hated music! But afar as were these tonal silhouettes, traced against
the evening air, his practised hearing told him that they were made by
an artist. He languidly followed the clue, and soon he was at the gate
of a villa, almost buried in the bosk, and listening with all his
critical attention to a thrilling performance--yes, thrilling was the
word--of Chopin's music. What! The last movement of the B flat minor
sonata, the funeral march sonata, but no more like the interpretation he
had heard from others--from himself--than--than....
But, good heavens! _Who_ was playing! The unison passages that mount and
recede were iridescent columns of mist painted by the moonlight and
swaying rhythmically in the breeze. Here was something rare. No longer
conscious of the technical side of the playing, so spiritualized was it,
so crystalline the touch, Davos forgot his manners and slipped through
the gateway, through the dark garden, toward an open window in which
burned a solitary candle. The mystery of this window and the quicksilver
dartings of the music--gods, what a touch, what gossamer delicacy!--set
his heart throbbing. He forgot his sick nerves. When the trumpet blows,
the war-horse lusts for action--and this was not a trumpet, but a horn
of elf-land. He moved as closely as he dared to the window, and the
music ceased--naturally enough, the movement had concluded. His ears
burned with the silence. _She_ came to the window. Arrested by the
vision--the casement framed her in a delicious manner--he did not stir.
She could not help seeing this intruder, the light struck him full in
the face. She spoke:--
"Dear Mr. Davos, won't you come into the house? My father and my uncle
will be most happy to receive you."
* * * * *
She knew him! Stunned by his overstrung emotions, he could only bow his
head.
II
He received the welcome of a king. The two men he had seen earlier in
the day advanced ceremoniously and informed him that the honour of his
presence was something they had never hoped for; that--as news flies
swiftly in villages--they had heard he was at Alt-Aussee; they had
recognized the _great_ Marco Davos on the road. These statements were
delivered with exaggerated courtesy, though possibly sincere. The elder
of the pair was white-whiskered, very tall and spare, his expression a
sadly vague one. It was her father. The other an antique person, a
roly-poly fellow who chuckled and quavered, was her uncle. Davos sat in
a drawing-room containing a grand pianoforte, a few chairs, and couches.
The floor was stained, and when a cluster of lights was brought by the
uncle, he noticed that only Chopin portraits hung on the walls. He
apologized for his intrusion--the music had lured him from the highroad.
"We are very musical," said the father.
"I should say so," reiterated his brother-in-law.
"Musical!" echoed Davos. "Do you call it by such an everyday phrase? I
heard the playing of a marvellous poet a moment ago." The two men looked
shyly at each other. She entered. He was formally presented.
"Monsieur Davos, this is Constantia Grabowska, my daughter. My name is
Joseph Grabowski; my late wife's brother, Monsieur Pelletier." Davos
was puzzled by the name, Constantia Grabowska! She sat before him,
dressed in black silk with crinoline; two dainty curls hung over her
ears; her profile, her colouring, were slightly Oriental, and in her
nebulous gray eyes with their greenish light there was eternal youth.
Constantia! Polish. And how she played Chopin--ah! it came to him before
he had finished his apologies.
"You are named after Chopin's first love," he ejaculated. "Pardon the
liberty." She answered him in her grave, measured contralto.
"Constantia Gladowska was my grandmother." The playing, the portraits,
were now explained. A lover of the Polish composer, Davos knew every
incident of his biography.
"I am the son of that Joseph Grabowski, the Warsaw merchant who married
the soprano singer, Constantia Gladowska, in 1832," said the father,
smilingly. "My father became blind."
"Chopin's _Ideal_!" exclaimed Marco. He was under the spell of the
girl's beauty and music. He almost stared at her, for the knowledge that
she was a great artiste, perhaps greater than himself, rather dampened
his passion. She was adorable as she returned without coquetry his
ardent gaze; but she was--he had to admit it--a rival. This composite
feeling he inwardly wrestled with as the conversation placidly
proceeded. They only spoke of Poland, of Chopin. Once the name of
Emilia Plater, the Polish Joan of Arc, was mentioned--she, too, was a
distant connection. The young pianist hinted that more music would be
agreeable, but there was no response. He was quite alone with
Constantia, and they talked of Poland's tone-poet. She knew much more of
Chopin than he did, and she recited Mickïewicz's patriotic poems with
incomparable verve.
