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VISIONARIES
BY
JAMES HUNEKER
J'aime les nuages ... là bas...!
BAUDELAIRE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published October, 1905.
A
MON CHER MAÎTRE
REMY DE GOURMONT
PARIS
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. A MASTER OF COBWEBS 1
II. THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN 23
III. THE PURSE OF AHOLIBAH 44
IV. REBELS OF THE MOON 64
V. THE SPIRAL ROAD 80
VI. A MOCK SUN 110
VII. ANTICHRIST 135
VIII. THE ETERNAL DUEL 145
IX. THE ENCHANTED YODLER 149
X. THE THIRD KINGDOM 168
XI. THE HAUNTED HARPSICHORD 188
XII. THE TRAGIC WALL 203
XIII. A SENTIMENTAL REBELLION 227
XIV. HALL OF THE MISSING FOOTSTEPS 249
XV. THE CURSORY LIGHT 266
XVI. AN IRON FAN 278
XVII. THE WOMAN WHO LOVED CHOPIN 289
XVIII. THE TUNE OF TIME 309
XIX. NADA 326
XX. PAN 332
VISIONARIES
I
A MASTER OF COBWEBS
I
Alixe Van Kuyp sat in the first-tier box presented to her husband with
the accustomed heavy courtesy of the Société Harmonique. She went early
to the hall that she might hear the entire music-making of the
evening--Van Kuyp's tone-poem, Sordello, was on the programme between a
Weber overture and a Beethoven symphony, an unusual honour for a young
American composer. If she had gone late, it would have seemed an
affectation, she reasoned. Her husband kept within doors; she could tell
him all. And then, was there not Elvard Rentgen?
She regretted that she had invited the Parisian critic to her box. It
happened at a _soirée_, where he showed his savage profile among
admiring musical lambs. But he was never punctual at musical affairs.
This consoled Alixe.
Perhaps he would forget her impulsive, foolish speech,--"without him the
music would fall upon unheeding ears,--he, who interpreted art for the
multitude, the holder of the critical key that unlocked masterpieces."
She had felt the banality of her compliment as she uttered it, and she
knew the man who listened, his glance incredulous, his mouth smiling,
could not be deceived. Rentgen had been too many years in the candy shop
to care for sweets. She recalled her mean little blush as he twisted his
pointed, piebald beard with long, fat fingers and leisurely
traversed--his were the measuring eyes of an architect--her face, her
hair, her neck, and finally, stared at her ears until they burned like a
child's cheek in frost time.
Alixe Van Kuyp was a large woman, with a conscientious head and gray
eyes. As she waited, she realized that it was one of her timid nights,
when colour came easily and temper ran at its lowest ebb. She had begged
Van Kuyp to cancel the habit of not listening to his own music except at
rehearsal, and, annoyed by his stubbornness, neglected to tell him of
the other invitation. The house was quite full when the music began.
Uneasiness overtook her as the Oberon slowly stole upon her
consciousness. She forgot Rentgen; a more disquieting problem presented
itself. Richard's music--how would it sound in the company of the old
masters, those masters who were newer than Wagner, newer than Strauss
and the "moderns"! She envisaged her husband--small, slim, with his
bushy red hair, big student's head--familiarly locking arms with Weber
and Beethoven in the hall of fame. No, the picture did not convince her.
She was his severest censor. Not one of the professional critics could
put their fingers on Van Kuyp's weak spots--"his sore music," as he
jestingly called it--so surely as his wife. She had studied; she had
even played the violin in public; but she gave up her virtuosa ambitions
for the man she had married during their student years in Germany. Now
the old doubts came to life as the chivalric tones of Weber rose to her
sharpened senses. Why couldn't Richard--
The door in the anteroom opened, her guest entered. Alixe was not
dismayed. She left her seat and, closing the curtains, greeted him.
The overture was ending as Rentgen sat down beside her in the intimate
little chamber, lighted by a solitary electric bulb.
"You are always thoughtful," she murmured.
"My dear lady, mine is the honour. And if you do not care, can't we hear
the music of your young man--" he smiled, she thought, acidly--"here? If
I sit outside, the world will say--we have to be careful of our
unsmirched reputations--we poor critics and slave-drivers of the deaf."
She drew her hand gently away. He had held it, playfully tapping it as
he slowly delivered himself in short sentences. He was a Dane, but his
French and English were without trace of accent; certain intonations
alone betrayed his Scandinavian origin.
Alixe could not refuse, for the moment he finished speaking she heard a
too familiar motive, the ponderous phrase in the brass choir which Van
Kuyp intended as the thematic label for his hero, "Sordello."
"Ah, there's your Browning in tone for you," whispered the critic. She
wished him miles away. The draperies were now slightly parted and into
the room filtered the grave, languorous accents of the new tone-poem.
Her eyes were fixed by Rentgen's. His expression changed; with nostrils
dilated like a hunter scenting prey, his rather inert, cold features
became transfigured; he was the man who listened, the cruel judge who
sentenced. And she hoped, also the kind friend who would consider the
youth and inexperience of the culprit. To the morbidly acute hearing of
the woman, the music had a ring of hollow sonority after the denser
packed phrases of Weber.
