Schneidermann was Alsatian, and Jew on his father’s side, rich, for his
family owned steel mills at Toul and Nancy and in the very environs of
Paris, as well as coal mines in the neighborhood of St. Quentin and La
Bassée. Schneidermann, tall, handsome, swarthy ... was beautiful in an
austere, sensual fashion as only Jews can be beautiful. He came
sometimes to play the ’cello with “Mees Ellen,” choosing queer music
they called “modern” that had none of the beauty and melody of Offenbach
and Gounod.
The voice of “Mees Ellen” joining the pair in the dining-room....
“War!... War!... Nonsense! There can’t be any war. I must play in Berlin
and Munich next season.” Her voice rang with genuine conviction, as if
she really believed that war itself dared not interfere with still more
amazing successes. Madame Blaise’ cynical laugh answered her.
“Ah, you young people ... you young people. What do you know of war and
politics? I have been through wars, through revolutions, you understand.
I know about these things. I am as old as time.”
The old woman was talking in her most fantastic vein. It was her habit
to talk thus as if she were wise beyond all people. She was, as Madame
Gigon said, a little cracked on this side of her.
“I know ... I know,” she continued to mutter in the most sinister
fashion until an unusually large madeleine put an end to her talk.
“How much did you say ... eight francs?” It was the peevish voice of
Madame de Cyon settling her bridge debts.
“Eight francs,” came the gruff reply of Captain Marchand. “Eight francs,
I tell you.” And then the tinkling of the Russian’s woman’s innumerable
gold bangles as she thrust her fat bejeweled hand into a small purse to
wrench loose from it the precious eight francs. “I had no luck to-day
... no luck at all,” she observed in the same irritable voice. “No cards
at all. What can one do without cards? Now last week I won ...” And she
fell to recounting past victories while Captain Marchand’s chair scraped
the floor savagely.
And then the voice of Madame Blaise quite close at hand, bidding Madame
Gigon good-by.
“On Tuesday, then, Louise. I shall expect you.”
“On Tuesday,” repeated Madame Gigon.
“And bring Madame Shane if she wishes to come. But not ‘Mees Tolliver.’
I can’t bear her and her American ways.” The old harridan bent lower,
her reticule shaking with the aged trembling of her thin body. “That
Schneidermann!” she observed scornfully. “He is a fool! The men I knew
when I was young were interested in revolutions and politics ... not
music. Music! Bah!” And to show her disgust she spat on the bare
floor.... Then she made a hissing noise and swept up the long dim
stairway, her boots squeaking as she walked.
Then the confusion of farewells as the last guests departed, Madame de
Cyon passing by, still in bad humor over her losses.
“On Friday, Madame Gigon,” she said. “My husband will be there. He is
home from the Balkans and full of news.”
“Of the wars I suppose.... On Friday, Madame.”
“And tell Madame Shane she is expected also.”
Then Captain Marchand and Madame Marchand, also in a bad humor because
they got on badly. Madame Marchand’s day fell on Monday and she too
asked the old woman to bring Madame Shane. Her invitation was made in
the same oblique fashion as the other. “Bring Madame Shane if she cares
to come.”
At last there remained no one save those whom Lily, in her vague, lazy
fashion called “the family.” These were old Madame Gigon, Ellen
Tolliver, Jean, herself and the Baron.
As the blond little Captain Marchand, pompously clanking his spurs as he
walked, disappeared up the darkening reaches of the long stairway, Jean,
who had been reading in a corner reserved for himself, sprang up with
the bound of a young animal and ran across to Ellen and Schneidermann.
“Alors! Viens donc ... la musique!” he cried, seizing her by the hand
while she struggled against his youthful strength, and Schneiderman
laughed at his exuberance. She resisted, bracing her strong slim body
and indulging in a mock struggle.
“Not a sound from me,” she replied. “Unless we talk English. I can make
no more effort with this waiter’s chatter.”
It was a price which she exacted frequently, for she spoke French badly,
though with great vigor, and with an accent so atrocious that it seemed
quite beyond hope of improvement. Her English carried the drawling tang
of the middle west. She called “dog” _dawg_ and “water” _watter_.
