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 fashion 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 splashing, 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

She had understood--the virtuoso's nimbus had become quite visible to her. Gesa need fear no longer that she would not know how to value his great friend sufficiently. How could it be otherwise? His name was to be encountered everywhere. All the newest bon-bons, patent leathers, pocket handkerchiefs were named after him, and the children played at "Concert and Virtuoso," just as in the earliest youth of our century they had played "Consul and Battle of Marengo." Annette was taking singing lessons now. Another little luxury that Gesa had provided for her, and at her singing teacher's house the girls whom she met there talked of nothing but de Sterny. The uncle of one pupil was conductor at the "Monnaie" de Sterny had called upon him, and had forgotten his gloves on going away. The said pupil brought those gloves to the next singing lesson; they were cut in pieces and divided among Signor Martini's feminine pupils. Years afterward, more than one of these gushers wore a bit of leather round her neck, sewed up in a little silk bag!

At this time de Sterny had reached the zenith of his fame. His last tour through Russia had resembled a triumph. In Odessa they had received him with the discharge of cannon, in Moscow a procession had gone to meet him, huzzahing students had unhitched the horses from his coach and the fairest women had showered down flowers from the windows upon his ill.u.s.trious head, as the cortege pa.s.sed through the princ.i.p.al streets; in Petersburg a grand d.u.c.h.ess had insisted upon his lodging in her palace; sable furs, laurel wreaths, diamond rings, casks of caviare, and a golden samovar, had all been humbly laid at his feet by Russian enthusiasm. All this Gesa related to his beloved. What he failed to tell her was that the greatest ladies had contended for de Sterny's favor, and that a princess cruelly scorned by him had shot herself at one of his concerts while he was playing! But these things she learned from the girls in the singing cla.s.s. They interested her much more than de Sterny's other triumphs.

Of course Gesa went to meet the virtuoso at the station. But as half Brussels besides were a.s.sembled at the "gare du nord," for the same purpose, de Sterny could only dismiss his protege with a cordial pressure of the hand, and an invitation to visit him next morning at the Hotel de Flandres.

When Gesa entered at the appointed hour, he found de Sterny sitting at his desk, with his head on one hand and a pen in the other: a sheet of music paper, covered with notes, and full of corrections, lay before him. In his nervous, precise, mechanically polite bearing, that uncomfortable something betrayed itself, which a man contracts from constant a.s.sociation with his superiors. One remarked in him that he had accustomed himself, so to speak, to sleep with open eyes, like hares,--and courtiers.

"Well, how are you? I am truly rejoiced to see you," he cried to Gesa, "it makes me downright young to look in your eyes. I was much astonished to hear of your prolonged stay in Brussels. What the devil are you going to do here? I thought you were with Manager Marinski, on the other side of the world long ago."

"My engagement was broken off--that is I have no desire to bind myself," said Gesa, blushing a little.

"So--here--and meantime you are knocking around"--de Sterny treated the young musician in his old cordial, patronizing manner. "Sapristi! You look splendidly, too well for a young artist. Look me in the face. And what are you really doing? Plans? Eh?"

"O, I am very industrious, I give lessons."

"Oh! lessons! _You_--lessons! _Nom d'un chien!_ I should think it would have been more amusing to dig for gold in America with Marinski.

Lessons! And so few pretty women learn the violin! Well, and besides lessons, how do you busy yourself?"

"I compose. You seem also"--

"Certainly, certainly," replied de Sterny, pushing the music paper into his portfolio. "But how can a man compose in such a life as I lead?

Bah! I have had enough of squandering my existence in railroad cars and concert halls! Oh for four weeks rest, beefsteak and potatoes, country air, flowers and one friend!"

Some one knocked, the virtuoso's servant entered. "I am not at home!"

cried de Sterny.

"But it is Count S----"

"I am not at home. Animal! to any one--do you hear!"

The valet vanished.

"You see how it is," grumbled de Sterny, "before another quarter strikes ten persons will have been announced. It is a stale life, always to play the same fool's tricks, always to be applauded for them...."

"Do you perhaps desire to be hissed by way of variety?" laughed Gesa.

At this quite innocent repartee the virtuoso changed color a little, and glanced suspiciously first at Gesa and then at the portfolio where he had hidden his composition. But the young violinist's eyes convinced him that no harm was intended. If de Sterny ever had a believing disciple it was Gesa Van Zuylen.

"It is really a shame," earnestly observed the young musician after a while, "that you allow yourself so little time for composition. I have never heard anything of yours but transcriptions--perhaps you will sometime trust me with your more serious work."

De Sterny's brows met. "Hm!" growled he--"I can't show the things around. They might take wings. It spoils their eclat if one confides them to all sorts of people before they are published." The blood mounted in Gesa's cheek.