Eheu fugaces! How that air carries me back, that air ground away so
unmercifully, _sans_ tune, _sans_ time on a hopelessly discordant
barrel-organ, right underneath my window. It is being bitterly
execrated, I know, by the literary gentleman who lives in chambers
above me, and by the convivial gentleman who has a dinner party
underneath. It has certainly made it impossible for me to continue the
passage in my new Fugue in A minor, which was being transferred so
flowingly from my own brain on to the score when it interrupted me.
But for all that, I have a shrewd suspicion that I shall bear its
unmusical torture as long as it lasts, and eventually send away the
frowsy foreigner, who no doubt is playing it, happy with a fairly
large coin.
Yes: for the sake of old times, for the old emotion's sake--for
Ninette's sake, I put up with it, not altogether sorry for the
recollections it has aroused.
How vividly it brings it all back! Though I am a rich man now, and so
comfortably domiciled; though the fashionable world are so eager to
lionise me, and the musical world look upon me almost as a god, and
to-morrow hundreds of people will be turned away, for want of space,
from the Hall where I am to play, just I alone, my last Fantaisie, it
was not so very many years ago that I trudged along, fiddling for
half-pence in the streets. 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. All his sensations are so much grist for
his art.'
But it is of Ninette, not Lady Greville, that I think to-night,
Ninette's childish face that the dreary grinding organ brings up
before me, not Lady Greville's aquiline nose and delicate artificial
complexion.
Although I am such a great man now, I should find it very awkward to
be obliged to answer questions as to my parentage and infancy.
Even my nationality I could not state precisely, though I know I am as
much Italian as English, perhaps rather more. From Italy I have
inherited my genius and enthusiasm for art, from England I think I
must have got my common-sense, and the capacity of keeping the money
which I make; also a certain natural coldness of disposition, which
those who only know me as a public character do not dream of. All my
earliest memories are very vague and indistinct. 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.
I was very hungry and miserable indeed when that rencontre came about.
I wonder sometimes what would have happened if Ninette had not come to
the rescue, just at that particular juncture. 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.
It was at the close of my first day of independence, a wretched
November evening, very much like this one. I had wandered about all
day, but my efforts had not been rewarded by a single coin. My fiddle
was old and warped, and injured by the rain; its whining was even more
repugnant to my own sensitive ear, than to that of the casual
passer-by. I was in despair. How I hated all the few well-dressed,
well-to-do people who were but on the Boulevards, on that inclement
night. I wandered up and down hoping against hope, until I was too
tired to stand, and then I crawled under the shelter of a covered
passage, and flung myself down on the ground, to die, as I hoped,
crying bitterly.
The alley was dark and narrow, and I did not see at first that it had
another occupant. Presently a hand was put out and touched me on the
shoulder.
I started up in terror, though the touch was soft and need not have
alarmed me. I found it came from a little girl, for she was really
about my own age, though then she seemed to me very big and
protecting. But she was tall and strong for her age, and I, as I have
said, was weak and undersized.
'Chut! little boy,' said Ninette; 'what are you crying for?'
And I told her my story, as clearly as I could, through my sobs; and
soon a pair of small arms were thrown round my neck, and a smooth
little face laid against my wet one caressingly. 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? There it is!'
And she pointed to an object on the ground beside her, which I had, at
first, taken to be a big box, and dimly hoped might contain eatables.
My respect for my new friend suffered a little diminution. Already I
felt instinctively that to play the fiddle, even though it is an old,
a poor one, is to be something above a mere organ-grinder.
But I did not express this feeling--was not this little girl going to
take me home with her? would not she, doubtless, give me something to
eat?
My first impulse was an artistic one; that was of Italy. The
concealment of it was due to the English side of me--the practical
side.