to Paris. It was an old-fashioned house with an entrance in the Rue
Saint-Honoré and another in the Rue de Rivoli. The girl sat on a small
balcony from which she could view the Tuileries Gardens without turning
her head; while looking farther westward she saw the Place de la
Concorde, its windy spaces a chessboard for rapid vehicles, whose
wheels, wet from the watered streets, ground out silvery fire in the
sun-rays of this gay June afternoon. Where the Avenue des Champs Élysées
began, a powdery haze enveloped the equipages, overblown with their
summer toilets, all speeding to Longchamps. It was racing day, and
Ermentrude, feigning a headache, had insisted that her uncle and aunt go
to the meeting. It would amuse them, she knew, and she wished to be
alone. Nearly a week had passed since the visit to Neuilly, and she had
been afraid to ask her aunt what Madame Kéroulan had imparted to
her--afraid and also too proud. Her sensibility had been grievously
wounded by the plainly expressed feelings of Octave Kéroulan. She had
reviewed without prejudice his behaviour, and she could not set down to
mere Latin gallantry either his words or his action. No, there was too
much intensity in both,--ah, how she rebelled at the brutal
disillusionment!--and there were, she argued, method and sequence in his
approach and attack. If she had been the average coquetting creature,
the offence might not have been so mortal. But, so she told herself
again and again,--as if to frighten away lurking darker thoughts, ready
to spring out and devour her good resolutions,--she had worshipped her
idol with reservations. His poetry, his philosophy, were so inextricably
blended that they smote her nerves like the impact of some bright
perfume, some sharp chord of modern music. Dangerously she had filed at
her emotions in the service of culture and she was now paying the
penalty for her ardent confidence. His ideas, vocal with golden
meanings, were never meant to be translated into the vernacular of life,
never to be transposed from higher to lower levels; this base betrayal
of his ideals she felt Kéroulan had committed. Had he not said that love
should be like "un baiser sur un miroir"? Was he, after all, what the
princess had called him? And was he only a mock sun swimming in a
firmament of glories which he could have outshone?
A servant knocked and, not receiving a response, entered with a letter.
The superscription was strange. She opened and read:--
DEAR AND TENDER CHILD: I know you were angry with me when
we parted. I am awaiting here below your answer to come to you and
bare my heart. Say yes!
"Is the gentleman downstairs?" she asked. The servant bowed. The blood
in her head buzzing, she nodded, and the man disappeared. Standing there
in the bright summer light, Ermentrude Adams saw her face in the oval
glass, above the fireplace, saw its pallor, the strained expression of
the eyes, and like a drowning person she made a swift inventory of her
life, and, with the insane hope of one about to be swallowed up by the
waters, she grasped at a solitary straw. Let him come; she would have an
explanation from him! The torture of doubt might then be brought to an
end....
Some one glided into the apartment. Turning quickly, Ermentrude
recognized Madame Kéroulan. Before she could orient herself that lady
took her by both hands, and uttering apologetic words, forced the amazed
girl into a chair.
"Don't be frightened, dear young lady. I am not here to judge, but to
explain. Yes, I know my husband loves you. But do not believe in him. He
is a _terrific_ man." This word she emphasized as if doubtful of its
meaning. "Ah, if you but knew the inferno of my existence! There are so
many like you--stop, do not leave! You are not to blame. I, Lillias
Kéroulan, do not censure your action. My husband is an evil man and a
charlatan. Hear me out! He has only the gift of words. He steals all his
profundities of art from dead philosophers. He is not a genuine poet. He
is not a dramatist. I swear to you that he is now the butt of artistic
Paris. The Princesse de Lancovani made him--she is another of his sort.
He _was_ the mode; now he is desperate because his day has passed. He
knows you are rich. He desires your money, not _you_. I discovered that
he was coming here this day. Oh, I am cleverer than he. I followed. Here
I am to save you from him--and from yourself--he is not now below in the
salon."
"Please go away!" indignantly answered Ermentrude. She was furious at
this horrible, plain-spoken, jealous creature. Save her from herself--as
if ever she had wavered! The disinterested adoration she had entertained
for the great artist--what a hideous ending was this! The tall, blond
woman with the narrow, light blue eyes watched the girl. How could any
one call her handsome, Ermentrude wondered! Then her visitor noticed the
crumpled letter on the table. With a gesture of triumph she secured it
and smiling her superior smile she left, closing the door softly behind
her.
Only kissed hands are white! Ermentrude threw herself on the couch, her
cheeks burning, her heart tugging in her bosom like a ship impatient at
its anchorage. And was this the sordid end of a beautiful dream?...
