The piano was closed, an arm-chair was placed in the centre of the platform. Fraulein Sonia drifted towards it. A breathless pause. Then, presumably, the winged shaft struck her collar brooch. She implored us not to go into the woods in trained dresses, but rather as lightly draped as possible, and bed with her among the pine needles. Her loud, slightly harsh voice filled the salon. She dropped her arms over the back of the chair, moving her lean hands from the wrists. We were thrilled and silent. The Herr Professor, beside me, abnormally serious, his eyes bulging, pulled at his moustache ends. Frau Godowska adopted that peculiarly detached attitude of the proud parent. The only soul who remained untouched by her appeal was the waiter, who leaned idly against the wall of the salon and cleaned his nails with the edge of a programme. He was 'off duty' and intended to show it.
'What did I say?' shouted the Herr Professor under cover of tumultuous applause, 'tem-per-ament! There you have it. She is a flame in the heart of a lily. I know I am going to play well. It is my turn now. I am inspired. Fraulein Sonia'—as that lady returned to us, pale and draped in a large shawl—'you are my inspiration. To-night you shall be the soul of my trombone. Wait only.'
To right and left of us people bent over and whispered admiration down Fraulein Sonia's neck. She bowed in the grand style.
'I am always successful,' she said to me. 'You see, when I act I AM. In Vienna, in the plays of Ibsen we had so many bouquets that the cook had three in the kitchen. But it is difficult here. There is so little magic. Do you not feel it? There is none of that mysterious perfume which floats almost as a visible thing from the souls of the Viennese audiences. My spirit starves for want of that.' She leaned forward, chin on hand. 'Starves,' she repeated.
The Professor appeared with his trombone, blew into it, held it up to one eye, tucked back his shirt cuffs and wallowed in the soul of Sonia Godowska. Such a sensation did he create that he was recalled to play a Bavarian dance, which he acknowledged was to be taken as a breathing exercise rather than an artistic achievement. Frau Godowska kept time to it with a fan.
Followed the very young gentleman who piped in a tenor voice that he loved somebody, 'with blood in his heart and a thousand pains.' Fraulein Sonia acted a poison scene with the assistance of her mother's pill vial and the arm-chair replaced by a 'chaise longue'; a young girl scratched a lullaby on a young fiddle; and the Herr Professor performed the last sacrificial rites on the altar of the afflicted children by playing the National Anthem.
'Now I must put mamma to bed,' whispered Fraulein Sonia. 'But afterwards I must take a walk. It is imperative that I free my spirit in the open air for a moment. Would you come with me as far as the railway station and back?'
'Very well, then, knock on my door when you're ready.'
Thus the modern soul and I found ourselves together under the stars.
'What a night!' she said. 'Do you know that poem of Sappho about her hands in the stars... I am curiously sapphic. And this is so remarkable—not only am I sapphic, I find in all the works of all the greatest writers, especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself—some resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own hands in a dark mirror.'
'But what a bother,' said I.
'I do not know what you mean by 'bother'; is it rather the curse of my genius...' She paused suddenly, staring at me. 'Do you know my tragedy?' she asked.
I shook my head.
'My tragedy is my mother. Living with her I live with the coffin of my unborn aspirations. You heard that about the safety-pin to-night. It may seem to you a little thing, but it ruined my three first gestures. They were—'
'Impaled on a safety-pin,' I suggested.
'Yes, exactly that. And when we are in Vienna I am the victim of moods, you know. I long to do wild, passionate things. And mamma says, 'Please pour out my mixture first.' Once I remember I flew into a rage and threw a washstand jug out of the window. Do you know what she said? 'Sonia, it is not so much throwing things out of windows, if only you would—''
'Choose something smaller?' said I.
'No...'tell me about it beforehand.' Humiliating! And I do not see any possible light out of this darkness.'
'Why don't you join a touring company and leave your mother in Vienna?'
'What! Leave my poor, little, sick, widowed mother in Vienna! Sooner than that I would drown myself. I love my mother as I love nobody else in the world—nobody and nothing! Do you think it is impossible to love one's tragedy? 'Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs,' that is Heine or myself.'
'Oh, well, that's all right,' I said cheerfully.
''But it is not all right!'
I suggested we should turn back. We turned.
'Sometimes I think the solution lies in marriage,' said Fraulein Sonia. 'If I find a simple, peaceful man who adores me and will look after mamma—a man who would be for me a pillow—for genius cannot hope to mate—I shall marry him... You know the Herr Professor has paid me very marked attentions.'
'Oh, Fraulein Sonia,' I said, very pleased with myself, 'why not marry him to your mother?' We were passing the hairdresser's shop at the moment. Fraulein Sonia clutched my arm.
'You, you,' she stammered. 'The cruelty. I am going to faint. Mamma to marry again before I marry—the indignity. I am going to faint here and now.'
I was frightened. 'You can't,' I said, shaking her.
'Come back to the pension and faint as much as you please. But you can't faint here. All the shops are closed. There is nobody about. Please don't be so foolish.'
'Here and here only!' She indicated the exact spot and dropped quite beautifully, lying motionless.
'Very well,' I said, 'faint away; but please hurry over it.'
She did not move. I began to walk home, but each time I looked behind me I saw the dark form of the modern
