A Long Time Ago

Extract from The Story of My Life by Elissa Koebel, translated by Fanny Bartlett, with a foreword by Johann Heinrich.

SPRING found me again in England, very ill and almost penniless. X thought that I was dying. I had been ill in Paris before we started and when we reached London I could scarcely speak. Terrible spasms of shivering shook me. Nothing could keep me warm. X knelt beside me in the train, chafing my hands and begging me to recover. It was a terrible journey. We thought that it would never be over. But at last we had arrived. We descended from the train.

A strange figure I must have looked, tottering down the platform, my long, white cloak wrapped round me like a shroud!

“Why do all the people stare at me so? What is it that they are staring at?”

“No. I cannot pay a doctor. I have exactly ten francs. Let us drive to the hotel.”

But in the automobile a frightful fact assailed me. I became galvanised, alert. I recovered my powers of utterance.

Always, during my previous visits to England I had stayed with friends or, if at an hotel, at the Ritz. It was to the Ritz that we were now going. Poor Noemi had given the direction as a matter of course. I was furious. I loaded them with reproaches.

“Am I for ever to be surrounded by imbeciles?” I shouted. “Can you not understand that I have exactly ten francs? Take me some place where I can die in peace for ten francs.”

X lowered the window and addressed the driver. He could not speak English at all, and I was too ill to help him. Those spasms, that dreadful shivering, had come back. I could only lie in Noemi’s arms, moaning and sobbing:

Need I say that this prayer was not granted? There was no place in London, it seemed, where one could live, much less die, for as little as that.

If one has not enough money to go to a bad hotel one should stay at a good one. I have always found this to be true. We went to the Ritz and we remained there for six weeks, in spite of our poverty; whereas, if we had gone to a cheap pension in a poor quarter of the town they would have thrown us out because we could not pay. My old suite, overlooking the park, was ready for me and already there were flowers from friends who knew that I was coming.

But our troubles were not over. My friends would gladly have died for me, but they were not practical. It was always I who had to think and act. I lost no time.

“We must have money, it seems. That is the first thing. I have still some jewels which we must sell, as soon as we have recovered our luggage.”

That afternoon this same agent, who appeared such a wonderful individual to my poor friends, came to call upon me.

“You will be so good, Mr. Perkins, as to cancel all my London engagements. I cannot sing.”

It was quite true. I could not. My beautiful voice had left me as the soul leaves the body when it is dead. It was as if I had actually died on that terrible journey. That glorious fountain of music, which was my very life, had ceased to flow. I was convinced that I should never sing again.

There comes a time, I think it is written in the stars for every artist, there comes a moment of chaos, of nothingness. It is winter in the soul. The flowery promise of spring, the rich fruitfulness of summer, appear to have departed for ever. The earth lies frozen, spell-bound, under a sullen mist. The sap is stagnant in the trees. The warm currents of inspiration have ceased to flow.

For nature, which is without memory and without hope, this time is a season of sleep and forgetfulness. The trees, shorn of their leaves, feel no pain and no regret: they have forgotten all past springs and they know nothing of springs to come. But Man is not as wise as the trees. He is not content to lie fallow. He suffers. He remembers. He is impatient for the revival of his powers. He knows that he has ceased to find beauty and significance in the objects which surround him, and yet he still endeavours to create a false spring in the midst of winter, and, knowing it to be false, he despairs. He cries:

It was to such a valley of desolation that I had now come. The experience was new to me. Heretofore my life had been all summer. In spite of a thousand misfortunes my inner light had never failed me. I could not account for it. I was in despair. In vain did they tell me that I could not sing because I was ill. I knew better. I was ill because I could not sing. My God had forsaken me. In everything that I did there was the same quality of deadness. My life appeared to have no continuity, and no meaning. Nothing could move me. I visited picture galleries. I gazed upon the most glorious masterpieces of Raphael and Titian, and they were no more to me than senseless daubs. The poetry which had so often inspired me had no message of hope—the volume of Goethe or of Dante would fall from my listless hand. Nor could I fly to music as a refuge. That was the worst of all. The noblest Sonatas of Beethoven, the tenderest nocturne of Chopin, were nothing but a noise, a bruhaha, exasperating to my nerves.

