FAREWELL TO YOU!--TO YOU GOOD CHEER!
Given a young man of average resolution in force against an
acknowledged and violently self-disapproved inclination, seated in a
pleasant morning-room, with clear broad rays of December sunshine,
as it knows how to shine in winter in Greece, pouring in through the
lattice-work of the windows, every leaf in the garden singing and
proclaiming that out-of-doors there is gladness of sight as well as
gladness of sound, to soothe the mind of restless and melancholy youth.
It will go hard with that young man to resist the temptation to get
up, shake out the draggled plumes of thought, and canter away into the
country--or why own an uncle who has a horse or two to be had for the
asking? One cannot lock oneself away in a dismal chamber merely as
a correction against one’s own irregular impulses. Besides, was not
his resolution there to act as constable, and move them on if unruly
subjects showed any tendency to loiter on the way? So Rudolph made
himself look very spruce in a dark green riding coat he had bought in
Vienna, and much more suited to the forest depths of Rapolden Kirchen
than the high-road of a modern town, put on a pair of brown gauntlet
gloves, also scenting too suspiciously of the forest, with long black
boots, and he only wanted a forester’s plumed hat to complete the
picture. But he looked exceedingly handsome, and as, abroad, all
eccentricities of costume are credited to the English, he was taken as
a fair young milord as he cantered briskly along the Partissia Road.
Somebody met him and remarked afterwards to the Baron von Hohenfels
that “he had had the pleasure of seeing his nephew on horseback got up
like Gessler without the hat.”
On the youth rode, quite pleased with his green coat and his fine
boots, flicking away an occasional fly from the ear of his bay with a
dainty riding whip, and inhaling delightedly the soft odours of the
winter landscape. He would have liked to whistle or sing.
“Decidedly, Athens is a charming place,” he thought to himself. “All
my life till now I have been frozen at this time of the year, and
here the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the sea is smiling
out there its very bluest smile, and it would be impossible to paint
the lovely colours of the landscape. Hills everywhere, with a long
silver plain--the plain of Attica! I wonder where this road leads to?
Somewhere out into the country, but it does not matter. I’ll ride to
the end of it, and then I’ll ride back.”
It was an enchanting ride. He saw a little beer garden, and stopped to
see if the beer of Athens were as refreshing as its air. Well, no; he
thought on the whole that he had tasted better beer in Vienna, but the
place was quaint, and, who knows? perhaps a centre of classic memories.
He would look into Baedeker on his return. Certainly the waiters
left much to be desired in manner, in attendance, and in personal
appearance. Then he thought of riding back, paid his score, leaving
what would have been considered a satisfactory tip for any one but a
proverbially prodigal milord,--that article, with a proper respect for
itself, not being thought guilty of a knowledge of coppers,--mounted
his horse, and turned its head towards Athens.
His pace this time was not so brisk, nor did his face or the atmosphere
seem quite so happy. A vague consciousness of what was awaiting him was
slowly beginning to make itself felt through the recent satisfaction
of moral superiority, and that consciousness weighted his horse’s
step, as it weighted his own boy’s heart. And yet it was fate that was
guiding him, and not his own will. Of course not. When does the will
ever guide the unwilling, and where would any of us be in moments of
complicated decision, if it were not for that convenient scapegoat and
disentangler--Fate?
The museums afforded an excuse for putting off the evil moment, and a
lad was found to hold the bay while Rudolph went inside to examine the
curiosities. He did all that was to be done; stood gravely before Greek
vase after Greek vase, each one the exact counterpart of the other,
and while running the silver handle of his riding-whip along his lips,
told himself that it was really curious that so many intelligent people
should be found ready to go into ecstasies over this sort of thing,
and prefer to look at a cracked red vase with mad figures on it, to
a living pretty face, or a pine-fringed mountain, or the rain-clouds
scattered across the blue heavens. And then he gazed at the coins;
gazed at broken statues, and at whatever wearied and polite attendants
were willing to show him.
“Well, I am not archæological, that is certain,” he thought, mounting
his bay with an open alacrity that might be described as a silent
“Hurrah!” and flew--not to the Austrian Embassy, but to Academy Street.
When he asked Polyxena in his blandest tones if her mistress was
visible, that gracious minister unto art nodded, and pointed with her
thumb over her shoulder:
“Go up there, you will find her about.”
“The Natzelhuber has picked up a perfect counterpart of herself,”
Agiropoulos had remarked, which struck Rudolph as unpleasantly accurate.
When Rudolph, after a timid knock, opened the door, he found the
pianiste lying on a worn black sofa, smoking a cigarette and reading a
French novel, with three cats about her, one comfortably seated at her
head, and one across her feet. On the hearthrug there were two dogs
feigning to be asleep, in order the more conveniently to pry into the
affairs of man, and ridicule together the secrets they had discerned
between two blinks and a snap at a fly. The room was poorly furnished
and disorderly. A piano which had seen battle and better days, a faded
carpet; music on the floor, music on tables, music on chairs. Over
the mantelpiece a large portrait of Liszt, under it Rubinstein, above
Beethoven, and on either side Chopin and George Sand.
