Somewhere; in desolate wind-swept space,
In Twilight-land--in No-man's land--
Two hurrying shapes met face to face
And bade each other stand.
"And who are you?" cried one agape
Shuddering in the gloaming light;
"I know not," said the second shape,
"I only died last night!"
--ALDRICH.
Mychowski was considered by grave critical authorities, the best living
interpreter of Chopin. He was a Pole--any one could tell that by the way
he spelt his name--and a perfect foil to Paderewski, being short,
thick-set and with hair as black as a kitchen beetle. His fat amiable
face, flat and corpulent fingers, his swarthy skin and upturned nose,
were called comical by the women who thronged his recitals; but
Mychowski at the keyboard was a different man from the Mychowski who sat
all night at a table eating macaroni and drinking Apollinaris water.
Then the funny profile vanished and the fat fingers literally dripped
melody. His readings of the Polish master's music were distinguished by
grace, dexterity, finesse, pathos and subtilty. The only pupils of
Chopin alive--there were only six now--hobbled to Mychowski's concerts
and declared that at last their dead idol was reincarnated, at last the
miracle had taken place: a genuine interpreter of Chopin had
appeared--then severe coughing, superinduced by emotion, and the rest of
the sentence would finish in tears....
The Chopin pupils also wrote to the papers letters always beginning,
"Honored Sir,--Your numerous and intelligent readers would perhaps like
to know in what manner Chopin's performance of the F minor Ballade
resembled Mychowski's. It was in the year 1842 that--" A sextuple flood
of recollections was then let loose, and Mychowski the gainer thereby.
Still he obstinately refused to be lionized, cut his hair perilously
near the prizefighter's line, and never went into society, except for
money. He was a model business man; the impresarios worshipped him. Such
business ability, such frugality, such absence of eccentricity, such
temperance, were voted extraordinary.
"Why, the man never gambles," said a manager, "drinks only at his
meals"--"which are many," interrupted some one--"and always sends his
money home to his wife and family in Poland. Yet he plays like a god. It
is unheard of." ...
The Polish servant Mychowski brought with him from home sickened in
Paris and died. Although the pianist was playing the Erard, he went
often to the Pleyel piano warerooms and there told a friend that he was
without a valet.
"We have some one here who will suit you. His father was Chopin's
body-servant, who, as you must have read, was an Irish-Frenchman named
Daniel Dubois. We call the son Daniel Chopin; he looks so much like some
of the pictures of your great countryman. Best of all, he doesn't know
one note of music from another."
"Just the man," cried Mychowski; "my last valet always insisted on
waking me in the morning with a Bach Invention. It was awful." Mychowski
shuddered.
"Wait, then; I'll send upstairs for him," said the amiable
representative of the Maison Pleyel, and soon there appeared, dressed
after the fashion fifty years ago, a man of about thirty, whose face and
expression caused Mychowski to bound out of his seat and exclaim in his
native tongue:
"Slawa Bohu! but he looks like Frédéric."
The man started a little, then became impassive. "My father was Daniel
Dubois, in whose arms the great master died. May he keep company with
the angels! When my mother bore me she wore a medallion containing a
portrait of the great master, and my father, who was his pupil, played
the nocturnes for her."
The speaker's voice was slightly muffled in timbre, its accent was
languid, yet it was indubitably the voice of a cultivated man. Mychowski
regarded him curiously. A slim frame of middle height; fragile but
wonderfully flexible limbs; delicately formed hands; very small feet; an
oval, softly-outlined head; a pale, transparent complexion; long silken
hair of a light chestnut color parted on one side; tender brown eyes,
intelligent rather than dreamy; a finely-curved aquiline nose, a sweet,
subtle smile; graceful and varied gestures--such was the outward
presence of Daniel Dubois.
"He looks just like the description given by Niecks," murmured the
pianist. "Even the eyes are _piwne_, as we say in Poland, couleur de
bière.
"Yet you do not play the piano?" he continued. The man smiled and shook
his head. Terms were arranged, and the valet sent to Mychowski's rooms.
"And the mother, who was she?" Mychowski asked later.
"Pst!" enjoined his friend discreetly. Mychowski smiled, sighed, shook
his head, settled himself before a new piano and plunged into the
preludes, playing the entire twenty-five without pause, while business
was suspended in the ancient and honorable Maison Pleyel, so
captivating, so miraculous, was the poetic performance of this
commonplace and kind-hearted virtuoso....
