Are we all in love with a little singing-girl?"
"My Prince," said Carricchio, "it matters little what an old fool like
me loves or does not love. I am a broken old Arlecchino, you a Prince.
She will have none of us. She alone of all of us--Prince and Princess
and clown alike--has solved the riddle which that boy, whom we killed,
was sent to teach us. She alone has made her life an art, for she alone
has found that art is capable of sacrifice. She alone of all of us has
based her art upon nature and upon love. She is passionately devoted to
her master--her father in art and life, for he rescued her from poverty
and shame. She will follow him through the world. _Mon Prince_, let her
alone."
"To let her go," said the Prince, "would be to spoil everything. Shall
I give up a deliberate plan of life, finely conceived and carefully
carried out, to gratify the whims of a foolish girl? Why is religion to
interfere always with art? Why is sacrifice always to be preached to us?
Life is not sacrifice: it is a morbid, monkish idea. Life is success,
fruition, enjoyment. Life is an art--religion also should be an art."
"Where there is love," said Carricchio, "there must be sacrifice, and no
life is perfect without love. There are only two things capable of
sacrifice--nature and love. When art is saturated with nature and
elevated by love, it becomes a religion, but religion never becomes an
art; for art without nature and without love is partial and selfish, and
cannot include the whole of life. You will find, believe me, that if
you follow art apart from these two, you have indeed only been following
a deception, for it has not only been irreligion, it has been bad art."
"The sphere of religion," said the Prince, "is the present, and its
scope the whole of human life. It is, therefore, an art. If art is
selfish, so is religion. The most disinterested martyr is selfish, for
he is following the dictates of his higher self. I tell you Tina is
mine, I want her. She shall not go!"
"You said the same of the boy, Highness," said Carricchio gravely; "yet
he went--went a long journey from us all. _Mon Prince_, beware!"
VII.
FAILING with the old Arlecchino, the Prince determined to try his own
influence with the girl; but he had no intention of acting in a
blundering and inartistic manner. He was too good an artist not to
prepare the way. Having failed with Carricchio, he resolved to try the
Maestro once more.
He sent for the old man. "Maestro," he said, "I regret exceedingly what
has happened. I do not wish to make a disturbance immediately after
coming to Court after so long an absence. It would not be well. But we
shall soon put things right. Meanwhile, if you like to travel for a few
months you can do so. There is no necessity for it that I know of, but
it will be an entertainment for you, and you will gather ideas for your
music, and, no doubt, fame also. If the Signorina remains here, you
shall have letters of credit on Paris or any other city. As you will not
be dependent on your music, it probably will be a great success. As the
Scripture says, 'To him that hath shall be given.' When you are tired of
wandering you can return. But Tina remains here--you understand."
"I have already tried to persuade her, Highness," said the old man.
"Well, you must try again. You shall sup with her to-night, as you are
neither of you wanted at the opera. I will order supper for you in _la
petite Salle_ beyond the _salon_. When I return at night I shall find
everything arranged."
The Prince himself went to the opera. He did not care to be seen, as he
was supposed to have received a slight, but he had nothing else to do,
and was interested in the performance, which was a new opera by
Metastasio. Indeed, he was restless, and wanted diversion of any kind.
He sat well back in his box, across the front of which the delicate lace
curtains were partly drawn. Karl the _Jager_, and the valet who
attended, had left the box and retired to their own gallery, where they
criticised the play and the music with more interest than did their
master. The Prince lay back in his chair, watching the piece listlessly
through the gauzy screen, and listening half heedlessly to the
music--the wonderful music of Pergolesi.
