Mighty was the applause. Herr Wunderheim looked delighted. Mrs.
Wegstaffe, sailing up to the distinguished Bulgarian pianist, said loudly:
"Dear Herr Wunderheim, charmed, I a.s.sure you! We are all charmed; dear Tschakowsky, charming man, charming composer. Dear Walter Damrosch a.s.sured me that he was quite the gentleman; charming music altogether!"
The pianist grew red in the face. Then, straightening himself quite suddenly, he said in tones that sounded like a dog barking:
"Dot vasn"t Schykufski I blayed, lieber madame; dot vas a koprice by me, myself."
Even the second drawing-room people stopped talking for a minute....
The musicale merrily proceeded. We heard the amateur tenor with the cravat voice. We heard the society pianist, who had a graceful bow and an amiable technic; then two of Frau Makart"s pupils sang. I couldn"t get near the Italian contingent, but they chattered loudly. One of the girls sang Dvorak"s "Gute Nacht," and her German made me shiver. The other tried a Brahms song and everybody talked. I turned to ask Edith the girl"s name but she had gone--so had Tompkins.
This angered me but I couldn"t get up then. Opposite me was a Yankee college professor--an expert on golfing poetry--who had become famous by an essay in which he proved that Poe should not have written Poe; next to me sat a fat lady who said to her daughter as she fanned herself vigorously, "Horrid music, that Brahms. He wrote "The Rustic Cavalier,"
didn"t he? And some nasty critics said it was written by De----"
"No, mamma. He wrote--" more buzzing and I fled upstairs.
The men"s room was crowded to suffocation. Everybody was drinking hard, and old Wegstaffe was telling a story to a group of young men among whom I recognized the fat author of that affected book "How to play Chopin though Happy." He was pretty far gone.
"Shee here, bhoys; thish b.l.o.o.d.y music--thish cla.s.shic music--makesh me shick--I mean tired. I played Bluebottle for plashe to-day--50 to 1 shot--whoop!"
Another bottle was opened.
In a corner they were telling the story of Herr Schwillmun, the famous pianist who was found crazy with wine in a Fourth Avenue undertaker"s shop trying to play the Dvorak Concerto on the lid of a highly polished coffin. The Finnish virtuoso thought he was in a piano wareroom. Another lie, I knew, for Schwillmun was most poetic in appearance and surely not an intemperate man!
Wherever I went I heard nothing but malicious remarks, slurring accusations and t.i.ttle-tattle. Finally I joined a crowd in the upper hall attracted by the appearance of a white-haired man of intelligent aspect, who, with kindly smile and abundant gesture was making much merriment about him. I got close enough to hear what he was saying.
"Music in New York! There is none. You fellows ought to work for your grub, as I do, on a daily, and write up the bosh concerts that advertise. Humbug, boys; rank humbug! Modern music is gone to the devil.
Brahms was a fraud who patched up a compound of Beethoven and Schumann, put in a lot of mystifying harmonic progressions, and thought he was new. Verdi, the later Verdi was helped out by Boito: Just compare "Otello" and "Falstaff" with "Mefistofele"! Dvorak, old "Borax" as they call him, went in for "n.i.g.g.e.r" music and says there"s no future for American music unless it is founded on plantation tunes. Hence the "c.o.o.n" song and its long reign. Tschakowsky! Well, that tartar with his tom-tom orchestra makes me tired; he should have been locked up in the "Ha-Ha House." Rubinstein never could do ten bars of decent counterpoint. Saint-Saens, with his symphonic poems, his Omphalic Roues, is a Gallic echo of Bach and Liszt--a Bach of the Boulevards. The English have no composers; the Americans never will have, and, begad, sir, we"re all going to the dogs. Music--rot!"
I was shocked. Here was a great critic abusing the G.o.ds of modern music and not a dissenting voice was raised. I determined to do my duty. I would ask this cynical old man why he belittled his profession. "Sir!"
said I, raising my voice, but got no further, for a household servant, whose breath reeked, caught me by the arm and in a whisper explained:
"Oh, Mr. Trybill, Miss Edith is a-lookin" for you everywheres and sent me to tell you as how you"re wanted in the music-room. It"s her turn next."
My heart sank below my boots but I waded downstairs, spoiling many a tete-a-tete by my haste, for which I was duly and audibly execrated. Why do people at musicales flirt on the stairs?
Upon reaching the front drawing-room I found Edith taking her seat at the demon piano. Tompkins was nowhere visible, and I felt relieved. The guests looked worn out, and knots of men were hanging suspiciously about the closed doors of the supper room.
The musical part of the entertainment was about over, Edith"s solo being the very last. Suddenly all became still; every one had to listen to the daughter of the hostess.
She looked positively radiant. Her eyes sparkled, and of her early nervousness not a trace remained.
