THE HOUSE OF GAUZE
A MOZART FANTASY
“Good evening, my Lord of Mozart.”
The voice was sweet and so was the title. He looked up in surprise. Midnight had sounded. He had thought that he was the only one awake in the old house in the Rauhensteingasse with its myriad rooms, of which he rented three. His wife and children were abed. Their clothing littered the room in which he sat and added to its disorder.
He remembered the beautiful face that was bending beside him. At sight of it the years rolled back to the days of his childhood. Now, as she stood in his miserable room and called him “My Lord of Mozart,” he jumped up in readiness for her behest.
“I have come for you. The carriage waits below.”
Something snapped in his head, and it seemed to him that he rushed through gray leagues of space. Then he mastered himself and followed in the direction in which his visitor had gone. He did not find her. She was not within the hall nor upon the street.
There, however, a carriage waited, its driver by the door. He jumped in and fell back among soft cushions. A whip curled in the air, and two horses dashed through the darkness. They left the city, and reached the country. The speed did not lessen. He saw in fleeting perspective black hills and bare trees against a dull silver sky, where pale green stars shone. After they had driven at this pace for a time, they came to a city. He did not care what city it was. He only knew that she lived here. At last he should know who she was. At last!
The driver dismounted and opened the door. With his whip he pointed to a gate ahead. Then he bowed, leaped to the box and was gone. There was an inscription upon the gate. When he came near, he read in strange and antique characters: “The Land of Music.” After he had passed through the gate, he turned to have another look at it. There was nothing to be seen of the gate through which he had entered, nor of the country beyond. In all directions rose the roofs and towers of an alien city.
He found himself in a square where a number of streets converged. He read their names, and one caught his fancy: “The Street of the Masters.” He turned into it.
“What wonderful dwellings there are in The Land of Music!” he exclaimed joyously, forgetting for the instant the one he sought. “I knew it! I knew it! Why could I not have come here sooner!” he added, his lips and chin trembling piteously.
“What dwellings the masters dwell in!” He looked rapturously down the vista before him. “Here are tone-palaces of an Assyrian magnificence, silverly translucent, of the most gracious symmetry and rising to unthinkable heights. How I love this land, through whose gateways I have just passed! How I love it! It is as if it were made for me. It is a world of crystal and silver and white onyx and pale ivory. I can see streets of dwellings whose harmonious lines make Grecian temples heavy; dwellings of such fabulously fragile beauty as the frost of northern nights paints on the windows. There are arches springing airily from arches, reproduced again and again in delicate, diminishing curves; façades of silver fretwork of the palpitating tenuity of a spider’s web; forests of fair columns, their capitals hung with leaves of light.”
Then it was that a strange inversion took place. This became the reality, and that sad other world the dream. He covered his face with his hands and gave way to a storm of tears, so greatly was he relieved to be rid of the dream where he had known only sorrow. The relief, the unspeakable relief, to know that it was a dream! His frail figure became erect and proud, as he walked along, recognizing the dwellings of his friends. “Here are the houses of Glück and Sebastian Bach and my dear, dear Haydn. But what is that—that structure just ahead? Beethoven? Yes, Beethoven.” He looked about. Nowhere could he see anything that out-topped it. “My little friend Beethoven! How kind is life in comparison with the hideousness of dreams!” Again tears dimmed his eyes. “And there dwells Händel! That is just such a temple as the saints would build. It is not altogether original, but it is the work of a mighty soul. If it does not stand for versatility, it stands for strength.”
After passing the stern home of Händel, it was some little distance to the next dwelling. When he came where he could see it plainly, he laughed long and wildly, just as madmen laugh. “Who ever heard of any one forgetting his own home! How could that black dream have lasted long enough for me to do that? Will it never cease to haunt me? The idea of forgetting my own home!” And he laughed as madly as before.
Ahead, upon a little eminence, not quite in a straight line with the other houses of the street, he saw a sumptuous Italian palace of the best days, built evidently for love and leisure.
It was just such a palace as Lorenzo the Magnificent dreamed of setting among the laureled hills of Tuscany. It was built of resonant crystal, turreted and pinacled, and provided with a myriad Venetian balconies and pillared porticos. It was not of such tremendous height as the dwelling of Beethoven, nor of such vast dimensions as that of Handel, and yet it might easily be called lovelier than either, because of its charm of design.
