Hagedorn, “but I’ve failed. It was all very simple and I’ve made it
sound highfalutin. I’m not an artist in words, you see. But to me she
was a revelation, a miracle of frankness, sympathy--charm.
“But ten minutes after I left her I could not help wondering why she
went about with that Jew; what was the attraction, the connection.
Fishy, it seemed to me; for I knew him, knew that no good thing could
live in his atmosphere. I ought to tell you about him but I can’t. I’m
conscious I’m not fair to him; no human being could be as vile, sordid,
soulless, unscrupulous, cruel and vain as I knew him to be. I’ve heard
him boast of things an assassin would be ashamed of. Yet he was big
and handsome in a common style, a good writer, a good actor too, and
always carried himself with an assured mastery in life. He always
held the floor wherever he was. I remember his saying once he could
always borrow money from the worldly wise by saying: ‘Give me a hundred
gulden; I don’t promise ever to pay you back. You should be willing to
pay for my society’; and from greenhorns by insisting it was a loan to
be returned next day. The funny part of it was, he said, that a second
loan was always easier to get than the first; humans hated to confess
even to themselves that they had been fooled. And he believed as little
in woman’s virtue as in man’s generosity.
“‘Their refusals,’ he used to say, ‘are all either coldness or
calculation. Choose the right moment and----’
“‘And your mother?’ someone retorted one evening.
“‘My race tells you,’ he responded.
“A common nature and mind sharpened by life.
“When we walked together a dozen girls gave him the glad eye for one
who noticed me. Don’t think I was envious of his gifts or looks; I
never was envious in my life. But though he sought me out I had avoided
him always till I found him with Marie.
“Two or three days after that meeting on the street he sent me a ‘wire’
to say he’d call for me at seven to take me to a new dance. I was ready
and went with him.
“‘You lucky dog,’ he began. ‘She’s always talking about you and your
playing; it’ll be your own fault if you don’t win her, and she’s a
seductive little devil. I shouldn’t be surprised if it was her first
“affair.” Fancy a professional dancer a virgin--everything’s possible
in this mad world! And she certainly has what the French call “the
devil in her body.”’
“I could not discuss her with him. The thought of seeing her quickened
my blood and with beating heart and glad eyes I went to my fate.
“Yet all the preliminaries were hateful to me. When we reached the
concert hall the performance had begun, so Goldescu took me round to
the stage door and went to her dressing-room as if it had been his own.
“‘You know the way?’ I asked in surprise.
“‘I should think so,’ he replied characteristically. ‘I’ve paid to
learn it in every theatre in Vienna.’
“I could have struck the dog in the face.
“At his knock she opened--‘Come in’--and in we went, though she was not
half-dressed.
“‘The days have seemed long,’ she said, turning at once to me. ‘I have
thought about you a great deal.’
“I, too, had thought about her; in fact I had hardly thought of
anything else.
“The stage bell sounded.
“‘I must get ready,’ she said; ‘forgive me! You’ll come back?’
“‘I shall be delighted! After the show?’ I asked.
“‘After my dance,’ she corrected, smiling. ‘I’ll need only ten minutes
to get rid of the grease paint and change: I’ll grudge the minutes.’
“She had voiced my very thought. ‘So shall I,’ I replied like an echo,
and we went to our Press seats in the front row.
“Marie’s dance was announced as ‘A Joy Dance,’ and she appeared all in
rose; but the skirt was short and the stuff was so thin and so soft
that it clung and drew attention to the beauties of her figure in the
most provocative way. My mouth parched while looking at her: I could
scarcely draw breath, and heavy pulses hammered in my temples. I was
filled with a blind rage of jealousy; all these men seeing her nudity
seemed an outrage.
“‘In the beginning dress was mere decoration,’ said Goldescu, ‘and not
clothing, we are told. Marioutza is a true primitive, eh?’
“I could not trust myself to speak. ‘How could she? Why?’
“I was all interrogation and revolt; angry beyond control. Yet even
in my rage I recognised that she was dancing marvellously; now like
a lily swaying in water, now floating like thistledown, seeming to
rebound as lightly as she came to earth; and when the music quickened
and she sprang from the stage, one really felt that she might go higher
indefinitely--
‘Like an unbodied joy
Whose race has just begun.’
It all showed such a union of rare natural gifts and long assiduous
practice as only an artist could appreciate.
