Books: Ranson\'s Folly

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Miss Warriner, on the contrary, was much older than he in everything
but years, and was conscious of the fact. She was a serious, self-
centred young person, and satisfied with her own thoughts, unless her
companion gave her better ones. She concerned herself with the
character and ideas of her friends. If a young man lacked ideas, the
fact that he possessed wealth and good manners could not save him. If
these attributes had been pointed out to her as part of his assets
she would have been surprised. She was not impressed with her own
good looks and fortune--she took them for granted; so why should they
count with her in other people?

Miss Warriner made an error of analysis in regard to Mr. Corbin in
judging his brain by his topics of conversation. His conversation was
limited to the A B C's of life, with which, up to the time of his
meeting her, his brain had been fed. When, however, she began to cram
it full with all the other letters of the alphabet, it showed itself
just as capable of digesting the economic conditions of Egypt as it
had previously succeeded in mastering the chess-like problems of the
game of football.

Young Corbin had not considered the Home Beautiful, nor Municipal
Government, nor How the Other Half Lives as topics that were worth
his while; but when Miss Warriner showed her interest in them, her
doing so made them worth his while, and he fell upon them greedily.
He even went much further than she had gone, and was not content
merely to theorize and to discuss social questions from the safe
distance of the deck of a dahabiyeh on the Nile, but proposed to at
once put her theories into practice. To this end he offered her a
house in the slums of Boston, rent free, where she could start her
College Settlement. He made out lists of the men he thought would
like to teach there, and he volunteered to pay the expenses of the
experiment until it failed or succeeded. When her interest changed to
the Tombs of the Rameses, and the succession of the ancient
dynasties, he spent hours studying his Baedeker that he might keep in
step with her; and when she abandoned ancient for modern Egypt and
became deeply charmed with the intricacies of the dual control and of
the Mixed Courts, he interviewed subalterns, Pashas, and missionaries
in a gallant effort to comprehend the social and political
difficulties of the white men who had occupied the land of the
Sphinx, who had funded her debt, irrigated her deserts, and "made a
mummy fight."

One night, as the dahabiyeh lay moored beneath a group of palms in
the moonlight, Miss Warriner gave him praise for offering her the
house in the slums for her experiment. He assured her that he was
entirely selfish--that he did so because he believed her settlement
would be a benefit to the neighborhood, in which he owned some
property. When she then accused him of giving sordid reasons for what
was his genuine philanthropy he told her flatly that he neither cared
for the higher education of the slums nor the increased value of his
rents, but for her, and to please her, and that he loved her and
would love her always. In answer to this, Miss Warriner told him
gently but firmly that she could not love him, but that she liked him
and admired him, even though she was disappointed to find that his
sudden interest in matters more serious than polo had been assumed to
please her. She added that she would always be his friend. This, she
thought, ended the matter; it was unfortunate that they should be
shipbound on the Nile; but she trusted to his tact and good sense to
save them both from embarrassment. She was not prepared, however, to
see him come on deck very late the next morning, after, apparently, a
long sleep, as keen, as cheerful, and as smiling as he had been
before the blow had fallen. It piqued her a little, and partly
because of that, and partly because she really was relieved to find
him in such a humor, she congratulated him on his most evident
happiness.

"Why not?" he asked, suddenly growing sober. "I love you. That is
enough to make any man happy, isn't it? You needn't love me, but you
can't prevent my going on loving you."

"Well, I am very sorry," she sighed in much perplexity.

"You needn't be," he answered, reassuringly. "I'm more sorry for you
than I am for myself. You are going to have a terrible time until you
marry me."

They were at Thebes, and he went off that afternoon to the Temple of
Luxor with her mother, and made violent use of the sacred altars, the
beauty of Cleopatra, the eternity of the scarabea, and the
indestructibility of the Pyramids to suggest faintly to Mrs. Warriner
how much he loved her daughter. He shook his hand at the crouching
sphinxes and said:

"Mrs. Warriner, in forty centuries they have never looked down upon a
man as proud as I am, and I am told they have seen Napoleon; but I
need help; she won't help me, so you must. It's no use arguing
against me. When this Nile dries up I shall have ceased loving your
daughter!"

