My first idea had been to talk immediately to Mr. Doblana and inform him that I intended marrying his daughter. I told Mitzi this while we were going home through narrow, dark streets, as becomes thieves and lovers. But she objected. She was rather cool, the result probably of yonder bootmakers' lad's intervention.

"I know you love me," she said, "and always will. I too love you, but I don't know yet how to do it well. I cannot tell you what I feel. If you were at once to speak to father, either he would say yes, or he would say no, but in both cases you would have to leave our house at once. Father is no artist, he is a trader in music, and he is meanspirited as all tradespeople are. He does not understand love as artists do. He would only see the impropriety of your staying any longer with us. And I do not want to be lonely. I want you with me. Think only that I just found my heart. You do love me?"

I wanted to take her in my arms, and to kiss her again. But although there was nobody in the street she prevented it.

"And you always will love me?" she asked once more.

"Always, Mitzi!" I said.

And, my word, I am afraid that this always still holds good a little.

When we arrived at home Doblana was not yet in and Fanny had gone to bed. In the drawing-room, where a couple of hours before Mitzi had sung herself definitely into my heart, we halted. She looked at me, and I opened my arms; for a moment she laid her cheek against my shoulder, then she took my head between her hands and kissed me. It was very sweet ... but it lacked Schubert.

Then she went into her room, and I into mine.

It was she who the next day came to speak about Macbeth.

"You want me to play Lady Macbeth?"

"Yes. Did you not ask me for something heroic? Is Lady Macbeth not the woman who tries to be stronger than man and who breaks up from over-exertion? Can you imagine anything more prodigious?"

"What am I to do with her?" she asked again after a while. "I re-read Macbeth last night. She is terrible. Think only, she says that while her baby was smiling in her face she would have dashed its brains out, had she sworn to do it. I know that art can receive a new meaning from all successive generations, but how can a woman in this century of longing for peace speak words which were horrible even in those times of torture?"

I was surprised at her question which filled me with great happiness. She had read Macbeth this very night. Was this not a wonderful proof of her love? And she had not read it superficially. Oh, what a happy man I was to be able to call such a girl my own!

But how to answer her question was beyond me. All I could find to say was this:

"You forget, Mitzi, that I will make Lady Macbeth a beautiful, flexible cat in the first part, and a weak child in the second."

"My dear," she declared, "I fear that that is rather an empty sentence, and that you are not at all sure what you are going to make her."

I felt that her remark was just, and I resented her superiority a little. You see, I was a composer; and as a composer I believed that I need not think so very deeply, if only I felt profoundly. I suppose that most composers share this opinion, which may be erroneous.

Anyhow, I am sure that if I had been better at thinking (even at the cost of being less good at feeling) Mitzi would have preferred it. There were two Mitzis. The one was a very pretty, charming girl, yet probably somewhat insignificant. The other was an eminent artist, gifted in many respects. Instinctively it was the latter I loved. But to love a woman means to conquer her, not to be conquered. A superior woman wants to be vanquished by a more superior man. And I had capitulated already to the pretty girl. As for the artist, she simply annihilated me.

(The reader must not believe that these war-like expressions are the result of my entrenched authorship. If I were to use the language which I have learned here I would have first to publish a trench dictionary. No—these expressions are only the result of newspaper reading.)

Two days went by. Then Mr. Bischoff called upon me and, as he wanted a thousand crowns[1], he brought with him a detailed sketch of his libretto.

Happily Doblana was absent, which enabled Mitzi to assist at our interview. I told Bischoff that it was my wish to see the rÔle of Lady Macbeth performed by Miss Doblana, but that this must for the present remain a secret to her father, who objected to an artistic career for his daughter.

Bischoff inclined his head without saying what he thought of my plan. Probably his conviction was that I was mad to confide my first work to a beginner, for this was what people generally believed. How many times have I been warned during the following months not to commit my opera to a "beginner"! But as it happened, the great actor found that this "beginner" knew very well what she wanted.

"I do not think, Mr. Bischoff," she said, "that your libretto is any good, and should it remain as it is, I will probably not undertake to create the part of the lady."