And through it all, day after day, I had to endure the mockery of seeing the sunshine, the flowers, the gaiety of early summer: that most beautiful of all the phases of the year. It was the time of the London season and every mail brought us a number of invitations to the most brilliant balls, concerts and receptions. My English friends had been anxious to fête me, and to my other distresses this was now added—that I was obliged to disappoint them. I would see no one. I would go nowhere. I had shut myself up like a nun in her cell.

All my life I have been happy only in giving. Just as I give of my art, so also I give of myself. To go into society, to grimace and to speak politenesses where no genuine current of sympathy is flowing, this is as impossible to me as to sing badly. If, upon the concert platform, I will not offer the cold shell of my voice to the public, so, in the drawing-room, I will not offer the cold shell of my heart to my friends….

London is beautiful in summer, especially, I think, at night. Above the brilliantly-lighted streets there is a sky of a peculiar vivid green which I have not seen in any other city. Sometimes, after a day spent in pacing my little room at the hotel, I would wrap my cloak about me and rush out to mingle with the crowds that move slowly about on the pavements beneath that strange green sky. I drew a sense of comfort from the simple kindness of these people as they made way for me to pass. I felt that they some way shared the trouble of this strange woman, this tall ghost in her white cloak. Their looks followed me, a little awe-struck, as though they had beheld a vision flitting past them. I enjoyed a greater communion of sympathy, here in the streets, than I would have felt among the distinguished and titled people who had begged me to visit them.

I would ride long distances on the street cars, out into the suburban quarters of the town, always with that strange green sky above me, and always saying to myself:

“If I go far enough there will be no more houses, and no more people. I shall come to a place of silence and peace….”

My friend Emmi Waldstein was singing at Covent Garden. Once, having wandered into the vicinity of the Opera House, I determined to pay her a visit. It was the impulse of a moment and yet, as so often, that moment was a turning point in my life. For it was Emmi who suggested that I should go into the country: it was she who made me understand what it was that I needed—the space and silence of nature.

It so happened that she was singing “Isolde.” I went to her in her dressing-room during the intermission. She rose, almost in tears, to greet me, distressed at my altered appearance.

We stood together before the long mirror in her dressing-room, and a strange contrast we made! Emmi had remained as charming as ever, so plump, so debonair, a little too short, as I always think, for the rôle of Isolde, but very graceful in her white robe, smiling back at me from the mirror with that peculiar expression of hers which is at once so infantile and so shrewd, so naïve yet so alert.

I had indeed grown thin; the mystic quality in my beauty had become accentuated by suffering so that I looked, as X said, more like a tragic muse than a woman.

“I think it is I, and not you, Emmi, who should be singing the “Liebestod” to-night.”

“You will be ruined, my dear, if you continue in this manner. If you are ill you should see a doctor and get well again as quickly as possible.”

“I understand perfectly. I have myself said this upon an occasion … Confide in me, my dearest friend. Who has given you the basket?”

It is impossible to become angry with Emmi. I, for one, cannot do it. Her kindness is so entirely sincere, there is so much naïveté and good humour in her manner, that I am obliged to capitulate, especially when she uses the argot of our girlhood, of the period when we were students together at the Conservatoire. There is something about this great singer, something genuine and simple, which has survived all the onslaughts of fame and of public achievement. At heart, she is still a young girl. She has had many lovers, but to her they have all been just a little ridiculous. She transports me back to those days when we hid laughing behind the curtain while certain of our admirers in the street below paced slowly up and down on the sentimental Fenster Promenade.

“Unfortunately, no one has given me the basket. It is more than eighteen months since I have loved anyone at all.”

“It is quite true. It seems that I have lost the power to respond to such feelings.”

“But, my dear, this is terrible! For you it is most unnatural. I do not wonder that you are ennervée. I implore you to take a lover immediately.”

