Chapter 19

In the iron solitude of his soul he tortured himself with these questions. His stupor lasted for days--was it the abrupt fall or was it the result of his absinthe-like dreams? He was haunted by an odour that assailed his brain like one tune persistently played. The odour! Whence did it come with its sickly sweetness? Perhaps therein lay the secret of his hallucinating visions. Perhaps a drug had perverted his brain. But within the week the dangerous perfume had become dissipated, and with it vanished all hope of solving the riddle. Oh, to sense once more the enchantments of its fragrance, once more revel in the sublimated intoxication of mighty forces weaving at the loom of life! By the cadences of what infernal art had he been vouchsafed a glimpse of the profiles of the gods? Henceforth Ferval became a lover of shadows.

XIX

NADA

The tenderness of the growing night disquieted the dying woman.

"Aline!" she called. But it was only the name that reverberated within the walls of her brain, harrowed by fever. A soft air rustled the drawn curtains of lawn; and on the dressing table the two little lamps fluttered in syncopated sympathy. One picture the room held. It was after a painting by Goya, and depicted a sneering skeleton scrawling on his dusty tomb, with a bony fore-finger, the sinister word, _Nada_--nothing! The perturbation of the woman increased, though physical power seemed denied her. "Aline, my child!" This time a clucking sound issued from her throat.

The girl went to the bedside and gently fanned. Her aunt wagged her head negatively. "No, no!" she stuttered. Aline stopped, and kneeling, took the sick hands in her own. Their eyes met and Aline, guided by the glance, looked over at the picture with its sardonic motto.

"Shall I take it away, Aunt Mary?" The elder woman closed her eyes as if to shut out the ghoulish mockery. Then Aline saw the tabouret that stood between the windows--it was burdened with magnolias in a deep white bowl.

"Do you wish them nearer?"

"No, no," murmured her aunt. Her eyes brightened. She pushed her chin forward, and the young girl removed the flowers, knowing that their odour had become oppressive. She was not absent more than a few seconds. As she returned the maid touched her arm.

"The gentlemen are waiting below, miss. They won't leave until they see you."

"How can I go now? Send them away, send them away!"

"Yes, miss; but I told them what you said this afternoon about the danger of Holiest Mother--"

"Hush! she is calling." Aline slipped into the room on hurried feet, her eyes dilated, her hair in anxious disorder. But the invalid made no signal. She lay with closed eyelids, the contraction of her nostrils a faint proclamation of life. Again the niece took her place at the headboard, and with folded fingers watched the whispering indications of speedy flight. The maid soon beckoned her from a narrowed door. Aline joined her.

"They say that if you don't go down, they will come up."

"Who says?" was the stern query.

"The Second Reader and the Secretary. I think you had better see them; they both look worried. Really I do, Miss Allie."

"Very well, Ellen; but you must stay here, and if Holiest Mother makes the slightest move, touch the bell. I'll not be gone five minutes."

Without arranging her hair or dress, Aline opened the folding doors of the drawing-room. Only the centre lamp was lighted, but she recognized the two men. They were sitting together, and arose as she entered. The burly Second Reader wore a dismayed countenance. His cheeks were flabby, his eyes red. The other was a timid little man who never had anything to say.

"How is Holiest Mother?" asked the Reader.

"Dying."

"Oh, Sister Aline! Why such a blunt way of putting it? _She_ may be exchanging her earthly garb for a celestial one--but die! We do not acknowledge death in the Church of the New Faith." He paused and blandly stroked his huge left hand, covered with red down.

"Holiest Mother, my aunt, has not an hour to live," was the cool response of the girl. "If you have no further question, I must ask you to excuse me; I am needed above." She stepped to the door.

"Wait a moment, sister! Not so fast. The situation is serious. Hundreds of thousands of the faithful depend on our report of this--of this sad event. We may tell them that the female pope of our great religion"--he bent his big neck reverently--"was wafted to her heavenly abode by the angels. But there are the officers of the law, the undertaker, the cemetery people, to be considered. Shall we acknowledge that our founder has died like any other human--in bed, of a fever? And who is to be her successor? Has she left a will?"