“She ended her dance by springing into the wings and left us with the
image of her willowy, slight figure outlined as distinctly as a figure
on a Greek vase.
“We walked about for a few minutes and on turning found her at the
stage door.
“‘What do you think of it?’ she asked with the anxiety of the true
artist. For the life of me I could not answer as I wanted to.
“‘I liked it, of course,’ I said, ‘liked it immensely; but I preferred
your Love Dance.’
“‘Really?’ she cried in such chagrined disappointment that I had to
mitigate the rebuff. ‘I mean, love is a greater theme than joy,’ I
began. ‘Don’t you think----’
“Goldescu chose this moment to take his leave. ‘Don’t let him cast you
down!’ he cried. ‘I’ve never seen you more entrancing: you’re a marvel;
but alas! I’ve something special on to-night,’ he added. We let him go
almost without noticing him.
“On our way to her rooms the girl enthralled me. She seemed to divine
my secret thoughts and my jealousy vanished before her outspokenness.
Our talk was confidential and intimate from the beginning.
“‘Your playing the other night,’ she began, ‘was magical, but I
was overwrought by it and--and--I wanted to meet you under better
conditions: you understand?’
“Of course I understood. It was my own feeling.
“‘I want you to like my Joy Dance,’ she went on. ‘I wrote the music
for it myself. Often as a girl the beauty of our river and woodland in
summer and the song of the birds used to make me weep for joy. Bukarest
is so lovely and I wanted to render that beauty that’s one with joy and
delight. I’ve a pretty figure and I’m glad of it. We all love beauty;
don’t we?’
“I felt that I had been a brute.
“‘I know, I understand,’ I cried; ‘but I’m a man and had already put
you apart and above everyone, and when you showed your figure it made
me jealous; it was petty of me.’
“‘Let me explain it to you,’ she said with her childlike sincerity.
‘You know, we dancers look on our bodies as you do on your violin, as
our instrument. You love a fine one and know all its good points and
so do we. How often we used to laugh at some girl with big shoulders
and bust trying to learn to dance; she couldn’t: the instrument was not
right.’
“‘But do you like exposing yourself?’ I asked, all my innate prejudices
coming to rationalise my jealousy.
“‘I don’t think of it in that way,’ she replied. ‘I want to express a
certain emotion: I try to do it as perfectly as I can; I never even
think whether I am showing a few inches more or less of figure.... Is
that immodest of me? You know, I want you to know me as I am--my faults
even. Others may take the grease paint for my complexion: I want you to
see me as I really am, heart and soul and all!... I think as a girl I
was almost without modesty, in mind as in body. I used to picture and
imagine all things to myself. I was dreadfully curious, longed to know
this and that. The mind is immoral, isn’t it? or rather it has nothing
to do with morality?’ And she looked up at me anxiously. I nodded and
she went on:
“‘My mother used to be shocked at me. She was a Catholic and religious,
and when she found me studying my figure in the glass (I often wanted
to kiss it) she told me that I must be modest, and that the body was
sinful.
“‘I couldn’t believe it. I don’t now. I love the curve of my neck, and
my small breasts are lovely to me; and even my slender feet please me
intimately.’
“I was shaken with delight: she was clear as crystal, with a woman’s
depth and a woman’s delight in her beauty. I smiled and she continued:
“‘Am I immodest? I don’t think so. If there were anything ugly about me
I’d conceal it and be ashamed of it. I hate my legs because the muscles
show; but I can’t help that; it’s part of my art and I’m not modest or
immodest about them: I just recognise the fact----’
“‘You dear!’ I cried, ‘I’ve called modesty the fig-leaf of ugliness.’
“‘That’s it, that’s it,’ she crowed with delight; ‘that’s the truth;
the talk of the girls in the dance classes I call immodest; but----
“‘I like your strong, stern face,’ she broke off, ‘and the boy’s eyes
you have and your bronzed-fair skin pleases me. Why shouldn’t I say so?
But most of all, your genius, your wonderful playing, the divine spirit
in you----’
“‘You must hear me once at my best!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ll play for you
better than I’ve ever played. Let me see. On Friday I play at Prince
Lichtenstein’s. Would you come?’
“‘Goldescu wants me to dance there,’ she said. ‘Suppose we both perform
in public, yet just for each other?’
