University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
LYDIAN MEASURES.

I dined en famille at Mr. Denman's the day
after that panic-struck night walk with Cecil
Dreeme.

“You are looking pale and thin, Emma,” said
Mr. Denman, as his daughter rose to leave us to
our claret. “You need more variety in your
life. Why not let Byng take you to the opera
to-night? Our box has stood vacant, now, these
many weeks.”

“Yes,” said I, “it is the new opera to-night.”

Emma glanced at her black dress.

“Go!” said Denman, with something of harshness
in his tone, “that need not cloud your life
forever.”

“Do go,” said I.

“I will,” she said, with a slight effort. “But
I shrink from appearing in public again.”

“It is time you should get over that feeling.
We shall soon be receiving company again,” said
her father. “So be ready when Byng and I have
had our cigars.”

She was ready, and we drove to the Opera-House
together.

Her mourning was exquisitely becoming to her
slight, graceful, refined figure. The startled and
almost timorous manner I had noticed in our
first interview had lately grown more marked.
This shy, feminine trait excited instant sympathy.
It recalled how her life had been shocked
by the sudden news of a tragedy. She seemed
to have learned to tremble, lest she might encounter
at any moment some new disaster sadder
than the first. This was probably mere
nervousness after her long grief, so I thought.
Yet sometimes, when I spoke to her with any
suddenness, she would start and shrink, and turn
from me; then, exercising a strong control over
herself, she would return, smile away the fleeting
shiver, and be again as self-possessed and gay as
ever.

As we entered the Opera-House and took our
places in Mr. Denman's conspicuous box, the
glare of the lights and the eyes of a great audience
making a focus upon her affected Emma
with the panic I have described. She turned to
me with the gesture of one asking protection,
almost humbly.

“I must go,” she said; “I cannot bear to have
all the world staring at me in this blank, hard,
cruel way. They hurt me, — these people, prying
into my heart to find the sorrow there.”

“In a moment it will be an old story,” said I.
“Do not think of going, dear Emma. The
change and the excitement of the music will do
you good. This nervousness of a débutante will
pass away presently.”

Dear Emma! The first time that any such
tender familiarity had passed my lips. And my
manner, too, I perceived, expressed a new and
deeper solicitude. I perceived this; so did my
companion.

She looked at me, with a strange, fixed expression,
as if she were resisting some potent impulse.
Then a hot blush came into her cheeks. She
sank into her seat, and fanned herself rapidly.
Her brilliant color remained.

“Emma,” said I, bending toward her, “what
splendid change has befallen you? You are at
this moment beautiful beyond any possible dream
of mine.”

“Do not speak to me,” she said; “I shall
burst into tears before all these people. This
crowd, after my seclusion, confuses and frightens
me. Let me be quiet a moment!”

All the world, of course, was immediately
aware of the reappearance of the beautiful Miss
Denman. There was much curiosity, and some
genuine sympathy. “Nods and becks and
wreathed smiles” came to her from the boxes on
every side. Her entrée was a triumph — as such
triumphs go.

To avoid this inspection, she took her lorgnette
and glanced about the house. I followed its
direction.

I saw her pause a moment on the group of men
in the lobby. At the same time we both recognized
Densdeth, regarding us.

He was laughing with Raleigh and others. I
seemed almost to hear the sharp tone of that
cynical, faithless laugh of his.

All the color faded out of Emma Denman's
face. She sank back, almost cowering. Cowering,
— the expression does not exaggerate the
effect of her gesture. She cowered into the
corner of the box, and hid her face behind her
fan.

I should have spoken to demand the reason of
her strange distress, when the leader of the orchestra
rapped; there was a hush, and the new
overture began with a barbaric blare of trumpets.

So the opera went on, to the great satisfaction
of all dilettanteism.

It was thoroughly debilitating, effeminate music.
No single strain of manly vigor rose, from
end to end of the drama. Never would any
noble sentiment thrill along the fibres of the soul
in response to those Lydian measures. It was
music to steep the being in soft, luxurious languors;
to make all effort seem folly, all ardor
madness, all steady toil impossible; — music to lap

the mind in somnolence, in a careless consent to
whatever was, were it but bodily ease and moral
stagnancy.