Mychowski discovered in Daniel an agreeable servant. He was noiseless,
ubiquitous. He could make an omelette or sew on a button with woman's
skill. His small, well-kept hands knew no fatigue, and his master often
watched them, almost transparent, fragile and aristocratic, as they
shaved his rotund oily face. Daniel was admirable in his management of
the musical library, seeming to know where the music of every composer
had to be placed. Mychowski wondered how he contrived to find time to
learn so much and yet keep his hands from the keyboard. After the first
month Mychowski began to envy his servant the possession of such a
poetic personality.
"Now if I had such a face and figure how much better an effect I should
produce. I see the women laugh when I sit down to play, and if it wasn't
for my fat fingers where would I be?" Mychowski sighed. He had conquered
the musical world, but not his reflection in the mirror. He had made
some charming conquests, but his better guides had whispered to him that
it was his music, not his face, that had won the women. He was vain,
sensitive and without the courage of his nose, unlike Cyrano de
Bergerac. Nothing was lacking; talent, wealth, health, a capital
digestion and success! Had they not poured in upon him? From his
twentieth year he enjoyed the sunshine of popular favor and after ten
years was enamoured of it as ever. He almost felt bitter when he saw
Daniel's high-bred and delicate figure. He questioned him a hundred
times, but could find out nothing. Where had he been raised? Who was his
mother, and why did he select a servant's life? Daniel replied with
repose and managed to parry or evade all inquiries. He confessed,
however, to one weakness--insatiable love for music--and begged his
master to be allowed the privilege of sitting in the room during the
practising hours. When a concert was given Daniel went to the hall and
arranged all that was necessary for the pianist's comfort. Mychowski
caught him at a recital one night with a score of the F minor Ballade of
Chopin, and warm and irritable as he was, for he had just played the
work, he could not refrain from asking his servant how it had pleased
him. Daniel shook his head gently. Mychowski stared at him curiously,
with chagrin. Then a lot of women rushed in to congratulate the artist,
but stopped to stare aghast at Daniel.
"Ah, M. Mychowski!"--it was the beautiful Countess d'Angers--"We know
now why you play Chopin so wonderfully, for have you not his ghost here
to tell you everything? Naughty magician, why have you not come to me on
my evenings? You surely received cards!" Mychowski looked so annoyed at
the jest that Daniel slipped out of the room and did not appear until
the carriage was ready....
At the café where Mychowski invariably went for his macaroni Daniel
usually had a place at the table. The pianist was easy in his manners,
and not finding his man presumptuous he made him a companion. They had
both eaten in silence, Mychowski gluttonously. Looking at Daniel and
drinking a glass of chianti, he said in his most jocular manner:
"Eh bien, mon brave! now tell me why you didn't like my F minor
Ballade." Daniel lifted his eyes slowly to the other's face and smiled
faint protestation. Mychowski would take no refusal. He swore in Polish
and called out in lusty tones, "Come now, Daniel Chopin, what didn't you
like, the tempo, the conception, the coda, or my touch?"
"Your playing, cher maître, was yourself. No one can do what you can,"
answered Daniel evasively.
"Hoity-toity! What have we here, a critic in disguise?" said Mychowski
good humoredly, yet at heart greatly troubled. "Do you know what the
pupils of Chopin say of my interpretation?" Daniel again shook his head.
"They know nothing about Chopin or his music," he calmly replied. A
thunderbolt had fallen at Mychowski's feet and he was affrighted. Know
nothing of Chopin or his music? Here was a pretty presumption. "Pray,
Daniel," he managed to gasp out, "pray how does your lordship happen to
know so much about Chopin and his music?" Mychowski was becoming angry.
In a stifled voice Daniel replied:
"Dear master, only what my father told me. But do let me go home and get
your bed ready. I feel faint and I ask pardon for my impertinence. I am
indeed no critic, nor shall I ever presume again." "You may go," said
his master in gruff accents, and regretted his rudeness as soon as
Daniel was out of sight. If any one of the managers who so ardently
praised Mychowski's temperate habits had seen him guzzling wine, beer
and brandy that night, they might have been shocked. He seldom went to
excess, but was out of sorts and nettled at criticism from such a
quarter. Yet--had he played as well as usual? Was not overpraise
undermining his artistic constitution? He thought hard and vainly
endeavored to recapture the mood in which he had interpreted the
Ballade, and then he fell to laughing at his spleen. A great artist to
be annoyed by the first adverse feather that happened to tickle him in
an awkward way. What folly! What vanity! Mychowski laughed and ordered a
big glass of brandy to steady his nerves.
