CHAPTER XX

STEINDAL GIVES A PUBLIC PERFORMANCE

“Say,” whispered Hooper to me, “Karl looks like a high priest of Baal leading Steindal to slaughter as a sacrificial bull.”

I babbled something, it matters not what. All my eyes were bent on the strange meeting between those two. Karl, suavely stern, motioned the Jew to a chair at a table laid for four. They faced each other. Hooper and I took the vacant places. Jules, of course, hastened to us, and his attendant sprites relieved the travelers of overcoats and hats.

Steindal, manifestly ill at ease, glanced around the crowded restaurant. He soon recognized several _habitués_. One man, a well-known Stock Exchange broker, hastened to greet him. While they were speaking, I murmured to Karl:

“Under the circumstances, is this wise?”

“At any cost, I shall punish the man,” he said. “I had almost forgotten his existence. Fate sent him here to-night. I regret it, for one reason, but I rejoice for many.”

The one reason, I fancied, was that the strain on his already weakening powers entailed by the subjugation of Steindal would demand a corresponding relaxation of the tension needed to preserve the woman he loved and the woman who loved him from relapsing into their lamentable excitations. I was right in this, as also in the surmise that the erstwhile purveyor of musical celebrities (Steindal was now a mining expert and a man of great wealth in share certificates) would prove a most stubborn subject before he yielded to the demands of telegnomic reciprocity.

It was to be a contest of Mind against Matter, of the Soul in man against the Brute in man. That is a primeval fight, a battle begun ere many of the hills were fashioned or the oceans charted as we know them; nor did I doubt the issue of its latest renewal. But what form would it take? Would Karl kill Steindal? If Steindal were the bull of sacrifice, would Karl supply the fire to consume him before our very eyes?

Haply, I had no opportunity for ordered thought. Events began to march, as they say on the Boul Mich, and, for a little time, I remained an outwardly quiet spectator of doings which soon set the restaurant in an uproar.

Steindal, who had drawn somewhat apart in earnest conversation with his friend from Capel Court, came back to us. He looked confidently enough at Karl. Evidently he was determined to brazen out a difficult situation.

“I feel a little _hors de concours_ in these garments,” he said, quite affably, speaking in the smooth, sibilant voice which reminded me of Karl’s likening his utterance to that of a boa-constrictor.

“Ah, you speak French, too!” exclaimed Karl with a grim geniality. “The last time we met you indulged mostly in Spanish.”

“The last time! We have never met before. I--er--think I have heard of you from a man named Constantine.”

Certainly Steindal had splendid nerves. He arranged himself comfortably at the table. The chef of the Pall Mall Hotel had a great name for appetizing dishes, and Jules was hovering about with alert pencil and memoranda tablets.

“Yes. Poor Constantine! Killed himself, didn’t he? Did you ever hear why?”

Karl, I noticed, had his hands clasped and resting on the table. The significance of this attitude dawned upon me then. He thus completed some magnetic circuit of intense potency.

“Never heard a word,” said Steindal, who seemed to accept Karl’s presence with greater complacency each moment. “That is to say, I knew he was worried about some girl. As if any woman were worth suicide! _Sango la Madonna!_”

“That is more like the Steindal of old, though the appeal is to a strange patroness,” cried Karl. “Oh, do not worry, Jules! Give us fish, flesh, and fowl, and bring the best wine of France. We leave details to you.”

The head waiter whisked off. That sort of order is comprehensible. The diner surrenders at discretion, no matter what the charge.

“Your references to past acquaintance puzzle me,” said the Jew, politely keeping to the thread of the conversation.

“Then I must be mistaken. Perhaps Constantine gave me a picture so vivid that it burnt itself into my memory.”

“That is a popular attribute of the fiend, and hardly flattering to me,” laughed the other.

“Well, there is some truth in it, and it may even contain a germ of adulation. Unless I err again, you played Mephisto to Constantine’s Faust, eh?”

“Very likely. I knew many Margarets in those days.”

I expected an explosion after that singularly apt, yet unfortunate, reply, but, beyond a slight contraction of the eyelids and twitching of the nostrils, Karl gave no sign. Steindal was so unctuously candid, so shielded by the armor of money and conceit, that I deemed him impenetrable by the hidden lightning with which Karl was enveloping him. I changed my opinion ere many minutes passed.

“Many Margarets,” repeated Karl, musingly, “and many Fausts, but only one devil, Steindal.”

“Do you think so? Then he exists in numerous forms. _Sapristi!_ Here is another and familiar imp in a _sole diable_. And an ’84 champagne! You can’t get this wine in Paris.”

