Part 12
Invern was ill at ease. The place was not what it seemed. He read the titles of several imposing tomes: the Traité Methodique de Science Occulte, by Dr. Papus; Sar Péladan’s Amphitheatre des Sciences Mortes, and Comment on devient mage; Au Seuil du Mystère and Le Serpent de la Genése, by Stanislaus de Guaita. Eliphas Levi, Nicolas Flamel, Ernest Bosc, Saint-Martin, Jules Bois, Nehor, Remy de Gourmont’s Histoires Magiques, and many other mystics were represented. Upon the dados were stamped winged Assyrian bulls, the mystic rose, symbolic figures with the heads of women and anonymous beasts, lion’s paws terminating in fish-tails and serpent scales. Inscriptions in a dead language, possibly Chaldean, streamed over the walls, and the constellations were painted in gold upon a dark-blue ceiling. Luini’s Sacrifice to Pan, an etching of the picture in the Brera at Milan, caught his eye and he wondered why its obvious Satanic quality had been so seldom noted by diabolists. A cumbrous iron lamp of ornate Eastern workmanship, in which burned a wisp of green flame, comprised all that was bizarre in this apartment; otherwise, the broad student’s table, the comfortable chairs and couches, did not differ from hundreds of other studios on the left bank of the Seine.
Count Van Zorn coaxed Invern into a lounging chair and gave him a glass of wine. It was Port, of a quality that to the young man’s palate tasted like velvet fire. He was soon smoking a strong cigar in company with the old man, his fears quite obliterated. But his visitor noted that the Count was engrossed. As he sat, his eyes fastened upon the pattern of the polished parquet, Van Zorn looked like a man planning some grave project, perhaps a great crime. His head was hollowed at the temples, on his forehead the veins were puffy, his eyebrows, black as ink in the morning, were now interspersed with whitish-gray--the dye had worn away. At intervals he groaned snatches of melody, and once Invern heard him gabble in a strange tongue.
“And the music and the magic!” broke in the young man, weary of this interval. Slowly Van Zorn arose and stared at him steadily with his bird-of-prey eyes.
“Have you ever realized,” he finally began in sing-song tones, “what an instrument for good or evil is the art you profess to practise? Hear me out,” he continued, as the composer made a motion of dissent; “I don’t refer to the facile criticism which classifies some music profane, some music sacred. The weaklings who are hurt by sensual operatic music would be equally hurt by a book or a picture; I refer to the music that is a bridge between here and--over there, over there!” His voice sank as he waved his lean brown fingers toward the alcove. “In the days of old, when man was nearer to nature, nearer to the gods, music was the key to all the mysteries. Pan and Syrinx answered its magic summons. A lost art, lost with the vulgarization of the other beautiful arts, you say? I deny it!” He drew up his rickety figure as if he held the keys of a conquered city.
“No! I repeat, music is still the precious art of arts and across its poisonous gulf of sound, on the other side, _over there_,”--again he pointed to the alcove, with its sable velvet funeral pall--“the gods await our homage. Wagner--a worshipper at the diabolic shrine--pictured his faith in Parsifal. He is his own Klingsor, and the music he made for the evocation of Kundry came straight from the mouth of hell. Ah! how it burns the senses! How it bites the nerves’--‘Gundryggia there, Kundry here!’ Yes, the gods and the greatest of all the gods, my master. Music is the unique spell that brings him to his worshippers on earth. We near the end of things. This planet has lived its appointed years. All the sins--_save the supreme one_--have been committed, all the virtues have bleached in vain our cowardly souls. Tell me, young man, tell me,” he grasped Oswald by his wrist, “do you long for a sight of the true master? Through the gates of music will you go with me to _my_ heaven where dwells the Only One?”
Invern nodded. He was more curious than afraid. With apish agility Van Zorn darted to the pianoforte and literally threw his hands upon its keyboard. A shrill dissonance in B minor sounded; like the lash of hail in his face the solitary auditor felt the stormy magnetism of the playing. He had sufficient control of his critical faculties--though it seemed as if he were launched into space on the tail of some comet--to realize the desperate quality of the performance. It was not that of a virtuoso; rather the travail of a spirit harshly expressing itself in a language foreign to its nature. The symmetry of the Wagner structure was almost destroyed; yet between the bits of broken bars and splintered tones there emerged the music of some one else, a stranger, newer Wagner. Was the Horla of Wagner buried in this demoniacal prelude to the second act of Parsifal struggling into palpable being! Carried before the banners of this surging army of tones, Oswald clutched his couch and eagerly listened to the evil music of Kundry and Klingsor.
