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The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson

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'If you would do me the honour to accept it, Monsieur! It is a stall, and a
good one! I have never asked for one before, all these years, so they gave
it to me easily. You see, I have few friends. It is for to-morrow, as you
observe, I demanded it especially; it is an occasion of great interest to
me,--ah! an occasion! You will come?'

'You are too good, M. Cristich!' I said with genuine gratitude, for indeed
the gift came in season, the opera being at that time a luxury I could
seldom command. 'Need I say that I shall be delighted? And to hear Madame
Romanoff, a chance one has so seldom!'

The old gentleman's mild, dull eyes glistened. 'Madame Romanoff!' he
repeated, 'the marvellous Leonora! yes, yes! She has sung only once before
in London. Ah, when I remember--' He broke off suddenly. As he rose, and
prepared for departure, he held my hand a little longer than usual, giving
it a more intimate pressure.

'My dear young friend, will you think me a presumptuous old man, if I ask
you to come and see me to-morrow in my apartment, when it is over? I will
give you a glass of whisky, and we will smoke pipes, and you shall tell
me your impressions--and then I will tell you why to-morrow I shall be so
proud, why I show this emotion.'


II

The Opera was _Fidelio_, that stately, splendid work, whose melody, if one
may make a pictorial comparison, has something of that rich and sun-warm
colour which, certainly, on the canvasses of Rubens, affects one as an
almost musical quality. It offered brilliant opportunities, and the
incomparable singer had wasted none of them. So that when, at last, I
pushed my way out of the crowded house and joined M. Cristich at the
stage door, where he waited with eyes full of expectancy, the music still
lingered about me, like the faint, past fragrance of incense, and I had no
need to speak my thanks. He rested a light hand on my arm, and we walked
towards his lodging silently; the musician carrying his instrument in its
sombre case, and shivering from time to time, a tribute to the keen spring
night. He stooped as he walked, his eyes trailing the ground; and a certain
listlessness in his manner struck me a little strangely, as though he came
fresh from some solemn or hieratic experience, of which the reaction had
already begun to set in tediously, leaving him at the last unstrung and
jaded, a little weary, of himself and the too strenuous occasion. It was
not until we had crossed the threshold of a dingy, high house in a byway of
Bloomsbury, and he had ushered me, with apologies, into his shabby room,
near the sky, that the sense of his hospitable duties seemed to renovate
him. He produced tumblers from an obscure recess behind his bed; set a
kettle on the fire, a lodging-house fire, which scarcely smouldered with
flickers of depressing, sulphurous flame, talking of indifferent subjects,
as he watched for it to boil.

Only when we had settled ourselves, in uneasy chairs, opposite each other,
and he had composed me, what he termed 'a grog': himself preferring the
more innocent mixture known as _eau sucrée_, did he allude to _Fidelio_.
I praised heartily the discipline of the orchestra, the prima donna,
whom report made his country-woman, with her strong, sweet voice and her
extraordinary beauty, the magnificence of the music, the fine impression of
the whole.

M. Cristich, his glass in hand, nodded approval. He looked intently into
the fire, which cast mocking shadows over his quaint, incongruous figure,
his antiquated dress coat, which seemed to skimp him, his frost-bitten
countenance, his cropped grey hair. 'Yes,' he said, 'Yes! So it pleased
you, and you thought her beautiful? I am glad.'

He turned round to me abruptly, and laid a thin hand impressively on my
knee.

'You know I invented her, the Romanoff, discovered her, taught her all
she learnt. Yes, Monsieur, I was proud to-night, very proud, to be there,
playing for her, though she did not know. Ah! the beautiful creature!...
and how badly I played! execrably! You could not notice that, Monsieur,
but they did, my confrères, and could not understand. How should they? How
should they dream, that I, Maurice Cristich, second violin in the orchestra
of the opera, had to do with the Leonora; even I! Her voice thrilled them;
ah, but it was I who taught her her notes! They praised her diamonds; yes,
but once I gave her that she wanted more than diamonds, bread, and lodging
and love. Beautiful they called her; she was beautiful too, when I carried
her in my arms through Vienna. I am an old man now, and good for very
little; and there have been days, God forgive me! when I have been angry
with her; but it was not to-night. To see her there, so beautiful and so
great; and to feel that after all I had a hand in it, that I invented her.
Yes, yes! I had my victory to-night too; though it was so private; a secret
between you and me, Monsieur? Is it not?'

