When Bardini, who led the Hungarian Band at the Savoy Restaurant, was
promoted to play at the Casino at Trouville, his place was taken by
the second violin. The second violin was a boy, and when he greeted his
brother Tziganes and the habitues of the restaurant with an apologetic
and deprecatory bow, he showed that he was fully conscious of the
inadequacy of his years. The maitre d'hotel glided from table to table,
busying himself in explanations.
“The boy's name is Edouard; he comes from Budapest,” he said. “The
season is too late to make it worth the while of the management to
engage a new chef d'orchestre. So this boy will play. He plays very
good, but he is not like Bardini.”
He was not in the least like Bardini. In appearance, Bardini suggested a
Roumanian gypsy or a Portuguese sailor; his skin was deeply tanned, his
hair was plastered on his low forehead in thick, oily curls, and his
body, through much rich living on the scraps that fell from the tables
of Girot's and the Casino des Fleurs, was stout and gross. He was
the typical leader of an orchestra condemned to entertain a noisy
restaurant. His school of music was the school of Maxim's. To his skill
with the violin he had added the arts of the head waiter, and he and the
cook ran a race for popularity, he pampering to one taste, and the cook,
with his sauces, pampering to another. When so commanded, his pride
as an artist did not prevent him from breaking off in the middle of
Schubert's Serenade to play Daisy Bell, nor was he above breaking it off
on his own accord to salute the American patron, as he entered with the
Belle of New York, or any one of the Gaiety Girls, hurrying in late for
supper, with the Soldiers in the Park. When he walked slowly through the
restaurant, pausing at each table, his eyes, even while they ogled the
women to whom he played, followed the brother Tzigane--who was passing
the plate--and noted which of the patrons gave silver and which gave
gold.
Edouard, the second violin, was all that Bardini was not, consequently
he was entirely unsuited to lead an orchestra in a restaurant. Indeed,
so little did he understand of what was required of him that on the
only occasion when Bardini sent him to pass the plate he was so
unsophisticated as not to hide the sixpences and shillings under the
napkin, and so leave only the half-crowns and gold pieces exposed.
And, instead of smiling mockingly at those who gave the sixpences, and
waiting for them to give more, he even looked grateful, and at the same
time deeply ashamed. He differed from Bardini also in that he was very
thin and tall, with the serious, smooth-shaven face of a priest. Except
for his fantastic costume, there was nothing about him to recall the
poses of the musician: his hair was neither long nor curly; it lay
straight across his forehead and flat on either side, and when he
played, his eyes neither sought out the admiring auditor nor invited
his applause. On the contrary, they looked steadfastly ahead. It was as
though they belonged to someone apart, who was listening intently to the
music. But in the waits between the numbers the boy's eyes turned from
table to table, observing the people in his audience. He knew nearly all
of them by sight: the head waiters who brought him their “commands,”
and his brother-musicians, had often discussed them in his hearing. They
represented every city of the world, every part of the social edifice:
there were those who came to look at the spectacle, and those who came
to be looked at; those who gave a dinner for the sake of the diners,
those who dined for the dinner alone. To some the restaurant was a
club; others ventured in counting the cost, taking it seriously, even
considering that it conferred upon them some social distinction. There
were pretty women in paint and spangles, with conscious, half-grown
boys just up from Oxford; company-promoters dining and wining possible
subscribers or “guinea-pigs” into an acquiescent state; Guardsmen giving
a dinner of farewell to brother-officers departing for the Soudan or the
Cape; wide-eyed Americans just off the steamer in high dresses, great
ladies in low dresses and lofty tiaras, and ladies of the stage, utterly
unconscious of the boon they were conferring on the people about them,
who, an hour before, had paid ten shillings to look at them from the
stalls.
