AT home that evening, on the loggia, Hetzel said, “I have news for
you.”
“Ah?” queried Arthur.
“Yes—about your mystery across the way.”
“Well?”
“She’s no longer a mystery. The ambiguity surrounding her has been
dispelled.”
“Well, go on.”
“To start with, after you went down-town this morning, carts laden
with furniture began to rattle into the street, and the furniture was
carried into No. 46. It appears that they have taken the whole house,
after all. They were merely camping out in the third story, while
waiting for the advent of their goods and chattels. So we were jumping
to a conclusion, when we put them down as poverty-stricken. The
furniture was quite comfortable looking. It included, by the way, a
second piano. Confess that you are disappointed.”
“Why should I be disappointed? The divine voice remains, doesn’t it?
Go ahead.”
“Well, I have learned their names.—The lady of the house is an
elderly widow—Mrs. Gabrielle Hart. She has been living till
recently in an apartment-house on Fifty-ninth Street, facing Central
Park—’The Modena’.”
“But the songstress?”
“The songstress is Mrs. Hart’s companion. She is also a Mrs.—Mrs.
Lehmyl—L-e-h-m-y-l—picturesque name, isn’t it?”
“And Mr. Lehmyl—who is he?”
“Perhaps Mrs. Lehmyl is a widow, too. She dresses in black.”
“Ah, you have seen her? Describe her to me.”
“No, I haven’t seen her. But Josephine has. It is to Josephine that
I owe the information so far communicated.”
“What does Josephine say she looks like?”
“Josephine doesn’t say. She caught but a meteoric glimpse of her, as
she stood for a moment this afternoon at her front door. Like the woman
she is, she paid more attention to her costume than she did to her
features.”
“Well, any thing further?”
“Nothing.”
“Has she sung for you since I left?”
“Not a bar. Probably she has been busy, helping to put the house to
rights.”
“Let us hope she will sing for us to-night.”
“Let us hope so.”
But bed-time stole upon them, and their hopes had not yet been rewarded.
The week wound away. Nothing new transpired concerning the occupants of
No. 46. Mrs. Lehmyl sang almost every evening. But neither Arthur
nor Hetzel nor Josephine succeeded in getting sight of her; which, of
course, merely aggravated our hero’s curiosity. Sunday afternoon he
stood at the front window, gazing toward the corner house. The two cats,
heretofore mentioned, were disporting themselves upon the window-ledge.
Hetzel, who was seated in the back part of the room, noticed that
Arthur’s attitude changed all at once from that of languid interest
to that of sharp attention. His backbone became rigid, his neck craned
forward; it was evident that something had happened. Presently he turned
around, and remarked, with ill-disguised excitement, “If—if you’re
anxious to make the acquaintance of that Mrs. Lehmyl, here’s your
chance.”
It struck Hetzel that this was pretty good. “If I am anxious to make
her acquaintance!” he said to himself. Aloud, “Why, how is that?”
he asked.
“Oh,” said Arthur, “two ladies—she and Mrs. Hart, I
suppose—have just left the corner house, and crossed the street, and
entered our front door—to call on Mrs. Berle, doubtless.”
Mrs. Berle was the down-stairs neighbor of our friends—a middle-aged
Jewish lady, whose husband, a commercial traveler, was commonly away
from home.
“Well?” questioned Hetzel.
“Well, you ought to call on Mrs. Berle, anyway, you know. She has been
so polite and kind, and has asked you to so often, that really it’s no
more than right that you should show her some little attention. Why not
improve this occasion?”
“Oh,” said Hetzel, yawning, “I’m tired. I prefer to stay home
this afternoon.”
“Nonsense. You’re simply lazy. It’s—it’s positively a matter
of duty, Hetz.”
“Well, you have so frequently asserted that I have no sense of duty,
I’m trying to live up to your conception of me.”
After a minute of silence, “The fact of the matter is,” ventured
Arthur, “that I too owe Mrs. Berle a visit, and—and won’t you go
down with me, as a favor?”
“Oh, if you put it on that ground, it’s another question. As a favor
to you, I consent to be dragged out.”
“Hurrah!” cried Arthur, casting off the mask of indifference that he
had thus far clumsily worn. “I’ll go change my coat, and come back
in an instant. Wasn’t I lucky to be posted there by the window at the
moment of their exit? At last we shall see her with our own eyes.”
Ere a great while, Mrs. Berle’s maid-servant ushered them into Mrs.
Berle’s drawing-room.
Mrs. Lehmyl was at the piano—playing, not singing. Arthur enjoyed a
fine view of her back. My meaning is literal, when I say “enjoyed.”