He saw the stony laboratory with its gloomy battlements, from which the necromancer Klingsor witnessed Parsifal defeat the emasculate squires. He saw the mystic abyss hidden in the haze of violet vapor whence, obeying the hoarse summons of her master, Kundry slowly emerged. Her scream, the symphonic scream of woman, beast, or devil, fell upon his ears as though an eternity of damned souls had gnashed their teeth. And the echoes of her laughter reverberated through the porches of hell.
Gundryggia dort! Kundry hier! The succubus, or she-devil, demon, Rose of Hell, after vainly refusing to obey the demands of the harsh magician, sank with a baffled cry: “Oh! Woe is me!” The vast fabric of Klingsor’s abode shivered, dissipated into nothingness. But there followed no shining garden filled with strange and gorgeous flowers, shapes of delights, wooing maidens with promises of unearthly love on their lips. Vainly Oswald awaited that scene of tropical splendor with its dream-terraces, living arabesques, and harmonious comminglement of sky and mountain, earth and fountain, the fair mirage painted by Klingsor’s dark art. It did not appear. Instead the music became no longer Wagner’s, became no longer music. Van Zorn amid brazen thunders wrenched himself from the keyboard, and prostrate upon the floor fairly kissed its surface, mumbling an awful litany. The room was murky, though violet hues suffused the velvet at the end. Invern became conscious of a third person, where he could not say. An icy vibration like the remote buzzing of monstrous dynamos apprised him that a door or window had been opened in the apartment which permitted the entrance of--what! His heart beat in the same rhythm with the mighty dynamos and the hoarse chanting of the Count.
“_O Exiled Prince on whom was wrought such wrong! Who, conquered, still art impious and strong!_” “_O Satan have mercy on us!_” “_O Satan, patron saint of evil!_” “_O Satan take pity on our misery!_” “_O Prince of Suicide, Maker of music!_” “_O Satan have pity on us!_” “_O Father of Pain, King of Desolation, true Master of the House of Planets!_” “_O Satan have mercy on us!_” “_O Creator of black despair!_” “_O Satan take pity on us!_”
Indifferent Christian as was Invern, his knees knocked at this sacrilegious Baudelairian invocation. The violet grew in intensity as the prayers of the blasphemer increased. Slowly across the sombre velvet stretched in patibulary attitude a human skeleton. No thorns crowned its grinning skull; instead a live viper wreathed about its bony nest and turned glittering eyes upon the two men. Van Zorn’s voice became a wail, calling down imprecations on earth to men of good-will. He cursed life and praised death, and his refrain was ever:
“_O Satan, take pity on our misery!_”
Oswald no longer heard him. With hysterical agitation he remarked the transformation of the adumbrated phantom. The skeleton had begun to carnify--its frame was first covered with ivory-white flesh, and then, with amazing velocity, a woman bourgeoned before his eyes. Gone the skull, gone the viper. In their stead emerged the delicate head of a goddess--filleted by Easter lilies--with smiling lips, enticing pose, the figure of a delicious nubility. Hazel were the wide, gold-flecked eyes that shot forthright shafts into the bosom of Oswald, and charged him with ineffable longing. The arms, exquisite in proportion, the graciously modelled torso, pierced him with an epileptic ecstasy. And the crazy tones of Van Zorn assailed his ears as if from a great distance:
“_O Satan, have mercy on us!_”
But the entranced youth cared little now for the diabolic litany. One idea seized and was burning up the vital spark of him. As the creature waxed in beauty he knew her--June Tilney! Yes, it was she--or was it the daughter of the devil in the Rops picture?--who drew him toward her with an irresistible caress in her eyes; eyes full of the glamour of Gehenna, eyes charged with sins without joy, penitence without hope. Forgotten her warnings before this Kundry of Golgotha.
“_O Satan come down to us_,” rhythmically crooned the grovelling old man.
