Boris Lensky

"Whoever wishes to know how great is the power which the charm of music can exercise over humanity must visit one of Boris Lensky's concerts.

"Boris Lensky! The name in itself has a legendary sound--a magic fascination surrounds the man and his violin. For every one who has attended one of his concerts, the longing, listening expression on the faces of the women who hear him is something which remains forever interwoven in remembrance with the complaining sweetness of his art. The best and noblest of women, when they listen to his wonderful violin, fall into a feverish trance which makes them lose all power over themselves.

"In Russia they call Boris Lensky the devil's violinist, and in explanation of the godless charm which glows in his art, the following neat little tale is told:

"Almost fifty years ago, crept through the poorest quarter of Moscow a neglected, ugly child, who, in order to earn his scanty food, scraped his violin as best he might, and sometimes received a copeck, but never a caress. This child was Boris Lensky. His heart languished for tenderness, like that of all repulsed ones. Then the devil met him, and allured him with splendid temptations. He would lay the whole world at his feet, if the boy would give him his soul for his own in exchange. But the boy felt a terror at this hellish slavery and said: 'No.' Then the devil at first went his way, and gnashed his teeth that he had not succeeded in capturing a human soul. But suddenly he turned back and called to the boy: 'I desire nothing of you; keep your soul; but you shall accept a present from me--a gift. In your art shall dwell a charm which no one can resist.'

"Then the boy was astonished at the devil's generosity, and accepted the gift. But the devil rejoiced, for he said to himself: 'If I have lost one soul, I have taken ten thousand others for it.' But the violinist soon noticed what a curse had fallen to his share.

"Denying all nobility, and still feeling a horror of the degrading power within him, he now goes through the world, restless, joyless, and without power over his own demoniac art--a resisting tool in the devil's hand. And he longs despairingly to find a being who could resist the fiendish charm, but he finds none.

"Thus the Russian tale.

"Now Lensky has grown old and gray in the service of the devil. His friends with fright notice in him the evermore plainly noticeable signs of physical decay. In his art he stands greater than ever, and from his violin sounds out to the public a wild, triumphing, and despairing swan song!"

This somewhat exaggerated production an old lady read aloud with declamatory emphasis, in whom at the first glance one perceived the Englishwoman and the spinster. She sits in a pretty, charming room, furnished with all kinds of rarities, by the hearth, and refreshes herself by turns with the newspaper and with tea.

It is in Paris.

The newspaper in which the old Englishwoman revels is Figaro, and the windows of the pretty little room look out on the Parc Monceau.

Already dressed to go out, a second, much younger lady in the same room busies herself in hastily, and to all appearance disapprovingly, looking through a just-opened package of books.

Somewhat vexed that her reading has called forth no remark from her listener, the old Englishwoman now says:

"Well, what do you say to this legend?"

"What shall I say?" replies the young lady, without looking up from the package of books, with blameless English accent, but in a decidedly un-English deep, soft voice--"that the French write much nonsense, if it is to raise the price of concert tickets."

"Nita!" said the Englishwoman, angrily; "you surely will not assert that this article is a common advertisement?"

"Certainly I assert it, Miss Wilmot," is the calm answer. "I am firmly convinced that Lensky's impressario has had the article printed."

"Well, I say, Nita, a strange change has taken place in you!" says Miss Wilmot, astonished and discontented, while she at the same time let her wrinkled hands sink down on her cinnamon-colored dress. "But, advertisement or not, Nita, Lensky's results speak for themselves. The Parisians run like mad to his concerts; recently there was such a crowd before the doors of the Salle Erard that the police had to interfere!"

"Bah!" replied she addressed as Nita. "Reliable musicians have told me that Lensky has gone very far back in his art. The animation with which the French do him homage is only a new proof of their immoderate worship of all that is Russian. This tasteless idolatry makes me furious. Then, see here!" And Nita, for the first time in the course of the above conversation, turned her face to the old lady, while at the same time she drew a number of yellow books out from the package which she had been busy glancing over. Piling these up on each other, she said: "Three, five, seven books, translated from the Russian and mere trash, not a sensible line in the whole! What does that matter? The mere circumstance that 'from the Russian' stands upon it assures the worst Galimathias in Paris a publisher and a circle of readers. It is odious."

