and wondered how he could see Rue that night. The American girl seemed
something infinitely sweet, healthy, sun-swept in nature compared with
her Slavic rival.
“By Jove,” said Paul aloud, “it’s a case of rouge et noir, and I’m in
for it and no mistake.” Paul was fond of polyphony.
IV
After supper he suggested to Helena the Sammet Garden. The artists
always flocked there and it might prove interesting. Although a
chaperon was a necessity, Helena persuaded the princess that she could
go out just once in the American fashion. It would be so novel. Paul
pleaded and, of course, won. The young people hardly spoke as they went
down the dark street to the garden. The air was full of electricity. A
touch, a glance, and a storm would be precipitated. So they reached the
garden and found a seat near enough the house to be tortured by Herr
Sammet’s crazy trombone. At the same table was a black-bearded little
man dressed in white flannels.
“It is the Sâr Peladan; I know him by his musk,” said Helena
discontentedly, and they changed their seats.
“What a decadent you are!” said Godard laughingly.
“Yes. I believe sometimes I can think with my nose, my smelling sense
is so keen. I can almost divine approaching enemies. Who is that girl
staring at you so hard, M. Godard, a very pretty blonde; she looks
like an American? No, not near the house--there, over there!” Helena
reminded Paul of a cat that lifts a threatening furry back when she
scents a hostile dog.
“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “It must be Rue. That settles me for good.” It
was Rue, and she had never looked lovelier. The slight bruise under
her eyes betokened emotional exhaustion. She was dressed in white, and
the simplicity of her gown and its charming fit made the German women
plainer. Paul’s heart knocked against his ribs as he returned her
constrained bow. He saw that she had quietly and earnestly examined
Helena, and as the eyes of the women met antagonism kindled. But the
American girl was mistress of herself. She began to talk to the group
of artists about her, while Helena sulked and glowered at Paul’s too
openly expressed admiration.
“You admire your own countrywomen, do you not, M. Godard?” she asked,
and the inflection in her voice was cruelly sarcastic. Before Paul
could answer she touched his arm softly and said:
“If you can’t look at me when I talk to you, why, you may take me home.”
Paul at once begged her pardon, called for his reckoning and they
prepared to leave the garden. He did not again salute Rue Towne, for
she was talking earnestly to an ugly old fat man with a grey beard and
a Wagnerian forehead half a foot high. But from the tail of his eye he
saw that she was fully conscious of his departure. Scarlet spots came
into her face, and as Paul walked down the garden steps he felt as if
two eyes burned into his back. Then he did what other desperate men
have done under similar circumstances. He made violent love to Helena,
and it relieved the pain of his heart. But the girl was capricious,
and only by dint of magnificent lying did he finally force her hand
into his. They were now walking toward the Hofgarten, down a deserted
street. The many bells of Baireuth told them that it was a quarter past
eleven, and the moon rode tenderly in the blue. It was a night made
for soft vows and kisses, and as Paul walked he thought of Rue; Helena
fell to dreaming of the prince in her native Roumania who had played
the weakling to her strong woman’s heart, and thus the pair reached the
hotel, and after a brief parley at its door said good night and parted.
O blessed love, that can at least console two hearts glowing for the
absent!
Paul awoke next morning with what the hardheaded Germans call a moral
headache. He had a bad taste in his conscience, and he decided to call
as soon as possible on Rue. It was nearly eleven before he got to her
house. As she had no rehearsal for Siegfried, she received him. He
thought that she was distant, but he talked fast and earnestly, and
soon the ice began to thaw. Paul felt happy. Helena appealed to his
decadent taste, but Rue was as the perfume of the morning. He told her
so, and explained at great length and with considerable ingenuity how
he came in the company of a lone young woman. Her two chaperons--Paul
fancied two sounded more imposing--had gone by mistake to the garden
of the Sonne Hotel; that is why he left so soon with the lady, who was
only a recent acquaintance.
He felt Rue’s eyes on him as he wove this roundelay, and, feeling hot
about the neck and a little fearful of his ability to keep up the
strain much longer, he suddenly grasped the girl, crying out, and most
sincerely:
“O Rue! why do we waste time talking about a woman I never cared for
and never expect to see again. I love you, I love you, my darling! Kiss
me just once and tell me you care a little for me.”
As he fell upon her she was taken off her guard, and the inevitable
happened. She kissed Paul and he placed a big ring on her finger, and
left the house an hour later an engaged and also a much be-perjured
man. He was happy until he thought of Helena.