In this little group of portraits consisted the sole decoration of the
bare white walls, and a table in a corner held all that its owner had
amassed of precious things in her public career: her medals gained
at the Conservatoire, the few gifts of gold-studded objects she had
condescended in her most amenable moods to accept from grand dukes
and duchesses, and other courtly and wealthy admirers. She looked at
Ehrenstein without getting up, and said:
“What do you want?”
“Nothing,” he retorted, sitting down uninvited, and staring at her a
moment in cold inquiry.
She was not handsome, nay, she was ugly, and he was glad of it, being
still of the innocent belief that the face is the clear index of the
soul, and that a fair exterior cannot possibly cover a foul interior.
Then, too, the fact that she was unprepossessing made the course he was
contemplating so much the easier, since, however sincerely he might
regret the artist, he could not in conscience pretend it possible that
he should regret her face.
“You are doing well, my young friend,” laughed the Natzelhuber,
“excellently well, ’pon my soul. Not so long ago a convent girl could
not beat you in humility, and to-day you’ve cheek enough to lend even
Agiropoulos a little.”
“Oh!” said Rudolph, lifting his eyebrows, and then changing his tone,
suddenly, “but I did not mean to be rude.”
“Then what the devil do you mean?” the artist cried, lighting another
cigarette, with almost maternal precautions against disturbing her
cats. “Is that the way to come into a woman’s room, making yourself at
home without being asked, and impertinently saying you want nothing?”
“If it comes to that, I might ask, is it habitual for morning callers
to be received by their hostess lying on a sofa, nursing three cats,
smoking, and to be asked what they wanted?”
“A very reasonable attitude if it suits me, and a very reasonable
question. But since you are so susceptible and cantankerous, I’ll do
you the grace to change both to suit you,” she said good-humoredly,
removing her cats and placing them back on the sofa when she stood up;
then seating herself in an arm-chair, she added:
“Now, what have you come for?”
“To see you,” he said, smiling in spite of himself.
“Much obliged, I am sure. Well, look away, and in the meantime I’ll
finish this chapter of my book.”
The method of being severe and renunciatory, with a suitable Byronic
fold of the lip and stern compression of the brows--a kind of “fare
thee well, and if forever” expression--with a woman like this! Fancy
such a reception at twenty-one--when a young man is oldest, gravest,
intensest, and slightly melodramatic--from the object of shattered
dreams, the creature of agitated and complex feelings, and the cause
of poignant humiliation and vexed wonder! Yet the Natzelhuber was
unconsciously working most effectually for the boy’s good, and every
stab was a definite step on the road to recovery, and to a full lifting
of the veil of his own signal folly.
“What makes you look so unhappy, Ehrenstein?” she asked, after a
considerable pause. “Have you been playing?”
“No, mademoiselle. I did not know that I looked unhappy,” Rudolph
answered, colouring slightly.
“You do then. But there is no need to ask why you are unhappy. You wear
your nature in your face, and that proves to me that you will never be
happy--any more than my unlucky self.”
“Why?”
“Because you are too refined and too fastidious, and too everything
else that goes to the making of a first-class irrational humbug. A man
who wishes to make the best of life should be able to take a little
of its mud comfortably, whereas you are ready even to turn up your
aristocratic nose at a little elegant dust.”
“And you, mademoiselle? Why are you not happy?--for I cannot regard
dust or mud as the impediment here,” said Rudolph sarcastically.
“Oh, for just the contrary reason. I am too _gamine_! It comes to the
same thing, child. We are both mad, though reaching the condition by
diametrically opposed roads. My life is ending, and it is too late
now to change had I even the desire,--but yours is beginning. Get
rid of all that superfluous refinement, and tell yourself that there
are things more real and more absolutely necessary than sugar and
ice-cream.”
“What you say is very true, and I will remember it. But have you no
words of equal wisdom for your own case--although they say that doctors
are always better able to treat cholera in an alien body than a fit of
indigestion in themselves.”
“I could say much, but I could not be sure of finding an attentive
audience in myself. You see I am a poor devil. Not so long ago I
had the musical world at my feet--only two names above me, and the
second Rubinstein, not so far away. Like this we were crowned,” she
explained, making a dot on the cover of her book, and calling it Liszt,
with a second lower down, on the right hand side, which represented
Rubinstein, and the last, on the left, hardly more than a thought below
the second--“there! the Natzelhuber. And turn from my fame to reality.
An ugly old woman without a sou, alone, friendless, ill, the only
companions of my solitude these cats and dogs, and that,” she added,
pointing to a bottle of brandy.
“Is that not a very bad companion in solitude?” asked Rudolph, pained.
“Not so very bad when it keeps you from cutting your throat in a morbid
moment.”
“Mademoiselle, command me--command all your true friends, for surely
it is impossible that genius such as yours has gathered no honest
friendship along its path, as well as empty honours. Whatever my
shortcomings may be in the way of entertaining, I will prove a better
counsellor than your present one,” he urged, forgetting all about
himself in his anxiety to save her from the approach of certain
degradation.