"Oh!" answered Bischoff mockingly, "you have not yet been on the boards, and you already have a prima donna's caprices. You will make your way!"

"There is no use in talking like this," she exclaimed. "If nobody yet has thought of making a music drama of Macbeth there are good reasons. By himself Macbeth is a dull, heavy character."

Dear me! Bischoff's face!—You ought to have seen it. It was worth while. He took it personally—he out-shakespeared Shakespeare.

"You are a very young girl," he said at last, "to utter such criticism." And, turning to me: "I did not expect, when I came here, an adversary to whom I cannot speak as I should like to on account of her sex. It is most unfair."

"Neither my sex," cried Mitzi, "nor my youth have anything to do with what you call my criticisms. At this moment I am no woman. I am but an artist, and as such I have the right to speak."

I should have gladly given whatever money I had in my pocket to be somewhere else; yet this very thought reminded me of the fact that Bischoff would bear a little more of Mitzi's argument, as there was a cheque at the end of it.

But while I pondered over these possibilities Mitzi was going on:

"Yes, Mr. Bischoff, Macbeth is a dull, heavy person. He does not do anything by himself. The witches who show him his future do not influence him."

"But, FrÄulein, the witches are but a symbol of his ambitious ideas."

"Never mind ... let us say then, that his ambitious ideas do not lead him into action. He must be dragged to it by his Lady. As a great criminal he is entirely overshadowed by her. Now, such a character may be interesting in a spoken tragedy, but not in music-drama. Further: Macduff is a typical tenor, and as such never interesting. Again, that fairy tale of Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane, do you think that it can impress a modern public?"

"So you are against our scheme altogether?"

"Not in the least. But I want you to make a Lady Macbeth instead of a Macbeth. The Lady is the one interesting person in the whole drama. I want you to cut out all that does not concern her directly. I suggest that you make the first scene of the prophesy of the three witches, which is a grand opening. Then must follow a first act where at the beginning the Lady induces Macbeth to commit the murder and where at the end the deed is done. The second act should be the banquet...."

"And Banquo's ghost? What will you do with Banquo's ghost, if, as I suppose, you suppress Banquo?"

"Let it be King Duncan's ghost. As long as there is a ghost, it matters little whose ghost it is. Finally, the third act should be the scene where the Lady walks in her sleep. After this the interest is over. Let the public go home. It will have had quite enough of the nightmare."

She stopped and there was a long silence. The actor did not say one word, and I did not dare to interfere. I am modest, I have reported that to you already. If I were not, I might have told you that Mitzi's plan, which certainly was good, was my invention. But I am proud of being modest and truthful.

At last Bischoff said:

"I apologise, FrÄulein, for having been distrustful. Your scheme is workable."

"That is better, Mr. Bischoff," said my dear girl with a most bewitching, yet triumphant smile. "But I have not finished. I do not want to impersonate a mere monster. I consent to be a cat first, and a sick child afterwards, but I must know why—I will not be content with nice phrases. The Lady will be my dÉbut, and I want my dÉbut to be a triumph. Mr. Cooper does not seem to know exactly how to explain. Will you?"

If Mitzi had shown her superiority up to this moment, it was now Bischoff's turn. As for me I had my favourite feeling: That of being ... but why should I repeat it? You know.

"It is only because your dull and heavy Macbeth is compatible with my theory of the Lady," began Bischoff, "that I can give you the explanation you want. In my idea Macbeth was not heavy, but irresolute. Never mind, let him be heavy. In either case, the Lady is obliged to put a steam engine, if I may use this expression, in front of all she says, to carry him away. However, she shudders before her horrible words and deeds. She seems to shut her eyes not to see them. She is not a mere monster, to quote your own words, she is a poor weak woman, who loves that one man with such strength, that she has been able to discover all his failings, so that she may, with her trembling body, cover and protect the imperfections. You have only to search for her tenderness and you will find it. It is, for instance, with the utmost softness that you must say the words:

'Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness ...
... What thou would'st highly
That would'st thou holily.'

