The Salzburg Tales (33 page)

He did everything in his power to accentuate the supernatural in his setting and to cash in on the superstition next to the heart of city men. He now inhabited a magnificent suite of offices, entirely redecorated, in one of the famous old courts off Throgmorton Street: one of the rooms only was plainly furnished, papered in plain grey silk paper and containing a blackboard. Very few persons were admitted into the other rooms of his personal suite, but at intervals, one visitor and another was allowed to catch a glimpse of a rich tapestry, an exotic painting, a Daghestan carpet, or to hear the soft sound of water running into the fabulous Roman bathing-pool. It was confirmed by many that one of these rooms was hung with black silk curtains and that the curtains drawn back revealed on one wall a
great six-pointed star of scarlet frames containing the photographs of men he had driven to suicide or ruined; or that these were the portraits of all the distinguished financiers in Europe with whom he was hand-in-glove. Further, it was said and believed that another room was elegantly decorated in eggshell blue and contained the portraits of seventeen women, his various mistresses; and that there was a room paved with red, black and white tiles, with a macaw in one corner on a golden perch, and in the centre, under crystal, an aquarium with the rarest kind of sea-animals, the aquarium being aërated subterraneously. The bathroom was supposed to be in Carrara marble, surrounded by columns and containing an authentic faun dug up at Herculancum. Let no-one think that this is a ridiculous account of the suite of the once-famous Van Laer, for much more fantastic legends are regularly current about the financial wizards and mystery-men of the Stock Exchange who spring up frequently in the nightmarish financial world.

Henry Van Laer's demeanour was not calculated to dissipate the illusion of the awestruck, covetous and generally rather stupid promoters who came to call on him: he spoke in a rapid, sibilant, unnaturally accented style, with impetuous gestures, or sudden cold calms, with withering analyses and frequent elaborate mathematical explanation on the blackboard. This blackboard was the undoing of most, for Van Laer was a good mathematician and had invented several new theorems (it was said), while most of his visitors simply knew how to divide and were difficult on fractions.

Isidor encountered the redoubtable Henry after some difficulty, and left the business with him, feeling pretty sure of success. Naturally his share would be small and Van Laer's large, but his self-respect was restored and he could now fish round for something more tempting for Sir Solomon.

He hung about for several weeks without getting another interview with Henry Van Laer and without getting more than one glimpse of his enchantress—he had seen her in the street and she had seemed to him possibly slightly older than twenty-four.

“Sir Solomon, that respectable old gent,” he said to himself, “is wearing her with his ancient's passivity and forbearance: what she wants is active love and a companion, a mate who will not be afraid to throw his energy into the whirlpool of life and swim for it with her: what should she know about the conservation of energy?”

During some weeks Van Laer was on the Continent, and when Isidor telephoned his secretaries, they coldly told him that the office was out of touch with Van Laer; true (they let him divine), they had their secret addresses, but he was engaged in stupendous affairs and could not be disturbed for a mere plate of porridge. Isidor smelt something in the breeze and went to reclaim his papers, but could not get even those, for Mr Van Laer's private safes were locked and none of the secretaries might hand out papers.

Isidor was busy likewise with other things, and his heart continued to burn in his waistcoat. The Winter passed away and the Spring came, and when he first smelled the fresher air and saw the black buds waiting to burst on the plane-trees and the gusts of wild wind rushing down the street, and an occasional bag of blue in the gloomy sky, his blood became mercurial: as he was blown along he found himself chanting verses in time with his light footfalls: “The heart arose like a bird, the heart flew into air” and at this he did a double twirl on his heels, for his hat, after hopping off his head and standing in the air, was now bowling along the pavement. This brought him in front of a large door which was suddenly opened: in the entrance stood two men carrying a bronze figure partly wrapped in papers and sacking: at the same moment the sun shone and the first man observed,

“Yes, Spring is here.”

“And thank Evans,” said the second, “cause in Spring they alluz go to Paris.”

