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. This observation is especially true of such of them as are
yet unrecognised. 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.
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. His pale face was remarkable for
nothing except a pair of dreamy eyes which could at times give sign
of inward lightnings. His hair was lank; his figure was attenuated and
ungraceful; he wore his clothes awkwardly. He was commonly supposed
to be sulky, and some people thought his tone of voice bumptious and
insolent. He was far from being a favourite, but those who knew him
best liked him best, which is a good sign about a man. Everybody was
compelled to admit that he was a well-conducted young man enough, and on
Sundays he played the harmonium gratis at the little Independent
chapel in which that pious and simple pair, his father and mother,
had worshipped till their last illness. Over this instrument
Christopher--let me admit it--made wonderful eyes, sweeping the ceiling
with a glance of rapture, and glaring through the boarders at the
ladies’ school (who sat in the front of the gallery) with orbs which
seemed to see not. The young ladies were a little afraid of him, and
his pallor and loneliness, and the very reputation he had for oddity,
enlisted the sympathies of some of them.
Whatever tender flutterings might disturb the bosoms of the young ladies
in the galleries, Christopher cared not. His heart was fixed on Barbara.
Barbara, who surely deserves a paragraph to herself, was provokingly
pretty, to begin with, and she had a fascinating natural way which made
young men and young women alike unhappy. She bubbled over--pardon this
kitchen simile--with unaffected gaiety; she charmed, she bewitched, she
delighted, she made angry and bewitched again. The young ladies very
naturally saw nothing in her, but a certain pert forwardness of which
themselves would not be guilty, though it should bring a world of young
gentlemen sighing to their feet. Barbara was nineteen, and she had
a voice which for gaiety and sweetness was like that of a throstle.
Christopher had himself taught her to sing. His own voice was
cacophonous and funereal, and it was droll to hear him solemnly phrasing
‘I will enchant thine ear’ for the instruction of his enchantress.
But he was a good master, and Barbara prospered under him, and added a
professional finish and exactness to her natural graces. She lived alone
with an old uncle who had sold everything to buy an annuity, and she had
no expectations from anybody.
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. Christopher knew the sweet and quaint old ballad,
and introduced it to his love, who was charmed to discover herself
like-named with a heroine of fiction. 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. Still let me sing thy praises, gracious Love,
though I am entering on the days of fogeydom, and my minstrelsy is
something rusty. I remember; I remember. Thou and I have heard the
chimes at midnight, melancholy sweet.
‘Barbara,’ said Christopher, one evening, bending his mournful brows
above her, ‘we must part.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Barbara smilingly.
‘There is no hope of doing anything here,’ continued Christopher. ‘I
must face the world, and if there is anything in me, I must force the
world to see it and to own it. 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. I must have more elbow-room.’
Elbow-room is indispensable to a violinist, and Barbara was compelled
to agree to her lover’s programme. She was a brave little creature, and
though she was as sorry to part with her lover as even he could wish
her, she accepted the inevitable. Christopher finished his quarter’s
instructions where he had pupils, declined such few further engagements
as offered themselves, packed up his belongings in a tin box somewhat
too large for them, said farewell, and went his way to London. Barbara
went with him by coach into the great neighbouring town five miles away,
and saw him off by train. The times and the place where these two were
bred were alike primitive, and this farewell journey had no shadow of
impropriety in it even for the most censorious eyes. The coach did not
return till evening, and little Barbara had three or four hours on her
hands. She walked disconsolately from the station, with her veil down to
hide the few tears which forced themselves past her resolution. Scarcely
noticing whither her feet carried her, she had wandered into a retired
and dusty street which bore plainly upon its surface the unwritten but
readable announcement of genteel poverty, and there in a parlour window
was a largeish placard bearing this legend: ‘Mrs. Lochleven Cameron
prepares pupils for the Stage. Enquire Within.’ A sudden inspiration
entered Barbara’s heart. She had seen the inside of a theatre once or
twice, and she thought herself prettier and knew she could sing
better than the singing chambermaid whom everybody had so applauded.
Christopher had often defended the stage from the aspersions cast upon
it by the ignorant prejudices of country-bred folk, who looked on the
theatre as a device of the Arch-Enemy and an avenue to his halls of
darkness. In pious varyings from church she had heard the Eeverend Paul
Screed compare the theatrical pit with that other pit of which the Enemy
holds perpetual lease, but she respected Christopher’s opinion more
highly than that of the Eeverend Paul. There was yet a sense of
wickedness in the thought which assailed her, and her heart beat
violently as she ascended the steps which led to Mrs. Lochleven
Cameron’s door. She dried her eyes, summoned her resolution, and rang
the bell. A pale-faced lady of stately carriage opened the door.
‘I wish,’ said little Barbara, with a beating heart, ‘to see Mrs.
Cameron.’
‘Pray enter,’ returned the lady in tones so deep that she might have
been a gentleman in disguise.
Barbara entered, and the deep-voiced lady closed the door, and led
the way into a scantily furnished parlour, which held, amongst other
objects, a rickety-looking grand piano of ancient make.
‘Be seated,’ said the deep-voiced lady. ‘I am Mrs. Lochleven Cameron.
What are your wishes?’
There was just a suspicion of Dublin in Mrs. Cameron’s rich and rolling
tones.
‘You prepare pupils for the stage?’ said Barbara. Her own clear and
sweet voice sounded strange to her, as though it belonged to somebody
else, but she spoke with outward calm.
‘Do you wish to take lessons?’ asked the lady.
‘If I can afford to pay your terms,’ said little Barbara.
‘What can you do?’ asked Mrs. 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.
‘Wait here a time, my dear,’ said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron, regally
business-like in spite of her tears, but with the suggestion of Dublin a
trifle more developed in her voice.
