very sensitive to genius. I’ve never heard your music, yet I’m sure you
are doomed to greatness--or sorrow.” She added these last two words
under her breath. Oswald heard them. He started and looked into her
eyes, but he might as well have questioned two pools of light; they
reflected no sentiment, nor did they directly return his glance. Across
the table the Count made a motion and she colored; he summoned at the
same time the attention of the young composer.
“You write music, do you?” he asked in a grating voice. “I am a
composer myself. I studied with a great Russian musician, now dead.
I----”
“Tell us about _Sar_ Merodack Péladan,” interrupted the vivacious
Willy; “tell us if you ever witnessed his incantations.” Every one but
the Count and Invern laughed. The girl rapidly said something to her
guardian. It must have been in Russian. He shook his head.
“Not to-day,” he answered in French.
“No secrets!” the brothers adjured. At last the crowd began to modulate
into that hazy amiable humor which follows a copious breakfast. As
they drank coffee conversational themes were preluded, few developed;
the ball of dialogue was lightly tossed and Oswald noticed that Miss
Tilney could, at will, be American, French, German, Russian, and
English, and again Russian. Like a many-colored skein she unwound her
various temperaments according to her mood. With him she was sombre;
once she flashed anger at the Count and showed her teeth; for the two
Hollins she played any tune they wished. The real June Tilney--what was
she? Oswald wondered. But, when he fancied himself near the edge of a
revelation, his mind must have collided with her guardian’s--Van Zorn’s
expression was repellent. Invern greatly disliked him. The talk drifted
to art, thence to religion, and one of the Hollins jested about the
Devil. Count Van Zorn fixed him at once.
“No one must mock sacred things in my presence,” he coldly announced.
The others were startled.
“M. Van Zorn!” said Miss Tilney. Oswald saw her hands fluttering in
nervous excitement.
“I mean it,” was the firm response of the Count. “The Devil is the
mainspring of our moral system. Mock him and you mock God--who created
him. Without him this world would be all light without shadow, and
there would be no art, no music--the Devil is the greatest of all
musicians. He created the chromatic scale--that’s why Richard Wagner
admired the Devil in music--what is Parsifal but a version of the Black
Mass! Ah! it is easy to see that Wagner knew Baudelaire only too well
in Paris, and was initiated into the mysteries of Satanism by that poet
who wrote a Litany to Lucifer, you know, with its diabolic refrain!”
These words were fairly pelted upon the ear-drums of his listeners. The
girl held her peace, the brothers roared at the joke, but Invern took
the phrases as a serious insult. He arose and bowed.
“The Count sees fit to insult my art--very well! But I am not compelled
to hear any more.” Before he could leave June plucked at his sleeve and
tried to hold him; stranger still was the behavior of the old man. He
reached across the table, his hands clasped in supplication.
“My dear young man,” he panted, “I meant no offense. Pray be seated. I
adore your art and practise it daily. I am a devout Wagnerian. I was
but repeating the wisdom of certain ancient Fathers of the Church who
ascribed, not without cause, the origin of music to Satan. Do not be
annoyed. Beg of him, June, not to go.” Invern fell back in his seat
bewildered by this brusque cannonade. The Count held up his ten skinny
fingers.
“These claws,” he cried, “are worn to the bone on the keyboard. I
belong to an antique generation, for I mingle music and magic. Credit
me with good intentions. Better still, visit me soon--to-night--June,
we go nowhere to-night, hein! Perhaps as you do not believe in the
existence of the Devil, perhaps music--_my music_--may----”
Oswald received a shock, for a small foot was placed upon his and
pressed down with such electric vigor that he almost cried aloud. It
told him, this foot, as plainly as if its owner had spoken: “Say no!
Say no!” Responding to a stronger will than his own, he did not answer.
“Ha, you fear the Devil! But I assure you the Devil is a gentleman.
I have met him, conversed with him.” His voice filed down to a
brittle whisper and to the acute perception of the young man an air
of melancholy enveloped the speaker. Oswald hung his head, wondering
all the while. Was this fanatic really in his sane senses? And the
girl--what part did she play in such a life? Her voice cut sharply
across his perplexity.
“Dear guardian, stop your Devil talk. I’m sick of it. You spoil our
fun. Besides, you know the Devil is not a gentleman at all--the Devil
is a woman.” Shocked at the very tone of her voice, almost as harsh and
guttural as her uncle’s, Oswald intercepted a look rapidly exchanged
between the Count and his ward. The blood rushed to his head and he
slowly balled his fists. Then he arose:
“I don’t know what you boys expect to do to-night, but I’m going to
see the Devil--I mean the Count; that is, if he does not withdraw his
invitation.” The Hollins looked regretfully at Oswald and Miss Tilney.