"Poor Aunt Mary!" muttered the girl.

"It must be a woman, will or no will," continued the Second Reader, in the tone of a conqueror making terms with a stricken foe. "Now Aline, sister, you are the nearest of kin. You are a fervent healer. _You_ are the Woman."

"How can you stand there heartlessly plotting such things and a dying woman in the house?" Aline's voice was metallic with passion. "You care only for the money and power in our church. I refuse to join with you in any such scheme. Aunt Mary will die. She will name her successor. Then it will be time to act. Have you forgotten her last words to the faithful?" She pointed to a marble tablet above the fireplace, which bore this astounding phrase: "My first and forever message is one and eternal." Nothing more,--but the men cowered before the sublime wisdom uttered by a frail woman, wisdom that had started the emotional machinery of two continents.

"But, great God! Miss Aline, you mustn't go off and leave us in this fix." Drops of water stood on the forehead of the Second Reader. His hands dropped to his side with a gesture of despair. His companion kept to the corner, a scared being.

"You know as well as I do that _somebody_ has to take the throne seat after--after your Aunt Mary dies--I mean, after Holiest Mother is translated to eternity. Ask her, beg her, for some advice. We can't let the great undertaking go to pieces--"

"You have little faith, brother," replied Aline. "If that message means anything, then the New Faith will take care of itself--"

"Yes, yes, I know," was the testy interruption; "but the world is not so easily led in matters of religion. The message, as you say, is divine; but it may sound like meaningless twaddle to the world at large. If we are to heal mankind and dispel the heresy of disease and death, why can't Holiest Mother save herself? Mind you, I am looking at this thing with the eyes of the sceptics--"

"You are an unbeliever, a materialist, yourself," was the bold retort. "Do as you please, but you can't drag me into your money calculations." The swift slam of the door left them to their fears.

Her aunt, sitting as upright as a candle, was conducting an invisible orchestra when Aline returned. The frightened maid tried to hold the lean, spasmodic arms as they traced in the air the pompous rhythm of a march that moved on silent funereal pinions through the chamber. The woman stared threateningly at the picture on the wall, the picture of the skeleton which had come from nothingness to reveal nothingness to the living. The now distraught girl, her nerves crisped by her doubts, threw herself upon the bed, her fears sorely knocking at her heart.

"Aunt, Aunt Mary--Holiest Mother, in Christ's name, in the name of the New Faith, tell me before you go--tell me what is to become of our holy church after you die--after you pass over to the great white light. Is it all real? Or is it only a dream, _your_ beautiful dream?--What is the secret truth? Or--or--is there no secret--no--" her voice was cracked by sobs. The stately, soundless music was waved on by her aunt. Then Holiest Mother fell back on her pillow, and with a last long glance at the picture, she pointed, with smiling irony at the picture.

_Nada, Nada ..._

The night died away in tender complicity with the two little lamps on the dressing table, and the sweet, thick perfume of magnolias modulated into acrid decay as day dawned. Below, the two men anxiously awaited the message from the dead. And they saw again upon the marble tablet above the fireplace her cryptic wisdom:--

"My first and forever message is one and eternal."

XX

PAN

For the Great God Pan is alive again.

--DEAN MANSEL.

I

The handsome Hungarian kept his brilliant glance fixed upon Lora Crowne; she sat with her Aunt Lucas and Mr. Steyle at a table facing the orchestra. His eyes were not so large as black; the intensity of their gaze further bewildered the young woman, whose appearance that evening at the famous café on the East Side was her initial one. The heat, the bristling lights, the terrific appealing clamour of the gypsy band, set murmuring the nerves of this impressionable girl. And the agility of the _cymbalom_ player, his great height, clear skin, and piercing eyes, quite enthralled her.

"It is the gypsy dulcimer, Lora; I read all about it in Liszt's book on gypsy music," said Aunt Lucas, in an airy soprano.

