Part 10

The little man disappeared, and I was glad to rest myself in the chair that Dr. Woodruff had found for me. I turned toward Mrs. Jack, who had seated herself beside me. She saw the gleam of annoyance in my eyes as they met hers, but smiled, sweetly.

"Why are you angry with me, my dear?" she whispered. "Am I responsible if nature granted me a sense of humor? You must acknowledge that the situation is amusing--even if it is a bit uncanny."

Tom had seated himself beside Molatti to listen to the president's essay. Presently, I found myself hearkening, with almost feverish interest, to the latter.

"I have thought it well, my friends," the president was saying, "to confine my remarks this evening to Chopin in his great general relations to the world. I shall endeavor to draw a picture of the man rather than of the musician. And first of all, let me quote from Liszt in regard to the master's appearance."

I glanced at Tom. He sat motionless, almost rigid, with a face so lacking in expression that it was hard to believe he had caught the significance of the speaker's words.

"'The ensemble of his person,'" quoted the president, "'was harmonious, and called for no special comment. His eye was more spiritual than dreamy; his bland smile never writhed into bitterness. The transparent delicacy of his complexion pleased the eye; his fair hair was soft and silky, his nose slightly aquiline, his bearing so distinguished and his manner stamped with so much of high breeding that involuntarily he was always treated _en prince_. He was generally gay; his caustic spirit caught the ridiculous rapidly, and far below the surface at which it usually strikes the eye. His gaiety was so much the more piquant because he always restrained it within the bounds of good taste, holding at a distance all that might tend to wound the most fastidious delicacy.'" To this quotation, the president added a few words from Orlowski: "'Chopin is full of health and vigor; all the Frenchwomen dote on him, and all the men are jealous of him. In a word, he is the fashion, and we shall no doubt shortly have gloves _a la Chopin_.'"

The president paused, and I saw with consternation that he was glaring at my husband. The cause of this interruption was apparent at once as I shifted my gaze. Tom was rocking back and forth in his chair, shaking with laughter. His effort to keep his merriment in check, to restrain the loud guffaws that seemed to rack his very frame, was painfully in evidence. There was something almost heroic in his endeavor to repress an outbreak that would have been brutally rude. Tom had become the center of all eyes through the president's lack of tact.

"What's the matter with him?" whispered Mrs. Jack, hysterically.

"I don't know," I answered, lamely. "He's had a funny thought. Is he better?" I had turned away from him.

"He's growing worse, I think," answered Mrs. Jack, despondently. "Why doesn't the president go on? There, it's all right. He's quiet now."

Mrs. Jack spoke truly. The president had resumed his lecture, and I turned and saw that Tom was no longer swaying with mirth.

"How did it happen?" I murmured in Mrs. Jack's ear.

"I'm not sure," she whispered, "but I think Molatti touched his hand. Oh, isn't it weird? I can't help feeling it's like breaking a colt."

*CHAPTER IX.*

*AN UNRECORDED OPUS.*

Methought it was a glorious joy, indeed, To shut and open heaven as he did. EMMA TATHAM.

Whenever a number of men and women whose lives are devoted to some one line of art are gathered together the social atmosphere becomes surcharged with electricity. If one is impressionable, acutely sensitive to an environment, it is best, perhaps, to avoid the haunts of genius. I am inclined to believe that sociologists will investigate eventually the eternal antagonism between Belgravia and bohemia by strictly scientific methods. How large an infusion of genius can be safely sustained by a throng in search of social relaxation it would be well to know. One fact, at least, in this connection has been repeatedly demonstrated--as I had learned to my cost--namely, that a social function based on music rests on a powder mine. Belgravia had witnessed an explosion at my recent musical. And now, I felt convinced, bohemia was to undergo a like ordeal.

Tom was at the root of this disquieting conviction. His hysterical attack of wholly irrelevant hilarity, his quick response to Molatti's soothing touch, and now the tense, unnatural expression of his face filled me with painful apprehension. I both craved and dreaded the end of the president's discourse, and my forebodings were darkened by a remark made by Mrs. Jack, who seemed to derive real pleasure from the excitement of the crisis.

