'What is thy name, _p'tit_?' she said.
'Anton,' I answered, for that was what the woman Maddalena had called
me. Her husband, if he was her husband, never gave me any title,
except when he was abusing me, and then my names were many and
unmentionable. Nowadays I am the Baron Antonio Antonelli, of the
Legion of Honour, but that is merely an extension of the old concise
Anton, so far as I know, the only name I ever had.'
'Anton?' repeated the little girl, that is a nice name to say. Mine is
Ninette.'
We sat in silence in our sheltered nook, waiting until the rain should
stop, and very soon I began to whimper again.
'I am so hungry, Ninette,' I said; 'I have eaten nothing to-day.'
In the literal sense this was a lie; I had eaten some stale crusts in
the early morning, before I gave my taskmasters the slip, but the
hunger was true enough.
Ninette began to reproach herself for not thinking of this before.
After much fumbling in her pocket, she produced a bit of _brioche_, an
apple, and some cold chestnuts.
'_V'la_, Anton,' she said, 'pop those in your mouth. When we get home
we will have supper together. I have bread and milk at home. And we
will buy two hot potatoes from the man on the _quai_.'
I ate the unsatisfying morsels ravenously, Ninette watching me with an
approving nod the while. When they were finished, the weather was a
little better, and Ninette said we might move. She slung the organ
over her shoulder--it was a small organ, though heavy for a child; but
she was used to it, and trudged along under its weight like a woman.
With her free hand she caught hold of me and led me along the wet
streets, proudly home. Ninette's home! Poor little Ninette! It was
colder and barer than these rooms of mine now; it had no grand piano,
and no thick carpets; and in the place of pictures and _bibelots_, its
walls were only wreathed in cobwebs. Still it was drier than the
streets of Paris, and if it had been a palace it could not have been
more welcome to me than it was that night.
The _ménage_ of Ninette was a strange one! There was a tumbledown
deserted house in the Montparnasse district. It stood apart, in an
overgrown weedy garden, and has long ago been pulled down. It was
uninhabited; no one but a Parisian _gamine_ could have lived in it,
and Ninette had long occupied it, unmolested, save by the rats.
Through the broken palings in the garden she had no difficulty in
passing, and as its back door had fallen to pieces, there was nothing
to bar her further entry. In one of the few rooms which had its window
intact, right at the top of the house, a mere attic, Ninette had
installed herself and her scanty goods, and henceforward this became
my home also.
It has struck me since as strange that the child's presence should not
have been resented by the owner. But I fancy the house had some story
connected with it. It was, I believe, the property of an old and
infirm miser, who in his reluctance to part with any of his money in
repairs had overreached himself, and let his property become
valueless. He could not let it, and he would not pull it down. It
remained therefore an eyesore to the neighbourhood, until his death
put it in the possession of a less avaricious successor. The
proprietor never came near the place, and with the neighbours it had a
bad repute, and they avoided it as much as possible. It stood, as I
have said, alone, and in its own garden, and Ninette's occupation of
it may have passed unnoticed, while even if any one of the poor people
living around had known of her, it was, after all, nobody's business
to interfere.
When I was last in Paris I went to look for the house, but all traces
of it had vanished, and over the site, so far as I could fix it, a
narrow street of poor houses flourished.
Ninette introduced me to her domain with a proud air of ownership. She
had a little store of charcoal, with which she proceeded to light a
fire in the grate, and by its fitful light prepared our common
supper--bread and radishes, washed down by a pennyworth of milk, of
which, I have no doubt, I received the lion's share. As a dessert we
munched, with much relish, the steaming potatoes that Ninette had
bought from a stall in the street, and had kept warm in the pocket of
her apron.
And so, as Ninette said, we made a _ménage_ together. How that old
organ brings it all back. My fiddle was useless after the hard usage
it received that day. Ninette and I went out on our rounds together,
but for the present I was a sleeping partner in the firm, and all I
could do was to grind occasionally when Ninette's arm ached, or pick
up the sous that were thrown us. Ninette was, as a rule, fairly
successful. Since her mother had died, a year before, leaving her the
organ as her sole legacy, she had lived mainly by that instrument;
although she often increased her income in the evenings, when
organ-grinding was more than ever at a discount, by selling bunches of
violets and other flowers as button-holes.
With her organ she had a regular beat, and a distinct _clientèle_.