Steindal had that insufferable habit of tucking a napkin under his chin. He began to eat. He swallowed two glasses of wine with surprising haste. Karl relapsed into silence. Hooper and I spoke of generalities. An orchestra was tuning up, and Karl whispered to a waiter. I saw that the conductor held a confabulation with the bassoon-player, and the band struck into an allegro movement which I did not recognize at once.

Suddenly Karl leaned forward. His eyes blazed with fire. Had the hotel clerk of former years been in the room he would have remembered that look.

“That is your cue, Mephisto,” he said, his low-pitched voice vibrating with intense energy. “Up you get! On the chair! You know the words:

Dio dell’ or del mondo, signor, Sei possente risplendente Culto hai tu maggior quaggiù.

That’s it! Now!”

And Steindal, skipping to his feet, mounted the chair with surprising agility, and began to sing, with a fine assumption of the basso profundo manner, the rollicking song with which Mephistopheles disturbed the village revels. What could be more amazing than the action, more appropriate than the air? It has been rendered in English:

Clear the way for the Calf of Gold! In his pomp and pride adore him; East or West, in heat or cold, Weak and strong must bow before him! Wisest men do homage mute To the image of the brute....

Steindal, posturing on the chair in absurd caricature of a Plançon or Edouard de Reszke, was fairly launched into the opening strofa before Hooper or I quite realized what was happening. Some ladies at neighboring tables shrank from us with alarm. People farther away rose and gazed at us wide-eyed. A sharp-witted genius, scenting some mischief, shouted “Bravo!” and the band, thinking an artistic joke was in train, kept up the accompaniment. Jules and an under-manager hurried towards us, but, seeing that the diners were, if anything, inclined to applaud, they resolved to defer their appeal for orderly behavior on Steindal’s part until he made an end. He sang both verses admirably, the band helping in the chorus, and, with the final wild phrase:

Tuo ministro è Belzebù,

a perfect hurricane of encouraging cries and rattling of cutlery came from all sides.

Steindal bowed in the approved style, and descended from his rostrum. He was not disturbed in the least. Obviously, Karl held him in a state of complete aphanasia, and this magnate of a Rand which he had never seen had not the remotest notion that he was making a supreme ass of himself. Nor was it altogether patent that others took that severe view. Certainly, the stock-broker regarded him with a pained curiosity, but most of those present seemed to look upon the escapade as the light-hearted ebullience of a foreigner.

Our waiters brought some variety of meat, goodness knows what, and Steindal tackled it with keen zest, first sluicing his strained vocal cords with more wine. The orchestra swung off into a pleasing waltz. Hooper and I, though disconcerted by the covert attention our party attracted, were beginning to take an intelligent interest in the dinner when Karl called on his medium for another “turn.”

“In your vanished youth, Steindal,” he hissed, “you were a circus acrobat. Before you gorge too much give us a contortion or two!”

Instantly the unhappy Wilhelm sprang upright again. He grabbed his chair, set it apart from the table with a professional bang on the floor, and forthwith stood on his head and hands. His coat and the white napkin flapped down over his face, coins rattled from his pockets, and his obese figure looked exceedingly comical as he poised himself feet upwards and slowly turned, so that all might see and admire. After a pause, he bounced back to the floor, but only to grasp the chair in a new way and extend himself horizontally, resting on his hands.

This time there were no plaudits. Something approaching a panic reigned throughout the room. The song was deemed a pardonable extravagance, but these grotesque posturings savored of madness. Like everybody else, I was so taken up with Steindal’s antics that I paid no heed to Karl, nor did my flurried thoughts credit him with creating the wave of fear and disgust which now converted popular tolerance into disapprobation.

Women shrieked; there was a rush of excited guests and perplexed waiters. Then somebody--probably the gentleman who cried “Bravo” a few minutes before--bawled:

“Turn him out! He is either mad or drunk!”

Absolutely heedless of the commotion he was causing, Steindal finished his balancing, gave a little skip reminiscent of the ring, smiled blandly, and kissed his finger-tips. Then he squatted on the carpet, and endeavored to do that which was impossible for a man of his build by trying to cross his feet over his shoulders.

This was too much. Jules, aided by a couple of waiters, clutched Steindal and pulled him out of the knot. He became very angry, swore outlandishly, fought, kicked, squealed, and was hauled out by main force, while a man gathered up his scattered money.

“And now,” said Karl, with an air of placid relief, “now that I have made that self-satisfied little wretch the laughing-stock of London, let us have some dinner.”

So that was the explanation of the extraordinary scene! Karl had not forgotten Steindal’s outspoken rage when the hapless Armenian created a similar disturbance in a New York restaurant. He divined that Steindal could only be scarified through his colossal vanity. “The laughing-stock of London!”--that would be a barbed shaft; its wound would never heal. When Steindal regained possession of his senses he would learn the disastrous truth. Even if he escaped prosecution for disorderly conduct, some kind friend would surely tell him how he sang, and balanced, and contorted! He would howl and writhe in impotent fury. There was no legal redress. None would credit him, nor would he dare take that course. He could only accuse Karl of exercising some terrible influence upon him, and, in that event, the laughter would be even more wide-spread, while his overbearing reputation, which stood him in good stead in financial circles, must be lost irrecoverably.