“It's all right to be some people,” concluded the first, and they went trot-trotting down the street with their bronze figure. Then Isidor remembered that his lady had been away all last summer, and his heart jumped into his throat more like a stone flying up off the
wheel of a cart, than a bird, and his temples began to beat, for he did not wish to spend the entire summer without having got one word with Lady Perez. He devoted all his ingenuity and patience (which was the smaller of the two) in the next two days, to finding out the lie of the house from his own post of observation and from an idle conversation or two with the maid. The maid immediately suspected a romance and guilefully let fall several titbits of information, such as, that Sir Solomon and his wife were not always of the same mind, that he called her “extravagant, extravagant, unendurably extravagant” (although the maid could testify that she had a very small and very unbecoming set of clothes for so rich a lady), and that Lady Perez had a lot of books in her private cabinet which were “what you might call queer”.

“I don't say anything against them,” said the maid, “and I know foreign girls are not reared up like English young ladies, and she's a married lady too, but the books are very queer, sir, if you know what I mean.”

On the whole the maid took the side of her master against her mistress. Isidor played with the tip of the maid's ear, and with the tip of her nose: he also drew one lock of hair over one eye and told her her eye gleamed through “like a fox in a brush”, whereupon the maid informed Isidor (who was a young man of pleasing exterior) that she had to go indoors because the master was upstairs in his library and wanting something or other, but that he was out every day from ten till four or five and that he had lately taken to staying out till seven several times a week, or that he hurried home and went straight out again, and that was usually on Wednesday evenings, “to the Club, or the Linnean”.

“Céleste Aida,” sang Isidor and departed.

“The young woman is evidently a very romantic and passionate creature,” said Isidor to himself, “and the old man is neglecting her,” and he ran upstairs singing. He put his face against the pane when he got upstairs, and looked at the spray of light the remote chandelier made on the coloured glass in the banker's house, and
he imagined to himself that he was inside there, sitting in an easy chair on a carpet, stretching himself and looking upward at the old French-beamed ceiling, scarlet with gold mouldings and chisellings marked in blue. The door would open and in would come the maid with a letter: the door would open on another side and there would stand Lady Perez—“My dear Mr Stevenson, what a pleasure!”

For I must now admit a thing I have concealed before. Some years before, Isidor had paid tribute to the country of his birth by changing his name to Irving Stevenson. It is only for the sake of clarity that I continue to call him Isidor.

He would spring to his feet and bowing over her hand—words of rapture would certainly pour from his lips, for he knew that he could never contain himself at such happiness. Or, no, on the contrary he would kiss her hand with great elegance, and withdrawing to a little distance, carefully noting the details of her person and character, would say that he was not what he seemed to be, an idle visitor, come through a casual introduction; that he was a student—these ideas froze; would she be susceptible to scholarship? He thought of Sir Solomon bending over his book while his wife gesticulated; no, he would not be a student; a poet, rather, for a domineering woman loves a poet, and a poet can also twist her like silk. He started to say to himself, “Sweet …” but he did not know her name.

The front-door yawned opposite and Sir Solomon drove out in his car alone. Isidor rushed into his bedroom and changed his clothes, made himself a hasty but lustrous toilet, ran the file over his nails, sat down on the edge of the bed with beating heart, and opening a volume of Byron's poetry read some verses at random:

“Or since that has left my breast
,

Keep it now and take the rest.”

He fluttered the pages and came to the “Hebrew Melodies”:

“She walks in beauty like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies …”

It was sufficient: armed with the emotion and prying open his treasure of rhetoric, he descended the stairs and rang the bell of the Perez door. To the footman he presented his card and said, with a frown,

“Sir Solomon Perez is expecting me!”

“Sir Solomon is out, sir.”

“He will surely return, for I have an appointment with him: let me see his secretary.”

“I am sorry, sir: he has no secretary here, sir.”

Isidor hesitated, and as he was being shown in, said with great dignity:

“Perhaps you will be kind enough to give Lady Perez my card and ask het· to receive me.”

Lady Perez, having made a scene with her husband, because he was once again dining out, was now sitting dolefully in her bedroom thinking of her abandonment. Her expression was sulky and her eyes furious with plans for revenge and liberation. She would have liked to free herself or she would have been content with a lover, but she did not see the possibility of either. Not only was her husband keen and careful of his fame, but she feared to wound him too deeply, for at seasons she loved him passionately, and he was usually tender with her; she knew she was difficult to get on with; to live with her required the silken armour of romantic love, which Sir Solomon had worn for her. Moreover, she had a dignified timidity in the presence of young men, because she had not seen much of society, and now lived so quietly.

