Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

"Coventry Patmore, a dead poet. He it was that spoke of Wagner as a musical impostor, and of the grinning woman in every canvas of Leonardo da Vinci. I enjoy his 'Angel in the House' so much, because it shows me the sort of a woman I am not and the sort of a woman we modern women are trying to outlive.... Yes, 'the bright disorder of the stars is solved by music,' he sings; and I remember reading somewhere in Henry James that music is a solvent. But it's false--false in my case. Mr. Vibert is, as you know, a talented young man. Well, his music bores me. He is said to have genius, yet his music never sounds as if it had any fire in it; it is as cold as salt. Why should I be solved by his music?"

Ellenora upset her glass and laughed. Paul joined in at a respectful pace. The woman was beyond him. He gave her a long glance and she returned it, but not ardently; only curiosity was in her insistent gaze.

"Ah! Youth is an alley ambuscaded by stars," he proclaimed. The phrase had cost him midnight labor.

"Don't try to be epigrammatic," she retorted, "it doesn't suit your mental complexion. I'll be glad, then, when my youth has passed. It's a time of turmoil during which one can't really think clearly. Give me cool old age."

"And the future?"

"I leave that to the licensed victuallers of eternity." Paul experienced a thrill. The woman's audacity was boundless. Did she believe in anything?...

"I wonder why your husband does not give you the love he puts into his music."

"He has not suffered enough yet. You know what George Moore says about the 'sadness of life being the joy of art!' ... Besides, Arthur is only half a man if he can't give it to both. Where is your masculine objectivity, then?" she retorted.

"Lord, what a woman! 'Masculine objectivity,' and I suppose 'feminine subjectivity' too. I never met such a blue-stocking. Do you remember how John Ruskin abused those odious terms 'objective' and 'subjective'?" Paul asked.

"I can't read Ruskin. He is all landscape decoration; besides, he believes in the biblical attitude of woman. Put a woman on the mantelpiece and call her luscious, poetic names and then see how soon she'll hop down when another man simply cries 'I love you.' If a man wishes to spoil a woman successfully let him idealize her."

"Poor Ruskin! There are some men in this world too fine for women." Paul sighed, and slily watched Ellenora as she cracked almonds with her strong white fingers.

"Fine fiddlesticks!" she ejaculated. "Don't get sentimental, Mr. Goddard, or else I'll think you have a heart. You are trying to flirt with me. I know you are. Take me away from this place and let us walk, walk! Heavens! I'd like to walk to the Battery and smell the sea!"

Paul discreetly stopped, and the pair started up Fifth Avenue. The day was a brave one; the sky was stuffed with plumy clouds and the rich colors of a reverberating sunset. The two healthy beings sniffed the crisp air, talked of themselves as only selfish young people can, and at Fifty-ninth street, Ellenora becoming tired, waited for a cross-town car--she expected some people at her house in the evening, and must be home early. Paul was bidden, but declined; then without savor of affection they said good-by.

The man went slowly down the avenue thinking: "Of all the women I've met, this is the most perverse, heartless, daring." He recalled his Bayreuth experiences, and analyzed Ellenora. Her supple, robust figure attracted his senses; her face was interesting; she had brains, uncommon brains. What would she become? Not a poet, not a novelist. Perhaps a literary critic, like Sainte-Beuve with shining Monday morning reviews. Perhaps--yes, perhaps a critic, a writer of bizarre prose-poems; she has personal style, she is herself, and no one else.

"That's it," said Paul, half aloud; "she has style, and I admire style above everything." He resolved on meeting Ellenora as often as he could....

The following month he saw much of Arthur Vibert's wife, and found himself a fool in her strong grasp. The girl had such baffling contrasts of character, such slippery moods, such abundant fantasy that the young man--volatility itself--lost his footing, his fine sense of honor and made love to this sphinx of the ink-pot, was mocked and flouted but never entirely driven from her presence. More than any other woman, Ellenora enjoyed the conquest of man. She mastered Paul as she had mastered Arthur, easily; but there was more of the man of the world, more of the animal in the amateur, and the silkiness of her husband, at first an amusement, finally angered her.

Vibert knew that his wife saw Paul much too often for his own edification, but only protested once, and so feebly that she laughed at him.

"Arthur," she said, taking him by his slender shoulders, "why don't you come home some night in a jealous rage and beat me? Perhaps then I might love you. As it is, Mr. Goddard only amuses me; besides, I read him my new stories, otherwise I don't care an iota for him."

He lifted his eyebrows, went to the piano and played the last movement of his new concerto, played it with all the fire he could master, his face white, muscles angry, a timid man transformed.

"Why don't you beat me instead of the piano, dear?" she cried out mockingly; "some women, they say, can be subdued in that fashion." He rushed from the room....

April was closing when Vibert, summoned to Washington, gave a piano recital there, and Ellenora went down-town to dinner with Goddard. She was looking well, her spring hat and new gown were very becoming. As they sat at Martin's eating strawberries, Paul approved of her exceedingly. He had been drinking, and the burgundy and champagne at dinner made him reckless.

"See here, Ellenora Vibert, where is all this going to end? I'm not a bad fellow, but I swear I'm only human, and if you are leading me on to make a worse ass of myself than usual, why, then, I quit."

