strove to answer the oppressing shape threatening
him. And his fingers lingeringly revolved the lamp-screw
with its brass and bevelled-edge. If only some gust of
resolution would arise like the sudden scud of the squall
that whitens far-away level summer seas, and drive forth
pampered procrastinations! Then might his fingers become
flexile, his mind untied. Poor, drab seconds that fooled
with eternity and supped on vain courage as they went
trooping by. Could not one keen point of consciousness
abide? Why must all go humming into oblivion like untuned
values? He grasped at a single strand of recollection; he
saw her parted lips, the passionate reproach of her eyes and
felt her strenuous tacit acquiescence; he sensed the
richness of her love. So he stood, unstable, vacillating and
a treacherous groper amidst cruel shards of an ineluctable
memory, powerless to stay the fair phantom and fearful of
looking night squarely in the front. And he remained a
dweller in the shadows, as he faintly fingered the
bevelled-edge screw of the lamp....

"If Maeterlinck would feed on Henry James and write a dream fugue on your affected title, this might be the result," muttered Berkeley. "Hush!" whispered Merville; "can't you see that it is his own life he is unconsciously relating in this sequence of short stories; the tale of his own pampered procrastinations? If he had only made up his mind perhaps he could have kept her by his side and been happy but"--"But instead," said Berkeley sourly "he wrote queer impossible things about bevelled-edge lamp screws and she couldn't stand it. I don't blame her. I say, nature before art every time." ... Then Hodson shouted, dispelling dangerous reveries:

"Cintras, why don't you finish that book of yours? Ten years ago you told me that you had finished it nearly one-half." "Yes, and in ten years more he will finish the other," remarked Berkeley.

"If you knew how I worked you would not ask why I work slowly." "Flaubert again!" interjected Berkeley.

"The title cost me much pain, and the first two lines infinite travail. I really write with great facility. I once wrote a novel in three weeks for a sensation monger of a publisher; but because of this ease I suspect every sentence, every word, aye, every letter that drops from my pen."

"Hire a typewriter and you'll suspect nobody," suggested Hodson....

The party began to break up; Cintras pressed hands and went first. There was some desultory conversation, during which Berkeley endeavored to persuade Hodson to buy him his dinner. Then they left Merville and Pauch alone. The musician looked at the sculptor.

"And these makers of words think they have the secret of art; as if form, as if music, is not infinitely greater and nearer the core of life." Pauch grunted.

"There's a man, that Brahms, you played, Merville; his is great art which will girdle the centuries. The man built solidly for the future. He reminds me of Rodin's Calais group: harsh but eternal; secret and sweetly harsh. Brahms is the Bonze of his art; his music has often the immobility of the Orient--I think the 'Vibrationists' would describe it as 'kinetic stability.' ... Cintras is done. He never did anything; he never will. He theorizes too much. If you talk too often of the beautiful things you are going to execute they will go sailing into the air for some other fellow to catch. Mark my words! No man may play tag with his soul and win the game. He is a study in temperament, or, rather the need of one, is Cintras. He must have received a black eye some time. Was he ever in love?"

"Yes, but she went off with another fellow."

"That explains all." Pauch stolidly asked for beer, and getting none strolled home....

Cintras died. Among his effects was found a bulky mass of manuscript; almost trembling with joy and expectation Berkeley carried the treasure to Merville's room. On the title-page was read: "The Corridor of Time: A Novel. By George Cintras."

Frantic with curiosity the friends found on the next page the following lines:

"And the insistent clamor of her name at my heart is like the sonorous roll of the sea on a savage shore."

The other pages were virginal of ink....

AVATAR

Somewhere; in desolate wind-swept space,
In Twilight-land--in No-man's land--
Two hurrying shapes met face to face
And bade each other stand.

"And who are you?" cried one agape
Shuddering in the gloaming light;
"I know not," said the second shape,
"I only died last night!"

--ALDRICH.

