‘It used to be something like that in the West, when I punched cattle,’ observed Mr. Van Torp, quietly. ‘A man who interfered with a lady there was liable to get into trouble. Progress works both ways, up and down, doesn’t it? Bears at one end and rots at the other. Isn’t that so?’
‘It’s just as true of civilisation,’ answered the Greek.
‘They’re the same thing, I should say,’ objected Mr. Van Torp.
‘Oh, not quite, I think!’
Logotheti smiled at his own thoughts. To his thinking, civilisation meant an epigram of Meleager, or Simonides’ epitaph on the Spartans who fell at Thermopylæ, or a Tragedy of Sophocles, or the Aphrodite of Syracuse, or the Victory of the Louvre. Progress meant railways, the Paris Bourse, the Nickel Trust, and Mr. Van Torp.
‘Well,’ said the latter, ‘you were telling me about Miss Barrack.’
‘Is that what you call her?’ Logotheti laughed lightly.
He seemed to be in very good humour. Men often are, just before marriage; and sometimes, it is said, when they are on the eve of great misfortunes which they cannot possibly foresee. Fate loves unexpected contrasts. Logotheti told his companion the story of the ruby mine, substantially as it was narrated at the beginning of this tale, not dreaming that Van Torp had perhaps met and talked with the man who had played so large a part in it, and to find whom Baraka had traversed many dangers and overcome many difficulties.
‘It sounds like the Arabian Nights,’ said Mr. Van Torp, as if he found it hard to believe.
‘Exactly,’ assented Logotheti. ‘And, oddly enough, the first of these stories is about Samarkand, which is not so very far from Baraka’s native village. It seems to have taken the girl about a year to find her way to Constantinople, and when she got there she naturally supposed that it was the capital of the world, and that her man, being very great and very rich, thanks to her, must of course live there. So she searched Stamboul and Pera for him, during seven or eight months. She lived in the house of a good old Persian merchant, under the protection of his wife, and learned that there was a world called Europe where her man might be living, and cities called Paris and London, where people pay fabulous prices for precious stones. Persian merchants are generally well-educated men, you know. At last she made up her mind to dress like a man, she picked up an honest Turkish man-servant who had been all over Europe with a diplomatist and could speak some French and English as well as Tartar, she got a letter of recommendation to me from a Greek banker, through the Persian who did business with him, joined some Greeks who were coming to Marseilles by sea, and here she is. Now you know as much as I do. She is perfectly fearless, and as much more sure of herself than any man ever was, as some young women can be in this queer world. Of course, she’ll never find the brute who thought he was leaving her to be murdered by her relations, but if she ever did, she would either marry him or cut his throat.’
‘Nice, amiable kind of girl,’ remarked Mr. Van Torp, who remembered her behaviour when he had refused her proffered gift. ‘That’s very interesting, Mr. Logotheti. How long do you count on being in London this time? Three or four days, maybe?’
‘I daresay. No longer, I fancy.’
‘Why don’t you come and take dinner with me some night?’ asked the American. ‘Day after to-morrow, perhaps. I’d be pleased to have you.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Logotheti answered. ‘Since you ask me, I see no reason why I should not dine with you, if you want me.’
They agreed upon the place and hour, and each suddenly remembered an engagement.
‘By the way,’ said Mr. Van Torp without apparent interest, ‘I hope Madame Cordova is quite well? Where’s she hiding from you?’
‘Just now the hiding-place is Bayreuth. She’s gone there with Mrs. Rushmore to hear Parsifal. I believe I’m not musical enough for that, so I’m roving till it’s over. That’s my personal history at this moment! And Miss Donne is quite well, I believe, thank you.’
‘I notice you call her “Miss Donne” when you speak of her,’ said Van Torp. ‘Excuse me if I made a mistake just now. I’ve always called her Madame Cordova.’
‘It doesn’t matter at all,’ answered Logotheti carelessly, ‘but I believe she prefers to be called by her own name amongst friends. Good-bye till day after to-morrow, then.’
‘At half after eight.’
