Part 5 (1/2)
”All sorts of people,” he repeated.
But de Sterny burst out laughing and cried, ”Still so sensitive! I did not mean it in that way. We know you are an exceptional being. Sacre bleu! I am the last who would deny it! As soon as I have completed an important work I will lay it before you. But that”--with a glance at the writing desk, ”that is nothing, just nothing--the sketch of some ballet music. Princess L----, you remember her, surely, has asked for it. Already at Vienna she wrote me about it--you understand. I couldn't put it off. _C'est a.s.somant_. A Countess-ballet!
”And now be so good as to ring, that they may bring in the breakfast.
During the meal you shall confide to me what it really is that holds you fast chained in Brussels, for that you remain solely in order to find leisure for composition I don't believe!”
Over the breakfast Gesa confided his great secret to his friend.
De Sterny started up. ”So that is it. Well you could not have contrived anything more stupid for yourself!” cried he. ”I suspected something, some long drawn out liaison, from which I should have to extricate you.
But a betrothal! Oh, yes! What are you thinking of? To marry and become a paterfamilias at your age! It is ruin! It is the grave! The grave of your genius mind, not of your body, that will flourish in the atmosphere of sleek morality. You'll grow fat. You'll celebrate a christening every year. You'll run from one street to another with your trousers turned up and a music book under one arm, giving lessons. And your ambition will culminate in obtaining the post of first violin in some orchestra, or perhaps if it soars very high in becoming conductor of the same. Sapristi! You need the whip of the manager over your back, and not the feather bolster of family life under your head! What is more _this_ bolster which you are stuffing for yourself will contain few feathers. But that is all one to you. You only need a pretext for laziness, and would go to sleep on a potato sack!”
”You speak like a heretic, like a regular atheist in love,” cried Gesa, who had not outgrown his pa.s.sion for large words. ”Who told you I was going to be married the day after to-morrow? I shall not receive her hand until I have secured a position.”
”Ah--so! Well--that is some comfort. But who is she? One of your pupils? The blonde daughter of a square-built burgher?”
”She is the daughter of my foster-father.”
”O--h! The Gualtieri's daughter. And her you will marry? Marry?”
”You cannot possibly imagine how charming she is,” murmured Gesa.
”That the Gualtieri's daughter is charming I can easily imagine,” said the virtuoso, and there came suddenly into his eyes an expression of dreamy pa.s.sion to which they were quite unaccustomed, ”but that a man would want to marry the Gualtieri's daughter, I cannot understand.
Perhaps you do not know who the Gualtieri was.”
Gesa bit his lip.
”She made my foster-father happy.”
”So--hm! Made him happy! He was mad as we all were. To have been permitted to black her shoes would have made him happy. I know the history of Delileo's marriage. It is a legend which they still relate in artist circles, only they have got the names wrong. I know the right names because ... Delileo interests me for your sake, and--and--because the Gualtieri ... was my first love!”
Gesa shrank back. ”Your first love!” he repeated, breathlessly.
The virtuoso pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead and smiled bitterly.
”Yes! I became acquainted with her in the salon of the d'Agoult. I looked like a girl myself then, was scarcely eighteen years old, and in love! Oh! in love! She laughed at me--I fretted myself with vain desire, she would never notice me. I cannot hear her name now after twenty years without feeling as I did then. Heavens! How beautiful she was! Form, smile, tresses! Dark hair with auburn lights in neck and temples--as if powdered with gold dust. Withal a certain grand carriage....”
The virtuoso ceased and gazed musingly into vacancy. The remembrance of the Gualtieri was a sore spot in his heart. Gesa looked, deeply moved, into the changed countenance of his friend.
”How could such a woman consent to marry Delileo?”
”How? Yes--how? She had lost her voice, her lovers, her health. She was thirty-eight years old. He was of a good family, and still possessed the remains of a handsome fortune, of which he had already squandered the greater part in philanthropic enterprises. He spoiled and pampered her as if she were a princess, and she ... she ran away from him one year and a half after the birth of her child, your bride,--with an obscure Polish adventurer. Delileo discovered her afterward in the greatest misery, dying of consumption, in a garret; he took her home and nursed her till she died. Poor devil! He had united himself to her against the will of his family, and the counsel of his friends, he was at the end of his money--so he buried himself in the Rue Ravestein. His lot is hard; but--at least he lived a year and a half at her side!”
Alphonse de Sterny ceased, and looked down, brooding.
Gesa laid a hand on his arm.
”The memory of this woman lives so powerfully in you still, and yet you marvel that I want her daughter for my wife--her daughter, who inherits all the mother's charm, without her sinfulness?”
De Sterny smiled, no pleasant smile. ”How old is she then--sixteen or seventeen, if I reckon rightly is she not?”