"Do you know, dearest, we have had such news!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldam as
she entered, and so charged with her happiness that she did not notice
the drawn features of her niece. "Charlie, Charlie will be here some
time next week. He arrives at Havre. He has just cabled his father. Let
us go down to meet the boy." Charlie was the only son of the Sheldams
and fonder of his cousin than she dare tell herself. She burst into
tears, which greatly pleased her aunt.
In the train, eight days later, Ermentrude sat speechless in company
with her aunt and uncle. But as the train approached Havre she
remembered something.
"Aunt Clara," she bravely asked, "do you recall the afternoon we spent
at the Kéroulans'? What did Madame Kéroulan tell you then? Is it a
secret?" She held tightly clenched in her hand the arm-rest at the side
of the compartment.
"Oh, dear, no! The madame was very chatty, very communicative. It's
funny I've not told you before. She confessed that she was the happiest
woman on earth; not only was she married to a grand genius,--for the
life of me I can't see where _that_ comes in!--but he was a good man
into the bargain. It appears that his life is made weary by women who
pester him with their attentions. Even our princess--yes, _the_
princess; isn't it shocking?--was a perfect nuisance until Mr. Kéroulan
assured her that, though he owed much of his success in the world to
her, yet he would never betray the trust reposed in him by his wife.
What's the matter, dear, does the motion of the car affect you? It
_does_ rock! And _he_ shows her all the letters he gets from silly women
admirers--oh, these foreign women and their queer ways! And he tells her
the way they make up to him when he meets them in society."
Ermentrude shivered. The princess also! And with all her warning about
the Superman! Now she understood. Then she took the hand of Mrs.
Sheldam, and, stroking it, whispered:--
"Auntie, I'm so glad I am going to Havre, going to see Charlie soon."
The lids of her eyes were wet. Mrs. Sheldam had never been so motherly.
"You _are_ a darling!" she answered, as she squeezed Ermentrude's arm.
"But there is some one who doesn't seem to care much for Havre." She
pointed out Mr. Sheldam, who, oblivious of picturesque Normandy through
which the train was speeding, slept serenely. Ermentrude envied him his
repose. He had never stared into the maddening mirror which turned poets
into Supermen and--sometimes monsters. Had she herself not gazed into
this distorting glass? The tune of her life had never sounded so
discouragingly faint and inutile. Perhaps she did not posses the higher
qualities that could extort from a nature so rich and various as Octave
Kéroulan's its noblest music! Perhaps his wife had told the truth to
Mrs. Sheldam and had lied to her! And then, through a merciful mist of
tears, Ermentrude saw Havre, saw her future.
VII
ANTICHRIST
To wring from man's tongue the denial of his existence is proof of
Satan's greatest power.--PÈRE RAVIGNAN.
The most learned man and the most lovable it has been my good fortune to
know is Monsignor Anatole O'Bourke--alas! I should write, was, for his
noble soul is gathered to God. I met him in Paris, when I was a music
student. He sat next to me at a Pasdeloup concert in the Cirque d'Hiver,
how many years ago I do not care to say. A casual exclamation betrayed
my nationality, and during the intermission we drifted into easy
conversation. Within five minutes he held me enthralled, did this
big-souled, large-brained Irishman from the County Tipperary. We
discussed the programme--a new symphonic poem by Rimski-Korsakoff,
Sadko, had been alternately hissed and cheered--and I soon learned that
my companion mourned a French mother and rejoiced in the loving presence
of a very Celtic father. From the former he must have inherited his
vigorous, logical intellect; the latter had evidently endowed him with a
robust, jovial temperament, coupled with a wonderful perception of
things mystical.
After the concert we walked slowly along the line of the boulevards. It
was early May, and the wheel of green which we traversed, together with
the brilliant picture made by the crowds, put us both in a happy temper.
It was not long before Monsignor heard the confession of my ideals. He
smiled quickly when I raved of music, but the moment I drifted into the
theme of mysticism--the transposition is ever an easy one--I saw his
interest leap to meet mine.
"So, you have read St. John of the Cross?" I nodded my head.
"And St. Teresa, that marvellous woman? The Americans puzzle me," he
continued. "You are the most practical people on the globe and yet the
most idealistic. When I hear of a new religion, I am morally certain
that it is evolved in America."
"A new religion!" I started. This phrase had often assailed me, both in
print and in the depths of my imagination. He divined my thought--ah! he
was a wonder-worker in the way he noted a passing _nuance_.