She looked at him sharply, and then a curious softened light came into
the yellow eyes, making them once again beautiful and fascinating
with their old charm. She placed her two powerful little hands on his
shoulders, and seemed to gaze down into his very soul.
“My dear boy, I believe you are sincere. You are as good as you look,
and that is saying much. A tired old woman thanks you with all her
heart, but it is too late. Some demon fixed himself in that old woman’s
head when she was born, and never could manage to find its way out ever
since.”
Rudolph was on the point of protesting, when the door opened, and a
woman in black, followed by a young girl entered. The Natzelhuber
wheeled round brusquely, and demanded:
“Who are you, madame? and what brings you here, pray?”
The woman, who was stout and hot, stared anxiously, gasped, clutched
in vain at her scattered ideas, and murmured something relative to the
great honour the illustrious Mademoiselle Natzelhuber had done her in
consenting to teach her daughter Andromache, the interview having been
arranged for to-day.
“All very well. But that does not explain how you came to enter my room
unannounced,” cried the pianiste.
“Your servant sent us up, madame.”
“Polyxena!” roared the Natzelhuber, holding the door open.
Rudolph, ready to sink with shame at the unpleasantness of his
position, and eager to beat a hasty retreat, happened to look at the
girl who was staring from the stormy musician to him with large dark
blue eyes, dark fringed, and full of beseeching anxiety and fright. She
was a very pretty girl of somewhat exotic type: olive tints, blue-black
hair, with a thin, sedately arranged row of curls upon the forehead.
A face of meagre intelligence, without a shade of those subtle and
tremulous surprises, that delicate eloquence of opening sensibilities
and wonder, that make up so much of girlish beauty in northern races.
But Andromache was very touching in that moment of perplexity and
humiliation, and having looked at her once, Rudolph felt constrained to
look again--which he did willingly enough, though he blushed scarlet at
his own audacity.
“Polyxena, who the devil gave you leave to send me strangers when I am
engaged?”
“How was I to know you were engaged? Haven’t I my work to do without
looking after your danglers? Do you think I’m going to walk up here
every time your bell rings to find out what I am to say? Ah, then,
and upon my word, you’d have first to go into treaty with my Maker to
fashion me another pair of legs,” retorted Polyxena, turning on her
heel.
“That is the way she always answers me,” said the Natzelhuber, smiling.
“But I am fond of servants. They are the only part of humanity that has
retained a bit of originality or naturalness. When she is in a good
humour that girl delights me with the extraordinary things she says,”
she remarked to Rudolph. “So, madame, this is the young woman you want
me to turn into an artiste,” she exclaimed, menacingly, standing before
the trembling Andromache with her hands joined behind her.
After a long scrutiny, she thrust up her chin, and muttered:
“Pouf! she doesn’t look very bright.”
“Everybody says she is very clever, mademoiselle,” the girl’s mother
ventured to plead humbly, “and she plays really well.”
“Who is ‘everybody’? half a dozen brutes of Athenians who couldn’t tell
you the difference between C major and F sharp. If you have come here
to cite me the opinion of that distinguished and discriminating critic,
Everybody, madame, instead of waiting to hear mine, you and your
daughter may go about your business, and see what your Everybody will
do for you.”
Rudolph made a movement towards the door, hoping to escape unnoticed,
but the Natzelhuber, having had enough of her last visitors, detained
him with an invitation to smoke a cigarette, and drink a glass of
brandy.
“Wouldn’t you like me to play you something?”
“Not to-day, thanks. Another time. It’s just breakfast time,” he said
hurriedly.
She turned her back on him without another word, and opening the piano,
pointed to Andromache to sit down before it. The girl’s hands shook as
she removed her gloves, and Rudolph, going downstairs, could hear how
unsteady and timid were the first notes that she played.
“Weber’s ‘Invitation à la Danse.’ She will surely fly into another rage
when she hears that,” he thought. “But I do wish she would be kind and
encouraging to the poor girl. Such pretty eyes as she has! I have never
seen prettier. Just like the March violets in Rapoldenkirchen that I
used to gather for my mother.”
In the meantime the frightened owner of these eyes like the March
violets of Rapoldenkirchen was passing through the worst moment of her
existence. Two bars of the “Invitation” served to bring down the wrath
of artistic majesty on her head, and very nearly on her hands.
“What do you call that?”
“Weber’s ‘Invitation,’” died away in the girl’s throat.
“Weber’s ‘Rubbish,’ you idiot! It is as little like the ‘Invitation’ as
the music of my cats is like the ‘Funeral March.’ But you have a good
touch. Something may be made of you when you have learnt your scales,
and know how to sit before a piano. Seat low, thumb covered, body
tranquil. Are you prepared to regard yourself as a beginner, with less
knowledge than a stammering infant--or do you still cherish the opinion
of ‘Everybody’ that you are very clever?”
“I know very well that I am quite ignorant, and it is because I want to
learn that I have come to you,” Andromache said, with a simple dignity
that mollified the artist.
“Well, I see you are not a fool like your respectable mother,” she
said. “Now go home and practice as many scales as you can for three or
four or even more hours a day, and come to me at the end of a week.
Hard work and slow results, remember.”