"Do turn over the leaves nicely, that"s a good fellow, Mr.
Trybill"--again that odious phrase--"I feel so happy I"m sure I"ll play well." Naturally, I was flattered at the inference. I was near her--the darling of my wildest dreams. Of course she would play well, and of course I would turn over the music n.o.bly.
She began. The piece was Liszt"s Polonaise in E. My brave girl, how proud I felt of her as she began. How she rushed on! I could scarcely turn the leaves fast enough for my little girl, my wife that was to be.
How sweet her face seemed. I was ravished. I must tell her all to-night, and she will put her plump little hand in mine and say, "Yes"; the sweet little--
Bang! Smash, crash-bang! "Stupid fellow, I hate you!" I awoke as from a dream. Edith was standing up and in tears. Alas! Fatal dreamer that I am, I had turned over two pages at once, and trouble ensued, for Edith never memorized....
As I stood in horrid silence Mrs. Wegstaffe swooped down on Edith and took her away, saying in a harsh voice, "The young man knows nothing of the divine art!" Then the supper signal was sounded, and a cyclone"s fury was not comparable to the rush and crush.
Old Wegstaffe, in a very shaky condition, led a gallant band of unsteady men in a gallop to the supper room, crying, "Bluebottle"s the horsh for me." I lost heart. All my brilliant visions fled. As I stood alone in the hall Mrs. Wegstaffe triumphantly pa.s.sed me on the arm of Herr Wunderheim. She looked at me a moment, then, seeming to pity my loneliness, leaned toward me, saying in acidulously sweet accents:
"Ah, no partner yet, Mr. Trybill? Your first partner is engaged, and to Mr. Tompkins. Do go in and congratulate him, that"s a good fellow."
She swam away in the bedlam of shrieks and clattering of dishes and knives. I walked firmly upstairs, found my coat and hat, and left the house forever. It was my first and last experience at that occidental version of the Hara-Kiri, called a musicale.
THE IRON VIRGIN
For there is order in the streets, but in the soul--confusion.
--MAXIM GORKY.
The carriage stood awaiting them in the Place Boeldieu. Chardon told the coachman to drive rapidly; then closed the door upon Madame Patel and himself. Cautiously traversing the crowded boulevards they reached the Madeleine; a sharp turn to the left, down the Rue Royale, they were soon crossing the vast windy s.p.a.ces of the Place de la Concorde and there he spoke to his companion.
"It was a glorious victory! The Opera Comique looked like a battlefield after the conflict." Chardon"s voice trembled as if with timidity.
Madame Patel turned from the half-opened window.
"Yes, a glorious triumph. And _he_ is not here to enjoy it, to exult over his detractors." Her tone was bitter as winter.
"My poor friend," the other answered as he laid his hand gently on her arm. She shuddered. "Are you cold? Shall I close the window?" "Thanks, no; it is too warm. How long this ride seems! Yet he always delighted in it after conducting." Chardon was silently polite. They were riding now at high speed along the Avenue Montaigne which the carriage had entered after leaving the Champs elysees. From the Quai de Billy to the Quai de Pa.s.sy their horses galloped over naked well-lighted avenues. The cool of the river penetrated them and the woman drew herself back into the corner absorbed in depressing memories. Along Mirabeau and Molitor, after pa.s.sing the Avenue de Versailles; and when the street called Boileau appeared the carriage, its lanterns shooting tiny shafts of light on the road, headed for the _Hameau_, named after the old poet of Auteuil. There it stopped. Madame Patel and Chardon, a moment later, were walking slowly down the broad avenue of trees through which drawled the bourdon of the breeze this night in early May.
It was one o"clock when they entered the pretty little house, formerly the summer retreat of the dead composer Patel. A winner of the _Prix de Rome_ he had produced many operas and oratorios until his death, just a year previous to the _premiere_ of "The Iron Virgin." Of its immense success widow and librettist were in no doubt. Had they not witnessed it an hour earlier! Such furore did not often occur at the Comique. All recollection of Patel"s mediocre work was wiped away in the swelter and glow of this pa.s.sionate music, more modern than Wagner, more brutal than Richard Strauss. "Who would have believed that the old dried-up mummy had such a volcano in his brain?"--this the bereaved woman had overheard as she descended the marble stairway of the theatre, and Chardon hurried her to the carriage fearing that the emotions of the evening--the souvenirs of the dead, the shouting of the audience and the blaring of the band as it had saluted her trembling, bowing figure in the box--finally would prove too strong for her. He, too, had come in for some of the applause, a sort of inverted glory which like a frosty nimbus envelopes the head of the librettist. Now he recalled all this and rejoiced that his charge was safely within doors.
