Visionaries Part 2

"He shall--he won't believe _you_! Oh, Rentgen, how can you invent such cruel things? Are you always so malicious? What do you mean? Come--what do you expect?" She closed her eyes, antic.i.p.ating an avowal. Why should a man seek to destroy her faith in her husband, in love itself, if not for some selfish purpose of his own? But she was wrong, and became vaguely alarmed--at least if he had offered his service and sympathy in exchange for her friendship, she might have understood his fantastic talk. Rentgen sourly reflected--despite epigrams, women never vary. For him her sentiment was suburban. It strangled poetry. But he said nothing, though she imagined he looked depressed; nor did he open his mouth as the carriage traversed avenues of processional poplars before arriving at her door. She turned to him imploringly:--

"You must come with me. I shall never be able to go in alone, without an excuse. Don't--don't repeat to Richard what you said to me, in joke, I am sure, about his music. Heavens! What will my husband think?" There was despair in her voice, but hopefulness in her gait and gesture, when they reached the ill-lighted hall.

A night-lamp stood on the composer's study table. The piano was open. He sat at the keyboard, though not playing, as they hurriedly entered the room.

"You poor fellow! You look worn out. Did you think we had run away from you? Did you get the wires, the telephone messages? Oh, why did you keep us expecting you, Richard! We have had a wonderful time and missed you so much! Such a talk with Rentgen! And all about _you_. _Nicht wahr_, Rentgen? He says you are the only man in the world with a musical future. Isn't that so, Rentgen? Didn't you say that Richard was the only man in whom you took any interest? Say what you said to me! I _dare_ you!"

The musician, aroused by this wordy a.s.sault, looked from one to the other with his heavy eyes, the eyes of an owl rudely disturbed. Alixe almost danced her excitement. She hummed shrilly and grasped Van Kuyp's arm in the gayest rebounding humour.

"Why don't you speak, Maestro?"

"I didn't join you because I was too busy at my score. Listen, children!

I have sketched the beginning of The Shadowy Horses. You remember the Yeats poem, Rentgen? Listen!"

Furiously he attacked the instrument, from which escaped accents of veritable torture; a delirium of tone followed, meagre melodies fighting for existence in the boiling madness of it all; it was the parody of a parody, the music of yesterday masquerading as the music of to-morrow.

Alixe nervously watched the critic. He stood at the end of the piano and morosely fumbled his beard. Again a wave of anxious hatred, followed by forebodings, crowded her alert brain. She desperately clutched her husband's shoulder; he finished in a burst of sheer pounding and brutal roaring. Then she threw her arms about him in an ecstasy of pride--her confidence was her only anchorage.

"There, Elvard Rentgen! What did you tell me? I dare you to say that this music is not marvellous, not original!" Her victorious gaze, in which floated indomitable faith, challenged him, as she drew the head of her husband to her protecting bosom. The warring of exasperated eyes endured a moment; to Alixe it seemed eternity. Rentgen bowed and went away from this castle of cobwebs, deeply stirred by the wife's tender untruths.... She was the last dawn illuminating his empty, sordid life,--now a burnt city of defaced dreams and blackened torches.

II

THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord G.o.d had made.--_Genesis._

I

THE SERMON

"And the Seven Deadly Sins, beloved brethren, are: Pride, Covetousness, l.u.s.t, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth. To these our wise Mother, the Church, opposes the contrary virtues: Humility, Chast.i.ty, Meekness, Temperance, Brotherly Love, Diligence." The voice of the preacher was clear and well modulated. It penetrated to the remotest corner of the church. Baldur, sitting near the pulpit, with its elaborate traceries of marble, idly wondered why the sins were, with few exceptions, words of one syllable, while those of the virtues were all longer. Perhaps because it was easier to sin than to repent! The voice of the speaker deepened as he continued:--

"Now the Seven Deadly Arts are: Music, Literature, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Dancing, Acting. The mercy of G.o.d has luckily purified these once pagan inventions, and transformed them into saving instruments of grace. Yet it behooves us to examine with the utmost diligence the possible sources of evil latent in each and every one of those arts. Then we shall consider some of the special forms of sin that may develop from them. St. Chrysostom warned the faithful against the danger of the Eighth Deadly Art--Perfume...."

His phrases, which began to fall into the rhythmic drone of a Sunday sermon, lulled Baldur to dreaming. Perfume--that delicious vocable! And the contrast with what his own nostrils reported to his consciousness made him slightly shiver. It was on a Friday night in Lent that, weary in flesh and spirit, his conscience out of tune, he had entered the church and taken the first vacant seat. Without, the air was sluggish; after leaving his club the idea of theatres or calls had set his teeth on edge. He longed to be alone, to weigh in the silence of his heart the utter futility of life. Religion had never been a part of his training as the only son of a millionnaire, and if he preferred the Roman Catholic ritual above all others, it was because the appeal was to his aesthetic sense; a Turkish mosque, he a.s.sured his friends, produced the same soothing impression--gauze veils gently waving and slowly obscuring the dulling realities of everyday existence. This _morbidezza_ of the spirit the Mahometans call _Kef_; the Christians, pious ecstasy.