Impatient though he was to see her face, he took an indescribable
pleasure in watching her back sway to and fro, as her fingers raced
up and down the keyboard. Its contour was refined and symmetrical. Its
undulations lent stress to the music, and denoted fervor on the part
of the executant. Arthur can’t tell what she was playing. It was
something of Rubenstein’s, the title of which escapes him—something,
he says, as vigorous as a whirlwind—a bewitching melody sounding
above a tempest of harmony—it was the restless, tumultuous, barbaric
Rubenstein at his best.
At its termination, the audience applauded vehemently, and demanded
more. The result was a Scherzo by Chopin. Afterward, Mrs. Lehmyl rose
from the piano and fanned herself. Every body began simultaneously to
talk.
Mrs. Berle presented Hetzel and Arthur in turn to the two ladies. Of
the latter she was kind enough to remark, “Dot is a young lawyer
down-town, and such a goot young man”—which made him blush profusely
and wish his hostess a dozen apoplexies.
Mrs. Hart was tall and spare, a severe looking woman of sixty, or
thereabouts. She wore a gray poplin dress, and had stiff gray hair, and
a network of gray veins across the backs of her hands. A penumbra upon
her upper lip proved, when inspected, to be due to the presence of an
incipient mustache. Her eyes were blue and good-natured.
Mrs. Lehmyl’s manner was at once dignified and gracious. Arthur
made bold to declare, “Your playing is equal to your singing, Mrs.
Lehmyl—which is saying a vast deal.”
“It is saying what is kind and pleasant,” she answered, “but I
fear, not strictly accurate. My playing is very faulty, I have so little
time to practice.”
“If it is faulty, a premium ought to be placed upon such faults,” he
gushed.
Mrs. Lehmyl laughed, but vouchsafed no reply. “And as for your
singing,” he continued, “I hope you won’t mind my telling you how
much I have enjoyed it. You can’t conceive the pleasure it has given
me, when I have come home, fagged out, from a day down-town, to hear you
sing.”
“I am very glad if it is so. I was afraid my musical pursuits might
be a nuisance to the neighbors. I take for granted that you are a
neighbor?”
“Oh, yes. Hetzel and I inhabit the upper portion of this house.”
“Ah, then you are the young men whom we have noticed on the roof. It
is a brilliant idea, your roof. You dine up there, do you not?”
“Let’s go into the back room,” cried Mrs. Berle; and she led the
way.
In the back room wine and cakes were distributed by a German Madchen in
a French cap. The gentlemen—there were two or three present besides
Arthur and Hetzel—lit their cigars. The ladies, of whom there were
an equal number, with the exception of Mrs. Lehmyl, gathered in a knot
around the center-table. Mrs. Lehmyl went to the bay-window and admired
the view. It was, indeed, admirable. A crystalline atmosphere permitted
one to see as far down the river as the Brooklyn Navy Yard; and
leagues to the eastward, on Long Island, the marble of I know not what
burying-ground glittered in the sun. An occasional schooner slipped past
almost within stone’s throw. On the wharf under the terrace, fifty odd
yards away, an aged man placidly supported a fishing pole, and watched a
cork that floated immobile upon the surface of the water. Over all bent
the sky, intensely blue, and softened by a few white, fleecy clouds. But
Arthur’s faculties for admiration were engrossed by Mrs. Lehmyl’s
face.
I think the first impression created by her face was one of power,
rather than one of beauty. Not that it was in the slightest degree
masculine, not that it was too strong to be intensely womanly. But at
first sight, especially if it chanced then to be in repose, it seemed
to embody the pride and the solemnity of womanhood, rather than its
gentleness and flexibility. It was the face of a woman who could purpose
and perform, who could suffer and be silent, who could command and be
inexorable. The brow, crowned by black, waving hair, was low and broad,
and as white as marble. The nose and chin were modeled on the pattern
of the Ludovici Juno’s. Your first notion was: “This woman is calm,
reserved, thoughtful, persistent. Her emotions are subordinated to
her intellect. She has a tremendous will. She was cut out to be an
empress.” But the next instant you noticed her eyes and her mouth: and
your conception had accordingly to be reframed. Her eyes, in color dark,
translucent brown, were of the sort that your gaze can delve deep into,
and discern a light shimmering at the bottom: eyes that send an electric
spark into the heart of the man who looks upon them; eyes that are
eloquent of pathos and passion and mystery. Her lips were full and
ruddy, and indicated equal capacities for womanly tenderness and for
girlish mirth. It was easy to fancy them curling in derisive laughter:
it was quite as easy to fancy them quivering with intense emotion,
or becoming compressed in pain. Insensibly, you added: “No—not an
empress: a heroine, a martyr to some noble human cause. It was like this
that the Mother of Sorrows must have looked.”