As he stormed up the steps impatiently, he noticed how well his blue satin court suit with its jeweled stars and orders and his curling golden hair suited the dwelling in which he lived. The doors swung open to receive him. Powdered footmen bent before him.
The guests were waiting. They were in their places ready for the dance. He bowed before his partner. Her mouth was a little red dot, and her eyes were two deep pools of love. They swung into the dance. The music uplifted them. As changing figures brought them together, he sensed pleasantly the delicacy of her flesh and the floating fragrance of her hair. As he bent in the dance’s slow salutes, his eyes embraced soft shoulders, white breasts upheld, flower-like, by stiff corsages, slim, jewel-clasped necks, and twinkling feet beneath lifted lace.
Cavaliers, with heads flung back and hands to sword hilt, like true old French gallants, danced haughtily out to meet gay Watteau ladies. Then what smiles, what courtly bows, what languishment, what bird-like gayety! In the swinging whirl he saw court trains outfloat in satin splendor, and the backward tilt of high-coiffured heads. The floors and the mirrored walls reflected the dancers, redoubling their graces in fluent light. He caught the interchange of stolen glances. He saw delicate fingers press responsive hands. He saw the amorous leaning of fond bodies and the pledge of lifted eyes. The air was electric with love. He drank it in eagerly, greedily. It was for this that he had thirsted. Again, for an instant, the black dream swept down upon him and blotted the pageant out. When it passed and he found anew the bright reality, he grasped his companion in his arms convulsively and buried his face in her breast to forget.
“To the banquet hall, good friends! To the banquet hall!” he commanded, when he lifted his face. He leaped to the center of the room, silenced the orchestra, and flung up his arms to signal attention, uncontrollable laughter bubbling on his lips—
he sang, as he danced along.
Silks swished past him. Fans fluttered like butterflies. Little slippers clicked in merry flight. Women drifted past with heightened color and dream-veiled eyes. He heard their low laughter and knew that they were being led with a caress.
As he entered the banquet room, a forest of upstretched arms whose hands held each a wineglass greeted him: “Long life to the Lord of Mozart! The Lord of Mozart!”
Amber and crimson wine-light flecked faces and breasts and lifted arms, and fell in long broken ribbons upon the walls.
“Now find out which one is sweetest!” they chorused.
“I pledge a health to each lady,” he gallantly responded, bowing before each in turn. “In this way I shall find her, for surely she is here.” When he had made the rounds and satisfied himself that she was not, he beckoned a young cavalier to him.
“Why is she not here?”
“She? She never takes part in our revels.”
“But she promised to meet me here.”
“Impossible, my lord; she is queen.”
“And I—am I not king?” he responded haughtily. Then, repenting of the words, he flung his arms tenderly about the boyish figure.
“Ah, my boy, you do not know what love is—its torture, its longing, its insatiable longing. He noticed then how the young cavalier resembled his youthful self before grief and disappointment had lined his face and lighted their wild light in his eyes.
“Go to my generals! Summon the army!”
Doors slid back, transforming the pleasure palace into a hall. The dancers arranged themselves on either side. Between them the soldiers passed. And what soldiers! They were small and supple and swift. They flew rather than walked. Each one was a black music note, spurred and bent and vicious. From their legs black needle-like stilettos pointed. They were a destructive, unstemmable torrent. When the last one had crossed the threshold, and they stood drawn up in readiness before it—“After them, my friends!” he ordered. The revelers obeyed. Black horses waited at the door. They leaped upon them and swung through the night.
In the Land of Music it is always night—night lighted by feverishly bright stars and the rising and setting of strange moons.
Upon black and shining backs poised delicate figures; outflying manes revealed the clasp of jeweled arms, and beside the wild heads of the horses shone the faces of musical nymphs. The streets through which they passed were no longer lined with magnificent buildings. They had entered the oldest part of the Land of Music, which is sparsely settled and where the dwellings are quaint and ancient. Here a primitive people had lived.
“What a ridiculous army!” roared the Lord of Mozart, who led the cavalcade, standing upon his horse and pirouetting. “Look! my good friends! Look!” He pointed ahead.