Edouard, as he sat with his violin on his knee, his fingers fretting the
silent strings, observed them all without envy and without interest. Had
he been able to choose, it would not have been to such a well-dressed
mob as this that he would have given his music. For at times a burst
of laughter killed a phrase that was sacred to him, and sometimes the
murmur of the voices and the clatter of the waiters would drown him out
altogether. But the artist in him forced him to play all things well,
and for his own comfort he would assure himself that no doubt somewhere
in the room someone was listening, someone who thought more of the
strange, elusive melodies of the Hungarian folksongs than of the chefs
entrees, and that for this unknown one he must be true to himself and
true to his work. Covertly, he would seek out some face to which he
could make the violin speak--not openly and impertinently, as did
Bardini, but secretly and for sympathy, so that only one could
understand. It pleased young Edouard to see such a one raise her head as
though she had heard her name spoken, and hold it poised to listen, and
turn slowly in her chair, so completely engaged that she forgot the
man at her elbow, and the food before her was taken away untouched. It
delighted him to think that she knew that the music was speaking to
her alone. But he would not have had her think that the musician spoke,
too--it was the soul of the music, not his soul, that was reaching out
to the pretty stranger. When his soul spoke through the music it would
not be, so he assured himself, to such chatterers as gathered on the
terrace of the Savoy Restaurant.
Mrs. Warriner and her daughter were on their way home, or to one of
their homes; this one was up the Hills of Lenox. They had been in Egypt
and up the Nile, and for the last two months had been slowly working
their way north through Greece and Italy. They were in London, at the
Savoy, waiting for their sailing-day, and on the night of their arrival
young Corbin was giving them a dinner. For three months Mrs. Warriner
and himself had alternated in giving each other dinners in every part of
Southern Europe, and the gloom which hung over this one was not due to
the fact that the diners had become wearied of one another's society,
but that the opportunities still left to them for this exchange of
hospitality were almost at an end. That night, for the hundredth time,
young Corbin had decided it would have been much better for him if they
had come to an end many weeks previous, for the part he played in the
trio was a difficult one. It was that of the lover who will not take
“no” for an answer. The lover who will take no, and goes on his way
disconsolate, may live to love another day, and everyone is content; but
the one who will not have no, who will not hear of it, nor consider it,
has much to answer for in making life a burden to himself and all around
him.
When Corbin joined the Warriners on their trip up the Nile it was
considered by all of them, in their ignorance, a happy accident.
Other mothers, more worldly than Mrs. Warriner, with daughters less
attractive, gave her undeserved credit for having lured into her
party one of the young men of Boston who was most to be desired as a
son-in-law. But the mind of Mrs. Warriner, so far as Mr. Corbin was
concerned, was quite free from any such consideration; so was the mind
of the young bachelor; certainly Miss Warriner held no tender thoughts
concerning him. The families of the Warriners and the Corbins had been
friends ever since the cowpath crossed the Common. Before Corbin entered
Harvard Miss Warriner and he had belonged to the same dancing-class.
Later she had danced with him at four class-days, and many times
between. When he graduated, she had gone abroad with her mother, and he
had joined the Somerset Club, and played polo at Pride's Crossing, and
talked vaguely of becoming a lawyer, and of re-entering Harvard by the
door of the Law School, chiefly, it was supposed, that he might have
another year of the football team. He was very young in spirit, very
big and athletic, very rich, and without a care or serious thought. Miss
Warriner was to him, then, no more than a friend; to her he was a boy,
one of many nice, cultivated Harvard boys, who occasionally called upon
her and talked football. On the face of things, she was not the sort of
girl he should have loved. But for some saving clause in him, he should
have loved and married one of the many other girls who had belonged to
the same dancing-class, who would have been known as “Mrs. Tom” Corbin,
who would have been sought after as a chaperone, and who would have
stood up in her cart when he played polo and shouted at him across the
field to “ride him off.”
Miss Warriner, on the contrary, was much older than he in everything but
years, and was conscious of the fact. She was a serious, self-centred
young person, and satisfied with her own thoughts, unless her companion
gave her better ones. She concerned herself with the character and ideas
of her friends. If a young man lacked ideas, the fact that he possessed
wealth and good manners could not save him. If these attributes had been
pointed out to her as part of his assets she would have been surprised.
She was not impressed with her own good looks and fortune--she took them
for granted; so why should they count with her in other people?