"Did you tell Helen what you have told me? Did you talk to her so?"
asked Mrs. Warriner.

"No, not last night," said Corbin; "but I will, in time, after she
gets more used to the Idea."

Unfortunately for the peace of Mr. Corbin and all concerned. Miss
Warriner did not become reconciled to the idea. On the contrary, she
resented it greatly. She had looked at the possibility of something
to be carried out later--much later, perhaps not at all. It did not
seem possible that before she had really begun to enjoy life it
should be subjected to such a change. She saw that it was obviously
the thing that should happen. If the match had been arranged by the
entire city of Boston it could not have been more obvious. But she
argued with him that marriage was a mutual self-sacrifice, and that
until she felt ready to make her share of the sacrifice it was
impossible for her to consent.

He combated her arguments, which he refused to consider as arguments,
and demolished them one by one. But the objection which he destroyed
before he went to sleep at night was replaced the next day by
another, and his cause never advanced. Each day he found the citadel
he was besieging girt in by new and intricate defences. The reason
was simple enough: the girl was not in love with him. Her objections,
her arguments, her reasons were as absurd as he proved them to be.
But they were insurmountable because they were really various
disguises of the fact that she did not care for him. They were
disguises to herself as well as to him. He was so altogether a good
fellow, so earnest, honest, and desperate a lover that the primary
fact that she did not want his love did not present itself, and she
kept casting about in her mind for excuses and reasons to explain her
lack of feeling. He wooed her in every obvious way that would present
itself to a boy of deep feeling, of quick mind, and an unlimited
letter of credit. He created wants in order to gratify them later. He
suggested her need of things which he had already ordered, which,
before she had been enticed into expressing a wish for them, were
then speeding across the Continent toward her. Every hour brought her
some fresh and ingenuous sign of his thought and of his devotion. He
treated these tributes as a matter of course; if she failed to
observe them and to see his handiwork in them he let them fall to the
ground unnoticed.

His love itself was his argument-in-chief; it was its own excuse; it
needed no allies; "I love you" was his first and last word. It
puzzled her to find that she could not care. When she was alone she
asked herself what there was in him of which she disapproved, and she
could only answer that there was nothing. She asked herself what
other men there were who pleased her more, and she could think of
none. On the contrary, she found him entirely charming as a friend--
but his love distressed her greatly. It was a foreign language; she
could not comprehend it. When he allowed it to appear it completely
disguised him in her eyes; it annoyed her so much that at times she
considered herself a much ill-used young person.

It was in this way that the matter stood between them when their long
journey was ended and they reached London. He was miserable,
desperate, and hopeless; the girl was firm in that she would not
marry him, and her mother, who respected both the depth of Corbin's
feelings and her daughter's reticence, and who had watched the
struggle with a troubled heart, was only thankful that they were to
part, and that it was at an end. Corbin had no idea where he would go
nor what he would do. He recognized that to cross the ocean with them
would only subject his love to fresh distress and humiliation, and he
had determined to put as much space between him and Miss Warriner as
the surface of the globe permitted. The Philippines seemed to offer a
picturesque retreat for a broken life. He decided he would go there
and enlist and have himself shot. He was uncertain whether he would
follow in the steps of his Revolutionary ancestors and join the men
who were struggling for their liberty and independence, or his
fellow-Americans; but that he would get shot by one side or the other
he was determined. And then in days to come she would think, perhaps,
of the young man on the other side of the globe, buried in the wet
rice-fields, with the palms fanning him through his eternal sleep,
and she might be sorry then that she had not listened to his troubled
heart. The picture gave him some small comfort, and that night when
he ordered dinner for them at the Savoy his manner showed the
inspired resolve of one who is soon to mount the scaffold unafraid,
and with a rose between his lips.