"When we wear out the old one, it will be time for a new religion," he
blandly announced; "you Americans, because of your new mechanical
inventions, fancy you have free entry into the domain of the spiritual.
But come, my dear young friend. Here is my hôtel. Can't I invite you to
dinner?" We had reached the Boulevard Malsherbe and, as I was miles out
of my course, I consented. The priest fascinated me with his erudition,
which swam lightly on the crest of his talk. He was, so I discovered
during the evening, particularly well versed in the mystical writers, in
the writings of the Kabbalists and the books of the inspired Northman,
Swedenborg. As we sat drinking our coffee at one of the little tables in
the spacious courtyard, I revived the motive of a new religion.
"Monsignor, have you ever speculated on the possible appearance of a
second Mahomet, a second Buddha? What if, from some Asiatic jungle,
there sallied out upon Europe a terrible ape-god, a Mongolian with
exotic eyes and the magnetism of a religious madman--"
"You are speaking of Antichrist?" he calmly questioned.
"Antichrist! Do you really believe in the Devil's Messiah?"
"Believe, man! why, I have _seen_ him."
I leaned back in my chair, wondering whether I should laugh or look
solemn. He noted my indecision, and his eyes twinkled--they were the
blue-gray of the Irish, the eyes of a seer or an amiable ironist.
"Listen! but first let us get some strong cigars. Garçon!" As we smoked
our panatelas he related this history:--
"You ask me if I believe in an Antichrist, thereby betraying your
slender knowledge of the Scriptures--you will pardon the liberty! I may
refer you not only to John's Epistles, to the revelations of the
dreamer of Patmos, but to so many learned doctors of the faith that it
would take a week merely to enumerate the titles of their works all
bearing on the mysterious subject. Our Holy Mother the Church has held
aloof from any doctrinal pronouncements. The Antichrist has been
predicted for the past thousand years. I recall as a boy poring over the
map of the world which a friend of my mother had left with her. This
lady my father called 'the angel with the moulting wings,' because she
was always in an ecstatic tremor over the second coming of the Messiah.
She would go to the housetop at least once every six months, and there,
with a band of pious deluded geese dressed in white flowing robes, would
inspect the firmament for favourable signs. Nothing ever happened, as we
know, yet the predictions sown about the borders of that strange-looking
chart have in a measure come true.
"There were the grimmest and most resounding quotations from the
Apocalypse. 'Babylon is fallen, is fallen!' hummed in my ears for many a
day. And the pale horse also haunted me. What would I have given to hear
the music of that 'voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and
as the voice of great thunder.' I mean the 'harpers harping with their
harps' the 'new song before the throne, before the four beasts and the
elders.' It is recorded that 'no man could learn that song but the
hundred and forty _and_ four thousand, which were redeemed from the
earth.' That is a goodly multitude. Let us hope we shall be of it.
Learned Sir Thomas Browne asked what songs the sirens sang. I prefer to
hear that wonderful 'harpèd' song.
"But I wander. The fault lies in that wondrous map of the world, with
its pictured hordes of Russians sweeping down upon Europe and America
like a plague of locusts, the wicked unbaptized Antichrist at the head
of them, waving a cross held in reversed fashion. Don't ask me the
meaning of this crazy symbolism. The sect to which my mother's friend
belonged--God bless her, for she was a dear weak-minded lady--must have
set great store by these signs. I admit that as a boy they scared me.
Sitting here now, after forty years, I can still see those cryptograms.
However, to my tale. About ten years ago I was in Paris, and in my
capacity as Monsignor I had to attend a significant gathering at the
embassy of the Russian ambassador in this city of light." He waved his
left hand, from which I caught the purple fire of amethyst.
"It was a notable affair, and I don't mind telling you now that it was
largely political. I had just returned from a secret mission at Rome,
and I was forced to mingle with diplomatic people. Prince Wronsky was
the representative of the Czar at that time in France, a charming man
with a flavour of _diablerie_ in his speech. He was a fervent Greek
Catholic, like most of his countrymen, and it pleased him to fence
mischievously with me on the various dogmas of our respective faiths.
He called himself _the_ Catholic; I was only a Roman Catholic. I told
him I was satisfied.
"On this particular night he was rather agitated when I made my
salutations. He whispered to me that madame the princess had that very
day presented him with a son and heir. Naturally I congratulated him.
His restlessness increased as the evening wore on. At last he beckoned
to me--we were very old friends--to follow him into his library. There
he hesitated.
"'I want you to do me a favour, an odd one; but as you are known to me
so long I venture to ask it. Do go upstairs and see my boy--' His tone
was that of entreaty. I smiled.