She had upset the salt and was slowly passing the tips of her fingers
over its gritty surface, apparently dreaming, leagues distant. The
Count was almost amiable.
“Ah, my dear June, I shall at last have an auditor for my bad Wagner
playing! I live, Monsieur Invern, around the corner in the little
Impasse du Maine, off the Avenue. We are neighbors, I think, and
perhaps it may interest you to know that we, June and myself, inhabit
the old atelier of Bastien Lepage, where he painted Sarah Bernhardt,
where, also, unfortunate Marie Bashkirtseff was often wheeled to see
the dying painter.”
“Oh! oh!” remonstrated the girl in a toneless voice, “first
Devil-worship, and now studio scandal. Fie!” Her high spirits had
vanished; her face was ash-grey as she bowed to Invern. After shaking
hands with the brothers, Count Van Zorn turned to him and said:
“Don’t forget--eleven o’clock. Impasse du Maine. The Devil perhaps;
anyhow, Wagner. And the Devil is a gentleman.” He tittered, baring his
gums, his painted eyebrows high on his forehead.
“The Devil is a woman,” tremulously insisted the girl. “Have you
forgotten Klingsor and his ‘Rose of Hell’?” With Van Zorn she
disappeared.
II
When he reached his room Invern sat on the bed. These new people
puzzled him. He had shaken off the Hollin brothers, telling them they
were idiots to have introduced such an old lunatic to him.
“But we thought you liked occult Johnnies!” had been their doleful
answer; and then Oswald bade them seek the old Nick himself, but leave
him to his own thoughts; many had clustered about his consciousness
during that afternoon; the principal one, the girl. Who was she? With,
all the boastings of the brothers that Count Van Zorn was welcome in
distinguished musical circles, Oswald made up his mind to a decided
negative. That man never went into the polite world nowadays, though he
may have done so years before. An undefinable atmosphere of caducity
and malodorous gentility clung to this disciple of music and the arts
esoteric. How came it then that June Tilney, so mundane, so charming,
so youthfully alert, could tolerate the vulture? What a vulture’s
glance suggesting inexpressible horrors was his brief, warning look!
Oswald grew dizzy. “By God!” he groaned, “no, not that! But surely some
sort of diabolic business!”
Why not go? Nothing but boredom could result at the worst, and boredom
in his life was rapidly merging into a contempt for existence, contempt
for this damnable Parisian morass. His ambition had winged away years
before. Occasionally at dusk, on white summer nights, he seemed to
discern a flash of some shining substance aloft, and felt his eyes
fill, while in his ears he heard the humming of a great colored melody.
Then he would make marks in his note-book and the next day forget his
infrequent visitor; he believed in old-fashioned inspiration, but when
it did arrive he was too indifferent to open the doors of his heart.
The Devil? Any belief but the dull, cynical unfaith of his existence,
any conviction, even a wicked one, any act of the will, rather than the
motiveless, stagnant days he was leading. Why not call on the Count?
Why not see June Tilney again? He recalled vaguely the freshness of her
face, of her presence. Yes, alert was the word, alert, as if she were
guarding herself against an enemy. Ah! hiding a secret. _That_ was in
her light fencing, feathery raillery, cold despondency, half-smothered
anger, fierce outburst, and, at the close, in her obstinate
reiteration. What did it all mean? He sat on his bed and wondered.
And in the dim light of early evening he heard his name called, once,
twice--with the memory of June Tilney’s warning earlier in the day
pressing thick upon his spirit, he rushed into the hallway from whose
vacancy came no response to his excited challenge. Yet he could have
sworn to the voice, a soundless voice which had said to him: “Don’t go!
Don’t go!” Oswald put on his hat, picked up his walking-stick, and left
the house....
III
He wandered up and down the Boul’ Mich’ obsessed by his ideas, and
the clocks in the cafés were pointing to five minutes of eleven when
he turned from the Avenue du Maine into the little street, closed
at one end, which bears the name of the adjacent avenue. Invern had
never been before in this Impasse du Maine, though he had passed it
daily for ten years. He remembered it as a place where painters and
sculptors resided; it was dark, and the buildings for the most part
were dingy, yet his impression, as he slowly moved along the lower side
of the street, was not a depressing one. He reached the number given
him as the bells in the neighboring church began to sound the hour.