Miss Warriner made an error of analysis in regard to Mr. Corbin in
judging his brain by his topics of conversation. His conversation
was limited to the A B C's of life, with which, up to the time of his
meeting her, his brain had been fed. When, however, she began to cram it
full with all the other letters of the alphabet, it showed itself just
as capable of digesting the economic conditions of Egypt as it had
previously succeeded in mastering the chess-like problems of the game of
football.
Young Corbin had not considered the Home Beautiful, nor Municipal
Government, nor How the Other Half Lives as topics that were worth his
while; but when Miss Warriner showed her interest in them, her doing so
made them worth his while, and he fell upon them greedily. He even went
much further than she had gone, and was not content merely to theorize
and to discuss social questions from the safe distance of the deck of
a dahabiyeh on the Nile, but proposed to at once put her theories into
practice. To this end he offered her a house in the slums of Boston,
rent free, where she could start her College Settlement. He made
out lists of the men he thought would like to teach there, and he
volunteered to pay the expenses of the experiment until it failed or
succeeded. When her interest changed to the Tombs of the Rameses, and
the succession of the ancient dynasties, he spent hours studying his
Baedeker that he might keep in step with her; and when she abandoned
ancient for modern Egypt and became deeply charmed with the intricacies
of the dual control and of the Mixed Courts, he interviewed subalterns,
Pashas, and missionaries in a gallant effort to comprehend the social
and political difficulties of the white men who had occupied the land of
the Sphinx, who had funded her debt, irrigated her deserts, and “made a
mummy fight.”
One night, as the dahabiyeh lay moored beneath a group of palms in the
moonlight, Miss Warriner gave him praise for offering her the house
in the slums for her experiment. He assured her that he was entirely
selfish--that he did so because he believed her settlement would be a
benefit to the neighborhood, in which he owned some property. When
she then accused him of giving sordid reasons for what was his genuine
philanthropy he told her flatly that he neither cared for the higher
education of the slums nor the increased value of his rents, but for
her, and to please her, and that he loved her and would love her always.
In answer to this, Miss Warriner told him gently but firmly that she
could not love him, but that she liked him and admired him, even though
she was disappointed to find that his sudden interest in matters more
serious than polo had been assumed to please her. She added that she
would always be his friend. This, she thought, ended the matter; it was
unfortunate that they should be shipbound on the Nile; but she trusted
to his tact and good sense to save them both from embarrassment. She
was not prepared, however, to see him come on deck very late the next
morning, after, apparently, a long sleep, as keen, as cheerful, and
as smiling as he had been before the blow had fallen. It piqued her a
little, and partly because of that, and partly because she really was
relieved to find him in such a humor, she congratulated him on his most
evident happiness.
“Why not?” he asked, suddenly growing sober. “I love you. That is enough
to make any man happy, isn't it? You needn't love me, but you can't
prevent my going on loving you.”
“Well, I am very sorry,” she sighed in much perplexity.
“You needn't be,” he answered, reassuringly. “I'm more sorry for you
than I am for myself. You are going to have a terrible time until you
marry me.”
They were at Thebes, and he went off that afternoon to the Temple of
Luxor with her mother, and made violent use of the sacred altars,
the beauty of Cleopatra, the eternity of the scarabea, and the
indestructibility of the Pyramids to suggest faintly to Mrs. Warriner
how much he loved her daughter. He shook his hand at the crouching
sphinxes and said:
“Mrs. Warriner, in forty centuries they have never looked down upon a
man as proud as I am, and I am told they have seen Napoleon; but I need
help; she won't help me, so you must. It's no use arguing against me.
When this Nile dries up I shall have ceased loving your daughter!”
“Did you tell Helen what you have told me? Did you talk to her so?”
asked Mrs. Warriner.
“No, not last night,” said Corbin; “but I will, in time, after she gets
more used to the Idea.”
Unfortunately for the peace of Mr. Corbin and all concerned. Miss
Warriner did not become reconciled to the idea. On the contrary, she
resented it greatly. She had looked at the possibility of something to
be carried out later--much later, perhaps not at all. It did not seem
possible that before she had really begun to enjoy life it should be
subjected to such a change. She saw that it was obviously the thing
that should happen. If the match had been arranged by the entire city of
Boston it could not have been more obvious. But she argued with him that
marriage was a mutual self-sacrifice, and that until she felt ready to
make her share of the sacrifice it was impossible for her to consent.
