In Norway the ladies dress with the innocent purpose of protecting
themselves against the weather; if this purpose is still remotely
present in the toilets of American women of to-day, it is, at all
events, sufficiently disguised to challenge detection, very much like a
primitive Sanscrit root in its French and English derivatives. This was
the reflection which was uppermost in Halfdan’s mind as Edith, ravishing
to behold in the airy grace of her fragrant morning toilet, at the
appointed time took her seat at his side before the piano. Her presence
seemed so intense, so all-absorbing, that it left no thought for
the music. A woman, with all the spiritual mysteries which that name
implies, had always appeared to him rather a composite phenomenon,
even apart from those varied accessories of dress, in which as by an
inevitable analogy, she sees fit to express the inner multiformity of
her being. Nevertheless, this former conception of his, when compared
to that wonderful complexity of ethereal lines, colors, tints and
half-tints which go to make up the modern New York girl, seemed
inexpressibly simple, almost what plain arithmetic must appear to a man
who has mastered calculus.
Edith had opened one of those small red-covered volumes of Chopin where
the rich, wondrous melodies lie peacefully folded up like strange exotic
flowers in an herbarium. She began to play the fantasia impromtu, which
ought to be dashed off at a single “heat,” whose passionate impulse
hurries it on breathlessly toward its abrupt finale. But Edith toiled
considerably with her fingering, and blurred the keen edges of each
swift phrase by her indistinct articulation. And still there was a
sufficiently ardent intention in her play to save it from being a
failure. She made a gesture of disgust when she had finished, shut the
book, and let her hands drop crosswise in her lap.
“I only wanted to give you a proof of my incapacity,” she said, turning
her large luminous gaze upon her instructor, “in order to make you duly
appreciate what you have undertaken. Now, tell me truly and honestly,
are you not discouraged?”
“Not by any means,” replied he, while the rapture of her presence
rippled through his nerves, “you have fire enough in you to make an
admirable musician. But your fingers, as yet, refuse to carry out your
fine intentions. They only need discipline.”
“And do you suppose you can discipline them? They are a fearfully
obstinate set, and cause me infinite mortification.”
“Would you allow me to look at your hand?”
She raised her right hand, and with a sort of impulsive heedlessness let
it drop into his. An exclamation of surprise escaped him.
“If you will pardon me,” he said, “it is a superb hand--a hand capable
of performing miracles--musical miracles I mean. Only look here”--(and
he drew the fore and second fingers apart)--“so firmly set in the joint
and still so flexible. I doubt if Liszt himself can boast a finer row of
fingers. Your hands will surely not prevent you from becoming a second
Von Bulow, which to my mind means a good deal more than a second Liszt.”
“Thank you, that is quite enough,” she exclaimed, with an incredulous
laugh; “you have done bravely. That at all events throws the whole
burden of responsibility upon myself, if I do not become a second
somebody. I shall be perfectly satisfied, however, if you can only make
me as good a musician as you are yourself, so that I can render a not
too difficult piece without feeling all the while that I am committing
sacrilege in mutilating the fine thoughts of some great composer.”
“You are too modest; you do not--”
“No, no, I am not modest,” she interrupted him with an impetuosity which
startled him. “I beg of you not to persist in paying me compliments. I
get too much of that cheap article elsewhere. I hate to be told that
I am better than I know I am. If you are to do me any good by your
instruction, you must be perfectly sincere toward me, and tell me
plainly of my short-comings. I promise you beforehand that I shall never
be offended. There is my hand. Now, is it a bargain?”
His fingers closed involuntarily over the soft beautiful hand, and once
more the luxury of her touch sent a thrill of delight through him.
“I have not been insincere,” he murmured, “but I shall be on my guard in
future, even against the appearance of insincerity.”
“And when I play detestably, you will say so, and not smooth it over
with unmeaning flatteries?”
“I will try.”