That evening when Siegfried was finished Paul walked arm and arm with
Rue down the hill to Sammet’s. As they entered they brushed against
three ladies, and Paul said aloud: “Oh, Lord!”
The next day Rue had to go to a rehearsal for the Rhine Daughters in
Die Götterdämmerung, and Paul was whistling the Spring Song from Die
Walküre in his room when a knock at his door brought the news that a
lady wished to see him. He wondered who the lady was, and, as the
parlor of the house had been turned into a bedroom, he put on his hat
and went into the hall, to be confronted by Helena, shamefaced but
resolute.
“Come out into the street,” he begged, for in her implacable eyes he
read signs of the approaching storm.
They silently descended to a lower étage. Then she turned and faced him:
“So you didn’t come to me this morning,” she said. Roumania excited
was a stirring spectacle, nevertheless Paul wished that he was up the
Hudson playing golf.
He endeavored to placate her. Helena, angered at her loss of dignity
in condescending to call on this man, reproached him bitterly, and it
seemed to him that she was about to sing the picturesque songs of hate
which Carmen Sylva has made known to us, when they reached the street.
Then her rage vanished in a moment.
“You conceited man, and you really took me in solemn earnest! I fancied
the Americans had a sense of humor. Pooh! You’re not a man to love more
than a moment, anyhow,” and she went on her way laughing mockingly,
leaving Paul shamefaced, angered, his self-love all bruised and his
senses aroused, for Helena wrathful was more beautiful than Helena
amiable.
He was so distressed in mind that he only sat through one act of
Die Götterdämmerung; his Wagner madness seemed to have evaporated.
He hovered around the back of the theatre, and caught a glimpse
of Rue getting in a carriage with the same fat old German--her
singing-teacher, he fancied.
Although it was late, he called at her house. She had not yet arrived,
the maid told him. He mooned about disconsolately until one o’clock,
keeping at a safe distance from the Hotel Sonne. Then he wearily went
to bed and dreamed that the Nornes were chasing him down Fifth Avenue.
The next morning he called again on Rue. She sent down word that she
was tired. He called again in the afternoon; she was not at home. In
the evening, feeling as if he were going mad, he was told that she had
gone out and would not be back until late. He hung around the house in
a hungry-dog fashion, smiling bitterly at times and beginning to doubt
even his own intentions. But no Rue.
He went home at last, and in a rage of love and jealousy he sat down
and wrote to Rue this letter:
“Rue, my Rue, darling, what is the matter? Have I offended you? Why did
you not see me to-day, to-night? Oh, how lonely was the street, how sad
my heart! I thought of Verlaine’s ‘It rains in my heart as it rains in
the town.’ Why don’t you see me? You are mine; you swore it. My sweet
girl, whose heart is as fragrant as new-mown hay! Darling, you must
see me to-morrow--to-day--for I am writing to you in the early, early
morning. You know that you promised to come to me next year in America.
Only think, sweetheart, what joy then! The sky is aflame with love.
We walk slowly under few soft spring stars, and your hand is in mine,
and that night, that night your heart will sob on my breast, my lovely
woman, and your heart will fiercely beat as we both slip over the hills
to heaven. Rue, you will make me a poet. Only tell me, I beg of you,
the hour when I may see you.”
Then Paul threw himself on the bed, but not to sleep. It was daybreak,
and the Teutonic chanticleer of the dawn had lusty lungs, and it was
almost time for coffee. He dressed in feverish haste, went out of
doors, secured a messenger and despatched the letter. He walked up and
down the Lisztstrasse for twenty minutes, and his emotion was so great
at the sight of the boy returning, a letter in hand, that he retreated
into the doorway and awaited the news. It was brief. He read this in
Rue’s firm handwriting:
“Your friend Helena has told me all. Here is your ring.”
There was no signature.
Then Paul did what most cowards do. He went to the other woman. The
storm in his soul might be allayed, and he could have the pleasure of
showing Rue that she was not necessary to him. Of course the jealousy
of Helena had spoiled his game; for he really had meant to be sincere
with Rue, so he told himself in the inward, eloquent manner which paves
hell with composite intentions. It was all clear to him. Helena loved
him, else why did she tell Rue of his double-dealing? It gave him a
glowing feeling again in his distracted bosom, and as he walked into
the Hotel Sonne he said between clutched teeth:
“Black wins!”
