Melomaniacs Part 25

"There's Val, Belle. There, near the stage, to the left. I do believe he's praying. And for what? For a man who had no brains, no heart; a reckless, handsome man, who was simply a voice, a sweet, lying voice."

"For shame, Selene, for shame! He was your--he was our husband." Belle's lips were white and trembling as she murmured, "May G.o.d rest his poor soul. He was a sweet boy, poor Sig, may G.o.d rest his soul. Oh, how I wish he were alive!" Selene looked disdainful, and her eyes grew black.

"I don't," she said, so loudly that a man in the next box leaned over, and then as "Siegfried's Trauermarsch" sounded, the coffin was carried in pompous procession from the building. There was a brief conflict between the ushers and a lot of women over the flowers on the stage, and every one, babbling and relieved, went out into the daylight.... The widows waited until the police had emptied the house, then sent for their carriage. They lunched at home and later, after many exchanges of affection, Belle drove away to catch the evening train. Selene watched her from the window.

"I do believe she loved him after all! I wish she'd set her cap now for Val. Pooh! what a soft fool she is. Sig was _my_ legal husband, and I alone can bear his name, for she has no certificate. What an interesting name, Mrs. Siegfried Brazier, widow of the famous Wagnerian tenor. Is that you, Val?" Val came in, dusty and exhausted.

"Did you go to the cemetery?" "Yes." "Was any one there?" "Only one old woman." "Mrs. Madison!" cried Selene, in rasping, triumphant tones.

"No," wearily answered the man, lying....

INTERMEZZO

In his hand Frank Etharedge held a cablegram. The emotion of the moment was one of triumph mixed with curiosity; his sensitive face a keyboard over which his feelings swept the octave. He was alone in his office, and from the windows on the top floor of this giant building he saw the harbor, saw the river maculated with craft; saw the bay, the big Statue--best of all saw steams.h.i.+ps. This caught his fancies into one chord and the keynote sounded: Yes, life was a good thing sometimes. A few months more, in the spring, he would be sailing on just such an iron carrier of joy, sailing to Paris, to Edna. He looked at the pink message again. It announced in disconnected words that Mrs. Etharedge had been bidden to the Paris Grand Opera. The cable was ten days old, and on each of these days the lawyer had gone to his private consulting room immediately after luncheon, and, facing seaward, read the precious revelation: "Engaged by Gailhard for Opera. Will write. Edna." That was all--but it was the top of the hill for both after three years of separation and work. He was not an expansive man and said little to his a.s.sociates of this good fortune, though there were times when he felt as if he would like to throw open the windows and shout the glorious news across the chimneys of the world.

Etharedge was a slim, nervous man with dark eyes and pointed beard. He believed in his wife. Europe, artistic Europe, had for him the fascination which sends fanatics across hot sands to Mecca shrines. He had never seen Paris but knew its people, palaces, galleries. His whole life was a preparation for deliberate a.s.sault upon the City by the Seine. He spoke American-French, ate at French-American table d'hotes, and had been married four years to a girl of Gallic descent whose singing held such promise of future brilliancy that finally their household was disrupted by music and its fluent deceptions. The advice of friends, the unfortunate praise of a few professional critics, and Edna Etharedge accompanied by her cousin, a widow, sailed for Paris.

Each summer he made up his mind to join her; once the death of his mother had stopped him, and a second time money matters held him in a vise of steel, but the third season--he did not care to dwell upon that last summer: his conscience was ill at ease. And Edna worked like the galley slave into which operatic routine transforms the most buoyant spirit. For the first two years her letters were as regular as the mail service--and hopeful. She was getting on famously. Her cousin corroborated the accounts of plain living and high singing. There were no vacations in the simple pension on the Boulevard de Clichy. She had the best master in Paris, the best repet.i.teur; and the instructor who came to coach her in stage business declared that madame held the future in the hollow of her pretty palm. But the third year letters began to miss. Edna wrote irregularly in pessimistic phrases. Art was so long and life so gray that she felt, thus she a.s.sured her husband, as if she must give up everything and return to him. Did he miss her? Why was he cool--above all, patient? Didn't he long for wings to fly across the Atlantic? Then a silence of three weeks. Etharedge grew frantic. He neglected business, spent much money in telegraph tolls, and was at last relieved by a letter from Emmeline relating Edna's severe illness, her close sailing to the perilous gate, and her slow recovery. He was told not to come over as they were on the point of starting for Switzerland where the invalid had been ordered. Frank felt happy for the first time since his wife had gone away. After that, letters began again--old currents ran smooth and the climax came with the wonderful news.

