Read Ebook: Daughters of Men by Lynch Hannah

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Ebook has 1933 lines and 97031 words, and 39 pages

"It is a great disappointment that M. Reineke is not here to-night. He, also, is a new lion--singularly handsome and captivating and very clever, they say. He created quite a sensation in Paris last winter. But he got ill coming from Egypt and I suppose he will make his first appearance at the Jaroviskys' ball next week."

"Is there to be a ball next week?" Rudolph asked listlessly.

"Of course; are we not all vying to honour an English Cabinet minister? He will probably write about us when he gets home."

"Who are those girls laughing so loudly?" Rudolph asked, with no particular desire for information.

"He is quite a boy," cried Rudolph, cheerfully. "I shall be less afraid of him than of your lively young ladies."

Agiropoulos had in the meantime driven to Academy Street, where Mademoiselle Photini Natzelhuber was staying. He found the house in complete darkness, and only when he had made a considerable noise did a somnolent and astonished servant thrust her head out of a window and demand his business.

"Where is your mistress, Polyxena?" cried Agiropoulos.

"In bed, sir."

"In the name of all that is wonderful, has Photini gone clean out of her senses? In bed, and all Athens waiting for her at the Austrian Embassy!"

Polyxena leisurely unbolted the door, and Agiropoulos rushed past her up the stairs, and hammered frantically outside Photini's bedroom door.

"Photini, get up and dress this instant. I insist. I swear I will not leave off knocking until you come out--not even at the risk of driving all the neighbours mad!" he shouted.

"What the devil do you want at this time of night, Agiropoulos?" was roared back to him. "I will box that girl's ears for letting you in. Stop that row. You must be drunk."

"Come, no nonsense, Photini. I am serious, on my soul I am. You've been expected at the Austrian Embassy for the last hour and a half. It is just eleven, and Athenian receptions break up at midnight, you know."

"I suppose they want me to play. I had forgotten all about it. The mischief take the idiots! For goodness' sake stop that noise, and I'll get up."

It was a little after eleven when a murmur ran through the rooms on the Patissia Road that Agiropoulos had returned with the missing Pleiad. Every one pressed eagerly forward to see the great and eccentric artist. Corns were gratuitously trodden upon and the proprietors forgot to swear, dresses were crushed, and no lady remembered to cover a cross expression with a mendacious smile and a feeble "It does not matter;" all faces wore an expression of open anxiety, curiosity, and wonder.

"Quite a bear, I hear," somebody whispered, audibly, "bites and snarls even. Dresses abominably, and swears like a trooper."

Madame von Hohenfels moved towards the artist with a gracious smile of welcome, and expressed her pleasure in very cordial terms,--she could afford to be exuberant now that she was relieved of the terror of this woman's possible defection.

"This, I believe, is your first appearance in Athens after a long absence, Mademoiselle Natzelhuber."

"Where is your piano, Madame? You did not invite me for the sake of my handsome face, I suppose. Then pass compliments and come to business."

"Qu'elle est grossi?re," was the comment that ran round the room, and the English Cabinet Minister, the Right Honourable Samuel Warren, gazed at her through his eyeglass, and lisped, "What a very extraordinary creature!" One does not mix in the highest diplomatic circles for nothing, and the Baroness von Hohenfels was perfectly competent to extricate herself and her guests from an awkward situation with both grace and glory. She laughed musically, as if something specially witty had been said, and led the way to the grand piano. The seat was a high one, and Photini tranquilly kicked it down, and gazed around her in search of a low stool. Agiropoulos rushed forward with a chair of the required height, and the artist sat down amid universal silence and touched the keys lightly, upon which her nose might conveniently have played, so near were both. After a few searching bars she burst into Liszt's splendid orchestral arrangement of "Don Giovanni."

Agiropoulos cared nothing whatever about her music, and wandered round the room till he reached the place where Ehrenstein was standing.

"That was a delicate mission, eh, Ehrenstein?" he said, with his persistent smile. "Successfully accomplished too."

"Its success is as apparent as its delicacy," retorted Rudolph. He was filled with astonishment at the wave of bitterness towards this oily self-satisfied Greek that swelled within him.

Agiropoulos caught the unmistakable ironical tone.

"Might I request you to define your precise meaning, my young friend?" he asked, drily.

"That is easily done. You have acted to-night as no gentleman should."

All girlish timidity had faded out of Rudolph's eyes, which flashed like gem fire in the sparkle of honest indignation.

"Ho! is that where we are?" cried the Greek, with a low exasperating laugh, as he twisted his moustache and examined the gloss of his shoes. "And the crime?"

"In permitting my aunt to speak to you in a distinctly offensive way of Mademoiselle Natzelhuber, and in smiling as you did when you entered the room with her."

"My dear fellow, what a simpleton you are to talk in this superannuated style about the Natzelhuber."

"Mademoiselle Natzelhuber is a woman. An honourable gentleman makes no distinction between women as regards certain laws. The same courtesy and consideration are due to all."

