Читать книгу Daughters of Men - Hannah Lynch - Страница 11

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Many years ago a German mechanic drifted, in the spirit of adventure, eastwards, and finding the conditions of life offered him in Athens sufficiently attractive for a man desirous of earning his bread in the easiest manner possible, and not contemptuously inclined towards the midday siesta, the excellent Teuton settled down in the city we may presume to be no longer under the special patronage of Wisdom. Not that Jacob Natzelhuber regretted that Athens’ reign was over. The mechanic was ignominiously indifferent to all great questions, and so long as his employers continued to pay him his weekly wages, conscientiously earned and conscientiously saved, the extravagances of the unfortunate King Otho and the virtues of Queen Amelia troubled him as little as did the glorious ruins on the Acropolis. He never went near the Acropolis. When his glance rested on the mass of broken pillars and temples that dominate every view of the town, he doubtless confused them with the eccentric shapes of the adjoining hills, and if asked his opinion of that point of classic memories, would tranquilly remove his pipe from his lips and remark that the other hill, his own special friend, Lycabettus, was higher. A good-humored, egoistic, phlegmatic workman, for the rest; fond of leisurely meditation on nothing, fond of smoking in his shirt-sleeves with the help of an occasional glass of mastia or brandy, and convinced that the world goes very well now as it did in olden days, and that the Greek is a composite of barbarian and child.

In a wife one naturally chooses what is most convenient, if one cannot obtain what is most suitable. Jacob chanced upon an enormous indolent maiden, dowered as Greek maids usually are, with a father whose house property was prophetic of better things to come. The girl was not handsome—nor as cleanly or learned in household matters as a German frau; but some half dozen years in the makeshift of Oriental domestic life had served to deaden Jacob’s fastidious sensibilities in this department, and with the prospect of a little money and a couple of houses in the neighbourhood of Lycabettus by and by, on the death of a respectable father-in-law, he was so far demoralised as to face this unsavory future with tolerable tranquillity. They married.

The slow and philosophic Teuton found his Athenian wife and their one servant—a small barefooted child, in perpetual terror of her mistress, whose reprimands generally came upon her in the shape of tin utensils, water-jugs or stiff tugs of hair and ear—rather more noisy than a simple woman and child should be, to his thinking. But he preferred a quiet smoke on the balcony to interference in the kitchen, whence the sounds of hysterical cries, very bad language indeed, and sundry breaking articles reached him.

The lady, when not in a rage, a rare enough occurrence, was an amiable woman so long as her innocent habits were not interfered with. Jacob was indisposed to interfere with any one—even with his own wife. So Kyria Photini peacefully smoked her three or four cigarettes, and drank her small glass of cognac of an evening, chattered in high Athenian tones with her neighbours, arrayed in a more or less soiled white morning jacket, and any kind of a skirt, with black hair all dishevelled, and sallow cheeks not indicative of an immoderate preference for cold water and soap. The little maid trembled and broke plates, went about with bare feet, short skirts and unkempt woolly hair, meeting her mistress’s vituperations with a wooden animal look, and lifting a protective arm to catch the threatened blow or object. Jacob was not happy, but he was philosopher enough to know that few people ever are, and that the highest wisdom consists in knowing how to make the best of even the worst. He was fond of his wife in his heavy German fashion, removed his pipe, and said, “come, come,” when the heat unstrung her nerves and sent her from her normal condition, bordering on hysterics, into positive madness; consoled himself by remembering that distinguished men in all ages have agreed that woman is incomprehensible, and hoped for some acceptable amelioration with the birth of the expected baby.

The baby came, a small dark girl, and the baby’s mother went to heaven, Jacob naturally supposed, and shed the customary tears of regret, though it can hardly have been happiness or comfort that he regretted. He engaged an Athenian woman to look after the child, and returned to his daily work and bachelor habits, deterred by recent experiences from making any other venture in the search of domestic bliss. The child was called Photini, and it was greatly to be hoped that a little of the paternal temperament would go to correct the vices of the maternal, but there are relative stages in the path of moral development, and a lazy, hysterical, soulless woman is not the worst thing in feminine nature.