I assured him of my discretion, but he hardly seemed to hear. His sad eyes
had wandered away to the live coals, and he considered them pensively, as
though he found them full of charming memories. I sat back, respecting
his remoteness; but my silence was replete with surprised conjecture, and
indeed the quaint figure of the old musician, every line of his garments
redolent of ill success, had become to me, of a sudden, strangely romantic.
Destiny, so amorous of surprises, of pathetic or cynical contrasts, had in
this instance excelled herself. My obscure acquaintance, Maurice Cristich!
The renowned Romanoff! Her name and acknowledged genius had been often
in men's mouths of late, a certain luminous, scarcely sacred, glamour
attaching to it, in an hundred idle stories, due perhaps as much to the
wonder of her sorrowful beauty, as to any justification in knowledge,
of her boundless extravagance, her magnificent fantasies, her various
perversity, rumour pointing specially at those priceless diamonds, the
favours not altogether gratuitous it was said of exalted personages. And
with all deductions made, for malice, for the ingenuity of the curious,
the impression of her perversity was left; she remained enigmatical and
notorious, a somewhat scandalous heroine! And Cristich had known her; he
had, as he declared, and his accent was not that of bragadoccio, invented
her. The conjuncture puzzled and fascinated me. It did not make Cristich
less interesting, nor the prima-donna more perspicuous.

By-and-by the violinist looked up at me; he smiled with a little dazed air,
as though his thoughts had been a far journey.

'Pardon me, Monsieur! I beg you to fill your glass. I seem a poor host; but
to tell you the truth, I was dreaming; I was quite away, quite away.'

He threw out his hands, with a vague expansive gesture.

'Dear child!' he said to the flames, in French; 'good little one! I do not
forget thee.' And he began to tell me.

'It was when I was at Vienna, ah! a long while ago. I was not rich, but
neither was I very poor; I still had my little patrimony, and I lived in
the ---- Strasse, very economically; it is a quarter which many artists
frequent. I husbanded my resources, that I might be able to work away at my
art without the tedium of making it a means of livelihood. I refused many
offers to play in public, that I might have more leisure. I should not do
that now; but then, I was very confident; I had great faith in me. And
I worked very hard at my symphony, and I was full of desire to write an
opera. It was a tall dark house, where I lived; there were many other
lodgers, but I knew scarcely any of them. I went about with my head full
of music and I had my violin; I had no time to seek acquaintance. Only
my neighbour, at the other side of my passage, I knew slightly and bowed
to him when we met on the stairs. He was a dark, lean man, of a very
distinguished air; he must have lived very hard, he had death in his
face. He was not an artist, like the rest of us: I suspect he was a great
profligate, and a gambler; but he had the manners of a gentleman. And when
I came to talk to him, he displayed the greatest knowledge of music that
I have ever known. And it was the same with all; he talked divinely, of
everything in the world, but very wildly and bitterly. He seemed to have
been everywhere, and done everything; and at last to be tired of it all;
and of himself the most. From the people of the house I heard that he was a
Pole; noble, and very poor; and, what surprised me, that he had a daughter
with him, a little girl. I used to pity this child, who must have lived
quite alone. For the Count was always out, and the child never appeared
with him; and, for the rest, with his black spleen and tempers, he must
have been but sorry company for a little girl. I wished much to see her,
for you see, Monsieur! I am fond of children, almost as much as of music;
and one day it came about. I was at home with my violin; I had been playing
all the evening some songs I had made; and once or twice I had seemed to be
interrupted by little, tedious sounds. At last I stopped, and opened the
door; and there, crouching down, I found the most beautiful little creature
I had ever seen in my life. It was the child of my neighbour. Yes,
Monsieur! you divine, you divine! That was the Leonora!'

'And she is not your compatriot,' I asked.

'A Hungarian? ah, no! yet every piece of her pure Slav. But I weary you,
Monsieur; I make a long story.'

I protested my interest; and after a little side glance of dubious
scrutiny, he continued in a constrained monotone, as one who told over to
himself some rosary of sad enchanting memories.

