him for a loan to defray my expenses to Melbourne on the expected
steamer, giving only my word in pledge of refunding, he assented
readily. He showed a like willingness to oblige me when I asked for
a certain wooden chest, some six feet in length, which I had seen
out-doors beneath one of the windows, and for which I had no ostensible
use. He was willing to do anything to have me off his hands.
“The first thing I did when I reached Melbourne was to cable for money
to my attorneys in Paris. When the answer came, I proceeded to hire
a steamer and to equip it for a cruise of indefinite length. After
procuring the most trustworthy seamen that port afforded, I set out
on my quest of the Opal Isles. The captain, an old man whose life had
been spent upon southern seas, said that in his youth he had heard of
wonderful cities of white marble beyond the last known land. Likewise
he said that he had heard that no one could land there, because they
floated always out of reach. Others affirmed that they were merely
icebergs drifting northward from the polar circle.
“I was glad to leave the low, yellow, sun-baked shores of Australia.
I longed for the open sea. After we had steamed out of port and gone
some distance, sand blown by a furious wind from that blistering upland
desert which makes its interior, fell upon us and dotted the sea like
rain.
“Straight to southward we steamed, past Tasmania. As we neared it, I
remembered that it was spring in the southern seas--November. Tasmania
was pink with orchard bloom. After we passed it and looked back--so
different is its southern coast--there was nothing to be seen but
towering columns of black basalt.
“Now the roll of the long waves struck us, sweeping always from west
to east. Tremendous waves they are, whose length no one may measure.
On and on they sweep, unhindered and unchecked, until somewhere to
southward they girdle the earth.
“Five days later we sighted New Zealand--a row of white mountains whose
bases are buried in yellow gorse. When we came nearer, we saw the
cherry blossoms and the dog-roses of an English garden. Then again to
southward and out into the long wash of the Australasian waves. Here
our steamer disturbed and put to flight a myriad sea-fowl resting idly
upon the surface of the water; down-white albatross with wings of jet,
and Cape pigeons with checker-board backs. Land was definitely left
behind with all that we had known. Before us, like a magic pathway
enticing us to follow, stretched the long, shining roadstead of the
wind. Swiftly we slipped down it and away toward the Polar seas. At
night the Southern Cross flamed bright. At night we saw the vari-tinted
stars of a southern zone. We were in a strange world, with a strange
sky above us. The sea, too, was strange. Sometimes it was so clear by
some little island’s side that we could see the mysteries of the deep.
Some times we saw algæ as delicate and finely lined as carven cameos,
and sometimes kelp so long it mocked the sea-serpent in its length.
“We coasted past unknown islands, where bright sea-growths blazed
on coral reefs. We saw palms that looked as if they sprang from the
water, so slender was their foothold in the soil. At times all that we
knew of an island was a whiff of fragrance that blew across our faces
while we slept, or we rose to find a feathery greenness in the day.
Or at dawn we coasted near enough to land to catch a phrase drawled
in dull semi-tones, or to see the sun gild sharply the bare body of
a woman with black and floating hair. Then we came to barren water
where no islands were, turquoise blue and chill, upon whose outer edge
the ice-fields lay. Then back to northward. Round and round we swung.
Thus we scoured the seas. We became known to every merchantman, to
every sailor. At first they thought that ours was a like occupation.
When they found out the difference, they looked upon us with disfavor.
Stories were circulated. They said we brought misfortune and foul
weather. Wrecks and sea tragedies were laid at our door. They confused
us with the Flying Dutchman. Gloom settled down upon us. No one escaped
it. Even I was losing heart. I found that we may not live other than
our fellows. The punishment for being different is not slight.
“Days and days I sat on deck and scanned the horizon with my glass.
When weariness overpowered me, a sailor took my place. Nor at night
was the watch relaxed. Then, too, a sailor sat ready to lift his glass
at call of a ray of light and sweep the sea. Each night when I went to
bed, it was with the hope of finding myself beside the blessed islands
when I awoke. That failing, I consoled myself with the possibilities of
day. My life trembled between hope and disappointment. These were the
poles of my narrowed world.
“There was one room in the steamer especially arranged for Asra. No
one entered there except myself. It was lighted with brilliancy, that
no material aid might be lacking in reading the great stone’s heart.