She regarded him coolly. "It will end when I choose and where I choose. It is my own affair, Paul, and if you feel cowardly qualms, go home like a good boy to your mamma and tell her what a naughty woman I am."

He sobered at once and reaching across the narrow dining-table took her wrist in both of his hands and forced her to listen.

"You disdainful woman! I'll not be mastered by you any longer--"

"That means," interrupted Ellenora coolly, "do as you wish, and not as I please."

Paul, his vanity wounded, asked the waiter for his reckoning. His patience was worn away.

"Paul, don't be silly," she cried, her eyes sparkling. "Now order a carriage and we'll take a ride in the park and talk the matter over. I'm afraid the fool's fever is in your blood; the open air may do it good. Oh! the eternal nonsense of youth. Call a carriage, Paul!--April Paul!" ...

III

Life in Philadelphia runs on oiled wheels. After the huge clatter of New York, there is something mellow and human about the drowsy hum of Chestnut Street, the genteel reaches of Walnut, and the neat frontage of Spruce Street. Ellenora, so quick to notice her surroundings, was at first bored, then amused, at last lulled by the intimate life of her new home. She had never been abroad, but declared that London, out-of-the-way London, must be something like this. The fine, disdainful air of Locust Street, the curiously constrained attitude of the brick houses on the side streets--as if deferentially listening to the back-view remarks of their statelier neighbors, the brown-stone fronts--all these things she amused herself telling Paul, playfully begging him not to confront her with the oft-quoted pathetic fallacy of Ruskin. Hadn't Dickens, she asked, discerned human expression in door-knockers, and on the faces of lean, lonely, twilight-haunted warehouses?

She was gay for the first time in her restless dissatisfied life. By some strange alchemy she and Paul were able to precipitate and blend the sum total of their content, and the summer was passed in peace. At first they went to a hotel, but fearing the publicity, rented under an assumed name a suite in the second storey of a pretty little house near South Rittenhouse Square. Here in the cheerful morning-room Ellenora wrote, and Paul smoked or trifled at the keyboard. They were perfectly self-possessed as to the situation. When tired of the bond it should be severed. This young woman and this young man had no illusion about love--the word did not enter into their life scheme. Theirs was a pact which depended for continuance entirely upon its agreeable quality. And there was nothing cynical in all this; rather the ready acceptance of the tie's fallibility mingled with a little curiosity how the affair would turn out.

It was not yet November when Paul stopped in the middle of a Chopin mazurka:

"Ellenora, have you heard from Vibert?"

She looked up from the writing-desk.

"How could I? He doesn't know where we are."

"And I fancy he doesn't care." Paul whistled a lively lilt. His manner seemed offensive. She flushed and scowled. He moved about the room still whistling and made much noise. Ellenora regarded him intently.

"Getting bored, Paul? Better go to New York and your club," she amiably suggested.

"If you don't care," and straightway he began making preparations for the journey. In a quarter of an hour he was ready, and with joy upon his handsome face kissed Ellenora fervently and went away to the Broad Street station. Then she did something surprising. She threw herself upon a couch and wept until she was hysterical.

"I'm a nice sort of a fool, after all," she reflected, as she wiped her face with a cool handkerchief and proceeded to let her hair down for a good, comfortable brushing. "I'm a fool, a fool, to cry about this vain, selfish fellow. Paul has no heart. Poor little Arthur! If he had been more of a man, less of a conceited boy. Yet conceit may fetch him through, after all. Dear me, I wonder what the poor boy did when he got the news."

Ellenora laughed riotously. The silliness of the situation burned her sense of the incongruous. There she stood opposite the mirror with her tears hardly dry, and yet she was thinking of the man she had deserted! It was absurd after all, this hurly-burly of men and women. Then she began to wonder when Paul would return. The day seemed very long; in the evening she walked in Rittenhouse Square and watched Trinity Church until its brown façade faded in the dusk. She expected Paul back at midnight, and sat up reading. She didn't love him, she told herself, but felt lonely and wished he would come. To be sure, she recalled with her morbidly keen memory that Howells had said: "There is no happy life for woman--the advantage that the world offers her is her choice in self-sacrifice." At two hours past the usual time, she went to bed and slept uneasily until dawn, when she reached out her hand and awoke with a start....

The next night he came back slightly the worse for a pleasant time. He was too tired to answer questions. In the morning he told her that Vibert announced a concert in Carnegie Hall, the programme made up of his own compositions.

"His own compositions?" Ellenora indignantly queried. "He has nothing but the piano concerto, an overture he wrote in Germany, and some songs." She was very much disturbed. Paul noticed it and teased her.

"Oh, yes, he has; read this:"

"Mr. Arthur Vibert, a talented young composer, pupil of Saint-Saëns and Brahms, will give an instrumental concert at Carnegie Hall, November 10th, the programme of which will be devoted entirely to his own compositions. Mr. Vibert, who is an excellent pianist, will play his new piano concerto; a group of his charming songs will be heard; an overture, one of his first works, and a new symphonic poem will comprise this unusually interesting musical scheme. Mr. Vibert will have the valuable assistance of Herr Anton Seidl and his famous orchestra."

