The Concert-Director

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BY NELLIE K. BLISSETT — * AUTHOR OF " THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE " EonSon MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1898 All rights reserieed Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, london and bungay. CONTENTS PAGE PRELUDE ... ... ... ... ••• ••■ I PAET I. THE PRIMA DONNA ... ... ... IO, „ II. THE MAN AT THE OTHER TABLE ... IOj „ III. THE VICTORY OF THE VANSUISHED ... 223 FINALE ... ... ••• ■•• ••■ ••• 3°3 PRELUDE The rain was falling softly and persistently, and in the air was a damp freshness grateful after the heat of a late and sultry summer. The weather has an undoubted effect upon the course of existence. It is beloved of those seeking for conversational brilliancy, and finding it not ; it is a boon to the uninspired letter writer. It has caused many crimes, innumerable disappointments, and not a few tragedies.

A wet day is not an uncommon occurrence in Vienna, nor, for the matter of that, anywhere else ; yet the fact that it rained upon that par ticular day, and in that particular place, changed the destinies of three people, who, but for the weather, might never have come in contact with each other. It is significant, too, that the con necting link which united them was a storm. The rain had been comparatively gentle until B about three o'clock in the afternoon, and then it came down violently, beating with a hard rattle upon the pavements, and driving along the streets in what seemed to be solid sheets of water. A young man, without an umbrella, who had been detained by business in a part of the city with which he was not familiar, found that he had missed his road, and went into a little cafe at the corner of the street to ask the way.

When he returned to the door, the prospect seemed so uninviting that he turned back and sat down at one of the small marble-topped tables to wait until the violence of the rain should diminish. Not five minutes later another visitor entered the cafe. He was large, and tall, and muffled in heavy furs, despite the fact that it was only early in the autumn. The first stranger glanced up at him curiously, for he knew him by sight as Spada, the famous impresario. He watched him with idle interest, and purely for the reason that he had nothing else to watch. He had finished his business, and was in no particular hurry to get home. For the rest, it was all the doing of the rain — or of Fate in the shape of a wet day. The impresario also sat down at one of the little tables. He looked as though fresh from a long journey, and he ordered himself PRELUDE 3 food and wine, and fell upon them hungrily.

Part I The Prima Donna Chapter

I The little fishing village of Villac lay — and for that matter lies still — in the shadow of the great black headland of Sainte Anne. A reef of rocks, upon which many a tall ship had struck and perished miserably, ran out from the foot of the headland like a row of sharp teeth, flecked in winter with ugly yellow foam, and in summer almost hidden beneath the treacherous sapphire of the sea. On the side of the promontory stood the Convent of Sainte Anne wherein the Princess Antonio Tarasca had threatened to take shelter in her grief, and on the warm slope beneath the ridge lay the Chateau de Villac itself, a grey old building, square and low, with gardens and terraces running down to the shore. To the left of it stood a private chapel of later date than the Chateau, with a neat little pointed spire surmounted by a great cross that flashed like gold in the sunshine.

And beneath that shining cross, just in front of the high altar, a great slab of white marble had been let into the PT. I 22 coloured mosaic of the pavement. In those days the marble itself was hardly visible for the wealth of flowers which was heaped there. Only in the centre of it was left an empty space upon which a date was cut, and beneath it the simple name " Antonio Tarasca." There were two entrances to the chapel, one leading by a covered way from the Chateau, and the other opening on a broad stone terrace look ing over the sea. Here, in the days following the signing of that contract between Spada the impresario, and Israel Scaramanga the Jew, a figure in heavy black draperies paced slowly up and down, hour after hour, from morning till night. The sunshine lay like fire upon the sea, for the summer seemed to have gathered all its power again, as it often does for a brief space before the final burst of autumn rain and wind.

The brown sails of the fishing-boats danced merrily across the bay, and the sea-gulls swooped and flashed above the blue waters, reflecting the glare of the sun from their broad white wings. But the figure on the terrace never noticed these things, but walked up and down with slow, mechanical steps, and eyes fixed always on the stone flags with a gaze that saw nothing but its own despair. For Xenia Tarasca had been, as the impresario had said, mad with grief; and now that the madness had passed, it had left behind it a dull blank of misery and utter hopelessness harder still to bear. For days after her husband's death she had been like a raging fury, and then the fury suddenly disappeared, and in its place was a statue in sweeping black, walking up and down the terrace, eating, drinking, moving, with a terrible mechanical regularity, silent and un approachable.

