I had not yet heard the soprano rôle sung. Now it was unfamiliar and sad to hear it sung for the first time by a strange voice. The singer did it well, and I thanked her, but in my heart I thought of those autumn afternoons, when Gertrude had sung the words. And I had a feeling, an unconfessed, sad unpleasantness, as if I had given away a precious possession, and now for the first time saw it in strange hands.
I saw little of Gertrude in these days. She observed my fright, smiled, and left me alone. With the Teifers, I had made a call on her. With a calm tenderness she had taken possession of Brigitte who looked with wonder on the beautiful, distinguished woman. After that the girl raved about Gertrude and sang her praises, in which the brother joined.
I can hardly remember the days before the production. Everything in me seemed turned upside down. Then there were other difficulties. One singer got hoarse; another was offended to have such a small rôle, and acted so badly at the last rehearsal that the Director became more and more formal and frigid, especially when I had anything to say. Muoth stood by me opportunely, smiling calmly at the tumult. In this situation he was worth more to me than the good Teifer, who ran here and there like a demon and found fault with everything. Brigitte looked at me with awe, though, also, with pity, when we sat together in the hotel, in the calmer hours, oppressed and almost silent.
Well, the days passed, and the evening of the opera came. While the house was filling, I stood behind the scenes without doing or being able to suggest the slightest thing.
“Will you have a glass of wine?” Muoth asked, sympathetically.
“No,” I answered. “Does it not excite you?”
“What? The spectacle out there? It’s always like that.”
“I mean the wine.”
“Oh! No, it quiets me. I always take a glass or two when I am going to act. But, go now—it’s time.”
An attendant showed me into a box where I met Gertrude and both Teifers and a high official of the Theater Directors. They greeted me, smiling. Almost directly we heard the signal. Gertrude looked at me encouragingly and nodded. Teifer, who sat behind me, gripped my arm and pressed it desperately. The house became dark, and from the depths my overture came solemnly up to me. Then I grew quieter.
And now my opera began. It sounded familiar to me and yet strange. It seemed to need nothing of me but to have a life of its own.
The desire and sorrow of the days gone by; the hope and sleepless nights; the suffering and longing of that time were now released, and, disguised, stood facing me. The inspiration of secret hours sounded unconfined, even wooing, in that house of a thousand strange hearts. Muoth came, commenced with his beautiful strength, gave generously of himself, and sang with his deep, unwilling passion. And the soprano answered him in high, soaring, luminous tones. Then came a place which I remembered exactly as I had heard it from Gertrude. It was my homage to her, a tender confession of my love. I turned my glance to her and looked into her quiet, pure eyes, which understood me, and answered me kindly. And in an instant the whole fragrance of my youth came over me like the scent of ripe fruit.
After that I was calm, and looked and listened as if I were merely a visitor. Applause sounded about me. The singers appeared before the curtain and bowed. There were loud calls for Muoth, and he smiled cooly into the illuminated house. I was also urged to appear. But I was quite too stupefied and had no desire to limp out of my grateful obscurity.
Teifer smiled at me like the morning sun, and even the high director of the opera shook both my hands. A banquet was prepared. But it would have been given in case of a failure! We drove away, Gertrude with her husband, I with the Teifers. On the short drive, Brigitte, although she had said no word, began suddenly to weep. At first she fought against it and wanted to withstand it, but then she held her hands before her face and let the tears run down. I couldn’t say anything, and was astonished that Teifer was silent and asked no questions. He put his arm around her and murmured to her, kindly and comfortingly, as he would quiet a child.
Afterwards came the handshakings, and the good wishes, and the toasts. Muoth winked at me, ironically. Someone asked urgently about my next work, and was astonished when I said it was to be an oratorio. Then they drank to my next opera, which to this day is unwritten.
It was late in the evening, when we had broken away and had gone back to our hotel, before I could speak to Teifer and ask what was the trouble with his sister, and why she wept. She herself had been in bed a long time. My friend looked at me somewhat wonderingly, almost as if he would test me. Then he shook his head and whistled until I questioned him again.
“You are indeed a goose, a blind one,” he said, reproachfully. “Have you, then, never seen?”
“No,” I said with a growing presentiment of the truth.
“Well, I think now I will tell you. The child has loved you for a long time. Naturally she has never said a word to me, anymore than to you. But I have noticed it, and to be candid, I should have been overjoyed if something had come of it.”
“Oh, you have hurt me! ” I cried, filled with sorrow. “But what was it tonight?”
“That she cried? You are a child! Do you think we did not see?”
“See? What?”
“Good heaven! You do not need to tell me a word, and it is right that you never have. But then you should not so have looked at the wife of Muoth. For now we understand.”
I did not ask him to keep my secret. I knew it was safe. He gently laid his hand on my shoulder.
“I can now think of all sorts of things, friend, that during these years you have endured in silence. It came to me once, too. We will now bravely hang together and compose beautiful music, will we not? And see that the child is comforted. There, give me your hand. It has been beautiful. Goodbye until we are at home. I start with the child early in the morning.”