"'Dear prince, I am, as a priest, hardly a judge of children. But if you
wish it--is there anything wrong with the little chap's health?'
"'God forbid!' he ejaculated and piously crossed himself. We went to the
first _étage_ of his palace--he was gorgeously housed--and there he
said:--
"'Madame is in another wing of our apartments--go in here--the child is
attended by the nurse.' With that he pushed me through a swinging door
and left me standing in a semi-lighted chamber. I was very near ill
temper, I assure you, for my position was embarrassing. The room was
large and heavily hung with tapestries. A nurse, a hag, a witch, a dark
old gypsy creature, came over to me and asked me, in Russian:--
"'Do you wish to see his Royal Highness the King of Earth and Heaven?'
Thinking she was some stupid _moujik's_ wife, I nodded my head
seriously, though amused by the exalted titles. She put up a thin hand
and I tiptoed to a cradle of gold and ivory--it certainly seemed so to
my inexperienced eyes--the nurse parted the curtains, and there I saw--I
saw--but my son, you will think I exaggerate--I saw the most exquisite
baby in the universe. You laugh at an old bachelor's rhapsody! In
reality I don't care much for children. But that child, that supreme
morsel of humanity, was too much for me. I stood and stared and stood
and stared, and all the while the tiny angel was smiling in my eyes, oh!
such a celestial smile. From his large blue eyes, like flowers, he
smiled into my very soul. I was chained to the floor as if by lead.
Every fibre of my soul, heart, and brain went out to that little
wanderer from the infinite. It was a pathetic face, full of suppressed
sorrow--_Dieu_! but he was older than his father. I found my mind
beginning to wander as if hypnotized. I tried to divert my gaze, but in
vain. Some subtle emanation from this extraordinary child entered my
being, and then, as if a curtain were being slowly lowered, a mist
encompassed my soul; I was ceding, I felt, the immortal part of me to
another, and all the time I was smiling at the baby and the baby
smiling back. I remember his long blond hair, parted in the middle and
falling over his shoulders; but even that remarkable trait for an infant
a few hours old did not puzzle me, for my sanity was surely being
undermined by the persistent gaze of the boy. I vaguely recall passing
my hand across my breast as if to stop the crevice through which my
personality was filtering; I was certain that my soul was about to be
stolen by that damnable child. Then the nurse dropped something, and my
thoughts came back,--they were surely on the road to hell, for they were
red and flaming when I got hold of them,--and the spell, or whatever it
was, snapped.
"I looked up and noticed the woman maliciously smiling--if it had been
in the days of the inquisition, I would have sent her to the faggots,
for she was a hell-hag. The child had fallen back in his cradle as if
the effort of holding my attention had exhausted him. Then it struck me
that there was something unholy about this affair, and I resolutely
strode to the crib and seized the baby.
"'What changeling is this?' I demanded in a loud voice, for the being
that twisted in my grip was two or two hundred years old.
"'Lay him down, you monster!' clamoured the nurse, as I held the
squirming bundle by both hands. It was a task--and I'm very strong. A
superhuman strength waged against my muscles; but I was an old football
half-back at the university, so I conquered the poor little devil. It
moaned like a querulous old man; the nurse, throwing her weight upon me,
forced me to let go my hold. As I did so the baby turned on its face,
its dainty robe split wide open, and to my horror I saw on its back,
between its angelically white shoulders, burnt in as if by branding
irons, the crucifix--and _upside down_!"
I shuddered. I knew. He lowered his voice and spoke in detached phrases.
"It was--oh! that I live to say it--it was the dreaded Antichrist--yes,
this Russian baby--it was predicted that he would be born in Russia--I
trembled so that my robes waved in an invisible wind. The reversed
cross--the mark of the beast--the sign by which we are to know the Human
Satan--the last opponent of Christianity. I confess that I was
discomposed at the sight of this little fiend, for it meant that the red
star, the baleful star of the north, would rise in the black heavens and
bloody war spread among the nations of the earth. It also meant that
doomsday was not far off, and, good Christian as I believe myself to be,
a shiver ran down my spine at the idea of Gabriel's trump and the
resurrection of the dead. Yes, I shan't deny it--so material are the
sons of men, I among them! And the very thought of Judgment Day and its
blasting horrors withered my heart. Still something had to be done,
prophecy or no prophecy. To fulfil the letter of the law this infernal
visitor was let loose from hell. There was one way, so I grasped--"
"Great God, Monsignor, you didn't strangle the demon?" I cried.