Mr. Steyle was impressed. Lora paid no attention, but continued to gaze curiously at the antics of the player, who hammered from his instrument of wire shivering, percussive music. With flexible wrists he swung the felt-covered mallets that brought up such resounding tones; at times his long, apelike arms would reach far asunder and, rolling his eyes, he touched the extremes of his _cymbalom_; then he described furious arpeggios, punctuated with a shrill tattoo. And the crazy music defiled by in a struggling squad of chords; but Aŕpad Vihary never lifted his eyes from Lora Crowne....

The vibration ceased. Its withdrawal left the ear-drums buzzing with a minute, painful sensation, like that of moisture rapidly evaporating upon the naked skin. A battalion of tongues began to chatter as the red-faced waiters rushed between the tables, taking orders. It was after eleven o'clock, and through the swinging doors passed a throng of motley people, fanning, gossiping, bickering--all eager and thirsty. Clarence Steyle pointed out the celebrities with conscious delight. Over yonder--that man with the mixed gray hair--was a composer who came every night for inspiration,--musical and otherwise, Clarence added, with a laugh. And there was the young and well-known decadent playwright who wore strangling high collars and transposed all his plays from French sources; he lisped and was proud of his ability to dramatize the latest mental disease. And a burglar who had written a famous book on the management of children during hot weather sat meekly resting before a solitary table.

The leader of the Hungarian band was a gypsy who called himself Alfassy Janos, though he lived on First Avenue, in a flat the door of which bore this legend: _Jacob Aron_. The rest of the band seemed gypsy. Who is the _cymbalom_ player? That is not difficult to answer; the programme gives it.

"There you are, Miss Lora."

She looked. "Oh, what a romantic name! He must be a count at least."

"Lora, dear, gypsies never bear titles," remarked Aunt Lucas, patronizingly.

"How about the Abbé Liszt?" triumphantly asked her charge.

Aunt Lucas laughed coldly. "Liszt was Hungarian, not Romany. But your artist with the drumsticks certainly is distinguished-looking. If he only would not wear that odious scarlet uniform. I wonder why he does not sit down, like the rest of his colleagues."

Aŕpad Vihary leaned against the panelled wall, his brow puckered in boredom, his long black mustaches drooping from sheer discouragement. His was a figure for sculpture--a frame powerfully modelled, a bisque complexion. Thin as a cedar sapling, he preserved such an immovable attitude that in the haze of the creamy atmosphere he seemed a carved, marmoreal image rather than a young man with devouring eyes.

The three visitors ate sandwiches and pretended to relish Munich beer served in tall stone mugs. Aunt Lucas, who was shaped like a 'cello, made more than a pretence of sipping; she drank one entirely, regretting the exigencies of chaperonage: to ask for more might shock the proper young man.

"It's horrid here, after all," she remarked discontentedly. "So many people--_such_ people--and very few nice ones. The Batsons are over there, Lora; but then you don't care for them. O dear, I wish the band would strike up again."

It did. A vicious swirl of colour and dizzy, dislocated rhythms prefaced the incantations of the Czardas. Instantly the eating, gabbling crowd became silent. Alfassy Janos magnetized his hearers with cradling, caressing movements of his fiddle. He waved like tall grass in the wind; he twisted snakewise his lithe body as he lashed his bow upon the screaming strings; the resilient tones darted fulgurantly from instrument to instrument. After chasing in circles of quicksilver, they all met with a crash; and the whole tonal battery, reënforced by the throbbing of Aŕpad Vihary's dulcimer, swept through the suite of rooms from ceiling to sanded floor. It was no longer enchanting music, but sheer madness of the blood; sensual and warlike, it gripped the imagination as these tunes of old Egypt, filtered through savage centuries, reached the ears. Lora trembled in the gale that blew across the Puzta. She imagined a determined Hungarian prairie, over which dashed disordered centaurs brandishing clubs, driving before them a band of satyrs and leaping fauns. The hoofed men struggled. At their front was a monster with a black goat-face and huge horns; he fought fiercely the half-human horses. The sun, a thin scarf of light, was eclipsed by earnest clouds; the curving thunder closed over the battle; the air was flame-sprinkled and enlaced by music; and most melancholy were the eyes of the defeated Pan--the melancholy eyes of Aŕpad Vihary....