He would go to Paris--go in a few months, go without writing. Then, gaining the beautiful city, he would read the announcements of Edna's singing. With what selfish, subtle joy would he buy a box and listen to the voice of his beautiful wife, watch the lithe figure, hear the applause after her aria! He had sworn this was to reward his long months of loneliness, of syncopated hopes, of tiresome labor; his profession had become unleavened drudgery. Perhaps Edna would make him her business man, her constant companion. Ah! what enchantment to stand in the _coulisses_ and hold her wraps while she floated near the footlights on the pinions of song. He would give up his distasteful practice and devote the remainder of his life to the service of a great artist, hear all the music he longed for, see the Paris of his dreams.

The door opened. Plunged in reverie he felt that this was but an extension of his vision. "Edna!" he cried and flung wide his arms.

"Frank, you dear old boy, how thin you've grown! Heavens! You're not sick? Wait, wait until I raise the window." She pushed up the sash noisily and Frank felt the brisk air on his temples. He smiled though his heart nipped sadly. It was Edna, Edna his wife in the flesh; and the excitement of holding her in his willing arms drove from his brain the vapors of idle hope. She was looking down at him a strong, handsome girl with eyes too bright and hair too golden. "Edna," he cried, "your hair, what have you done to your lovely black hair?" "There's a salute from a loving husband. No surprise, though I've dropped from the clouds. But my hair is quizzed. Now, what do you mean, Frank Etharedge?" Both were agitated, both endeavored to dissemble. Then his eyes fell on the cablegram. He started.

"In the name of G.o.d, Edna, is anything the matter? This cable! Why are you here? Are you in trouble?" The dark shadows under her eyes lightened at the commonplace questions. She had time to tune her whirring thoughts.

"Frank, don't ask too much at once. I'm here because I am. We have just landed. I left Emmeline on the pier with the custom officers and came to you immediately. Say you're glad to see me--my old Frank!"

"But, but--" he stammered.

"Yes, I know what you are thinking. I was engaged for the Paris Opera--"

"Was?" he blankly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed--"and I couldn't stand it. Locateli--"

"Who?" "Locateli. You remember him, Frank, my old teacher? He got me into the Opera and he got me out of it." "Do you mean that low-lived scamp who gave you lessons here, the man I kicked out of doors?" She flushed. Etharedge stared at her. He was near despair. His dream of an artistic life on the Continent was as a bubble burst in the midday sunlight. He loved his wife, but the shock of her unheralded arrival, the hasty ill-news, proved too much for this patient man's nerves. So he transposed his wrath to Locateli.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!" he blurted, kicking aside the chair and walking the floor like a caged cat. "And to think that scoundrel of an Italian--"

"Frenchman, Frank," she interposed--"that foreigner, who ought to have been shot for insulting you, that Locateli, followed you to Paris and mixed up in your affairs! And you say he had you pushed out of the Opera? The intriguing villain! How did you come to see him?"

"He gave me lessons in Paris." "Locateli gave you--Lord!" The man was speechless. He put his hand to his forehead several times, and then gazed at his wife's hair. She fell to sobbing. "Frank," she wailed, "Frank! I've come back to you because I couldn't stand it any longer--it was killing me. Can't you see it? Can't you believe me? No woman, no American girl can go through that life and come out of it--happy. It made me sick, Frank, but I did not like to tell you. And now, after I've thrown up a career simply because I can't be your wife and a great artist at the same time, your suspicions are driving me mad." Her tone was poignant. He looked out on the harbor as another steamer pa.s.sed the Statue bound for Europe.

"Ask Emmeline!" She, too, followed the vessel with hopeless expression and clasped his shoulder. "Oh! Sweetheart, aren't you glad to have me back again? It's Edna, your wife! I've been through lots for the sake of music. Now I want my husband--I'm not happy away from him." He suddenly embraced her. Forgotten the disappointment, forgotten the fast vanis.h.i.+ng hope of a luxurious life, of seeing his dream--Paris; forgotten all in the fierce joy of having Edna with him forever. Again he experienced a thrill that must be happiness: as if his being were dissolving into a magnetic slumber. He searched her eyes. She bore it without blenching.

