"We all went to bed. In the middle of the night I heard my dear
silver-gray cat mewing at the back of the house. She had been locked
out. I rose and went down-stairs to let her in. To do so it was
necessary for me to pass through the kitchen. It was quite dark, and I
knocked against something in the darkness. With an inarticulate
scream, I raced up-stairs again to my parents' bedroom. I seized my
mother by her night-dress and dragged her towards the door. She
stopped only to light a candle, and hand-in-hand we went down-stairs
to the kitchen. The candle threw around its fitful, shuddering glare,
and my mother's eyes followed mine. Some strange thing happened in my
throat.
"'Mother!' I cried, in a hoarse, uncouth, horrible voice, and, casting
myself against her bosom, I clung convulsively to her. From a hook in
the ceiling beam my father's corpse dangled. He had hanged himself in
the frenzy of his remorse. So my speech came to me again."
All the man's genius for tragic acting, that genius which had made him
unique in "Tristan" and in "Tannhauser," had been displayed in this
recital; and its solitary auditor was more moved by it than
superficially appeared. Neither of us spoke a word for a few minutes.
Then Alresca, taking aim, threw the end of his cigar out of the
window.
"Yes," I said at length, "that was tragedy, that was!"
He proceeded: "The critics are always praising me for the emotional qualities in my
singing. Well, I cannot use my voice without thinking of the dreadful
circumstance under which Fate saw fit to restore that which Fate had
taken away."
And there fell a long silence, and night descended on the canal, and
the swans were nothing now but pale ghosts wandering soundlessly over
the water.
"Carl," Alresca burst out with a start--he was decidedly in a mood to
be communicative that evening--"have you ever been in love?"
In the gloom I could just distinguish that he was leaning his head on
his arm.
"No," I answered; "at least, I think not;" and I wondered if I had
been, if I was, in love.
"You have that which pleases women, you know, and you will have
chances, plenty of chances. Let me advise you--either fall in love
young or not at all. If you have a disappointment before you are
twenty-five it is nothing. If you have a disappointment after you are
thirty-five, it is--everything."
He sighed.
"No, Alresca," I said, surmising that he referred to his own case,
"not everything, surely?"
"You are right," he replied. "Even then it is not everything. The
human soul is unconquerable, even by love. But, nevertheless, be
warned. Do not drive it late. Ah! Why should I not confess to you, now
that all is over? Carl, you are aware that I have loved deeply. Can
you guess what being in love meant to me? Probably not. I am aging
now, but in my youth I was handsome, and I have had my voice. Women,
the richest, the cleverest, the kindest--they fling themselves at
such as me. There is no vanity in saying so; it is the simple fact. I
might have married a hundred times; I might have been loved a thousand
times. But I remained--as I was. My heart slept like that of a young
girl. I rejected alike the open advances of the bold and the shy,
imperceptible signals of the timid. Women were not for me. In secret I
despised them. I really believe I did.