And it is only because she feels kindness, pity and peace in her heart that she calls the spirits: 'Come you spirits, unsex me here, and fill me top-full of direst cruelty.' Again, she suffers when she cries: That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor Heaven cry 'Hold, hold!' And how happy were she if she had known nothing of it all: 'What beast was it then that made you break this enterprise to me?'"

"Yes," said Mitzi, "but immediately afterwards she says those horrible words about the babe...."

"That," answered Bischoff, "is effort. That is one of the sentences where she uses the steam engine to pull more vigorously. That you must say as if you were shuddering before your own words, as if you were feeling that it is too much. In short, the woman must continually appear under the mask of the monster, and this is the reason why I see the Lady cajoling her husband like a beautiful, flexible cat during the scene where she induces him to the murder. But as soon as the deed is done she shows all her weakness. Not to lose courage she has felt obliged to drink. Nevertheless, she starts at the slightest noise.

'Hark! Peace!
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night.'

in these words! And does she not confess that she is unable to commit the crime herself, when she says these words, which must be uttered with trembling love:

'Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done it.'

Thus the rÔle must be played from beginning to end, Lady Macbeth as a woman, a weak woman, who knows her weakness:

'These deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad....'

a woman who at the end breaks down under the stress of the effort she has made. You must produce, as if by magic, love and pity for Lady Macbeth in the hearts of the audience, and never be a vulgar, awful criminal, a Gorgon, as actresses generally understand, or rather misunderstand the Lady."

"It will mean hard work," said Mitzi, "but I am not afraid. I mean to do it."

And turning to me she added:

"You had better begin working."

Indeed, I started that very evening.

---

What is the bluest blue?

It is not the sky of Italy; it is not the Sapphire of the Maharajah of Baipal, it is not the Blue Diamond of the King of Siam, nor is it the blue gentian that blooms on the high Alps, it is not Rickett's blue, it is not Prussian blue, which is, parenthetically, out of fashion just now, nor is it the blue of a tuppence highpenny stamp. All these are blues. But the blues at the front when it rains, these are the bluest blues. And it never rains but it pours.

We sit there, the four of us, namely, Charlie, Guncotton, Pringle, and I.

We smoke and feel miserable.

"It rains," states Guncotton.

"Does it?" asks Charlie.

"It does," answers Pringle, and I finish the series with a:

"Rotten weather!"

A stillness follows.

We go on puffing, feeling thoroughly soaked.

"It begins to be wet," says I.

"It's water," explains Guncotton.

"You are sure it isn't champagne?" asks Charlie.

"Champagne!" sighs Pringle dreamily.

And we fall back into taciturnity.

"By the way," asks Pringle, "Sergeant, have you still got that bottle of champagne?"

"Of course, I have."

"Well, as the official communiquÉ will be that bad weather has hampered fighting on the British front, why not go and fetch the bottle and break its neck?"

"My friend," says Charlie solemnly, "I have sworn an oath that I would not open that bottle so long as I had not got my commission!"

"You will not even open it to celebrate the recovery of your nose?"

"I will not. I have not brought it all the long way from the Dardanelles, through Egypt and the Mediterranean to France, only to forget my oath when I am so near my goal!"

That bottle of champagne has a history. When we were at the Dardanelles the Sergeant had made himself a wonderful dugout, quite a spacious room, magnificently furnished with all sorts of empty cases. It was quite a cosy place. Charlie had even caught a fox, that was his dog, and a kingfisher, that was his canary. On the completion of the abode we had a house warming. We were six, namely, the four inseparables whom you have the advantage of knowing, plus an Australian and a French guest.

The menu was:

SOUP.
Oxo.

---

ENTREE.
Kidneys.

(obtained from the Butcher Sergeant in return for a pair of braces which he wanted badly.)

---

HORS D'ŒUVRES.

(Whilst we were eating our kidneys the French guest arrived. He was late. So we had the Hors d'oeuvres, which he brought with him, after the EntrÉe.)

A Tin of Sardines.

---

JOINT.
Roast Chicken.

(This solid piece, the chef-d'oeuvre, was a roast fowl, stolen by the Australian guest—poor devil, I may make it public now, for he's dead—from the General. What busines had the General to keep chickens?)