The fairy world of song and harmony, peopled by fantastic and impossible
creatures who exist only for the sake of the melodies which give them
birth, was not devoid of powerful and pathetic phases of passion and of
character; but what made its lesson particularly adapted to the Prince's
frame of mind, and gradually aroused his languid interest, was the
subordination of passion and character to the nicest art. The deepest
sorrow warbled to exquisite airs; passion, despairing and bewildered,
flinging itself as an evil thing across the devious paths of Romance,
yet never for a second forgetful of the nicest harmony or capable of a
jarring note. This ideal musical world--bizarre and rococo as, in some
respects, it was--seemed to the Prince in some sort an allegory, or even
parody, on the art-life he had set himself to create or to perfect. He
thought he saw that even its faults were instinct with, and revealed,
the secret of which he was in search. Faultiness and feebleness, folly
and littleness, seemed restrained, corrected, transformed, when
presented in solemn, noble, and pure melodies. Everything in this parody
of life was ruled by art just as, in the so-called reality, he had
wished. The lesson was not altogether a noble one. Passion, ennobled by
art, lost its fatal, repellent aspect, and became perfect as an artistic
whole. Here the poison worked readily in the Prince's mind. To sacrifice
the least portion of this art-life to any narrow illiterate scruples was
to sin against its perfection, without which the whole structure were
worthless. Better, far better, throw the entire scheme to the winds.
Imperfect art is worse than none at all. He had already forgotten, if he
had ever listened to it, Carricchio's warning against unreal and
loveless art.
Moreover, as the play went on, and the fantastic adventures and fortunes
of its strange actors gradually won the Prince's attention and attracted
his interest, through the gauzy veil of the curtains and the haze of
delicious melody, his desire was excited and he longed to play out his
own part on a real stage, and with tangible, no longer ideal, delights
and success. Why did he sit there gazing at a mere show of life, when
life itself, in a form strangely attractive and prepared--life which he
himself had in some sort formed and created--awaited him, with parts
and scenes, ready for the playing, compared to which all the glamour of
the piece before him was a mere dream-shade? Fortune had been kind to
him; or rather, he thought, his patient loyalty to art had wrought the
usual result. As he had followed his steadfast course, nature, chance,
the confusions and spite of men, had all tended to co-operate with him,
had each supplied a thread of gold to perfect his brilliant woof of
coloured existence. The moment seemed at hand; let him no longer dally
with shadows, but play his own part, compared with which the piece
before him was poor and tame.
* * * * *
"_La petite Salle_," as the Prince had called it--in which supper had
been laid for Tina and the Maestro--was situated at the end of a
splendid "_apartement_," which contained the _salon_ and the other
reception-rooms of the _Hotel_. It communicated with other rooms and
private staircases, and was therefore peculiarly suitable for purposes
of retirement. It was decorated, with the picturesque daintiness of the
French Court, in panels painted in imitation of Watteau, festooned with
silk, embroidered with flowers. One or two cabinets supporting plate,
and chairs richly embroidered in vari-coloured silk, completed the
furniture. The supper was served on a small round table, with a costly
service of china and Venetian glass.
Tina had accepted the invitation with pleasure. She had feared that this
evening, when the work of another was being performed at the Imperial
Theatre, to the exclusion of his great masterpiece, would have been a
time of great depression with the Maestro, and she resolved to endeavour
to cheer him. She had dressed herself with the greatest care, and
without thought of cost. She had never looked so charming--every day
seemed to mature her beauty. The supper was all that could have been
expected or wished; nevertheless the Maestro was distrait and even
sulky. Tina lavished her bewitching wiles and enchantments upon him in
vain.
After the first course or two, which, it must be admitted, were served
by the attendants in a somewhat perfunctory manner, the Maestro
dismissed the servants, saying that the Signorina and he would prefer
waiting upon themselves: dumb waiters, containing wines and other
accessories, were placed by the table's side, and the servants left the
room.
Still the Maestro seemed ill at ease. Tina, finding that her sallies
were received with a morose indifference, relapsed into silence, and sat
furtively glancing at her companion, with a pouting, disconsolate air
which, it might have been thought, would have been found irresistible
even by an ascetic.
At last the Maestro, after several futile attempts, and with an awkward
and embarrassed air, began:
"I have been thinking, Signora," he said, "over my future plans, and I
have resolved not to try to get my music performed, at present at any
rate, in any great city. I am old and want rest. I propose to travel
for a few months. It will therefore not be necessary to take you from
Vienna."