"Do you believe in heredity?" he cried, as the father entered with the
tea. "Do you believe that your love of Chopin is inherited? Chopin
composed that wonderful slow movement of the F minor concerto because of
his love for your grandmother. How I wish I could have seen her, heard
her."
The girl, without answering him, detached from her neck a large brooch
and chain. Davos took it and amazedly compared the portrait with the
living woman.
"You _are_ Constantia Gladowska." She smiled.
"Her love of Chopin--she must have loved her youthful adorer--has been
transmitted to you. Oh, please play me that movement again, the one
Rubinstein called 'the night wind sweeping over the churchyard graves.'"
Constantia blushed so deeply that he knew he had offended her. She had
for him something of the pathos of old dance music--its stately
sweetness, its measured rhythms. After drinking a cup of tea he drifted
to the instrument--flies do not hanker after honey as strongly as do
pianists in the presence of an open keyboard. A tactful silence ensued.
He began playing, and, as if exasperated at the challenge implied by her
refusal, he played in his old form. Then he took the theme of Chopin's E
flat minor Scherzo, and he juggled with it, spun it into fine fibres of
tone, dashed it down yawning and serried harmonic abysses. He was
magnificent as he put forth all the varied resources of his art.
Constantia, her cheeks ablaze, her lips parted, interposed a fan between
her eyes and the light. There was something dangerous and passionate in
her regard. In all the fury of his play he knew that he had touched her.
Once, during a pause, he heard her sigh. As he finished in a thunderous
crash he saw in the doorway the figure of the Japanese maid--an ugly,
gnarled idol with slitted eyes. She withdrew when he arose to receive
the unaffected homage of his hosts. He was curious. Monsieur Pelletier,
who looked like a Brazilian parrot in beak and hue, cackled:--
"That's Cilli, our Japanese. She was born in Germany, and is my niece's
governess. Quite musical, too, I should say so. Just look at my two
Maltese cats! I call them Tristan and Isolde because they make noises in
the night. Don't you _loathe_ Wagner?"
It was time to go. Enamoured, Davos took his leave, promising to call
the next forenoon before he went back to Ischl. He held her fingers for
a brief moment and longed to examine their tips,--the artist still
struggled to subdue the man,--but the pressure he received was so
unmistakable that he hurried away, fearing to betray his emotion. He
hovered in the vicinity of the house, longing for more music. He was
disappointed. For a full hour he wandered through the dusty lanes in the
faded light of an old moon. When he reached his chamber, it was long
past one o'clock; undaunted, his romantic fervour forced him to the
window, and he watched the shining lake. He fell asleep thinking of
Constantia. But he dreamed of Cilli, the Japanese maid with the hideous
eyes.
III
Not only that morning, but every morning for two weeks, did Marco Davos
visit Alt-Aussee. He came down from Ischl on the earliest train, and
some nights he stopped at the hotel near his new friends. After a few
visits he saw little of the father and uncle, and he was not sorry--they
were old bores with their archaic anecdotes of dead pianists. Two
maniacs on the subject of music, Davos wished them to the devil after he
had known them twenty-four hours. His passion had reached the acute key.
He could not eat or drink in normal fashion, and no sooner had he left
the girl than the sky became sombre, his pulse weakened, and he longed
to return to her side to tell her something he had forgotten. He did
this several times, and hesitated in his speech, reddened, and left her,
stumbling over the grass like a lame man. Never such a crazy wooer,
never a calmer maiden. She looked unutterable sentiment, but spoke it
not.
When he teased her about her music, she became a statue. She was too
timid to play before artists; her only master had been her father. Once
more he had heard the piano as he returned unexpectedly, and almost
caught her; he saw her at the instrument, but some instinct must have
warned her that she was being spied upon. She stopped in the middle of a
phrase from a Mendelssohn song, and even to his prejudiced ears her
touch had seemed commonplace. Yet he loved her all the more despite her
flat refusal to play. The temptation to his excited artistic temperament
was removed. He played, often, gloriously. His nerves were steel. This
was a cure his doctor had not foreseen. What did it matter, anyhow?--he
was near Constantia daily, and the sunshine was royal. Only--why did her
relatives absent themselves so obstinately! She told him, with her
secret smile, that she had scolded them for talking so much; but when he
played they were never far away, she assured him. Nor was the Japanese
woman, Cilli--what a name! A nickname given by Constantia in her
babyhood. Cilli was a good soul. He hoped so--her goodness was not
apparent. She had a sneering expression as he played. He never looked up
from the keyboard that he did not encounter her ironical gaze. She was
undoubtedly interested. Her intensity of pose proved it; but there was
no sympathy in her eyes. And she had a habit of suddenly appearing in
door or window, and always behind her mistress. She ended by seriously
annoying him, though he did not complain. It was too trivial.
