Part 4 (1/2)

Delileo, who had had plenty to do, in his day, with poets and composers, let him quietly alone; treating him with the forbearance which is accorded to the unhappy, the weak-minded, and geniuses. But Annette could not understand this strange behavior, and at last she broke out in a gay laugh.

Strange to say Gesa took this childishness very ill, and left the chamber with a hastily muttered ”good-night.”

Until the grey of morning he was working at his opera.

Several days went by, days during which Gesa neither ate nor slept, looked excited and irritable, yet at the same time enjoyed an indescribable painful happiness, a condition of supreme exaltation. In vain Delileo warned him, ”Don't overwork, one can strain the creative faculty as well as the voice, be moderate!” Gesa only shook his handsome head and smiled to himself with eyes half shut. Perhaps he had not heard a word his foster-father had been saying.

And then, suddenly, when, shouting an exultant Eureka to himself, he finished the finale of the fifth act,--the third and fourth were not even begun yet,--his inspiration failed. Pegasus threw him, as an overworked and maltreated Pegasus will,--threw him from the Spheres of Light down into the regions of Earthly Misery.

Painful headaches, and fathomless melancholy tormented him, his own performance seemed suddenly repulsive to him: where at first he had only seen the beauties of his work, he now recognized nothing but its deficiencies, compared it with the works of other masters, ground his teeth, and beat his brow. He condemned his own composition unmercifully, as overstrained and absurdly romantic. He could only endure the coldest, dryest musical fare. A Nocturne of Chopin threw him into a nervous excitement. He practiced the ”Chaconne” by Bach incessantly. He looked like one who was convalescing from a severe illness. With neglected dress and dragging step he lounged about aimlessly, or brooded by the hour, all in a heap, head on hand, in the darkest corner of the green sitting-room. Once after he had been trying a new composition, in careless fas.h.i.+on on his violin, he put the instrument away with nervous haste, threw himself into the great leather armchair that was regarded as his by all the family, bit restlessly at his nails a moment, and then suddenly broke into convulsive sobbing. Then came Annette shyly to him, stroked his hair pityingly, and whispered, ”Poor Gesa, does it hurt so to be a Genius?”

He drew her onto his knee, kissed her often and ardently on hair, eyes, mouth, and when half glad, half frightened, she drew away, he allowed her to slip from his arms, but took both her hands and said softly, looking up at her with true-hearted eyes, ”Annette, my good little Annette, can you endure me? Will you be my wife? Not now, but when I am become a great artist. Perhaps I may yet, for your sake.”

She blushed, and stammered, ”What can you want of such a foolish girl as I am?”

”But if she just happens to please me,” he jested, much moved.

She bent her young head over his hand and kissed it, then she nestled down on a stool at his feet. When Gaston came home he found them thus, and gave his blessing upon the betrothal.

X

Gesa's affection for his betrothed grew ever day more tender, and more devoted. Her behavior toward him changed, in that she laid aside something of her bashfulness, and adopted a tone of teasing perversity.

Since it was no longer possible to regard his children as brother and sister, Gaston resolved to beg that Gesa would limit his intercourse with Annette to evening visits, and a daily walk. O those daily walks!

Annette liked the frequented streets, and loved to stand before the show windows of the shops where finery was kept, while she asked her lover if he would give her this or that pretty thing if he were a great artist. Her fancies, as yet, were not very expensive, and seldom rose above a dainty ribbon or a coquettish pair of bronze slippers. He smiled at her questions and usually sent her the desired object next morning, accompanied by a pretty, cordial, unpretending little note. A few lessons which he was giving enabled him to indulge in this lover-like extravagance.

Unlike Annette, he had a disinclination for frequented streets, and strolled more willingly with her in the park, at this time quite desolate, and deserted of human kind. Dreaming and forgetful of all the world, he walked beside her under the trees that sighed in the November wind. Here and there the paths were broken by large puddles, and when no one was looking he lifted the maiden lightly over. Annette did not care for a little splas.h.i.+ng, and leaned all the more heavily on her lover's arm. Sometimes, when he went along quite too dumb and absent at her side, she gave his arm a little pinch to arouse him, and cried ”Wake up, tell me something.” Then he would look down at her with wet, happy eyes and murmur, ”I love you.” He was beyond all bounds in love, and beyond all measure tiresome. But he composed at this time very industriously although more collectedly, and with less exaltation. He had postponed the completion of his opera for the present, and had nearly finished instead a dramatic work, in oratorio form, founded on Dante's Inferno.

XI

”Annette!” cried Gesa, one evening in the end of November, bursting breathless into the green sitting-room. ”Annette! Father!”

”What is it, my boy?” asked Delileo.

”De Sterny has written to me. He is coming next week to Brussels.”

”Oh!” said Annette, irritated and disappointed, ”I certainly thought you had drawn the great lottery prize or had come to astonish us with an engagement at five thousand francs a month.”

”Why! Annette!” cried Gesa.

”No wonder that you rejoice,” said the tender and sympathetic Delileo, and seeing that Gesa kept his great tragic eyes fixed on Annette's face, with an expression of reproachful surprise, he added soothingly, ”You must not take her indifference to heart, she does not know what 'de Sterny' is.”

So Gesa spent that evening in explaining to his betrothed bride what de Sterny had been to him for the last ten years, and what the virtuoso's name meant to his grateful heart.

XII