"I will go to New York and hear that symphonic poem." She spoke in her most aggressive manner.

"Well, why not?" replied Paul flippantly. "Only you will see a lot of people you know, and would that be pleasant?"

"You needn't go to the concert, you can meet me afterward, and we'll go home together."

Paul yawned, and went out for his afternoon stroll.... Ellenora passed the intervening days in a flame of expectancy. She conjectured all sorts of reasons for the concert. Why should Arthur give it so early in the season? Where did he get the money for the orchestra? Perhaps that old, stupid, busybody, portrait-painting friend of his had advanced it. But when did he compose the symphonic poem? He had said absolutely nothing about it to her; and she was surprised, irritated, a little proud that he had finished something of symphonic proportions. She knew Arthur too well to suppose that he would offer a metropolitan audience scamped workmanship. Anyhow, she would go over even if she had to face an army of questioning friends.

Vibert! How singularly that name looked now. It was a prettier, more compact name than Goddard. But of course she wasn't Mrs. Goddard, she was Mrs. Vibert, and would be until her husband saw fit to divorce her. Would he do that soon? Then she walked about furiously, drank tea, and groaned--she was ennuied beyond description....

Paul had the habit of going to New York every other week, and she raised no objection as his frivolous manner was very trying during sultry days; when he was away she could abandon herself to her day-dreams without fear of interruption. She thought hard, and her strong head often was puzzled by the cloud of contradictory witnesses her memory raised. But she cried no more at his absence....

It was quite gaily that she took her seat beside him in the drawing-room car of the train and impatiently awaited the first sight of the salt meadows before Jersey City is reached.

"Ah! the sea," she cried enthusiastically, and Paul smiled indulgently.

"You are lyrical, after all, Ellenora," he remarked in his most critical manner. "Presently you will be calling aloud 'Thalatta, Thalatta!' like some dithyrambic Greek of old."

"Smell the ocean, Paul," urged Ellenora, who looked years younger and almost handsome. Paul's comment was not original but it was sound: "You are a born New York girl and no mistake." He took her to luncheon when they reached the city and in the afternoon she went to a few old familiar shops, felt buoyant, and told herself that she would never consent to live in Philadelphia, as inelastic as brass. Alone she had a hasty dinner at the hotel--Paul had gone to dine with his mother--and noted in the paper that there was no postponement of the Vibert concert. The evening was cool and clear, and with a singular sensation of lightness in her head she went up to the hall in a noisy Broadway car....

Her heart beat so violently that she feared she was about to be ill; intense excitement warned her she must be calmer. All this fever and tremor were new to her, their novelty alarmed and interested her. Accustomed since childhood to time the very pulse-beats of her soul, this analytical woman was astounded when she felt forces at work within her--forces that seemed beyond control of her strong will. She did not dare to sit downstairs, so secured a seat in the top gallery, meeting none of Arthur's musical acquaintances. She eagerly read the programme. How odd "Vibert" seemed on it! She almost expected to see her own name follow her husband's. Arthur Vibert and Ellenora, his wife, will play his own--their own--concerto for piano and orchestra!

She laughed at her conceit, but her laugh sounded so thin and miserable that she was frightened....

Again she looked at the programme. After the concerto overture "Adonaïs"--Vibert loved Shelley and Keats--came the piano concerto, a group of songs--the singer's name an unfamiliar one--and finally the symphonic poem. The symphonic poem! What did she see, or were her eyes blurred?

"Symphonic Poem 'The Zone of the Shadow'. For explanatory text see the other side." Sick and trembling she turned the page and read "The Argument of this Symphonic Poem is by Ellenora Vibert."

THE ZONE OF THE SHADOW

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.

IV

How she reached the train and Philadelphia she hardly remembered. She was miserably sick at soul, miserably mortified. Her foolish air-castles vanished, and in their stead she saw the brutal reality. She had deserted a young genius for a fashionable dilettante. In time she might have learned to care for Arthur--but how was she to know this? He was so backward, such a colorless companion!... She almost disliked the man who had taken her away from him; yet six months ago Ellenora would have resented the notion that a mere man could have led her. Besides there was another woman in the muddle now!... In her disgust she longed for her own zone of silence. In her heart she called Ibsen and Nora Helmer delusive guides; her chief intellectual staff had failed her and she began to see Torvald Helmer's troubles in a different light. Perhaps when Nora reached the street that terrible night, she thought of her children--perhaps Helmer was watching her from the Doll's House window--perhaps--perhaps Arthur--then she remembered the young singer and bitterness filled her mouth....

When Paul came back, twenty-four hours later, she turned a disagreeable regard upon him.

"Why didn't you stay away longer?" she demanded inconsistently.

"My dear girl, I searched for you at Carnegie Hall that night, but I suppose I must have come too late; so yesterday I went yachting and had a jolly time."

Ellenora fell to reproaching Paul violently for his cruel neglect. Didn't he know that she was ailing and needed him? He answered maliciously: "I fancied that your trip might upset your nerves. I am really beginning to believe you care more for your young composer than you do for me. Ellenora Vibert, sentimentalist!--what a joke."