There they were, gathering about a structure of considerable extent, an army of dwarfs, with big, oblong, melon-like heads. They carried stilettos fringed with darts, but they were slow of motion and aged. They did not seem to have strength enough to carry about their cumbersome heads. And in numbers they did not reach the half of the army of Mozart.
“So that’s our enemy!” he exclaimed, convulsed with laughter, pirouetting again upon his horse’s back. “We’ll make short work of them. Quick, upon them!”
Like a cloud of black locusts, the vicious army of Mozart fell upon them. They covered them from sight. They smothered them. They dazed them by their numbers and agility. They killed them.
“Now to the house!” he called. “The way is clear.” His eyes shone like steel, and spots of fever dotted his cheeks. He knew that within that ancient dwelling was the lady of his heart.
“Come, my friends!” They rode across the dead bodies of the ancient soldiers, laughing at their ugliness. The ladies pulled high their silken trains lest they be spotted with dust and blood.
“My generals, there within sits the lady of my heart. Bring her out and place her upon the horse beside me.”
The lady they lifted to the saddle in no way resembled the gay court beauties. In her bearing there was something noble.
“Back to the palace!”
Like magic, they covered the distance. In front of the entrance, the Lord of Mozart halted and stood erect in his stirrups, bowing majestically to right and left.
“I thank you, good friends, for your aid. And now, good night. I go to celebrate the conquest of love.”
“May joy be with you!” they called in return, waving their hands as their galloping horses disappeared in the brightness of the street.
“Why did you try to conquer me by force?” she asked, facing him in the great chamber into which he had taken her, and speaking for the first time. “Do you not know that it is really by my will that I have come—to save you from humiliation? Do you not know that you can have no power over me?”
“Am I not King! I have power over everything.”
“You do not know who I am.”
“How can that matter, since I love you?”
“I am the Lady Melodia. I cannot be long to any one. I belong to all. I am queen absolute.”
“Did I not know that we are one!” he answered, bowing in mock humility to the stately figure. “Have you not come to me of your own will? Is it not you who guided me here?”
“That is why your deed to-night is shameful.”
“But I need you so!” he continued piteously. “Surely you will not leave me when I need you so. Let me tell you; then you will pity me. I am haunted by a hideous dream. (I never told any one before. I conceal it carefully.) Sometimes I cannot tell which is real—this life here, or the dream. I have the strange consciousness”—he looked about timidly, like a little child, lest some one hear his secret, then drew her close to him, his eyes dark with fear—“that I lead two lives. One is in another world, a world of hard material facts, where by the proper grasping of the facts one can have every joy, every comfort. But there I cannot grasp anything. I cannot accustom myself to living. I cannot feel at home. I cannot understand how men buy prosperity. I cannot learn anything. I cannot cope with people. They beat me at every turn. I lack something—that fiber of the commonplace that contends and wins. There, in that black dream-world, I cannot do the simplest things. And because I cannot, I suffer—suffer poverty and hunger. When I buy things honestly with my brain, when I win success, I cannot grasp it. Everything slips away and leaves me alone—to know the want of beggars. Your presence alone dispels that horror and makes me know that this is real, that I am real, and that here I belong.”
Like the face of a mother in tenderness was the face of the Lady Melodia, as she murmured: “Dear one! Dear one!”
“Your face lights that black dream-world like a star and rests upon my soul. But there it paralyzes the power of action.”
“But are you not willing to suffer the dream for the sake of this?” She indicated the glittering chamber.
“If I could always remember that it is a dream,” he answered piteously. “But they—other people—have had real things, while I have had only the glitter of foam. I’ll tell you what it’s like,” he added boyishly. “You’ve seen a bottle dropped into water where, instead of standing upright, it wavers about, unable to keep balance? That is what I am without you. Does not that justify what I did to-night? Does not that make it right?”
Pity had taken the place of resentment when she answered: “Yes, perhaps. But you see you cannot keep me. A Titan could not do that.”
“But I am more than a Titan.”
“Once I was wholly yours—”
“When?”
“In your youth. Then I was yours unasked. Before you had grown old, before life had marred you.”
He looked at himself in a mirror. It was true that there was no sign of youth in the face, nor, strange as it may seem, was there any sign of age. It was the face of one whom some terrible passion had consumed and burnt out without materially ageing.
“Why did you leave me?”
“Because you were false to me.”
