By easy stages Paul made his way northward through Italy, putting up at the cheapest pensions, resting in villages innocent of tourists, following in the wake of spring, overtaken by summer. The illness which had struck him down proved stubborn, and there were intervals when he was too weak to pursue his wanderings, when he could do little more than lie exposed to the sun, frightening away with a stick the lizards that scrambled up gorse-covered banks and darted between the hot flat rocks.
His objective was Paris. The thought of its neurotic atmosphere daunted him. Yet he was drawn back. He could only explain the urge on the ground that he had failed to fulfil there some mission which he had been predestined to fulfil, though in his present state the idea of hoping to fulfil any mission seemed the wildest mockery.
His past was a series of abdications, As a child he had been impelled forward by the vision of fulfilling a musical destiny he had, as it were, inherited from Aunt Verona; but his inability to do this had become patent in Vienna, the scene of her moral defeat. As a yourig man he had been lured on by the wonder and splendour of spiritual initiation; but the hard kernel of his ego had remained opaque when subjected to the rays, except for a few blessed moments. In the manner of a resigned loser, he had indulged a last hope, the hope of squandering his unproductive experience on others, and thus sow, as Aunt Verona had done in his case, seeds of truth in soil which seemed propitious; but even in this rôle he could credit himself with only the most dubious success. And, with such aims, to have blundered into the bog of passion for a woman with eyes like risky amulets! Verily he was a prophet à la manque.
Despite which the old injunction still haunted him: Have faith in yourself, and nothing on earth can prevail against you. Only now, after many years of obedience to it, did he realize the sinister corollary: "If you have faith to the nth degree in yourself, the universe will virtually consist of yourself, consequently, however badly fate may serve you, you'll be able to say that nothing is prevailing against you, since, naturally, you can't prevail against yourself." Therefore, in a sense the undeniably true formula was a snare and a delusion, but even if he had been duped by it, he was past caring. In rebellious moments he could almost find it in his heart to wish that Aunt Verona had never existed. She was the only idol that had remained intact. Were she to fail him, life would indeed have been a wilderness.
Of all his misadventures, the one for which he found it least easy to excuse himself was his addiction to Germaine. He had had several months in which to review the affair, and marvelled that he could so completely have hoodwinked himself. By some freak of womanliness she had taken it upon herself to nurse him, and under a spell he had lavished on her the pent-up emotions of a lifetime devoid until then of overmastering passion. His amours had been confined to the comparatively large class of women who make the mistake of assuming that they are indispensable to the men they covet. Germaine, if vastly inferior to these women in worth, was more crafty than they. "Any woman could do as much as I have done, and more," expressed her attitude, and as it was the plain, hard truth, men, as they must, misinterpreted it as the rare flower of womanly modesty.
"It's a waste of time for you to fall in love with me; besides Raoul, although he is a pig, needs me, and you don't; for you're clever and I'm not."
That is what she said to him, and had doubtless re-echoed to the third man. In consequence she had inflamed him, whose nature it was to crave and magnify what seemed beyond his reach. He had not stopped to ask why she had devoted herself to him. It had been sufficient that she had done so. Now, as he looked back, he gave a new importance to the fact that she had regarded him—whatever other feelings she may have entertained for him—as a man who could feed and clothe her for the time being. Then, as he had made his slow recovery she had talked of her frustrated longings for an education, her desire to see the world—and he had taken her troubles au grand tragique. What a situation for a man who had presumed to lead youth in the way it should go, who had so confidently pointed out pitfalls to others! Ah yes, but in their cases he was not blinded by his own febrile passion. The most wise and sober of men were not proof against madness where their own affairs were concerned.
It was over now, and he would never feel again—in that particular way. It was a relief to know it. Germaine now stood merely for the memory of a bad investment—the worst of many doubtful ones. Some might yet show a dividend. The young poet, George Paddon, for example, might end by upholding the torch toward which he, Paul Minas, a sort of philanthropic foolish virgin, had contributed a little oil. Paddon, according to a letter now several months old, seemed to have found his level among a group of budding philosophers and poets—neo-somethingists.
By the time Paul had made his way as far north as Siena, his funds were at a point which made imperative the most rigid economy. Having no head for figures he could not account for the fact that he had, in less than five years, disposed of a sum that should, under wise manipulation, have provided him with an income for life. For life! He smiled at the phrase. What with incessant coughing, perspiring through the night, waking with shiny eyes, and funking every steep hill—the handful of francs still in one's possession might last a "lifetime."
He thought of the young sailor who had hoarded his savings, year in and year out, for the sake of a holiday in Germany. Paradoxically, in those days he had not known the value of money. Now he knew. Money existed for the purchasing of one's ideals—whether the ideals consisted in fine raiment or the subsidizing of needy visionaries. Paul had had money to spend, and spent it. Not a sou had he begrudged. Not a purchase did he regret. Not even Germaine, for she had taught him something, if only the extent of his own fatuity.
