"You will certainly not run into the _foyer_ after him?" asks Nita,
dryly.
"I am not thinking of it," Sophie assures her.
"Well, I only thought that you are one of his relatives," says Nita.
"Since his wife's death I have had no intercourse with him," Sophie
confides to her friend. "He cannot bear me, thinks me narrow and
prudish. As a man, I have never been in sympathy with him; he treated
my dear cousin, his wife, much too badly for me to ever pardon him. But
as an artist--as artist--he stands alone. I have heard other wonderful
violinists, but it is only he that sends such hot and cold shudders
over one's back at each stroke of his bow."
"Yes, he is a great artist," says Nita. Her voice sounds weary and
hoarse, and the words fall slowly, syllable for syllable, from her
lips, as if they were forced from her in a magnetic sleep. She looks
pale, and her eyes again have their mysterious look. After much coaxing
and pleading from Sophie, she has at length resolved to go with her
friend to Lensky's concert, announced for that afternoon, and now seems
to regret her decision.
"I think that we have a great musical treat before us," remarks Sophie,
after a while. "Lensky has an uncommonly fine programme to-day. The
first number is a trio of Schumann; then his accompanist plays a couple
of little things; then comes a saraband, by Bach; something by
Paganini, I do not know what; then a melody by Lensky himself--'La
Legende' is the name, I think. It is dedicated to his wife."
"Ah! he plays that also?" asks Nita, shortly.
"Have you already heard him play it?" asks Sophie.
"Yes, once, a few years ago," replies Nita, without looking up.
"I am usually not very fond of his compositions, but I know of nothing
that goes to one's heart more than this melody when he plays it," says
Sophie. Nita is silent.
"You seem tired and ill, my heart," says Sophie, after a pause. "If you
really do not want to go to the concert, if you were really going
merely on my account, I would rather stay at home."
"No," says Nita, gloomily. "I have said it. I will go."
* * * * *
Lensky's concert is to take place at four o'clock. About half-past
three Nita and Sophie, in a rattling fiacre, roll out of the quiet Rue
Murillo into the noisy heart of the city. All at once the cab slows its
pace. "What is the matter?" asks Sophie, putting her head out of the
window.
"I cannot go on. The row of carriages blocks the way," answers the
coachman. The horses stop. Nita also looks out. "What a tumult!" says
she. "One carriage crowds another; it is as if a celebrity was to be
buried."
Meanwhile the rain pours down on the roofs of the carriages, on the
hard macadam, on the umbrellas of the pedestrians, who remorselessly
push each other forward on the sidewalks. The coachmen crack their
whips, cry out, curse; the horses stamp and press against each other.
At last, with difficulty enough, the carriage with the two girls pushes
forward a few steps. Sonia looks at her watch. Four o'clock! With a
start, she remembers Lensky's fabulous punctuality. "Nita, if we do not
wish to miss the beginning, we must get out and walk."
And they get out. They are not the only ones. The most distinguished
ladies get out of the prettiest coupes, thread their way between the
muddy carriage wheels, crowd on the slippery sidewalk between piano
teachers with waterproofs and overshoes, musicians with turned-up coat
collars and dented silk hats, and among them the Countess d'Olbreuse,
with a great bundle of music under her arm.
The young girls' places are on the stage. They go, or rather are pushed
forward by the crowd, through an endless length of corridors smelling
of gas and sawdust.
All the places on the stage Lensky has given to acquaintances. There is
no more generous artist than he--none who, with such an immense
crowding, and with doubled prices, still continues to keep hundreds of
free tickets for his personal disposal. In consequence, all kinds of
people are crowded together on the stage--ladies of every age and quite
every rank in life, music teachers, conservatorists, ladies from the
highest society, people who speak Spanish, French, Russian, or English.
"Where are our two places?" asks Sophie, looking round
attentively--"24, 25, 24, 25."
"Here, Sonia," says a gentle, good-natured man's voice.
Sonia suddenly becomes fiery red. Her blue eyes sparkle. She stands as
if rooted to the ground. A young man, tall, broad-shouldered, under
whose severely English exterior something of his true Russian
bearishness is betrayed, with an oval, rather yellow, unusually regular
face, sympathetic, almond-shaped eyes, and thick brown hair, comes up
to her and gives her his hand. "These are the places," says he, "here
in the third row. I only came day before yesterday; my father had no
better ones to give away."
"But, I beg you, we are splendidly placed. It was so nice in you to
think of me," Sophie assures him cordially.
"Well, the time has not yet come when I have forgotten you!" Suddenly
his glance rests on Nita, and remains fixed on her face.
"Have the kindness to introduce me, Sonitschka," asks he. His voice
trembles a little.
"My cousin, Nikolai Lensky," says Sophie, in a tone which betrays that
this cousin is not merely a cousin for her.
"Fraeulein von Sankjewitch," she adds, explanatorily. "But what is the
matter, my heart, you look so faint?" This turning to Nita.
"It is nothing; it will pass off," murmurs Nita, and sits down.
Nikolai's features take on a truly anxious expression, and he cannot
take his eyes from off her. Why does she, just she, please him, before
she has exchanged a word with him, better than formerly any woman has
pleased him? She looks unusually attractive to-day, besides. The weary
fever which quite weighs her down to the ground takes from her
appearance the harshness which often makes her somewhat cold. The
outline of her face is much softer than formerly. A mysterious light
shines from her large eyes, the eyes in which a strange grief
lies buried, and round her mouth trembles an expression as of
death-sentenced tenderness which will not die.
"Could you possibly get me a vinaigrette, Colia?" asks Sonia,
anxiously.