This, Satan? This radiant maiden with the flowery nimbus and beaming eyes, her young breasts carolling a magnificat as they pointed to the zenith--Oswald stumbled to the foot of the gibbet, in his ears the throbbing of death. Her glance of cadent glory transfixed him. Scorched by the vision, some fibre snapped in his brain and he triumphantly cried:
“Thou art a goddess, not the Devil.”
A freezing blast overturned him, the saints of hell encircled him, as he heard Van Zorn’s grinding sobs:
“Thou hast denied the Devil! Thou hast committed the Supreme Sin! Quickly worship, else be banished forever from the only Paradise!”
Sick, his lips twisting with anguish, Invern had sufficient will to close his eyes and despairingly groan: “Son of Mary, save me!” The apparition crumbled. After a panic plunge he found himself somehow in the wintry street, his forehead wet with fear, his nerves tugging in their sheaths like wild animals leashed, his heart a cinder in a world of smoke....
* * * * *
From Asia Minor, years later, the brothers received a letter signed by Oswald Invern. In it there were misty hints of monastic immurement, and the hopelessness of expiating a certain strange crime, compared with which the sin against the Holy Ghost is but a youthful peccadillo. The Hollin boys giggled in unison.
“What joy!” they exclaimed, “to have invented the Supreme Sin!”
II
BROTHERS-IN-LAW
With the vision of an antique marble façade lingering in his memory he slowly walked up the Avenue, only stopping at Fiftieth Street to turn and as leisurely retrace his route. Vincent Serle was in the middle of his vigorous life, but this day, an early one in April, his forces seemed arrested; like the curling wave which crests before its ultimate recoil and crumble. He attributed his mood to the weather. It was not precisely spring-fever, but a general slackening of physical fibre. He felt almost immoral: he desired respite from toil; he longed for some place where his eyes would not encounter palette or print; and, a versatile man of uncertain purpose, he longed to write a novel, chiefly about himself.
The clock on the church-tower told him that he was farther down-town than he had planned. He had mechanically spoken to passing acquaintances. He had saluted Mrs. Larce, over whose portrait he was laboring, with a vacant regard and flamboyant hat. Then he emerged from his engulfing spleen and hastily ascended Delmonico’s steps. It was his day of disappointments. All the windows in the café were occupied; nothing remained except a large table in the centre of the room, decidedly an unpleasant spot, with people passing and repassing. He hesitated and would have gone away when he remembered that this hour always saw a mob of hungry folk at any establishment. And Benedict, his favorite waiter, whispered to him that he would assiduously attend to monsieur’s wants. The bored painter sank heavily into his chair.
The meal was not an enlivening one. Like most artists educated in Paris, Vincent never took anything save coffee and rolls before one o’clock. He was not an early riser; he deplored morning work, being lazy and indifferent; but he soon discovered that if he were to keep pace with the desperate pace of New York artistic life he dared not waste the first half of the day. Mrs. Larce, for example, insisted upon a ten-o’clock sitting. At that precise hour he wished himself a writer with liberty to work at midnight; then he might indulge in more tobacco, dreams, and later uprisings. In the meantime he was munching his fish without noting its flavor, a fact that Benedict witnessed with disappointed eyes.
He had achieved coffee and cognac and was about to light a black cigar when a man hurried in, and, after gazing at the coveted window-tables, sat himself opposite Serle with a short nod, though hardly looking at him. The match burned Serle’s fingers and he struck a fresh one. Instinctively he stood up, searching the room for another place. The garçon asked if he desired his account. Vincent shook his head and fumingly demanded a newspaper; behind it he swallowed his brandy and puffed his cigar. The fine print melted into a blurred mass before his eyes and his hands trembled. He could feel the beating of blood at his wrists and temple. He did not peep over the paper rampart because of his discomposed features.
“Damn him!” he thought, “I wonder if he knows me yet?”
The newcomer calmly ate his omelette with the air of a man intent upon some problem. He was not so tall, so dark as Serle, but older, wirier and of a type familiar to Fifth Avenue after four o’clock on fine afternoons:--a lawyer, broker, an insurance officer, but never an artist. He did not glance at his table companion until the other had folded his newspaper, and then without a gleam of recognition.
