In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. I.

by Paul Heyse

CHAPTER IX.

It was late when Jansen arrived. He had, as usual, been spending the evening with Julie; and had then escorted Angelica home, who complained afresh each time that she was compelled to be a restraint upon two lovers.

But Julie insisted upon being "matronized" by her during the year of probation, and so she submitted, and knew how to conduct herself so sensibly that the very fact of her presence gave the peculiar charm of suppressed emotion to these happy hours. The after-glow of it still shone upon Jansen's face as he entered the salon. A sudden stillness ensued; all looked at him; but he seemed hardly to see any one but his hostess, whom he greeted with a shake of the hand. She received him with studied cordiality, immediately took exclusive possession of him, and merely chided him for arriving so late by an allusion to older and higher duties which had a prior claim upon him.

"Now don't deny it," she said, smiling. "It cost you a heroic struggle to tear yourself away at all. It is true a man seldom finds it at all difficult to leave one woman in order to go to another; but when he is forced to leave a beauty in the lurch, in order to pay a little attention to an old woman, one cannot estimate the sacrifice too highly."

"You are mistaken, countess," he laughingly replied. "I have been forced to tear myself away, not from one but from two elderly women, as they are fond of calling themselves--with just as little reason and just as little seriousness as when you, countess, count yourself among that class. But, if it had really cost me a sacrifice, you would have deserved it of me. I know how ungratefully I conducted myself toward you in former years. Yet you haven't treasured it up against me."

"Unfortunately there are men with whom one cannot be offended, no matter what they do. Ils le savent et ils en abusent-- But what is that?"

She suddenly broke off. Her sharp eye had seen that one of the young ladies at the opposite end of the room had become faint, and that the elder ones were busied over her. In a second she was at her side, noiselessly and swiftly doing what was necessary. The insensible girl was borne into the sleeping-chamber, and soon came to herself again. When the countess returned, she said, in passing, to Jansen:

"The poor child! Think of practising nine hours daily, and eating nothing all the while! What existences some people do lead!" Then to the others: "The Fräulein feels better already. The excessive heat was the cause of her illness. Perhaps if we should turn down the gas just for a little while, the temperature would be somewhat more bearable."

Several of the young people hastened to execute this hint. When the gas-lights were extinguished, the candles on the piano and a lamp on the mantel over the fireplace gave only a subdued light, so the clear night sky, with its moon and stars, shed its lustre through the wide-opened windows. In this twilight, every one seemed to feel happy and at ease. A young person, who had previously been entreated to sing in vain, now mustered up sufficient courage, and her sweet, sympathetic contralto voice sounded charmingly in the breathless stillness. Jansen had seated himself in a corner of the sofa in the adjoining room; it did him good to sit there in the dim light, with half-closed eyes, watching the play of the shadows as they passed before him, drinking in the soft tones and thinking all the while upon his happiness. He spoke with no one. Rosenbusch had at first taken a seat by his side; but as he had received only monosyllabic answers, he had soon withdrawn again. Felix had disappeared without taking leave; he could not longer suppress all that he felt. And now the scene in the salon grew livelier and more fantastic. No one thought any longer of playing an entire piece of music. The instrument merely served to illustrate this or that assertion, as it came up in the course of the confused conversation; now a few chords were struck, now the hoarse voice of some composer hummed an air in order to explain some passage; the younger guests had separated into little groups, and were apparently engaged in other conversation than that relating to art. In the midst of all was heard from time to time the high, thin voice of the professor, who was continually in search of new victims for his eloquence, and buttonholed now one person and now another. This intellectual exertion exhausted him all the less from the fact that he consumed an incredible quantity of the refreshments which were handed about. After having emptied a whole basket of cakes, he devoted himself persistently to the ices, and, finally, when, toward midnight, the champagne was brought in, he seized a whole bottle out of the waiter's hands and placed it with his glass in a little niche behind a pillar. As he did so the countess honored him with a cold, almost contemptuous glance, and her lips curled slightly. The expression enhanced the beauty of her face exceedingly. Then, too, the dim light that now prevailed in the room lent her a strange charm. She looked very much younger, and her eyes flashed sparks that were still capable of kindling fire. Stephanopulos devoured her with his eyes, and was continually seeking a chance to approach her. But she always passed without noticing him; nor did she sit down by Jansen again. It was easy to see that her mind was fixed upon something which took her thoughts away from all that was going on about her.