He was met by a polite portier, who told him that his friends had left
on the early train for Vienna. But there was a letter!
Heart-sick and with trembling hands he tore open the envelope.
“Did you really think I loved an American when I can have a Roumanian?
Better console your singer.”
No signature.
“When does the next train leave for Paris?” asked Paul of the polite
portier.
* * * * *
There is a rumor in society that Paul Godard is engaged to Edith
Vicker. He never goes to a Wagner music-drama, and is passionately
addicted to cabaret dancing.
Americans are versatile.
V
THE CARDINAL’S FIDDLE
Yakov leaned out of his window and greedily listened to the Cardinal
playing his fiddle. The window was small and under a hot roof. From
it a view of the great palace of his Eminence was easy, for the house
of Yakov’s mother stood in a narrow court at the rear, and was a
low-sized building, not far from the Cathedral which dominated this
old-fashioned and once aristocratic section of the city. The bedroom of
the boy was on a level with the living-room of the Cardinal--a tall,
spare old man with mild eyes and ascetic face. His bushy white hair and
ruddy complexion, coupled with a high, hawk-like nose, gave him the
appearance, in Yakov’s eyes, of a benevolent bird of exotic origin.
Stranger still was his passion for music. At least once a day he could
be seen by the lad, walking with long, elastic strides about the large
bare room, a violin tucked under his chin, his eyes closed, and he
fiddling as if rehearsing for a classical concert. Yakov knew it was
“classical” music because he couldn’t make head or tail of it, although
he was studying the instrument himself at the big conservatory on the
square. But he was only a beginner--that’s what his cross teacher told
him when his lesson was a poor one--and he realized the fact, while the
Cardinal--oh! he played everything difficult, and always without notes.
He wondered why this kindly old gentleman in the queer dress should
fiddle in the great palace across the way; he, so rich and powerful,
doing for fun what the poor little Yiddish boy did as a task. When
Yakov could play he wouldn’t live in a palace, but would try to get a
job in a theatre orchestra. His mother answered his query, “What is
a cardinal?” with a vague, “Oh, he is a sort of high rabbi,” which
didn’t tell her son much. He was brought up in the orthodox faith, went
to Shool--the synagogue--and was careful to eat no food that had not
been prepared in Kosher fashion. This last practice brought him into
conflict with the boys of his class at the public school around the
corner. They were American born, though many of foreign descent. That
made no difference, for, as much as they quarrelled with one another,
they were a unit as to the undesirability of the Jew. Their teacher had
scolded, had even punished them, but uselessly. They were sarcastic,
were these boys of Italian, Irish and German parents, calling aloud,
“Micky,” “Dutchy,” “Guinney,” “Wop,” but for Yakov and his like--in
the majority at the school--they had choicer terms: “Sheeny” “Kike!”
“Mekmek!” Yakov didn’t much mind the nicknames.
He only feared the suddenly delivered punches at his back, the
vise-like grip of “Jimmy the Brick” (self-christened) on his neck,
and the hateful grin with which a ham sandwich would be thrust into
his mouth. This last was the supreme insult. If he did not complain
to his teacher, it was because he feared reprisals. So he only told
his mother, with tears in his large, dark, expressive eyes, and she
comforted him. She said it was the glory of his race, this badge of
suffering, these insults from the Gentiles. He must not fight back, but
meekly endure. Jehovah would watch over him. She was a decent widow
woman, who had a small dressmaking business in her house and barely
supported herself and child, also giving him a musical education. Oh!
to see him a great violinist! She loved music, and as she worked her
sewing-machine she hummed to its rhythms. Once, many years ago, she had
heard in Lemberg, her Galician birthplace, the greatest violinist in
the world, Joseph Joachim, and one of her race. She was unmarried then,
yet she made a silent vow that if ever she had a son....
She had Yakov now, and his father was gone. She always said to
him--dead. But she knew better. He had deserted her for another woman,
left her without a dollar, and she had been fighting for ten years to
keep their heads above water. Living in this humble yet genteel court
behind the Cathedral, she dreamed of Yakov’s future, and she cried
with joy when the teacher at the conservatory grudgingly admitted
that the boy had talent and might--he coughed his reservations--with
hard work make a fair musician. Yakov went to school and in the
afternoons practised. The weather was warm, windows were opened, and he
attentively heard the fiddle of the Cardinal.
The music was a succession of beautiful sounds for the young visionary.
