Part 3 (2/2)

Gesa sat comfortably leaning back in the softest armchair the establishment afforded, and explained to the attentive Gaston his numerous plans for composition.

Annette was silent: her large eyes shone in the twilight.

Gesa talked and talked and the ”droevige Herr” only interrupted him from time to time to cry ”cela sera superbe!”

Rhythmically scanned, mystically blended, the far-off sounds of the city penetrated to the Rue Ravestein like a monotonous slumber song.

The dreamy relaxing smell of the poppies grew stronger with the incoming night, and from time to time there was the rustle of a leaf that detached itself and fell dying onto the cold marble of the gueridon.

IX

The poppies lay in the gutter and many other fresh and gracious flowers had withered under the portrait of the Gualtieri. May had become June, and June July. Every evening Gesa explained his projects to his foster-father, played one and another melody on his violin, or sketched the whole of an ensemble movement for him on the old spinet, received Gaston's a.s.surance ”_cela cera superbe!_” improvised a great deal, listened dreamily to the singing and ringing in his soul, and--accomplished nothing. He had lodged himself in a neighboring attic, at a washerwoman's, but spent the whole day in the home of Delileo, now made still more attractive by the gracious presence of Annette.

The ”droewige Herr” had found a regular situation, probably for his daughter's sake. He busied himself as secretary of the theatre and also as _feuilletonist_ of a newspaper. This procured him steady employment.

His housekeeping now bore the stamp, not of limited means, but of slovenly comfort, the comfort of the Rue Ravestein.

Gesa felt at home in this disorder. He always found a comfortable sofa on whose arms he could rest his hands while he talked about the future, and in whose cus.h.i.+ons he could lean back his head while he searched for the outlines of impending fortune among the smoke-clouds from his cigarette; and he always found a bottle of good Bordeaux on the table when he seated himself at dinner.

He loved the long idling meal times, which lifted from him the necessity of doing anything, and furnished such a plausible excuse for his beloved laziness: he loved to sit and dally with his coffee, while Annette sat opposite and occasionally sipped a little out of his cup.

He loved to rummage among the notes of old composers whom no one had ever heard of and to rush through the works of half-forgotten poets.

When a verse pleased him, then his eyes glowed, and he would thunder forth the most colossal adjectives, and read the lines two, three, yes twenty times to the little Annette. He might just as well have read to the Flemish servant outside, only she would not, perhaps, have smiled so prettily. Then he would seize note paper and set the verse to music, try his hasty composition on the old spinet, that gave back the stormy melodies of his foaming, effervescing youth in a broken, trembling little voice, like a grandmother on the edge of the grave who sings a love song for the last time. Then Annette must try the verse. She had a splendid contralto voice, and spared no pains to give him pleasure with her singing. But he was never contented. ”More expression Annette, more pa.s.sion!” he would cry. ”Do you feel nothing then, absolutely nothing here!” and he tapped her on the heart with his finger. She smiled, colored, and turned her face away.

Gaston Delileo had resolved to look upon Annette and Gesa as sister and brother; that cut short all other thoughts, and was very comfortable.

He would not notice how much Annette was occupied with her ”brother,”

to what flattering little attentions she accustomed him, with what an expression her large dark eyes sometimes rested upon him. He only noticed that in the beginning Gesa's bearing was perfectly cool, cordial and brotherly. Toward the end of July the latter began to neglect Rue Ravestein a little, and entangled himself in some sort of relation with a Paris actress who, playing an engagement at the Galerie St. Hubert, found herself bored in Brussels. Annette was consumed by jealousy without Gesa's guessing the cause of her disquiet.

”What ails you, b.i.+.c.hette?” he asked, anxiously, stroking her thin cheek with a caressing hand. ”What makes you sad? It is this pestilential city air that does not agree with you. Send her to the seash.o.r.e for a while, father!” The old man shrugged his shoulders--

”Alas!” he murmured. ”I have not the means.”

”The means! the means!” cried Gesa, ”then permit me to advance them. I have lived so long on your generosity!” Gesa forgot how much his little attentions to Mlle. Irma had cost! When he hurried over to his apartment to get a couple of bank notes, he found in his pocketbook just one solitary twenty-franc piece. At first he rubbed his head and stared, then he burst out laughing, and carried his used up purse across to Delileo, ”There, laugh at me and my big promises,” he cried.

”Here, see, this is my whole wealth! But wait, only wait! My hands and my head are full of gold. If only once the right feeling for work would come--the real fever! Do you happen to know where I have laid the libretto for my opera?”

Toward the end of August, Mlle. Irma left Brussels, Gesa became morose, and the mood was favorable to industry.

One morning he felt ”the fever.” He spread some music paper before him, smoothed it with his hand, cut a pen, planted his elbows on the one shaky table his attic contained, wrote a line, struck it out, stretched himself, and twisted himself--a feeling of physical unrest tormented him. He resolved to go out for a little, and wandered into the park, where he stood still from time to time as if listening to an inward voice, jostling absently against pa.s.sers-by, and at last sat down upon a bench, thinking deeply. Suddenly a gust of wind pa.s.sed, lightly at first, then howling loudly through the tree tops overhead. Gesa started, pressed his hands to his temples, a flood of music streamed through his soul. He hurried back to his attic, and wrote and wrote.

The hour at which he was accustomed to find himself at lunch with Annette,--Delileo seldom came home for this meal,--was long past, the late supper time had come--Gesa still bent over his music paper. Single leaves lay strewn around him on the floor. Some one knocked at the door--he did not hear. Delileo entered. ”What are you doing, my boy, that one sees nothing of you to-day. Are you sick?”

Gesa stared at him as if awakened from a strange dream. ”No,” he answered, simply, ”I am working.”

He was very pale and his hands trembled. Delileo insisted that he must interrupt his work at least long enough to take some nourishment. Gesa followed him unwillingly. He sat at table, ate nothing, did not speak, but gazed steadily at one spot like a ghost seer. After supper he wandered up and down the sitting-room, humming disconnected melodies to himself, clutched from time to time at the keys of the old spinet, threw out with short lips a single tone in which some sort of grand finale seemed to culminate, lashed about him urging on an imaginary orchestra, stamped suddenly on the floor and cried ”Bravo!”

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