Part 4
(_Aiming for the first and second C's above the staff, he accidentally strikes the C sharps instead and has to transpose three measures to get back into the key. The effect is harrowing, and he gives his audience a swift glance of apprehension._)
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY WOMEN
What new beauties he gets out of it!
A MAN
He can tickle the ivories, all right, all right!
A CRITIC
Well, at any rate, he doesn't try to imitate Paderewski.
THE GREAT PIANIST
(_Relieved by the non-appearance of the hisses he expected._) Well, it's lucky for me that I'm not in Leipzig to-day! But in Leipzig an artist runs no risks: the beer is pure. The authorities see to that. The worse enemy of technic is biliousness, and biliousness is sure to follow bad beer. (_He gets to the_ coda _at last and takes it at a somewhat livelier pace._)
THE VIRGIN
How I envy the woman he loves! How it would thrill me to feel his arms about me--to be drawn closer, closer, closer! I would give up the whole world! What are conventions, prejudices, legal forms, morality, after all? Vanities! Love is beyond and above them all--and art is love! I think I must be a pagan.
THE GREAT PIANIST
And the herring! Good God, what herring! These barbarous Americans----
THE VIRGIN
Really, I am quite indecent! I should blush, I suppose. But love is never ashamed--How people misunderstand me!
THE MARRIED WOMAN
I wonder if he's faithful. The chances are against it. I never heard of a man who was. (_An agreeable melancholy overcomes her and she gives herself up to the mood without thought._)
THE GREAT PIANIST
I wonder whatever became of that girl in Dresden. Every time I think of her, she suggests pleasant thoughts--good beer, a fine band, _Gemütlichkeit_. I must have been in love with her--not much, of course, but just enough to make things pleasant. And not a single letter from her! I suppose she thinks I'm starving to death over here--or tuning pianos. Well, when I get back with the money there'll be a shock for her. A shock--but not a _Pfennig_!
THE MARRIED WOMAN
(_Her emotional coma ended._) Still, you can hardly blame him. There must be a good deal of temptation for a great artist. All of these frumps here would----
THE VIRGIN
Ah, how dolorous, how exquisite is love! How small the world would seem if----
THE MARRIED WOMAN
Of course you could hardly call such old scarecrows temptations. But still----
(THE GREAT PIANIST _comes to the last measure of the_ coda--_a passage of almost Haydnesque clarity and spirit. As he strikes the broad chord of the tonic there comes a roar of applause. He arises, moves a step or two down the stage, and makes a series of low bows, his hands to his heart._)
THE GREAT PIANIST
(_Bowing._) I wonder why the American women always wear raincoats to piano recitals. Even when the sun is shining brightly, one sees hundreds of them. What a disagreeable smell they give to the hall. (_More applause and more bows._) An American audience always smells of rubber and lilies-of-the-valley. How different in London! There an audience always smells of soap. In Paris it reminds you of sachet bags--and _lingerie_.
(_The applause ceases and he returns to the piano._)
And now comes that _verfluchte adagio_.
(_As he begins to play, a deathlike silence falls upon the hall._)
ONE OF THE CRITICS
What rotten pedaling!
ANOTHER CRITIC
A touch like a xylophone player, but he knows how to use his feet. That suggests a good line for the notice--"he plays better with his feet than with his hands," or something like that. I'll have to think it over and polish it up.
ONE OF THE OTHER MEN
Now comes some more of that awful classical stuff.
THE VIRGIN
Suppose he can't speak English? But that wouldn't matter. Nothing matters. Love is beyond and above----
SIX HUNDRED WOMEN
Oh, how beautiful!
THE MARRIED WOMAN
Perfect!
THE DEAN OF THE CRITICS
(_Sinking quickly into the slumber which always overtakes him during the_ adagio.) C-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!
THE YOUNGEST CRITIC
There is that old fraud asleep again. And to-morrow he'll print half a column of vapid reminiscence and call it criticism. It's a wonder his paper stands for him. Because he once heard Liszt, he....
THE GREAT PIANIST
That plump girl over there on the left is not so bad. As for the rest, I beg to be excused. The American women have no more shape than so many matches. They are too tall and too thin. I like a nice rubbery armful--like that Dresden girl. Or that harpist in Moscow--the girl with the Pilsner hair. Let me see, what was her name? Oh, Fritzi, to be sure--but her last name? Schmidt? Kraus? Meyer? I'll have to try to think of it, and send her a postcard.
THE MARRIED WOMAN
What delicious flutelike tones!
ONE OF THE WOMEN
If Beethoven could only be here to hear it! He would cry for very joy! Maybe he _does_ hear it. Who knows? I believe he does. I am _sure_ he does.
(THE GREAT PIANIST _reaches the end of the_ adagio, _and there is another burst of applause, which awakens_ THE DEAN OF THE CRITICS.)