His manner was so constrained, and his resolution so unexpected, that
the girl looked at him with perplexity. It was, of course, impossible
for her, in her ignorance, to perceive that what was troubling the
Maestro was the difficulty of concealing from himself that he had
accepted a bribe to desert his art and his friend.
"Maestro," she said at last, "what can you mean?--you to whom it has
been given to achieve such a success? How can you talk of rest? What
rest can be more perfect than to listen to your own wonderful music? To
see, to feel, the power of your glorious art over others, over
yourself?"
The Maestro hesitated and floundered worse than before. He was, as he
had said himself, when under the influence of as noble feeling as he was
capable of, a bad artist; but he had sufficient of the true instinct to
be conscious of his bad work. He was ashamed of himself and of his
_faineantise_. He made a bungling business of it all round.
He had, before the Prince had made his offer, begun to regret that in a
moment of irritation he had been so precipitate in insisting upon
leaving Vienna; but now that an offer of freedom, of a sojourn in Paris,
of independent means, was made him, the proposal was too attractive to
be declined. He felt, beside, that there was so much truth in the
Prince's bitter phrase--when he was independent of his music, he felt
certain that his music would be a great success.
"It will be better so, Faustina," he said at last; "you will be happier
here. You will have plenty to sing, plenty to teach you. The Prince will
be pleased."
She was still looking at him wonderingly, but a smile was slowly growing
in her eyes. She judged him by a nature as generous and unselfish as his
was paltry and mean.
"You are saying this," she said, "for my sake. You fear that I shall
suffer hardship and want. You sacrifice yourself--more than
yourself--for me."
This turn in the conversation completed the vexation of the Maestro.
When you are doing a particularly mean thing, nothing is more
aggravating than to have noble and generous motives imputed to you; and
to have a very pretty woman offer herself to you, unreservedly, when
motives of paltry selfishness render the offer unacceptable, is enough
to provoke any man.
The old man lost his temper completely.
"Faustina," he said, "you are a fool. I have told you already that I
intend to travel, without thinking of work or of pay. You must stay
here. I shall not want you. You have everything here you can wish. The
Prince is your lover. You have a brilliant future before you. Don't let
me have any more trouble about you."
Still the girl could not believe that her friend and teacher meant to
cast her off. She was looking at him wonderingly and sadly.
"Maestro," she said, "you are not well. You are cross and tired; we will
not speak of this any more to-night. This worry has made you ill.
To-morrow you will see quite differently. You can never leave your
art--and Tina."
This feminine persistency, as it seemed to him--this leaving a
discussion open which it was absolutely necessary should be closed that
night--was too much for the Maestro.
"I leave Vienna," he said brutally, "the day after to-morrow. I suppose
that you will not insist on following me uninvited. If so, I shall know
what to do."
This tone and look revealed to the girl, at last, that she was cast off
and discarded by the only man for whom she really cared. She threw
herself on her knees beside his chair, and caught his hand.
"Maestro," she said passionately, "you will not be so cruel! You will
not leave me! What can I do? How can I live, without you? I cannot sing
without you. I am your child. You took me out of the gutter; you taught
me all I know; you made me all I am. I will do anything you tell me. I
will not trouble you. I will not speak even! I care for no one except
for you. I know you better, I can care for you, can serve you better,
than they all. You will not be so cruel! You will not send me away from
you."
The more passionately she spoke, the more rapid and fervent her
utterance, the more fretful and irritated did the old man become. He
pushed her roughly from him.
"Tina," he said again, "you are a fool. Get up from your knees. I don't
want any of this stage-acting here."
He rose himself, and began to wander about the room, muttering and
grumbling.
As he pushed her rudely from him, the girl rose and, retreating some
steps from the table, gazed at him with a dazed, wondering look, as of
one before whose eyes some strange unaccountable thing was happening.
She was standing, in her brilliant beauty and in her delicate and
fantastic dress, her hands clasped before her. The jewels on her fingers
and on her breast paled before the solemn glow of her wonderful eyes,
which were dry, only from the intensity of her thought.
"No," she said at last, as it would seem in answer to some unspoken
question. "No. There is nothing strange in this. A woman's heart is
easily won. I am not the first, by many, who has found that out, too
late."