There, after the nerve-racking day on deck, I spent a part of the
night, peering into the long gem which lay upon a couch of white.
“It was rarely now, and only under mental stress, that I was able to
glimpse the dear face. To do so it was necessary to shut myself off
for days from contact with my fellow men and by imaginative effort
and strong stimulants key myself to a fictitious joy. Then, for one
moment, the fair body in its golden corselet would be visible in all
its beauty, and the face smile as if ready to awake from sleep. Nor
was this consolation of great duration. It was not long before the
strongest and headiest wines failed to have any effect upon me, and I
took to drugs. The moments of vision were of slighter duration, the
body less distinctly seen, less real, and, it seemed sometimes, less
lovely. It was all going from me, all that I had loved. I watched it,
but I was powerless to hinder.
“The effect of the drugs failed altogether. There was nothing now that
could lift me for an instant to the old height of joy where Asra and
I had lived and loved. The strain was telling upon my health. Physical
weakness helped to make the moments of vision rarer. Never again,
Titan-like, could I live with Asra upon the heights. Weariness and
weakness and impotence fell upon me. The earth called me, and held me
bound. I could only look at the opal with its heart of flame and dream
sadly of what had been. I could see Asra now only in the dream recesses
of my brain. And I knew, too, that this power would not last. Old age
would blot it out. There was nothing that I could hold and call my own.
“The years of cruising had been futile. They had brought disappointment
to my hopes and to my heart the certainty that I should never find the
delectable isles. My strength was exhausted. I was worn out with the
fruitless quest. I gave it up and came here.
“That room there,” indicating with a wave of his hand an upper wing of
the house, “I built for Asra. It is arranged and furnished like the
room in which I found her. There she has lain for fifty years and, as
I told you, I do not know whether she is alive or dead. That part of
the house, as you may have noticed, fronts the sea, that she may hear
always what she loved--the undying laughter of the pagan gods.
“It is years and years now since I have seen her. I am old and I have
not the strength. I shall never see her again. But I know that she is
there--asleep.”
* * * * *
A year later, in a distant city, I picked up a paper and this head-line
caught my eye: “The Strangest Will Ever Filed.” It was an account of
how one Gustav Berençy, a nobleman of the south of France, had left his
wealth to a gigantic opal, which was shaped like a woman’s form.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] From “Rime di tre gentil donne.”
THE HOUSE OF GAUZE
A MOZART FANTASY
_C’est quelque part en des pays du nord--le sais-je? C’est quelque part
sous des pôles aciéreux, Où les blancs ongles de la neige Griffent des
pans de roc nitreux._
EMILE VERHAEREN.
“Good evening, my Lord of Mozart.”
The voice was sweet and so was the title. He looked up in surprise.
Midnight had sounded. He had thought that he was the only one awake
in the old house in the Rauhensteingasse with its myriad rooms, of
which he rented three. His wife and children were abed. Their clothing
littered the room in which he sat and added to its disorder.
He remembered the beautiful face that was bending beside him. At sight
of it the years rolled back to the days of his childhood. Now, as she
stood in his miserable room and called him “My Lord of Mozart,” he
jumped up in readiness for her behest.
“I have come for you. The carriage waits below.”
Something snapped in his head, and it seemed to him that he rushed
through gray leagues of space. Then he mastered himself and followed in
the direction in which his visitor had gone. He did not find her. She
was not within the hall nor upon the street.
There, however, a carriage waited, its driver by the door. He jumped in
and fell back among soft cushions. A whip curled in the air, and two
horses dashed through the darkness. They left the city, and reached the
country. The speed did not lessen. He saw in fleeting perspective black
hills and bare trees against a dull silver sky, where pale green stars
shone. After they had driven at this pace for a time, they came to a
city. He did not care what city it was. He only knew that she lived
here. At last he should know who she was. At last!
The driver dismounted and opened the door. With his whip he pointed to
a gate ahead. Then he bowed, leaped to the box and was gone. There was
an inscription upon the gate. When he came near, he read in strange and
antique characters: “The Land of Music.” After he had passed through
the gate, he turned to have another look at it. There was nothing to
be seen of the gate through which he had entered, nor of the country
beyond. In all directions rose the roofs and towers of an alien city.