"Well, Nita, it seems to me that you least of all have the right to wonder over any Russian worship," remarks the old Englishwoman phlegmatically. "You yourself, in my recollection, have accomplished considerable in this respect."

"Who has not some youthful folly to reproach one's self for?" said Nita, shrugging her shoulders. "Fortunately, only in politics is one sentenced to never perceive one's errors. I also once had a violent passion for Russia leather, and I have gotten over that. Nothing in the world is now more unbearable than too much Russia leather, especially in a small room."

"A strange change has taken place in you, Nita," repeated the Englishwoman, who, as if petrified with astonishment, sat there motionless in the position of an Assyrian goddess, still with a hand on each knee. "You not only raved over the Russians, you raved over Boris Lensky; and how you raved!"

A dark blush rose in Nita's pale cheeks; at the same time her eyes darkened. "Good-by, Miss Wilmot," said she, without replying anything to the remarks of the old lady, and turned to the door.

"Will you not take a cup of tea before you go, Nita?" the Englishwoman calls after her.

"No, Miss Wilmot; I must hurry a great deal without that in order to reach the studio before twilight. I have promised Sonia to come; so once more adieu; and I beg of you, send all this plunder"--pointing to the books---"back to Calman Levy, and send him word he need no longer disturb me with his Russian stories." With that Nita vanished.

"A strange change, a very strange change," says Miss Wilmot to herself, while she still stares with the same abashed, astonished expression at the door which has just closed behind her young friend. Then she wishes to again take up Figaro in order to translate the article on the devil's violinist into German, for which language she has for twenty years had a love. In vain--the paper is nowhere to be found.

Nita von Sankjéwitch is a young Austrian who lives perfectly independent on her income in Paris. Miss Wilmot, her former governess, now serves as chaperon in her little home.

If Miss Wilmot can be described in brief as an English old maid who reminds one of David's Marie Antoinette on the poor sinner's car, it would, on the contrary, have been quite difficult to give in as few words a half-way significant and life-like description of Nita.

Her figure, tall and slender, with very delicate limbs and long, slender hands and feet, has in carriage and movements something of the harsh, so to say, repellant charm with which the Greeks loved to characterize their Diana statues. Her abundant hair, which is cut straight across her forehead and gathered up in a heavy knot on her neck, is of a light-brown color with reddish lights; her face, long but prettily rounded, is pale, with regular features, finely arched little nose, and full, somewhat arrogantly curved little mouth.

But the most remarkable in her face, the most remarkable in her whole appearance, are the eyes--large, brilliant gray eyes with greenish and bluish lights in them, eyes which suddenly darken, and then become strangely and unfathomably deep, as if she had tasted all the bitterness of creation, and in the next moment look out upon the world again as challengingly bright and cold as if they did not believe there could be a heart-ache that could not be overcome by a gay jest.

In her family Nita was called the "melancholy scamp." Her age was difficult to decide. Just as her nature completely lacked that unrestrained, youthful exuberance, so her face, in spite of the ivory smoothness of the skin, was without all freshness. From her manner she might be forty.

She is the daughter of a born Countess B?renburg and a Baron Sankjéwitch, who obtained the Theresien cross and the title of Freiherr on the battlefield. Both parents are dead. On her father's side she has no relatives; with her mother's numerous relatives she stands on the best footing, without letting herself be much influenced by them. "It would be very uncomfortable to me to be obliged to be as distinguished as the clan B?renburg," she used frequently to say, and preferred to say it to the face of the clan B?renburg. The clan B?renburg shook its head sadly at that, and regretted her peculiarities, without losing its respect, or even its sympathy, for her. The sharpest judgment which the family had ever pronounced upon her was: "Nita is an original."