She had read Sordello with her husband until she thought its meaning was
as clear as high noon. By the critic's advice the subject had been
selected for musical treatment. Sordello's overweening spiritual
pride--"gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy"--appealed to Van
Kuyp. The stress of souls, the welter of cross-purposes which begirt the
youthful dreamer, his love for Palma, and his swift death when all the
world thrust upon him its joys--here were motives, indeed, for any
musician of lofty aim and sympathetic imagination.
Alixe recalled the interminable arguments, the snatches of poetry, the
hasty rushes to the keyboard; a composer was in travail. At the end of a
year, Rentgen professed his satisfaction; Van Kuyp stood on the highroad
to fame. Of that there could be no doubt; Elvard Rentgen would say so in
print. Alixe had been reassured--
Yet sitting now within the loop of her husband's music it suddenly
became insipid, futile, and lacking in those enchantments for which she
yearned. Her eyes dropped to the shapely hands meekly folded in her lap,
dropped because the bold, interrogative expression on Rentgen's face
disturbed her. She knew, as any woman would have known, that he admired
her--but was he not Richard's friend? His glance enveloped her with
piteous mockery.
The din was tremendous. After passages of dark music, in which the
formless ugly reigned, occurred the poetic duel between Sordello and
Eglamor at Palma's Court of Love. But why all this stress and fury? On
the pianoforte the delicate episode sounded gratefully; with the thick
riotous orchestration came a disillusioning transformation. There was
noise without power, there was sensuality that strove to imitate the
tenderness of passion; and she had fancied it a cloudy garden of love.
Alixe raised an involuntary hand to her ear.
"Yes," whispered the critic, "I warned him not to use his colours with a
trowel. His theme is not big enough to stand it." He lifted thin
eyebrows and to her overheated brain was an unexpected Mephisto. Then
the music whirled her away to Italy; the love scene of Palma and
Sordello. It should have been the apex of the work.
"Sounds too much like Tschaïkowsky's Francesca da Rimini," interrupted
Rentgen. She was annoyed.
"Why didn't you tell Van Kuyp before he scored the work?" she demanded,
her long gray eyes beginning to blacken.
"I did, my dear lady, I did. But you know what musicians are--" He
shrugged a conclusion with his narrow shoulders. Alixe coldly regarded
him. There was something new and dangerous in his attitude to her
husband's music this evening.
Her heart began to beat heavily. What if her suspicions were but the
advance guard of a painful truth! What if this keen analyst of other
men's ideas--she dared not finish the thought. With a sluggish movement
the music uncoiled itself like a huge boa about to engulf a tiny rabbit.
The simile forced itself against her volition; all this monstrous
preparation for a--rabbit! In a concert-hall the poetic idea of the
tone-poem was petty. And the churning of the orchestra, foaming hysteria
of the strings, bellowing of the brass--would they never cease! Such an
insane chase after a rabbit! Yes, she said the word to herself and found
her lips carved into a hard smile, which she saw reflected as in a trick
mirror upon the face of Elvard Rentgen. _He_ understood.
Of little avail Sordello's frantic impotencies. She saw through the
rhetorical trickeries of the music, weighed its cheap splendours,
realized the mediocrity of this second-rate poet turned symphonist.
Image after image pressed upon her brain, each more pessimistic, more
depressing than its predecessor. Alixe could have wept. Her companion
placed his hand on her arm. His fingers burned; she moved, but she felt
his will controlling her mood. With high relief she heard the music end.
There was conventional applause. Alixe restlessly peered into the
auditorium. Again she saw opera-glasses turned toward the box. "Our good
friends," she rather bitterly thought. Rentgen recognized her mental
turmoil.
"Don't worry," he said soothingly. "It will be all right to-morrow
morning. What I write will make the fortune of the composition." He did
not utter this vaingloriously, but as a man who stated simple truth. She
gazed at him, her timidity and nervousness returning in full tide.
"I know I am overwrought. I should be thankful. But--but, isn't it
deception--I mean, will it be fair to conceal from Richard the real
condition of affairs?" He took her hand.
"Spoken like a true wife," he gayly exclaimed. "My dear friend, there
will be no deception. Only encouragement, a little encouragement. As for
deceiving a composer, telling him that he may not be so wonderful as he
thinks--that's impossible. I know these star-shouldering souls, these
farmers of phantasms who exist in a world by themselves. It would be a
pity to let in the cold air of reality--anyhow Van Kuyp has some
talent."
Like lifting mists revealing the treacherous borders of a masked pool,
she felt this speech with its ironic innuendo. She flushed, her vanity
irritated. Rentgen saw her eyes contract.
"Let us go when the symphony begins," she begged, "I can't talk to any
one in my present bad humour; and to hear Beethoven would drive me
mad--now."
"I don't wonder," remarked her companion, consolingly. Alixe winced.
The silver-cold fire of an undecided moon was abroad in the sky and
rumours of spring filled the air. They parted at a fiacre. He told her
he would call the next afternoon, and she nodded an unforgiving head. It
was her turn to be disagreeable.
In his music room, Van Kuyp read a volume of verse. He did not hear his
wife enter. It pained her when she saw his serious face with its
undistinguished features and dogged expression. No genius this, was her
hasty verdict, as she quickly went to him and put a hand on his head.
It was her hand now that was hot. He raised eyes, dolent with dreams.
"Well?" he queried.
"You are a curious man!" she said wonderingly. "Aren't you interested in
the news about your symphonic poem?" He smiled the smile of the fatuous
elect. "I imagine it went all right," he languidly replied. "I heard it
at rehearsal yesterday--I suppose Thelème took the _tempi_ too slow!"