One afternoon he unfolded his novel views on touch. If the action of the
modern pianoforte could be made as sensitive in its response as the
fingerboard of a fiddle.... Constantia listened with her habitual
gravity, but he knew that she was bored. Then he shifted to the subject
of fingers. He begged to be allowed the privilege of examining hers. At
first she held back, burying her hand in the old Mechlin lace flounce of
her sleeves. He coaxed. He did not attempt to conceal his chagrin when
he finally saw her fingers. They were pudgy, good-humoured, fit to lift
a knife and fork, or to mend linen. They did not match her cameo-like
face, and above all they did not reveal the musical soul he knew her to
possess. For the first time since he met her she gave evidence of ill
humour. She sharply withdrew her hand from his, and as she did so a
barbaric croon was heard, a sort of triumphant wailing, and Constantia,
without making an excuse, hurriedly left the room. The singing stopped.
"It's that devil of a Japanese woman," he muttered testily. He waited
for nearly an hour, and in a vile temper took up his hat and stick and
went away. Decidedly this was his unlucky day, he grumbled, as he
reached the water. He saw Grabowski and Pelletier, arm in arm, trudging
toward the villa, but contrived to evade them. In ten minutes he found
himself spying on the house he had quitted. He skirted a little private
way back of the villa, and to his amazement father, uncle, and
Constantia came out and hailed the omnibus which travelled hourly to
Aussee. Davos was furious. He did not risk following them, for he
realized he had been treated shabbily. His wrath softened as he
reflected; perhaps Constantia, agitated by his rudeness,--had he been
rude?--persuaded her family to follow him to Ischl. The sky cleared.
That was the solution--Marco Davos straightened himself--his pride was
no longer up in arms. Poor child--she was so easily wounded! How he
loved her!
His body trembled. He could not believe he was awake. Incredible music
was issuing from behind the closed blinds of the villa. Music! And the
music he had overheard that first night. But Constantia had just gone
away; he had seen her. There must be some mistake, some joke. No, no, by
another path she had managed to get back to the house. Ay! but what
playing. Again came that purling rush of notes, those unison passages,
as if one gigantic hand grasped them--so perfect was the tonal accord.
He did not hesitate. At a bound he was in the corridor and pushed open
the door of the drawing-room....
At first the twilighted room blinded him. Then to his disgust and terror
he saw the apelike features of the squat Japanese governess. She sat at
the piano, her bilious skin flushed by the exertion of playing.
"You--you!" he barely managed to stammer. She did not reply, but
preserved the immobility of a carved idol.
"You are a wonderful artiste," he blurted, going to her. She stolidly
answered:--
"The Japanese have the finest sense of touch in the world. I was once a
pupil of Karl Tausig." Involuntarily he bowed his head to the revered
name of the one man he had longed to hear. Then his feelings almost
strangled him; his master passion asserted itself.
"Your fingers, your fingers--let me see them," he hoarsely demanded.
With a malicious grin she extended her hands--he groaned enviously. Yes,
they were miracles of sculpture, miracles of colour and delicacy, the
slender tips well-nigh prehensile in their cunning power. And the
fingers of Constantia, of his love, of the woman who loved Chopin--that
Chopin whose first passion was for her grandmother, the opera singer
Constantia Gladowska!
The knowledge of her cruel deception crept into his consciousness. He
was chilled for several seconds. Grief at his lost love, implacable
anger at her trickery, crowded into his unhappy brain. But he only bowed
to Cilli, and summoning all his will he politely said:--
"It is quite true that when the Japanese choose to play the piano, we
Europeans must shut up shop." He hurried out to the road and walked
desperately....
The next morning, as he nervously paced the platform of the Ischl
railway station, he encountered his old friend Alfred Brünfeld, the
jovial Viennese pianist.
"Hullo!"
"Hullo!"
"Not going back to Vienna?"
"Yes--I'm tired of the country."