He arrived in Paris on a rainy day of September, 1924. He had spent a sleepless night on the wooden bench of a third-class compartment, and caught a fresh chill from the bad air and the draughts. By the time he had collected his scanty possessions from the entrepôt and moved into a fifth-floor lodging in a dingy street behind the Gare Montparnasse, he was in the grip of an illness which he knew to be dangerous. Of all his former acquaintances there was no one he cared to send for, no one he could trust to do the right things, without asking questions or offering advice. He craved companionship, yet he was relieved to think that no one could find him in this retreat. For two weeks he lay in bed obliged to submit to the attention of a fumbling old physician whom the concierge had sent up, and retarding his recovery by worrying as to how he was going to pay the bills.
His first venture out of doors was an excursion to the stalls along the quays, where he sold an armful of his best books for a tenth of their value.
Once he thought of looking up friends to whom he had made advances in the past, on the off-chance that their fortunes, unlike his own, had taken a turn for the better. But the suggestion was vetoed by the very pride for which he had righteously scolded so many others, when they had shown a reluctance to accept aid at his hands. After all, he had invested in their talent, and he had no talents of his own deserving subvention. Besides, the men he had helped—at least in the best cases—had not actually asked; they had simply accepted what he had guessed—they needed. Would anyone guess he needed help? Perhaps, but he was under no illusion as to the amount of help likely to be voluntarily offered. Tant pis. He had known that a day of reckoning must come.
At the night café in the Rue St. Marc he found a disconcerting welcome. The patronne, who had always regarded him as her most distinguished client, received him with open arms, but only after she had stepped back with an expression of consternation on her face and a fervently uttered, "Grand Dieu du Ciel." For a moment Paul was unnerved. He had not realized that his appearance had altered to such an extent.
For the next fifteen minutes he was engaged in answering Madame's questions. Then she went to the kitchen herself to prepare food for him. The night was not far advanced, and the regular gathering of compositors, van-drivers, thieves and fly-by-nights had not arrived. Paul had hoped to see Suzy, whose favours he had declined, but who was indebted to him for many a loan. Suzy, for all her depravity, would heartily welcome an opportunity to do him a good turn, if she was in luck. When he had finished his meal he mentioned her name to the patronne, who treated her own sex with uniform contempt.
"Oh, Suzy never comes here now. She's living up in Montmartre somewhere. She owes me thirty francs—sale gribiche qu'elle est! They're all alike, ces filles. . . . But your great amoureuse still comes."
"Who is that?"
Madame reminded him of the murderous, mirthful hag who had been prepared to bid for him with rolls of hundred-franc notes.
"She always asks about you."
Paul shuddered. To-night the thought of his admirer was not even funny. He turned up his collar, and rose from the bench.
"Ça ne fait rien, Madame, st je vous paie la prochaine fois?"
"Mais quand vous voudrez, mon petit, quand vous voudrez. Ici vous êtes toujours chez vous. Vous le savez bien!"
He thanked her and shook hands, in accordance with the etiquette of the establishment. The dirty floor and the stale smells of tobacco and beer nauseated him. Madame had just served to an unsuspecting customer a steak of horse-flesh. In the fat surrounding his own potatoes, Paul had been obliged to remove the corpse of a fly. He hurried away.
"Here, you can always consider yourself at home," she had said. Home!
There was only one direction in which Paul could turn for an immediate livelihood. Through the centre of all the shifting emotions of life, music had run as a dull gold thread. He would have preferred not to degrade it to the status of mere breadwinner, but there was no alternative. He thought of becoming a professional accompanist, as he had done in Vienna, and with this idea in mind sought out an acquaintance of four years back, Luigi Pessaro, a man of ample means who had taken up singing as a hobby and whose art was reserved for salons.
Pessaro received him with the dismayed countenance that Paul had grown to expect. For once, however, his altered appearance stood him in good stead. The singer, shocked into action, took him to Monsieur Sariac, a teacher at the Conservatoire.
Monsieur Sariac heard Paul play with evident interest. "With your temperament," he finally commented, "you strike me as a virtuoso run to seed. You've missed your calling. You have more to say than the average soloist for whom it will be your duty to efface yourself."
Paul shrugged his shoulders, "There comes a time," he replied, "when one has no desire so strong as to efface oneself. I am seeking a livelihood, not a career."
Monsieur Sariac was unable to offer him employment, but promised to recommend him in various quarters. Then, as Paul was on the point of leaving, an idea struck the elder man.
"Do you by any chance play the organ?"
"Yes."
"Then I may possibly be able to help you. It's a very unusual post."