Madame Patel retained only one servant in her dignified, miniature household, for she was not rich; but the lamps were burning brightly, and on the table stood cold food, wine and fruit. The music-room was familiar to her late husband"s a.s.sociate. Patel"s portrait hung over the fireplace. It represented in hard, shallow tones the face of a white-haired, white-bearded man whose thin lips, narrow nose and high forehead proclaimed him an ascetic of art. The deep-set eyes alone told of talent--their gaze inscrutable and calculating; a disappointed life could be read in every seam of the brow.
Near the piano, where Chardon turned as he waited Madame Patel"s return from her dressing-room, there swung a picture whose violence was not dissipated by the gloom of the half-hidden corner. He approached it with a lamp. Staring eyes saluted him, eyes saturated with the immitigable horror of life; eyes set in grotesque faces and smothered in a sinister Northern landscape. It was one of Edvard Munch"s ferocious and ironic travesties of existence. And on the white margin of the lithograph the artist had pencilled: "I stopped and leaned against the bal.u.s.trade almost dead with fatigue. Over the blue-black fjord hung clouds red as blood--as tongues of flame. My friends pa.s.sed on, and alone, trembling with anguish, I listened to the great infinite cry of Nature."
She tapped him on the shoulder. "Come," she said gravely, "leave that awful picture and eat. You must be dead--you poor man!" Chardon blushed happily until he saw her cold eyes. "I was trying to catch the color of that painter"s mind--that Norwegian, Munch. Disordered, farouche as is his style its spiritual note enchains me. The t.i.tle of the picture means nothing, yet everything--"Les Curieux," is it not?" "Yes, you know it well enough by this time. What M. Patel could see in it I can"t say." As she sat down to the table--not at the head: that was significantly empty--he admired her figure, maidenly still despite her majestic bearing; admired the terse contour of her head and noticed, not without a sigh, her small selfish ear. Madame Patel was nearing forty and her November hair had begun to whiten, but in her long gray eyes was invincible youth, poised, self-centred youth. She was deliberate in her movements and her complexion a clear brown. Chardon followed her example, eating and drinking, for they were exhausted by the ordeal of hearing under the most painful conditions, a posthumous opera.
"The great, infinite cry of Nature,"--he returned to the picture. "How difficult that is to get into one"s art." "Yes, _mon ami_; but our dead one succeeded, did he not?" She was plainly obsessed by the theme. "His enemies--ah! the fools, fools. What a joy to see their astonished faces!
Did you notice the critics, did you notice Mille in particular? He was in despair; for years that man pursued with his rancorous pen every opera by M. Patel." She paused. "But now he is conquered at last. Ah!
Chardon, ah! Robert, Patel loved you, trusted you--and you helped him so much with your experience, your superior dramatic knowledge, your poetic gifts. You have been a n.o.ble friend indeed." She pressed his hand while he sat beside her in a stupor. "The great, infinite cry of Nature," he muttered. "And think of his kindness to me, a poor singer, so many years younger than himself! No father could have treated a daughter with such delicacy!" ...
Chardon looked up. "Yes," he a.s.sented, "he was very, very old--too old for such a beautiful young wife." She started. "Not too old, M.
Chardon," she said, slightly raising her contralto voice: "What if he was thirty years my senior! He married me to spare me the peril and fatigue of a singer"s life; few women can stand them--I least of all. He loved me with a pure, narrow affection. I was his daughter, his staff.
You, he often called "Son."" She grazed the hem of tears. Chardon was touched; he seized her large, shapely hand, firm and cold as iron, and spoke rapidly.
"Listen, Madame Patel, listen Olivie--you were like a daughter to him, I know it, he told me. I was his adopted son. I tried to repay him for his interest in a young, unknown poet and composer--well, I compose a bit, you know--and I feel that I pleased him in my libretto of "The Iron Virgin." You remember the summer I spent at Nuremberg digging up the old legend, and the numberless times I visited the torture chamber where stands the real Iron Virgin, her interior studded with horrid spikes that cruelly stabbed the wretches consigned to her diabolical embraces?
You recall all this?" he went on, his vivacity increasing. "Now on the night of the successful termination of our artistic enterprise, the night when all Paris is ringing with the name of Patel, with "The Iron Virgin""--he did not dare to add his own name--"let me tell you what you know already: I love you, Olivie. I have always loved you and I offer you my love, knowing that our dear one--" She dragged her hand from his too exultant grasp and sat down breathless on a low couch. Her eye never left his and he wavered at the thought of following her.
"So this is the true reason for your friendship!" she protested in sorrowful accents. "For this you cultivated the good graces of an unsuspecting old man." "Olivie!" he exclaimed. "For this," she sternly pursued, "you sought my company after his death. Oh, Chardon! Robert!
How could you be so soon unfaithful to the memory of a man who loved you? He loved you, Robert, he made you! Without him what would you be?"