“Pardon me, Emmi, but I cannot arrange matters quite as easily as that. If I have no lover it is because there is nobody, but I say it, nobody, who can succeed in attracting me. I know it is unnatural, but I cannot help it. I cannot go to a store and purchase a lover as I would purchase a pair of gloves.”

“Naturally. One cannot concoct a grande passion to order. But one can amuse oneself.”

“I cannot. I have never been able to amuse myself, as you say. For me the passion of love must be all-devouring. It must arouse my most sacred, my deepest feelings. I require to be entirely swept away. I have nothing cynical or frivolous in my nature.”

It was impossible that she should understand me. She had not the tragic temperament. Her life was like her singing—cool, delicious, perfectly poised. Her art was perfect but it was not sublime. There were no supreme moments for her. Her greatest rôles have been those of comedy, in Mozart and in Strauss.

For none of her lovers had she felt very deeply. Each affair had been, for her, a delightful episode, whereas each, for me, had been a tragedy. I had given all and I demanded everything. That is my nature and I cannot alter it, even if I would.

“But there is your career to be considered, mein Kind. I repeat, you cannot continue in this manner. I do not think that you should remain in London if you cannot sing. It is not sensible at all. Believe me, it creates a very bad impression, not only with the public but with more important individuals. There comes an idea that one is passée … a failure. The effect upon contracts in the future is very bad. If one is ill, if one cannot sing, it is much better to disappear until one is well again. Everyone knows that you are in London and they are saying strange things about you.”

“But where do you advise me to go? Is not every place the same? London … Paris … Rome … New York….”

“In a town it would be the same. But you must not remain in a town. You must go into the country. I have spent many weeks myself at a farm in the Black Forest, two years ago. You must do the same. I will give you the address. I can assure you that it was not at all disagreeable. One becomes very fond of the country.”

“Indeed you are mistaken if you suppose that I do not love the country, Emmi. I am never happy anywhere else. The most beautiful period in my life has been spent living quite simply among the peasants in Styria.”

“Precisely. When one is by oneself it is even more peaceful. One goes to bed as soon as it is dark. One sleeps all night. One rises early. One learns to milk the cows …”

She continued her exhortations until it was time for her to return to the stage. I accompanied her to the wings, and as I stood there, listening, a terrible nostalgia for the opera overcame me. This was my world and I was cast out from it! Voiceless, despairing, I breathed the air of home.

Great cliffs of scenery towered above me and, in an island of dazzling light, I could see a little section of the stage … the form of Emmi in her white robe, kneeling over Tristan. And beyond that lay what I could not see, the great, darkened opera house, silent and intent. The pure clear notes of the “Liebestod” floated away into that unseen world. Why was it not my voice?

A violent rebellion against my lot surged over me. I leant sobbing against the scenery, oblivious of the little crowd of friends who had gathered to welcome me. Drowned in tears I stumbled once more into the street. And of the weeks which followed I can write nothing. They are blackness. They are night. But at some moment the power to save myself returned. I left London. I left my friends. I went alone to Ireland.

Was it because Isolde was in my mind? Isolde was a princess of Ireland. Or was it because fate had chosen Ireland for me? Unknown to me, the inspiration that I needed was waiting there. It is not chance which governs these things, though at the time it seems so.

My Irish friend, Caroline Nugent, the wife of the British Ambassador in Rome, had once offered to lend me a little cottage that she had built on the banks of a lake, on her estate. The thought of it returned to me.

“It is always ready,” she had said, “always waiting for you. Go there whenever you wish. The key lies on a great beam above the door.”

I travelled alone, consumed by the desire to be by myself. And it was well that I did so, for the little house was too small for a party. One large room it had, and over half the space a loft, like a deep musicians’ gallery, to which one ascended by a ladder. Here was to be found a curtained bed. Caroline had built the little cottage for herself as a retreat when she wished to be alone. In the lower room there was a great fire of turf, a dresser with blue plates, many books …

When I had lit the fire I was at home. I clambered up the ladder to my great curtained bed in the loft. I slept as I had not been able to sleep for many months. I could have lain dreaming there for ever, I think, if I had not at last become very hungry. I had eaten nothing for three days except the chocolate which I had brought with me. It was time to go out and purchase some food. Caroline had told me of a village at the end of the lake.

