Ninette

“ For, tho she is fair to look upon and has little bills springing up along the Rue de la Paix as thick as a field of bachelor’s-buttons, Ninette is not an actress. But Ninette enjoys her theatrical career. She takes the stage seriously, enjoying even the rigid discipline, because of its complete novelty. The old playgoers come to her salon, gravely kiss the tips of her fingers, and tell her how charming she has been in the revue. ”

“ I have no doubt I shall get rich, because I am going to be a great musician, but I shall not leave you. I will have a big house on the Champs Elysées, and then you shall come and live with me, and be my housekeeper. And in the evenings, I will play to you and make you open your eyes, Ninette. You will like me to play, you know; we are often dull in the evenings.'
'Yes,' said Ninette meekly, 'we will buy your fiddle to-morrow, dear
Anton. Let us go home now.'
Poor vanished Ninette! ”

“ To me she is always a child. Ninette grown up, with a draggled dress and squalling babies, is an incongruous thing that shocks my sense of artistic fitness. My fiddle is my only mistress, and while I can summon its consolation at command, I may not be troubled by the pettiness of a merely human love. But once when I was down with Roman fever, and tossed on a hotel bed, all the long, hot night, while Giacomo drowsed in a corner over 'Il Diavolo Rosa,' I seemed to miss Ninette. ”

“ Perhaps it was Clara de la Roche alone that saw and understood the real motives of the poor girl's behaviour, She did not, indeed, know that from the first hour that Auguste la Brousse, as the young stranger called himself, had set his foot across the threshold of the farm of Dervais, Ninette had determined that he should be her lover whether he would or not. ”

“ I felt as if half my troubles were over.
'Don't cry, little boy,' said Ninette, grandly; 'I will take care of you. If you like, you shall live with me. We will make a ménage together. What is your profession?'
I showed her my fiddle, and the sight of its condition caused fresh tears to flow.
'Ah!' she said, with a smile of approval, 'a violinist—good! I too am an artiste. You ask my instrument? ”

“ Ninette was not precisely a pretty child, but she had a very bright face, and wonderful gray eyes. When she smiled, which was often, her face was very attractive, and a good many people were induced to throw a sou for the smile which they would have assuredly grudged to the music. ”

“ Ninette and I—Ninette with her barrel-organ, and I fiddling. Poor little Ninette—that air was one of the four her organ played. I wonder what has become of her? Dead, I should hope, poor child. Now that I am successful and famous, a Baron of the French Empire, it is not altogether unpleasant to think of the old, penniless, vagrant days, by a blazing fire in a thick carpeted room, with the November night shut outside. I am rather an epicure of my emotions, and my work is none the worse for it.
'Little egoist,' I remember Lady Greville once said of me, 'he has the true artistic susceptibility. ”

“ By the Author of 'Vera,' 'Blue Roses,' Etc.
"A story of sustained power from beginning to end, it is put together according to the true principles of art; moreover, we congratulate the author upon her hero and heroine. Ninette, in her simple untaught rectitude of conduct, her innate modesty, and child-like faith, recalls some of the happiest touches in the Lucia of the immortal 'Promessi Sposi.'"—Church Quarterly Review.
"'Ninette' is something more than a novel; it is a careful and elaborate study of life among the Provençal hills, and, as such, deserves special attention. ”

“ Everything seems all changed somehow," answered Aunt Ninette. "The noise the children make is not a bit bad, when one knows them all, and I am glad we did not move from here. I even begin to miss it, when I do not hear their merry voices, and things do not seem quite right, when there is no noise in the garden."
"That's exactly the way I feel," agreed Uncle Titus. "I enjoy the lively boy so much, when he comes running to me every night. He can hardly control his eagerness to tell me what he has composed, and when I set him my task, he drinks in every word I say. ”

“ Eventually, I got my violin, and it was Ninette who gave it me. The manner of its acquirement was in this wise.
Ninette would sometimes invest some of her savings in violets, which she divided with me, and made into nosegays for us to sell in the streets at night.
Theatre doors and frequented placed on the Boulevards were our favorite spots.
One night we had taken up our station outside the Opera, when a gentleman stopped on his way in, and asked Ninette for a button-hole. He was in evening dress and in a great hurry. ”