Jean resembled his mother. His hair, like hers, was red though less soft
and more carroty. His nose was short, straight, and conveyed an
impression of good humor and high spirits. He was tall for his age and
strongly built with a slim figure which gave every promise of one day
growing into the bulky strength of the Governor. He possessed a
restless, noisy, energy quite incomprehensible to Lily. To-day he wore
the uniform of a cadet at the cavalry school at St. Cyr. It was the idea
of the Baron, himself a cuirassier, that Jean should be trained for the
cavalry. “If he does not like it, he may quit,” he told Lily. As for
Jean, he appeared to like it well enough. He was as eager for a war as
Madame Blaise had been certain of one.
“Come along, Nell,” he cried. “Be a good cousin, and play that
four-handed stuff with me.”
Madame Gigon, with Michou and Criquette waddling amiably after her,
stole quietly away to her room to lock her door against the hideous
sounds which Ellen, Schneidermann and Jean made when they played what
they called modern “music.”
From the shelter of a divan placed between two of the tall windows, Lily
and the Baron watched the three noisy musicians. On the verge of
middle-age, her beauty appeared to have reached its height. There are
those who would have preferred her as a young girl, fresher, more gentle
and more naive. But likewise there are those who find the greatest
beauty in the opulent women of Titian, and it was this beauty which Lily
now possessed. She wore a black tea-gown, loosely and curiously made
with a collar which came high about her throat and emphasized the ivory
green tint of her skin and the copper red of her hair. She lay back
among the cushions watching Jean with the triumphant, possessive look
which strayed into her dark eyes whenever her son was with her. It was
an expression so intense as to be almost tragic.
The Baron smiled too, but his smile was concealed somewhat by the fierce
black military mustaches that adorned his face. They were the mustaches
of the French army, very long, very luxurious, and purposely rather
ill-kempt. There was nothing silky about them. On the contrary they were
the mustaches of an _homme de guerre_--stiff, bristling and full of
vitality. He was a dark, wiry Frenchman, with strong, nervous hands and
very bright black eyes which clouded easily with anger. He was perhaps
four or five years older than Lily and did not look his age. Indeed his
figure was youthful and muscular with the hard, fierce masculinity which
belongs to some men of the Latin race.
Whenever he regarded Ellen, it was with a stern glance that was almost
hostile. They did not get on well. Even Lily, indifferent and
unobservant, must have seen the hidden clash of their two strong
natures. It appeared that he resented Ellen’s wilfulness and even the
masculine simplicity of her clothes. On this evening she was at her
best. Her dark hair she no longer wore in the manner of Lily. It was
drawn straight back from her high forehead with an uncompromising
severity and done in a knot low on the back of her strong, well-shaped
neck. Jean dragged her by sheer force of strength to the piano where the
two sat down noisily, the boy searching through the music while Ellen
played the most amazing, delicate and agile roulades and cascades of
notes on the polished ivory keyboard. Schneidermann, thrown a little
into the background by the wild exuberance of the pair, drew up a chair
and waited quietly until it was time for him to turn the pages.
And during these preliminaries Lily and the Baron rose and made their
way silently through one of the tall windows on to the terrace and
thence into the garden. Lily herself confessed that she could not abide
the new music.
“I do not understand it,” she told her cousin. “And I do not find it
beautiful. It is beyond me, I confess. I cannot see what you and Jean
find in it. I suppose it is because I am growing old. You and Jean
belong to the same generation. I am too old for new ideas.” And for the
first time her laugh was not all geniality and warmth. It carried a fine
edge of bitterness, scarcely to be discerned but none the less
unmistakable.
And now in the soft spring twilight of the garden she and the Baron
walked along the neat gravel paths until they reached the wall shutting
out the Rue de Passy. Here they sat for a time on a stone bench saying
nothing, remaining quite still and silent. And at last as the darkness
grew more heavy they rose and wandered off again, aimlessly and slowly,
until in the shadow of a laburnum tree, the man seized her suddenly and
kissed her, long and passionately. And after a little while when it was
quite dark they entered the pavilion hidden by shrubbery where Jean
lived when he was home on a holiday.
The garden lay breathless and silent. Even the rumbling noises from the
street beyond the wall had died away with the coming of darkness. From
the distant Seine arose the faint whistle of the St. Cloud steamer, and
through the tall window drifted in wild fragments the savage, barbaric
chords of Stravinsky’s music.