Paul sat down again. It was a question of going three or four times a week to play for a harmlessly deranged old gentleman—an aristocrat and an exile—who lived, closely guarded, in a house off the Boulevard St. Germain. When Paul had assured M. Sariac that he was not deterred by the singularity of the situation, the teacher gave further details, binding his listener to respect the confidence.
"The old man lives under the delusion that a woman long dead is at his side—a girl with whom he was violently in love, but who vanished on the day he killed his wife."
M. Sariac paused to watch the effect of his words, then reassured, went on. "The crime was committed in an access of insanity brought on by the hopelessness of the love affair. M. de Reisenach, as he is called, fled to Paris, but was overtaken by couriers, who found him raving. To avoid a scandal it was given out that he was dead and, with the connivance of the authorities here, it was arranged that he should be installed in a private house. The house is, of course, nothing more than a private asylum, and for many years its inmate has persuaded himself that he is living in clandestine happiness with the woman he loved. Naturally he sees almost nobody from the outside world, and whoever penetrates into the house is obliged to humour him in a dozen subtle ways. . . . You see the difficulties of the post?"
Paul was fascinated by them. "What makes you think I might qualify?"
"Ah ça! How does one know such things? There's a quiet intensity in your manner that makes me feel you might appeal to the old man—if you care to undertake the task. Of course he may turn you down at sight. There's no accounting for his judgment."
"Has he nobody to play for him?"
M. Sariac's face became grave. "For the last twenty years my wife went regularly to play for him—my wife died only last week."
Paul filled the hiatus with an expression of sympathy, and M. Sariac descanted upon the qualities of the unfortunate lady.
"If you are interested," he finally said, "I'll take you to M. de Reisenach's secretary."
Paul felt that the offer lay peculiarly in his province.
"There is a further warning," concluded the teacher. "Like most deranged men, M. de Reisenach has periods when he believes himself watched by spies. You will have to exercise great tact."
"And the remuneration?"
"It is modest, but if you succeed in pleasing the old gentleman they will be liberal. When my wife died I received a charming letter and a cheque for twenty-five thousand francs."
Two days later, on a crisp afternoon of November, Paul was ushered into an enormous salon. A tall, white-haired man of seventy, dressed in correct morning clothes, turned at his approach. Paul found a pair of large blue eyes searching him. Lips half defiant, half appealing, pronounced a courteous greeting in French which betrayed a trace of accent.
Then, turning to an empty arm-chair which was drawn close to the fire, M. de Reisenach said in tones at once ceremonious and affectionate:
"My dear, let me present to you Monsieur Minas, a friend of our good Sariac. He has come to play." Then with a quick motion, M. de Reisenach turned and pierced Paul with a suspicious glance.
But Paul had been rehearsed, and was bowing gravely to the imaginary occupant of the chair.
The old man's face relaxed in a smile. "My wife adores music," he explained. "Though I, too, am fond of it, in my ignorant way. It was very good of you to come to us. We are dull old fogies."
"On the contrary, Monsieur, it is a pleasure to be invited to play for appreciative hearers—and in such a room."
For half an hour the old man exhibited his treasures, explaining their history and artistic worth. At the end of the room in a large alcove stood an organ built of dark carved oak, its pipes rendered as inconspicuous as possible by a decorator who must have deplored their intrusion into the scheme. Near the alcove stood the most beautiful piano Paul had ever seen—of glowing black, inlaid with metal in a pattern that corresponded with other pieces of furniture in the room. M. de Reisenach himself lifted the lid, and motioned Paul to the keyboard, then retraced his steps toward the fireplace. A footman advanced silently and wheeled the vacant arm-chair round so that the back of the imaginary woman would not be turned to the guest. For the first time since he had entered the room Paul thrilled to the uncanniness of his surroundings. He had experienced no difficulty in bowing to the chair, or in casting polite glances in its direction, but the footman's matter-of-fact attention to a non-existent mistress sent a shudder through him, and he had to make an effort to steady his nerve.
For an hour he played, gaining confidence as he went on. The old man dozed through it all. The piano responded graciously, and Paul rose to his best heights. It was as though he were desperately trying to disprove M. Sariac's frank comment: a virtuoso run to seed. And the old man dozed on till a clock warned Paul that his time was up.
He left the piano, and his host, roused by the cessation of sound, got up to meet him.
"Ah, Monsieur, I cannot tell you how much we have enjoyed your music, You will come again, will you not—often?"
Paul breathed a sigh of relief. "You are very kind, Monsieur." He turned to the arm-chair and said, with a bow, "Bonsoir, Madame." Then he shook hands with M. de Reisenach and left the room.