“ Yet looking back at it now, I know that I never cared for any living person so much as I did for Ninette.
I have very few illusions left now; a childhood, such as mine, does not tend to preserve them, and time and success have not made me less cynical. Still I have never let my scepticism touch that childish presence. Lady Greville once said to me, in the presence of her nephew Felix Leominster, a musician too, like myself, that we three were curiously suited, for that we were, without exception, the three most cynical persons in the universe, Perhaps in a way she was right. ”

“ Doubtless the musician is a country-woman of his, and if he pockets the coin, that is his look out.
Now if I was writing a romance, what a chance I have got. I should tell you how my organ-grinder turned out to be no other than Ninette. Of course she would not be spoilt or changed by the years—just the same Ninette. Then what scope for a pathetic scene of reconciliation and forgiveness—the whole to conclude with a peal of marriage bells, two people living together 'happy ever after.' But I am not writing a romance, and I am a musician, not a poet. ”

“ She played at hap-hazard, listlessly throwing down the cards or letting them fall from her hands, vaguely asking what were trumps at inopportune moments; showing that inattentiveness so exasperating to an eager player and which oftener than once drew a sharp rebuke from Belle Worthington.
“Don’t you wish we could play,” said Ninette to her companion from her comfortable perch beside the fire, and looking longingly towards the card table.
“Oh, no,” replied Lucilla briefly, gazing into the fire, with hands folded in her lap. ”

“ Jumble ran to her with shrill barks of welcome, then ran back to William to reassure him of his undying loyalty.
“It is Jumble,” said the man. “He’s called Jumble,” he explained to William, “because he is a jumble. He’s all sorts of a dog, you know. This is Ninette, my daughter, and my name is Jarrow, and we’ve taken Lavender Cottage for two months. We’re roving vagabonds. We never stay anywhere longer than two months. So now you know all about us. Jumble seems to have adopted you. Ninette, my dear, you are completely ousted from Jumble’s heart. ”

“ Remembering that time, I sometimes fancy that when the inevitable hour strikes, and this hand is too weak to raise the soul of melody out of Stradivarius—when, my brief dream of life and music over, I go down into the dark land, where there is no more music, and no Ninette, into the sleep from which there comes no awaking, I should like to see her again, not the woman but the child. ”

“ Clara had no fears when she beheld a peasant, and she felt too, as most women would feel, that although she might see but little of Ninette, yet there was great comfort in having one other of her own sex constantly near her. The peasant girl too, habituated to such scenes, seemed to understand her situation at once, and came forward to speak to her with much kindness; but the tidings that she had seen horsemen upon the hill, riding about as if in search of some one, abridged all ceremony, and Clara at once took up her abode in her place of concealment. ”

“ The next afternoon, as Dora and her father seated themselves on their favorite bench under the lindens, the child asked,
"Papa, is it possible that Aunt Ninette never knew the verse you repeated to her last night?"
"Oh yes, my child, she has always known the lines," replied the Major. "It is only for the moment that your good aunt allows herself to be so overwhelmed with care and worry as to forget who governs all wisely. She is a good woman, and in her heart she places her trust in God's goodness. She soon comes to herself again." ”

“ I have no need, I see, to tell you its value. If you will come with me and make no scene, you shall have it for your very own. Ninette will be perfectly happy. Do you agree?'
I looked at my old fiddle, lying on the floor. How yellow and trashy it looked beside the grand old Cremona, bedded in its blue velvet.
'I will do what you like, Madame,' I said.
'Human nature is pretty much the same in geniuses and dullards,' said
Felix. 'I congratulate you, Auntie.'
And so the bargain was struck, and the new life entered upon that very day. ”

“ She was like a child in her exultant happiness, far more child-like, indeed, than the grave little Ninette whom she was nursing.
“Thou art not dignified enough for a teacher,” said the fraulein, laughingly.
“She is no teacher,” cried the girls. “It is holiday time and she need not talk that frightful English.”
Erica made a laughing defense of her native tongue, and such a babel ensued that the fraulein had to interfere again.
“Liebe Erica! Thou art beside thyself! What has come to thee?” ”