It might have seemed impossible to one easily stirred, easily wrought
upon by a woman's beauty--it would surely have seemed impossible to such
a one that any could gaze on a sight like this and harbour a selfish
thought; but the old man was perfectly unmoved.
"It is always the way," he said peevishly, "always the way with women;
now we shall have a scene--tears--entreaties. I shall be called all
manner of hard names for giving sensible advice."
And he turned his back upon the girl, and stood sullenly, gazing
apparently upon one of the painted panels of the wall.
For about a minute there was a terrible pause, then the curtains that
veiled the _salon_ were drawn forcibly back, and the groom of the
chambers, who was a Frenchman, announced suddenly--
"_Monseigneur le Prince._"
VIII.
THE Prince came forward smiling. The Maestro made a gesture of
inexpressible relief. He shuffled off toward the still opened curtain,
and, turning as he reached it, he bowed to the ground before his patron
and his pupil, and disappeared through the opening as the servant let
the curtain drop. We shall not care, I think, to see him again.
Faustina looked still more scared and bewildered than before at this
sudden change of actors and of parts. She would gladly have left the
room but she was incapable of anything of the kind--besides, where
should she go? The scene seemed to swim before her eyes, and the lights
to flicker. She sank down on her chair again.
The Prince had never looked so well. He was flushed with excitement, and
the habitual _insouciance_ of his manner had given place to a reality
and earnestness of purpose which rendered eloquent his every gesture and
look. He was exquisitely dressed in silk, embroidered with flowers. The
priceless lace at his wrists and throat accommodated itself, with a
delicate fulness, to the soft outline of his dress and figure. His
expression was full of kindliness and protection, but of kindliness
delicate and refined. The girl's eyes were fascinated in spite of
herself.
"Have you quarrelled with the Maestro, Tina?" said the Prince. "He
seemed in a marvellous hurry to be gone."
Faustina made two or three ineffectual attempts to speak before she
could find her voice. She burst into tears.
"He is cruel! cruel!" she said. "He does not love me. He will not have
me any longer. He throws me away."
"Poor child!" said the Prince, "you will not be deserted. I am your
friend; we are all your friends. The Maestro even will come back to you.
He is cross and angry. When he finds how lost he is without you and your
lovely voice, he will come back to you; you and he will carry all before
you again."
"Speak to him, Highness!" cried the girl passionately. "You are kind
and good to all--kinder than any one to me. Speak to him! do not let
him go without me! He cannot live without his music, and no one surely
can know his music so well as I, whom he has taught!"
She looked so indescribably attractive in her tears and her distress
that the Prince wondered at the sight. "Let her go, indeed!"
"Tina," he said very kindly, "I fear that can hardly be. The Maestro is
only going for a time. There is, in fact, no need that he should go at
all. It is his own wish, his own wish, Tina. He is too old to make his
way among strangers, and will soon come back. But you we cannot spare.
You are too much a favourite with us all. We are too much accustomed to
you: every one would miss you--the Princess and all; you must stay with
us."
"I cannot stay," said the girl, looking earnestly and beseechingly at
the Prince. "I want to go with him."
The Prince hesitated for a moment. In an instantaneous flash of thought
the two paths lay open before him, plain and clear to be seen.
Carricchio's warning struck him again with renewed force. The more
terrible presage of Mark's death cast itself, ghostlike, before his
steps. He could plead no excuse of self-deception: he saw the beauty and
the danger of the way which lay before him on either hand. He hesitated
for a moment, then he deliberately chose the lower path.
"Tina," he said, "I cannot spare you; you must not go. You are mine--I
love you; you belong to me;" and he stepped forward, as if to take her
in his arms.
The girl sprang to her feet. She drew herself up to her full height, and
her splendid eyes, expanded to their full orbit, flashed upon the Prince
with a look of astonishment and reproach. With the entire power of her
trained voice, which, magnificent as it was, could still but imperfectly
render the reality of remonstrance and pathetic regret, she uttered but
one word--"Prince!"
