IX

The poppies lay in the gutter and many other fresh and gracious flowers

had withered under the portrait of the Gualtieri. May had become June,

and June July. Every evening Gesa explained his projects to his

foster-father, played one and another melody on his violin, or

sketched the whole of an ensemble movement for him on the old spinet,

received Gaston's assurance "_cela cera superbe!_" improvised a great

deal, listened dreamily to the singing and ringing in his soul,

and--accomplished nothing. He had lodged himself in a neighboring

attic, at a washerwoman's, but spent the whole day in the home of

Delileo, now made still more attractive by the gracious presence of

Annette.

The "droewige Herr" had found a regular situation, probably for his

daughter's sake. He busied himself as secretary of the theatre and also

as _feuilletonist_ of a newspaper. This procured him steady employment.

His housekeeping now bore the stamp, not of limited means, but of

slovenly comfort, the comfort of the Rue Ravestein.

Gesa felt at home in this disorder. He always found a comfortable sofa

on whose arms he could rest his hands while he talked about the future,

and in whose cushions he could lean back his head while he searched for

the outlines of impending fortune among the smoke-clouds from his

cigarette; and he always found a bottle of good Bordeaux on the table

when he seated himself at dinner.

He loved the long idling meal times, which lifted from him the

necessity of doing anything, and furnished such a plausible excuse for

his beloved laziness: he loved to sit and dally with his coffee, while

Annette sat opposite and occasionally sipped a little out of his cup.

He loved to rummage among the notes of old composers whom no one had

ever heard of and to rush through the works of half-forgotten poets.

When a verse pleased him, then his eyes glowed, and he would thunder

forth the most colossal adjectives, and read the lines two, three, yes

twenty times to the little Annette. He might just as well have read to

the Flemish servant outside, only she would not, perhaps, have smiled

so prettily. Then he would seize note paper and set the verse to music,

try his hasty composition on the old spinet, that gave back the stormy

melodies of his foaming, effervescing youth in a broken, trembling

little voice, like a grandmother on the edge of the grave who sings a

love song for the last time. Then Annette must try the verse. She had a

splendid contralto voice, and spared no pains to give him pleasure with

her singing. But he was never contented. "More expression Annette, more

passion!" he would cry. "Do you feel nothing then, absolutely nothing

here!" and he tapped her on the heart with his finger. She smiled,

colored, and turned her face away.

* * * * *

Gaston Delileo had resolved to look upon Annette and Gesa as sister and

brother; that cut short all other thoughts, and was very comfortable.

He would not notice how much Annette was occupied with her "brother,"

to what flattering little attentions she accustomed him, with what an

expression her large dark eyes sometimes rested upon him. He only

noticed that in the beginning Gesa's bearing was perfectly cool,

cordial and brotherly. Toward the end of July the latter began to

neglect Rue Ravestein a little, and entangled himself in some sort of

relation with a Paris actress who, playing an engagement at the Galerie

St. Hubert, found herself bored in Brussels. Annette was consumed by

jealousy without Gesa's guessing the cause of her disquiet.

"What ails you, Bichette?" he asked, anxiously, stroking her thin cheek

with a caressing hand. "What makes you sad? It is this pestilential

city air that does not agree with you. Send her to the seashore for a

while, father!" The old man shrugged his shoulders--

"Alas!" he murmured. "I have not the means."

"The means! the means!" cried Gesa, "then permit me to advance them. I

have lived so long on your generosity!" Gesa forgot how much his little

attentions to Mlle. Irma had cost! When he hurried over to his

apartment to get a couple of bank notes, he found in his pocketbook

just one solitary twenty-franc piece. At first he rubbed his head and

stared, then he burst out laughing, and carried his used up purse

across to Delileo, "There, laugh at me and my big promises," he cried.

"Here, see, this is my whole wealth! But wait, only wait! My hands and

my head are full of gold. If only once the right feeling for work would

come--the real fever! Do you happen to know where I have laid the

libretto for my opera?"

Toward the end of August, Mlle. Irma left Brussels, Gesa became morose,

and the mood was favorable to industry.

One morning he felt "the fever." He spread some music paper before him,

smoothed it with his hand, cut a pen, planted his elbows on the one

shaky table his attic contained, wrote a line, struck it out, stretched

himself, and twisted himself--a feeling of physical unrest tormented

him. He resolved to go out for a little, and wandered into the park,

where he stood still from time to time as if listening to an inward

voice, jostling absently against passers-by, and at last sat down upon

a bench, thinking deeply. Suddenly a gust of wind passed, lightly at

first, then howling loudly through the tree tops overhead. Gesa

started, pressed his hands to his temples, a flood of music streamed

through his soul. He hurried back to his attic, and wrote and wrote.

The hour at which he was accustomed to find himself at lunch with

Annette,--Delileo seldom came home for this meal,--was long past, the

late supper time had come--Gesa still bent over his music paper. Single

leaves lay strewn around him on the floor. Some one knocked at the

door--he did not hear. Delileo entered. "What are you doing, my boy,

that one sees nothing of you to-day. Are you sick?"

Gesa stared at him as if awakened from a strange dream. "No," he

answered, simply, "I am working."