Hastily flinging on a few garments I ran out into the fresh air. A cry of joy and wonder broke from me.

I think, only in a dream. It is only in dreams that we see these colours, so soft, so vivid, so unreal—these mountains that we shall never climb, these pale waters…. Or has the world appeared to us like this in our childhood?

I do not know. I can only say that I achieved a moment of rapture, beholding a scene that was familiar and yet strange, remembered and yet new.

A lake, pale as nacre, yet clear, holding in its bosom the crowded shapes of mountains: a bloom, a haze, an infinite softness: two worlds, a world in the water and a world in the air, and in the centre (ah! it was that which I remembered so well) a little island floating in its own reflection. Again and again my eyes returned to it. I could discern it now, among the trees, grey walls and a tower. I had always known it. A castle that was waiting for me. It had been waiting all my life. It was for this that I had come.

“To-morrow,” I said, “I will take my boat and I will row out to the castle on the island.”

And yet I did not go. It was many days before I attempted to pierce the mystery of the island and the castle. Why did I linger? Perhaps because I knew that I was not, as yet, ready for it.

I was so happy in my little cottage. Every day I recovered strength. My solitude was precious to me. In those days I only spoke to the peasants in the village where I purchased food. A delightful gipsy freedom possessed me. I went barefoot, like a young girl, my long hair hanging in two plaits. My youth flowed back into me, into my body and soul. It shone in my eyes. When I gazed into my little mirror it was no longer the Tragic Muse that gazed back at me; I saw again the face of a young and beautiful woman, still in the springtide of her life.

I tended my fire, I swept my little house, I cooked my simple meals. I lay for long hours beside the lake gazing towards the island … the castle….

I knew now that there were dwellers there. I had seen boats gliding over the water. I had seen smoke drifting across the trees. But these people were not strangers. I knew that they also were waiting for me.

As yet I had not sung. The wish to sing had not returned to me and I was content that it should be so. I waited serenely, understanding at last that some beautiful experience was drawing nearer to me. Until there came naturally a day when my solitude was over, and when my little cottage appeared also to be waiting. I became conscious that the chair upon the other side of my hearth was empty. I no longer slept quite contentedly alone in that great bed in the loft. And then I knew, with a mysterious finality, that it was time for me to go to the island.

It was very early morning, and I had spent a restless night, often groaning and crying out in my sleep. A light haze like a thin, imperceptible curtain hovered between the lake and the full light of the sun, and in that silver radiance, upon those milky waters, the island and its trees looked strangely dark and formidable. As my boat drew nearer that dark shape grew taller until at last it had hidden the sun and the friendly hills behind it. I floated into the shadow and rested for a moment on my oars.

I could see a stretch of very green grass, a little lawn stretching gently up to the grey pile of buildings. Something told me that they were all asleep. And then an old woman came out from under the arched doorway. She crossed the green grass and stood beside the lake, looking at me in my boat. A cold shadow, a premonition, fell across my heart. I thought:

Her white apron, her black dress, her neat grey hair repelled me. Who was she, this old sibyl? A servant … an old nurse, perhaps.

But these old women, how terrible they are! What secrets do they not conceal behind the drab and formal neatness of their appearance? What fierce passions, what a deadly hatred of life, of love, of youth and joy, is raging in their shrivelled bosoms? All my life I have been afraid of old women and their crafty wisdom.

I dared not speak to her. I turned my boat and rowed quickly away from the island.

Next day, when the silver light had turned to gold and the lake waters were blue, my courage returned to me. I determined once more to make the attempt. But this time I did not approach the northern shores of the island, where the grass sloped down from the castle door: I rowed stealthily round, exploring the little coves and beaches among the trees. On a stretch of fine white sand I drew in my boat, and climbed ashore. I pushed my way in among the trees. My bare feet pressed delicately upon a sumptuous carpet of moss. Presently I paused to listen.

