To the harsh sacrificial tones of curious shells wrought
from conch let us worship our blazing parent planet! We
stripe our bodies with ochre and woad, lamenting the decline
of our god under the rim of the horizon. O! sweet lost days
when we danced in the sun and drank his sudden rays. O!
dread hour of the Shadow, the Shadow whose silent wings
drape the world in gray, the Shadow that sleeps. Our souls
slink behind our shields; our women and children hide in the
caves; the time is near, and night is our day. Softly, with
feet of moss, the Shadow stalks out of the South. The
brilliant eye of the Sun is blotted over, and with a
remorseless mantle of mist the silvery cusp of the new moon
is enfolded. Follow fast the stars, the little brethren of
the sky; and like a huge bolster of fog the Shadow scales
the ramparts of the dawn. We are lost in the blur of doom,
and the long sleep of the missing months is heavy upon our
eyelids. We rail not at the coward Sun-God who fled fearing
the Shadow, but creep noiselessly to the caves. Our shields
are cast aside, unloosed are our stone hatchets, and the
fire lags low on the hearth. Without, the Shadow has
swallowed the earth; the cry of our hounds stilled as by the
hand of snow. The Shadow rolls into our caves; our brain is
benumbed by its caresses; it closes the porches of the ear,
and gently strikes down our warring members. Supine, routed
we rest; and above all, above the universe, is the silence
of the Shadow.
"Arthur has had his revenge," she murmured, and of a sudden went sick;
the house was black about her as she almost swooned.... The old pride
kept her up, and she looked about the thinly filled galleries; the
concert commenced; she listened indifferently to the overture. When
Vibert came on the stage and bowed, she noticed that he seemed rather
worn but he was active and played with more power and brilliancy than
she ever before recalled. He was very masterful, and that was a new note
in his music. And when the songs came, he led out a pretty, slim girl,
and with evident satisfaction accompanied her at the piano. The three
songs were charming. She remembered them. But who was this soprano?
Arthur was evidently interested in her; the orchestra watched the pair
sympathetically.
So the elopement had not killed him! Indeed he seemed to have thriven
artistically since her desertion! Ellenora sat in the black gulf called
despair, devoured by vain regrets. Was it the man or his music she
regretted? At last the Symphonic Poem! The strong Gothic head of Anton
Seidl was seen, and the music began....
The natural bent of Arthur for the mystic, the supernatural, was
understood by his wife. Here was frosty music, dazzling music, in which
the spangled North, with its iridescent auroras, its snow-driven
soundless seas and its arctic cold, were imagined by this woman. She
quickly discerned the Sun theme and the theme of the Shadow, and
alternately blushed and wept at the wonderfully sympathetic tonal
transposition of her idea. That this slight thing should have trapped
his fantasy surprised her. After she had written it, it had seemed
remote, all too white, a "Symphonie en Blanc Majeur"--as Théophile
Gautier would have called it--besides devoid of human interest. But
Arthur had interwoven a human strand of melody, a scarlet skein of
emotion, primal withal, yet an attempt to catch the under emotions of
the ice-bound Esquimaux surprised in their zone of silence by the sleep
of the Shadow, the long night of their dreary winter. And the composer
had succeeded surprisingly well. What boreal epic had he read into
Ellenora's little prose poem, the only thing of hers that he had ever
pretended to admire! She was amazed, stunned. She wondered how all this
emotional richness could have been tapped. Had she left him too soon, or
had her departure developed some richer artistic vein? She tortured her
brain and heart. After a big tonal climax followed by the lugubrious
monologue of a bassoon the work closed.
There was much applause, and she saw her husband come out again and
again bowing. Finally he appeared with the young singer. Ellenora left
the hall and feebly felt her way to the street. As she expected, Paul
was not in sight, so she called a carriage, and getting into it she saw
Arthur drive by with his pretty soprano.