“She was ravishing and her eyes held mine. Why were they so beautiful
to me? Was it the long dark lashes or the brown brook depths? I can’t
say. For the first time in my life I knew love. I could not help
touching her hips as we walked side by side; I was drunk with desire.
I knew it was love I felt, love once for all, love that was deathless;
this was my mate; the strength of my feeling frightened me. I longed to
take her in my arms, but refrained; though the passion of admiration I
felt for her and her sacred boldness was clear enough, I’m sure, for
now and again her eyes gave themselves to mine.
“At her door she held out her hand and though I wanted her lips I
restrained myself. I had had so much; I did not want to go in. I wanted
to drink the divine cup little by little and prolong the ecstasy. But I
could not help putting my hands on her shoulders and looking deep into
her eyes while I said: ‘Auf Wiedersehn! Mein Alles!’
“I’m conscious I’ve remembered badly; given you no idea of her charm
for me.
“I went home as if on air, drunk with the hope that she loved me, crazy
with desire sharpened by this and that picture of her slight fleeting
girl’s figure.
“Next morning I awoke to find a letter from her begging me to send or
bring her the music I had composed for her Love Dance, so that, as she
said, ‘even when dancing I may feel inspired by your spirit.’
“I sat down at once and wrote out the music and took it to her
apartment that same afternoon. It was the first time I had seen her in
her frame, so to speak. The drawing-room was very simple; half-a-dozen
photos of men and girl friends; three or four prints of famous dancers,
all sent her by Goldescu, she told me, and nothing more except a piano
and the usual furniture. At first she seemed shy; her eyes withdrawn;
her hands, I remember, were very cold, but her face was lovelier than
I thought; she grew on one; surely her eyes were larger than the night
before.
“She made me talk about myself and my tours, of Paris and London and
Madrid; ‘people everywhere much the same,’ was her comment. I had to
tell her of my mother and father and my beginnings and all I hoped to
be and do.
“Then a samovar was brought in and we had tea, and afterwards I went
to the piano and played my Love Dance music for her, and as I ended
she put her hand on my shoulder and I could not help putting my arm
round her waist, seeking to draw her to me. At first she yielded and I
thought she was going to kiss me; but then she grew stiff and looked
into my eyes and smiled, shaking her head:
‘Touch hands and part with laughter,
Touch lips and part with tears,’
she chanted mischievously, the brown eyes alight. She pleased me so
intimately that even her caprices were delightful. She wanted to try my
music over before me; she played quite well, I found; and then I had to
play it again while she danced. ‘Oh, I shall have a new effect!’ she
triumphed. ‘You’re a dear, dear magician!’ she cried, and for a moment
put her glowing cheek against mine.
“I don’t know why I record all this, but I want you to understand the
full perfection of my love. Whatever she did or refused to do pleased
me; her boldness of speech and virginal shrinking from even a kiss
delighted me equally.
“That evening at Prince Lichtenstein’s was a triumph. She danced
divinely and I really think my music helped her. I am sure as she
sank backward on the floor, while the music throbbed with passion
and sang with delight, no human figure had ever shown a more complete
abandonment.
“The audience went crazy; you know our Viennese and how they love to
show their feelings. Well, I never saw anything like the enthusiasm
displayed that night. I suppose there were five hundred guests in the
great ballroom, the best names in Austria, and they were all entranced.
They cheered and kissed their hands to her in wild admiration.
“She came to me before them all with glowing cheeks.
“‘O Master,’ she cried, ‘what music! I felt as if I were in your arms.
Do you really love me? Can you? Are you sure?’
“For a moment I was tongue-tied and thought-bound too.
“‘You know I love you,’ I heard myself say. And at once before them all
she gave me her lips, as if we had been alone. I adored her for her
noble courage.
“Love to ordinary people is the event of their lives; but artists
often have a tenfold keener delight. Suppose a sculptor suddenly
finds in the woman he loves the most perfect model he has ever met;
his passion is extraordinarily sharpened. Suppose a woman has tried
for years and years to dance better than anyone else and suddenly
finds her powers intensified by a musician who gives her surprising
melodies, her æsthetic ambitions are all realised beyond hope; if
she’s inclined to love the musician you can easily see how her passion
will be heightened. That’s how I explain the bursting forth of Marie’s
love. As for me, well, from the beginning she had been to me perfection
perfected. At last I had found the ideal we all long for, and my very
soul was ravished.
