Melomaniacs Part 10

The evening was cool and clear, and with a singular sensation of lightness in her head she went up to the hall in a noisy Broadway car....

Her heart beat so violently that she feared she was about to be ill; intense excitement warned her she must be calmer. All this fever and tremor were new to her, their novelty alarmed and interested her.

Accustomed since childhood to time the very pulse-beats of her soul, this a.n.a.lytical woman was astounded when she felt forces at work within her--forces that seemed beyond control of her strong will. She did not dare to sit downstairs, so secured a seat in the top gallery, meeting none of Arthur's musical acquaintances. She eagerly read the programme.

How odd "Vibert" seemed on it! She almost expected to see her own name follow her husband's. Arthur Vibert and Ellenora, his wife, will play his own--their own--concerto for piano and orchestra!

She laughed at her conceit, but her laugh sounded so thin and miserable that she was frightened....

Again she looked at the programme. After the concerto overture "Adonas"--Vibert loved Sh.e.l.ley and Keats--came the piano concerto, a group of songs--the singer's name an unfamiliar one--and finally the symphonic poem. The symphonic poem! What did she see, or were her eyes blurred?

"Symphonic Poem 'The Zone of the Shadow'. For explanatory text see the other side." Sick and trembling she turned the page and read "The Argument of this Symphonic Poem is by Ellenora Vibert."

THE ZONE OF THE SHADOW

To the harsh sacrificial tones of curious sh.e.l.ls wrought from conch let us wors.h.i.+p our blazing parent planet! We stripe our bodies with ochre and woad, lamenting the decline of our G.o.d under the rim of the horizon. O! sweet lost days when we danced in the sun and drank his sudden rays. O!

dread hour of the Shadow, the Shadow whose silent wings drape the world in gray, the Shadow that sleeps. Our souls slink behind our s.h.i.+elds; our women and children hide in the caves; the time is near, and night is our day. Softly, with feet of moss, the Shadow stalks out of the South. The brilliant eye of the Sun is blotted over, and with a remorseless mantle of mist the silvery cusp of the new moon is enfolded. Follow fast the stars, the little brethren of the sky; and like a huge bolster of fog the Shadow scales the ramparts of the dawn. We are lost in the blur of doom, and the long sleep of the missing months is heavy upon our eyelids. We rail not at the coward Sun-G.o.d who fled fearing the Shadow, but creep noiselessly to the caves. Our s.h.i.+elds are cast aside, unloosed are our stone hatchets, and the fire lags low on the hearth. Without, the Shadow has swallowed the earth; the cry of our hounds stilled as by the hand of snow. The Shadow rolls into our caves; our brain is benumbed by its caresses; it closes the porches of the ear, and gently strikes down our warring members. Supine, routed we rest; and above all, above the universe, is the silence of the Shadow.

"Arthur has had his revenge," she murmured, and of a sudden went sick; the house was black about her as she almost swooned.... The old pride kept her up, and she looked about the thinly filled galleries; the concert commenced; she listened indifferently to the overture. When Vibert came on the stage and bowed, she noticed that he seemed rather worn but he was active and played with more power and brilliancy than she ever before recalled. He was very masterful, and that was a new note in his music. And when the songs came, he led out a pretty, slim girl, and with evident satisfaction accompanied her at the piano. The three songs were charming. She remembered them. But who was this soprano?

Arthur was evidently interested in her; the orchestra watched the pair sympathetically.

So the elopement had not killed him! Indeed he seemed to have thriven artistically since her desertion! Ellenora sat in the black gulf called despair, devoured by vain regrets. Was it the man or his music she regretted? At last the Symphonic Poem! The strong Gothic head of Anton Seidl was seen, and the music began....

The natural bent of Arthur for the mystic, the supernatural, was understood by his wife. Here was frosty music, dazzling music, in which the spangled North, with its iridescent auroras, its snow-driven soundless seas and its arctic cold, were imagined by this woman. She quickly discerned the Sun theme and the theme of the Shadow, and alternately blushed and wept at the wonderfully sympathetic tonal transposition of her idea. That this slight thing should have trapped his fantasy surprised her. After she had written it, it had seemed remote, all too white, a "Symphonie en Blanc Majeur"--as Theophile Gautier would have called it--besides devoid of human interest. But Arthur had interwoven a human strand of melody, a scarlet skein of emotion, primal withal, yet an attempt to catch the under emotions of the ice-bound Esquimaux surprised in their zone of silence by the sleep of the Shadow, the long night of their dreary winter. And the composer had succeeded surprisingly well. What boreal epic had he read into Ellenora's little prose poem, the only thing of hers that he had ever pretended to admire! She was amazed, stunned. She wondered how all this emotional richness could have been tapped. Had she left him too soon, or had her departure developed some richer artistic vein? She tortured her brain and heart. After a big tonal climax followed by the lugubrious monologue of a ba.s.soon the work closed.

