appeal to his heart of hearts; she was a coquette. Pobloff sighed. He
was midway in his mortal life, a dangerous period for susceptible
manhood. He lifted moist eyes to the stars; the night was delicious. He
rested upon a cushioned couch of stone. About him the moonlight painted
the trees, until they seemed like liquefied ermine; the palace arose in
pyramidal surges of marble to the sky, meeting the moonbeams as if in
friendly defiance, and casting them back to heaven with triumphant
reflections. And the stillness, profound as the tomb, was punctuated by
glancing fireflies. Pobloff hummed melodiously.
"A night to make music," whispered a deep, sweet voice. Before he could
rise, his heart bounding as if stung to its centre, a woman, swathed in
white, sat beside him, touched him, put such a pressure upon his
shoulder that his blood began to stir. It was she. He stumbled in his
speech. She laughed, and he ground his teeth, for this alone saved him
from foolishness, from mad behaviour.
"Maestro--you could make music this lovely night?" Pobloff started.
"In God's name, who are you, and what are you doing here? Where did you
go this evening? I missed you. Ah! unhappy man that I am, you will drive
me crazy!"
She did not smile now, but pressed close to him.
"I am a prisoner--like yourself," she replied simply.
"A prisoner! How a prisoner? I am not a prisoner, but an envoy from my
king to the sick princeling."
She sighed.
"The poor, mad prince," she said, "he is in need of your medicine,
sadly. He sent for me a year ago, and I am now his prisoner for life."
"But I saw you on the train, a day's journey hence," interrupted the
musician.
"Yes, I had escaped, and was being taken back by black Hamet when we
met."
Pobloff whistled. So the mystery was disclosed. A little white slave
from the seraglio of this embryo tyrant had flown the cage! No wonder
she was watched, little surprise that she did not care to eat. He
straightened himself, the hair on his round head like porcupine quills.
"My dear young lady," he exclaimed in accents paternal, "leave all to
me. If you do not wish to stay in this place, you may rely on me. When I
see this same young man,--he must be a nice sprig of royalty!--I propose
to tell him what I think of him." Pobloff threw out his chest and
snorted with pride. Again he fancied that he heard suppressed laughter.
He darted glances in every direction, but the fall of distant waters
smote upon his ears like the crepuscular music of Chopin. His companion
shook with ill-suppressed emotion. It was some time before she could
speak.
"Pobloff," she begged, in her dangerous contralto, a contralto like the
medium register of a clarinet, "Pobloff, let me adjure you to be
careful. Your coming here has caused political disturbances. The aunt of
the prince hates music as much as he adores it. She is no party to your
invitation. So be on your guard. Even now there may be spies in the
shrubbery." She put her hand on his arm. It was too much. In an instant,
despite her feeble struggle, the ardent musician grasped the creature
that had tantalized him since morning, and kissed her a dozen times. His
head whirled. Pobloff! Pobloff! a voice cried in his brain--and only
yesterday you left your Luga, your pretty pigeon, your wife!
The girl was dragged away from him. In the moonshine he saw the grinning
Hamet, suspiciously observing him. The runaway stood up and pressed
Pobloff's hand desperately, uttering the cry of her forlorn heart:--
"Don't play in the great hall; don't play in that accursed place. You
will be asked, but refuse. Make any excuse, but do not set foot on its
ebon floors."
He was so confused by the strangeness of this adventure, so confused by
the admonition of the unknown when he saw her white draperies disappear,
that his jaw fell and his courage wavered. A moment later two oddly
caparisoned soldiers, bearing lights, approached, and in the name of her
Highness invited him make midnight music in the Palace of a Thousand
Sounds.
IV
Seated before a Steinway grand pianoforte, an instrument that found its
way to this far-away province through the caprice of some artistic
potentate, Pobloff nervously preluded. Notwithstanding the warning of
the girl, he had allowed himself to be convoyed to the great Hall of
Ebony, and there, quite alone, he sat waiting for some cue to begin.
None came. He glanced curiously about him. For all the signs of humanity
he might as well have been on the heights of Kerb, out among its thorny
groves, or in its immemorial forests. He preluded as he gazed around. He
could see, by the dim light of two flambeaux set in gold sconces, column
after column of blackness receding into inky depths of darkness. A
fringe of light encircled his instrument, and beside him was a gallery,
so vast that it became a gulf of the infinite at a hundred paces. Now,
Pobloff was a brave man. He believed that once upon a time he had peered
into strange crevices of space; what novelty could existence hold for
him after that shuddering experience? Again he looked into the tenebrous
recesses of the hall. He saw nothing, heard nothing.