But now he could not plunge himself, despite the faint odour of incense lingering in the atmosphere, into the deepest pit of his personality. At first he ascribed his restlessness to the sultry weather, then to his abuse of tea and cigarettes,--perhaps it was the sharp odour of the average congregation, that collective odour of humanity encountered in church, theatre, or court-rooms. The smell of poverty was mingled with the heavy scents of fashionable women, who, in the minority, made their presence felt by their showy gowns, rustling movements, and att.i.tudes of superior boredom. In a vast building like this extremes touch with eagerness on the part of the poor, to whom these furtive views of the rich and indolent brought with them a bitter consolation.

Baldur remarked these things as he leaned back in his hard seat and barely listened to the sermon, which poured forth as though the tap would never be turned off again. And then a delicate note of iris, most episcopal of perfumes, emerged from the ma.s.s of odours--musk, garlic, damp shoes, alcohol, shabby clothing, rubber, pomade, cologne, rice-powder, tobacco, patchouli, sachet, and a hundred other tintings of the earthly symphony. The finely specialized olfactory sense of the young man told him that it was either a bishop or a beautiful woman who imparted to the air the subtle, penetrating aroma of iris. But it was neither ecclesiastic nor maid. At his side was a short, rather thick-set woman of vague age; she might have been twenty-five or forty. Her hair was cut in masculine fashion, her attire unattractive. As clearly as he could distinguish her features he saw that she was not good-looking. A stern mask it was, though not hardened. He would not have looked at such an ordinary physiognomy twice if the iris had not signalled his peculiar sense. There was no doubt that to her it was due. Susceptible as he was to odours, Baldur was not a ladies' man. He went into society because it was his world; and he attended in a perfunctory manner to the enormous estate left him by his father, bound up in a single trust company. But his thoughts were always three thousand miles away, in that delectable city of cities, Paris. For Paris he suffered a painful nostalgia. There he met his true brethren, while in New York he felt an alien. He was one. The city, with its high, narrow streets--granite tunnels; its rude reverberations; its colourless, toiling barbarians, with their undistinguished physiognomies, their uncouth indifference to art,--he did not deny that he loathed this nation, vibrating only in the presence of money, sports, grimy ward politics, while exhibiting a depressing sn.o.bbery to things British. There was no _nuance_ in its life or its literature, he a.s.serted. France was his _patrie psychique_; he would return there some day and forever....

The iris crept under his nostrils, and again he regarded the woman. This time she faced him, and he no longer wondered, for he saw her eyes.

With such eyes only a great soul could be imprisoned in her brain. They were smoke-gray, with long, dark lashes, and they did not seem to focus perfectly--at least there was enough deflection to make their expression odd, withal interesting, like the slow droop of Eleonora Duse's magic eye. Though her features were rigid, the woman's glance spoke to Baldur, spoke eloquently. Her eyes were--or was it the iris?--symbols of a soul-state, of a rare emotion, not of s.e.x, nor yet s.e.xless. The pupils seemed powdered with a strange iridescence. He became more troubled than before. What did the curious creature want of him! She was neither coquette nor cocotte, flirtation was not hinted by her intense expression. He resumed his former position, but her eyes made his shoulders burn, as if they had sufficient power to bore through them. He no longer paid any attention to his surroundings. The sermon was like the sound of far-away falling waters, the worshippers were so many black marks. Of two things was he aware--the odour of iris and her eyes.

He knew that he was in an overwrought mood. For some weeks this mood had been descending upon his spirit, like a pall. He had avoided music, pictures, the opera--which he never regarded as an art; even his favourite poets he could not read. Nor did he degustate, as was his daily wont, the supreme prose of the French masters. The pleasures of robust stomachs, gourmandizing and drinking, were denied him by nature.

He could not sip a gla.s.s of wine, and for meat he entertained distaste.

His physique proved him to be of the neurotic temperament--he was very tall, very slim, of an exceeding elegance, in dress a finical dandy; while his trim pointed blue-black beard and dark, foreign eyes were the cause of his being mistaken often for a Frenchman or a Spaniard--which illusion was not dissipated when he chose to speak their several tongues.

