THE BARON VON HOHENFELS EXPRESSES AN OPINION.
That night Rudolph did not go to bed. He spent some hours walking up
and down his room in a nervous agitation he could by no means account
for. It seemed to him that he had been dropped into a disagreeably
topsy-turvy world, and the thought made him wretched and unhappy:
dissatisfied and perplexed by his own state, fierce in a vague kind
of resentment against Agiropoulos, and filled with an immeasurable
grief for Photini. With such soul in her fingers she appeared to him
through an ugly cloud like a battered and draggled angel, and he sat
disconsolately gazing at the blue and golden flames from the beautiful
star-fire above, and asked himself how had it happened, and was there
for her henceforth no struggling back into the paths of sweet womanhood
from which she had strangely and openly strayed?
Yet why should he grieve so passionately for Photini? No affair of
his if she courted slander and irreverent familiarity; nor yet if she
indulged in inadmissible tastes in public, and wounded and insulted
all who came near her. His own birth and its responsibilities surely
excluded him from such preoccupations, and his natural fastidiousness
made relations, however slight and flexible, with a woman like
Photini impossible. This he knew well, and despite the knowledge
felt miserably sad and unquiet. He wanted so much that she should not
degrade his high ideal of the artist who has received nature’s patent
of nobility, and a lonely impressionable boy like Rudolph could not
afford to stand by tamely and watch the dethroning of his idol. For
Photini had been his idol long before they had met. Her name had been
borne into his retreat from many quarters, and no one had hinted to
him her unlovableness--her disreputableness. Liszt had only spoken to
him of her genius with enthusiasm. Had his small circle deliberately
conspired to keep him in ignorance of this cruel reality, while he
was wandering and losing himself in a forest of delicate and poetic
illusions?--building hope upon hope of an unanalysable nature until his
whole happiness grew to bind itself round the thought of this unknown
woman crowned by art with a glory greater than her womanhood? Photini
Natzelhuber! His mother had often told him of the time she first came
to Vienna, a slip of a girl, with a curly boyish head and the strangest
topaz eyes. Mossy dark hair and topaz eyes with divine fingers--what
more did it require to set aflame a dreamy imaginative lad? And when
strangers visited the Castle at Rapolden Kirchen and spoke of her,
he never seemed to understand that years had flown and left her less
girlish, but pictured her like Art, like a goddess ever young. And when
he read of knightly reverence and allegiance, he told himself that one
day he should go abroad and seek Photini. He dreamed of no conditions
or reward, not of marriage or of love in the ordinary sense. To wear
her colours, serve her in true devotion, honour her above all women,
and humbly sue the privilege to obey her commands and caprices with
some considerable recreative pauses for music--this was Rudolph’s
innocent dream. Remember he was brought up by a high-bred mother, all
grace and gentle benignity, a woman who wore her widowhood like a
sovereign lady to whom man’s homage was a sweet claim. And her pretty
and impracticable theories but helped to feed the fires of a fatally
romantic temperament, while his complete and unboylike isolation left
him an easy prey to the riotous play of fancy. Then is it any wonder
that reality at the outset should both crush and bewilder him?
He opened the window, and leant far out with his head against his hand,
that the cold night air might blow upon him. Through the confusion of
his mind he could gather no dim or possible conclusion upon which to
shape immediate action. He dreaded meeting Photini again, for he felt
he could never forgive her for the havoc she had made of all his bright
hopes. Then softly through the silence of the night waved in echoing
dimness the lovely strains of the “Barcarolle,” with its ever recurrent
note of passionate melancholy, its very voluptousness of exquisite pain
and the musical rhythm of the oars breaking through the water murmur.
The memoried sounds flushed his cheek with trembling delight, and he
rushed to his violin and tried to pick out the dominant melody. But who
could ever hope to play it as she did? And, happily, he became mindful
of the possible objections of others to this faint nocturnal music, and
generously put up his instrument.
“Ah!” he sighed, “if Photini be hardly a woman, what an artist, good
heavens!” Must much not be forgiven undeniable genius? And was all
the ideal love irrevocably vanished? If only he could know. For this
uncertainty disturbed him and made him unhappy, and unhappiness is not
exactly the condition that enables a young man to see clearly into his
own mind or into anybody else’s. He would try to sleep, and then this
tempest of emotion and harassing conflict would blow over and leave his
eyes clearer to see what he ought to do and leave undone.
But Rudolph did not sleep, and a sleepless night, we know, works
disastrously upon the nerves and looks. When he appeared downstairs his
uncle glanced up casually from his papers, and, stirring his chocolate,
said in surprise:
“Why, whatever is the matter with you, Rudolph? This is too absurd. A
girl wouldn’t look so battered after a first ball.”
“Well, I am battered, I suppose. I’ve passed a bad night and I am not
used to it,” said Rudolph listlessly.