His fingers went their own way over the keyboard. Finally, following
some latent impulse, they began to shape the opening measures of
Chopin's Second Ballade, the one of the enigmatic tonalities, sometimes
called _The Lake of the Mermaids_. It began with the chanting, childish
refrain, a Lithuanian fairy-tale of old, and as its naïve, drowsy,
lulling measures--the voices of wicked, wooing sirens--sang and sank in
recurrent rhythms, Pobloff heard--this time he was sure--the regular
reverberation of distant footsteps. It was as if the monotonous beat of
the music were duplicated in some sounding mirror, some mirror that
magnified hideously, hideously mimicked the melody. Yet these footfalls
murmured as a sea-shell. Every phrase stood out before the pianist,
exquisitely clear; his brain had only once before harboured such an
exalted mood. There was the expectation of great things coming to pass;
dim rumours of an apocalyptic future, when the glory that never was on
sea or land should rend the veil of the visible and make clear all that
obscures and darkens. The transfiguration which informs the soul of one
taken down in epileptic seizure possessed him. Every cranny of his being
was flooded with overmastering light--and the faint sound of footsteps
marking sinister time to his music, drew closer, closer.
Shaking off an insane desire to join his voice in the immortal choiring
of the Cherubim, Pobloff dashed into the passionate storm-scream of the
music, and like a pack of phantom bloodhounds the footsteps pressed him
in the race. He played as run men from starving wolves in Siberian
wastes. To stop would mean--God! what would it mean? These were no
mortal steps that crowded upon his sonorous trail. His fingers flew
over the keys as he finished the scurrying tempests of tone. Again the
first swaying refrain, and Pobloff heard the invisible multitude of feet
pause in the night, as if waiting the moment when the Ballade would
cease. He quivered; the surprises and terrors were telling upon his
well-seasoned nerves.
Still he sped on, fearing the tremendous outburst at the close, where
Chopin throws overboard his soul, and with blood-red sails signals the
hellish _Willis_, the Lamias of the lake, to his side. Ah, if Pobloff
could but thus portion his soul as hostage to the infernal host that now
hemmed him in on all sides! Riding over the black and white rocks of his
keyboard, he felt as if in the clutches of an unknown force. He
discerned death in the distance--death and the unknown horror--and was
powerless to resist. Still the galloping of unseen feet, horrible, naked
flesh, that clattered and scraped the earth; the panting, hoarse and
subdued, of a mighty pack, whose thirst for destruction, for revenge,
was unslaked. And always the same trampling of human feet! Were they
human? Did not resilient bones tell the tale of brutes viler than men?
The glimmering lights seemed cowed, as they sobbed in vacuity and slowly
expired.
Pobloff no longer asked himself what it meant; he was become a maniac,
pursued by deathless devils. He could have flown to the end of the
universe in this Ballade; but, at last, his heart cracking, head
bursting, face livid, overtaken by the Footsteps of the Missing, he
smashed both fists upon the keys and fell forward despairingly....
* * * * *
... The gigantic, noseless negro, the grand vizier himself, sternly
regarded the prince, who stood, torch in hand, near the shattered
pianoforte. The dumb spoke:--
"Let us hope, Exalted Highness, that your masquerades and mystifications
are over forever. To-day's prankish sport may put us to trouble for a
satisfactory explanation." He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of
the prostrate composer. "And hasheesh sometimes maddens for a lifetime!"
He lightly touched the drugged Pobloff with his enormous foot.
The youthful runaway ashamedly lowered his head--in reality he adored
music with all the fulness of his cruel, faunlike nature.
XV
THE CURSORY LIGHT
To this day Pinton could never explain why he looked out of that pantry
window. He had reached his home in a hungry condition. He was tired and
dead broke, so he had resolved to forage. He had listened for two or
three, perhaps five, minutes in the hall of his boarding-house; then he
went, soft-footed, to Mrs. Hallam's pantry on the second floor. He was
sure that it was open, he was equally sure that it contained something
edible on its hospitable shelves. Ah! who has not his bread at midnight
stolen, ye heavenly powers, ye know him not!