Edouard, the first violin, saw Miss Warriner when she entered and
took her place facing him at one of the tables in the centre of the
room. He was sitting with his violin on his knees, touching the
strings with his finger-tips. When he saw her he choked the neck of
the violin with his hand, as though it had been the hand of a friend
which he had grasped in a sudden ecstasy of delight. The effect her
appearance had made upon him was so remarkable that he glanced
quickly over his shoulder to see if he had betrayed himself by some
sign or gesture. But the other musicians were concerned with their
own gossip, and he felt free to turn again and from under his half-
closed eyelids to observe her covertly.

There was nothing to explain why Miss Warriner, in particular, should
have so disturbed him; the English women seated about her were as
fair; she showed no great sorrow in her face; her beauty was not of
the type which carried observers by assault. And yet not one of the
many beautiful women who on one night or another passed before
Edouard in the soft light of the red shades had ever stirred him so
strangely, had ever depressed him with such a tender melancholy, and
filled his soul--the soul of a Hungarian and a musician--with such
loneliness and unrest. He knew that, so far as he was concerned, she
was as distant as the Venus in the Louvre; she was, for him, a
beautiful, unapproachable statue, placed, by some social convention,
upon a pedestal.

As he looked at her he felt hotly the degradation of his silly
uniform, of the striped sash around his waist, the tawdry braids, and
the tasselled boots. He felt as he had often felt before, but now
more keenly than ever, the prostitution of his art in this temple of
the senses, this home of epicures, where people met to feast their
eyes and charm their palates. He could not put his feelings into
words, and he knew that if by some upheaval of the social world he
should be thrown into her presence he would still be bound, he would
not be able to speak or write what she inspired in him. But--and at
the thought he breathed quickly, and raised his shoulders with a
touch of pride--he could tell her in his own way; after his own
fashion he could express what he felt better even than those other
men could tell what they feel--these men for whose amusement he
performed nightly, to whom it was granted to sit at her side, who
spoke the language of her class and of her own people. Edouard was
not given to analyzing his emotions; like the music of his Tzigane
ancestors, they came to him sweeping every chord in his nature,
beating rapidly to the time of the Schardash, or with the fitfulness
of the gypsy folksongs sinking his spirits into melancholy. So he did
not stop to question why this one face so suddenly inspired him; he
only knew that he felt grateful, that he was impatient to pay his
tribute of admiration, that he was glad he was an artist who could
give his feelings voice.

In the long programme of selected airs he remembered that there was
one which would give him this chance to speak, in the playing of
which he could put all his skill and all his soul, an air which
carried with it infinite sadness and the touch of a caress. The other
numbers on the programme had been chosen to please the patrons of a
restaurant, this one, La Lettre d'Amour, was included in the list for
his own satisfaction. He had put it there to please himself; to-night
he would play it to please her--to this unknown girl who had so
suddenly awakened and inspired him.

As he waited for this chance to come he watched her, noting her every
movement, her troubled smile, her air of being apart and above her
surroundings. He noticed, too, the set face of the young man at her
side and, with the discernment of one whose own interest is captive,
saw the half-concealed longing in his eyes. He felt a quick antipathy
to this young man. His assured position at the girl's side
accentuated how far he himself was removed from her; he resented also
the manner of the young man to the waiters, and he wondered hotly if,
in the mind of this favored youth, the musician who played for his
entertainment was regarded any more highly than the servant who
received his orders. To this feeling of resentment was added one of
contempt. For, as he read the tableau at the table below him, the
young man was the devotee of the young girl at his side, and if one
could judge from her averted eyes, from her silent assent to his
questions, from the fact that she withdrew from the talk between him
and the older woman, his devotion was not welcome.

This reading of the pantomime pleased Edouard greatly. Nothing could
have so crowned the feeling which the beauty of the stranger stirred
in him as the thought that another loved her as well as himself, and
that the other, who started with all things in his favor, met with
none from her.

