XII
She had understood--the virtuoso's nimbus had become quite visible to her. Gesa need fear no longer that she would not know how to value his great friend sufficiently. How could it be otherwise? His name was to be encountered everywhere. All the newest bon-bons, patent leathers, pocket handkerchiefs were named after him, and the children played at "Concert and Virtuoso," just as in the earliest youth of our century they had played "Consul and Battle of Marengo." Annette was taking singing lessons now. Another little luxury that Gesa had provided for her, and at her singing teacher's house the girls whom she met there talked of nothing but de Sterny. The uncle of one pupil was conductor at the "Monnaie" de Sterny had called upon him, and had forgotten his gloves on going away. The said pupil brought those gloves to the next singing lesson; they were cut in pieces and divided among Signor Martini's feminine pupils. Years afterward, more than one of these gushers wore a bit of leather round her neck, sewed up in a little silk bag!
At this time de Sterny had reached the zenith of his fame. His last tour through Russia had resembled a triumph. In Odessa they had received him with the discharge of cannon, in Moscow a procession had gone to meet him, huzzahing students had unhitched the horses from his coach and the fairest women had showered down flowers from the windows upon his illustrious head, as the cortege passed through the principal streets; in Petersburg a grand duchess had insisted upon his lodging in her palace; sable furs, laurel wreaths, diamond rings, casks of caviare, and a golden samovar, had all been humbly laid at his feet by Russian enthusiasm. All this Gesa related to his beloved. What he failed to tell her was that the greatest ladies had contended for de Sterny's favor, and that a princess cruelly scorned by him had shot herself at one of his concerts while he was playing! But these things she learned from the girls in the singing class. They interested her much more than de Sterny's other triumphs.
Of course Gesa went to meet the virtuoso at the station. But as half Brussels besides were assembled at the "gare du nord," for the same purpose, de Sterny could only dismiss his protégé with a cordial pressure of the hand, and an invitation to visit him next morning at the Hotel de Flandres.
When Gesa entered at the appointed hour, he found de Sterny sitting at his desk, with his head on one hand and a pen in the other: a sheet of music paper, covered with notes, and full of corrections, lay before him. In his nervous, precise, mechanically polite bearing, that uncomfortable something betrayed itself, which a man contracts from constant association with his superiors. One remarked in him that he had accustomed himself, so to speak, to sleep with open eyes, like hares,--and courtiers.
"Well, how are you? I am truly rejoiced to see you," he cried to Gesa, "it makes me downright young to look in your eyes. I was much astonished to hear of your prolonged stay in Brussels. What the devil are you going to do here? I thought you were with Manager Marinski, on the other side of the world long ago."
"My engagement was broken off--that is I have no desire to bind myself," said Gesa, blushing a little.
"So--here--and meantime you are knocking around"--de Sterny treated the young musician in his old cordial, patronizing manner. "Sapristi! You look splendidly, too well for a young artist. Look me in the face. And what are you really doing? Plans? Eh?"
"O, I am very industrious, I give lessons."
"Oh! lessons! You--lessons! Nom d'un chien! I should think it would have been more amusing to dig for gold in America with Marinski. Lessons! And so few pretty women learn the violin! Well, and besides lessons, how do you busy yourself?"
"I compose. You seem also"--
"Certainly, certainly," replied de Sterny, pushing the music paper into his portfolio. "But how can a man compose in such a life as I lead? Bah! I have had enough of squandering my existence in railroad cars and concert halls! Oh for four weeks rest, beefsteak and potatoes, country air, flowers and one friend!"
Some one knocked, the virtuoso's servant entered. "I am not at home!" cried de Sterny.
"But it is Count S----"
"I am not at home. Animal! to any one--do you hear!"
The valet vanished.
"You see how it is," grumbled de Sterny, "before another quarter strikes ten persons will have been announced. It is a stale life, always to play the same fool's tricks, always to be applauded for them...."
"Do you perhaps desire to be hissed by way of variety?" laughed Gesa. At this quite innocent repartee the virtuoso changed color a little, and glanced suspiciously first at Gesa and then at the portfolio where he had hidden his composition. But the young violinist's eyes convinced him that no harm was intended. If de Sterny ever had a believing disciple it was Gesa Van Zuylen.
"It is really a shame," earnestly observed the young musician after a while, "that you allow yourself so little time for composition. I have never heard anything of yours but transcriptions--perhaps you will sometime trust me with your more serious work."
De Sterny's brows met. "Hm!" growled he--"I can't show the things around. They might take wings. It spoils their eclat if one confides them to all sorts of people before they are published." The blood mounted in Gesa's cheek.
"All sorts of people," he repeated.
But de Sterny burst out laughing and cried, "Still so sensitive! I did not mean it in that way. We know you are an exceptional being. Sacre bleu! I am the last who would deny it! As soon as I have completed an important work I will lay it before you. But that"--with a glance at the writing desk, "that is nothing, just nothing--the sketch of some ballet music. Princess L----, you remember her, surely, has asked for it. Already at Vienna she wrote me about it--you understand. I couldn't put it off. C'est assomant. A Countess-ballet!