Pinton, however, knew one thing, and that was a ravenous desire to sink
his teeth into pie, custard, or even bread. He felt with large, eager
hands along the wall on the pantry side. With feverish joy he touched
the knob--a friendly knob, despite its cold, distant glaze--of the door
he sought.
Pinton gave a tug, and then his heart stopped beating. The door was
locked. Something like a curse, something like a prayer, rose to his
lips, and his arms fell helplessly to his side.
Mrs. Hallam, realizing that it was Saturday night--the predatory night
of the week--had secured her pastry, her confitures, her celebrated
desserts; and so poor Pinton, all his sweet teeth furiously aching, his
mouth watering, stood on the hither side of Paradise, a baffled peri in
pantaloons!
After a pause, full of pain and troublous previsions of a restless,
discontented night, Pinton grew angry and pulled at the knob of the
door, thinking, perhaps, that it might abate a jot of its dignified
resistance. It remained immovable, grimly antagonistic, until his
fingers grew hot and cold as they touched a bit of cold metal.
The key in the lock! In a second it was turned, and the hungry one was
within and restlessly searching and fumbling for food. He felt along the
lower shelves and met apples, oranges, and sealed bottles containing
ruined, otherwise miscalled preserved, fruit. He knelt on the dresser
and explored the upper shelf. Ah, here was richness indeed! Pies, pies,
cakes, pies, frosted cakes, cakes sweating golden, fruity promises, and
cakes as icy as the hand of charity. Pinton was happy, glutton that he
was, and he soon filled the pockets of his overcoat. What Mrs. Hallam
might say in the morning he cared not. Let the galled jade wince, his
breakfast appetite would be unwrung; and then he started violently, lost
his balance, and almost fell to the floor.
Opposite him was the window of the pantry, which faced the wall of the
next house. Pinton had never been in the pantry by daylight, so he was
rudely shocked by the glance of a light--a cursory, moving light. It
showed him a window in the other house and a pair of stairs. It
flickered about an old baluster and a rusty carpet, it came from below,
it mounted upward and was lost to view.
The burglar of pies, the ravisher of cakes, was almost shocked by this
unexpected light. He watched it dancing fantastically on the discoloured
wall of the house; he wondered--ill at ease--if it would flash in his
face. His surmise was realized, for a streak of illumination reached the
narrow chamber in which he cowered, and then he was certain some one was
looking at him. He never budged, for he was too frightened. Suddenly the
light vanished and a head was dimly silhouetted in the window opposite.
It nodded to Pinton. Pinton stared stupidly, and the head disappeared.
The hungry man, his appetite now gone, was numb and terrified.
What did it mean, who was the man? A detective, or a friend of Mrs.
Hallam's in a coign from which the plunderers of her pantry could be
noted? Beady repentance stood out on Pinton's forehead.
And the light came back. This time it was intelligible, for it was a
lantern in the hand of a young man of about thirty. His face was open
and smiling. He wore his hair rather long for an American, and it was
blond and curling.
He surveyed Pinton for a moment, then he said, in a most agreeable
voice:--
"What luck, old pal?"
Pinton dropped his pies, slammed the window, and got to his bedroom as
fast as his nervous legs could carry him. He undressed in a nightmare,
and did not sleep until the early summer sun shot hot shafts of heat
into his chamber.
With a shamed Sabbath face he arose, dressed, and descended to his
morning meal. Mrs. Hallam was sitting in orotund silence, but seemed in
good humour. She asked him casually if he had enjoyed his Saturday
evening, and quite as casually damned the wandering cats that had played
havoc in her pantry. She remarked that leaving windows open was a poor
practice, even if hospitable in appearance, and nervous Mr. Pinton drank
his coffee in silent assent and then hurried off to the church where he
trod the organ pedals for a small salary's sake.
The following Friday was rehearsal night, and the organist left his
choir in a bad humour. His contralto had not attended, and as she was
the only artiste and the only good-looking girl of the lot, Pinton took
it into his head to become jealous. She had not paid the slightest
attention to him, so he could not attribute her absence to a personal
slight; but he felt aggrieved and vaguely irritated.
Pinton's musicianship was not profound. He had begun life as an organ
salesman. He manipulated the cabinet organ for impossible customers in
Wisconsin, and he came to New York because he was offered a better
chance.
