crowded as was the steamer with cultured americans invading europe, few knew that rozenoffski was on board, or even that rozenoffski was a pianist. the name, casually seen on the passengers' list, conveyed nothing but a strong russian and a vaguer semitic flavour, and the mere outward man, despite a leonine head, was of insignificant port and somewhat shuffling gait, and drew scarcely a second glance.
he would not have had it otherwise, he told himself, as he paced the almost deserted deck after dinner—it was a blessing to escape from the perpetual adulation of music-sick matrons and schoolgirls—but every wounded fibre in him was yearning for consolation after his american failure.
not that his fellow-passengers were aware of his failure; he had not put himself to the vulgar tests. his american expedition had followed the lines recommended to him by friendly connoisseurs—to come before the great public, if at all, only after being launched by great hostesses at small parties; to which end he had provided himself with unimpeachable introductions to unexceptionable ladies from irresistible [352]personalities—a german grand duke, a bulgarian ambassador, countesses, both french and italian, and even a belgian princess. but to his boundless amazement—for he had always heard that americans were wax before titles—not one of the social leaders had been of the faintest assistance to him, not even the owner of the chicago palace, to whom he had been recommended by the belgian princess. he had penetrated through one or two esoteric doors, only to find himself outside them again. not once had he been asked to play. it was some weeks before it even dawned upon the minor prophet of european music-rooms that he was being shut out, still longer before it permeated to his brain that he had been shut out as a jew!
those barbarous americans, so far behind europe after all! had they not even discovered that art levels all ranks and races? poor bourgeois money-mongers with their mushroom civilization. it was not even as if he were really a jew. did they imagine he wore phylacteries or earlocks, or what? his few childish years in the russian pale—what were they to the long years of european art and european culture? and even if in rome or paris he had foregathered with jews like schneemann or leopold barstein, it was to the artist in them he had gravitated, not the jew. did these yankee ignoramuses suppose he did not share their aversion from the gaberdine or the three brass balls? oh the narrow-souled anti-semites!
the deck-steward stacked the chairs, piled up the forgotten rugs and novels, tidying the deck for the night, but still the embittered musician tramped to and fro under the silent stars. only from the smoking-room where the amateur auctioneer was still hilariously [353]selling the numbers for a sweepstake, came sounds in discord with the solemnity of sky and sea, and the artist was newly jarred at this vulgar gaiety flung in the face of the spacious and starry mystery of the night. and these jocose, heavy-jowled, smoke-soused gamblers were the americans whose drawing-rooms he would contaminate! he recalled the only party to which he had been asked—'to meet the bright lights'—and which to his amazement turned out to be a quasi-public entertainment with the guests seated in rows in a hall, and himself—with the other bright lights—planted on a platform and made to perform without a fee. the mean vulgarians! but perhaps it was better they had left him untainted with their dollars—better, comparatively poor though he was, that america should have meant pure loss to him. he had at least kept the spiritual satisfaction of despising the despiser, the dignity of righteous resentment, the artist's pride in the profitless. and this riot of ugliness and diamonds and third-rate celebrities was the fashionable society to which, forsooth, the jew could not be permitted access!
the aroma of an expensive cigar wafted towards him, and the face between whose prominent teeth it was stuck loomed vividly in the glare of an electric light. rozenoffski recognised those teeth. he had seen countless pictures and caricatures of them, for did they not almost hold the globe in their grip? this, then was the notorious multi-millionaire, 'the napoleon in dollars,' as a wit had summed him up; and the first sight of andrew p. wilhammer almost consoled the player for his poverty. who, even for an imperial income, would bear the burden of those grotesque teeth, protruding like a sample of wares in a dentist's [354]showcase? but as the teeth came nearer and the great rubicund face bore down upon him, the prominence of the notorious incisors affected him less than their carnivorous capacity—he felt himself almost swallowed up by this monstrous beast of prey, so admirably equated to our small day of large things, to that environment in which he, poor degenerate artist, was but a little singing-bird. the long-forgotten word rishus came suddenly into his mind—was not the man's anti-semitism as obtruded as his teeth?—rishus, that wicked malice, which to a persecuted people had become almost a synonym for christianity. he had left the thought behind him, as he had left the hebrew word, while he went sailing up into the rosy ether of success, and rishus had sunk into the mere panic-word of the ghetto's stunted brood, shrinking and quivering before phantasms, sinuously gliding through a misunderstood world, if it was not, indeed, rather a word conveniently cloaking from themselves a multitude of their own sins. but now, as incarnated in this millionaire mammoth, the shadowy word took on a sudden solidity, to which his teeth gave the necessary tearing and rending significance.
yes, in very sooth—he remembered it suddenly—was it not this man's wife on whom he had built his main hopes? was she not the leader of musical america, to whom the belgian princess had given him the scented and crested note of introduction which was to open to him all doors and all ears? was it not in her marvellous marble music-room—one of the boasts of chicago—that he had mentally seen himself enthroned as the lord of the feast? and instead of these olympian visions, lo! a typewritten note to clench his fist [355]over—a note from a secretary regretting that the state of mrs. wilhammer's health forbade the pleasure of receiving a maestro with such credentials. rishus—rishus indubitable!