Photini grew up pretty much as the animals do, without any but merely natural obligations placed upon her. She ran about like a little street arab, learned neither reading, nor writing, nor catechism, nor sewing; swore like a small trooper, was more than a match for the barefooted, unkempt-headed girl, who soon learned to tremble before her as she had formerly trembled before her mother; was even too much for her quiet father, who began to be afraid of her furious explosions, and was too indifferent to the duties of paternity to trouble himself seriously about her education. Yet a pretty and striking child she was, with large topaz eyes, that in their audacity and frankness were sufficient in themselves to arrest attention, if there were no mossy black curls making an engaging network above and around the fine boyish brow; with the absurdest and sauciest nose and a wide, pale mouth that had a way of twisting itself into every imaginable grimace without losing a certain disreputable charm of curve and expression. A face full of precocious evil, but withal exquisitely candid—what the French would call a ragged face, warning you and yet claiming a sort of indefinable admiration from its absolute courage and truthfulness. She took to the streets as kindly as if she had been born in them, rolling about in mud and dust in the full enjoyment of unfettered childhood, dealing blows, expletives, kisses and ugly names with generous indifference. With every one she quarrelled, not as children do, but as savages quarrel, fiercely and murderously; but even in this innocent age she displayed a frank preference for the male sex. Girls filled her with unlimited contempt, and she was never really happy unless surrounded by a group of noisy, quarrelling boys. Then her pretty teeth would gleam in wild laughter, and she would talk more nonsense in five minutes than any six ordinary girls in an hour.

The father saw the lamentable condition of his child, but being a philosopher and caring only for abstract meditations and his ease, he preferred that she should be kept out of his sight as much as possible, than that he should be asked to mend matters. What can a man be expected to do with a motherless baby girl? Not teach it the alphabet, surely? Nor walk it about the barren slopes of Lycabettus of a Sunday, nor initiate it into the mysteries of the Catechism? Clearly there was nothing else for a hard-working and good-tempered German to do but let nature work her will on such unpromising and unmanageable material, and continued to smoke his pipe and drink his mastic at his favourite coffee-house fronting Lycabettus. If nature failed, it was far from likely that he should succeed, and it was too much to expect him to devote his rare leisure hours to his unruly child. The neighbours did not, however, regard it in this light; but then neighbours never are disposed to regard the concerns of others from a reasonable point of view. So many improvements they could bring into the management of your family matters which they fail to bring into their own. No, no; leave a philosopher to find the easiest road of life and to discover a way out of all domestic responsibilities. Socrates was an admirable example in this high path, and if he could discourse in public on the immortality of the soul and other subjects, while his much calumniated wife and child wanted bread at home, a more modest individual like Jacob Natzelhuber might certainly sip his mastic in the Greek sunshine, and cherish a poor opinion of the policy of Metternich, while his little daughter was running about the narrow Athenian streets.

But there was one saving and remarkable grace about Photini. Not only did she display a nascent passion for music, but even as an infant she had shown an amazing taste for thrumming imaginary tunes on every object with which her fingers came in contact. When not fighting with a dozen amiable little beggars, or rolling delightedly in mud and dust, she was always to be seen playing this imaginary music of hers, and on the few occasions when her father took her to hear the German band on the Patissia Road, the sight of the King and Queen on horseback was nothing to her in comparison with the joy of sound.

This growing passion was becoming too prominent and imperious to be long overlooked; besides, Jacob had a German’s reverence for true musical proclivities, so he purchased the cheapest piano to be had, engaged the services of a Bavarian music master who had come to Athens in the hope of making his fortune under his compatriot king, and for so many hours in the day, at least, Photini was guaranteed from mischief. Her progress was something more than astonishing, and caused the Bavarian to give his spectacles an extra polish before announcing gravely to Jacob that Liszt himself could not ask for a more promising pupil. This naturally made Jacob very thoughtful, and sent his aimless meditations into quite a new channel. It is a negative condition of mind to feel that one has a poor opinion of Metternich, but to learn that one has a genius in one’s daughter leads to disagreeably positive reflections.

Now Jacob was a quiet man, we know, and the idea of an exceptional child frightened him. It was not an enviable responsibility in his estimation. Far from it, a distinctly painful one. An ordinary girl who would have grown just a little better-looking than her mother, learned to sew and housekeep in the usual way, and terminated an uneventful girlhood by marriage into something better than mechanics, thanks to his industry and economy—this was his ideal of a daughter’s career. Evidently here Nature thought differently.

As soon, however, as he had given a conscientious attention to Photini’s talent, greatly injured by the modest instrument on which she played, he came to the conclusion that this was not a case in which man can interfere, and that he was before a vocation claiming its legitimate right of sovereignty and refusing to be shifted off into the shallow byways of existence.

“I am of your opinion,” he said to the Bavarian master. “It is no common talent, that of my girl, but for my part I would far rather she did not know a major from a minor scale. It is not a woman’s business. However, I can do nothing now. I leave the matter in your hands. I am a poor man, but whatever you propose, as far as it is honourably necessary, I will make an effort to meet your proposal,” he added, with a slow, grave look.