Involuntarily, and to the ire of his neighbours, he arose and indolently made his way down the side aisle. When he reached the baize swinging doors, he saw the woman approaching him. As if she had been an acquaintance of years, she saluted him carelessly, and, accompanied by the scandalized looks of many in the congregation, the pair left the church, though not before the preacher had sonorously quoted from the Psalm, _Domine ne in Furore_, "For my loins are filled with illusions; and there is no health in my flesh."

II

THE SeANCE

Je cherche des parfums nouveaux, des fleurs plus larges, des plaisirs ineprouves.--FLAUBERT.

"It may be all a magnificent illusion, but--" he began.

"Everything is an illusion in this life, though seldom magnificent," she answered. They slowly walked up the avenue. The night was tepid; motor cars, looking like magnified beetles, with bulging eyes of fire, went swiftly by. The pavements were almost deserted when they reached the park. He felt as if hypnotized, and once, rather meanly, was glad that no one saw him in company of his dowdy companion.

"I wonder if you realize that we do not know each other's name," he said.

"Oh, yes. You are Mr. Baldur. My name is Mrs. Lilith Whistler."

"Mrs. Whistler. Not the medium?"

"The medium--as you call it. In reality I am only a woman, happy, or unhappy, in the possession of super-normal powers."

"Not supernatural, then?" he interposed. He was a sceptic who called himself agnostic. The mystery of earth and heaven might be interpreted, but always in terms of science; yet he did not fancy the superior manner in which this charlatan flouted the supernatural. He had heard of her miracles--and doubted them. She gave a little laugh at his correction.

"What phrase-jugglers you men are! You want all the splendours of the Infinite thrown in with the price of admission! I said super-normal, because we know of nothing greater than nature. Things that are off the beaten track of the normal, across the frontiers, some call supernatural; but it is their ignorance of the vast, unexplored territory of the spirit--which is only the material masquerading in a different guise."

"But you go to church, to a Lenten service--?" It was as if he had known her for years, and their unconventional behaviour never crossed his mind. He did not even ask himself where they were moving.

"I go to church to rest my nerves--as do many other people," she replied; "I was interested in the parallel of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Deadly Arts."

"You believe the arts are sinful?" He was curious.

"I don't believe in sin at all. A bad conscience is the result of poor digestion. Sins are created so that we pay the poll-tax to eternity--pay it on this side of the ferry. Yet the arts may become dangerous engines of destruction if wrongfully employed. The Fathers of the early Church, Ambrose and the rest, were right in viewing them suspiciously."--He spoke:--

"The arts diabolic! Then what of the particular form of wizardry practised so successfully by the celebrated Mrs. Whistler, one of whose names is, according to the Talmud, that of Adam's first wife?"

"What do you know, my dear young man, of diabolic arts?"

"Only that I am walking with you near the park on a dark night of April and I never saw you before a half-hour ago. Isn't that magic--white, not black?"

"Pray do not mock magic, either white or black. Remember the fate of the serpents manufactured by Pharaoh's magicians. They were, need I tell you, speedily devoured by the serpents of Moses and Aaron. Both parties did not play fair in the game. If it was black magic to transform a rod into a snake on the part of Pharaoh's conjurers, was it any less reprehensible for the Hebrew magicians to play the same trick? It was prestidigitation for all concerned--only the side of the children of Israel was espoused in the recital. Therefore, do not talk of black or white magic. There is only one true magic. And it is not slate-writing, toe-joint snapping, fortune-telling, or the vending of charms. Magic, too, is an art--like other arts. This is forgotten by the majority of its pract.i.tioners. Hence the sordid vulgarity of the average mind-reader and humbugging spiritualist of the dark-chamber seance. Besides, the study of the super-normal mind tells us of the mind in health--nature is shy in revealing her secrets."

They pa.s.sed the lake and were turning toward the east driveway. Suddenly she stopped and under the faint starlight regarded her companion earnestly. He had not been without adventures in his career--Paris always provided them in plenty; but this encounter with a homely woman piqued him. Her eye he felt was upon him and her voice soothing.

"Mr. Baldur--listen! Since Milton wrote his great poem the English-speaking people are all devil-worshippers, for Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost. But I am no table-tipping medium eager for your applause or your money. I don't care for money. I think you know enough of me through the newspapers to vouchsafe that. You are rich, and it is your chief misery. Listen! Whether you believe it or not, you are very unhappy. Let me read your horoscope. Your club life bores you; you are tired of our silly theatres; no longer do you care for Wagner's music.

You are deracinated; you are unpatriotic. For that there is no excuse.

The arts are for you deadly. I am sure you are a lover of literature.

Yet what a curse it has been for you! When you see one of your friends drinking wine, you call him a fool because he is poisoning himself. But you--you--poison your spirit with the honey of France, of Scandinavia, of Russia. As for the society of women--"