Visionaries.

by James Huneker.

I

A MASTER OF COBWEBS

I

Alixe Van Kuyp sat in the first-tier box presented to her husband with the accustomed heavy courtesy of the Societe Harmonique. She went early to the hall that she might hear the entire music-making of the evening--Van Kuyp's tone-poem, Sordello, was on the programme between a Weber overture and a Beethoven symphony, an unusual honour for a young American composer. If she had gone late, it would have seemed an affectation, she reasoned. Her husband kept within doors; she could tell him all. And then, was there not Elvard Rentgen?

She regretted that she had invited the Parisian critic to her box. It happened at a _soiree_, where he showed his savage profile among admiring musical lambs. But he was never punctual at musical affairs.

This consoled Alixe.

Perhaps he would forget her impulsive, foolish speech,--"without him the music would fall upon unheeding ears,--he, who interpreted art for the mult.i.tude, the holder of the critical key that unlocked masterpieces."

She had felt the ba.n.a.lity of her compliment as she uttered it, and she knew the man who listened, his glance incredulous, his mouth smiling, could not be deceived. Rentgen had been too many years in the candy shop to care for sweets. She recalled her mean little blush as he twisted his pointed, piebald beard with long, fat fingers and leisurely traversed--his were the measuring eyes of an architect--her face, her hair, her neck, and finally, stared at her ears until they burned like a child's cheek in frost time.

Alixe Van Kuyp was a large woman, with a conscientious head and gray eyes. As she waited, she realized that it was one of her timid nights, when colour came easily and temper ran at its lowest ebb. She had begged Van Kuyp to cancel the habit of not listening to his own music except at rehearsal, and, annoyed by his stubbornness, neglected to tell him of the other invitation. The house was quite full when the music began.

Uneasiness overtook her as the Oberon slowly stole upon her consciousness. She forgot Rentgen; a more disquieting problem presented itself. Richard's music--how would it sound in the company of the old masters, those masters who were newer than Wagner, newer than Strauss and the "moderns"! She envisaged her husband--small, slim, with his bushy red hair, big student's head--familiarly locking arms with Weber and Beethoven in the hall of fame. No, the picture did not convince her.

She was his severest censor. Not one of the professional critics could put their fingers on Van Kuyp's weak spots--"his sore music," as he jestingly called it--so surely as his wife. She had studied; she had even played the violin in public; but she gave up her virtuosa ambitions for the man she had married during their student years in Germany. Now the old doubts came to life as the chivalric tones of Weber rose to her sharpened senses. Why couldn't Richard--

The door in the anteroom opened, her guest entered. Alixe was not dismayed. She left her seat and, closing the curtains, greeted him.

The overture was ending as Rentgen sat down beside her in the intimate little chamber, lighted by a solitary electric bulb.

"You are always thoughtful," she murmured.

"My dear lady, mine is the honour. And if you do not care, can't we hear the music of your young man--" he smiled, she thought, acidly--"here? If I sit outside, the world will say--we have to be careful of our unsmirched reputations--we poor critics and slave-drivers of the deaf."

She drew her hand gently away. He had held it, playfully tapping it as he slowly delivered himself in short sentences. He was a Dane, but his French and English were without trace of accent; certain intonations alone betrayed his Scandinavian origin.

Alixe could not refuse, for the moment he finished speaking she heard a too familiar motive, the ponderous phrase in the bra.s.s choir which Van Kuyp intended as the thematic label for his hero, "Sordello."

"Ah, there's your Browning in tone for you," whispered the critic. She wished him miles away. The draperies were now slightly parted and into the room filtered the grave, languorous accents of the new tone-poem.

Her eyes were fixed by Rentgen's. His expression changed; with nostrils dilated like a hunter scenting prey, his rather inert, cold features became transfigured; he was the man who listened, the cruel judge who sentenced. And she hoped, also the kind friend who would consider the youth and inexperience of the culprit. To the morbidly acute hearing of the woman, the music had a ring of hollow sonority after the denser packed phrases of Weber.

She had read Sordello with her husband until she thought its meaning was as clear as high noon. By the critic's advice the subject had been selected for musical treatment. Sordello's overweening spiritual pride--"gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy"--appealed to Van Kuyp. The stress of souls, the welter of cross-purposes which begirt the youthful dreamer, his love for Palma, and his swift death when all the world thrust upon him its joys--here were motives, indeed, for any musician of lofty aim and sympathetic imagination.

Alixe recalled the interminable arguments, the s.n.a.t.c.hes of poetry, the hasty rushes to the keyboard; a composer was in travail. At the end of a year, Rentgen professed his satisfaction; Van Kuyp stood on the highroad to fame. Of that there could be no doubt; Elvard Rentgen would say so in print. Alixe had been rea.s.sured--

Yet sitting now within the loop of her husband's music it suddenly became insipid, futile, and lacking in those enchantments for which she yearned. Her eyes dropped to the shapely hands meekly folded in her lap, dropped because the bold, interrogative expression on Rentgen's face disturbed her. She knew, as any woman would have known, that he admired her--but was he not Richard's friend? His glance enveloped her with piteous mockery.