She sighed and asked:--
"What are you reading a night like this?" His expression became
animated.
"A volume of Celtic poetry--I've found a stunning idea for music. What a
tone-poem it will make! Here it is. What colour, what rhythms. It is
called The Shadowy Horses. 'I hear the shadowy horses, their long manes
a-shake'--"
"Who gave you the poem?"
"Oh, Rentgen, of course. Did you see him to-night?"
"You dear boy! You must be tired to death. Better rest. The critics will
get you up early enough."
Through interminable hours the mind of Alixe revolved about a phrase she
had picked up from Elvard Rentgen: "Music is a trap for weak souls; for
the strong as the spinning of cobwebs...."
II
It was pompous July and the Van Kuyps were still in Paris. They lived
near Passy--from her windows high in the air Alixe caught the green at
dawn as the sun lifted level rays. Richard was writing his new
tone-poem, which the Société Harmonique accepted provisionally for the
season following. Sordello had set the town agog because of the
exhaustive articles by Rentgen it brought in its wake. He was a critic
who wrote brilliantly of music in the terms of painting, of plastic arts
in the technical phraseology of music, and by him the drama was
discussed purely as literature. This deliberate and delicate confusion
of æsthetics clouded the public mind. He described Sordello as a vast
mural fresco, a Puvis de Chavannes in tone, a symphonic drama wherein
agonized the shadowy Æschylean protagonist. Even sculpture was rifled
for analogies, and Van Kuyp to his bewilderment found himself called
"The Rodin of Music"; at other times, "Richard Strauss II," or a "Tonal
Browning"; finally, he was adjured to swerve not from the path he had so
wonderfully hewn for himself in the virgin jungle of modern art, and
begged to resist the temptations of the music-drama.
Rentgen loathed the music of Wagner. Wagner had abused Meyerbeer for
doing what he did himself--writing operas stuffed with spectacular
effects. This man of the foot-lights destroyed all musical imagination
with his puppet shows, magic lanterns, Turkish bazaars, where, to the
booming of mystic bells, the listener was drugged into opium-fed
visions.
Under a tent, as at a fair, he assembled the mangled masterpieces of
Bach, Gluck, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, and to a
gullible public sold the songs of these music-lords--songs that should
swim on high like great swan-clouds cleaving skies blue and
inaccessible. And his music was operatic, after all, grand opera
saccharine with commonplace melodies gorgeously attired--nothing more.
Wagner, declared the indignant critic, was not original. He popularized
the noble ideas of the masters, vulgarized and debased their dreams. He
never conceived a single new melody, but substituted instead, sadly
mauled and pinched thematic fragments of Liszt, Berlioz, and Beethoven,
combined with exaggerated fairy-tales, clothed in showy tinsel and
theatrical gauds, the illusion being aided by panoramic scenery; scenery
that acted in company with toads, dragons, horses, snakes, crazy
valkyrs, mermaids, half-mad humans, gods, demons, dwarfs, and giants.
What else is all this but old-fashioned Italian opera with a new name?
What else but an inartistic mixture of Scribe libretto and Northern
mythology? Music-drama--fudge! Making music that one can _see_ is a
death-blow to a lofty idealization of the art.
Puzzled by the richness of Rentgen's vocabulary, by his want of logic,
Alixe asked herself many times whether she was wrong and her husband
right. She wished to be loyal. His devotion to his work, his inspiration
springing as it did from poetic sources, counted for something. Why not?
All composers should read the poets. It is a starting-point. Modern
music leans heavily on drama and fiction. Richard Strauss embroiders
philosophical ideas, so why should not Richard Van Kuyp go to Ireland,
to the one land where there is hope of a spiritual, a poetic renascence?
Ireland! The very name evoked dreams!
When Rentgen called at the Van Kuyps' it was near the close of a warm
afternoon. The composer would not stir, despite the invitation of the
critic or the pleading of his wife. He knew that the angel wings of
inspiration had been brushing his brow all the morning, and such visits
were too rare to be flouted. He sat at his piano and in a composer's
raucous varied voice, imitated the imaginary _timbres_ of orchestral
instruments. Sent forth, Mrs. Van Kuyp and Rentgen slowly walked into
the little Parc of Auteuil, once the joy of the Goncourts.
"Musicians are as selfish as the sea," he asserted, as they sat upon a
bench of tepid iron. She did not demur. The weather had exhausted her
patience; she was young and fond of the open air--the woods made an
irresistible picture this day. The critic watched her changing,
dissatisfied face.
"Shall we ride?" he suddenly asked. Before she could shake a negative
head, he quickly uttered the words that had been hovering in her mind
for hours.
"Or, shall we go to the Bois?" She started. "What an idea! Go to the
Bois without Richard, without my husband?"
"Why not?" he inquired, "it's not far away. Send him a wire asking him
to join us; it will do him good after his labours. Come, Madame Van
Kuyp, come Alixe, my child." He paused. Her eyes expanded. "I'll go,"
she quietly announced--"that is, if you grant me a favour."
"A hundred!" he triumphantly cried.
III
To soothe her conscience, which began to ring faint alarm-bells at
sundown, Alixe sent several despatches to her husband, and then tried a
telephone; but she was not successful. Her mood shifted chilly, and they
bored each other immeasurably on the long promenade vibrating with gypsy
music and frivolous folk.