THE DEAN OF THE CRITICS
Oh, piffle! Compared to Gottschalk, the man is an amateur. Let him go back to the conservatory for a couple of years.
ONE OF THE MEN
(_Looking at his program._) Next comes the _shirt-so_. I hope it has some tune in it.
THE VIRGIN
The _adagio_ is love's agony, but the _scherzo_ is love triumphant. What beautiful eyes he has! And how pale he is!
THE GREAT PIANIST
(_Resuming his grim toil._) Well, there's half of it over. But this _scherzo_ is ticklish business. That horrible evening in Prague--will I ever forget it? Those hisses--and the papers next day!
ONE OF THE MEN
Go it, professor! That's the best you've done yet!
ONE OF THE CRITICS
Too fast!
ANOTHER CRITIC
Too slow!
A YOUNG GIRL
My, but ain't the professor just full of talent!
THE GREAT PIANIST
Well, so far no accident. (_He negotiates a difficult passage, and plays it triumphantly, but at some expenditure of cold perspiration._) What a way for a man to make a living!
THE VIRGIN
What passion he puts into it! His soul is in his finger-tips.
A CRITIC
A human pianola!
THE GREAT PIANIST
This _scherzo_ always fetches the women. I can hear them draw long breaths. That plump girl is getting pale. Well, why shouldn't she? I suppose I'm about the best pianist she has ever heard--or ever _will_ hear. What people can see in that Hambourg fellow I never could imagine. In Chopin, Schumann, Grieg, you might fairly say he's pretty good. But it takes an _artist_ to play Beethoven. (_He rattles on to the end of the_ scherzo _and there is more applause. Then he dashes into the_ finale.)
THE DEAN OF THE CRITICS
Too loud! Too loud! It sounds like an ash-cart going down an alley. But what can you expect? Piano-playing is a lost art. Paderewski ruined it.
THE GREAT PIANIST
I ought to clear 200,000 marks by this tournee. If it weren't for those thieving agents and hotelkeepers, I'd make 300,000. Just think of it--twenty-four marks a day for a room! That's the way these Americans treat a visiting artist! The country is worse than Bulgaria. I was treated better at Bucharest. Well, it won't last forever. As soon as I get enough of their money they'll see me no more. Vienna is the place to settle down. A nice studio at fifty marks a month--and the life of a gentleman. What was the name of that little red-cheeked girl at the café in the Franzjosefstrasse--that girl with the gold tooth and the silk stockings? I'll have to look her up.
THE VIRGIN
What an artist! What a master! What a----
THE MARRIED WOMAN
Has he really suffered, or is it just intuition?
THE GREAT PIANIST
No, marriage is a waste of money. Let the other fellow marry her. (_He approaches the closing measures of the finale._) And now for a breathing spell and a swallow of beer. American beer! Bah! But it's better than nothing. The Americans drink water. Cattle! Animals! _Ach, München, wie bist du so schön!_
(_As he concludes there is a whirlwind of applause and he is forced to bow again and again. Finally, he is permitted to retire, and the audience prepares to spend the short intermission in whispering, grunting, wriggling, scraping its feet, rustling its programs and gaping at hats. The_ SIX MUSICAL CRITICS _and_ SIX OTHER MEN, _their lips parched and their eyes staring, gallop for the door. As_ THE GREAT PIANIST _comes from the stage_, THE JANITOR _meets him with a large seidel of beer. He seizes it eagerly and downs it at a gulp._)
THE JANITOR
My, but them professors can put the stuff away!
_VI.--SEEING THE WORLD_
_VI.--Seeing The World_
_The scene is the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It is the half hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn_--still wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer--_begins to glow with mauves and apple greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the world, there are touches of piercing primary colours--red, yellow, violet. Far below, hugging the winding river, lies little Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and Christmas garden villas. A battalion of Austrian soldiers, drilling in the Exerzierplatz, appears as an army of grey ants, now barely visible. Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad flank of the Hungerberg, the night train for Venice labours toward the town.
It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all Europe. It has colour, dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a bit and so increase their spell. They are not the harsh precipices of Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of the Trentino, but rotting billows of clouds and snow, the high flung waves of some titanic but stricken ocean. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from the funicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the trees of the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is only a sheep bell) is heard from afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon, sweeps across the crystal spaces.
Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside, and the hand of man has converted it into a terrace. To the rear, clinging to the mountain, is an Alpine_ gasthaus--_a bit overdone, perhaps, with its red-framed windows and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of the Alps. Along the front of the terrace, protecting sightseers from the sheer drop of a thousand feet, is a stout wooden rail.
