IX
The poppies lay in the gutter and many other fresh and gracious flowers had withered under the portrait of the Gualtieri. May had become June, and June July. Every evening Gesa explained his projects to his foster-father, played one and another melody on his violin, or sketched the whole of an ensemble movement for him on the old spinet, received Gaston's assurance "cela cera superbe!" improvised a great deal, listened dreamily to the singing and ringing in his soul, and--accomplished nothing. He had lodged himself in a neighboring attic, at a washerwoman's, but spent the whole day in the home of Delileo, now made still more attractive by the gracious presence of Annette.
The "droewige Herr" had found a regular situation, probably for his daughter's sake. He busied himself as secretary of the theatre and also as feuilletonist of a newspaper. This procured him steady employment. His housekeeping now bore the stamp, not of limited means, but of slovenly comfort, the comfort of the Rue Ravestein.
Gesa felt at home in this disorder. He always found a comfortable sofa on whose arms he could rest his hands while he talked about the future, and in whose cushions he could lean back his head while he searched for the outlines of impending fortune among the smoke-clouds from his cigarette; and he always found a bottle of good Bordeaux on the table when he seated himself at dinner.
He loved the long idling meal times, which lifted from him the necessity of doing anything, and furnished such a plausible excuse for his beloved laziness: he loved to sit and dally with his coffee, while Annette sat opposite and occasionally sipped a little out of his cup. He loved to rummage among the notes of old composers whom no one had ever heard of and to rush through the works of half-forgotten poets. When a verse pleased him, then his eyes glowed, and he would thunder forth the most colossal adjectives, and read the lines two, three, yes twenty times to the little Annette. He might just as well have read to the Flemish servant outside, only she would not, perhaps, have smiled so prettily. Then he would seize note paper and set the verse to music, try his hasty composition on the old spinet, that gave back the stormy melodies of his foaming, effervescing youth in a broken, trembling little voice, like a grandmother on the edge of the grave who sings a love song for the last time. Then Annette must try the verse. She had a splendid contralto voice, and spared no pains to give him pleasure with her singing. But he was never contented. "More expression Annette, more passion!" he would cry. "Do you feel nothing then, absolutely nothing here!" and he tapped her on the heart with his finger. She smiled, colored, and turned her face away.
* * * * *
Gaston Delileo had resolved to look upon Annette and Gesa as sister and brother; that cut short all other thoughts, and was very comfortable. He would not notice how much Annette was occupied with her "brother," to what flattering little attentions she accustomed him, with what an expression her large dark eyes sometimes rested upon him. He only noticed that in the beginning Gesa's bearing was perfectly cool, cordial and brotherly. Toward the end of July the latter began to neglect Rue Ravestein a little, and entangled himself in some sort of relation with a Paris actress who, playing an engagement at the Galerie St. Hubert, found herself bored in Brussels. Annette was consumed by jealousy without Gesa's guessing the cause of her disquiet.
"What ails you, Bichette?" he asked, anxiously, stroking her thin cheek with a caressing hand. "What makes you sad? It is this pestilential city air that does not agree with you. Send her to the seashore for a while, father!" The old man shrugged his shoulders--
"Alas!" he murmured. "I have not the means."
"The means! the means!" cried Gesa, "then permit me to advance them. I have lived so long on your generosity!" Gesa forgot how much his little attentions to Mlle. Irma had cost! When he hurried over to his apartment to get a couple of bank notes, he found in his pocketbook just one solitary twenty-franc piece. At first he rubbed his head and stared, then he burst out laughing, and carried his used up purse across to Delileo, "There, laugh at me and my big promises," he cried. "Here, see, this is my whole wealth! But wait, only wait! My hands and my head are full of gold. If only once the right feeling for work would come--the real fever! Do you happen to know where I have laid the libretto for my opera?"
Toward the end of August, Mlle. Irma left Brussels, Gesa became morose, and the mood was favorable to industry.