As the winter wore on, Paul settled patiently into his new mode of existence. With lessened vitality had come a simplification of interests. From a daily routine which would once have dejected him by its lack of variety he now derived as much stimulation as his chastened organism could endure. He had no grievances, no wayward hopes nor goading ambitions to disturb the tenor of his mind. In the mornings—often after nights of pain and insomnia—he awoke with a sense of security. Outside his window, in the streets, beyond them, in outlying villages and fields, stretching in circles which infinitely widened, life hummed and purred its course in myriad activities each of which contributed to a compact protective total. For life was protective; it afforded sustenance and comfort in subtle ways, meting itself out in portions nicely adjusted to one's capacity.
Paul had progressed beyond the stage of exacting boons from life, consequently could at last appreciate boons which came gratuitously, could revel in diluted rays of sunlight which more sturdy souls cursingly accused of meagreness, could feel deep thankfulness for food and drink which to others seemed frugal, could find solid worth in creatures whom the world voted dull. Without picturesquely striving—as the devotees of a hundred cults strove—he had unexpectedly achieved, as they expressed it, peace. He made no boast of it, took no false credit for it. Simply his soul was in equipoise.
For this long coveted state he had paid heavily—but he was able to face the bill without a tremor.
The lonely ache which had always shadowed him was gone, yet in spirit he now stood farther aloof from the world than ever. Friendship and companionship were as far beyond his reach as if he were an invisible figure on the earth, though he moved among men who passed for friends and companions. Love in a personal sense he would never experience again; its place had been pre-empted by an emotion which reached out in all directions, knitting the universe together in a warm garment which he wore as a mantle over his soul. For thirty-five years he had been a slave to his egos, then, as in the case of the Ancient Mariner, his stubborn heart had yielded without warning, and the weight of his mistakes and failures had dropped into the sea at his feet.
One of the first signs of his spiritual freedom was the magnetism he unconsciously exerted. In the old days the rare homage of his fellows fed his vanity. Now it increased his humility. Night after night in a modest restaurant on the Boulevard Raspail, he found himself the centre of a heterogeneous group of students and artists. Former acquaintances sought him out and, having found him, came back again and again to lay their problems before him. Karl Zurschmiede, the painter, the American-Italian tramp of literary and anarchistic leanings, Paddon, the English poet fresh from circles of radical opinion in Vienna, were among the list. And a prominent figure in the growing confraternity was a young French Jew, Philippe Bloch, whose essays on the theory of relativity, concerning which speculation was rife and comprehension uncertain, were winning attention for him in serious reviews.
Each member of the confraternity, with the exception of Paul, was driven by some demon, Each was bent on entering controversial lists to vindicate the honour of some theory on which he might base a scheme of life. Each was obliged to argue at length and with heat in order to find out what he believed. And through the kaleidoscope of colours that would not blend, in the wars that surged round the names of modern personalities and movements, artistic, political, scientific, religious, Paul's impartiality became the refuge of all parties. He seldom supported an applicant with an axe to grind, but he usually restored harmony by his faculty for reducing all problems to a common denominator, his faculty for eliminating inessentials and raising the issue to a plane beyond the reach of disputation. He was not known to have any special subject, though he was described, vaguely, as a musician. And he seemed to have no panacea for the ailments of the world, unless his views on internationalism and the fundamental unity of all religions could be thought of as such.
On a few occasions Paul had emerged from his impersonality in some sudden onslaught, some appeal for tolerance, some championship of the despitefully used. In such moments he had expressed himself with a fervour that gripped his hearers, and it was on account of them that he had begun to acquire the status of a prophet. But for two reasons he curbed such effusions. In the first place he felt that his most valuable contribution to life lay in his ability to exert a tranquillizing rather than a stimulating influence. In the second place the concentration entailed in propounding a difficult thesis, in preaching and converting, took a heavy toll from his physical resources, bringing on disorders which he could ill afford to encourage.
One evening in March, 1925, intoxicated by the deceptive warmth of a spring-like night which seemed to presage a summer of infinite bounties, a future of glorious opportunity, Paul threw precaution to the winds. He had been absorbing life in small, diluted doses. To-night he craved a more potent draught. The soft strong air from a window opening on a row of evergreens laved and quickened him. The lights, the buzz of familiar faces, the distant murmur of a world awakening from winter sluggishness filled him with a throbbing joy, made him feel twenty-one instead of half the allotted three score and ten. He tingled to the incomparable privilege of living, gave thanks for it, gloated over the treasures that lay within the reach of himself and his kind. He had an impulse to rouse the world to a sharper wonderment, a more electric vitality. To-night he knew himself for a superior being—superior not in the sense against which he had chafed as a boy, when Mrs. Kestrell placed before him her finest linen, but superior in his comprehension of the infinite insignificance of himself and of all men as individuals, in the puissant totality of life. With flushed cheeks and shining eyes he seized the reins of discourse and drove it furiously, increasing the pace as each man and woman showed signs of catching up.
In the background he saw the proprietor rubbing his hands.