"Look at Tom," she whispered. "He's fretful at the post. He'll get the bit in his teeth, presently. Do you see Dr. Woodruff over there? He's taking notes."

Before she had ceased to speak Tom was out of hand and had bolted down the track, as Mrs. Jack would have put it. In other words, he had sprung from Molatti's side as the president ended his discourse and had rushed to the piano at the end of the room. I caught the look of amazement on the president's quaint face, and laughed aloud, nervously. Utterly ashamed of my lack of self-control, I glanced at the crowd surrounding me, but nobody had noticed my touch of hysteria. Every eye in the room was fastened on Tom, who was seated motionless at the piano in an apparently dazed condition. His eyes were closed and the corners of his mouth drawn down. He looked at that moment like the very incarnation of all that was unmusical in the universe. I feared that Mrs. Jack would comment on his ridiculous appearance, but she was kind enough to keep quiet. She told me afterward that my raucous laugh had frightened her.

Suddenly Tom's chin went up, he opened his eyes, fixed them on Molatti's white face, and began to play. Such weird, intoxicating harmonies as filled the room, setting every soul therein athrob with an ecstasy that was close akin to agony, no earthly audience had ever heard before. Men and women were there who had memorized each and every note that Chopin wrote, but there was not among them one who could identify this marvelous improvisation, this strange exposition of a great master in his most inspired mood. It was Chopin, but Chopin unrecorded; his genius in its most characteristic tendency, but raised, as a mathematician would say, to the _n_th power. It was as if the soul of the composer, dissatisfied with the heritage that he had left to us, had returned to earth to exhibit to his worships the one perfect flower of his creative spirit.

How long Tom played I have never known. I had forgotten all about him before many minutes had passed, losing in my impressionability to music my sensitiveness as the wife of a man misunderstood. There were in the universe only my soul and a throbbing splendor of great music, mighty harmonies that filled all space, magic chords that awakened dim memories of a life long past, filled to overflowing with joy and sorrow, tossing waves of melody that bore me to the stars or sank with me into vast, mysterious realms peopled by gray shadows that I had learned to love.

Presently I felt Mrs. Jack's hand clasping mine. "Don't go to him, dear. He has only fainted," I heard her saying, her voice seeming to reach me from a remote distance. "He was all out, and collapsed under the wire. But it's nothing serious."

Tom had sunk back into Molatti's arms, and his head rested against her shoulder. She had sprung toward him, as I learned later, just in time to save him from a fall. She now stood gazing mournfully down on his white, upturned face, sorrow, pity and, I imagined, remorse in her glance. For an instant a hot rage swept over me, and I strove to stand erect, despite Mrs. Jack's restraining hand.

"Don't make a scene!" she whispered to me, passionately in earnest. "He is in no danger. See, Dr. Woodruff is feeling his pulse."

Even at that awful moment, when I knew not whether Tom was alive or dead. I remember that my mind dwelt for a moment on the tendency of new schools of medicine to cling to old traditions. Of what significance to a psychologist could the rapidity of Tom's pulse be? I heard people all around me talking excitedly.

"Did you ever hear anything like it?"

"I tell you, it's one of the master's posthumous works. I couldn't identify it, but perhaps it was discovered by Remsen."

"That's absurd! Where could he find it?"

"He's better now. See, he opens his eyes."

"I don't wonder he fainted; I was just on the verge of collapse myself."

"_Parblen! Chopin a la diable! Non, non_, no more _pour moi, s'il vous plait!_"

"I can now die so vara happy! I hava justa once heard the _maestro_ himself. I hava nothing left for to live."

"Who is this wonderful Remsen? Never heard of him before."

"You'll hear of him again, then. He's the only man living who can interpret the master."