"And now be so good as to ring, that they may bring in the breakfast. During the meal you shall confide to me what it really is that holds you fast chained in Brussels, for that you remain solely in order to find leisure for composition I don't believe!"
Over the breakfast Gesa confided his great secret to his friend.
De Sterny started up. "So that is it. Well you could not have contrived anything more stupid for yourself!" cried he. "I suspected something, some long drawn out liaison, from which I should have to extricate you. But a betrothal! Oh, yes! What are you thinking of? To marry and become a paterfamilias at your age! It is ruin! It is the grave! The grave of your genius mind, not of your body, that will flourish in the atmosphere of sleek morality. You'll grow fat. You'll celebrate a christening every year. You'll run from one street to another with your trousers turned up and a music book under one arm, giving lessons. And your ambition will culminate in obtaining the post of first violin in some orchestra, or perhaps if it soars very high in becoming conductor of the same. Sapristi! You need the whip of the manager over your back, and not the feather bolster of family life under your head! What is more this bolster which you are stuffing for yourself will contain few feathers. But that is all one to you. You only need a pretext for laziness, and would go to sleep on a potato sack!"
"You speak like a heretic, like a regular atheist in love," cried Gesa, who had not outgrown his passion for large words. "Who told you I was going to be married the day after to-morrow? I shall not receive her hand until I have secured a position."
"Ah--so! Well--that is some comfort. But who is she? One of your pupils? The blonde daughter of a square-built burgher?"
"She is the daughter of my foster-father."
"O--h! The Gualtieri's daughter. And her you will marry? Marry?"
"You cannot possibly imagine how charming she is," murmured Gesa.
"That the Gualtieri's daughter is charming I can easily imagine," said the virtuoso, and there came suddenly into his eyes an expression of dreamy passion to which they were quite unaccustomed, "but that a man would want to marry the Gualtieri's daughter, I cannot understand. Perhaps you do not know who the Gualtieri was."
Gesa bit his lip.
"She made my foster-father happy."
"So--hm! Made him happy! He was mad as we all were. To have been permitted to black her shoes would have made him happy. I know the history of Delileo's marriage. It is a legend which they still relate in artist circles, only they have got the names wrong. I know the right names because ... Delileo interests me for your sake, and--and--because the Gualtieri ... was my first love!"
Gesa shrank back. "Your first love!" he repeated, breathlessly.
The virtuoso passed his hand over his forehead and smiled bitterly. "Yes! I became acquainted with her in the salon of the d'Agoult. I looked like a girl myself then, was scarcely eighteen years old, and in love! Oh! in love! She laughed at me--I fretted myself with vain desire, she would never notice me. I cannot hear her name now after twenty years without feeling as I did then. Heavens! How beautiful she was! Form, smile, tresses! Dark hair with auburn lights in neck and temples--as if powdered with gold dust. Withal a certain grand carriage...."
The virtuoso ceased and gazed musingly into vacancy. The remembrance of the Gualtieri was a sore spot in his heart. Gesa looked, deeply moved, into the changed countenance of his friend.
"How could such a woman consent to marry Delileo?"
"How? Yes--how? She had lost her voice, her lovers, her health. She was thirty-eight years old. He was of a good family, and still possessed the remains of a handsome fortune, of which he had already squandered the greater part in philanthropic enterprises. He spoiled and pampered her as if she were a princess, and she ... she ran away from him one year and a half after the birth of her child, your bride,--with an obscure Polish adventurer. Delileo discovered her afterward in the greatest misery, dying of consumption, in a garret; he took her home and nursed her till she died. Poor devil! He had united himself to her against the will of his family, and the counsel of his friends, he was at the end of his money--so he buried himself in the Rue Ravestein. His lot is hard; but--at least he lived a year and a half at her side!"
Alphonse de Sterny ceased, and looked down, brooding.
Gesa laid a hand on his arm.
"The memory of this woman lives so powerfully in you still, and yet you marvel that I want her daughter for my wife--her daughter, who inherits all the mother's charm, without her sinfulness?"
De Sterny smiled, no pleasant smile. "How old is she then--sixteen or seventeen, if I reckon rightly is she not?"
Gesa nodded.
"Ah! So! And you will judge already of her temperament?" He drummed a march on the table. Gesa colored. "De Sterny!" he cried after a pause. "Much as I love you I will not bear to hear you speak in that way. Do me a favor and learn to know the little one--then judge yourself. Come sometime in the evening and drink tea with us, unless you are afraid of the Rue Ravestein!"
"When you will, big child! to-morrow, day after!--You always keep early hours there. I can come before I have to go into society!"
A few minutes later Gesa took leave. De Sterny accompanied him to the door of the apartment, and called gaily after him, over the banisters. "The day after to-morrow then, about eight! I am curious to see your Capua!"--