There was much applause, and she saw her husband come out again and again bowing. Finally he appeared with the young singer. Ellenora left the hall and feebly felt her way to the street. As she expected, Paul was not in sight, so she called a carriage, and getting into it she saw Arthur drive by with his pretty soprano.

IV

How she reached the train and Philadelphia she hardly remembered. She was miserably sick at soul, miserably mortified. Her foolish air-castles vanished, and in their stead she saw the brutal reality. She had deserted a young genius for a fas.h.i.+onable dilettante. In time she might have learned to care for Arthur--but how was she to know this? He was so backward, such a colorless companion!... She almost disliked the man who had taken her away from him; yet six months ago Ellenora would have resented the notion that a mere man could have led her. Besides there was another woman in the muddle now!... In her disgust she longed for her own zone of silence. In her heart she called Ibsen and Nora Helmer delusive guides; her chief intellectual staff had failed her and she began to see Torvald Helmer's troubles in a different light. Perhaps when Nora reached the street that terrible night, she thought of her children--perhaps Helmer was watching her from the Doll's House window--perhaps--perhaps Arthur--then she remembered the young singer and bitterness filled her mouth....

When Paul came back, twenty-four hours later, she turned a disagreeable regard upon him.

"Why didn't you stay away longer?" she demanded inconsistently.

"My dear girl, I searched for you at Carnegie Hall that night, but I suppose I must have come too late; so yesterday I went yachting and had a jolly time."

Ellenora fell to reproaching Paul violently for his cruel neglect.

Didn't he know that she was ailing and needed him? He answered maliciously: "I fancied that your trip might upset your nerves. I am really beginning to believe you care more for your young composer than you do for me. Ellenora Vibert, sentimentalist!--what a joke."

He smiled at his wit....

"Leave me, leave me, and don't come here again!... I have a right to care for any man I please."

"Ah! Ibsen encore," said Paul, tauntingly.

"No, not Ibsen," she replied in a weak voice, "only a free woman--free even to admire the man whose name I bear," she added, her temper sinking to a sheer monotone.

"Free?" he sarcastically echoed. The shock of their voices filled the room. Paul angrily stared out of the window at the thin trees in dusty Rittenhouse Square, wondering when the woman would stop her tiresome reproaches. Ellenora's violent agitation affected her; and the man, his selfish sensibilities aroused by the most unheroic sight in the world, slowly descended the staircase, grumbling as he put on his hat....

Too cerebral to endure the philandering Paul, Ellenora Vibert is still in Philadelphia. She has little hope that her husband will ever make any sign.... After a time her restless mind and need of money drove her into journalism. To-day she successfully edits the Woman's Page of a Sunday newspaper, and her reading of an essay on Ibsen's Heroines before the Twenty-first Century Club was declared a positive achievement. Ellenora, who dislikes Nietzsche more than ever, calls herself Mrs. Bishop. Her pen name is now Nora Helmer.

TANNHaUSER'S CHOICE

I

"And you say they met him this afternoon?" ... "Yes, met him in broad daylight coming from the house of that odious woman." "Well, I never would have believed it!" "That accounts for his mysterious absence from the clubs and drawing-rooms. Henry Tannhauser is not the style of man to miss London in the season, unless there is a big attraction elsewhere."

... The air was heavy with flowers, and in the windows opening on the balcony were thronged smartly dressed folk; it was May and the weather warm. The Landgrave's musicale had been antic.i.p.ated eagerly by all music-lovers in town; Wartburg, the large house on the hill, hardly could hold the invited....

The evening was young when Mrs. Minne, charming and a widow, stood with her pretty nun-like face inclined to the tall, black Mr. Biterolf, the ba.s.so of the opera. She had been sonnetted until her perfectly arched eyebrows were famous. Her air of well-bred and conventual calm never had been known to desert her; and her high, light, colorless soprano had something in it of the s.e.xless timbre of the boy chorister. With her blond hair pressed meekly to her shapely head she was the delight and despair of poets, painters and musicians, for she turned an impa.s.sable cheek to their pleadings. Mrs. Minne would never remarry; and it was her large income that made water the mouth of the impecunious artistic tribe....

Just now she seemed interested in Karl Biterolf, but even his vanity did not lead him to hope. They resumed their conversation, while about them the crush became greater, and the lights burned more brilliantly. In the whirl of chatter and conventional compliment stood Elizabeth Landgrave, the niece of the host, receiving her uncle's guests. Mrs. Minne regarded her, a sweet, unpleasant smile playing about her thinly carved lips.

"Yet the men rave over her, Mr. Biterolf. Is it not so? What chance has a pa.s.see woman with such a pure, delicate slip of a girl? And she sings so well. I wonder if she intends going on the stage?" Her companion leaned over and whispered something.

"No, no, I'll never believe it. What? Henry Tannhauser in love with that girl! Jamais, jamais!"

