Ainslee's Magazine, February 1913 — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

86 or a mother announce the marriage of a beloved daughter. Both pain and heartbroken ecstasy filled him. His blue eyes were full of hot tears. The be- loved thing, the music into which he had poured himself and his dreams, all that he was and wished to be, had left him, had spread great, shining wings and flown into the storm of the world. What would be its fate? Yet he never really doubted that it would be received with reverence and honor. It was a great symphony—so he believed it. Why should not the world be glat to get it, and grateful to him for making so beautiful a thing? But Pippa’s heart ached for him. “It is very difficult to get a symphony performed by that orchestra,” she said to him gently. “Many very distin- guished composers have had to wait for many years Olaf Nilsson smiled at her with the divine assurance of a child. “Ah, yes!” he said. “But with me, it is different. Doubtless they—those great composers—wrote very fine sym- phonies. But there is no symphony like mine. The Herr Direktor he is a great and a wise man, a true musician. He will know. He cannot fail to know that there could be only one such sym- phony !” Pippa could not find it in her heart to tell him that every young composer in the world thought just this of his first big composition. Some of them were not naive enough to say so, but they all felt so. Did she not know? Had she not studied genius in youth and in maturity—studied it rather scornfully, and dismissed it as not vastly different from other phases of humanity, only, occasionally, more exacting? At an address in the east sixties, Philippa Carpenter was most. ex- quisitely chez elle. It was not a very gorgeous abode, nor was it strictly what we Anglo-Saxons call a home; but it was a very charming place, and ex- pressed Pippa delightfully, if inade- quately. That is to say, it expressed one side of her—the highly developed, beautifully cared-for side—the side that AINSLEE’S found pleasure in rare things, and oc- cupation in existing perfectly. Al- though she lived a life more or less insecure and dubious, and had, indeed, no fixed orbit in the cosmos of society, she kept about her always an aura made out of the finer tones of life—the del- icacies, and the supreme. civilizations. One evening—it was midwinter, and the coldest time of the year held the ‘city in its grip—she rose suddenly in her bijou drawing-room, and looked about her at the dainty, luxurious things that furnished it, a wild glance such as prisoners throw upon the walls of their cells. Then she walked out into the night. In her heart beat strange words: “No one needs me here, but he needs me—that poet boy with the violin and the divine disregard for money and the world—he needs me! I will give up everything else. I will go to him—I will go to him!” 7 She did not love Olaf Nilsson, but it seemed to her that what she had to give him was better than love. She had left not only her jewels, but her furs be- hind, and the wind struck cold against her throat. She felt a curious joy in the chill. It seemed to her that every step was carrying her farther out of her meaningless life, into some other life which was as yet new to her, and yet which she seemed to know marvel- ously well. It was like a return to some lost young country of dreams to climb the long, rickety stairway to Olaf Nils- son’s room. He opened the door, and wonder and joy filled his pale face. The studio was very dim and bitter cold. <A _ single candle flickered on the table. “Oh—but you are beautiful!’ said Olaf Nilsson softly, and he closed the door. They were alone in the candle- light. | For the first time he saw Pippa with- out her furs. The toque that inclosed her cream-white face was as simple as one that any shopgirl might have worn. If the angle at which it was set dis- closed a great wave of red hair in most gracious fashion, it was no fault of the toque, and detracted in no sense from its simplicity. Her gown was dark, and COMMUCE TOOK (E@)