"Are you my same little Edna?" "Oh, my husband!" There was a knock at the door; an office boy entered and gave Etharedge a letter which bore a foreign stamp. She put out her hand greedily. "It will keep until after dinner, Edna. We'll go to some cafe, drink a bottle of champagne and celebrate. You must tell me your story--perhaps we may be able to go to Paris, after all." "To Paris!" Edna s.h.i.+vered and importuned for the letter until he showed it. "Why, it's mine!" she exclaimed. "It's the letter I wrote you before we sailed." "You said nothing about it when you came in?" He put it in his pocket and looked for his hat. She was the color of clay. "It is my letter. Let me have it," she begged. "Why, dear, what's the matter? I'll give it to you after I have read it. Why this excitement? Besides, the address is not in your handwriting." He trembled. "Emmeline wrote it for me; I was too busy--or sick--or--"

"Hang the letter, my dear girl. I hear the elevator. Let's run and catch it. This is the happiest hour of my life. An 'intermezzo' you musicians call it, don't you?" "Yes," she desperately whispered following him into the hall, "an intermezzo of happiness--for you!"

Suddenly with a grin the man turned and handed her the letter: "Here!

I'd better not juggle with the future. You can tell me all about it--to-morrow."

And now for the first time Edna hated him.

A SPINNER OF SILENCE

She was only a woman famish'd for loving.

Mad with devotion and such slight things.

And he was a very great musician And used to finger his fiddle strings.

Her heart's sweet gamut is cracking and breaking For a look, for a touch--for such slight things But he's such a very great musician Grimacing and fing'ring his fiddle strings.

--THeOPHILE MARZIALS.

I

In his study Belus sat before a piano, his slender troubled fingers seeking to follow the quick drift of his mind. He played Liszt's "Waldesrauschen," but murmured, "She is the first to doubt me." He laughed, and s.h.i.+fted by an almost unconscious cut to the F minor Nocturne of Chopin. With the upward curve of his thoughts the music grew more joyous; then came bits of a Schubert impromptu, boiling scales and flashes of clear sky. The window he faced looked out upon the park.

Beyond the copper gleam from the great, erect synagogue was the placid toy lake with its rim of moving children; the trees swept smoothly in a huge semi-circle, and at their verge was the driveway. The glow of the afternoon, the purity of the air, and the glancing metal on the rolling carriages made a gay picture for the artist. But he was not long at ease, though his eyes rested gratefully upon the green foliage. The interrogative note in the music betrayed inquietude, even mental turbulence.

A certain firmness of features, long, narrow eyes set under a square forehead, heavily accented cheek-bones, almost Calmuck in width, a straight feminine nose, beckoning black hair--these, and a distinction of bearing made Belus the eighth wonder of his day. That is what the hypnotized ones averred. Master of a complex art, his nature complex, the synthesis was irresistible. His expression was complicated; he had not a frank gaze, nor did he meet his friends without a nameless reticence. This veiled manner made him difficult to decipher. Upon the stage Belus was like a desert cat, a gliding movement almost incorporeal, a glance of feline intensity, and then--the puissant attack upon the keyboard. As in sullen dreams one struggles to throw off the spell of hypnotic suggestion, so there were many who mutely fought his power, questioning with rebellious soul his right to conquer. But conquer he did--so all the conservatory pupils said. A steady stream of victorious tone came from under his supple fingers, and his instrument of shallow thunders and tinkling wires sang as if an archangel had smote it, celestially sang. Belus was the Raphael of the piano, and master of the emotional world. His planetary music gathered about him women, the ailing, the sorrowful, the mad, and there were days when these Maenads could have slain him in their excess of nervous fury, as was slain Bacchus of old. Thus wrote some enthusiastic critics of the impressionist school.

Zora came in. She was brune and broad, her eyes of changeful color, and her temper wifely. Belus flashed his fingers in the air, and she bowed her head. His own language was Hungarian, that tongue of tender and royal a.s.sonances, but Zora had never heard it. She was quite deaf; and so, barred from the splendors of this magician's inner court, she ever watched his face with a curiosity that honeycombed her very life.

The man's love of paradox had piqued him to select this deaf woman; he confessed to his intimate friends that the ideal companion for a musician was one who could never hear him practise his piano. She rapidly made a request in her little voice, the faded voice of the deaf: "Can't I go to the concert with you? Oh, do not put me off. I am crazy to see you play, to see the public." He drew back at once. "If you go you will make me nervous--and the recital is sold out," he signalled.

She regarded him steadily. "Your art usually ends in the box-office."

They drank their coffee sadly. Leaving her with a pad upon which he had scribbled "Patience, Fatima, wife of Bluebeard!" Belus went to his concert, she to her hushed dreams....