It was after seven o'clock as the sun slowly swam down the sky-line.
Decidedly their little flight from the prison of stone was not offering
rich recompense to Alixe Van Kuyp and her elderly companion.
"And now for the favour!" he demanded, his eyes contentedly resting upon
the graceful expanse of his guest's figure.
She moved restlessly: "My dear Rentgen, I am about to ask you a
question, only a plain question. _That_ is the favour." He bowed
incredulously.
"I must know the truth about Richard. It is a serious matter, this
composing of his. He neglects his pupils--most of them Americans who
come to Paris to study with him. Yet with the reputation he has
attained, due to you entirely"--she waved away an interruption--"he
refuses to write songs or piano music that will sell. He is an
incorrigible idealist and I confess I am discouraged. What can be our
future?" She drew the deep breath of one in peril; this plain talk
devoid of all sham mortified her exceedingly.
She was thankful that he did not attempt to play the rôle of fatherly
adviser. His eyes were quite sincere when he answered her:--
"What you say, Alixe--" the familiarity brought with it no condescending
reverberations--"has bothered me more than once. I shall be just as
frank on my side. No, your husband has but little talent; original
talent, none. He is mediocre--wait!" She started, her cheeks red with
the blood that fled her heart when she heard this doleful news. "Wait!
There are qualifications. In the first place, what do you expect from an
American?"
"But you always write so glowingly of our composers," she interjected.
"And," he went on as if she had not spoken, "Van Kuyp is your typical
countryman. He has studied in Germany. He has muddled his brain with
the music of a dozen different nations; if he had had any individuality
it would have been submerged. His memory has killed his imagination. He
borrows his inspiration from the poets, from Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz,
Richard Strauss. Anyhow, like all musicians of his country, he is too
painfully self-conscious of his nationality."
"You, alone, are responsible for his present ambitions," retorted the
unhappy woman.
"Quite true, my dear friend. I acknowledge it."
"And you say this to my face?"
"Do you wish me to lie?" She did not reply. After a grim pause she burst
forth:--
"Oh, why doesn't he compose an opera, and make a popular name?"
"Richard Wagner Number II!" There were implications of sarcasm in this
which greatly displeased Mrs. Van Kuyp. They strolled on slowly. It was
a melodious summer night; mauve haze screened all but the exquisite
large stars. Soothed despite rebellion, Alixe told herself sharply that
in every duel with this man she was worsted. He said things that
scratched her nerves; yet she forgave. He had not the slightest
attraction for her; nevertheless, when he spoke, she listened, when he
wrote, she read. He ruled the husband through his music; he ruled her
through her husband. And what did he expect?
They retraced their way. A fantastic bridge spanning the brief
marshland, frozen by the moonlight, appealed to them. They crossed. A
coachman driving an open carriage hailed confidentially. Alixe entered
and with a dexterous play of draperies usurped the back seat. Rentgen
made no sign. He had her in full view, the moon streaking her disturbed
features with its unflattering pencil.
They started bravely, the horses running for home; but the rapid gait
soon subsided into a rhythmic trot. Rentgen spoke. She hardly recognized
his voice, so gently monotonous were his phrases.
"Dear Alixe. It is a night for confessions. You care for your husband,
you are wrapped up in his art work, you are solicitous of his future, of
his fame. It is admirable. You are a model wife for an artist. But tell
me frankly, doesn't it bore you to death? Doesn't all this talk of
music, themes, orchestration, of the public, critics, musicians,
conductors, get on your nerves? Is it any consolation for you to know
that Van Kuyp will be famous? What is his fame or his failure to you?
Where do you, Alixe Van Kuyp, come in? Why must your charming woman's
soul be sacrificed, warped to this stunted tree of another's talent? You
are silent. You say he is trying to make me deny Richard! You were never
more mistaken. I am interested in you both; interested in you as a noble
woman--stop! I mean it. And interested in Richard--well--because he is
my own creation...."
She watched him now with her heart in her eyes; he frightened her more
with these low, purring words, than if he declared open love.
"He is my own handiwork. I have created him. I have fashioned his
outlines, have wound up the mechanism that moves him to compose. Did you
ever read that terrifying thought of Yeats, the Irish poet? I've
forgotten the story, but remember the idea: 'The beautiful arts were
sent into the world to overthrow nations, and, finally, life itself,
sowing everywhere unlimited desires, like torches thrown into a burning
city.' There--'like torches thrown into a burning city!' Richard Van
Kuyp is one of my burning torches. In the spectacle of his impuissance I
find relief from my own suffering."
The booming of the Tzigane band was no longer heard--only the horses'
muffled footfalls and the intermittent chromatic drone of hidden distant
tram-cars. She shivered and shaded her face with her fan. There was
something remote from humanity in his speech. He continued with
increasing vivacity:--
"Music is a burning torch. And music, like ideas, can slay the brain.
Wagner borrowed his harmonic fire from the torch of Chopin--" She broke
in:--
"Don't talk of Chopin! Tell me more of Van Kuyp. Why do you call him
_yours_?" Her curiosity was become pain. It mastered her prudence.