The din was tremendous. After pa.s.sages of dark music, in which the formless ugly reigned, occurred the poetic duel between Sordello and Eglamor at Palma's Court of Love. But why all this stress and fury? On the pianoforte the delicate episode sounded gratefully; with the thick riotous orchestration came a disillusioning transformation. There was noise without power, there was sensuality that strove to imitate the tenderness of pa.s.sion; and she had fancied it a cloudy garden of love.

Alixe raised an involuntary hand to her ear.

"Yes," whispered the critic, "I warned him not to use his colours with a trowel. His theme is not big enough to stand it." He lifted thin eyebrows and to her overheated brain was an unexpected Mephisto. Then the music whirled her away to Italy; the love scene of Palma and Sordello. It should have been the apex of the work.

"Sounds too much like Tschakowsky's Francesca da Rimini," interrupted Rentgen. She was annoyed.

"Why didn't you tell Van Kuyp before he scored the work?" she demanded, her long gray eyes beginning to blacken.

"I did, my dear lady, I did. But you know what musicians are--" He shrugged a conclusion with his narrow shoulders. Alixe coldly regarded him. There was something new and dangerous in his att.i.tude to her husband's music this evening.

Her heart began to beat heavily. What if her suspicions were but the advance guard of a painful truth! What if this keen a.n.a.lyst of other men's ideas--she dared not finish the thought. With a sluggish movement the music uncoiled itself like a huge boa about to engulf a tiny rabbit.

The simile forced itself against her volition; all this monstrous preparation for a--rabbit! In a concert-hall the poetic idea of the tone-poem was petty. And the churning of the orchestra, foaming hysteria of the strings, bellowing of the bra.s.s--would they never cease! Such an insane chase after a rabbit! Yes, she said the word to herself and found her lips carved into a hard smile, which she saw reflected as in a trick mirror upon the face of Elvard Rentgen. _He_ understood.

Of little avail Sordello's frantic impotencies. She saw through the rhetorical trickeries of the music, weighed its cheap splendours, realized the mediocrity of this second-rate poet turned symphonist.

Image after image pressed upon her brain, each more pessimistic, more depressing than its predecessor. Alixe could have wept. Her companion placed his hand on her arm. His fingers burned; she moved, but she felt his will controlling her mood. With high relief she heard the music end.

There was conventional applause. Alixe restlessly peered into the auditorium. Again she saw opera-gla.s.ses turned toward the box. "Our good friends," she rather bitterly thought. Rentgen recognized her mental turmoil.

"Don't worry," he said soothingly. "It will be all right to-morrow morning. What I write will make the fortune of the composition." He did not utter this vaingloriously, but as a man who stated simple truth. She gazed at him, her timidity and nervousness returning in full tide.

"I know I am overwrought. I should be thankful. But--but, isn't it deception--I mean, will it be fair to conceal from Richard the real condition of affairs?" He took her hand.

"Spoken like a true wife," he gayly exclaimed. "My dear friend, there will be no deception. Only encouragement, a little encouragement. As for deceiving a composer, telling him that he may not be so wonderful as he thinks--that's impossible. I know these star-shouldering souls, these farmers of phantasms who exist in a world by themselves. It would be a pity to let in the cold air of reality--anyhow Van Kuyp has some talent."

Like lifting mists revealing the treacherous borders of a masked pool, she felt this speech with its ironic innuendo. She flushed, her vanity irritated. Rentgen saw her eyes contract.

"Let us go when the symphony begins," she begged, "I can't talk to any one in my present bad humour; and to hear Beethoven would drive me mad--now."

"I don't wonder," remarked her companion, consolingly. Alixe winced.

The silver-cold fire of an undecided moon was abroad in the sky and rumours of spring filled the air. They parted at a fiacre. He told her he would call the next afternoon, and she nodded an unforgiving head. It was her turn to be disagreeable.

In his music room, Van Kuyp read a volume of verse. He did not hear his wife enter. It pained her when she saw his serious face with its undistinguished features and dogged expression. No genius this, was her hasty verdict, as she quickly went to him and put a hand on his head.

It was her hand now that was hot. He raised eyes, dolent with dreams.

"Well?" he queried.

"You are a curious man!" she said wonderingly. "Aren't you interested in the news about your symphonic poem?" He smiled the smile of the fatuous elect. "I imagine it went all right," he languidly replied. "I heard it at rehearsal yesterday--I suppose Theleme took the _tempi_ too slow!"

She sighed and asked:--

"What are you reading a night like this?" His expression became animated.

"A volume of Celtic poetry--I've found a stunning idea for music. What a tone-poem it will make! Here it is. What colour, what rhythms. It is called The Shadowy Horses. 'I hear the shadowy horses, their long manes a-shake'--"

"Who gave you the poem?"

"Oh, Rentgen, of course. Did you see him to-night?"

"You dear boy! You must be tired to death. Better rest. The critics will get you up early enough."

Through interminable hours the mind of Alixe revolved about a phrase she had picked up from Elvard Rentgen: "Music is a trap for weak souls; for the strong as the spinning of cobwebs...."

II