Even the sun has spots, the most charming being has her unlovely peculiarities--Nita von Sankjéwitch is an artist! She has her independent studio in the rear of a building in a little court adorned with a pleasure ground, in the Avenue Frochot. Since some months she has shared it with a friend, a young Russian, of whom she is very fond. Nita's studio has two doors: one which leads directly out on the little court, and one which connects Nita's own sanctum with the great painting school of which Monsieur Sylvain is at the head. She has the key of her art nest in her pocket. Before she has yet had time to put it in the key-hole, the door is opened from within. A pretty, blonde young girl comes to meet her, and embraces her as if they had been separated for two years. It is Sonia--i.e., Sophia Dimitrievna Kasin.

"Do I come too late?" asks Nita. "Has Monsieur Sylvain already been?"

"No," replied Sophie, "we are about to give him up. Will you have tea?"

Nita laughs. "Tea, and yet again tea! At home Miss Wilmot has already pursued me with offers of tea; that comes of it if one lives between an Englishwoman and a Russian. Well, give me a cup of your nectar, Sonia. I am a little out of tune to-day; perhaps it will do me good."

"You must wait a moment; if is not yet ready," replies Sonia, and bends listening over the copper tea-kettle, which stands on a little table delicately set with all kinds of tea things.

It is four o'clock in the afternoon. The last whitish light of an already quickly dying November day falls through a large window occupying almost one entire side of the studio, a roomy, square apartment, whose gray walls are adorned with a couple of studies, abundant bold sketches by Nita, anxiously neat attempts by Sophie; beside those, a plaster cast of St. John, bas reliefs of Donatello, with many bits of picturesque old stuffs, and two or three Japanese crapes. Furniture is scarce: a divan, over which an old Persian rug is spread; a couple of comfortable chairs, mostly of cane, but with a supplement of silken cushions; tables which bend under a weight of books, portfolios, plaster casts, and paint-boxes; many easels; a vase of withered chrysanthemums; in one corner a manikin with gracefully bent arms, in the other a skeleton, many old paint tubes--form the furnishings.

The door into the adjoining painting school stands half open. Idly waiting for the completion of Sophie's brewing, Nita glances in there.

Between a forest of easels she sees eight or ten women, who look weary, yawn; one of them smokes a cigarette, another nibbles at a biscuit; a third, her hat already on her head and veil over her eyes, makes a correction on her picture; while still another sits at a little piano, and with desperate energy drums the Saint Saens danse macabre.

The lady who is making yet another correction in her picture is the Countess d'Olbreuse, a butterfly of fashion, who not only raves over painting, but also has a great love for music.

"It is useless to wait longer for Sylvain," she remarks, laying aside her brushes and addressing the lady at the piano. "Apropos, have you procured tickets for Lensky's concert in Eden?"

"Not yet, and yet I have telephoned for twenty-four hours like a detective or a broker."

Nita turns away, and closes the half-opened door between the two studios, not without force.

"Tea is ready," says Sonia; "but what is the matter, dear, you look so gloomy?"

"Nothing," says Nita, "only that"--with a glance at the door--"vexes me so. Such a ladies' studio is only a kind of hospital for ruined feminine existences. There! what an absent-minded being I am! Where is it?--a letter for you; perhaps it contains something interesting." And after some search, Nita finds the letter in the pocket of her jacket. Scarcely has Sophie opened the letter when she cries out for joy.

"Well, what is it, little goose?" asks Nita, quite pleased at Sophie's beaming face.

"The letter is from my cousin, Nikolai Lensky, the son of the famous violinist, you know----"

"I know nothing. I had no suspicion that you were related to Lensky," replies Nita, quickly and harshly.

"My mother was a cousin of his wife," stammers Sophie, somewhat vexed at Nita's unpleasant tone. "Yesterday I met Nikolai at the Jeliagins. He has recently come from St. Petersburg. He will soon come to see me; meanwhile he sends me two tickets to his father's concert day after to-morrow--the concert for which there is not a seat to be had in all Paris, either for good words or for money. So you can rejoice with me."

"Over what?"

"You will go with me to the concert?"

