Up the Via Dolorosa toiled a Sunday mob from many nations. The long,
nebulous avenue, framed on either side by dull trees, was dusty with
the heels of the faithful ones; and the murmur of voices in divers
tongues recalled the cluttering sea on a misty beach. Never swerving,
without haste or rest, went the intrepid band of melomaniacs speaking of
the singers, the weather and prices until the summit was reached. There
the first division broke ranks and charged upon the caravansary which
still stood the attacks of thirsty multitudes after two decades. Lucky
ones grasped Schoppen of beer and Rhine wine hemmed in by an army of
expectant throats, for the time was at hand when would sound Donner's
motive from the balcony: music made by brass instruments warning the
elect that "Rheingold" was about to unfold its lovely fable of water,
wood and wind.
Mrs. Fridolin went to the theatre and longed with mother's eyes for the
curtains to part and discover Fricka. She took her seat unconcernedly;
she was not an admirer of Wagner, educated as she had been in the florid
garden of Italian song. The darkness at first oppressed her. When from
mystic space welled those elemental sounds, not mere music, but the
sighing, droning, rhythmic swish of the waters, this woman knew that
something strange and terrible was about to enter into her
consciousness. The river Rhine calmly, majestically stole over her
senses; she forgot Bellini, Donizetti, even Gounod and soon she was with
the Rhine Daughters, with Alberich.... Her heart seemed to stop. All
sense of identity vanished at a wave of Wagner's wand, as is absorbed
the _ego_ by the shining mirror of the hypnotist. This, then, was the
real Wagner--a Wagner who attacked simultaneously the senses, vanquished
the strongest brain; a Wagner who wept, wooed, sang and surged, ravished
the soul until it was brought lacerated and captive to the feet of the
victorious master magician. The eye was promise-crammed, the ears sealed
with bliss, and she felt the wet of the waters. She breathed hard as
Alberich scaled the slimy steeps; and the curves described by the three
swimming mermaids filled her with the joy of the dance, the free
ecstatic movements of free things in the waves. The filching of the
Rheingold, the hoarse shout of laughter from Alberich's love-foresworn
lips, and the terrified cries of the luckless watchers were as real as
life. Walhall did not confuse her, for now she caught clues to the
meaning of the mighty epic. Wotan and Fricka--ah, Meg did not look so
stout, and how lovely her voice sounded!--Loki, mischief-making,
diplomatic Loki; the giants, Fafner and Fasolt; Freia, and foolish,
maimed, malicious Mime--these were not mere papier-maché, but
fascinating deities. She saw the gnomes' underworld, saw the ring, the
snake and the tarnhelm; she heard the Nibelungs' anvil chorus--so
different from Verdi's--saw the giants quarrelling over their booty;
and the sonorous rainbow seemed to bridge the way to a fairer land. As
the Walhall march died in her ears she found herself outside on the
dusky, picturesque esplanade and forgot all about Meg, remembering her
only as Fricka. With the others she slowly trod the path that had been
pressed by the feet of art's martyrs. Mrs. Fridolin then gave tongue to
her whirring brain:
"Oh! the magic of it all," she gasped.
"I'm afraid I rather agree with Nordau, Mrs. Fridolin--the whole affair
reminds me of a tank-drama I once saw in Chicago." It was the cool voice
of Miss Bredd that sounded in the hot, humming lane punctuated by vague,
tall trees....
Mrs. Fridolin and her party went to Sammett's for dinner that evening.
This garden, once Angermann's and made famous by Wagner, is still a
magnet. The Americans listened calmly to furious disputes, in a
half-dozen tongues, over the performance to the crashing of dishes and
the huddling of glasses always full, always empty. Arthmann ordered the
entire menu, knowing well that it would reach them after much delay in
the inevitable guise of veal and potatoes. The women were in no hurry,
but the sculptor was. He drummed on the table, he made angry faces at
his neighbors--contented looking Germans who whistled themes from
"Rheingold"--and when Herr Sammett saluted his guests with a crazy
trombone and crazier perversion of the Donner motive, Arthmann jumped up
and excused himself. The two hours and a half in the theatre had made
him nervous, restless, and he went away saying that he would be back
presently. Mrs. Fridolin was annoyed. It did not seem proper for three
ladies to remain unaccompanied in a public garden, even if that garden
was in Bayreuth. Suppose some of her New York friends should happen
by!... "I wonder where he has gone? I don't admire your new friend,
Margaret. He seems very careless," she grumbled.
"Wenceslaus!"--Mrs. Fridolin looked narrowly at her daughter--"Mr.