Paul found himself talking of the soul, of its arduous journey through the valley of the shadow, of its imprisonment in the body and its subjection to a mind which sought to argue it out of existence, of its incessant struggle for liberation, encouraged by a presence merely felt, as a brushing of wings, or merely glimpsed in flashes of celestial light, of its ultimate emancipation at death. He deprecated the unnecessary strife within the trinity: soul, mind and body. His plea was for order, co-ordination, poise, harmony. Religion, he said, any sort of religion, even that of maniacal evangelists, was an essential part of life, necessary as a sort of tuning-fork that gave human beings the right "pitch," according to which they might live without flatting.
Then the talk swerved round to the topic on which he was known to have expressed views that savoured of a past bitterness. Never had his conviction that national barriers were a heritage from barbarous days, that the progress of civilization depended on a pooling of human interests, been so succinctly, so vehemently and inspiringly set forth. "La parole est à Orphée," cried Philippe Bloch, who sought to maintain a sort of parliamentary procedure in these discussions. "Orpheus" was a nickname conferred on Paul in jest by his acknowledged disciple, George Paddon, and it had caught.
For an hour Paul talked, foretelling the new heaven and the new earth illuminated by a unified religion, impelled forward by the concerted energies of a unified race. He suggested, in imaginative flights, ways and means of making it feasible, appealed for support, speculating, affirming, convincing. Through it all he was exultingly conscious that this, at last, was the essence of his famous message. A message neither startling nor original, but grand, with a grandeur that could only be measured by the intensity with which it was projected, the zeal with which it inspired those who were destined to carry it into the highways and by-ways. His ego was not delivering the message; the message was being delivered through it, by a power as much greater than himself as winds are greater than the ships they drive across the ocean. He was free from self-consciousness now as he had never been—not even on the far-distant occasion when, as a precocious cabin-boy, he had evoked the spirit of Beethoven and caused it to speak, through him, to a roomful of seamen. The difference between the two occasions was that to-night he was able to bring the force of experience, reason, spiritual exaltation, moral fervour, and impassioned words to bear on his audience—an audience, moreover, of virtual disciples, predisposed to accept the message which was being transmitted through him.
Of all the faces that crowded about him, Paul was conscious of only one steeled against his appeal. The Italian-American vagabond, a man who, born perverse, had let his mind become distorted still more by disease and hard-usage, and then become enamoured of his own distortions, had from the outset of their acquaintance shown a personal antipathy, an antipathy which Paul, loath to argue with an insincere man whom he had aided, had taken no pains to break down. When Paul brought his impromptu speech to an end, the anarchist waited for a lull in the hubbub, and then, with a cynical laugh, threw out a challenge which he had obviously been saving.
"How do we know you're speaking in good faith? For all anybody knows to the contrary, you might be a spy in the employ of a government that has something to gain by your kind of propaganda, preached outside its own boundaries. Are you afraid to show your papers?"
Although the speaker was not popular, and although in its present mood the confraternity would have taken Paul's side against anyone, an undercurrent of curiosity awaited with interest the fate of the challenge.
Paul had no intention of gratifying this curiosity, nor of evading the challenge.
"I make a secret of my nationality out of sheer consistency," he replied quietly. "To my way of thinking, the fact that nobody here can say for a certainty what country produced me is a vindication, in a small way, of my thesis. If everybody had tried to ignore national prejudices as consistently as I have done, we should find ourselves able to co-operate in ways which are now infeasible. . . . I'm not afraid to show my papers—the suggestion is silly. But I don't mind telling you that I've served a term in prison for the views I've been advocating, if you need any proof of my good faith."
A few short years ago he would have been tempted to give a cynical flourish to this final piece of information. But he had outgrown his cynicism.
There was a stir of renewed interest, and Paul went on to link up his remarks, bringing the audience again under his sway. Gradually his words dwindled. There was a singing in his ears which drowned the sound of his voice. He was suddenly oppressed by the thick smoke that filled the room, and reached towards the window, which someone had closed as the night air grew colder. Paul knew now that he had shot his bolt. The strange buoyancy he had experienced earlier in the evening had departed, leaving as a sort of echo an inward turbulence. He was too exhausted to decide whether the turbulence was emotional or physical.
He shivered. The draught from the window brought him out of his thoughts. He had a vague premonition of impending trouble, and felt he must find a pretext to go home.
Before he could close the window again, he was coughing. His cough was well enough known by this time, yet many eyes turned to him with quick sympathy and fear.
He had only one thought now—to control himself until he could get out of the room, away from everybody. He rose from his chair, and some one darted forward. Why should Karl look so panicky? Paul tried to deceive himself with the question, then gave it up. Self deception wouldn't work; he had tried it before. He sat down again, racked in a cough that was past controlling. He had once thought of buying a red handkerchief to carry against such emergencies. Had he done so, his acquaintances would merely have laughed at his conversion to Bolshevism. As it was—there would be a scene—and his speech would be forgotten in the light of this more impressive, useless phenomenon. His genius for anticlimax again.