‘All right — half-past — I shall remember.’
But at two o’clock, on the next day but one, Logotheti received a note, brought by hand, in which Mr. Van Torp said that to his very great regret he had been called away suddenly, and hoped that Logotheti would forgive him, as the matter was of such urgent importance that he would have already left London when the note was received.
This was more than true, if possible, for the writer had left town two days earlier, very soon after he had parted from Logotheti in Pall Mall, although the note had not been delivered till forty-eight hours later.
CHAPTER V
MR. VAN TORP knew no more about Bayreuth than about Samarkand, beyond the fact that at certain stated times performances of Wagner’s operas were given there with as much solemnity as great religious festivals, and that musical people spoke of the Bayreuth season in a curiously reverent manner. He would have been much surprised if any one had told him that he often whistled fragments of Parsifal to himself and liked the sound of them; for he had a natural ear and a good memory, and had whistled remarkably well when he was a boy.
The truth about this seemingly impossible circumstance was really very simple. In what he called his cow-punching days, he had been for six months in company with two young men who used to whistle softly together by the hour beside the camp fire, and none of the other ‘boys’ had ever heard the strange tunes they seemed to like best, but Van Torp had caught and remembered many fragments, almost unconsciously, and he whistled them to himself because they gave him a sensation which no ‘real music’ ever did. Extraordinary natures, like his, are often endowed with unnoticed gifts and tastes quite unlike those of most people. No one knew anything about the young men who whistled Wagner; the ‘Lost Legion’ hides many secrets, and the two were not popular with the rest, though they knew their business and did their work fairly well. One of them was afterwards said to have been killed in a shooting affray and the other had disappeared about the same time, no one knew how, or cared, though Mr. Van Torp thought he had recognised him once many years later. They were neither Americans nor Englishmen, though they both spoke English well, and never were heard to use any other language. But that is common enough with emigrants to the United States and elsewhere. Every one who has been to sea in an American vessel knows how the Scandinavian sailors insist on speaking English amongst themselves, instead of their own language.
Mr. Van Torp was fond of music, quite apart from his admiration for the greatest living lyric soprano, and since it was his fancy to go to Bayreuth in the hope of seeing her, he meant to hear Wagner’s masterpiece, and supposed that there would not be any difficulty about such a simple matter, nor about obtaining the sort of rooms he was accustomed to, in the sort of hotel he expected to find where so many rich people went every other year. Any one who has been to the holy place of the Wagnerians can imagine his surprise when, after infinite difficulty, he found himself, his belongings and his man deposited in one small attic room of a Bavarian tanner’s house, with one feather-bed, one basin and one towel for furniture.
‘Stemp,’ said Mr. Van Torp, ‘this is a heathen town.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I suppose I’m thought close about money,’ continued the millionaire, thinking aloud, ‘but I call five dollars a day dear, for this room, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir, I do indeed! I call it downright robbery. That’s what I call it, sir.’
‘Well, I suppose they call it business here, and quite a good business too. But I’d like to buy the whole thing and show ’em how to run it. They’d make more in the end.’
‘Yes, sir. I ho
pe you will, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but do you think it would cost a great deal?’
‘They’d ask a great deal, anyway,’ answered the millionaire thoughtfully. ‘Stemp, suppose you get me out some things and then take a look around, while I try to get a wash in that — that tea-service there.’
Mr. Van Torp eyed the exiguous basin and jug with some curiosity and much contempt. Stemp, impassive and correct under all circumstances, unstrapped a valise, laid out on the bed what his master might need, and inquired if he wished anything else.
‘There isn’t anything else,’ answered Mr. Van Torp, gloomily.
‘When shall I come back, sir?’
‘In twenty-five minutes. There isn’t half an hour’s wash in that soup-plate, anyway.’
He eyed the wretched basin with a glance that might almost have cracked it. When his man had gone, he proceeded to his toilet, such as it was, and solaced himself by softly whistling as much of the ‘Good Friday’ music as he remembered, little dreaming what it was, or that his performance was followed with nervous and almost feverish interest by the occupant of the next room in the attic, a poor musician who had saved and scraped for years to sit at the musical feast during three days.