The cadence of her voice, trembling in the passionate intensity of
musical tone, the whole power of her woman's nature, exerted to its full
in expostulation and reproach--the magnetic force of her intense
consciousness--struck upon the conscience and cultured taste of the
Prince with crushing effect. He lost the perfectly serene tone of pose
and demeanour which distinguished him and became him so well. He aged
perceptibly, incredible as it may seem, ten years. The fatal step which
he had taken was revealed to him in a moment as in a flash of light,
with all the stain and taint with which it had tarnished the fair dream
of finished art which he had conceived it possible to perfect. He was
utterly demoralised and crushed. Mark's death was nothing to this. That
had been a terrible mistake, but his part in it had been indirect, and
his motive, at least so he flattered himself, comparatively high; but
this action, so entirely his own, revealed to him, in its vulgar
commonplaceness, by the glorious perfection of the girl's action and
tone, withered him with a sense of irreparable failure and disgrace. He
made one or two ineffectual attempts to rally; it was impossible--there
was nothing for him but to leave the room.
Faustina was unconscious of his going. She found herself left alone. The
situation was still not without its difficulties. She was alone,
unattended by servants, she knew not where to go, how to leave the
_Hotel_. She lay for some time in a sort of swoon; then she rose and
wandered from the room.
The only means of exit with which she was acquainted was through the
curtains into the _salon_. She parted them and went out, hardly knowing
what she did.
The vast _salon_ was but dimly lighted, and no servants were to be seen;
the whole house seemed silent and deserted--more especially these state
apartments. She passed slowly and with faltering steps down the slippery
floor of the _salon_, with its dimly-lighted candelabra of massive
silver and its half-seen portraits, and, opening the great door at the
opposite end, found herself in an antechamber which communicated with a
grand staircase, both ascending and descending. To descend was evidently
useless--she could not go out into the streets of Vienna alone at night
and in her fanciful dress. She went up the wide staircase in the hope of
finding some female domestics who would help her; as she reached the
next flight the sound of music, subdued and solemn, fell upon her ear.
She knew enough of German music to know that it was the tune of a hymn.
The door of the room from which the sound seemed to come stood partly
open. She went in.
Before an harpsichord, with her hand carelessly passing over the keys,
and her head turned at the sound of footsteps, stood the Princess
Isoline. The light of a branched candelabra fell full upon her stately
figure, revealing the compassionate, lofty expression of her beautiful
face. The girl crossed the room towards her and fell on her knees at her
feet.
"Child," said the Princess, "what is it? Why are you here?"
"I cannot tell," said the girl; and now at last she found it possible to
weep. "I do not know what has happened. The Maestro has forsaken me, and
I have insulted the Prince."
Gradually, in a broken way, she told her story, kneeling by the
Princess, who stood serenely, her fingers still wandering over the
harpsichord keys, her left hand caressing the girl's hair and cheek.
"He was a wonderful child," said the Princess at last, more to herself
than to Faustina, for as she spoke she played again the simple notes of
the Lutheran hymn. "He was truly a wonderful child. A very Christ-child,
it seems to me, in his simple life and sudden death; for, though what he
did was little, yet the lives of all of us seem different for his
life--changed since his death. As for me, since his life crossed my path
I have seen more, it seems to me, of the mercy of God and of Christ's
working in paths and among lives where I never thought to look for it
before."
Faustina did not reply, and the Princess played several bars of the hymn
before she spoke again.
"Do you not see," she said at last, "the blessing it has been also to my
brother the Prince?--for the desire that he felt, surely a noble one, to
refine the life of art by the sacred touch of religion--the effort that
he made, though it seemed a failure, and was made--it may be, I dare not
judge him--blindly, and in a mistaken fashion; yet this effort has
to-night proved his own salvation, through you."
She stopped, and again the notes of the hymn sounded through the room.
"Carricchio was right," she went on, "when he told the Prince that you
alone of all of us had solved the riddle, for on you alone has art
exercised its supreme, its magic touch, in drawing out and developing
the emotions, the powers of the soul. You alone possessed the perfect
gift of nature--the untainted well-spring of natural life--which
assimilated Mark's spirit with your spirit, and reproduced his life
within your own."