Aunt Lucas was scandalized. "Do you know, Lora, that the impudent dulcimer virtuoso"--she prided herself on her musical terms--"actually stared you out of countenance during the entire Czardas?" And she could have added that her niece had returned the glance unflinchingly.

Mr. Steyle noticed Lora's vacant regard when he addressed her and insisted on getting her away from the dangerous undertow of this "table d'hôte music," as he contemptuously called it. He summoned the waiter.

Lora shed her disappointment. "Oh, let's wait for the _cymbalom_ solo," she frankly begged.

Her aunt was unmoved. "Yes, Mr. Steyle, we had better go; the air is positively depressing. These slumming parties are delightful if you don't overdo them--but the people!" Up went her lorgnon.

They soon departed. Lora did not dare to look back until she reached the door that opened on the avenue; as she did so her vibrant gaze collided with the Hungarian's. She determined to see him again.

II

Nice Brooklyn girls always attend church and symphony concerts. This dual custom is considered respectable and cultured. Lora's parents during their lifetime never missed the Theodore Thomas concerts and the sermons of a certain famous local preacher; but there were times when the young woman longed for Carmen and the delights of fashionable Bohemia. Carefully reared by her Aunt Lucas, she had nevertheless a taste for gypsy bands and "Gyp's" novels. She read the latter translated, much to the disedification of her guardian, who was a linguist and a patron of the fine arts. This latter clause included subscriptions to the Institute Course and several scientific journals. If Lora were less romantic, all would be well. Once the careful chaperon had feared music and its disturbing influences; but after she had read an article about its healing effect upon the insane she felt that it could work no evil in Lora; indeed, it was an elevating art. She was fond of music herself, and, as dancing was strictly tabooed, there seemed little likelihood of the noble art of "sweet concordance"--Aunt Lucas had picked this quotation up somewhere--doing mischief to her impressionable niece.

Nearly all dwelling-houses look alike in Brooklyn, even at midday. The street in which the Crownes lived was composed of conventional brown-stone buildings and English basements. Nielje, the Dutch maid, stood at the half-opened door, regarding with suspicion the big, dark man who had pulled the bell so violently. Aunt Lucas was in New York at the meeting of a society devoted to Ethical Enjoyment. Though Nielje had been warned secretly of an expected visitor, this wild-looking young man with long black hair, wearing a flaring coat of many colours and baggy Turkish trousers, gave her a shock. Why did he come to the basement as if he were one of the cook's callers? She paused. Then the door was shoved in by a muscular arm, and she was pushed against the wall.

"Don't try that again, man," she protested.

He answered her in gibberish. "Mees, Mees Lora," he repeated.

"Ach!" she exclaimed.

Aŕpad Vihary gloomily followed her into the dining-room, where Lora stood trembling. This was the third time she had met the Hungarian, and fearing Prospect Park,--after two timid walks there, under the fiery-fingered leaves of early autumn,--she had been prevailed upon to invite Aŕpad to her home. She regretted her imprudence the moment he entered. All his footlight picturesqueness vanished in the cold, hard light of an unromantic Brooklyn breakfast-room. He seemed like a clumsy circus hero as he scraped his feet over the parquetry and attempted to kiss her hand. She drew away instantly and pointed to a chair. He refused to sit down; his pride seemed hurt.

Then he gave the girl an intense look, and she drew nearer.

"Oh, Aŕpad Vihary," she began.

He interrupted. "You do not love me now. Why? You told me you loved me, in the park, yesterday. I am a poor artist, that is the reason."

This speech he uttered glibly, and, despite the extraordinary pronunciation, she understood it. She took his long hand, the fingers amazed her. He bent them back until they touched his wrist, and was proud of their flexibility. He walked to the dining-table and tossed its cover-cloth on a chair. Upon his two thumbs he went around it like an acrobat. "Shall I hold you out with one arm?" he softly asked. Lora was vastly amused; this was indeed a courtship out of the ordinary--it pleased her exotic taste.

"Hungarian gypsies are very strong, are they not?" she innocently asked.

"I am not gypsy nor am I Hungarian; I am an East Indian. My family is royal. We are of the Rajpoot tribes called Ranas. My father once ruled Roorbunder."