Edouard assured himself that this was so because he had often heard
his people boast that men not of their country could not feel as they
could feel. If he had ever considered them at all it was as cold and
conscious creatures who taught themselves to cover up what they felt,
so that when their emotions strove to assert themselves they were
found, through long disuse, to be dumb and inarticulate. Edouard
rejoiced that to the men of his race it was given to feel and suffer
much. He was sure that beneath the calmness of her beauty this woman
before him could feel deeply; he read in her eyes the sympathy of a
great soul; she made him think of a Madonna in the church of St.
Sophia at Budapest. He saw in her a woman who could love greatly.
When he considered how impossible it was for the young man at her
side ever to experience the great emotions which alone could reach
her, his contempt for him rose almost to pity. His violin, with his
power to feel, and with his knowledge of technic added, could send
his message as far as sound could carry. He could afford to be
generous, and when he rose to play La Lettre d'Amour it was with the
elation of a knight entering the lists, with the ardor of a lover
singing beneath his lady's window. La Lettre d'Amour is a composition
written to a slow measure, and filled with chords of exquisite
pathos. It comes hesitatingly, like the confession of a lover who
loves so deeply that he halts to find words with which to express his
feelings. It moves in broken phrases, each note rising in intensity
and growing in beauty. It is not a burst of passionate appeal, but a
plea, tender, beseeching, and throbbing with melancholy. As he
played, Edouard stepped down from the dais on which the musicians
sat, and advanced slowly between the tables. It was late, and the
majority of those who had been dining had departed to the theatres.
Those who remained were lingering over their coffee, and were
smoking; their voices were lowered to a polite monotone; the rush of
the waiters had ceased, and the previous chatter had sunk to a
subdued murmur. Into this, the quivering sigh of Edouard's violin
penetrated like a sunbeam feeling its way into a darkened room, and,
at the sound, the voices, one by one, detached themselves from the
general chorus, until, lacking support, it ceased altogether. Some
were silent, that they might hear the better, others, who preferred
their own talk, were silent out of regard for those who desired to
listen, and a waiter who was so indiscreet as to clatter a tray of
glasses was hushed on the instant. The tribute of attention lent to
Edouard an added power; his head lifted on his shoulders with pride;
his bow cut deeper and firmer, and with more delicate shading; the
notes rose in thrilling, plaintive sadness, and flooded the hot air
with melody.

Edouard made his way to within a short distance of the table at which
Miss Warriner was seated, and halted there as though he had found his
audience. He did not look at her, although she sat directly facing
him, but it was evident to all that she was the one to whom his
effort was directed, and Corbin, who was seated with his back to
Edouard, recognized this and turned in his chair.

The body of the young musician was trembling with the feeling which
found its outlet through the violin. He was in ecstasy over his power
and its accomplishment. The strings of the violin pulsated to the
beating of his heart, and he felt that surely by now the emotion
which shook him must have reached the girl who had given it life--
and, for one swift second, his eyes sought hers. What he saw was the
same beautiful face which had inspired him, but unmoved, cold, and
unresponsive. As his eyes followed hers she raised her head and
looked, listlessly, around the room, and then turned and glanced up
at him with a careless and critical scrutiny. If his music had been
the music of an organ in the street, and he the man who raised his
hat for coppers, she could not have been less moved. The discovery
struck Edouard like a cold blast from an open door. His fingers
faltered on the neck of his violin, his bow wavered, drunkenly,
across the strings, and he turned away his eyes to shut out the
vision of his failure, seeking relief and sympathy. And, in their
swift passage, they encountered those of Corbin looking up at him,
his eyes aglow with wonder, feeling, and sorrow. They seemed to hold
him to account; they begged, they demanded of him not to break the
spell, and, in response, the hot blood in the veins of the musician
surged back, his pride flared up again, his eyes turned on Corbin's
like those of a dog to his master's. Under their spell the music
soared, trembling, paused and soared again, thrilling those who heard
it with its grief and tenderness.

Edouard's heart leaped with triumph. "The man knows," he whispered to
the violin; "he understands us. He knows."

The people, leaning with their elbows on the tables before them, the
waiters listening with tolerant smiles, the musicians following
Edouard with anxious pride, saw only a young man with his arm thrown
heavily across the back of his chair, who was looking up at Edouard
with a steady, searching gaze. But Edouard saw in him both a disciple
and a master. He saw that this man was lifted up and carried with
him, that he understood the message of the music. The notes of the
violin sank lower and lower, until they melted into the silence of
the room, and the people, freed of the spell the music had put upon
them, applauded generously. Edouard placed his violin under his arm,
and with his eyes, which had never left Corbin's face, still fastened
upon his, bowed low to him, and Corbin raised his head and nodded
gravely. It was as though they were the only people in the room. As
Edouard retreated his face was shining with triumph, for he knew that
the other had understood him, and that the other knew that he knew.

