Part 3

It was the middle of May; May is beautiful in Brussels. No long war, only gay skirmishes between sun and rain clear the air. Undulating golden vapors weave a dreamy halo, like the atmosphere of old legends, over the perspective of ancient streets that lose themselves in the far distance; they shimmer like luminous shadows around the Gothic lace work of St. Gudule, and spread their blonde veil over the green pomp of the park. There is something quite mysterious in this hazy light, this mist of dissolved sunbeams, this metallic vibrating and shimmering that illumines sober, grey old Brussels in the springtime, like a saint's nimbus. The statues in the park have lost their winter cowls of straw; through the trees, whose feathery foliage gives out a pleasant pungent spring odor, glide the sunbeams, outline the edge of a gnarled black bough with a streak of silver, paint broad spots of light on a mighty bole, slip gaily into the moist grass and play hide-and-seek among the transparent leaf-shadows. Around the house of the Prince of Orange luxuriant blooming lilac bushes toss their white and pale purple plumes; before the Koenigsgarten dreamily waves a sea of violet rhododendrons; and heavy with fragrance, warmly enervating, a scarcely perceptible breath of wind stirs the air, the Sirocco of the North.

Gesa went with vigorous strides from the Gare du Midi, across the Boulevard, to the Rue Ravestein. Everything interested him, everything seemed like home. He stood still, looked about him, smiled, went a little further, and again stood still, in his foolish absent fashion. Now he turned off from the Montagne de la Cour--before his eyes stretched the Rue Ravestein. A strange nameless feeling overcame him, a feeling of agitation and anxiety. He could have turned and fled, yet he drew nearer and nearer. Soft golden haze wove itself over everything. The strange little alley, with its architecture of the Middle Ages, and its crucifix leaning against the black church wall, looked like an old picture painted on a gold background.

"Is Monsieur Delileo at home?" asked Gesa at the door of the well-known dwelling. The unaccustomed Flemish words fell haltingly from his lips. The maid, who was busied (unexampled waste of time!) in cleaning the threshold, looked up at him somewhat astonished, and nodded. His heart beat as he entered the vestibule, and hastily cleared the old wooden stairs that groaned under the storming of his impatient young feet. He knocked at the door but received no answer, and he entered the chamber, which still contained the old green carpet. It was much cleaner than when he and Delileo had lived there together; even a little coquettish in its arrangement. A strange narcotic, dreamy odor streamed to meet him. Under the portrait of the Gualtieri, in the crumbling delft pitcher, stood a large bouquet of tempting iris-hued poppies,--those bewitching, beautiful, enormous flowers that are known by the name of "_pavots de Nice_."

The door of this first room was open; on the outer wall of the farther chamber was a glass enclosed balcony. There at a little round table, opposite one another, sat Delileo--and his daughter! Gesa started, and looked at the maiden dumb with admiration. Nowhere except in Italy had he seen features with at once such regular and such peculiarly rounded lines. The girl's little head rested upon a pair of strong classic shoulders, her colorless face was lighted by a pair of mysterious, dark eyes, and scarlet lips. Delileo's daughter, notwithstanding she scarcely counted seventeen years, had nothing of the angular grace that belongs to Northern maidens: her whole being breathed an enchanting, luxuriant ripeness.

While Gesa stood there, lost in this unexpected vision, Delileo looked up, winked as if dazzled, stretched out his head, the young musician smiled and stepped forward.

"Gesa! Thou!" and in the next moment the "droevige Herr" held his foster son in his arms. The two shed some pleasant tears, then Delileo pushed the young man away from him, the better to see him, then he embraced him again. "And will you stay with us for a little while?" he asked, and his voice trembled.

"As long as you will let me, father," replied Gesa. "I want to work in quiet near you; that is, I know that here is no place for me, but I will lodge in your neighborhood. But"--he looked around at the young girl, "make me acquainted with my sister!"

"Ah! right! Well, Annette, this is Gesa von Zuylen, of whom I have so often told you. Tell him he is welcome, and you, Gesa, give her a kiss, as a brother should!"

