Part 11

A fat, cowled monk stealthily marches after him. He shades his eyes from the fierce rays of the Wagnerian sun; to him more grateful are moon-rays and the reflected light of lonely forest pools. He is the Arch-Hypocrite of Tone, and he speaks in divers tongues. Brahms it is and he wears the mask of a musical masquerader. Then swirled by a band of gypsies, with guitars, castanets, and led by Bizet. Spain seemed familiar land, Spain with the odors of the boudoir. Gounod and Faust go simpering on tiptoe; a disorderly mass of Cossacks stampeded them, Tchaikovsky at their head. They yelled as they banged upon resounding Svirelis, Balalaikas, and Kobzas, dancing the Ziganka all the while. And as a still more horrible uproar was heard I became suddenly conscious of a change on the face of the Sphinx; streaked with grey it seemed to be crumbling. As the clatter increased I diverted my regard from the massive stone and beheld an orgiastic mob of men and women howling and playing upon instruments of fulgurating colors and vile shapes. Their skins were white, their hair yellow, their eyes of victorious blue.

“Nietzsche’s Blond Barbarians, the Apes of Wagner!” I exclaimed, and I felt the ground giving away. The naked music, pulsatile and opium-charged, turned hysterical as Zarathustra-Strauss waved on his myrmidons with frenzied philosophical motions. Music was become vertiginous, a mad vortex wherein whirled mad atoms madly embracing. Dancing, the dissonant corybantes of the Dionysiac evangel scarce touched earth, thus outvying the bacchantes. The roar of enemy cannon pursued them as the last Superman yielded his ghost to the Time-Spirit....

Then there gravely marched a group of men of cold cerebral expression. They carried steel hammers with which they beat upon their anvils the whole-tone scale. Near by hovered Arnold Schoenberg with Claude Debussy, but they put their fingers into their pained ears as the Neo-Scythians, Scriabine, Stravinsky, Ornstein and Prokofieff hammered with excruciating dynamics hell itself into icy enharmonic splinters. With thunderous peals of ironic laughter the Sphinx sank into the sand, yawning as it vanished and mumbling: “No longer are there dissonances. Nothing is true. All is permitted!” By a mighty effort to escape the nipping arctic air and the harsh grindings of impending icebergs, I fled.

And that is my Masque of Music.

_PART II_

IDOLS AND AMBERGRIS

“Idols and ambergris and rare inlays....”

--_Ezra Pound._

I

THE SUPREME SIN

“Et Diabolus incarnatus est. Et homo factus est.”

--_From the Litany of the Damnéd Saints._

“Shall no new sin be born for men’s trouble?”

--_Swinburne._

“Let us deny Satan!”

--_Sar Péladan._

I

Idly tapping the metal-topped table of the café with his stick, Oswald Invern waited for the Hollin boys. They had promised, the night before, to be punctual. It was past eleven and the pair had not turned up; he was bored, irritated. If they couldn’t remember their engagement, well and good; but why----!

“Oswald, have we kept you waiting?” intoned two pleasant tenor voices. There they were at last! Oswald made room for them on the divan and at once the twin brothers began smoking. Harry fetched a pipe from the bulging pocket of his coat and Willy lighted a cigarette. It was their pet affectation to pretend that they disliked any suggestion of twinship. Willy wore high heels and fashionably cut clothes so as to appear taller than his brother, while Harry sported Bohemian velvet and a broad-brimmed hat. But both agreed as to art and brotherly love. People endured them for these salient traits, though Oswald declared that it only made them the more stupid.

“No headache this morning, Oswald?”

“No heartache this morning, Oswald?”

The young man envied them as they pulled their fan-shaped beards and sipped their vermouth-citron. They were in key with the cosmos and he was not.

“Neither one nor the other,” he absently replied.

“But is not Miss Tilney a charmer? I saw you looking at her the entire evening. Come now, say?” Harry Hollin spoke with enthusiasm. Invern slowly shook his head and he continued to gaze down the Boulevard de Vaugirard. The café stood at the meeting of this boulevard and the Place du Maine, across from the Gare Mont-Parnasse. The Avenue du Maine intersected the Place and, while beyond lay the choicer precincts of the Quarter, there was no spot on the “left bank” that was gayer in silent weather or duller when the rain fell. This particular morning the sky reported a delicate pigeon-blue, a nuance that occasionally may be seen in Paris after a storm; it had withdrawn above the housetops and was immeasurably far away; a melochromatic horizon was tinged with flushes of pink and ochre. The twins followed Oswald’s eyes and boiled over ecstatically:

“What tones!” cried Harry.

