The even flow of his own music pleased and soothed him, but he found that he could not listen to it in a spirit of intelligent criticism. A strange helplessness had come upon him; he knew it for the first stage of a violent seizure of mental and spiritual activity. Very soon he would be thinking desperately, but at the moment he was obsessed and baffled by a vague conception, a form, the outlines of a new thing in his mind. While this veiled idea disturbed his peace he could not think connectedly upon any subject, since he must needs reject every image which was not the right one. He brooded absently – anxious, yet afraid of the moment when his thought should take shape.
Presently Birnbaum had to leave them and join the group on the stage. Lewis, standing with Antonia behind the screen, was jerked out of his absorption and exasperated beyond all reason when he discovered that she was in tears. He whispered fiercely over his shoulder:
‘Stop making that noise, can’t you?’
She felt herself that he ought not to be disturbed when he was listening to his own music, and with a meek gulp she replied:
‘I’ll try. Can you lend me a handkerchief?’
He thought he could. He searched his raiment and at last discovered a very dirty red cotton object which he gave her. Then he turned his back again while she quietly mopped her eyes, until the end of the piece set her free to run away and howl as loudly as she pleased.
He took his call, lost still in his uneasy preoccupation. He climbed on to the stage and bowed to an audience composed of Linda, Susan, Sanger and the village schoolmaster. They crowded round him, and Linda said that she hadn’t known he could write anything so pretty, and Sanger said that he was an amusing fellow. Trigorin clasped his hand in a couple of wet white ones.
‘It is admirable,’ he gasped. ‘You say it is to imitate the Italian opera? I say not. It is inspired by that school … yes … but also it is original. My dear sir, it is a work of genius!’
‘Very good of you to say so,’ replied Lewis, trying to release himself. ‘You played well, Trigorin. I don’t know how you managed to make out my scrawls.’
‘It was a pleasure … an honour. I like it so much. It is so beautiful, that little work. It has the true melody …’
‘Is it an advance on the “Revolutionary Songs”?’ asked Birnbaum, who was listening.
‘But no,’ said Trigorin, shaking his head very seriously. ‘That I cannot say. This I like so much; but the others I like better. They also are the work of genius, but more heavy.’
Lewis looked very much pained and intimated that he himself was inclined to consider ‘Breakfast with the Borgias’ as the most profound effort he had yet made. It was a blow to him, he said, if Mr Trigorin thought it superficial. He had succeeded in reducing his fellow-guest to a perfectly speechless condition of embarrassment and mortification when Linda was heard to ask, in no mean voice, why a part had not been written for Susan.
‘The child can sing in tune,’ she asserted. ‘And I’d like to know why she’s been passed over.’
‘My dear Linda,’ expostulated Albert, ‘one must keep the thing even. We like a high standard in our family productions, but Susan’s level is beyond the rest of us.’
‘I don’t know why you should have such a spite against the poor little thing, I’m sure,’ complained Linda, fondling Susan. ‘As if it matters how a kiddie of that age does things! I don’t see anything so wonderful, come to that, in the way that Lina and Sebastian sang their parts.’
‘There was nothing wonderful,’ said Sanger wearily, ‘except that they had the grace to take pains. If either of them had dared to set up the confounded little pipe which we hear from Susan I’d have stopped the piece. You never did, did you? I daresay not.’
‘I can tell you, Albert, there’s plenty of people think differently. There was a gentleman down in Genoa that heard her sing and he said she was wonderful for her age. He said she’d inherited her talent, and he’d know her anywhere for Sanger’s daughter. He said she’d go very far.’
‘Sanger’s daughter! Heaven and earth! Sanger’s daughter! Isn’t it bad enough to have begotten anything like Susan? I’m ready to swear I never did. And now a gentleman in Genoa says she takes after me! An intolerable insult! Birnbaum! Will you listen to this? A gentleman in Genoa who heard Susan sing … have you heard Susan sing, by the way? You haven’t? Well then you shall. Pop up on to the platform, Sue, and give us a song. Let me see … what did you sing to the gentleman in Genoa? The flower song out of “Faust”? I might have known it. Sing that! I dare say Trigorin will be able to play it for you.’
‘That’s right, dearie, it’s your turn now to sing a bit,’ said Linda, who could not believe that anyone should hear Susan sing and not find her very sweet.
Susan needed no encouragement. She was delighted with any sort of notice. She climbed on to the dais, pushed back her yellow curls, and began to warble in a shallow, sugary treble. Her facility, self-confidence and inaccuracy were on a level with the amazing vulgarity of her performance. She paraded every cheap effect, every little trick, most likely to outrage the pure taste of her relations. And yet there was a certain dash and assurance about her which explained the prophesy of the gentleman in Genoa. Sanger himself was inclined to fear that her push and her unscrupulous showiness would carry her further than the others and establish her as the star of the family. Hence his animosity; he could not bear that she should eclipse the patient, industrious talent of Caryl and Kate, or the fine brilliance of Evelyn’s children. He scowled heavily all through her song.