Children playing with their _bonnes_ in the gardens of the Tuileries
and the Luxembourg were her most productive patrons. Of course we had
bad days as well as good, and in winter it was especially bad; but as
a rule we managed fairly to make both ends meet. Sometimes we carried
home as much as five francs as the result of the day's campaign, but
this, of course, was unusual.
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.
Though we were about the same age, the position which it might have
been expected we should occupy was reversed. It was Ninette who petted
and protected me--I who clung to her.
I was very fond of Ninette, certainly. I should have died in those
days if it had not been for her, and sometimes I am surprised at the
tenacity of my tenderness for her. As much as I ever cared for
anything except my art, I cared for Ninette. But still she was never
the first with me, as I must have been with her. I was often fretful
and discontented, sometimes, I fear, ready to reproach her for not
taking more pains to alleviate our misery, but all the time of our
partnership Ninette never gave me a cross word. There was something
maternal about her affection, which withstood all ungratefulness. She
was always ready to console me when I was miserable, and throw her
arms round me and kiss me when I was cold; and many a time, I am sure,
when the day's earnings had been scanty, the little girl must have
gone to sleep hungry, that I might not be stinted in my supper.
One of my grievances, and that the sorest of all, was the loss of my
beloved fiddle. This, for all her goodwill, Ninette was powerless to
allay.
'Dear Anton,' she said, 'do not mind about it. 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! loved it!' I cried passionately. 'It could
talk to me, Ninette, and tell me beautiful, new things, always
beautiful, and always new. Oh, Ninette, I shall die if I cannot play!'
It was always the same cry, and Ninette, if she could not understand,
and was secretly a little jealous, was as distressed as I was; but
what could she do?
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.
'How much?' he asked shortly.
'Ten _sous_, M'sieu,' said exorbitant little Ninette, expecting to get
two at the most.
The gentleman drew out some coins hastily and selected a bunch from
the basket.
'Here is a franc,' he said, 'I cannot wait for change,' and putting a
coin into Ninette's hand he turned into the theatre.
Ninette ran towards me with her eyes gleaming; she held up the piece
of money exultantly.
'Tiens, Anton!' she cried, and I saw that it was not a franc, as we
had though at first, but a gold Napoleon.
I believe the good little boy and girl in the story-books would have
immediately sought out the unfortunate gentleman and bid him rectify
his mistake, generally receiving, so the legend runs, a far larger
bonus as a reward of their integrity. I have never been a particularly
good little boy, however, and I don't think it ever struck either
Ninette or myself--perhaps we were not sufficiently speculative--that
any other course was open to us than to profit by the mistake. Ninette
began to consider how we were to spend it.
'Think of it, Anton, a whole gold _louis_. A _louis_,' said Ninette,
counting laboriously, 'is twenty francs, a franc is twenty sous,
Anton; how many sous are there in a louis? More than an hundred?'
But this piece of arithmetic was beyond me; I shook my head dubiously.
'What shall we buy first, Anton?' said Ninette, with sparkling eyes.
'You shall have new things, Anton, a pair of new shoes and an hat; and
I--'
But I had other things than clothes in my mind's eye; I interrupted
her.
'Ninette, dear little Ninette,' I said coaxingly, 'remember the
fiddle.'
Ninette's face fell, but she was a tender little thing, and she showed
no hesitation.
'Certainly, Anton,' she said, but with less enthusiasm, 'we will get
it to-morrow--one of the fiddles you showed me in M. Boudinot's shop
on the Quai. 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. 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! I must often have made the little heart sore
with some of the careless things I said. 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. Yet
for all her cynicism Lady Greville I know has a bundle of old and
faded letters, tied up in black ribbon in some hidden drawer, that
perhaps she never reads now, but that she cannot forget or destroy.
They are in a bold handwriting, that is, not, I think, that of the
miserable, old debauchee, her husband, from whom she has been
separated since the first year of her marriage, and their envelopes
bear Indian postmarks.
And Felix, who told me the history of those letters with a smile of
pity on his thin, ironical lips--Felix, whose principles are adapted
to his conscience and whose conscience is bounded by the law, and in
whom I believe as little as he does in me, I found out by accident not
so very long ago. It was on the day of All Souls, the melancholy
festival of souvenirs, celebrated once a year, under the November
fogs, that I strayed into the Montparnasse Cemetery, to seek
inspiration for my art. And though he did not see me, I saw Felix, the
prince of railers, who believes in nothing and cares for nothing
except himself, for music is not with him a passion but an _agrément_.