'Ah, yes! she was beautiful; that mysterious, sad Slavonic beauty! a thing
quite special and apart. And, as a child, it was more tragical and strange;
that dusky hair! those profound and luminous eyes! seeming to mourn over
tragedies they have never known. A strange, wild, silent child! She might
have been eight or nine, then; but her little soul was hungry for music. It
was a veritable passion; and when she became at last my good friend, she
told me how often she had lain for long hours outside my door, listening to
my violin. I gave her a kind of scolding, such as one could to so beautiful
a little creature, for the passage was draughty and cold, and sent her away
with some _bon-bons_. She shook back her long, dark hair: 'You are not
angry, and I am not naughty,' she said: 'and I shall come back. I thank you
for your _bon-bons_; but I like your music better than _bon-bons_, or fairy
tales, or anything in the world.'

'But she never came back to the passage again, Monsieur! The next time I
came across the Count, I sent her an invitation, a little diffidently, for
he had never spoken to me of her, and he was a strange and difficult man.
Now, he simply shrugged his shoulders, with a smile, in which, for once,
there seemed more entertainment than malice. The child could visit me when
she chose; if it amused either of us, so much the better. And we were
content, and she came to me often; after a while, indeed, she was with
me almost always. Child as she was, she had already the promise of her
magnificent voice; and I taught her to use it, to sing, and to play on the
piano and on the violin, to which she took the most readily. She was like a
singing bird in the room, such pure, clear notes! And she grew very fond of
me; she would fall asleep at last in my arms, and so stay until the Count
would take her with him when he entered, long after midnight. He came to
me naturally for her soon; and they never seemed long those hours that I
watched over her sleep. I never knew him harsh or unkind to the child; he
seemed simply indifferent to her as to everything else. He had exhausted
life and he hated it; and he knew that death was on him, and he hated
that even more. And yet he was careful of her after a fashion, buying her
_bon-bons_ and little costumes, when he was in the vein, pitching his voice
softly when he would stay and talk to me, as though he relished her sleep.
One night he did not come to fetch her at all, I had wrapped a blanket
round the child where she lay on my bed, and had sat down to watch by her
and presently I too fell asleep. I do not know how long I slept but when I
woke there was a gray light in the room, I was very cold and stiff, but I
could hear close by, the soft, regular breathing of the child. There was a
great uneasiness on me, and after a while I stole out across the passage
and knocked at the Count's door, there was no answer but it gave when I
tried it, and so I went in. The lamp had smouldered out, there was a sick
odour of _pétrol_ everywhere, and the shutters were closed: but through the
chinks the merciless gray dawn streamed in and showed me the Count sitting
very still by the table. His face wore a most curious smile, and had not
his great cavernous eyes been open, I should have believed him asleep:
suddenly it came to me that he was dead. He was not a good man, monsieur,
nor an amiable, but a true _virtuoso_ and full of information, and I
grieved. I have had Masses said for the repose of his soul.'

He paid a tribute of silence to the dead man's memory, and then he went on.

'It seemed quite natural that I should take his child. There was no one to
care, no one to object; it happened quite easily. We went, the little one
and I, to another part of the city. We made quite a new life. Oh! my God!
it is a very long time ago.'

Quite suddenly his voice went tremulous; but after a pause, hardly
perceptible, he recovered himself and continued with an accent of apology.

'I am a foolish old man, and very garrulous. It is not good to think of
that, nor to talk of it; I do not know why I do. But what would you have?
She loved me then, and she had the voice and the disposition of an angel.
I have never been very happy. I think sometimes, monsieur, that we others,
who care much for art, are not permitted that. But certainly those few,
rapid days, when she was a child, were good; and yet they were the days
of my defeat. I found myself out then. I was never to be a great artist,
a _maestro_: a second-rate man, a good music-teacher for young ladies,
a capable performer in an orchestra, what you will, but a great artist,
never! Yet in those days, even when my opera failed, I had consolation,
I could say, I have a child! I would have kept her with me always but it
could not be, from the very first she would be a singer. I knew always
that a day would come when she would not need me, she was meant to be the
world's delight, and I had no right to keep her, even if I could. I held my
beautiful, strange bird in her cage, until she beat her wings against the
bars, then I opened the door. At the last, I think, that is all we can do
for our children, our best beloved, our very heart-strings, stand free of
them, let them go. The world is very weary, but we must all find that out
for ourselves, perhaps when they are tired they will come home, perhaps
not, perhaps not. It was to the Conservatoire, at Milan, that I sent her
finally, and it was at La Scala that she afterwards appeared, and at La
Scala too, poor child, she met her evil genius, the man named Romanoff, a
baritone in her company, own son of the devil, whom she married. Ah, if I
could have prevented it, if I could have prevented it!'