But she, with a persistent, babyish simper, ignored this, and ignored also the loud retching noises whereby her younger brother and sisters indicated their nausea at the style of her performance. At the end she acknowledged the slightly ironic applause of her elders as though conscious of popularity, jumped down and ran to hide her face in her mother’s lap, a pretty gesture which they had rehearsed in private.
‘Little monkey!’ observed Sanger wrathfully. ‘That’s what I have to put up with. And she’ll disgrace us on every platform in Europe before she’s done. But I shan’t know it. The worms will have me before then, thank God.’
He relapsed into gloom for a little while, and then said:
‘Kate, my dear! Don’t be shy. We’re an indulgent audience and won’t expect a second Susan of you. Couldn’t you oblige us a little? We’ve not heard as much of you tonight as I’d like.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lewis. ‘I’d no idea Kate was turning into such a prima donna, or she should have had more songs of her very own. Do sing, Kate!’
Kate sang and they were all delighted with her. She sang one song after another to meet every taste, and ended with a somewhat ambitious composition of Caryl’s, a setting to the lines:
Du bist wie eine Blume!
which was received by the family with varying appreciation since its sentiment was practically incomprehensible to most of them. At the end of it Lewis began to congratulate Caryl with such fulsomeness, so palpably in imitation of Trigorin, that all the children began to giggle. He was enlarging upon his privileges in being allowed to listen to a first performance of this detestable little work when Sanger, who felt that things were really going too far, went across to Trigorin and began to be civil to him. He praised his reading of the pencil score and explained how much obliged they all were. Trigorin beamed. It was the first conversational opening given to him by Sanger during this whole visit.
‘It was easy,’ he said. ‘Often I must read music that is so badly written. It is very nice, this piece? Yes?’
‘Humph!’ said Sanger. ‘Very pretty fooling. It suited the cast, which was all that was required.’
Trigorin, who had had a cross letter from his wife that morning, thought he saw an opportunity and rushed upon his fate.
‘It is a diversion to write for an artist, sometimes. It is amusing. My wife, she hopes that you will one day write a ballet for her … a little thing …’
Sanger stiffened and shot up
his eyebrows.
‘I’m honoured,’ he said. ‘But I don’t suppose I could write a ballet that would suit Madame to save my life. Why not get Birnbaum here to write one? It’s much more in his line.’
‘I did not know …’ began Trigorin doubtfully, looking at the young Jew.
‘You didn’t know that he wrote music? Well, he hasn’t written any yet. But he should. He should! And he owns several theatres. Look here, Birnbaum! Here’s Trigorin wants one of us to write a ballet for Madame. I tell him you’d better do it and produce it at one of your places.’
‘I think that Madame Zhigalova would not be pleased with my work,’ said Jacob. ‘Why does he not do it himself?’
‘I cannot write music,’ said Trigorin sadly.
‘Perhaps you could, if you tried. It is quite easy, is it not, my friend?’
‘Quite,’ said Sanger, returning his grin. ‘Yes; it would be an excellent speculation to write all her ballets yourself, Trigorin.’
‘Don’t listen to them, Mr Trigorin,’ whispered Linda, behind him, ‘they’re just laughing at you.’
The baited man turned round and looked at her and remembered how much kinder she had been than anyone else at the Karindehütte. She dropped her large white eyelids and made a place for him beside her on the window seat For a second he wavered, looking towards the piano where Sanger, Lewis and Birnbaum were talking together; but he knew that they did not want him, so he sat down and surrendered himself to her. She could at least help him to forget his mortification, to his sorrowing spirit she brought an easy forgetfulness, she stirred his pulses and provoked no ideas either of good or of evil.
They embarked upon a whispered conversation full of long significant pauses, as a pair of chess players will hesitate and ponder over the moves of a game. Their common goal was oblivion, escape from their several sorrows. For Linda, despite her placidity, had a sorrow – a sort of composite dread of poverty, insecurity and increasing flesh; a fear of the future which was creeping over her life like a chilly fog; a vision of herself as an enormous old woman, starving to death.
The company meanwhile was breaking up. The schoolmaster took his leave and Lewis, attracted by the moonlight outside, strolled a little way down the hill with him. Sanger and Caryl went upstairs to begin on their night’s work. Birnbaum, straying unhappily through the house, was looking for Antonia, though he did not in the least know what he wanted to say if he found her. He stumbled over the two little girls sitting on the top step of the stairs and asked if they had seen her.
‘She’s in our room, Ike,’ said Paulina. ‘Crying like anything. She’s been crying all the evening.’
‘Crying,’ he repeated, startled, yet a little hopeful. ‘That’s a pity.’
‘She often cries,’ said Teresa without much concern.
‘She’s a regular cry-baby,’ added Paulina.
‘So are you!’ Teresa was moved to retort ‘You both of you roar and yell at the least little thing.’
‘What is she crying for?’ asked Jacob anxiously.
‘Because Lewis wouldn’t let her be Lucrezia Borgia,’ they told him. ‘She was dreadfully hurt because he despised her singing.’
‘So!’ he exclaimed in some disappointment, and took himself off to bed.
‘It’s no use us going up till Tony’s quiet,’ said Paulina.