"In far-away Celtic legends there may be found a lovely belief that our
thoughts are independent realities, that they go about in the void
seeking creatures to control. They are as bodiless souls. When they
descend into a human being they possess his moods, in very existence--"
"And Richard!" she muttered. His words swayed her like strange music;
the country through which they were passing was a blank; she could see
but two luminous points--the nocturnal eyes of Elvard Rentgen, as he
spun his cobwebs in the moonshine. She did not fear him; nothing could
frighten her now. One desire held her. If it were unslaked, she felt she
would collapse. It was to know the truth, to be told everything! He put
restraining fingers on her ungloved hand; they seemed like cold, fat
spiders. Yet she was only curious, with a curiosity that murdered the
spirit within her.
"To transfuse these shadows, my dear Alixe, has been one of my delights,
for I can project my futile desires into another's soul. I am denied the
gift of music-making, so this is my revenge on nature for bungling its
job. If Richard had genius, my intervention would be superfluous. He has
none. He is dull. You must realize it. But since he has known me, has
felt my influence, has been subject to my volition, my sorcery, you may
call it,--" his laugh was disagreeably conscious,--"he has developed the
shadow of a great man. He will seem a great composer. I shall make him
think he is one. I shall make the world believe it, also. It is my
fashion of squaring a life I hate. But if I chose to withdraw--"
The road they entered was black and full of the buzzing shadows of hot
night, but she was oblivious to everything but his hallucinating
voice:--
"And if you withdraw?" Her mouth echoed phrases without the complicity
of her brain.
"If I do--ah, these cobweb spinners! Good-by to Richard Van Kuyp and
dreams of glory." This note of harsh triumph snapped his weaving words.
"I don't believe you or your boasts," remarked Alixe, in her most
conventionally amused manner. "You are trying to scare me, and with this
hypnotic joke about Richard you have only hypnotized yourself. I mean to
tell Mr. Van Kuyp every bit of our conversation. I'm not frightened by
your vampire tales. You critics are only shadows of composers."
"Yes, but we make ordinary composers believe they are great," he replied
acridly.
"I'll tell this to Richard."
"He won't believe you."
"He shall--he won't believe _you_! Oh, Rentgen, how can you invent such
cruel things? Are you always so malicious? What do you mean? Come--what
do you expect?" She closed her eyes, anticipating an avowal. Why should
a man seek to destroy her faith in her husband, in love itself, if not
for some selfish purpose of his own? But she was wrong, and became
vaguely alarmed--at least if he had offered his service and sympathy in
exchange for her friendship, she might have understood his fantastic
talk. Rentgen sourly reflected--despite epigrams, women never vary. For
him her sentiment was suburban. It strangled poetry. But he said
nothing, though she imagined he looked depressed; nor did he open his
mouth as the carriage traversed avenues of processional poplars before
arriving at her door. She turned to him imploringly:--
"You must come with me. I shall never be able to go in alone, without an
excuse. Don't--don't repeat to Richard what you said to me, in joke, I
am sure, about his music. Heavens! What will my husband think?" There
was despair in her voice, but hopefulness in her gait and gesture, when
they reached the ill-lighted hall.
A night-lamp stood on the composer's study table. The piano was open. He
sat at the keyboard, though not playing, as they hurriedly entered the
room.
"You poor fellow! You look worn out. Did you think we had run away from
you? Did you get the wires, the telephone messages? Oh, why did you keep
us expecting you, Richard! We have had a wonderful time and missed you
so much! Such a talk with Rentgen! And all about _you_. _Nicht wahr_,
Rentgen? He says you are the only man in the world with a musical
future. Isn't that so, Rentgen? Didn't you say that Richard was the only
man in whom you took any interest? Say what you said to me! I _dare_
you!"
The musician, aroused by this wordy assault, looked from one to the
other with his heavy eyes, the eyes of an owl rudely disturbed. Alixe
almost danced her excitement. She hummed shrilly and grasped Van Kuyp's
arm in the gayest rebounding humour.
"Why don't you speak, Maestro?"
"I didn't join you because I was too busy at my score. Listen, children!
I have sketched the beginning of The Shadowy Horses. You remember the
Yeats poem, Rentgen? Listen!"
Furiously he attacked the instrument, from which escaped accents of
veritable torture; a delirium of tone followed, meagre melodies fighting
for existence in the boiling madness of it all; it was the parody of a
parody, the music of yesterday masquerading as the music of to-morrow.
Alixe nervously watched the critic. He stood at the end of the piano and
morosely fumbled his beard. Again a wave of anxious hatred, followed by
forebodings, crowded her alert brain. She desperately clutched her
husband's shoulder; he finished in a burst of sheer pounding and brutal
roaring. Then she threw her arms about him in an ecstasy of pride--her
confidence was her only anchorage.
"There, Elvard Rentgen! What did you tell me? I dare you to say that
this music is not marvellous, not original!" Her victorious gaze, in
which floated indomitable faith, challenged him, as she drew the head of
her husband to her protecting bosom. The warring of exasperated eyes
endured a moment; to Alixe it seemed eternity. Rentgen bowed and went
away from this castle of cobwebs, deeply stirred by the wife's tender
untruths.... She was the last dawn illuminating his empty, sordid
life,--now a burnt city of defaced dreams and blackened torches.