“How could I be false to you when I have had no pleasures apart from you?”
“Did I not tell you that you could not live two lives—the life of a man and the life of a god?”
“You mean love? That is the only thing that makes the black dream tolerable. It is like the honey the stinging bee carries. It is the gem in the head of the toad.”
“That is why I said you were false to me,” she replied, anger brightening her eyes.
“But now I love only you. Surely you know that.”
“How can that right the matter? I cannot belong to any one in whose heart I have been supplanted for an instant.”
“You will reconsider when you know that I am worthy. Besides, there is no one else who is worthy. Perhaps you have not read my heart. I tired of that other—of love—long ago, as I have tired of every real thing. It became like a too sweet honey. It sickened me, it smothered me; it made me struggle to be free. It made me long to feel flying in my face the bright insubstantiality of dreams. And you are my brightest dream,” he said, lifting the long hair and burying his face in it.
“I know, I know, but—”
“Wait! Do not decide now. You do not know me. There are powers you have not suspected. I will make you forget. I will take you where oblivion is deepest. I will prove that I am worthy. You shall never leave me. What care I for law—for right! I will take you where there is no law, no right, except my will. I will isolate you with myself so far beyond the boundaries of the real that thought cannot return. We will go beyond the farthest edge of dreams. Come to the window where you can see the exterior of the palace. Now watch.”
She saw the crystal walls glow as if a flame dwelled within them, while from tower to basement fell a silver veil bordered with diamond sound-crystals, which floated gracefully. Then the veil rose and vanished; the flame dimmed and faded until the palace became as frail as if made of ashes. From this ashen palace rose a diaphanous, white gauze, pearl-encrusted palace, mirroring itself in a lake of ice. The man beside her, too, had changed. He became well-nigh transparent. He looked like a spirit made visible. His hand was frailer and whiter than the gauze upon which it rested. His eyes were terrible in their concentrated power.
“Now, see where I have taken you! Now do you think that there is any return? See that avenue of white ferns there, from which the frost particles fall like rain. Can you leave me now? Do you want to? Look at that frozen sea to the north, encrusted with opaque crystals. Note its greenish pallor. You are wondering what is flying across it, are you not? I can see it in your eyes. You are saying to yourself: ‘What are those creatures which have no form and yet have every form?’ Watch them awhile—watch them! My love, those changeful and indeterminate contours are the unembodied stuff melodic dreams are made of. They are the world of my soul made visible—the soul of a creator. Now do you guess where you are? If you do, you know that there is no return. They who come here cannot go back.
“Watch the far horizon for a moment! There—that light. There, every once in a while, bright caravans swing to sight, remain visible for a time, like ships upon the desert, flooding the sea with a regretful splendor, then disappear. But you can never reach them, my love, never signal them and go away from me. Do you hear that sound? But you do not know what it is, Sweet, else you would not listen so calmly.
“High above that frozen sea (in whose heart sleep a million terrors—that frozen sea, which is genius), so high that your eye cannot see it, a brilliant-winged bird hovers and flings down the fragment of a song. The bird is love. When its song reaches the surface of that frozen sea, it is shivered and broken like a crystal, and the fragments roll on and on until they reach my gauze-built palace and make it tremble pitifully. Am I not the first of kings, the wonder king! Who can resist me! Not you!” he answered, kissing her impetuously.
“Do you never tire of mad improbabilities?”
“Tire of them! Does God tire of his Heaven? The madder they are, the more they please me. I, too, am a god. I have made a heaven of my own. I can love only a self-created world where nothing bears the mark of materiality, of other people’s commonplaceness. In my world matter takes the form of my slightest wish. I am the center about which change revolves. I am the force which projects form.” He clapped his hands. “Let the palace be lighted!”
Across the floor crept the wan shimmer of the will-o’-the-wisp, and down the walls the green phosphoric glow of fireflies. Then, at a motion of his hand, the gauze palace faded to a cold ethereal splendor until it seemed to the Lady Melodia, in her fear and wonder, that it was little more than a vague radiance against the snow-lit water. Above, three moons poised, swinging melodiously into place, streaking it with opalescent light.
“Will you deign to accept my arm?” he asked mockingly. As he bent before her, she saw that he had become as ethereal as his house of gauze. His face had an unearthly beauty, and his eyes were awful in their concentrated splendor.