Teresa said nothing but crouched at the top of the stairs, brooding disconsolately, her thin arms round her knees. Suddenly she had become intensely miserable. She stared down into the darkness of the hall, cut in two by the moonlight which streamed in through the open door. She could not bear it. She jumped up with a little cry of exasperation.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘How I hate it all!’
‘Hate what?’ asked Paulina mildly.
‘Everybody! Everything! I hate the whole world!’
‘Everything does seem horrid this year,’ agreed Paulina sadly. ‘We don’t seem to have the fun we used to.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Teresa, setting off down the stairs.
‘Where are you off to? Are you going out?’
‘Yes! I must get out of this …’
She ran out to hide herself in the mountains, frightened and furious, pursued by a desolate foreboding which seemed to fill the quiet house. As she stumbled up towards the pass she kept murmuring to herelf:
‘I wish I could die! I wish I was dead!’
She knew that she did not mean this; she was not in the least anxious to die. But the violence of such a statement seemed to satisfy her, just as it was a relief to run up hill.
5
The top of the pass was such a quiet place that Teresa very soon recovered her peace of mind. She could see nothing of the trees or the world of men, since the valley leading down to Weissau was full of clouds. Above and around her was the sky, empty save for the moon. Mountain peaks stood up in that space, bare to the light. She was at a point where the track balanced itself for a moment on the ridge and then dived into an inky valley on the far side. From that blackness rose the echoing murmur of many waterfalls, so that the pit of night was full of sound. She stood, looking down, already calmer.
By the path was a small wooden Calvary marking a spring, and near it a grotto of stones built the year before by Paulina and Sebastian. They had said it was for prayer and meditation, which was strange, for neither of them was much given to this employment; but the building had kept them happy for three weeks. Winter storms had blown it down, and it lay now a tumbled heap of stones beside the crucifix with its penthouse roof. Teresa thought how nice it would be to build, not a grotto, but a little house where she could live always, watching the blizzards blown across the pass, and the snow melting, and the flowers of Spring pushing up through the grass. And in the Summer she would have a cornet, and, hidden in the mountains, she would play lovely tunes and give terrific shocks to lonely travellers toiling over the pass with their knapsacks. For nobody should know of the little house.
She climbed a knoll, the highest point near by, and stared round her. In every direction she could see for miles and miles, but the view was simple, a succession of serene ranges sticking up into emptiness. The moon had painted them all a uniform black and white, and the sky was no colour at all. It was a simplification which delighted her; she needed it. There were, usually, too many things. The people and colours and noises crowded her mind with ideas and confused her. Often she felt that she saw nothing clearly, but here, where there was so very little to see, it might be managed. She turned round to the Königsjoch, which hung almost above her, and took a good look at it. Its stony crags, its snowfields, and the smooth, bare outline of its summit seemed almost near enough to touch, yet she knew them to be miles away. She stared hungrily, trying to stamp this image on her mind and thus secure it for ever and ever. She became entranced with it. As she looked she had an idea, a passionate hope, which took her breath away. If she could ever see but one thing properly she might quite easily see God.
The thought so moved her that she flung herself down on the short wind-blown grass and gazed up into the sky above her, waiting, rigid in an effort to reach singleness of mind. Nothing happened. In a few minutes she became painfully exhausted and very cold. The wind in her hair came straight off the snowfields. She began to think more kindly of her exasperating family down at the Karindehütte. She would go back to them.
She pulled herself together for the descent, aware that a frightful weariness was aching in all her bones. Glancing down towards the path she saw that a man was standing there, staring at the mountains in a kind of lost trance, as if he had discovered the secret thing which had escaped her. It was Lewis. She blew a loving little kiss at his unconscious figure thinking how well she was acquainted with the shape of his head at the back. She could have drawn it with her eyes shut; she had sat so often watching him while he conducted symphonies to which she did not always listen. And in this place he did not look more solitary than he always seemed in crowded concert halls.
Presently his vision seemed to break up, and he took to walking about, in a distraught frenzy, stumbling sometimes, and often almost running. She knew what ailed him and was very sorry. Living in a family of artists she had come to regard this implacable thing which took them as a great misfortune. Oddly enough it had missed her out; alone of the tribe, she was safe from it. She did not believe that she would ever be driven to these monstrous creative efforts. She desired nothing but to be allowed to look on at the world; and the result of her observations had been that she rated the writing of music as an atrocious and painful disease. She pitied her friend when it assailed him as much as if he had fallen down and broken his leg. To her the thing was a hidden curse, a family werewolf, always ready to spring out and devour them all. It was at the bottom of most of their misfortunes. Its place in her scheme of things was approximate to the position which the devil might hold in the mind of a better instructed little girl.
‘Poor Lewis,’ she murmured. ‘I thought as much! He’s been looking like a broody hen all the week.’
She guessed that he must not discover her and was for stealing off down the far side of the hill when he caught sight of her. Immediately he hailed her, bounding up the slope very quickly, so that she could not get away.
‘Tessa! What are you doing here? Aren’t you cold?’
The Constant Nymph Page 7