---

ENTREMET.
Omelette au Rum.

(The eggs were bought at the price of 1/- each from a Greek trader who had come over from Lemnos, but who had learned his trade in a London provision shop. The rum was Charlie's own savings for three weeks. Our ration was one-eighth of a pint twice a week.)

---

DESSERT.
Fruit.

from Lemnos, too, which was the only cheap thing to be had there.

---

COFFEE.

---

WINES.

French wine,
A bottle of whisky,
And one of champagne.

That bottle of champagne had been provided by Charlie. To get it, he had had to swim a quarter of a mile, in order to reach a certain ship—to swim with a sovereign in his mouth. There were still some such things as sovereigns in the world when this affair took place. The sovereign was put in a basket which had been lowered with a rope, the basket pulled on deck and lowered again with half a crown change and the bottle of champagne. On his way back Charlie did not know whether to spit his half crown out or to swallow it, whether to let go the bottle or not. For there was a heavy sea. But somehow he reached the shore and landed the bottle, the half crown and himself quite safely.

Well, the dinner party in Charlie's dugout went splendidly. But just at the moment when we were about to open the bottle of champagne, there was a surprise attack from the Turks, a regular alarm, a call to arms, (which I need not explain, as "alarm" is only a perverted form of À l'arme!—to arms!).

"Never mind," cried Charlie, "We'll drink the champagne another time, when I get my commission. I swear I'll keep this bottle till then."

Since that day he has fulfilled his promise. The bottle is the only thing he took with him when we evacuated the Peninsula.

And now, when we have got the blues, he refuses to open it. And, my word, our blues are of a true blue, a Conservative blue. Not the light blue of Cambridge, but the dark blue of Oxford. We have even blue blood in our veins, and call the Germans Blue-beards. If we were to take any pills, they would be blue pills. Our flag could be the Blue Peter. And we have such a blue funk, lest this confounded rain should never cease, that we talk of our blues till we get blue in the face. Not even Guncotton, who is very skilled in pyrotechnics and has manufactured a sort of little cartridge with which he cleverly imitates Will-o'-the-wisps, is able to enliven us. The daily display of pyrotechnics of a somewhat more awe-inspiring sort has rendered us positively cloyed with that pleasure.

But Pringle, since Charlie's refusal to open his bottle, has remained dreaming. Finally he steals away. We wait five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour. In the end he comes back holding a shell in his arms. It is about four inches in diameter and twelve in length. He settles down and slowly starts unscrewing the fuse.

"Look out," warns Guncotton. "These things explode sometimes...."

"That's just what I want," declares Pringle tragically. "I want to put an end to all this misery of ours."

Then, when the shell is unscrewed, he passes it to the Sergeant.

"Have a drop?" he asks.

The shell goes round.

"Our blues turn pink," says I.

"Like litmus paper under the influence of an acid," explains Guncotton.

"Acid?" asks Pringle reproachfully. "It's brandy. The best brandy possible."

"French brandy," says I.

"Vive la France!" cries Charlie.

---

We have had another fight ... a day of manifold horrors and of deafening explosions. We have killed many Germans and many of our own homes were put into mourning. I shall make no attempt at describing this battle. It is over, thank God, and I turn from its monstrosities to my peaceful occupation of remembering what happened in days gone by.

I was perfectly happy in spite of the fact that Mitzi had no overflowing heart. You will be good enough to remember that on the day of our first meeting in the railway carriage P.C. 3.33 she remained clad in mystery all the way from Salzburg to Vienna, and that, while I told her all about myself, I did not learn anything about her. This more or less repeated itself now. I let her peep into the inmost recesses of my heart, and there is certainly nobody who has such a complete acquaintance with that organ of mine, which circulates my blood, my feelings, my thoughts.

Mitzi's heart remained ever an unknown quantity to me. I think this is a bad habit of woman. Dad always pretends that there is a corner of the mater's heart into which Daniel Cooper & Co., Ltd., have never penetrated. I am afraid this corner is the most important one of a woman's heart. Nobody ever explores it, not even the woman to whom the heart belongs. Perhaps she dares not.