His eyes glittering, his lips apart, his arms tightly folded about his
thin little frame, he listened as if to the voice of God. The Cardinal
played the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s concerto, and, threadbare
as has become this familiar song, to Yakov it was an enchantment. Its
obvious sentiment seemed a call from his dead father in heaven. When
the music ceased he involuntarily stretched aloft his arms. The eye of
the Cardinal must have caught the glint of white--the boy was in his
shirt-sleeves--and came to the window cautiously, peering across to
Yakov. He vaguely smiled, and to Yakov’s sorrow he closed the window,
yet the sound of his fiddle softly echoed in the ears of the boy.
Every evening he stationed himself at the same spot, but the Cardinal
did not play. Yakov yearned for his music. His own cheap red fiddle
became hateful to him. Its rasping tones when he attempted scales
extinguished his ambition. One day his mother said in her purring
Yiddish: “Yakov, you must be more industrious, else the gentleman at
the conservatory will send you home.” Even that didn’t arouse him. He
suddenly took to playing in the court with the other boys after school.
Such rough games! He stood a lot of kicking and punching, especially
from Jimmy the Brick, who, after all, wasn’t a bad-hearted chap. He
once grabbed Yakov’s lunch-box and critically swallowed the contents,
which pleased him, as he liked full-flavored food. “Say, Kike, that’s
not bad grub. I like your stuffed fish better than the macaroni of that
Wop kid Tony.” With this backing of the boss Yakov enjoyed comparative
peace. He had thought of revenge, of organizing into a compact phalanx
the large body of Jewish boys at the school, but his mother’s advice
and the patience of his race dissuaded him from active rebellion.
He let things slide along, and in the meantime his music was almost
neglected. In vain did his teacher rap his knuckles with the fiddle-bow
and threaten him with dismissal. Yakov knew the crosspatch wouldn’t
keep his word, for he was a pay pupil; not much pay, to be sure;
anyhow, not a charity scholar.
The magic of a windless June night transformed the old Red Lion court
into an operatic picture. Moonlit, it recalled a prosperous past that
had hardly modulated into its present middle-class shabbiness. Old
houses, colonial in style, but sadly defaced by time, slept tranquilly
in the magnetic rays of a moon which breasted the low housetops. The
din and gabble had ceased, the only noise being the sound of hammered
iron on the anvil of the blacksmith’s at the corner. So changed were
times that the legend over the door of the smithy read, “Sokolov &
Grünstein--Horseshoers.” The ancient and honorable profession had been
wrested from sturdy English and Irish hands by the more persistent
hosts from southeastern Europe. For Yakov the change meant nothing,
but it gave extreme pain to Jimmy’s parents, and so Jimmy, with his
faithful band, was in the habit of yelling defiant and insulting words
at the two blacksmiths, though keeping at a safe distance. The rhythmic
tapping of the hammers brought peace to Yakov, who stood in his window
regarding with awakened curiosity the spectacle of the Cardinal’s
living-room, lighted for the first time in weeks; perhaps--! Presently
the sound of a fiddle oozed through the open space. He was back, the
Cardinal with his fiddle. What was he playing? Hymn tunes, surely.
First, the Adeste Fideles, which Yakov remembered because in a moment
of condescending generosity Jimmy had taken him to Vespers at the
Cathedral and had told him the name of the music he had heard.
Then the tune shifted to a more solemn, a celestial tune, indeed,
which the listener couldn’t place. He didn’t know it was the O Jesu,
by Haydn, but that didn’t matter; his ear was ravished by its pleading
strains, and he hung out of his perch, tremulously absorbing every
tone. The Cardinal’s humor shifted. He dashed off a gay Tipperary jig,
and followed this with The Valley Lay Smiling Before Me, and The Harp
of Tara. Yakov felt that the violinist must be an Irishman, but ever so
different from the noisy Jimmy. Yet Irish!
What, what! He pinched himself as the grave music of the Kol Nidré,
the sacred tune sounded on the Day of Atonement, came swelling across
the Cardinal’s windows. The Kol Nidré, that immemorial cantillation
of the Hebrews, in it compressed the dolors of the ages, and perhaps
first chanted in the house of Egyptian bondage, perhaps out of the dim
centuries before Egypt, before the shadowy Sumerians! Who knows? What
concerned the boy was the strange happening--a potentate of the Gentile
Church playing on a fiddle the grand and venerable hymn of the Jews.