Lora was amazed. A king's son, a Rana of Roorbunder! She became very sympathetic. Again she urged him to sit down.

"My nation never sits before a woman," he proudly answered.

"But I will sit beside you," she coaxed, pushing him to a corner. He resisted her and went to the window. Lora again joined him. The man piqued her. He was mysterious and very unlike Mr. Steyle--poor, sentimental Clarence, who melted with sighs if she but glanced at him; and then, Clarence was too stout. She adored slender men, believing that when fat came in at the door love fled out of the window.

"They put me in a circus at Buda-Pesth," remarked Aŕpad Vihary, as if he were making a commonplace statement about the weather.

She gave a little scream; he regarded her with Oriental composure. "In a circus! You! Did you ride?"

"I cannot ride," he said. "I played in a cage all day."

"Because you were wild?" She then went into a fit of laughter. He was such a funny fellow, though his ardent gaze made her blush. So blond and pink was Lora that her friends called her Strawberry--a delicate compliment in which she delighted. It was this golden head and radiant face, with implacably blue eyes, that set the blood pumping into Aŕpad's brain. When he looked at her, he saw sunlight.

"Do you know, you absurd prince, that when you played the Czardas the other night I seemed to see a vision of a Hungarian prairie, covered with fighting centaurs and satyrs! I longed to be a _vivandière_ among all those fauns. You were there--in the music, I mean--and you were big Pan--oh, so ugly and terrible!"

"Pan! That is a Polish title," he answered quite simply.

"Stupid! The great god Pan--don't you know your mythology? Haven't you read Mrs. Browning? He was the god of nature, of the woods. Even now, I believe you have ears with furry tips and hoofs like a faun."

He turned a sickly yellow.

"Anyhow, why did they put you in a cage? Were you a wild boy?"

"They thought so in Hungary."

"But why?"

He stared at her sorrowfully, and was about to empty his soul; but she turned away with a shudder.

"I know, I know," she whispered; "your hands--they are like the hands of--"

Aŕpad threw out his chest, and Lora heard with a curiosity that became nervous a rhythmic wagging sound, like velvet bruised by some dull implement. It frightened her.

"Do not be afraid of me," he begged. "You cannot say anything I do not know already." He walked to the door, and the girl followed him.

"Don't go, Aŕpad," she said with pretty remorse.

The fire blazed in his eyes and with a single swift grasp he seized her, holding her aloft like a torch. Lora almost lost consciousness. She had not counted upon such barbarous wooing, and, frightened, cried out, "Nielje, Nielje!"

Nielje burst into the room as if she had been very near the keyhole. She was a powerful woman from Holland, who did not fear an army.

"Put her down!" she insisted, in her deepest gutturals. "Put her down, you brute, or I'll hurt you."

Lora jumped to the floor as Nielje struck with her broomstick at Aŕpad's retreating back. To the surprise of the women he gave a shriek of agony and ran to the door, Nielje following close behind. Lora, her eyes strained with excitement, did not stir; she heard a struggle in the little hall as the man fumbled at the basement entrance. Again he yelled, and then Lora rushed to the window. Nielje, on her knees, was being dragged across the grassy space in front of the house. She held on, seemingly, to the coat-tail of the frantic musician; only by a vigorous shove did he evade her persistent grasp and disappear.

A policeman with official aptness went leisurely by. Nielje flew into the house, locking and bolting the door. Her face was red as she rolled on the floor, her hands at her sides. Lora, alarmed, thought she was seriously hurt or hysterical from fright; but the laughter was too hearty and appealing.

"Oh, Meeslora! Oh, Meeslora!" she gasped. "He must be monkey-man--he has monkey tail!"

Lora could have fainted from chagrin and horror.

Had the great god Pan passed her way?

BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER

What Maeterlinck wrote:

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote thus of James Huneker: "Do you know that 'Iconoclasts' is the only book of high and universal critical worth that we have had for years--to be precise, since Georg Brandes. It is at once strong and fine, supple and firm, indulgent and sure."

The _Evening Post_ of June 10, 1915, wrote of Mr. Huneker's "The New Cosmopolis":