They left the chamber and entered a hall, in whose center a staircase descended for two stories. Upon this staircase came and went an endless procession of pale and regal women, dull gems upon their breasts and brows.
With a gesture of offended dignity, the Lady Melodia turned as if to leave the hall.
“There is no cause for anger,” he exclaimed. “I love them, of course. Are they not made for love? But in loving them, I have dreamed only of you.”
“Your love, evidently, has not made them happy,” she retorted scornfully. “Why are their eyes so full of grief and regret? And why are they silent? Do they never speak?”
“They are not real, any more than I am. They are prisoned in the crystal prison of a melody. They are the women who rise from the whirlpools of music. Like the Russalka, they flutter over the abyss. I created them to live on the boundary line of sound and silence.”
“That is cruel. Give them life. I command you!”
“In every artist, my love, there is the soul of a Nero who longs for the burning of Rome. They who love beauty are always cruel.”
“But this is monstrous. I will not permit it.”
“I am no crueler to them than life has been to me. Like them, I have always lived on the boundary line of two worlds. In neither have I been at home. I, too, am not real. Why do you not pity me? Am I not dearer to you than they?”
“What are they begging for so piteously? See their outstretched hands!”
“For life, to break the melody in which they are encased and give them life.”
“And you can refuse?”
“Is not that just what life has refused me? Besides, I love them best as they are. Can you not see what they are to me? They are my soul’s life. They are the myriad lives that my brain lives. Look! As they strain earthward with bitter yearning, thirsting for life, for the substantiality of joy, of love, can you not understand how they inspire me, how they make me what I am? Their futile frenzy touches my brain to fire. It pours a fury into my soul and strings my nerves to mastery and to creative power.
“Ah, you do not know—no one will ever know—what they have been to me, what stories, what caprices they have breathed into me. Their mute eloquence has told me tales of wild longing, of unspeakable desires, of unknown loves—I cannot tell you how I love them. They set a-tingle in my brain the centers of creative fancy. They swing me into the harmonies of the silences. They project upon the canvas of my soul melodic visions. I live with the unexpanded vigor of their prisoned lives. Their desires are realized in me.
“Ah!” he continued, becoming reminiscent and talking as if to himself, “I have had strange, strange loves indeed, which not even tone-magic can picture, beyond the limits of time and space. I have always been the king of bons viveurs. I have been a pagan exquisite, a Lucullian epicure! How I have despised those who had only money to enjoy with! What miserable beggars are they! What has gold to do with the brain? It is the brain that enjoys.
“But to-night is the crowning night. To-night I have you. To-night I have for a love her whom no mortal has dared to love before. In your eyes I shall not read the memory of other lovers. Their ghosts cannot come between us. Upon your lips I shall not taste the savor of their kisses. Your sweetness has been reserved for me. What matters it that I have made a bonfire of my soul to buy you! If I had ten lives, I would do the same. This way! This way! There is another room. This room was made for you. No other woman has entered it. It is a strange room. It is lighted only by the stars, those discreet stars which have shone upon the amorous sleep of lovers.”
No sooner had they crossed the threshold, however, than the Lord of Mozart began to tremble violently. Beads of sweat dotted his brow. He put out his hands gropingly, as do they who cannot see.
“The dream! Again the dream! Oh, keep it from me! Banish it with your kisses! Banish it with your mouth and the clasp of your arms. How is it possible that I suffer from a horror like this in the splendid palace of my genius? I cannot see you, but I know that you are here. I see only the dream. In the dream I am dying, dying miserably, in a shabby rooming-house in old Vienna. Through a little window I can see that it is misty and gray outside, and that a cold rain drizzles down. In the room where I lie are poverty and the weeping of little children.
“Oh, fling it from me with your love! Let me bury my face in your breast and forget. Keep it away from me! Keep it away from me! Why can I not reason! Why can I not know that the world would not permit one gifted as I am to die in want—one who bears within his blood the genius of his race!
“Yet I do die there. I know it. I see it. Unaccompanied by a single one who mourns, my shabby coffin is borne along in the rain—to the potter’s field where the beggars lie, and the red earth covers my mouth.”
The Lady Melodia bent her head and wept. She knew that the dream was true, and that the king of the world had died.