With that we separated. But after a few seconds he came running back and said, pleadingly: “But you must have the flutes for the next performance, won’t you?”
So ended the day of joy and each of us lay long awake—thinking. I thought of Brigitte. She had been so near to me all this time. And I had thought of her as a comrade, wished her to be just a comrade, as Gertrude thought of me. And as she had divined my love for another, she felt as I had felt when I noticed the letter at Muoth’s—and loaded my revolver. And it made me so sad that I could not smile over it.
The days during which I remained in Munich I spent mostly with the Muoths. There was no more harmony, like that of the first afternoon when we three had first sung and played together. But in the afterglow of the production there was a silent understanding, and incidentally, it gave a new light between Gertrude and Muoth.
When I left them I stood for a while outside and looked upon the quiet house in the bare winter trees. I hoped to return there many times, and gladly would I have resigned my little peace and happiness to help the two within to come to each other again and forever.
CHAPTER VII
AFTER my return, as Heinrich had prophesied, I was hailed as successful, with many displeasing and absurd consequences. I shifted the business from my own shoulders to those of an agent. But there were visits, journalists, and stupid letters, and it took a little time for me to become accustomed to the small burdens of sudden fame and to recover from the first disillusions. The people enforced their right to a public person in most remarkable ways; for there is no distinction between genius, poet, and highwayman.
One will have a picture; the other, an autograph; the third begs for money. Every young student sends on his work, flatters prodigiously, and asks for an opinion. And if one does answer and gives an honest opinion, the same admirer immediately becomes rude, bitter and revengeful.
The magazines desire a photograph; the journalists tell of one’s life, one’s ancestry, one’s appearance. Schoolmates recall themselves to remem
brance; and distant relations have said for years that their cousin would some time be famous!
Among the letters of this sort which caused me embarrassment and distress, was one from Miss Schniebel, which amused us; and one from someone of whom I had not thought for a long time. It was the pretty Liddy who wrote to me, without making mention of our toboggan journey, but quite in the tone of an old friend. She had married a music teacher in her hometown. She gave me her address, that I might send her very soon all of my compositions with a pretty dedication to her. She enclosed her picture, which clearly showed her familiar features aged and coarsened. As soon as I could I sent her a friendly answer.
Still all these little things are hardly remembered and leave no traces. The good and worthy fruits of my success, as the acquaintance with noble and fine men, who really had music in their hearts and not only on their lips, still do not belong to my real life, which, as before, has remained in peace, and has little changed. There is left for me to tell what changes Fate has brought to my nearest friends.
Old Mr. Imthor did not have as much company as when Gertrude was with him. But every three weeks, in his house of the old paintings, he gave an evening of selected chamber music which I attended regularly. Sometimes I took Teifer with me. But Mr. Imthor insisted that I visit him besides. So, many times, I went early in the evening, during his favorite hour. I found him in the simple library where hung a picture of Gertrude. And gradually between the old man and me there came a firm understanding, and to each a need for speech. So, often we talked of the two who most filled the hearts of both of us.
I told him of Munich, and I even was not silent of the impression I had received in regard to the relationship between Gertrude and Muoth. He nodded.
“Perhaps, it will be all right,” he said, sighing, “but we can do nothing. I will be glad for the summer, when, for two months, I can have the child with me. I visit her seldom in Munich. I don’t like to go. She is so brave that I would not disturb her or touch her in any way.”
Gertrude’s letters did not bring any news. But when at Easter she came to visit her father and called on us in our little home, she looked thin and spent. And though she was friendly and tried to conceal it, I often saw in her eyes, grown so serious, a singular hopelessness. I must play for her my new music! But when I begged her to sing something, she shook her head and looked at me, beseechingly.
“Some other time,” she said, unsteadily.
We all saw that things were not well with her, and her father told me afterwards that he had proposed that she stay with him, but she would not accept that.
“She loves him,” I said. He shrugged his shoulders, and looked at me, troubled. “Oh, I do not know. Who can understand? But she said that on his own account she wished to remain with him, for he was so disturbed and unhappy, and needed her more than he himself knew. He told her nothing but it was written on his face.”
Then the voice of the old man was lowered, and he said very softly, and ashamed, “She thinks he drinks.”
“He has always done that a little,” I said, comfortingly, “but I have never seen him drunk. He looks after himself. He is a nervous man who hasn’t himself under control, but, in his way, perhaps suffers more than he makes others suffer.”
How terribly those two glorious, noble people suffered in silence, none of us knew. I do not believe that at any time they ceased to love each other. But in the very roots of their lives, they did not belong together. They met only under excitement, and in the glamour of intense hours. That clear, earnest acceptance of life, that calm breath in the understanding of one’s own individuality, Muoth never knew. And Gertrude could only endure and pity his storms and broodings, his falls and his retrievals, and his eternal thirst after self-forgetfulness and excitement. She could not change these and she could not share them. So they loved each other and yet never wholly came together. And though he saw his unspoken hope that he might gain peace and comfort through Gertrude come to naught, so, she too had to look on and suffer that her work and her will were in vain, and that she could neither comfort nor save him. Thus the secret dream and ardent desire of both were destroyed. It was only by sacrifice and forbearance that they remained together. It was brave of them to do that.