She was beautiful: on that score there could be no difference of
opinion. Her appearance justified the expectations that her voice
aroused. She was beautiful not in a pronounced, aggressive way, but in
a quiet, subtle, and all the more potent way. Her beauty was of the sort
that grows upon one, the longer one studies it; rather than of the sort
that, bullet-like, produces its greatest effect at once. Join to this
that she was manifestly young, at the utmost five-and-twenty, and the
reader will not wonder that Arthur’s antecedent interest in her had
mounted several degrees. I must not forget to mention her hands. These
were a trifle larger than it is the fashion for a lady’s hands to
be; but they were shaped and colored to perfection, and they had an
unconscious habit of toying with each other, as their owner talked
or listened, that made it a charm to watch them. They were suggestive
hands. Arthur felt that, had he understood the language of hands, he
could, by observing these, have divined a number of Mrs. Lehmyl’s
secrets; and he bethought him of an old treatise on palmistry that lay
gathering dust in his book-case up-stairs. Around her wrist she wore a
bracelet of amber beads. She was dressed entirely in black, and had a
sprig of mignonette pinned in her button-hole.
As has been said, she admired the view. “I am so glad we have come
to live in Beekman Place,” she added; “it is such a contrast to the
rest of dusty, noisy, hot New York.”
“To hear this woman utter small talk,” says Arthur, “was like
seeing a giant lift straws. I half wished that she would not speak at
all, unless to proclaim mighty truths in hexameters. Still, had she kept
silence, I am sure I should have been disappointed.”
She was much amused by the old fisherman down on the wharf; wondered
whether he had met with any luck; and thought that such patient devotion
as he displayed, merited recognition on the part of the fishes. She was
curious to know what the granite buildings were on Blackwell’s Island.
Arthur undertook the office of cicerone.
“Prison and hospital and graveyard constantly in sight,” was her
comment; “I should think they would make one gloomy.”
“A memento mori, as one’s eyes feast on sky and water. On moonlight
nights in summer, it is superb here—quite Venetian. Every now and
then some dark, mysterious craft, slowly drifting by, reminds one of
Elaine’s barge.”
“It must be very beautiful,” she said, simply.
At this juncture an excursion steamboat made its appearance upon the
river, and conversation was suspended till it had passed. It was gay
with bunting and black with humanity. It strove its best to render day
hideous by dispensing a staccato version of “Home, Sweet Home” from
the blatant throat of a Calliope—an instrument consisting of a series
of steam whistles graduated in chromatic scale.
“How uncomfortable those poor people must be,” said Mrs. Lehmyl.
“Is—is this one of the dark, mysterious craft?”
“It is a product of our glorious American civilization. None but
an alchemist with true American instincts, would ever have thought of
transmuting steam to music.”
“Music?” queried Mrs. Lehmyl, dubiously.
Arthur was about to qualify his use of the term when the door opened and
admitted a procession of Mrs. Berle’s daughters and sons-in-law.
An uproar of greetings and presentations followed. The men exchanged
remarks about the weather and the state of trade; the women, kisses and
inquiries concerning health. Bits of news were circulated. “Lester
Bar is engaged to Emma Frankenstiel,” “Mrs. Seitel’s baby was
born yesterday—another girl,” “Du lieber Gott!” “Ist’s
moglich?” and so on; a breezy mingling of German with English, of
statement with expletive; the whole emphasized by an endless swaying of
heads and lifting of eyebrows. The wine and cakes made a second tour of
the room. Fresh cigars were lighted. The ladies fell to comparing notes
about their respective offspring. One of the gentlemen volunteered a
circumstantial account of a Wagner concert he had attended the night
previous. It was a long while before any thing resembling quiet was
restored. Arthur seized the first opportunity that presented itself to
edge back to Mrs. Lehmyl’s side.
“All this talk about music,” he said, “has whetted my appetite.
You are going to sing for us, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t dare to, in this assemblage of Wagnerites. The sort
of music that I can sing would seem heresy from their point of view.
I can’t sing Wagner, and I shouldn’t venture upon any thing so
retrograde as Schumann or Schubert. Besides, I’m rather tired to-day,
and—so please don’t introduce the subject. Mrs. Berle might follow
it up; and if she asked me, I couldn’t very well refuse.”
Mrs. Lehmyl’s tone showed that she meant what she said.
“This is a great disappointment,” Arthur rejoined.
“You don’t know how anxious I am to hear you sing at close quarters.
But as for your music being retrograde, why, only the other night I
was admiring your fine taste in making selections. Wohin, for instance.