All fat men, he thought, are nervous and sensitive. I must really go to
Marienbad and drink the waters and I think I'll leave Daniel Chopin
behind in Paris. Chopin--Chopin, I wonder how much Chopin is in him?
Pooh! what nonsense. Chopin only loved Sand and before that Constantia
Gladowska. He never stooped to commonplace intrigue. But the
resemblance, the extraordinary resemblance! After all, nature plays
queer pranks. A thunderstorm may alarm a Mozart into existence, and why
not a second Chopin? Ah, if I had that fellow's face and figure or he
had my fingers what couldn't we do? If he were not too old to study--no,
I won't give him lessons, I'll be damned if I will! He might walk away
with me, piano and all. Chopin face, Chopin fingers.
Mychowski was rapidly becoming helpless and at two o'clock the patron of
the café sent a message to Daniel, who was hard by, that he had better
fetch his master away. The pianist was lifted into a carriage, though he
lived just around the corner, and with the aid of the concierge, a
cynical man of years, was helped into his apartment and put to bed. It
was a trying night for Daniel, whose nature revolted at any suggestion
of the grosser vices....
From dull, muddy unconsciousness the soul of Mychowski struggled up into
thin light. He fought with bands of villainous appearing men holding
tuning forks; he was rolled down terrific gulfs a-top of pianos; while
accompanying him in his vertiginous flight were other pianos, square,
upright and grand; pianos of sinister and menacing expression; pianos
with cruel grinning teeth; pianos of obsolete and anonymous shapes;
pianos that leered at him, sneered at him with screaming dissonances.
The din was infernal, the clangor terrific; and as the pianist, hemmed
in and riding this whirlwind of splintered sounding-boards, jangling
wires and crunching lyres, closed his eyes expecting the last awful
plunge into the ghastly abyss, a sudden, piercing tone penetrated the
thick of the storm; as if by sorcery, the turmoil faded away, and,
looking about him, Mychowski's disordered senses took note of an
exquisite valley in which rapidly flowed a tiny silvery stream. Carpeted
with green and fragrant with flowers, the landscape was magical, and
most melancholy was the music made by the running waters. Never had the
artist heard such music, and in the luminous haze of his mind it seemed
familiar. Three tones, three Gs in the treble and in octaves, sounded
clear to him; and again and once more they were heard in doubled rhythm.
A rippling prelude rained upon the meadows and Mychowski lay perfectly
entranced. He knew what was coming and knew not the music. Then a melody
fell from the trees as they whispered over the banks of the brook and it
was in the key of F minor. A nocturne; yet the day was young. Its
mournful reiterations darkened the sky; but about all, enchantment lay.
In G flat, so the sensitive ear of the pianist warned him, was his life
being borne; but only for a time. Back came the first persistent theme,
bringing with it overpowering richness of hue and scent, and then it
melted away in prismatic vapors....
"What is all this melodic madness?" asked Mychowski. He knew the music
made by the little river and trees, yet he groped as if in the toils of
a nightmare to name it. That solemn narrative in six-eight time in B
flat, where had he heard it? The glowing, glittering arabesques, the
trilling as if from the throats of a thousand larks, the cunning
imitations as if leaf mocked leaf in the sunshine! Again the first theme
in F minor, but amplified and enlarged with a spray of basses and under
a clouded sky. Without knowing why, the unhappy man felt the impending
catastrophe and hastened to escape it. But in vain. His feet were as
lead, and suddenly the heavens opened, fiercely lightened, the savage
thunder leaping upon him in chromatic dissonances; then a great
stillness in C major, and with solemn, silent steps he descended in
modulated chords until he reached an awful crevasse. With a howl the
tempest again unloosed, and in screeching accents the end came, came in
F minor. For many octaves Mychowski fell as a stone from a star, and as
he crashed into the very cellarage of hell he heard four snapping chords
and found himself on the floor of his bedroom....
"The F minor Ballade, of course," he cried; "and a nice ass I made of
myself last night. Oh, what a head! But I wonder how I came to dream of
the Ballade? Oh, yes, talking about it with Daniel, of course. What a
vivid dream! I heard every note, and thought the trees and the brook
were enjoying a duo, and--Bon Dieu! what's that?"
Mychowski, his face swollen and hair in disorder, slowly lifted himself
and sat on the edge of the bed as he listened.