He smiled at his wit....

"Leave me, leave me, and don't come here again!... I have a right to care for any man I please."

"Ah! Ibsen encore," said Paul, tauntingly.

"No, not Ibsen," she replied in a weak voice, "only a free woman--free even to admire the man whose name I bear," she added, her temper sinking to a sheer monotone.

"Free?" he sarcastically echoed. The shock of their voices filled the room. Paul angrily stared out of the window at the thin trees in dusty Rittenhouse Square, wondering when the woman would stop her tiresome reproaches. Ellenora's violent agitation affected her; and the man, his selfish sensibilities aroused by the most unheroic sight in the world, slowly descended the staircase, grumbling as he put on his hat....

* * * * *

Too cerebral to endure the philandering Paul, Ellenora Vibert is still in Philadelphia. She has little hope that her husband will ever make any sign.... After a time her restless mind and need of money drove her into journalism. To-day she successfully edits the Woman's Page of a Sunday newspaper, and her reading of an essay on Ibsen's Heroines before the Twenty-first Century Club was declared a positive achievement. Ellenora, who dislikes Nietzsche more than ever, calls herself Mrs. Bishop. Her pen name is now Nora Helmer.

TANNHÄUSER'S CHOICE

I

"And you say they met him this afternoon?" ... "Yes, met him in broad daylight coming from the house of that odious woman." "Well, I never would have believed it!" "That accounts for his mysterious absence from the clubs and drawing-rooms. Henry Tannhäuser is not the style of man to miss London in the season, unless there is a big attraction elsewhere." ... The air was heavy with flowers, and in the windows opening on the balcony were thronged smartly dressed folk; it was May and the weather warm. The Landgrave's musicale had been anticipated eagerly by all music-lovers in town; Wartburg, the large house on the hill, hardly could hold the invited....

The evening was young when Mrs. Minne, charming and a widow, stood with her pretty nun-like face inclined to the tall, black Mr. Biterolf, the basso of the opera. She had been sonnetted until her perfectly arched eyebrows were famous. Her air of well-bred and conventual calm never had been known to desert her; and her high, light, colorless soprano had something in it of the sexless timbre of the boy chorister. With her blond hair pressed meekly to her shapely head she was the delight and despair of poets, painters and musicians, for she turned an impassable cheek to their pleadings. Mrs. Minne would never remarry; and it was her large income that made water the mouth of the impecunious artistic tribe....

Just now she seemed interested in Karl Biterolf, but even his vanity did not lead him to hope. They resumed their conversation, while about them the crush became greater, and the lights burned more brilliantly. In the whirl of chatter and conventional compliment stood Elizabeth Landgrave, the niece of the host, receiving her uncle's guests. Mrs. Minne regarded her, a sweet, unpleasant smile playing about her thinly carved lips.

"Yet the men rave over her, Mr. Biterolf. Is it not so? What chance has a passée woman with such a pure, delicate slip of a girl? And she sings so well. I wonder if she intends going on the stage?" Her companion leaned over and whispered something.

"No, no, I'll never believe it. What? Henry Tannhäuser in love with that girl! Jamais, jamais!"

"But I tell you it's so, and her refusal sent him after--well, that other one." Biterolf looked wise.

"You mean to tell me that he could forget her for an old woman? Stop, I know you are going to say that the Holda is as fascinating as Diana of Poitiers and has a trick of making boys, young enough to be her grandsons, fall madly in love with her. I know all that is said in her favor. No one knows who she is, where she came from, or her age. She's fifty if she's a day, and she makes up in the morning." Mrs. Minne paused for breath. Both women moved in the inner musical set of fashionable London and both captained rival camps. Mrs. Minne was voted a saint and Mrs. Holda a sinner--a fascinating one.... There was a little feeling in the widow's usually placid voice when she again questioned Biterolf.

"I always fancied that Eschenbach, that man with the baritone voice, son of the rich brewer--you know him of course?--I always fancied that he was making up to our pretty young innocent over yonder."

Biterolf gazed in amusement at his companion. Her veiled, sarcastic tone was not lost on him; he felt that he had to measure his words with this lily-like creature.

"Oh, yes; Wolfram Eschenbach? Certainly, I know him. He sings very well for an amateur. I believe he is to sing this evening. Let us go out on the balcony; it's very warm." "I intend remaining here, for I shall not miss a trick in the game to-night and if, as you say, that silly Tannhäuser was seen leaving the Holda's house this afternoon--" "Yes, with young Walter Vogelweide, and they were quarrelling--" "Drinking, I suppose?" "No; Henry was very much depressed, and when Eschenbach asked him where he had been so long--" "What a fool question for a man in love with Elizabeth Landgrave," interposed Mrs. Minne, tartly. "Henry answered that he didn't know, and he wished he were in the Thames." "And a good place for him, say I." The lady put up her lorgnon and bowed amiably to Miss Landgrave, who was talking eagerly to her uncle....

The elder Landgrave was as fond of hunting as of music, and sedulously fostered the cultivation of his niece's voice. As she stood beside him, her slender figure was almost as tall as his. Her eyes were large in the cup and they went violet in the sunlight; at night they seemed lustrously black. She was in virginal white this evening, and her delicately modelled head was turned toward the door. Her uncle spoke slowly to her.

