"Ach Gott! Gracious lady, what have I said?" exclaimed the Herr Professor.

Sonia took her mother's hand. "Do you know," she said, "to-night it is stewed carrots and nut tart for supper. Suppose we go in and take our places," her sidelong, tragic stare accusing the Professor and me the while.

I followed them across the lawn and up the steps. Frau G.o.dowska was murmuring, "Such a wonderful, beloved man"; with her disengaged hand Fraulein Sonia was arranging the sweet pea "garniture."

"A concert for the benefit of afflicted Catholic infants will take place in the salon at eight-thirty P.M. Artists: Fraulein Sonia G.o.dowska, from Vienna; Herr Professor Windberg and his trombone; Frau Oberlehrer Weidel, and others."

This notice was tied round the neck of the melancholy stag's head in the dining-room. It graced him like a red and white dinner bib for days before the event, causing the Herr Professor to bow before it and say "good appet.i.te" until we sickened of his pleasantry and left the smiling to be done by the waiter, who was paid to be pleasing to the guests.

On the appointed day the married ladies sailed about the pension dressed like upholstered chairs, and the unmarried ladies like draped muslin dressing-table covers. Frau G.o.dowska pinned a rose in the centre of her reticule; another blossom was tucked in the mazy folds of a white antimaca.s.sar thrown across her breast. The gentlemen wore black coats, white silk ties and ferny b.u.t.tonholes tickling the chin.

The floor of the salon was freshly polished, chairs and benches arranged, and a row of little flags strung across the ceiling--they flew and jigged in the draught with all the enthusiasm of family washing. It was arranged that I should sit beside Frau G.o.dowska, and that the Herr Professor and Sonia should join us when their share of the concert was over.

"That will make you feel quite one of the performers," said the Herr Professor genially. "It is a great pity that the English nation is so unmusical. Never mind! To-night you shall hear something--we have discovered a nest of talent during the rehearsals."

"What do you intend to recite, Fraulein Sonia?"

She shook back her hair. "I never know until the last moment. When I come on the stage I wait for one moment and then I have the sensation as though something struck me here,"--she placed her hand upon her collar brooch--"and... words come!"

"Bend down a moment," whispered her mother. "Sonia, love, your skirt safety-pin is showing at the back. Shall I come outside and fasten it properly for you, or will you do it yourself?"

"Oh, mamma, please don't say such things," Sonia flushed and grew very angry. "You know how sensitive I am to the slightest unsympathetic impression at a time like this... I would rather my skirt dropped off my body--"

"Sonia--my heart!"

A bell tinkled.

The waiter came in and opened the piano. In the heated excitement of the moment he entirely forgot what was fitting, and flicked the keys with the grimy table napkin he carried over his arm. The Frau Oberlehrer tripped on the platform followed by a very young gentleman, who blew his nose twice before he hurled his handkerchief into the bosom of the piano.

"Yes, I know you have no love for me, And no forget-me-not.

No love, no heart, and no forget-me-not."

sang the Frau Oberlehrer, in a voice that seemed to issue from her forgotten thimble and have nothing to do with her.

"Ach, how sweet, how delicate," we cried, clapping her soothingly. She bowed as though to say, "Yes, isn't it?" and retired, the very young gentleman dodging her train and scowling.

The piano was closed, an arm-chair was placed in the centre of the platform. Fraulein Sonia drifted towards it. A breathless pause. Then, presumably, the winged shaft struck her collar brooch. She implored us not to go into the woods in trained dresses, but rather as lightly draped as possible, and bed with her among the pine needles. Her loud, slightly harsh voice filled the salon. She dropped her arms over the back of the chair, moving her lean hands from the wrists. We were thrilled and silent. The Herr Professor, beside me, abnormally serious, his eyes bulging, pulled at his moustache ends. Frau G.o.dowska adopted that peculiarly detached att.i.tude of the proud parent. The only soul who remained untouched by her appeal was the waiter, who leaned idly against the wall of the salon and cleaned his nails with the edge of a programme. He was "off duty" and intended to show it.