The inevitable church position occurred. Then came Zundel voluntaries
and hard pedal practice. At last Mendelssohn's organ sonatas were
reached and with them a call--organists, like pastors, have calls--to a
fashionable church. The salary was fair and Mr. Pinton grew
side-whiskers.
He heard Paderewski play Chopin, and became a crazy lover of the piano.
He hired a small upright and studied finger exercises. He consulted a
thousand books on technic, and in the meantime could not play Czerny's
velocity studies.
He grew thin, and sought the advice of many pianists. He soon found that
pressing your foot on the swell and pulling couplers for tone colour
were not the slightest use in piano playing. Subtle finger pressures,
the unloosening of the muscles, the delicate art of _nuance_, the art
unfelt by many organists, all were demanded of the pianist, and Pinton
almost despaired.
He grew contemptuous of the king of instruments as he essayed the C
major invention of Bach. He sneered at stops and pedals, and believed,
in his foolish way, that all polyphony was bound within the boards of
the Well-Tempered Clavichord. Then the new alto came to the choir, and
Pinton--at being springtide, when the blood is in the joyful
mood--thought that he was in love. He was really athirst.
This Friday evening he was genuinely disappointed and thirsty. He turned
with a sinking heart and parched throat into Pop Pusch's dearly beloved
resort. Earlier in his life he had often solaced himself with the free
lunch that John, the melancholy waiter, had dispensed. Pinton's mind was
a prey to many emotions as he entered the famous old place. He sat down
before a brown table and clamoured for amber beer.
He was not alone at the table. As Pinton put the glass of Pilsner to his
lips he met the gaze of two sardonic eyes. He could not finish his
glass. He returned the look of the other man and then arose, with a
nervous jerk that almost upset the table.
"Sit down, old pal; don't be crazy. I'll never say a word. Sit down, you
fool; don't you see people are looking at you?"
The voice was low, kindly in intonation, but it went through Pinton like
a saw biting its way into wood.
He sat down all in a heap. He knew the eyes; he knew the voice. It was
the owner of the dark lantern--the mysterious man in the other house of
that last Saturday night. Pinton felt as if he were about to become ill.
"Lord, but you are a nervous one!" said the other, most reassuringly.
"Sit still and I'll order brandy. It will settle your stomach."
That brought Pinton to his senses at once.
"No, no, I'll be all right in a moment," he said rather huskily. "I
never drink spirits. Thank you, all the same."
"Don't mention it," said the man, and he tossed off his Würzburger. Each
man stealthily regarded the other. Pinton saw the stranger of the
lantern and staircase. Close by he was handsome and engaging. His hair
was worn like a violin virtuoso's, and his hands were white, delicate,
and well cared for. He spoke first.
"How did you make out on that job?--I don't fancy there was much in it.
Boarding-houses, you know!"
Pinton, every particle of colour leaving his flabby face, asked:--
"What job?"
The stranger looked at him keenly and went on rather ironically:--
"You are the most nervous duck I ever ran across. When I saw you last
your pocket was full of the silver plate of that pantry, and I can thank
you for a fright myself, for when I saw you, I was just getting ready to
crack a neat little crib. Say! why didn't you flash your glim at me or
make some friendly signal at least? You popped out of sight like a
prairie rabbit when a coyote heaves in view."
Pinton felt the ground heave beneath him. What possible job could the
man mean? What was a "glim," and what did the fellow suggest by silver
plate? Then it struck him all of a sudden. Heavens! he was taken for a
burglar by a burglar. His presence in the pie pantry had been
misinterpreted by a cracksman; and he, the harmless organist of Dr.
Bulgerly's church, was claimed as the associate of a dangerous, perhaps
notorious, thief. Pinton's cup of woe overflowed.
He arose, put on his hat, and started to go. The young man grasped his
arm, and said in a most conciliatory fashion:--
"Perhaps I have hurt your sensitive nature. It was far from my intention
to do so. I saluted you at first in the coarse, conventional manner
which is expected by members of our ancient and honourable craft, and if
I have offended you, I humbly beg your pardon."
His accent was that of a cultivated gentleman. Pinton, somewhat assured,
dropped back in his seat, and, John passing by just then, more beer was
ordered.
"Hear me before you condemn me," said the odd young man. "My name is
Blastion and I am a burglar by profession. When I saw you the other
night, at work on the premises next door to me, I was struck by your
refined face. I said to myself: 'At last the profession is being
recruited by gentlemen, men of culture, men of refinement. At last a
profitable, withal risky, pursuit is being dignified, nay, graced, by
the proper sort of person.' And I saluted you in a happy, haphazard
fashion, and then you flew the coop. Pardon my relapse into the
vernacular."