"I?--no."

"But, Nita, what are you thinking of?"

"I really cannot; I have no time. Go with the Countess d'Olbreuse, who hurried here from Madrid and missed a bull-fight in order to be present at Lensky's concert, and who appeals by turns to the Russian ambassador and her music-teacher to coax a ticket."

But Sophie shook her head. "I would rather burn the ticket than give it to any one but you. I do not understand you, Nita--you who are so musical that you attend every concert that is worth the while. You do not wish to hear Boris Lensky? What is the reason?"

Nita tapped her little foot vexedly on the floor, and said: "When not long ago a sceptical old Frenchman, who had nothing to do with death, learned from his physician that his last hour had come, he said: 'Well, it is not agreeable to me, but still I have one consolation: I shall, at least, when I am dead, hear nothing more of Sarah Bernhardt and the great French nation'--he could have added, and of Boris Lensky!"

"You will certainly not run into the foyer after him?" asks Nita, dryly.

"I am not thinking of it," Sophie assures her.

"Well, I only thought that you are one of his relatives," says Nita.

"Since his wife's death I have had no intercourse with him," Sophie confides to her friend. "He cannot bear me, thinks me narrow and prudish. As a man, I have never been in sympathy with him; he treated my dear cousin, his wife, much too badly for me to ever pardon him. But as an artist--as artist--he stands alone. I have heard other wonderful violinists, but it is only he that sends such hot and cold shudders over one's back at each stroke of his bow."

"Yes, he is a great artist," says Nita. Her voice sounds weary and hoarse, and the words fall slowly, syllable for syllable, from her lips, as if they were forced from her in a magnetic sleep. She looks pale, and her eyes again have their mysterious look. After much coaxing and pleading from Sophie, she has at length resolved to go with her friend to Lensky's concert, announced for that afternoon, and now seems to regret her decision.

"I think that we have a great musical treat before us," remarks Sophie, after a while. "Lensky has an uncommonly fine programme to-day. The first number is a trio of Schumann; then his accompanist plays a couple of little things; then comes a saraband, by Bach; something by Paganini, I do not know what; then a melody by Lensky himself--'La Legende' is the name, I think. It is dedicated to his wife."

"Ah! he plays that also?" asks Nita, shortly.

"Have you already heard him play it?" asks Sophie.

"Yes, once, a few years ago," replies Nita, without looking up.

"I am usually not very fond of his compositions, but I know of nothing that goes to one's heart more than this melody when he plays it," says Sophie. Nita is silent.

"You seem tired and ill, my heart," says Sophie, after a pause. "If you really do not want to go to the concert, if you were really going merely on my account, I would rather stay at home."

"No," says Nita, gloomily. "I have said it. I will go."

* * *

Lensky's concert is to take place at four o'clock. About half-past three Nita and Sophie, in a rattling fiacre, roll out of the quiet Rue Murillo into the noisy heart of the city. All at once the cab slows its pace. "What is the matter?" asks Sophie, putting her head out of the window.

"I cannot go on. The row of carriages blocks the way," answers the coachman. The horses stop. Nita also looks out. "What a tumult!" says she. "One carriage crowds another; it is as if a celebrity was to be buried."

Meanwhile the rain pours down on the roofs of the carriages, on the hard macadam, on the umbrellas of the pedestrians, who remorselessly push each other forward on the sidewalks. The coachmen crack their whips, cry out, curse; the horses stamp and press against each other.

At last, with difficulty enough, the carriage with the two girls pushes forward a few steps. Sonia looks at her watch. Four o'clock! With a start, she remembers Lensky's fabulous punctuality. "Nita, if we do not wish to miss the beginning, we must get out and walk."

And they get out. They are not the only ones. The most distinguished ladies get out of the prettiest coupés, thread their way between the muddy carriage wheels, crowd on the slippery sidewalk between piano teachers with waterproofs and overshoes, musicians with turned-up coat collars and dented silk hats, and among them the Countess d'Olbreuse, with a great bundle of music under her arm.