One morning he felt "the fever." He spread some music paper before him, smoothed it with his hand, cut a pen, planted his elbows on the one shaky table his attic contained, wrote a line, struck it out, stretched himself, and twisted himself--a feeling of physical unrest tormented him. He resolved to go out for a little, and wandered into the park, where he stood still from time to time as if listening to an inward voice, jostling absently against passers-by, and at last sat down upon a bench, thinking deeply. Suddenly a gust of wind passed, lightly at first, then howling loudly through the tree tops overhead. Gesa started, pressed his hands to his temples, a flood of music streamed through his soul. He hurried back to his attic, and wrote and wrote.
The hour at which he was accustomed to find himself at lunch with Annette,--Delileo seldom came home for this meal,--was long past, the late supper time had come--Gesa still bent over his music paper. Single leaves lay strewn around him on the floor. Some one knocked at the door--he did not hear. Delileo entered. "What are you doing, my boy, that one sees nothing of you to-day. Are you sick?"
Gesa stared at him as if awakened from a strange dream. "No," he answered, simply, "I am working."
He was very pale and his hands trembled. Delileo insisted that he must interrupt his work at least long enough to take some nourishment. Gesa followed him unwillingly. He sat at table, ate nothing, did not speak, but gazed steadily at one spot like a ghost seer. After supper he wandered up and down the sitting-room, humming disconnected melodies to himself, clutched from time to time at the keys of the old spinet, threw out with short lips a single tone in which some sort of grand finale seemed to culminate, lashed about him urging on an imaginary orchestra, stamped suddenly on the floor and cried "Bravo!"
Delileo, who had had plenty to do, in his day, with poets and composers, let him quietly alone; treating him with the forbearance which is accorded to the unhappy, the weak-minded, and geniuses. But Annette could not understand this strange behavior, and at last she broke out in a gay laugh.
Strange to say Gesa took this childishness very ill, and left the chamber with a hastily muttered "good-night."
Until the grey of morning he was working at his opera.
Several days went by, days during which Gesa neither ate nor slept, looked excited and irritable, yet at the same time enjoyed an indescribable painful happiness, a condition of supreme exaltation. In vain Delileo warned him, "Don't overwork, one can strain the creative faculty as well as the voice, be moderate!" Gesa only shook his handsome head and smiled to himself with eyes half shut. Perhaps he had not heard a word his foster-father had been saying.
And then, suddenly, when, shouting an exultant Eureka to himself, he finished the finale of the fifth act,--the third and fourth were not even begun yet,--his inspiration failed. Pegasus threw him, as an overworked and maltreated Pegasus will,--threw him from the Spheres of Light down into the regions of Earthly Misery.
Painful headaches, and fathomless melancholy tormented him, his own performance seemed suddenly repulsive to him: where at first he had only seen the beauties of his work, he now recognized nothing but its deficiencies, compared it with the works of other masters, ground his teeth, and beat his brow. He condemned his own composition unmercifully, as overstrained and absurdly romantic. He could only endure the coldest, dryest musical fare. A Nocturne of Chopin threw him into a nervous excitement. He practiced the "Chaconne" by Bach incessantly. He looked like one who was convalescing from a severe illness. With neglected dress and dragging step he lounged about aimlessly, or brooded by the hour, all in a heap, head on hand, in the darkest corner of the green sitting-room. Once after he had been trying a new composition, in careless fashion on his violin, he put the instrument away with nervous haste, threw himself into the great leather armchair that was regarded as his by all the family, bit restlessly at his nails a moment, and then suddenly broke into convulsive sobbing. Then came Annette shyly to him, stroked his hair pityingly, and whispered, "Poor Gesa, does it hurt so to be a Genius?" He drew her onto his knee, kissed her often and ardently on hair, eyes, mouth, and when half glad, half frightened, she drew away, he allowed her to slip from his arms, but took both her hands and said softly, looking up at her with true-hearted eyes, "Annette, my good little Annette, can you endure me? Will you be my wife? Not now, but when I am become a great artist. Perhaps I may yet, for your sake."
She blushed, and stammered, "What can you want of such a foolish girl as I am?"
"But if she just happens to please me," he jested, much moved.
She bent her young head over his hand and kissed it, then she nestled down on a stool at his feet. When Gaston came home he found them thus, and gave his blessing upon the betrothal.