The frightened servants watched her from behind curtains, and through the chinks of doors. The good old cure came and sat by her, and took her little cold hand in his own lean, brown fingers, and spoke softly and kindly to her, and tried to rouse her to some sign of life. He spoke of Antonio Tarasca, and looked at the beautiful pale face for some answering glance of recognition, but not so much as the flicker of an eyelid replied to the name. He sent for the Abbess of Sainte Anne from her convent, and she came and walked up and down the terrace beside the black figure and talked to it for hours, but there was never any answer on the white lips. Then they became terrified, too, and led her into the music-room, and seated her before the piano, and placed her hands upon the keys ; but she stared at the little strips of ivory as though she had never seen them before PT.

I in her life. Last of all they brought the portrait of her husband, a great canvas whereon was a life-size figure, and set it unexpectedly before her. She looked coldly at it for a moment, and then turned away without a sign of interest ; the features of the dead man in his coffin beneath the marble slab could not have been more motionless and lifeless than hers. So at last they gave her up, and left her to walk up and down the terrace in peace, thinking that she was mad indeed, and past all hope and all despair. They noticed that sometimes she picked flowers in an aimless kind of way, and walked with them in her hands as though seeking for a place to put them, and one day she strayed into the chapel with her arms full of white roses, and stood above the slab of marble. The old priest was in the chapel, and he watched her as she stood there, and thought that never, in all his life, had he seen anything so beautiful, or so sad.

She looked at the stone at her feet and read the name, and he saw her lips move silently as though she were repeating it ; and then she bent down and pushed all the scented hot-house flowers aside and gathered them into a heap on the pavement, and laid her own white roses in their place, covering the slab until nothing of it was visible but the name in the centre. After that day they never put flowers on Antonio's grave ; but they always found them there, fresh every morning. Soon after that wet day when the three men sat in the little Viennese cafe, a boat began to lie in the middle of the bay, and in it was a thin dark man, with a Jewish face and glittering eyes. He had found quarters in one of the cottages on the beach, and seemed to like to talk to the fishers as they lounged on the fine white sand and mended their nets, and patched the sails of their boats.

Naturally, the Princess Tarasca and her madness formed the chief topic of conversation in Villac at that time, and her name was often on the men's lips, mingled with many expressions of pity ; for she was little more than a child, and her beauty and her misery would have touched harder hearts than theirs. They did not notice, these simple fishers, that when the stranger was amongst them the Princess invariably dominated the conversation ; they were not observant enough to appreciate the masterly adroitness with which he turned and twisted every subject until it reached the gossip of the Chateau and rested there. He sat among them, with his easy smile and smooth voice, and the eyes that shot out sparks of changing light ; and they were as so many tools PT. I in his hand, and as absolutely under his com mand as the pebbles he tossed into the clear blue waters.

He informed himself daily of the Princess's condition, and then rowed out into the middle of the bay and watched the black figure on the terrace above as it moved slowly to and fro. His face was very thoughtful as he watched, and his eyes flickered and darkened as they followed her up and down, up and down, with a gaze as steady as a panther's when it crouches to spring. He lay and basked in the sunshine like a sleepy lizard, and thought of a great many things. First, his mind took hold of the facts of the situation as they passed before him from day to day, and he knew that it was of no use to approach Tarasca in her present mood. Then his quick imagination leapt into the future, and he saw himself successful, a man with a position in the world, a start in life, and brains that would take the uttermost advantage of every opportunity, until he became a moving power and influence in the particular sphere of his ambition.

He saw himself rich ; and he lay very quiet in the boat, and only his eyes burnt like flames in the still face — flames that had in them the glint of gold, and the love of it, deep, silent, strong, engraved into the man's nature by a thousand racial and hereditary instincts, as com pletely a part of him as the blood that ran in his veins, and the subtle, powerful intellect that no passion had been able to shake, and no adversity subdue. Sometimes, too, he thought of the woman whose name lay under the slips of stamp-paper beneath the signature " Israel Levi Scaramanga"; and when he did so his face became cold and hard, and his lips a thin straight line of in flexible resolution. If Rhoda Levi could have seen him with that expression on his face before she wrote her last despairing appeal, she would have known that it was as vain to speak of pity to him, as it would have been to cry out for help to the sea, or the sunshine, or the rocks that lay in wait for prey under the headland of Sainte Anne.