"Who the devil is playing at this hour? But what's this? Am I dreaming
again? There goes that damnable Ballade." Mychowski rushed out of his
room, down the short hall and pushed open the door of the music-room.
The music stopped. Daniel was dusting some music at the end of the piano
as he came in.
"Ah! dear master, I hope you are not sick," said the faithful fellow,
dropping his feather-duster and running to Mychowski, who stood still
and only stared.
"Who was playing the piano?" he demanded. "The piano?" quoth Daniel.
"Yes, the piano. Was any one here?"
"No one has called this morning," answered Daniel, "except M. Dufour,
the patron of the café, who came to inquire after your health." "It's
none of his business," snapped Mychowski, whose nerves were on edge. "I
heard piano playing and I wasn't dreaming. Come, no nonsense, Daniel,
who was it?"
Just then his eyes fell on the desk; he strode to it and snatched the
music. "There," he hoarsely said, "there is damning proof that you have
lied to me; there is the Ballade in F minor by Chopin, and who, in the
name of Beelzebub, was playing it? Not you?"
Daniel turned white, then pink, and trembled like a cat. Mychowski, his
own face white, with cold shivers playing zither-wise up and down his
back, looked at the servant and, in a feeble voice, asked him, "Who are
you, man?" Daniel recovered himself and said in soothing tones, "Cher
maître, you were up too late last night and you are nervous, agitated. I
ask your pardon, but I never did tell you that I drum a little on the
piano, and thinking you fast asleep I ventured on the liberty, and--"
"Drum a little! You call that drumming?" said Mychowski slowly. The two
men looked into each other's eyes and Daniel's drooped. "Don't do it
again; that's all. You woke me up," said Mychowski roughly, and he went
out of the room without hearing Daniel reply:
"No, Monsieur Mychowski, I will not do it again." ...
From that time on Mychowski was obsessed. He weighed the evidence and
questioned again and again the validity of his dream, in the margin
between sleep and waking. During the daytime he was inclined to think
that it had been an odd trance, music and all; but when he had drunk
brandy he grew superstitious and swore to himself that he really had
heard Daniel play; and he became so nervous that he never took his man
about with him. He drank too much, and kept such late hours that Daniel
gently scolded him; finally he played badly in public and then the
critical press fairly pounced upon him. Too long had he been King
Pianist, and his place was coveted by the pounding throng below. He
drank more, and presently there was talk of a decadence in the
marvellous art of M. Mychowski, the celebrated interpreter of Chopin.
All this time Mychowski watched Daniel, watched him in the day, watched
him in the night. He would prowl about his apartment after midnight,
listening for the tone of a piano, and, after telling Daniel that he
would be gone for the day, he would sneak back anxious and expectant.
But he never heard any music, and this, instead of calming his nerves,
made him sicker. "Why," he would ask himself, "if the fellow can play as
he does, why in the name of Chopin does he remain my servant? Is it
because his servant blood rules, or--His servant blood? Why, he may have
Polish blood in his veins, and such Polish!" Mychowski grew white at the
idea. He could not sleep at night for he felt lonely, and drank so much
that his manager declined to do business with him. Daniel prayed,
expostulated and even threatened to leave; but Mychowski kept on the
broad, downward path that leads to the mirage called Thirst.
One afternoon Mychowski sat at his accustomed table in the café. He was
sick and sullen after a hard night of drinking, and as he saw himself in
the mirror he bitterly thought, "He has the face, he has the figure,
and, by God, he plays like Chopin." A voice interrupted him.
"Bon jour, Monsieur Mychowski; but how can you duplicate yourself, for
just a minute ago I passed your apartment and heard such delicious piano
playing?"
"The devil!" cried Mychowski, jumping up, and meeting the gaze of one of
the six original Chopin pupils. "No, not the devil," said the other;
"but Chopin. Surely you could not have been playing the F minor Ballade
so marvellously and so early in the day? Now, Chopin always asserted
that the F minor Ballade was for the dusk--"
"No," interrupted Mychowski, "it was not I; it was only Daniel, my
valet, and my pupil. The lazy scamp! If I catch him at the piano instead
of at his work I'll break every bone in his body." Mychowski's eyes were
evil.
"But I assure you, cher monsieur, this was no servant, no pupil; this
sounded as if the master had come back." "You once said that of me,"
returned the pianist moodily, and as he got up, his face ugly with
passion, he reiterated:
"I tell you it was Daniel Chopin. But I'll answer for his silence after
I've finished with him."
Mychowski hurried home....