“I looked up and the men and women were all smiling, as I thought,
maliciously or disdainfully. (What were we to them after all but a
musician and a dancing-girl?) I had an inspiration. Taking her by the
hand I led her over to Prince Lichtenstein and bowing said: ‘Prince,
you have often been kind to me, but never so kind as to-night; for in
your house I have found my bride.’
“Everyone applauded and shouted, and Lichtenstein swore they must
celebrate the betrothal of the two greatest artists in the world;
and indeed we did celebrate it all night long, for the early morning
sunshine was gilding the house as the Prince took us to the door and
sent us home in his state carriage with outriders, if you please, and
all his guests cheering on the steps. And even then he would not let us
go till I had promised to celebrate the marriage in his palace.
“I took my love to her rooms and she would have me go in with her; so
I sent the carriage home and stayed. And there with shining great eyes
she told me she had loved me from the first and only wanted to make
me happy, and as I kissed her holding her in my arms I was more than
happy, drunk with pride and joy, delirious with desire.
“Next week my father and mother came to Vienna and I took a house and
began to furnish it, and Prince Lichtenstein sent me some pictures
and others of the nobility followed suit. The Gross-Herzog Rudolph,
who called himself my first admirer, gave me the whole drawing-room
furniture--pictures and all--from one of his palaces.
“Our marriage was an event, but the part I liked best was that my
mother had taken a great fancy to Marie and told me at the wedding she
hoped to be a grandmother in a year.
“They say happiness has no history and I found it true; I could tell
you little or nothing of the next three years, except that as I learned
to know my wife’s nature I loved her more and more. Positively she had
no faults and a myriad of high qualities, all set off by gaiety and
sweet temper.
“After the first season in Vienna I took her for a tour through Italy
and the second year through Spain. We learned everything together,
languages and all. I found it easy with a few performances each year
to increase our fortune; the only drawback to our joy was that we had
no children, but neither of us missed anything; at least I certainly
did not, and my wife assured me she was content. But she was always
encouraging me to write an opera or an oratorio to show how great I
was! _The Passion of St. Matthew_ by Bach was her favourite: I ought to
do a great oratorio! I didn’t want to face the work; I was continually
plagued by the idea of making first a new and scientific musical
notation. I wanted to go to China and Japan and learn their music and
then build up a music which should include theirs and be as effective
in Peking or Kyoto as in Paris or Vienna. Meanwhile I worked constantly
in my own lazy way and made up my mind to spend the next summer in
Shanghai. Marie consented.
“But that season in Vienna, for some reason or other, perhaps to excite
my ambition, she took up her dancing again, and got Goldescu to get her
engagements and play publicity manager. I wrote several new themes for
her and she certainly embroidered them superbly.
“I don’t think our passion had lost its keen edge; I found Marie a
wonderful mistress, with an extraordinary congeniality of taste and
desires. It was she who first taught me to love pictures. If I proposed
to go into the Carpathians in mid-winter to hunt bear and wolves, or in
summer to go to the Lido at Venice for a week’s bathing, she clapped
her hands and crowed joyful acceptance. Never was there such a joyous,
eager companion.
“I often wondered what her own intimate wish was: had she desires apart
from mine?
“I had bought a little country place twenty or thirty miles from Vienna
and I went there frequently, sometimes without her, to put it in order.
“Once or twice I had been annoyed by her liking for Goldescu; she
always told me she had known him as boy and girl together, and had
never even kissed him; his cynical effrontery, she insisted, disgusted
her; but she had no good reason to give him up; he was so serviceable;
she used him for this and for that and I believed her. I would have
believed whatever she chose to tell me. I was too happy even to work at
my art, too happy to measure how happy I was when the blow fell.
“I had gone out to our country place one Saturday and found the
water-tank that supplied the bathroom had burst and overflowed
everywhere. I wired to Vienna for skilled help and stayed to set them
to work. I wrote my wife I should not be in Vienna before Wednesday
or Thursday and returned on Monday afternoon to get fifteen feet of
piping that was urgently needed. I got the piping and I saw that I
had half-an-hour before I could catch my train. Naturally I drove to
my home and went upstairs. The drawing-room door was ajar; hearing
low voices, I pushed it half open. On the sofa opposite was my wife
nestling in the corner and leaning over her, half behind her, was
Goldescu. As I was about to speak he leaned forward, lifted up her chin
and kissed her on the mouth. I was petrified; literally unconscious
that I drew the door to; suddenly I found myself at the stair-head,
yards away, shivering with cold. Like a sleep-walker I passed down into
the hall, picked up the coil of piping, went out the front door, found
a droshky and drove to the station--mechanically!