He combated her arguments, which he refused to consider as arguments,
and demolished them one by one. But the objection which he destroyed
before he went to sleep at night was replaced the next day by another,
and his cause never advanced. Each day he found the citadel he was
besieging girt in by new and intricate defences. The reason was
simple enough: the girl was not in love with him. Her objections, her
arguments, her reasons were as absurd as he proved them to be. But they
were insurmountable because they were really various disguises of the
fact that she did not care for him. They were disguises to herself as
well as to him. He was so altogether a good fellow, so earnest, honest,
and desperate a lover that the primary fact that she did not want his
love did not present itself, and she kept casting about in her mind
for excuses and reasons to explain her lack of feeling. He wooed her in
every obvious way that would present itself to a boy of deep feeling, of
quick mind, and an unlimited letter of credit. He created wants in order
to gratify them later. He suggested her need of things which he had
already ordered, which, before she had been enticed into expressing a
wish for them, were then speeding across the Continent toward her. Every
hour brought her some fresh and ingenuous sign of his thought and of his
devotion. He treated these tributes as a matter of course; if she failed
to observe them and to see his handiwork in them he let them fall to the
ground unnoticed.
His love itself was his argument-in-chief; it was its own excuse; it
needed no allies; “I love you” was his first and last word. It puzzled
her to find that she could not care. When she was alone she asked
herself what there was in him of which she disapproved, and she could
only answer that there was nothing. She asked herself what other men
there were who pleased her more, and she could think of none. On the
contrary, she found him entirely charming as a friend--but his love
distressed her greatly. It was a foreign language; she could not
comprehend it. When he allowed it to appear it completely disguised him
in her eyes; it annoyed her so much that at times she considered herself
a much ill-used young person.
It was in this way that the matter stood between them when their long
journey was ended and they reached London. He was miserable, desperate,
and hopeless; the girl was firm in that she would not marry him, and
her mother, who respected both the depth of Corbin's feelings and her
daughter's reticence, and who had watched the struggle with a troubled
heart, was only thankful that they were to part, and that it was at
an end. Corbin had no idea where he would go nor what he would do. He
recognized that to cross the ocean with them would only subject his love
to fresh distress and humiliation, and he had determined to put as
much space between him and Miss Warriner as the surface of the globe
permitted. The Philippines seemed to offer a picturesque retreat for a
broken life. He decided he would go there and enlist and have himself
shot. He was uncertain whether he would follow in the steps of his
Revolutionary ancestors and join the men who were struggling for their
liberty and independence, or his fellow-Americans; but that he would
get shot by one side or the other he was determined. And then in days to
come she would think, perhaps, of the young man on the other side of the
globe, buried in the wet rice-fields, with the palms fanning him through
his eternal sleep, and she might be sorry then that she had not listened
to his troubled heart. The picture gave him some small comfort, and that
night when he ordered dinner for them at the Savoy his manner showed the
inspired resolve of one who is soon to mount the scaffold unafraid, and
with a rose between his lips.
Edouard, the first violin, saw Miss Warriner when she entered and took
her place facing him at one of the tables in the centre of the room. He
was sitting with his violin on his knees, touching the strings with his
finger-tips. When he saw her he choked the neck of the violin with his
hand, as though it had been the hand of a friend which he had grasped in
a sudden ecstasy of delight. The effect her appearance had made upon him
was so remarkable that he glanced quickly over his shoulder to see if
he had betrayed himself by some sign or gesture. But the other musicians
were concerned with their own gossip, and he felt free to turn again and
from under his half-closed eyelids to observe her covertly.