He lapsed into a long silence; a great weariness seemed to have come over
him, and in the gray light which filtered in through the dingy window
blinds, his face was pinched and wasted, unutterably old and forlorn.

'But I did not prevent it,' he said at last, 'for all my good will,
perhaps merely hastened it by unseasonable interference. And so we went
in different ways, with anger I fear, and at least with sore hearts and
misunderstanding.'

He spoke with an accent of finality, and so sadly that in a sudden rush of
pity I was moved to protest.

'But, surely you meet sometimes; surely this woman, who was as your own
child--'

He stopped me with a solemn, appealing gesture.

'You are young, and you do not altogether understand. You must not judge
her; you must not believe, that she forgets, that she does not care. Only,
it is better like this, because it could never be as before. I could not
help her. I want nothing that she can give me, no not anything; I have my
memories! I hear of her, from time to time; I hear what the world says of
her, the imbecile world, and I smile. Do I not know best? I, who carried
her in my arms, when she was that high!'

And in effect the old violinist smiled, it was as though he had surprised
my secret of dissatisfaction, and found it, like the malice of the world,
too ignorant to resent. The edge of his old, passionate adoration had
remained bright and keen through the years; and it imparted a strange
brilliancy to his eyes, which half convinced me, as presently, with a
resumption of his usual air of diffident courtesy, he ushered me out into
the vague, spring dawn. And yet, when I had parted from him and was making
my way somewhat wearily to my own quarters, my first dubious impression
remained. My imagination was busy with the story I had heard, striving
quite vainly to supply omissions, to fill in meagre outlines. Yes! quite
vainly! the figure of the Romanoff was left, ambiguous and unexplained;
hardly acquitted in my mind of a certain callousness, an ingratitude almost
vulgar as it started out from time to time, in contraposition against that
forlorn old age.


III

I saw him once more at the little restaurant in Soho, before a sudden
change of fortune, calling me abroad for an absence, as it happened, of
years, closed the habit of our society. He gave me the god-speed of a
brother artist, though mine was not the way of music, with many prophesies
of my success; and the pressure of his hand, as he took leave of me, was
tremulous.

'I am an old man, monsieur, and we may not meet again, in this world. I
wish you all the chances you deserve in Paris; but I--I shall greatly miss
you. If you come back in time, you will find me in the old places; and if
not--there are things of mine, which I should wish you to have, that shall
be sent you.'

And indeed it proved to be our last meeting. I went to Paris; a fitful
correspondence intervened, grew infrequent, ceased; then a little later,
came to me the notification, very brief and official, of his death in the
French Hospital of pneumonia. It was followed by a few remembrances of him,
sent at his request, I learnt, by the priest who had administered to him
the last offices: some books that he had greatly cherished, works of Glück,
for the most part; an antique ivory crucifix of very curious workmanship;
and his violin, a beautiful instrument dated 1670 and made at Nuremberg,
yet with a tone which seemed to me, at least, as fine as that of the
Cremonas. It had an intrinsic value to me, apart from its associations;
for I too was something of an amateur, and since this seasoned melodious
wood had come into my possession, I was inspired to take my facility more
seriously. To play in public, indeed, I had neither leisure nor desire:
but in certain _salons_ of my acquaintance, where music was much in vogue,
I made from time to time a desultory appearance. I set down these facts,
because as it happened, this ineffectual talent of mine, which poor
Cristich's legacy had recalled to life, was to procure me an interesting
encounter. I remember the occasion well, it was too appropriate to be
forgotten--as though my old friend's lifeless fiddle, which had yet
survived so many _maestri_, was to be a direct instrument of the completion
of his story, the resurrection of those dormant and unsatisfied curiosities
which still now and again concerned me. I had played at an house where
I was a stranger; brought there by a friend, to whose insistence I had
yielded somewhat reluctantly; although he had assured me, and, I believe,
with reason, that it was a house where the indirect, or Attic invitation
greatly prevailed, in brief, a place where one met very queer people. The
hostess was American, a charming woman, of unimpeachable antecedents; but
her passion for society, which, while it should always be interesting, was
not always equally reputable, had exposed her evenings to the suspicion of
her compatriots. And when I had discharged my part in the programme and
had leisure to look around me, I saw at a glance that their suspicion was
justified; very queer people indeed were there. The large hot rooms were
cosmopolitan: infidels and Jews, everybody and nobody; a scandalously
promiscuous assemblage! And there, with a half start, which was not at
first recognition, my eyes stopped before a face which brought to me a
confused rush of memories. It was that of a woman who sat on an ottoman
in the smallest room which was almost empty. Her companion was a small,
vivacious man with a gray imperial, and the red ribbon in his buttonhole,
to whose continuous stream of talk, eked out with meridional gestures,
she had the air of being listlessly resigned. Her dress, a marvel of
discretion, its colour the yellow of old ivory, was of some very rich
and stiff stuff cut square to her neck; that, and her great black hair,
clustered to a crimson rose at the top of her head, made the pallor of her
face a thing to marvel at. Her beauty was at once sombre and illuminating,
and youthful no less. The woman of thirty: but her complexion, and her
arms, which were bare, were soft in texture as a young girl's.