A man in an American sack suit, with a bowler hat on his head, lounges against this rail. His elbows rest upon it, his legs are crossed in the fashion of a figure four, and his face is buried in the red book of Herr Baedeker. It is the volume on Southern Germany, and he is reading the list of Munich hotels. Now and then he stops to mark one with a pencil, which he wets at his lips each time. While he is thus engaged, another man comes ambling along the terrace, apparently from the direction of the funicular railway station. He, too, carries a red book. It is Baedeker on Austria-Hungary. After gaping around him a bit, this second man approaches the rail near the other and leans his elbows upon it. Presently he takes a package of chewing gum from his coat pocket, selects two pieces, puts them into his mouth and begins to chew. Then he spits idly into space, idly but homerically, a truly stupendous expectoration, a staggering discharge from the Alps to the first shelf of the Lombard plain! The first man, startled by the report, glances up. Their eyes meet and there is a vague glimmer of recognition._
THE FIRST MAN
American?
THE SECOND MAN
Yes; St. Louis.
THE FIRST MAN
Been over long?
THE SECOND MAN
A couple of months.
THE FIRST MAN
What ship'd you come over in?
THE SECOND MAN
The _Kronprinz Friedrich_.
THE FIRST MAN
Aha, the German line! I guess you found the grub all right.
THE SECOND MAN
Oh, in the main. I have eaten better, but then again, I have eaten worse.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, they charge you enough for it, whether you get it or not. A man could live at the Plaza cheaper.
THE SECOND MAN
I should _say_ he could. What boat did _you_ come over in?
THE FIRST MAN
The _Maurentic_.
THE SECOND MAN
How is she?
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, so-so.
THE SECOND MAN
I hear the meals on those English ships are nothing to what they used to be.
THE FIRST MAN
That's what everybody tells me. But, as for me, I can't say I found them so bad. I had to send back the potatoes twice and the breakfast bacon once, but they had very good lima beans.
THE SECOND MAN
Isn't that English bacon awful stuff to get down?
THE FIRST MAN
It certainly is: all meat and gristle. I wonder what an Englishman would say if you put him next to a plate of genuine, crisp, _American_ bacon.
THE SECOND MAN
I guess he would yell for the police--or choke to death.
THE FIRST MAN
Did you like the German cooking on the _Kronprinz_?
THE SECOND MAN
Well, I did and I didn't. The chicken à la Maryland was very good, but they had it only once. I could eat it every day.
THE FIRST MAN
Why didn't you order it?
THE SECOND MAN
It wasn't on the bill.
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, bill be damned! You might have ordered it anyhow. Make a fuss and you'll get what you want. These foreigners have to be bossed around. They're used to it.
THE SECOND MAN
I guess you're right. There was a fellow near me who set up a holler about his room the minute he saw it--said it was dark and musty and not fit to pen a hog in--and they gave him one twice as large, and the chief steward bowed and scraped to him, and the room stewards danced around him as if he was a duke. And yet I heard later that he was nothing but a Bismarck herring importer from Hoboken.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, that's the way to get what you want. Did you have any nobility on board?
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, there was a Hungarian baron in the automobile business, and two English sirs. The baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk with him in the smoking room one night. He didn't put on any airs at all. You would have thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs kept to themselves. All they did the whole voyage was to write letters, wear their dress suits and curse the stewards.
THE FIRST MAN
They tell me over here that the best eating is on the French lines.
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, so I hear. But some say, too, that the Scandinavian lines are best, and then again I have heard people boosting the Italian lines.
THE FIRST MAN
I guess each one has its points. They say that you get wine free with meals on the French boats.
THE SECOND MAN
But I hear it's fourth-rate wine.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, you don't have to drink it.
THE SECOND MAN
That's so. But, as for me, I can't stand a Frenchman. I'd rather do without the wine and travel with the Dutch. Paris is dead compared with Berlin.
THE FIRST MAN
So it is. But those Germans are awful sharks. The way they charge in Berlin is enough to make you sick.
THE SECOND MAN
Don't tell _me_. I have been there. No longer ago than last Tuesday--or was it last Monday?--I went into one of those big restaurants on the Unter den Linden and ordered a small steak, French fried potatoes, a piece of pie and a cup of coffee--and what do you think those thieves charged me for it? Three marks fifty. That's eighty-seven and a half cents. Why, a man could have got the same meal at home for a dollar. These Germans are running wild. American money has gone to their heads. They think every American they get hold of is a millionaire.
THE FIRST MAN
The French are worse. I went into a hotel in Paris and paid ten francs a day for a room for myself and wife, and when we left they charged me one franc forty a day extra for sweeping it out and making the bed!
THE SECOND MAN
That's nothing. Here in Innsbruck they charge you half a krone a day _taxes_.
THE FIRST MAN
What! You don't say!