"He promised to come." Elizabeth flushed. "Whether he does or not, I shall sing; besides, his rudeness is unbearable. Uncle, dear, what can I say to a man who goes away for a month without vouchsafing me a word of excuse?"

Her uncle coughed insinuatingly in his beard. He was a widower.

"Hadn't we better begin, uncle? Go out on the balcony and stop that noisy gypsy band. I hate Hungarian music." ... She carried herself with dignity, and Mr. Landgrave admired the pretty curves of her face and wondered what would happen when her careless lover arrived. Soon the crowd drifted in from the balcony and the great music-room, its solemn oak walls and ceilings blazing with light, was jammed. Near the concert-grand gathered a group of music makers, in which Wolfram Eschenbach's golden beard and melancholy eyes were at once singled out by sentimental damsels. He had long been the by-word of match-making mammas because of his devotion to a hopeless cause. Elizabeth Landgrave admired his good qualities, but her heart was held by that rake, _vaurien_ and man about town, dashing Harry Tannhäuser; and as Wolfram bent over Miss Landgrave her uncle could not help regretting that girls were so obstinate.

A crashing of chords announced that the hour had arrived. After the "Tannhäuser" overture, Elizabeth Landgrave arose to sing. Instantly there was a stillness. She looked very fair in her clinging gown, and as her powerful, well modulated soprano uttered the invocation to the Wartburg "Dich, teure Halle, grüss ich wieder," the thrill of excitement was intensified by the appearance of Henry Tannhäuser in the doorway at the lower end of the room. If Elizabeth saw him her voice did not reveal emotion, and she gave, with rhetorical emphasis, "Froh grüss ich dich, geliebter Raum."

"He looks pretty well knocked out, doesn't he?" whispered Biterolf to Mrs. Minne. She curled her lip. She had long set her heart on Tannhäuser, but since he preferred to sing the praises of Mrs. Holda, she slaked her feelings by cutting up his character in slices and serving them to her friends with a saintly smile.

"Poor old Harry," went on Biterolf in his clumsy fashion. "Your poor old Harry had better keep away from his Venus," snapped the other; "he looks as if he'd been going the pace too fast." Every one looked curiously at the popular tenor. He stood the inspection very well, though his clean-shaven face was slightly haggard, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. But he was such good style, as the women remarked, and his bearing, as ever, gallant.

Elizabeth ended with "Sei mir gegrüsst," and there was a volley of handclapping. Tannhäuser made his way to the piano. His attitude was anything but penitent; the girl did not stir a muscle. He shook hands. Then he complimented her singing. She bowed her head stiffly. Tannhäuser smiled ironically.

"I suppose I ought to do the conventional operatic thing," he murmured--"cry aloud, 'Let me kneel forever here.'" She regarded him coldly. "You might find it rather embarrassing before this crowd. Do you ever sing any more?" He was slightly confused. "Let us sing the duo in the second act; you know it," she curtly said, "and stop the mob's gaping. Mrs. Minne over there is straining her eyes out." "She cannot say that I ever sang her praises," laughed Tannhäuser, and as he faced the audience with Elizabeth there was a hum which modulated clamorously into noisy applause.

The pair began "Gepriesen sei die Stunde, gepriesen sei die Macht," and Mr. Landgrave looked on gloomily as the voices melted in lyric ecstasy. Henry's voice was heroic, like himself, and his friend Wolfram felt a glow when its thrilling top tones rang out so pure, so clear. What a voice, what a man! If he would only take care of himself, he thought and looked at Elizabeth's spiritual face wondering if she knew--if she knew of the other woman who was making Henry forget his better self!

The duo ceased and congratulations were heaped upon the singers....

"How do you manage to keep it up, old man?" asked Biterolf while Mrs. Minne engaged Elizabeth.

Tannhäuser smiled. "You old grim wolf, Biterolf, you cling to the notion that a singer must lead the life of an anchorite to preserve his voice. I enjoy life. I am not a monk, but a tenor--" "Yes, but not a professional one!" "No; therefore I'm happy. If I had to sing to order, I'd jump into the river." "That's what you said this afternoon," replied Biterolf, knowingly.

Henry's face grew dark. "You've said nothing, have you? That's a good fellow. I assure you, Karl, I'm in the very devil of a fix. I've got rid of Holda, but no one can tell how long. She's a terror." "Why don't you travel?" "I have, I swear I have, but she has a trick of finding where my luggage goes and then turns up at Pau or Paris as if I expected her. She's a witch! That's what she is."

"She is Venus," said Biterolf moodily. "Aha! you've been hard hit, too? I believe she does come from the Hollow Hill. Her cavern must be full of dead men's bones, trophies of her conquests. I think I've escaped this time." Tannhäuser's face grew radiant. "Don't be too sure, she may turn up here to-night." "Good Lord, man, she's not invited, I hope." "I don't know why not--she goes with the best people. Take a tip from me, Harry. Don't waste any more time with her for Eschenbach may cut you out. He's very fond of Elizabeth, and you'd better cut short that duet over there now; Mrs. Minne is not fond of you." "Nonsense!" said Tannhäuser, but he lounged over toward the two women and his big frame was noted by all the girls in the room.