There were voices, close at hand, ringing out across the water, children’s voices, happy and laughing. And now there was singing. Another voice, a woman’s, had raised an air and soon all were singing, too. I hurried towards the sound. Standing on the crest of a high bank I looked down upon a lovely sight.

Little naked children were bathing on the beach below me. It was their beautiful mother who was singing, as she sat in the sun beside the lake. She sang as the birds sing, with a voice untrained but sweet. I gazed down at her and knew that she was destined to be my friend.

When the song was over I cried out bravo! from my hiding place among the bushes. She looked up in astonishment and I showed myself.

Afterwards she told me that she had almost believed me. In my ragged green dress, with my little feet bare, I really appeared to be some spirit of the forest or of the lake.

Standing still on my high bank, smiling down at them, I suddenly commenced to sing. I heard my own voice pouring out, with an astonishing power and purity, into the golden air of that summer morning. In a moment it had all come back to me—the strength and the desire to express myself. My body had become once more the vehicle of my art. Without conscious effort I was singing those words which my dumb heart had so often whispered in silence:

Du bist der Lenz

Nach dem ich verlangte

Im frostigen Winter’s Frist ….

As yet I did not know. I only knew that my winter was over and that my voice had returned to me. It had returned in all its perfection. I have never sung better.

I have experienced all the supreme moments in an artist’s life. I have known that tremor of a sacred delirium which flows between the singer and his audience, and I have known that instant of silence, like a great deep sigh, which hangs between the last note and the first sharp crackle of applause, the applause which falls like a single stone, a shower, a vast avalanche into a deep lake of peace which I have created with my art. But I have never—I say it,—I have never sung more perfectly than on this golden summer morning, to this simple audience—a woman and her children, who wept to hear me.

Did I not know it! I laughed and sprang down the bank. I wished to laugh and I wished that everyone should laugh as well. A mad exhilaration seized upon us. No child among them was as wild and merry as I. I had found my friends. They had been expecting me. I knew it.

These delightful people were highly unconventional. I soon learnt to know them all. The castle on the island became my second home. Often the stars had risen before my boat returned to the cottage, and if I wished to stay all night there was always a bed for me. An irresistible impulse drew me towards them.

My new friend, Louise, remained the dearest. I discovered that she was indeed the mistress of this charming house. Beautiful and gifted, she was not, I think, entirely happy. An artist at soul, she had sacrificed those sacred impulses to husband and children and I see her always like some lovely captive bird, pining for a freedom that is only half realised. I know that she often envied me my fuller and more vital life. And, as is so often the case with these talented and wasted souls, she offered to her friends the gift of a most perfect sympathy.

For her husband, an Oxford professor, I soon cherished a deep and affectionate respect. At first, I was chilled by his grave formality; I felt that our hearts would never speak to one another. But as I came to know him better I learned how delicate and gentle a soul was hidden beneath this cold and precise exterior. It was his ambition to introduce me to a study of the classics, and in my conversations with him I began to comprehend for the first time a little of that severe beauty which inspired the poetry of Homer and of Virgil. I have still a beautiful translation of the Idylls of Theocritus which he gave me….

But everyone in that household was delightful. Louise, with characteristic hospitality, had thrown open her doors to her entire family and their friends, all gifted and beautiful people. So that I found myself suddenly transported from solitude to social life of the pleasantest kind.

I was a great favourite with the children and spent many hours of the day playing with them. The naïve adoration of these little creatures was a constant source of pleasure to me. They still called me Undine and would never tire of listening to my stories of coral palaces at the bottom of the lake.

Beautiful summer days! By what spell can I evoke your serenity and your delight? Why do I linger, as I record you?

“Come now,” I can hear my readers saying, “how tedious this Elissa is being! All that she wishes to tell us may be stated in a single paragraph. In the spring she became melancholy and in bad health. In the summer she went to Ireland, where she recovered. And she made there some new friends.”

Forgive me, dear reader, but I cannot agree with you. The truth is never told as easily as that.