“Very well, then we shall get on well together. Do not imagine that this
is a mere feminine whim of mine. I never was more in earnest. Men, and
I believe foreigners, to a greater degree than Americans, have the idea
that women must be treated with gentle forbearance; that their follies,
if they are foolish, must be glossed over with some polite name. They
exert themselves to the utmost to make us mere playthings, and, as such,
contemptible both in our own eyes and in theirs. No sincere respect can
exist where the truth has to be avoided. But the majority of American
women are made of too stern a stuff to be dealt with in that way. They
feel the lurking insincerity even where politeness forbids them to
show it, and it makes them disgusted both with themselves, and with the
flatterer. And now you must pardon me for having spoken so plainly to
you on so short an acquaintance; but you are a foreigner, and it may be
an act of friendship to initiate you as soon as possible into our ways
and customs.”
He hardly knew what to answer. Her vehemence was so sudden, and
the sentiments she had uttered so different from those which he had
habitually ascribed to women, that he could only sit and gaze at her
in mute astonishment. He could not but admit that in the main she had
judged him rightly, and that his own attitude and that of other men
toward her sex, were based upon an implied assumption of superiority.
“I am afraid I have shocked you,” she resumed, noticing the startled
expression of his countenance. “But really it was quite inevitable,
if we were at all to understand each other. You will forgive me, won’t
you?”
“Forgive!” stammered he, “I have nothing to forgive. It was only your
merciless truthfulness which startled me. I rather owe you thanks,
if you will allow me to be grateful to you. It seems an enviable
privilege.”
“Now,” interrupted Edith, raising her forefinger in playful threat,
“remember your promise.”
The lesson was now continued without further interruption. When it was
finished, a little girl, with her hair done up in curl-papers, and
a very stiffly starched dress, which stood out on all sides almost
horizontally, entered, accompanied by Mrs. Van Kirk. Halfdan immediately
recognized his acquaintance from the park, and it appeared to him a
good omen that this child, whose friendly interest in him had warmed his
heart in a moment when his fortunes seemed so desperate, should
continue to be associated with his life on this new continent. Clara was
evidently greatly impressed by the change in his appearance, and could
with difficulty be restrained from commenting upon it.
She proved a very apt scholar in music, and enjoyed the lessons the more
for her cordial liking of her teacher.
It will be necessary henceforth to omit the less significant details in
the career of our friend “Mr. Birch.” Before a month was past, he had
firmly established himself in the favor of the different members of the
Van Kirk family. Mrs. Van Kirk spoke of him to her lady visitors as “a
perfect jewel,” frequently leaving them in doubt as to whether he was a
cook or a coachman. Edith apostrophized him to her fashionable friends
as “a real genius,” leaving a dim impression upon their minds of flowing
locks, a shiny velvet jacket, slouched hat, defiant neck-tie and a
general air of disreputable pretentiousness. Geniuses of the foreign
type were never, in the estimation of fashionable New York society, what
you would call “exactly nice,” and against prejudices of this order
no amount of argument will ever prevail. Clara, who had by this time
discovered that her teacher possessed an inexhaustible fund of fairy
stories, assured her playmates across the street that he was “just
splendid,” and frequently invited them over to listen to his wonderful
tales. Mr. Van Kirk himself, of course, was non-committal, but paid the
bills unmurmuringly.
Halfdan in the meanwhile was vainly struggling against his growing
passion for Edith; but the more he rebelled the more hopelessly he found
himself entangled in its inextricable net. The fly, as long as it keeps
quiet in the spider’s web, may for a moment forget its situation; but
the least effort to escape is apt to frustrate itself and again reveal
the imminent peril. Thus he too “kicked against the pricks,” hoped,
feared, rebelled against his destiny, and again, from sheer weariness,
relapsed into a dull, benumbed apathy. In spite of her friendly
sympathy, he never felt so keenly his alienism as in her presence. She
accepted the spontaneous homage he paid her, sometimes with impatience,
as something that was really beneath her notice; at other times she
frankly recognized it, bantered him with his “Old World chivalry,” which
would soon evaporate in the practical American atmosphere, and called
him her Viking, her knight and her faithful squire. But it never
occurred to her to regard his devotion in a serious light, and to look
upon him as a possible lover had evidently never entered her head. As
their intercourse grew more intimate, he had volunteered to read his
favorite poets with her, and had gradually succeeded in imparting to her
something of his own passionate liking for Heine and Björnson. She
had in return called his attention to the works of American authors
who had hitherto been little more than names to him, and they had thus
managed to be of mutual benefit to each other, and to spend many a
pleasant hour during the long winter afternoons in each other’s company.