As it struck midnight, it so chanced that there was a momentary hush in the conversation. The æsthetical professor advanced into the middle of the salon, holding a full glass in his hand, and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to propose a toast to our honored mistress, in whose name we are here assembled. I do not mean by this the gracious lady, so sincerely honored by us all, whose guests we are. I have praised her too often not to be willing to resign, for once, to her younger guests this privilege of an old friend. My toast is offered to a mistress even greater than she--to the sublime art of Music, the art of arts, whose supremacy is becoming more and more acknowledged and exalted, without envy by her sisters. May she, the mightiest of all the powers which move the world--thrice glorious and thrice holy Music--live, flourish, and prevail to the end of time!"

Enthusiastic applause followed these words, but even the clinking of the glasses, and the shouts of the different voices, were drowned by a loud flourish which a young musician improvised upon the piano. The professor, who had emptied his bumper at a draught and instantly filled it again, now stepped, with a complacent smile, into the cabinet where Jansen sat, thoughtfully holding his half-filled glass, from which he had scarcely sipped, as if he were counting the rising pearls within it.

"My honored master," he heard a voice say at his side, "we have not yet touched glasses with one another."

He quietly looked up at the speaker.

"Do you care very much to have your resolution passed by a strictly unanimous vote?"

"My resolution?"

"I mean your exaltation of music above all other arts. If it was merely a polite phrase to catch the applause of the musicians and the devotees of music, I have nothing to say against it. It is always expedient to howl with the wolves. But in case you expressed your real opinion, and ask me now, on my conscience and between ourselves, whether I share it, you must permit me to draw back my glass in silence, and, if I drink, to think my own thoughts in so doing."

"Do what you can't help doing, carissimo!" replied the professor, with a thoughtful nod of the head. "I know very well that you worship other gods, and only esteem you the more for having the true artist's courage to be one-sided. To your health!"

Jansen held his glass in the same position, and did not seem in the least inclined to approach it to that of the professor.

"I am very sorry to sink in your estimation," he said, "but I am really not quite so one-sided as you think. I not only love music, but it is fairly necessary to my existence; and if I am deprived of it for any length of time, my spirit is as ill as my body would be if it were forced to go without its bath."

"A strange comparison!"

"And yet, perhaps, it is more appropriate than it would seem at first. Doesn't a bath stimulate and excite, calm, or quicken the blood, wash away the grime of everyday life from the limbs, and soothe all manner of pain? But it stills neither hunger nor thirst, and he who bathes too often feels his nervous strength relaxed, his blood over-excited, and his organs toned down to a voluptuous languor. Isn't it just so with music? It is possible our thanks are due to her alone that mankind has gradually lost its bestiality, and grown nearer the likeness of God. But this is equally certain, that men who now carry this enjoyment to excess sink gradually into a vegetating dream-life, and that if a time should come when music should really be exalted as the highest art, the highest problems of humanity would remain unsolved, and the very marrow of mankind would be forceless and feeble.--I know well," he continued, without noticing that the people in the salon were listening to his monologue, and that groups of listeners had approached the door--"I know well that these are heresies which one cannot utter in certain circles without being stoned a little. Nor would I care to discuss the question with a musician, for he would scarcely understand what I really mean. The effect of this art 'of thinking in tones' is gradually to dissolve all that is solid in the brain into a softened mass, and only the great, truly creative talents can preserve the capacity and disposition for other intellectual interests. That the highest masters of every art stand on an equality with one another, I need not say. As to the others, the expression which some one used in regard to lyric poets maybe justly used toward them--'They are like geese whose livers have been fattened; excellent livers, but sick geese.' How can the balance of the intellectual powers be preserved, when any one sits nine hours a day at an instrument and continually practises the same exercises? And for that reason I should be careful how I tried to convince a musician of the error of his fanaticism. But to you, who are an æsthetic by profession--"

He chanced to let his eyes wander toward the door, and broke off suddenly. He noticed now, for the first time, before what an audience he had been speaking. The professor observed his surprise, and grinned maliciously.

