In an elegant suite of chambers in the Rue Castiglione sat a merry party
at dessert.
Senhor José Francisco de Silvis was a short-legged, dark-complexioned
Portuguese, one of those who usually come from Brazil with incredible
wealth, live incredible lives in Paris, and, above all, become notorious
by making the most incredible acquaintances.
In that little company scarcely anybody, except those who had come in
pairs, knew his neighbour. And the host himself knew his guests only
through casual meetings at balls, _tables d' hôte_, or in the street.
Senhor de Silvis laughed much, and talked loudly of his success in life,
as is the habit of rich foreigners; and as he could not reach up to the
level of the Jockey Club, he gathered the best company he could find.
When he met anyone, he immediately asked for the address, and sent next
day an invitation to a little dinner. He spoke all languages, even
German, and one could see by his face that he was not a little proud
when he called over the table: Mein lieber Herr Doctor! Wie geht's
Ihnen?'
There was actually a live German doctor among this merry party. He had
an overgrown light-red beard, and that Sedan smile which invariably
accompanies the Germans in Paris.
The temperature of the conversation rose with the champagne; the sounds
of fluent and broken French were mingled with those of Spanish and
Portuguese. The ladies lay back in their chairs and laughed. The guests
already knew each other well enough not to be reserved or constrained.
Jokes and _bons-mots_ passed over the table, and from mouth to mouth.
'Der liebe Doctor' alone engaged in a serious discussion with the
gentleman next to him--a French journalist with a red ribbon in his
buttonhole.
And there was one more who was not drawn into the general merriment. He
sat on the right of Mademoiselle Adèle, while on the left was her new
lover, the corpulent Anatole, who had surfeited himself on truffles.
During dinner Mademoiselle Adèle had endeavoured, by many innocent
little arts, to infuse some life into her right-hand neighbour. However,
he remained very quiet, answering her courteously, but briefly, and in
an undertone.
At first she thought he was a Pole--one of those very tiresome specimens
who wander about and pretend to be outlaws. However, she soon perceived
that she had made a mistake, and this piqued Mademoiselle Adèle. For one
of her many specialties was the ability to immediately 'assort' all the
foreigners with whom she mingled, and she used to declare that she could
guess a man's nationality as soon as she had spoken ten words with him.
But this taciturn stranger caused her much perplexed cogitation. If he
had only been fair-haired, she would at once have set him down as an
Englishman, for he talked like one. But he had dark hair, a thick black
moustache, and a nice little figure. His fingers were remarkably long,
and he had a peculiar way of trifling with his bread and playing with
his dessert-fork.
'He is a musician,' whispered Mademoiselle Adèle to her stout friend.
'Ah!' replied Monsieur Anatole. 'I am afraid I have eaten too many
truffles.'
Mademoiselle Adèle whispered in his ear some words of good counsel, upon
which he laughed and looked very affectionate.
However, she could not relinquish her hold of the interesting foreigner.
After she had coaxed him to drink several glasses of champagne, he
became livelier, and talked more.
'Ah!' cried she suddenly; 'I hear it in your speech. You are an
Englishman!'
The stranger grew quite red in the face, and answered quickly, 'No,
madame.'
Mademoiselle Adèle laughed. 'I beg your pardon. I know that Americans
feel angry when they are taken for Englishmen.'
'Neither am I an American,' replied the stranger.
This was too much for Mademoiselle Adèle. She bent over her plate and
looked sulky, for she saw that Mademoiselle Louison opposite was
enjoying her defeat.
The foreign gentleman understood the situation, and added, half aloud:
'I am an Irishman, madame.'
'Ah!' said Mademoiselle Adèle, with a grateful smile, for she was easily
reconciled.
'Anatole! Irishman--what is that?' she asked in a whisper.
'The poor of England,' he whispered back.
'Indeed!'
Adèle elevated her eyebrows, and cast a shrinking, timid glance at the
stranger. She had suddenly lost much of her interest in him.
De Silvis's dinners were excellent. The party had sat long at table, and
when Monsieur Anatole thought of the oysters with which the feast had
begun, they appeared to him like a beautiful dream. On the contrary, he
had a somewhat too lively recollection of the truffles.
Dinner was over; hands were reaching out for glasses, or trifling with
fruit or biscuits.
That sentimental blonde, Mademoiselle Louison, fell into meditation over
a grape that she had dropped in her champagne glass. Tiny bright
air-bubbles gathered all round the coating of the fruit, and when it was
quite covered with these shining white pearls, they lifted the heavy
grape up through the wine to the surface.
