5. V.
In Norway the ladies dress with the innocent
purpose of protecting themselves against the
weather; if this purpose is still remotely present
in the toilets of American women of to-day,
it is, at all events, sufficiently disguised to
challenge detection, very much like a primitive
Sanscrit root in its French and English derivatives.
This was the reflection which was uppermost in
Halfdan's mind as Edith, ravishing to behold
in the airy grace of her fragrant morning toilet,
at the appointed time took her seat at his side
before the piano. Her presence seemed so
intense, so all-absorbing, that it left no thought
for the music. A woman, with all the spiritual
mysteries which that name implies, had always
appeared to him rather a composite phenomenon,
even apart from those varied accessories of
dress, in which as by an inevitable analogy, she
sees fit to express the inner multiformity of her
being. Nevertheless, this former conception
of his, when compared to that wonderful
complexity of ethereal lines, colors, tints and half-tints which go to make up the modern New
York girl, seemed inexpressibly simple, almost
what plain arithmetic must appear to a man who
has mastered calculus.
Edith had opened one of those small red-covered volumes of Chopin where the rich,
wondrous melodies lie peacefully folded up like
strange exotic flowers in an herbarium. She began
to play the fantasia impromtu, which ought
to be dashed off at a single “heat,” whose
passionate impulse hurries it on breathlessly toward
its abrupt finale. But Edith toiled considerably
with her fingering, and blurred the keen
edges of each swift phrase by her indistinct articulation.
And still there was a sufficiently
ardent intention in her play to save it from being
a failure. She made a gesture of disgust
when she had finished, shut the book, and let
her hands drop crosswise in her lap.
“I only wanted to give you a proof of my
incapacity,” she said, turning her large luminous
gaze upon her instructor, “in order to make you
duly appreciate what you have undertaken.
Now, tell me truly and honestly, are you not
discouraged?”
“Not by any means,” replied he, while the
rapture of her presence rippled through his
nerves, “you have fire enough in you to make
an admirable musician. But your fingers, as
yet, refuse to carry out your fine intentions.
They only need discipline.”
“And do you suppose you can discipline
them? They are a fearfully obstinate set, and
cause me infinite mortification.”
“Would you allow me to look at your
hand?”
She raised her right hand, and with a sort of
impulsive heedlessness let it drop into his. An
exclamation of surprise escaped him.
`{`}If you will pardon me,” he said, “it is a
superb hand—a hand capable of performing miracles—
musical miracles I mean. Only look here”
—and he drew the fore and second fingers apart
—“so firmly set in the joint and still so flexible.
I doubt if Liszt himself can boast a finer row
of fingers. Your hands will surely not prevent
you from becoming a second Von Bulow, which
to my mind means a good deal more than a
second Liszt.”
“Thank you, that is quite enough,” she
exclaimed, with an incredulous laugh; “you have
done bravely. That at all events throws the
whole burden of responsibility upon myself, if
I do not become a second somebody. I shall be
perfectly satisfied, however, if you can only
make me as good a musician as you are yourself,
so that I can render a not too difficult piece
without feeling all the while that I am committing
sacrilege in mutilating the fine thoughts
of some great composer.”
“You are too modest; you do not—”
“No, no, I am not modest,” she interrupted
him with an impetuosity which startled him.
“I beg of you not to persist in paying me
compliments. I get too much of that cheap article
elsewhere. I hate to be told that I am better
than I know I am. If you are to do me any
good by your instruction, you must be perfectly
sincere toward me, and tell me plainly of my
short-comings. I promise you beforehand that
I shall never be offended. There is my hand.
Now, is it a bargain?”
His fingers closed involuntarily over the soft
beautiful hand, and once more the luxury of her
touch sent a thrill of delight through him.
“I have not been insincere,” he murmured,
“but I shall be on my guard in future, even
against the appearance of insincerity.”
“And when I play detestably, you will say
so, and not smooth it over with unmeaning
flatteries?”
“I will try.”
“Very well, then we shall get on well
together. Do not imagine that this is a mere
feminine whim of mine. I never was more in
earnest. Men, and I believe foreigners, to a
greater degree than Americans, have the idea
that women must be treated with gentle forbearance;
that their follies, if they are foolish,
must be glossed over with some polite name.
