Zora drowsed on the balcony. The park was a great, shapeless, soft
flowing river of trees over which the tall stars hung, while the
creeping plumes of rhythmic steam, and the earthly echoes of light from
the flat-faced hotels on the west side set her wondering if any one
really stayed at home when Belus played Chopin. No one but herself, she
bitterly thought. Her mood turned jealous. His magnetism, her husband's
magnetism, that vast reservoir upon which floated the souls of many,
like tiny lamps set adrift upon the bosom of the Ganges by pious
Mohammedan widows, must it ever be free to all but herself? Must she,
who worshipped at his secret shrine, share her adoration, her idol, with
the first sentimental school girl? It was revolting. She would bear with
it no longer. The ride through the park cooled her blood and eased her
headache. Just to be nearer to him; that might set her throbbing nerves
at rest. As if she had been cut off from the big central current of
life, so this woman suffered during the absence of her husband. In
trance-like condition she stepped out of the carriage, and slowly
walked down Seventh avenue. When Fifty-sixth Street was reached, she
turned eastward and went up the few steps that led into the artists'
room.
A man half staggered by her at the dimly lighted door, but steadied
himself when he saw her.
"I am Madame Belus," she said in her pretty English streaked with soft
Magyar cadences. He stared at her, and she thought him crazy. "All
right, ma'am," he said after a pause. His speech was thick, yet he was
not drunk; it was more the behavior of a drug eater.
"Don't go back there, lady!" he begged, "don't go back to the professor.
He is doing wonderful things with the piano, but somehow I couldn't
stand it, it made me dizzy. I had no business there anyhow.... You know
his orders. Every door locked in the building when he plays. If the
public knew it, what a row!" The man gasped in the spring air. Zora was
terrified. What secret was being withheld from her? Who could be with
him? Perhaps he was deceiving her, Belus, her husband! She tried to pass
the man, who stared at her vacantly.
"Don't go in, ma'am, don't go in. Every door is locked, all except the
two little doors looking out on the stage. My God, don't go there! I saw
a mango tree--I know the mango, for I've been in India--I saw the tree
bloom out over the keys, and its fruit fell on the stage. I saw it. And
I swear to the ladder, the rope ladder, which he threw up with his left
hand while he kept on playing with the other. If you had only seen what
came tumbling down that rope as he played the cradle-song! Baby faces,
withered faces, girls and mothers, the sweetest and the most fearful you
ever saw. They all came rolling down and the people in front sat still,
the old ones crying softly. And there were wings and devilish things. I
couldn't stand the air, it was alive; and your man's face, white and
drawn, with the eyes all gone like those jugglers I knew when I was a
boy in India--out there in India."
She trembled like the strings of a violin. Then after a sharp struggle
with her beating heart, and bravely pushing the man aside, she went on
rapid feet up the circular stairway, her head buzzing with the clamor of
her nerves. India! Belus had once confessed that his youth had been
spent in Eastern lands. What did it mean? As she mounted to the little
doors she listened in vain for the sound of music. She heard nothing,
not even the occasional singing of the electric lights. Not a break in
the air told her of the vast assembly on the other side of the wall.
Belus, where was he? Possibly in his room above. But why had she met
none of the usual officials? What devilry was loosed in the large
spaces of this hall? Again her heart roared threateningly and she was
forced to sit on a chair to catch her breath. A humming like the wind
plucking at the wires of a thousand Æolian harps set her soul shivering
in fresh dismay. The two little arched doors were in front of her, but
they seemed leagues away. To go to one and boldly open it she must; yet
her tissues were dissolving, her eyes dim. That door!--if she could see
him, see Belus, then all would be well. Across the stair she wavered, a
wraith blown across the gulf of time. She grasped at the cold knob of
the door--gripped but could not turn it, for it was locked. Zora fell to
her knees, her heart weeping like the eyes of sorrow. Oh! for one firm,
clangorous chord struck by Belus; it would be as wine to the wounded.
Zora crawled to the other door, perhaps--! It was not locked, and slowly
she opened it and peered out upon the stage, the auditorium.
The humming of the harps ceased and the chaplet of iron that bound her
brow relaxed. The house was full of faces, pink human faces, the faces
of women, and as these faces rose tier after tier, terrifying terraces
of heads, Zora recalled the first council of the Angel of Light;
Lucifer's council sung of by Milton and mezzo-tinted by John Martin. The
faces were drained of expression, but in the rows near by she saw
staring eyes. Belus--what was he doing?
He sat at the piano and over its keyboard his long, ghost-like fingers
moved with febrile velocity. But no music reached her ears. Instead she
saw suspended above him the soul of Belus. It was like a coat of many
colors. It glistened with the subtle hues of a flying fish; and it swam
in the air with passionate flashes of fire. This soul that wriggled and
leapt, this burning coal that blistered the hearts of his audience, was
it truly the soul of her husband? As the multitude rose in cadenced
waves of emotion, the soul seemed to shrink, to become more remote. Then
leaf by leaf it dropped its petals until only an incandescent core was
left. And this, too, paled and died into numb nothingness. Where was the
soul of Belus? What was the soul of Belus? A bit of carbon lighted by
the world's applause? A trick-nest of boxes each smaller than the other,
with black emptiness at the end? A musical mirage of the world?
Belus was bowing. Then she saw the faces ravished with delight, the
swaying of crazy people. They had heard--but she alone knew the
secret....