A mad storm of applause cuts short her words. Through the passage left
between the audience on the stage strides a large man, with long,
half-curled hair, which begins to grow gray; with a face whose features
remind one of an Egyptian Sphinx, a face with an indescribable
expression of gloomy sadness, austere pride, and touching kindness; a
face that is not handsome, but which one never forgets when one has
once seen it, the face of a man who has tasted all the pleasures of
earth and who is yet always hungry--the face of a man who still
desperately longs for something in which he has long ceased to believe.
The two cooperators are behind him--the 'cellist, a Parisian celebrity
with curly hair parted in the middle, and a very long mustache, which
he had inherited from an exiled Polish martyr; the pianist, a pupil of
De Sterny, like him in appearance, blond, slender, medium sized,
faultlessly attired, almost dandified.
Lensky bows simply, benevolently, in all directions; the Schumann trio
commences.
Dominating the two other instruments, the silvery sweet tones of the
violin vibrate through the hall.
Nita bends her head forward--listens--listens. Young Lensky has
brought her the vinaigrette which Sophie had asked for. She turns it
absent-mindedly in her hands. Her eyes become gloomier.
Why had she come here, why?--to oblige Sophie? No: because, again and
again, the whole night long, she had ever heard these silvery violin
tones, in a thousand caressing shadings, oppressive, sad, alluring. She
had promised herself the highest musical enjoyment which can be offered
to one, and feels a fearful disappointment.
Already after the first bars Lensky begins to hurry. He is vexed at the
cold playing of the Parisian 'cellist, at a gnat which has flown
against his face, at God knows what.
From that moment his playing differs from other violin virtuosos only
through a raging acceleration of _tempo_, an astonishing lack of
purity, and a luxuriant fulness of sound, an inimitable softness and
satiety of tone which none of the other violinists have ever attained.
His playing is of an arbitrariness which completely confuses the
'cellist, ignorant of his peculiarities. At many parts the three
instruments are not together.
It is pitiable music. The veins in Lensky's forehead swell with rage.
Ever more fiercely he draws the bow across his violin; it is now for
him merely an instrument on which he can vent his bad moods.
A critic who is present describes his playing as a musical crime, the
performance of the trio as a sin against Schumann's creation. Still, at
the close of the number, abundant applause falls to the share of the
artists. It is the fashion to rave over the "devil's violinist." What
in any case seems strange in the performance to the Parisians, they
describe as "Slavonic," and with this short word lull all such
thoughts.
"It is one of his bad days," sighs Sophie, "or it is no longer the same
man."
For the first time Nita's eyes rest on the virtuoso, who now, recalled
by the audience with loud cries of applause, again steps on the stage
between the two other performers.
He stoops, his lower lip is flabby, deep furrows are in his cheeks,
there are heavy shadows under his eyes, the chin has no longer the
firm, marked outline of formerly, and still-- "He is quite the same,"
says Nita, shortly, and turns away her head.
Naturally he is the same, only the dross in his nature comes to light
more hatefully and intrusively than formerly, when the whole charm of
fiery manhood glorified his faults. These faults become a young man,
but an old man they do not.
At last the audience has become quiet; the concert proceeds.
Monsieur Albert Perfection sits down to the piano, plays a nocturne of
Chopin, an _etude_ of Thalberg, and a Liszt tarentella with blameless
technical perfection, and without faltering a single time.
After the impure, confused, over-hasty, and still, in spite of
everything, fascinating playing of Lensky, his performance has a calm,
soothing effect on the nerves, and without reckoning to what phenomenon
to ascribe the effect, the public breathes freely, breaks out in stormy
bravos, then suddenly recollects itself--considers. To distinguish his
accompanist at one of Boris Lensky's concerts! It is not fitting.
Then follows quite a long pause, and at length Lensky once more steps
upon the stage.
In two minutes scarcely one of those present remembers that Albert
Perfection exists. Whatever musical adherents Lensky had lost, he has
quite won back.
Even now his playing is not perfectly free from continual little
technical faults and impurities, but still, who would have time to stop
at those while this sense-enthralling, oppressing, resonant charm flows
from his violin? It is now no longer a violin; it is a human heart
which spreads out all its treasures before the crowd, exposes its
holiest of holies to it, and in a wonderful, mysterious language, a
language which all understand, and to which no one can lend words,
confesses his joys and sorrows, his heaven-aspiring enthusiasm, and,
swooning, back to earth sinking, human sadness.
His appearance also has changed, become ennobled. His formerly flushed
face is now deathly pale; the deeply sunken eyes are almost closed; the
hateful expression about his mouth has disappeared, and has given place
to an inconsolably melancholy expression; his lips are half parted; he
breathes with difficulty, sometimes something like a gasp interrupts
his performance. The insane story from _Figaro_ comes to the mind of
more than one of his listeners. It is not to be denied, his playing
gives the impression of a bad charm to which he himself has fallen
victim.
Now Lensky plays his own composition, his famous, wonderful "La
Legende," for which every one in the audience waited eagerly. In the
middle of the powerful, striking melody of the piece something like a
sob and the wearily fluttering wings of an angel who has wandered into
Hades, and now vainly seeks the way to its home, sounds from beneath
his bow.
The audience is beside itself. Men laugh, weep, rejoice, clap their
hands, stamp their feet, mount on chairs in order to see him better.
"_Bis, bis, bis!_" sounds from all sides. He repeats it.
Then a murmur goes through the room: some one has fainted yonder on the
stage--Nita! Her head falls forward. With difficulty Sophie holds her
for one moment upright in her arms; then Nikolai springs to her help,
carries out the unconscious woman. Sonia follows him.
An unpleasant excitement overpowers the audience; without entirely
stopping, Lensky retards his strokes, coughs compassionately, looks
short-sightedly squinting after his son. A splendid fellow! How easily
he carries the dark form! Who was she? A slender, supple young body,
evidently. Then he takes up the rhythm anew--the incident is forgotten.