It was, all of it, intolerable. How I hated these chattering idiots, who were making an idol of clay, setting up my poor Tom--who was to me at that moment an object of pity--as the incarnation of their cult, to whom they must pay reverent homage! I longed to cry aloud to them that they had been tricked, that my husband was a sensible, commonplace, lovable man, as far removed from a musical crank as he was from a train-robber or a pirate. All my former love for music seemed to have turned suddenly into detestation, and I longed to get away from this nest of Chopiniacs into the noisy, wholesome atmosphere of the outside world. It seemed to me that nothing could restore my equilibrium but the uproar of the streets and the unmelodious clatter of my coach.

"We must get out of this at once," I said to Mrs. Jack, standing erect and checking the dizziness in my head by an effort of will. I saw that Tom had fully recovered his senses and that he seemed to be actually enjoying the homage the excited throng pressing toward him offered to his vicarious genius. Beside him stood Molatti, her face radiant, as if her mission on earth were to reflect the glory of Tom Remsen's musical miracle.

"We must get out of this," I found myself saying again, as I urged Mrs. Jack toward the exit. "I'll send the carriage back for Tom."

"But it's such bad form to run away like this," protested Mrs. Jack. "What will the president think of us? And Dr. Woodruff! Surely you want to ask him what he thinks of the--ah--case."

But my will for the time being was stronger than hers, and presently we were seated in my carriage, homeward bound, and I was fighting back the hot tears that had rushed to my eyes.

"I--I--don't care what--what Dr. Woodruff thinks about the--the case," I sobbed. "I--I--know what I think about it."

Mrs. Jack said nothing for a time, but it was pleasant to feel the pressure of her hand and to realize that she could be tactful now and again.

We had nearly reached the house before she ventured to ask: "And what, my dear, do you think of the case?"

I pulled myself together and restrained my sobs. I am not of the weeping variety of woman, and I was ashamed of my hysterical exhibition of weakness.

"I think," I began, and then I hesitated, weighing my words carefully--"I think that Signorina Molatti is in love with Tom."

Mrs. Jack laughed outright, both to my amazement and anger. "You've wholly lost the scent, my dear," she remarked, while I removed my hand from hers. "Signorina Molatti is not in love with Tom--she's in love with Chopin."

*CHAPTER X.*

*TOM'S RECOVERY.*

At length the man perceives it die away And fade into the light of common day. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

After rereading the foregoing deposition I am forced to the conclusion that I was designed by nature neither for a novelist nor a historian. I can see that my narrative fails to be convincing, considered either as a work of fiction or as a statement of fact. But may I not comfort myself with the thought that I have given my testimony conscientiously, and that if the outcome of my literary efforts is unsatisfactory my failure is due rather to the inexplicable phenomena with which I have been obliged to deal than to my own defects as an annalist and witness? I have endeavored to inscribe simply and in chronological order the unadorned tale of my husband's sudden attack of genius and its consequences, and I realize now that my data will not be accepted by the scientific, nor will their arrangement appeal to the artistic. But I have told the truth, and if not the whole truth, at least nothing but the truth. As literature my story belongs to the realistic school and is of the present. As a contribution to science it will have no standing to-day, but I am firmly convinced that the psychologists of the future will read the details of Tom Remsen's case with enlightened interest.

I have felt too deeply the nervous strain of setting down in black and white the story of the greatest crisis in my life to go into details here and now regarding the ups and downs of the long illness that Tom underwent after his triumphant appearance before the Chopin Society.

For two days before he collapsed I saw that he was fighting in grim silence against weakness and fever. He was like a man struggling to overcome an unnatural appetite and growing constantly more weary of the contest. He would stroll with reluctant steps into the music-room, stand for a time gazing defiantly at the piano, with his hands clenched and beads of perspiration on his troubled brow; then he would turn away, meeting my gaze with a melancholy smile, and hurry off to his office or his club, to return to me after a time pale and listless, but always stubbornly silent as to the cause of his evident suffering. Only once before he was forced to take to his bed, where he tossed for a week in delirium, did he refer, even indirectly, to the cause of his disquietude.

"Has Signorina Molatti been here to-day?" he asked me, abruptly, one evening at dinner.

"No, Tom," I answered, a note in my voice that I'm sure he did not like. "Did you expect her?"