II
THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which
the Lord God had made.--_Genesis._
I
THE SERMON
"And the Seven Deadly Sins, beloved brethren, are: Pride, Covetousness,
Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth. To these our wise Mother, the
Church, opposes the contrary virtues: Humility, Chastity, Meekness,
Temperance, Brotherly Love, Diligence." The voice of the preacher was
clear and well modulated. It penetrated to the remotest corner of the
church. Baldur, sitting near the pulpit, with its elaborate traceries of
marble, idly wondered why the sins were, with few exceptions, words of
one syllable, while those of the virtues were all longer. Perhaps
because it was easier to sin than to repent! The voice of the speaker
deepened as he continued:--
"Now the Seven Deadly Arts are: Music, Literature, Painting, Sculpture,
Architecture, Dancing, Acting. The mercy of God has luckily purified
these once pagan inventions, and transformed them into saving
instruments of grace. Yet it behooves us to examine with the utmost
diligence the possible sources of evil latent in each and every one of
those arts. Then we shall consider some of the special forms of sin that
may develop from them. St. Chrysostom warned the faithful against the
danger of the Eighth Deadly Art--Perfume...."
His phrases, which began to fall into the rhythmic drone of a Sunday
sermon, lulled Baldur to dreaming. Perfume--that delicious vocable! And
the contrast with what his own nostrils reported to his consciousness
made him slightly shiver. It was on a Friday night in Lent that, weary
in flesh and spirit, his conscience out of tune, he had entered the
church and taken the first vacant seat. Without, the air was sluggish;
after leaving his club the idea of theatres or calls had set his teeth
on edge. He longed to be alone, to weigh in the silence of his heart the
utter futility of life. Religion had never been a part of his training
as the only son of a millionnaire, and if he preferred the Roman
Catholic ritual above all others, it was because the appeal was to his
æsthetic sense; a Turkish mosque, he assured his friends, produced the
same soothing impression--gauze veils gently waving and slowly obscuring
the dulling realities of everyday existence. This _morbidezza_ of the
spirit the Mahometans call _Kef_; the Christians, pious ecstasy.
But now he could not plunge himself, despite the faint odour of incense
lingering in the atmosphere, into the deepest pit of his personality. At
first he ascribed his restlessness to the sultry weather, then to his
abuse of tea and cigarettes,--perhaps it was the sharp odour of the
average congregation, that collective odour of humanity encountered in
church, theatre, or court-rooms. The smell of poverty was mingled with
the heavy scents of fashionable women, who, in the minority, made their
presence felt by their showy gowns, rustling movements, and attitudes of
superior boredom. In a vast building like this extremes touch with
eagerness on the part of the poor, to whom these furtive views of the
rich and indolent brought with them a bitter consolation.
Baldur remarked these things as he leaned back in his hard seat and
barely listened to the sermon, which poured forth as though the tap
would never be turned off again. And then a delicate note of iris, most
episcopal of perfumes, emerged from the mass of odours--musk, garlic,
damp shoes, alcohol, shabby clothing, rubber, pomade, cologne,
rice-powder, tobacco, patchouli, sachet, and a hundred other tintings of
the earthly symphony. The finely specialized olfactory sense of the
young man told him that it was either a bishop or a beautiful woman who
imparted to the air the subtle, penetrating aroma of iris. But it was
neither ecclesiastic nor maid. At his side was a short, rather thick-set
woman of vague age; she might have been twenty-five or forty. Her hair
was cut in masculine fashion, her attire unattractive. As clearly as he
could distinguish her features he saw that she was not good-looking. A
stern mask it was, though not hardened. He would not have looked at such
an ordinary physiognomy twice if the iris had not signalled his peculiar
sense. There was no doubt that to her it was due. Susceptible as he was
to odours, Baldur was not a ladies' man. He went into society because it
was his world; and he attended in a perfunctory manner to the enormous
estate left him by his father, bound up in a single trust company. But
his thoughts were always three thousand miles away, in that delectable
city of cities, Paris. For Paris he suffered a painful nostalgia. There
he met his true brethren, while in New York he felt an alien. He was
one. The city, with its high, narrow streets--granite tunnels; its rude
reverberations; its colourless, toiling barbarians, with their
undistinguished physiognomies, their uncouth indifference to art,--he
did not deny that he loathed this nation, vibrating only in the presence
of money, sports, grimy ward politics, while exhibiting a depressing
snobbery to things British. There was no _nuance_ in its life or its
literature, he asserted. France was his _patrie psychique_; he would
return there some day and forever....
The iris crept under his nostrils, and again he regarded the woman. This
time she faced him, and he no longer wondered, for he saw her eyes.
With such eyes only a great soul could be imprisoned in her brain. They
were smoke-gray, with long, dark lashes, and they did not seem to focus
perfectly--at least there was enough deflection to make their expression
odd, withal interesting, like the slow droop of Eleonora Duse's magic
eye. Though her features were rigid, the woman's glance spoke to Baldur,
spoke eloquently. Her eyes were--or was it the iris?--symbols of a
soul-state, of a rare emotion, not of sex, nor yet sexless. The pupils
seemed powdered with a strange iridescence. He became more troubled than
before. What did the curious creature want of him! She was neither
coquette nor cocotte, flirtation was not hinted by her intense
expression. He resumed his former position, but her eyes made his
shoulders burn, as if they had sufficient power to bore through them. He
no longer paid any attention to his surroundings. The sermon was like
the sound of far-away falling waters, the worshippers were so many black
marks. Of two things was he aware--the odour of iris and her eyes.