"What did I say?" shouted the Herr Professor under cover of tumultuous applause, "tem-per-ament! There you have it. She is a flame in the heart of a lily. I know I am going to play well. It is my turn now. I am inspired. Fraulein Sonia"--as that lady returned to us, pale and draped in a large shawl--"you are my inspiration. To-night you shall be the soul of my trombone. Wait only."

To right and left of us people bent over and whispered admiration down Fraulein Sonia's neck. She bowed in the grand style.

"I am always successful," she said to me. "You see, when I act I AM. In Vienna, in the plays of Ibsen we had so many bouquets that the cook had three in the kitchen. But it is difficult here. There is so little magic. Do you not feel it? There is none of that mysterious perfume which floats almost as a visible thing from the souls of the Viennese audiences. My spirit starves for want of that." She leaned forward, chin on hand. "Starves," she repeated.

The Professor appeared with his trombone, blew into it, held it up to one eye, tucked back his shirt cuffs and wallowed in the soul of Sonia G.o.dowska. Such a sensation did he create that he was recalled to play a Bavarian dance, which he acknowledged was to be taken as a breathing exercise rather than an artistic achievement. Frau G.o.dowska kept time to it with a fan.

Followed the very young gentleman who piped in a tenor voice that he loved somebody, "with blood in his heart and a thousand pains." Fraulein Sonia acted a poison scene with the a.s.sistance of her mother's pill vial and the arm-chair replaced by a "chaise longue"; a young girl scratched a lullaby on a young fiddle; and the Herr Professor performed the last sacrificial rites on the altar of the afflicted children by playing the National Anthem.

"Now I must put mamma to bed," whispered Fraulein Sonia. "But afterwards I must take a walk. It is imperative that I free my spirit in the open air for a moment. Would you come with me as far as the railway station and back?"

"Very well, then, knock on my door when you're ready."

Thus the modern soul and I found ourselves together under the stars.

"What a night!" she said. "Do you know that poem of Sappho about her hands in the stars... I am curiously sapphic. And this is so remarkable--not only am I sapphic, I find in all the works of all the greatest writers, especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself--some resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own hands in a dark mirror."

"But what a bother," said I.

"I do not know what you mean by 'bother'; is it rather the curse of my genius..." She paused suddenly, staring at me. "Do you know my tragedy?"

she asked.

I shook my head.

"My tragedy is my mother. Living with her I live with the coffin of my unborn aspirations. You heard that about the safety-pin to-night. It may seem to you a little thing, but it ruined my three first gestures. They were--"

"Impaled on a safety-pin," I suggested.

"Yes, exactly that. And when we are in Vienna I am the victim of moods, you know. I long to do wild, pa.s.sionate things. And mamma says, 'Please pour out my mixture first.' Once I remember I flew into a rage and threw a washstand jug out of the window. Do you know what she said? 'Sonia, it is not so much throwing things out of windows, if only you would--'"

"Choose something smaller?" said I.

"No...'tell me about it beforehand.' Humiliating! And I do not see any possible light out of this darkness."

"Why don't you join a touring company and leave your mother in Vienna?"

"What! Leave my poor, little, sick, widowed mother in Vienna! Sooner than that I would drown myself. I love my mother as I love n.o.body else in the world--n.o.body and nothing! Do you think it is impossible to love one's tragedy? 'Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs,' that is Heine or myself."

"Oh, well, that's all right," I said cheerfully.

"'But it is not all right!"

I suggested we should turn back. We turned.

"Sometimes I think the solution lies in marriage," said Fraulein Sonia.

"If I find a simple, peaceful man who adores me and will look after mamma--a man who would be for me a pillow--for genius cannot hope to mate--I shall marry him... You know the Herr Professor has paid me very marked attentions."

"Oh, Fraulein Sonia," I said, very pleased with myself, "why not marry him to your mother?" We were pa.s.sing the hairdresser's shop at the moment. Fraulein Sonia clutched my arm.

"You, you," she stammered. "The cruelty. I am going to faint. Mamma to marry again before I marry--the indignity. I am going to faint here and now."

I was frightened. "You can't," I said, shaking her.

"Come back to the pension and faint as much as you please. But you can't faint here. All the shops are closed. There is n.o.body about. Please don't be so foolish."

"Here and here only!" She indicated the exact spot and dropped quite beautifully, lying motionless.