They exert themselves to the utmost to make
us mere playthings, and, as such, contemptible
both in our own eyes and in theirs. No sincere
respect can exist where the truth has to be
avoided. But the majority of American women
are made of too stern a stuff to be dealt with in
that way. They feel the lurking insincerity
even where politeness forbids them to show it,
and it makes them disgusted both with themselves,
and with the flatterer. And now you
must pardon me for having spoken so plainly
to you on so short an acquaintance; but you
are a foreigner, and it may be an act of friendship
to initiate you as soon as possible into our
ways and customs.”
He hardly knew what to answer. Her
vehemence was so sudden, and the sentiments she
had uttered so different from those which he
had habitually ascribed to women, that he could
only sit and gaze at her in mute astonishment.
He could not but admit that in the main she
had judged him rightly, and that his own attitude
and that of other men toward her sex,
were based upon an implied assumption of
superiority.
“I am afraid I have shocked you,” she
resumed, noticing the startled expression of his
countenance. “But really it was quite inevitable,
if we were at all to understand each other.
You will forgive me, won't you?”
“Forgive!” stammered he, “I have nothing
to forgive. It was only your merciless truthfulness
which startled me. I rather owe you
thanks, if you will allow me to be grateful to
you. It seems an enviable privilege.”
“Now,” interrupted Edith, raising her
forefinger in playful threat, “remember your
promise.”
The lesson was now continued without further
interruption. When it was finished, a little girl,
with her hair done up in curl-papers, and a very
stiffly starched dress, which stood out on all sides
almost horizontally, entered, accompanied by
Mrs. Van Kirk. Halfdan immediately recognized
his acquaintance from the park, and it appeared
to him a good omen that this child, whose friendly
interest in him had warmed his heart in a moment
when his fortunes seemed so desperate,
should continue to be associated with his life
on this new continent. Clara was evidently
greatly impressed by the change in his appearance,
and could with difficulty be restrained
from commenting upon it.
She proved a very apt scholar in music, and
enjoyed the lessons the more for her cordial
liking of her teacher.
It will be necessary henceforth to omit the
less significant details in the career of our friend
“Mr. Birch.” Before a month was past, he had
firmly established himself in the favor of the
different members of the Van Kirk family.
Mrs. Van Kirk spoke of him to her lady visitors
as “a perfect jewel,” frequently leaving them
in doubt as to whether he was a cook or a
coachman. Edith apostrophized him to her
fashionable friends as “a real genius,” leaving
a dim impression upon their minds of flowing
locks, a shiny velvet jacket, slouched hat,
defiant neck-tie and a general air of disreputable
pretentiousness. Geniuses of the foreign type
were never, in the estimation of fashionable
New York society, what you would call “exactly
nice,” and against prejudices of this order
no amount of argument will ever prevail. Clara,
who had by this time discovered that her teacher
possessed an inexhaustible fund of fairy stories,
assured her playmates across the street that he
was “just splendid,” and frequently invited
them over to listen to his wonderful tales. Mr.
Van Kirk himself, of course, was non-committal,
but paid the bills unmurmuringly.
Halfdan in the meanwhile was vainly struggling
against his growing passion for Edith;
but the more he rebelled the more hopelessly
he found himself entangled in its inextricable
net. The fly, as long as it keeps quiet in the
spider's web, may for a moment forget its
situation; but the least effort to escape is apt to
frustrate itself and again reveal the imminent
peril. Thus he too “kicked against the pricks,”
hoped, feared, rebelled against his destiny, and
again, from sheer weariness, relapsed into a
dull, benumbed apathy. In spite of her friendly
sympathy, he never felt so keenly his alienism
as in her presence. She accepted the spontaneous
homage he paid her, sometimes with impatience,
as something that was really beneath
her notice; at other times she frankly
recognized it, bantered him with his “Old World
chivalry,” which would soon evaporate in the
practical American atmosphere, and called him
her Viking, her knight and her faithful squire.
But it never occurred to her to regard his
devotion in a serious light, and to look upon him
as a possible lover had evidently never entered
her head. As their intercourse grew more
intimate, he had volunteered to read his favorite
poets with her, and had gradually succeeded in
imparting to her something of his own passionate
liking for Heine and Björnson. She had in
return called his attention to the works of
American authors who had hitherto been little
more than names to him, and they had thus
managed to be of mutual benefit to each other,
and to spend many a pleasant hour during the
long winter afternoons in each other's company.