Felix bareheaded, and without his usual smile, putting fresh flowers
on the grave of a little Parisian grisette, who had been his mistress
and died five years ago. I thought of Balzac's 'Messe de l'Athée' and
ranked Felix's inconsistency with it, feeling at the same time how
natural such a paradox is. And myself, the last of the trio, at the
mercy of a street organ, I cannot forget Ninette.
Though it was not until many years had passed that I heard that little
criticism, the purchase of my fiddle was destined very shortly to
bring my life in contact with its author. Those were the days when a
certain restraint grew up between Ninette and myself. Ninette, it must
be confessed, was jealous of the fiddle. Perhaps she knew
instinctively that music was with me a single and absorbing passion,
from which she was excluded. She was no genius, little Ninette, and
her organ was nothing more to her than the means of making a
livelihood; she felt not the smallest _tendresse_ for it, and could
not understand why a dead and inanimate fiddle, made of mere wood and
catgut, should be any more to me than that. How could she know that to
me it was never a dead thing, that even when it hung hopelessly out of
my reach, in the window of M. Boudinot, before ever it had given out
wild, impassioned music beneath my hands, it was always a live thing
to me, alive and with a human, throbbing heart, vibrating with hope
and passion.
So Ninette was jealous of the fiddle, and being proud in her way, she
became more and more quiet and reticent, and drew herself aloof from
me, although, wrapped up as I was in the double egoism of art and
boyhood, I failed to notice this. I have been sorry since that any
shadow of misunderstanding should have clouded the closing days of our
partnership. It is late to regret now, however. When my fiddle was
added to our belongings, we took to going out separately. It was more
profitable, and, besides, Ninette, I think, saw that I was growing a
little ashamed of her organ. On one of these occasions, as I played
before a house in the Faubourg St. Germain, the turning point of my
life befell me. The house, outside which I had taken my station was a
large, white one, with a balcony on the first floor. This balcony was
unoccupied, but the window looking to it was open, and through the
lace curtains I could distinguish the sound of voices. I began to
play; at first, one of the airs that Maddalena had taught me; but
before it was finished, I had glided off, as usual, into an
improvisation.
When I was playing like that, I threw all my soul into my fingers, and
I had neither ears nor eyes for anything round me. I did not therefore
notice until I had finished playing that a lady and a young man had
come out into the balcony, and were beckoning to me.
'Bravo!' cried the lady enthusiastically, but she did not throw me the
reward I had expected. She turned and said something to her companion,
who smiled and disappeared. I waited expectantly, thinking perhaps she
had sent him for her purse. Presently the door opened, and the young
man issued from it. He came to me and touched me on the shoulder.
'You are to come with me,' he said, authoritatively, speaking in
French, but with an English accent. I followed him, my heart beating
with excitement, through the big door, into a large, handsome hall and
up a broad staircase, thinking that in all my life I had never seen
such a beautiful house.
He led me into a large and luxurious _salon_, which seemed to my
astonished eyes like a wonderful museum. The walls were crowded with
pictures, a charming composition by Gustave Moreau was lying on the
grand piano, waiting until a nook could be found for it to hang.
Renaissance bronzes and the work of eighteenth century silversmiths
jostled one another on brackets, and on a table lay a handsome
violin-case. The pale blinds were drawn down, and there was a
delicious smell of flowers diffused everywhere. A lady was lying on a
sofa near the window, a handsome woman of about thirty, whose dress
was a miracle of lace and flimsiness.
The young man led me towards her, and she placed two delicate,
jewelled hands on my shoulders, looking me steadily in the face.
'Where did you learn to play like that, my boy?' she asked.
'I cannot remember when I could not fiddle, Madame,' I answered, and
that was true.
'The boy is a born musician, Felix,' said Lady Greville. 'Look at his
hands.'
And she held up mine to the young man's notice; he glanced at them
carelessly.
'Yes, Miladi,' said the young man, 'they are real violin hands. What
were you playing just now, my lad?'
'I don't know, sir,' I said. 'I play just what comes into my head.'
Lady Greville looked at her nephew with a glance of triumph.
'What did I tell you?' she cried. 'The boy is a genius, Felix. I shall
have him educated.'
'All your geese are swans, Auntie,' said the young man in English.
Lady Greville, however, ignored this thrust.
'Will you play for me now, my dear,' she said, 'as you did
before--just what comes into your head?'