There was no epic dignity, no tragic elevation,
no lyrical fervor, in the new opera. Passion it
had; but it was a dreamy passionateness, not the
passion that wakes action, nervous and intent.
Even its wild strains, that meant terror and danger,
came like the distant cry of wild beasts in a
heavy midnight of the tropics, — a warning so
far away, that it would never stir the slumbers
of the imperilled.

Always this music seemed to sound and
sing, with every note of voice or instrument, —
“Brethren, what have we to do with that idle
fiction of an earnest life? While we live, let us
live in sloth. Let us deaden ourselves with soft
intoxications and narcotic stupors, out of reach
of care. Why question? Why wrestle? Why
agonize? Here are roses, not too fresh, so as to
shame the cheeks of revelry. Here is the dull,
heavy sweetness of tropic perfume. Here is
wine, dark purple, prostrating, Lethean. Here
are women, wooing to languid joys. Here is
sweet death in life. So let us drowse and slumber,
while the silly world goes wearily along.”

Emasculated music! Such music as tyranny
over mind and spirit calls for, to lull its unmanned
subjects into sensual calm. Such as an

Italian priesthood has encouraged, to make its
people forget that they were men, and remember
that they were and would ever be slaves. Music
that no tyrant need ever dread, lest it should
nerve the arm of a tyrannicide. Music that
would never ring to any song of freedom, or
chime with any lay of tender and ennobling love.

The story was as base as the strain. There
was tragedy, indeed, in it, and death. But
a neat, graceful, orderly death, in white satin.
Nothing ugly, like blood and pangs; nothing distressing,
like final repentance with tears, or final
remorse with sobs and anguish. The moral was,
that after a life of revelry, not too frantic, to
die by digestible poison, when pleasure began to
pall, was a very proper and pretty exit.

Delicious music, and only soothing if music
were simply a corporeal influence, but utterly
enervating to the soul. I felt it. I was aware
of a deterioration in myself. I passed into a
Sybaritic mood, — a mood of consent, — of accepting
facts as they were, and missing nothing
that could give a finer joy to my sensuous tranquillity.
In this frame of mind, the degree and
kind of my passion for Emma Denman satisfied
me wholly. I yielded to it.

And she, in the same lulled and dreamy state,
lost the dignity of manner which had kept us
apart. She no longer shrank as she had been

wont to do when my voice or words conveyed a
lover meaning. Her shyness was gone. She
seemed to yield herself to me, fully and finally.

All the while the swelling, flowing, soothing
strains of honeyed music hung around us, and
when the movement of the drama paused, our
minds pursued the same intention in our talk.

We agreed that all regret was idle; that sorrow
was more idle than regret; that error
brought its little transitory pang, and so should
be forgotten; that mundane creatures should not
be above mundane joys in this fair world, reeking
with sights and sounds of pleasure, and all
lavish with what sense and appetite desire. We
agreed that it was all unwisdom to perplex the soul
with too much aspiration; better not aspire than
miss attainment, and so pine and waste, as one
might sigh his soul away that loved a cloud.

Between the acts, I saw Densdeth moving
about, welcome everywhere, — the man who had
the key of the world. A golden key Densdeth
carried. All the salable people, and, alas! that
includes all but a mere decimation, threw open
their doors to Densdeth. Opera-box and the
tenants of the box were free to him.

The drama was nearly done, and he had not
been to pay his respects to Emma Denman,
though he had bowed and smiled in congratulation.

“Densdeth does not come to tell you how brilliantly
you are looking to-night,” I said.

“I do not need his verdict,” she said, coldly
enough; — and then, as if I might take the coldness
to myself, she added, “since I have yours,
and it is favorable.”

“Yes; my verdict is this, — Guilty, — guilty
of being your most fascinating self, — guilty of
a finer charm to-night than ever before.”

“Guilty!” she said, turning from me. “Guilty,
thrice repeated! Do use some less ominous
word.”

The music ceased. The curtain slowly descended,
and hid the sham death-scene. There
was the usual formal applause. The conceited
tenor in his velvet doublet, unsullied by his late
despair, the truculent basso, now in jovial mood,
the prima donna, past her prime, sidled along,
hand in hand, behind the foot-lights, and bowed
to the backs of two thirds of the audience, and to
the muffled resonance of the white gloves of the
other third.

The spiritual influence of the opera remained,
mingled with a slight forlornness, the reaction
after luxurious excitement.

I left Emma Denman in the corridor, and
went to find the carriage.