But Edith had a very keen sense of humor, and
could hardly restrain her secret amusement when
she heard him reading Longfellow's “Psalm of
Life” and Poe's “Raven” which had been
familiar to her from her babyhood, often with
false accent, but always with intense enthusiasm.
The reflection that he had had no part of his
life in common with her,—that he did not love
the things which she loved,—could not share
her prejudices and women have a feeling akin
to contempt for a man who does not respond to
their prejudices—removed him at times almost
beyond the reach of her sympathy. It was
interesting enough as long as the experience
was novel, to be thus unconsciously exploring
another person's mind and finding so many
strange objects there; but after a while the
thing began to assume an uncomfortably serious
aspect, and then there seemed to be something
almost terrible about it. At such times a call
from a gentleman of her own nation, even
though he were one of the placidly stupid type,
would be a positive relief; she could abandon
herself to the secure sense of being at home;
she need fear no surprises, and in the smooth
shallows of their talk there were no unsuspected
depths to excite and to baffle her ingenuity.
And, again, reverting in her thought to Halfdan,
his conversational brilliancy would almost
repel her, as something odious and un-American,
the cheap result of outlandish birth and
unrepublican education. Not that she had ever
valued republicanism very highly; she was one
of those who associated politics with noisy
vulgarity in speech and dress, and therefore
thanked fortune that women were permitted to
keep aloof from it. But in the presence of this
alien she found herself growing patriotic; that
much-discussed abstraction, which we call our
country and which is nothing but the aggregate
of all the slow and invisible influences
which go toward making up our own being,
became by degrees a very palpable and
intelligible fact to her.
Frequently while her American self was thus
loudly asserting itself, Edith inflicted many a
cruel wound upon her foreign adorer. Once,—
it was the Fourth of July, more than a year after
Halfdan's arrival, a number of young ladies and
gentlemen, after having listened to a patriotic
oration, were invited in to an informal luncheon.
While waiting, they naturally enough spent their
time in singing national songs, and Halfdan's
clear tenor did good service in keeping the
straggling voices together. When they had
finished, Edith went up to him and was quite
effusive in her expressions of gratitude.
“I am sure we ought all to be very grateful
to you, Mr. Birch,” she said, “and I, for my
part, can assure you that I am.”
“Grateful? Why?” demanded Halfdan,
looking quite unhappy.
“For singing our national songs, of course.
Now, won't you sing one of your own, please?
We should all be so delighted to hear how a
Swedish—or Norwegian, is it?—national song
sounds.”
“Yes, Mr. Birch, do sing a Swedish song,”
echoed several voices.
They, of course, did not even remotely suspect
their own cruelty. He had, in his enthusiasm
for the day allowed himself to forget that
he was not made of the same clay as they were,
that he was an exile and a stranger, and must
ever remain so, that he had no right to share
their joy in the blessing of liberty. Edith had
taken pains to dispel the happy illusion, and had
sent him once more whirling toward his cold
native Pole. His passion came near choking
him, and, to conceal his impetuous emotion, he
flung himself down on the piano-stool, and struck
some introductory chords with perhaps a little
superfluous emphasis. Suddenly his voice burst
out into the Swedish national anthem, “Our
Land, our Land, our Fatherland,” and the air
shook and palpitated with strong martial melody.
His indignation, his love and his misery,
imparted strength to his voice, and its occasional
tremble in the
piano passages was something
more than an artistic intention. He was loudly
applauded as he arose, and the young ladies
thronged about him to ask if he “wouldn't
please write out the music for them.”
Thus month after month passed by, and every
day brought its own misery. Mrs. Van Kirk's
patronizing manners, and ostentatious kindness,
often tested his patience to the utmost. If he
was guilty of an innocent witticism or a little
quaintness of expression, she always assumed it
to be a mistake of terms and corrected him
with an air of benign superiority. At times, of
course, her corrections were legitimate, as for
instance, when he spoke of wearing a cane,
instead of carrying one, but in nine cases out of
ten the fault lay in her own lack of imagination
and not in his ignorance of English. On such
occasions Edith often took pity on him,
defended him against her mother's criticism, and
insisted that if this or that expression was not
in common vogue, that was no reason why it
should not be used, as it was perfectly
grammatical, and, moreover, in keeping with the
spirit of the language. And he, listening
passively in admiring silence to her argument,
thanked her even for the momentary pain
because it was followed by so great a happiness.