“ Do you think the ten-franc one will do, or the light one for fifteen francs?'
'Oh, the light one, dear Ninette,' I said; 'it is worth more than the extra money. Besides, we shall soon earn it back now. Why if you could earn such a lot as you have with your old organ, when you only have to turn an handle, think what a lot I shall make, fiddling. For you have to be something to play the fiddle, Ninette.'
'Yes,' said the little girl, wincing; 'you are right, dear Anton.
Perhaps you will get rich and go away and leave me?'
'No, Ninette,' I declared grandly, 'I will always take care of you. ”

“ Presently a loud bleat close at his side startled him, and looking down, he saw that Ninette, decked in her gay garlands, and still dragging the be-ribboned Beppo in the little cart, had broken away from the Père Michaud and come close up to himself. ”

“ It is wonderful how keen women's eyes are in seeing into other women's hearts; and although Clara herself was yet scarcely nineteen, and had possessed as few opportunities as any one of judging what love is, yet she was not long in discovering that there was a spark of affection for the young stranger lighted in the bosom of poor Ninette, which she feared, from what she suspected of his real station, might prove hereafter dangerous to her peace. Many were the questions that she asked concerning Auguste's history ”

“ Would some other salvation have appeared, or would—well, well, if one once begins wondering what would have happened if certain accidents in one's life had not befallen one when they did, where will one come to a stop? Anyhow, when I had escaped from my taskmasters, a wretched, puny child of ten, undersized and shivering, clasping a cheap fiddle in my arms, lost in the huge labyrinth of Paris, without a sou in my rags to save me from starvation, I did meet Ninette, and that, after all, is the main point. ”

“ A young man, Restagnon by name, who, though poor, was of gentle blood, was in the last degree enamoured of Ninette, and she of him; and so discreetly had they managed the affair, that, never another soul in the world witting aught of it, they had had joyance of their love, and that for a good while, when it so befell that two young friends of theirs, the one Foulques, the other Hugues by name, whom their fathers, recently dead, had left very wealthy, fell in love, the one with Madeleine, the other with Bertelle. ”

“ I earn enough for both with my organ, and some day we shall save enough to buy thee a new fiddle. When we are together, and have got food and charcoal, what does it matter about an old fiddle? Come, eat thy supper, Anton, and I will light the fire. Never mind, dear Anton.' And she laid her soft little cheek against mine with a pleading look.
'Don't,' I cried, pushing her away, 'you can't understand, Ninette; you can only grind an organ—just four tunes, always the same. But I loved my fiddle, loved it! ”

“ I must convey a coin somehow to that dreary person outside, who is grinding now half-way down the street.
On consideration, I decide emphatically against opening the window and presenting it that way. If the fog once gets in, it will utterly spoil me for any work this evening. I feel myself in travail also of two charming little Lieder that all this thinking about Ninette has suggested. How would 'Chansons de Gamine' do for a title? I think it best, on second thoughts, to ring for Giacomo, my man, and send him out with the half-crown I propose to sacrifice on the altar of sentiment. ”

“ I remember tramping over France and Italy with a man and woman—they were Italian, I believe—who beat me, and a fiddle, which I loved passionately, and which I cannot remember having ever been without. They are very shadowy presences now, and the name of the man I have forgotten. The woman, I think, was called Maddalena. I am ignorant whether they were related to me in any way: I know that I hated them bitterly, and eventually, after a worse beating than usual, ran away from them. I never cared for any one except my fiddle, until I knew Ninette. ”

“ Such being the tenor of their life, it so befell that (as 'tis matter of daily experience that, however delightsome a thing may be, superabundance thereof will breed disgust) Restagnon, much as he had loved Ninette, being now able to have his joyance of her without stint or restraint, began to weary of her, and by consequence to abate somewhat of his love for her. And being mightily pleased with a fair gentlewoman of the country, whom he met at a merrymaking, he set his whole heart upon her, and began to shew himself marvellously courteous and gallant towards her ”