“He doesn’t know me,” reflected Serle; “so much the better, I’ll not go away. I’ll watch him. It will be interesting.”
He sardonically hoped that the absorbed man would choke as he swallowed his chop. Then he smiled at his vindictive temper, smiled bitterly because of his childishness--after all the fellow was not to blame; he had been a mere accomplice of a stronger, a more unprincipled will. Yet, slowly studying the face, he could not call it a foolish one. Its owner showed by his concentrated pose, the stern expression of his mask, that he was not a weakling.
“But,” mused the painter, “I’ve seen men with jaws as if modelled in granite, eyes that imperiously reminded you that they were your master, men whose bearing recalled that of a triumphant gladiator; well, these same individuals, artists, despots, brutes, bankers, were like whipped dogs in the presence of some woman. No. Hector Marden’s outward semblance is not an indication of the real man. We are all consummate actors in our daily lives, none more so than those who have much to conceal.”
Hector Marden--and had he not much to conceal--the beast! Vincent’s clinched fists were drumming on the table. “Come,” he pondered, “I’ll have to cease this baby game or I’ll end by making a scene and consequently an ass of myself.” He stared at Benedict just as Marden raised his finger. The waiter hurried to the table and presented his memoranda to the men. Serle frowned. He was in a nasty humor.
“What’s this, Benedict?” He tendered the embarrassed garçon his slip of paper.
“Pardon, a thousand times pardon, monsieur! I made a mistake.” Marden looked up smiling.
“I fear I have the bill intended for you,” he said, in a conciliating tone.
“It’s nothing,” murmured Serle. Both men bowed. The accounts were soon settled and Benedict nervously retreated to the background. But neither one stirred. Vincent, without pausing to analyze his action, offered Marden the newspaper. It was politely refused. Possibly because of the mellowness of the moment, or the ample repose that follows luncheon, Marden was not averse from entering into conversation, one of hazy indirectness, equally suggestive and non-committal. He made a few commonplace remarks about the unseasonable heat, the deplorable twilight of New York’s tower-begirt highways, and soon, against the prompting of his inner spirit, Serle chimed an accordance. They chatted. Benedict discreetly moved nearer. Presently Serle asked his neighbor if he would have a cigar or perhaps a liqueur.
“I don’t mind,” rejoined Marden. “The fact is I feel lazy this afternoon. I had expected to meet a friend here--a client of mine--but I fancy he is off somewhere wondering if New York shall ever boast a decent sky-line. He is an architect and enthusiastic over French Gothic.” Serle’s ears began to burn.
“Architecture in New York? That’s a tall joke. Curiously enough, though, this very morning I was admiring the new library. It has a stunning façade. If I were Emperor of America I’d raze every building within the radius of ten blocks so as to give the building a chance. Only think of the Cathedral without a house near it!”
“You are an artist, evidently,” Marden said without the faintest trace of curiosity in his voice. Serle nodded. Benedict with clasped hands hinted that the two gentlemen might prefer a window. There were empty tables upon which the sun no longer shone, since the formidable walls across the street blocked its rays. The painter shuddered. They would surely be seen by impertinent passers-by. He sent the man away, sharply adding that he would be called when needed. As for Marden, he was languidly drifting on the current of his fancy. Was it pleasant or unpleasant? The watcher could not decide. But he had made up his mind that he would draw Marden up to the danger-line, and if discovered, if discovered? He would at least tell him what he thought of the mean scoundrel who had----
“I’ve noticed,” Marden broke in on Serle’s ugly revery, “that painters seem to have lots of time on their hands. I beg your pardon. You have quite as much reason for advancing a similar remark about a professional man. Here I am lounging as if I had no office or desk loaded with unanswered correspondence. But I assure you I don’t often dissipate this way, and I take it you are of the same opinion regarding yourself.” He paused.
“You spoke of painters loafing. What made you single out that particular profession? I believe it may be called a profession,” Vincent laughed.
“Oh! You said you were a painter----”
“Yes, but you were not thinking of me, I’ll wager. You’ve only seen me half an hour.”
“You’re right; I was not thinking of painters, or of you in general, but of a particular case that came under my personal observation.”