There was nothing to explain why Miss Warriner, in particular, should
have so disturbed him; the English women seated about her were as fair;
she showed no great sorrow in her face; her beauty was not of the
type which carried observers by assault. And yet not one of the many
beautiful women who on one night or another passed before Edouard in the
soft light of the red shades had ever stirred him so strangely, had ever
depressed him with such a tender melancholy, and filled his soul--the
soul of a Hungarian and a musician--with such loneliness and unrest. He
knew that, so far as he was concerned, she was as distant as the Venus
in the Louvre; she was, for him, a beautiful, unapproachable statue,
placed, by some social convention, upon a pedestal.
As he looked at her he felt hotly the degradation of his silly uniform,
of the striped sash around his waist, the tawdry braids, and the
tasselled boots. He felt as he had often felt before, but now more
keenly than ever, the prostitution of his art in this temple of the
senses, this home of epicures, where people met to feast their eyes and
charm their palates. He could not put his feelings into words, and he
knew that if by some upheaval of the social world he should be thrown
into her presence he would still be bound, he would not be able to speak
or write what she inspired in him. But--and at the thought he breathed
quickly, and raised his shoulders with a touch of pride--he could tell
her in his own way; after his own fashion he could express what he felt
better even than those other men could tell what they feel--these men
for whose amusement he performed nightly, to whom it was granted to sit
at her side, who spoke the language of her class and of her own people.
Edouard was not given to analyzing his emotions; like the music of his
Tzigane ancestors, they came to him sweeping every chord in his nature,
beating rapidly to the time of the Schardash, or with the fitfulness of
the gypsy folksongs sinking his spirits into melancholy. So he did not
stop to question why this one face so suddenly inspired him; he only
knew that he felt grateful, that he was impatient to pay his tribute
of admiration, that he was glad he was an artist who could give his
feelings voice.
In the long programme of selected airs he remembered that there was one
which would give him this chance to speak, in the playing of which he
could put all his skill and all his soul, an air which carried with it
infinite sadness and the touch of a caress. The other numbers on the
programme had been chosen to please the patrons of a restaurant,
this one, La Lettre d'Amour, was included in the list for his own
satisfaction. He had put it there to please himself; to-night he would
play it to please her--to this unknown girl who had so suddenly awakened
and inspired him.
As he waited for this chance to come he watched her, noting her every
movement, her troubled smile, her air of being apart and above her
surroundings. He noticed, too, the set face of the young man at her side
and, with the discernment of one whose own interest is captive, saw the
half-concealed longing in his eyes. He felt a quick antipathy to this
young man. His assured position at the girl's side accentuated how far
he himself was removed from her; he resented also the manner of the
young man to the waiters, and he wondered hotly if, in the mind of
this favored youth, the musician who played for his entertainment was
regarded any more highly than the servant who received his orders. To
this feeling of resentment was added one of contempt. For, as he read
the tableau at the table below him, the young man was the devotee of the
young girl at his side, and if one could judge from her averted eyes,
from her silent assent to his questions, from the fact that she withdrew
from the talk between him and the older woman, his devotion was not
welcome.
This reading of the pantomime pleased Edouard greatly. Nothing could
have so crowned the feeling which the beauty of the stranger stirred in
him as the thought that another loved her as well as himself, and that
the other, who started with all things in his favor, met with none from
her.
Edouard assured himself that this was so because he had often heard his
people boast that men not of their country could not feel as they could
feel. If he had ever considered them at all it was as cold and conscious
creatures who taught themselves to cover up what they felt, so that when
their emotions strove to assert themselves they were found, through long
disuse, to be dumb and inarticulate. Edouard rejoiced that to the men of
his race it was given to feel and suffer much. He was sure that beneath
the calmness of her beauty this woman before him could feel deeply; he
read in her eyes the sympathy of a great soul; she made him think of a
Madonna in the church of St. Sophia at Budapest. He saw in her a woman
who could love greatly. When he considered how impossible it was for the
young man at her side ever to experience the great emotions which alone
could reach her, his contempt for him rose almost to pity. His violin,
with his power to feel, and with his knowledge of technic added, could
send his message as far as sound could carry. He could afford to be
generous, and when he rose to play La Lettre d'Amour it was with the
elation of a knight entering the lists, with the ardor of a lover
singing beneath his lady's window. La Lettre d'Amour is a composition
written to a slow measure, and filled with chords of exquisite pathos.