Tannhäuser had a very taking way with him. His eyes were sky-blue and his hair old gold. He was a terrific sportsman and when not making love was singing. From his Teutonic ancestry he had inherited a taste for music which desultory study in a German university town, combined with a musical ear, had improved. He had been told by managers that if he would work hard he could make a sensation, but Henry was lazy and Henry was rich, so he sang, shot big game and flirted his years away. Then he met Mrs. Holda, of Berg Street, Piccadilly.

The women were not looking at each other with loving eyes when he drew near. Elizabeth turned to him, her face aglow: "Let us walk a bit before Mr. Eschenbach sings." Her manner was almost seductive. Mrs. Minne sneered slightly and waved her fan condescendingly at the two as they moved slowly up the room. "There go the biggest pair of fools in all Christendom," she remarked to Biterolf; "why, she will believe everything he tells her. She wouldn't listen to my advice." Biterolf shook his head. When Tannhäuser and Elizabeth returned both looked supremely happy.

"That woman has actually been abusing you, Harry." He pressed her arm reassuringly. Wolfram Eschenbach began to sing "Blick' ich umher in diesem edlen Kreise," and once more silence fell upon the bored crowd. Sympathy was in his tones and he sang tenderly, lovingly. Elizabeth listened unmoved. She now had eyes for Tannhäuser only, and she laughed aloud when he proposed to follow Wolfram with a solo.

"Do," she said enthusiastically, "it will stir them all up." Although this number was not down on the program, Tannhäuser was welcomed as he went to the piano. Wolfram seemed uneasy and once looked fixedly at Elizabeth. Then he walked out on the balcony as if seeking some one, and Mrs. Minne nudged her stolid neighbor. "Mark my words, there's trouble brewing," she declared.

By this time Tannhäuser was in his best form. He seemed to have regained all his usual elasticity, for Berg Street, with its depressing memories, had completely vanished. He expanded his chest and sang, his victorious blue eyes fastened on Elizabeth. He sang the song of Venus, "Dir, Göttin der Liebe," and all the old passion came into his voice; when he uttered "Zieht in den Berg der Venus ein" he was transported, his surroundings melted and once more he was gazing at the glorious woman, his Venus, his Holda. The audience was completely shaken out of its fashionable immobility, and "superb," "bravo," "magnificent," "encore," "bis," were heard on all sides. Elizabeth alone remained mute. Her skin was the pallor of ivory, and into her glance came the look of a lovely fawn run down by the hounds.

"He'd better pack his traps and make a pilgrimage to Rome," remarked Mrs. Minne with malice in her secular eyes as Tannhäuser strode to the balcony. Wolfram, looking anxious, went to Elizabeth and led her to her uncle; then the supper signal sounded and the buzz and struggle became tremendous.

Mrs. Minne disappeared. Ten minutes later she was at Miss Landgrave's side, and presently the pair left the table, slowly forced a passage through the mob of hungry and thirsty humans and reached the balcony.

The night was rich with May odors, but the place seemed deserted. Plucking at the girl's sleeve, her companion pointed to a couple that stood looking into the garden, the arm of the man passed about the waist of the woman. Even in the starlight Elizabeth recognized the exquisite head and turned to leave; the woman with her was bent on seeing the game. In sharp staccato she said, "What a relief after that hot supper-room!" and the others turned. Elizabeth did not pause a moment. She went to Tannhäuser's companion and said:

"My dear Mrs. Holda, where have you been hiding to-night? I fear you missed the music and I fear now you will miss the supper; do let us go in." ...

Five minutes later Mrs. Holda left with Tannhäuser in her brougham, telling the coachman to drive to Berg Street.

II

The drawing-room was delicious that May afternoon--the next after the musicale at Landgrave's. Henry was indolently disposed, and on a broad divan, heaped with Persian pillows, he stretched his big limbs like a guardsman in a Ouida novel. The dark woman near watched him closely, and as he seemed inclined to silence she did not force the conversation.

"Shall we drive, Venus?" he nonchalantly asked. "Just as you please. We may meet your saint with the insipid eyes in the park." "Good heavens!" he testily answered, "why do you forever drag in that girl's name? She's nothing to me." Mrs. Holda went to the window and he lazily noticed her perfect figure, her raven hair and black eyes. She was a stunner after all, and didn't look a day over twenty-eight. How did she manage to preserve the illusion of youth? She turned to him, and he saw the contour of a face Oriental, with eyes that allured and a mouth that invited. A desirable but dangerous woman, and he fell to thinking of the other, of her air of girlhood, her innocence of poise, her calm of breeding that nothing disturbed. Like a good pose in the saddle, nothing could ever unseat the equanimity of Elizabeth. Mrs. Holda grew distasteful for the moment and her voice sounded metallic.

"When you cease your perverse mooning, Harry Tannhäuser, when you make up your mind once and for all which woman you intend to choose, when you decide between Elizabeth Landgrave and Venus Holda, I shall be most happy. As it is now I am"--Just then two cards were handed her by a footman, and after looking at them she laughed a mellow laugh. Tannhäuser sat up and asked her the news.