The young girls' places are on the stage. They go, or rather are pushed forward by the crowd, through an endless length of corridors smelling of gas and sawdust.

All the places on the stage Lensky has given to acquaintances. There is no more generous artist than he--none who, with such an immense crowding, and with doubled prices, still continues to keep hundreds of free tickets for his personal disposal. In consequence, all kinds of people are crowded together on the stage--ladies of every age and quite every rank in life, music teachers, conservatorists, ladies from the highest society, people who speak Spanish, French, Russian, or English.

"Where are our two places?" asks Sophie, looking round attentively--"24, 25, 24, 25."

"Here, Sonia," says a gentle, good-natured man's voice.

Sonia suddenly becomes fiery red. Her blue eyes sparkle. She stands as if rooted to the ground. A young man, tall, broad-shouldered, under whose severely English exterior something of his true Russian bearishness is betrayed, with an oval, rather yellow, unusually regular face, sympathetic, almond-shaped eyes, and thick brown hair, comes up to her and gives her his hand. "These are the places," says he, "here in the third row. I only came day before yesterday; my father had no better ones to give away."

"But, I beg you, we are splendidly placed. It was so nice in you to think of me," Sophie assures him cordially.

"Well, the time has not yet come when I have forgotten you!" Suddenly his glance rests on Nita, and remains fixed on her face.

"Have the kindness to introduce me, Sonitschka," asks he. His voice trembles a little.

"My cousin, Nikolai Lensky," says Sophie, in a tone which betrays that this cousin is not merely a cousin for her.

"Fr?ulein von Sankjéwitch," she adds, explanatorily. "But what is the matter, my heart, you look so faint?" This turning to Nita.

"It is nothing; it will pass off," murmurs Nita, and sits down.

Nikolai's features take on a truly anxious expression, and he cannot take his eyes from off her. Why does she, just she, please him, before she has exchanged a word with him, better than formerly any woman has pleased him? She looks unusually attractive to-day, besides. The weary fever which quite weighs her down to the ground takes from her appearance the harshness which often makes her somewhat cold. The outline of her face is much softer than formerly. A mysterious light shines from her large eyes, the eyes in which a strange grief lies buried, and round her mouth trembles an expression as of death-sentenced tenderness which will not die.

"Could you possibly get me a vinaigrette, Colia?" asks Sonia, anxiously.

A mad storm of applause cuts short her words. Through the passage left between the audience on the stage strides a large man, with long, half-curled hair, which begins to grow gray; with a face whose features remind one of an Egyptian Sphinx, a face with an indescribable expression of gloomy sadness, austere pride, and touching kindness; a face that is not handsome, but which one never forgets when one has once seen it, the face of a man who has tasted all the pleasures of earth and who is yet always hungry--the face of a man who still desperately longs for something in which he has long ceased to believe.

The two co?perators are behind him--the 'cellist, a Parisian celebrity with curly hair parted in the middle, and a very long mustache, which he had inherited from an exiled Polish martyr; the pianist, a pupil of De Sterny, like him in appearance, blond, slender, medium sized, faultlessly attired, almost dandified.

Lensky bows simply, benevolently, in all directions; the Schumann trio commences.

Dominating the two other instruments, the silvery sweet tones of the violin vibrate through the hall.

Nita bends her head forward--listens--listens. Young Lensky has brought her the vinaigrette which Sophie had asked for. She turns it absent-mindedly in her hands. Her eyes become gloomier.

Why had she come here, why?--to oblige Sophie? No: because, again and again, the whole night long, she had ever heard these silvery violin tones, in a thousand caressing shadings, oppressive, sad, alluring. She had promised herself the highest musical enjoyment which can be offered to one, and feels a fearful disappointment.

Already after the first bars Lensky begins to hurry. He is vexed at the cold playing of the Parisian 'cellist, at a gnat which has flown against his face, at God knows what.

From that moment his playing differs from other violin virtuosos only through a raging acceleration of tempo, an astonishing lack of purity, and a luxuriant fulness of sound, an inimitable softness and satiety of tone which none of the other violinists have ever attained. His playing is of an arbitrariness which completely confuses the 'cellist, ignorant of his peculiarities. At many parts the three instruments are not together.