He had not time to summon the concierge when a hand was laid upon his
arm; a woman, wearing a hood, and enveloped in a long cloak, peered
at him through a heavy veil. He knew that it was June Tilney and his
heart began to pump up the blood into his temples. She stooped as if
endeavoring to hide her identity, and in her hand she carried a little
cane.
“Don’t go in!” she adjured the young man who, astounded by this
apparition, regarded her with open-mouthed disquiet.
“Don’t go in--there!” she again admonished him. “It means peril to your
immortal soul if you do. I caution you for the _second_ time.”
“But how can it harm me?”
“I have warned you,” she answered abruptly--was this his June Tilney of
the bright morning airs?--“and I repeat: it is my wish that you do not
visit there to-night.” Something in her tone aroused opposition.
“Nevertheless, Miss Tilney, I mean to see the Devil to-night.”
“Then go see her! But deny her if you dare!” She vanished in a doorway
across the street....
Shocked as was Oswald, he stolidly pulled the bell until the massive
doors opened. A light at the end of a large, dim court showed him the
staircase of the atelier. A moment later he had let fall a grinning
bronze knocker in the image of a faun’s hoof, and he had hardly time to
ask himself the mystery of Miss Tilney’s request, when he was welcomed
by Count Van Zorn.
Nothing could have been pleasanter than the apartment into which he
was conducted. The Count apologized for the absence of the young
lady--Miss Tilney was a slave to social obligations! Invern winced. He
looked about while the Count busied himself with carafe and glasses.
Decidedly an ideal home for a modern wizard of culture. Book-shelves
crowded with superb volumes, pictures of the Barbizon school on the
walls, an old-fashioned grand pianoforte, an alcove across which was
drawn black velvet drapery; everything signalized the retreat of a man
devoted to literature and the arts. There were no enchantments lurking
in the corners. Then his glance fell upon a warmly colored panel, a
Monticelli, of luscious hues with richly wrought figures. It depicted a
band of youths and maidens in flowing costumes, strayed revellers from
some secret rites, but full of life’s intoxication; hard-by stood an
antique temple, at its portals a wicked smiling garden god. And over
all was the flush of a setting sun, a vivid stain of pomegranate....
The desk of the piano held an engraving. Invern approached, but turned
away his head. He saw that it was by that man of unholy genius,
Félicien Rops. The Count crossed to his visitor and smilingly told him
to look again.
“My Rops! You do not admire this Temptation of St. Anthony? No? Yet
how different in conception from the conventional combination of the
vulgar and voluptuous. Wagner’s Parsifal is only a variation on this
eternal theme of the Saint tempted by the Sinner. The Woman here is
crucified--what a novel idea!”
Invern was ill at ease. The place was not what it seemed. He read the
titles of several imposing tomes: the Traité Methodique de Science
Occulte, by Dr. Papus; Sar Péladan’s Amphitheatre des Sciences Mortes,
and Comment on devient mage; Au Seuil du Mystère and Le Serpent de la
Genése, by Stanislaus de Guaita. Eliphas Levi, Nicolas Flamel, Ernest
Bosc, Saint-Martin, Jules Bois, Nehor, Remy de Gourmont’s Histoires
Magiques, and many other mystics were represented. Upon the dados
were stamped winged Assyrian bulls, the mystic rose, symbolic figures
with the heads of women and anonymous beasts, lion’s paws terminating
in fish-tails and serpent scales. Inscriptions in a dead language,
possibly Chaldean, streamed over the walls, and the constellations were
painted in gold upon a dark-blue ceiling. Luini’s Sacrifice to Pan,
an etching of the picture in the Brera at Milan, caught his eye and
he wondered why its obvious Satanic quality had been so seldom noted
by diabolists. A cumbrous iron lamp of ornate Eastern workmanship, in
which burned a wisp of green flame, comprised all that was bizarre in
this apartment; otherwise, the broad student’s table, the comfortable
chairs and couches, did not differ from hundreds of other studios on
the left bank of the Seine.
Count Van Zorn coaxed Invern into a lounging chair and gave him a glass
of wine. It was Port, of a quality that to the young man’s palate
tasted like velvet fire. He was soon smoking a strong cigar in company
with the old man, his fears quite obliterated. But his visitor noted
that the Count was engrossed. As he sat, his eyes fastened upon the
pattern of the polished parquet, Van Zorn looked like a man planning
some grave project, perhaps a great crime. His head was hollowed at the
temples, on his forehead the veins were puffy, his eyebrows, black as
ink in the morning, were now interspersed with whitish-gray--the dye
had worn away. At intervals he groaned snatches of melody, and once
Invern heard him gabble in a strange tongue.