He found himself in a square where a number of streets converged.
He read their names, and one caught his fancy: “The Street of the
Masters.” He turned into it.
“What wonderful dwellings there are in The Land of Music!” he exclaimed
joyously, forgetting for the instant the one he sought. “I knew it! I
knew it! Why could I not have come here sooner!” he added, his lips and
chin trembling piteously.
“What dwellings the masters dwell in!” He looked rapturously down the
vista before him. “Here are tone-palaces of an Assyrian magnificence,
silverly translucent, of the most gracious symmetry and rising to
unthinkable heights. How I love this land, through whose gateways I
have just passed! How I love it! It is as if it were made for me. It is
a world of crystal and silver and white onyx and pale ivory. I can see
streets of dwellings whose harmonious lines make Grecian temples heavy;
dwellings of such fabulously fragile beauty as the frost of northern
nights paints on the windows. There are arches springing airily from
arches, reproduced again and again in delicate, diminishing curves;
façades of silver fretwork of the palpitating tenuity of a spider’s
web; forests of fair columns, their capitals hung with leaves of light.”
Then it was that a strange inversion took place. This became the
reality, and that sad other world the dream. He covered his face with
his hands and gave way to a storm of tears, so greatly was he relieved
to be rid of the dream where he had known only sorrow. The relief,
the unspeakable relief, to know that it was a dream! His frail figure
became erect and proud, as he walked along, recognizing the dwellings
of his friends. “Here are the houses of Glück and Sebastian Bach and
my dear, dear Haydn. But what is that--that structure just ahead?
Beethoven? Yes, Beethoven.” He looked about. Nowhere could he see
anything that out-topped it. “My little friend Beethoven! How kind is
life in comparison with the hideousness of dreams!” Again tears dimmed
his eyes. “And there dwells Händel! That is just such a temple as the
saints would build. It is not altogether original, but it is the work
of a mighty soul. If it does not stand for versatility, it stands for
strength.”
After passing the stern home of Händel, it was some little distance
to the next dwelling. When he came where he could see it plainly, he
laughed long and wildly, just as madmen laugh. “Who ever heard of any
one forgetting his own home! How could that black dream have lasted
long enough for me to do that? Will it never cease to haunt me? The
idea of forgetting my own home!” And he laughed as madly as before.
Ahead, upon a little eminence, not quite in a straight line with the
other houses of the street, he saw a sumptuous Italian palace of the
best days, built evidently for love and leisure.
It was just such a palace as Lorenzo the Magnificent dreamed of setting
among the laureled hills of Tuscany. It was built of resonant crystal,
turreted and pinacled, and provided with a myriad Venetian balconies
and pillared porticos. It was not of such tremendous height as the
dwelling of Beethoven, nor of such vast dimensions as that of Handel,
and yet it might easily be called lovelier than either, because of its
charm of design.
As he stormed up the steps impatiently, he noticed how well his blue
satin court suit with its jeweled stars and orders and his curling
golden hair suited the dwelling in which he lived. The doors swung open
to receive him. Powdered footmen bent before him.
The guests were waiting. They were in their places ready for the dance.
He bowed before his partner. Her mouth was a little red dot, and her
eyes were two deep pools of love. They swung into the dance. The music
uplifted them. As changing figures brought them together, he sensed
pleasantly the delicacy of her flesh and the floating fragrance of her
hair. As he bent in the dance’s slow salutes, his eyes embraced soft
shoulders, white breasts upheld, flower-like, by stiff corsages, slim,
jewel-clasped necks, and twinkling feet beneath lifted lace.
Cavaliers, with heads flung back and hands to sword hilt, like true
old French gallants, danced haughtily out to meet gay Watteau ladies.
Then what smiles, what courtly bows, what languishment, what bird-like
gayety! In the swinging whirl he saw court trains outfloat in satin
splendor, and the backward tilt of high-coiffured heads. The floors
and the mirrored walls reflected the dancers, redoubling their graces
in fluent light. He caught the interchange of stolen glances. He saw
delicate fingers press responsive hands. He saw the amorous leaning
of fond bodies and the pledge of lifted eyes. The air was electric
with love. He drank it in eagerly, greedily. It was for this that he
had thirsted. Again, for an instant, the black dream swept down upon
him and blotted the pageant out. When it passed and he found anew the
bright reality, he grasped his companion in his arms convulsively and
buried his face in her breast to forget.