She agreed to receive the young Englishman, Irving Stevenson, and came into the library, the room with the unsteady windows, moving through the door with a grand gait like an imperial trireme. Her eyes rested steadily on the young man as he advanced to meet her, very upright and graceful, but with hallucinations of unsteadiness which can well be imagined.

Isidor was in a hole, but his favourite motto in hard times was “when in trouble tell the truth”. He said:

“Madam, I called, really, to see you for a moment, and not to see your husband.”

In an uncertain contralto which her victims found charming, she murmured a word.

“Madam, I am a poet and I live in the house opposite: one of my windows is opposite these windows.”

Lady Perez smiled with caution and waited politely.

“Pardon me for speaking about myself: I am also a banker, and from my friends I have heard everywhere in the city the praise of Lady Perez. I am afraid a poet is a bad brother for a man of my profession and gives him unworldly advice. A few months ago, for example, I became like a man possessed and I desired nothing so much as to speak a few words with you—that was my whole life: once I had the great pleasure of seeing you from my window. It seems to me that I feel like the humble artist who cannot pay the entrance fee to the great exhibitions, or get an introduction to visit private collections: surely all beauty should be free, for it is the only lamp to light us poor earthmen in our darkness and filthy air.”

Isidor for the moment had lost control of his tongue; he had not kept his reserve nor his elegant air, and he was afraid to make a period lest he should find himself awkwardly stuck in the middle of a preposterous phrase. The lady rose and looked at Isidor restlessly (for any phrase sounds well-spoken in a voice which leaves a violin twang in the air, and when accompanied by the passionate, if respectful, looks of a young man in love): she said,

“If you have no business, Mr Stevenson, and some regard for me, you should not put me in an embarrassing position: I beg you to go.”

Isidor flushed darkly: he felt he had been ridiculous, and his phrases hitting his memory in waves sounded like the brayings of an ass. His pride rushed up in his heart and, bowing deeply to the lady, he left the room and hurriedly regained the street. As is the way with fortunate love-affairs, by doing the most unexpected thing, he won the lady's fancy at a blow; and he did not know that when
Sir Solomon returned rather late that evening his wife, Sara, greeted him with a beautiful tranquillity which not only surprised but charmed him and made him regret for the moment certain vagaries of his. As the light which hung over them splashed on the darkness welling in through the window from the night, Isidor sat dejectedly on the arm of his chair, beside his window, and thought:

“I have insulted a proud and chaste spirit: with what dignity, with what sweet pride she told me to go! Now I have lost the game for ever.” But he went over the incident many times, and because he still lived opposite his beauty he persuaded himself by morning that all was not lost.

“I have seen her; and she was not indignant.”

And Lady Perez moved about for a day or two (the longest constancy of her violent nature) with an air of sweet meditation which intrigued her husband. She was thirty years younger than he, and he still had a passionate, jealous attachment to her, and suffered all the pangs of the ageing man who sees his wife still youthful and discontented.

It was June: the cold had continued till the twenty-third, and the people still went out with their overcoats on. Rushing up the street in the evening, anxious to get home and cheerfully recollecting that that day he had made the acquaintance in business of an intimate friend of Sir Solomon Perez, Isidor bumped into a lady in a drooping hat and an overcoat; he started back, reflected that she was well-built, and apologised. The lady half turned, and he saw Sara Perez. She did not recognise him and continued her way, but a hundred feet from her own door, she heard someone hurrying after her, and at the same moment a voice she well remembered said in her ear, intensely, almost hissing: “Madam, I love you, I worship you,” and seizing her hand, rashly enough in such a place, Isidor kissed it, and left her astonished on the pavement. This time there was as much art as nature in his abrupt departure, for he had decided that his previous exit had been in very good taste. Likewise,
he had taken his lady to heart after seeing her; he understood her better than he could have expressed it; and his aim was now to become her lover.