“And the music and the magic!” broke in the young man, weary of this
interval. Slowly Van Zorn arose and stared at him steadily with his
bird-of-prey eyes.
“Have you ever realized,” he finally began in sing-song tones, “what an
instrument for good or evil is the art you profess to practise? Hear me
out,” he continued, as the composer made a motion of dissent; “I don’t
refer to the facile criticism which classifies some music profane, some
music sacred. The weaklings who are hurt by sensual operatic music
would be equally hurt by a book or a picture; I refer to the music that
is a bridge between here and--over there, over there!” His voice sank
as he waved his lean brown fingers toward the alcove. “In the days of
old, when man was nearer to nature, nearer to the gods, music was the
key to all the mysteries. Pan and Syrinx answered its magic summons. A
lost art, lost with the vulgarization of the other beautiful arts, you
say? I deny it!” He drew up his rickety figure as if he held the keys
of a conquered city.
“No! I repeat, music is still the precious art of arts and across its
poisonous gulf of sound, on the other side, _over there_,”--again he
pointed to the alcove, with its sable velvet funeral pall--“the gods
await our homage. Wagner--a worshipper at the diabolic shrine--pictured
his faith in Parsifal. He is his own Klingsor, and the music he made
for the evocation of Kundry came straight from the mouth of hell. Ah!
how it burns the senses! How it bites the nerves’--‘Gundryggia there,
Kundry here!’ Yes, the gods and the greatest of all the gods, my
master. Music is the unique spell that brings him to his worshippers on
earth. We near the end of things. This planet has lived its appointed
years. All the sins--_save the supreme one_--have been committed, all
the virtues have bleached in vain our cowardly souls. Tell me, young
man, tell me,” he grasped Oswald by his wrist, “do you long for a sight
of the true master? Through the gates of music will you go with me to
_my_ heaven where dwells the Only One?”
Invern nodded. He was more curious than afraid. With apish agility Van
Zorn darted to the pianoforte and literally threw his hands upon its
keyboard. A shrill dissonance in B minor sounded; like the lash of
hail in his face the solitary auditor felt the stormy magnetism of the
playing. He had sufficient control of his critical faculties--though
it seemed as if he were launched into space on the tail of some
comet--to realize the desperate quality of the performance. It was not
that of a virtuoso; rather the travail of a spirit harshly expressing
itself in a language foreign to its nature. The symmetry of the Wagner
structure was almost destroyed; yet between the bits of broken bars and
splintered tones there emerged the music of some one else, a stranger,
newer Wagner. Was the Horla of Wagner buried in this demoniacal prelude
to the second act of Parsifal struggling into palpable being! Carried
before the banners of this surging army of tones, Oswald clutched his
couch and eagerly listened to the evil music of Kundry and Klingsor.
He saw the stony laboratory with its gloomy battlements, from which the
necromancer Klingsor witnessed Parsifal defeat the emasculate squires.
He saw the mystic abyss hidden in the haze of violet vapor whence,
obeying the hoarse summons of her master, Kundry slowly emerged. Her
scream, the symphonic scream of woman, beast, or devil, fell upon his
ears as though an eternity of damned souls had gnashed their teeth. And
the echoes of her laughter reverberated through the porches of hell.
Gundryggia dort! Kundry hier! The succubus, or she-devil, demon, Rose
of Hell, after vainly refusing to obey the demands of the harsh
magician, sank with a baffled cry: “Oh! Woe is me!” The vast fabric
of Klingsor’s abode shivered, dissipated into nothingness. But there
followed no shining garden filled with strange and gorgeous flowers,
shapes of delights, wooing maidens with promises of unearthly love on
their lips. Vainly Oswald awaited that scene of tropical splendor with
its dream-terraces, living arabesques, and harmonious comminglement
of sky and mountain, earth and fountain, the fair mirage painted by
Klingsor’s dark art. It did not appear. Instead the music became no
longer Wagner’s, became no longer music. Van Zorn amid brazen thunders
wrenched himself from the keyboard, and prostrate upon the floor fairly
kissed its surface, mumbling an awful litany. The room was murky,
though violet hues suffused the velvet at the end. Invern became
conscious of a third person, where he could not say. An icy vibration
like the remote buzzing of monstrous dynamos apprised him that a door
or window had been opened in the apartment which permitted the entrance
of--what! His heart beat in the same rhythm with the mighty dynamos and
the hoarse chanting of the Count.