Arthmann, then, will be back soon. Like all sculptors he hates to be
cooped up long." "I guess he's gone to get a drink at the bar,"
suggested the practical Miss Bredd. "How did you like my Fricka--oh,
here's Mr. Dennett--Caspar, Caspar come over here, here!" The big girl
stood up in elephantine eagerness, and a jaunty, handsome young man,
with a shaven face and an important chin, slowly made his way through
the press of people to the Fridolin table. It was Caspar Dennett, the
conductor. After a formal presentation to the tall, thin Mrs. Fridolin,
the young American musician settled himself for a talk and began by
asking how they liked his conducting. He had been praised by the Prince
Imperial himself--praise sufficient for any self-doubting soul! Thank
heaven, _he_ had no doubt of his vocation! It was Miss Bredd who
answered him:
"I enjoyed your conducting immensely, Mr. Dennett, simply because I
couldn't see you work those long arms of yours.... I wrote lots about
you when you visited the West with your band. I never cared for your
Wagner readings." He stared at her reproachfully and she stared in
return. Then he murmured, "I'm really very sorry I didn't please you,
Miss Bredd. I didn't know that you were a newspaper woman." "Journalist,
if you please!" "I beg your pardon, journalist. I'm so sorry that Mrs.
Dennett is visiting relations in England. She would have been delighted
to call on you;"--Miss Bredd's expression became disagreeable--"and now,
Mrs. Fridolin, what do you think of your daughter, your daughter Fricka
Fridolina, as we call her? Won't she be a superb Isolde some day?" "I
hope not, Mr. Dennett," austerely replied the mother. Margaret grasped
his hands gratefully, crying aloud, "You dear! Isn't he a dear, mamma?
Only think of your daughter as Isolde. Ah! there comes the deserter. You
thoughtless man!"
The sculptor bowed stiffly when presented, and the two men sat on either
side of Miss Fridolin, far away from each other.
"Mr. Arthmann," fluted the singer--she was all dignity now--"Mr. Dennett
thinks I'm quite ready for Isolde." "You said that to me this
afternoon," he answered in a rude manner. The conductor glanced at him
and then at Margaret. She was blushing. "What I meant," said Dennett,
quickly turning the stream his way, "What I meant was that Miss
Fridolina knows the score, and being temperamentally suited to the
rôle--" "Temperamentally," sneered Arthmann. "Yes, that's what I said,"
snapped the other man, who had become surprisingly pugnacious--Fridolina
was pressing his foot with heavy approval--"temperamentally." "You know
Caspar"--the brows of the mother and sculptor were thunderous--"you know
that Mr. Arthmann is a very clever sculptor, and is a great reader of
faces and character. Now he says, that I have no dramatic talent, no
temperament, and ought to--" "Get married," boomed in Arthmann with his
most Norwegian accent. The bomb exploded. "I'd rather see her"--"in her
grave, Mrs. Fridolin"--"Oh, you wicked, sarcastic Louie Bredd. No, not
in her grave, but even as Isolde. Yes, I admit that I am converted to
Wagnerism. Wagner's music is better for some singers than marriage.
Prima donnas have no business to be married. If their husbands are not
wholly worthless--and there are few exceptions--they are apt to be
ninnies and spongers on their wives' salaries." Then she related the
story of Wilski, who was a Miss Willies from Rochester. She married a
novelist, a young man with the brightest possible prospects imaginable.
What happened? He never wrote a story after his marriage in which he
didn't make his wife the heroine, so much so that all the magazine
editors and publishers refused his stuff, sending it back with the
polite comment, Too much Wilski!
"That's nothing," interrupted Louie. "She ought to have been happy with
such a worshipping husband. I know of a great singer, the greatest
singer alive--Frutto"--they all groaned--"the _greatest_, I say. Well,
she married a lazy French count. Not once, but a hundred times she has
returned home after a concert only to find her husband playing cards
with her maid. She raised a row, but what was the use? She told me that
she'd rather have him at home with the servant playing poker than at the
opera where he was once seen to bet on the cards turned up by Calvé in
the third act of 'Carmen.' I've written the thing for my paper and I
mean to turn it into a short story some day." Every one had tales to
relate of the meanness, rapacity, dissipation and extravagance of the
prima donna's husband from Adelina Patti to Mitwindt, the German singer
who regularly committed her husband to jail at the beginning of her
season, only releasing him when September came, for then her money was
earned and banked.
"But what has this to do with me?" peevishly asked Fridolina, who was
tired and sleepy. "If ever I marry it must be a man who will let me sing
Isolde. Most foreign husbands hide their wives away like a dog its
bone." She beamed on Wenceslaus. "Then you will never marry a foreign
husband," returned the sculptor, irritably.