During this year I had undergone one of the most important, the most mystical phases which occur in the life of an artist: the sudden and unexplained extinction of my powers, a period of despair, of gradual recovery, and finally of new inspiration. When, eventually, I left Ireland it was to launch upon a magnificent era of new activity and achievement. And all this is a great deal more interesting than if I had only to say that I had sung in London during the Season, that I had been fêted and applauded, that this, or that, distinguished person had done me honour. All that you may read in the newspapers, or it may be written by others about me: what I have to say is that story which only the artist himself can tell.

I was happy, as I have said, yet I was still waiting. I was aware that some new, great emotional climax lay before me. My soul and body were awake and alert; they were already in a tingling ferment of anticipation. I was eagerly desiring this new experience.

I must confess that I anticipated very little pleasure from this new acquaintance that I was about to make. I had already formed for myself a picture of this brilliant, unhappy man. I had learned that he was a doctor and this chilled my sympathies. My experience of men in that profession had already made me impatient. They know too much and too little. Their contact with humanity breeds in them a kind of cynicism which the artist instinctively knows to be false.

Every night, when the evening meal was over, they would entreat me to sing for them. I was delighted to do so. In those days I could scarcely stop singing. I would sing in that great shadowy room, with its windows open to the lake. I would sing until the moon had risen far up into the sky. Upon the piano, standing on a dais at one end of the room, we would place two candles. Louise would permit no other light. To listen in the dark, she said, is an ideal state of things. So I would stand upon the dais, dim and tall in my white dress, and sing song after song, while the glow of the sunset faded, and dusk gathered in the room, and the first rays of the rising moon silvered the edges of the distant mountains. The night was so still that the candle flames burnt steadily upwards, like candles on an altar, upon either side of the pianist.

Scattered among the shadows of the great room this little group of people would sit silent, dreaming. Sometimes, at the termination of a song, a voice would speak and call to me:

“Sing this … sing that … sing the Pieta Signore of Stradella … sing the Dove Sono … sing Waldegespracht … La Procession of César Franck … sing Du bist die Ruh….”

A favourite, this last, with the husband of Louise. I must sing it every night for him, and it was usually the end of the concert. The little murmuring accompaniment flows out into the room and there is a sigh of pleasure from my hidden audience. My still, calm voice floats through the night …

Du bist die Ruh,

Der Friede mild!

Die Sehnsucht du

Und was sie stillt!

Thou art the longing and the appeasement! To whom was I singing, then? Who was coming to appease my longing?

On the soft cadence at the end of the verse I lifted my eyes. A stranger was listening by one of the open windows, leaning his arms upon the low sill. I could see a pale face, beautiful and intent … my eyes were drawn and held by those other eyes which glittered in the darkness. My voice continued:

Kehr ein bei mir

Und schliesse du

Still hinter dir

Die Pforten zu!

The listeners in the dark room were forgotten. I had now but one listener and already I was linked to him by a secret current of emotion, a knowledge of mutual need. My voice rose triumphant:

Dies’ augenzelt

Von deinem Glanz

Allein erhellt!

He for whom I had been waiting had come. My song over, I stood motionless, locked in a gaze that had become an embrace. There was a cry in the room. Louise had risen. She was stumbling towards the window.

For two weeks we were continually together and yet we said nothing of the passion which consumed us.

What can I write of those weeks? What memory detaches itself from all that fever and anguish?

Only the sense of rapture delayed and a host of little things: a basket of mushrooms that we gathered—a child’s laughter in the courtyard—a woman sitting on a low bench in the sunshine by the lake with a piece of white needlework in her hands.

Dick Napier was standing at that time upon the threshold of his great career. Since then honours, distinctions and wealth have been heaped upon him. But when I knew him his brilliance was by no one fully recognised. His beauty, the power and grace of his physique, the fiery intelligence which transfused it, were so remarkable that even now its memory astonishes me. He had a superb body in which was lodged a superb brain, of the scientific type. Louise had already spoken of his amazing promise. As a boy every prize, every scholarship, had been his as if by right.