“_O Exiled Prince on whom was wrought such wrong!
Who, conquered, still art impious and strong!_”
“_O Satan have mercy on us!_”
“_O Satan, patron saint of evil!_”
“_O Satan take pity on our misery!_”
“_O Prince of Suicide, Maker of music!_”
“_O Satan have pity on us!_”
“_O Father of Pain, King of Desolation, true Master of the House
of Planets!_”
“_O Satan have mercy on us!_”
“_O Creator of black despair!_”
“_O Satan take pity on us!_”
Indifferent Christian as was Invern, his knees knocked at this
sacrilegious Baudelairian invocation. The violet grew in intensity
as the prayers of the blasphemer increased. Slowly across the sombre
velvet stretched in patibulary attitude a human skeleton. No thorns
crowned its grinning skull; instead a live viper wreathed about its
bony nest and turned glittering eyes upon the two men. Van Zorn’s voice
became a wail, calling down imprecations on earth to men of good-will.
He cursed life and praised death, and his refrain was ever:
“_O Satan, take pity on our misery!_”
Oswald no longer heard him. With hysterical agitation he remarked the
transformation of the adumbrated phantom. The skeleton had begun to
carnify--its frame was first covered with ivory-white flesh, and then,
with amazing velocity, a woman bourgeoned before his eyes. Gone the
skull, gone the viper. In their stead emerged the delicate head of a
goddess--filleted by Easter lilies--with smiling lips, enticing pose,
the figure of a delicious nubility. Hazel were the wide, gold-flecked
eyes that shot forthright shafts into the bosom of Oswald, and charged
him with ineffable longing. The arms, exquisite in proportion, the
graciously modelled torso, pierced him with an epileptic ecstasy.
And the crazy tones of Van Zorn assailed his ears as if from a great
distance:
“_O Satan, have mercy on us!_”
But the entranced youth cared little now for the diabolic litany. One
idea seized and was burning up the vital spark of him. As the creature
waxed in beauty he knew her--June Tilney! Yes, it was she--or was it
the daughter of the devil in the Rops picture?--who drew him toward her
with an irresistible caress in her eyes; eyes full of the glamour of
Gehenna, eyes charged with sins without joy, penitence without hope.
Forgotten her warnings before this Kundry of Golgotha.
“_O Satan come down to us_,” rhythmically crooned the grovelling old
man.
This, Satan? This radiant maiden with the flowery nimbus and beaming
eyes, her young breasts carolling a magnificat as they pointed to the
zenith--Oswald stumbled to the foot of the gibbet, in his ears the
throbbing of death. Her glance of cadent glory transfixed him. Scorched
by the vision, some fibre snapped in his brain and he triumphantly
cried:
“Thou art a goddess, not the Devil.”
A freezing blast overturned him, the saints of hell encircled him, as
he heard Van Zorn’s grinding sobs:
“Thou hast denied the Devil! Thou hast committed the Supreme Sin!
Quickly worship, else be banished forever from the only Paradise!”
Sick, his lips twisting with anguish, Invern had sufficient will to
close his eyes and despairingly groan: “Son of Mary, save me!” The
apparition crumbled. After a panic plunge he found himself somehow in
the wintry street, his forehead wet with fear, his nerves tugging in
their sheaths like wild animals leashed, his heart a cinder in a world
of smoke....
* * * * *
From Asia Minor, years later, the brothers received a letter signed by
Oswald Invern. In it there were misty hints of monastic immurement, and
the hopelessness of expiating a certain strange crime, compared with
which the sin against the Holy Ghost is but a youthful peccadillo. The
Hollin boys giggled in unison.
“What joy!” they exclaimed, “to have invented the Supreme Sin!”
II
BROTHERS-IN-LAW
With the vision of an antique marble façade lingering in his memory he
slowly walked up the Avenue, only stopping at Fiftieth Street to turn
and as leisurely retrace his route. Vincent Serle was in the middle
of his vigorous life, but this day, an early one in April, his forces
seemed arrested; like the curling wave which crests before its ultimate
recoil and crumble. He attributed his mood to the weather. It was not
precisely spring-fever, but a general slackening of physical fibre.
He felt almost immoral: he desired respite from toil; he longed for
some place where his eyes would not encounter palette or print; and, a
versatile man of uncertain purpose, he longed to write a novel, chiefly
about himself.