“I am not so sure about that. But I am afraid Photini will turn out one of those women who had best avoid marriage with any one. She does not look likely to make any man happy, or herself either. A perverse, passionate, uneducated girl, with more ugly names in her head than any two ordinary street boys, and not a single good or amiable instinct in her that I can see.”
Jacob, excellent man, quite forgot to take into consideration that he himself was far from innocent of these disastrous results, and that his paternal indifference had had far more to do with her ill condition than any predisposition of the child’s.
“That is quite another matter and one that concerns me not at all,” rejoined the Bavarian, indifferently. “Art, my dear sir, Art! Fraulein Photini represents an abstract idea to me. The problem of her destiny as a woman has no attraction for me. She may marry, or she may not—she is not a pretty girl, but I have seen men make idiots of themselves about uglier. It all depends on the spectacles you use. But I am of opinion that a woman of genius has no business with marriage. Goethe, you may remember, wisely calls it the grave of her genius.”
“Probably, but there is time enough to think of that.”
Photini’s grandfather, when consulted, was only too glad to contribute towards the speculation of winging this hybrid fledgling from the parent nest. The Greeks have a naïve respect for fame, of which there was promise in Photini’s talent, so her relatives willingly abstracted a portion from the family funds for her use.
One October morning, Photini, a stripling rather than a girl, of fifteen, with big keen yellow eyes and soft dark curls breaking away from the eyebrows in petulant confusion over and round her head like a boy’s, escorted by a faintly disapproving and anxious father, left the Piræus on an Austrian liner bound for Trieste. Not at all a pretty or attractive girl, most people would decide; of a vulgar indefiniteness of type and a coarseness of expression hardly excused by the charming hair and strange eyes. But she had the virtue of extreme youth on her side, as shown in the slender and supple frame, in the freshness and surprise of her glance, and in the rounded olive cheek melting into a full throat like a bird’s. And youth, God bless it, carries its own apology anywhere; it is the time of possibilities and vague hopes. This girl might, nay, must grow less brusque, less vulgar, less boyish with the development of womanhood; and as her features would refine, so would her heart, at present as safe and hard as a coral, expand and open out its hidden buds of tremulous sensibility and delicate feeling.
Her second year in Leipzig brought her the third medal, and a decided reputation, yet there were many complaints against her. She had unpardonable fits of idleness broken by explosions of temper, and language hardly less gross than what might be expected in the lowest phase of society. These shortcomings, added to a sharpness of manner and a coarseness of mind, terrified and astounded her masters, who, however, were ready enough to overlook such deficiencies when under the spell of her masterful playing. A girl of seventeen with already an unmistakable fire of inspiration and an echo of Liszt in her touch was not to be despised clearly, whatever her vices, and they, alas! were many, and promised to be more. Her companions shunned her, and her masters spoke of her as “La gamine,” no other appellation being so justly indicative of her appearance and manners.
In the fourth year she left the Conservatoire, its acknowledged star, and capable now of steering her own course in whatever direction impulse or deliberate choice might push her. One of the fortunate of this earth, standing, at twenty, apart, wrapped in the conscious cloak of genius, a majesty, alas! she was incapable of measuring, and which she was destined only to trail in the mire without reaping any benefit, pecuniary or social, from its possession. It was almost as sad a mistake on the part of Nature as if she had endowed one of the lower animals with some glorious gift which could never be to it other than a grotesque ornament. The girl understood nothing of responsibility, and yet she was proud, unapproachably proud as an artist. She felt and gloried in her superiority in a stupid senseless way; could not acquit herself of the commonest civility towards those who were desirous of helping her, had not the remotest idea of gratitude or the art of gracious acceptance, and considered inconceivable rudeness to every one who addressed her as her natural right. She ought to have been happy, and would doubtless have been so had she known ambition, or felt a moderate but healthy desire to please. But she was hardly conscious of feelings of any kind, only of blind dim instincts of which she could give no account to herself. Poor dumb, unfinished creature with but half a soul, and that run to music. It was pitiable. As she massed follies, proud stupidities, and degradations one upon the other, until the thinnest thread of common sense, of merely animal self-protection was lost to view, one could only wonder and grieve, but not excuse. Nature seemed to have been the sinner, and the extravagant creature her victim. And then there were lucid moments—wretched awakenings, stupefied contemplation of the havoc that had been made of promise, of ripe chances, and, by way of anodyne, a deeper plunge into the mire.
Her first act of independence was a concert in Leipzig which proved an abnormal success, and then upon the advice of her director she went to Vienna, furnished with letters for Liszt. The amiable and courtly king of pianists received her with an exquisite cordiality, expressed the highest satisfaction with her abilities, gave her a few finishing instructions which she received, as was her wont, ungraciously enough; used his influence in securing her success with his own special public, and recommended her to Rubinstein, who was then on his way back from England. This was the beginning of the only lasting period of lucidity in her mad career.
She left Vienna with Liszt’s portrait and his autograph, “To the Queen of Sound,” added to her meagre luggage, for it was not her way to decorate her plainness of person by any unnecessary attention to her toilet. Just as, music excepted, she was totally uneducated, illiterate even, barely able to write a letter that would shame a peasant, in Greek or German,—which languages she regarded as equally her native tongues,—so her person was left rigidly unadorned. At twenty the results of untidiness are not so deplorable as at thirty or forty, for there is always the fresh round cheek and clear gaze as a relief, and then the complete absence of vanity in a very young girl, constantly before the public in a prominent position, is something so unusual that one can afford to regard it with a smile of wonder rather than one of disdain. The striking feature of the case was that she was fond of male society—particularly of the admiring and love-making male. But heaven help the innocence of the lover who expected her to put on a bow, or brush her hair, or choose a hat with a view to please him!