Zurschmiede and Paddon got him to his attic room, and Bloch arrived shortly afterwards with a doctor.
The three young men took their leave. As Paddon opened the door some loose sheets of paper fluttered from a table. Believing them to be a copy of an essay which Paul had forgotten to return to him, he mechanically thrust the sheets into his pocket. Later in the evening, by the light of his own candle he read what seemed to be an entry destined for a diary:
"Rue N.D. des C., March 14, 1925. Since my soul insists, I give it up to a soft breeze which mysteriously stirs in all this wintry stench of mid-Paris, and bears it to the bourne of my life-long pilgrimage which I shall always vaguely discern but never reach. The sea is there, amethystine; a shore of crisp velvet sand, deserted; sweeping green banks; a sweetly melancholy, faint rustle of leaves; deep-hued flowers discreet in number, for each has its individuality; not one is superfluous.
"Silence composed of infinite soft sounds, as whiteness is composed of infinite colours. A terrace, high windows flung open, a glimpse of spacious rooms which my soul can enter when night falls.
"Music which comes from the flowers or from within me and pervades the afternoon but has no locus. Music and perfume which mingle, which gently thrill, which stir the curtains of the high windows, the foliage of trees, music and perfume which give life to the sea air, which like interweaving recitatives hover above the ocean's rhythm.
"And a presence felt, guessed, but not seen: a radiant figure so perfectly unlike, yet so strangely like me, for it has a beauty I have ever coveted. It comes and goes, brushing me invisibly in its flight. It is young, fresh, eager, iridescent, suddenly languid, suddenly animated, suddenly visible, splashed with the blue-purple-green of the water, the yellow of the sunshine, the green of the trees, the red of the flowers, a red that throws off glints of orange and purple like rubies. The figure is echoed by a rhythmic fragrance, perfume that comes in a pattern. Its movements are determined by, or determine my music. It has the fragility, the grace of a vision, yet it makes me conscious of my body, stirs my veins to new measures. It mocks and challenges, and the music and perfume deepen to riot, and I am running to its urge, leaping, pursuing, nearing, touching draperies of gossamer, catching laughter tossed to me like bubbles, capturing, subduing, at the music's dictate.
"In my arms the vision takes life from me, leaving me but a soul. The enchanted laughter under my lips becomes a healing caress. My eyes, for the fullness of seeing, close. The ethereal figure which was beautiful is now a part of me, a supplement. With it I am become the universe. The music has grown so full-toned, it is beyond hearing, just as my eyes in the fullness of seeing merged into the vision and ceased to see. The music has become as great as the universe; it is the vesture enveloping the universe which I, by uniting with my fleeting vision, have become. With the fullness of feeling we have ceased to feel."
Paul was warned by a specialist that he must leave Paris at once and seek some mountain resort.
"But it's a luxury I can't afford these days," said the invalid.
The specialist held open the door of his consulting-room. "Alors, mon pauvre ami, unless you do as I say, life itself is a luxury you can't afford."
The remark took Paul's fancy. "That's what I've been telling myself for many a year," he replied.
He walked into the bright April sunshine and directed his footsteps toward the Luxembourg gardens. Under a canopy of trees on which budding leaves shot forth like green flames from gas jets, lolled students wearing black hats and red neckties, idly addressing themselves to books and sketch-blocks. He pushed on towards the round pound, where children were sailing boats, and paused to watch them, marvelling at their obliviousness of the doom that overshadowed them. They were as exuberantly unconscious of their sad mortality as the hyacinths were unconscious of the rain-cloud encroaching on the blue and golden glories of the afternoon sky.
He left the park to the innocents who infested it, to the God-blessed and the God-spared, and walked on through the gates past the Odéon, down the hill through narrow streets toward the river. When the shower descended he took refuge inside the doors of a book-shop. One volume attracted his attention, for it contained an account of the life and teachings of Orpheus.
"'Rugged is the road which leads to the realm of the Gods,' said Orpheus, who seemed to be replying to voices from within himself rather than to his disciple. 'A flowery path, a sharp slope, then rocks haunted by thunder-bolts and surrounded by the immensity of space—that is the destiny of the seer and the prophet on earth. Let thy feet dwell in the flowery pathways of this world, my child, and aspire not to go further.'
"'My thirst but increases the more as thou seekest to quench it,' said the young disciple. Thou hast taught me the secrets of the Gods. But tell me, great master of mysteries, thou who wast inspired by divine Eros, shall I ever be able to see them?'
"'With the eyes of the soul,' replied the pontiff of Jupiter, 'but not with those of the body. At present thou canst see merely with the eyes of the body. Only by dint of long travail and great pain may the spiritual eyes be opened.'"