It is pitiable music. The veins in Lensky's forehead swell with rage. Ever more fiercely he draws the bow across his violin; it is now for him merely an instrument on which he can vent his bad moods.

A critic who is present describes his playing as a musical crime, the performance of the trio as a sin against Schumann's creation. Still, at the close of the number, abundant applause falls to the share of the artists. It is the fashion to rave over the "devil's violinist." What in any case seems strange in the performance to the Parisians, they describe as "Slavonic," and with this short word lull all such thoughts.

"It is one of his bad days," sighs Sophie, "or it is no longer the same man."

For the first time Nita's eyes rest on the virtuoso, who now, recalled by the audience with loud cries of applause, again steps on the stage between the two other performers.

He stoops, his lower lip is flabby, deep furrows are in his cheeks, there are heavy shadows under his eyes, the chin has no longer the firm, marked outline of formerly, and still-- "He is quite the same," says Nita, shortly, and turns away her head.

Naturally he is the same, only the dross in his nature comes to light more hatefully and intrusively than formerly, when the whole charm of fiery manhood glorified his faults. These faults become a young man, but an old man they do not.

At last the audience has become quiet; the concert proceeds.

Monsieur Albert Perfection sits down to the piano, plays a nocturne of Chopin, an étude of Thalberg, and a Liszt tarentella with blameless technical perfection, and without faltering a single time.

After the impure, confused, over-hasty, and still, in spite of everything, fascinating playing of Lensky, his performance has a calm, soothing effect on the nerves, and without reckoning to what phenomenon to ascribe the effect, the public breathes freely, breaks out in stormy bravos, then suddenly recollects itself--considers. To distinguish his accompanist at one of Boris Lensky's concerts! It is not fitting.

Then follows quite a long pause, and at length Lensky once more steps upon the stage.

In two minutes scarcely one of those present remembers that Albert Perfection exists. Whatever musical adherents Lensky had lost, he has quite won back.

Even now his playing is not perfectly free from continual little technical faults and impurities, but still, who would have time to stop at those while this sense-enthralling, oppressing, resonant charm flows from his violin? It is now no longer a violin; it is a human heart which spreads out all its treasures before the crowd, exposes its holiest of holies to it, and in a wonderful, mysterious language, a language which all understand, and to which no one can lend words, confesses his joys and sorrows, his heaven-aspiring enthusiasm, and, swooning, back to earth sinking, human sadness.

His appearance also has changed, become ennobled. His formerly flushed face is now deathly pale; the deeply sunken eyes are almost closed; the hateful expression about his mouth has disappeared, and has given place to an inconsolably melancholy expression; his lips are half parted; he breathes with difficulty, sometimes something like a gasp interrupts his performance. The insane story from Figaro comes to the mind of more than one of his listeners. It is not to be denied, his playing gives the impression of a bad charm to which he himself has fallen victim.

Now Lensky plays his own composition, his famous, wonderful "La Légende," for which every one in the audience waited eagerly. In the middle of the powerful, striking melody of the piece something like a sob and the wearily fluttering wings of an angel who has wandered into Hades, and now vainly seeks the way to its home, sounds from beneath his bow.

The audience is beside itself. Men laugh, weep, rejoice, clap their hands, stamp their feet, mount on chairs in order to see him better.

"Bis, bis, bis!" sounds from all sides. He repeats it.

Then a murmur goes through the room: some one has fainted yonder on the stage--Nita! Her head falls forward. With difficulty Sophie holds her for one moment upright in her arms; then Nikolai springs to her help, carries out the unconscious woman. Sonia follows him.

An unpleasant excitement overpowers the audience; without entirely stopping, Lensky retards his strokes, coughs compassionately, looks short-sightedly squinting after his son. A splendid fellow! How easily he carries the dark form! Who was she? A slender, supple young body, evidently. Then he takes up the rhythm anew--the incident is forgotten.