"I laugh because the situation is so funny," she said; "here are your two friends come to visit you and perhaps attempt your rescue from the Venusberg. Oh! for a Wagner now! What appropriate music he could set to this situation." She gave him the cards, and to his consternation he read the names of Elizabeth Landgrave and Wolfram Eschenbach. He started up in savage humor and was for going to the reception room. Quite calmly Mrs. Holda bade him stay where he was.

"They did not ask for you, Harry, dear; stay here and be a good boy, and I'll tell you all about it when they've gone." Her laughter was resilient as she descended the staircase, but to the young man it seemed sinister. He felt that hope had abandoned him when he entered the Berg Street house, and now Elizabeth's presence, instead of relieving his dull remorse, increased it. She was under the same roof with him, yet he could not go to her....

Tannhäuser paced the parquetry almost hidden by Bokhara rugs, trying to forget the girl. Stopping before an elaborate ebony and gold lectern, he found a volume in vellum, opened and in it he read: "Livre des grandes Merveilles d'amour, escript en Latin et en françoys par Maistre Antoine Gaget 1530." "Has love its marvels?" pondered the disquieted young man. Turning over the title-page he came upon these words in sweet old English:

"Then lamented he weeping: Alas, most unhappy and accursed sinner that I am, in that I shall never see the clemency and mercy of my God. Now will I go forth and hide myself within Mount Horsel, imploring my sweet lady Venus for favor and loving mercy, for willingly would I be forever condemned to hell for her love. Here endeth all my deeds of arms and my sweet singing. Alas, that my lady's face and her eyes were too beautiful, and that in an unfortunate moment I saw them. Then went he forth sighing and returned to her, and dwelt sadly in the presence of his lady, filled with a surpassing love. And afterwards it came to pass that one day the pope saw many red and white flowers and leaf-buds spring forth from his bastions, and all without bloomed anew. So that he feared greatly, and being much moved thereby was filled with great pity for the chevalier who had gone forth hopeless like unto a man forever damned and miserable. And straightway sent he numberless messengers to him to bring him back, saying that he should receive grace and absolution from God, for this his great sin of love. But never more was he seen; for the poor chevalier dwelt forever near unto Venus, that most high and mighty Goddess, in the bosom of the amorous mountain." ...

Mrs. Holda was delightful as she welcomed her visitors. "The drawing-room was not empty," she said; "a friend, an old friend, a bit of a bore, you know;" and they must just stay downstairs, it was more cozy, more intimate. Elizabeth, whose face was quite rosy from walking, studied the woman with the Egyptian profile and glorious hair, and wondered if she ever told the truth. Wolfram alone seemed uneasy. He could not get into the swing of conversation; he was in his watchful mood. He looked at the portières as if every moment he expected some one to appear. The musicale was discussed and Miss Landgrave's singing praised. Wolfram rather awkwardly attempted to introduce Tannhäuser's name, but was snubbed by Elizabeth.

"Now, my dear Mrs. Holda, I've come to tell you some news; promise me, I beg of you, promise me not to divulge it. We are engaged, Wolfram and I, and you being such an old friend I came to you first." The girl's pure face was the picture of nubile candor, and her eyes met fairly the shock of the other's quick glance.

"How lovely, how perfectly lovely it all is, and how I appreciate your confidence," sang Mrs. Holda, in purring accents. "How glad Henry Tannhäuser will be to hear that his two best friends are to be married. I must tell--tell him this afternoon."

"Oh!" cried Elizabeth, lightly, "but your promise, have you forgotten it?" The other laughed in her face.

"We go to Rome, to make what dear Mrs. Minne calls the pilgrimage," declared the girl unflinchingly.

"Then I hope the Wagner miracle will take place again," mockingly answered Mrs. Holda, and after a few more sentences the visitors went away. Venus burst into her drawing-room holding her sides, almost choking. "Harry, Harry, Harry Tannhäuser, I shall die. They're engaged to be married. They came to tell me, to tell me, knowing that you were upstairs. Oh, that deceitful virgin with her sly airs! I understood her. She fancied that she would put me out of countenance. She and that sheep of a brewer's son, Eschenbach. They're engaged, I tell you, and going to Rome on their wedding trip--their pilgrimage she called it. Oh, these affected Wagnerites! You had better go, too, Mr. Tannhäuser; perhaps the miracle might be renewed and your staff of faith grow green with the leaves of repentance. Oh, Harry, what a lark it all is!"

He sat on the couch and stared at her as she rolled about on a divan, gripped by malicious laughter.... Engaged! Elizabeth Landgrave engaged to be married! And a few hours ago she told him she loved him, could never love another--and now! What had happened in such a brief time to make her change her mind? Engaged to Wolfram Eschenbach, dear, old stupid Wolfram, who had loved her with a dog's love for years, even when she flouted him. Wolfram, his best friend, slow Wolfram, with his poetizing, his fondness for German singing societies, his songs to evening stars; Eschenbach, the brewer's son, to cut him out, cut out brilliant Harry Tannhäuser! It was incredible, it was monstrous!... He slowly went to the window. The street was empty, and only his desperate thoughts made noise as they clattered through his hollow head. Her voice roused him. "You can take the pitcher too often to the well, Harry dear, and you drove once too often to Berg Street. Elizabeth, sensible girl, instead of dying, takes the best man she could possibly find; a better man than you, Harry, and she couldn't resist letting me know it. So, silly old boy, better give up your Wartburg ambitions, your pilgrimage to Rome, and stay here in the Venusberg. I know I'm old, but, after all, am I not your Venus?" In the soft light of an early evening in May the face of Mrs. Holda seemed impossibly charming....