"I always expect her," he muttered, speaking more to himself than to me.

That evening the magnetism of the open piano in the music-room proved irresistible to him. To my mingled consternation and delight he played selections from Chopin until long after midnight, the while I sat behind him fascinated by his renditions but appalled by the persistent recurrence of his "seizures." "To-morrow," I said to myself, "I will consult Dr. Woodruff again. Perhaps he has made his diagnosis and can suggest some line of treatment."

But on the morrow Tom was in charge of our family doctor and two trained nurses. The morning had found him hot with fever, and by noon he was out of his head and inclined to be violent. Then followed days and nights of alternating hope and fear, during which there came to me a complete revelation of what the old Tom had been to me, the Tom who had bored me at times--ungrateful woman that I was!--by his practical, unimaginative, inartistic personality. How I treasured a word of encouragement from the doctor or a nurse! How bitterly I repented my former discontent, my disloyal longing for something in Tom's make-up that nature had not vouchsafed to him! It had come to him--this "something"--and it had well-nigh ruined our lives. Whatever it had been, demoniac possession, hypnotism or what-not, it had been a thing of evil, despite the uncanny beauty of its manifestation. In my heart of hearts I craved one of two alternatives--either Tom's death or his restoration to his former self, freed forever from the black shadow of Chopin's genius.

It was not until one afternoon well on in his convalescence that I knew my fondest hopes had been realized. We had betaken ourselves to the library, not to read but to enjoy in an indolent way our new freedom from trained nurses and the discipline of the sick-room. Tom, leaning back comfortably in a reclining-chair and puffing a cigarette, wore on his invalid's face an expression of supreme contentment. Not once, I was glad to note, did his eyes wander to the distant shelf on which stood our Chopin literature, books that I had doomed in my mind to an _auto-da-fe_ when a fitting opportunity for the sacrifice should arise.

"Isn't this cozy?" remarked Tom, presently, glancing at me affectionately. "But I suppose I must hasten my recovery, my dear. The Pepper and Salt Trust and other enterprises don't take much stock in sick men."

"Don't worry about business matters, Tom Remsen," I said, with playful sternness. "We can get on very well if you never do another stroke of work in your life."

A shadow passed over Tom's face, and he puffed his cigarette nervously. "I'm not fitted for a life of leisure, my dear," he remarked, grimly. "A man may get into so many kinds of mischief if he isn't busy."

I hastened to change the subject. "Remember, sir, that you are under orders. You are to do as you are told to do. You may not know it, Tom, but the fact is that you and I sail for Europe just as soon as you are strong enough to stand the voyage."

"Where are we going?" he asked, apprehensively. "Not to Paris?"

"No, not to Paris," I answered, understanding him. "We'll spend all our time in Scotland and Ireland. They're the only countries over there that we have not seen, Tom."

The next day I discharged our butler for an indiscretion that he committed at this moment.

"Signorina Molatti," he announced from the doorway of the library, and turning my head I saw the violiniste, with her Cremona under her arm, coming toward us. I glanced at Tom. The two red spots that had leaped into his white cheeks seemed to be an outward manifestation, not of joy but of hot anger. I rose and went toward our visitor, a question in my face.

"Will you not forgiva me, signora?" cried Molatti, in soft, pleading tones. "Eet ees what you calla vera bad form, but I hava been so vera unhappy. They tolda me that Signor Remsen was dying. Can you not forgiva me?"

"But he is on the road to recovery, signorina," I said, perfunctorily. It would not do to give way to my inclination to chide this insinuating girl for her presumption. A scene might cause Tom to have a relapse.

"I see," she cried. "And I am so glad! And I hava broughta my violin. That the signor would lika to hear the voice of the _maestro_--"

"Stop right there, will you--ah--signorina," exclaimed Tom, gruffly, endeavoring, as I saw, to control his annoyance and show no discourtesy to even an unwelcome guest. "I'm not it, young woman. He's gone away, whoever he was. If he comes back--which God forbid--I'll notify you. But you won't catch me drumming any more on a piano. My musical career is at an end. I'm under the care of a doctor, and he says that I'm on the road to recovery. Forgive me if I have spoken too plainly. You're a very charming young woman, and I admire your--ah--genius. But mine's gone, and I'll take good care that it doesn't come back. If you'd like that piano in the music-room, Signorina Molatti, I'm sure that my wife would be glad to send it over to your apartments. We're through with it--forever!"