The evening meal was over, the long grey May twilight had extinguished all the golden shimmer. Only one slender red ray fell from a street lamp along the alley, and a second glistened in the colored glass of the church window.

Gesa sat comfortably leaning back in the softest armchair the establishment afforded, and explained to the attentive Gaston his numerous plans for composition.

Annette was silent: her large eyes shone in the twilight.

Gesa talked and talked and the "droevige Herr" only interrupted him from time to time to cry "cela sera superbe!"

Rhythmically scanned, mystically blended, the far-off sounds of the city penetrated to the Rue Ravestein like a monotonous slumber song. The dreamy relaxing smell of the poppies grew stronger with the incoming night, and from time to time there was the rustle of a leaf that detached itself and fell dying onto the cold marble of the gueridon.

IX

The poppies lay in the gutter and many other fresh and gracious flowers had withered under the portrait of the Gualtieri. May had become June, and June July. Every evening Gesa explained his projects to his foster-father, played one and another melody on his violin, or sketched the whole of an ensemble movement for him on the old spinet, received Gaston's assurance "_cela cera superbe!_" improvised a great deal, listened dreamily to the singing and ringing in his soul, and--accomplished nothing. He had lodged himself in a neighboring attic, at a washerwoman's, but spent the whole day in the home of Delileo, now made still more attractive by the gracious presence of Annette.

The "droewige Herr" had found a regular situation, probably for his daughter's sake. He busied himself as secretary of the theatre and also as _feuilletonist_ of a newspaper. This procured him steady employment. His housekeeping now bore the stamp, not of limited means, but of slovenly comfort, the comfort of the Rue Ravestein.

Gesa felt at home in this disorder. He always found a comfortable sofa on whose arms he could rest his hands while he talked about the future, and in whose cushions he could lean back his head while he searched for the outlines of impending fortune among the smoke-clouds from his cigarette; and he always found a bottle of good Bordeaux on the table when he seated himself at dinner.

He loved the long idling meal times, which lifted from him the necessity of doing anything, and furnished such a plausible excuse for his beloved laziness: he loved to sit and dally with his coffee, while Annette sat opposite and occasionally sipped a little out of his cup. He loved to rummage among the notes of old composers whom no one had ever heard of and to rush through the works of half-forgotten poets. When a verse pleased him, then his eyes glowed, and he would thunder forth the most colossal adjectives, and read the lines two, three, yes twenty times to the little Annette. He might just as well have read to the Flemish servant outside, only she would not, perhaps, have smiled so prettily. Then he would seize note paper and set the verse to music, try his hasty composition on the old spinet, that gave back the stormy melodies of his foaming, effervescing youth in a broken, trembling little voice, like a grandmother on the edge of the grave who sings a love song for the last time. Then Annette must try the verse. She had a splendid contralto voice, and spared no pains to give him pleasure with her singing. But he was never contented. "More expression Annette, more passion!" he would cry. "Do you feel nothing then, absolutely nothing here!" and he tapped her on the heart with his finger. She smiled, colored, and turned her face away.

* * * * *

Gaston Delileo had resolved to look upon Annette and Gesa as sister and brother; that cut short all other thoughts, and was very comfortable. He would not notice how much Annette was occupied with her "brother," to what flattering little attentions she accustomed him, with what an expression her large dark eyes sometimes rested upon him. He only noticed that in the beginning Gesa's bearing was perfectly cool, cordial and brotherly. Toward the end of July the latter began to neglect Rue Ravestein a little, and entangled himself in some sort of relation with a Paris actress who, playing an engagement at the Galerie St. Hubert, found herself bored in Brussels. Annette was consumed by jealousy without Gesa's guessing the cause of her disquiet.

"What ails you, Bichette?" he asked, anxiously, stroking her thin cheek with a caressing hand. "What makes you sad? It is this pestilential city air that does not agree with you. Send her to the seashore for a while, father!" The old man shrugged his shoulders--

"Alas!" he murmured. "I have not the means."