“Yes, yes,” eagerly responded Serle, as he mentally abused the lawyer for his measured, pedantic delivery. “Your story interests.”
Marden glanced at the other’s flaming cheeks and replied, rather abruptly:
“But you haven’t heard it yet. However, it’s not much of a yarn. It happened--several years ago. A lady, a client, came to me for advice. She was married, married, I say, to an artist, a painter--a big, good-for-nothing fellow, who was lazy, who drank, ran after his models and spent her money.” Marden was interrupted.
“Excuse me, you said the lady was rich?”
“Did I?”
“Certainly, spent her money was your last phrase.”
“Oh!--Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have said her money. She had no money. I meant that her husband had money and didn’t spend it on her. A mere slip of the tongue.”
“Good. I’m a regular cross-examiner, you see.”
“True. You might prove a difficult witness in the chair. My friend--my client, informed me that her husband was so lazy that he remained in bed until one or two o’clock in the afternoon; then he would slowly dress and saunter for a walk, and often she did not see him until the next morning.”
“How did he make a living?”
“Oh, I suppose he painted a portrait or two and managed to get on.”
“A portrait or two? That would hardly pay household expenses--that is, unless your friend--I mean your client’s husband, was a Sargent or a Boldini. Then they could have struggled along at the rate of one portrait every year.” Serle laughed so harshly that Marden looked at him wonderingly.
“I see you are acquainted with the artistic temperament, as they call it in the newspapers,” observed the lawyer.
“Not as they call it, but as it is. My dear sir, an artist is not built to put in a ton of coal every day. A man whose brain is delicately adjusted, whose whole soul is in his eyes----”
“When he sees a pretty girl?” The sly tone of Marden angered the painter.
“No, hang it! For a painter there are no pretty, no ugly girls; no pretty, no ugly landscapes; no agreeable, no disagreeable subjects. Only a surface to be transferred to canvas, to be truthfully rendered. And that’s what business men, with their lack of imagination, will never understand.” He spoke hotly.
“I confess I have a lack of imagination when it comes to an appreciation of the artistic temperament.” Marden said this so slyly that Serle at once begged his pardon.
“After all, we are not at Delmonico’s just to thrash out a stale question. Pray go on--your story interests me strangely.”
“It’s not very interesting--that’s all I know. The woman left the man----”
“For another?” calmly interjected Vincent.
“Not at all, not at all--that is, not at the time.” The lawyer fumbled his glass, his expression overcast.
“You know what strange creatures women are. I had the greatest difficulty in persuading my client to make up her mind. She suffered, yet she cared for the fellow----”
Serle impatiently asked: “But you haven’t revealed what the fellow did to her--what his special crime! Didn’t he give her a good home?”
“My dear sir! A good home when he turned night into day! A good home when he seldom put brush to canvas! A good home--why, I thought I told you he was too friendly with his models.”
“His models! A portraitist! Do you mean his sitters? Did he flirt with them? If he did so he was a fool, for he was killing the goose that laid the--No, I’ll not be so impolite. I meant to say he would endanger his reputation.” Marden dryly laughed.
“That’s good--reputation is good. My client informed me, and she is a serious woman, that she never met an artist who could be relied upon. And she knew, for she was one herself.”
Serle’s jaw dropped. “How odd! What did she do?”
“Oh, she painted a little, just enough to make pin-money and to annoy her husband. You see, it was this way. She did not care to take money from a man she loathed.”
“Loathed!”
“I said--loathed. She literally loathed him. She told me so.”
“Why didn’t she leave him sooner? Besides, a few moments ago you said he never offered her money. Now, she loathed him so she wouldn’t take any----”
“Ah! That’s not in my fable,” tartly answered Marden. Again he turned gloomy and tapped nervously on the table.
The afternoon waned. A soft light slipped through the high curtained windows and modulated into glancing semitones over the richly decorated apartment. Several men entered--the vanguard of the five-o’clock brigade of absintheurs. Serle became nervous. What if!--But he determined to take the chance of seeing some imbecile who might salute him by name. He leaned forward on his folded arms and asked with a show of concern:
“And what became of your charming client?”
“My charming--Oh! Why, she married and settled down.”
“At last! Is she happy?”
“How can I tell?” The response betrayed an irritable nuance.