For it was so sweet to be defended by Edith, to
feel that he and she were standing together side
by side against the outer world. Could he only
show her in the old heroic manner how much he
loved her! Would only some one that was
dear to her die, so that he, in that breaking
down of social barriers which follows a great
calamity, might comfort her in her sorrow.
Would she then, perhaps, weeping, lean her
wonderful head upon his breast, feeling but that
he was a fellow-mortal, who had a heart that
was loyal and true, and forgetting, for one brief
instant, that he was a foreigner. Then, to
touch that delicate Elizabethan frill which
wound itself so daintily about Edith's neck—
what inconceivable rapture! But it was quite
impossible. It could never be. These were
selfish thoughts, no doubt, but they were a lover's
selfishness, and, as such, bore a close kinship to
all that is purest and best in human nature.
It is one of the tragic facts of this life, that a
relation so unequal as that which existed between
Halfdan and Edith, is at all possible. As
for Edith, I must admit that she was well aware
that her teacher was in love with her. Women
have wonderfully keen senses for phenomena of
that kind, and it is an illusion if any one
imagines, as our Norseman did, that he has locked
his secret securely in the hidden chamber of his
heart. In fleeting intonations, unconscious
glances and attitudes, and through a hundred
other channels it will make its way out, and the
bereaved jailer may still clasp his key in fierce
triumph, never knowing that he has been
robbed. It was of course no fault of Edith's
that she had become possessed of Halfdan's
heart-secret. She regarded it as on the whole
rather an absurd affair, and prized it very
lightly. That a love so strong and yet so humble,
so destitute of hope and still so unchanging,
reverent and faithful, had something grand and
touching in it, had never occurred to her. It is
a truism to say that in our social code the value
of a man's character is determined by his position;
and fine traits in a foreigner unless he
should happen to be something very great
strike us rather as part of a supposed mental
alienism, and as such, naturally suspicious. It
is rather disgraceful than otherwise to have your
music teacher in love with you, and critical
friends will never quite banish the suspicion
that you have encouraged him.
Edith had, in her first delight at the discovery
of Halfdan's talent, frankly admitted him
to a relation of apparent equality. He was a
man of culture, had the manners and bearing of
a gentleman, and had none of those theatrical
airs which so often raise a sort of invisible wall
between foreigners and Americans. Her mother,
who loved to play the patron, especially to young
men, had invited him to dinner-parties and introduced
him to their friends, until almost every one
looked upon him as a protégé of the family. He
appeared so well in a parlor, and had really such
a distinguished presence, that it was a pleasure
to look at him. He was remarkably free from
those obnoxious traits which generalizing American
travelers have led us to believe were inseparable
from foreign birth; his finger-nails were
in no way conspicuous; he did not, as a French
count, a former adorer of Edith's, had done,
indulge an unmasculine taste for diamond rings
possibly because he had none; his politeness
was unobtrusive and subdued, and of his accent
there was just enough left to give an agreeable
color of individuality to his speech. But, for
all that, Edith could never quite rid herself of
the impression that he was intensely un-American.
There was a certain idyllic quiescence
about him, a child-like directness and simplicity,
and a total absence of “push,” which were
startlingly at variance with the spirit of American
life. An American could never have been
content to remain in an inferior position without
trying, in some way, to better his fortunes.
But Halfdan could stand still and see, without
the faintest stirring of envy, his plebeian friend
Olson, whose education and talents could bear
no comparison with his own, rise rapidly above
him, and apparently have no desire to emulate
him. He could sit on a cricket in a corner,
with Clara on his lap, and two or three little
girls nestling about him, and tell them fairy
stories by the hour, while his kindly face
beamed with innocent happiness. And if Clara,
to coax him into continuing the entertainment,
offered to kiss him, his measure of joy was full.
This fair child, with her affectionate ways, and
her confiding prattle, wound herself ever more
closely about his homeless heart, and he clung
to her with a touching devotion. For she was
the only one who seemed to be unconscious of
the difference of blood, who had not yet learned
that she was an American and he—a foreigner.