"But, man, you are pale and tired. Have you been studying up here after
your doctor bade you rest?" The concern in Brünfeld's voice touched
Davos. He shook his head, then bethought himself of something.
"Alfred, you are acquainted with everybody in Europe. How is it you
never told me about that strange Grabowski crowd--you know, the
granddaughter of Chopin's first love?" Brünfeld looked at him with
instant curiosity.
"You also?" he said. The young man blushed. After _that_ he could never
forgive! The other continued:--
"Granddaughter, fiddlesticks! They are not Poles, those Grabowskis, but
impostors. Their real name is--is--" Davos started.
"What, you have met them?"
"Yes, the stupid father, the odious uncle, the fair Constantia--what a
meek saint!--and that diabolical Japanese, who plays the piano like a
house on fire." Tears came to the eyes of Marco Davos.
"Did they--I mean, did _she_ take you in, too?"
"Here, at Ischl, last summer," was the grim reply.
XVIII
THE TUNE OF TIME
Ferval returned to Rouen after a fatiguing trip down the Seine as far as
Croisset, the old home of Gustave Flaubert. Here he viewed, not without
a dismal sense of fame and its futility, the little garden-house in
which the masterpieces of the great Frenchman had been conceived in joy
and executed in sorrow. He met the faithful Colange, one-time attendant
of Flaubert, and from him learned exacerbating details of the novelist's
lonesome years; so he was in a mood of irritation as he went ashore near
the Boïeldieu Bridge and slowly paced toward his hotel. He loved this
Norman Rouen, loved the battered splendour of Nôtre-Dame Cathedral,
loved the church of Saint-Ouen--that miracle of the Gothic, with its
upspringing turrets, its portal as perfect as a Bach fugue. And in the
Solferino Garden he paid his tribute of flowers at the monuments of
Maupassant and Flaubert. Ferval was modern in his tastes; he believed
nothing in art was worth the while which did not date from the
nineteenth century.
Deplorably bored, he passed his hotel on the Quai and turned into the
Rue Jeanne d'Arc, which led by the façade of the Palais de Justice. He
had studied it carefully, and it did not, this dull afternoon in
September, hold his interest long; he sauntered on, not feeling strong
enough to light a cigarette. Decidedly, Rouen was become tiresome. He
would go back to Paris by the evening train--or to Dieppe, thence to
London, on the morning boat. Presently he found himself nearing the
Porte de la Grosse Horloge. Through its opening poured vivacious working
girls and men in blouse and cap, smoking, chattering, gesticulating. It
was all very animated, and the wanderer tried to enjoy the picture. Then
over against the crenellated wall, under the tablet bearing the quaint
inscription picked out in choice Latin, Ferval saw a tall girl. Her bare
head would not have marked her in a crowd where motley prevailed; it was
her pose that attracted him,--above all, her mediæval face, with its
long, drooping nose which recalled some graven image of Jean Goujon. Her
skin was tanned; her hair, flame-coloured, was confined by a classic
fillet; her eyes, Oriental in fulness, were light blue--Ferval had
crossed to the apparition and noted these things. She did not return his
stare, but continued to gaze at the archway as if expecting some one.
Young, robust, her very attitude suggested absolute health; yet her
expression was so despairing, her eyes so charged with misery, that
involuntarily he felt in his pocket for money. And then he saw that in
her hand she held a tambourine. She wore a faded uniform of the
Salvation Army.
Suddenly an extraordinary noise was heard; music, but of such a peculiar
and excruciating quality that the young man forgot his neighbour and
wondered what new pain was in store for his already taut nerves. The
shops emptied, children stopped their games, and the Quarter suspended
its affairs to welcome the music. Ferval heard rapturous and mocking
remarks. "Baki, Baki, the human orchestra!" cried one gossip to another.