THE RED-HEADED PIANO PLAYER

The two young men left the trolley car that carried them from Bath Beach to the West End of Coney Island, and walked slowly up the Broad Avenue of Confusing Noises, smoked and gazed about them with the independent air that notes among a million the man from New York. And as they walked they talked in crisp sentences, laughing at the seller of opulent Frankfurter sausages and nodding pleasantly to the lovely ladies in short, spangled skirts, who, with beckoning glances, sought their eyes. The air reverberated with an August evening's heat and seemed sweating. Its odor modulated from sea-brine to Barren Island, and the wind hummed. The clatter was striking; ardent whistling of peanut steam-roasters, vicious brass bands, hideous harps, wheezing organs, hoarse shoutings and the patient, monotonous cry of the fakirs and photographers were all blended in a dense, huge symphony; while the mouse-colored dust churned by the wheels of blackguard beach-wagons blurred a hard, blue sky from which pricked a soft, hanging star. An operatic sun had just set with all the majestic tranquillity of a fiery hen; and the two friends felt laconically gay. "Let's eat here," suggested the red-haired one.

"Not on your life," answered the other, a stout, cynical blond; "you get nothing but sauerkraut that isn't sour and dog-meat sausage. I'm for a good square meal at Manhattan or Sheepshead Bay."

"Yes, but Billy, there's more fun here, and heavens knows I'm dead tired." The young fellow's accents were those of an irritable, hungry human animal, and his big chum gave in....

They searched the sandy street for a comfortable beer place, and after passing dime-museums, unearthly looking dives, amateur breweries, low gin mills and ambitious establishments, the pair paused opposite a green, shy park of grass and dwarf trees, and listened.

"Piano playing, and not bad," cried Billy. They both hung over the rustic palings and heard bits of Chopin's Military Polonaise, interrupted by laughter and the rattling of crockery.

"I'm for going in, Billy," and they read the sign which announced a good dinner, with music, for fifty cents. They followed the artificial lane to a large summer cottage, about which were bunched drooping willows and, finding all the tables occupied, went inside.

A long room furnished for dining, gaudy pictures on the walls, and at one end upon a raised platform a grand piano. The place was full; and the tobacco-smoke, chatter and calls of the waiters disconcerted the two boys. Just then the piano sounded. Chopin again, and curious to know who possessed such a touch at Coney Island, the friends found a table to the right of the keyboard and sat down. As they did, they looked at the pianist and both exclaimed:

"Paderewski or his ghost!" The fellow wore a shock of lemon-tinted hair after the manner of the Polish virtuoso, but his face was shaven clean.

"Harry, he looks like a lost soul," said Billy, who was rather plain spoken in his judgments.

"Let's give him a drink," whispered Harry, and he called a waiter. "Whiskey," said the waiter after a question had been put, and presently the piano player was bowing to them as he threw the liquor into his large mouth. Then the Chopin study in C minor was recommenced and half-finished and the two music lovers forgot their dinner. A waiter spoke to them twice; the manager, seeing that music was hurting trade, went to the piano and coughed. The pianist instantly stopped, and a dinner was ordered by Harry. Billy looked around him with a trained eye. He noticed that the women were all sunburned and wore much glittering jewelry; the men looked like countrymen and were timid in the use of the fork. When the music began they stopped eating and their companions ordered fresh drinks. Billy could have sworn that he saw one woman crying. But as soon as the music ceased conversation began, and the rattle of dishes was deafening.

"I say, Harry, this is a queer go. There's something funny about this place and this piano. It upsets all my theories of piano music. When the piano begins here the audience forgets to eat, and its passion mounts to its ears. Not like the West End at all, is it?" Harry was busy with his soup. He was sentimental, and the sight of kindred hair--the hue beloved of Paderewski--roused his sympathies.

"By George, Billy, that fellow's an artist. Just look at his expression. There's a story in him, and I'm going to get it. It may be news."

They chatted, and asked the pianist to join them in another drink. Whiskey was sent up to the platform, and the musician drank it at a gulp, his right hand purling over the figuration of "Auf dem Wasser zu Singen." But he took no water. Then making them a little bobbing, startled bow, he began playing. Again it was something of Chopin. On his lean features there was a look of detachment; and the watchers were struck with the interesting forehead, the cheeks etched with seams of suffering, and the finely compressed lips.

"I'll bet it's some German who has boozed too much at home, and his folks have thrown him out," hinted Billy.

"German? That's no German, I swear. It's Hungarian, Bohemian or Pole. Besides, he drinks whiskey."

"Yes, drinks too much, but it hasn't hurt his playing--yet: just listen to the beggar play that prelude."