That night until he fell asleep, and all of the day following, the
beautiful face of Miss Warriner troubled Edouard, and the thought of
her alternately thrilled and depressed him. One moment he mocked at
himself for presuming to think that his simple art could reach the
depths of such a nature, and the next he stirred himself to hope that
he should see her once again, and that he should succeed where he had
failed.

The music had moved Corbin so deeply that when he awoke the day
following the effect of it still hung upon him. It seemed to him as
though all he had been trying to tell Miss Warriner of his love for
her, and which he had failed to make her understand in the last three
months, had been expressed in the one moment of this song. It was
that in it which had so enchanted him. It was as though he had
listened to his own deepest and most sacred thoughts, uttered for the
first time convincingly, and by a stranger. Why was it, he asked
himself, that this unknown youth could translate another's feelings
into music, when he himself could not put them into words? He was
walking in Piccadilly, deep in this thought, when a question came to
him which caused him to turn rapidly into Green Park, where he could
consider it undisturbed.

The doubt which had so suddenly presented itself was in some degree
the same one which had stirred Edouard. Was it that he was really
unable to express his feelings, or was it that Miss Warriner could
not understand them? Was it really something lacking in him, or was
it not something lacking in her? He flushed at the disloyalty of the
thought and put it from him; but, as his memory reached back over the
past three months, the question returned again and again with fresh
force, and would not be denied. He called himself a fatuous,
conceited fool. Because he could not make a woman love him other men
could do so. That was really the answer; he was not the man. But the
answer did not seem final. What, after all, was the thing his love
sought--a woman only, or a woman capable of deep and great feeling?
Even if he could not inspire such emotions, even if another could, he
would still be content and proud to love a woman capable of such deep
feelings. But if she were without them? At the thought, Corbin stared
blankly before him as though he had stumbled against a stone wall.
What sign had she ever given him that she could care greatly? Was not
any form of emotion always distasteful to her? Was not her mind
always occupied with abstract questions? Was she not always engaged
in her own self-improvement--with schemes, it is true, for bettering
the world; but did her heart ever ache once for the individual? What
was it, then, he loved? Something he imagined this girl to be, or was
he in love with the fact that his own nature had been so mightily
stirred? Was it not the joy of caring greatly which had carried him
along? And if this was so, was he now to continue to proffer this
devotion to one who could not feel, to a statue, to an idol? Were not
the very things which rendered her beautiful the offerings which he
himself had hung upon her altar? Did the qualities he really loved in
her exist? Was he not on the brink of casting his love before one who
could neither feel it for him nor for any other man? He stood up,
trembling and frightened. Even though the girl had rejected him again
and again, he felt a hateful sense of disloyalty. He was ashamed to
confess it to himself, and he vowed, hotly, that he must be wrong,
that he would not believe. He would still worship her, fight for her,
and force her to care for him.

Mrs. Warriner and her daughter were to sail on the morrow, and that
night they met Corbin at dinner for the last time. After many days--
although self-accused--he felt deeply conscious of his recent lack of
faith, and, in the few hours still left him, he determined to atone
for the temporary halt in his allegiance. They had never found him
more eager, tactful, and considerate than he was that evening. The
eyes of Mrs. Warriner softened as she watched him. As one day had
succeeded another, her admiration and liking for him had increased,
until now she felt as though his cause was hers--as though she was
not parting from a friend, but from a son. But the calmness of her
daughter was impenetrable; from her manner it was impossible to learn
whether the approaching separation was a relief or a regret.

To Edouard the return of the beautiful girl to the restaurant
appeared not as an accident, but as a marked favor vouchsafed to him
by Fate. He had been given a second chance. He read it as a sign that
he should take heart and hope. He felt that fortune was indeed kind.
He determined that he would play to her again, and that this time he
would not fail.

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