In the evening, when it was cool, he would leave the beach and stroll along the lanes about the Chateau. He never wandered far from the old building, for he liked to watch it and con sider it, just as a cat likes to sit over a mouse hole hour after hour in broad daylight, though she knows that it is extremely improbable that she will catch so much as a glimpse of the mouse's whiskers. There was a great deal of the cat in Israel Scaramanga's disposition, and PT. I his methods were distinctly feline. If souls were always clothed in the form which best expressed them, his would surely have inhabited the body of a panther — a strange black puma, swift, and soft, and deadly, with a satin coat and paws of noiseless velvet, and under the velvet, talons hooked, and sharp, and strong as steel. He had been in Villac a week without seeing anything more of the Princess than her figure on the terrace, and one evening as he prowled round and round the Chateau, he sat down on a bank beside the road to rest, and lit himself a cigarette.

The windows on that side of the building hung right over the narrow lane, and it was quite easy to hear the slightest sound in the room under which Scaramanga had stopped. It happened to be the music-room, where the great piano stood idle and unopened since the day of Antonio Tarasca's death. Perhaps it was fate which drove the Princess, aimless as always, into the music-room upon that particular evening. Scaramanga, comfortably lounging on his bank, was innocent of the near presence of the woman he had come to hunt — the mouse over whose hole he watched so industriously. He lay back with his eyes fixed on the distance in a bright, intent gaze, and never knew that the curtain had been drawn aside in the window above, nor saw the cold, white face looking down at him with the faintest dawning glimmer of human and natural curiosity.

Presently the curtain dropped silently, and the figure of the Princess disappeared ; and at that moment, as chance would have it, Scara manga began to whistle. He fell into a dance measure, and then into a scrap of operatic melody ; and then, thoughtless of the importance of what he did, he began to whistle the Russian air, The Red Sarafan. The Princess, moving towards the door, stopped at the first sound of the whistling as though she had been shot. She listened, with parted lips and lifted head, and the light came back slowly into her dull eyes, and a faint colour dawned in her white face. Her glance fell upon the piano, and she gave a little start of recognition, and went across and sat down upon the stool. Her fingers touched the keys silently and wonderingly, as a child handles a familiar but long-lost toy.

Then Scaramanga began his third selection, and all at once the light of reason leapt into the girl's eyes. She did not for the moment remember her sorrow, but she remembered her art, and her fingers fell on the keys, and her voice rose and answered to the sound. Out into the hush of the evening floated The Red Sarafan, as lovely PT. I 30 and pathetic an air as ever was written ; and Scaramanga gave a great start of astonishment. Then, as the perfect voice gained strength and sweetness, he did a strange thing — a thing which no one could explain, and which he did not try to explain to himself. But he got hastily to his feet, took off" his hat, and so stood, bareheaded, as though he were in some sacred place. Suddenly her fingers faltered and were still, and there was a moment of breathless silence.

Then came a crash of discords, as if something had fallen heavily forward upon the key-board, and the sound of a woman's sobs, thick, and strangling, and bitter with a bitterness that was new to the man who listened. He stood motionless for a moment. His face was still, and there was no sign of feeling in it. But the cold light had gone from his eyes, and there was something in them that looked like pity, in a place where pity had never been before. Then the spell seemed broken, and he moved away silently, smiling a little to himself in the darkness ; but it was not at all like the studied smile of Israel Scaramanga, the Jew.

Chapter II

After that day reason seemed to return to Tarasca. It was true that she still walked on the terrace hour after hour, but she answered when spoken to, and recognized the people about her. Once, too, she astonished the cure by inquiring if a strange man had been seen in the neighbourhood of the Chateau. The cure, of course, was quite ignorant of the fact that Scaramanga haunted the lanes round the old place, though he had seen him on the beach. He did not connect the Jew with the " strange man " of whom Tarasca spoke, and concluded that she referred to some apparition of her temporary madness. The cure was not a sus picious man, and no robbery had occurred in Villac within the memory of any living inhabit ant. As nobody ever left the place permanently it was not likely that the " strange man " had designs of vengeance which brought him there.