But Edith had a very keen sense of humor, and could hardly restrain her
secret amusement when she heard him reading Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life”
and Poe’s “Raven” (which had been familiar to her from her babyhood),
often with false accent, but always with intense enthusiasm. The
reflection that he had had no part of his life in common with her,--that
he did not love the things which she loved,--could not share her
prejudices (and women have a feeling akin to contempt for a man who does
not respond to their prejudices)--removed him at times almost beyond
the reach of her sympathy. It was interesting enough as long as the
experience was novel, to be thus unconsciously exploring another
person’s mind and finding so many strange objects there; but after a
while the thing began to assume an uncomfortably serious aspect, and
then there seemed to be something almost terrible about it. At such
times a call from a gentleman of her own nation, even though he were
one of the placidly stupid type, would be a positive relief; she could
abandon herself to the secure sense of being at home; she need fear
no surprises, and in the smooth shallows of their talk there were no
unsuspected depths to excite and to baffle her ingenuity. And, again,
reverting in her thought to Halfdan, his conversational brilliancy would
almost repel her, as something odious and un-American, the cheap result
of outlandish birth and unrepublican education. Not that she had ever
valued republicanism very highly; she was one of those who associated
politics with noisy vulgarity in speech and dress, and therefore thanked
fortune that women were permitted to keep aloof from it. But in the
presence of this alien she found herself growing patriotic; that
much-discussed abstraction, which we call our country (and which is
nothing but the aggregate of all the slow and invisible influences which
go toward making up our own being), became by degrees a very palpable
and intelligible fact to her.
Frequently while her American self was thus loudly asserting itself,
Edith inflicted many a cruel wound upon her foreign adorer. Once,--it
was the Fourth of July, more than a year after Halfdan’s arrival,
a number of young ladies and gentlemen, after having listened to a
patriotic oration, were invited in to an informal luncheon. While
waiting, they naturally enough spent their time in singing national
songs, and Halfdan’s clear tenor did good service in keeping the
straggling voices together. When they had finished, Edith went up to him
and was quite effusive in her expressions of gratitude.
“I am sure we ought all to be very grateful to you, Mr. Birch,” she
said, “and I, for my part, can assure you that I am.”
“Grateful? Why?” demanded Halfdan, looking quite unhappy.
“For singing OUR national songs, of course. Now, won’t you sing one
of your own, please? We should all be so delighted to hear how a
Swedish--or Norwegian, is it?--national song sounds.”
“Yes, Mr. Birch, DO sing a Swedish song,” echoed several voices.
They, of course, did not even remotely suspect their own cruelty. He
had, in his enthusiasm for the day allowed himself to forget that he
was not made of the same clay as they were, that he was an exile and a
stranger, and must ever remain so, that he had no right to share their
joy in the blessing of liberty. Edith had taken pains to dispel the
happy illusion, and had sent him once more whirling toward his cold
native Pole. His passion came near choking him, and, to conceal his
impetuous emotion, he flung himself down on the piano-stool, and struck
some introductory chords with perhaps a little superfluous emphasis.
Suddenly his voice burst out into the Swedish national anthem, “Our
Land, our Land, our Fatherland,” and the air shook and palpitated
with strong martial melody. His indignation, his love and his misery,
imparted strength to his voice, and its occasional tremble in the PIANO
passages was something more than an artistic intention. He was loudly
applauded as he arose, and the young ladies thronged about him to ask if
he “wouldn’t please write out the music for them.”
Thus month after month passed by, and every day brought its own misery.
Mrs. Van Kirk’s patronizing manners, and ostentatious kindness, often
tested his patience to the utmost. If he was guilty of an innocent
witticism or a little quaintness of expression, she always assumed it
to be a mistake of terms and corrected him with an air of benign
superiority. At times, of course, her corrections were legitimate, as
for instance, when he spoke of WEARING a cane, instead of CARRYING
one, but in nine cases out of ten the fault lay in her own lack of
imagination and not in his ignorance of English. On such occasions Edith
often took pity on him, defended him against her mother’s criticism, and
insisted that if this or that expression was not in common vogue,
that was no reason why it should not be used, as it was perfectly
grammatical, and, moreover, in keeping with the spirit of the language.