But there were other aspects of his personality. That cynicism, of which I have spoken, had taken in his case an aspect of profound melancholy. He appeared to be incapable of happiness. Imprisoned within the fortress of his magnificent intellect he remained for ever beyond the reach of human sympathy. I think that only the impulse of creative art could have liberated him; but, despite his keen sense of beauty, he had chosen for himself a life of scientific enquiry which could not satisfy his need for self-expression. Drawn to me, as I to him, by an overpowering desire, he never, even after the fulfilment of his passion, he never once achieved the abandon, the exhilaration, of a happy lover. I, to whom such a moment is all-fulfilling, cannot understand these sufferings of the intellectual temperament. I was impatient of them. The intellect was meant to be the servant and not the master of the passions.

This self-hatred, which some natures have, is a thing that I cannot comprehend. Upon one occasion, when we were living together in my cottage, he called my attention to a passage in a book that he was reading: What I hate, that I do.

“But that is ridiculous,” I insisted. “To me it is incredible. I never hate what I do. I never do what I hate. All my actions are inspired by emotions which I consider beautiful and sacred. It is only when I have not followed my own impulses that I have felt any regret in my life.”

Up to the end there was always this chasm of incomprehension between us. And in the beginning it kept us apart, as I have said, for many days.

It is evening and a crimson sky flames in the western end of the lake. I wander beside the water, listening to the sigh of the wind in the reeds, and cooling my fevered body in that soft breeze. In a few minutes it will be supper and we shall all assemble in the great hall where it is already dusk, where the starry candles burn on the table.… At the end of the landing-stage a tall man, immobile as a statue, gazes at the water in a posture of profound contemplation. He does not turn his head to look at me when I call to him. But when we are strolling across the grass to the castle he sighs deeply.

“But I don’t like talking to you, Elissa. To please me you must either sing or be silent.”

It is morning and I have gone with Louise to bathe in a secret little cove that we have found. We lie naked in the early sun. There is a splash of oars. A boat is coming round the point. Louise springs up in consternation.

“But, Louise … you have a beautiful body. Why should you wish to cover it up?”

The little boat comes into view and the fisherman hails us across the water. Louise is confused. She pulls her cloak more closely round her, and cries out:

She cannot understand that a beautiful woman should not be ashamed of her body. Unable to support the gaze of her brother, she runs away towards the castle. I remain. He draws no nearer to the shore, but, resting on his oars, he contemplates me silently. Between us there is still that chasm and we have no power to cross it.

It is night. The white light of a full moon pours down upon the world with a dazzling radiance. The trees throw inky shadows. The castle and the island stand up, a silhouette cut in black paper against the faint luminance of the grey mountains behind. My oars, dipping into the water, cause a thousand silver ripples, and their gentle splashing, as I glide towards the island, is the only sound to be heard in all the breathless summer night.

I have tied up my boat. I steal across the dim grass. And now the night is full of music. The sound of a violin streams from the open window of the drawing-room. I creep closer. I stand at the window where he stood on the first night that he came, leaning my elbows on the sill. I gaze as if hypnotised at the tall flames of the candles, burning so straight and unflickering in the still air. They are playing the Spring Sonata of Beethoven …

He is standing beside me. He too leans his elbows on the sill: he too gazes into the room.

The clear river of music flows on its untroubled course. It fills our souls with an aching sweetness.

It speaks to us, this music, of a time in our lives which will never come again: a time which has never existed, but which might once have been. In our youth the world was never so tender or so gay, but in the deep lake of memory and of regret, where we see our youth reflected, we may perhaps trace these heavenly hues, and know what we have lost. Surely in our youth some lover has passed by us and vanished among the crowded years, some other self in whose arms we could have been thus gay and tender and serene.

I cannot tell. But I know that when we stood, locked in a long embrace beneath the shadowy trees, I was murmuring, brokenly, a name that I had forgotten for many, many years….

Beside the landing stage my little boat was waiting. And still the fountain of music played on into the night. I caught his hand. We ran like children across the grass. The splash of our oars broke the water into a thousand silver ripples. The black silhouette of the island receded. The sounds of music grew fainter….

