The Constant Nymph. Margaret Kennedy Kennedy
garden at Genoa and discovered, with a sense of dazed shock, the enchantment of her loveliness and youth. That day had been the beginning of his madness. At the thought of the havoc she had made in his peace of mind he could almost wish that she was really lying dead at his feet. If she were dead she could not be more lost to him. Should this sweet, tormenting thing, that had been his, die and be buried, be thrust away under the mould, he might forget her. But while the living, revengeful spirit which had eluded him gazed upon him with her eyes and mocked him with her tongue he could never hope for tranquillity.
Because she had seemed to promise Paradise, and because he was accustomed to get what he wanted, he had persuaded her, with promises of lavish entertainment, to come to Munich. The rest of the business had been most pitifully easy. Only, in return, she had made a fool of him; she had opened his eyes so completely to the illusion of all possession that he doubted if he should ever again enjoy anything without an after-taste of bitterness. She had given him none of the bliss he had anticipated; and long before the end of the week he knew that he had made an irremediable mistake, that his need had been for some moment of shared passion, some appeasement of his loneliness, some sign that she returned his feeling. He would gladly have relinquished his brief, unsubstantial victory, if that were possible, for some hint that he was in any way necessary to her happiness. But an implacable remorse told him that by his own folly he had lost her.
Upon the stage Scaramello, the servant, was being instructed to throw her into the Tiber. He picked her up and carried her behind the screen. When he had set her carefully upon her feet she opened her eyes with a laugh which ended abruptly, since she found herself so close to Jacob Birnbaum. Shrinking back she eyed him defiantly, and he, stung by a sudden, unendurable pain, returned her glance with a smile of deliberate insolence which sent her pale with fury. Lewis, watching them, thought that they made a pretty pair; he shuddered a little at them. He did not like to think what dark things must have passed between them at Munich that they should still choose to remain in each other’s company for the sake, apparently, of mutual torment. He turned his back on them and, since his head that day was completely in the clouds, he soon forgot them.
The even flow of his own music pleased and soothed him, but he found that he could not listen to it in a spirit of intelligent criticism. A strange helplessness had come upon him; he knew it for the first stage of a violent seizure of mental and spiritual activity. Very soon he would be thinking desperately, but at the moment he was obsessed and baffled by a vague conception, a form, the outlines of a new thing in his mind. While this veiled idea disturbed his peace he could not think connectedly upon any subject, since he must needs reject every image which was not the right one. He brooded absently – anxious, yet afraid of the moment when his thought should take shape.
Presently Birnbaum had to leave them and join the group on the stage. Lewis, standing with Antonia behind the screen, was jerked out of his absorption and exasperated beyond all reason when he discovered that she was in tears. He whispered fiercely over his shoulder:
‘Stop making that noise, can’t you?’
She felt herself that he ought not to be disturbed when he was listening to his own music, and with a meek gulp she replied:
‘I’ll try. Can you lend me a handkerchief?’
He thought he could. He searched his raiment and at last discovered a very dirty red cotton object which he gave her. Then he turned his back again while she quietly mopped her eyes, until the end of the piece set her free to run away and howl as loudly as she pleased.
He took his call, lost still in his uneasy preoccupation. He climbed on to the stage and bowed to an audience composed of Linda, Susan, Sanger and the village schoolmaster. They crowded round him, and Linda said that she hadn’t known he could write anything so pretty, and Sanger said that he was an amusing fellow. Trigorin clasped his hand in a couple of wet white ones.
‘It is admirable,’ he gasped. ‘You say it is to imitate the Italian opera? I say not. It is inspired by that school … yes … but also it is original. My dear sir, it is a work of genius!’
‘Very good of you to say so,’ replied Lewis, trying to release himself. ‘You played well, Trigorin. I don’t know how you managed to make out my scrawls.’
‘It was a pleasure … an honour. I like it so much. It is so beautiful, that little work. It has the true melody …’
‘Is it an advance on the “Revolutionary Songs”?’ asked Birnbaum, who was listening.
‘But no,’ said Trigorin, shaking his head very seriously. ‘That I cannot say. This I like so much; but the others I like better. They also are the work of genius, but more heavy.’
Lewis looked very much pained and intimated that he himself was inclined to consider ‘Breakfast with the Borgias’ as the most profound effort he had yet made. It was a blow to him, he said, if Mr Trigorin thought it superficial. He had succeeded in reducing his fellow-guest to a perfectly speechless condition of embarrassment and mortification when Linda was heard to ask, in no mean voice, why a part had not been written for Susan.
‘The child can sing in tune,’ she asserted. ‘And I’d like to know why she’s been passed over.’
‘My dear Linda,’ expostulated Albert, ‘one must keep the thing even. We like a high standard in our family productions, but Susan’s level is beyond the rest of us.’
‘I don’t know why you should have such a spite against the poor little thing, I’m sure,’ complained Linda, fondling Susan. ‘As if it matters how a kiddie of that age does things! I don’t see anything so wonderful, come to that, in the way that Lina and Sebastian sang their parts.’
‘There was nothing wonderful,’ said Sanger wearily, ‘except that they had the grace to take pains. If either of them had dared to set up the confounded little pipe which we hear from Susan I’d have stopped the piece. You never did, did you? I daresay not.’
‘I can tell you, Albert, there’s plenty of people think differently. There was a gentleman down in Genoa that heard her sing and he said she was wonderful for her age. He said she’d inherited her talent, and he’d know her anywhere for Sanger’s daughter. He said she’d go very far.’
‘Sanger’s daughter! Heaven and earth! Sanger’s daughter! Isn’t it bad enough to have begotten anything like Susan? I’m ready to swear I never did. And now a gentleman in Genoa says she takes after me! An intolerable insult! Birnbaum! Will you listen to this? A gentleman in Genoa who heard Susan sing … have you heard Susan sing, by the way? You haven’t? Well then you shall. Pop up on to the platform, Sue, and give us a song. Let me see … what did you sing to the gentleman in Genoa? The flower song out of “Faust”? I might have known it. Sing that! I dare say Trigorin will be able to play it for you.’
‘That’s right, dearie, it’s your turn now to sing a bit,’ said Linda, who could not believe that anyone should hear Susan sing and not find her very sweet.
Susan needed no encouragement. She was delighted with any sort of notice. She climbed on to the dais, pushed back her yellow curls, and began to warble in a shallow, sugary treble. Her facility, self-confidence and inaccuracy were on a level with the amazing vulgarity of her performance. She paraded every cheap effect, every little trick, most likely to outrage the pure taste of her relations. And yet there was a certain dash and assurance about her which explained the prophesy of the gentleman in Genoa. Sanger himself was inclined to fear that her push and her unscrupulous showiness would carry her further than the others and establish her as the star of the family. Hence his animosity; he could not bear that she should eclipse the patient, industrious talent of Caryl and Kate, or the fine brilliance of Evelyn’s children. He scowled heavily all through her song.
But she, with a persistent, babyish simper, ignored this, and ignored also the loud retching noises whereby her younger brother and sisters indicated their nausea at the style of her performance. At the end she acknowledged the slightly ironic applause of her elders as though conscious of popularity, jumped down and ran to hide her face in her mother’s lap, a pretty gesture which they had rehearsed in private.
‘Little