And as for Scaramanga, as I have said, he never even connected him with anything unusual ; he 3' PT. I had spoken to him on the beach and thought him particularly charming. It was not given to every one to see Scaramanga with the eye of the young man who had watched him in the Viennese cafe. But, if any one aware of that conversation with Spada had been in Villac, he would have observed that Scaramanga, though he managed it without attracting attention, was now almost continually in the vicinity of the Chateau. As a matter of fact, the Jew was beginning to realize that it was no light task he had under taken so boldly. But difficulty merely added zest to the adventure, and awakened in him a spirit of defiant resolution. He had worked hard all his life, though not perhaps with the best results, and all the tremendous energy of his mind was roused to encounter an obstacle.

An easy road, a smooth sea, would not have suited his nature, for there was in him an innate love of resistance for its own sake. To rule was the passion of the man's soul ; but to rule an obedient world would have bored him to death. So he watched Tarasca more closely than before, and lurked for hours beneath the walls of the Chateau. The black figure on the terrace seemed as far from him as ever, and he spun plots, as a spider spins webs, and discarded them one by one. It is the unexpected that always happens, and it happens sometimes in a way to forestall and not destroy the plans of men. One evening as Scaramanga walked beneath the walls of the Chateau, he saw one of the small doors which were let into the dim red brick open upon a figure dressed in deep black. He had watched it so often upon the terrace that he was not to be deceived now.

He knew that it was the Princess, and followed her. She was unconscious of his presence and walked straight on, and he saw that she was making for the beach. It did not occur to him what her errand could be, and he began to feel curious. The beach was deserted, and she went resolutely past the small cluster of houses and straight across the firm white sand. Fortunately it was dusk and she did not look back ; but Scaramanga felt oddly uneasy. It was a close evening, and there was thunder in the air ; but it was not the thunder which brought fire to the Jew's eyes, and to his face the look of a beast at its hunting. Tarasca kept steadily on, walking quickly and resolutely as though with some definite purpose in her mind. They reached the reef under the headland of Sainte Anne, and there she D PT.

I paused, and Scaramanga instinctively hid himself behind a rock. She unwound the black veil from her head, folded it neatly, and laid it on the ground, and then began deliberately to pick her way along the points of rock towards the sea, which, being at low tide, was some distance down the reef. The Jew, watching her, felt distinctly puzzled, for the simple explanation of her action did not, curiously enough, occur to him. He had been hard pressed more than once in his life, but his instinct had always been that of the animal to turn and rend the nearest thing within his reach — but never himself. Suicide was a possible mode of escape which had never appealed to him — his perfectly balanced brain rejected it as unreasonable, and his intense, physical love of life, no matter how lived, confirmed his in tellectual contempt for the folly of throwing away existence.

Therefore, when the black figure disappeared suddenly with a violent splash over the edge of the rocks, he experienced a greater shock than he had ever had before. The transition from the weird, vague strain of suspense, to the actual comprehension of a very commonplace fact, struck him as comic rather than tragic, and he almost laughed. But he also realized the serious aspect of the situation, and in a moment he had gained the edge of the rocks. Tarasca had not flung her self into very deep water, but the shock of it, icy cold after the sultriness of the day, had rendered her unconscious. She lay at his feet, floating in a mass of black draperies, and for the first time in his life he saw her face to face, and he knew Spada was right. She was beauti ful as an angel — though the phrase that had risen naturally to the impresario's lips meant little or nothing to Israel Scaramanga at the time.

He would have regarded any loveliness described as angelic as a paradoxical impossi bility, though with characteristic caution he would not have said so. He bent down and tried to reach the un conscious girl, but in vain. For a moment he hesitated and looked towards the shore, but the darkness was fast approaching and no one was near. Scaramanga was not a man of impulse, and he could not swim and was perfectly alive to the fact. On an ordinary occasion he would have studied his valued safety of life and limb at any risks to an unimportant second person — but, just as he had taken off his hat at the sound of Tarasca's voice by a sudden and curious prompting of something which he did not under stand, so now he looked at the girl's white face PT. I beneath him, and let himself down into the water.

The chill of it almost took away his breath, but he dropped resolutely down and was relieved to feel the sand beneath his feet. It was but the work of a few moments to wade with Tarasca to the shore, and deposit her high — though by no means dry — upon the shore. He laid her down, and knelt beside her, watching for the life to come back to the white features. Her wet hair was streaming over her face, and, instinctively, the Jew put out his hand and pushed it back. The glint of gold ran through the darkness of it, and here and there a thread caught the fading light and shone like fire. Scaramanga's touch was very gentle, and for the second time there was something like pity in his eyes. The folly of the girl's action did not strike him just then, and he was sorry for her. He could not understand it from the cool, impersonal standpoint from which he viewed existence, but his mood was not analytical.

