I
The handsome Hungarian kept his brilliant glance fixed upon Lora Crowne; she sat with her Aunt Lucas and Mr. Steyle at a table facing the orchestra. His eyes were not so large as black; the intensity of their gaze further bewildered the young woman, whose appearance that evening at the famous café on the East Side was her initial one. The heat, the bristling lights, the terrific appealing clamour of the gypsy band, set murmuring the nerves of this impressionable girl. And the agility of the cymbalom player, his great height, clear skin, and piercing eyes, quite enthralled her.
"It is the gypsy dulcimer, Lora; I read all about it in Liszt's book on gypsy music," said Aunt Lucas, in an airy soprano.
Mr. Steyle was impressed. Lora paid no attention, but continued to gaze curiously at the antics of the player, who hammered from his instrument of wire shivering, percussive music. With flexible wrists he swung the felt-covered mallets that brought up such resounding tones; at times his long, apelike arms would reach far asunder and, rolling his eyes, he touched the extremes of his cymbalom; then he described furious arpeggios, punctuated with a shrill tattoo. And the crazy music defiled by in a struggling squad of chords; but Aŕpad Vihary never lifted his eyes from Lora Crowne....
The vibration ceased. Its withdrawal left the ear-drums buzzing with a minute, painful sensation, like that of moisture rapidly evaporating upon the naked skin. A battalion of tongues began to chatter as the red-faced waiters rushed between the tables, taking orders. It was after eleven o'clock, and through the swinging doors passed a throng of motley people, fanning, gossiping, bickering—all eager and thirsty. Clarence Steyle pointed out the celebrities with conscious delight. Over yonder—that man with the mixed gray hair—was a composer who came every night for inspiration,—musical and otherwise, Clarence added, with a laugh. And there was the young and well-known decadent playwright who wore strangling high collars and transposed all his plays from French sources; he lisped and was proud of his ability to dramatize the latest mental disease. And a burglar who had written a famous book on the management of children during hot weather sat meekly resting before a solitary table.
The leader of the Hungarian band was a gypsy who called himself Alfassy Janos, though he lived on First Avenue, in a flat the door of which bore this legend: Jacob Aron. The rest of the band seemed gypsy. Who is the cymbalom player? That is not difficult to answer; the programme gives it.
"There you are, Miss Lora."
She looked. "Oh, what a romantic name! He must be a count at least."
"Lora, dear, gypsies never bear titles," remarked Aunt Lucas, patronizingly.
"How about the Abbé Liszt?" triumphantly asked her charge.
Aunt Lucas laughed coldly. "Liszt was Hungarian, not Romany. But your artist with the drumsticks certainly is distinguished-looking. If he only would not wear that odious scarlet uniform. I wonder why he does not sit down, like the rest of his colleagues."
Aŕpad Vihary leaned against the panelled wall, his brow puckered in boredom, his long black mustaches drooping from sheer discouragement. His was a figure for sculpture—a frame powerfully modelled, a bisque complexion. Thin as a cedar sapling, he preserved such an immovable attitude that in the haze of the creamy atmosphere he seemed a carved, marmoreal image rather than a young man with devouring eyes.
The three visitors ate sandwiches and pretended to relish Munich beer served in tall stone mugs. Aunt Lucas, who was shaped like a 'cello, made more than a pretence of sipping; she drank one entirely, regretting the exigencies of chaperonage: to ask for more might shock the proper young man.
"It's horrid here, after all," she remarked discontentedly. "So many people—such people—and very few nice ones. The Batsons are over there, Lora; but then you don't care for them. O dear, I wish the band would strike up again."
It did. A vicious swirl of colour and dizzy, dislocated rhythms prefaced the incantations of the Czardas. Instantly the eating, gabbling crowd became silent. Alfassy Janos magnetized his hearers with cradling, caressing movements of his fiddle. He waved like tall grass in the wind; he twisted snakewise his lithe body as he lashed his bow upon the screaming strings; the resilient tones darted fulgurantly from instrument to instrument. After chasing in circles of quicksilver, they all met with a crash; and the whole tonal battery, reënforced by the throbbing of Aŕpad Vihary's dulcimer, swept through the suite of rooms from ceiling to sanded floor. It was no longer enchanting music, but sheer madness of the blood; sensual and warlike, it gripped the imagination as these tunes of old Egypt, filtered through savage centuries, reached the ears. Lora trembled in the gale that blew across the Puzta. She imagined a determined Hungarian prairie, over which dashed disordered centaurs brandishing clubs, driving before them a band of satyrs and leaping fauns. The hoofed men struggled. At their front was a monster with a black goat-face and huge horns; he fought fiercely the half-human horses. The sun, a thin scarf of light, was eclipsed by earnest clouds; the curving thunder closed over the battle; the air was flame-sprinkled and enlaced by music; and most melancholy were the eyes of the defeated Pan—the melancholy eyes of Aŕpad Vihary....
Aunt Lucas was scandalized. "Do you know, Lora, that the impudent dulcimer virtuoso"—she prided herself on her musical terms—"actually stared you out of countenance during the entire Czardas?" And she could have added that her niece had returned the glance unflinchingly.
Mr. Steyle noticed Lora's vacant regard when he addressed her and insisted on getting her away from the dangerous undertow of this "table d'hôte music," as he contemptuously called it. He summoned the waiter.
Lora shed her disappointment. "Oh, let's wait for the cymbalom solo," she frankly begged.
Her aunt was unmoved. "Yes, Mr. Steyle, we had better go; the air is positively depressing. These slumming parties are delightful if you don't overdo them—but the people!" Up went her lorgnon.
They soon departed. Lora did not dare to look back until she reached the door that opened on the avenue; as she did so her vibrant gaze collided with the Hungarian's. She determined to see him again.