Rehearsal had been called at eight o'clock, a late hour for Balak, which
rises early only to get ready the sooner for the luxury of a long
afternoon siesta. The conductor of the Royal Filharmonie Orchestra had
sent out brief enough notice to his men; but they were in the opera
house before he arrived. Pobloff believed in discipline; when he reached
the stage, he cast a few quick glances about him: fifty-two men in all
sat in their accustomed places; his concertmaster, Sven, was nodding at
the leader. Then Pobloff surveyed the auditorium, its depths dimly
lighted by the few clusters of lights on the platform; white linen
coverings made more ghastly the background. He thought he saw some one
moving near the main door. "Who's that?" He rapped sharply for an answer
but none came. Sven said that the women who cleaned the opera house had
not yet arrived. "Lock the doors and keep them out," was the response,
and one of the double-bass players ran down the steps to attend to the
order. The men smiled; and some whispered that they were evidently in
for a hard morning--all signs were ominous. Again the conductor's stick
commanded silence.
In a few words he told them he would rehearse his new symphonic poem,
"The Abysm:" "I call it by that title as an experiment. In fact the
music is experimental--in the development-section I endeavor to
represent the depths of starry space; one of those black abysms that are
the despair of astronomer and telescope. Ahem!" Pobloff looked so
conscious as he wiped his perspiring mop of a forehead that the tenor
trombone coughed in his instrument. The strange cackle caused the
composer to start: "How's that, what's that?" The man apologized. "Yes,
yes, of course you didn't do it on purpose. But how did you do it? Try
it again." The trombone blatted and the orchestra roared with laughter.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, this will never do. I needed just such a crazy
tone effect and always imagined the trombone too low for it." "Try the
oboe, Herr Kapellmeister," suggested Sven, and this was received with
noisy signs of joy. "Yes, the crazy oboe, that's the fellow for the
crazy effects!"--they all shouted. Luga, at her harp, arpeggiated in
sardonic excitement.
"What's the matter with you men this morning?" sternly inquired Pobloff.
"Did you miss your breakfasts?" Stillness ensued and the rehearsal
proceeded. It was very trying. Seven times the first violins, divided,
essayed one passage, and after its chromaticism had been conquered it
would not go at all when played with the wood-wind. It was nearly eleven
o'clock. The heat increased and also the thirst of the men. As the doors
were locked there was no relief. Grumbling started. Pobloff, very pale,
his eyes staring out of his head, yelled, swore, stamped his feet, waved
his arms and twice barely escaped tumbling over. The work continued and
a glaze seemed to obscure his eyes; he was well-nigh speechless but beat
time with an intensity that carried his men along like chips in a high
surf. The free-fantasia of the poem was reached, and, roaring, the music
neared its climacteric point. "Now," whispered Pobloff, stooping, "when
the pianissimo begins I shall watch for the Abysm." As the wind
sweepingly rushes to a howling apex so came the propulsive crash of the
climax. The tone rapidly subsided and receded; for the composer had so
cunningly scored it that groups of instruments were withdrawn without
losing the thread of the musical tale. The tone, spun to a needle
fineness, rushed up the fingerboard of the fiddles accompanied by the
harp in a billowing glissando and--then on ragged rims of wide thunder
a gust of air seemed to melt lights, men, instruments into a darkness
that froze the eyeballs. With a scorching whiff of sulphur and violets,
a thin, spiral scream, the music tapered into the sepulchral clang of a
tam-tam. And Pobloff, his broad face awash with fear saw by a solitary
wavering gas-jet that he was alone and upon his knees. Not a musician
was to be seen. Not a sound save dull noises from the street without. He
stared about him like a man suffering from some hideous ataxia, and the
horror of the affair plucking at his soul, he beat his breast, groaning
in an agony of envy.
"Oh, it is the Fourth Dimension they have found--my black abysm! Oh, why
did I not fall into it with the ignorant dogs!" He was crying this over
and over when the doors were smashed and Pobloff taken, half delirious,
to his home....