Paul thought of his disciples, of Paddon, who had conferred on him the name of Orpheus. He skimmed through the pages and came to the end of the dialogue:
"'Thou hast earned the crown of initiation, and thou hast lived my dream,' concluded Orpheus. 'But let us depart from hence; for in order that fulfilment may come to pass, it is necessary that I should die, and thou shouldst live.'"
On the point of buying the volume with the few remaining coins in his pocket, Paul was deterred by a perception of the irony of the situation. What purpose could be served by his absorption of the contents of one more book? What purpose, for that matter, had been served by the omnivorous reading of thirty years? Books had nourished his mind as bread had nourished his body. But why should either have been nourished? In a few months or weeks or days, the one would be under the ground and the other would have vanished God knew where. An echo of war-time phraseology recurred to him—spurlos versenkt!
Perhaps this volume, after all, could throw a glimmer on the probable destiny of one's spirit. One might read it on the off chance that it would impart a smattering of spiritual etiquette, in case there were some sort of conscious survival after death. He bought the volume, and went out again into the cold sunlight of the rain-splashed street.
He passed cafés where men were sipping pleasant concoctions, passed stalls heaped with fruits, heard scraps of good-humoured talk, caught glimpses of fresh cheeks and keen eyes. What a pity to leave it all behind, what a pity beyond the range of tears and chagrin! What incredible and meaningless extravagance, que la vie! Thirty-five years of seething and frothing like a busy bubble, then, instead of floating off, as a bubble should, towards some Empyrean, one merely relapsed into the illimitable ocean—the river with but a single bank. One's iridescent personal bloom, a mere reflection, vanished with a little plop, and one dispersed as air and water. The arch-anticlimax! It was not that one resented being merged into the reservoir of life; it was simply that one endlessly wondered why a complicated system of bubbles should have been ordained. Did they, perhaps, make it possible for a greater quantity of oxygen to be dissolved into the water for the benefit of fish—and if so, what, in the metaphor, corresponded to fish?
Why seek to purchase a prolongation of life? Would one be warranted in begging for the wherewithal to tarry among stalls heaped with fruits, streets running over with traffic, gardens filled with children, young and grown-up? Besides, could one cheat fate with money? Into his head came the ominous air from Carmen he had hummed one night more than ten years ago: "Si tu dois mourir, recommence vingt fois; la carte impitoyable répètera la mort."
He wandered along the quays, nodding to booksellers of his acquaintance, and at the Gare d'Orsay turned into a street leading to the closely guarded house of M. de Reisenach, where he was due at five o'clock.
The old man greeted him with the customary show of hospitality. Paul bowed as usual to the empty arm-chair, exchanged the usual remarks about the weather, sat at a tiny table laid for three and drank tea poured out by a servant, since "Madame" had "an aversion to presiding over her table." This explanation was invariably repeated.
Paul had forgotten whatever horror he had first experienced on hearing of the crime committed so long ago, and felt strangely in sympathy with the motives that urged M. de Reisenach to persist in his realization of a wildly extravagant ideal. Paul entered into the madman's psychology and played his part in the other's life-long drama with a facility that gave him cause to question his own balance. The measure of his sanity, he concluded, was merely the measure of his failure to realize his chimères. Paul recalled a sentence of a favourite writer: "Cette forme est réelle, puisqu' elle est apparente et qu'il n'y a de réalité au monde que les apparences." M. de Reisenach's visions were real to him. He was to be envied.
Paul's long walk had fatigued him. The strong tea made his cheeks burn. He felt his body frail against the soft upholstery of the chair. In a mirror he saw a reflection of his face—a flushed ivory setting for two black jewels. That very morning he had seen a paragraph in the Paris edition of an American newspaper stating that Miss Gritty Kestrell had arrived at the Ritz for a visit of some weeks, and he could not go to her, for he was unwilling to subject her to the shock of his emaciation.
Within him, beneath a little singing restlessness of nerves, there was a deep tranquillity.
Monsieur was speaking of music. It was time to drag oneself from the chair. He marvelled that a body so thin could be so heavy. Monsieur was asking him to play the organ for a change. If Monsieur only knew how fatiguing the pedals were, how hard one had to press down the keys!
Once seated on the bench, Paul's energies rallied. He played a Pastorale of César Franck's—a thing of quiet, gentle, austere beauty, reflecting a loftiness of spirit, a sincerity and nobility that refreshed and inspired.
Although he had drawn away from it at intervals, music still expressed some truth he had always sought in books and in life itself yet never quite attained. It was strangely satisfying, yet it stirred a longing for fuller revelation.