"You are talking to your own destruction, my dear sir," he said, raising his voice. "You might just as well declare in a mosque that Allah was not Allah, and Mohammed was not his prophet, as to assert to this crowd of enthusiastic youths that there is anything more divine than music, or that devotion to it, its service and its cultivation, could ever be pushed too far. Entrench yourself behind your blocks of marble, so that we may grant you peace on favorable terms. What would you say if some one declared that whoever uses his mallet nine hours of the day must, in the course of time, lose his sense of hearing and sight, that his intellectual power would finally become deadened and petrified, and that his soul would get to be as dusty and muddy as the blouse he wears when he hammers his stones?"

A unanimous shout of bravos arose from the group standing nearest him, and a murmur of satisfaction ran through the salon.

The countess, who now for the first time became aware of the dialogue, was seen hastily approaching, with the intention of averting the threatened storm by a timely word. But Jansen had already risen to his feet, and stood confronting the professor with the most unruffled composure.

"What would I say?" he cried, loud enough to be understood by all. "I would say that in every art there are artists and mechanics, and that the latter know as little of the god whom they serve as the sexton who sweeps out the church and hands about the contribution-box. Of all the arts there is but one which does not know the dust of the workshop, that has no underlings and assistants, or, at the worst, merely charlatans who fancy themselves masters; and even these know nothing of that kind of mechanical readiness which murders the soul and deadens thought. For that reason it is the highest and most divine of the arts, before which the others bow, and which they ought to worship as their mistress and goddess. To you, who are in the habit of lecturing upon æsthetics, I should be ashamed to explain myself more fully by saying that I refer to poetry, were it not that in your toast you offered an insult to the majesty of this, the highest muse, which I can only excuse upon the supposition that you have strayed from the temple of the true divinity, and wandered by mistake into a mosque."

With these words he raised his glass, held it before the flame of the lamp and slowly drank it off. A deathlike silence followed; the professor, who was apparently on the point of making a rather irritating reply, was restrained by a meaning look from the countess. She herself had looked at the sculptor while he spoke, with a peculiar, searching, flashing look, and merely threatened him playfully with her finger as he now advanced toward her as if to take leave.

"Stay," she whispered to him, "I have a word to speak with you."

Then she turned to the others, and invited them to be seated again and not to think of breaking up so soon. But her most cordial words and demeanor could not banish a certain uncomfortable feeling that had taken possession of the company. No one could be induced to take a place at the piano, and a court musician, who still had a violin sonata in petto, shut up his instrument-case with conspicuous noise and took his leave of the countess, bestowing upon Jansen as he passed a look full of meaning. The others followed his example, and, finally, even the professor, who took his defeat most easily, entered upon his retreat after addressing a few jesting remarks to his opponent. Rosenbusch, who would probably otherwise have waited for Jansen, had offered his services in escorting home the young Fräulein who had fainted earlier in the evening.

The artist and the countess now stood alone confronting one another, in the dimly-lighted room. From the street below they could hear the departing guests as they went away, laughing, talking, and singing.

"I beg for a mild punishment, countess," began Jansen, smiling. "Of course you have only detained me in order to exact a penance in the absence of witnesses. I thank you for this kind intention, although, to be honest, I rather favor a public execution if the head really must come off!"

"You are very, very wicked!" she answered, slowly shaking her head as if she were deeply in earnest in what she said. "You fear neither God nor man, least of all that which seems to many the most terrible--the anger of a woman. And, for that reason, I shall not succeed in punishing you for your sins as you have deserved."

"No," he said. "I submit voluntarily to any penance you may put upon me. How I wish that by so doing I could rid myself of my old fault of thinking aloud without first looking around to see who may be listening!"

She walked up and down the room with folded arms, gazing thoughtfully before her.