“I could model them in precious gems!” exclaimed his brother.

“There you go, with your atelier slang,” muttered their companion. “I’ve been in Paris ten years longer than you and you beat me as a Frenchman.”

“Ça ne biche pas?” Harry continued. “It’s lovely.”

“Oui, c’est kif--kif!” chimed his brother. Invern watched them, the echo of a smile sounding across his compressed lips. He was not more than twenty-eight; a slender figure proclaimed his youth. The head was well set on his shoulders. It was the expression of his frowning forehead and large, dark, heavy eyes that made the man look much older. Not dissipation, rather discontent, marred features of a Byzantine type. Yes, he had been thirteen years in Paris and these foolish good-hearted fellows only three; but they knew the argot of the Beaux-Arts better than he, and they openly boasted their anti-Americanism. He asked them:

“Frankly, what are you going to do with yourselves in America--when you get there?” They answered in happy unison: “Make money.”

He shook his head.

“Make money by selling tombstones--that’s you, Willy!--and painting society dames in impossible attitudes, tints, and expressions--that’s you, Harry.”

“Never mind us, Invern. You may never go, but if you do--a comic opera with a howling success is our wish.”

“I’ll never return--now,” said Invern. “The cursed microbe of artistic Paris is in my system. And, what’s more, I’ll never do anything. When a Yankee comes over here to paint he tries to paint like a Frenchman. Look at the three Salons with their half-baked imitations. Let me finish”--the brothers had lifted angry shoulders--“and if a Yankee studies music here he composes French music ever afterward--French music which is a sad mixture of German and Italian; eclectic style, the wise ones call it.”

“And if he goes to Germany?” demanded Harry.

“Then he composes German music.” Suddenly Willy stood up.

“I have solved the mystery. This pessimism, Oswald, is the result of--of--why, you’re in love, man! I know her name. It’s Miss Tilney--June Tilney. The secret is out.”

“Is her name June?” asked Oswald irrelevantly.

“It’s June and she’s rich as the sound of her name.” The Hollin boys were irrepressible this gay morning.

“So! But why June?”

“You’re interested. Listen,” interpolated Harry. “She’s a Yankee girl with a Russian mother--or had one--and she was educated in London, Russia, Italy, Germany, Paris----”

“Go on! Why not New York?”

“She never saw New York, but she speaks United States.”

“And,” added Willy, “the Count hates it like the dickens.”

“What a pair of rattles you are! Who’s the Count?”

“Why, Count Van Zorn, her guardian, of course. Haven’t you met old Van Zorn yet? He’s very musical, goes to all the swell musical Salons of Paris, to the Princesse de Brancovan, to the Comtesse de Blanzay, to Duchesse de Bellune, to the Princesse de Bibesco--” Oswald held up his hands in consternation.

“Stop! I don’t care a sou where he goes. Who is he?”

“He’s very rich and looks after June Tilney’s affairs. And--they say--wants to marry her--only thirty years’ difference--she won’t have it, though she likes the old codger and is seen everywhere with him--and they say the Rasta--he’s from Roumania or South America--goes in for magic and puts spells upon the girl.”

“Drop the mufle,” interrupted Oswald. “The main thing now is breakfast. And, incidentally, why don’t you marry the girl yourself, Willy?”

“C’est à Bibi!” exclaimed Harry, pointing to himself. “Willy has signed over all rights and interests to his loving brother. And we have the cabot on the run--he will be here in five minutes”; the brothers were embarrassed after this statement. Their friend stared at them shrewdly for a moment and then laughed--one of his rare “Rosmersholm” laughs, as the brothers had christened such a happening.

“So that’s the game? Coming here to déjeuner! Miss June with him?” They blushed over the tops of their beards. Invern began grumbling.