I made my way as well as I could for the crowd, to my hostess, listened,
with what patience I might, to some polite praise of my playing, and made
my request.

'Mrs. Destrier, I have an immense favour to ask; introduce me to Madame
Romanoff!'

She gave me a quick, shrewd smile; then I remembered stories of her
intimate quaintness.

'My dear young man! I have no objection. Only I warn you, she is not
conversational; you will make no good of it, and you will be disappointed;
perhaps that will be best. Please remember, I am responsible for nobody.'

'Is she so dangerous?' I asked. 'But never mind; I believe that I have
something to say which may interest her.'

'Oh, for that!' she smiled elliptically; 'yes, she is most dangerous. But I
will introduce you; you shall tell me how you succeed.'

I bowed and smiled; she laid a light hand on my arm; and I piloted her
to the desired corner. It seemed that the chance was with me. The little
fluent Provençal had just vacated his seat; and when the prima-donna had
acknowledged the hasty mention of my name, with a bare inclination of
her head, I was emboldened to succeed to it. And then I was silent. In
the perfection of that dolorous face, I could not but be reminded of the
tradition which has always ascribed something fatal and inevitable to the
possession of great gifts: of genius or uncommon fortune, or singular
personal beauty; and the common-place of conversation failed me.

After a while she looked askance at me, with a sudden flash of resentment.

'You speak no French, Monsieur! And yet you write it well enough; I have
read your stories.'

I acknowledged Madame's irony, permitted myself to hope that my efforts had
met with Madame's approval.

'_A la bonne heure!_ I perceive you also speak it. Is that why you wished
to be presented, to hear my criticisms?'

'Let me answer that question when you have answered mine.'

She glanced curiously over her feathered fan, then with the slightest
upward inclination of her statuesque shoulders--'I admire your books; but
are your women quite just? I prefer your playing.'

'That is better, Madame! It was to talk of that I came.'

'Your playing?'

'My violin.'

'You want me to look at it? It is a Cremona?'

'It is not a Cremona; but if you like, I will give it you.'

Her dark eyes shone out in amazed amusement.

'You are eccentric, Monsieur! but your nation has a privilege of
eccentricity. At least, you amuse me; and I have wearied myself enough this
long evening. Show me your violin; I am something of a _virtuosa_.'

I took the instrument from its case, handed it to her in silence, watching
her gravely. She received it with the dexterous hands of a musician, looked
at the splendid stains on the back, then bent over towards the light in a
curious scrutiny of the little, faded signature of its maker, the _fecit_
of an obscure Bavarian of the seventeenth century; and it was a long time
before she raised her eyes.

When she spoke, her rich voice had a note of imperious entreaty in it.
'Your violin interests me, Monsieur! Oh, I know that wood! It came to
you--?'

'A legacy from an esteemed friend.'

She shot back. 'His name?' with the flash which I waited for.

'Maurice Cristich, Madame!'

We were deserted in our corner. The company had strayed in, one by one, to
the large _salon_ with the great piano, where a young Russian musician,
a pupil of Chopin, sat down to play, with no conventional essay of
preliminary chords, an expected morsel. The strains of it wailed in just
then, through the heavy, screening curtains; a mad _valse_ of his own, that
no human feet could dance to, a pitiful, passionate thing that thrilled the
nerves painfully, ringing the changes between voluptuous sorrow and the
merriment of devils, and burdened always with the weariness of 'all the
Russias,' the proper _Welt-schmerz_ of a young, disconsolate people. It
seemed to charge the air, like electricity, with passionate undertones; it
gave intimate facilities, and a tense personal note to our interview.

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