I first saw Heinrich again in the summer when he brought Gertrude to her father. He was gentle and considerate with her and with me, more so than I had ever seen him. And I observed that he feared to lose her, and that he would not be able to bear that loss. But she was tired and desired nothing but rest and quiet days in order to find herself again, and again to win strength and courage. We spent a quiet evening together in our garden. Gertrude sat between my mother and Brigitte whose hand she held. Heinrich walked softly up and down between the roses. And Teifer and I played a violin sonata upon the terrace. It all remains in my soul as an ineffaceable picture—how Gertrude rested quietly in the peace of the hour, and how Brigitte bent reverently towards the beautiful suffering woman, and how Heinrich, with shoulders bent, walked back and forth in the shadows and listened. Afterwards he said to me with gentle banter, but with sad eyes:
“Look at those three women sitting by one another. And the only one of them all who seems happy is your mother. We must see that we also become old.”
Then we left one another. Muoth went alone to Bayreuth; Gertrude with her father to the mountains; the Teifers to their annual walking tour; and I with my mother to the North Sea. There I often walked along the shore and listened to the sea, and thought the same as I had years before in my first youth; thought with wonder and fear of the sad, foolish chaos of life—that love can be vain, and that people who wish one another well, can yet pass by one another with the desire to help but unable to do so. It was all as in a troubled nightmare. And I often thought of Muoth’s words about youth and age, and was curious whether life would ever become simple and clear to me. My mother smiled when I alluded to this and seemed pleased. And she reminded me, to my shame, of my good friend, Teifer, who was not old and yet old enough to have come to know his lot, and who lived untroubled as a child with a Mozart melody on his lips. It was not a question of age. That I saw clearly. Perhaps our sorrow and lack of understanding was only that illness of which Mr. Lohe had first spoken to me. Or was he also, in his way, but a child like Teifer?
Well, whether it was this or that, my thinking and brooding did not change it. When music stirred in my soul then I understood all without words. I felt clear harmony in the depths of all life, and believed that thought and order were concealed in all that was. If it was all a mistake, I lived in that thought and was happy in it.
Perhaps it would have been better if Gertrude had not been separated for the summer from her husband. She began indeed to recover, and in the autumn, when I saw her after her trip, truly looked strong, and better able to resist. But the hopes which we had built upon this strength were deceptive. Gertrude had been happy during the few months with her father. She could give up to her need for rest, and to the joy of breathing quietly without a daily struggle, and when she was tired out, to go to sleep as soon as she lay down. But now it showed that she was more deeply exhausted than we had believed, or than she herself had known. For now, when Muoth was soon to come for her, she fell into a terrified despair, could not sleep, and begged her father imploringly to keep her with him for a longer time.
Naturally, Mr. Imthor was much shocked, for he had believed that with new strength and new purpose she would be glad to return to Muoth. But he did not oppose her, and only cautiously laid before her the idea of a longer visit, preparatory to a later and final separation. But she resisted this with great vehemence.
“But I love him,” she cried, passionately, “and will never be unfaithful to him. It is only so difficult to live with him! I will just have a little longer rest, a few months, perhaps, until I gain more courage.”
The old man sought to quiet her and had nothing
to say against this, indeed wanted to keep his child with him a while longer. He wrote to Muoth that Gertrude was still ill and wished to remain a little longer. Unfortunately Muoth did not easily accept this report. During this time of separation the desire for his wife had become strong. He had looked forward with joy to seeing her, and was full of good resolves to win her wholly again, and to make her his own.
Now Mr. Imthor’s letter came as a bitter disappointment. He wrote back at once, raging, and full of suspicion against his father-in-law. He thought that Mr. Imthor had worked against him, and that he desired a dissolution of their marriage. He demanded an immediate interview with Gertrude, for he hoped surely to prevail upon her to return. Mr. Imthor came to me with the letter, and we considered for a long time what should be done. It seemed better to us both that an interview between the two should be avoided at this time, for quite clearly Gertrude could bear no excitement. Mr. Imthor was full of anxiety and begged me to go to Muoth himself, and to plead with him that for a little while he should leave Gertrude in peace. Now, I realize that I should have done that. But at that time I had doubts and thought it rather dangerous for me to let my friend know that I had the confidence of his father-in-law in regard to things in his life which he himself had not cared to tell me. So I refused, and there was nothing to do but for the old man to write a letter, which, naturally, did not make matters better.
On the contrary, Muoth came without announcement and terrified us all by the hardly curbed passion of his love and of his rage. Gertrude, who knew naught of this short exchange of letters, and who was not expecting him, was wholly surprised and stupefied by his choleric excitement. There was a scene of which I could learn little. I only know Muoth begged Gertrude to return with him to Munich. She declared that she was ready to go if it must be, but pleaded that she might be left a little longer with her father, for she was tired and needed the rest. Then he bitterly exclaimed that, urged on by her father, she wished to forsake him, and at her gentle avowals he became more suspicious, and was so furious in his rage that he commanded her to return to him.
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