"The means! the means!" cried Gesa, "then permit me to advance them. I have lived so long on your generosity!" Gesa forgot how much his little attentions to Mlle. Irma had cost! When he hurried over to his apartment to get a couple of bank notes, he found in his pocketbook just one solitary twenty-franc piece. At first he rubbed his head and stared, then he burst out laughing, and carried his used up purse across to Delileo, "There, laugh at me and my big promises," he cried. "Here, see, this is my whole wealth! But wait, only wait! My hands and my head are full of gold. If only once the right feeling for work would come--the real fever! Do you happen to know where I have laid the libretto for my opera?"

Toward the end of August, Mlle. Irma left Brussels, Gesa became morose, and the mood was favorable to industry.

One morning he felt "the fever." He spread some music paper before him, smoothed it with his hand, cut a pen, planted his elbows on the one shaky table his attic contained, wrote a line, struck it out, stretched himself, and twisted himself--a feeling of physical unrest tormented him. He resolved to go out for a little, and wandered into the park, where he stood still from time to time as if listening to an inward voice, jostling absently against passers-by, and at last sat down upon a bench, thinking deeply. Suddenly a gust of wind passed, lightly at first, then howling loudly through the tree tops overhead. Gesa started, pressed his hands to his temples, a flood of music streamed through his soul. He hurried back to his attic, and wrote and wrote.

The hour at which he was accustomed to find himself at lunch with Annette,--Delileo seldom came home for this meal,--was long past, the late supper time had come--Gesa still bent over his music paper. Single leaves lay strewn around him on the floor. Some one knocked at the door--he did not hear. Delileo entered. "What are you doing, my boy, that one sees nothing of you to-day. Are you sick?"

Gesa stared at him as if awakened from a strange dream. "No," he answered, simply, "I am working."

He was very pale and his hands trembled. Delileo insisted that he must interrupt his work at least long enough to take some nourishment. Gesa followed him unwillingly. He sat at table, ate nothing, did not speak, but gazed steadily at one spot like a ghost seer. After supper he wandered up and down the sitting-room, humming disconnected melodies to himself, clutched from time to time at the keys of the old spinet, threw out with short lips a single tone in which some sort of grand finale seemed to culminate, lashed about him urging on an imaginary orchestra, stamped suddenly on the floor and cried "Bravo!"

Delileo, who had had plenty to do, in his day, with poets and composers, let him quietly alone; treating him with the forbearance which is accorded to the unhappy, the weak-minded, and geniuses. But Annette could not understand this strange behavior, and at last she broke out in a gay laugh.

Strange to say Gesa took this childishness very ill, and left the chamber with a hastily muttered "good-night."

Until the grey of morning he was working at his opera.

Several days went by, days during which Gesa neither ate nor slept, looked excited and irritable, yet at the same time enjoyed an indescribable painful happiness, a condition of supreme exaltation. In vain Delileo warned him, "Don't overwork, one can strain the creative faculty as well as the voice, be moderate!" Gesa only shook his handsome head and smiled to himself with eyes half shut. Perhaps he had not heard a word his foster-father had been saying.

And then, suddenly, when, shouting an exultant Eureka to himself, he finished the finale of the fifth act,--the third and fourth were not even begun yet,--his inspiration failed. Pegasus threw him, as an overworked and maltreated Pegasus will,--threw him from the Spheres of Light down into the regions of Earthly Misery.

Painful headaches, and fathomless melancholy tormented him, his own performance seemed suddenly repulsive to him: where at first he had only seen the beauties of his work, he now recognized nothing but its deficiencies, compared it with the works of other masters, ground his teeth, and beat his brow. He condemned his own composition unmercifully, as overstrained and absurdly romantic. He could only endure the coldest, dryest musical fare. A Nocturne of Chopin threw him into a nervous excitement. He practiced the "Chaconne" by Bach incessantly. He looked like one who was convalescing from a severe illness. With neglected dress and dragging step he lounged about aimlessly, or brooded by the hour, all in a heap, head on hand, in the darkest corner of the green sitting-room. Once after he had been trying a new composition, in careless fashion on his violin, he put the instrument away with nervous haste, threw himself into the great leather armchair that was regarded as his by all the family, bit restlessly at his nails a moment, and then suddenly broke into convulsive sobbing. Then came Annette shyly to him, stroked his hair pityingly, and whispered, "Poor Gesa, does it hurt so to be a Genius?" He drew her onto his knee, kissed her often and ardently on hair, eyes, mouth, and when half glad, half frightened, she drew away, he allowed her to slip from his arms, but took both her hands and said softly, looking up at her with true-hearted eyes, "Annette, my good little Annette, can you endure me? Will you be my wife? Not now, but when I am become a great artist. Perhaps I may yet, for your sake."