From Franck he went back to older masters, and found himself playing Bach fughettas he had not heard since childhood. Once more he was the small boy performing his solo while the pennies fell with a chink into baize-lined mahogany plates. Once more he was playing for Phœbe Meddar—not the ladylike schoolmistress, but a pale blue, pale pink, pale gold and lavender Princess of Alcantara who knew no language but the ethereal language he made for her with his music. Once more he identified his life with the melody—he was the voice which rose yearningly above the complexity of opposing voices, Again he thought of life as a series of variations on a given theme. His had surely passed through enough. Further variations could only be anticlimactic. Yet it was so difficult to know when to stop.
His strength had come back as if by magic with his absorption in the music. His body was forgotten, he was again the creature all wings. What if he endeavoured to live, after all? There were always ways of making shift. He thought of Gritty. She was a sort of sublimated Suzy—a Suzy with the advantages of talent, brains, and what she had called "one genuine little streak." If Gritty only knew, she would insist on helping him as a right—a right given by sisterly regard. In a sense he even owed Gritty the opportunity to be of service to him. She had once expressed a desire to share his destiny in some way.
Yet
His fatigue was creeping back. The thought of going over old ground, of preparing a fresh campaign against the world of fact—even were it worth the effort, could he undertake the responsibility? Something in him held back, something whispered: "Your solo is finished, and a damn bad job you made of it; get off the platform."
He turned away from the organ.
For once Monsieur had not dozed. A psychical sympathy which had grown up between them made him respond to Paul's mood.
"You're tired, to-day, my young friend. Has something gone wrong?"
"Things always go wrong, if one is foolish enough to brood. They're right enough if one doesn't care."
"Then you've been brooding—it doesn't pay."
"One has weak moments."
The old man eyed him with vague misgiving. Usually he was too deeply immersed in his own unreal world to be conscious of others' anxieties. "Pourtant," he went on, "you've never played so well as you played to-day. That's curious."
"Malheureusement," supplemented Paul, with a grim smile. "Good art is a product of suffering."
The old man had retired into his shell. "So well," he insisted, "that I was hoping you'd play a little longer—perhaps something on the piano."
"Volontiers," Paul acquiesced, though he would rather have crept back to his garret.
He opened the piano and let his fingers roam. He was still living in the past. His moral life was unfolding itself before him year by year. Instinctively he began the sonata he had performed on the night when he had first become conscious of having a mission to fulfil. As the first movement played itself he relived the tropical nights at sea, recaptured the smell of tar, the sound of crisp, lapping water and flapping sails, the sight of a moonlight track through the indigo gloom, a track down which he sent passionate invocations towards a radiant future which had become a dreary present.
In the last movement his courage failed him. That triumphant, self-sure theme which he had boldly identified with his own ego—what a travesty! Yet he forced himself to play it, if only as a tribute to the heroic dead—for that eager, credulous boy of thirteen was assuredly dead.
His arms dropped at his sides. He could not have played another bar.
M. de Reisenach came towards him with tears in his eyes. He looked old and harrowed. It was the first time Paul had played the sonata in his house.
"Ah, mon cher ami, if you only knew what the sonata means to me—to us. It was one of my wife's favourites. How many times has she played it for me in the old happy days that ceased long ago—before you were even born!"
The old man turned to the arm-chair silhouetted against the gathering twilight which showed through a high window. "My darling," he said, in deeply moved tones, "how long we've had to wait to hear it again! Aren't you happy?"
Paul's glance had instinctively followed the old man's towards the arm-chair which he was so tenderly addressing, and there, with his own eyes, Paul saw—Aunt Verona!
Not the Aunt Verona he had known, but the Mademoiselle Windell who had stirred imaginations and captured hearts in Munich and Vienna, young and handsome, her dark hair smoothed over her ears, her figure lost in folds of silk.
He started up, as if in a trance, old recollections and recent gleanings of fact darting through his mind, while the image slowly vanished and he saw nothing but the vacant chair.
He turned towards the old man, awe-struck and dumb. Then through his dry throat came the words: "Dann sind Sie der Prinz Heinrich!"
He was thinking aloud, having been rendered incautious by fatigue and the overwhelming revelation. Already the words had wrought their havoc, for the tender, tearful old gentleman had been transformed. Paul, holding to the piano for support, found himself face to face with a fiend, the personification of insane terror, suspicion and guile. He thought of calling out, but could make no sound. He could only wait and stare through the twilight at a pair of protruding blue eyes.
Instinctively Paul drew back, a move which kindled a baleful glint in the eyes. In an unearthly silence they stood watching each other, and Paul felt himself sway. Before he could collect his forces a massive object whirred past his head, crashing on the keyboard of the piano with a hideous clamour.
Then the madman was upon him. Fingers closed about his throat, and the world grew black.
When he regained consciousness it was to see the maniac struggling with three servants and shrieking execrations in German as they dragged him from the room. Paul lay on the floor, coughing, coughing, with a handkerchief to his mouth. He heard a sound of sobbing, and realized it was himself. The shrieks died away in the distance, and the world was again blacked out.