’E sharp!’ cried an agonised voice on the other side of the closed door, in a strong German accent. ‘I know it is E sharp! I know it!’
Mr. Van Torp stopped whistling at once, lowered his razor, and turned a mask of soapsuds in the direction whence the sound came.
‘Do you mean me?’ he inquired in a displeased tone.
‘I mean who whistles the “Good Friday” music,’ answered the voice. ‘I tell you, I know it is E sharp in that place. I have the score. I shall show you if you believe not.’
‘He’s mad,’ observed Mr. Van Torp, beginning to shave again. ‘Are you a lunatic?’ he asked, pausing after a moment. ‘What’s the matter with you anyhow?’
‘I am a musician, I tell you! I am a pianist!’
‘It’s the same thing,’ said Mr. Van Torp, working carefully on his upper lip, under his right nostril.
‘I shall tell you that you are a barbarian!’ retorted the voice.
‘Well, that doesn’t hurt,’ answered Mr. Van Torp.
He heard a sort of snort of scorn on the other side and there was silence again. But before long, as he got away from his upper lip with the razor, he unconsciously began to whistle again, and he must have made the same mistake as before, for he was interrupted by a deep groan of pain from the next room.
‘Not feeling very well?’ he inquired in a tone of dry jocularity. ‘Stomach upset?’
’E sharp!’ screamed the wretched pianist.
Van Torp could hear him dancing with rage, or pain.
‘See here, whoever you are, don’t call names! I don’t like it. See? I’ve paid for this room and I’m going on whistling if I like, and just as long as I like.’
‘You say you make noises you like?’ cried the infuriated musician. ‘Oh, no! You shall not! There are rules! We are not in London, sir, we are in Bayreuth! If you make noises, you shall be thrown out of the house.’
‘Shall I? Well, now, that’s a funny sort of a rule for a hotel, isn’t it?’
‘I go complain of you,’ retorted the other, and Mr. Van Torp heard a door opened and shut again.
In a few minutes he had done all that the conditions would permit in the way of making himself presentable, and just as he left the room he was met by Stemp, the twenty-five minutes being just over.
‘Very good, sir. I’ll do what I can, sir,’ said the excellent man, as Mr. Van Torp pointed to the things that lay about.
As he went out, he recognised the voice of his neighbour, who was talking excitedly in voluble German, somewhere at the back of the house.
‘He’s complaining now,’ thought Mr. Van Torp, with something like a smile.
He had already been to the best hotel, in the hope of obtaining rooms, and he had no difficulty in finding it again. He asked for Madame da Cordova. She was at home, for it was an off-day; he sent in his card, and was presently led to her sitting-room. Times had changed. Six months earlier he would have been told that there had been a mistake and that she had gone out.
She was alone; a letter she had been writing lay unfinished on the queer little desk near the shaded window, and her pen had fallen across the paper. On the round table in the middle of the small bare room there stood a plain white vase full of corn-flowers and poppies, and Margaret was standing there, rearranging them, or pretending to do so.
She was looking her very best, and as she raised her eyes and greeted him with a friendly smile, Mr. Van Torp thought she had never been so handsome before. It had not yet occurred to him to compare her with Lady Maud, because for some mysterious natural cause the beautiful Englishwoman who was his best friend had never exerted even the slightest feminine influence on his being; he would have carried her in his arms, if need had been, as he had carried the Tartar girl, and not a thrill of his nerves nor one faster beat of his heart would have disturbed his placidity; she knew it, as women know such things, and the knowledge made her quite sure that he was not really the coarse-grained and rather animal son of nature that many people said he was, the sort of man to whom any one good-looking woman is much the same as another, a little more amusing than good food, a little less satisfactory than good wine.
But the handsome singer stirred his blood, the touch of her hand electrified him, and the mere thought that any other man should ever make her his own was unbearable. After he had first met her he had pursued her with such pertinacity and such utter ignorance of women’s ways that he had frightened her, and she had frankly detested him for a time; but he had learned a lesson and he profited by it with that astounding adaptability which makes American men and women just what they are.