"Don't tilt against windmills in this extravagant way, Ehrenstein," said Agiropoulos, laughing good-humoredly. "Why, Photini would be the first to laugh at us for a pair of imbeciles if she heard that we quarrelled about her. She does not want consideration. She is rather a fine fellow in a rough and manly way of her own--very rough, I admit."

"Pray, make no mistake about me. I object to such vulgar classification as you are disposed to make," cried Rudolph, sharply.

"I'll be as wide and as refined as you like--platonic, artistic, spiritual--whichever suits you best. But we may not doubt the admiration, my friend."

"To prevent gross misinterpretation, I will give you the situation. I hold myself willingly and proudly enslaved to such genius as hers. I would gladly sit in silence all my life if my ear might be filled with music such as hers. For the sake of that, I am ready to offer my friendship, and forget the rest."

Rudolph stood back a little with a listening rapt expression, and Agiropoulos glanced contemptuously down at Photini. Agiropoulos was constitutionally incapable of understanding disinterested admiration. His sentiments were coarse and definite, and to him were unknown the conditions of strife, probation, unrewarded and unexacting love, self-distrust and tremulous aspiration and fear; above all, was he free from a young man's humble reverence of womanhood, which, in the abstract, was to him something so greatly inferior to himself as to be below consideration. Cheerful it must be to escape the hesitations and exquisitely painful flutterings between doubt and hope, and the thousand and one causes of clouded bliss, to the more fastidious and ideal Northern nature. He looked forward to a suitable marriage when his relations with Photini should come to an end, but was not concerned with the question of choice. Girls are plentiful enough, and handsome or ugly, they come to the same thing in the long run: mothers of children of whose looks their husbands are unconscious.

In response to the loud applause which greeted her last chord, Mademoiselle Natzelhuber rose slowly, bent her head as low as her knees, the mossy black curls rolling over her forehead like a veil, and her hands hanging straight down beside her. No one present had ever seen a lady bow in this masculine fashion, and following the breathless magnificence of her playing it so awed her spectators that some moments of dead silence passed before they were able to break into their many-tongued speech.

"Let me have some cognac, if you please," she said, curtly, turning to her delighted hostess.

What will not the mistress of a salon endure if she may furnish her guests with a thoroughly new sensation! And certainly Mademoiselle was a very novel sensation.

The cognac was promptly administered to the artist, and the people began to move about and express their opinions.

"What bad taste! Persephone is surely a beautiful name."

"Who is that going to play now?" asked Rudolph.

"Good heavens! it's Melpomene--and after the Natzelhuber!"

No wonder there was much admiration expressed at the nerve of the lady who bravely undertook to play such a masterpiece as Chopin's "Barcarolle" in the presence of a master not given to handle offenders gently. But everyone was disposed to receive the amiable imperfection of an amateur with indulgence, while it was impossible to conjecture the feelings of the short-haired woman who was quietly sipping her second glass of cognac on an ottoman and listening with a fixed neutral stare in her yellow eyes. When the piece was over, the artist rose, and said with awful measured politeness:

"Does Madame imagine that she has played Chopin's 'Barcarolle?' Doubtless Madame has mistaken the name. I will play the 'Barcarolle' now."

When the first wave of emotion had subsided, and the artist had bowed her acknowledgment in the same curious way, too contemptuous even to shake the flowers off her person, her host stepped forward to offer her his arm and lead her towards the buffet in another room. Somebody else stepped forward with gracious intent, a young self-sufficient viscount, the nephew of the distinguished French minister. He bowed low, and acquainted her with the agreeable fact that he had never heard anything like her playing of the "Barcarolle," and his regret that Chopin himself could not hear it. Mademoiselle looked at him meditatively for some trying seconds, then said calmly:

"Do you really believe, sir, that I require your approval? Be so good, sir, as to confine your observations on music to your equals."

"Truly a remarkable and slightly disconcerting person," said the English Cabinet Minister, arranging his eyeglass the better to observe her. "Extraordinary, egad! I suppose artists are bound to be erratic. But don't you think they could play just as well with hair like everybody else, and decent manners?"

His companion was of opinion they could, and suggested that the artist in question would create a lively sensation in a London drawing-room.

All the guests now struggled forward in search of refreshments. But Rudolph strolled about waiting for an opportunity to see Photini alone. His gratitude and admiration were at that exalted pitch when an outpouring is imperative. He knew nothing of the vile report that had been circulated concerning his own relations with her, and sought her with the damning candour of complete innocence. He found her, and the discovery sent a shock of horror through him that almost stopped the beating of his heart. She was in the centre of a noisy laughing group of men, smoking a cigarette and holding an empty liqueur glass in her hand into which the Baron von Hohenfels was pouring some brandy, laughing boisterously and joking hideously. Every nerve within him thrilled in an agony of shame. This the glorious interpreter of heavenly sound! This the artist he so passionately desired to reverence as a woman, while worshipping her genius! He was half prompted to go away in silence, when his eyes caught the sarcastic triumph of Agiropoulos' smile. With a mighty effort he gulped down the bitterness of disappointment and shocked surprise, and bravely went forward.

"I have been looking for you, Mademoiselle," he said coldly. "I wanted so much to thank you for the delight you have given me to-night--this addition to past delight," he added, holding out his hand.

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