There was an odd contentment in his mind, and he was not conscious of the fact that his clothes were wet through, and that a chill breeze was beginning to blow in from the sea — the sudden breath of cold air which frequently precedes a thunder-storm. Neither did he realize that a CH. II THE PRIMA DONNA 37 pure accident had brought about the meeting for which he had planned and plotted so steadily. Properly speaking, he should have been considering how best to take advantage of this unex pected stroke of fortune, but, strangely enough, he never even thought of the next move in the game. A sudden sense of unreality overcame him, and it seemed to him that he was kneeling in a dream beside some creature of his own imagination. But he was dimly conscious that the dream might have gone on very pleasantly for ever.

It did not, for Tarasca opened her eyes with a sudden start and a sob, and stared at him. He returned the stare for a moment, and then his gaze dropped, almost nervously, to the sand. She tried to move, and fell back, and in an instant he had changed his position by one swift silent movement, and was holding her up and looking at her with his usual easy smile ; only his eyes did not smile with the rest of his face, and there was something in them which fright ened and fascinated her so that she could not turn away. " Where am I ? " she asked in English ; then with another sob, " I thought I was dead." He did not answer for a moment. " You are too beautiful to die," he said at PT. I last, and his voice sounded quieter than usual, as though it were part of the dream. Tarasca did not hear him.

She was looking at the sea. Suddenly she turned on him again. "Why did you save me?" she cried pas sionately. " I wanted to die — so much. You didn't understand, or you would have let me die." " No," said Scaramanga, in the same quiet tone. " There is nothing to live for," she went on, with the tears rising slowly in her eyes. " There is nothing — any more. I wanted to go to him ! " Scaramanga did not answer, and all at once she covered her face and burst into a passion of grief. Her sobs shook the arm that held her, but they did not alter the impassive face which looked down at her with a smile of stone. He did not, as she said, understand — but if she had seen him at that moment she would have feared him more than she had done before. Presently her tears ceased, and she looked up at him again.

" Why don't you go and leave me ? " " Because you would throw yourself in there again." She eyed him curiously. " How do you know ? " " I can see it in your face. She made a little uneasy movement away from him. " I am afraid of you. How can you see any thing in my face ? There is nothing there to tell you what I meant to do." " There is a good deal there," said the Jew, slowly. His tone was cold — almost dry ; and she looked at him again. But she could read nothing. " It could not matter if I did," she said. " Would you go on living if you had lost everything you cared about?" Scaramanga smiled a little. " Perhaps. Perhaps I have nothing to care about. In that case it is best to go on living." " How horrible ! " she exclaimed involun tarily, shocked at the man's tone. Then a not unnatural feeling of curiosity prompted her to add, "Why?"

Scaramanga turned his face suddenly away. " I do not know why," he said very quietly. " Perhaps because I might wait for something to care about." A silence fell on them, and Tarasca sat look ing dreamily at the sea. The breeze had died away, and black clouds were coming up, bringing T. I a darkness not of night. One or two heavy drops of rain fell on the sand, and far away in the distance there was an odd sound like a lost wind wandering drearily on the threshold of the world. " There is a storm coming," said the Jew in his mechanical tones. Tarasca started. She had forgotten that he was still holding her, and his voice sounded almost startlingly near in the silence. "You are wet through," she said suddenly, touching the sleeve of his coat. " I did not know that. You went __ '» me r into the water after " Yes."

" Did you swim far ? " I do not swim at all the rocks." You were quite near " You might have been drowned," she said very gravely. "So might you. You wished to be." "Yes, but that is different. You did not. It was very brave of you, but it was very un necessary. I suppose I ought to thank you, though I did not want to be saved." "You need not thank me," said the Jew coldly. "I am not brave at all." She thought him offended, and somehow the thought did not please her, for, after all, he had saved her life ; and though, as she said, she had not at all desired to be saved, she still remained under an obligation to him. Besides, there was something unusual about the man — something which, at the same time, repulsed and fascinated her. She was afraid of him, and she wished to know the cause of her fear.