"No, no--something better. I rushed over to a marble wash-basin and
seized a ewer of water, and, going back to the crib, despite the frantic
remonstrances of the old sorceress, I baptized the Antichrist in the
name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Before my eyes I
saw the inverted cross vanish. Then I soundly spanked the presumptuous
youngster and, running down the staircase, I sought the prince and said
to him:--
"'Your boy is now a Roman, not a Greek Catholic. We are quits!'"
The idea of a spanked Antichrist disconsolately roaming the earth,
unwilling to return to his fiery home for fear of a scolding, his guns
of evil spiked, his virus innocuous, his mission of spiritual
destruction a failure--for what could a baptized devil's child do but
pray and repent?--all this dawned upon me, and I burst into laughter,
the worthy Monsignor discreetly participating. His bizarre recital
proved to me that, despite his Gallic first name, Monsignor Anatole
O'Bourke hailed from the County Tipperary.
VIII
THE ETERNAL DUEL
What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
--D.G. ROSSETTI, _Vain Virtues_.
The face set him to a strange wondering; he sat at the coffin and
watched it. His wife's face it was, and above the sorrow of irrevocable
parting floated the thought that she did not look happy as she lay in
her bed of death. Monross had seen but two dead faces before, those of
his father and mother. Both had worn upon the mask which death models an
expression of relief. But this face, the face of his wife, of the woman
with whom he had lived--how many years! He asked himself why he
shuddered when he looked down at it, shuddered and also flushed with
indignation. Had she ever been happy? How many times had she not voiced
her feelings in the unequivocal language of love! Yet she seemed so
hideously unhappy as she stretched before him in her white robes of
death. Why? What secret was this disclosed at the twelfth hour of life,
on the very brink of the grave? Did death, then, hold the solution to
the enigma of the conquering Sphinx!
Monross, master of psychology, tormented by visions of perfection, a
victim to the devouring illusion of the artist,--Monross asked himself
with chagrin if he had missed the key in which had sounded the symphony
of this woman's life. This woman! His wife! A female creature,
long-haired, smiling, loquacious--though reticent enough when her real
self should have flashed out signals of recognition at him--this wife,
the Rhoda he had called day and night--what had she been?
She had understood him, had realized his nobility of ideal, his gifts,
his occasional grandeur of soul,--like all artistic men he was desultory
in the manifestation of his talent,--and had read aloud to him those
poems written for another woman in the pitch-hot passion of his
youth--before he had met her. To her he had been always, so he told
himself, a cavalier in his devotion. Without wealth, he had kept the
soles of her little feet from touching the sidewalks of life. Upon her
dainty person he had draped lovely garments. Why then, he wondered, the
vindictive expression etched, as if in aqua fortis, upon her carved
features?
Some Old World superstition held him captive as he gazed. Death is the
grand revealer, he thought; death alone stamps upon the crumbling canvas
of mortality the truth. Rhoda was dead. Yet her face was alive for the
first time. He saw its truth; and he shuddered, for he also discerned
the hate that had lurked a life long in its devious and smiling
expressions--expressions like a set of scenery pushed on and off as the
order of the play demanded. Oh, the misery of it all! He, Monross, poet,
lover, egoist, husband, to be confronted by this damnable defiance, this
early-born hate! What had he done! And in the brain cells of the man
there awakened a processional fleet of pictures: Rhoda wooed; Rhoda
dazzled; Rhoda won; Rhoda smiling before the altar; Rhoda resigned upon
that other altar; Rhoda, wife, mother; and Rhoda--dead!
But Rhoda loved--again he looked at the face. The brow was virginally
placid, the drooping, bitter mouth alone telling the unhappy husband a
story he had never before suspected. Rhoda! Was it possible this tiny
exquisite creature had harboured rancour in her soul for the man who had
adored her because she had adored him? Rhoda! The shell of his egoism
fell away from him. He saw the implacable resentment of this tender girl
who, her married life long, had loathed the captain that had invaded the
citadel of her soul, and conqueror-like had filched her virgin zone. The
woman seemingly stared at the man through lids closed in death--the
woman, the sex that ages ago had feared the barbarian who dragged her to
his cave, where he subdued her, making her bake his bread and bear his
children.
In a wide heaven of surmise Monross read the confirmation of his
suspicions--of the eternal duel between the man and the woman; knew
that Rhoda hated him most when most she trembled at his master bidding.
And now Rhoda lay dead in her lyre-shaped coffin, saying these ironic
things to her husband, when it was too late for repentance, too early
for eternity.
IX
THE ENCHANTED YODLER
A MARIENBAD ELEGY
I