“A bad night! a fellow of your age! Is it possible? Fact is, my dear
boy, your mother has ruined you. Nothing worse than to pamper and
coddle up lads as if they were girls. Your mother had no business to
keep you immured in that ghostly old place with no hardier society than
her own.”
“I wish she were there still and I with her,” said poor Rudolph, with a
little break in his voice and a faint clouding of his blue eyes.
“Of course, of course,” hastily cried the volatile baron, whom all
evidence of emotion struck chill. “The wish does you and her credit.
But all the same, it is not exactly fit training for a boy. Makes him
whimsical and sensitive and shy--a lively prey for all adventurers
male and female, especially female. Fact is, it is most enervating and
absurd. You ought to have seen something of society long ago, Rudolph;
you ought indeed. Men and manners--you know your classics?”
“That is just my difficulty. Men and manners--to find them
disappointing and strange. My brief glimpse of them has both sickened
and saddened me.”
“Nonsense! You must face life like a man; not dream it away like a puny
sentimental girl. You want backbone and nerve, Rudolph, you do indeed.
Men are not saints nor women angels. Well, what of that? They are not
expected to be so until they get into the next world, which time,
as far as I am concerned, I trust will be postponed to the furthest
limits. Then the ladies find their wings and the men get canonised,
that is, if they haven’t taken snuff. I believe a very estimable saint
was once refused canonisation because he took snuff; can’t swear to it,
however. For the rest, my boy, adopt the aphorism of the wise German,
who was good enough to discover that everything is arranged for the
best in this best of all possible worlds.”
“You can take things lightly, uncle, but I cannot.”
“Of course not,” rejoined the baron, lighting a cigar. “Whoever heard
of a young man taking anything lightly except his debts?”
“I do not ask that men should be saints nor women angels.”
“It is considerate of you to be so unexacting. Pass the saintship of
your own sex, young men have the extremely awkward habit of quarrelling
with women as soon as they discover they are not angels.”
“But I do seek for evidences of gentlemanly feeling, for decent
manners and chivalrous speech,” Rudolph went on, ignoring the Baron’s
interruptions.
“Now you are hardly so unexacting. This strikes me as demanding
something more than sanctity, for it is quite possible that a saint may
be an ill-mannered cad,” said the baron gravely.
“I hope, sir, that you will not be offended with me if I express a wish
to return to Austria,” said Rudolph, after a pause, nervously devoted
to industrious crumbling.
“Indeed, Rudolph,” cried the baron, facing him with a disconcerting
steadiness of gaze, “I am very seriously offended to hear you express
such a wish. Your aunt and I have cherished the hope that you would
find your stay with us pleasant enough to make your visit a prolonged
one. What has upset you? If there is anything we can do to make you
comfortable, I beg you will state your wishes and count them fulfilled.”
“Nothing, nothing indeed, I assure you. You and my dear aunt are
kindness itself, and I am most truly grateful. But I am not happy,
uncle. Do not blame me if I seem capricious.”
“Seem! Well, and are you not?”
“I cannot help it if I am perplexed and grieved. I think I should
feel less troubled in Rapolden Kirchen, that is all,” Rudolph slowly
explained, bending his head with apparent anxiety over the little heap
of crumbs he was making with his knife.
His uncle watching him narrowly saw the sensitive lips tremble under
the soft moustache.
“Come, unveil the mystery, Rudolph,” he said with a quiet smile. “Who
is the woman? For, Gad, it looks deucedly like a first prick of love.
Nothing else smarts so keenly at your age.”
Rudolph shrank visibly from the coarse frank glance of worldly eyes
directed upon a wound so intangible, so especially delicate, and
yet open to misconstruction. To grieve about a woman argues the
existence of the commoner sentiment, and he loathed the thought of
his fine instinct being so misinterpreted. But could a bland and
heavy ambassador, who smokes the best cigars and lounges on the
softest cushions in irreproachable attire, skilful in gastronomy and
a connoisseur in feminine points, be possibly expected to seize and
rightly interpret the daintier emotions and pangs of a more exquisite
and spiritual organism?
“There is nothing of that matter in my trouble, but I believe I am
unfitted for society. I don’t like it; much that others, possibly wiser
and better than I, hardly note offends me.”
“You find the charming illusions nurtured in the seclusion of Rapolden
Kirchen rudely dispelled,” suggested the baron, looking what he felt, a
trifle bored by the lad’s heavy earnestness, but admirably sustained by
the comfort of good tobacco. “That happens to every one, though I have
no doubt it would afford you immeasurable satisfaction to look upon
your case as exceptional. All this is quite correct, since it is so,
and if this very interesting and pleasant world realised the fastidious
ideal of youth, my dear fellow, it would not be a fit place for any
sensible man to live in. Be reasonable, Rudolph. Give poor society
another chance before you decide to abandon it to inevitable perdition.
There will be plenty of balls presently. Stay and see if you cannot
reconcile your flighty imagination to a waltz or two with some pretty
Athenians. You may not credit it, but there are two very pretty girls
here.”