II

Zora drowsed on the balcony. The park was a great, shapeless, soft flowing river of trees over which the tall stars hung, while the creeping plumes of rhythmic steam, and the earthly echoes of light from the flat-faced hotels on the west side set her wondering if any one really stayed at home when Belus played Chopin. No one but herself, she bitterly thought. Her mood turned jealous. His magnetism, her husband's magnetism, that vast reservoir upon which floated the souls of many, like tiny lamps set adrift upon the bosom of the Ganges by pious Mohammedan widows, must it ever be free to all but herself? Must she, who wors.h.i.+pped at his secret shrine, share her adoration, her idol, with the first sentimental school girl? It was revolting. She would bear with it no longer. The ride through the park cooled her blood and eased her headache. Just to be nearer to him; that might set her throbbing nerves at rest. As if she had been cut off from the big central current of life, so this woman suffered during the absence of her husband. In trance-like condition she stepped out of the carriage, and slowly walked down Seventh avenue. When Fifty-sixth Street was reached, she turned eastward and went up the few steps that led into the artists'

room.

A man half staggered by her at the dimly lighted door, but steadied himself when he saw her.

"I am Madame Belus," she said in her pretty English streaked with soft Magyar cadences. He stared at her, and she thought him crazy. "All right, ma'am," he said after a pause. His speech was thick, yet he was not drunk; it was more the behavior of a drug eater.

"Don't go back there, lady!" he begged, "don't go back to the professor.

He is doing wonderful things with the piano, but somehow I couldn't stand it, it made me dizzy. I had no business there anyhow.... You know his orders. Every door locked in the building when he plays. If the public knew it, what a row!" The man gasped in the spring air. Zora was terrified. What secret was being withheld from her? Who could be with him? Perhaps he was deceiving her, Belus, her husband! She tried to pa.s.s the man, who stared at her vacantly.

"Don't go in, ma'am, don't go in. Every door is locked, all except the two little doors looking out on the stage. My G.o.d, don't go there! I saw a mango tree--I know the mango, for I've been in India--I saw the tree bloom out over the keys, and its fruit fell on the stage. I saw it. And I swear to the ladder, the rope ladder, which he threw up with his left hand while he kept on playing with the other. If you had only seen what came tumbling down that rope as he played the cradle-song! Baby faces, withered faces, girls and mothers, the sweetest and the most fearful you ever saw. They all came rolling down and the people in front sat still, the old ones crying softly. And there were wings and devilish things. I couldn't stand the air, it was alive; and your man's face, white and drawn, with the eyes all gone like those jugglers I knew when I was a boy in India--out there in India."

She trembled like the strings of a violin. Then after a sharp struggle with her beating heart, and bravely pus.h.i.+ng the man aside, she went on rapid feet up the circular stairway, her head buzzing with the clamor of her nerves. India! Belus had once confessed that his youth had been spent in Eastern lands. What did it mean? As she mounted to the little doors she listened in vain for the sound of music. She heard nothing, not even the occasional singing of the electric lights. Not a break in the air told her of the vast a.s.sembly on the other side of the wall.

Belus, where was he? Possibly in his room above. But why had she met none of the usual officials? What devilry was loosed in the large s.p.a.ces of this hall? Again her heart roared threateningly and she was forced to sit on a chair to catch her breath. A humming like the wind plucking at the wires of a thousand aeolian harps set her soul s.h.i.+vering in fresh dismay. The two little arched doors were in front of her, but they seemed leagues away. To go to one and boldly open it she must; yet her tissues were dissolving, her eyes dim. That door!--if she could see him, see Belus, then all would be well. Across the stair she wavered, a wraith blown across the gulf of time. She grasped at the cold k.n.o.b of the door--gripped but could not turn it, for it was locked. Zora fell to her knees, her heart weeping like the eyes of sorrow. Oh! for one firm, clangorous chord struck by Belus; it would be as wine to the wounded.

Zora crawled to the other door, perhaps--! It was not locked, and slowly she opened it and peered out upon the stage, the auditorium.

The humming of the harps ceased and the chaplet of iron that bound her brow relaxed. The house was full of faces, pink human faces, the faces of women, and as these faces rose tier after tier, terrifying terraces of heads, Zora recalled the first council of the Angel of Light; Lucifer's council sung of by Milton and mezzo-tinted by John Martin. The faces were drained of expression, but in the rows near by she saw staring eyes. Belus--what was he doing?