'Look!' said Mademoiselle Louison, turning her large, swimming eyes upon
the journalist, 'look, white angels are bearing a sinner to heaven!'
'Ah! _charmant_, mademoiselle! What a sublime thought!' exclaimed the
journalist, enraptured.
Mademoiselle Louison's sublime thought passed round the table, and was
much admired. Only the frivolous Adèle whispered to her obese admirer,
'It would take a good many angels to bear you, Anatole.'
Meanwhile the journalist seized the opportunity; he knew how to rivet
the general attention. Besides, he was glad to escape from a tiresome
political controversy with the German; and, as he wore a red ribbon and
affected the superior journalistic tone, everybody listened to him.
He explained how small forces, when united, can lift great burdens; and
then he entered upon the topic of the day--the magnificent collections
made by the press for the sufferers by the floods in Spain, and for the
poor of Paris. Concerning this he had much to relate, and every moment
he said 'we,' alluding to the press. He talked himself quite warm about
'these millions, that we, with such great self-sacrifice, have raised.'
But each of the others had his own story to tell. Numberless little
touches of nobility--all savouring of self-denial--came to light from
amidst these days of luxury and pleasure.
Mademoiselle Louison's best friend--an insignificant little lady who sat
at the foot of the table--told, in spite, of Louison's protest, how the
latter had taken three poor seamstresses up to her own rooms, and had
them sew the whole of the night before the _fête_ in the hippodrome. She
had given the poor girls coffee and food, besides payment.
Mademoiselle Louison suddenly became an important personage at table,
and the journalist began to show her marked attention.
The many pretty instances of philanthropy, and Louison's swimming eyes,
put the whole company into a quiet, tranquil, benevolent frame of mind,
eminently in keeping with the weariness induced by the exertions of the
feast. And this comfortable feeling rose yet a few degrees higher after
the guests were settled in soft easy-chairs in the cool drawing-room.
There was no other light than the fire in the grate. Its red glimmer
crept over the English carpet and up the gold borders in the tapestry;
it shone upon a gilt picture-frame, on the piano that stood opposite,
and, here and there, on a face further away in the gloom. Nothing else
was visible except the red ends of cigars and cigarettes.
The conversation died away. The silence was broken only by an occasional
whisper or the sound of a coffee-cup being put aside; each seemed
disposed to enjoy, undisturbed, his genial mood and the quiet gladness
of digestion. Even Monsieur Anatole forgot his truffles, as he reclined
in a low chair close to the sofa, on which Mademoiselle Adèle had taken
her seat.
'Is there no one who will give us a little music?' asked Senhor de
Silvis from his chair. 'You are always so kind, Mademoiselle Adèle.'
'Oh no, no!' cried Mademoiselle; 'I am too tired.'
But the foreigner--the Irishman--rose from his corner and walked towards
the instrument.
'Ah, you will play for us! A thousand thanks, Monsieur--.' Senhor de
Silvis had forgotten the name--a thing that often happened to him with
his guests.
'He is a musician,' said Mademoiselle Adèle to her friend. Anatole
grunted admiringly.
Indeed, all were similarly impressed by the mere way in which he sat
down and, without any preparation, struck a few chords here and there,
as if to wake the instrument.
Then he began to play--lightly, sportively, frivolously, as befitted the
situation. The melodies of the day were intermingled with fragments of
waltzes and ballads; all the ephemeral trifles that Paris hums over for
eight days he blended together with brilliantly fluent execution.
The ladies uttered exclamations of admiration, and sang a few bars,
keeping time with their feet. The whole party followed the music with
intense interest; the strange artist had hit their mood, and drawn them
all with him from the beginning. 'Der liebe Doctor' alone listened with
the Sedan smile on his face; the pieces were too easy for him.
But soon there came something for the German too; he nodded now and then
with a sort of appreciation.
It was a strange situation: the piquant fragrance that filled the air,
the pleasure-loving women--these people, so free and unconstrained, all
strangers to one another, hidden in the elegant, half-dark salon, each
following his most secret thoughts--thoughts born of the mysterious,
muffled music; whilst the firelight rose and fell, and made everything
that was golden glimmer in the darkness.
And there constantly came more for the doctor. From time to time he
turned and signed to De Silvis, as he heard the loved notes of 'unser
Schumann,' 'unser Beethoven,' or even of 'unser famoser Richard.'