It comes hesitatingly, like the confession of a lover who loves so
deeply that he halts to find words with which to express his feelings.
It moves in broken phrases, each note rising in intensity and growing
in beauty. It is not a burst of passionate appeal, but a plea, tender,
beseeching, and throbbing with melancholy. As he played, Edouard stepped
down from the dais on which the musicians sat, and advanced slowly
between the tables. It was late, and the majority of those who had been
dining had departed to the theatres. Those who remained were lingering
over their coffee, and were smoking; their voices were lowered to a
polite monotone; the rush of the waiters had ceased, and the previous
chatter had sunk to a subdued murmur. Into this, the quivering sigh
of Edouard's violin penetrated like a sunbeam feeling its way into
a darkened room, and, at the sound, the voices, one by one, detached
themselves from the general chorus, until, lacking support, it ceased
altogether. Some were silent, that they might hear the better, others,
who preferred their own talk, were silent out of regard for those who
desired to listen, and a waiter who was so indiscreet as to clatter a
tray of glasses was hushed on the instant. The tribute of attention lent
to Edouard an added power; his head lifted on his shoulders with pride;
his bow cut deeper and firmer, and with more delicate shading; the
notes rose in thrilling, plaintive sadness, and flooded the hot air with
melody.
Edouard made his way to within a short distance of the table at which
Miss Warriner was seated, and halted there as though he had found his
audience. He did not look at her, although she sat directly facing him,
but it was evident to all that she was the one to whom his effort
was directed, and Corbin, who was seated with his back to Edouard,
recognized this and turned in his chair.
The body of the young musician was trembling with the feeling which
found its outlet through the violin. He was in ecstasy over his power
and its accomplishment. The strings of the violin pulsated to the
beating of his heart, and he felt that surely by now the emotion which
shook him must have reached the girl who had given it life--and, for one
swift second, his eyes sought hers. What he saw was the same beautiful
face which had inspired him, but unmoved, cold, and unresponsive. As his
eyes followed hers she raised her head and looked, listlessly, around
the room, and then turned and glanced up at him with a careless and
critical scrutiny. If his music had been the music of an organ in the
street, and he the man who raised his hat for coppers, she could not
have been less moved. The discovery struck Edouard like a cold blast
from an open door. His fingers faltered on the neck of his violin, his
bow wavered, drunkenly, across the strings, and he turned away his eyes
to shut out the vision of his failure, seeking relief and sympathy. And,
in their swift passage, they encountered those of Corbin looking up at
him, his eyes aglow with wonder, feeling, and sorrow. They seemed to
hold him to account; they begged, they demanded of him not to break
the spell, and, in response, the hot blood in the veins of the musician
surged back, his pride flared up again, his eyes turned on Corbin's
like those of a dog to his master's. Under their spell the music soared,
trembling, paused and soared again, thrilling those who heard it with
its grief and tenderness.
Edouard's heart leaped with triumph. “The man knows,” he whispered to
the violin; “he understands us. He knows.”
The people, leaning with their elbows on the tables before them, the
waiters listening with tolerant smiles, the musicians following Edouard
with anxious pride, saw only a young man with his arm thrown heavily
across the back of his chair, who was looking up at Edouard with a
steady, searching gaze. But Edouard saw in him both a disciple and a
master. He saw that this man was lifted up and carried with him, that he
understood the message of the music. The notes of the violin sank lower
and lower, until they melted into the silence of the room, and the
people, freed of the spell the music had put upon them, applauded
generously. Edouard placed his violin under his arm, and with his eyes,
which had never left Corbin's face, still fastened upon his, bowed low
to him, and Corbin raised his head and nodded gravely. It was as though
they were the only people in the room. As Edouard retreated his face was
shining with triumph, for he knew that the other had understood him, and
that the other knew that he knew.
That night until he fell asleep, and all of the day following, the
beautiful face of Miss Warriner troubled Edouard, and the thought of her
alternately thrilled and depressed him. One moment he mocked at himself
for presuming to think that his simple art could reach the depths of
such a nature, and the next he stirred himself to hope that he should
see her once again, and that he should succeed where he had failed.