“Oswald!” exclaimed the boys deprecatingly; they were fond of him, notwithstanding his frowns and gloomy moods. A waiter was summoned and the order given for the mid-day meal. “Five plates, Louis, and have the whitest table linen in the house, please!”

After the introductions Oswald again admired the girl he had seen the previous night. She had accompanied the fraternal pair much against the wish of her guardian to a ball in the Quarter and she had not, she said, found it wonderfully diverting. The color of her eyes was hazel--they were wide with golden flecks in them, the same curious gold as her hair--and her little ears and nose with its tiny nostrils, that became inflated when she was interested, held the gaze of the young man. Under his dyed eyebrows Count Van Zorn regarded the company. It was not quite to his liking, the Hollin brothers soon discovered, so they engaged him in conversation and paid him exaggerated compliments. His bird-like profile, with the dull, prominent eyes, moved slowly from one brother to the other.

“Who’s your friend?” he finally asked. He was told all sorts of impossible things; Invern was the coming composer; he had not arrived yet, but--! The Count grunted. He had heard this blague before. In Paris all your artistic friends are just about to, but never do, arrive. Miss Tilney spoke to Invern.

“It is charming to think of an American giving up his great country for the sake of music--preferring notes to gold.” He made a gesture of disapproval.

“Ah, don’t play the modest genius,” she gayly cried. “You know, I am very sensitive to genius. I’ve never heard your music, yet I’m sure you are doomed to greatness--or sorrow.” She added these last two words under her breath. Oswald heard them. He started and looked into her eyes, but he might as well have questioned two pools of light; they reflected no sentiment, nor did they directly return his glance. Across the table the Count made a motion and she colored; he summoned at the same time the attention of the young composer.

“You write music, do you?” he asked in a grating voice. “I am a composer myself. I studied with a great Russian musician, now dead. I----”

“Tell us about _Sar_ Merodack Péladan,” interrupted the vivacious Willy; “tell us if you ever witnessed his incantations.” Every one but the Count and Invern laughed. The girl rapidly said something to her guardian. It must have been in Russian. He shook his head.

“Not to-day,” he answered in French.

“No secrets!” the brothers adjured. At last the crowd began to modulate into that hazy amiable humor which follows a copious breakfast. As they drank coffee conversational themes were preluded, few developed; the ball of dialogue was lightly tossed and Oswald noticed that Miss Tilney could, at will, be American, French, German, Russian, and English, and again Russian. Like a many-colored skein she unwound her various temperaments according to her mood. With him she was sombre; once she flashed anger at the Count and showed her teeth; for the two Hollins she played any tune they wished. The real June Tilney--what was she? Oswald wondered. But, when he fancied himself near the edge of a revelation, his mind must have collided with her guardian’s--Van Zorn’s expression was repellent. Invern greatly disliked him. The talk drifted to art, thence to religion, and one of the Hollins jested about the Devil. Count Van Zorn fixed him at once.

“No one must mock sacred things in my presence,” he coldly announced. The others were startled.

“M. Van Zorn!” said Miss Tilney. Oswald saw her hands fluttering in nervous excitement.

“I mean it,” was the firm response of the Count. “The Devil is the mainspring of our moral system. Mock him and you mock God--who created him. Without him this world would be all light without shadow, and there would be no art, no music--the Devil is the greatest of all musicians. He created the chromatic scale--that’s why Richard Wagner admired the Devil in music--what is Parsifal but a version of the Black Mass! Ah! it is easy to see that Wagner knew Baudelaire only too well in Paris, and was initiated into the mysteries of Satanism by that poet who wrote a Litany to Lucifer, you know, with its diabolic refrain!” These words were fairly pelted upon the ear-drums of his listeners. The girl held her peace, the brothers roared at the joke, but Invern took the phrases as a serious insult. He arose and bowed.

“The Count sees fit to insult my art--very well! But I am not compelled to hear any more.” Before he could leave June plucked at his sleeve and tried to hold him; stranger still was the behavior of the old man. He reached across the table, his hands clasped in supplication.

“My dear young man,” he panted, “I meant no offense. Pray be seated. I adore your art and practise it daily. I am a devout Wagnerian. I was but repeating the wisdom of certain ancient Fathers of the Church who ascribed, not without cause, the origin of music to Satan. Do not be annoyed. Beg of him, June, not to go.” Invern fell back in his seat bewildered by this brusque cannonade. The Count held up his ten skinny fingers.