Mychowski was considered by grave critical authorities, the best living interpreter of Chopin. He was a Pole--any one could tell that by the way he spelt his name--and a perfect foil to Paderewski, being short, thick-set and with hair as black as a kitchen beetle. His fat amiable face, flat and corpulent fingers, his swarthy skin and upturned nose, were called comical by the women who thronged his recitals; but Mychowski at the keyboard was a different man from the Mychowski who sat all night at a table eating macaroni and drinking Apollinaris water. Then the funny profile vanished and the fat fingers literally dripped melody. His readings of the Polish master's music were distinguished by grace, dexterity, finesse, pathos and subtilty. The only pupils of Chopin alive--there were only six now--hobbled to Mychowski's concerts and declared that at last their dead idol was reincarnated, at last the miracle had taken place: a genuine interpreter of Chopin had appeared--then severe coughing, superinduced by emotion, and the rest of the sentence would finish in tears....

The Chopin pupils also wrote to the papers letters always beginning, "Honored Sir,--Your numerous and intelligent readers would perhaps like to know in what manner Chopin's performance of the F minor Ballade resembled Mychowski's. It was in the year 1842 that--" A sextuple flood of recollections was then let loose, and Mychowski the gainer thereby. Still he obstinately refused to be lionized, cut his hair perilously near the prizefighter's line, and never went into society, except for money. He was a model business man; the impresarios worshipped him. Such business ability, such frugality, such absence of eccentricity, such temperance, were voted extraordinary.

"Why, the man never gambles," said a manager, "drinks only at his meals"--"which are many," interrupted some one--"and always sends his money home to his wife and family in Poland. Yet he plays like a god. It is unheard of." ...

The Polish servant Mychowski brought with him from home sickened in Paris and died. Although the pianist was playing the Erard, he went often to the Pleyel piano warerooms and there told a friend that he was without a valet.

"We have some one here who will suit you. His father was Chopin's body-servant, who, as you must have read, was an Irish-Frenchman named Daniel Dubois. We call the son Daniel Chopin; he looks so much like some of the pictures of your great countryman. Best of all, he doesn't know one note of music from another."

"Just the man," cried Mychowski; "my last valet always insisted on waking me in the morning with a Bach Invention. It was awful." Mychowski shuddered.

"Wait, then; I'll send upstairs for him," said the amiable representative of the Maison Pleyel, and soon there appeared, dressed after the fashion fifty years ago, a man of about thirty, whose face and expression caused Mychowski to bound out of his seat and exclaim in his native tongue:

"Slawa Bohu! but he looks like Frédéric."

The man started a little, then became impassive. "My father was Daniel Dubois, in whose arms the great master died. May he keep company with the angels! When my mother bore me she wore a medallion containing a portrait of the great master, and my father, who was his pupil, played the nocturnes for her."

The speaker's voice was slightly muffled in timbre, its accent was languid, yet it was indubitably the voice of a cultivated man. Mychowski regarded him curiously. A slim frame of middle height; fragile but wonderfully flexible limbs; delicately formed hands; very small feet; an oval, softly-outlined head; a pale, transparent complexion; long silken hair of a light chestnut color parted on one side; tender brown eyes, intelligent rather than dreamy; a finely-curved aquiline nose, a sweet, subtle smile; graceful and varied gestures--such was the outward presence of Daniel Dubois.

"He looks just like the description given by Niecks," murmured the pianist. "Even the eyes are _piwne_, as we say in Poland, couleur de bière.

"Yet you do not play the piano?" he continued. The man smiled and shook his head. Terms were arranged, and the valet sent to Mychowski's rooms.

"And the mother, who was she?" Mychowski asked later.

"Pst!" enjoined his friend discreetly. Mychowski smiled, sighed, shook his head, settled himself before a new piano and plunged into the preludes, playing the entire twenty-five without pause, while business was suspended in the ancient and honorable Maison Pleyel, so captivating, so miraculous, was the poetic performance of this commonplace and kind-hearted virtuoso....

Mychowski discovered in Daniel an agreeable servant. He was noiseless, ubiquitous. He could make an omelette or sew on a button with woman's skill. His small, well-kept hands knew no fatigue, and his master often watched them, almost transparent, fragile and aristocratic, as they shaved his rotund oily face. Daniel was admirable in his management of the musical library, seeming to know where the music of every composer had to be placed. Mychowski wondered how he contrived to find time to learn so much and yet keep his hands from the keyboard. After the first month Mychowski began to envy his servant the possession of such a poetic personality.