"Why should we disguise ourselves?" she said, after a pause. "It is not worth the trouble to deceive the thoughtless masses, and we cannot fool the wise few. Let us drop our masks, dear friend. I think exactly as you do, only perhaps I feel it even more keenly because I am a woman. For me, too, music is merely a bath. But I enjoy it more passionately because a woman, who is much more restricted than you men, is more grateful for every opportunity to cast off all her chains and fetters, and plunge her soul in a great excited and exciting element. To me such an element is music; of course not all music--not that shallow kind that merely bubbles and murmurs pleasantly, yet scarcely rises to my knees, but that fathomless music whose billows break over my head. To me Sebastian Bach is like a shoreless sea, 'and it is sweet to plunge into its depths.' But do not let us talk of the petty souls, the bunglers and the underlings! With you great men--you yourself have said as much--does the material make such a great difference? When you see a work of Phidias, does not your whole being sink as if into divinely cool waters? And that is the main thing in the end. The few moments in life that satisfy our innermost desires are, after all, those only in which we almost believe we are dying. Enjoyment of art, enthusiasm, a great deed, a passion--in the main they all have the same ending. Or do not you agree, dear friend?"

He indicated his assent by a gesture, though he had only caught a few stray words. This woman interested him so little that his thoughts, even when he was at her side, secretly flew away to her whose image filled his heart.

She took his silence as a sign that she had made a deep impression upon him.

"You see," she continued, "it is a satisfaction to me to tell you this. It is so seldom one finds people capable of comprehending one, and from whom one need have no secrets. It is a privilege of all sovereign natures that they dare to confess all to one another--the highest as well as the lowest thoughts--for, even when we confess our weakness, we are ennobled by the boldness and daring with which we do it. Oh, my dear friend! if you knew how hard a woman has to struggle to attain that freedom which you men claim as a birthright! For how long a time do we throw away the best years of our life because of false shame, and a thousand other considerations! It is only since I acknowledged it as a moral duty toward my own nature to possess myself of anything toward which I felt drawn, to dare anything which was not beyond my powers, to say anything for which I could find a sympathetic listener--it is only since that time that I can say I have learned to respect myself. But I forget; it does not follow that these confessions interest you, no matter how much sympathy you may feel for them. I am, doubtless, not the first woman who has given you similar confidences. The world in which you live is used to seeing fall the veils and coverings with which we drape ourselves in the prudish society of ordinary mortals. Nor would I, perhaps, have detained you here with me merely to talk to you of such feelings and thoughts, if I had not besides something very particular at heart, a great, great favor--"

She had thrown herself down on a sofa and rested there in a careless, picturesque attitude, her arms thrown back gracefully behind her head. Her face was pale as marble, and her lips were slightly parted--but not with a smile.

"A favor?" he asked, absently. "You know, countess, I was prepared to receive a penance. How much sooner--"

"Who knows whether the granting of this favor will not seem to you a penance, and none of the lightest either!" she hastily interrupted. "In a word, will you make my portrait?"

"Your portrait?"

"Yes; a portrait-statue, sitting or standing, as you like. I confess to you that the thought first came to me this morning. I can't get that beautiful portrait of your charming friend out of my head, though I am not so conceited as to wish to compare myself with this unknown woman, especially in your eyes. I have a special reason for wanting it; I know a foolish man who still finds me young and pretty enough to want my portrait--particularly if it were done by such a master--a friend, from whom I have been separated often and long, and whom I should make very happy if I could send him my effigy as a compensation."

While she delivered this excited speech, Jansen had let his eyes rest on her, without betraying by any sign whether he was disposed to grant her the favor or not. She blushed under this cool, searching look, and cast down her eyes.

"He is beginning to study me already," she thought. "But you mustn't think," she continued, "that I am altogether too modest in my request. He, for whom this master-work is intended, would be ready to pay its weight in gold for even the most hasty sketch from your hand. But it appears as if the undertaking had no great charm for you? Tell me frankly; in any case, we will still remain good friends."