She blushed, and stammered, "What can you want of such a foolish girl as I am?"

"But if she just happens to please me," he jested, much moved.

She bent her young head over his hand and kissed it, then she nestled down on a stool at his feet. When Gaston came home he found them thus, and gave his blessing upon the betrothal.

X

Gesa's affection for his betrothed grew ever day more tender, and more devoted. Her behavior toward him changed, in that she laid aside something of her bashfulness, and adopted a tone of teasing perversity.

Since it was no longer possible to regard his children as brother and sister, Gaston resolved to beg that Gesa would limit his intercourse with Annette to evening visits, and a daily walk. O those daily walks! Annette liked the frequented streets, and loved to stand before the show windows of the shops where finery was kept, while she asked her lover if he would give her this or that pretty thing if he were a great artist. Her fancies, as yet, were not very expensive, and seldom rose above a dainty ribbon or a coquettish pair of bronze slippers. He smiled at her questions and usually sent her the desired object next morning, accompanied by a pretty, cordial, unpretending little note. A few lessons which he was giving enabled him to indulge in this lover-like extravagance.

Unlike Annette, he had a disinclination for frequented streets, and strolled more willingly with her in the park, at this time quite desolate, and deserted of human kind. Dreaming and forgetful of all the world, he walked beside her under the trees that sighed in the November wind. Here and there the paths were broken by large puddles, and when no one was looking he lifted the maiden lightly over. Annette did not care for a little splashing, and leaned all the more heavily on her lover's arm. Sometimes, when he went along quite too dumb and absent at her side, she gave his arm a little pinch to arouse him, and cried "Wake up, tell me something." Then he would look down at her with wet, happy eyes and murmur, "I love you." He was beyond all bounds in love, and beyond all measure tiresome. But he composed at this time very industriously although more collectedly, and with less exaltation. He had postponed the completion of his opera for the present, and had nearly finished instead a dramatic work, in oratorio form, founded on Dante's Inferno.

XI

"Annette!" cried Gesa, one evening in the end of November, bursting breathless into the green sitting-room. "Annette! Father!"

"What is it, my boy?" asked Delileo.

"De Sterny has written to me. He is coming next week to Brussels."

"Oh!" said Annette, irritated and disappointed, "I certainly thought you had drawn the great lottery prize or had come to astonish us with an engagement at five thousand francs a month."

"Why! Annette!" cried Gesa.

"No wonder that you rejoice," said the tender and sympathetic Delileo, and seeing that Gesa kept his great tragic eyes fixed on Annette's face, with an expression of reproachful surprise, he added soothingly, "You must not take her indifference to heart, she does not know what 'de Sterny' is."

So Gesa spent that evening in explaining to his betrothed bride what de Sterny had been to him for the last ten years, and what the virtuoso's name meant to his grateful heart.

XII

She had understood--the virtuoso's nimbus had become quite visible to her. Gesa need fear no longer that she would not know how to value his great friend sufficiently. How could it be otherwise? His name was to be encountered everywhere. All the newest bon-bons, patent leathers, pocket handkerchiefs were named after him, and the children played at "Concert and Virtuoso," just as in the earliest youth of our century they had played "Consul and Battle of Marengo." Annette was taking singing lessons now. Another little luxury that Gesa had provided for her, and at her singing teacher's house the girls whom she met there talked of nothing but de Sterny. The uncle of one pupil was conductor at the "Monnaie" de Sterny had called upon him, and had forgotten his gloves on going away. The said pupil brought those gloves to the next singing lesson; they were cut in pieces and divided among Signor Martini's feminine pupils. Years afterward, more than one of these gushers wore a bit of leather round her neck, sewed up in a little silk bag!