So it was with Mitzi. She was sweet, and I am sure she loved me; yet she kept her secret corner hermetically closed. There was no need of writing on that heart: Trespassers will be prosecuted, for there was no possibility of trespassing.

If I were not so modest I should say that what she most loved in me was my musical talent. I had an experience of this on the morrow of that interview which had taken place between her, Bischoff, and myself.

"Are you going to see Bischoff?" she asked as I was to leave for what we called my lesson with Hammer.

I answered that it had not been my intention, but that I might see my collaborator if she had any particular wish.

"I have," she said. "Your Lady Macbeth scarcely leaves me a restful minute. I have thought that it will be very difficult to show the weak, feminine side of the part in music, without a certain external help."

"What do you mean by this?" I asked.

"I mean some lyrical detail which in my opinion must be added. Could the words

'I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me.'

could these words not be the excuse for a sort of lullaby? And then in the scene where she walks in her sleep; as we have cancelled all Macduff, the Lady can no more say: 'The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?' But I think the lullaby could be repeated in her dream. It would be, when it comes first, only a remembrance, and when it comes for the second time only the dream-memory of that remembrance. It would have to be very mysterious and so in keeping with the general character of the whole drama."

Mitzi's idea may give you a notion of her artistic instinct. Perhaps I ought not to call it artistic, but theatrical or operatic. For, although the idea was excellent and proved so, its staginess, its artificiality cannot be denied.

Anyhow, I was then enthusiastic about it. I went to Hammer, who advised as accompaniment for this not yet composed lullaby a succession of major thirds in the lowest notes of the flutes; a suggestion which I applied, but not without the greatest difficulty, in the first version of that little piece, while when it came back in the dream scene I replaced the flutes by muted violins. I remember this detail, because when Lady Macbeth was performed, Hammer came greatly excited after the first act to me protesting that his advice had been bad, and the highest notes of the bassoons would have been better than the lowest of the flutes, whereupon I told him in my excusable excitement that I did not care, or, to employ the Austrian expression, and that it was all "sausage to me."

Indulgent reader, do not be cross with me because I speak of these professional details. Having shown you sufficiently that I am no more a musician, I may be allowed to remember that once upon a time I was one.

I ran to Bischoff. And so pleased was he with Mitzi's suggestion that he wrote there and then the words of that lullaby. In the afternoon I worked with Mr. Doblana on the score of his Aladdin, which was advancing rapidly and in my judgment becoming a distinctly charming ballet.

Then only did I find time to compose the lullaby. It is a weird yet tuneful little piece which took me but half an hour to write down.

When Mitzi heard it she was enraptured. She let herself fall in my arms and looked at me with loving eyes.

"Oh Patrick," she said, "you will write a masterpiece for me, won't you?"

I promised. Never had I felt so much sympathy between us.

"I will do my best, Mitzi," I replied, "for I love you, love you truly, you are my better self, you are my good angel."

She laughed. Yes, she laughed at my fervent words.

"How solemn you are, Patrick. How English. You declaim as if you wanted to appeal to my passions."

"Mitzi, I cannot help worshipping you. No woman can wish to be loved better than I love you."

I found my words quite nice and the right thing to say. But she went on laughing.

"I can make any man say that to me. But I doubt whether I can make any man compose a beautiful opera. Will you?"

"Is my lullaby not to your taste?"

She seemed doubtful.

"One swallow does not make a summer."

I felt it like a bitter pang, as if I were forsaken by her. Artists are such sensitive plants. Oh, imaginative reader, fancy your Patrick Cooper as a Mimosa whose leaves have just been touched. My life seemed pale, my prospects desolate, my hopes dead. And all that because Mitzi had laughed when my heart had been glowing.

Yet the phenomena of irritability last but one moment in the Mimosa, and the subtle doom that had struck my love lasted not much longer.

Now, when writing this I see how fearfully weak I was.

A few days later, the holidays at the Opera having begun, Doblana and Mitzi left for a little place in the Salzkammergut, St. Gilgen, not far from Salzburg, and I for England, where I was to stay for a few weeks with my parents.

---