Meanwhile the stranger played on, steadily and without apparent effort,
slightly inclined to the left, so as to give power to the bass. It
sounded as if he had twenty fingers, all of steel; he knew how to unite
the multitudinous notes in a single powerful clang. Without any pause to
mark the transition from one melody to another, he riveted the interest
of the company by constant new surprises, graceful allusions, and genial
combinations, so that even the least musical among them were constrained
to listen with eager attention.
But the character of the music imperceptibly changed. The artist bent
constantly over the instrument, inclining more to the left, and there
was a strange unrest in the bass notes. The Baptists from 'The Prophet'
came with heavy step; a rider from 'Damnation de Faust' dashed up from
far below, in a desperate, hobbling hell-gallop.
The rumbling grew stronger and stronger down in the depths, and Monsieur
Anatole again began to feel the effects of the truffles. Mademoiselle
Adèle half rose; the music would not let her lie in peace.
Here and there the firelight shone on a pair of black eyes staring at
the artist. He had lured them with him, and now they could not break
loose; downward, ever downward, he led them--downward, where was a dull
and muffled murmur as of threatenings and plaints.
'Er führt eine famose linke Hand,' said the doctor. But De Silvis did
not hear him; he sat, like the others, in breathless expectancy.
A dark, sickening dread went out from the music and spread itself over
them all. The artist's left hand seemed to be tying a knot that would
never be loosened, while his right made light little runs, like flames,
up and down in the treble. It sounded as if there was something uncanny
brewing down in the cellar, whilst those above burnt torches and made
merry.
A sigh was heard, a half-scream from one of the ladies, who felt ill;
but no one heeded it. The artist had now got quite down into the bass,
and his tireless fingers whirled the notes together, so that a cold
shudder crept down the backs of all.
But into that threatening, growling sound far below there began to come
an upward movement. The notes ran into, over, past each other--upward,
always upward, but without making any way. There was a wild struggle to
get up, as it were a multitude of small, dark figures scratching and
tearing; a mad eagerness, a feverish haste; a scrambling, a seizing with
hands and teeth; kicks, curses, shrieks, prayers--and all the while the
artist's hands glided upward so slowly, so painfully slowly.
'Anatole,' whispered Adèle, pale as death, 'he is playing Poverty.'
'Oh, these truffles!' groaned Anatole, holding his stomach.
All at once the room was lit up. Two servants with lamps and candelabra
appeared in the _portière_; and at the same moment the stranger finished
by bringing down his fingers of steel with all his might in a
dissonance, so startling, so unearthly, that the whole party sprang up.
'Out with the lamps!' shouted De Silvis.
'No, no!' shrieked Adèle; 'I dare not be in the dark. Oh, that dreadful
man!'
Who was it? Yes, who was it? They involuntarily crowded round the host,
and no one noticed the stranger slip out behind the servants.
De Silvis tried to laugh. 'I think it was the devil himself. Come, let
us go to the opera.'
'To the opera! Not at any price!' exclaimed Louison. 'I will hear no
music for a fortnight.'
'Oh, those truffles!' moaned Anatole.
The party broke up. They had all suddenly realized that they were
strangers in a strange place, and each one wished to slip quietly home.
As the journalist conducted Mademoiselle Louison to her carriage, he
said: 'Yes, this is the consequence of letting one's self be persuaded
to dine with these semi-savages. One is never sure of the company he
will meet.'
'Ah, how true! He quite spoiled my good spirits,' said Louison
mournfully, turning her swimming eyes upon her companion. 'Will you
accompany me to La Trinité? There is a low mass at twelve o'clock.'
The journalist bowed, and got into the carriage with her.
But as Mademoiselle Adèle and Monsieur Anatole drove past the English
dispensary in the Rue de la Paix, he stopped the driver, and said
pleadingly to his fair companion: 'I really think I must get out and get
something for those truffles. You will excuse me, won't you? That music,
you know.'
'Don't mind me, my friend. Speaking candidly, I don't think either of us
is specially lively this evening. Good-night.'
She leant back in the carriage, relieved at finding herself alone; and
this light, frivolous creature cried as if she had been whipped whilst
she drove homeward.
Anatole was undoubtedly suffering from the truffles, but yet he thought
he came to himself as the carriage rolled away. Never in their whole
acquaintance had they been so well pleased with each other as at this
moment of parting.
'Der liebe Doctor' had come best through the experience, because, being
a German, he was hardened in music. All the same, he resolved to take a
walk as far as Müller's _brasserie_ in the Rue Richelieu to get a decent
glass of German beer, and perhaps a little bacon, on the top of it all.