At this time de Sterny had reached the zenith of his fame. His last tour through Russia had resembled a triumph. In Odessa they had received him with the discharge of cannon, in Moscow a procession had gone to meet him, huzzahing students had unhitched the horses from his coach and the fairest women had showered down flowers from the windows upon his illustrious head, as the cortege passed through the principal streets; in Petersburg a grand duchess had insisted upon his lodging in her palace; sable furs, laurel wreaths, diamond rings, casks of caviare, and a golden samovar, had all been humbly laid at his feet by Russian enthusiasm. All this Gesa related to his beloved. What he failed to tell her was that the greatest ladies had contended for de Sterny's favor, and that a princess cruelly scorned by him had shot herself at one of his concerts while he was playing! But these things she learned from the girls in the singing class. They interested her much more than de Sterny's other triumphs.

Of course Gesa went to meet the virtuoso at the station. But as half Brussels besides were assembled at the "gare du nord," for the same purpose, de Sterny could only dismiss his protege with a cordial pressure of the hand, and an invitation to visit him next morning at the Hotel de Flandres.

When Gesa entered at the appointed hour, he found de Sterny sitting at his desk, with his head on one hand and a pen in the other: a sheet of music paper, covered with notes, and full of corrections, lay before him. In his nervous, precise, mechanically polite bearing, that uncomfortable something betrayed itself, which a man contracts from constant association with his superiors. One remarked in him that he had accustomed himself, so to speak, to sleep with open eyes, like hares,--and courtiers.

"Well, how are you? I am truly rejoiced to see you," he cried to Gesa, "it makes me downright young to look in your eyes. I was much astonished to hear of your prolonged stay in Brussels. What the devil are you going to do here? I thought you were with Manager Marinski, on the other side of the world long ago."

"My engagement was broken off--that is I have no desire to bind myself," said Gesa, blushing a little.

"So--here--and meantime you are knocking around"--de Sterny treated the young musician in his old cordial, patronizing manner. "Sapristi! You look splendidly, too well for a young artist. Look me in the face. And what are you really doing? Plans? Eh?"

"O, I am very industrious, I give lessons."

"Oh! lessons! _You_--lessons! _Nom d'un chien!_ I should think it would have been more amusing to dig for gold in America with Marinski. Lessons! And so few pretty women learn the violin! Well, and besides lessons, how do you busy yourself?"

"I compose. You seem also"--

"Certainly, certainly," replied de Sterny, pushing the music paper into his portfolio. "But how can a man compose in such a life as I lead? Bah! I have had enough of squandering my existence in railroad cars and concert halls! Oh for four weeks rest, beefsteak and potatoes, country air, flowers and one friend!"

Some one knocked, the virtuoso's servant entered. "I am not at home!" cried de Sterny.

"But it is Count S----"

"I am not at home. Animal! to any one--do you hear!"

The valet vanished.

"You see how it is," grumbled de Sterny, "before another quarter strikes ten persons will have been announced. It is a stale life, always to play the same fool's tricks, always to be applauded for them...."

"Do you perhaps desire to be hissed by way of variety?" laughed Gesa. At this quite innocent repartee the virtuoso changed color a little, and glanced suspiciously first at Gesa and then at the portfolio where he had hidden his composition. But the young violinist's eyes convinced him that no harm was intended. If de Sterny ever had a believing disciple it was Gesa Van Zuylen.

"It is really a shame," earnestly observed the young musician after a while, "that you allow yourself so little time for composition. I have never heard anything of yours but transcriptions--perhaps you will sometime trust me with your more serious work."

De Sterny's brows met. "Hm!" growled he--"I can't show the things around. They might take wings. It spoils their eclat if one confides them to all sorts of people before they are published." The blood mounted in Gesa's cheek.

"All sorts of people," he repeated.