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Book 1Four
The next morning Lucy was in Chicago, in her own room, unpacking and putting her things to rights. She lived in a somewhat unusual manner; had a room two flights up over a bakery, in one of the grimy streets off the river.
When she first came to Chicago she had stayed at a students` boarding-house, but she didn`t like the pervasive informality of the place, nor the Southern gentlewoman of fallen fortunes who conducted it. She told her teacher, Professor Auerbach, that she would never get on unless she could live alone with her piano, where there would be no gay voices in the hall or friendly taps at her door. Auerbach took her out to his house, and they consulted with his wife. Mrs. Auerbach knew exactly what to do. She and Lucy went to see Mrs. Schneff and her bakery.
The Schneff bakery was an old German landmark in that part of the city. On the ground floor was the bake shop, and a homely restaurant specializing in German dishes, conducted by Mrs. Schneff. On the top floor was a glove factory. The three floors between, the Schneffs rented to people who did not want to take long leases; travelling salesmen, clerks, railroad men who must be near the station. The food in the bakery downstairs was good enough, and there were no table companions or table jokes. Everyone had his own little table, attended to his own business, and read his paper. Lucy had taken a room here at once, and for the first time in her life she could come and go like a boy; no one fussing about, no one hovering over her. There were inconveniences, to be sure. The lodgers came and went by an open stairway which led up from the street beside the front door of the restaurant; the winter winds blew up through the halls--burglars might come, too, but so far they never had. There was no parlour in which Lucy could receive callers. When she went anywhere with one of Auerbach`s students, the young man waited for her on the stairway, or met her in the restaurant below.
This morning Lucy was glad as never before to be back with her own things and her own will. After she had unpacked, she arranged and rearranged; nothing was too much trouble. The moment she had shut the door upon the baggage man, she seemed to find herself again. Out there in Haverford she had scarcely been herself at all; she had been trying to feel and behave like someone she no longer was; as children go on playing the old games to please their elders, after they have ceased to be children at heart. Coming up from the station, through a pecking fall of sleet, she wondered whether something she had left in this room might have vanished in her absence; might not be there to welcome her. It was here she had come the night after she first heard Clement Sebastian, and here she had brought back all her chance glimpses of him. These four walls held all her thoughts and feelings about him. Her memories did not stand out separately; they were blended and pervasive. They made the room seem larger than it was, quieter and more guarded; gave it a slight austerity.
Since she was going to Sebastian`s recital tonight, Lucy had her dinner early, in the restaurant below. When she came upstairs again, it was not yet time to dress. She put on her dressing-gown, turned out the gas light, and lay down to reflect.
Only three months ago, early in October, Professor Auerbach had told her that his old friend, Clement Sebastian, was in Chicago, and that she must hear him--probably he would not be there long. He was a man one couldn`t afford to miss. But Lucy had little money and many wants; a baritone voice didn`t seem to be one of the most vehement. She missed his first recital without regret, though afterwards the newspaper notices, and the talk she heard among the students, aroused her curiosity. The following week he gave a benefit recital for the survivors of a mine disaster. Auerbach got a single ticket for her, and she went alone. She had dressed here, in this room, without much enthusiasm, rather reluctant to go out again after a tiring day. She had turned on the steam heat and put out the gas and gone downstairs, anticipating nothing.
Sebastian`s personality had aroused her, even before he began to sing, the moment he came upon the stage. He was not young, was middle-aged, indeed, with a stern face and large, rather tired eyes. He was a very big man; tall, heavy, broad-shouldered. He took up a great deal of space and filled it solidly. His torso, sheathed in black broadcloth and a white waistcoat, was unquestionably oval, but it seemed the right shape for him. She said to herself immediately: "Yes, a great artist should look like that."
The first number was a Schubert song she had never heard or even seen. His diction was one of the remarkable things about Sebastian`s singing, and she did not miss a word of the German. A Greek sailor, returned from a voyage, stands in the temple of Castor and Pollux, the mariners stars, and acknowledges their protection. He has steered his little boat by their mild, protecting light, eure Milde, eure Wachen. In recognition of their aid he hangs his oar as a votive offering in the porch of their temple.