She swept from the room, and closed the door behind her; and Barbara,
not yet rid of the feeling that she was somebody else, heard Mrs.
Cameron’s voice, somewhat subdued, calling ‘Joe.’
‘What is it?’ asked another deep voice, wherein the influences of Dublin
and the stage together struggled.
‘Come down,’ said Mrs. Cameron; and in answer to this summons a
solemn footstep was heard upon the stair. Barbara heard the sound of
a whispered conference outside, and then, the door being opened, Mrs.
Cameron ushered in a gentleman tall and lank and sombre, like Mrs.
Cameron, he was very pale, but in his case the pallor of his cheeks was
intensified by the blackness of his hair and the purple-black bloom
upon his chin and upper lip. He looked to Barbara like an undertaker who
mourned the stagnation of trade. To you or me he would have looked like
what he was, a second or third-rate tragedian.
‘I have not yet the pleasure of your name,’ said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron,
addressing Barbara.
‘My name is Barbara Allen,’ said Barbara, speaking it unconsciously as
though it were a line of an old ballad.
‘This, Miss Allen,’ said Mrs. Cameron with a sweep of the right hand
which might have served to introduce a landscape, ‘is Mr. Lochleven
Cameron.’
Barbara rose and curtsied, and Mr. Lochleven Cameron bowed. Barbara
concluded that this was _not_ the gentleman who had been called
downstairs as ‘Joe.’
‘Will you’ sing that little ballad over again, Miss Allen?’ asked Mrs.
Cameron, gravely seating herself.
Barbara sang the ballad over again, and sang it rather better than
before.
Mrs. Cameron cried again, and Mr. Cameron said ‘Bravo!’ at the finish.
‘Now,’ said Mrs. Cameron, ‘do you know anything sprightly?’ she
pronounced it ‘sproightly,’ but she was off her guard.
Barbara, by this time only enough excited to do her best, sang ‘Come
lasses and lads,’ and sang it like herself, with honest mirth and rural
roguishness. For without knowing it, this young lady was a born
actress, and did by nature and beautifully what others are taught to do
awkwardly.
‘You’ll have to broaden the style a little for the theatre,’ said the
tragédienne, ‘but for a small room nothing could be better.’
‘I venture to predict,’ said the tragedian, ‘that Miss Allen will become
an ornament to the profession.’
‘I am afraid,’ said Barbara, rising from the piano, ‘that after all I
may be only wasting your time. I have not asked your terms, and--I am--I
have not much money.’
‘Miss Allen,’ said the tragedian, ‘unless I am much mistaken, you will
not long have to mourn that unpleasant condition of affairs.’
‘Are your parents aware of your design, Miss Allen?’ This from the lady.
‘I have no parents,’ faltered Barbara. ‘I am living with my uncle.’
‘Does he know your wishes in this matter?’
‘No,’ said Barbara, and the feeling of guilt returned.
‘If he is willing to entrust you to my tuition,’ said Mrs. Lochleven
Cameron, ‘I should be willing to instruct you without charge on
condition that you bound yourself to pay to Mr. Cameron one-third of
your earnings for the first three years.’
This opened up a vista to Barbara, but she was certain that her uncle
would give his consent to no such arrangement.
‘You had better lay the matter before your uncle, Miss Allen,’ said the
tragedian. ‘Without his consent, Mrs. Lochleven Cameron could not see
her way to an arrangement. 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. She dropped her veil and drew on
her gloves slowly, and as she did so a rapid step ascended to the front
door, there came the click of a latch-key, the slam of the street
door as it closed, and then, with an imperative knock which awaited no
answer, a young man rushed into the room and shouted,
‘Done at last!’
There was triumph in this young man’s eyes, and the flush of triumph
on his cheek. He was a handsome young fellow of perhaps five-and-twenty,
with a light curling beard and a great blonde moustache. His clothes
were a little seedy, but he looked like a gentleman. He did not notice
Barbara, and the tragedian and his wife apparently forgot her presence.
‘You don’t mean------?’ began Mrs. Lochleven
Cameron.
‘But I do mean it,’ cried the new-comer.
‘Rackstraw has taken it. It is to be put in rehearsal on Monday, and
billed for Monday-week. How’s that for high, eh?’
‘Good, dear boy, good!’ said the tragedian, and the two shook hands.
‘But that’s not all,’ said the new-comer. ‘Milford was there.’
‘The London Milford?’ asked Mr. Cameron.
‘The London Milford,’ said the other. ‘Milford of the Garrick. He heard
me read it, prophesied a great run for it, has promised to come down
again and see it, and if it fulfils his hopes of it, means to take it up
to town. In fact, it’s as good as settled.’
‘I congratulate ye, me boy,’ said Mr. Cameron. ‘I knew ye’d hit ‘em one
of these fine days. I knew ut.’
Through all this, which she only half understood, Barbara was silent.
She took advantage of the lull which followed the tragedian’s expression
of friendly triumph to recall Mrs. Cameron to the knowledge of her
presence.
‘I will speak to my uncle,’ she said, ‘and I will write to you.’
The stranger looked round when she spoke, and snatched his hat off.
Barbara bent her head in general salutation and went her way. When she
left the street, she could scarcely believe that it had not all been a
dream. It was so unlike herself to do anything so bold-She felt more
and more guilty as she waited for the coach, more and more afraid of
confiding to her uncle such a scheme as that she had so hastily formed.
When she reached home she made one or two inward overtures towards the
attempt, but her courage failed her, and she kept silence. Yet she
used to think sometimes that if she had the power to shorten poor
Christopher’s struggles, it was almost a crime not to do it.