Isn’t Wohin abreast of the times?”
“The Wagnerites wouldn’t think so. It is melody. Therefore it
is—good enough for the uninitiated, perhaps—but not to be put up
with by people of serious musical cultivation. The only passages in
Wagner’s own work that his disciples take exception to, are those
where, in a fit of artistic obliquity, he has become truly melodious.
Here, they think, he has been guilty of backsliding. His melodies were
the short-comings of genius—pardonable, in consideration of their
infrequency, but in no wise to be commended. The further he gets away
from the old standards of excellence—the more perplexing, complicated,
artificial, soporific, he becomes—the better are his enthusiasts
pleased. The other day I was talking with one of them, and in the
desire to say something pleasant, I spoke of how supremely beautiful
the Pilgrim’s Chorus is in Tannhâuser. A look of sadness fell upon
my friend’s face, and I saw that I had blundered. ’Ah,’ she cried,
’don’t speak of that. It makes my heart ache to think that the
master could have let himself down to any thing so trivial.’ That’s
their pet word—trivial. Whenever a theme is comprehensible, they
dispose of it as trivial.”
Arthur laughed and said, “It is evident to what school you belong.
For my part, I always suspect that when a composer disdains to write
melodies, it is a case of sour grapes.”
“Yes, he lacks the inventive faculty, and then affects to despise
it,” said Mrs. Lehmyl. “My taste is very old-fashioned. Of course
every body must recognize Wagner’s greatness, and must appreciate him
in his best moods. But when he cuts loose from all the established laws
of composition—well, I heard my sentiments neatly expressed once by
Signor Zacchinelli, the maestro. ’It is ze music of ze future?’ he
inquired. ’Zen I am glad I shall be dead.’ Smiting his breast he
went on, ’I want somezing to make me feel good here.’ That’s the
trouble. Except when Wagner abides by the old traditions, he never makes
one feel good here. The pleasure he affords is intellectual rather than
emotional. He amazes you by the intricate harmonies he constructs, but
he doesn’t touch your heart. Now and then he forgets himself—is
borne away from his theories on the wings of an inspiration—and then
he is superb.”
“I wonder,” Arthur asked, by and by, “whether you can tell me what
it was that you sang the evening I first heard you. It was more than a
week ago—a week ago Friday. At about sunset time, we were out on our
roof, and you sang something that I had never heard before,—something
soft and plaintive, with a refrain that went like this——” humming
a bar or two of the refrain. “Oh, that? Did you like that?”
“I did, indeed. I thought it was exquisite.”
“I am glad, because it is a favorite of my own. It’s an old
French folk-song, arranged by Bizet. The title is Le Voile d’une
Religieuse.”
“I wish I could hear it again. I can’t tell you how charming it was
to sit there in the open air, and watch the sunset, and listen to that
song. Only, it was so exasperating not to be able to see the songstress.
Won’t you be persuaded to sing it now? I’m sure you are not too
tired to sing that.”
“What? Here? I should never be absolved. The auditors—I dare not
fancy what the effect upon them might be. That song, of all things! Why,
it is worse than Schubert.—But seriously,” she added, gravely, “I
could not bear to expose any thing so dear to me as my music is, to the
ridicule it would provoke from the Wagnerites. It hurts me keenly to
hear a song that I love, picked to pieces, and made light of, and
tossed to the winds. It hurts me just as keenly to hear it praised
insincerely—merely for politeness’ sake. Music—true music—is
like prayer. It is too sacred to—you know what I mean—to be laid
bare to the contempt of unbelievers.”
“Yes, indeed, like prayer. It is the most perfect vehicle of
expression for one’s deepest, most solemn feelings—that and——”
“And poetry.”
“How did you guess that I was going to say poetry?”
“It was obvious. The two go together.”
“So they do. Do you know, Mrs. Lehmyl, if I were to try my hand at
guesswork, I think I could name your favorite poet.”
“Indeed; who is he?”
“Robert Browning.”
Mrs. Lehmyl cast a half surprised, half startled glance at Arthur.
“Are you a mind-reader? Or was it simply a chance hit?” she asked.
“Then I was right?”
“Yes, you were right, though I ought not to tell you so. You ought not
to know your power, if power it was, and not mere random’ guesswork.
One with that faculty of penetrating another’s mind must be a
dangerous associate. But tell me, what hint did I let fall, that made
you suspect I should be fond of Browning?”
“If I should answer that question, I am afraid you might deem me
presumptuous. I could not do so, without paying you a compliment.”
“Then, leave it unanswered,” she said, coldly.