The song was sung as a religious observance in the classical spirit, a rite more than a prayer; a noble salutation to beings so exalted that in the mariner`s invocation there was no humbleness and no entreaty. In your light I stand without fear, O august stars! I salute your eternity. That was the feeling. Lucy had never heard anything sung with such elevation of style. In its calmness and serenity there was a kind of large enlightenment, like daybreak.
After this invocation came five more Schubert songs, all melancholy. They made Lucy feel that there was something profoundly tragic about this man. The dark beauty of the songs seemed to her a quality in the voice itself, as kindness can be in the touch of a hand. It was as simple as that--like light changing on the water. When he began Der Doppelganger, the last song of the group (Still ist die Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen), it was like moonlight pouring down on the narrow street of an old German town. With every phrase that picture deepened--moonlight, intense and calm, sleeping on old human houses; and somewhere a lonely black cloud in the night sky. So manche Nacht in alter Zeit? The moon was gone, and the silent street.--And Sebastian was gone, though Lucy had not been aware of his exit. The black cloud that had passed over the moon and the song had obliterated him, too. There was nobody left before the grey velvet curtain but the red-haired accompanist, a lame boy, who dragged one foot as he went across the stage.
Through the rest of the recital her attention was intermittent. Sometimes she listened intently, and the next moment her mind was far away. She was struggling with something she had never felt before. A new conception of art? It came closer than that. A new kind of personality? But it was much more. It was a discovery about life, a revelation of love as a tragic force, not a melting mood, of passion that drowns like black water. As she sat listening to this man the outside world seemed to her dark and terrifying, full of fears and dangers that had never come close to her until now.
A note on the program said there would be no encores. After the last number, when the singer had repeatedly come back to acknowledge applause, the lights above the stage were turned out. But the audience remained seated. A French basso from the New York opera, who happened to be in town, occupied a stage box with a party of friends. He kept calling:
Clement! Clement!
At last the baritone came back, his coat on his arm and his hat in his hand. He bowed to his colleague, the bass, then turned aside and spoke through the stage door. The lame boy appeared; they had a word together under the applause. Sebastian walked to the front of the stage in the half-darkness and began to sing an old setting of Byron`s When We Two Parted; a sad, simple old air which required little from the singer, yet probably no one who heard it that night will ever forget it.
Lucy had come home and up the stairs, into this room, tired and frightened, with a feeling that some protecting barrier was gone-- a window had been broken that let in the cold and darkness of the night. Sitting here in her cloak, shivering, she had whispered over and over the words of that last song:
When we two parted, In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted, To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Surely that hour foretold Sorrow to this.
It was as if that song were to have some effect upon her own life. She tried to forget it, but it was unescapable. It was with her, like an evil omen; she could not get it out of her mind. For weeks afterwards it kept singing itself over in her brain. Her forebodings on that first night had not been mistaken; Sebastian had already destroyed a great deal for her. Some peoples` lives are affected by what happens to their person or their property; but for others fate is what happens to their feelings and their thoughts--that and nothing more.
The following day Lucy had questioned Paul Auerbach about Sebastian, at first timidly, then fiercely. What was his history? What had he been like as a boy? What made him different from other singers?
"Oh, but," said Professor Auerbach calmly, "Clement is very exceptional; he is a fine artist." This exasperated her. It was like saying, This is a black horse, or, This is a tall tree. Auerbach promised her that she should meet him some time, but it never seemed to come off.
Then one afternoon, a few days before the Christmas vacation, Auerbach came into the back room where Lucy was just finishing with a pupil and told her he had a surprise for her. Sebastian would be here at the studio at ten o`clock tomorrow morning. His accompanist, James Mockford, was to have an operation on his hip when he got home to England, and for the present his doctor wanted him to spend his mornings in bed. He might be able to keep his concert dates, if he got rid of the routine work. Sebastian was looking for someone to accompany him in his practice hours. He was coming tomorrow to try out several of Auerbach`s pupils, and Lucy would have a chance to play for him.