"Countess," he began, for the first time this evening betraying some confusion, "you are really too good--"

"No! You are trying to escape me--now, don't deny it. Perhaps I know the reason which makes you unfavorable to my request. You have delicate duties that you must regard. If your friend should discover that you had shown the same favor to me as to her--I don't know her, but, for all that, it might be possible, and certainly pardonable, for her to be a little jealous! Am I not right? Isn't it that which makes you hesitate?"

He was silent for a moment. Then, still in an absent way and as if speaking to himself, he said, quietly:

"Jealous? She would certainly have no cause to be."

The unfortunate expression had scarcely passed his lips when a hot and cold shudder passed over him, and he suddenly became conscious what a deadly insult he had uttered. He looked at her in alarm; he saw that all the blood had fled from her cheeks, leaving even her lips a deathly white. But immediately, before he could even recover sufficient self-possession to soften the impression of his words, she forced a pleasant laugh, hastily rose from the sofa and stepped up to him with both her hands extended.

"Thank you, my friend," she said, in her easiest tone; "you are not particularly gallant, but something better and rarer--you are candid. You are right; unless a woman is able to set the whole female sex wild with envy and jealousy, like your beautiful unknown friend, she is not a worthy subject for your art. I really ought to be old enough to see that myself. But, as I said, you are partly to blame for my having hit on such a foolish idea--the portrait of that beautiful woman had turned my head. But now it is in its right place again, and I thank you for your speedy cure. Prenez que je n'aie rien dit. That my tardy wish, which perhaps would have been an impudent one even in earlier days, remains our secret, I expect from your chivalry. So--your hand upon it--and soyons amis! And now, good-night. Though I am in no danger of awakening jealousy, I am not old enough yet to be secure from malicious gossip, and--you have already staid longer than is proper."

In the most painful confusion he attempted to stammer out a few palliating words. But she would not listen to them, and, amid all sorts of pretty speeches and jests, almost hustled him by main force out of the door, which she immediately locked behind him.

No sooner did she find herself alone than her features became transformed; the smile on her lips faded into a grimace, and a threatening scowl appeared on her smooth forehead. She brushed from her eyelashes the tears of angry humiliation which she had held back too long already, and drew a long, deep breath, as if to save her heart from suffocation. Thus she stood, near the threshold, her little hands clinched tight, gazing motionless at the door through which the man who had insulted her had passed out. If a passionate wish possessed the magic power to kill, Jansen would probably have never left her house alive.

She heard steps in the adjoining cabinet. She looked up, passed her hands across her eyes and seized a glass of water, which she emptied at a single draught. She was herself again. An elderly woman entered cautiously, dressed simply and entirely in black, but with a care which betrayed long practice in the arts of the toilet. Moreover, her manner of speaking and carrying herself showed, at the first glance, that she had once been at home behind the foot-lights. She was apparently well on in the forties; but her real face was concealed under a coating of paint, very skillfully laid on, and her soft, regular features made no disagreeable impression.

"You are still here, my dear?" cried the countess, scarcely attempting to conceal a feeling of displeasure. "I thought you had long ago felt bored at your self-chosen part and gone away."

"I have passed an unspeakably pleasurable evening, my dear countess, and wanted to thank you for it. Since I lost my voice and left the stage, I scarcely remember to have heard so much good music in so few hours. Manna in the desert, my dear countess!--manna in the desert! But how lucky it was that I listened to the concert, as I did, in my dark box over there! It is true that he, before whom I particularly wished to avoid appearing, might not have noticed me. Since his new liaison he seems to be blind for everything else, and the many years since we last met have done their best to make it hard for him to recognize me. But imagine, countess, that young painter--the same one who got in my way that night when we discovered the burning picture--strayed by chance into your bedroom! Fortunately, he hastily retired again. But it was a bright moonlight night the first time. Who knows whether he did not recognize me again, especially as the picture in the cabinet there--"

"Certainly," nodded the countess, "you are right. Who knows?"

She had not heard a word the other had spoken.