I was sorry for the girl. The expression of amazement--even horror--that had come into her dark, expressive face touched my heart, and I laid my hand gently on her arm.

"It's a great mystery, signorina," I whispered to her, as I led her from the library. "I can't explain it to you very clearly, for I don't understand it myself. But Mr. Remsen told you the truth. He is no longer musical. In his normal condition he is the most unmusical man in the world. The Signor Remsen that you have known, with whom you have played duets, is dead--I can hardly believe that he ever existed. Will you, Signorina Molatti, grant me the great privilege of presenting to you yonder piano? Frankly, it would be a great relief to me to be rid of it."

There were tears in her splendid black eyes as she turned her face toward me. "I do not understand," she said, mournfully. "You do not know whata it all meant to me. I cannot taka your piano. There is nobody in the wide world to playa eet, now that he ees gone. And you are telling me the truth? I was dreaming? Eet did not really happen? But, signora, there were so many who hearda heem--hearda me--hearda us! Eet could not hava been a dream. Whata was eet?"

Her voice broke with a sob, and I bent down and kissed her tear-stained face.

"I cannot tell you, signorina. But do not let your heart break. You may find him again some day."

"Nevaire again," she sighed, seizing my hands impulsively. "Nevaire again. But I thanka you so much. Fareawell."

My heart was heavy as I returned to Tom, uncertain of the state in which I should find him. To my delight, I saw as I entered the library that he had suddenly made a great stride toward renewed health. He was sitting erect, and there was little of the invalid in his face or voice.

"That's over, my dear!" he cried, gaily, "and I'm going to celebrate Chopin's utter rout. Order me a brandy and soda, will you?--and push that box of cigars toward me. Then we'll read up a bit, little woman, about Scotland and Ireland. On the whole, I'm inclined to believe you and I will have a very jolly outing."

I leaned forward and kissed the dear fellow's smiling lips. "It's so good to have you back again, Tom," I murmured.

"And the signorina?" he asked, presently. "How did she take it? I'm afraid I was cruel to her, my dear. Did I speak too harshly to her?"

"You had no alternative, Tom," I assured him, soothingly; "you had been placed in a very awkward position."

"I had--in a very awkward position," he acknowledged. "And who the deuce put me there? I wonder----"

"Don't wonder, Tom," I cried, sharply. "The less wondering you do the better it will be for us both."

"You're right, Winifred, as you always are," he said, raising aloft the glass of bubbling brandy that the butler had brought to him, and nodding toward me. "Here's your good health, my dear, and _bon voyage_ to us both!"

*III.*

*Clarissa's Troublesome Baby.*

_For while the wheel of birth and death turns round,_ _Past things and thoughts, and buried lives come back,_ _I now remember, myriad rains ago,_ _What time I roamed Himala's hanging woods,_ _A tiger, with my striped and hungry kind._ _THE LIGHT OF ASIA._

*CLARISSA'S TROUBLESOME BABY.*

*CHAPTER I.*

*MY LATE HUSBAND.*

And while the wheel of birth and death turns round That which hath been must be between us two. --_Sir Edwin Arnold_.

I was alone in the nursery with the baby, a chubby boy whose eight months of life had amazingly increased his weight and vigor, when I heard the crack of doom issuing from his miniature mouth!

I wonder if your imagination is strong enough to put you, for a moment, in my place. Suppose that you had dismissed the nurse for a time that you might have a mother's frolic in the twilight with your only child, the blessing that had come to you as a reward for marrying again after five years of widowhood. Suppose that the baby, opening his little eyes to their widest extent, had said to you, as my baby said to me:

"You don't seem to recognize me, my dear, but I've come back to you."