But that he was fascinated by the music he would have rushed down to
his mother to tell her the glad tidings. She knew of the playing across
in the palace, and was pleased because of Yakov’s evident interest. She
would welcome the return of the Cardinal, for her boy would be again
spurred to study. He couldn’t leave the window till the last note had
been squeezed from the august and mournful melody.
In a fever Yakov seized his tiny instrument and lovingly mimicked
the Cardinal. Its squeak reached the priest, who came to the window
and waited until Yakov’s imperfect interpretation of the Kol Nidré
ended, and, smiling a kind smile that melted the heart within the
bosom of the boy, he waved a slender hand, as if to say, “I salute a
brother artist!” It was too much for Yakov, who ran to his mother’s
sewing-room, there to pour out his joy and receive her gentle blessing.
He, too, would play the fiddle like the Cardinal--play the Kol Nidré
for a hall full of listeners, who would applaud him! The mighty
Cardinal had played the Kol Nidré for the poor little Jew boy, and he
hadn’t even bowed his profound gratitude!
On wings of song, he mounted the stairway to his garret, but the music
was no longer heard, though the windows were still alight. Not able to
control himself, Yakov took his instrument, and, all the while playing,
marched down-stairs into the court, and in the mystic moonshine he
played on, played the Kol Nidré. Soon the gang surrounded him, and
Jimmy the Brick cried: “Aw, give us a rest with that tune. Play a coon
song.” Yakov only shook his head and kept on playing.
“Stop it, I say!” yelled Jimmy. “We want none of yer Kike music in this
court. D’ye hear?” Yakov still played, and the tune rang out with the
terror and desolation of the Day of Atonement.
“Hit him, Tony! Grab his fiddle, you Wop!” hoarsely commanded the
leader. The boys closed about him and in a twinkling the current of
the music was cut off, the red violin smashed into a hundred bits, the
bow snapped in two and its coarse hair twisted about Yakov’s neck.
He fought silently, tearlessly. The firm of Sokolov & Grünstein came
to his rescue, and, being muscular men, they routed the band and sent
the victim to his home with consoling phrases. But he was hopeless.
That another fiddle might be bought for him found no place in his
whirling imagination. He had been cruelly treated. Why should he be so
punished? As he sank on his knees at his attic window tears flowed and
sobs followed. Yakov mourned and would not be comforted. And across the
court in the chamber of the palace the Cardinal played with exquisite
melancholy that antique Hebraic tune, the Kol Nidré.
VI
RENUNCIATION
The hearts of some women are as a vast cathedral. There are its
gorgeous high altars, its sounding gloom, its lofty arches, and
perhaps in an obscure niche burns a tiny taper before the votive
shrine. And many pass through life with this taper unlighted, despite
the pomp and ceremonial of the conjugal comedy. Others carry in the
little chapel of their hearts a solitary glimmering lamp of love that
only flames out with death.
A grand piano, its burnished ivory teeth gleaming in the candle-light,
stood near the open window, and at it one lounged and idly preluded
Schumann-like harmonies that questioned the night. Outside a veiled
fumidity, behind which lurked thunderous prospects; the air was still
with languorous anticipation, and the month of the year was April. He
would not have been human and an artist to have withstood the dumb
depression of the moment. Snatches of heavily brocaded harmonies of
Chopin, mute interrogations of Brahms, and furtive glitterings of Liszt
vibrated through the chamber. One sultry chord, persistently repeated
and unresolved, told the temper of him who played.
It was a sober apartment; a half-score of wax tapers sang with a bunch
of tuberoses a sweet duo.
A few chairs, some music scattered about, a tall bookcase, gaunt and
shadowy in the background, and a polished floor made the ensemble
of an artist’s living-room. The playing grew vaguer and the night
without more menacing. Then the first eight or ten bars of the prelude
to Tristan und Isolde forced into shape on the keyboard and--hush!
a delicate knock at the door. He harshly called, “Entrez!” She was
without a wrap, her head enveloped in a filmy burnoose. She faltered,
then moved to him as moves a sleep-walker. “I know that it is wrong,
but I--how can I help it? I have come to you--and you?” She paused, her
face illuminated by love-doubt. His voice was muffled when he answered
her, “Pray be seated, madame.”
She divined his reluctance: “We leave to-morrow, and you must play for
me once more.”
“I could have called at your hotel,” he gently replied.
Impetuously she cried: “I have risked much to be near you, to hear you
play; yet you stand coldly, and after yesterday--Ah, you forget!”
“I do not forget,” he replied.