“There is nothing for it but Germany, Natzelhuber,” said the Bavarian, promptly. “I should fancy we might manage, with the help of your father-in-law, a little influence I possess, and the girl’s own genius, to get her three or four years’ study in Leipzig. Once that much assured, she need only keep her head above water, and the waves will surely carry her——”

The Bavarian flung out his hands in an attitude suggestive of infinity.

“Well, well, so long as they do not carry her into evil,” said Jacob, shaking his head mournfully. “I am mistrustful of a public career for a woman.”

“You cannot deny that it is better than marriage with a man of your own class.”

“I am not so sure about that. But I am afraid Photini will turn out one of those women who had best avoid marriage with any one. She does not look likely to make any man happy, or herself either. A perverse, passionate, uneducated girl, with more ugly names in her head than any two ordinary street boys, and not a single good or amiable instinct in her that I can see.”

Jacob, excellent man, quite forgot to take into consideration that he himself was far from innocent of these disastrous results, and that his paternal indifference had had far more to do with her ill condition than any predisposition of the child’s.

“That is quite another matter and one that concerns me not at all,” rejoined the Bavarian, indifferently. “Art, my dear sir, Art! Fraulein Photini represents an abstract idea to me. The problem of her destiny as a woman has no attraction for me. She may marry, or she may not—she is not a pretty girl, but I have seen men make idiots of themselves about uglier. It all depends on the spectacles you use. But I am of opinion that a woman of genius has no business with marriage. Goethe, you may remember, wisely calls it the grave of her genius.”

“Probably, but there is time enough to think of that.”

Photini’s grandfather, when consulted, was only too glad to contribute towards the speculation of winging this hybrid fledgling from the parent nest. The Greeks have a naïve respect for fame, of which there was promise in Photini’s talent, so her relatives willingly abstracted a portion from the family funds for her use.

One October morning, Photini, a stripling rather than a girl, of fifteen, with big keen yellow eyes and soft dark curls breaking away from the eyebrows in petulant confusion over and round her head like a boy’s, escorted by a faintly disapproving and anxious father, left the Piræus on an Austrian liner bound for Trieste. Not at all a pretty or attractive girl, most people would decide; of a vulgar indefiniteness of type and a coarseness of expression hardly excused by the charming hair and strange eyes. But she had the virtue of extreme youth on her side, as shown in the slender and supple frame, in the freshness and surprise of her glance, and in the rounded olive cheek melting into a full throat like a bird’s. And youth, God bless it, carries its own apology anywhere; it is the time of possibilities and vague hopes. This girl might, nay, must grow less brusque, less vulgar, less boyish with the development of womanhood; and as her features would refine, so would her heart, at present as safe and hard as a coral, expand and open out its hidden buds of tremulous sensibility and delicate feeling.

Her second year in Leipzig brought her the third medal, and a decided reputation, yet there were many complaints against her. She had unpardonable fits of idleness broken by explosions of temper, and language hardly less gross than what might be expected in the lowest phase of society. These shortcomings, added to a sharpness of manner and a coarseness of mind, terrified and astounded her masters, who, however, were ready enough to overlook such deficiencies when under the spell of her masterful playing. A girl of seventeen with already an unmistakable fire of inspiration and an echo of Liszt in her touch was not to be despised clearly, whatever her vices, and they, alas! were many, and promised to be more. Her companions shunned her, and her masters spoke of her as “La gamine,” no other appellation being so justly indicative of her appearance and manners.

In the fourth year she left the Conservatoire, its acknowledged star, and capable now of steering her own course in whatever direction impulse or deliberate choice might push her. One of the fortunate of this earth, standing, at twenty, apart, wrapped in the conscious cloak of genius, a majesty, alas! she was incapable of measuring, and which she was destined only to trail in the mire without reaping any benefit, pecuniary or social, from its possession. It was almost as sad a mistake on the part of Nature as if she had endowed one of the lower animals with some glorious gift which could never be to it other than a grotesque ornament. The girl understood nothing of responsibility, and yet she was proud, unapproachably proud as an artist. She felt and gloried in her superiority in a stupid senseless way; could not acquit herself of the commonest civility towards those who were desirous of helping her, had not the remotest idea of gratitude or the art of gracious acceptance, and considered inconceivable rudeness to every one who addressed her as her natural right. She ought to have been happy, and would doubtless have been so had she known ambition, or felt a moderate but healthy desire to please. But she was hardly conscious of feelings of any kind, only of blind dim instincts of which she could give no account to herself. Poor dumb, unfinished creature with but half a soul, and that run to music. It was pitiable. As she massed follies, proud stupidities, and degradations one upon the other, until the thinnest thread of common sense, of merely animal self-protection was lost to view, one could only wonder and grieve, but not excuse. Nature seemed to have been the sinner, and the extravagant creature her victim. And then there were lucid moments—wretched awakenings, stupefied contemplation of the havoc that had been made of promise, of ripe chances, and, by way of anodyne, a deeper plunge into the mire.