“To the banquet hall, good friends! To the banquet hall!” he commanded,
when he lifted his face. He leaped to the center of the room,
silenced the orchestra, and flung up his arms to signal attention,
uncontrollable laughter bubbling on his lips--
“Wine or woman, which is sweetest, Tell me which for pleasure’s
meetest, Which from care can take us fleetest?”
he sang, as he danced along.
Silks swished past him. Fans fluttered like butterflies. Little
slippers clicked in merry flight. Women drifted past with heightened
color and dream-veiled eyes. He heard their low laughter and knew that
they were being led with a caress.
As he entered the banquet room, a forest of upstretched arms whose
hands held each a wineglass greeted him: “Long life to the Lord of
Mozart! The Lord of Mozart!”
Amber and crimson wine-light flecked faces and breasts and lifted arms,
and fell in long broken ribbons upon the walls.
“Now find out which one is sweetest!” they chorused.
“I pledge a health to each lady,” he gallantly responded, bowing
before each in turn. “In this way I shall find _her_, for surely she is
here.” When he had made the rounds and satisfied himself that she was
not, he beckoned a young cavalier to him.
“Why is _she_ not here?”
“_She?_ She never takes part in our revels.”
“But she promised to meet me here.”
“Impossible, my lord; she is queen.”
“And I--am I not king?” he responded haughtily. Then, repenting of the
words, he flung his arms tenderly about the boyish figure.
“Ah, my boy, you do not know what love is--its torture, its longing,
its insatiable longing. He noticed then how the young cavalier
resembled his youthful self before grief and disappointment had lined
his face and lighted their wild light in his eyes.
“Go to my generals! Summon the army!”
Doors slid back, transforming the pleasure palace into a hall. The
dancers arranged themselves on either side. Between them the soldiers
passed. And what soldiers! They were small and supple and swift. They
flew rather than walked. Each one was a black music note, spurred and
bent and vicious. From their legs black needle-like stilettos pointed.
They were a destructive, unstemmable torrent. When the last one had
crossed the threshold, and they stood drawn up in readiness before
it--“After them, my friends!” he ordered. The revelers obeyed. Black
horses waited at the door. They leaped upon them and swung through the
night.
In the Land of Music it is always night--night lighted by feverishly
bright stars and the rising and setting of strange moons.
Upon black and shining backs poised delicate figures; outflying manes
revealed the clasp of jeweled arms, and beside the wild heads of the
horses shone the faces of musical nymphs. The streets through which
they passed were no longer lined with magnificent buildings. They had
entered the oldest part of the Land of Music, which is sparsely settled
and where the dwellings are quaint and ancient. Here a primitive people
had lived.
“What a ridiculous army!” roared the Lord of Mozart, who led the
cavalcade, standing upon his horse and pirouetting. “Look! my good
friends! Look!” He pointed ahead.
There they were, gathering about a structure of considerable extent,
an army of dwarfs, with big, oblong, melon-like heads. They carried
stilettos fringed with darts, but they were slow of motion and aged.
They did not seem to have strength enough to carry about their
cumbersome heads. And in numbers they did not reach the half of the
army of Mozart.
“So that’s our enemy!” he exclaimed, convulsed with laughter,
pirouetting again upon his horse’s back. “We’ll make short work of
them. Quick, upon them!”
Like a cloud of black locusts, the vicious army of Mozart fell upon
them. They covered them from sight. They smothered them. They dazed
them by their numbers and agility. They killed them.
“Now to the house!” he called. “The way is clear.” His eyes shone like
steel, and spots of fever dotted his cheeks. He knew that within that
ancient dwelling was the lady of his heart.
“Come, my friends!” They rode across the dead bodies of the ancient
soldiers, laughing at their ugliness. The ladies pulled high their
silken trains lest they be spotted with dust and blood.
“My generals, there within sits the lady of my heart. Bring her out and
place her upon the horse beside me.”
The lady they lifted to the saddle in no way resembled the gay court
beauties. In her bearing there was something noble.
“Back to the palace!”
