David Christie Murray

“ Nobody need wonder at Christopher’s amazement.
The street fiddler played the theme clean out, and then passed through the crowd in search of coppers. It furnished a lesson worth his learning that, while he abandoned himself to mirth, the coppers had showered into the hat at his feet in tinkling accompaniment to his strains; and that now the weird and mournful theme had sealed generosity’s fountain as with sudden frost. The musician came at last, hat in hand, to Christopher. He was a queer figure. ”

“ She was there!’ groaned Christopher, rising and pacing the room with unequal steps.
‘Who was there?’ said Carl, almost as wildly.
‘Barbara,’ groaned Christopher again, ‘Mademoiselle Hélène is Barbara Allen.’
‘“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”’ murmured the theatrical Carl. ‘I must humour him. Never mind, old man. Suppose she is! what does it matter?’
‘Oh, Carl! Carl!’ cried the other, turning upon him and gripping him by both shoulders. ‘I never loved another woman, and I never can. ”

“ Christopher was a fiddler and a man of genius. Educated people do not deny the possibility of such a combination; but it was Christopher’s misfortune to live amongst a dull and bovine-seeming race, who had little sympathy with art and no knowledge of an artist’s longings. They contented themselves, for the most part, with the belief that Christopher was queer. Perhaps he was. My experience of men of genius, limited as it may be, points to the fact that oddity is a characteristic of the race. ”

“ I am going up to London.’
‘To London?’ asked Barbara, no longer smiling.
‘To London,’ said Christopher, quoting Mrs. Browning; ‘to the gathering-place of souls.’
‘What shall you do there, Christopher?’ asked Barbara, by this time tremulous.
‘I shall take my compositions with me,’ he answered,’ and offer them to the publishers. I will find out the people who give concerts and get leave to play. I will play at first for nothing: I can but try. If I fail, I fail. But there is nothing here to work upon. There is no knowledge of art and no love for it. ”

“ There is not a man in the band who can do justice to “When Love has flown.” It will be no trouble to you. You will simply have to stand in the flies and play the air whilst a man on the stage appears to play it, sawing away with a soaped bow. Will you come?’
Christopher stood irresolute. ‘They can do without me in the orchestra,’ said Carl, ‘but I have been playing your song as it deserves to be played. Mademoiselle Hélène looks forward to its being played so. ”

“ Cameron with stage solemnity. ‘Have you had any practice? Can you sing?’
‘I do not know what I can do,’ said Barbara. ‘I can sing a little.’
‘Let me hear you,’ said the deep voice; and the lady, with a regal gesture, threw open the grand piano.
Barbara drew off her thread gloves and lifted her veil, and then, sitting down to the piano, sang the piteous ballad of the Four Marys. Barbara knew nothing of the easy emotions of people of the stage, and she was almost frightened when, looking up timidly at the conclusion of the song, she saw that Mrs. Cameron was crying. ”

“ Christopher went up and down the room exclaiming here and there against the perfidy of woman. There came an imperious summons at the door.
‘Don’t let him in, whoever it is,’ said Christopher.
Somebody kicked the door and roared ‘Rubach!’
‘It’s Milford,’ said Carl; ‘the manager. There’s going to be a row. A bit of a row will do you good, my poor fellow. I shall let him in.’
So said, so done. Enter Milford the lordly, in a towering rage, followed by Holt, evidently disposed to appease his manager’s wrath. ”

“ Christopher had no expectations either, except of a stiff struggle with the world, but the two young people loved each other, and, having their choice of proverbs, they discarded the one which relates to poverty and a door and love and a window, and selected for their own guidance that cheerful saying which sets forth the belief that what is enough for one is enough for two. ”

“ Christopher, therefore, bent himself like a man to earn enough for one, and up to the time of the beginning of this history had achieved a qualified failure. Barbara believed in his genius, but so far nobody else did, and the look-out was not altogether cheerful. Barbara’s surname was Allen, but her godfathers and godmothers at her baptism had been actuated by no reminiscences of ballad poetry, and she was called Barbara because her godmother was called Barbara and was ready to present her with a silver caudle-cup on condition that the baby bore her name. ”

“ She used to sing it to him in private, and sometimes to her uncle, but it was exclusively a home song. Christopher made a violin setting of it which Barbara used to accompany on the pianoforte, a setting in which the poor old song was tortured into wild cadenzas and dizzy cataracts of caterwauling after the approved Italian manner.
The days went by, days that were halcyon under love’s own sunshine. What matter if the mere skies were clouded, the mere material sun shut out, the wind bitter? Love can build a shelter for his votaries, and has a sun-shine of his own. ”

“ We who live in London know well enough that its streets are not paved with gold. If one had asked Christopher his opinion on that point, he would no doubt have laughed at the childishness of the question, yet he came up to London with all the confidence and certainty which the old childish belief could have inspired. ”

“ There are reasons for all things, if we could but find them; yet where is the social philosopher who will establish the nexus between a passion for Beethoven and the love of a bad hat? Why should a man who has perceptions of the beautiful fear the barber’s shears? There were no social philosophers to speak of in the little country town in which Christopher was born and bred, and nobody in his case strove to solve these problems. Christopher was established as queer, and his townsfolk were disposed to let him rest at that. ”

“ She is; aware—as I am—of the undeserved stigma which has been cast upon the profession by bigotry and ignorance. She has no respect for the prejudice—nor have I—but she will not violate the feelings of those who are so unfortunate as to suffer under it.’
‘Ye’re quite right, Joe,’ said Mrs. Cameron colloquially, and then, with added grandeur, to Barbara, ‘Mr. Lochleven Cameron expresses me own feelings admirably.’
Barbara made no reply. It would have been sweet to work for Christopher even by so audacious a means as going on the stage. But the vision crumbled when she thought of her uncle. ”

“ In two months’ time Carl Rubach was restored to his old place at the Garrick, and poor Christopher was beginning to find out in real earnest what it was to be hungry. He was too proud to ask anybody for a loan, and Rubach was the only man he really knew. ‘When things are at their worst,’ says the cynical bard, ‘they sometimes mend.’ Things suddenly mended for Christopher. The Bohemian turned up one afternoon with an Englishman in his train, a handsome young fellow of perhaps five-and-twenty, with a light curling beard and a blonde moustache. ”

“ They wear curious garments and their ways are strange. The outward and visible signs of their inward and spiritual graces are familiar to most observers of life, and the aesthetic soul recognises the meaning of their adornments of the hair and their puttings on of apparel. Genius may be said in these cases to be a sort of mental measles exhibited in sartorial form, and it may be supposed that but for their breaking out there would be some fear of their proving fatal. ”

“ A man can’t bring out more than there is in him. There’s no divine melody in me. Good spirits now and then, a bit of sentiment now and then, a dash more or less of the devil now and then—that’s all I’m equal to. ”

“ Yes, that was it, Christopher confessed, as he took back the violin and bow and laid them on the table.
‘What brings a man who plays as you do, playing in the streets?’ he asked a little sulkily.
‘That eternal want of pence which vexes fiddlers,’ said the youngster ‘I lost an engagement a month ago. First violin at the Garrick. Rowed with the manager. Nothing else turned up. Must make money somehow.’
‘What have you made to-night?’ Christopher asked. ”

“ It gives her aid, I know. The people look to hear it well played, and if you do not go it will be given to Jones—to Jones, Gott in Himmel! who plays as a mason cuts stone. Do come. It will cost you no trouble.’
Christopher took up his violin-case, long since extracted from My Uncle’s maw, and followed Carl from the chambers into the street. ”