Her first act of independence was a concert in Leipzig which proved an abnormal success, and then upon the advice of her director she went to Vienna, furnished with letters for Liszt. The amiable and courtly king of pianists received her with an exquisite cordiality, expressed the highest satisfaction with her abilities, gave her a few finishing instructions which she received, as was her wont, ungraciously enough; used his influence in securing her success with his own special public, and recommended her to Rubinstein, who was then on his way back from England. This was the beginning of the only lasting period of lucidity in her mad career.

She left Vienna with Liszt’s portrait and his autograph, “To the Queen of Sound,” added to her meagre luggage, for it was not her way to decorate her plainness of person by any unnecessary attention to her toilet. Just as, music excepted, she was totally uneducated, illiterate even, barely able to write a letter that would shame a peasant, in Greek or German,—which languages she regarded as equally her native tongues,—so her person was left rigidly unadorned. At twenty the results of untidiness are not so deplorable as at thirty or forty, for there is always the fresh round cheek and clear gaze as a relief, and then the complete absence of vanity in a very young girl, constantly before the public in a prominent position, is something so unusual that one can afford to regard it with a smile of wonder rather than one of disdain. The striking feature of the case was that she was fond of male society—particularly of the admiring and love-making male. But heaven help the innocence of the lover who expected her to put on a bow, or brush her hair, or choose a hat with a view to please him!

Rubinstein was more than satisfied with her; paid little or no attention to any eccentricity of exterior or manner, and was ready and glad to do all in his power to advance her. After some years of hard work and occasional public appearances, it was agreed that she should spend a season at St. Petersburg.

Everybody was disposed to receive her with open arms and lift her to a permanent and glorious pedestal. But good-natured and art-loving Russian princesses and countesses had calculated without their host. This young lady had no desire to be patronised or helped. People might come to her concerts or to her as pupils, and they might stay away: it mattered little to her which they did. In either case she was pretty sure to regard them as idiots, and if they came to her they would have the advantage of hearing it,—that was the difference, which made it easier for them to stay away, as not only the Russian princesses and countesses found out, but also the princes and counts. They might invite her to their entertainments, but it was a wise precaution on their part not to feel too sure of her presence—as for expecting an answer to a polite letter or message, or civil treatment upon a morning call or at a lesson, well, all this lay without the range of probabilities for the most sanguine.

Her peculiarities were incredible. Rubinstein’s name and influence opened every door to her, and the results were unique. She appeared at one Grand Duchess’s in evening dress with woollen gloves, to the dumb amazement of distinguished guests, one sprightly duchess wondering why she had omitted to come in waterproof and goloshes. When introduced to an ambassador, and informed of his passion for music, she coolly surveyed him from the top of his bald head to the edge of his white gold-striped trousers, and said to her host: “I do not want to be introduced to him. A fellow in gold can know nothing about music.”

Her pupils she treated even worse. One young countess who was studying Chopin with her sent her a rich plum cake. The Natzelhuber, as she was called, was smoking a cigarette when the servant entered with the countess’s letter, followed by a powdered footman who presented her the cake with a stately bow.

“Does your mistress fancy I am starving?” roared the artist, throwing away her cigarette and seizing the cake in both hands. “What do I want with her trumpery cakes? Tell her that is the reception it met with from Photini Natzelhuber.”

She opened the door, rolled the unfortunate cake down the stairs, flung the gracious note after it, and upon them the frightened footman, who, not foreseeing what was coming, was easily knocked off his balance by her powerful little wrists. Of course the countess discontinued her studies of Chopin, and the Natzelhuber can hardly be said to have been the gainer in the transaction. These were the stupid blunders that left her soon without a friend or a well-wisher. Incapable of a mean or an ungenerous act; incapable of uttering a spiteful word behind an enemy’s back, she was equally incapable of uttering a gracious one to the face of a friend. The habit of recklessly indulging in vile language which she acquired in the streets of Athens never left her, and ambassadors, noblemen, artists and friends who momentarily offended her were never less than “pigs, asses,” and other such gentle and inoffensive beings. She could not help this failing any more than her bad temper and her passion for brandy and sensual pleasures of every kind.