The disordered diners were beginning to arrange themselves once more. The band, owing to the conductor’s happy thought, broke into the magnificent trio, “O del Ciel,” for those Italians can play you anything of Gounod’s or Verdi’s right off the reel, and a great many persons smiled broadly as they caught the musical satire.

The stock-broker hurried out.

“He has gone to look after his friend. It is a kindly act,” I said.

“Guess he has gone to glue himself on to the Paris telephone,” commented Hooper, dryly. “Steindal’s stocks are mainly held in France. Let it once get round that he is cracked, and they will drop into the place beneath like the gentle dew from heaven.”

Hooper’s perversion of Shakespeare was condoned by his knowledge of human nature. The telephone girl told me afterwards that the broker paid a fabulous sum for half an hour’s talk with Paris that night.

“What will happen to Steindal, do you think?” I asked Karl.

“He is gradually recovering. In less than an hour he will be all right. I expect the hotel people, knowing his identity, will put him to bed and send for a doctor. But he wants no doctor. He will clamor for a purveyor of guns and daggers.”

“You believe he will plan vengeance against you?”

“Most decidedly. He is no coward. His mother was a Mexican dancer. She taught him to throw a knife before he learnt the alphabet. Ask him the meaning of _la cuchillada_ and you will see his eyes glisten.”

Here was a nice outcome of a freak worthy of some light-headed schoolboy with a taste for practical joking. In addition to his other troubles, Karl had saddled himself with a mortal feud.

“Oh,” I cried in a sudden heat, “this is intolerable. What a counselor your father brought from Heidelberg when he summoned me!”

“Have no fear,” said Karl, toying with a salad; “Steindal cannot injure me. The little beast! I could paralyze his uplifted hand.”

Karl could do that, I knew. Nevertheless, I was a prey to disquieting thoughts.

Hooper, blessed with a temperament which could take an equable view of the Day of Judgment, began to review events in his practical way.

“I can credit you with accomplishing almost anything in the present tense, Karl,” he said; “but I am taken out of my stride when you dip into history. How did you know Steindal had been a circus acrobat?”

“_You_ knew.”

“Yes. Some one told me years ago. I thought of it while he was singing, but I have never mentioned it to you.”

Karl smiled wearily.

“That was enough,” he said.

“My dear fellow, can you read my thoughts?”

“A little while ago I read the thoughts of every living being in this room. And what is more, I supplied the thoughts of most of them. Now, I would like to forget Steindal. Why did you fail to let me know you were in Paris?”

“I have a notion that any giving of information on my part would be kind of superfluous,” laughed Hooper.

“You are mistaken. Here you are at my mercy; in Paris you are safe. The world holds nearly two thousand millions of people. Except under special circumstances, I cannot pretend to single out individuals.”

I listened to their talk with little real comprehension. I was wondering what would be the outcome of the scene I had just witnessed. I seemed to be sitting in some theater, watching a drama of intense interest, with its thrills of pathos and human agony, and its snatches of comic relief. While the clown was setting the audience in a roar with his unconscious buffoonery the sad-hearted heroine was waiting in the wings to harrow us in the next breath.

And was it so in sober earnest? Was Maggie Hutchinson waiting, in her far-off Round Castle on the shores of Como, fully aware of the farce being enacted in the restaurant, and ready to take her cue when the moment arrived for her tribulation? How could I be sure? Was it possible to be certain of anything when all the common laws of nature were being turned topsy-turvy by a youngster whose weird powers were as yet but vaguely acknowledged by those few doubting believers acquainted with them?

I have often looked back on that extraordinary dinner in the Pall Mall Hotel. I know now that a great deal was revealed to me in that hour, but I was so overcome by the exciting outward aspects of the manifestations that I missed the inward message they carried. I am not alone in this crass blindness to hidden truth. When Gounod wrote the opera which gave Karl the text for Steindal’s undoing, Mr. Gye, the then chief operatic manager of London, saw nothing in it but “a waltz and a chorus of old men.” Paris would not have it. The Théâtre Lyrique produced it with financial loss. And one man, Choudens, thought he was taking a tremendous risk when he purchased the publishing rights for £400. Happy Choudens! He cleared nearly £120,000 by the venture.

Yet _Faust_ was as great in 1839 as it is to-day. Only man has become enlightened.

I was brought to see things clearly in much less than half a century. But it saddens me to know how much I missed while Steindal was singing his devil’s song and gyrating on his head and hands!