He was very pale and his hands trembled. Delileo insisted that he must

interrupt his work at least long enough to take some nourishment. Gesa

followed him unwillingly. He sat at table, ate nothing, did not speak,

but gazed steadily at one spot like a ghost seer. After supper he

wandered up and down the sitting-room, humming disconnected melodies to

himself, clutched from time to time at the keys of the old spinet,

threw out with short lips a single tone in which some sort of grand

finale seemed to culminate, lashed about him urging on an imaginary

orchestra, stamped suddenly on the floor and cried "Bravo!"

Delileo, who had had plenty to do, in his day, with poets and

composers, let him quietly alone; treating him with the forbearance

which is accorded to the unhappy, the weak-minded, and geniuses. But

Annette could not understand this strange behavior, and at last she

broke out in a gay laugh.

Strange to say Gesa took this childishness very ill, and left the

chamber with a hastily muttered "good-night."

Until the grey of morning he was working at his opera.

Several days went by, days during which Gesa neither ate nor slept,

looked excited and irritable, yet at the same time enjoyed an

indescribable painful happiness, a condition of supreme exaltation. In

vain Delileo warned him, "Don't overwork, one can strain the creative

faculty as well as the voice, be moderate!" Gesa only shook his

handsome head and smiled to himself with eyes half shut. Perhaps he had

not heard a word his foster-father had been saying.

And then, suddenly, when, shouting an exultant Eureka to himself, he

finished the finale of the fifth act,--the third and fourth were not

even begun yet,--his inspiration failed. Pegasus threw him, as an

overworked and maltreated Pegasus will,--threw him from the Spheres of

Light down into the regions of Earthly Misery.

Painful headaches, and fathomless melancholy tormented him, his own

performance seemed suddenly repulsive to him: where at first he had

only seen the beauties of his work, he now recognized nothing but its

deficiencies, compared it with the works of other masters, ground his

teeth, and beat his brow. He condemned his own composition

unmercifully, as overstrained and absurdly romantic. He could only

endure the coldest, dryest musical fare. A Nocturne of Chopin threw him

into a nervous excitement. He practiced the "Chaconne" by Bach

incessantly. He looked like one who was convalescing from a severe

illness. With neglected dress and dragging step he lounged about

aimlessly, or brooded by the hour, all in a heap, head on hand, in the

darkest corner of the green sitting-room. Once after he had been trying

a new composition, in careless fashion on his violin, he put the

instrument away with nervous haste, threw himself into the great

leather armchair that was regarded as his by all the family, bit

restlessly at his nails a moment, and then suddenly broke into

convulsive sobbing. Then came Annette shyly to him, stroked his hair

pityingly, and whispered, "Poor Gesa, does it hurt so to be a Genius?"

He drew her onto his knee, kissed her often and ardently on hair, eyes,

mouth, and when half glad, half frightened, she drew away, he allowed

her to slip from his arms, but took both her hands and said softly,

looking up at her with true-hearted eyes, "Annette, my good little

Annette, can you endure me? Will you be my wife? Not now, but when I am

become a great artist. Perhaps I may yet, for your sake."

She blushed, and stammered, "What can you want of such a foolish girl

as I am?"

"But if she just happens to please me," he jested, much moved.

She bent her young head over his hand and kissed it, then she nestled

down on a stool at his feet. When Gaston came home he found them thus,

and gave his blessing upon the betrothal.

X

Gesa's affection for his betrothed grew ever day more tender, and more

devoted. Her behavior toward him changed, in that she laid aside

something of her bashfulness, and adopted a tone of teasing perversity.

Since it was no longer possible to regard his children as brother and

sister, Gaston resolved to beg that Gesa would limit his intercourse

with Annette to evening visits, and a daily walk. O those daily walks!

Annette liked the frequented streets, and loved to stand before the

show windows of the shops where finery was kept, while she asked her

lover if he would give her this or that pretty thing if he were a great

artist. Her fancies, as yet, were not very expensive, and seldom rose

above a dainty ribbon or a coquettish pair of bronze slippers. He

smiled at her questions and usually sent her the desired object next

morning, accompanied by a pretty, cordial, unpretending little note. A

few lessons which he was giving enabled him to indulge in this

lover-like extravagance.

Unlike Annette, he had a disinclination for frequented streets, and

strolled more willingly with her in the park, at this time quite

desolate, and deserted of human kind. Dreaming and forgetful of all the

world, he walked beside her under the trees that sighed in the November

wind. Here and there the paths were broken by large puddles, and when

no one was looking he lifted the maiden lightly over. Annette did not

care for a little splashing, and leaned all the more heavily on her

lover's arm. Sometimes, when he went along quite too dumb and absent at

her side, she gave his arm a little pinch to arouse him, and cried

"Wake up, tell me something." Then he would look down at her with wet,

happy eyes and murmur, "I love you." He was beyond all bounds in love,

and beyond all measure tiresome. But he composed at this time very

industriously although more collectedly, and with less exaltation. He

had postponed the completion of his opera for the present, and had

nearly finished instead a dramatic work, in oratorio form, founded on

Dante's Inferno.