The music had moved Corbin so deeply that when he awoke the day
following the effect of it still hung upon him. It seemed to him as
though all he had been trying to tell Miss Warriner of his love for her,
and which he had failed to make her understand in the last three months,
had been expressed in the one moment of this song. It was that in it
which had so enchanted him. It was as though he had listened to his
own deepest and most sacred thoughts, uttered for the first time
convincingly, and by a stranger. Why was it, he asked himself, that this
unknown youth could translate another's feelings into music, when he
himself could not put them into words? He was walking in Piccadilly,
deep in this thought, when a question came to him which caused him to
turn rapidly into Green Park, where he could consider it undisturbed.
The doubt which had so suddenly presented itself was in some degree the
same one which had stirred Edouard. Was it that he was really unable to
express his feelings, or was it that Miss Warriner could not understand
them? Was it really something lacking in him, or was it not something
lacking in her? He flushed at the disloyalty of the thought and put it
from him; but, as his memory reached back over the past three months,
the question returned again and again with fresh force, and would not
be denied. He called himself a fatuous, conceited fool. Because he could
not make a woman love him other men could do so. That was really the
answer; he was not the man. But the answer did not seem final. What,
after all, was the thing his love sought--a woman only, or a woman
capable of deep and great feeling? Even if he could not inspire such
emotions, even if another could, he would still be content and proud
to love a woman capable of such deep feelings. But if she were without
them? At the thought, Corbin stared blankly before him as though he had
stumbled against a stone wall. What sign had she ever given him that she
could care greatly? Was not any form of emotion always distasteful to
her? Was not her mind always occupied with abstract questions? Was she
not always engaged in her own self-improvement--with schemes, it is
true, for bettering the world; but did her heart ever ache once for the
individual? What was it, then, he loved? Something he imagined this girl
to be, or was he in love with the fact that his own nature had been so
mightily stirred? Was it not the joy of caring greatly which had carried
him along? And if this was so, was he now to continue to proffer this
devotion to one who could not feel, to a statue, to an idol? Were not
the very things which rendered her beautiful the offerings which he
himself had hung upon her altar? Did the qualities he really loved in
her exist? Was he not on the brink of casting his love before one
who could neither feel it for him nor for any other man? He stood up,
trembling and frightened. Even though the girl had rejected him again
and again, he felt a hateful sense of disloyalty. He was ashamed to
confess it to himself, and he vowed, hotly, that he must be wrong, that
he would not believe. He would still worship her, fight for her, and
force her to care for him.
Mrs. Warriner and her daughter were to sail on the morrow, and
that night they met Corbin at dinner for the last time. After many
days--although self-accused--he felt deeply conscious of his recent lack
of faith, and, in the few hours still left him, he determined to atone
for the temporary halt in his allegiance. They had never found him more
eager, tactful, and considerate than he was that evening. The eyes of
Mrs. Warriner softened as she watched him. As one day had succeeded
another, her admiration and liking for him had increased, until now she
felt as though his cause was hers--as though she was not parting from
a friend, but from a son. But the calmness of her daughter was
impenetrable; from her manner it was impossible to learn whether the
approaching separation was a relief or a regret.
To Edouard the return of the beautiful girl to the restaurant appeared
not as an accident, but as a marked favor vouchsafed to him by Fate. He
had been given a second chance. He read it as a sign that he should take
heart and hope. He felt that fortune was indeed kind. He determined that
he would play to her again, and that this time he would not fail.
As the first notes of La Lettre d'Amour brought a pause of silence
in the restaurant, Corbin, who was talking at the moment, interrupted
himself abruptly, and turned in his chair.
All through the evening he had been conscious of the near presence of
the young musician. He had not forgotten how, on the night before, his
own feelings had been interpreted in La Lettre d'Amour, and for some
time he had been debating in his mind as to whether he would request
Edouard to play the air again, or let the evening pass without again
submitting himself to so supreme an assault upon his feelings. Now the
question had been settled for him, and he found that it had been decided
as he secretly desired. It was impossible to believe that Edouard was
the same young man who had played the same air on the night previous,
for Edouard no longer considered that he was present on sufferance--he
invited and challenged the attention of the room; his music commanded it
to silence. It dominated all who heard it.