And the reverberating music swelled, multifarious and amazing as if a
military band from piccolo to drum were about to descend the highway. A
clatter and bang, a sweet droning and shrill scraping, and then an old
man proudly limped through the gateway of the Great Clock. This was the
conjurer, this white-haired fellow, who, with fife, cymbals, bells,
concertinas,--he wore two strapped under either arm,--at times fiddler,
made epileptic music as he quivered and danced, wriggled, and shook his
venerable skull. The big drum was fastened to his back, upon its top
were placed cymbals. On his head he wore a pavilion hung with bells that
pealed when he twisted or nodded his long, yellow neck. He carried a
weather-worn fiddle with a string or two missing, while a pipe that
might have been a clarinet years before, now emitted but cackling tones
from his thin lips, through which shone a few fanglike teeth. By some
incomprehensible coördination of muscular movements he contrived to make
sound simultaneously his curious armoury of instruments, and the
whistling, screeching, scratching, drumming, wheezing, and tinkling of
metal were appalling. But it was rhythmic, and at intervals the edge of
a tune could be discerned, cutting sharply through the dense cloud of
vibrations, like the prow of a boat cleaving the fog. Baki, his face red
and swollen by his exertions, moved to the spot where waited the girl.
"_Ai_, Debora!" cried a boy, "here's the old man. Pass the plate, pass
the plate!" To his amazement, though he could give no reason for the
feeling, Ferval saw the girl go from group to group, her tambourine
outstretched, begging for coppers. Once she struck an insulting youth
across the face, but when she reached Ferval and met his inquiring look,
she dropped her eyes and did not ask for alms. A red-headed Sibyl, he
thought discontentedly, a street beggar, the daughter of an old ruffian.
And as he walked away rapidly he remembered her glance, in which there
lurked some touch of antique pride and wrath.
II
Rouen lay below him, a violet haze obscuring all but the pinnacles of
its churches. The sinking sun had no longer power to pierce this misty
gulf, at the bottom of which hummed the busy city; but Ferval saw
through rents in the twirling, heat-laden atmosphere the dim shapes of
bridges mirrored by the water beneath him; and once the two islands
apparently swept toward him, a blur of green; while at the end of the
valley, framed by hills, he seemed to discern the odd-looking
Transbordeur spanning the Seine.
For twenty-four hours he had not ceased thinking of the girl with the
tambourine, of her savage, sullen grace, her magnificent poise and
strange glance. He had learned at his hotel that she was called "_Debora
la folle_," and that she was the daughter of the still crazier Baki. Was
she some sort of a gypsy, or a Continental version of Salvation Army
lass? No one knew. Each year, at the beginning of autumn, the pair
wandered into Rouen, remained a few weeks, and disappeared. Where?
Paris, perhaps, or Italy or--_là bas!_ The shoulder-shrugging proved
that Baki and his daughter were not highly regarded by reputable
citizens of Rouen, though the street people followed their music and
singing as long as it lasted. Singing? queried Ferval; does the woman
sing?
He became more interested. His visits to the country where Pissarro
painted and Flaubert wrote revealed other possibilities besides those
purely artistic ones in which this amateur of fine shades and sensations
delighted. He did not deny, on the esplanade where behind him stood
Bonsecours and the monument of Jeanne d'Arc, that souvenirs of the girl
had kept his eyelids from closing during the major portion of the night.
To cool his brain after the midday breakfast he had climbed the white,
dusty, and winding road leading to the Monumental Cemetery wherein, true
Flaubertian, he had remained some moments uncovered at the tomb of the
master. Now he rested, and the shade of the trees mellowed the slow dusk
of a Rouen evening.
A deep contralto voice boomed in his ears. As he had seen but a scant
half-dozen persons during the afternoon on the heights, Ferval was
startled from his dreams. He turned. Sitting on a bank of green was the
girl. Her hands were clasped and she spoke carelessly to her father,
who, unharnessed from his orchestra, appeared another man. Rapidly
Ferval observed his striking front, his massive head with the long,
white curls, the head of an Elijah disillusioned of his mission. He,
too, was sitting, but upright, and his arm was raised with a threatening
gesture as if in his desolating anger he were about to pronounce a
malediction upon the vanishing twilighted town. Ferval moved
immediately, as he did not care to be caught spying upon his queer
neighbours. He was halted by their speech. It was English. His surprise
was so unaffected that he turned back and went up to the two and bade
them good-day. At once he saw that the girl recognized him; the father
dropped his air of grandeur and put on the beggar's mask. What an actor!
thought Ferval, at the transformation. "Would the good gentleman
please--?"
The girl plucked at her father's arm imploringly. With her grave, cold
expression she answered the other's salutation and fixed him with her
wonderful eyes so inquiringly that Ferval began a hasty explanation.
"English was rarely spoken here ... and then the pleasure of the music!"
The old man burst into scornful laughter.