“These claws,” he cried, “are worn to the bone on the keyboard. I belong to an antique generation, for I mingle music and magic. Credit me with good intentions. Better still, visit me soon--to-night--June, we go nowhere to-night, hein! Perhaps as you do not believe in the existence of the Devil, perhaps music--_my music_--may----”

Oswald received a shock, for a small foot was placed upon his and pressed down with such electric vigor that he almost cried aloud. It told him, this foot, as plainly as if its owner had spoken: “Say no! Say no!” Responding to a stronger will than his own, he did not answer.

“Ha, you fear the Devil! But I assure you the Devil is a gentleman. I have met him, conversed with him.” His voice filed down to a brittle whisper and to the acute perception of the young man an air of melancholy enveloped the speaker. Oswald hung his head, wondering all the while. Was this fanatic really in his sane senses? And the girl--what part did she play in such a life? Her voice cut sharply across his perplexity.

“Dear guardian, stop your Devil talk. I’m sick of it. You spoil our fun. Besides, you know the Devil is not a gentleman at all--the Devil is a woman.” Shocked at the very tone of her voice, almost as harsh and guttural as her uncle’s, Oswald intercepted a look rapidly exchanged between the Count and his ward. The blood rushed to his head and he slowly balled his fists. Then he arose:

“I don’t know what you boys expect to do to-night, but I’m going to see the Devil--I mean the Count; that is, if he does not withdraw his invitation.” The Hollins looked regretfully at Oswald and Miss Tilney. She had upset the salt and was slowly passing the tips of her fingers over its gritty surface, apparently dreaming, leagues distant. The Count was almost amiable.

“Ah, my dear June, I shall at last have an auditor for my bad Wagner playing! I live, Monsieur Invern, around the corner in the little Impasse du Maine, off the Avenue. We are neighbors, I think, and perhaps it may interest you to know that we, June and myself, inhabit the old atelier of Bastien Lepage, where he painted Sarah Bernhardt, where, also, unfortunate Marie Bashkirtseff was often wheeled to see the dying painter.”

“Oh! oh!” remonstrated the girl in a toneless voice, “first Devil-worship, and now studio scandal. Fie!” Her high spirits had vanished; her face was ash-grey as she bowed to Invern. After shaking hands with the brothers, Count Van Zorn turned to him and said:

“Don’t forget--eleven o’clock. Impasse du Maine. The Devil perhaps; anyhow, Wagner. And the Devil is a gentleman.” He tittered, baring his gums, his painted eyebrows high on his forehead.

“The Devil is a woman,” tremulously insisted the girl. “Have you forgotten Klingsor and his ‘Rose of Hell’?” With Van Zorn she disappeared.

II

When he reached his room Invern sat on the bed. These new people puzzled him. He had shaken off the Hollin brothers, telling them they were idiots to have introduced such an old lunatic to him.

“But we thought you liked occult Johnnies!” had been their doleful answer; and then Oswald bade them seek the old Nick himself, but leave him to his own thoughts; many had clustered about his consciousness during that afternoon; the principal one, the girl. Who was she? With, all the boastings of the brothers that Count Van Zorn was welcome in distinguished musical circles, Oswald made up his mind to a decided negative. That man never went into the polite world nowadays, though he may have done so years before. An undefinable atmosphere of caducity and malodorous gentility clung to this disciple of music and the arts esoteric. How came it then that June Tilney, so mundane, so charming, so youthfully alert, could tolerate the vulture? What a vulture’s glance suggesting inexpressible horrors was his brief, warning look! Oswald grew dizzy. “By God!” he groaned, “no, not that! But surely some sort of diabolic business!”

Why not go? Nothing but boredom could result at the worst, and boredom in his life was rapidly merging into a contempt for existence, contempt for this damnable Parisian morass. His ambition had winged away years before. Occasionally at dusk, on white summer nights, he seemed to discern a flash of some shining substance aloft, and felt his eyes fill, while in his ears he heard the humming of a great colored melody. Then he would make marks in his note-book and the next day forget his infrequent visitor; he believed in old-fashioned inspiration, but when it did arrive he was too indifferent to open the doors of his heart.