As he again slowly approached the table where Miss Warriner was seated,
the eyes of everyone were turned upon him; the pathos, the tenderness
of his message seemed to speak to each; the fact that he dared to offer
such a wealth of deep feeling to such an audience was in itself enough
to engage the attention of all. A group of Guardsmen, their faces
flushed with Burgundy and pulling heavily on black cigars, stared at him
sleepily, and then sat up, erect and alert, watching him with intent,
wide-open eyes; and at tables which had been marked by the laughter of
those seated about them there fell a sudden silence. Those who fully
understood the value of the music withdrew into themselves, submitting,
thankfully, to its spell; others, less susceptible, gathered from the
bearing of those about them that something of moment was going forward;
but it was recognized by each, from the most severe English matron
present down to the youngest “omnibus-boy” among the waiters, that it
was a love-story which was being told to them, and that in this public
place the deepest, most sacred, and most beautiful of emotions were
finding noble utterance.
The music filled Corbin with desperate longing and regret. It was
so truly the translation of his own feelings that he was alternately
touched with self-pity and inspired to fresh resolve. It seemed to
assure him that love such as his could not endure without some return.
It emboldened him to make still another and a final appeal. Mrs.
Warriner, with all the other people in the room, was watching Edouard,
and so, unobserved, and hidden by the flowers upon the table, Corbin
leaned toward Miss Warriner and bent his head close to hers. His eyes
were burning with feeling; his voice thrilled in unison to the plaint of
the violin.
He gave a toss of his head in the direction from whence the music came.
“That is what I have been trying to tell you,” he whispered. His voice
was hoarse and shaken. “That is how I care, but that man's genius is
telling you for me. At last, you must understand.” In his eagerness, his
words followed each other brokenly and impetuously. “That is love,” he
whispered. “That is the real voice of love in all its tenderness
and might, and--it is love itself. Don't you understand it now?” he
demanded.
Miss Warriner raised her head and frowned. She stared at Edouard with a
pained expression of perplexity and doubt.
“He shows no lack of feeling,” she said, critically, “but his technic is
not equal to Ysaye's.”
“Good God!” Corbin gasped. He sank away from Miss Warriner and stared at
her with incredulous eyes.
“His technic,” he repeated, “is not equal to Ysaye's?” He gave a laugh
which might have been a sob, and sat up, suddenly, with his head
erect and his shoulders squared. He had the shaken look of one who has
recovered from a dangerous illness. But when he spoke again it was in
the accents of every-day politeness.
At an early hour the following morning, Mrs. Warriner and her daughter
left Waterloo Station on the steamer-train for Southampton, and Corbin
attended them up to the moment of the train's departure. He concerned
himself for their comfort as conscientiously as he had always
done throughout the last three months, when he had been their
travelling-companion; nothing could have been more friendly, more
sympathetic, than his manner. This effort, which Mrs. Warriner was sure
cost him much, touched her deeply. But when he shook Miss Warriner's
hand and she said, “Good-by, and write to us before you go to the
Philippines,” Corbin for the first time stammered in some embarrassment.
“Good-by,” he said; “I--I am not sure that I shall go.”
He dined at the Savoy again that night, in company with some Englishmen.
They sat at a table in the corner where they could observe the whole
extent of the room, and their talk was eager and their laughter constant
and hearty. It was only when the boy who led the orchestra began to
walk among the tables, playing an air of peculiar sadness, that Corbin's
manner lost its vivacity, and he sank into a sudden silence, with his
eyes fixed on the table before him.
“That's odd,” said one of his companions. “I say, Corbin, look at that
chap! What's he doing?”
Corbin raised his eyes. He saw Edouard standing at the same table at
which for the last two nights Miss Warriner had been seated. “What is
it?” he asked.
“Why, that violin chap,” said the Englishman. “Don't you see? He's been
playing to the only vacant table in the room, and to an empty chair.”