Like magic, they covered the distance. In front of the entrance,
the Lord of Mozart halted and stood erect in his stirrups, bowing
majestically to right and left.
“I thank you, good friends, for your aid. And now, good night. I go to
celebrate the conquest of love.”
“May joy be with you!” they called in return, waving their hands as
their galloping horses disappeared in the brightness of the street.
“Why did you try to conquer me by force?” she asked, facing him in
the great chamber into which he had taken her, and speaking for the
first time. “Do you not know that it is really by my will that I have
come--to save you from humiliation? Do you not know that you can have
no power over me?”
“Am I not King! I have power over everything.”
“You do not know who I am.”
“How can that matter, since I love you?”
“I am the Lady Melodia. I cannot be long to any one. I belong to all. I
am queen absolute.”
“Did I not know that we are one!” he answered, bowing in mock humility
to the stately figure. “Have you not come to me of your own will? Is it
not you who guided me here?”
“That is why your deed to-night is shameful.”
“But I need you so!” he continued piteously. “Surely you will not leave
me when I need you so. Let me tell you; then you will pity me. I am
haunted by a hideous dream. (I never told any one before. I conceal it
carefully.) Sometimes I cannot tell which is real--this life here, or
the dream. I have the strange consciousness”--he looked about timidly,
like a little child, lest some one hear his secret, then drew her close
to him, his eyes dark with fear--“that I lead two lives. One is in
another world, a world of hard material facts, where by the proper
grasping of the facts one can have every joy, every comfort. But there
I cannot grasp anything. I cannot accustom myself to living. I cannot
feel at home. I cannot understand how men buy prosperity. I cannot
learn anything. I cannot cope with people. They beat me at every turn.
I lack something--that fiber of the commonplace that contends and wins.
There, in that black dream-world, I cannot do the simplest things.
And because I cannot, I suffer--suffer poverty and hunger. When I buy
things honestly with my brain, when I win success, I cannot grasp it.
Everything slips away and leaves me alone--to know the want of beggars.
Your presence alone dispels that horror and makes me know that this is
real, that I am real, and that here I belong.”
Like the face of a mother in tenderness was the face of the Lady
Melodia, as she murmured: “Dear one! Dear one!”
“Your face lights that black dream-world like a star and rests upon my
soul. But there it paralyzes the power of action.”
“But are you not willing to suffer the dream for the sake of this?” She
indicated the glittering chamber.
“If I could always remember that it _is_ a dream,” he answered
piteously. “But they--other people--have had real things, while I have
had only the glitter of foam. I’ll tell you what it’s like,” he added
boyishly. “You’ve seen a bottle dropped into water where, instead of
standing upright, it wavers about, unable to keep balance? That is what
I am without you. Does not that justify what I did to-night? Does not
that make it right?”
Pity had taken the place of resentment when she answered: “Yes,
perhaps. But you see you cannot keep me. A Titan could not do that.”
“But I am more than a Titan.”
“Once I was wholly yours--”
“When?”
“In your youth. Then I was yours unasked. Before you had grown old,
before life had marred you.”
He looked at himself in a mirror. It was true that there was no sign of
youth in the face, nor, strange as it may seem, was there any sign of
age. It was the face of one whom some terrible passion had consumed and
burnt out without materially ageing.
“Why did you leave me?”
“Because you were false to me.”
“How could I be false to you when I have had no pleasures apart from
you?”
“Did I not tell you that you could not live two lives--the life of a
man and the life of a god?”
“You mean love? That is the only thing that makes the black dream
tolerable. It is like the honey the stinging bee carries. It is the gem
in the head of the toad.”
“That is why I said you were false to me,” she replied, anger
brightening her eyes.
“But now I love only you. Surely you know that.”
“How can that right the matter? I cannot belong to any one in whose
heart I have been supplanted for an instant.”
“You will reconsider when you know that I am worthy. Besides, there
is no one else who _is_ worthy. Perhaps you have not read my heart. I
tired of that other--of love--long ago, as I have tired of every real
thing. It became like a too sweet honey. It sickened me, it smothered
me; it made me struggle to be free. It made me long to feel flying in
my face the bright insubstantiality of dreams. And you are my brightest
dream,” he said, lifting the long hair and burying his face in it.
“I know, I know, but--”