The Devil? Any belief but the dull, cynical unfaith of his existence, any conviction, even a wicked one, any act of the will, rather than the motiveless, stagnant days he was leading. Why not call on the Count? Why not see June Tilney again? He recalled vaguely the freshness of her face, of her presence. Yes, alert was the word, alert, as if she were guarding herself against an enemy. Ah! hiding a secret. _That_ was in her light fencing, feathery raillery, cold despondency, half-smothered anger, fierce outburst, and, at the close, in her obstinate reiteration. What did it all mean? He sat on his bed and wondered.

And in the dim light of early evening he heard his name called, once, twice--with the memory of June Tilney’s warning earlier in the day pressing thick upon his spirit, he rushed into the hallway from whose vacancy came no response to his excited challenge. Yet he could have sworn to the voice, a soundless voice which had said to him: “Don’t go! Don’t go!” Oswald put on his hat, picked up his walking-stick, and left the house....

III

He wandered up and down the Boul’ Mich’ obsessed by his ideas, and the clocks in the cafés were pointing to five minutes of eleven when he turned from the Avenue du Maine into the little street, closed at one end, which bears the name of the adjacent avenue. Invern had never been before in this Impasse du Maine, though he had passed it daily for ten years. He remembered it as a place where painters and sculptors resided; it was dark, and the buildings for the most part were dingy, yet his impression, as he slowly moved along the lower side of the street, was not a depressing one. He reached the number given him as the bells in the neighboring church began to sound the hour. He had not time to summon the concierge when a hand was laid upon his arm; a woman, wearing a hood, and enveloped in a long cloak, peered at him through a heavy veil. He knew that it was June Tilney and his heart began to pump up the blood into his temples. She stooped as if endeavoring to hide her identity, and in her hand she carried a little cane.

“Don’t go in!” she adjured the young man who, astounded by this apparition, regarded her with open-mouthed disquiet.

“Don’t go in--there!” she again admonished him. “It means peril to your immortal soul if you do. I caution you for the _second_ time.”

“But how can it harm me?”

“I have warned you,” she answered abruptly--was this his June Tilney of the bright morning airs?--“and I repeat: it is my wish that you do not visit there to-night.” Something in her tone aroused opposition.

“Nevertheless, Miss Tilney, I mean to see the Devil to-night.”

“Then go see her! But deny her if you dare!” She vanished in a doorway across the street....

Shocked as was Oswald, he stolidly pulled the bell until the massive doors opened. A light at the end of a large, dim court showed him the staircase of the atelier. A moment later he had let fall a grinning bronze knocker in the image of a faun’s hoof, and he had hardly time to ask himself the mystery of Miss Tilney’s request, when he was welcomed by Count Van Zorn.

Nothing could have been pleasanter than the apartment into which he was conducted. The Count apologized for the absence of the young lady--Miss Tilney was a slave to social obligations! Invern winced. He looked about while the Count busied himself with carafe and glasses. Decidedly an ideal home for a modern wizard of culture. Book-shelves crowded with superb volumes, pictures of the Barbizon school on the walls, an old-fashioned grand pianoforte, an alcove across which was drawn black velvet drapery; everything signalized the retreat of a man devoted to literature and the arts. There were no enchantments lurking in the corners. Then his glance fell upon a warmly colored panel, a Monticelli, of luscious hues with richly wrought figures. It depicted a band of youths and maidens in flowing costumes, strayed revellers from some secret rites, but full of life’s intoxication; hard-by stood an antique temple, at its portals a wicked smiling garden god. And over all was the flush of a setting sun, a vivid stain of pomegranate.... The desk of the piano held an engraving. Invern approached, but turned away his head. He saw that it was by that man of unholy genius, Félicien Rops. The Count crossed to his visitor and smilingly told him to look again.

“My Rops! You do not admire this Temptation of St. Anthony? No? Yet how different in conception from the conventional combination of the vulgar and voluptuous. Wagner’s Parsifal is only a variation on this eternal theme of the Saint tempted by the Sinner. The Woman here is crucified--what a novel idea!”