“I gave the coil of piping to the overseer, who told me I must have
caught a chill and following his advice I went to bed. He gave me a hot
rum. I fell asleep and four hours afterwards awoke to a tempest of rage
and hate that altered my whole nature.
“The rest can be told briefly. In the morning I wired my lawyer, who
was also my father’s; I told him the truth and begged him to tell it
to my parents. I made over half of all I possessed to my wife, asked
the lawyer to tell her the truth if she pressed for it and that evening
took train for Venice. Since then I have been a wanderer over the face
of the globe. I buried myself for two years in China and think I know
their music now and their language and the spirit of that great people
as well.
“I went all through Japan time and again and understand, I think, their
music.
“But I’ve never done anything: the truth is I’ve never recovered from
the shock of that afternoon. I used to hate her when I thought of it;
often feared I should go mad with hate; but now I’m just cold to it
all; it might have happened to someone else for all I care; but with my
love I lost my love of life; all the uses of living became stale, flat
and tedious to me.
“Three months ago I returned to Austria after six years of wandering,
and went down to Salzburg. My father and mother were both dead. I came
to Vienna meaning to make an end; what was there for me to live for?
“You saved my life; for a brief space I’ve warmed myself with your
inexhaustible strength and vigorous love of living, but it can’t go
on....
“‘Everyone,’ says the Russian, ‘gets tired of holding up an empty
sack.’ You’d get tired in time, my friend, or if you did not, you must
feel that I am tired already; I have travelled the path before, know
all the toils and triumphs of it, and therefore it all says nothing
to me--nothing! I got the best of life too easily, too early; I can’t
struggle; I won’t; it’s fat that floats,” he added disdainfully.
“Did your wife never write to you or seek to see you to explain?” I
asked in amazement.
“She wrote,” he said, “and the lawyer forwarded it; but I never read
the letter; I would not reopen the wound; the cicatrice was painful
enough; why should I let her torture me again?”
“But you can’t tell anything from the act,” I insisted; “one might kiss
and nothing more.”
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“You haven’t followed my story with full sympathy,” he said....
“Surely you know without my telling you that I went through all the
tortures of hell. At first I wanted to go back and kill the Jew, and
when that madness left me the memory of her beauty and her kisses drove
me crazy. She had made me feel more intensely than anyone: her body
was always before me, in its slim beauty; I’d see it, touch it, get
drunk with the odour of it. A thousand times I said to myself: ‘I’ll
go back. What does it matter to me whom she kissed so long as she’ll
kiss me, give me the illusion of love?’ My body ached for her, man; a
thousand times my mouth parched and desire choked me.
“And my maimed, lost soul cried for her day and night incessantly.
I was lonely always and missed her as the blind man misses his
eyesight.... Time and again I found myself in the train, once at least
I got to Vienna and then went back.... I could not face the ruins of
such perfect happiness, such divine bliss....
“Don’t think I blamed her! No, I quickly got over that. ‘She may have
kissed him,’ I said to myself, ‘for any one of a thousand reasons; the
flesh is faithless in woman as in man; she may even have loved me best,
nay, she must have loved me best, else why did she marry me and not him
whom she had known all her life?’...
“But the heart does not reason, my friend; it aches and contracts in
agony, or it triumphs and grows big and joyful. My heart bled and my
life-blood drained away. Day and night I cried: ‘Why? Why? Oh, my soul!
Marie! why?’ The pain choked me and I lived without living, without joy
or hope or interest, till gradually, years later, away off there in
China, I found myself taking a faint interest in music; but my heart
was dead and my interest in life was no longer living, vivid, but mere
curiosity....
“They say that cells in the body can outlive the body’s death for
years; my music cells will outlive soul and body in me; but the
little corpse-light of life is not strong enough to do any good; I’m
finished....
“Are you answered, my friend?”
“I understand,” I said. “But, nevertheless,” I persisted, “it’s your
duty to write a great piece of really new music, music that shall
appeal to every human ear. Think, man, of the fame to be won; immortal
reputation as the _Bahnbrecher_, the Roadmaker to a new Kingdom of the
Spirit. You owe a debt to Humanity; pay it first; your life’s not your
own.”