He knew that he was in an overwrought mood. For some weeks this mood had
been descending upon his spirit, like a pall. He had avoided music,
pictures, the opera--which he never regarded as an art; even his
favourite poets he could not read. Nor did he degustate, as was his
daily wont, the supreme prose of the French masters. The pleasures of
robust stomachs, gourmandizing and drinking, were denied him by nature.
He could not sip a glass of wine, and for meat he entertained distaste.
His physique proved him to be of the neurotic temperament--he was very
tall, very slim, of an exceeding elegance, in dress a finical dandy;
while his trim pointed blue-black beard and dark, foreign eyes were the
cause of his being mistaken often for a Frenchman or a Spaniard--which
illusion was not dissipated when he chose to speak their several
tongues.
Involuntarily, and to the ire of his neighbours, he arose and indolently
made his way down the side aisle. When he reached the baize swinging
doors, he saw the woman approaching him. As if she had been an
acquaintance of years, she saluted him carelessly, and, accompanied by
the scandalized looks of many in the congregation, the pair left the
church, though not before the preacher had sonorously quoted from the
Psalm, _Domine ne in Furore_, "For my loins are filled with illusions;
and there is no health in my flesh."
II
THE SÉANCE
Je cherche des parfums nouveaux, des fleurs plus larges, des
plaisirs inéprouvés.--FLAUBERT.
"It may be all a magnificent illusion, but--" he began.
"Everything is an illusion in this life, though seldom magnificent," she
answered. They slowly walked up the avenue. The night was tepid; motor
cars, looking like magnified beetles, with bulging eyes of fire, went
swiftly by. The pavements were almost deserted when they reached the
park. He felt as if hypnotized, and once, rather meanly, was glad that
no one saw him in company of his dowdy companion.
"I wonder if you realize that we do not know each other's name," he
said.
"Oh, yes. You are Mr. Baldur. My name is Mrs. Lilith Whistler."
"Mrs. Whistler. Not the medium?"
"The medium--as you call it. In reality I am only a woman, happy, or
unhappy, in the possession of super-normal powers."
"Not supernatural, then?" he interposed. He was a sceptic who called
himself agnostic. The mystery of earth and heaven might be interpreted,
but always in terms of science; yet he did not fancy the superior manner
in which this charlatan flouted the supernatural. He had heard of her
miracles--and doubted them. She gave a little laugh at his correction.
"What phrase-jugglers you men are! You want all the splendours of the
Infinite thrown in with the price of admission! I said super-normal,
because we know of nothing greater than nature. Things that are off the
beaten track of the normal, across the frontiers, some call
supernatural; but it is their ignorance of the vast, unexplored
territory of the spirit--which is only the material masquerading in a
different guise."
"But you go to church, to a Lenten service--?" It was as if he had known
her for years, and their unconventional behaviour never crossed his
mind. He did not even ask himself where they were moving.
"I go to church to rest my nerves--as do many other people," she
replied; "I was interested in the parallel of the Seven Deadly Sins and
the Seven Deadly Arts."
"You believe the arts are sinful?" He was curious.
"I don't believe in sin at all. A bad conscience is the result of poor
digestion. Sins are created so that we pay the poll-tax to eternity--pay
it on this side of the ferry. Yet the arts may become dangerous engines
of destruction if wrongfully employed. The Fathers of the early Church,
Ambrose and the rest, were right in viewing them suspiciously."--He
spoke:--
"The arts diabolic! Then what of the particular form of wizardry
practised so successfully by the celebrated Mrs. Whistler, one of whose
names is, according to the Talmud, that of Adam's first wife?"
"What do you know, my dear young man, of diabolic arts?"
"Only that I am walking with you near the park on a dark night of April
and I never saw you before a half-hour ago. Isn't that magic--white, not
black?"
"Pray do not mock magic, either white or black. Remember the fate of the
serpents manufactured by Pharaoh's magicians. They were, need I tell
you, speedily devoured by the serpents of Moses and Aaron. Both parties
did not play fair in the game. If it was black magic to transform a rod
into a snake on the part of Pharaoh's conjurers, was it any less
reprehensible for the Hebrew magicians to play the same trick? It was
prestidigitation for all concerned--only the side of the children of
Israel was espoused in the recital. Therefore, do not talk of black or
white magic. There is only one true magic. And it is not slate-writing,
toe-joint snapping, fortune-telling, or the vending of charms. Magic,
too, is an art--like other arts. This is forgotten by the majority of
its practitioners. Hence the sordid vulgarity of the average mind-reader
and humbugging spiritualist of the dark-chamber séance. Besides, the
study of the super-normal mind tells us of the mind in health--nature is
shy in revealing her secrets."
They passed the lake and were turning toward the east driveway. Suddenly
she stopped and under the faint starlight regarded her companion
earnestly. He had not been without adventures in his career--Paris
always provided them in plenty; but this encounter with a homely woman
piqued him. Her eye he felt was upon him and her voice soothing.
"Mr. Baldur--listen! Since Milton wrote his great poem the
English-speaking people are all devil-worshippers, for Satan is the hero
of Paradise Lost. But I am no table-tipping medium eager for your
applause or your money. I don't care for money. I think you know enough
of me through the newspapers to vouchsafe that. You are rich, and it is
your chief misery. Listen! Whether you believe it or not, you are very
unhappy. Let me read your horoscope. Your club life bores you; you are
tired of our silly theatres; no longer do you care for Wagner's music.