"But I tell you it's so, and her refusal sent him after--well, that other one." Biterolf looked wise.

"You mean to tell me that he could forget her for an old woman? Stop, I know you are going to say that the Holda is as fascinating as Diana of Poitiers and has a trick of making boys, young enough to be her grandsons, fall madly in love with her. I know all that is said in her favor. No one knows who she is, where she came from, or her age. She's fifty if she's a day, and she makes up in the morning." Mrs. Minne paused for breath. Both women moved in the inner musical set of fas.h.i.+onable London and both captained rival camps. Mrs. Minne was voted a saint and Mrs. Holda a sinner--a fascinating one.... There was a little feeling in the widow's usually placid voice when she again questioned Biterolf.

"I always fancied that Eschenbach, that man with the baritone voice, son of the rich brewer--you know him of course?--I always fancied that he was making up to our pretty young innocent over yonder."

Biterolf gazed in amus.e.m.e.nt at his companion. Her veiled, sarcastic tone was not lost on him; he felt that he had to measure his words with this lily-like creature.

"Oh, yes; Wolfram Eschenbach? Certainly, I know him. He sings very well for an amateur. I believe he is to sing this evening. Let us go out on the balcony; it's very warm." "I intend remaining here, for I shall not miss a trick in the game to-night and if, as you say, that silly Tannhauser was seen leaving the Holda's house this afternoon--" "Yes, with young Walter Vogelweide, and they were quarrelling--" "Drinking, I suppose?" "No; Henry was very much depressed, and when Eschenbach asked him where he had been so long--" "What a fool question for a man in love with Elizabeth Landgrave," interposed Mrs. Minne, tartly. "Henry answered that he didn't know, and he wished he were in the Thames." "And a good place for him, say I." The lady put up her lorgnon and bowed amiably to Miss Landgrave, who was talking eagerly to her uncle....

The elder Landgrave was as fond of hunting as of music, and sedulously fostered the cultivation of his niece's voice. As she stood beside him, her slender figure was almost as tall as his. Her eyes were large in the cup and they went violet in the sunlight; at night they seemed l.u.s.trously black. She was in virginal white this evening, and her delicately modelled head was turned toward the door. Her uncle spoke slowly to her.

"He promised to come." Elizabeth flushed. "Whether he does or not, I shall sing; besides, his rudeness is unbearable. Uncle, dear, what can I say to a man who goes away for a month without vouchsafing me a word of excuse?"

Her uncle coughed insinuatingly in his beard. He was a widower.

"Hadn't we better begin, uncle? Go out on the balcony and stop that noisy gypsy band. I hate Hungarian music." ... She carried herself with dignity, and Mr. Landgrave admired the pretty curves of her face and wondered what would happen when her careless lover arrived. Soon the crowd drifted in from the balcony and the great music-room, its solemn oak walls and ceilings blazing with light, was jammed. Near the concert-grand gathered a group of music makers, in which Wolfram Eschenbach's golden beard and melancholy eyes were at once singled out by sentimental damsels. He had long been the by-word of match-making mammas because of his devotion to a hopeless cause. Elizabeth Landgrave admired his good qualities, but her heart was held by that rake, _vaurien_ and man about town, das.h.i.+ng Harry Tannhauser; and as Wolfram bent over Miss Landgrave her uncle could not help regretting that girls were so obstinate.

A cras.h.i.+ng of chords announced that the hour had arrived. After the "Tannhauser" overture, Elizabeth Landgrave arose to sing. Instantly there was a stillness. She looked very fair in her clinging gown, and as her powerful, well modulated soprano uttered the invocation to the Wartburg "Dich, teure Halle, gruss ich wieder," the thrill of excitement was intensified by the appearance of Henry Tannhauser in the doorway at the lower end of the room. If Elizabeth saw him her voice did not reveal emotion, and she gave, with rhetorical emphasis, "Froh gruss ich dich, geliebter Raum."

"He looks pretty well knocked out, doesn't he?" whispered Biterolf to Mrs. Minne. She curled her lip. She had long set her heart on Tannhauser, but since he preferred to sing the praises of Mrs. Holda, she slaked her feelings by cutting up his character in slices and serving them to her friends with a saintly smile.

"Poor old Harry," went on Biterolf in his clumsy fas.h.i.+on. "Your poor old Harry had better keep away from his Venus," snapped the other; "he looks as if he'd been going the pace too fast." Every one looked curiously at the popular tenor. He stood the inspection very well, though his clean-shaven face was slightly haggard, his eyes sunken and bloodshot.

But he was such good style, as the women remarked, and his bearing, as ever, gallant.

Elizabeth ended with "Sei mir gegrusst," and there was a volley of handclapping. Tannhauser made his way to the piano. His att.i.tude was anything but penitent; the girl did not stir a muscle. He shook hands.

Then he complimented her singing. She bowed her head stiffly. Tannhauser smiled ironically.