And he, listening passively in admiring silence to her argument, thanked
her even for the momentary pain because it was followed by so great a
happiness. For it was so sweet to be defended by Edith, to feel that
he and she were standing together side by side against the outer world.
Could he only show her in the old heroic manner how much he loved
her! Would only some one that was dear to her die, so that he, in that
breaking down of social barriers which follows a great calamity, might
comfort her in her sorrow. Would she then, perhaps, weeping, lean her
wonderful head upon his breast, feeling but that he was a fellow-mortal,
who had a heart that was loyal and true, and forgetting, for one
brief instant, that he was a foreigner. Then, to touch that delicate
Elizabethan frill which wound itself so daintily about Edith’s
neck--what inconceivable rapture! But it was quite impossible. It could
never be. These were selfish thoughts, no doubt, but they were a lover’s
selfishness, and, as such, bore a close kinship to all that is purest
and best in human nature.
It is one of the tragic facts of this life, that a relation so unequal
as that which existed between Halfdan and Edith, is at all possible. As
for Edith, I must admit that she was well aware that her teacher was in
love with her. Women have wonderfully keen senses for phenomena of that
kind, and it is an illusion if any one imagines, as our Norseman did,
that he has locked his secret securely in the hidden chamber of his
heart. In fleeting intonations, unconscious glances and attitudes,
and through a hundred other channels it will make its way out, and the
bereaved jailer may still clasp his key in fierce triumph, never knowing
that he has been robbed. It was of course no fault of Edith’s that she
had become possessed of Halfdan’s heart-secret. She regarded it as on
the whole rather an absurd affair, and prized it very lightly. That
a love so strong and yet so humble, so destitute of hope and still so
unchanging, reverent and faithful, had something grand and touching in
it, had never occurred to her. It is a truism to say that in our social
code the value of a man’s character is determined by his position; and
fine traits in a foreigner (unless he should happen to be something very
great) strike us rather as part of a supposed mental alienism, and as
such, naturally suspicious. It is rather disgraceful than otherwise
to have your music teacher in love with you, and critical friends will
never quite banish the suspicion that you have encouraged him.
Edith had, in her first delight at the discovery of Halfdan’s talent,
frankly admitted him to a relation of apparent equality. He was a man
of culture, had the manners and bearing of a gentleman, and had none
of those theatrical airs which so often raise a sort of invisible wall
between foreigners and Americans. Her mother, who loved to play the
patron, especially to young men, had invited him to dinner-parties and
introduced him to their friends, until almost every one looked upon him
as a protege of the family. He appeared so well in a parlor, and had
really such a distinguished presence, that it was a pleasure to look
at him. He was remarkably free from those obnoxious traits which
generalizing American travelers have led us to believe were inseparable
from foreign birth; his finger-nails were in no way conspicuous; he did
not, as a French count, a former adorer of Edith’s, had done, indulge an
unmasculine taste for diamond rings (possibly because he had none); his
politeness was unobtrusive and subdued, and of his accent there was just
enough left to give an agreeable color of individuality to his speech.
But, for all that, Edith could never quite rid herself of the impression
that he was intensely un-American. There was a certain idyllic
quiescence about him, a child-like directness and simplicity, and a
total absence of “push,” which were startlingly at variance with the
spirit of American life. An American could never have been content to
remain in an inferior position without trying, in some way, to better
his fortunes. But Halfdan could stand still and see, without the
faintest stirring of envy, his plebeian friend Olson, whose education
and talents could bear no comparison with his own, rise rapidly above
him, and apparently have no desire to emulate him. He could sit on a
cricket in a corner, with Clara on his lap, and two or three little
girls nestling about him, and tell them fairy stories by the hour, while
his kindly face beamed with innocent happiness. And if Clara, to coax
him into continuing the entertainment, offered to kiss him, his measure
of joy was full. This fair child, with her affectionate ways, and her
confiding prattle, wound herself ever more closely about his homeless
heart, and he clung to her with a touching devotion. For she was the
only one who seemed to be unconscious of the difference of blood, who
had not yet learned that she was an American and he--a foreigner.