At this moment Mrs. Hart rose and bade good-by to Mrs. Berle; then
called across to Mrs. Lehmyl, “Come, Ruth;” and the latter wished
Arthur good afternoon.
He and Hetzel left soon after. Mrs. Berle said, “If you young
gentlemen have no other engagement, won’t you take tea here a week
from to-night?”
“You are very kind,” Hetzel answered; “and we shall do so with
great pleasure.”
Upstairs, “Well, how did you like her?” inquired Arthur.
“Like whom? Mrs. Berle?”
“No—Mrs. Lehmyl, of course, stupid.”
“That’s a pretty question for you to ask; as though you’d given me
a chance to find out. How did you like her?”
“Oh, she’s above the average.”
“Is that all? Then you were disappointed? She didn’t come up to your
anticipations?”
“Oh, I don’t say that. Yes, she’s# a fine woman.”
“But her friend, Mrs. Hart, is a trump.”
“So? Nobody would suspect it from her looks. Her austere coloring
inspires a certain kind of awe.”
“She’s no longer young. But she’s very agreeable, all the same. We
talked a good deal together. She asked me to call. You weren’t a bit
clever.”
“No?”
“No, sir. If you had been, you would have devoted yourself to Mrs.
Hart. Then she would have invited you to call, too. So you could have
cultivated Mrs. Lehmyl at your leisure.”
“But you and I are one. You can take me to call with you, can’t
you?”
“I don’t know about that. She asked me to drop in informally any
afternoon. You’re never home in the afternoon. Besides, you’re old
enough to receive an invitation for yourself.”
“Nonsense! You can arrange it easily enough. Ask permission to bring
your Fidus Achates.”
“I’ll see about it. If you behave yourself for the next week or two,
perhaps I’ll exert my influence. By the way, how did you like Mrs.
Lehmyl’s playing?”
“She played uncommonly well—didn’t you think so?”
“Indeed, I did. Execution and expression were both fine. She has
studied in Europe, Mrs. Hart says.”
“Did you learn who her husband is?”
“I learned that he isn’t. I was right in my conjecture. She is a
widow.”
“That’s a relief. I am glad she is not-encumbered with a husband.”
“Fie upon you, man! You ought to be ashamed to say it. He has been
dead quite a number of years.”
“Quite a number of years? Why, she can’t be more than twenty-four or
five years old—and besides, she’s still in mourning.”
“I guess that’s about her age. But the mourning doesn’t signify,
because it’s becoming to her; and so she would naturally keep it up as
long as possible.”
“That introduces the point of chief importance. What did you think of
her appearance?”
“Oh, she has magnificent eyes, and looks refined and
interesting—looks as though she knew what sorrow meant, too—only,
perhaps the least bit cold. No, cold isn’t the word. Say dignified,
serious, a woman with whom one could never be familiar—in whose
presence one would always feel a little—a little constrained. That
isn’t exactly what I mean, either. You understand—one would always
have to be on one’s guard not to say any thing flippant or trivial.”
“You mean she looks as though she were deficient in levity?”
“Well, as though she wouldn’t tolerate any thing petty—a dialogue
such as ours now, for example.”
“I don’t know whether you have formed a correct notion of her, or
not. Cold she certainly isn’t. She’s an enthusiast on the subject
of music. And when we were talking about Wagner, she—wasn’t exactly
flippant—but she showed that she could be jocose. There’s something
about her that’s exceedingly impressive, I don’t know what it is.
But I know that she made me feel, somehow, very small. She made me feel
that underneath her quiet manner—hidden away somewhere in her frail
woman’s body—there was the capability of immense power. She reminded
me of the women in Robert Browning’s poetry—of the heroine of the
’Inn Album’ especially. Yet she said nothing remarkable—nothing to
justify such an estimate.”
“You were affected by her personal magnetism. A woman with eyes like
hers—and mighty scarce they are—always gives you the idea of power.
Young as she is, I suspect she’s been through a good deal. She has had
her experiences. That seems to be written on her face. Yet she didn’t
strike me as having the peach-bloom rubbed off—though, of course, I
had no chance to examine her closely.”
“Oh, no; the peach-bloom is there in abundance. Well, at all events,
she’s a problem which it will be interesting to solve. By the way,
what possessed you to accept Mrs. Berle’s invitation to tea?”
“What possessed me? Why should I have done otherwise?”
“It will be an insufferable bore.”
“Who was it that somewhat earlier in the afternoon preached me a
sermon on the duties we owe that identical Mrs. Berle?”
Arthur spent the evening reading. Hetzel, peeping over his shoulder, saw
that the book of his choice was “The Inn Album” by Robert Browning.