"He wants someone young and teachable, not somebody who will try to teach him. I think you might please him, Lucy. I spoke for you."
That night, of course, she slept very little. She had never been nervous when Auerbach asked her to play for his friends; he had told her this was because she was not ambitious,--that it was her greatest fault. But this time it was different. If she didn`t please Sebastian, she would probably never meet him again. If she did please him--But that possibility frightened her more than the other. For an ordinary singer she thought she could do very well; but she could never play for him. She hadn`t it in her. By five o`clock in the morning she had decided not to appear at the studio at all; she would decline the risk.
With her breakfast, courage revived. To this day she could not remember how she ever got to Auerbach`s studio, but she arrived there. As she approached the door, she heard Sebastian singing the "Largo al Factotum" from the Barber of Seville. It must be John Patterson at the piano. She slipped in quietly. It was an easier entrance than she had hoped for. When the aria was over, Auerbach introduced her. Sebastian was easy and kindly. He took her hand and looked straight into her eyes.
"Shall we set to work at once, Miss Gayheart, or had you rather wait a bit, while Mr. Schneller and I try our luck?"
"I`d rather try now, if you please," she said decidedly.
He laughed. "And get it over with? Don`t be nervous. It`s no great matter. We might try this same aria. I seemed not to do it very well."
Poor young Patterson flushed under his sandy hair; he knew what that meant.
"Have you ever played the piano accompaniment?" Sebastian asked as she sat down.
"I haven`t happened to. But I`ve heard the opera."
When they finished he began turning over his music. "Now suppose we take something quite different." He put an aria from Massenet`s Herodiade, "Vision fugitive," on the rack before her.
Afterwards he called Mr. Schneller, and Lucy sat in a deep corner of the sofa, remembering the mistakes she had made. Presently she heard Sebastian thanking the two young men and telling Auerbach they were a credit to him.
"Now, my boys, I won`t keep you any longer. We will have another practice morning one of these days. I`m going to detain Miss Gayheart; she was a little nervous and I want her to try again." He shook hands with Schneller and Patterson, and they left. Then he took Auerbach`s arm and walked with him toward the sofa where Lucy was sitting. "On the whole, Paul, I think Miss Gayheart would be the best risk. She is a little uncertain, but she has much the best touch."
Auerbach spoke up for her.
"She`s not usually uncertain. I was surprised when she went wrong in the Massenet. She reads well at sight."
"I was frightened, Mr. Auerbach," Lucy said feebly.
The large man in the double-breasted morning coat stood before her and smiled encouragingly. "I know when people are frightened, my dear. I`ve seen it before. The point is, you do not make ugly sounds; that puts me out more than anything. After the holidays you must come to my studio and we`ll try an hour`s practice together. That`s the only way to arrive at anything. Just when do you get back from your vacation?"
On the 3rd of January, she told him.
"Very well, shall we say January 4th, at ten o`clock, in my studio on Michigan Avenue?" He took a notebook from his pocket and wrote it down. "You might take the score of Elijah with you and glance over it." Again he looked at her intently, with real kindness in his eyes. "Good-bye, Miss Gayheart, and a pleasant holiday."
That was the last time she had seen him.
Tonight she would hear his Schubert program, and tomorrow morning at ten she was to be at his studio.
* * *
Lucy sprang up from her bed; it was almost time to start for the concert. She slipped into her only evening dress and put on the velvet cloak she had bought just before she went home for Christmas. It was very pretty, she thought, and becoming (she had quite impoverished herself to have it), but it was not very warm. Tonight there was a bitter wind blowing off the Lake, but she was going to have a cab--anyway, she was not afraid of the cold. She rather liked the excitement of winding a soft, light cloak about her bare arms and shoulders and running out into a glacial cold through which one could hear the hammer-strokes of the workmen who were thawing out switches down on the freight tracks with gasoline torches. The thing to do was to make an overcoat of the cold; to feel one`s self warm and awake at the heart of it, one`s blood coursing unchilled in an air where roses froze instantly.
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