"Oh, my honored patroness!" continued the latter, "if I could only tell you how it infuriated me again to see him--the hard and cruel man who made my poor daughter's life so wretched--enter the room with such a proud, arrogant air, and receive homage everywhere; to hear his voice, and his aggressive speeches that seemed meant to throw down the glove to the whole company--oh, you cannot tell how I hate him! But has not a mother a right to hate the enemy of her daughter?--all the more when this daughter is so foolish as still to love the man who cast her out of his house, and even begrudged her the consolation of weeping over her wrongs on the neck of her own child?"

She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes in a theatrical manner, as if her grief had overpowered her.

The countess gave her a cold look.

"Don't play comedy before me, my dear," she said, sharply. "According to all that I have heard of your daughter, I don't imagine she is inconsolable. What reasons have you for thinking she still loves him?"

"I know her heart, countess. She is too proud to mourn and weep. But would she not ask her mother to come and live with her, were it not that then she would be obliged to give up ever hearing any news of the child? If she only knew what it cost me to be a spy, so that I can write to her now and then how it fares with her hardhearted husband--the poor, innocent child! And yet, gracious countess, if I could ever succeed in tying the broken bond again, in freeing this ungrateful, inconstant man from this snare of unworthy passion, in leading him back again to his rightful wife--"

Her voice appeared to be choked with tears. The countess made a movement of impatience.

"Enough!" she said. "It is late, and I am very tired. Still, it is true, something must be done. This man's great talent will go to rack and ruin amid false surroundings and vulgar love affairs, unless some one brings him back into the right path. Come to me again to-morrow forenoon, my dear. We will talk further on the subject then. Adieu!"

She nodded to the singer in an absent way. The latter bowed low before her, and started in haste to leave the room. As she was crossing the threshold she heard her name called.

"Don't you think me very unbecomingly dressed today, dear Johanna? It seems to me I appear very old and haggard in this Venetian coiffure. For that matter, I really ought to have put off the soirée altogether; I could hardly keep on my feet, I had such a headache."

"You have this advantage over us, that even suffering makes you appear more beautiful. From my place in my invisible box, I caught words that would prove to you how great injustice you do yourself."

"Flatterer!" laughed the countess, bitterly. "Go away I--do go away! At all events you can't contradict the evidence of my own eyes."

After the singer had gone, Nelida remained for a time standing on the same spot where the former had taken leave of her. She murmured a few words in her mother tongue, and then said in German:

"He wants to do penance, does he? He shall!--he shall!--he shall!"

She stepped in front of the mirror above the fireplace, before which a lamp, nearly out, burned with a weak, red flame. The candles on the piano were burned down almost to the socket. In this dim light her cheeks looked still more wan, her eyes more sunken, and the scowl on her forehead as if it could nevermore be smoothed away.

"Is it really too late for happiness?" she said aloud, in a hollow voice.

She shuddered, for the night wind swept coldly through the room. Slowly she took the rose from her hair and let it fall to the ground, so that the leaves were strewed over the carpet; then she unwound the veil from her head, took out the comb and shook her hair down over her shoulders. As she did so the blood returned to her cheeks, her eyes sparkled, and she began to be pleased with herself once more. "Il y a pourtant quelques beaux restes!" she said to herself. Then, with sunken head, she strode across the salon, talking half aloud to herself, and stepped up to the open piano. She struck the keys with her open hand so that they gave forth a loud, harsh discord. She laughed scornfully at this. "He will do penance, will he? He shall!--he shall!--he shall!" and, once more folding her arms across her breast, she stepped into the cabinet and stood still before the young Greek's cartoon. She knew the picture by heart. And yet she stood before it as lost in contemplation as though she saw it for the first time.

Suddenly she felt a hot breath upon her neck. She shuddered slightly and looked round.

Stephanopulos stood behind her.

"Are you crazy?" whispered Nelida. "What are you doing here? Leave me this moment! My maid is coming!"

"She is asleep," whispered the youth. "I told her you would not need her. Do you reproach me, countess?--me, who only live in your smiles--to whom a glance of your eyes is heaven or hell!"

"Hush!" she said, leaving him her hand which he had seized. "You are talking nonsense, my friend. But you have a good voice, and, besides, one cannot be angry with you. Vous êtes un enfant!"