THE SECOND MAN
Sure thing. And if you don't eat breakfast in the hotel they charge you a krone for it anyhow.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, well, what next? But, after all, you can't blame them. We Americans come over here and hand them our pocket-books, and we ought to be glad if we get anything back at all. The way a man has to tip is something fearful.
THE SECOND MAN
Isn't it, though! I stayed in Dresden a week, and when I left there were six grafters lined up with their claws out. First came the port_eer_. Then came----
THE FIRST MAN
How much did you give the port_eer_?
THE SECOND MAN
Five marks.
THE FIRST MAN
You gave him too much. You ought to have given him about three marks, or, say, two marks fifty. How much was your hotel bill?
THE SECOND MAN
Including everything?
THE FIRST MAN
No, just your bill for your room.
THE SECOND MAN
I paid six marks a day.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, that made forty-two marks for the week. Now the way to figure out how much the port_eer_ ought to get is easy: a fellow I met in Baden-Baden showed me how to do it. First, you multiply your hotel bill by two, then you divide it by twenty-seven, and then you knock off half a mark. Twice forty-two is eighty-four. Twenty-seven into eighty-four goes about three times, and half from three leaves two and a half. See how easy it is?
THE SECOND MAN
It _looks_ easy, anyhow. But you haven't got much time to do all that figuring.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, let the port_eer_ wait. The longer he has to wait the more he appreciates you.
THE SECOND MAN
But how about the others?
THE FIRST MAN
It's just as simple. Your chambermaid gets a quarter of a mark for every day you have been in the hotel. But if you stay less than four days she gets a whole mark anyhow. If there are two in the party she gets half a mark a day, but no more than three marks in any one week.
THE SECOND MAN
But suppose there are two chambermaids? In Dresden there was one on day duty and one on night duty. I left at six o'clock in the evening, and so they were both on the job.
THE FIRST MAN
Don't worry. They'd have been on the job anyhow, no matter when you left. But it's just as easy to figure out the tip for two as for one. All you have to do is to add fifty per cent. and then divide it into two halves, and give one to each girl. Or, better still, give it all to one girl and tell her to give half to her pal. If there are three chambermaids, as you sometimes find in the swell hotels, you add another fifty per cent. and then divide by three. And so on.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. But how about the hall porter and the floor waiter?
THE FIRST MAN
Just as easy. The hall porter gets whatever the chambermaid gets, plus twenty-five per cent.--but no more than two marks in any one week. The floor waiter gets thirty pfennigs a day straight, but if you stay only one day he gets half a mark, and if you stay more than a week he gets two marks flat a week after the first week. In some hotels the hall porter don't shine shoes. If he don't he gets just as much as if he does, but then the actual "boots" has to be taken care of. He gets half a mark every two days. Every time you put out an extra pair of shoes he gets fifty per cent. more for that day. If you shine your own shoes, or go without shining them, the "boots" gets half his regular tip, but never less than a mark a week.
THE SECOND MAN
Certainly it seems simple enough. I never knew there was any such system.
THE FIRST MAN
I guess you didn't. Very few do. But it's just because Americans don't know it that these foreign blackmailers shake 'em down. Once you let the port_eer_ see that you know the ropes, he'll pass the word on to the others, and you'll be treated like a native.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. But how about the elevator boy? I gave the elevator boy in Dresden two marks and he almost fell on my neck, so I figured that I played the sucker.
THE FIRST MAN
So you did. The rule for elevator boys is still somewhat in the air, because so few of these bum hotels over here have elevators, but you can sort of reason the thing out if you put your mind on it. When you get on a street car in Germany, what tip do you give the conductor?
THE SECOND MAN
Five pfennigs.
THE FIRST MAN.
Naturally. That's the tip fixed by custom. You may almost say it's the unwritten law. If you gave the conductor more, he would hand you change. Well, how I reason it out is this way: If five pfennigs is enough for a car conductor, who may carry you three miles, why shouldn't it be enough for the elevator boy, who may carry you only three stories?
THE SECOND MAN
It seems fair, certainly.
THE FIRST MAN
And it _is_ fair. So all you have to do is to keep account of the number of times you go up and down in the elevator, and then give the elevator boy five pfennigs for each trip. Say you come down in the morning, go up in the evening, and average one other round trip a day. That makes twenty-eight trips a week. Five times twenty-eight is one mark forty--and there you are.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. By the way, what hotel are you stopping at?
THE FIRST MAN
The Goldene Esel.
THE SECOND MAN
How is it?
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, so-so. Ask for oatmeal at breakfast and they send to the livery stable for a peck of oats and ask you please to be so kind as to show them how to make it.
THE SECOND MAN
My hotel is even worse. Last night I got into such a sweat under the big German feather bed that I had to throw it off. But when I asked for a single blanket they didn't have any, so I had to wrap up in bath towels.
THE FIRST MAN