Margaret held out her hand and he took it; and though its touch and her friendly smile were like a taste of heaven just then, he pressed her fingers neither too much nor too little, and his face betrayed no emotion.
‘It’s very kind of you to receive me, Miss Donne,’ he said quietly.
‘I think it’s very kind of you to come and see me,’ Margaret answered. ‘Come and sit down and tell me how you got here — and why!’
‘Well,’ he answered slowly, as they seated themselves side by side on the hard green sofa, ‘I don’t suppose I can explain, so that you’ll understand, but I’ll try. Different kinds of things brought me. I heard you were here from Lady Maud, and I thought perhaps I might have an opportunity for a little talk. And then — oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen everything worth seeing except a battle and Parsifal, and as it seemed so easy, and you were here, I thought I’d have a look at the opera, since I can’t see the fight.’
Margaret laughed a little.
‘I hope you will like it,’ she said. ‘Have you a good seat?’
‘I haven’t got a ticket yet,’ answered Mr. Van Torp, in blissful ignorance.
‘No seat!’ The Primadonna’s surprise was almost dramatic. ‘But how in the world do you expect to get one now? Don’t you know that the seats for Parsifal are all taken months beforehand?’
‘Are they really?’ He was very calm about it. ‘Then I suppose I shall have to get a ticket from a speculator. I don’t see anything hard about that.’
‘My dear friend, there are no speculators here, and there are no tickets to be had. You might as well ask for the moon!’
‘I can stand, then. I’m not afraid of getting tired.’
‘There are no standing places at all! No one is allowed to go in who has not a seat. A week ago you might possibly have picked up one in Munich, given up by some one at the last moment, but such chances are jumped at! I wonder that you even got a place to sleep!’
‘Well, it’s not much of a place,’ said Mr. Van Torp, thoughtfully. ‘There’s one room the size of a horsebox, one bed, one basin, one pitcher and one towel, and I’ve brought my valet with me. I’ve concluded to let him sleep while I’m at
the opera, and he’ll sit up when I want to go to bed. Box and Cox. I don’t know what he’ll sit on, for there’s no chair, but he’s got to sit.’
Margaret laughed, for he amused her.
‘I suppose you’re exaggerating a little bit,’ she said. ‘It’s not really quite so bad as that, is it?’
‘It’s worse. There’s a lunatic in the next room who calls me E. Sharp through the door, and has lodged a complaint already because I whistled while I was shaving. It’s not a very good hotel. Who is E. Sharp, anyway? Maybe that was the name of the last man who occupied that room. I don’t know, but I don’t like the idea of having a mad German pianist for a neighbour. He may get in while I’m asleep and think I’m the piano, and hammer the life out of me, the way they do. I’ve seen a perfectly new piano wrecked in a single concert by a fellow who didn’t look as if he had the strength to kick a mosquito. They’re so deceptive, pianists! Nervous men are often like that, and most pianists are nothing but nerves and hair.’
He amused her, for she had never seen him in his present mood.
’E sharp is a note,’ she said. ‘On the piano it’s the same as F natural. You must have been whistling something your neighbour knew, and you made a mistake, and nervous musicians really suffer if one does that. But it must have been something rather complicated, to have an E sharp in it! It wasn’t “Suwanee River,” nor the “Washington Post” either! Indeed I should rather like to know what it was.’
‘Old tunes I picked up when I was cow-punching, years ago,’ answered Mr. Van Torp. ‘I don’t know where they came from, for I never asked, but they’re not like other tunes, that’s certain, and I like them. They remind me of the old days out West, when I had no money and nothing to worry about.’
‘I’m very fond of whistling, too,’ Margaret said. ‘I study all my parts by whistling them, so as to save my voice.’
‘Really! I had no idea that was possible.’
‘Quite. Perhaps you whistle very well. Won’t you let me hear the tune that irritated your neighbour the pianist? Perhaps I know it, too.’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1236