It had indeed vanished behind an impenetrable curtain of mist and driving rain. Nor did I see it again. During the remainder of my visit to Ireland it concealed itself as though to tell me that the part which it had played in the story of my life was now complete. Destiny had drawn me to its shores, and the same inexorable fate was to drive me from it.

During the first days after we arrived together at the cottage the fine weather came to an end. But we, I must confess, were scarcely aware of this. We were too much occupied with one another. Our passion was not quickly or easily assuaged. We did not hear the howling of the wind or the beating rain.

These hours, these moments of supreme happiness, do they not solve for us the riddle of existence? For what else were we created? And yet, after a few days, I became once more aware of that overpowering melancholy which overshadowed my lover’s mind. It seemed that the chasm had again opened between us. I felt it, even in his arms. We had nothing to say to one another.

At heart he was a puritan … His continued, brooding silence began to irritate me. He could not exist merely in the present, as I did; thoughts of the past and the future destroyed the harmony of life for him.

“Most certainly not. This continued rain is intolerable. We will go to-morrow. I think I should like to return at once to Italy. We will take a villa …”

Always it has been like this. I have never had a lover who hesitated to sacrifice me and my art upon the altar of his career. The egotism of the masculine temperament is supreme. I could never make them understand that I, too, must have freedom.

“And what then? How am I to occupy myself while you are receiving your patients? Am I to be hidden away in some little nest behind your consulting room?”

“But if you will not come with me to Italy, then I must go with you to London.”

A cold fear, a first premonition of separation, fell across my heart. I wept aloud, and for two or three days we said nothing more about the future.

I was to be caught up once again in the eternal conflict between my love and my art. My power to sing had returned to me and I was eager to exert it. But if I was to follow that highest call of my soul I must do it at a terrible price—the sacrifice of my woman’s happiness.

It seems that this is a lesson which I shall never learn. To me each love is always eternal until I am made to understand that for a man this is not the case. I would have been faithful to him. It was he, and not I—I repeat it—it was he who broke that sacred bond.

How could I guess that my beautiful island, where I had found strength and happiness, had changed into an enemy? Hidden behind its curtain of rain and mist it was preparing a blow for me. And yet, I might have known. I might have remembered the shadow which fell across my heart on that first day when I could not land because I was afraid—because I knew that the island was guarded against me. An old woman who looked at me across the water … a malevolent spirit, defying me. Ah, yes, I might have known!

Wrapped up in my peasant’s cloak, I had been absent from the cottage for some hours. I had gone into the village to buy food.

“No, no, it is my turn to go,” I had told him. “You do not like the village. You must tend the fire and read your books.”

Why did I leave him? He had a morbid fear of going to the village or any place where we might encounter our friends from the island. I did not understand this at the time. He knew, better than I, what a terrible influence they could exert.

We embraced and he remained in the warm shelter of our cottage. When I returned, all was over. They had sent an emissary from the island. He was commanded to return.

It would have been less cruel if he had gone without a word, while I was away. But he felt obliged to see me once again.

Gradually I came to understand that his egotism, his cowardice, his cold puritanism, were to prevail.

And next day the little house, which had witnessed such moments of despair and rapture, stood deserted. The key lay once more upon the beam above the door. In my agony I had flown back to my first and only friend, my work. A beautiful movement in the symphony of my life had come to an end.

To life I say: Give me what you will! Give me your worst and your best! If I have accepted these gifts I shall have nothing to regret. The puritan, the coward, may fear the future and wish to see the past undone. But I, as long as I have power to suffer and to remember, refuse to regret anything that I have experienced.

I give thanks for the little house where my driven soul was sheltered and renewed its strength.

I give thanks for the island and the friendship that I found, for music and laughter, beautiful days and nights.

I give thanks for the love which crowned this wonderful summer with a supreme glory.

And for the art which drew me back, like a mother to her bosom, and healed my wounds, I give the deepest thanks of all:

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