You are deracinated; you are unpatriotic. For that there is no excuse.
The arts are for you deadly. I am sure you are a lover of literature.
Yet what a curse it has been for you! When you see one of your friends
drinking wine, you call him a fool because he is poisoning himself. But
you--you--poison your spirit with the honey of France, of Scandinavia,
of Russia. As for the society of women--"
"The Eternal Womanly!" he sneered.
"The Eternal Simpleton, you mean. In _that_ swamp of pettiness, idiocy,
and materialism, a man of your nature could not long abide. Religion--it
has not yet responded to your need. And without faith your sins lose
their savour. The arts--you don't know them all, the Seven Deadly Arts
and the One Beautiful Art!" She paused. Her voice had been as the sound
of delicate flutes. He was aflame.
"Is there, then, an eighth art?" he quickly asked.
"Would you know it if you saw it?"
"Of course. Where is it, what is it?"
She laughed and took his arm.
"Why did you look at me in church?"
"Because--it was mere chance--no, it may have been the odour of iris. I
am mad over perfume. I think it a neglected art, degraded to the
function of anointment. I have often dreamed of an art by which a
dazzling and novel synthesis of fragrant perfumes would be invented by
some genius, some latter-day Rimmel or Lubin whom we could hail as a
peer of Chopin or Richard Strauss--two composers who have expressed
perfume in tone. Roinard in his Cantiques des Cantiques attempted a
concordance of tone, light, and odours. Yes--it was the iris that
attracted me."
"But I have no iris about me. I have none now," she simply replied. He
faced her.
"No iris? What--?"
"I _thought_ iris," she added triumphantly, as she guided him into one
of the side streets off Madison Avenue. He was astounded. She must be a
hypnotist, he said to himself. No suggestion of iris clung to her now.
And he remembered that the odour disappeared after they left the church.
He held his peace until they arrived before a brown-stone house of the
ordinary kind with an English basement. She took a key from her pocket
and, going down several steps, beckoned to him. Baldur followed. His
interest in this modern Cassandra and her bizarre words was too great
for him to hesitate or to realize that he would get himself into some
dangerous scrape. And was this truly the Mrs. Whistler whose tricks of
telepathy and other extraordinary antics had puzzled and angered the
wise men of two continents? He did not have much time for reflection. A
grilled door opened, and presently he was in a room furnished very much
like a physician's office. Electric bulbs, an open grate, and two
bookcases gave the apartment a familiar, cheerful appearance. Baldur sat
down on a low chair, and Mrs. Whistler removed her commonplace headgear.
In the bright light she was younger than he had imagined, and her head a
beautifully modelled one--broad brows, very full at the back, and the
mask that of an emotional actress. Her smoke-coloured eyes were most
remarkable and her helmet of hair blue black.
"And now that you are my guest at last, Mr. Baldur, let me apologize for
the exercise of my art upon your responsive nerves;" she made this
witch-burning admission as if she were accounting for the absence of
tea. To his relief she offered him nothing. He had a cigarette between
his fingers, but he did not care to smoke. She continued:--
"For some time I have known you--never mind how! For some time I have
wished to meet you. I am not an impostor, nor do I desire to pose as the
goddess of a new creed. But you, Irving Baldur, are a man among men who
will appreciate what I may show you. You love, you understand, perfumes.
You have even wished for a new art--don't forget that there are others
in the world to whom the seven arts have become a thrice-told tale, to
whom the arts have become too useful. All great art should be useless.
Yet architecture houses us; sculpture flatters us; painting imitates us;
dancing is pure vanity; literature and the drama, mere vehicles for
bread-earning; while music--music, the most useless art as it should
have been--is in the hands of the speculators. Moreover music is too
sexual--it reports in a more intense style the stories of our loves.
Music is the memory of love. What Prophet will enter the temple of the
modern arts and drive away with his divine scourge the vile
money-changers who fatten therein?" Her voice was shrill as she paced
the room. A very sibyl this, her crest of hair agitated, her eyes
sparkling with wrath. He missed the Cumæan tripod.
"There is an art, Baldur, an art that was one of the lost arts of
Babylon until now, one based, as are all the arts, on the senses.
Perfume--the poor, neglected nose must have its revenge. It has outlived
the other senses in the æsthetic field."
"What of the palate--you have forgotten that. Cookery, too, is a fine
art," he ventured. His smile irritated her.
"Yes, Frenchmen have invented symphonic sauces, they say. But again,
eating is a useful art; primarily it serves to nourish the body. When
man was wholly wild--he is a mere barbarian to-day--his sense of smell
guarded him from his foes, from the beasts, from a thousand dangers.
Civilization, with its charming odours of decay,--have you ever ventured
to savour New York?--cast into abeyance the keenest of all the senses.
Little wonder, then, that there was no art of perfume like the arts of
vision and sound. I firmly believe the Hindoos, Egyptians, and the
Chinese knew of such an art. How account for the power of theocracies?
How else credit the tales of the saints who scattered perfumes--St.
Francis de Paul, St. Joseph of Cupertino, Venturini of Bergamo?"
"But," he interrupted, "all this is interesting, fascinating. What I
wish to know is what form your art may take. How marshal odours as
melodies in a symphony, as colours on a canvas?" She made an impatient
gesture.