Pinton felt that it was time to speak.
"Pardon me, if I interrupt you, Mr. Blastion; but I fear we are not
meeting on equal ground. You take me for a--for a man of your
profession. Indeed, sir, you are mistaken. When you discovered me last
Saturday night I was in the pantry of Mrs. Hallam, my boarding-house
keeper, searching for pie. I am not a burglar--pardon my harsh
expression; I am, instead, an organist by profession."
The pallor of the burglar's countenance testified to the gravity of his
feeling. He stared and blushed, looked apprehensively at the various
groups of domino players in the back room, then, pulling himself
together, he beckoned to melancholy John, and said:--
"Johann, two more beers, please. Yes?"
Pinton became interested. There was something appealing in the signal
the man flashed from his eyes when he realized that he had unbosomed
himself to a perfect stranger, and not to a member of his beloved guild.
The organist put his hand on the man's arm and said--faint memories of
flatulent discourses from the Reverend Bulgerly coming to his aid: "Be
not alarmed, my friend. I will not betray you. I am a musician, but I
respect art ever, even when it reveals itself in manifold guises."
Pinton felt that he was a man of address, a fellow of some wit; his
confidential and rather patronizing pose moved his companion, who slyly
grimaced.
"So you are an organist and not a member of the noble Knights of the
Centrebit and Jimmy?" he asked rather sarcastically.
"Yes," admitted Pinton, "I am an organist, and an organist who would
fain become a pianist." The other started.
"I am a pianist myself, and yet I cannot say that I would like to play
the organ."
"You are a pianist?" said Pinton, in a puzzled voice.
"Well, why not? I studied in Paris, and I suppose my piano technic stood
me in good stead in my newer profession. Just look at my hands if you
doubt my word."
Aghast, the organist examined the shapely hands before him. Without
peradventure of a doubt they were those of a pianist, an expert pianist,
and one who had studied assiduously. He was stupefied. A burglar and a
pianist! What next?
Mr. Blastion continued his edifying remarks: "Yes, I studied very hard.
I was born in the Southwest, and went to Paris quite young. I had good
fingers and was deft at sleight-of-hand tricks. I could steal a
handkerchief from a rabbi--which is saying volumes--and I played all the
Chopin études before I was fifteen. At twenty-one I knew twenty-five
concertos from memory, and my great piece was the _Don Juan Fantasy_.
Oh, I was a wonder! When Liszt paid his last visit to Paris I played
before him at the warerooms of the Pleyels.
"Monsieur Théodore Ritter was anxious for his old master to hear such a
pupil. I assure you there must be some congenital twist of evil in me,
for I couldn't for the life of me forbear picking the old fellow's
pockets and lifting his watch. Now don't look scandalized, Mr. ---- eh?
Oh! thank you very much, Mr. Pinton. If you are born that way, all the
punishments and preachments--excuse the alliteration--will not stand in
your way as a warning. I have done time--I mean I have served several
terms of imprisonment, but luckily not for a long period. I suffered
most by my incarceration in not having a piano. Not even a dumb keyboard
was allowed, and I practised the Jackson finger exercises in the air and
thus kept my fingers limber. On Saturdays the warden allowed me, as a
special favour, to practise on the cabinet organ--an odious
instrument--so as to enable me to play on Sundays in chapel. Of course
no practice was needed for the wretched music we poor devils howled once
a week, but I gained one afternoon in seven for study by my ruse.
"Oh, the joy of feeling the ivory--or bone--under my expectant fingers!
I played all the Chopin, Henselt, and Liszt études on the miserable
keyboard of the organ. Yes, of course, without wind. It was, I assure
you, a truly spiritual consolation. You can readily imagine if a man has
been in the habit of practising all day, even if he does 'burgle' at
night, that to be suddenly deprived of all instrumental resources is a
bitter blow."
Pinton stuttered out an affirmative response. Then both arose after
paying their checks, and the organist shook the burglar's hand at the
corner, after first exacting a promise that Blastion should play for him
some morning.
"With pleasure, my boy. You're a gentleman and an artist, and I trust
you absolutely." And he walked away, whistling with rare skill the D
flat valse of Chopin.